DADA

DADA

Dada, our father who passed away at the ripe old age of 90 recently, belonged to the old school when PDA was a strict no-no.  So I have to really rack my brains to reminisce about some tender moments spent with him in my childhood days.

I do remember those early winter mornings, when I used to climb into his quilt and listen to the story of “Androcles and the Lion”. While narrating it for the nth time (for some reason, I always found this story fascinating) he used to nuzzle me with his perennial stubble, which was not a very unpleasant sensation. I still remember the coarseness and the tingle on my cheeks which must have been tender those days.

He was a selfless RSS worker (it took me years of adult life to accept this resignedly), hence he was always saddled with the most thankless tasks by the pompous asses who ruled the roost. He used to bicycle to distant “Shakhas”   (branches of RSS which conducted the daily drill and games), trying valiantly to keep them alive. As a child of 5 or 6, I had no option but to accompany him on these expeditions. In cold winter evenings, I used to ride the danda (the top horizontal bar of the frame) of his old bicycle (among other things, one of its pedals used to be always broken), always sleepy on my return journeys and often shivering with cold. Sensing my discomfort, he used to stop midway, take off his pullover, (knitted from cheap wool by my mother during her free periods in the government school where she used to teach) and drape it around my frail shoulders. I can still feel the heat of his body (generated from vigorous cycling) conducted through the pullover, dispelling the chill from my bones like magic.

Even in those good old days, it was not safe to leave the bicycles outside overnight. The locks could be picked in no time. So dada had to carry the bicycle up the stairs every night to park it in the balcony of our first floor flat. I remember one little game we often played to my great delight. While sleepily riding the danda of his bicycle on my return rides, when we used to reach home, I used to pretend to be sleepier than I actually was and refused to get off the bicycle when he had to carry it upstairs. The strong man that he was, from years of “Surya Namaskaras” (a yoga exercise), he could easily carry the bicycle upstairs with yours truely precariously perched atop, to my great delight and excitement.

I remember with love, a word he never actually uttered with us, the tingle of his stubble on my cheeks, the warmth of his pullover around my shoulders and the wild excitement of getting carried atop his bicycle over the staircase. 

RITUALS

RITUALS

We continued our morning walks after moving to the central Mumbai suburb of Sion. But somehow it was not the same. Instead of the picturesque environs of “Sagar Upvan”, we had to do with the bye lanes of Sion East, which were full of second grade schools and colleges of various hues. The children were always milling around on the roads. One school had their students dressed in whites for the sports day and they were pretending to play various games ranging from cricket to football, on the narrow sidewalk, already crowded with morning walkers, maids, milkmen and the newspaper delivery boys. I thought it was pathetic. The girls studying in the junior college nearby were clad in the cheaper versions of the dresses worn by bollywood starlets in their latest movies. (The maids wore the cheaper replicas of the dresses made popular by the actresses on popular soaps). The boys were always rushing sleepily to their classes while chattering excitedly all along. The stray dogs always thought that they owned the place and fought and shat all over indiscriminately. All things considered, morning walk ceased to be the pleasure of yore and became more of a chore.

          Then somebody introduced me to the dilapidated apology of a garden on the Sion fort, not far away from our apartment complex. We had to climb 85 stairs to reach the garden. There were another 70 odd stairs if one wanted to reach the top of the keep. Otherwise, people walked on the walkway which went around the castle. It was far from clean and quite slushy in the rains. But slightly better than the roads and devoid of the obnoxious morning traffic dominated by empty cabs, speeding needlessly. The garden had a laughter club, a clapping club, a karate club and the ubiquitous gully cricketers. Some middle-aged women were busy doing grotesque contortions which they must be thinking as exercise. One dapper looking old man played ‘ring’, (a rubber tube in round form, an ancient version of the Frisbee without the excitement, played in the style of badminton), with two ladies. I wonder wherever they still find the ring.

          We soon got into the groove and sort of adjusted to the poor man’s jogger’s park. I soon became very good at breath control. Every corner, every secluded spot, which was not occupied by the ubiquitous lovers, reeked of urine. So you either had to hold your breath or exhale while passing these places.

          When I was diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and advised to get some sunshine whenever possible, I started climbing to the top of the castle and sat in the sun for a while doing my breathing exercises and believe me I was the most normal human being in that keep of broken walls. I found a good unbroken spot on the parapet wall where I could sit cross legged, do Pranayama and soak in the sun. But to my utter dismay, somebody had spilled some lentils (Daal) there. So it was totally uninhabitable. I had to settle for the second best spot where I had to sit with feet dangling over the parapet wall. Whenever the lentils started to dry, somebody would renew the deposit without fail. I had a good mind to tick off the guy who was doing this to me. Finally I did see him once. He caught my attention because he was being followed by a cackle of crows cawing excitedly. He opened the polythene bag he was carrying and deposited the remnants of his yesterday’s dinner on the same spot. The crows swooped in cawing hungrily. To my horror, the guy kept sitting cross legged among all the noisy crows, looking at them with glazed eyes. Then I knew that this was a hopeless case and if I so much as whimpered in protest against his rape of a perfectly sittable parapet wall, he would kill me.  Reason? His eyes were full of religious fervour and his look betrayed that he was making an offering to his ancestors via these crows (in Hindu religion, the offerings to the crows are expected to be directly transferred to the ancestors). 

          I felt he must have treated his progenitors real bad to be required to do this every day without fail. I remembered some of the prayers I had memorised in my childhood. One prayer ends like this:” If you recite this once, your greatest sins will be washed away; if you recite this twice, all the riches of the world will be yours and if you recite this thrice, your greatest enemy will be destroyed”. Another prayer ends thus: “If you recite this prayer in the morning, the sins of the previous evening will be washed away; if you recite it in the evening, the sins committed during the day will be washed away and if you recite it morning and evening, all your sins will be washed away”. These prayers definitely do not advocate that you commit sins so that you get the opportunity to say the prayer and absolve yourself from their after effects. But we tend to interpret these things to our own advantage. Religion does not teach us to sin but we find it convenient to assuage our conscience with prayers and rituals and use this as a licence to do anything during the day. Recite a powerful prayer in the evening and hey presto, you are as pure as morning dew again. The more you sin during the day, the more bizarre the rituals in the evening. I could go on and on, but this is the time when I feed grass to the white cow every evening, so ciao for now.

SNAILS

SNAILS

We stayed in the posh southernmost  locality of Mumbai called ‘Colaba’ for two years. The view of the sea from my 13^th floor flat was absolutely breathtaking. We took great pride in telling all visitors that we had Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani for neighbours. Although I never saw either of them, I did, however, sometimes get a glimpse of some of Ratan Tata’s 26 dogs when they were being taken by the staff for a drive; and occasionally saw from afar the parties hosted by Mukesh Ambani in his terrace garden.

            The best part of the stay was the morning walks we took in the BPT (Bombay Port Trust) garden behind our building. Named “Sagar Upvan”, it was a paradise for walkers/joggers on the seashore. Well maintained walkway, with lots of neatly tagged shady trees, with detours going up and down, it also had two grassy knolls in the middle for yoga enthusiasts. There were some covered areas with benches for taking shelter if it rained and some benches on the seafront where you could sit and enjoy the view if there was no low tide and there were no crappings/crappers nearby. The park was devoid of the ubiquitous obnoxious bunch of noisy urchins who are usually found at such places making a total nuisance of themselves.

            The walkers were a curious bunch. Most of them were nattily clad in the latest sports attire and expensive sneakers. One gentleman had a funny way of swinging his arms as if he was trying to elbow his way through a milling crowd at VT station. One chap greeted everybody coming from the other side with a loud Hari Om! And one lady scurried about like a frightened mouse. There was a group of three desperate housewives who insisted on walking together side by side on the narrow walkway and walked so furiously with elbows flying around and gossiped so loudly that everyone got out of their way when they approached. That was their “power walk”. I found it mildly irritating and soon learned the trick of getting the better of them by looking sideways at a distant object when they approached, which forced them to check the offending elbow from swinging out when I crossed them. Some workaholics kept vigorously yelling away in their hands free cell phone devices all along. There was an occasional young mother with baby and Ayah in tow. There also were the love birds without whom no Mumbai public space is complete. I used to marvel at their devotion. You have to be really in love to get up in the wee hours of the morning, put on your Sunday best, slap on some make up and head for the nearest park for a lover’s tryst. Not to forget the occasional Adonis with a perfectly toned body, armed with the latest ipod, clad in the trendiest running gear and trainers and loping effortlessly through the melee of the morning walkers with a bottle of energy drink in hand, smelling of sweat mixed with expensive perfume.

            In rainy season, many trees were in bloom, the grassy knolls became wet, and the sea became much more majestic. Some walkers gave up, other diehard ones persisted. With the help of an umbrella, one could negotiate the stray showers, till Mumbai settled into serious rain. We normally continued our walks, with some other faithfuls, till the walkways became too slippery/ water logged.

The snails and leeches came out in large numbers and were at times found crawling around on the walkway also. The most heart rending sound I ever heard was the loud crunching sound of a careless walker stepping on a snail. I always flinched on hearing it but the careless share broker/businessman went on babbling on his cell phone as if nothing happened. Whenever I saw a snail crawling across the path, I wanted to pick it up and keep it in a safer place, but was too busy/lazy to do it. Then, inevitably, would come the next crunching sound and I would feel terrible again.

One day I saw an old gentleman carefully picking up fallen leaves, fruits and flowers from the track. I could easily understand the feeling behind it. He was trying to avoid these beautiful specimens of nature getting crushed on the walkway (which would have made it all squishy and slippery). I felt like kissing this guy who was quietly practising what I was not even thinking. Then I realised, it is not enough to have good, pious and noble thoughts unless/until you decide to do something about it. Grieving for crushed snails does not absolve me from the guilt of tacit complicity in their demise

           

TOP

TOP

In my childhood, the rainy season brought many Hindu festivals esp. in the month of Saawan in the Hindu calendar.  I always enjoyed the outings with the family, many of them on the bicycles, to various places of worship, best of all to the river Narmada for a holy bath. Sometimes the ladies sat in a cycle rickshaw and I had the choice of riding the bicycle with my dad or sitting in the cycle rickshaw with mom and granny. Due to the Spartan seating arrangements on offer on the bike (with possibility of serious damage to one’s posterior), as compared to the soft lap of granny, I normally opted for the three wheeler ride. My dad’s vigorous peddling however posed a serious threat of facing the ignominy of being overtaken by him and my other equally enthusiastic uncles on their bikes. It was a tricky choice which one should not be required to make at such a tender age.

          Of course, apart from the swim in the river, I was more interested in the various goodies available at these festive gatherings. My favourite item was a pair of goggles made from coloured cellophane papers fitted into the rings of hard paper with a rubber band for tying it around the head. Obviously, due to the fragility of the material used and the rough treatment it got from me and my cousin Parag, the goggles never came back intact. Then there were cheap plastic mouth organs which were normally vetoed by the senior members of the family, due to the serious threat posed to the noise level of the universe.  

          During one of these outings, I was introduced to the magical world of the ‘top’, a simple wooden item, conical in shape, with an iron nail at the bottom and a rounded head. The colour of the top was a bright red or green which became indistinguishable after weathering some usage.  There were ribs on the slanting middle of the top where one had to wind a thread, first around the nail and then around the rest of the body. The whole routine was quite complicated.  Then the thread had to be pulled up with a jerk while flinging the top down, to give a spin to the top.

          The thread had to be of a special quality. It resembled the wick used in oil lamps, hence, was quite expensive. Dad gamely offered to make a homemade substitute which he expertly made by rolling old rags across his thigh. But somehow it was not the same. I had to challenge him to make the top spin with his homemade thread, to force him to buy me the real thing.

Initially, the entire rigmarole appeared too tough to master. I kept staring wistfully at the big boys who could not only spin the top effortlessly but also, make it do many tricks like picking it up while still spinning, on their palms, throwing it up and down etc. Sometimes, if they were in a good mood, they would put the spinning top on my tiny palm. The tickling sensation of a whirling top on the palm and the thrill of holding it made me ecstatic. Later, after hours and hours of frustrating attempts, the top suddenly started responding to my command and actually spun majestically before slowing down and eventually rolling away on its side. When spinning the top became easy, I moved towards more esoteric tricks and the culmination of the entire experience was throwing the top down and flicking the thread expertly before it lands on the ground and voila you have a spinning top on your palm.

          Boys played many games with the tops, but once the thrill of making it spin in various expert ways was over, I soon lost interest in it. Then on, it was a forgotten art practised only occasionally to train the younger boys or impress the girls who always swooned when I demonstrated my special tricks.

          Then I discovered marbles. But that is another story.   

Unkempt

UNKEMPT

Unkempt was the word to describe him. He was all of 5 feet tall, was built like a wrestler i. e. muscular, stocky and thick necked; wore dirty, smelly clothes and had a thick mop of unruly hair, resembling an inverted wicker basket matted with grime and dirt. He had a thick moustache which completely covered his upper lip and often carried a giveaway evidence of his last meal. He had a loud, booming voice which was put to good use in the late night shouting matches we occasionally had with the hall next door, Lala Lajpatrai hall (Lallu in IIT Kharagpur parlance, no disrespect to the great man). He could yell the choicest Punjabi curse words with great gusto. He walked with a peculiar shuffle dragging his feet on the ground.

          Folklore has it that he was a really wild kid in his childhood. After his day’s romp with the other brats in the village, he used to often return home with so much dust and dirt in his hair that finally his parents decided to chop off his locks and make him mona i.e. a sikh who has decided to sport a shorter hair style. He was named Amrik Singh, as his parents like many others in rural Punjab those days, wanted their son to grow up and go to Amreeka, the Promised Land.

          He was a man of few words but he could shout “Shanta!” at the top of his voice every time he saw the buxom lass, who was the secret fantasy of all male iitkgpians,  passing by. (The word stalking had not entered the social parlance in that era and it was considered perfectly all right for hot blooded jocks to shout their appreciation of a girl’s beauty and the girls took it in good spirit). He was, however, a staunch supporter of the hall and always cheered the hall team lustily in whichever activity we participated including chess and bridge tournaments. When I won the chess tournament, in spite of being a foot shorter and at least 10 kgs lighter, he easily lifted me up and shouted “Oye Pande! You did it.”

          His sense of hygiene was wackier than that of Lalit Bhanot (of CWG fame). His room was full of dust and you could clearly see the foot marks made in the dust where he found his way to the bed from the door. There was a permanent pile of dirty shirts lying in one corner. Whenever I went to his room calling him to come to the mess, he would pick up shirts from that pile one by one, sniff them and chose the one that smelled the least. He had put up a poster of Katy Mirza on the roof just above his bed so that he could look at her as soon as he woke up. Despite his outward appearance of being an uncouth yokel, he happened to top his class in aeronautical engineering. When and how he studied remained a mystery to all of us.

          I met him 15 years later in a venture capitalists’ conference at ISB Hyderabad. Had it not been for his trademark shuffle, I could have easily missed him. He had lost some weight and gained some sophistication. He wore a black Armani suit and his hair was short and well groomed. He had got rid of the bush over his upper lip. He reeked of expensive French perfume. He looked the quintessential investment banker. I tapped him on the back; he turned back, politely extended his hand and said Hi! I am Mikey from JJM Capital. I said, “Oye Amreek, don’t you recognise me? I am Pande, your hallmate from VS?”

          He picked me up easily, although I had become 10 kgs heavier since we met last, and said “Oye Pande, b*&%$#d! How are you?

Virtuous Cycle

VIRTUOUS CYCLE

We go through life with a complex relationship with our parents, which is always evolving and changing, comprising different shades varying from wide eyed adulation to resigned acceptance to embarrassed dismay.

When we enter the world, we are totally dependent on them for feeding us, changing our nappies, putting us to sleep and for making our existence as comfortable as it can be, while lying helplessly on our backs in control of neither ourselves nor our environment. Whenever we get hungry/wet/crappy we holler for help and keep howling till we get it. Most of us get over this simple symbiotic relationship as we grow older. But some of us get stuck in this habit of shouting mummy/daddy whenever in trouble, may it be career planning, relationship snarls, marital discord or parental responsibilities.

The next phase is “My daddy the strongest man / My mommy the most beautiful woman (the best cook) on the planet“. This phase lasts till the teen years (maybe only tween years now) when it becomes “My dad the most rigid and stuck up miser / My mom the stupidest dinosaur with no inkling of the current fashion trends“. They embarrass us. Again, some people go through their entire lives thinking their dad the smartest / mom the best cook syndrome whereas some others continue to think that their dad is too stuck up and mum is too uncouth. The vilest vituperation of the genx ‘uncool’ is permanently branded on their nonexistent facebook profiles.

When travails of parenthood assail us in the early middle age, we suddenly wake up with a jolt and it dawns on us that mom and dad couldn’t have been so bad after all if they successfully coped with our teething phase, dysentery, measles, several bouts of flu, numerous exams, tests, quizzes, interviews, school projects, stalkers and horror of horrors “pimples“. They also managed to play Frisbee/cricket with us occasionally, take us on picnics/camping, prepare us for the fancy dress parade/school play and ferry us to painting classes. And here I am stuck with this tyke who starts howling the moment I want to sleep and doesn’t shut up even when I am being so calm and reasonable.

This renewed respect and appreciation for the progenitors sometimes remains till they depart for their heavenly abode. But it can also evaporate quickly when as doting grandparents they start spoiling the children rotten. -“Dad! Put him down. Or he will expect to be picked up every time he cries.” “Ma! no chocolates, I told you.” “Mom! don’t interrupt when I am scolding her.”

Finally, when the parents grow real old and feeble; and become clumsy, sloppy, forgetful, garrulous and repetitive, we tend to get impatient and dismissive. -“Mom! You already told him that joke 17 times.” ‘Dad! don’t spill your soup again.”

To our utter and complete bewilderment, while our own parents are slipping into senility and being generally a pain in the neck, we are already graduating from “My daddy strongest” to the “My daddy dumbest” stage. “What me uncool??” “ Hello! You must be mad.” What does this chit of a girl think of herself? Doesn’t she know I was the princess of the year in Saint Joans Convent, Ludhiana? And the boys used to make a beeline at the gate to have a glimpse of me? Wake up princess. Smell the roses. This is life.

And the cycle goes on.

My Name is Paan

This was written some time ago, but may still make interesting reading.

My  Name Is Paan (MNIP)

The two idiots Farukh Khan(FK) and Taran Joker (TJ) are watching the preview of their forthcoming release MNIP.

“Shit! It’s a lemon. It’s a dud. It’s a big effing flop.” Taran is fuming. “Who told you and that girl Pagol to ham so much? “

“But you always ask us to ham  on your TV show –Toffee with Taran(TWIT). So now we have forgotten how to act naturally. “ FK.

You forgot it long ago, after you made ‘Kabhi Ga Kabhi Na.’

“Ok ok.” Farukh says... “no point in finger pointing.  How do we avert the disaster? This time the distributors will surely kill me. I barely escaped their suparis after the near fiasco of ‘Pub me banadi Phodi’”.

Taran laughed. “I knew this was going to be a difficult movie to sell. I have already talked with our friend Udao Thokle who has agreed to boycott the movie and create a big controversy provided you open your  trap wide enough to put your foot into it”.

FK – “ That’s easy.  But how do we release our movie if Udao boycotts it”?

Taran – “I have thought of that. Our young CM Alok Wahan has promised to take stern action if Udao calls for a boycott. He will stop Udao from stopping our release”.

FK – “ But Alok has never acted in his life. How will he act decisively this time”?

Taran- “Don’t worry i have thought of that too. I have asked prince Rajul Thandi to light a fire under Alok’s chair so that he jumps up and does the needful. Rajul will also tell him that Narayan Kane and Gilasrao are waiting for Alok to make only one wrong move so that they can stake their claims for  the hot seat.”

“my god, Taran, you are really a genius. How come it never shows in your movies”?

“Shut up. Does your stupidity show in your movies”?

“OK OK Taran. But how do we still sell the goddamn movie? What about the critics”?

“Oh. That part is simple. The Trade Pundit is already enjoying a five star holiday in the Bahamas after filing his five star review of MNIP. The other reviewers will give us at least three stars out of politeness which is enough for a good opening”.

“You seem to have sewn up the Indian market but what about the overseas markets”?

Taran – “The usual tamasha yaar. You and Pagol brush up your chemistry and go on a world tour. Remember to use only three sentences. My name is Paan, I am an Indian and I want to meet the US president. The Europeans will think you are Amir or Sallu and throng the multiplexes, the NRIs will think this is about India and flock to the DVD parlours and the Americans will be curious to see the idiot who wants to meet the president whom no American wants to meet any more”.

FK – “that’s gr8 Taran. But tell me wont the moviegoers realise that this movie is a half star pile of dung”?

“They will. Of course. But by then, we would have smashed all the BO records of ‘3idiots’.  Then if somebody cribs we shall claim that the people have not really understood our movie properly like our  last lemon ‘Kabhi Phaluda Na Kehna’. Also, I have already purchased two awards for you. You only have to not only dance at the functions but also host the whole shows and keep the public amused”.

FK – “that’s easy . i will keep hinting at our real relationship, mock Shahid, Salman and Saif and shovel dirt on the Bachpan family who will thank me secretly for the free publicity.

Ok. Now that everything is tied up, call that buffoon Phoney Lever. Tell him to bring some fresh jokes. He can accompany us to the swiss bank. I want to laugh all the way.

'WIND BENEATH MY WINGS’

'WIND BENEATH MY WINGS’

Since my child hood I have been having this vivid recurring dream of flying. I am running away from some hoodlums who are for some unknown reason after my life. They are slowly gaining on me. I try to run faster but can’t gather speed. I am becoming more and more desperate by the second and the desperados are catching up with me. I frantically jump up and down. And suddenly as I jump up and flap my hands, I take off like the Harrier. Even then, the pursuers are running with me on the ground. I gain altitude slowly and then I am also able to navigate around more easily. I fly over treetops and power cables and go over tall mountains.  Again, as suddenly, I start losing height.    I look down and see my tormentors still running. I keep kicking down with both my legs and pressing down the surrounding air with both my hands. Sometimes I am able to lift off again, sometimes I can’t. When I descend to the ground in utter panic, I see the goons rushing towards me and to my horror I realise that what to talk of flying, now I can’t even run. I am frozen in fright like a rabbit in front of bright headlights. I try to cry out for help, but no sound comes from my mouth. With considerable effort, I am able to shout in a very small, choked squeak.  This is the time when I normally wake up, often drenched in cold sweat, sometimes weeping in a noiseless shout.  

            I have been having different variations of this dream over the years. On some occasions there is a girl with me whom I have to carry when I fly; normally I am all alone in my fancies of flights. At a few times, there is a body of water underneath when I am flying, or there is a snow capped mountain. While flying, I occasionally rest on the treetops. There are times when I am soaring high effortlessly like Icarus easily steering clear of the trees and the power cables. At times I find it difficult to extricate myself from the maze of power cables surrounding me. Normally there are no other animals on the ground. However, the trees are often full of different birds making their own cacophony/music. The owls and bats resent my intrusions very much and express their displeasure by screeching and squeaking and shrieking shrilly. But sparrows go about their singing without missing a flap. Often, the dream is so vivid and the experience of flying so exhilarating that I feel convinced even after becoming half awake, that I can really fly. There are days, rather nights, when I know that it’s a dream. But I am so ecstatic flying about effortlessly that I don’t want to wake up and miss the experience. Over the last few years, the frequency of the dreams has waned considerably.

            Now that I am approaching my twilight years, I find it funny that I had such puerile dreams for so long. But I am also in a way sad that I am past the age of dreaming. I have become very melancholic and nostalgic. This is the time when the realisation has finally dawned that I may have really lost my wings. I can’t even dream of flying any more.  Did someone say that you become dead the day you stop dreaming?

I have, however, not yet given up hope completely. I still go to bed with the fervent desire that the mobsters will come chasing me again and out of shear desperation, I shall be able to lift off, to save the fair maiden clinging to my side.

Xerostomia

XEROSTOMIA

She walked into his life, like a sliver of bright sunshine into a dark room in a gloomy winter morning. She always brought with her the freshness of dewdrops on the rosebuds, the laughter of angels and the divine music of the seraphim. She flashed him a sweet smile whenever they crossed ways. She rustled around in crisply starched cotton saris smelling of detergent and ponds dreamflower talc. He was totally smitten. Every time he crossed her in the corridors, on the stairs or in the courtyard, his heart would be beating wildly, his palms would dampen with cold sweat and beads of perspiration would line his forehead. His mouth would suddenly go dry with no drop of saliva to swallow/ moisten his parched lips. The acute dryness in his throat ruled out any comprehensible verbal communication. The only sound coming out of his mouth on such encounters would be a feeble helpless croak.  He even found a word for his condition in the dictionary “Xerostomia”.

            He tried various ways to overcome his shyness/dryness of throat. He tried chewing gum (it only tightened up his jaw muscles more), lozenges, Hail Marys, deep breathing; but nothing seemed to work. Finally, he accidently came upon a simple solution. A swig of water was found to be the panacea for his episodal Xerostomia. It appeared to work effectively, at least with others.

He started carrying a water bottle everywhere and kept his eyes peeled for her so that he could take a quick mouthful of water before coming closer and make some intelligible conversation. Numerous climbs up and down the staircase, sneaking around corners and loitering in the corridors were futile.  Finally, one day, suddenly, he saw her approaching from afar and his heart missed several beats. He managed to take in a sip of fortifying aqua pura before she came close. She flashed him her usual radiant smile. He opened his mouth confidently and his voice rang out loud and clear “Good Morning Teacher”. 

The Curious Case of the Missing Y

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING “Y”

I went for my nth public function yesterday. One gets lot of time to ponder over the quirks of life while sitting on an uncomfortable dais for long periods. Some things at these jamborees always bug me.

Ÿ  Why do we always cram the podium with so many people?

Ÿ  Why the chairs on the dais are kept so close together that whenever somebody has to get up to receive the bouquet, or hand it over to somebody else, or make a speech, he has to get up, push the chair back and wriggle out. When he returns, the process is reversed. Pull chair out, squeeze in and pull chair back in and sit. And while he is doing these contortions, the two distinguished guests on his two sides have to get up to escape being trampled on. There is every possibility that you get home with a sprained back/ankle.

Ÿ  The dais also invariably has a pin/nail/tack (which is use for affixing the table cloth) protruding just in front of me which is always trying to prick my thumb or rip my new pair of trousers in the most inconvenient place.

Ÿ  Why do they write your names on the nameplates             only on the side facing the public? Whenever the honorable guests are requested to take their places on the dais, there is a scramble and confusion ending in the guest of honour sitting in the distant corner and the assistant deputy secretary of the society taking centre stage. Thankfully, the chief assistant secretary discovers the mistake and there is another scramble and then everybody is finally seated satisfactorily only to be requested to get up and do the ceremonial lighting of the lamp. I always happen to wear laced shoes on these occasions and have to untie and tie my shoelaces in quick succession in full public view, while everyone else on the dais is waiting patiently after having taken off their slip on shoes/open sandals quickly.

Ÿ   Before you have recovered from this ordeal, the most toneless and shrillest wonder in the town is let loose on the gathering in the form of a prayer. I always feel, the goddess Saraswati (goddess of arts and music) must be suffering this spectacle with cotton wool in her ears and with the choicest ones spewing from the mouth.

Ÿ  Then comes the MC(master/mistress of ceremony) and I could write a book on their shenanigans. The MC comes fully armed with the history of the town, the purpose of the function and a repertoire of four or five jokes/couplets/anecdotes etc; and launches into a long monologue ending in thanking all the dignitaries on the dais for sparing their valuable time in making the function a grand success. By the time he/she is through with the intro, nobody has anything left to say. So every subsequent speaker has to refer to him/her before repeating the same platitudes.

Ÿ  Then comes the ritual of garlanding/presenting bouquets to the dignitaries. I am fully convinced that here the garlander is more important than the garlandee. On one occasion, after about 25 persons garlanding the various people on and off the dais, they called, Mr. so and so ex MLA or something to do the honours. Mr. so and so asked “whom should I garland?” and the organizers said garland anyone, it does not matter, or something to that effect. 

Ÿ  Despite their gift of the gab/garrulity/verbosity, all the MCs always manage to get my name wrong. My name for the record is R.J.Ghatey. I am invariably called Mr. Ghatge/Ghadge/Laghate/Dhote or Ghatekar(some people assume that all Maharashtrian names must end with a kar). If someone manages to get it right, they goof up with the initials. In any case, they all the miss the ‘y’ while writing it down. Ditto with my designation. When I was a DGM (Dy General Manager), I was invariably called a Dy. Manager which is four rungs below. I secretly wished someone would call me a general manager by mistake. They did, once, when the great man (my boss) was sitting right next to me on the dais. I contemplated whether I could crawl under the table cloth, but there were too many pesky mosquitoes buzzing around in that space to risk it.

Ÿ  Often there are so many guests on the dais that the organizers have to invent fancy titles to massage everybody’s ego. And the MC manages to mix up all of them. I have been a ’Special Guest’, ’Guest of Honour’, ‘Chief Guest’ and ‘Distinguished Guest’ at the same function.

Ÿ  Then the speech making starts. Normally, the least important person on the dais should speak first and they should move upwards in the ascending order. But most functions follow a much more chaotic format. So you don’t know when you will be called to speak.

Ÿ  After every speaker the MC keeps repeating whatever was said for the benefit of the audience (which must be so stupid that everything has to be explained twice to them). And keeps requesting every speaker to make it short. (No one takes him/her seriously anyways.)

Ÿ  At the end, someone is requested to propose a vote of thanks. God forbid if that somebody happens to be a budding/fading MC. Then he/she goes on to repeat all that the MC and the other speakers said, interspersing it with his own five jokes/couplets/anecdotes. Finally he thanks all the speakers for keeping it short and calls it a day.

Ÿ  Phew!  Hence, in this case of the missing ‘y’, the MC did it.

Zeitgeist

ZEITGEIST

There are times when after a night’s sleep, you wake up with an alert, fertile almost febrile mind with a lot of interesting thoughts, ideas and quotable quotes swirling around. Beautifully formed sentences on the previous day’s “breaking news”, or snippets gleaned from the numerous newspapers read, or some pseudo philosophical/spiritual thoughts flow effortlessly like rhythmic patterns from the magical fingers of Ustad Zakir Hussain. You wonder at your own felicity and brilliance. You feel you should get up and record these gems for the benefit of mankind (?) or at least for posterity. Alas! By the time you awaken fully, you are already late for the morning walk and your mind is already forming your responses in the first video conference of the day. The literary masterpiece simply evaporates and disappears from your subconscious slowly like dewdrops from the grass blades on sunrise. 

While sitting down to write a blog of indeterminate length on any subject starting with the letter Z, originality is the first muse that deserts you, followed closely by felicity, grammar and eloquence not necessarily in that order. You finally dust up the dictionary and start reading all the words starting with z.  

This is how I stumbled across zeitgeist which I had happened to look up recently. I have been wondering lately what the presiding spirit of the present era is. Is it greed? Is it money? Is it hedonism? Is it materialism? Or what?  It is difficult to pin down. May be I should approach the question in a different way. By using the ancient Vedic philosophy of “Neti Neti”, by eliminating what it is not. 

            It is not upliftment of the downtrodden. People seldom stop to look down, not even to see what they are trampling on. They are always in a tearing hurry to get by the shortest route to the next destination, next project, next assignment, next promotion, next boy/girl friend, next divorce, next tummy tuck, next rave party, next visit to the shrink and so on. No time to think of our social responsibility. 

            It is not love for one’s country, patriotism, jingoism or whatever, unless it comes to indo-pak encounters of the cricket kind.  Otherwise, it is I, me, myself; then my family, my extended family; my sub-caste, my caste, my religion and then again I, me and myself and so on.

            It is not pursuit of knowledge. We cram from text books and forget all of it after puking it on the exam papers. We bluff our way through interviews; depend on our juniors to do ‘research’ for us, prepare talking points for us and write our reports, presentations even our self appraisals. I have seen some people sleepwalking through a banking job, right up to retirement without gathering as much as iota of experience/expertise. Jargon and subterfuge can help you get out of the tightest corner. “Let me run it past/bounce it off my team/boss”, “let me sleep over it”, “this needs to be looked into in greater detail”, “have you benchmarked your data with the best in class”’ I could go on and on.  You get the drift. The cruellest of them all is “does it conform to CVC guidelines”. You can kill any project with this one.

            It is not, definitely not honesty, integrity, honour or any of such old fashioned virtues.  We bribe/give donations to the schools to admit our kids who cheat, with no little help from their teachers, in board exams so that the child/his parents/the school can boast of a good result. Same process is repeated in college/B school till the child is, with some help from the well connected grand uncle, ensconced into a regular job. On the first day at the job, esp a govt job, the poor boy/girl is taught the various original ways of using everyday things like a diary (to be left at the far corner of the table in which the visitor can slip in some “chaipani”), the table (more under than above) and the desk drawers (has anybody seen the desk drawers of RTO officers in the evening?).

I could go on and on but my daughter wud impatiently say “ooookaaaay dad. Don’t exaggerate. And what did your generation do? What was their zeitgeist?”

I started reminiscing about the spirit of our growing years in the 70s and the 80s. Those were the days of mediocrity and deprivation. We did not even have technicolour dreams. Every middle class boy aspired to become a doctor or an engineer and land a decent govt/semi govt job. (Girls wanted to study arts/home science and land a doctor/engineer in matrimony). Getting a four figure salary and driving a bajaj scooter was the ultimate aspiration. The movies reflected the angst of the suffocated youth in Amitabh Bachchan’s angry young man who revolted against the rich man/the system/the oppression. 

The neta-babu raj had the nation by its unmentionables and the licence-permit raj had a stranglehold over the industry.  Only the Bombay Club, which had a cosy relationship with the babudom thrived in the unlevel playing field. Youngsters dreamt of an India without Indira. But socialism did not really excite us.  It was either the egoistic Ayn Rand and her material objectivism or good old hindutwa which captured our imagination. The emergency rudely woke up the lotus eating masses from the travesty of democracy which was not by the people, neither of the people nor for them. The decline and resurrection of Mrs G was over in a blink and the nation was back to business as usual at the Hindu rate of growth of 3.5%. The bureaucrats continued to rule the country. They had to deal with the minor inconvenience of having inept and corrupt political masters and pesky subjects, which they did effortlessly. In the IAS academy they were actually taught not to extend their hand first while meeting aam aadmi (ordinary citizens), as they were the ruling class. Their mindset was aptly expressed by a friend who left a highly paid job to be a babu. He said “In our country, the danda (cane) of the Mai Baap sarkar (govt) has conjugal rights over the backside of the Aam Aadmi and I want to be the one to wield the danda and not the one to expose my behind.

And then came the big crossing of the Rubicon when the good doctor Manmohan Singh unleashed the triple whammy of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation on the country and nothing was the same ever again.