Agelessbonding

Farewell dear friend

2009-07-14T14:21:00.015+07:00

I vividly recollect the first time I saw her.
I had just returned to Bangalore after a year’s posting in New Delhi and Kanpur. I was standing on a chair trying to measure the window for ordering curtains and I saw her get out of the house in the opposite row, get into her car and drive away. It was a striking profile – the kind that belongs in advertisements. Young mom, well groomed and spotlessly well-dressed, smart and confident - – the type on whose recommendation you’d buy a toothpaste or detergent you’ve never tried before.
Later in the week she came with her husband to meet me and see if I needed any help. Three months earlier we had all been allotted houses within the campus of the organization where the husbands worked and while the other families had adjusted to the wilderness, I was new here. I had a three-year old son,about a year younger than her daughter and did not own a vehicle. She was spontaneous in her offer to take me in her car if I needed anything. That was how you always remembered her – Spontaneous. She was incapable of pretending.

She would walk into our parties and suddenly the place would become celebratory as if someone had opened a bottle of champagne. Her laughter would always announce her arrival – bubbly and effervescent. She would have a word for everyone – a compliment or a word of banter or even innocent insult. She had the looks and personality to get away with it. No one got hurt by what she said. Even when she teased them with a seemingly insulting statement they were flattered by the attention.
In the next few years we grew very fond of each other and it wasn’t uncommon for the neighbors to inquire about me if they found her alone anywhere and vice versa. We were almost inseparable and I was privy to many of her secrets. And that is when I learned what was below the surface of all this effervescence. She was very sad and very lonely.

She had lost her father by the time she was 7 or 8 and her mother was eager to see her 'settled' by the time she was 18. The family could not have been more joyous when they found a boy with a doctorate and a job with a very prestigious organization in the U.S. Small details like a 12 year age difference were over-looked as normal.
For her, it was a passport to freedom. She fancied that an older man would indulge her youthful fancies and he would be more understanding that a younger person. And in America, she thought she would be finally free of the shackles that had hounded her all her life in a middle-class family where the widowed mother had to ensure that she did not antagonize any of her relatives by what she or either of her daughters did. Little did she realize that this was precisely why the boy’s family had chosen her – they wanted a poster girl for the quintessential middle-class bahu. None of the fancy rebellious views on women’s rights and liberation. Her spirit took a beating every time they tried to shape her into the conventional mould. She winced inwardly but could not do much as she neither had the education , economic freedom or parental support. So she sought escape routes in her pursuit of music and socializing once they returned to India. This was when I met them. I loved them both – they were like a wonderful cat and an adorable dog thrown together. It was just hopeless to expect them to work it out. They were not genetically designed to be together.

And then something happened. Being around her suddenly felt ethereal. She had become even more beautiful. When she laughed it was like a wind-chime of thin metal tubes tinkling in a gentle breeze. Her skin glowed as if a secret current passed through her all the time. She had found LOVE. I was reminded of Madame Bovary:
"Never had Madame Bovary looked so beautiful as now. She went clothed in that indefinable loveliness which comes of joy, enthusiasm, success, and is but the perfect harmony of temperament and outward circumstance. Her yearnings, her sorrows, her joys, her still youthful illusions, had gradually developed her, even as flowers are developed by soil and rain, by sun and wind, and now, at length, she blossomed forth in all the fullness of her nature."

The events that followed were scarily similar to the novel and a lot of unhappiness followed. Although there were no financial issues involved there were too many emotional issues and she finally wound up as a nervous wreck. Prolonged periods of depression followed. Her smile was permanently gone and replaced by a vacant look. She was visibly lost but did not want to be reminded of where she was as she began to avoid everyone from her past. I understood and tried to reach out but how long can you stand before a door that is firmly shut? I decided to respect her need to stay away . I knew she would call one day in the future when she would be alright and that we would be able to go back to laughing together. That was 1993.

The call came yesterday - from another friend. That she was battling for life with a weak heart. I rushed to see her but just as I stepped outside the ICU we received news that she was no more. When I saw her face this morning, I saw that it was beatifically calm showing no traces of the inner struggle that had been the story of her life. Finally she was free. In death she had found the peace that eluded her all her life.

Farewell dear friend, I hope you are happy at last. I will miss you.
As for us laughing together at this foolish circus called Life, we will but it will have to wait a while longer. To quote Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
Yes, I will meet you there and I am sure there I will hear you laugh like a tiny bell rolling down a huge stairway in an empty hall.

FAO: Madam Railway mantriji ; C.C: All the moral police

2009-07-06T16:24:00.011+07:00

When I travel by night in trains, I normally take the air conditioned coach. That is a small luxury I allow myself because they are usually cleaner than the non-air-conditioned coaches and the toilets are not totally unusable and somehow I had imagined a higher safety factor in these, as you don't expect people who can afford the fare to walk away with your boxes in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep. And the railway official on duty normally ensures that persons without a ticket do not linger in the coach. Except for the inevitable cases of inefficiency in government-run operations such as not carrying enough number of blankets and sheets to cover all the berths or the air conditioner /fan not working, my experience with overnight trains in a/c coaches has been quite tolerable.

Last night my daughter-in-law and I took the Bangalore mail from Chennai. We both had upper berths but we usually manage to request and exchange seats with any males in the middle or lower berths. As luck would have it, the other 4 seats were allotted to a family with two children lass than 10 years of age and they carried so much luggage that they used up all the luggage space under and between the seats. So they cited these and refused to exchange seats with us. But the side berths were allotted to young men in their twenties and one of them willingly agree to take one of our upper berths. Since my daughter-in-law's sinuses were acting up we didn't want her closer to the a/c vent and so she took the lower berth and I went up.

The train departed on schedule at 11:15.I set the alarm for 4:30 so as not to miss Bangalore cantonment at 4:40 and by midnight all was quiet. I woke up around 3:45 with a start when a lady in the next coupe shouted "Bharat, Look at this boy!What kind of a boy is this, he should be lynched". And she quickly walked down the compartment. Both Akila and I sat up and asked her what happened.
Apparently she had opened her eyes a few minutes earlier and found this boy bent over her and by the time she was fully awake, he grabbed her breast. When he realised that she was awake, he quickly got away even as she tried to hold his shirt and catch him. That was when she called out to her husband at the end of the compartment so he could catch the boy. The husband was fast asleep and by the time she walked down to trace the culprit he had disappeared under his blanket. So we told the lady to get the coach guard so he could help her find him and the guard was nowhere in the coach.

The lady was definitely into her 40s if not more and if this is her fate I wonder how safe younger girls are in these trains. It is possible that one of the younger girls in the side berth was his intended target as he might have imagined them to be timid and hence an easy prey.
I wonder what exactly were his intentions:
Is this a manifestation of what can happen if young people do not have opportunities to interact with the opposite sex in a healthy way?
Is this the result of the extremes of repression as a result of the increasing moral policing in the system?
Is this perverted fascination with the female anatomy a result of the refusal to impart sex education to young people?
A young man who can afford a 450 rupee ticket on a train is certainly not from the dark alleys of deprived society. He must be educated and is probably even employed. This is definitely not lack of education. This is a serious psychological problem, symptom of a mental illness - this desperate need to feel a female's body even for a few seconds in a public place. Why is this happening to our youth in our 'culture' with its high 'moral' standards and with the entire 'system' (education, politics, society and police) working over-time passing laws to curb women's rights in a bid to ensure that these standards are not violated?
And talking about the system, where was the guard on duty? How safe are our trains for women and the irony of it all is that it should happen at a time when a lady is in charge of the ministry!
The lady in question was covered from head to toe in a loose Salwar-Kurta ensemble and she was not a 'loose' woman in a PUB. She was inside a train with a valid ticket. What safety does she have from such predators and what is the so called SYSTEM doing about it? Is even a Burkha any defence against such perverts? or should women stay within the four walls and not venture on trains too?
Shame on you Indian Railways if you cannot offer basic minimum safety to your women passengers. Shame on you, India!

musings over one shtrong kaapi

2009-06-25T07:21:00.014+07:00

Food, for me, was Tamil Brahmin cuisine for a very long time. In my family, the people who claimed that they were not very rigorous about their food preferences only meant that they even ate Bisibelebaat or Palakkad cuisine sometimes. In this milieu, I felt like a radical extremist since I enjoyed 'north Indian' food and was even willing to go without rice for a couple of meals. If you are younger than 30, I must tell you that this was a huge step for a Tam in the seventies. Of course I have written about this before.

And then I boarded a Pan Am flight in 1986 for my first ever trip abroad lasting two and a half months. Just the American accent was enough to intimidate me those days; it was worse because on this flight, for the leg till Frankfurt, the flight attendants were mostly European. They hardly smiled, spoke English like German and looked like they would throw you out of the window if they didn't like you. And it was pretty clear they didn't like anyone on this flight full of noisy, unruly Indians. Seated next to me was a couple from Gujarat . They seemed like seasoned travelers. At meal time they were served an Indian meal while everything on my plate looked unfamiliar except large leaves of cabbage (actually lettuce). I couldn't believe that this passed off as lunch in any language. I timidly requested the flight attendant for the same meal as the Gujarati couple.
'Sorry ma'm, it's all we 've got.'
My travel agent had missed to mention my meal preference!

I did not realize that this was just the beginning of the horror story until I had to suffer meal after meal of burger (with the meat removed), French fries and coleslaw on the days we traveled. I had a choice of staying in the apartment and having rice with baked beans or yoghurt or stay hungry and travel. We traveled and took pictures before every monument and tourist attraction until finally I was happy to come back home to proper meals. No wonder I only have hazy memories of that trip and don't recognize the monuments I am standing in front of.

Twenty years later I traveled again to this country and this time it was all very different. I was prepared to try exotic food ( as long as it had no meat) and they served me Pulao and Rajma for dinner and idli and upma for breakfast on a Lufthansa flight. In Seattle I stayed with my cousin who made sure that there was Sambar and curried vegetable at every meal. When we went out we ate at Udupi restaurants serving Puri/bhaji and Masala Dosa!
Thanks to the IT revolution and Y2k problem in no small measure I suppose! India had arrived - it was now a real country with real people and real food and not just some land of sadhus and snakes, where people had OM for breakfast and meditated! Airlines cared for the Indian traveler and his meal preferences. You didn't have to suffer Air India just for their food. You could buy and make Indian food right here -it was available and affordable.

But still there was one thing that I missed - Tea. Starbucks had one type of sweet tea and in the tearooms we were presented with a menu of several choices of herbal, green and black teas. While they had great snob value and assured ego-satisfaction, all I craved for was a nice Masala Chai. I was even willing to try Coffee with little luck. Yes, in the land of Starbucks we missed COFFEE - South Indian coffee. Starbucks gave us choices like we never had before and they were willing to make it all just the way we wanted. Only we didn't want any of it because they were either too strong or too watery, or too frothy or too hot. In every case it was too much - even the smallest cup ( whose idea was it to call a small cup 'tall'?) was a lot and we always ended up wasting more than half. Something was missing and it did not feel like the coffee back home even when we picked up coffee powder from the Indian shop. May be the chicory content.

How do the South Indians manage without their daily dose of South Indian Filter coffee, I wondered. My cousin did not care for coffee or tea but I am sure that is not the case with the other million or two out there. You can take a Tamilian or a Kannadiga to Starbucks but you cannot make him drink the coffee for sure? Or had they resigned to their fate, admitted defeat and prepared their palates to an acquired taste for one or other of the Starbucks coffee? Or were they getting their coffee supplies from India regularly? It was a mystery till the time I boarded the flight back to Bangalore and I made mental note to pack a few boxes of Lipton tea if I traveled to this country again.

Last month I was packing again to come to this country when my son asked me to get a coffee filter. He said he was tired of Starbucks coffee and wanted ‘our coffee’ in the mornings. So I asked him if he wanted some coffee powder too. He said “No. My friend Soundari has experimented with the coffee available here and discovered that a combination of Ethiopian Sidamo and Sumatra coffee (1:1)from Starbucks ground to a fine blend ("Turkish" grind for electric filter) tastes exactly like the coffee you get in Chennai.’
JUGAD, wow! I should have known – the true Indian spirit! I should have guessed!
And to answer your question, yes she is right. I even wrote this post while sipping on a strong cup of the blend that tastes just like the 'one shtrong filter kaapi' at my local SLV restaurant. Thank you Soundari.
So what is your favorite blend to get your coffee just the way your mom makes it?

Street smart

2009-06-22T23:36:00.005+07:00

As we approached the signal to cross over to the side of the Chicago Art Institute we saw this man who was saying to no one in particular:
Buy a copy of Streetwise magazine and by spending just 2 dollars you can help the homeless of Chicago.
I wasn't surprised that no one paid any attention to him as they kept their eyes focused on the signal.
Then he said
There is a tradition here at this signal. You either buy a copy of the magazine or you have to skip to the other side with me. Follow me.
The signal changed and the man kept skipping ahead of us and we all walked.
As we reached the other side he turned to us and said with a glint in his eyes:
Now that is cheating.

I loved his spirit. He was obviously homeless or at the risk of becoming homeless or he would not be vending the magazine. But he could smile from where he was and make others smile. Even if you did not buy the magazine, you would remember him for the zest with which he peddled the magazine.

The magazine he sells doesn't talk much about the likes of him although it is advertised to cover news of the 'city from the streets'. This issue was obviously a father's day special and carried articles about
'The meaning of dad' 'successful women on making up for missing dads' and "real men cook'. But if you bought a copy for $ 2.00this nice man would get $ 1.25 which is more than what an article about the likes of him can give him.
We asked him if he has ever wondered why the magazine did not talk about the homeless and their problems and he said:
'Sorry brother. No one is interested in our stories.'
Isn't that true? We only want to hear about the successful and the rich and decadent in every intimate detail.

On our way out of the art institute he was again escorting us back to the other side asking us : '
'Have you bought your copy of streetwise yet?'
So I said:
"I will, if you let me take a picture of you"
He posed willingly and then he said
"come here ma'm I will show you some thing. You see this road that goes all the way down. That is route 66. It goes all the way from here to california and has been here even before all your other interstate routes.
Ah yes, Route 66!

Well if you ever plan to motor west,
Just take my way , that's the highway that's the best.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two-thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Well it goes through St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty.
You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona,
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

Won't you get hip to this timely tip
And think you'll take that California trip.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.

I don't plan to take that trip on route 66 but I got my kicks at its beginning thanks to Will, the street vendor.

A zero's take on numbers

2009-06-06T19:11:00.009+07:00

Numbers scare me. I think I belong with the Pirahã, a hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives who live in brazil. There are just three words to denote numbers in the language of the Pirahã - one, two and many. Again ONE doesn’t refer just to a single unit of anything. It could mean small or few. And they get by , even commercially transacting with people outside their tribe and they don’t seem to suffer terribly for lack of words for numbers. It also helps that their life is very simple – they don’t even have myths or folk tales or art and have no collective memory going back beyond 2 generations.

In the world of small children there are few numbers. I know of a lot of 2 year olds who think ten is a humongous number. Once they have begun to count up to 10, they begin to think 10 is the end of the number world. I had a cousin whose son used the word ten interchangeably with vast, huge, great or enormous. When he wanted to refer to something really really BIG he would say ‘It is BIG, 10 BIG’.And he would say that when he is TEN big he would become a policeman. Of course according to him his father’s age was 10.

This is not just the case with children. Apparently in ancient Hebrew 40 was used to refer to ‘many’. For instance if they said that someone lived up to 40, it doesn’t refer to the exact number 40 but that he lived for many years. Apparently their religious book has a lot of references to the number 40 in the sense of ‘many’.
It is likely that the word for thousand was used in a similar manner in Hindu Myths. Otherwise how could we explain statements such as this :
After a thousand years of pleasure, in which he ruled virtuously, Yayati was sated with lust
At the end of a thousand years of penance to please Brahma, Rāvana cut off his own head and threw it as an oblation into the fire.
King Dasaratha had sixty thousand wives or Rama ruled for many thousand years.
(Sixty thousand wives? if we hazarded a guess about the population levels in his time this might mean that he was married to every woman in his kingdom.)

I am not a great fan of numbers and get nervous when they go beyond 3 digits. While I would be too happy to live in a world where the largest number is 2 or 10 or 40 or 1000, I can tolerate numbers up to say 100 million. This is something I can relate to. But beyond that? I think we should stick to ‘Many’.
For example
A googol is a a large number equal to a 1 with 100 zeros following it. Now of what use is a googol to me? I cannot visualize it at all. According to this page a googol represents nothing that is available in the universe.

There is really nothing left to count.
We have spanned the universe from its smallest parts to its entirety.

There is nothing that represents a googol in all of Universe!
The large number that can make some sense is
SEPTENVIGINTILLION which 10 to the power of 63 (10 followed by 63 zeros!) is the volume of the Universe in cubic inches.
But it is still useless for me – it is just ‘Many’.
The largest number that I can relate to , as I said before, is 100 million which I think is 10 crores. Someone once showed me the currency notes stacked in the currency chest of our bank and said that there was 10 crores of notes there. And I have seen a vast piece of land which was said to be valued at 10 crores. So I have a fair idea of what 10 crores looks like.
So if someone were to tell me that 10 raised to the power of 78 or QUINVINGTILLION represents the total number of atoms in the universe I would just hear it as “MANY”. I would not even miss it if one atom lost its way and we had just quinvingtillion minus one atoms. I am rather careless with large numbers that way. septenvingtillion, quinvingtillion - I am happy to put them all in one box labelled ‘MANY’.

I think there would be less dissatisfaction in the world if we didn’t worry too much about numbers. For instance a guy with 10 crore would not feel poorer compared to another who has 20 or 50 crores. 10 crore is a huge sum in itself and imagine being unhappy with that! Going by my method they would all be owners of MUCH money and hence equal.
The other day Shekar Suman ( of movers and shakers fame) made a valid point when he said that the difference between the fastest guy in the world and himself is just 5 secs.The world’s fastest man can cover 100 m in 9.69 secs and Shekar can do it in about 14.5 secs. Even I can do it in about 30 seconds I think. What is 21 seconds in our life – just a few winks! Why obsess over such small numbers! Is a person with 99.5% marks less intelligent than another who scored 99.6%. Sounds absurd but that is how we rate people these days.
I personally think there would be a lot more happiness if we did not get too anal about numbers. Imagine arithmetic problems . If the solution to a problem is 13.46389, we should be able to give an answer of 13 or 14 or many and still get full marks. Imagine how happy that would make students like me!
Don't laugh or call me silly, I can give you examples of some great minds who share similar thoughts:

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. ~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

See!

I know a lot of you there are numerically inclined and are even passionate about numbers. Dont get me wrong. I respect numbers too although i'd like to admire them from a safe distance. Despite being numerically challenged, I have a fair idea of the importance of large numbers or small fractions in scientific research and calculations, design and development, economics and astronomy and all sciences.
All I am saying is let us be a little relaxed about numbers in our day to day dealings and may be we could all be a little less dissatisfied with our lives or even be happy.

P.S: I won’t be around till the end of the month. Meantime look after yourselves and don’t do anything I might.
Much love and Many wishes!!

Remembering the half -saree

2009-05-31T13:49:00.017+07:00

Half-saree was still the official dress for most teenagers in Madras in the early 70s. (Pic courtesy:Kenny Wordsmith.)
Girls from liberal families wore western clothing. Salwar-kameezes were still not very popular. Mass produced salwar sets hadn’t begun flooding the market and local tailors lacked the skill to stitch them. Plump heroines in Tamil films sported tight versions of this 'north Indian' dress in duet songs which emphasized their fake breasts and fat thighs so much that they were definitely not a favorite with middle-class parents. I am pretty positive that I could have persuaded my conservative parents to let me wear a loose kurta over jeans rather than one of those salwar suits.

When I was growing up, middle class parents had just one rule by which they decided what their girls could wear. Anything that did not show off their shape in a flattering light was acceptable. I am reminded of my friend Anuradha who was an irrepressible rebel. When we were about 14, she wanted to wear tee shirts over her trousers which set off a volcano in her house. After losing the fight she told us “My mother thinks it is my fault I have breasts”. We laughed but soon I began to notice a similar subtext in the statements that my grandmother or mother made about how a woman is supposed to carry herself or walk. ‘Don’t push your chest outside. walk modestly’. When we were in class 7 and 8, the class teacher would have a talk with some of the girls and a few days later they would come wearing half-sarees. This went on till we reached class 9 when half-saree was compulsory for everyone. We experienced freedom only on the games field where we were allowed to wear divided skirts and a loose shirt. Otherwise we hid the contours of our frame behind 3 metres of cloth which covered us over the long skirt and long blouse.

When I was about 18 an older friend asked me if I had ever seen myself in the mirror without clothes and I was shocked that she could talk like that. Of course I had not. And I was not sure I could even do it because there was a kind of shame and fear associated with one’s body . It was safer behind those layers of clothing. But in college there were many times that I wished I could wear western clothing and ‘belong’ to the hep crowd. Many of us wished we were flatter so we could venture beyond the half-sari and wear smart western clothing. Like Anuradha said it seemed that it was our fault that we had breasts.

Looking back I can laugh at these memories. There was a time when I would have cringed to use the word ‘breast’ in public and here I am writing about it in a public blog. Our perception of our body and exposure norms have changed a lot in these 3 decades. Today people have no hesitation about flaunting their cleavages or wearing tight clothing to show off their shape and size. Breast implants and enhancement procedures have become as common as laser treatment for excess hair. I laugh thinking of the time when we would have been happy to delay the growth of mammaries just to be free from the restrictions that society around us imposed on us.
The dhavani or half-saree symbolized our suppression or lack of pride in our forms.
I didn't realize that there would come a time when I'd actually be grateful for the concept of a half-saree.

On friday, there was a documentary on national geographic channel on body modifications in different cultures and times . They showed the neck rings used by the Kayan tribe of Tibeto_burmese origin now living in Thailand.
and the footbinding custom that was prevalent in China for a long time.
While the former is largely voluntary and footbinding is not prevalent anymore, I was shocked to learn hear about a practice called breast-ironing practised in western Africa.
Breast ironing is exactly what it says - the flattening of a young girls’ breasts with a hot and heavy wooden rod or stone to push the breast muscles back in order to delay their development. YOu can see in the picture some of the tools used in the process and they are usually heated before applying on the breast
But why this brutality? Mothers subject their daughters to this barbarity in order to delay breast growth in their daughters in order to prevent rape and early marriage. Even when they feel their pain, they think it is for their own good in the long run.

"Before this breast band, my mother used the grinding stone—heated in the fire—to massage my chest. Every night my mother examines my chest (and) massages me, sometimes with the pestle," Matia adds. "Although I cry hard because of the pain, she tells me: 'Endure, my daughter; you are young and there is no point in having breasts at your age'."
Josaine Matia, 11 years old
Yaounde, Cameroon

This is precisely what I saw in the visual in the documentary and the victim didn’t even look like she was 11.
Read on more here:
www.unfpa.org/16days/documents/pl_breakironing_factsheet.doc

The study also gives the following facts:

Some 24 per cent of girls in Cameroon, about one girl in four, undergo breast ironing.
Breast ironing occurs extensively in the 10 provinces throughout Cameroon.sample survey published in January 2006 of 5000 girls and women aged between 10 and 82 in Cameroon, estimates that 4 million women had suffered the process.
Today, 3.8 million teenagers are threatened with the practice.
Up to 53 per cent of women and girls interviewed in the coastal Littoral province in the southeast, where the country's main port, Douala, is situated, admit to having had their breasts 'ironed'.
More than half (58 per cent) of cases breast ironing were undertaken by mothers. Other relatives also participate

.

The documentary was traumatic. It brought back memories of my own childhood and the difficulty in coming to terms with the changes in one’s own body made more difficult by the society’s ideas about a woman’s body at that time - that the more attractive it is, the more vulnerable it made its owner to predatory males. Men could not be trusted to obey rules so it was the woman’s responsibility not to attract their attention.
The ideas themselves were not very different from those of the Cameroon mothers. And I am grateful that in my culture they came up with the half-saree as the solution even though a wooden pestle was readily available in my ancestor’s backyard too.

Here's a video on the subject:
http://current.com/items/88852332_breast-ironing.htm
(Thanks Praveen.)

Life is beautiful (not)

2009-05-27T13:01:00.011+07:00

This morning, when I started out for my walk, my world looked pretty normal. Not perfect which is normal. But when I returned half an hour later I could not recognize my road as it was packed with vehicles of all kinds honking away impatiently . It seemed as though some kind of Traffic Tsunami had moved Bannerghatta Road to our doorstep crushing the 3 lanes in-between. And then I realized that this was indeed the final scene of a drama that has been unfolding on our road for about a month. Only we didn’t see it coming nor did we get any memo despite the fact that ours is a private residential layout.

Act 1 A month ago
Without any warning hordes of people descended on our layout armed with heavy iron implements. In another age and time this could have easily been mistaken for an invasion by a hostile tribe. They even behaved like invaders just digging away all over without any regard for how people were supposed to get out of their houses or how their vehicles were supposed to get out.. My neighbour who was out of town had been cut off from the road for the next 14 days as they dug up before his garage and went away without closing it. Fortunately, as they were about to dig a moat before my house I went looking for the guy in charge and asked him what the hell they thought they were doing. He said that they were widening the road and also added that they would be pulling out the plants outside my house. He sounded like I had done something illegal by planting them there. Anyway, I requested them to try and keep the trees and do whatever they wanted with the rest. So they dug up , left a lot of granite rubble all over the street, heaped the detritus outside our houses and disappeared.
Mission accomplished – in theory we had a road of the stipulated breadth. File closed. I am sure the contractor got his payment and went home happy. Apparently it wasn’t part of the mission to ensure that the extended part of the roads needed to be fit for use.

Act 2. A week ago
Few more trucks. Few more men who unloaded huge cement/concrete blocks from these trucks which were eventually placed on the side of the road to demarcate the footpath from the road.
Here a short note about footpaths would not be out of place. They don’t actually have anything to do with your foot or a pathway. The name denotes their historic purpose. In most parts of Bengaluru, we do not believe that people on foot have any right to use roads. If they stupidly insist on it, they may do so at their own peril.
See picture: Do you actually think anyone could actually use this path? or it was even intended to be used?
Act 3. Yesterday. 4:30 p.m
A digger/excavator type vehicle arrived before our neighbour’s house and two policemen followed on a motorcycle. I watched the policemen exchange some conversation with the neighbour who seemed confused. As he went inside banging the door shut, two men got some crowbars from the excavator and began to dig up a patch outside his house.
This seemed straight out of a murder mystery. I wondered what the police were looking for – stolen stuff? a body? some evidence for sure? A small crowd of on-lookers began to gather and the police were waving them away. I pretended not to look but kept my attention focused on the goings-on. After about 20 minutes of digging they called the policemen to take a look. As I eagerly waited for some offending piece of evidence to emerge, they brought a road sign that denoted NO ENTRY and placed it in the pit and shoveled the mud back in to hold it in place.

Even this did not prepare me for what was to come this morning. From this morning it seems that about a hundredth of Bengaluru vehicles have been passing right outside my house. There is no one to tell them where to turn and how to go or that honking is not going to help. Whoever had the bright idea to divert traffic through our layout did not seem to have thought of the fact that beyond our road, these vehicles would have to use a series of roads barely about 15 ft in breadth before they can reach the next main road. So there is mayhem caused by the bottleneck at both ends making the traffic halt every 5 minutes. As traffic is flowing in both directions, there is not adequate clearance for the huge buses to turn in and out of our road. Smaller vehicles are spilling into the bylanes of our colony , crowding them but still unable to get out. This has been going on from 7:15 this morning and as I write this at 11 a.m, from my terrace I can count 9 buses, 32 scooters and 42 cars on my road. And most of them are honking away as an outlet to their anger and frustration.
And not a single traffic policeman is in sight.
Even our dogs freaked out. That is poor kaiser, my neighbour,there in the picture

After living in this country for 51 years, I must be stupid or naive to even think these thoughts. But I will ask them anyway:

why don’t authorities think it is necessary to give any advance information to the general public
(even through a newspaper ad ) especially when it is something that rips your normal life apart
-like diverting thousands of vehicles through a residential layout?
- or digging up the road right in front of your house?
- or tarring the road all through the night disturbing your sleep?
Not so much as a ‘you- have-no- choice –but- be warned’ memo?
(And don't try to be smart and ask me what I could have done if they had informed me. May be I'd have sound-proofed my house? packed bags and moved to the Himalayas? or bought enough sleeping pills?At least I would have been mentally prepared!)

Why is it that people who come to lay the roads or water pipes and dig up your roads act as though it is a huge favor being done to you? Why are honest tax payer treated like they are on relief supplies in a refugee camp? Do they know we actually “pay’ for these ‘services’ many times even ‘before’ they are provided?

How come these road-diggers get paid even when they leave the place like an archeological ruin after they are supposed to have ‘completed’ their work?

Why is it that my BSNL landline hasn’t been working for 6 days and every time I call to check status I am informed by an irritatingly cheerful voice that my complaint has been registered already and my docket no is .... And yet no one has come to repair the line? Has BSNL gone out of business and did the postman forget to deliver me the memo?

Why is there a Postal department when I don’t seem to receive half the mails that are sent to me?

Why do we pay our taxes and where do our taxes go?
Why do we elect a government and what does the government do?
Oh ya I forgot, we are supposed to SHUT UP and vote!

That, in short, is what is happening in my (rocking) life this Wednesday morning. So when this half-full-glass –types annoying- optimist friend called me now, I had to rant and let off steam.
And she said ‘ come on, count your blessings!’
‘Like what?’ I asked
‘You are A.L.I.V.E! Isn’t that a blessing?’
Y.e.a.h... I.am a.l.i.v.e. And that is a blessing ? Like how?

this is my friend, let's call her X

2009-05-16T19:27:00.007+07:00

“Myself Rajinder, yourself?”
“I am Mr.Paramasivan. you are...?”
Once at a seminar someone introduced himself as
'I am ****, eminent economist'!

In India we have so many ways of introducing ourselves to a stranger unlike the West where the cliched 'Hi, I am Phil' meets 'Hi, I am Jack' over a firm or limp handshake. Even this one can elicit interesting responses here.
Once at a party given by an officer in the army a couple were seated at the same table and while the husbands were busy fetching their drinks I extended my hand and said 'Hello, I am Usha' and waited hoping she’d give her name. She shook my hand and said 'glad to meet you.' Not one to give up too easily I persisted 'Sorry I didn’t get your name' and she replied 'Mrs.Ramaswamy'. SIGH....

There is a reason why 'My name is Bond, James Bond' style won’t work in some parts of India. Let us try a desi version of this style:
I am Sai
Venkata Sai
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
Rajashekara Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
.......
You see?
And hence, “My good name is Ajay. Your good name?”

While I can manage routine introductions rather comfortably as long as they involve just the name- marital status – how many kids routine but if it is one of those occasions when I am compelled to make an impression or say something ‘interesting’ about myself I get all wound up. Remember I am the person who, at my son’s wedding, told a guest from the bride’s side ‘I am the son’s mother’?! That is what happens to me when I am under pressure to charm people with my introduction.
This was an ordeal when I was learning French. As part of the orale exercises, when you introduced yourself, you were expected not just to give your name, age, profession etc but were supposed to add some ‘interesting’ information about yourself. First of all, I cannot think of anything ‘interesting’ about myself. And even if I did, how am I to be sure that others will find the information ‘interesting’? For example would it be interesting information if I told them that I solved the code word puzzle this morning in 4 mins 33 secs? or if I told them that I exceeded my career best and ate 8 idlis for breakfast?
I don’t know. I’d assume that the details of our lives are pretty uninteresting to strangers others unless you lead a spectacular (or scandalous) life the details of which you are willing to share with others. How do you make your mundane life sound interesting to a bunch of strangers?
I am 51 and I have a blog which 100 people read! ( Pause for effect...)
Yawn. Ok. whatever. What IS a blog?

And it is even worse when I find myself in the position of having to introduce someone else. Given the tricks my memory plays with me, on a lucky day I can remember either the face or the name of most of the people I know. And so you can imagine my plight when I am expected to introduce people.
It happens usually like this. At a wedding this friend from my past gushes over to my side with a ‘heyyyyyy’ and nails me to the place with a swift volley of questions on covering me, my health, my family’s health and wealth, details regarding my dog and so forth. She could be a colleague from a past job, a customer in one of the bank branches where I worked, a neighbor – I have no clue. The face is familiar and she seems to know a lot about me and I wear my fakest smile and answer all her questions while searching my memory for some helpful hint. And this is when another friend joins us. I know she is chitra as I am regularly in touch with her and after some mutual exchange of pleasantries and banter I turn hoping friend1(stranger) would have left but she is standing there with an indulgent smile expecting to ‘mingle’. I rise to the occasion bravely and say “hi, meet my friend Chitra” and I keep talking about Chitra hoping to avoid having to get to the black hole that is the second part of the introduction. Sometimes the Chitra on the scene takes the hint and asks the stranger the question that begs to be asked about her name and who the hell she is. But my friends being MY friends they usually ask me pointedly: ‘you still haven’t told me anything about your friend’.
and that is one of the rare occasions on which a feigned heart attack seems a good idea to divert the attention of all concerned.

One advantage in having a lifetime of experience with such goof-ups is that I can spot it on a person’s face when they are trying to place me while having a normal conversation with me. Sometimes I enjoy it and prolong their agony without divulging any details but most of the time I am generous and ask them :’you have NO clue who I am right?” and then I tell them. Although they protest I can see I am right from their grateful smile. A few days ago this happened at a wedding and after I gave out the details the man smartly said: ‘of course I remember you. As if I won ‘t. I was simply pulling your legs.”
Smart strategy, must try it next time!

A problem screaming to be addressed

2009-05-11T13:07:00.009+07:00

April 29 was observed as international noise awareness day but in this country the problem seemed to have got drowned in the deafening noise of vehicles and people.
Proposals for a honk-free day were met with appropriate snickers and skepticism. A friend told me that everyday he only checks the horn in his vehicle to make sure it works - everything else is not an issue if the horn works. I think he was only half-joking and I think he is not alone in this. Noise levels in our cities are reaching annoying levels and what is even more scary is that no one seems to mind. We seem to have adapted to this even at the expense of our health.
Read on here in my post at Blogbharti
If the link doesn't work use this URL:
http://www.blogbharti.com/kuffir/environment/all-this-hustle-and-bustle/

Thank you Praveen for the image. :)

I am 15 going on 51, I know I am naive

2009-05-06T16:05:00.009+07:00

A friend asked me if I was writing my customary birthday post studded with pearls of wisdom gathered along the way to being 51. It then occurred to me that I had no urge to do a post this time ; perhaps that is an indication that wisdom was finally on its way?
'In any case what is there to write about?' I asked.
‘Yourself of course – what else are blogs for? write about your journey from 15 to 51’ she said.
My Journey! Wow, that sounded really impressive. – My journey!
Me at 15 embarking upon the adventures of life like a backpacker with only her own resources to rely upon! Shaped and strengthened by life’s vicissitudes and now finally settling down in the armchair with stories that beg to be told, experience that must be recorded for posterity to be inspired and awed.
So I sat and thought about all the wisdom I had gathered along this great ‘journey’. It seemed almost like a responsibility not to leave it all unrecorded.

At 15 my world was very small comprising of family, teachers and friends from school. The high points of one’s days consisted of stuff like getting attention from one’s favorite teacher or scoring the top marks or getting to listen to the current favorite song on radio. Boys existed –as pathetic creatures yet to evolve and become like girls. There didn’t seem much chance for that given their weird inclinations and interests. It was a dreadful thought that you might have to marry one of those creatures some years down the line. But for the moment it seemed far away and things seemed really safe.
In sum , the life of a small town girl? yes, Except that this was in Madras and it was a small town in many ways back then in 1973.

So any journey from such a protected life had to be an exciting adventure and the next 36 years have been quite a ride in terms of the people I have had the opportunity to know, places I have been to and experiences both good and bad. There were times while sitting in the room in Moscow’s Renaissance or dining at Jumeirah beach hotel in Dubai that I imagined that I had gone a long way from being the small town girl I was at 15. There were times in the initial days when it seemed so important to ensure that the humble beginnings did not show in one’s attitude or behaviour. I seemed to be running away from all that I was at 15 and succeeding well too.
Today as I sit here and see where I have come from being that girl of 15, it is such an irony to see that I am just the same girl – only no longer afraid of being so.

Turns out that all that my years of experience have taught me is nothing more than what people around me tried to ‘tell’ me when I was 15. Only they had all sounded like morals from fables then but which I I know now from my experience to be the only things that matter in the final analysis.
So if I had to sum up what I have learned along the way , the list would be something like this:

You are what you are . Do not try to become someone else.. Be the best you can be.

Every one can’t be the richest, prettiest or smartest; but it is possible to be happy even without being all these.

Happiness comes not from how much you have but from learning to appreciate whatever you have.

It is better to be honest and have fewer friends because in any case it is these friends who matter.
.
Never stop learning.

You are a special person – only to yourself.

The best way to repay someone who hurts you is to forgive them unconditionally. Life is too short to be spent in settling scores.

At the end of the day what matters is not how much you have accumulated but whether you have been able to make a difference to someone else’s life in a positive way.

Life is a zero-sum game. You cannot have it all. You need to give up something if you want something else. Finally it is all about your priorities.

It is the people in your life that ultimately matter.

These are the simple principles that guide my life since the past 5 years and I feel so calm, so much at peace. I do not pray or visit temples regularly but yes, I believe in a force far superior to me and derive strength from it when I am in doubt. The calm and peace come not from any spiritualism but from an acceptance of me and my life as they are and being guided by these simple aphorisms. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing earth-shattering; simple truths all of which I had heard all through my childhood from people who had learned it all from experience – their own and of those who had come before. Home-spun, old-fashioned, simplistic and small-town-ish perhaps. But as I said in the beginning I have not come too far from the small-town girl I started out as when I was 15. So then that is all this journey has been about – coming back a full circle to where I started, a little wiser and a lot humbler for the experience.

Plastic dosham and pollution karma

2009-05-04T17:05:00.018+07:00

It was around 8:30 a.m yesterday. I was making the second cup of tea of the day for me. This tea needs be absolutely perfect for my day to go well. You see the first cup is like a quick fix after 14 hours of caffeine withdrawal and it is required to get the brain cells started in the morning. I gulp it down while multitasking – getting things ready for breakfast, boiling milk, cutting fruit or glancing through the newspaper headlines. But the second one – this follows breakfast when the morning chores are complete and I have the house entirely to myself having seen people off to work.. Now no compromises on this one. The colour has to be the right shade of brown – a little darker than ochre and a shade lighter than russet to be precise - with the right amount of sugar to set off the bitterness of the tea and enhance its taste and the temperature has to be perfect . Total ZEN. Ask me for anything after this and it is yours.

So it is important that I stay focused while making it because even a few seconds this way or that way can spoil it all and ruin my day. Now my architect was thoughtful enough to place a couple of windows in my kitchen in strategic angles so I can get a view of what goes on in the street while I am in the kitchen. So I was making tea and looking through the one that gives me a clear view of the crossroad junction at the beginning of my road and presently a young girl came in view – jeans, a short red kurta and red stole. About 19 or 20, definitely in college or just out of college. I saw her glance in all directions as she approached the junction and I thought she was looking for an auto to hire. The road was quite empty at this time on a Sunday morning. And she turned toward the pavement. Now I am familiar with men doing it all the time in preparation of using the road as a public toilet but this was a girl, a well-dressed young one and I decided that this can’t be her intention. I kept watching as she took out a plastic carry-bag from her purse, pulled out a coconut and broke it on a stone on the road. I have no clue what this was about as I have only seen people break coconuts outside temples. May be some kind of superstition – a way to get rid of evil spirits. No problem. Coconuts are bio-degradable. A cow might even eat it for breakfast. So I had no issues with that.

But what she did next, that was unpardonable. No less than all those crass men urinating on the roads. She started crossing the road pretending that someone else had broken the coconut there and casually tossed the plastic bag on to the middle of the road . Now this really got my goat. An 'educated young girl' throwing a 'plastic' bag in the 'middle' of the 'road'. Too many unforgivables. And the nonchalance with which she did it suggested that she was n’t even aware of what she was doing. As if that was just the way one is supposed to dispose bags after their utility is over!
I wanted to catch her by her red stole and drag her back and make her pick it up. But unfortunately, by the time I turned off the stove and managed to reach my gate she had gone past two houses. I clapped my hands and shouted ‘hellooooooooo’ but she did not hear it or ignored me leaving me to seethe over my second cup which was ruined in any case.

I do not know if I might have been less angry if she had at least shown some signs of guilt while throwing the bag in that manner or tried to do it stealthily like the way she looked around while breaking the coconut. No, she tossed it confidently as if she was flicking off a leaf from her kurta and walked on. This apathy is more dangerous. And this apathy from a younger, educated person is even more disgusting.. When I take a walk in our neighborhood park, sometimes I see small kids throwing biscuit wrappers around. They don’t know better, so I tell them to use the garbage basket. Usually they are brought there by young girl-maids who take care of them and they don’t know better either due to their lack of education. But at least they comply when you tell them a couple of times. But what do you do with people who know that they are not supposed to do it and still do it because they could not care less or there is no real penalty for doing it. Perhaps it is a good idea to have fines for littering the way countries like Singapore have. You try to reason with our ‘educated’ people and tell them why it is important to preserve our environment they don’t care. They always want someone else to do it all before they can do their bit. But tell them that there is a fine and they will fall in line. But then again enforcement of any rule or law is always a problem in this country.

Is it something new or is it part of our psyche – a part of being Indian? Was this the reason why our ancestors invented punishments by Gods when you violated rules and codes of conduct?
‘You are to keep your surroundings clean – otherwise the Goddess of wealth would be annoyed and decide against living in your house.’
‘You are not to waste food because it is an insult to Goddess Lakshmi who would curse you to a life of hunger.’
I thought that all this was to instill a sense of discipline among people who lacked the privilege of education and the ability to reason. But education doesn’t really seem to make a difference especially when people are so selfish and apathetic and cannot see beyond the tip of their noses. We need culture-specific solutions to these global problems. Tell an average Indian that it is bad for your environment. he can't understand why it concerns him/her. But tell him that it is bad for his family and fortunes, he will sit up and act."Only a threat to them and theirs and their material well-being will work with these people to shake them to do something for common good.

I am sure that is the thing that a crossroads-coconut-breaker would relate to. Had someone told her that there is a ’dosham’ for using plastic or throwing it on the street, she might have be terrified about throwing it. I have always lobbied for getting rid of superstitions but if that is the language people understand I am all for inventing and popularising a few of them – some dosham for indiscriminate use of plastic and bad karma for littering and for spitting which would follow you up to seven births or some such thing. I am sure the message will hit home. We just need to get a few swamijis to collaborate and we can have a clean country in no time.
We have so many of them already – a couple more can’t hurt especially if they help to save this planet. We seem to have so many rituals for pleasing other planets which are supposed to control our lives while forgetting the only planet that matters, this mother earth which is our home.

ask an old bloke for directions

2009-05-01T19:32:00.011+07:00

In the days when we had just arrived in Bangalore we had some funny experiences when we asked people for directions to some place. I already wrote about our experiences with Rao uncle who was the owner of the first house we rented:
He had an interesting way of directing you to a place:
Me: Uncle could you tell me how to get to this RNR marriage hall?
Rao: RNR or JNR?
Me : RNR.
Rao: Sure it is not JNR? Nowadays nobody uses RNR. let me check. OK, it is RNR alright. Ok. See this road? Go to the end of this road and then take a right. Don't take the left- that will take you towards National College. National college is a very famous college in Bangalore and if you go further you will go to city market. But don't take the left, take the right.You will find a police station and a road next to it. Don't turn there. If you turn there you will find the Institute of World culture. It has a very good library and they organise many useful lectures there. But don't turn there. Go further. In the next circle you will see a park on the left and a bank on the right. If you take the right you will reach NR Colony. But do not take the right. take the left.....

It was not only with Mr.Rao but we had some peculiar experiences when we stopped to ask strangers for direction. Here’s one we will never forget:
We had reached the correct street but could not spot the house. Having gone up and down the street a couple of times we were thankful to see a middle-aged man come out of his house. So we approached him hoping he would guide us to the right house. He took the slip where we had noted down the address and asked us if it was the new number or the old number. We said we had only one number. He straight away dismissed our slip as all the houses had been renumbered a few months back and had both the numbers now. We gave him the name of the person we were looking for.
He: Is he the owner or the tenant?
me: Tenant
He: Where does he work?
I give the name of the company.
He: Is he tall, about six feet and he wears glasses no?
Me ( enthusiastically) Yes, yes
He: Did he move in here recently?
Me: No this address is about a year old.
He: Does he ride a scooter?
Me: I am not very sure...
He: mmmm, I am not too sure too. I keep seeing a gentleman like this on this street and I don’t know his name so I wondered if that was your friend. Please check with that iron gaadi (presswala) he knows most people on the road.
So we went to him and gave the address. The man asked us for the name of our friend’s kids and immediately guided us to the right house.
From then on we have found that a search using the kids’ names has a higher success rate than by searching on the parents’ names.

But what was most interesting was how people asked you so many questions and finally said “exact aagi gothilla” ( dont know exactly) so check with some one else.

Another time we ended up having a lesson in geology when we approached a gentleman for directions. We had gone all the way to the end of the road and failed to find the house. On our return, somewhere in the middle of the road we met this person and asked him for directions. We told him we had gone down all the way to the end of the road and he stopped us right there.
“Did you go down the road or up the road?”
We got thoroughly confused and pointed in the direction we had gone. He was quick to correct us:
“That is up. Not down. All those houses there have a water problem because they are up and when the pressure is low they don’t get enough water.”
!!!!!
But we did not regret asking him because he guided us correctly to the place we wanted.

If you are new to Bangalore and set out to find a place with just the address in your hand you are sure to have a couple of interesting experiences. Some people will confidently send you in one direction and when you come back drawing a blank they will say : “did not find a?. Oh then may be in this direction.” and send you in the opposite direction.
Of course the authorities do not make it easy for us either. Numbering of houses in Bangalore follows a complex system and crosses and mains are hidden in a complicated maze. My neighbour’s house number is 227 but the house next to him is numbered 212 and right across the road it is 170 on one side and 145 on the other. There must be some method in all this madness but no one knows what it is. I admire the postman on duty to our colony. And I also understand the reason why I never receive some of my mails.

So we used to make these elaborate jokes about getting directed in Bangalore until I realised how serious some people can be about it all. It was around 9 p.m and I was taking a walk with the dog. She had found something interesting and had decided to explore it a bit and I had to stop. My neighbour was outside his gate talking to his neighbour. Exactly at that moment a few young men in a car stopped to ask him for directions to Gandhi Bazar. He asked them where they were coming from and they said they were retuning from a trip to Mysore. Our man began to interrogate them on how they managed to find our colony on the way from Mysore to Gandhi Bazaar. Obviously they were new to town and had lost their way. But he had to make sure. Anyway finally he got down to giving them the directions and one of them asked “ you are sure no sir?” Poor guys had probably strayed all the way to our colony with a lot of ‘exactaagi gothilla’ directions and just wanted to make sure. But my neighbour was deeply offended by this question.
“you know I have just retired last month from *&^ bank where I was head of &*^% department. You think I will misguide you?”
And then he pointed to his companion and said:
“and my friend here, he used to be the G.M in %^&* company. You think he will misguide you?”
I was dazed. I wondered if he might bring out a Bhagvad Gita and begin to take the oath on it. The boys in the car were too stunned to answer, mumbled an apology and sped off.

So next time you are unable to locate a house, do ask someone for directions and come back here and share your experience. I assure you it will be interesting if not hilarious.

Vanaprastha* for the 21st century

2009-04-28T08:59:00.011+07:00

My uncle lives in a community of, for and by retired people in South India where they live in private apartments and all their daily needs such as food, housekeeping, and medical care are provided by the community and charged for. He is 72 and suffers from severe hip and spine problems that force him to be confined to his bed for weeks at a time. Rest of the time he is well enough not to depend on anyone to get by. His wife is 64 and has bronchial problems. Her mother who is 94 stays with them. She is perhaps in better health than both of them except that she is weak due to her age. It is a sensible arrangement they have chosen as both their sons work and live abroad and here their days go by without having to worry about daily irritants in terms of house help and other logistics. But then there are times when they could do with some support from younger members of the family and their non-availability hits home hard.

Last month my aunt had to undergo Coronary artery by-pass surgery and she almost decided against the operation because there was no one around to help her during the post-operative phase and she was worried about leaving her mother alone without any help. Given the economic conditions and job losses, they did not want to ask their sons to take extended leave. And the sons did not insist on coming either. I am not judging them as this is perhaps just illustrative of how relationships have become secondary to employment interests. I almost wrote family ‘responsibilities’ there instead of relationships but I am no longer sure of how much responsibility the children have toward their parents. It seems that , like in the west, we have also come to believe that parents bring their children into this world so they need to accept responsibility for them while children owe nothing to their parents and so filial responsibility is probably an outdated concept.

She finally went through the surgery with help from extended family who gave her post operative care and made sure that her mother was not left alone.
While I was with my aunt she said something that made me think:
“the doctors tell me that I have got another lease of life, at least another 10 years with this operation. But tell me what do I want another ten years for?” Perhaps it is the pain that she was going through that made her say that; or perhaps she meant it because she really doesn’t think she needs another 10 years. And she is a person who is highly educated and has varied interests such as books, music and crosswords. It is not lack of interests but a sense of purposelessness that made her say this.

Improvements in health facilities have given us extra years to live but neither our social system nor our infrastructure have changed enough to help us use these extra years purposefully. Traditionally old age was a period spent in pursuit of religious activities, accumulating good Karma away from the demands of the material world. But what about those who are not interested in such pursuits? They have a choice of baby sitting their grandchildren or watching unlimited hours of soaps, cricket or news. If one is an out doors person opportunities are restricted:
In cities like Bangalore, many new residential colonies do not even have proper footpaths and it is quite unsafe for the elderly to venture out on these roads even for a walk.
Very few areas have even a tiny park for these people to meet and spend the evening.
Concerts and plays mean commuting long distances for which transport is either unavailable or unaffordable in retirement.
Even public libraries are few and far between.
Most activities for entertainment and amusement are, in any case, aimed at a wallet-share of the young with a high spending ability and willingness.
Confined for the most part within the four walls of their homes, it isn’t a surprise that they do not have much to look forward to.

These are reflective of our attitude toward old age. Maami ,in a very interesting post here calls this attitude ageism. Such attitudes have been ingrained in our collective psyche as our culture and more specifically Hinduism imposes 'borders' on the ageing process. It clearly defines the stages of one's life, and people seem to take it that they cannot do certain things at certain ages, whereas the reverse in fact is true in today's economic, globalised world: feel free to do the things you always wanted to do, and if you can afford it, enjoy the best of what is available, don't care about what the world thinks of you as long as you think it is the right thing to do.
Spend your day at a satsang by all means if that is your idea of finding meaning in life but do not judge someone else who prefers to spend a day at the mall or who likes to relax with a pedicure or a facial. Finally they are at the age when they can make informed choices without being told what is the ‘thing to do’ or the ‘way to be’. Both airlines and railways have concessions for senior citizens. People should make use of these and travel to places together if their health allows them to. Above all, they must accept responsibility of ageing on themselves, i.e. not be fatalistic, exercise regularly, be disciplined in one's dietary habits, and search/reach out for those habits that reinforce critical requirements in healthy ageing, such as socialising with similar interests-seeking peoples, joint activities/outings, charity work,. Markets will keep up with their demands once they know that their wallets are available to plunder.

‘Old’ should stop being a bad word. I heard from a friend that in Singapore, it is now quite common to see large numbers of 50+ Chinese going to bangra classes, as they have learnt that it is very good for their bones, keeps their muscles toned , and is a good way to meet other people! People in the west talk about beginning life at 40 and even get married at 50 and 60 when they find their ideal companion for their sunset years. It may be a long way before we begin to accept such ideas but I think if people could liberate themselves from thinking and feeling ‘old’ there are still many ways in which they could make their old age enjoyable. The best age-defying mechanisms come from our thoughts and not from applying creams and lotions. I do not mean to over- romanticize old age as the high point of one’s life which it certainly isn’t; but my point is just that when you know something to be inevitable you might as well be prepared to face it with grace. It just seems the smart thing to do. There is a very thin line between dying alone and living free and it is completely decided by the way you decide to look at old age.

*Vanaprastha - is the third stage in the 4 main stages of life classified in Hiduism - Brahmacharya( student), grihastha (householder) Vanaprastha (retirement from worldly attachments) and Sanyasa (renunciation)

Citizen matters

2009-04-23T13:59:00.005+07:00

So I walk up to the polling booth bright and early this morning, eager to exercise my limbs but more importantly to exercise my sacred duty as a citizen of this country. Even though it is only 8 a.m, there are quite a few people at the polling station already. Two major parties have set up tables with voting lists and I join the crowd before one. A boy who looks about 16 takes my voter Id and looks through the list to find my name. No luck. I feel disenfranchised. He directs me to a middle aged man seated next to him with another list. Here the man tries to find my details by looking for my photo in the printout where all the pictures look alike - face shaped blobs of black toner ink. Obviously no luck there either. I openly shift alliance and move to the table of the other party only to find that they have an identical list. SIGH.... Worse, here they flip my card a few times as if they doubt its authenticity. So I snatch it back and walk back home to find it myself on the net. Should have done it yesterday.

Second time I walked passed the tables triumphantly waving the print out in their faces while they each whispered to me to vote for their candidate. Yeah right! Like I am going to vote for the guys who don't have my name even on the date of election - that one day when we are all so important to these people!
I queue up before the correct room and wait for my turn when a senior citizen comes along waving his voter ID. The policemen politely tell him to go and get a slip from one of the tables and the man protests:
'No, they are all party people. I am not going to them. It is YOUR duty to find it here in this room."
The policeman is confused for he is not aware of the rules. He looks at him pleadingly and says 'no sir, you must get the slip with your number in the list."
"What is this? Why should I? I am a valid voter and my name should be in the list. let these polling officers find it."
He seeks support from the others in the line and then he sees everyone in the line has a slip, having taken the easier way out. He walks back to a table but his protests can be heard all the way - 'never heard of this nonsense before" 'why do these people have a list?' and so on...
The polling officer comes out and tells the policeman to let him in if he came back without any questions:
"Papa vayasadavaru. avarige en problems o! life nalli baari pain nodiruthare. thade maad bedi. ulage bitu bidi"
(poor man, may be he has his problems! he must have seen a lot of pain in his life! don't stop him, let him in.")
He looks at us seeking approval for his sensitivity but we all know that he is duty-bound to let him in as the old man is right. It is their job to find us on the list however time consuming it is!

At the inking point , the lady pours a dollop of ink on my nails and I try to wipe the excess with a cloth on the table. She calls me back and pours another dollop. This time I wipe it with my other hand. The official next to her taking my signature explains that it is necessary to ensure that people do not cast votes several times.
Right, now I look like someone who forges votes! of all my career options this is perhaps the most likely!
My expression must have betrayed my thoughts so he quickly smiles and adds:
"oh no, you won't do it. but you know there are others." The last part is said in a low conspiratorial tone as if it is a big secret. I look appropriately shocked. Multiple voting? in India? never heard of it of course! And I can now clearly see how that ink has restrained people for the past 60 years from indulging in multiple voting. That vital instrument guarding our democracy - what would we do without it!

At the end of all this struggle I am finally allowed to go and touch that instrument for a second and my precious vote is cast.
So did you vote? was your voting as eventful as mine? do tell.

Of PEBIAP and Mom tag

2009-04-22T22:48:00.004+07:00

In the past few weeks many of my blogposts have disappeared due to a condition identified as PEBIAP.
PEBIAP? Ok. you know the PEBKAC problem right? This is similar to that except the problem here, exists between Inspiration and post. It happens like this: I am in conversation with someone and right in the middle of a sentence I get the inspiration for a blog post - a potentially awesome one. Few hours later, I sit down to post it only to discover that the idea is gone without a trace. Must be the heat in Bengaluru this year - even ideas evaporate!

But I seem to be getting worse in this department even by my standards - even when people give me a tag and tell me what I have to do I end up staring at the key board. Just write a post of your own (5 things that you love about being a mom - this is the easy part; but there is a difficult part which follows:find someone to link to and tag - someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country
When Itchingtowrite, Hiphopgrandmom and Mama-mia tagged me with this, I went and checked most blogs I read and found that practically everyone has done this tag. And the few who haven't are not moms or they are dads!
So I am just going to do the easy part and tell you 5 things I love about being a mom:

1. Even as a child my son was very sensitive and mature in dealing with his peers. Other mothers somehow assumed that I had some role to play in this and praised me on how well I had brought him up. Although I had no clue what I had done and why I was getting credit for his balanced personality, I did not hesitate to accept it all with a lot of grace. (Or you could call it shamelessness. It all boils down to perspective!)

2. Watching him grow up has been like a repeat experience of all those phases for me. I had been through the phases as a girl and now I was seeing things from a boy's perspective.

3. This is one relationship where the love is totally unconditional and both parties can be totally themselves without any pretences. It is these kind of relationships that help preserve one's sanity in one's life.

4. From the time he became an adult, it has been like having a good friend to talk to about anything under the sun and get a fresh perspective on it - full of positive energy unsullied by the cynicism of my age and experience. It is like letting fresh breeze take away the cobwebs in my mind.

5.It is a wonderful feeling to be that special person in his life - someone he knows he can depend on no matter what, someone who will never judge him, someone with whom he can openly discuss his failings and failures; because he knows that whatever he is, he will still be the most wonderful son in the world for her.

'The last chance for change'*

2009-04-09T19:01:00.013+07:00

The other day a friend asked me when I planned to change my car. He said that he would buy my Santro when I migrate to a bigger car. When I said that I was seriously considering a Reva or a Nano he gave me a look of disgust and said "why do you have such a preference for ugly cars? And don't you think you have come far enough to deserve a luxury vehicle?"
I explained how I would be quite happy NOT to use any car if only namma Bengaluru had reliable public transport and decent and safe footpaths. His immediate response was: "what do you plan to do with all your money?"
I do not have all that money he was talking about but I was rather pained to see that an educated young person was not thinking of the environmental impact of big cars at all. In fact I have known many people who dismiss ideas such as global warming as vastly exaggerated.This is what the Worldbook at NASA has to say about global warming:

Global warming is an increase in the average temperature of Earth's surface. Since the late 1800's, the global average temperature has increased about 0.7 to 1.4 degrees F (0.4 to 0.8 degrees C). Many experts estimate that the average temperature will rise an additional 2.5 to 10.4 degrees F (1.4 to 5.8 degrees C) by 2100. That rate of increase would be much larger than most past rates of increase.

Actually do we really need NASA to tell you these facts? isnt' the oppressive summer heat that we are facing right now enough testimony in itself? Don't we feel the climatic changes affect us in a tangible way?
Do you want to know what else is in store if we do not take measures to reverse it?

Continued global warming could have many damaging effects. It might harm plants and animals that live in the sea. It could also force animals and plants on land to move to new habitats. Weather patterns could change, causing flooding, drought, and an increase in damaging storms. Global warming could melt enough polar ice to raise the sea level. In certain parts of the world, human disease could spread, and crop yields could decline.

Read on more here

And please read Jane"s interview with Paul Brown author of the book: Global Warning, The Last Chance for Change
Here's an excerpt:

Some islands, like the Maldives, are going to flood anyway by the end of the century whatever they do, aren’t they?

Yes, and very possible before. I think that was one of the things that frightened me most was the inevitability of the sea level rise

Yes, we’re talking about huge civilizations flooding and where will all the dispossessed go? That is a really huge question. Perhaps in America they can all move inland but where will people who don’t have the same religious backgrounds and beliefs go? It’s just going to be awful.

Yes, people keep talking about China and India being the powerhouses of the world but if you take the effects of the glaciers melting in the Himalayas, the water supply running out and the flooding of the Deltas because of the sea level rise you’re talking millions and millions of people who have nowhere to go because the country is already so overwhelmed with population.

It is almost inevitable that millions of people are going to die.

Yes.

One of the scientists at Copenhagen, was saying he thought that unless we made drastic cuts in CO2 now we are looking at a population crash from 6 billion to 1 billion.

Please read the whole interview here and her review of his book here.

And yet we buy larger cars, instal bigger airconditioners and cut down trees indiscriminately. This last one has been going on in Bangalore for the past few years despite protests from concerned citizens.
For over four years now, Hasiru Usiru (a network of citizens, community organizations and NGOs) and concerned individuals from the wider public have proactively campaigned against irrational road-widening projects of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). But the authorities have been unrelentingly and indiscriminately feeling trees for widening roads.

I have a couple of neem trees outside my house which provide good shade and the leaves are in great demand for their disinfectant and medicinal properties. But every now and then officials from BESCOM send their staff to cut down the branches as they do not want them to grow high enough to reach the electric lines. What about all those underground cables that were laid with elaborate digging up of roads? why do we still need those ugly lines and why should trees be stunted to save them?
If you live in bengaluru and if you care about trees being cut down indiscriminately, please go here and sign the petition online:
And if you want to know what you can do about global warming and climate change go here and read these articles and here.There is a lot we can do.
"We have to remember that we are not the last generation on earth.” Think of our children. They need a place to live in. And the good news is that we still seem to have some chance, albeit the last one.

* - from the title of the book by Paul brown - Global warming, the last chance for change.

How you doing?Doing good?

2009-03-31T17:29:00.007+07:00

We don't really have neighbors - the plot to the right of our house and the one behind are empty and we do have a house to the left of our house but the owner has been posted overseas and the house has been empty for many months but for the dog and a maid.

I grew up surrounded by neighbors. We had three other families living within the same compound and we behaved like one large family sharing special dishes, celebrating and mourning together and standing by each other through good times and bad. If there was an unexpected guest for lunch and the curd had not yet set, one of us would quietly sneak through the back door to one of the neighbors and the problem would be solved. If one of the families forgot to grind coffee powder it was no big deal for one could always get a cup of powder, sugar, milk, oil or anything from one of the neighbors just as they could count on you. I don't know if the ladies of the house kept a strict account book but I remember that nobody made a big deal of it. You gave in one form and got back in another - sometimes you got back a lot more in the form of friendship, affection and togetherness.

All that seems from another life now. I am sure that all this seems strange to a lot of people reading this who would probably frown at the idea of asking for a cup of sugar from a neighbor. I quite understand because I don't know if I would be comfortable enough to ask for a spoon of curd for setting curd from any of my neighbors now. I guess I'd rather go without it or just walk up to the nearest supermarket. In any case I don't have any real neighbors as I already said.

Make that 'did not' - until a few days ago. In the beginning of the month a couple from the U.S. have moved into the house to the left and on Ugadi day we actually exchanged conversation, as neighbours do, across our compound wall.After the first few sentences, the lady came out with that inevitable statement that I have heard from every single foreigner I have spoken to: 'you speak English very well' in a surprised tone. So I responded with my standard reply: 'Most educated people in India speak English.' Normally the topic ends there but this time the lady said: 'They say they do but no, they DO NOT speak English. Most people in India DO NOT speak English' she confirmed. Who am I to argue about that with a person who is a native speaker of English? At the same time I could not help remembering those immortal lines from the film 'My fair lady':

One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!

I was tempted to ask the lady what she thought about that but I did not want to sound rude to the neighbors I finally had and in any case they seem like lovely people.

Of course I understood what they meant. In India we do not speak any of the standard versions of English but each region has its own dialect of English - Tanglish, Bonglish, Mallish , Kanglish etc. And it is unintelligible to the untrained ear. I have in fact been told by the employees of a bank in Moscow that they were finally happy to have me as the trainer because all the trainers from UK that my company had sent there before me had a 'funny accent'! (And my colleague from the UK office with whom I shared this responded with some typical British expletives)Of course I am the one with the wrong accent but it is just that it was more palatable to the Russian ear than the original English accent.

I wonder if that is the reason why most of the British colonies easily adapted to English - there are no hard and fast rules about how you have to speak it - unlike say, French. Take it and make it your own. Do what 'you want to be doing with it' , no problem, as long as you are 'being understood'. So we think we all speak English but most people from outside don't seem to think so. But somehow everybody seems to understand everybody else, mostly that is. So I guess it is all that matters in the final analysis.

Woman,un-role yourself!

2009-03-08T12:09:00.004+07:00

Deccan Herald mar 6 2009:

A bank employee committed suicide by hanging herself at her house in CK Achukattu police limits on Thursday.
The deceased Priyamvada (27), an employee of IndusInd Bank, took the extreme step after she was reportedly told by a doctor that she had remote chances of conceiving.

According to sources, Priyamvada was married to an employee of a private bank two years ago and the couple had no issues. She recently met a doctor who is said to have told her that she might not conceive.
The incident came to light when her husband returned home in the evening. She has left a suicide note asking her husband to marry another girl.

In one of my earliest posts I had spoken about this craving for children among humans specially women. Last week someone had left a comment there asking me if I had any of my own. I could not make out if the person agreed or disagreed with me or if he/she was trying to see if I knew what i was talking about. I love kids, my own and those of others - I'd any day prefer to spend time with them than in the company of adults. I do not mind the demands on my time, energy and emotions but I don't think I'd have been shattered if I could not have one of my own. A child doesn't have to have the stamp of my genes for me to love him or her. And more importantly, I do not define myself in terms of my role as a mother.

In spite of their refusal to be stereotyped in many ways, it seems that many young women still feel inadequate when they cannot bear a child. One woman even told me that she saw it as a kind of personal failure. I responded: 'What is the big deal? You cannot paint, you cannot sing, you cannot have a child. have you thought about adoption?'
She thought I was joking or even a bit insensitive perhaps.

I am quite aware of the stigma that used to be attached to a woman who was not 'fertile'- there is even a specific word for a barren woman in Tamil. It is also interesting that there is no male equivalent to the same word!
A while ago a young girl wrote to me about the kind of insults that were thrown at her by her in-laws because she hasn't been able to give them a grandchild three or four years since her marriage. It was even more unfair because her gynecologist had cleared her of any possible problem and her in-laws refused to believe her. And the husband preferred to let her deal with his parents and did nothing to stop his parents or be emotionally supportive to the young wife. And all this was happening not in some remote village in India but in a country in the western world where they had made their home. And the girl herself is a well-educated woman with a career.
In her story I was not surprised by the attitude of her in-laws given their age and background. But I was surprised that the girl and her husband were affected by the criticism to the extent their marriage was in trouble.

The ability to create a life is a special gift that nature has bestowed upon most women but there is no reason to feel worthless if your body is not fit for the same. There are still ways to create meaning in life. It is not a handicap. You are still a perfect person.
This women's day my appeal my sisters would be not to allow others to define them in terms of roles. For this we have to first stop seeing ourselves as these roles. Being a mother is just one part of your life. If you cannot have one of your own, give vent to your maternal feelings by adopting a child or supporting one. Your life is too precious to be given up for this.

Happy women's day!

For Dipali, C.A and Oorjas

2009-03-06T16:53:00.021+07:00

Dipali had tagged me to talk about the 6th photo in my 6th folder and I did a post on that and completely forgot to mention what triggered it because I could not post the photo without the permission of the people in it.
In the past few weeks I may seem have neglected a few tags. Please forgive me if it was one of yours - it is just one of those phases when I am too busy without accomplishing anything. Ya pretty much like the kind of thing that happens inside out government offices. Must have caught the virus when I was in and out of one of those buildings for some permission.

Now Cantaloupe's Amma (when I see these lovely cantaloupes I try and imagine what cute cantaloupe baby looks like in real life. Something I'd want to grab for sure) - So Cantaloupe's amma tagged me to talk about how I became a mom. I am not sure if she knows that my son is 27 years old and I really have to work hard to remember some of these things. I am horrified because I look around and see the attention with which today's young mothers record every minute of their motherhood and then here's me! is my reptilian brain still unevolved?
(Apparently reptiles do not have maternal instincts like mammals - so some of them would even eat their young!!) Thank god my son didn't get eaten!
Naaah, I am not so bad. I was just trying some humor there.
Ok. So what is the tag about?

1. Was your first pregnancy planned?

Oh ya, once I had completed my M.A. it was generally assumed that I'd graduate to motherhood. M.A. to M.A.M.A -a natural transition, isn't it?

2. Were you married at that time?

Planning a pregnancy without being married wasn't considered a great idea in my time. Is it very popular now?

3. What were your reactions?

Don't remember. But I assume it was a bit of a shock, surprise and may be a bit of anxiety too. That it was actually happening.

4. Was abortion an option for you?

If you are asking about availability of choices, yes. Abortion was legal by that time.
But there was no reason for me to consider the option.

5. How old were you?

22.

6. How did you find out you were pregnant?

God came and told me in my dream? Come on... no signs of monthly cycle and then my gynaec confirmed it. PCOD wasn't so common back then.

7. Who did you tell first?

The friend who had accompanied me to the clinic - or was it my sister who had come along?

8. Due date?

May 21. But the boy chose to arrive 3 days late!!

9. Did you have morning sickness?

No. Thank god. Actually I never threw up once during pregnancy. My grandmom had predicted that the baby wouldn't have much hair and was she right! I had a totally bald baby! I should have called him Cantaloupe actually!!!

10. What did you crave?
Nothing special. But I was hungry all the time - yes. ALL THE TIME.

11. What irritated you the most?
I was put under bed rest from the 5th month and I hardly got to go anywhere. And people were watching every step I took.

12. What was your first child's sex?

First (and only) child - Male.

13. Did you wish for a child of the opposite sex?

I had always wanted a girl child. Since I did not know then that this was going to be my only child I had no preferences.
But later some people commented on how lucky I was to have had a son as the first child. Their logic was that there was no pressure on me to have another child. Those were still the days when a male child was a big thing and people went through several pregnancies until one arrived. At these times I used to say that had i known if I was going to have only one child I'd have been happier to have a girl. Little did I realise the effect this was having on my son until one day when he was around 5 or 6 he simply said "I know you did not want be to be born." I was shocked and asked him what made him think so. And he explained!
Imagine how that made me feel. Almost as if I was a reptile and had just eaten my young!!

14. How many pounds did you gain during pregnancy?

I was huge. I had a big baby. And I was eating enormously. And I wasn't allowed to exercise - remember the bed rest? If not go back to Q 11.

15. Did you have a baby shower?

Nope. Not even the usual religious ceremonies like the bangle ceremony - remember the bed rest? If not go back to Q 11.

16. was it a surprise or did you know?
You are not paying attention. Go to Q 15 and then 11

17. Did you have any complications during pregnancy?
Now we are talking. Yes. Had to have a Shirodkar ligaturing done and then bed rest till completion of 36 weeks. The child was feared to arrive any day after removal of the ligature and our boy took his time and arrived 3 days late!

18. Where did you give birth?

Chennai - it was called Madras then. A clinic off G.N.Chetty Road.

19. How many hours were you in labour?

Drips started around 4 p.m on 23rd and the baby arrived a little after 2 on 24th. Not sure if I was in labour all through it.

20. Who drove you to the hospital?

Heheheheh. I walked the 1.5 km to the hospital with mom. Wasn't allowed to use an auto or cycle rickshaw and my parents did not own a car then.

21.Who watched you give birth?

A family friend, the ayah, nurse and my doctor.

22. Was it natural or C-section?

Natural.

23. Did you take medication to ease the pain?
What pain? I was given drips to INDUCE pain.

24. How much did your child weigh?
He was quite huge. Don't remember the details. 8 pounds perhaps.

25. When was your child actually born?

A little after 2 in the afternoon.

26. What was your reaction when the doctor announced the sex of your baby?
Was too tired to register. I bet it was something like "ya, whatever."

27 What was your first reaction on seeing the baby?

I wrote a post on this some time ago here.

28. Did you cry?

Not then but a few hours later.

28. What did you name him/ her?

Siddhartha.
Might as well use this opportunity to revel in some momma pride.

29. How old is your first born today?

Now this is touch for me. I am not too good with numbers that go beyond a single digit. give me a few hours, I'll come back and tell ya.
27 y 9 m 10 d

PHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!
Not bad, I managed to remember most of the stuff.
So C.A.,I await the check. Paypal payments accepted too. :)

P.S.
While on tags etc, I want to thank oorja for the awards she gave me. Not 1 not 2, 4 all in one go. One more than a Jackpot. I am touched, happy, humbled - all at once. Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you

Thank you!

Leave your message here

2009-03-04T13:46:00.003+07:00

AMSTERDAM (Reuters Life!) - God is taking calls.

Dutch artist Johan van der Dong has set up a local telephone number in the Netherlands, where he urges people to leave messages for God on his answering machine.

Van der Dong said he set up the number to give people an opportunity to take pause and contemplate life.

"Like praying, leaving a voicemail message is a way to organize your thoughts," he said. "It's a perfect combination for some contemplation."

Callers dialing 06-4424-4901 (or +316-4424-4901 if calling from outside the Netherlands) from March 7 will hear.

"Hi, you are speaking to God. I'm not in right now so leave a message after the beep."

(Reporting by Elke Bun, editing by Paul Casciato)

Just for fun, leave your message for God here.

Here's mine:
Hello God, you know who this is.
This is an emergency. Can you please turn your attention toward this planet and do something about the things we are doing to it? Particularly all this terrorism in your name?
It would actually be nice if you could make a visit down here - to resolve all debates about your existence or otherwise, your name and if you actually said all those things floating under your name.
You can reach me on my email or better still,leave a comment on my blog!

a pinch of this and a dash of that

2009-02-27T20:59:00.006+07:00

It was at a potluck lunch at a friend’s place that I met this lady. She is my friend’s cousin who has been in various foreign countries for a few decades now. She loved the food and periodically asked for recipes of this or that dish – particularly my rasam. Now for most South Indians this is a basic dish that doesn’t generate a lot of enthusiasm. When babies are first introduced to rice they start with bland lentils and then graduate to rasam which is their first introduction to all the spice that would follow them wherever they go for the rest of their lives. A child that starts its initiation into culinary world with the mild taste of pepper, daniya, jeera and chillies will never be satisfied with any other kind of food around the globe – his palate is ruined to the softer cuisines – all of them taste like mud after his tongue has grown to delight in the sharp taste of tamarind, chillies and pepper.
And so, when my guests ask me for a recipe of rasam I feel let down. When the menu contains dishes I have laboured over – like paruppu usili or avial or poricha kootu, they single out the easiest and simplest of them all and sing its praises. It is at these times that I wish I had just cooked rice and rasam and served it with some roasted papads – an unthinkable insult to a guest in a Tamilian household unless they are sick or something!
Anyway this story is not about Rasam. So what is it about? I am not very sure myself.

May be it is about Spoons. You must be thinking that I have kind of lost it – talking about camels first and now spoons. What is there to talk about spoons? I did not know too, until I started giving her the recipe for rasam.:
‘Soak a little tamarind in water’ I started.
She asked: ‘How much is a little?’
‘About this much’ I said making a small ball with my fingers.
‘But I will be using a paste. So how many spoons should I use?”
“ok. Perhaps two small spoons” I said
‘you mean coffee spoon or moka spoon?’ she asked.
I hadn’t even heard of these in my entire life - I use the same kind of spoon for tea, coffee, sugar and sambar powder!

In our house, we use our fingers to eat. Always have. So spoons have never been an issue. All the spoons in my mother’s kitchen were of different sizes – they had come as free gifts along with purchases of coffee powder, soap powder or even talcum powder. We never considered them as measures- my mother knew how much of the ingredients she needed for the dish and she used the spoon to scoop them out. We could use a ladle to take out salt ‘to taste’. The back of the ladle or spoon or even a spatula served fine for ‘a pinch’ of something. Your eyes knew how much you needed for the dish and the implement in hand was just a tool not a measure. Spoons of different shapes and sizes were also convenient for serving spicy stuff like pickles – so as far as our house was concerned spoons were smaller ladles that fit nicely into spice containers ; and their size also made them convenient implements to shove food into your mouth if your fingers were not available for the same; and very useful for feeding someone else – babies and sick people.

Way back in the early eighties someone gifted me with a fine cutlery set and I was rather puzzled about the assortment of spoons, forks and knives of different shapes and sizes. And a friend enlightened me on the purpose of each. Having traveled a bit since those days and dined at some fancy places, I do know a bit about the mysteries of cutlery at the dining table. But I still find it difficult to reduce my recipes to teaspoons and tablespoons.

At least I am better than my grandmother’s recipes. She and her mother filled the house with the heavenliest aromas when they cooked and their dishes tasted ‘just so’ every time. But ask them for a recipe and they would act like you asked them for the combination of the lock to the royal mint. Or they would give you a recipe that sounded like a list of ingredients printed on packaged food these days:
Add sambar powder, hing and salt to tamarind water. Add vegetables. When it has boiled enough, take it down and garnish.
‘No paati. Tell me the ingredients first’
“I already told you’
‘ok. I will figure that out. How much of each?’
‘Kannthittama podu’ ( meaning use your eyes as the guide to how much is needed for the dish)
‘That doesn’t work paati. tell me, how much?”
Then she would take the tip of her thumb up to a line on the ring finger or pinkie and say ‘this much’
‘But Paati your fingers are bigger than mine’ I’d whine
“ya so adjust accordingly”

In any case how was I to write down a measure like that!
Or she would say ‘watch me next time I make the dish and learn’ which would be an ordeal because you were not supposed to touch so many things in the kitchen or you were expected to wash your hands every time you touched something. And she would be so quick around the kitchen that if your attention wandered a bit she would have added something to the dish which you would have missed. I used to really think that she was being mean and did not want to part with her secret recipes. But only years later I understood that it is very difficult to reduce a recipe into teaspoons and tablespoons of ingredients.
That is why I have great respect for people like Tarla Dalal and food bloggers like Nandita and Vandana who give exact measurements for each ingredient in a recipe. Now when my son or daughter-in-law ask me for a recipe I simply give them the URL to these blogs. And this is where I finally directed my NRI friend - to check with one of these food bloggers for the recipe. Thank you Nandita and Vandana.

Now I understand the importance of teaspoons and tablespoons in our lives. How would we eat anything even half decent were it not for these? But I still do not understand why a teaspoon isn’t good enough for Coffee or Moka. Do you think my bottle of nescafé might explode if I used a teaspoon in it? or would my cup of Moka curdle? Or would it just be another unpardonable social faux pas? Anyone willing to enlighten this philistine?

Undulate Ungulates

2009-02-19T22:09:00.019+07:00

Camels remind me of my friend - let’s call her Radha.. She could not decide what qualities she was looking for in her life partner. She liked different people for different reasons - their looks, intelligence, humor, reading and other qualities that she was attracted to. Her mother once told her that she was looking for a camel.
Why camel? Because viewed in parts it is endowed with so much beauty – lovely eyes, strong body, impressive height, graceful legs and above all perseverance to struggle through the toughest deserts. But overall, none too impressive unlike a horse or a tiger. We found this very interesting and mercilessly teased her with scenes of her being married to a camel.

An animal that is a melange of so many features? Sounds funny? Actually there are other people, strangely from remote Mongolia who share this thought. There is a Mongolian folktale which says that the camel wanted to be one of the Zodiac signs and since all the signs were already taken, Buddha gave it an attribute of each of the animals in the Zodiac:
The ears of the mouse, the stomach of the cow, the paws of the tiger, the nose of the hare, the body of the dragon, the eyes of the snake, the mane of the horse, the wool of the sheep, the hump of the ape, the head crest of the rooster, the crooked back legs of the dog and the tail of the pig.

So next time you see this humped and unwieldy animal, look at it again. May be you will be as impressed as I am of its beautiful eyes full of thought and its sagely air totally impervious to silly worldly things. I actually love this animal now. For a few months now I have been regularly noticing a few camels in my neighbourhood. For 5 or 10 rupees children are taken on a ride and everyone is happy. Not everyone perhaps as I am told that the hooves of camels are made for traversing sandy deserts and not city roads which are actually quite painful for their feet. I am surprised that PFA, PETA etc have not raised their voices and these camel rides are available right outside the palace in Mysore.

Not all camels are unimpressive. In fact the Bactrian camels of the Gobi desert can, in my opinion, qualify among the top ten beautiful animals if there were to be a beauty pageant for animals. With their natural furry coats, lovely eyes and undulating gait. Please watch the film “The story of the weeping camel”. In this documentary film on a nomadic shepherd family in the Gobi desert, you will see some of the most beautiful camels. And the story is very touching too.
A mother camel rejects its calf after a difficult labour. It refuses to feed its baby and kicks it away every time it approaches. The calf suffers from the neglect and the shepherd family is worried. In an effort to save the rare white calf they get a musician to play the kind of fiddle called Morinn Khurr from the nearest city to come and play his music in a kind of folk ritual. Though initially resistant, the camel mother slowly begins to respond to the music and is moved to tears and finally it accepts its baby and feeds it with tenderness.
Very charming! Very sweet!!
The life of these shepherds seems so uncluttered and uncomplicated that makes you long for a life like theirs - closer to nature guided by simple rules.
In the film, in a ritual to honour Nature and its spirits , a Buddhist Lama says:
“Nowadays, mankind plunders the earth more and more in search of her treasures. This drives the spirits away, that should protect us from bad weather and from diseases.
We have to remember that we are not the last generation on earth.”

I suppose it is never too late to remind ourselves of this and take steps to leave a better world for our children. Will we?

Hey Ram!

2009-02-10T13:27:00.007+07:00

I received mails from some young friends urging me to join the protest against Sri Rama Sene chief Muthalik on Valentine’s day by sending him pink underwear.
Before people begin to paint me with the same brush as Muthalik let me openly declare that Muthalik and his ilk irritate me. If there was a campaign to tie him to a tree and throw pink marbles at him I’d be happy to participate with gusto. Or participate in a march to have him declared a known goonda and disturber of peace and have him arrested under some act similar to the TADA.
But send him my precious lingerie? No way. Actually I do not own any in pink but if I did I assume they’d be lovely with laces and all, and why on earth would I send it to Muthalik? Even the thought makes me sick.What is the point anyway?

I have a better idea. He calls himself the leader of the Shri Ram Sene and as far as I remember the most famous Sene of Shri Ram, the one that he led to defeat Ravana, consisted entirely of Vanaras or monkeys. Now that explains it all, doesn’t it? So let us send them pink ribbons for their tails or lots of bananas. Peanuts? Pink Monkey caps may be? Send him pink dupattas with detailed notes on how he can use them to hang himself.

Why isn’t that guy being taken into preventive custody after he has public announced his intentions to disrupt peace on Valentine’s day?
How come our police and administration become so meticulous about observance of rules when it comes to such people who have backings of political parties. My maid’s son is routinely taken for investigation and kept in the police station for a few days whenever there is a theft in their area. Reason: he has a previous record of petty theft. There are times when he is kept there for days and beaten up for no crime of his. The police inspector does not seem to remember the rules in these cases but with people like Muthalik, law is followed to the last letter.
WHY? Here is a guy who beats up women, makes threatening noises about causing trouble to private celebrations, pokes his nose into people’s private affairs and he is not considered a candidate for a few days of lock up and some police hospitality? WHY?
If nothing he should be locked up for defaming Rama’s name – what gives him the right to indulge in his goondagiri and use Rama’s name to justify it all. Valmiki’s Rama was a hero who hesitated to use force even against evil demons like Tataka because she was a woman and a true warrior was not supposed to use his force against a woman. And here in his name this joker goes and beats up women. Where are the other custodians of Rama now – the Dals, Parishads and Hindutva champions-? And why aren’t they raising their voice against this defamation of their God?

There are two reasons why such people get away with their interference with the liberties of other people. They are backed by powerful lobbies whom the party in power is scared to antagonise. And their victims’ cause is not considered important enough, worthy of protection. Women’s freedom and rights have never been considered serious enough by people entrusted with enforcing law.. Complaints of eve-teasing , molestation, sexual abuse, wife-beating are low priority – not worth the same kind of attention as political crimes, dacoities, murders and now terrorism. How many women even know that they have legal rights? And if you do try taking such a case to the police station, most of the time the woman is told to go home and behave herself and not infuriate the men of the house. Or tempt them. When the perpetrators know that their victims enjoy such low levels of protection, naturally they indulge in these acts with impunity.

When people talk of women's rights in this country, it is more in the tone of trying to assimilate the weaker sections in the mainstream rather than with the kind of outrage that a human rights issue is accorded. There is that patronising attitude as if concessions are being granted, as if it is an act of generosity. That people like Muthalik walk free on the other side of prison bars and enjoy media limelight is a manifestation of a larger problem with our society and governance. Unless we have laws that deal with those elements firmly and the law enforcers exhibit a willingness to enforce our constitutional rights in spirit and in letter, these problems will exist even after we run out of pink chaddis in the world.

Moment of Truth

2009-02-05T10:08:00.002+07:00

There is this TV show called 'Moment of Truth' on Star world. Apparently it hit the Indian airwaves some time in Nov 1997. It takes a while for such news to reach my little corner in the world and even when it does it takes some more for me to react to it. So it is only natural that I started watching the show only this Monday. It has got to be hugely popular, I am assuming, judging by its nature. Here's a show where people are asked scandalous questions about their private lives, where they bare the dark secrets they hold behind their public image, their extra-marital affairs, felonies and their inner insecurities. There is a polygraph monitoring if their responses or true or false. They have to be truthful if they want the prize money - half a mio if you answer 21 questions truthfully.
Every time the question gets too personal or too embarrassing you can hear a loud collective gasp from the audience but you can also feel the excitement building up about what the answer might be. Questions like:
'Have you cheated on your wife/husband?'
'Do you think you should actually be married to your ex and not to your husband?'
'Have you ever done anything with a co-worker that your husband would not approve of?'
And there are other kind of incriminatory questions like:
'have you stolen anything from your workplace?'
'have you ever flirted with your boss in order to advance your career?
'Have you consumed alcohol when you were pregnant?'
There are seemingly funny but pretty embarrassing questions like:
'have you ever fantasized about sex with a colleague' or 'would you act in an adult film to earn money for college?'
There are no simple questions on this show - at least none without consequences for you unless you have led an exceptionally principled life. As the show host often says the show is trying to see if there is a single honest person left in America.

It is pretty shocking to see the kind of things people are willing to reveal about their personal lives on national television but it is even worse because these are things that the affected people themselves- who are usually their close family and friends- have no inkling about. But isn't this how our lives and relationships are turning out in modern city life? We do not like it if our neighbour wants to know about our personal details but we do not seem to have a problem about sharing the same on a chat show on television or a blog. This is a generation of people who have all been oprahfied that way.

If it is all for the 500,000 dollars, is that the price at which they value their relationships with their family, best friends and their partners that they are willing to accept their darkest secrets that could ruin their relationships with them forever? I am not being judgemental as I am aware that it is a different culture and their relationships are founded on different kinds of arrangements and expectations than the one I am familiar with. And in any case it is their lives. But I talk about the damage to the relationships because one can see the damage right there on their shocked expressions, their stunned head-shakes, their tears of hurt. And oh, how the camera loves it all, lingering on their faces, focusing on their pain! And then the host does the inevitable 'How does that make you feel?' just in case the affected husband/ wife/ mother didn't catch the full import of the damning confession.
TV hosts are the same the world over.*

But the unkindest cut of it all comes when the participant has had a sort of public confession of all their misadventures and finally fails the polygraph test on a simple question like:
'Do you think you are a good person?'
And then she loses the 100 k she has so far won by facing some of the most difficult questions any person has to answer about his/her life.
Or perhaps these are indeed the real moments of truth on the program when a person comes face to face with their own conscience and its muffled voice.

I wish we could have our desi version of the same. While I am not too keen on the dirty linen of private individuals, it would be great if we could make it mandatory for all the candidates contesting the elections for our various legislative assemblies and parliament. Now wouldn't that be fun?

* -(Disclaimer: this statement has nothing to do with any Indian TV host- real or imaginary)

A and I or A um nAnum

2009-01-26T23:13:00.004+07:00

When A and I decided to go and watch the Tamil film Abhiyum nAnum today we were simply looking for some light entertainment and were hardly prepared for what the evening turned out to be.
At the PVR Cinemas all the staff were dressed in white kurta-pyjamas and the men wore white caps in celebration of Republic day. And they played the national anthem with a request asking people to stand while the anthem played. But a young lady occupying the seat next to me and her husband were too busy checking their phone for messages to stand up. So I was compelled to exercise one of my dirty looks which eventually got them on their feet by the time Balamurali came to Bhagyavidhata.
It takes less than TWO minutes for the song to play people, is it too much to stand up and pay your respect for one day in a year?

The film itself is a celluloid version of what in printed form could have been a doting daddy's blog - a devoted father tracing his relationship with a daughter who is dearer than life to him. His bond with his daughter Abhi is a living version of every sentiment that the Tamil Poet Subramanya Bharathi expressed so beautifully in his poem 'Chinnanchiru Kiliye kannamma". The first half of the film portrays this beautiful father- daughter bond in a sweet and endearing way. Every parent goes through these pains and joys with every child - a journey so universal and yet so very personal and unique and it offers so many interesting angles and possibilities to explore without becoming worn out or boring. The second half is about the pains of a parent in letting go once the child is ready to fly the nest. In this part the plot seemed to lose its way in too many things but was still entertaining. How can it not be with a dozen Punjabis thrown among Tamils and and all that bangra and fun lighting up the screen? Camera work was breath-taking helped largely by the natural beauty of OOty and Munnar.

By the time we stood up the cleaning staff had walked in and started clearing the waste that each show generates. As we reached the exit we were calmly advised by the security to use the stairs and exit the mall as quickly as possible as there was a minor fire in the building. Glances of panic were exchanged secretly but no one said anything. We were asked to leave the building as soon as possible and wait for instructions to get back to the parking lot for our vehicles.
And as we crossed to the other side of the road and waited for the fire to be put out and take our vehicles out these were some of the scenes we saw:

1. People trying to get closer to the building to get a better view making it tough for the mall staff and security who were trying to ensure everyone was out of the building safely.

2. People trying to take pictures of the building's wing where there was smoke on their cell phones - Citizen journalists perhaps.

3. Auto drivers very 'helpfully' offering to ferry stranded people at certain fixed prices.

4. Through the glass windows, we watched the mall staff trying to break the windows at the transit food lounge with fire extinguishers. A few of the mall staff had become suffocated with the smoke and were driven away in an ambulance.

5. Traffic police and the state police just wanted everyone out of the area and had no clue about where the fire was and when and how we could get our vehicles out. The way they were behaving, we began to wonder if there was more than a minor fire in the building.

6. Through all this the Mall staff stayed calm, efficient, polite and helpful. After an hour of waiting when we were still not allowed inside the building, one of the mall staff took our car key and walked six flights of stairs to bring our car down and refused to accept the money we offered as a token. Thank you stranger, I hope I will someday be able to repay you for this. Or perhaps I might get a chance to pass on this Random act of kindness to someone else who needs my help.

And that is how what started as a totally mundane day ended up being quite an eventful one.
It might be interesting to read the newspaper versions of the incident tomorrow. I already saw a piece that claimed:
"Panic gripped 'Forum Mall' in the upmarket Koramangala area here on Monday evening after a fire broke out there, police said."
If there was any panic, I didn't see it. People were calm and followed instructions and acted very sensibly. Noone ran out, no one screamed. The mall staff were exceptionally well-organised and calm. The only ones that seemed agitated were the police.