Thanks to my hypochondria, which is getting worse with advancing age, I have a new fantasy these days: to romance a doctor. That way, I could kill two birds with one stone -- get the woman's attention as well as assurance ("No baby, nothing is wrong with you! You are just fine, trust me!").
Romancing a doctor is quite different from marrying a doctor. When you marry a doctor, your home becomes a mini-hospital and all your vices are junked into the bin. No smoking, no drinking, no junk food, eating on time, sleeping on time -- everything that makes you feel alive is snatched away from you overnight. But when a female doctor chooses to romance you, she is well aware of your vices and is largely accepting of them: in fact, through you, she gets to see or lead the wild side of life which her professional conscience otherwise prohibits. For example, when you light up a cigarette, she may even take a drag or two, but at the same time she is likely to warn you, "Enough, this is the last cigarette you are having this evening. You can have the next one after dinner."
Experience, however, has taught me that the longer the romance rages, you begin to see more of the woman and less of the doctor. "Baby, nothing is wrong with you" becomes "Fuck you, go and die for all I care." Even then, I continue to be fascinated by women doctors -- at least the idea of them. It is not at all same as having a male doctor as a close friend.
If you call up a male doctor-friend, who is aware of your hypochondria, late in the night and tell him that you are experiencing a mild pain in the chest, he is most likely to tell you, "Have two glasses of water and try going to sleep. I don't think anything is wrong. If the pain still continues, go to Apollo tomorrow morning and get an ECG done. After that we will see."
But try calling a doctor-girlfriend to break the same chest-pain news and her first reaction, if it is within her control, would be, "Wait, I am coming!" Actually, the very fact that you have a doctor-girlfriend is good news: she would not have come anywhere close to you and have chosen to admire you from a distance if you really were a storehouse of diseases (which a hypochondriac thinks himself to be). And when she tells you, "Fuck you! Go and die", she is actually giving you a fitness certificate.
Which is why women doctors (or 'lady doctors') fascinate me. Each time I happen to find myself being examined by one, a barrage of questions assault me: Is it possible that she likes me? Does she wash her hands before she eats? Does she hog whenever she sees good food? Does she lust for men, knowing fully well what lies inside the human body? Does she have sex once she returns home from the hospital? If she does, does she analyse medically, in her mind, the whole act -- from arousal to orgasm? While kissing her lover, isn't she deterred by the fact that she is actually letting her mouth into a beehive of bacteria? Does she cry when a loved one dies, even though she knows, more than anyone else, that death is inevitable? Does she cry at all?
Strangely, these questions don't spring up in my mind when I am being examined by a male doctor. Maybe because I know that men are men, no matter what profession they are in. They are always guided by basic instincts. Women, on the other hand, are always conscientious and sincere. To imagine that they could have a naughty side when they are not examining a patient with a stern look on their face -- that can be titillating.
The other day, at a small gathering, I happened to meet a young doctor. She was specialising in, of all things, oncology. The hypochondriac in me wanted to stay miles away from her, lest she detect some strange growth on my body. Fortunately, by the time she pulled a chair next to me -- she turned out to be a reader of Ganga Mail and wanted to have a chat -- I had had two drinks to feel brave and philosophical.
"Sir," she began, "I have always wanted to tell you one thing. Please smoke and drink less, so that we can keep enjoying your writing."
"One will remain healthy as long as one wants to. It is all in the mind, you see. The mind is the most powerful human organ, which no doctor can touch or feel." It was the alcohol talking.
"Oh sir, it is pointless to argue with you intellectual types," she smiled. She looked shyly at the glass of beer she was holding.
"Tell me one thing," I said, "you have worked on cadavers, right?"
"Of course!"
"So you know how a man looks after death."
"Of course!"
"And you also know what is inside a human body -- the intestines, the organs, and so on."
"Of course!" she laughed, wiping the froth from her upper lip as she took a sip of beer. "Why do you ask all this?"
"I will tell you why. Suppose you are with a man, someone you like. Imagine a situation when you are standing or sitting very close to him. Are you going to be aroused, or are you going to think of all that is inside him -- the bones, the intestines, the organs?"
"Well, sir," she said, "it's like this. My brain will know what all is inside him, but my heart and eyes will see what is outside."
Monday, October 24, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
500th Post And Six Years Of Ganga Mail. Destination: Salvation
On an average, each post in Ganga Mail is about 500 words. Now multiply that by 500, and it will easily translate into three 250-page books. Three books! Alas, I can't keep them in the shelf. They are invisible books. But they've earned me what real books achieve for their writers: a little bit of recognition.
Tomorrow, if fame comes knocking, the credit will still go to Ganga Mail because it was this blog which helped me find and develop a distinct voice as a writer. I still have a long way to go, but at least I know now that I am capable of telling a story. This would not have been possible without the constant encouragement from the people who read and have stood by Ganga Mail -- to all of you, my heartfelt thanks. With you around, life isn't so lonely.
Ganga Mail was born out of loneliness. I was two months short of 35, still single and, for the first time in my life, without a steady girlfriend. Forget steady, I did not have any woman in my life, with the exception of my mother, who was worrying herself to death about the fact that her elder son was still not married.
There were a couple of women in my life, but they were unknown, unseen beauties with brains who were capable of engaging you in a conversation all night without letting your interest sag even for a moment. They were among the people who read my column in the New Sunday Express and had got in touch, and the conversation with them, even though intense, would be anything but personal. They had built such strong walls of anonymity around them that getting anything personal out of them was next to impossible. Moreover, after a long, stimulating chat, while they would go back to their respective beds or lovers or perhaps spouses, I would be left alone sitting on the mattress and staring at the screen. I had no one left to even call up.
Thus was born Ganga Mail -- as an attention-seeking device. I wanted to be read, to be appreciated. Writing for the paper was not sufficient enough -- that was just my job.
If you dig into the archives of the blog and read the first fifty posts or so, you will encounter the soul of a lonely (though not unhappy) man. In my opinion, that lot contains some of my best posts -- honest and free of the fear of being judged. I would write a post over several drinks and by the end of it would click on the 'Publish' button in a mildly drunken state, without worrying about what I had written -- something that I no longer do.
The lonely phase didn't last long. I started Ganga Mail in October 2005, within six months I was married. By then the blog had assumed a life of its own. It had become my diary, my conscience keeper, my mouthpiece, my front desk, my scribbling pad -- all rolled into one. Above all, it had become my best friend, who not only showed faith in my writing skills and helped me sharpen them, but also taught me that every single moment in your life, no matter how mundane or insignificant they may seem, can be transformed into an engaging piece of writing provided you put your mind into it. That way, you never consider anything to be mundane -- be it the 90 seconds you spend at the traffic signal or the 30 minutes you wait in the queue to pay your phone bill -- every moment, every experience is laden with a ripe fruit called the 'story'. You only have to know how to pluck it. Ganga Mail taught me the art.
Tonight, as I write this landmark post, my mind goes back to the old posts that gave Ganga Mail unprecedented visibility and helped it earn new reader bases. Two such posts easily come to my mind: one, my eyewitness account of Mani Ratnam in action, and the story of Shivani, a fictitious woman I had created.
But the two posts that will always remain close to my heart happen to be written during the lonely phase: one, my search for a particular song, Raat banoon main aur chaand bano tum; two, my eventual realisation that the route to immortality is only through mortality, courtesy a Sahir Ludhianvi song from Kabhie Kabhie. If Ganga Mail were to have an anthem, it would be Raat banoon main -- and it is not even sung by Kishore Kumar, the singer this blog is committed to celebrating.
Then there are countless other posts which I am proud of and wish people would read and reread them, but I can't recall their titles right away to run a search and reproduce the links here. But one of them would certainly be my experience of cremating my mother at the Manikarnika Ghat in Banaras, a place where every devout Hindu desires to be cremated. My mother, even though highly devout, never went to Banaras with the intention of being cremated there: she was merely visiting my brother who happened to be posted in the city, and she just died one fine afternoon while having lunch, three days before her 59th birthday and exactly three hours after I had spoken to her over the phone.
Here again, Ganga Mail came to my rescue: the moment I received the news of her death, I became a blogger-reporter who set out to cover his mother's funeral. I was no longer thinking of my mother, but about how to deliver the news and describe the event to my readers. The readers had become my relatives.
Six long years and 500 posts on, Ganga Mail continues to flow. May not be with the same ferocity when it could be heard even from a distance, but perhaps with a gentle gurgling sound that encourages you to step into the cool waters and splash some of it on your face.
During its journey through the six years, Ganga Mail has received numerous compliments. People who gave those compliments, at various points of time, might have forgotten all about it, but the nice things they had had to say about the blog not only remain engraved in my heart but also lie scattered, as evidence, in the comment boxes of various posts.
But one compliment deserves special mention. It came very recently from someone totally unknown to me, someone who hails from Lucknow, who mentioned my blog on his friend's Facebook wall, saying, Inko padhte jaiye, jeete jaiye, zindagi chakhte jaiye.
Inko padhte jaiye, jeete jaiye, zindagi chakhte jaiye -- Keep reading him, keep living life, keep savouring life.
Now, isn't that the mission statement of Ganga Mail?
Tomorrow, if fame comes knocking, the credit will still go to Ganga Mail because it was this blog which helped me find and develop a distinct voice as a writer. I still have a long way to go, but at least I know now that I am capable of telling a story. This would not have been possible without the constant encouragement from the people who read and have stood by Ganga Mail -- to all of you, my heartfelt thanks. With you around, life isn't so lonely.
Ganga Mail was born out of loneliness. I was two months short of 35, still single and, for the first time in my life, without a steady girlfriend. Forget steady, I did not have any woman in my life, with the exception of my mother, who was worrying herself to death about the fact that her elder son was still not married.
There were a couple of women in my life, but they were unknown, unseen beauties with brains who were capable of engaging you in a conversation all night without letting your interest sag even for a moment. They were among the people who read my column in the New Sunday Express and had got in touch, and the conversation with them, even though intense, would be anything but personal. They had built such strong walls of anonymity around them that getting anything personal out of them was next to impossible. Moreover, after a long, stimulating chat, while they would go back to their respective beds or lovers or perhaps spouses, I would be left alone sitting on the mattress and staring at the screen. I had no one left to even call up.
Thus was born Ganga Mail -- as an attention-seeking device. I wanted to be read, to be appreciated. Writing for the paper was not sufficient enough -- that was just my job.
If you dig into the archives of the blog and read the first fifty posts or so, you will encounter the soul of a lonely (though not unhappy) man. In my opinion, that lot contains some of my best posts -- honest and free of the fear of being judged. I would write a post over several drinks and by the end of it would click on the 'Publish' button in a mildly drunken state, without worrying about what I had written -- something that I no longer do.
The lonely phase didn't last long. I started Ganga Mail in October 2005, within six months I was married. By then the blog had assumed a life of its own. It had become my diary, my conscience keeper, my mouthpiece, my front desk, my scribbling pad -- all rolled into one. Above all, it had become my best friend, who not only showed faith in my writing skills and helped me sharpen them, but also taught me that every single moment in your life, no matter how mundane or insignificant they may seem, can be transformed into an engaging piece of writing provided you put your mind into it. That way, you never consider anything to be mundane -- be it the 90 seconds you spend at the traffic signal or the 30 minutes you wait in the queue to pay your phone bill -- every moment, every experience is laden with a ripe fruit called the 'story'. You only have to know how to pluck it. Ganga Mail taught me the art.
Tonight, as I write this landmark post, my mind goes back to the old posts that gave Ganga Mail unprecedented visibility and helped it earn new reader bases. Two such posts easily come to my mind: one, my eyewitness account of Mani Ratnam in action, and the story of Shivani, a fictitious woman I had created.
But the two posts that will always remain close to my heart happen to be written during the lonely phase: one, my search for a particular song, Raat banoon main aur chaand bano tum; two, my eventual realisation that the route to immortality is only through mortality, courtesy a Sahir Ludhianvi song from Kabhie Kabhie. If Ganga Mail were to have an anthem, it would be Raat banoon main -- and it is not even sung by Kishore Kumar, the singer this blog is committed to celebrating.
Then there are countless other posts which I am proud of and wish people would read and reread them, but I can't recall their titles right away to run a search and reproduce the links here. But one of them would certainly be my experience of cremating my mother at the Manikarnika Ghat in Banaras, a place where every devout Hindu desires to be cremated. My mother, even though highly devout, never went to Banaras with the intention of being cremated there: she was merely visiting my brother who happened to be posted in the city, and she just died one fine afternoon while having lunch, three days before her 59th birthday and exactly three hours after I had spoken to her over the phone.
Here again, Ganga Mail came to my rescue: the moment I received the news of her death, I became a blogger-reporter who set out to cover his mother's funeral. I was no longer thinking of my mother, but about how to deliver the news and describe the event to my readers. The readers had become my relatives.
Six long years and 500 posts on, Ganga Mail continues to flow. May not be with the same ferocity when it could be heard even from a distance, but perhaps with a gentle gurgling sound that encourages you to step into the cool waters and splash some of it on your face.
During its journey through the six years, Ganga Mail has received numerous compliments. People who gave those compliments, at various points of time, might have forgotten all about it, but the nice things they had had to say about the blog not only remain engraved in my heart but also lie scattered, as evidence, in the comment boxes of various posts.
But one compliment deserves special mention. It came very recently from someone totally unknown to me, someone who hails from Lucknow, who mentioned my blog on his friend's Facebook wall, saying, Inko padhte jaiye, jeete jaiye, zindagi chakhte jaiye.
Inko padhte jaiye, jeete jaiye, zindagi chakhte jaiye -- Keep reading him, keep living life, keep savouring life.
Now, isn't that the mission statement of Ganga Mail?
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Fireflies
It is always a pleasure to hold a new book in your hands -- even more if the book happens to arrive at your doorstep in a parcel. It is the time taken to tear open the parcel that heightens the pleasure. You know what exactly is inside, but the effort that goes into unravelling a brand new book is what really makes it worthwhile.
Then just imagine the pleasure if the brand new hardbound book you pull out of the parcel happens to be printed forty years ago! I must have been only a few months old when, in 1971, Alfred Knopf printed the American edition of Shiva Naipaul's best-known book, Fireflies.
I, of course, wouldn't know how many copies were printed and how many got sold from that lot, but it is now certain that some copies remained, unsold and untouched, in some storehouse where no light reached for forty long years. So what I held in my hands last Saturday was a first-edition copy of a celebrated book published at the time when I was born (Andre Deutsch published it in Britain in 1970 and Alfred Knopf published it in America the following year).
I kept rereading, in amazement, these words on the opening page: Alfred A. Knopf / New York / 1971. And also what the jacket of the book had to say about the author: Shiva Naipaul was born in 1945 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and was educated there and at University College, Oxford (where he received an honors degree in classical Chinese). Fireflies marks his debut as a novelist -- he has previously published short stories, three of which have appeared in Penguin Modern Stories 4. Like his brother, the novelist V.S. Naipaul, he now lives in England.
In a recent edition of the book, if at all there is one, the author intro would stand drastically altered. Shiva Naipaul would be described in the past tense (he died in 1985, aged 40) while V.S. Naipaul would not be called a mere novelist but a Nobel laureate. Fireflies, though I am yet to start reading it, seems to be Shiva Naipaul's answer to his elder brother's A House for Mr Biswas. They are equally voluminous and are set in Trinidad.
Between the two Naipauls, I somehow prefer the younger brother. While the elder one is like a dour-faced teacher who looks down upon you (yet you stick to him because you've got so much to learn from him), the younger brother is a good-natured soul who takes you along on his journeys. I have read, cover to cover, two books of Shiva Naipaul -- North of South and Beyond the Dragon's Mouth -- to be able to say that.
Somehow, Fireflies always eluded me. Each time I decided to look it up on Amazon, either the book would be out of stock or my credit card would have crossed the spending limit. Finally I got a first-edition copy, thanks to Soma.
Soma and I were born around the same time. We lived and grew up in the same neighbourhood and went to the same school. We were in the same class. As kids we were great friends, but adolescence erected a wall of awkwardness between us. I don't recall having a single conversation with her during our teenage years. By the time we could step out of teenage, she was already married and had gone off to America. We ceased to exist for each other -- not that it mattered to either of us. Then, one day, some twenty years later, Facebook reunited us. We were two different people now -- both embracing the age of forty and much wiser.
About a month ago, Soma came down to India to visit her parents in Calcutta. Since I was going to be in Calcutta too around that time, we planned to meet up for lunch at Peter Cat on Park Street. A couple of days before she took the flight out of the U.S., she pinged me: "Dude, is there anything you want from here?"
"Nothing at all," I replied, "But just in case you happen to visit a bookshop before you leave, and if in that bookshop you find a book called Fireflies, please pick it up for me. I'll pay you."
Little did I know that she was going to do what I also could've done sitting thousands of miles away in India. She went to Amazon.com and ordered the book. Unfortunately, the book reached her home after she had left for India. Which meant I could not get my copy of Fireflies during the lunch at Peter Cat (I was secretly hoping I would). But so what, I've got it now and I can finally proclaim, proudly and honestly: That's what friends are for!
Really, the copy of Fireflies is a certificate of that friendship -- a friendship that goes back forty years, when Shiva Naipaul had just finished writing the book and when Soma and I were still in our nappies.
P.S. Talking of siblings, my brother Rohit also has a blog now.
Then just imagine the pleasure if the brand new hardbound book you pull out of the parcel happens to be printed forty years ago! I must have been only a few months old when, in 1971, Alfred Knopf printed the American edition of Shiva Naipaul's best-known book, Fireflies.
I, of course, wouldn't know how many copies were printed and how many got sold from that lot, but it is now certain that some copies remained, unsold and untouched, in some storehouse where no light reached for forty long years. So what I held in my hands last Saturday was a first-edition copy of a celebrated book published at the time when I was born (Andre Deutsch published it in Britain in 1970 and Alfred Knopf published it in America the following year).
I kept rereading, in amazement, these words on the opening page: Alfred A. Knopf / New York / 1971. And also what the jacket of the book had to say about the author: Shiva Naipaul was born in 1945 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and was educated there and at University College, Oxford (where he received an honors degree in classical Chinese). Fireflies marks his debut as a novelist -- he has previously published short stories, three of which have appeared in Penguin Modern Stories 4. Like his brother, the novelist V.S. Naipaul, he now lives in England.
In a recent edition of the book, if at all there is one, the author intro would stand drastically altered. Shiva Naipaul would be described in the past tense (he died in 1985, aged 40) while V.S. Naipaul would not be called a mere novelist but a Nobel laureate. Fireflies, though I am yet to start reading it, seems to be Shiva Naipaul's answer to his elder brother's A House for Mr Biswas. They are equally voluminous and are set in Trinidad.
Between the two Naipauls, I somehow prefer the younger brother. While the elder one is like a dour-faced teacher who looks down upon you (yet you stick to him because you've got so much to learn from him), the younger brother is a good-natured soul who takes you along on his journeys. I have read, cover to cover, two books of Shiva Naipaul -- North of South and Beyond the Dragon's Mouth -- to be able to say that.
Somehow, Fireflies always eluded me. Each time I decided to look it up on Amazon, either the book would be out of stock or my credit card would have crossed the spending limit. Finally I got a first-edition copy, thanks to Soma.
Soma and I were born around the same time. We lived and grew up in the same neighbourhood and went to the same school. We were in the same class. As kids we were great friends, but adolescence erected a wall of awkwardness between us. I don't recall having a single conversation with her during our teenage years. By the time we could step out of teenage, she was already married and had gone off to America. We ceased to exist for each other -- not that it mattered to either of us. Then, one day, some twenty years later, Facebook reunited us. We were two different people now -- both embracing the age of forty and much wiser.
About a month ago, Soma came down to India to visit her parents in Calcutta. Since I was going to be in Calcutta too around that time, we planned to meet up for lunch at Peter Cat on Park Street. A couple of days before she took the flight out of the U.S., she pinged me: "Dude, is there anything you want from here?"
"Nothing at all," I replied, "But just in case you happen to visit a bookshop before you leave, and if in that bookshop you find a book called Fireflies, please pick it up for me. I'll pay you."
Little did I know that she was going to do what I also could've done sitting thousands of miles away in India. She went to Amazon.com and ordered the book. Unfortunately, the book reached her home after she had left for India. Which meant I could not get my copy of Fireflies during the lunch at Peter Cat (I was secretly hoping I would). But so what, I've got it now and I can finally proclaim, proudly and honestly: That's what friends are for!
Really, the copy of Fireflies is a certificate of that friendship -- a friendship that goes back forty years, when Shiva Naipaul had just finished writing the book and when Soma and I were still in our nappies.
P.S. Talking of siblings, my brother Rohit also has a blog now.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Life In A Metro — The Circle Of Life
Rebel all you want — but life has a way of pulling you back to the basics
This Durga Puja, which got over just two days ago, I went pandal-hopping with gusto even though the festival is celebrated in barely five locations in the whole of Chennai. Which meant shaking hands with hitherto-unknown Bengali men who, like me, are also living in the city; admiring the beautiful Bengali women who made you wonder why you don't ever run into them during the rest of the year; savouring the artery-choking Mughlai parathas and cutlets sold at the stalls; admiring the beautiful face of the goddess as the priest waved burning incense at her to the beats of the dhaak – the sound of Bengal.
Each time I stood in front of the goddess, transfixed, as the incense was being waved at her, I could see my mind racing thirty years back in time to a city called Kanpur, where I, as a ten-year-old, stood watching a similar spectacle.
Back then, Durga Puja meant at least three sets of new clothes, each to be worn on saptami, ashtami and navami. The cloth would be purchased and given to the tailor more than a month in advance. During those three days, you would be granted immunity against homework. Also during those three days, you discovered the joys of eating out – the biggest joy, and sense of achievement, being derived from the eating of the bhog, or the community feast, consisting of khichuri and labra.
Khichuri (a soggy preparation of rice and lentils) and labra (a mix of crudely-chopped vegetables) can only count as the humblest of dishes one can think of, but when eaten collectively out of leaf-plates at the puja pandal, the khichuri-labra combo becomes a delicacy in itself. The smell of khichuri is something that gets embedded in the nostrils of a Bengali child right from the formative years.
Then, one day, youth intervenes. You rebel against the practices you've followed as a child; you find it uncool to waste a day at the puja pandal; you find it horrifying that people should queue up for the khichuri and labra as if they were beggars. You want to do your own thing, much to the disappointment of your parents who want you to come along for the puja just like you did in your childhood. Then comes the stage where you are too busy making a career to be thinking of festivals. Who has the time to go back to Kanpur to attend, of all things, Durga Puja? Years pass.
Finally, one day, you miss the smell of khichuri. You suddenly crave it. You want to take the train back to childhood but it is simply too late. So guided by your nostrils, you scour the streets of Chennai and eventually come across a puja pandal, where scenes from your childhood are being played out. You meekly join the queue with a leaf-plate to have some khichuri and labra scooped on to it. Over the meal, you make new friends and perhaps meet your future wife. And then you start coming to the same place, year after year. You've become a part of Chennai's Durga Puja celebrations.
But just when you are beginning to relive your childhood, you realise that your child is no longer a child but a young man – a rebel – who would rather have lunch at Bay Leaf with his friends than sweat it out with fellow Bengalis over a boring meal of khichuri and labra. But when he takes up a job in the U.S., and once he gets as old as you, he too will crave the familiar smell someday. He will scour the alien streets of his city and eventually come across a pandal crowded with Bengalis speaking English with an American – and not Bengali – accent. He will become a part of the New Jersey Durga Puja celebrations.
Someday, many decades down the line, his grandson will tell himself that he has had enough of the American way of the puja, and that in order to enjoy the festival in its truest sense, he must return to Kanpur. So he will be standing there, on the invisible footprints of a ten-year-old, watching the priest wave burning incense at the goddess. Life would have come full circle.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, October 8, 2011.
This Durga Puja, which got over just two days ago, I went pandal-hopping with gusto even though the festival is celebrated in barely five locations in the whole of Chennai. Which meant shaking hands with hitherto-unknown Bengali men who, like me, are also living in the city; admiring the beautiful Bengali women who made you wonder why you don't ever run into them during the rest of the year; savouring the artery-choking Mughlai parathas and cutlets sold at the stalls; admiring the beautiful face of the goddess as the priest waved burning incense at her to the beats of the dhaak – the sound of Bengal.
Each time I stood in front of the goddess, transfixed, as the incense was being waved at her, I could see my mind racing thirty years back in time to a city called Kanpur, where I, as a ten-year-old, stood watching a similar spectacle.
Back then, Durga Puja meant at least three sets of new clothes, each to be worn on saptami, ashtami and navami. The cloth would be purchased and given to the tailor more than a month in advance. During those three days, you would be granted immunity against homework. Also during those three days, you discovered the joys of eating out – the biggest joy, and sense of achievement, being derived from the eating of the bhog, or the community feast, consisting of khichuri and labra.
Khichuri (a soggy preparation of rice and lentils) and labra (a mix of crudely-chopped vegetables) can only count as the humblest of dishes one can think of, but when eaten collectively out of leaf-plates at the puja pandal, the khichuri-labra combo becomes a delicacy in itself. The smell of khichuri is something that gets embedded in the nostrils of a Bengali child right from the formative years.
Then, one day, youth intervenes. You rebel against the practices you've followed as a child; you find it uncool to waste a day at the puja pandal; you find it horrifying that people should queue up for the khichuri and labra as if they were beggars. You want to do your own thing, much to the disappointment of your parents who want you to come along for the puja just like you did in your childhood. Then comes the stage where you are too busy making a career to be thinking of festivals. Who has the time to go back to Kanpur to attend, of all things, Durga Puja? Years pass.
Finally, one day, you miss the smell of khichuri. You suddenly crave it. You want to take the train back to childhood but it is simply too late. So guided by your nostrils, you scour the streets of Chennai and eventually come across a puja pandal, where scenes from your childhood are being played out. You meekly join the queue with a leaf-plate to have some khichuri and labra scooped on to it. Over the meal, you make new friends and perhaps meet your future wife. And then you start coming to the same place, year after year. You've become a part of Chennai's Durga Puja celebrations.
But just when you are beginning to relive your childhood, you realise that your child is no longer a child but a young man – a rebel – who would rather have lunch at Bay Leaf with his friends than sweat it out with fellow Bengalis over a boring meal of khichuri and labra. But when he takes up a job in the U.S., and once he gets as old as you, he too will crave the familiar smell someday. He will scour the alien streets of his city and eventually come across a pandal crowded with Bengalis speaking English with an American – and not Bengali – accent. He will become a part of the New Jersey Durga Puja celebrations.
Someday, many decades down the line, his grandson will tell himself that he has had enough of the American way of the puja, and that in order to enjoy the festival in its truest sense, he must return to Kanpur. So he will be standing there, on the invisible footprints of a ten-year-old, watching the priest wave burning incense at the goddess. Life would have come full circle.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, October 8, 2011.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Life In A Metro: Books, A Click Away
That's one evening I am not going to forget easily. It was October 2005. A colleague, who is also a good friend, and I were at Landmark, the bookstore, trying to make the most of the annual sale. As we went about picking books, I eagerly waited for the phone in my pocket to vibrate — our salaries were expected to be credited that evening, and as soon as the money hit the account, I was to receive a text message. Since my friend hadn't signed up for the intimation facility, he walked up to me every now and then to ask, “Did the SMS come?” We were getting panicky. Our evening depended entirely on the message from the bank.
Finally it arrived, just when we had run out of patience and were considering putting the carefully picked books back on the racks. It is difficult to describe in words the relief that overcame us; suffice to say that we pulled out our debit cards with flourish.
Today, even though that particular evening remains in my mind, the whole experience of whiling away time at bookshops has already become a distant memory. I simply can't recall the last time I went to a bookshop with the specific purpose of buying books. Why should I when I have the bookshop coming to my doorstep — that too with books I thought would be available only in a quaint bookstore in some corner of Europe? Can life get any better?
If you are a book-loving internet-savvy Indian and haven't heard of Flipkart yet, you are probably living in a cave. Flipkart, India's answer to Amazon.com, has brought about a revolution so sweeping that it is soon going to change the way the lay Indian shops — and not just for books. Why should you go to a bookshop and pay Rs. 250 for a book (not to mention the hundred bucks you shell out as autorickshaw fare) when Flipkart delivers the same book at your doorstep for just Rs. 188? For the discerning reader, it's not just about the discount but also the access to books that are never available in Indian bookshops.
Take Henry Miller, for instance. He is one writer I don't just admire, but also envy. But what do I find of him in the bookshops? Two long-unsold copies of Tropic of Cancer and may be a solitary copy of Sexus? And maybe a surprise copy of Black Spring? But run a search for Henry Miller on Flipkart, and you will hit a goldmine. For a few thousand rupees, you can own every single word Miller wrote in his lifetime. Ditto for other authors. You no longer have to lament: “Oh, I love his writing! He wrote that great book, what's its name? I tried looking for it, you know, but couldn't find it anywhere.”
The fun has just begun. It will be more fun starting next year when Amazon begins its India operations. According to informed sources, it has already set up an office in Bangalore (Flipkart is also headquartered in Bangalore), though it remains to be seen whether Amazon is going to function under its own brand name or piggyback on a local franchisee.
The surging popularity of e-tail is, needless to say, giving sleepless nights to the large chains of bookstores. Stand-alone bookstores, which are run out of passion for the written word and which have a loyal clientele, may still survive the onslaught as long as the elderly owner, most likely to be well-read himself, genially guides customers into buying the right books. But it's the big chains, who shell out a fortune each month to maintain their stores in plush malls or in prime locations in various cities, which will take the hit. Eventually they will sell less books and more of other items.
For once, I am not complaining about the changing times. More cars mean more pollution and congestion, more connectivity means less privacy, but more books only mean a bigger library at home. Which person in his or her right mind would ever grudge that?
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, October 1, 2011.
Finally it arrived, just when we had run out of patience and were considering putting the carefully picked books back on the racks. It is difficult to describe in words the relief that overcame us; suffice to say that we pulled out our debit cards with flourish.
Today, even though that particular evening remains in my mind, the whole experience of whiling away time at bookshops has already become a distant memory. I simply can't recall the last time I went to a bookshop with the specific purpose of buying books. Why should I when I have the bookshop coming to my doorstep — that too with books I thought would be available only in a quaint bookstore in some corner of Europe? Can life get any better?
If you are a book-loving internet-savvy Indian and haven't heard of Flipkart yet, you are probably living in a cave. Flipkart, India's answer to Amazon.com, has brought about a revolution so sweeping that it is soon going to change the way the lay Indian shops — and not just for books. Why should you go to a bookshop and pay Rs. 250 for a book (not to mention the hundred bucks you shell out as autorickshaw fare) when Flipkart delivers the same book at your doorstep for just Rs. 188? For the discerning reader, it's not just about the discount but also the access to books that are never available in Indian bookshops.
Take Henry Miller, for instance. He is one writer I don't just admire, but also envy. But what do I find of him in the bookshops? Two long-unsold copies of Tropic of Cancer and may be a solitary copy of Sexus? And maybe a surprise copy of Black Spring? But run a search for Henry Miller on Flipkart, and you will hit a goldmine. For a few thousand rupees, you can own every single word Miller wrote in his lifetime. Ditto for other authors. You no longer have to lament: “Oh, I love his writing! He wrote that great book, what's its name? I tried looking for it, you know, but couldn't find it anywhere.”
The fun has just begun. It will be more fun starting next year when Amazon begins its India operations. According to informed sources, it has already set up an office in Bangalore (Flipkart is also headquartered in Bangalore), though it remains to be seen whether Amazon is going to function under its own brand name or piggyback on a local franchisee.
The surging popularity of e-tail is, needless to say, giving sleepless nights to the large chains of bookstores. Stand-alone bookstores, which are run out of passion for the written word and which have a loyal clientele, may still survive the onslaught as long as the elderly owner, most likely to be well-read himself, genially guides customers into buying the right books. But it's the big chains, who shell out a fortune each month to maintain their stores in plush malls or in prime locations in various cities, which will take the hit. Eventually they will sell less books and more of other items.
For once, I am not complaining about the changing times. More cars mean more pollution and congestion, more connectivity means less privacy, but more books only mean a bigger library at home. Which person in his or her right mind would ever grudge that?
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, October 1, 2011.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Seeds Of The Raj Were Sown Here
In 1639, the very year Shah Jahan made Delhi his capital city, the seeds of the Mughal Empire's doom were sown in a hill-surrounded south Indian town called Chandragiri, located in present-day Andhra Pradesh.
By then, the powerful Vijayanagara Empire had disintegrated into smaller kingdoms which were now ruled independently by their erstwhile governors, the Nayaks. Chandragiri, which had been the capital of the Empire, was ruled by a Nayak called Damarla Venkatadri, whose authority extended to the East coast, from Pulicat to San Thome. On August 22, 1639, he put his signature on a deed allowing the East India Company to set up business on a strip of beach close to San Thome.
On that sandy strip the Company built Fort St. George, which turned out to be the springboard for British rule in the sub-continent. From Fort St. George also grew the city of Madraspatnam, known today as Chennai, a metropolis bursting at its seams with a population of nearly 10 million. But Chandragiri, where it all began, is a small and contented town of 10,000. Located 12 scenic kilometres from Tirupati, it's bustling with activity, nonetheless.
Bazaar Road, its only main road, is commercial as well as residential — flanked by houses of varying vintage, shops and provision stores and busy eateries. At Murali Haircutting Saloon, which is pulsating with the beats of a racy Telugu song, barbers are snipping away at the hair of their customers even as film star Venkatesh smiles at them from a poster. Vegetable vendors, all women, have their wares spread out on the pavement. The road also accommodates the town's busy bus-stand, police station, a wine shop and two modest lodges. Yours truly spent a night in one of the lodges: an AC room came for Rs. 700. If Chandragiri was Mumbai, it would have been equal to staying at the legendary Taj Mahal Palace.
But few luxuries beat the pleasure of exploring a tiny town on a drizzly night at an unhurried pace, smelling the idlis being steamed by a roadside vendor-couple or watching a masterly chef stationed on the pavement expertly roll out egg dosas. The dosas, which might be the best you've ever had, cost you barely ten rupees. Perhaps the time has come to promote small-town tourism, when you travel to a nondescript town and savour life in slow motion, that too in a princely manner.
Historically, however, Chandragiri is anything but nondescript. The three-storeyed Raja Mahal, where the Nayak is said to have signed the lease, is about a kilometre from the town and attracts a trickle of tourists on a daily basis. It has been renovated and turned into a museum by the Archaeological Survey of India and houses artifacts and bronze statues belonging to the Vijayanagara era. Across a neatly-kept lawn is the much smaller Rani Mahal. There are benches for visitors in the shade of jamun trees — you can't help trampling upon a few jamuns along the way — and a small lake for boat rides. A pleasant place to meditate upon history.
The two palaces are part of the Chandragiri fort, a substantial portion of which lies on top of the overlooking hills. From the lawns of the palaces, you notice fortifying walls peeping out of the vegetation on the steep hills. At certain places, you find the boulders glazed — the idea was to prevent the enemy from climbing up. Alas, the hilly part of the fort, believed to be dating back to 1,000 A.D., is closed to visitors.
"The climb can be very dangerous. We can't allow people for reasons of safety," says G. Thirumoorthy, the assistant superintending archaeologist. So what was up there? "Must be the treasury," he replies. So, a cloud of mystery hangs over the hills. One untested way of clearing the cloud could be to make friends with an enterprising goatherd: you will find a number of them loitering on the foothills.
The two palaces, however, do not give a feel of history. Thanks to the renovation by the ASI, the structures look rather new. The durbar hall of the Raja Mahal, in fact, bears a recent coat of pink. But Raja Mahal, no doubt, is old, very old. "Archaeological evidence suggests that it belongs to the late medieval period," says Thirumoorthy. He, however, laments the lack of archaeological studies done on Chandragiri, considering that it had been a capital of the Vijayanagara Empire (it became the capital after Hampi was reduced to ruins by Muslim invaders during the Battle of Talikota in 1565).
Meanwhile, life in Chandragiri, the town, goes on. Residents don't seem to have many complaints against life. "There are only five pawn brokers in this town, and I am one of them. We are all doing good business. Why should I go elsewhere?" asserts Vishnu Prakash, a pawn broker from Rajasthan who chose to settle in Chandragiri. Why not Tirupati, where business could be even better? "Why should I?" argues Vishnu Prakash, "The cost of living is so low here. Chandragiri is paradise."
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus Weekend, September 30, 2011.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Life In A Metro — Back To School After 25 Years
Why nostalgia may not always be a good thing
It feels as if I never left school or the neighbourhood I grew up in, even though more than two decades have passed since I left both. Every now and then, during the past few weeks, the screen of my laptop turns into a mirror in which I see myself sitting obediently in the classroom or playing cricket in the neighbourhood playground that nourished me as a boy. The reason: Facebook.
Sometime ago, an enterprising senior started a Facebook page for our school; and even though I already had many of my classmates on my list of friends, the new page opened the floodgates. People I had forgotten all about, people I thought I would never see again, people I was eagerly searching for, people I idolised, people I didn't look forward to seeing again – they all came rushing in to the Facebook page with a collective cry of joy, exactly the way we rushed out to the school playground at the sound of the bell. Overnight, the page had close to a 1,000 members.
After the initial joy of seeing the all-too-familiar names came a series of grim realisations. Realisation no. 1: how much time has passed since we last saw each other! Two-and-a-half decades is a long, long time. And there was no escaping this fact since there was pictorial evidence. Young men, who barely had beards sprouting from their chins when I last saw them, now looked like what their fathers looked like back then. They are the new ‘uncles' – who now have children as old as we were then.
Even the women – I mean the girls – had changed beyond recognition – not to mention their changed surnames. When I was 15, I had a serious crush on a girl called Payal Gupta (name changed, as journalists often say), but after I left school, I never saw her again. When Facebook – the ultimate missing-persons locator – arrived a few years ago, I searched for her. I came across many Payal Guptas, many prettier than her, but not her. Then the other day, one Payal Kapoor, who happened to be a member of the school page, sent me a friendship request. She was no longer the ‘girl' I knew, but a middle-aged mother of two teenage daughters!
Realisation no. 2: I too must be appearing to them an ‘uncle'. My father was 44 when I passed out of school, I am myself 40 today.
Realisation no. 3: You don't have much to talk about even though you are reconnecting with people after a quarter of a century – the same people you looked forward to spending time with while in school. After the passage of 25 years, you don't even recognise yourself in the mirror; how can you expect to connect with a long-lost schoolmate with your heart and soul, that too when he is not in the same profession as yours? Maybe that is why after the initial, enthusiastic bursts of Hi's and Hello's, most members on the page slipped into an uncomfortable silence – wishing each other only on occasions such as Janmashtami, Eid and Vinayaka Chathurthi.
I am not trying to boast here, but I did try to generate some conversation by posting this message on the wall: Those who passed out in 1988 and before: How about recalling your first crush in school (with names and all), now that a lot of water has flown under the bridge. Perhaps a nice way to warm up middle-aged hearts? The idea was to engage schoolmates who are now 40 and above in a juicy conversation – not that I expected anyone to spell out names.
But a senior of mine in school, whom I idolised once, rebuked me. He posted a comment saying that if the girls are named, their husbands may not take kindly to it and that might cause a storm in their lives. I was so amused by the comment that I did not feel like telling him that I was only kidding. Instead, I decided to play along. I posted another comment, saying: “You are so right. If I ever found out that someone had a crush on my wife while she was in school, I would file for divorce.”
Upon which yet another senior, a woman, pounced on me. “On one hand you are asking people to name their crushes, and on the other you are threatening to divorce your wife! You are the biggest MCP I've ever seen.” Even before I could reply, yet another senior commented, “You should respect your seniors. That's what our school taught us.” I wondered if it was really necessary for me to revisit the school.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, September 24, 2011.
It feels as if I never left school or the neighbourhood I grew up in, even though more than two decades have passed since I left both. Every now and then, during the past few weeks, the screen of my laptop turns into a mirror in which I see myself sitting obediently in the classroom or playing cricket in the neighbourhood playground that nourished me as a boy. The reason: Facebook.
Sometime ago, an enterprising senior started a Facebook page for our school; and even though I already had many of my classmates on my list of friends, the new page opened the floodgates. People I had forgotten all about, people I thought I would never see again, people I was eagerly searching for, people I idolised, people I didn't look forward to seeing again – they all came rushing in to the Facebook page with a collective cry of joy, exactly the way we rushed out to the school playground at the sound of the bell. Overnight, the page had close to a 1,000 members.
After the initial joy of seeing the all-too-familiar names came a series of grim realisations. Realisation no. 1: how much time has passed since we last saw each other! Two-and-a-half decades is a long, long time. And there was no escaping this fact since there was pictorial evidence. Young men, who barely had beards sprouting from their chins when I last saw them, now looked like what their fathers looked like back then. They are the new ‘uncles' – who now have children as old as we were then.
Even the women – I mean the girls – had changed beyond recognition – not to mention their changed surnames. When I was 15, I had a serious crush on a girl called Payal Gupta (name changed, as journalists often say), but after I left school, I never saw her again. When Facebook – the ultimate missing-persons locator – arrived a few years ago, I searched for her. I came across many Payal Guptas, many prettier than her, but not her. Then the other day, one Payal Kapoor, who happened to be a member of the school page, sent me a friendship request. She was no longer the ‘girl' I knew, but a middle-aged mother of two teenage daughters!
Realisation no. 2: I too must be appearing to them an ‘uncle'. My father was 44 when I passed out of school, I am myself 40 today.
Realisation no. 3: You don't have much to talk about even though you are reconnecting with people after a quarter of a century – the same people you looked forward to spending time with while in school. After the passage of 25 years, you don't even recognise yourself in the mirror; how can you expect to connect with a long-lost schoolmate with your heart and soul, that too when he is not in the same profession as yours? Maybe that is why after the initial, enthusiastic bursts of Hi's and Hello's, most members on the page slipped into an uncomfortable silence – wishing each other only on occasions such as Janmashtami, Eid and Vinayaka Chathurthi.
I am not trying to boast here, but I did try to generate some conversation by posting this message on the wall: Those who passed out in 1988 and before: How about recalling your first crush in school (with names and all), now that a lot of water has flown under the bridge. Perhaps a nice way to warm up middle-aged hearts? The idea was to engage schoolmates who are now 40 and above in a juicy conversation – not that I expected anyone to spell out names.
But a senior of mine in school, whom I idolised once, rebuked me. He posted a comment saying that if the girls are named, their husbands may not take kindly to it and that might cause a storm in their lives. I was so amused by the comment that I did not feel like telling him that I was only kidding. Instead, I decided to play along. I posted another comment, saying: “You are so right. If I ever found out that someone had a crush on my wife while she was in school, I would file for divorce.”
Upon which yet another senior, a woman, pounced on me. “On one hand you are asking people to name their crushes, and on the other you are threatening to divorce your wife! You are the biggest MCP I've ever seen.” Even before I could reply, yet another senior commented, “You should respect your seniors. That's what our school taught us.” I wondered if it was really necessary for me to revisit the school.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, September 24, 2011.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The Godmakers Of Kumartuli
Come Durga Puja, their creations will hold the entire city of Kolkata spellbound for five days. Yet, for the artisans on the banks of the Hooghly, it is just a means of survival. BISHWANATH GHOSH watches as the gods take shape under their skilled hands...
“You are taking pictures,” Bikash Mondal warns from his perch, “you'll have to give us money to buy tea.” Standing atop a wooden platform in a workshop that is crammed with incomplete clay images of the goddess, the elderly artisan, clad only in a soiled lungi, is preparing to install the head on the tallest of the idols.
His warning is only half in jest. This is, after all, a back-breaking time for the artisans of Kumartuli, one of Kolkata's oldest neighbourhoods, nestled on the banks of the Hooghly, which provides the city its greatest source of joy — idols of Durga. There are barely three weeks before the goddess transforms from a crude structure of clay-and-hay to a beautiful, bedecked Bengali bride and reaches the countless pandals of Kolkata. Distractions, therefore, are not welcome.
It is almost five in the evening when I arrive in Kumartuli. But Rabindra Sarani, its biggest road, bears a deserted look. Most shops are shut. The absence of traffic lays bare the pair of glistening tram lines stretched out on the road. Running on them now, however, are not trams but the occasional taxi and autorickshaw and, of course, the human horses — lungi-clad, weather-beaten men pulling rickshaws with the strength of their bones.
Is it a public holiday? Not that I know of. Or is it that the shops in Kumartuli close in the afternoon for a post-lunch nap? I'm not sure of that either, though that is more likely. But stroll into Banamali Sarkar Street and the languorous air melts into a buzz of activity. This narrow street is the nerve centre of Kumartuli, flanked by cavernous workshops that are packed with large idols of Durga and her four children in various stages of completion. Wiry artisans squat on the street, kneading the clay or working on smaller idols, ignoring the attention of curious passersby and amateur photographers. That their creation is going to leave Kolkata gaping in admiration for five full days is of no consequence to them — for them making gods is only a means of survival.
The workshops of Kumartuli — there are about 450 of them, many of them concentrated around Banamali Sarkar Street — are run by families that have been into idol-making and pottery for generations: Kumartuli means potters' quarter. During the Puja season, they hire extra hands from across Bengal because making the idols of Goddess Durga is a grand affair. The goddess, after all, does not like to be presented alone in a pandal: she must be accompanied by her four children, not to mention the lion she rides and the curly-haired, muscular demon she is shown slaying. And with new settlements coming up around Kolkata and with Bengalis reaching newer shores across the globe, the demand for idols has gone up over the years. Kumartuli is known to create close to 4,000 sets of Durga idols every year, some of which are shipped abroad. All this calls for a lot of work — work that demands intricacy and, very often, creativity.
The flash of my camera may have irritated the elderly, bare-chested artisan who is trying to fix the head on a 12-ft statue of Durga, but his employer, Nanigopal Rudra Pal, is in a meditative state as he works on the goddess' fingers. Strewn on his table are a set of clay fingers, each large enough to befit the 12-ft idol. He is picking them up, one by one, and delicately running his fingers on them to impart them his masterly touch, to make them look as human as possible. The fingers look very real — and a bit spooky.
“I have been in this business for 45 years now,” says Pal, now 68, without even looking up to see who he is talking to. He is too engrossed creating the nail on a thumb of the goddess. So how many idols is his workshop making this year? “Twenty, may be 25?” I decide to leave him alone, and find someone chatty.
Out on the street, in an isolated corner, one artisan is busy applying clay on the protruding belly of Ganesha. He is Gobinda Dey, who has come from Nabadweep. A typical Kumartuli idol, he tells me, is made of bamboo and hay — the bamboo serving as the skeleton and hay the flesh. Once the structure is ready, it gets a skin of entel maati, a sticky variety of clay procured from the bed of the Hooghly. Once it dries up, the finishing touches are given with bele maati, a finer variety of clay which also comes from the river. The idols are always pre-ordered and never sold off-the-shelf.
“I've been making idols ever since I was 18 or 20,” Gobinda, now 40, tells his story without stopping his work. “It takes about four days to create an idol” — he is talking about the goddess' children. “But Durga's idol takes about a week. Each year I make about 20 idols.” I ask Gobinda if he always wanted to be an idol-maker.
“I didn't have a choice. Lekha-pora to sikhtey paareni (I could not get education). This profession may not give me a good life, but it gives me what I need — two square meals a day. I have no one to look after; my parents are dead and I am single. So I am able to manage,” he says.
So how much does he earn during a season? Gobinda does not give a direct answer: uneducated he may be, but he is clearly aware of the never-ask-a-man-his-salary rule. “It all depends on skill and experience. Some of us get Rs. 1,000, some get Rs. 2,000, some others a little more. Food and lodging are provided by the employer.” A pittance, but, as he says, they don't have a choice.
I saunter along the street: never before have I seen so many idols at the same time. One set of idols sit right next to a public urinal: I guess it does not matter. Until they reach the pandals, they are not gods but just images of clay and hay. Three weeks later, a multitude of people will be standing before the same idols, with their hands folded and a silent prayer on their lips.
I am standing by the Hooghly now, its waters darkening in the rapidly fading light. The bell of the riverside temple rings. A group of labourers, wet from the river, has just deposited a boatload of black clay on the banks. From this mound, the clay will be scooped and taken to the various workshops. Two more clay-laden boats are approaching. All this for five days of festivity, after which, the idols will be consigned to the river. The clay will dissolve and return to where it belongs.
Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 18 October 2011.
“You are taking pictures,” Bikash Mondal warns from his perch, “you'll have to give us money to buy tea.” Standing atop a wooden platform in a workshop that is crammed with incomplete clay images of the goddess, the elderly artisan, clad only in a soiled lungi, is preparing to install the head on the tallest of the idols.
His warning is only half in jest. This is, after all, a back-breaking time for the artisans of Kumartuli, one of Kolkata's oldest neighbourhoods, nestled on the banks of the Hooghly, which provides the city its greatest source of joy — idols of Durga. There are barely three weeks before the goddess transforms from a crude structure of clay-and-hay to a beautiful, bedecked Bengali bride and reaches the countless pandals of Kolkata. Distractions, therefore, are not welcome.
It is almost five in the evening when I arrive in Kumartuli. But Rabindra Sarani, its biggest road, bears a deserted look. Most shops are shut. The absence of traffic lays bare the pair of glistening tram lines stretched out on the road. Running on them now, however, are not trams but the occasional taxi and autorickshaw and, of course, the human horses — lungi-clad, weather-beaten men pulling rickshaws with the strength of their bones.
Is it a public holiday? Not that I know of. Or is it that the shops in Kumartuli close in the afternoon for a post-lunch nap? I'm not sure of that either, though that is more likely. But stroll into Banamali Sarkar Street and the languorous air melts into a buzz of activity. This narrow street is the nerve centre of Kumartuli, flanked by cavernous workshops that are packed with large idols of Durga and her four children in various stages of completion. Wiry artisans squat on the street, kneading the clay or working on smaller idols, ignoring the attention of curious passersby and amateur photographers. That their creation is going to leave Kolkata gaping in admiration for five full days is of no consequence to them — for them making gods is only a means of survival.
The workshops of Kumartuli — there are about 450 of them, many of them concentrated around Banamali Sarkar Street — are run by families that have been into idol-making and pottery for generations: Kumartuli means potters' quarter. During the Puja season, they hire extra hands from across Bengal because making the idols of Goddess Durga is a grand affair. The goddess, after all, does not like to be presented alone in a pandal: she must be accompanied by her four children, not to mention the lion she rides and the curly-haired, muscular demon she is shown slaying. And with new settlements coming up around Kolkata and with Bengalis reaching newer shores across the globe, the demand for idols has gone up over the years. Kumartuli is known to create close to 4,000 sets of Durga idols every year, some of which are shipped abroad. All this calls for a lot of work — work that demands intricacy and, very often, creativity.
The flash of my camera may have irritated the elderly, bare-chested artisan who is trying to fix the head on a 12-ft statue of Durga, but his employer, Nanigopal Rudra Pal, is in a meditative state as he works on the goddess' fingers. Strewn on his table are a set of clay fingers, each large enough to befit the 12-ft idol. He is picking them up, one by one, and delicately running his fingers on them to impart them his masterly touch, to make them look as human as possible. The fingers look very real — and a bit spooky.
“I have been in this business for 45 years now,” says Pal, now 68, without even looking up to see who he is talking to. He is too engrossed creating the nail on a thumb of the goddess. So how many idols is his workshop making this year? “Twenty, may be 25?” I decide to leave him alone, and find someone chatty.
Out on the street, in an isolated corner, one artisan is busy applying clay on the protruding belly of Ganesha. He is Gobinda Dey, who has come from Nabadweep. A typical Kumartuli idol, he tells me, is made of bamboo and hay — the bamboo serving as the skeleton and hay the flesh. Once the structure is ready, it gets a skin of entel maati, a sticky variety of clay procured from the bed of the Hooghly. Once it dries up, the finishing touches are given with bele maati, a finer variety of clay which also comes from the river. The idols are always pre-ordered and never sold off-the-shelf.
“I've been making idols ever since I was 18 or 20,” Gobinda, now 40, tells his story without stopping his work. “It takes about four days to create an idol” — he is talking about the goddess' children. “But Durga's idol takes about a week. Each year I make about 20 idols.” I ask Gobinda if he always wanted to be an idol-maker.
“I didn't have a choice. Lekha-pora to sikhtey paareni (I could not get education). This profession may not give me a good life, but it gives me what I need — two square meals a day. I have no one to look after; my parents are dead and I am single. So I am able to manage,” he says.
So how much does he earn during a season? Gobinda does not give a direct answer: uneducated he may be, but he is clearly aware of the never-ask-a-man-his-salary rule. “It all depends on skill and experience. Some of us get Rs. 1,000, some get Rs. 2,000, some others a little more. Food and lodging are provided by the employer.” A pittance, but, as he says, they don't have a choice.
I saunter along the street: never before have I seen so many idols at the same time. One set of idols sit right next to a public urinal: I guess it does not matter. Until they reach the pandals, they are not gods but just images of clay and hay. Three weeks later, a multitude of people will be standing before the same idols, with their hands folded and a silent prayer on their lips.
I am standing by the Hooghly now, its waters darkening in the rapidly fading light. The bell of the riverside temple rings. A group of labourers, wet from the river, has just deposited a boatload of black clay on the banks. From this mound, the clay will be scooped and taken to the various workshops. Two more clay-laden boats are approaching. All this for five days of festivity, after which, the idols will be consigned to the river. The clay will dissolve and return to where it belongs.
Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 18 October 2011.
In Carnival Mode
Kolkata has many faces but during Durga Puja there is no space for anything else but celebration ... and a little bit of sadness
What you think of Kolkata depends a lot on how you come to Kolkata. If you come in a train and alight at the Howrah station, you will drive into a city that is a prisoner of its long-standing image — the iconic bridge, trams, hand-pulled rickshaws, stream of labourers propelled into a half-run by the heavy load on their heads, pavements turned into kitchen by poor migrants, crumbling colonial-era buildings giving off a whiff of heritage and decay.
But if you fly down to Kolkata and take the Rajarhat Road into the city, you could be rubbing your eyes in wonder. You will tear through a global-era landscape: upscale high-rises, state-of-the-art offices of IT giants, snazzy malls. North Kolkata, where the city originated, may continue to be a living museum of the olden times, but the metropolis, on the whole, is no longer what you saw in black-and-white Bengali movies. Unemployment is no longer a burning issue. There was a time when high school students, during their exams, were asked to write essays on the subject of unemployment. Load-shedding is a thing of the past. Traffic jam, once Kolkata’s best friend, has now become the principle foe of other cities. And Kolkata today has a night life like no other city.
But come Durga Puja and it does not matter what route you take to Kolkata. No matter what your mode of travel, you arrive in a city where celebration is the uniform civil code. From whichever corner you look at it, you will find nothing else but puja pandals, food stalls and a multitude of people out on the roads until the wee hours. It’s carnival time. It’s a religious event, cultural occasion, music season, literary fair, food festival, fashion show — all rolled into one. Many of the popular songs of R.D. Burman that you listen to today were originally recorded in Bengali as part of Puja albums. And the story for many a celebrated Bengali film had been originally written for the Puja-special edition of local literary magazines.
There is, however, a gloomy side to Durga Puja. Bengalis, even though they wait for it all year, actually become very sad once the Pujas begin. Even while they enjoy the five days of festivity, they are also extremely mournful about how quickly it is all going to end. On panchami, they realise that only four more days are left. On sashti, it strikes them that just three more days are left. By saptami, the heart is heavy. On ashtami, there is a lump in the throat. By the end of navami, there are tears in the eyes. They are left with no choice but to look forward to the next year’s Puja. It is the looking forward that keeps Kolkata going. As they shout while taking the idols for immersion: “Aaschhe bochhor abaar hobey (we are coming back next year)!” It’s Kolkata’s way of assuring itself that the party is not over yet.
Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 18 September 2011.
What you think of Kolkata depends a lot on how you come to Kolkata. If you come in a train and alight at the Howrah station, you will drive into a city that is a prisoner of its long-standing image — the iconic bridge, trams, hand-pulled rickshaws, stream of labourers propelled into a half-run by the heavy load on their heads, pavements turned into kitchen by poor migrants, crumbling colonial-era buildings giving off a whiff of heritage and decay.
But if you fly down to Kolkata and take the Rajarhat Road into the city, you could be rubbing your eyes in wonder. You will tear through a global-era landscape: upscale high-rises, state-of-the-art offices of IT giants, snazzy malls. North Kolkata, where the city originated, may continue to be a living museum of the olden times, but the metropolis, on the whole, is no longer what you saw in black-and-white Bengali movies. Unemployment is no longer a burning issue. There was a time when high school students, during their exams, were asked to write essays on the subject of unemployment. Load-shedding is a thing of the past. Traffic jam, once Kolkata’s best friend, has now become the principle foe of other cities. And Kolkata today has a night life like no other city.
But come Durga Puja and it does not matter what route you take to Kolkata. No matter what your mode of travel, you arrive in a city where celebration is the uniform civil code. From whichever corner you look at it, you will find nothing else but puja pandals, food stalls and a multitude of people out on the roads until the wee hours. It’s carnival time. It’s a religious event, cultural occasion, music season, literary fair, food festival, fashion show — all rolled into one. Many of the popular songs of R.D. Burman that you listen to today were originally recorded in Bengali as part of Puja albums. And the story for many a celebrated Bengali film had been originally written for the Puja-special edition of local literary magazines.
There is, however, a gloomy side to Durga Puja. Bengalis, even though they wait for it all year, actually become very sad once the Pujas begin. Even while they enjoy the five days of festivity, they are also extremely mournful about how quickly it is all going to end. On panchami, they realise that only four more days are left. On sashti, it strikes them that just three more days are left. By saptami, the heart is heavy. On ashtami, there is a lump in the throat. By the end of navami, there are tears in the eyes. They are left with no choice but to look forward to the next year’s Puja. It is the looking forward that keeps Kolkata going. As they shout while taking the idols for immersion: “Aaschhe bochhor abaar hobey (we are coming back next year)!” It’s Kolkata’s way of assuring itself that the party is not over yet.
Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 18 September 2011.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
In the state of Paschimbanga, a slice of Pondicherry
The sun, as it began to set, sprinkled the river with drops of orange; the sky, meanwhile, was rapidly turning into a patchwork of grey and deep blue. A number of elderly men, sitting on archaic wooden benches in groups of twos and threes, were watching the spectacle. For them it was not a spectacle but a sight they came across every day after their evening walks on the Strand in Chandannagar, once known as Chandernagore. But for us it was — and we had made it just in time to watch the sun set over the erstwhile French colony.
It takes roughly an hour to reach Chandannagar from Kolkata, but it took us three. The reason being my two companions got into a heated debate and forgot all about the crucial right turn that had to be taken in order to reach the tiny town located on the banks of the Hooghly. And since the debate, inspired by a new Bengali film called Iti Mrinalini, was about extra-marital relationships, the driver must have had his ear placed on the conversation so firmly that even he forgot to take his foot off the accelerator. The car kept speeding forever on the wide, smooth Delhi Road.
By the time we realised our mistake, we were way beyond Bandel, another town further up the Hooghly which boasts of a Portuguese-built church dating back to 1599. Moral of the story: discussing extra-marital affairs leads you nowhere. We made a U-turn and took the next visible road turning left, and were soon on the historical Grand Trunk Road, travelling downstream alongside the Hooghly. The road, built by Sher Shah Suri, which runs from Sonargaon in Bangladesh right up to Peshawar in Pakistan via the fertile Gangetic plains of India, assumes the form of a narrow lane at many places in this part of Bengal. Only upon reading the various signboards — the signboard of the neighbourhood doctor's clinic, of the local grocery store, of the crowded sweet shop — did we realise that it wasn't the lane that was small; it was actually we who were crawling like an ants on the lap of history.
In hindsight, the debate turned out to be a blessing. Had we reached Chandannagar a little earlier, we would have been caught in the rains. We might have turned the car back and thought of returning some other day — it's a day that never comes. But right now the town was freshly bathed — all set to welcome us and also draw its residents out of their homes. It was time for their evening walk.
As far as looks go, the similarity between Chandannagar and Pondicherry is unmistakable. While Chandannagar has the river, Pondicherry has the sea — that's the only big difference. Though Pondicherry, having been the capital of French India, has far more French-built buildings on the waterfront than Chandannagar, the atmosphere that prevails in the evenings is strikingly similar: people out on their walks, young women commuting on bicycles, hawkers selling ice-cream and local savouries. There is definitely something French about women riding bicycles — it's a common sight in Pondicherry as well.
What is, however, definitely Indian is the urge to have a steaming cup of tea and something freshly fried when the air smells wet. And so, before walking the length of the Strand, we parked ourselves on a bench in front of the eateries that line the short road connecting the Strand to the Sacred Heart Church, built in 1875. The three of us had hot cutlets, both mutton and vegetable, followed by tea served in miniature earthen cups. The bill: Rs 25.
Chandannagar's modern history dates back to 1673 when the French obtained permission from the Nawab of Bengal to set up a trading post on the banks of Hooghly. Bengal was then part of the Mughal Empire. Over the decades, the traders went on to become rulers — now that's a familiar story, isn't it? In 1730, Joseph Francois Dupleix was sent from Pondicherry to take over as the new governor of Chandannagar; and under him the town developed and prospered so much that he was soon sent back to Pondicherry as the governor-general of French India. Dupleix is best remembered for his rivalry with Robert Clive of the British East India Company. In the end Dupleix lost and Clive won, as a result of which Pondicherry lost out to Madras and Chandannagar lost out to Calcutta in terms of their importance as towns.
And what if Dupleix had won? Perhaps this piece would have been written in French.
Dupleix's home, still intact, continues to be the most prestigious building on the Strand. It is under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India: part of it is a museum and part of it serves as an institute where you can learn French. In the museum you still get to see Dupleix's four-poster bed — so tall that it could be climbed only with the help of a small wooden stairway that also stands preserved alongside the bed. Another landmark on the Strand is St. Joseph's Convent, a girls' school founded in 1861 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. It continues to be one of the best educational institutions in the country and its alumni, today, is spread across the world. I get to see two of them on a daily basis — one at work, a colleague; and another at home, my wife.
Even as you gaze admiringly at these buildings while walking on the promenade, it is impossible to miss the sights offered by the other side of the Strand — that of the tree-lined river bank and the river itself, flowing serenely towards the mouth of the Bay of Bengal. And across the river, you see the chimneys of jute mills rising above the green vegetation, piquing your curiosity about what lies on the opposite bank.
A one-way ferry ride costs three rupees each. We got into a steamer and climbed to the upper deck with the intention of getting a view of the river against the receding town, but a man stopped us and directed us to the lower deck, where we sat face-to-face with the daily passengers — mostly office-goers returning home. One of them sensed our discomfort and remarked, “It will take exactly three minutes.”
It was precisely in those three minutes that night descended; and on the opposite bank, by a temple, rickshaw-pullers waited to take passengers up the darkened path. Since we had no particular destination in mind, we lingered around the temple and ate peanuts. The peanut-seller once worked in a jute mill that has now closed down — another familiar story, isn't it?
When we returned to Chandannagar, the promenade had turned into a venue for addas. Elderly people in small groups were plunged in discussions — one group was discussing Anna Hazare. Young girls were dismounting their bicycles to greet known faces. The hawkers were out in force — selling ice-cream, jhaal muri and paani puri.
On our way out, one of my companions suggested that we stop by at the legendary sweet shop of Surjya Kumar Modak. It was another way of saying — a trip is incomplete without dessert. There we gorged on freshly-made sweets: maal-pua, sandesh, rabri and rosogolla. Needless to say, food turned out to be the subject of discussion on the journey back to Kolkata — a subject that, if you are a true Bengali, is any day more interesting than extra-marital affairs.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 17 September 2011.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Life In A Metro: In Pursuit Of Parking
Earlier, happiness meant owning a car. Now, it's finding a spot
I have been living in Chennai for 10 years now – I had arrived just in time to watch the city transform. Had I come a few years earlier, I would have been too old-time a resident to notice the changes; had I come a few years later, I would have landed amidst the change and would not have noticed it.
The thing I loved most about Chennai when I came to live here in early 2001 was my street – a clean and tree-lined stretch of road where you could only hear silence even though it's a stone's throw from the cacophony of T. Nagar. No matter what time of the day, the street would be empty, and when viewed from either end, would resemble an elongated arbour. I would often climb down my house and stand on the street just to meditate on the silence and listen to the birds – it made me love Chennai.
Today the same street resembles a parking lot. Throughout the day, cars and bikes are parked on either side, not only narrowing the once-handsome street but also causing traffic jams each time two large vehicles come face to face. The street that, not too long ago, had no traffic now witnesses frequent jams! Now that should give you a fair idea about what's going on in the rest of Chennai – considering that nearly 1,000 new vehicles hit its roads every day – and in other cities as well.
Time was when buying a car brought you happiness and gave you a sense of achievement. It was one of the milestones of life – once you crossed it, it meant you were on the road to prosperity. But today, we even have cars that are specifically made for the common man – the idea is no one should be without a car. And so, overnight, the meaning of happiness has changed. It's finding a parking space that now brings you joy and gives you a sense of immense achievement. (Possessing a car, on the other hand, only reminds you of the number of instalments that still remain to be paid.)
Today when you go to watch a movie at a multiplex, parking the car turns out to be a greater event than the movie itself. Once you are home, the scenes that play in your mind are not from the movie but from the parking lot. And I have lost count of the number of times my wife and I had to abandon the plan to watch a movie simply because a sign at the gate of the mall would read: Parking Full.
And yet, we watch wide-eyed the advertisements for cars, little realising that cars are slowly making us unsocial. It's just a matter of time before we completely stop visiting people or inviting them over: we can park ourselves on couches, but what about our cars!
Isn't it time we had companies that manufactured parking space? I guess it won't be very long before some enterprising companies actually begin doing that. And if that ever happens, you don't have be a rocket scientist to predict that space will cost more than the car. Imagine watching on TV a commercial selling space – how do you show a thing that cannot be seen!
This column is, in fact, inspired by an incident that took place last evening. The wife and I were at the basement of a mall, snaking along the rows of parked cars, trying to find a slot. Following us was a line of cars, in search of the same elusive thing. Suddenly my wife, who was driving, spotted a narrow vacant slot that we almost drove past.
“Quick, quick!” she told me, “Just get out and stand right there while I back the car.” Her idea was that if I stood there, I would automatically lay claim to the vacant space. Even as I considered whether I should actually do that, the car behind us slithered into that spot. She has not been talking to me since.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 17 September 2011.
I have been living in Chennai for 10 years now – I had arrived just in time to watch the city transform. Had I come a few years earlier, I would have been too old-time a resident to notice the changes; had I come a few years later, I would have landed amidst the change and would not have noticed it.
The thing I loved most about Chennai when I came to live here in early 2001 was my street – a clean and tree-lined stretch of road where you could only hear silence even though it's a stone's throw from the cacophony of T. Nagar. No matter what time of the day, the street would be empty, and when viewed from either end, would resemble an elongated arbour. I would often climb down my house and stand on the street just to meditate on the silence and listen to the birds – it made me love Chennai.
Today the same street resembles a parking lot. Throughout the day, cars and bikes are parked on either side, not only narrowing the once-handsome street but also causing traffic jams each time two large vehicles come face to face. The street that, not too long ago, had no traffic now witnesses frequent jams! Now that should give you a fair idea about what's going on in the rest of Chennai – considering that nearly 1,000 new vehicles hit its roads every day – and in other cities as well.
Time was when buying a car brought you happiness and gave you a sense of achievement. It was one of the milestones of life – once you crossed it, it meant you were on the road to prosperity. But today, we even have cars that are specifically made for the common man – the idea is no one should be without a car. And so, overnight, the meaning of happiness has changed. It's finding a parking space that now brings you joy and gives you a sense of immense achievement. (Possessing a car, on the other hand, only reminds you of the number of instalments that still remain to be paid.)
Today when you go to watch a movie at a multiplex, parking the car turns out to be a greater event than the movie itself. Once you are home, the scenes that play in your mind are not from the movie but from the parking lot. And I have lost count of the number of times my wife and I had to abandon the plan to watch a movie simply because a sign at the gate of the mall would read: Parking Full.
And yet, we watch wide-eyed the advertisements for cars, little realising that cars are slowly making us unsocial. It's just a matter of time before we completely stop visiting people or inviting them over: we can park ourselves on couches, but what about our cars!
Isn't it time we had companies that manufactured parking space? I guess it won't be very long before some enterprising companies actually begin doing that. And if that ever happens, you don't have be a rocket scientist to predict that space will cost more than the car. Imagine watching on TV a commercial selling space – how do you show a thing that cannot be seen!
This column is, in fact, inspired by an incident that took place last evening. The wife and I were at the basement of a mall, snaking along the rows of parked cars, trying to find a slot. Following us was a line of cars, in search of the same elusive thing. Suddenly my wife, who was driving, spotted a narrow vacant slot that we almost drove past.
“Quick, quick!” she told me, “Just get out and stand right there while I back the car.” Her idea was that if I stood there, I would automatically lay claim to the vacant space. Even as I considered whether I should actually do that, the car behind us slithered into that spot. She has not been talking to me since.
Published in The Hindu MetroPlus, 17 September 2011.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
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."
Sunday, September 04, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, August 26, 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.
“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.
Saturday, August 20, 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.
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.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 03, 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...
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...
Monday, August 01, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, July 28, 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).
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).
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