Travelling cattle class

Travelling ‘cattle class’, if I may dare use the demeaning epithet, is definitely illuminating in more ways than one. It throws open a brilliant case study of what constitutes the great Indian reality show.  It has been some years since college when I last got into a bus (doing the Delhi-Dehra Dun-Delhi circuit) on a rather longish journey. Yesterday I travelled from Gaya to Ranchi in a ‘coach’, classified such only because it had foam seats which could get into a semi-reclining position with the touch of a button. Otherwise it had the smattering of the erstwhile DTC bus that seemed to be bursting with its passenger load.

There was a diverse mix on board – a student busy on his cellphone talking about the state transport getting reduced to a local bus, population sensex workers talking of BPL cards, a father asking his son what he did with the money that his ‘mamu’ gave him, a little boy dozing off standing, the propreitoral jhola owner who wouldn’t let the sleepy kid sit on his bag (his veggies would get crushed), the lawyer who kept convincing his client on phone that he won’t let anything happen to the latter, a middle aged man busy playing painfully archaic Hindi songs on his cell with few voices saying, “collecsionva achcha hai”, a couple with three children of different sizes – each individual represented a different world altogether.

 The six-hour journey had the classic shades of people jostling for space, adjustment of three in a seat for two, conversation cursing the terrible state of transport, the ticket collector luring in people with the promise of a seat after a certain distance, the driver competing with the other bus close at its heels, the conductor tapping on the rickety tin door to signal start and stop of the moving bus to the driver – all becoming a fight to the finish because of the scarcity of buses at the end of the Dussehra holiday.

I had a ringside view to this fantastic spectacle sitting on the first seat with my two children. The ‘conductor-sahib’ was an apparition from a Hindi  movie of the ‘70’s, buck toothed, with soda glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, constantly pulling up his pants to the chest between counting tickets and convincing people that there really was space inside the bus. He promised seats after Hazaribagh (a good 3 hours away) and when passengers were doubtful about boarding, he said the bus was ‘special’, one that would not stop anywhere between Gaya and Hazaribagh.

 No sooner did we start  than the bus driver braked a few hundred metres away to pick up a stream of people and the conductor kept on his motivating act, assuring the ‘climbers’ of seats after Hazaribagh on the ‘special’ bus. I was appalled to hear two boys striking a bargain with the conductor, paying him Rs 60 per ticket instead of Rs 80. “Chaliye aaap saath hi dijiye,” the conductor reconciled, with no trace of embarrassment, as he pocketed the money without issuing a ticket.

We must have made at least five to six such stops in the first hour despite the aisle and the driver’s cabin being full. The no-ticket transactions and full-blown haggling continued at regular intervals. Twenty rupees were traded in lieu of thirty, fifteen for twenty and in some instances passengers just handed over a bill and despite the conductor asking for more, maintained a muted silence! The bus kept getting crammed and I could only marvel at the conductor’s faith in how much his bus could take and the people’s tenacity in climbing on board despite the numbers.

Every time a passenger got on, he would crane his neck at various angles above the heads that obstructed the view to the rear, make some comment on the terrible rush and finally found a footing to add another number in this already stuffed-to-capacity  space. As the sounds of ‘khisko-sarko, aage badhiye, thoda jagah dijiye na,jagah banaiye, arrey bhai bahut jagah hai, samaan kinarey kijiye, kahan badheyn, kidhar jagha hai,’ came from within and without, by some sheer force of push n pull, the elbows over my head kept moving a micro-inch away and people on the door step got elevated to the top. People remonstrated with each other on not allowing foot space, clumsy management of luggage in the aisle, the buffoon conductor who kept taking on passengers and so on.

In a crowd where people were literally breathing down each others’ necks there were some interesting observations that I made. For one, in a state and amidst a class of people considered crass and unruly, I didn’t hear an expletive even once, not even the mildest one. Two, there weren’t any smoking Joes. Three, politeness reigned supreme in this shift and shuffle of the population that seemed to implode any moment.

When my son wanted to get off for a pee break, a couple of hands got him off the bus and back again. When someone shouted from the rear about why the bus had stopped the conductor said, “bachchey ko bathroom laga hai”; that seemed to silence the objection and before long the front section of the population jumped off commenting, “ek doosre ko dekh kar lag jaata hai”. And a couple of voices concurred as if it were a comment as banal as, “I’ve had a rather long day”!!

At Hazaribagh a whole bunch of people disembarked, but still there was no seat for those who the conductor had promised. Several voices came out in support of the people who had been promised seats. The hapless conductor simply threw up his hands and once again asked people, “thoda adjust kijiye na”.

Despite the discomfort and the chaotic cacophony that characterized my travel, there was a distinct humour and worldview that was part of the experience. How people travel regularly under these trying conditions with an easy calm, how the fortunate ones with a seat are willing to share the space that they own presently, how what seems virtually impossible to me is practically possible in a country that knows deprivation and hardship only too well, all of these came as big learning to me.

We had to get on to the bus because our train tickets could not get confirmed. I was none too pleased about travelling in the bus but sitting on the first seat, looking at the people who spent the entire journey standing, I realized that the person with no slippers is better off than the one who doesn’t have a leg!!

The journey to Gaya was to see the Mahabodhi temple and the Mahabodhi tree under which Gautam Buddha got enlightenment. My enlightenment fell into a different category of sorts. I’ll remember it more for this bus journey than for the guided tour that we undertook at Bodh Gaya.

I can talk in English, I can walk in English

The raging debate over elitism associated with the English language is an issue too obvious for national media to be discussing. It is a phenomenon experienced across the country, at least in India where English spitting species are actually looked at with awe and reverence.

I studied in a convent school for 12 years, thanks to which I do not have to struggle with a language which ironically rules the roost despite it being an alien tongue for most who inhabit the land. For most years of my growing up and learning in the school, English was taught with a single-minded discipline that would probably surprise even the native English speakers. 

There was a sense of calculated objective as Anglo-Indian teachers differentiated the pronunciation between necessary and necessity, adolescence and adolescent and aboard and abroad. I have some pretty strong memories of my primary school and I do not remember ever having spoken to a teacher in Hindi except for the one who taught us Hindi. The teachers put the prepositions in place during the course of our speech, put words into our mouth where we got stuck and though at home we spoke nothing but Hindi, I finally managed to become good at speaking and writing the language. 

There was a flip side to this development though. There were schools and there were schools. There were the ISC board and the CBSE board. There were Government schools and there were kendriya vidyalays. So over a period of time those who spoke better English began to sneer (even if not openly) at those who made errors while speaking. The ones who spoke better hobnobbed together. This was within the school on an individual level. On a collective level, our school had better English speakers than the others, so the school as a collective became a higher entity than the one where English was not taught with as much a puritan zeal as it was taught in ours. 

Later on in life as well, the friendships that one forged were more on the basis of English speaking abilities of people. But was it primarily on account of the snob value associated with the language of our erstwhile rulers or simply on account of having familiarity with the same literature in English, is not for me to say. At Delhi, people from other colleges would get surprised if we managed to mouth English the Queen’s way or the King’s way, whichever it be, because they could not expect it of someone who came from a ‘behenji’ college; behenji implying salwaar kammez wearing rustic wannabes who couldn’t emit English in a way considered correct and upmarket. 

I had the opportunity to live in a non-English speaking country for four months. We lived in Montpellier, a city in southern France where not a soul spoke English. I had done a basic course in French at Alliance Francaise before we moved to Montpellier, and as I struggled with comprehending the accent of the native French and gesticulated wildly, embellishing each syllable of mine to establish some understanding in the mind of the hearer, a larger truth dawned on me. I was not worried about the tense or preposition or figure of speech, or any smart idiomatic expression; I just wanted to convey what I wanted in the simplest possible way. And so it must be for people who haven’t had exposure to the English language in our country. And I had no business to judge them.

Presently I am at the helm in a school where most children come from the rural background, whose parents have moved out of villages for their jobs. Some of these children can not even speak Hindi. But we are a school which shouts ‘English medium’ on the board. When I joined the school more than a year and a half ago, I had a half-baked notion that if we continually speak to the kids in English, they would ultimately understand the language and then manage to speak it as well. As I was to learn later, we could only insert a few English equivalents of the objects and actions of their daily lives, into their vocabulary; we couldn’t really get them moving with instructions that were solely in English.

Even during the interviews, as we sat to assess the aspirants who would teach these kids aged between three and five, the interviewees who could speak English were automatically considered superior than those who couldn’t; and those who could speak it with a convent-educated accent were again considered better than those who spoke with an accent that smacked of the local dialect. 

For my own children who shall be frogmarched from one small town to another on account of their dad’s job, and will clearly not have the advantage of the likes of a school that I went to, I am worried if they will learn to speak and write English the correct way. I am constantly attempting to make them speak English but to no avail. They enjoy their comfort zone in Hindi in their lives and also on television. Sometimes, I change the Hindi speaking Japanese cartoon to start speaking English. There is instant rebellion. I think it is just as difficult for them to watch the programme in English as it would be for me to watch a French film. And if entertainment comes at the cost of such consternation of having to figure out what each word means, then it’s punishment. So I relent, and the Korean Pokemon and the Japanese Doremon and the English Noddy and American Power Rangers begin to mouth Hindi the Mumbai style and Gujarati style, putting a smile back on my kids’ faces.

So as superciliousness of knowing English becomes a point of debate only because a minister (who’s studied at St Stephen’s) has expressed it overtly for another minister (who’s done his college at Hansraj), it only seems that the media is discussing the great class divide, which everyone experiences but is not big enough for discussion because it happens to the commoners. Javed Akhtar calls Hindi our roots and English the branches for us to reach out to the world. But the point remains that the have’s and the have not’s in terms of the English language will continue to have this racial divide between them, at least in India, until each individual gets the opportunity to learn the English language in a manner that doesn’t make him/her felt left out in the race of language aspiration.

Up in the air

I am sitting under the shade of a small tree as I write this. There is a sprawl of green fields sparkling in the afternoon sun and I am surrounded by mountains all around. Just a few moments ago, I was up in the air, at least a 1000 metres higher than the 2600 metre high Dhauladhar ranges in Bir, Billing village in Himachal. I had my brief half hour tryst with glory in the skies and I guess I am not going any higher than what I just did.

Having made it to the takeoff point after a slow winding ascent from the base, on a serpentine road that had the width to support just about the four wheels of our land cruiser, there is no question in my mind that being airborne was the only way to come down this mountain. However, once on the top, I see a woman almost tripping over while taking off on the para with her trainer and the million fears that gnaw at my mind are already making their appearance full blast. There ain’t a phobia which ain’t my pal, acrophobia – the fear of heights, being jus’ one of them. In any case Sports and I have exemplified same pole ends of two magnets which by nature have to repel. Adventure sports, therefore would come with a greater repulsion push. However, despite all the fear, I also have an overwhelming desire to prove me to myself, the quantum of which is greater than the surge of panic.

strapped on

With a bit of nervous trepidation I am strapped on to a contraption that looks too limp and flimsy to support one body form, leave alone two. I am not too convinced about this life-jacket look-alike that hangs loosely shoulder downwards till way below my calves. I am told this will transform itself into a seat once we have our feet off the ground. There’s a clicking of clasps in at least ten different places and then they tell me that I am ready to go.

running before the takeoff

 I’d thought there would be some mechanism which will just push us up against gravity. Much to my surprise, I discover that it is I who has to be the propellant. I have to run a certain distance to let the wind play its part. With my helmet and goggles and this appliance all around me and an audience to boot, there’s no way, I can say no now, so I simply start running only to feel the weight of a bullock cart at my back and before I realize, my feet have left the ground, I have a seat below my butt, a beautiful canopy of the para above my head and there I am greeting the wind in the face and looking at the sun in the eye – I am up in the air. 

Surprisingly, it is so smooth that I actually get all poetic up there thinking I am riding the wind. My pilot perched right behind me, on a slightly elevated seat, asks me to move back on my seat and just enjoy the ride. I am a little taut, scared of any movement that might disturb the balance but I manage to shuffle around a bit and surely with my back rested, I feel more secure than ever as I keep feeling the elevation with the trees and people becoming mere specks below. The pilot maneuvers the para around for me to get a view of my kids and friends below and the jubilation of having done it engulfs me, so much so that I am brave enough to let go of one of the ropes that I’ve been holding on to for dear life to wave at them and shout, “I love you” to my kids. I hear a faint shout from one of them and I am ecstatic. 

victory wave from the skies

The para which has taken off just a minute before us is some distance away and I can see it moving about, while I seem to be only suspended in the air. I am foolish enough to ask my pilot if we are actually moving much like the one ahead of us. He assures me we are and asks me to look at the mountains in the distance to feel how we are moving; he even navigates the para in a way that I am able to get a spectacular 360 degrees view of the valley. I had anticipated fear to build up in me once we were up. Astonishingly, there’s none, not even when I look down upon the tree-tops which resemble a green carpet ready to cushion the fall, which, heaven forbid, if it ever happens. 

I can hear the wind as if huge reams of paper are flapping in my ear drums, only to abate for a few second and then take off again. The sun is brilliant but not harsh, thanks to the dip in temperature because of our height in the atmosphere and after a couple of minutes I begin to relax, suspended there, absorbing sensations, which I couldn’t have ever been able to fathom from my take off point.  

The only ignominious sensation that wells up in this near-perfect scene is that of nausea. My pilot asks me to look straight far ahead and keep talking. Despite my innate ability to talk nineteen to a dozen, there’s nothing much I can ask this guy besides his age and marital status and how long he’s been at this job. I emit a volley of burps and for some time manage to keep the nausea at bay. Now I know the expression ‘dizzying heights’ in its entirety. For one shameful moment I even wish that this ride is curtailed and that we make a landing sooner than the prescribed 30 minutes. But I am not going to say this and ruin the effect of a courage that I have mustered from God knows where. So I just think of what I am going to put on my facebook status and what I’d tell my husband of this act of valiance. To hear his reaction on a person who’s scared of air travel being up at 4000 metres on a para, open and exposed to the forces of nature.

The pilot tugs at his navigating ropes and brings us closer to the earth and I am almost thankful with relief on finding that we’ll be landing soon. As we begin our descent a fresh wave of nausea sweeps over me, and I am vomiting all over myself and around. The pilot is sympathetic, he only tells me to direct the ejections towards the side so that his contraption is not soiled. Despite the mess I’ve created there is a physiological relief and I am able to enjoy better the mid-air swinging supported by the gust of wind. 

No sooner have I begun to enjoy the ride than the pilot informs me to brace myself for landing. This brings on another worry; much like the take off, it is I who has to land on my feet first. Very gradually, we start to come down, the houses start looking bigger, the trees come closer and I space my feet in a manner that when they touch the ground, the feeling is soft, unhindered and as natural as a bird perching itself on a branch, with one aberration of course, after I land on my feet, I just let go and rest my butt on the ground. And no amount of pilot’s asking me to take a few steps would make me get up. After I am freed of the bulk around me, the relief of being in my natural habitat washes over me, and I get up to wash myself from a tap nearby. The lady who’d taken off before me is also there and we make our way to sit under the tree and share our experience.

While I write a portion of this experience sitting there under the shade with not a soul except this stranger by my side, I am applauding myself for having done what I thought I would never be capable of. Paragliding is definitely not an extreme sport, some would even scoff at the quantum of achievement that I am ascribing to that half an hour of being up in the air. But for me it is not about the thrill or ability to stay up there but it is more about surmounting the psychological barriers that I had created in and around myself. It is about deciding to do it with no extraneous influence, about taking that one step after another from the take off point, about having made that one beginning towards conquering my fear, about taking flight into the unknown and relishing the voyage as much as the touch-down.

The PR Pier - Much Ado About Nothing

I have had a checkered history of sorts when it comes to a career. In fact I would refrain from even calling it a career, considering I’ve been occupied in vocations as different from the other as skydiving and scubadiving, as also the fact that in none of them did I ever graduate to occupy the next level because by the time promotions came, so did our move – to a new town and a new workplace. Like most firsts, the first job has its own place in the memoryspace. My first job experience can be wrapped up well in the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays – Much Ado About Nothing. I remember it as a drone of some stunningly insipid tasks and celebration of some routine, unexciting results, which I am afraid to admit did not carry even an iota of achievement about itself.

I began with being an executive in a PR company, which translates to no more than being a clerk, following stories on the brands that you’re on, cutting and pasting them on a file, writing eulogies to the company’s credit, irrespective of it being eulogy-worthy. If the market share of the auto giant is nosediving, project it as an environment conscious, social citizen; if an upmarket restaurant is opening up, offer a few free lunches to the food writers (it’s a different story that there are no free lunches and you expect the eats to translate to real meat by way of a thumping praise for the restaurant in the foodies’ column); track down the scribes who’re following the corporate beat; breathe down their necks like any private bank’s loan-selling agent – in short, do everything to transform your computer printout into a newspaper story.

The journey of the text from the PR company’s desktop to the pale pages of the newspaper is somewhat like that of a superstar rising up from the gallows of anonymity to delirious stardom. However, unlike the superstar’s asiduity and charm in new releases, which helps him stay at the top of the charts, the corporate can not possibly churn out any bestselling idea at intermittent, if not regular, intervals to keep featuring on the financial pages now and then. So it was largely up to the weight-bearing PR mules to maintain the client’s popularity ratings and constantly endeavour to keep the name appearing on the pages in some context or the other.

Selling the press release was the most difficult, if not impossible, part. A PR story is not an advertisement which the company pays for. This is mere goodwill creation, keep throwing the company’s name into the financial pages of the newspaper, and you’ve earned the scraps from the giant who’s employed you as its PR agent. There’s nothing in it for the print or electronic medium unless it is a groundbreaking new product or philosophy, something exclusive that the newspaper or TV channel would give its right arm for.

Product launches, however, were easy times, all you needed to do was organise a press conference. You’d turn into an event manager, tie up with a hotel, become the courier for the invite to the journalists and the bait would be sound bytes from the company’s top men and a lavish spread of lunch. Interestingly the pivot for the success of the press conference, that is attendance from a huge number of publications and channels, would not be the exclusivity of the product or the stature of the brand ambassador. Instead it would be the stature of the venue and the exclusivity of the menu that would ensure the maximum footfalls.

Gruelling hours would be spent over deciding the venue, the invitees from the media, the delivery of the invites, the phone calls before sending out the invite, the phone call confirming the receipt of the invitation, the phone calls confirming the attendance, and then finally a plan outlining the execution from entry to exit. The pointers to success would be visible soon after the PR people occupied their places behind the desks handing out press releases before the conference begins. If a heavyweight journalist from a heavyweight publication walks in, half the battle is won. And even if the rest are from the light-weight category, it makes no difference, so long as all the seats are occupied and the client is made to feel that he’s got his money’s worth out of the sheer numbers of this congregation. But that’d be just a curtain-raiser, the real worth of the show would be the quantity and quality that would get covered and emerge the next day.

So like buyers of a lottery ticket hunting for one particular number, the next morning would be spent poring over newspapers to see the details of the press release. There would be surprises, some pleasant and some nasty – some newspapers, who the PR executives thought were putty in their hands had only a curt announcement of the brand launch, while the ones with attitude were singing paeans about the positioning, price and the promise of the product and how it would outdo its competitors in the near future.

Expressions would change from dejected to upbeat, accompanied with mild cursing and some exultation. The precious words from the papers would then be cut and pasted and filed for posterity in the voluminous folders made for the same – medals of gallantry in the visibility war. After the victory lap, people would start staking claim to a particular journalist’s presence at the conference or a half page description of the company’s plan or deride a colleague’s association with some newspaper crony where only six sentences have been published in spite of the gala event.

Spurred by the success the bosses would go advertising their achievement to the client. The client’s expression would remain fixed at some particle in space even after our bosses have got over with a rendition that would make Milton come out of his grave. But obviously the client knows that Milton is not enough and he wants some of Shelley and Shakespeare too as he wonders aloud, “I remember there was a journalist from X Times, why hasn’t the story featured in that newspaper?” The bosses open their mouths, shift about a bit in their chairs, give some vague answer and once again start mouthing words to get Milton out of his grave.

Hereafter, there would be an unending repititiveness to the whole process of clothing the client’s persona in different sheens and textures while the basic mannequin remained the same. At times, I would wonder, what are we trying to sell more, the face or the clothes. But time and again that is what we would end up doing, making our draping plea with a new-found grandiloquence at each step of our selling our non-seller strategem. Another act in the play titled, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

The 6-year wonder

December 2010, Atharv, my son, turned 6. There are many shining indicators of his having become a ‘big boy’. For one, he is out of kindergarten and has entered Class 1; second, he has miraculously stopped sucking his thumb of his own sheer will; third he has his fingers rolling seamlessly over the keyboard of his synthesizer. The pencil on the paper now moves quicker than usual and he can manage to mouth some impeccable English without me having to stitch his words with the grammar thread. The computer games show his level rise from easy to medium to tough, as he maneuvers the movement on a minefield or saves the ship’s crew from drowning. Much as I feel thrilled with the mind and the body muscles making visible strides towards acquiring more power, there is a vague fear of keeping myself abreast with this new-found development. I had thought that it would not be until his teens that my mind would start ticking about keeping pace with his thought, mindset, needs and abilities. But his ability to wrap up transactional analysis even before I can set it into motion has all my neurons doing a break dance within.

Queries like why his TV viewing is contingent upon his having finished his homework, or why he needs to learn to ride a bicycle, or why his younger sister doesn’t get yelled at as much as he does, or why children are not allowed for certain official parties, or why adults don’t undress before the kids, or why characters on cartoon network kiss on the lips onscreen but Mama says it is unhygienic to do so in his context, or why do people have to die, or where do they go once they are dead, or why he can’t pet the stray dogs in the colony, or why are they called stray dogs when the whole colony is their home – have been coming my way for a long time now. He and I are like two tennis players sending the ball back and forth from my court to his waiting for the other one to bat an eyelid and score a point. Right from the start, I have endeavoured to lace even the fairy-tales with a bit of real. Of late however, as he does a touché act with his repartees to some of my ‘rules on life’, I realize that while he revels in the mysticism and make-believe of stories and television, he deserves real answers to real questions. The questions are gaining more depth and I am increasingly out of depth providing custom-made answers.

For instance, a typical conversation goes like this.

“What is Good Friday?”

“It was the day Jesus Christ died.”

“How did he die?”

Now much as I would like to leave out the gory details of the crucifix, I don’t want to insult his intelligence.   So I begin with the age-old tale of good vs bad and victory of good over evil and tell him the story as bloodlessly as possible. He listens with consternation; I feel that he is playing the scene in his mind when the next few questions have me stumped.

“But didn’t you tell me Jesus is God?”

“Yes.”

“So how can God die?” I swallow before I can construct the next logical answer for him.

“Well he did and didn’t. He resurrected himself on Sunday and that is why we have Easter.”

Somehow, he’s not happy about the idea of God having to die and instead of ‘moral of the story’, the conversation ends with his ‘advice after the story’.

“Mama I think you don’t know this story too well. It is not possible for God to die. No one can kill God.”

The profundity of his observation about God being immortal leaves me with no choice but to concur, but the slur regarding the absence of correct details in my information bag has me worried. Also, he has some pertinent demands on why he ought to be treated differently from his father by the entourage of help at home. As my husband’s helper gets him a glass of water after he gets back from office, he promptly asks for a glass for himself as well. While I am telling him not to ask his father’s assistant to get him water, he immediately asks me, “He gets it for daddy, why not for me.” So I begin with the whole concept of privileges associated with the kind of work Daddy does.

“Daddy works so hard day and night. He works for us and also leads his men at work and in battle, and that is why he is entitled to that glass of water being served to him when he gets home.”

“But what about you? You don’t work, you only sleep the whole day, still you’re served a glass of water when you get home.”

Now this one is a rude shock, though he’s said it very matter of factly. My recovery, however, is quick. “It’s not bhaiya (the assistant) but didi (my domestic help, who stays full-time at home with me), who gets me water. And why, I go the school, I work for the welfare of the jawans’ families, help you with your homework. Isn’t all of that work?”

“Well yes,” he says after a thought, “but still it’s didi who does the maximum work in the house.”

“How come?”

“She washes our clothes, washes the dishes, cleans our room, locates all our toys for us, puts all our clothes properly, isn’t that a lot of work?”

“Yes, but I teach you, bathe you and dress you up, tell you stories……..”

“But that’s not hard Mama; it is didi who does the real hard work.”

Having said that he walks off having made a case in point. I realise it’s actually not a tough job to work for my own kids but it is definitely hard for my domestic help to make a living out of washing dishes and  support her entire family with the meager bucks she makes thus.

So there goes my theory about all the work that I do, he can already distinguish between ‘ordinary work’ and ‘hard work’. This very adult-like quality to his constant quest and observations is a mixed bag. For instance I was once trying to get Gayatri, my daughter to eat her veggies. I was telling her how I started to eat vegetables. “Before I got married to Daddy,” I began, “I didn’t like many vegetables, and so Daddy’s mother, Dadi, said, “that’s not so good”. Then I began to eat different vegetables. Then Daddy’s younger brother got married and Dadi asked his wife, Mitali the same question. She used to eat all vegetables. Dadi was very happy. Then Daddy’s youngest brother got married. She was asked the same question. She too used to have vegetables but not all. So Dadi told Mitali chachi, “You are the best”.”

“But mama, how can that be,” Atharv interrupted me before my story progressed further.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because it is YOU who is the best Mama.”

For once my spirits have soared sky-high with his remark.

“Really?” I ask him.

He nods his head nonchalantly indicating that I am asking the obvious.

From the uncanny knack for articulating wisdom out of the banal, to the innocence underlying the most brutal and frank opinion, every remark of my son is a cerebral stimulant. But amidst the moments of self-introspection that arise out of his comments, there are also moments of immense self gratification. Especially that particular moment when my son declares that his mother is the best.

Queen of all Times - Vodka

Ever so often, garbed in a saree, the hair blow dried, the lips stretched a milimetre in each direction, sitting in the midst of bright lights and women, men sipping alcohol at a distance, the jazz band crooning some old ‘70’s number in a bid to infuse some life, I wonder if in the overall scheme of the universe, at this point of time, this is where I am meant to be. Try as I might, to convince myself that this is a very small role-play involved in the larger theatre of life, I fail miserably at snipping the tentacles of extreme impatience rising up from within my gut, urging me tor escape from the din and smoke of delusional enjoyment that we have created around ourselves.

It sounds almost disloyal to express oneself in a brutally honest form about an organization where the pros outweigh the cons. But it is also impossible to con oneself into believing that this is where we’re having the time of our life. A party would bring to mind the essential ingredients of music, dance, loud conversation, friends, good-humoured banter, alcohol-inspired happiness – generally some delightfully entertaining stuff pleasing the senses. In our context, it implies a diktat from the word go. Everything is laid down from time and dress to the overall conduct of the programme. In a way it makes it easier to know what is in store but then we end up playing to the gallery rather than playing for our own mirth.

Well there are some amusing moments for sure. For instance before the biggest dignitary arrives, an announcement is made. Announcement part I - “As we all know today’s party is in honour of so & so.” Incidentally the whole station has been abuzz about the arrival of ‘so & so’ since a week; and on this particular day, every man, woman and machine has been injected with kinetic energy with the sheer impact of events in his honour. So after having heard so & so’s name throughout the day, it is highly likely that we may forget that this event of the day is in his honour. Announcement part II – “All men are requested to be with their respective wives.” Now this is not to cast aspersion on the moral integrity of the men, it is just that at our parties we manage to separate  the ‘mardana’ and ‘zenana’ section of the population with an almost puritan zeal. Announcement Part III – “Each one of you is requested to meet so and so and make your acquaintance.” So and So stays just a couple of thousands miles away, is here for just two days, will see us for about a minute and a half, and may never be seeing us again unless fate has other plans. But get acquainted we must, how much of that acquaintance lasts is a frivolous question in the domain of ‘etiquette during the party’. Announcement Part IV – “For dinner all men of rank X and above will be seated in the same hall as the VIP, the rest will be seated in the lawns.” You would almost think ours is a racist organization, classifying the noblemen and plebeians, when announcement part IVa) sets the record straight, “Please do not embarrass us by leaving the chairs in the dining hall vacant.” Even the royals want to be commoners!

Announcement Part V – “Snacks will not be served, snack trolleys will be moving around, you can help yourselves.” This is the most viable piece of information so far, like I said earlier, nothing like knowing what’s in store, especially in the gastronomical department. Announcement Part VI – “I hope we have all understood the conduct of the programme and will adhere to the basics.” This almost has the ring of ‘tresspassers will be prosecuted’ written on boards defining private property. No one trespasses but it would be adventurous to indulge in, so long as prosecution does not read persecution.

 ‘So and so’ is soon deluged with over 200 men and an equal number of women one after the other. These 400-something people seem like clones of each other, dressed in dark suits and sarees mouthing the same words – ‘Good evening’, ‘how’s your stay been so far’, ‘two days is too short a time to visit’, ‘how’s the weather back home’, before ‘so and so’ moves on to the next one to hear the same set of lines all over again. Even the intonation and punctuation doesn’t vary, I bet. So and so, is also an evolved specimen of our very own species, so we also know what he’s going to ask and what we are supposed to say. So when he says, “Hello, how are you”, I say, “I am well, thank you”. Then come the standard questions of ‘how many kids do you have, the weather’s good here, are you having a good time, must be exciting.” It is now that that the conflict begins – to be or not to be. I know the answers have to be bordering on positive if not altogether positive. So the first two questions, well yes thankfully I can say I have two kids and the weather’s great in this part of the country but excitement and good time seem to be like asking about the sunny days in Mawsynram. The husband is a tactical specialist, he is trained to foresee and avoid disasters. So before I can utter that yeah, we’re having a great time, it is just that the women happen to spend about half an hour with their husbands on a good day, the husband intervenes with his take on our lives, on how we’re all living like a big happy family and manage to work hard and play hard. Every bit, politically correct, he lives up to his training.

When So and So moves to the next couple, the husband and I gravitate to our respective gender groups. Sarees and jewellery, form the skeleton of us women’s conversation. This is not as banal as you’d think it to be. This is that one source from where fashion, geography, economics, cultural lineages of fabric and politics bursts forth. In a casual conversation, you learn to distinguish tussar from jute, pashmina from crepe, benarsi from bandhej, bonkai from balucheri, kanjeevaram from ikkat, and designer from wannabes. Then comes the geography bit, where the loom is manufactured and exactly in which state, city/village, gali, mohalla, ward number, one can access the best at the most economic cost. We make some intelligent conversation too, how the looms of the weavers of Benares are lying barren because no one wants to take up the profession. We’ve read the page on city-sales and can rattle out verbatim the stores where sales are on. From macro level we go micro, talk about embroidery and whether Kashmir’s needlework is as good as Bareili’s khaddi work, and if chiffon is sturdy enough to withstand the needlepricks as crepe is. Then we talk about how the husband is never an accompanying sufferer in the shopping expeditions of women, how they never have the time, how we as a sorority of sisters must bandy together to achieve our objective – buying all sarees, embroidery and ethnic stuff that the city has to offer in the two years that we spend here. I look from one fountain of knowledge to another, clearly awed by their zeal.

I go across to the husband across the lawns, seeking refuge. The men are discussing Spectrum Raja and ISRO-Devas deal. I know there’s a scam but can’t understand any bit of what it entails. A glass of Vodka and sprite down my gullet helps, and suddenly I have started my own conversation on schooling and the challenges of child-rearing with an articulation I’ve never experienced before. Another glass down and I can even contribute my own two-penny bit on corruption and morals to the husband’s group. The ‘70’s crooner seems to be striking the right notes. I am rapidly engrossed sharing details of ‘Shantaram’ with someone when ‘so and so’ saunters in our direction, and asks me, “Having a good time”. I give a nonchalant shrug, and he’s kind enough to tell me, ‘The best way to have a good time in the Army ………”. Before he can educate me, I give a new dimension to valiance, I finish his sentence for him, “…….is to have two vodkas at the party.”

“Well that too,” he smiles benevolently, and the shocked looks on the faces of the gentlemen quickly change to sheepish nods. They better not disagree with whatever gyan spouts forth from  ‘so & so’.

‘So & so’ moves on to broaden his spectrum of acquaintance. But I am doing a double take on what I just stated in the earlier part of this note. I am sure that ‘so & so’ staying ‘thousands miles away’, meeting us for a ‘minute and a half’ will surely be carrying an everlasting piece of some acquaintance inspired by the Queen of all Times – Vodka.

Ode to 4 BIHAR on its 50 years

There was one moment in time

That one moment that I was born

To live and breathe and fly and soar

During noon and night and dusk and dawn.

In my fledgling wings of 1960

I gave people a sense of belonging

They gave me the name 4 BIHAR

And for fifty proud years I’ve been a standing.

I have felt the agony of loss

And the jubilation of victory

I’ve tasted the salt of the tears

And indulged in the frenzy of revelry.

Discipline and training, demos and exercise

Hockey and football, every minute made me wise.

I am tuned to be battle-ready, for peace or for war

To run in with a battle cry, or host a party for two hundred and twenty four.

The snow capped peaks and the desert dunes

The band of pipers and the military tunes

From the Chinese aggression to the Sri Lankan op Pawan

I’ve seen the grief and glory associated with each one.

North Biharis and Adivasis

Form the warp and weft of my fabric

In their courage & commitment,

They’re nothing short of heroic.

Tradition and valour are my middle name

Esprit-de-corps is the strength of our game.

The digest of service dotted with fading ink

It’s the saga of a culture where the brave don’t blink.

People come and go

To places known and unknown

But I remain the only one

They would always call their own.

Like the flow of a river, there’s no stopping me

Like the majestic mountains, I stand as tall as can be.

Like the wind, I blow across the sands of time

Like the sky, I embrace each one as mine.

I am courage, I am enthusiasm, I am discipline, I am killer instinct

I am warmth, I am wisdom, I am passion, I am my fellow brother’s kin. 

I am 4 BIHAR, I am a paltan with 50 years of inventory

I am culture, I am tradition, I am the future inspired by my history.

Morning Raga

The Morning Raga

It is the same story every morning

The same song I sing

“Up and out, in and spit”

Whisper and shout, love and rift.

I threaten the son

Cajole the daughter

The boy obliges

The girl can slaughter.

I raise my voice

There’s a wailing noise

From “Don’t you dare” to “won’t you please”

These so-called angels bring me to my knees.

I’ve supplied all toothpastes

The red and pink and white and blue

They sampled and experimented

And each one they eschewed.

The milk temperature is never right

The taste always terrible

Bournvita, Horlicks, Boost and Amway

I’ve got it all on the table.

One wants it warm

The other likes it cold

There’s no one package

In which it can be sold.

Between the microwave and the ice

The egg half-boiled and fried

I roar, “Sip and gulp, chew and swallow”

I am all-agitated, down to my bone marrow.

But I have to smile and nod

And learn to spare the rod

The clock is ticking away

And I have to keep the mutiny at bay.

Milk and egg, is only half the marathon won

And another half, yet to be run

There’s the bath and the school dress

And until then, I live under duress.

The bath is not a shower

Between mother and son, it’s a game of power

He says, “This cut on the knee, and nick on the shin,

A drop of water there, and up will go my chin”.

I sigh and tell him, “The soap’s a car

And your limbs the highway

As it negotiates the distance

It’s only I, who will have a say”.

I scrub him with soap and let him mope

“It’s almost eight, you’re going to be late”

That’s my standard battle cry

Win or lose, I have to try.

Somehow the soap is washed

The little body towel wrapped

Now’s the turn for my second one

The same bath story in a different format.

The soap becomes Barbie’s chariot

The horses galloping fast

As this pixie of mine rebels

Once more the die is cast.

There’s not a trick in the book

That works with this adorable imp

Explode or implore

All efforts simply leave me limp.

So I play to her tune

For so long as I can

Father, mother, didi, bhaiya

She’s the ring master for the whole clan.

If it’s my good day

She will accept my act

And if the entertaining not good enough

There’s no absolution, use force or tact.

Some formula I desperately fit in

And this one joins the brother in the towel

With the TV now on

There’s no mindspace for either to grovel.

On come the shirt and tie, tunic and shorts

The TV’s on, no room for rebellious thoughts

Pogo and cartoon send them into a trance

Suddenly there’s a magical change in their stance.

Whoever called the TV an idiot box,

It makes it easier to get on the shoes and socks

But it’s not all cakewalk

The TV’s off and they begin to balk.

Gently I push them

Towards the exit door

While answering at least 10 questions

Or perhaps even more.

In their pickup they’re about to leave

A sigh of relief I am about to heave

When out comes my son and runs into his room

With what speed – zip, zap, zoom.

He is a man on a mission

His face is fraught with tension

It’s like looking for a life jacket on a capsizing boat

As he excavates amidst books, toys, sweaters and coats.

I fret and fume and raise all hell

When out he comes carrying his Ben Ten satchel

He wears a guilty look, he tries to hide a smile

How could I remain angry with someone so without guile.

His satchel has goodies,

He gives his sister some

And once in the vehicle,

He has earned a hero’s welcome.

They pop their head out of the window

And throw their arms around me

It seems like a 6-day and not 6-hour parting

But I’ll love this feeling for so long as a mother I’ll  be.

So we hug and exchange our muaah-muaahs

Soak in every bit of the emotional opera

We could make a perfect picture

For an ad film’s camera.

Love, anger, powerplay and subterfuge

We play this morning raga each day

A perfect combination of devilry and angelhood

I wouldn’t have my children any other way.

In the high and lows of our morning raga

The heart’s lute strikes many a note

God’s blessings to me in real live form

These sun’s rays, on my children, I’ll forever dote.