Perception

I don't remember since how long S.S. and I have been drinking together. Wait a minute, I do. It's ten years now. If drinking were a creative act, we would have both been celebrated members of the society by now -- the amount we have drunk together! But who says drinking isn't a creative act? In fact, it can be the most creative if done in the right company.

The best part about S.S. is that he is not a fussy drinker. Very much like me. I know men who drink only beer and nothing else. I know men who drink only wine and look down upon other varieties of alcohol. I know men who can drink their whisky only with soda and their rum only with cola. Some can't drink without ice. Some others are very particular about 'side-snacks.'

S.S., however, makes no fuss. Neither do I. As long as there is some water to pour in the drink, anything, just about anything, will do. Most of the drinking, all these years, happened either at my home or in the dingy, dirty bars of wine shops. Today neither of us goes to these bars for the same reason -- they are dingy and dirty. After all, there comes a time when you no longer do things that you did in the younger days and are better off with the memories of it.

But there was a time when we liked going to such places. I particularly liked it because here you met people who did not wear masks. They were what they were -- the labourers, the autorickshaw drivers, the small-time businessmen, the marketing executives, the medical representatives... And alcohol made them even more honest and human.

Very often, we would be approached by men in tatters. They would be holding out their alcohol-filled glasses and begging for some water. They would have managed to collect just about enough money to buy the alcohol, and had no money left to buy a pouch of water. When you are drinking out of habit and not as a social obligation, you always understand a fellow drinker's needs and compulsions. You are sympathetic.

But there is one sight I can never forget. Some years ago, S.S. and I were busy discussing 'office politics' over drinks when a bloodied hand clutching a plastic glass came in between us. One look at the man's face and I was horrified: he had a terrorised look on his face, his soiled shirt was coated with dust and the right sleeve was soaked in blood. He was begging for water.

There are countless such episodes I can recall if I try very hard, but right now they are as hazy as the previous night's antics under the influence of alcohol and I would rather let them remain that way.

But a few weeks ago, S.S. and I got together for a drink at a wine shop after God knows how long. Only that the wine shop was not in Chennai, but in a village in Andhra Pradesh, on the highway to Tirupati.

"I am free, man! Why can't I come with you?" S.S. told me when he learned that I was preparing to leave for a small town near Tirupati. "We could go in my car." So off we were -- the two old drinking buddies -- getting away from the city together for the first time. With each kilometre we travelled the smell of freedom grew stronger -- freedom from what, I was not sure.

At Thiruvallur, we lunched on freshly-fried Mysore bondas and Thums Up at a roadside stall. S.S. has a fetish for roadside food. Not that I don't, just that I am careful while making a journey. The man who was frying the bondas, obviously pleased with the number of bondas we ate, pointed to a road which he said was a short-cut to Tirupati. S.S., who blindly trusted the man's bondas, was reluctant to trust his sense of direction. I finally coaxed him: "Come on, man! This guy lives here. He knows better."

Obviously the bonda-seller knew better. Because even before we realised, we had crossed into Andhra Pradesh. S.S.'s eyes lit up when he noticed wine shops with Telugu signboards. For residents of Tamil Nadu who love to drink or who love their drink, every other state in India is a paradise. Tamil Nadu is the only state in the country where you don't get cans of Kingfisher beer (or any other beer) or Bacardi Breezers. In fact, you don't get anything in Tamil Nadu other than brands of hard, headache-inducing liquor that are unheard of in the rest of India. Why so -- no one seems to know or wants to know.

And so, we had entered paradise. "How about some beer, Ghosh?" S.S. asked me, overcome by glee. "May be when the next shop comes along," I replied. We were driving on a practically empty highway, cutting across lush green fields that looked greener under an overcast sky. And then, the first set of hills showed up on the horizon. The thing with hills is that they look very close but it takes forever reach them. As we drove on, believing they were just round the corner, a signboard came into view: Himalaya Wines. S.S. took his foot off the accelerator.

Himalaya Wines is the most picturesque wine shop I have ever seen or will ever see. On the face of it, it is just another well-stocked wine shop on the highway that is more eager to cater to commuters from the city; but in reality, it is a wine shop located in the middle of an unending stretch of green fields with the hills looking over. Its bar is nothing but a thatched roof shed where people from the nearby villages gather to drink. A thatched roof is all you can ask for in the middle of nowhere -- it was five-star luxury when compared to the dingy bars of Chennai which we once frequented.

We bought two cans of beer each -- S.S. bought Corona while I stuck to Kingfisher -- and settled at a table under the thatched roof. The attendant, seeing customers from the city, came running. We ordered omlettes and sundal. There was pleasure in every moment -- in holding the moisture-coated cans, in clicking open the cans and watching the froth form around the gaping holes, in tasting the beer that actually tasted like beer and not horse's piss.

We had just begun enjoying our beers when an elderly man, in crumpled clothes, walked up to us with his hand outstretched. "Oh no, not again," I muttered to myself, "and we don't even have water. We are drinking beer, can't he see?"

The elderly man came closer, his hand still stretched out. On his palm rested two bondas, and he was telling us something in Telugu. "What does he want?" I asked S.S. "We don't even have any chutney or sauce."

"Wait, let me find out," S.S. said as he got talking to the elderly man in Tamil. It so turned out that the elderly man was a farmer from a nearby village who was not asking for anything but was actually offering us something -- the freshly-fried bondas that he had bought from a roadside stall before walking into the wine shop.

"Since you are an outsider, he considers you to be his guest," the attendant, when he returned with the omlette and sundal, explained. "He has been coming here for years, but I have never seen him offer food to anyone."

Life In A Metro: Flighty Thoughts

What goes on in the mind of a cattle-class passenger

Whenever I am on a flight, the most anxious moment comes when the plane is about to land. I am not alone, I'm sure. Horrible things are known to happen during landing, and I usually find a silent prayer involuntarily slipping out of my lips when the plane touches down.

It was no different last Sunday when, returning to Chennai after a pleasurable week in Kolkata, I held my breath as soon as the tyres hit the runway. I was eager to reach home safe so that I could pull out of my bag the large collection of books and CDs I'd bought from Park Street and look at them with renewed pleasure. A purchase is not a purchase until you've spread out the objects of desire on the bed upon reaching home for one final inspection before they become a part of your daily life.

The plane was still bouncing on the runway and I was yet to exhale in relief when I heard a cry from behind. “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me, sir!” It was the air-hostess who was strapped to her seat at the rear end of the aircraft. “Please go back to your seat! Please!” She was pleading, at the top of her voice, with a passenger who, within seconds of touchdown, had got up from his seat to retrieve his bag from the overhead compartment.

What surprised me even more was that the passenger – a bespectacled, thinly-built man who must be in his forties – returned to his seat with great reluctance, as if he did not like following the orders of a woman half his age. Had the plane been forced to take off again suddenly due to an emergency situation, he could have fractured his skull and died. It is not for nothing that the air-hostesses politely keep telling you to keep the seat belts on until the plane has reached the parking bay. But since they are pretty, petite and polite, you don't take them very seriously: replace them with menacing lathi-wielding police constables and you will find not a single mobile ringing during the take-off and not a single passenger unlocking the seat belt within seconds of landing.

But it's a very Indian thing: to defy rules if the rule enforcers happen to be of the courteous kind and if rule-breaking does not attract any penalty. We become like a classroom full of unruly students. There can't be a better example of this than the aircraft. No one seems to realise that the rules are for their own good, for their own safety. And yet, you will find passengers overcome by the sudden urgency to speak on the phone once they board – even though they had been idling their time away at the departure lounge. I guess for most of them, it is the thrill of being able to talk from the aircraft.

It no longer surprises me when phones continue to ring even after the pilot has announced, “Cabin crew, prepare for take-off.” What really surprises me is the scene inside an aircraft after landing. Though not many display the courage to get up from their seats while the plane is taxiing towards the parking bay, almost all passengers are up on their feet the moment the plane comes to a halt.

There is usually a long wait, which can extend up to twenty minutes, before the ladders arrive and the doors open, and yet passengers give up the comfort of their seats and stand up, often craning their necks under the overhead compartments, as if that would hasten their exit. At that point, the plane does not look like a plane but a truck packed with cattle. Cattle: doesn't the word sound familiar?

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, September 3, 2011.

Life In A Metro: Oh! Calcutta!

A letter from the capital of Paschimbanga (or West Bengal, as you knew it)

“Twenty minutes to touch down,” announced the captain, and I looked down the window to find the plane hovering over the city – a maze of luminous dots. So where was I going to land – in Kolkata or in Calcutta, in the capital of West Bengal or in the capital of Paschimbanga?

To me it made no difference. When I speak in my mother tongue, I instinctively refer to the city as Kolkata – like any other Bengali. When I am talking to a non-Bengali, I find ‘Calcutta' automatically rolling off the tongue. Likewise, I am as familiar with West Bengal as with Paschimbanga, which is merely the literal translation of the English name and has already been in use for as long as one can remember. Therefore, I don't see the change from West Bengal to Paschimbanga altering the life of the Bengali in any manner. But when I land, even though the temperature is a pleasant 29 degrees, I find Kolkata sizzling with arguments over the name-change. I have arrived just in time to catch the city engaged in doing what it loves to do best: debate.

The warmth of North Calcutta or the sophistication of South Calcutta? Shiraz biryani or Arsalan biryani? Mohun Bagan or East Bengal? Sourav or Sachin? Suchitra Sen or Supriya Choudhury? Uttam Kumar or Soumitra Chatterjee? Satyajit Ray or Ritwik Ghatak? Feluda or Byomkesh? Presidency College or Jadavpur University? Darjeeling or Puri? These are perennial debates that divide Kolkata, or Calcutta, into two fiercely independent nations. Perhaps it's only appropriate that the city and the state have two names each – one official, another universal.

Food for thought

In Kolkata, food is not only an integral part of any event worth celebrating, but is a celebration by itself – for which you need no particular occasion. Food columns, supported by high-resolution (read mouth-watering) pictures of preparations, are a prominent feature of every newspaper worth its salt; food festivals are usually the talk of the town, and food alone can rival the female form when it comes to the selling of a product through advertisements. At restaurants, any meal is incomplete without a passionate discussion about the food served to you. You should be able to tell whether the fish is good or not so good, or whether the lamb is as tender as it was the last time you ate there. You are considered lowly if you don't have an opinion to offer. Kolkata, after all, is a city of opinions – everybody has one, about almost everything under the sun.

The other day, I went with a group of friends for lunch to Oh! Calcutta, an upscale restaurant that serves authentic Bengali cuisine. The conversation at the table went rather smoothly until the arrival of the hilsa, which sparked off a debate: was the fish locally procured, or had it come from the river Padma in Bangladesh? One faction said the hilsa was too good to have come from the Indian side of the river, another faction countered that they'd had hilsa that tasted just as good as the ones from Padma. Since I don't eat fish, the discussion made no sense to me and was, in fact, getting on my nerves. I called the waiter and asked him: “Is this Padma hilsa or local hilsa?” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned after a few minutes to announce that it was indeed the Padma hilsa. Suddenly, a gloomy silence descended on the table. I realised my blunder: by putting an end to the discussion, I had made their meal bland.

Did you know?

As of this moment, theatres in Chennai, where I live, are showing about half-a-dozen English movies. But in Kolkata, which was once the capital of British India and where a large number of people still preserve the English way of life, only two English films are being screened in multiplexes: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Spy Kids 4. “I so badly wanted to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” a local friend, who is heavily into sci-fi, complained. “But they only show children's films. I wonder why.” Even I wonder why.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 27 August 2011.

Life In A Metro: Life In A Lodge

It's not so bad, sometimes, to forsake the big city for a small town

Money – as the Beatles and countless sagacious souls have said – can't buy you love. There is something else that money can't buy, and that's a decent hotel or a lodge in a small town. By decent I don't mean five-star luxury when you have to tear off a white ribbon to even lift the toilet seat – but a clean and comfortable bed and a clean and functional bathroom.

Cleanliness and comfort don't seem to figure very high in the priority list of people who run hotels and lodges in small towns. It's almost a rule that the bed-sheet should bear stains, the tap should leak, and the curtains, if there are any, should smell. The sentiment behind this deliberate oversight seems to be: “This is just a halt, not a home. Why invest in giving guests the feel of home when they are going to check out the next morning anyway?”

You have no choice but to check into one of these lodges, for a measly tariff that can be as low as Rs 150 a night. Even if you are willing to spend Rs 1,500 a night – which is, again, peanuts by city standards – you have no choice but to check into a smelly room for Rs 150 because that may be the only lodge the town boasts of.

Why should anyone, in his or her right mind, leave the comfort of a home in the city and travel to a small town to check into a mosquito-infested lodge? The answer is simple: necessity. You could be a young MBA graduate peddling biscuits, or a journalist collecting material for a story, or a pilgrim visiting a temple – there comes a time in life when a train or a bus deposits you in the lap of an otherwise unknown town and when the first thing that crosses your mind is, ‘Where do I stay?'

By now, I am a veteran of such occasions, though this is nothing to boast about – or maybe it is. The cheapest place I've stayed in was a lodge in Mughal Sarai, in eastern UP, where I checked in at four in the morning. I paid Rs 180 for a filthy, mosquito-infested room lit up by a candle (because of frequent powercuts), and where the leaking tap in the bathroom kept making a sinister sound all night.

The strangest lodge I've ever stayed in was one in Jolarpet, where the drainage mesh was located right in the middle of the bathroom floor. Each time you had a bath, you had to step over a frothy, circular puddle that would have formed at the centre of the floor. The dirtiest experience, however, has to be the lodge in Arakkonam where, after settling into an air-conditioned room (which itself smelt like the godown of a scrap-dealer), I made horrifying discoveries in quick succession – used toothpicks shoved under the edge of the mattress, the bathroom bearing muddy footprints, and the toilet seat lying on the floor.

Once, in Nagapattinam, a small army of taxi drivers stood in my room and watched a movie that I was playing on a borrowed DVD player. How that came to be merits a separate story. And during a recent trip to a small town in Andhra Pradesh – too small for you to have even heard of it – I discovered that the bathroom of my lodge did not have the provision for a light, even though the room was fitted with a brand-new AC.

But I quite like staying in such places. The trick is to spend a night there, either by sipping a drink and reading a good book, or by talking on the phone to a loved one (and silently marvelling at how technology keeps you connected even when you are in a godforsaken town), or by simply gazing at the ceiling and meditating upon life in a silence that only a small town can offer you. Once you cross the one-night milestone, things begin to look rosy. The bed-sheet begins to smell of you; the room begins to look familiar because your belongings are scattered all around; you begin to see the loyal side of the room boy who can do anything for you – including fetching bread-and-omelette at an unearthly hour – if you are nice to him. You discover the humility and simplicity of small-town India.

Each time I check out of a lodge, I feel the tip of a knife touching my heart. I feel like staying on. You can call it Stockholm syndrome – or whatever may be its equivalent in the hospitality industry.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, August 20, 2010.

A journey to remember — The disastrous route to paradise

This happened when budget airlines were yet to show up on Indian skies and when an air ticket from Chennai to Delhi cost nearly half my salary, when train tickets could be booked only at the reservation counters in railway stations, and when the mobile phone would receive signals only at important stations — leave alone trains having plug points to charge your phone.

It was during those difficult days that one Diwali eve, on an annual visit to my home in Kanpur, I found myself in the sleeper class of a train called Lucknow Express. I had never travelled on this train before. The more respectable trains bound north were already full, and even on this train the seats in the AC coaches had all been sold out.

The train was to depart at 5.30 am — most self-respecting long-distance trains depart from the station of origin only late in the evening -- and when I showed up at the station after a sleepless night, two things struck me as odd. The coaches of the train were still painted in old-fashioned red, and there were only nine coaches in all. I wondered about its position in the pecking order of the railways.

I went to sleep as soon as the train started, and woke up some two hours later at Gudur. I was ravenously hungry: I hadn't eaten properly the night before, hoping that I would have a hearty breakfast from the pantry car. But this train — not surprising any more — did not have a pantry car. I stepped on to the platform and bought a dosa and two idlis.

One bite of the dosa and I spat it out, while the idlis were hard like pumice stone. The food was stale. I flung the paper plate on the tracks and returned to my seat, and from there, made an astonishing discovery. The people who had crowded around the vendor’s cart were not hungry passengers at all: they were mostly his own men who had picked up paper plates as soon as the train arrived and pretended to eat hungrily in order to give the impression that he was in demand. Thirty-five hours and nearly 2,000 km still lay ahead of me.

I made peace with the circumstances and the next 24 hours passed without event: I would either stare out of the window or observe my fellow passengers — most of them men working or studying in the south and now going home for Diwali holidays. Bad news awaited us at Itarsi — I didn’t have a good feeling about the journey from the very beginning. We learned that there had been a derailment near Bhopal, which was further up the route, and that our train was now going to be diverted via Jabalpur. Travel or travail?

Once we left Itarsi station, the train stopped, literally, at every kilometre, mainly to let more important trains pass through. Who cared about a bunch of U.P.-wallahs travelling from Chennai to their homeland! Before long, we were stranded in the lap of the mighty Vindhyas. The train was now an orphan — a baby elephant left behind by the herd. It was difficult to tell whether the driver, whenever he moved the train a few metres (before coming to a halt again), was doing so on the instructions of the nearest control room or on the orders of my fellow passengers who marched up to the engine in an intimidating manner every time the halt became too long for their comfort.

While exasperation overcame my fellow passengers, it suddenly struck me that I was now the happiest person on earth. The battery of my phone had died a few hours ago, which I meant I was free from worldly attachments for the time being. The train, I realised, was standing at what could easily be one of the most beautiful railway stations in India. The station may be too small to figure in the railway timetable, but there it was — a solitary building, with a solitary bench, overlooked by green cascading hills and surrounded by wild flowers. No sign of civilisation for miles around.

What better place to honeymoon than sitting on that solitary bench, right in the middle of a jungle, and watching the trains go by? What better place to contemplate life — and maybe write? It can’t get more romantic. For company you will have a Pyare Mohan or a Ram Lal, the genial weather-beaten signalman who will regale you with anecdotes — maybe even ghost stories. The company of such men — who in their long years of service have seen it all — can be very assuring.

During the next few hours, Lucknow Express was to stop at many more such tiny stations in Madhya Pradesh. Stations that made you wonder, “What is this place doing here in the middle of nowhere?” I soaked in the sights and the smell of fresh, fragrant forest air. Fellow passengers, meanwhile, kept having heated arguments with the hapless driver. But I was no longer in a hurry to get home. I don’t think Paradise has a fixed address. Even if it exists, it has to be in the middle of nowhere — just where I was right now.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, August 6, 2011.

Life In A Metro: Then The Music Stopped

What do you do with the cassettes you've accumulated over the years?

The unique thing about technology is that it can be your best friend and at the same your worst enemy. The realisation dawns upon me, the self-styled nostalgia specialist, every so often, but it hit me rather hard last Sunday when someone I know put up a rather unusual status message on Facebook. He said he was looking for a deserving candidate to take away his impressive collection of music cassettes. I hope he has found someone who understands their worth and preserves them – preserve for what, even I don't know, considering we now live in the digital era.

After reading the status message, I opened my cupboard and looked at my own dust-coated collection of cassettes. There must have been some 500 of them, hiding in the shelves like scared rats. As I ran my fingers through their spines, memories gushed up:

“Ah, this I bought in Kanpur when I was returning home from college that afternoon!”

“And these two I bought in Delhi when I was roaming around Connaught Place with this girlfriend of mine – well, what was her name?”

“Ah, this RD Burman collection was gifted to me by that woman – what's her name – on my 26th birthday. Or was it my 27th birthday?”

“This entire lot was bought at Music World in Spencer Plaza soon after I came to Chennai.”

In a matter of minutes, each of those cassettes had been accounted for – where they were bought, and during what stage of my life. And each of them would have faithfully burst into songs had I chosen to insert them into the cassette player. But why would I do that when the songs they contain are already sitting in the ‘Music' folder of my laptop?

Today you can build an impressive collection of music by spending just one night on the computer. Not only that: you can even carry around those hundreds of songs in a device smaller than your thumb. But that was not the case in 2001, the year I relocated to Chennai, when it required a large bag to accommodate those many songs. The cassette-filled bag turned out to be the heaviest part of my luggage when I said goodbye to Delhi one foggy night and boarded the Tamil Nadu Express. (The collection of books, which would have been heavier than anything else, had been locked up in a trunk and left behind, for the time being, in the care of a friend).

Those days, it would take you years to build a collection of music of your choice. When a particular cassette was available, you wouldn't have the money. When you had the money, the cassette was no longer there – and God alone knew when the collection would hit the market again. You were totally at the mercy of the retailer who, in turn, must have been at the mercy of the whims of the recording company.

And so you built your collection, brick by brick. Simultaneously, you also invested in ‘head cleaners' and in cassette holders, and paid visits to shops that recorded songs of your choice on blank cassettes for two rupees a song. You faced distressing moments when the tape would accidentally get entangled in the pin of the cassette player and you would rush to press the ‘Stop' button and carefully straighten out the numerous coils formed around the pin, making sure your fingertips didn't rub too hard on the magnetic tape. Retrieving an entangled cassette safely from the player was perhaps as challenging – and gratifying – as saving a child from drowning in the swimming pool.

Music, in short, was sweat and blood: you had to earn it and work hard to preserve it. But technology intervened one fine morning. Today, even an 8GB pen drive or iPod can hold more music than you would ever want to listen to in your lifetime. But what do you do with the collection of cassettes you've painstakingly built over the years? Give them away? Doesn't that amount to giving away a chunk of your childhood or youth?

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, August 6, 2011.

Old Song, New Thoughts: Kishore Kumar Lives On

Tomorrow, August 4, if you happen to sit in front of television for a while, you are likely to see a familiar face. That of Kishore Kumar. Tomorrow is his birthday: had he been alive, he would have been 82, perhaps leading a retired life and giving the occasional stage performance. But can you imagine a doddering Kishore Kumar climbing on to the stage with the help of a walking stick -- that would have gone against his very name and also nature. Even when he died at the age of 58, in 1987, he was still dancing on the stage in spite of having suffered two cardiac arrests. It isn't, therefore, surprising, that he didn't live long; entertainers like him don't.

There are two Kishore Kumars I know. One belonged to the black and white era, the actor who also sang his own songs. I wouldn't really waste my time collecting those songs. Though there might be exceptions, such as O.P. Nayyar's Piya, piya, piya... or Ravi's Nakhrewaali...

The other Kishore, the one I worship, arrived on the scene riding the metaphorical Sholay-type of bike (denoting friendship and partnership) with Rajesh Khanna. A bike song (Zindagi ek safar hai suhana) and a jeep song (Mere sapnon ki raani) for Rajesh Khanna marked the reinvention of Kishore Kumar as the country's most sought-after playback singer. And Kishore Kumar lived up to his status: he made it appear as if it was the actor, be it Dev Anand or Randhir Kapoor, who was really singing the song and not him. The best example is Muqaddar ka Sikander: can you ever tell whether O saathi re was sung by Kishore or Amitabh Bachchan? Bloody hell, he sounded convincing even in the throat of Amol Palekar! -- Aane wala pal, jaane wala hai.

But which song, according to you, is Kishore Kumar's best? The best?

Readers are welcome to send in their choices, even though it's an unfair question: it's like asking a 70-year-old man to pin down the best meal he has ever had in his life. But since Kishore Kumar is one of the guiding forces of Ganga Mail, and since tomorrow happens to be his birthday, I have decided to search for an answer to mark the occasion; and I think I have found an answer, after three drinks and spending two hours surfing You Tube.

The most wholesome song that Kishore Kumar has ever sung, according to me, is Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi (from Aa Gale Lag Jaa). When I say wholesome, I mean a song that gives your soul all-round nourishment -- good lyrics set to a catchy tune and a great voice that does justice to the tune as well as the poetry. In short, a situation when you are unable to decide who should get the real credit for the song -- the lyricist, the composer, or the singer? This song is one such song.

The movie got released sometime in the early 1970's, but the words written by Sahir Ludhianvi, the most sensitive lyricist Hindi cinema ever had, still hold so true. Every so often, irrespective of how old you are or whether you are married or have married several times, you come across an engaging person from the opposite sex who makes you silently remember the lines, "Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi, yun hi nahin dil lubhata koi (I'm sure we had a connection in the previous birth, or else why should you fascinate me so much!). The works of a great lyricist or writer, even if he himself dies an early death, transcends time.

Now, Sahir could have written this song for Shankar-Jaikishen, who in turn could have got Mukesh to sing it. What a disaster the song would have been! If the song still happens to be entrenched in public psyche today, it is mainly because of the racy tune that R.D. Burman imparted to Sahir's lyrics. And once thought-provoking lyrics are set to a catchy tune, what can be a better voice than Kishore Kumar's to carry the message to the masses? Kishore Kumar, the untrained singer, but possessing the voice of the serenader living next-door. He never sang at you, but sang to you; you had no choice but to listen to him, and in the process appreciate the music as well as the lyrics.

It is, therefore, not surprising at all that Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata is recognised, even today, as a Kishore Kumar song. Very few will associate the song with Sahir Ludhianvi or R.D. Burman. Such was the power of the man's voice. Thanks to the song, Kishore Kumar continues to come to the rescue of those men and women who like each other but who can't figure why.

The song comes thrice in the film, under different circumstances -- each time a delight to listen to! Listen to this and this. My favourite lines from the song -- that's also a message from Ganga Mail to its readers:

Dekho abhi khona nahin
kabhi juda hona nahin
ab ke yuhin mile rahenge donon
waada rahaa yeh iss shaam ka
jaane tu ya jaane na
maane tu ya maane na...

Life In A Metro: Clothes Make the Woman

What people do is more important than what they wear — right?

YouTube hadn't arrived yet – or at least had not become part of everyday life – when I became a serious practitioner of yoga. I would spend hours on the Internet, painstakingly searching for yoga photos and videos that I could download and watch over and over again, so that I could stay inspired.

The videos were not easy to come by, though I did manage to build a small collection of clips, each of which was barely two minutes long. Two of the clips happened to feature Western women who were gracefully getting into the most difficult of yoga poses, in the most exotic of locations, without a stitch on their bodies. What more could a man have asked for? Or so I thought, until I started watching the two clips seriously.

The women, far from being objects to be gazed at, became a source of envy and frustration. I would carefully notice their movements and try to imitate them, and most of the time, fail – miserably. Finally, I learned to drop back into urdhva dhanurasana from the standing position; it will, however, take me another lifetime to get into the scorpion pose.

All the while that I watched these women and tried to imitate them, never did it strike me that they were in their birthday suits. All that mattered to me was the ease with which they struck the poses.

Such ease can be accomplished only after years of practice; and when a person puts in years of dedicated practice, he or she becomes worship-worthy, clothed or unclothed. What they were doing was important, not what they were wearing (or not wearing).

And yet, the kind of clothes you wear becomes an issue every now and then in our country, where college students are often forced to abide by a dress code. A medical institution was in the news recently after specifying a dress code for its students, male as well as female. Jeans and T-shirts are out, naturally; hair should be preferably oiled, men cannot leave the first button of their shirts open, while women have been prohibited from wearing sleeveless kurtas. No bracelets or rings for men, and only a minimum number of bangles for women. And so on.

In spirit, such a dress code is understandable and, to a great extent, justified. Can a jeans-clad doctor, strutting around with his top button open, inspire confidence in a patient? Or for that matter, a female doctor whose bangles make a tinkling sound as she places her stethoscope on the chest of a panic-stricken patient?

But is a dress code really aimed at maintaining sartorial hygiene in the university? The answer, alas, is a big ‘No.' The dress code for women in the medical college, which even prohibits them from wearing footwear that exposes their toes, concludes with a memorable line: “All this is to ensure that female students do not create the feeling that they are women (while examining male patients).” Now that's a real shocker.

A female doctor is a female doctor: she does not become gender-neutral by merely covering her toes or by giving up wearing bangles and nail polish or by oiling her hair. Since when did femininity require cosmetic embellishment to make its presence felt? Or is the university trying to suggest that a woman becomes a woman only when she wears T-shirts and jeans and nail polish and toe-revealing footwear? Shouldn't it also invest in a voice-modulation programme, to make its female doctors sound like males when they treat male patients?

But really, what is the big deal about a male patient being attended to by a ‘feminine' female doctor? If you have chest pain and if you rush to the nearest hospital, and if the doctor on duty happens to be a female, is the gender of the doctor going to make any difference? Are the bangles on her arm going to make any difference? All you look forward to is getting out of the hospital as soon as possible after being certified as healthy.

If in such critical moments the gender of the doctor still has an effect on you, then the source of your ailment lies not in your body but in your mind. What you need is a bouncer and not a doctor.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 30 July 2011.

When I Feel Ashamed To Be An Indian

I am usually proud that I am an Indian, and that I live in India, a country of emotional, sentimental people; a country where people don't just live but also look for the meaning of life. A country where the spiritual and the material coexist in equal strength.

But there are moments when I feel deeply ashamed to be an Indian. Moments that make me wish I lived elsewhere, in a country where prime ministers and chief ministers were not always doddering septuagenarians or octogenarians, where ministers were not always keen on leaving sufficient wealth for their grandchildren's grandchildren to live in comfort, where politicians were sensitive enough to put an arm around the shoulder of a flood victim or embrace the son of a bomb-blast victim, where television channels showed adult films instead of 'breaking news' (you can never be bored by the sameness of watching a pair of breasts as long as they belonged to different women, or if the same woman made an appearance at different times; but to watch the same footage for hours on end and listen to hysterical anchors -- that's torture!).

However, what made me feel ashamed to be an Indian most recently had nothing to do with what's happening in India, but what happened in faraway Norway, where nearly 100 people died last week at the hands of a mass killer. Since I don't watch television except while having lunch on Sunday afternoons(I often finish eating while an interminable ad break is still on), I read about the tragedy in the next morning's papers. Most papers had front-paged the picture of a rather good-looking man moving about in a state of daze (one paper showed him embracing another man by way of consolation).

In fact, I happened to notice the picture first, and thought he was a Hollywood actor, the kind who did a lot of World Cinema. Only when I read the headline and the caption did I realise he was the Norwegian prime minister, who was fearlessly out in the open to console the victims of the mindless shooting. The image made my chest swell with pride, even though I have never set foot on Norway nor do I know any Norwegian. And then I sighed to myself as I lit up the first cigarette of the day: "Will we ever have a leader like this?"



Our leaders only pay visits to hospitals long after a tragedy has taken place, and there they solemnly stand by the bed of a victim or two, their hands joined in front of them (perhaps a way of saying that their hands are tied), and return to New Delhi to resume normal life. They don't know the important of body language -- no matter whether they are inaugurating a project or visiting a hospital to condole victims, they always wear the benign grandfatherly expression. Had the Mumbai kind of blasts taken place in the US, Obama would have been on the spot of the blasts, with his arms around the shoulders of the affected and with an expression in his eyes that the perpetrators of the blast would have read as, "Just wait, I am going to fuck you!"

But then, this is India. Here, people have enormous tolerance levels. And such tolerance levels only help in thickening the skins of politicians. There was a time -- oh, that was so long ago -- when railway ministers resigned after a rail accident. It was not as if the minister's negligence would have caused the accident, but there was something called moral responsibility (an extinct term today) and they owned it up.

But today we have politicians like B.S. Yeddyurappa, the chief minister of Karnataka, who continues to desperately cling to his chair in spite of being slapped with serious charges of corruption and in spite of being asked by his own party to step down. Any self-respecting politician would have stepped down by now and declared: I will not hold public office again until I come clean. But the desperation of Yeddyurappa to hold on to power is evident from the fact that at least during the last several months, he has done little other than visiting various temples in various states to seek divine intervention in his favour. How much more shameless one can get! So as an Indian, I routinely get treated to pictures such as the one produced below. What a shame!



(Since the pictures above were sourced from the internet, that too in the heat of the moment, I am truly unaware of the identity of the photographers or the agency distributing them. I only hope nobody minds the pictures being reproduced here).

Waiting For My Katrina

If you put Sideways, Hangover I, Rock On!! and Dil Chahta Hai in a mixer and blend them nicely, what you get is Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

But that's only one way, a hopeless way, of looking at it. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, which I watched just an hour ago, comes like a splash of cold water on your face after you've walked a mile in the sun. Not an ounce of flab: each scene well thought-out and delectable.

My favourite scene was the one in which Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif are lying next to each under a star-lit sky, and while giving him some gyaan on life, she holds his hand and in a casual, rather absent-minded, manner places it on her stomach. It can't get more sensual and real-life. Another favourite scene was Naseeruddin Shah rolling up his cigarette and exhaling rich (and most likely aromatic) smoke. He looked every bit an artist, which he is anyway in real life. I felt like lighting up right away.

Though I wish the movie had ended with the frozen shot of the three men running while the bulls chased them: the final song during the rolling of the credits, even though feel-good, was superfluous. But if the audience was enjoying it, why not!

The movie has a message; it's the same message that the commercials of Mountain Dew, the soft drink, have been trying to drive home for a few years now: Dar ke aagey jeet hai -- Once you conquer fear, you are in the arms of victory.

Mountain Dew, in fact, is one of the sponsors of the film and Hrithik, in one scene, is shown holding a bottle of the drink while Farhan Akhtar, in another scene, mouths the same catchline -- Dar ke aagey jeet hai!

But you can't really trust a soft drink manufacturer when it eggs you on to conquer fear, can you? Their intention, after all, is to sell their product. But when the stars of a movie as grand as this set out to prove the same point, you are bound to sit up and think. I won't be surprised at all if the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi is already flooded with visa applications (the film was shot in Spain). And I can bet on my life that a number of people, who are otherwise busy making money and chasing targets, must have signed up for skydiving as well as deep-sea diving after seeing the film.

Fear, after all, is the biggest enemy of the human being. I can give you my own example. Even though I learned how to float in water (while holding the breath) some five years ago, I learned how to swim, in the real sense, only a couple of months ago. Today I can gracefully swim the breaststroke like any professional swimmer, thanks to the hours of daily practice and watching videos on You Tube for tips on improving one's strokes, but I am yet to muster the courage to go to the deep end of the pool. I have gone up to seven feet but not beyond that: 9.5 feet is far too scary! What if I drown?

"No problem sir, if you drown I am there to save you," the lifeguard assures me every evening, "but please go to the deep end." When I refuse, he sulks and refuses to make eye contact for the rest of the evening. He has every right to sulk: he can see that I am now capable of swimming in the deep end with ease, but how the fuck do I make him see the fear that grips me every time I set out towards the deep end? Each time I come up for air, a question gets sucked into my mouth:

What if I drown? What if the lifeguard does not notice me while I am sinking? Even if he dives into the pool, will he be able to save me? Won't I make a spectacle of myself? What will happen to my father if I die? Poor man, he just lost his wife! What will happen to the unwritten books I have in my head? Is it really worth going to the deep end when I can get my exercise even in the relatively shallow part of the pool?

If I were a 10-year-old child, I would not analyse so much: I would merely follow the orders of the coach and dive into the deep end with my nose shut. But as you grow older, you tend to become a slave of fear. Fears, irrespective of their nature, begin to guide your life.

But after watching Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, I have new-found hope. Hrithik, in the film, happens to be a non-swimmer who is naturally scared of deep-sea diving. But Katrina Kaif, the instructor, sucks the fear out of him and puts in tears of gratification into his eyes once they have done a round of the underwater world.

I am now waiting for a Katrina Kaif to help me proceed from seven feet to 9.5 feet. She doesn't have to be model-like as Katrina (I hate the model-types in any case) but someone intelligent and inspiring enough to make me overcome the fear of depth and cross over to victory.

Life In A Metro: Bus-Stop Blues

A FEW MINUTES at a bus stop can be a revelation about life in a metro

At least once a day, to give my eyes a break from staring at the computer screen, I step out of the office and stand outside its boundary wall, on the pavement, which also happens to be a bus stop. I lean against the wall and watch the world go past.

Right across the road stands the new Secretariat building, Karunanidhi's dream, its side view resembling a row of mammoth water tanks (oil tanks, if you like), which was abandoned by the new government even before it could be fully completed. My eyes have long become blind to the structure. Most of the time, they are focused on the people at the bus-stop. I watch them and try to imagine their lives – a pastime, rather a luxury, I couldn't have afforded had I myself been waiting for a bus.

Had I been waiting for a bus, I would be constantly watching the display board at the crown of every oncoming bus, and would have been part of the small and ever-replenishing crowd that you always find at a busy bus stop.

The people I see here are collectively known as the ‘common man' – who forms the vast majority of the population in any city and who is powerful enough to make and break governments. But individually, they are powerless and helpless, and their lives are governed by a number of factors, including the timely arrival of the bus. The bus stop is as important a theatre of their life as their home or workplace.

Last afternoon, I noticed a man lying face down on the pavement, lifeless, as if he had just been shot. There was no warm blood trickling out of his body, but there was something else trickling out of his clothes – it was obvious that his urinary bladder had given way soon after he passed out. But why did he pass out? Was he too drunk? Or could it be that he has had no money to eat and been surviving only on water for a couple of days? Or had he suffered a heart attack or stroke? No one knew or even bothered to find out – all I could see were people steering clear of the trickle which was soon collecting into a puddle.

I am ashamed to say that I was among the people who remained totally indifferent to the unconscious man. Such indifference, I think, stems from two reasons. One, it is quite common to see men, presumably drunk, passing out at bus stops; two, who has the time to play Good Samaritan? Each person is in a hurry to reach somewhere. That frightens the hypochondriac in me, though: what if I ever faint at a bus stop? Will I be left to lie on the pavement?

Unmindful of this man lying face-down, a bunch of uniformed children, talking to each other in sign language, played with marbles at the bus stop. Their teachers stood in a small circle and laughed and gossiped while waiting for the bus. The children looked extremely happy in each other's company – did they get to play with the ‘normal' children in their respective neighbourhoods? A little away from them sat an elderly man, wearing a sky-blue shirt and a dhoti. He looked forlorn, lost deep in thought. What was he thinking about: the loan that he had taken for his daughter's wedding? His wife's ailment, which was fast depleting his savings? About a dozen other people, of various ages and bearing varying degrees of frowns, waited too. Why do people in bus stops look unhappy? No, there was a young woman who was constantly smiling – the source of her smile was plugged to her ear. Boyfriend, perhaps?

A bus arrived. The uniformed children, minded by their teachers, got in. The elderly man got in too, as did some of the people who had run behind the bus as it approached the stop. An elderly woman, who couldn't run as fast, was still a few steps away from the door when the bus took off. She was carrying a toy in her hand – grandchild's birthday? She had missed the bus. She now joined the young woman who was still smiling. Meanwhile, the man who lay on the pavement remained lifeless.

Now multiply this scene at the bus stop with the number of stops the city has. What you will see is the real life in a metro.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus on July 23, 2011.

Simpler Times

July. August. Up north, where I emotionally belong to, these are the monsoon months. The month of Shraavana. In Hindi, saawan ka mahinaa.

This is the time of the year when the Ganga is usually swollen and its waters muddy. This is the time when the Ganga, which otherwise flows serenely and nourishes the millions settled on its plains, can assume a devastating form.

The evidence of the two different moods of the Ganga lies in the yoga-cum-puja room of my Chennai home. Two white translucent cans are sitting there, both containing water from the Ganga. One of them has water that I had collected during a boat ride in Banaras in November 2007, when I had gone there to collect material for Chai, Chai. The water in it is still crystal clear.

The other contains water I had collected, also during a boat ride in Banaras, in August 2009, when I was there to cremate my mother. A thick layer of sediment can be seen at the bottom of this can. How can I ever forget 29 August 2009: I stood there under an overcast sky, in the furnace-like heat generated by the over a dozen burning pyres, watching the Ganga -- swollen but sluggish.

Monsoon seems to have hit the Ganga Mail too. The more swollen the mind with thoughts, the muddier the thought process, and you can't see what exactly is there at the bottom of the mind that needs to be expressed.

The less the number of thoughts, the simpler and more effective the thought process. People living in the hills are simple people, and they lead a simple life. That's where the Ganga gurgles down with great force, and the water so cold and clear that you can often see what's at the bottom. It flows like a good piece of writing.

It's time to pay a visit to the hills; to return to simpler times.

Life In A Metro: Cool Writer

The business of writing has changed – everyone wants to become a published author

The other day, a childhood friend of mine, who is now a senior uniformed officer, called me up. He began by making polite enquiries and went on to ask my opinion about the future of the DMK. Since he called at 10 in the morning, when catching up with old friends would be the last thing on the mind of an office-goer, I knew he would soon come to the point. Sure enough he did.

“By the way, do you have Ruskin Bond’s phone number?”

“Whose?” I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

“Arre yaar, apna Ruskin Bond! The writer!”

“But I don’t have his number!”

“Why not? You are also a writer, na? Don’t writers have other writers’ numbers?”

(In late 2009 I wrote a travel book; therefore the ‘writer’ tag.)

“But why do you want his number?” I asked him.

It turned out that his boss’ teenaged daughter had written some short stories, and the boss was keen that Ruskin Bond should take a look at them. When the boss brought up the subject during a meeting, my friend volunteered to get Mr. Bond’s number from a friend – that’s me. He obviously wanted to please his boss – nothing wrong with that – but he had clearly overestimated my status as a ‘writer.’

It is one thing to have written a solitary book – as countless people have – quite another to have earned a reputation as a writer.

After he hung up – I promised him I would try my best – it suddenly struck me that this was perhaps the fifth or sixth call I had got in a span of two months on behalf of aspiring writers. And in all cases, the aspiring writer in question happened to be a teenaged girl, and the caller a highly concerned parent.

One worried mother, who had been turned down by established publishing houses, confessed to me that the number of stories written by her daughter was not adequate enough to add up to the size of a book. But she had a solution for the shortcoming. “I can put in some of the poems she has written. She has written some beautiful poems. If we still fall short, I can put in some of my paintings. I have done some beautiful paintings,” she told me. “But how do I find a publisher?”

Had I known the answer, I would have been a rich man today, sitting with my laptop in a villa in Goa or Kasauli, after having sold half-a-dozen ideas (most of which would’ve come to me while I was shaving) to a publisher for a huge advance. But the business of getting published remains mysterious – no one quite knows what works for the publisher and what doesn’t.

Jack Kerouac’s On The Road failed to find a publisher for six years before it changed the way people wrote. James Joyce's Dubliners got rejected 22 times before it got published. The first two novels written by Graham Greene got rejected by each publisher he sent them to, and it was his third novel that officially became his first book. And without Greene’s helping hand, what would have happened to our own R.K. Narayan, despite all the lucid prose and eye for detail?

But publishing is one field that has never concerned the lay Indian, who is usually too bogged down by other demands of life to spare money for books. Even today not many would have heard of R.K. Narayan, leave alone Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand – they formed the triumvirate that pioneered Indian Writing in English. Writers like them lived in a small island, hoping to be connected to the mainland.

Shobhaa De changed the game. She not only got people interested in her books but also in the business of writing books: “If she can, why can’t we?” Subsequently, Arundhati Roy enlightened India about the existence of the Booker Prize (and the prize money it entailed). But it was Chetan Bhagat who brought about a revolution – he brought down writing from the pedestal of exclusivity and took it to the masses, and in the process stoked a million literary ambitions.

Today, the writer is no longer a faceless entity. The successful ones now get the attention that once only movie stars and cricketers did. It is, therefore, not surprising that parents are suddenly spotting the ‘writer’ in their children and frantically knocking at the doors of publishers. Ruskin Bond, alas, did not have that luxury: he had to struggle to find a publisher. That reminds me, does anyone have his number?

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, July 16, 2011.

Time Flies, After All

I am a fairly new entrant to the locker room. I have never been used to the idea of changing in front of strange men -- or rather strange men changing in front of me. But now that's become a part of my life, considering that these days I'm pretty regular at the gym and the pool in the club.

Almost every evening I am subjected to about half a dozen instances of unintentional mooning, and to tell you the truth, when I come face-to-face (or should I say face-to-cheek) with reality, I often can't decide whether to instantly turn my gaze away or to look at the naked posterior of a man as if it was a bald head. Most often, I look away, but the eyes invariably manage to capture a few seconds of the images that the mind would rather not like to store.

And the other day, my eyes saw more than they had bargained for. I noticed a tall, well-built foreigner -- a white man -- standing right next to me as I fished for my swimming trunks in the bag. I had been noticing him in the pool during the recent weeks and even admiring his swimming skills, and now he was standing right next to me, changing into his swimming trunks. I don't wish to describe what the corner of my eye saw, but suffice to say that I was instantly reminded of two expressions -- "hanging loose" and "well-endowed".

All these men happen to be of varying ages and possessing varying degrees of fitness. In most cases, I don't ever want to be them, given their girth; and in some rare cases, I so want to be like them, especially the kinds who swim effortlessly. And then, there have been times when I looked at myself in the mirror, clothed waist-down of course, and thought: "Not too bad. Maybe a little more sculpting?"

One such evening, when I was looking at myself in the mirror, reality slapped me hard on my face. Mr S, a senior member of the club with who I had become friends in the swimming pool, had got himself entangled in his T-shirt.

Mr S, a widower, must be nearing 80 now, if not already 80-plus. He was born in Islamabad, from where he migrated to Ambala after Partition, and subsequently ran a business in Calcutta for a few years before relocating to Madras. "Dada, kamon achhen?" he would ask me routinely, in Bengali, as he took toddler-like steps in the pool, perhaps on the advice of his doctor. That evening, as he was taking his T-shirt off to get into the pool, the muscles of his hands suddenly gave away. He just couldn't pull the T-shirt off his head. By the time I could reach him, a young man had already helped him out of the T-shirt. That was the last time I saw Mr S in the pool (these days he just drags a chair and sits by the pool to watch other people swim).

Today, whenever I look into the mirror, I can see Mr S smiling back at me. I may be physically fit and having a well-sculpted body today, but the future belongs to the likes of Mr S. Tomorrow, in spite of the fitness levels I enjoy today, I might not be able to lift my arm to even wear a shirt. What's the point, then, in trying to remain fit? That too when old age is not too far away -- time flies, after all.

The Sea

The moon peeped in through the coconuts leaves, as if trying to eavesdrop. The strong breeze from the sea blew her hair across her face. At some distance the waves were breaking, softly enough for me to hear her sighs. She leaned forward across the table and formed an extra curtain of palms around mine to help me light up a cigarette.

"Thanks," I said, as I sat back and took a sip of the beer.

"As I was saying," she continued, "I can't have sex with a man unless I am in love with him."

"Really?"

"Yes, if I love a man, I wouldn't mind sleeping with him."

"But why go through the whole process of falling in love?"

"Without love I can't have sex. And it doesn't take me long to fall in love; it can take just three or four days. I just know when there is an emotional connect."

"Of course there has to be an emotional connect," I said. "But I wouldn't call it love?"

"But you do believe in emotional connect, don't you?"

"I do."

"So there."

"Are you tipsy already?" I asked.

"Just one Bloody Mary, what bloody tipsy!" she laughed.

"So how is it going with Atul?"

"Hey come on! Just because I was talking about him does not mean I am in love with him or going to sleep with him. Come on, I know him since the time we were kids. We grew up together!"

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, I like him and all, but not in that sense."

"I see!"

"And you know, he drinks only beer. And I don't like men who drink only beer."

I looked at my glass and suddenly felt like a man who had been caught with his fly open. She read my thoughts instantly.

"I know you are drinking beer now, but I also know that you have other drinks too, don't you?"

"Yes, I usually drink whisky."

"See! I knew."

"But how?"

"I read you."

"Oh! But what is your problem with men drinking only beer?"

"When a man drinks only beer, it means he is playing it safe and is not open to adventure. Such men are not my kind."

"I like that!" I said. I flicked the ash of the cigarette, even though there was no ash to be flicked, and turned my gaze to the sea, which was now so black that it had merged with the blackness of the sky.

I found it safer to gaze at the nothingness than looking into her eyes.

Life In A Metro: Resting In Peace

Uninterrupted sleep is no longer a necessity - it’s a luxury

Let me make a small guess: two out of every five people reading this column are doing so half-heartedly. They have something else nagging them, apart from the weekly whining by yours truly. Their mind is seized by a thought, rather an unfulfilled desire: Wish I had slept a little more!

You may have an Audi parked in your garage, you may be travelling business class in planes, you may have the biggest flat-screen mounted on your wall, you may be sipping single malt or vintage wine every evening from the stock that keeps getting replenished by your regular stopovers at duty-free shops, you may even have an air-conditioner installed in your bathroom. But you cannot purchase what has turned out to be the biggest luxury of our times – a sound sleep. You may try stealing it though.

Ironically, the better your position to buy the regular luxuries of life, the more elusive this luxury tends to get. And considering that almost everybody these days wants to be in a position to buy a flat or bring home a plasma TV or send their children to the best of schools, irrespective of their incomes, people are working harder than ever before. Good life, after all, comes at a price, and these days, the price seems to be uninterrupted sleep. But is life any good if you haven’t even slept well?

We have, however, made peace with interrupted sleep. Anybody can wake us up at anytime: it could be the hysterical boss who is prone to waking up at five in the morning; it could be a panicky colleague urgently in need of your guidance at midnight; it could be a man from the bank reminding you about the minimum payment due on your credit card; it could be a woman from the same bank offering you a loan to clear the outstanding dues on the credit card; it could be the call-taxi driver reminding you that he is waiting outside your flat to take you to the airport (while you are still in bed); or it could just be the alarm programmed in your mobile phone reminding you that it’s time to wake up your child because the school bus will be coming soon.

When I was a child, which was not too long ago, a sound sleep was taken for granted. The three biggest enemies of sleep – satellite television, mobile phone and laptop – were yet to invade our bedrooms. There was Doordarshan, but it would end transmission by nine – or was it 10 pm? The announcers on All India Radio too took leave by 11 pm. After that, you had no choice but to sleep.

And it was very easy for one to fall asleep those days. Most people bicycled to work; and they thought nothing of walking a kilometre or two every evening to the nearest market to fetch vegetables and groceries. The road was their gym. Real gyms didn’t exist anyway.

Today we either order groceries over the phone or stock up for the entire week during a Sunday visit to the supermarket. We no longer know what it means to walk. There may be gyms now in every neighbourhood where you can walk on the treadmill, but does it mean you get to sleep like a log at the end of the day? No. You usually doze off either while surfing the net or answering a text message or watching ‘breaking news’ on TV – only to be woken up soon after by a phone call. Even before you realise, it is another day.

The Internet is replete with stories about the death of the immensely fit Ranjan Das who, at the young age of 40, was appointed by SAP, a multinational software provider, to head its operations in the Indian subcontinent. Within two years, in 2009, Das dropped dead after a workout in the gym, and the cause of his death has been pinned down to lack of sleep. He slept for less than five hours, as he had admitted during a television interview – even though doctors these days prescribe seven hours of good sleep, especially for those who have touched forty.

If you sleep less than five hours, the chances – so I learn from the Internet – of high blood pressure increases by 350-500% and heart attack by threefold. You can’t really dispute such claims when you are used to waking up in the mornings feeling unwell and craving more sleep.

This column, in fact, is inspired by a Facebook page called Ghum, which was started recently in Bangladesh, most likely by a sleep-starved soul. Ghum, or ghoom, in Bengali, means sleep; and as many as 134,327 people ‘like’ the page as of date. Compared to that, only 6,976 people ‘like’ Franz Kafka so far; while only 6,545 people have bothered to click on their mouses to ‘like’ George Clooney. Sleep, clearly, wins hands down. Really, when was the last time you slept like a log?

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, July 9, 2011.

Life In A Metro: The Might Of The Majority

Majority opinion is everything — it can even change your surname

When I started my career in journalism nearly two decades ago – “20 years” would have made me sound just as ancient – as a trainee sub-editor with The Pioneer in Kanpur, one of the errors I looked out for in a copy was the merging of “per cent.” Most reporters spelt it as one word, and I would dutifully draw a line between “per” and “cent” to indicate to the compositor that there should be a space between the two. Those were the days of the horse-shoe desk, when the news editor or the chief sub-editor sat at its centre and distributed typed or hand-written copies for editing to his juniors who sat in front of him, pens ready.

Within a year and a half, I moved to Delhi to join the Press Trust of India. There too, it was “per cent” and not “percent.” But in the impeccably edited copies spat out by the ticker machine of Reuters, with which PTI had a news-sharing arrangement, it was already “percent.” This was in the mid-1990s. Today, even spell-check does not underline the word in red.

But is it really correct to say “percent” instead of “per cent?” No. But the majority, be it in Parliament or in society, always has its say – and way – and the custodians of the language had to allow it as an acceptable word.

It is only a matter of time before “inspite” and “accomodate” become acceptable too: the number of people who are either ignorant or don't bother to insert the space and the extra “m” respectively in the two words is getting too large to ignore. Many American magazines today use "Prez" instead of "President" – something that might have been considered irreverent even a couple of decades ago. A classic case of the corruption of a word gaining public acceptance is “juggernaut.” The original word is Jagannath, another name for Lord Krishna in Puri, who is taken out in a chariot in a massive procession each year. Somewhere down the centuries, Jagannath happened to enter the English dictionary as “juggernaut,” defined as “any large, overpowering, destructive force or object” (the definition, obviously, is inspired by the chariot procession).

Talking of present times, the expressions that we use during online chats, such as LOL (laughing out loud) and OMG (oh my god) were incorporated by the Oxford English Dictionary in its updates this year. WTF – I don't wish to expand it here – was already included in 2009 (or so I am told). So go ahead, coin your own abbreviation. How about IABM – In A Bad Mood? If it gets picked up by the public, chances are that your creation will enter the OED.

Once a misspelled word gains currency, it no longer matters how it came to be misspelled in the first place – it could have been ignorance, indifference, laziness or a stupid clerical error.

As far as clerical errors go, who should know better than Mr Henry Sullivan Graeme and Mr Richard Yeldham.

These two gentlemen lived around the same time in East India Company-ruled Madras. Graeme, a civil servant, was a member of the Madras council for five years from 1823. He owned a bungalow in Nungambakkam, and the road connecting his bungalow to Mount Road was subsequently named Graeme's Road. Yeldham, on the other hand, was a merchant of the Company who went on to become the mayor of Madras. The road from his palatial house in Teynampet to Mount Road came to be called Yeldham's Road.

Today, Graeme's Road has been rechristened Greams Road, and Yeldham's Road is Eldams Road. Who is responsible for the changes in their names? No one knows. But today, even if Mr Graeme and Mr Yeldham were to come out of their graves and plead with Chennai Corporation to restore the correct spellings of their surnames, they are most likely to be turned away. Mr Graeme would return to his grave as Mr Gream and Mr Yeldham as Mr Eldam. Such is the power of popular usage.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, July 2, 2011.

While It's Still His Birthday...

Here's presenting a gem composed by R.D. Burman who, if alive, would have been 72 today. Though not necessarily as popular. There is something magical about death: it makes the world realise the true worth of an artist. But when alive, the same artist has to prove his worth with every single composition or song or book in order to stay alive professionally. Or else the 'world', which can be very mean and ungrateful, tends to forget you -- until you die. Look what happened to Michael Jackson.

This song, Hum tum ghum sum raat milan ki, is close to my heart for two reasons. One, it happens to be one of the three songs that got ingrained in my mind when I was still a baby -- too young to even know what a song is. (The other two songs being Kanchi re kanchi re and Panna ki tamanna: both Pancham!). Reason no. 2: this song belongs to the great body of rarely-heard songs that Pancham created during his lifetime. This great body of work, containing songs that are as perfect as a Hindi song can get, was discovered and toasted only after he died. Chancing upon such songs is like finding an unopened whiskey bottle in the cabinet of your long-dead grandfather. This song is one of them -- I am so glad that I did not stumble upon it recently but had the tune buzzing in my head since childhood: Jhumnaa jhumnaa, jhumnaa jhumnaa.

It's a sensual song, and just look at the way Kishore Kumar has modulated his voice! He is neither humming, nor is full-throated -- he is somewhere in between, to suit the mood of the evening. Asha Bhosle, of course, matches up to him effortlessly. Sip the song and enjoy -- and while you do so, do remember me!

Pancham Beats

Today is R.D. Burman's birthday. Here's my review of the book, R.D. Burman: The Man, The Music, written by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal, which appeared recently in The Hindu:

The story of R.D. Burman is not so much about the successes he enjoyed as a music director during his short life. It is more about the stark truth that, had he lived a few weeks more, he would have had the last laugh, after having sustained a longish lean patch that saw one loyal producer after another deserting him.

Shortly before the songs of 1942-A Love Story stirred the nation in 1994, their composer had died heartbroken, at the age of 54, little knowing that the world would soon be at his feet — rediscovering, reliving, relishing, and remixing his music. Seventeen years after his death, his fans are still busy discovering — and gathering like awestruck schoolboys — hitherto unheard gems he had composed either during his lean phase or for films that had bombed back then.

In short, the story of R.D. Burman is not so much about his life as about his death, after which he seems to have permanently become Hindi cinema's No. 1 music director — ask the RJ of any Hindi FM channel or the salesman of any music shop. Whether such a story celebrates a posthumous triumph or laments an inevitable tragedy, it is difficult to say. But it's been told quite well — in delectable detail — by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal, who have done great service to Hindi cinema by bringing out this book.

For the fans of R.D. Burman, or Pancham, this book should be a Bible. That this is the first book to be written about him in the 17 years since his death is a matter of shame, considering the number of lives his tunes continues to touch even today. Better late than never, though, because in Pancham's case, the later you discover him, the better he sounds. Just like wine.

One, however, wishes the title of the book had been more imaginative. But R.D. himself never cared much for the titles of the films he made music for, be it the intriguing Gol Maal or the aggressive Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin. Incidentally, these are two films whose songs are, like nursery rhymes, ingrained in the psyche of every Pancham fan, especially the notes of the trumpet that open their most famous songs — the Chaand Mera Dil medley and Bachnaa Ae Haseeno(Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin), and Aane Wala Pal(Gol Maal), for example.

So who played the trumpet in these songs? It's an important question for the Pancham fan — as important as asking a sixth standard student, "Who's the President of the United States?" Commonsense suggested that it might have been Manohari Singh, Pancham's long-time music arranger who played the saxophone for the senior Burman in Gaata Rahe Mera Dil for Guide. But no, the man who played the trumpet was an Anglo-Indian musician called George Fernandes! For a hardcore Pancham fan like yours truly, this piece of information alone is worth the Rs.399 the book costs.

There are other priceless pieces of information too, but most of them tend to break your heart. This is what singer Abhijeet had to tell the authors: "From a time when he would record at Film Centre, Panchamda had slid to recording at a small studio in Khar. He would urge me to go to Anand-Milind and Rajesh Roshan as he did not have any work to give me."

Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who made 1942-A Love Story, explains Pancham's lean patch thus: "Lack of self-confidence. People close to him, including Asha Bhosle, left him. He began thinking that he lacked the ability and was burnt out. This was untrue, but he somehow got swayed by other people's opinions and ended up losing his belief in his music."

Pancham losing belief in his own music? This sounds funny now because his music is considered the yardstick for Hindi film music. But cruel are the ways of the world — the way it treats a man when he is dead is different from the way it does when he is alive. The book successfully dissects the hypocrisy.

Life In A Metro: The Big Fat Truth

Worrying about weight has become a national obsession

Even as you read this piece, 17 million people across the country are sweating it out in their neighbourhood gyms, another two million are busy practising kapaalabhati kriya (according to Ramdev, each exhalation makes you lose 10-15 gm), about a million are carefully reading the ads of weight-loss clinics and saving their numbers on mobiles, and 0.75 million have just resisted the temptation to have an extra paratha or dosa for breakfast.

I just cooked up these figures – I could be wildly off the mark. Or, who knows, maybe I am not. But there is no denying the big fat truth. Never before in recent history, apart from the struggle for freedom, have urban Indians single-mindedly worked this hard towards a goal. The goal is simple: just losing a few pounds of weight! Achieving it is even simpler: walk as if your life depends on it. But as the wise man once said, the simplest of things are the most difficult to achieve. As a result, weight-loss has today become a multi-million-dollar industry in India.

Wasn't it only the other day when, in our society, being a little overweight was considered a sign of good health and prosperity? In north India, where I grew up, a man was expected to grow a paunch soon after getting married – it was the litmus test for his bride's culinary skills. If the man remained skinny, it reflected poorly on the woman: “She can't even feed her husband properly.” And in cinema-crazy south India, where I live now, men have traditionally been great fans of women who never starved themselves in order to look slim. Even today you have actresses who are worshipped for their girth.

Indians have always been comfortable with the idea of weight. Excess weight, at the most, was an unwelcome guest, but never considered an enemy who needed to be chased out. But the turn of the century, when we were reaping the benefits of economic liberalisation, saw the much-publicised wedding between obesity and illness. Urban Indians suddenly woke up not only to the health benefits of being slim but also the immense social benefits of staying in shape. A recently married man, for example, began to realise that while his newly grown paunch may speak volumes about his wife's cooking skills, it only made him less appealing to other women.

While it is heartening to see more and more Indians sweating it out, it is amusing that the eagerness to lose a few kilos has become an obsession. Weight loss, in fact, is urban India's biggest obsession today. It is threatening to become a disorder in itself. Eavesdrop on the conversation at the next table in a restaurant and chances are you will hear the familiar expressions, ‘calories' and ‘cutting down'. Calories – until 20 years ago, only physics students were familiar with the word. Go to any Page-3 party and you'll find people gushing to each other about their waistlines. And if you happen to detest a woman, you only have to tell her, with a hint of concern, “I think you have put on a little weight since I saw you last time. That time you were very slim.” Your words will play on her mind throughout the evening – the effect will be as disastrous as a doctor breaking to her the news of a terrible disease.

A few weeks ago, returning to Chennai from Bangalore in the early-morning Shatabdi Express, I found myself sitting next to a woman who must have been in her early forties. She was plump. When the attendant who handed newspapers to the passengers offered her a copy, she refused and instead covered her face with a shawl and went to sleep. While I turned the pages of the newspaper, she was woken up for breakfast, and then she busied herself with her mobile phone. Once I was done with the paper and was about to put it away, she spoke: “Excuse me, can I have it for a minute?”

I watched her curiously from the corner of my eye. She did not even throw a glance at the front page, as one does instinctively when picking up a newspaper, but went on turning the pages hurriedly, as if searching for something. She finally paused at page 17 and settled to read an article on top of that page. I peered discreetly. It was a London-datelined report she was reading, that was headlined, “Want to stay in shape? Drink donkey's milk.”

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 26 June 2011.

Desi Thoughts, Desi Babu

This post is being written at a time when the scene outside the window of my study presents the perfect setting for a late-night Hindi-film murder: it is raining heavily and is pitch dark, except when the lighting brings into view the neighbouring houses for a fraction of a second; and the tyres of passing cars are making a sinister sound as they cautiously roll through water. On nights such as this, the fate of many families has taken an ugly turn -- in Hindi films, that is.

In the kitchen, meanwhile, rice is boiling. I can already smell it. Very few aromas are as delectable as that of boiling rice. The rice is going to be my second dinner tonight. Usually, I have my dinner very late -- at times so late that I can hear the chirping of the birds along with the beeps of the microwave. But what to do, I can't write on a full stomach. Today was one of those rare days when I had my dinner early, at the club, after an invigorating workout. I was hoping to lie down in bed and watch a movie or read a book and fall asleep. I was hoping to begin Saturday on an energetic note.

But while we were driving back home, I asked my wife (she's the one who always drives, because I can't) to stop at the supermarket. I wanted to buy cigarettes. As I picked up two packets of Gold Flake Kings and queued up to pay, I noticed, in their fridge, Amul Butter! All these years -- at least for the past 10 years -- I had become totally blind to the existence of butter, only because of the fear of its artery-clogging properties. I had even forgotten how butter tastes like, and was reminded of it only occasionally during my stay in luxury hotels. Planes and trains serve so little butter that you don't even get to taste it even after chewing up the two slices of bread.

But this evening, my heart melted like butter when I spotted the so-familiar Amul slabs, carelessly dumped away in the rack of the refrigerator along with varieties of cheese. Suddenly, memories came gushing! When was the last time I had Amul Butter -- with the knowledge that I was having Amul Butter? I couldn't recall. And when was the last time I had steaming rice with a chunk of Amul Butter melting in it, with half-a-lemon squeezed and some salt sprinkled over the combo? Fuck! This was even harder to tell. Whenever it must have been, it must have happened at the insistence of my mother, who was the only one to understand my taste in food.

My taste in food is very simple. Steaming rice with a spoonful of ghee or butter, served with a sliced lemon, a little salt, and a piece of green chilli to bite on -- that's luxury eating for me. Place a bowl of arhar ki daal and a saag around that plate of rice and I shall be grateful to you all my life. Embellish the plate with a ball of boiled potato mashed with chopped onions, green chilli and mustard oil and I shall be your slave. Simple food not only nourishes your body but also your soul -- or so I believe.

So, while the rice boils, I have decided to write. And to create the hunger for my second dinner, I have poured myself a drink. Since the cooker will shut itself off once the rice (and the two potatoes in it) are cooked, I can focus on the drinking and writing. As long as the birds don't begin to chirp when I take the butter out of the fridge.

But what do I write about? I really have nothing new to say. At the age of forty, I am now leading a pretty boring and predictable life. No new encounters, no new experiences. On top of it, courage seems to be deserting me. Time was when the wife would be out of town and I would remind myself excitedly about the things I could do in her absence. Today, whenever the wife is travelling, I ruefully remind myself of the things I am unable to do in her absence. I really miss her. A wise man would describe this phenomenon as 'conditioning.'

In such a situation, I can only blog about three things with confidence -- things that affect me on a daily basis: my mother, Kishore Kumar and writing. Each day, I make new discoveries about my feelings towards these three elements that currently rule my life.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't recall -- and relive -- that phone call from my father who conveyed the news to me in a very level-headed manner: "Your mother is no more." It is nearly two years now, but the measured voice of my father still keeps ringing in my ear. But I can't keep blogging about it, can I, especially when I have written several posts about my mother's untimely death?

And what new to write about Kishore Kumar? I have written countless heart-felt posts about him. Come to think of it, Kishore Kumar and my mother died at the same age. My mother had had one heart attack, a silent one, before she underwent a bypass surgery, while Kishore Kumar had had two, and even then he went on singing and dancing during stage performances. Of late, though, there have been things I wanted to write about him. Kishore Kumar might have been a great singer, but he could also be mean-minded. When R.D. Burman gave a chance to newcomer Abhijeet (a fellow Kanpurwallah) to sing some of the songs in Dev Anand's Anand Aur Anand, in which Dev Anand was introducing his son Suneil, Kishore Kumar got livid and stormed the recording studio.

Dev Anand managed to pacify Kishore Kumar, assuring him that all the songs pictured on him (Dev Anand) in the film would still be sung by him (Kishore Kumar). But Kishore Kumar still demanded to know why the voice of Abhijeet and not Amit Kumar was being used for Dev Anand's son Suneil. Can't blame Kishore: he was human and not above being insecure. The petty-mindedness, in any case, does not take away from the large-heartedness of his voice.

Then comes writing. What can I write about it? Writing can be a pain in the ass, and I would rather write than talk about writing, even though I have been foolish enough to write several posts on writing in the recent past.

What should I blog about, then? I would rather spend my time reading Desi Babu. Since the past few weeks, a number of friends who stop by my blog have asked me: "BG, who is Desi Babu?" I wish I knew. All I know is he is a kind soul and a brilliant writer who has recently started a blog, The Peanut Express. When I read his recent post, on Greece, I felt extremely flattered that a man of his calibre should have nice things to say about Ganga Mail. It's strange that some of the best writers I've known on blogosphere don't write for a living and choose to stay anonymous (and also have a Bong connection).

Life In A Metro: Workout For The Brain

Instant messaging maybe good news for man, but bad news for mankind

Imagine having a dozen suits in your wardrobe, dry-cleaned and mothballed periodically, but nowhere to go. Every now and then, you open the wardrobe and look at the suits lovingly and longingly, hoping that an invitation will soon arrive requiring you to wear formals. But the invitation never comes. My condition is somewhat similar today.

I own a rather decent collection of fountain pens. I clean them with water periodically and fill them up with fresh ink, but rarely do I get the chance to put these pens to paper. Yet, greed keeps getting the better of me. About a month ago, I ordered a Ratnam pen from Rajahmundry (the brand is named after its founder Ratnam, who started manufacturing fountain pens in the town way back in 1932, after Gandhi gave the call to boycott foreign goods), but I am yet to find an occasion to take it out of my pocket. Other than using it to initial the attendance register every morning.

When you use a pen, especially a fountain pen, you think several times before committing your thoughts to paper because you don't want to be seen striking out words or sentences too often. As a result, only the clearest of thoughts get transferred when you are writing with a pen, unlike in the case of a computer, where the luxury of the ‘delete' and ‘backspace' keys spares you the trouble of thinking hard before typing out a sentence.

When the screen of the computer is staring at you impatiently, you often make do with thoughts that are floating on the surface instead of plunging deeper. Who has the time?

But, strangely, in an age when communication is instant, communication itself is fast becoming a vanishing art. What we do today – over phone, SMS or online messengers – is merely keep in touch or make small talk.

No longer do we have the urge to communicate, by way of gathering thoughts and putting them down coherently on a piece of paper, because the people we would have liked to write long letters to are now available online 24/7.

We've paid a big price for instant communication, and the price is introspection. While instant communication may be good news for man, it is a terrible thing to happen to mankind. About 100 years from now, when historians set out to document our times, what will they have to fall back on? They will have to break into email accounts or chat transcripts of the who's-who of the 21st Century. Even then, they are unlikely to stumble upon great pieces of literature, but only brief exchanges in SMS lingo.

Even as I write this piece, I can see the spines of two voluminous books peeping from the bookshelf – A Literate Passion(a compilation of the letters between Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin) and Under the Sun (a collection of letters by Bruce Chatwin, the celebrated travel writer).

Books such as these would not have existed if Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin exchanged text messages, or if Chatwin carried an iPad. This is another way of saying that in 100 years from now there will be no new biographies or compilations of correspondences between great minds.

In the latest issue of Time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough, when asked whether people not writing letters on paper will affect the study of history, laments, “The loss of people writing – writing a composition, a letter or a report – is not just the loss for the record. It is the loss of the process of working out your thoughts on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren't [writing]. And that's a handicap. People I research were writing letters every day. That was calisthenics for the brain.”

What he calls calisthenics, I call introspection, which died unnoticed the day communication became instant.

Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, June 18, 2011.

The Real Man

This evening, the status message of a friend on Google-talk read: A man can love a million girls but only a real man can love one girl in a million ways!

I did not ask the friend whether she had borrowed the line or coined it herself, but I went over it a few times and was tempted to add some words that would have made it read as: A man can love a million girls but only a real man can love one girl in a million ways (even while loving a million others)!

And then a few questions struck me (just as two questions keep striking me these days -- 1. Who on earth in Anna Hazare? and 2. What on earth is Civil Society?):

1. Who/What is a real man?

2. Why should he love just one girl?

3. Why should he love just one girl in a million ways?

4. Is it possible to reach the million-mark in one's lifetime (that was more of a thought than a question)?

5. What if the girl decides that he is not her kind of man, even if a real one: does our man continue loving her in a million ways?

Midnight, Music And Musings

I was introduced to Bengali music quite late in life. I was already 12 or 13 when I first listened to Rabindra Sangeet; and it was not until the age of 26 or 27 that I discovered the other songs. I have described the discovery in great detail in an earlier post (I was searching the archives of 2009 and 2010 to locate this link but found out that it was written in 2007! How time flies).

Today I can boast of a decent collection of Bengali songs and no longer consider myself inferior -- even if not equal -- to a music-loving Bengali. I preserve the songs like gems because I have searched for them and earned them, unlike a Bengal-bred person, for example my wife, who has inherited them. And the best part about not being bred in Bengal is that there is a new discovery to be made almost every other day.

Tonight I made a new discovery -- a stunning one at that. For years I have been listening to a song, one my favourites, sung by Kishore Kumar and composed by Salil Choudhury for the 1977 Bengali film Kabita:

Shono shono go shobe shono diya mon
bichitro kaahini aek kori boronon...

I have never watched Kabita, but I don't need to see the film in order to like the song, which I have always liked for two reasons. One, Kishore Kumar is in his elements in this song -- he throws his voice not only out of his throat but also his heart and soul. Two, I was very familiar with the tune. Salil Choudhury had used it way back in 1966 for a famous song in the award-winning Malayalam film Chemmeen, which went in the voice of chorus as:

Kanaa poomeeninu povana thonikkaraa
Maanathe ponvala veeshana thonikkaraa...

And in the very next stanza, Yesudas takes over (now the tune is that of the Hindi song, Baag mein kali khili bagiya mehki from the film Chaand Aur Suraj):

Chaakara kadapurathini ulsavamaayi chaakara
Thera purathini malsaramaay...

So Salilda had separated his landmark Malayalam song (composed in Woodlands Hotel in Madras) into two more famous songs, one Hindi and another Bengali.

We are talking about the Bengali part here:

Shono shono go shobe shono diya mon
bichitro kaahini aek kori boronon...

What a full-throated song by Kishore Kumar! How he breathed life even into Bangla lyrics! But did you know who sang this song on the screen? Kamal Hassan! Here, watch it.

So that's the discovery I made tonight. I am sure many of you might already know it, but please don't kill my joy.