Fame in the times of Cholera - Ten ways to eternal glory.

I think Maya’s got it right..Maya who? Who else but behnji from the Northern Province. Every ruler would want to be remembered a great in posterity. And if history has taught us anything it is that to be remembered great, you’ve got to build stuff for archeologists to dig up in the future. Or just look at this Tut built a gold mask or whatever and got himself buried in that, Nebuchadenessar built the hanging gardens, Akbar the fort at Agra. The Taj and the Great Pyramid and the Coliseum. And I guess for all the criticism that’s been thrown at Behnji for being a backward (looking) leader, I must say she has her eyes set on the future. Well it does seem so from the single minded determination with which she’s building shrines to herself all over Lucknow, Noida and the rest of the province. The last I heard the largest dome in all of Asia would soon no longer be the Gol Gumbaz as history books taught us. Instead it would be somewhere in Noida with Behnji’s name inscribed. But then I was left wondering if it isn’t all this a waste. Utterly profligate in these bleak times. I can understand the craving that every man has to leave a mark on the world even after death. But is all this necessary. Hence I started thinking of a few ways to be remembered for ever…but in cost effective ways. Here goes.

1. Make cheap copper coins with your profile embossed in them on one side and your name inscribed as the great King 'YourName' on the other. About a thousand would do. Obtain a thousand post covers and five rupee stamps for each. Put one coin in a cover, paste the stamp and send it to random addresses in thousand locations around the world.

Eg: To, Mr. Cherian Nair, American Junction, Newyork, America.

Not finding the recipient the letter and with it the coin would find its way to some dump yard soon enough. This way coins with your name and profile embedded would be in around 1000 locations for future archeologists to dig up.

Cost of fame:

Coins @ Rs 10 per piece: 1000 X 10 = Rs10000

Post Covers @ Rs 5 per piece: 1000 X 5 = Rs5000

Stamps @ Rs 5 per piece: 1000 X 5 = Rs5000

Total – Rs 20000

2. Visit yahoo chat rooms of historic cities or cities which have historic monuments like Pisa, Cairo, Beijing, Machu Pichu etc. and get pally with one person each from these places. Convince them on some grounds, say it’s your dying mother’s last wish, to bury metallic boards somewhere near the periphery of the compound which houses the famous monuments in their city with this message inscribed in it:

“This great monument was built by/in memory of the great ruler ‘YourName’ in the year ‘Year of construction of the monument’”

Cost of fame:

Internet at Rs 15/hour and assuming it takes one hour chat sessions for a month to convince 10 such persons.

Total Cost = 15 X 30 = Rs1500

3. Build fake websites glorifying the greatness of King ‘YourName’ and host it in servers located everywhere from Kyoto to Mogadishu and in as many languages as you find translators. Pay google for ads and some ad agency for keyword optimizing your website by adding words like “Prostitute”, “sex”, “gay”, “lesbian”, “drugs”, “viagra” etc etc.

Cost of Fame:

Cost of website @ Rs 1000 per website for 20 websites = Rs 20000

Cost of Google ad. Somebody help me here. I’m venturing for around Rs 10000

Cost of keyword optimization. Again somebody help me here. Venturing for Rs 10000 again.

Total – Rs 40000

4. Have a star named after you at star registry. In the future when inter galactic travel will be made possible and some earthling will be traveling to planet Krypton to meet his uncle Clark Kent and he passes by the star with a board on it which says “Star ‘YourName’ of Galaxy-YK4533S”, he’s gonna do a google (yea google’s gonna be there even then I bet) on ‘YourName’ to find several websites (the ones that you created long ago) glorifying the great King ‘YourName’. Well I’m sure people will start talking.

Cost of Fame:

Cost of naming a star at starregistry.com = approx. $500 = @ Rs 50 a dollar = Rs 25000

Total Cost – Rs 25000

5. Spread emails saying King YourName,  dying king of different lands like Siberia/Nigeria/Tasmania/Albania/Lithuania is seeking heirs for his unfathomable wealth. Please forward this mail to all your loved ones who shall all receive a piece of it.

Cost of Fame: Again Internet rate at Rs 15/hour. Assuming an hour’s usage to send the mail.

Total cost = Rs 15

There’s your low cost solution to eternal fame. What? I promised 10 but I’m just giving you just half of it? I though you’d be used to such promises. Like what your HR department said when u asked for the variable pay promised at the end of the year. Well a sign of the times. :)

But at least here I am offering you a complete fame solution for just about Rs85000. That’s probably lesser than the cost of one raised bronze finger on those several Behnji statues that’s dotting every gali, nukkad and pan shop in the Northern Province.

These are desperate times and it calls for desperate solutions. But dreams need not be cut short in times of recession do they. Just reach up and touch the stars. Behnji seems to know.

She knew her way...

Elaine was fidgety right from the morning. She was alone at home. DJ’s mom was staying with him and it’s been more than a week since she had some alone time with him.

Screw the hag. No, repent. Take it back. She’s going to be your mom-in-law.

The marriage was three months away but DJ and El were more or less like a couple for years. She had always proclaimed that she’s never going to get married. It was pointless as far as she could see. And worst of all marriage itself was a patriarchal institution designed to breed a culture of female servitude. But ever since that milestone of turning 30 started looming before her like a deathly shadow she had started contemplating giving in to the idea that her conservative parents had been trying to buy her into for the past eight years or so; ever since she graduated from IIT. 

She liked to think of herself as a self made woman. Right from an early age she had tried to be self reliant. Yes her parents had paid for most part of her tuition fees and other expenses till college but unlike most others in her neighborhood she didn’t make them buy her expensive clothes or cosmetics nor did they have to dish out anything for donations for her college admission. No not even tuition fees for coaching classes. Her NTSE and other scholarships had paid a part of her college fees. The highly skewed (in favour of men) male-female ratio in the IIT had only helped fuel her feeling of self reliance. She had fought against the odds and made her mark in what was believed to be a man’s world. She knew how to hold her own among men. And later in the corporate world she had smashed every so called glass ceiling that she had encountered. She felt like punching his nose out once when a colleague of her suggested that she got her way around because of her good looks. She had given him a sound hearing and he had never dared cross her ever again. Looking back she could see that she had pretty much done what she had planned as she first walked through the gates of IIT Kanpur. She remembered that first day. The single engine training Cessna taking off from the airfield inside the IIT had her thinking of her school project where she had made a model aircraft piloted by a remote control and her best friend Priya, who had decided to join an airhostess academy after her 12^th. It was her idea that they team up to build the model plane. If she was so crazy about flying why didn’t she go for Pilot training instead of being an airhostess, she had asked Priya. The reply was “That’s not for girls, El”.

She hated weekends and this was a particularly long one, Christmas being on a Friday. She was stuck at home coz her car was in the garage and had decided to stay at home in her bed for the Saturday night instead of Geoffrey’s her favorite watering hole.

Mental Note: Don’t give the car for service anytime before Christmas or for that matter any major holidays.

It was one in the night. The cold was biting into her despite having downed at least four drinks since the dinner. She reached for the pack of Marlboro lights but found it empty. Well trust a pack of cigarettes to let you down when u most need it. But she had backup. She scrounged her bag, there had to be a few left from the joints that DJ had given her last week. Success. She smoothened out the wrinkles on the cig and lighted it. She took a long drag and kept the smoke inside her lungs for some time until she could feel her nerves calming down a bit. Without exhaling the smoke she took another drag in. This was good stuff, she thought.

Half an hour later she was still awake. The dark room was filled with cigarette fumes and she felt suffocated. The TV was also on in the drawing room. She was feeling as fidgety as before. She wanted to be with DJ. She reached for her mobile on the night stand and dialed his number. After what seemed like a hundred rings DJ’s sleepy voice answered.

“Haan kudiye kai zaala?”

She wasn’t in the mood for his broken Marathi. “Deeraj, just shove it ….”, she never liked him teasing her Marathi upbringing. But he loved doing it none the less and had in fact secretly put in much effort to learn the language. But she had called him “Deeraj” and that meant she’s really not in the mood. “Listen, DJ get your ass over her now, I’ve got to see you”.

“No way, I’m not getting out in this cold. And I don’t want to explain to mom the reason for my disappearance in the middle of the night. She’ll wake up the minute I turn the key on the ignition and there won’t be any going out for as long as she’s here”, he said.

DJ had a point his mom hadn’t taken well to the fact that he’s getting married to a Bombay bred Christian girl. She had lined up a list of homely Jain girls for Deeraj her only son when he decided to announce the shocker at home.

What the heck, if he’s not going to get here I’m gonna be there. She didn’t say anything more but slammed the phone down. DJ knew that wasn’t a good sign.

The digital clock on the nightstand showed that it was ten minutes past two. Going out at this time in Delhi in a taxi wasn’t safe, she knew. This was where she liked her hometown of Mumbai much more than Delhi. Raj, yea he could take her to DJ’s place. But the only thing is that she didn’t want to ask him for a favor. But she knew how to have her way around him.

Raj was a colleague in office. He pretended to be a perfect gentleman in front of her but she knew he wasn’t. She’d slice open a person, have him diagnosed with one look, a two minute conversation and a shared fag. That was her fool proof process of judging a man. It had never failed her.

She picked up her mobile again. Checked the twitter feed for anything interesting. Changed her status to “Out for a fox hunt”. Then dialed Raj’s number.

“Hey Raj, Elaine here. Hope I didn’t wake you up”

Indiscernible voices on the other side…finally there was a reply “Hey El, No no I was up reading a book, how are you?”

El knew he was lying, and that was what she expected him to do. “Raj, I feel like having a drink how about coming over?” Again she knew what the reply would be. And it was validated by the front door bell.

Raj was practically in his night wear over which he had pulled a jacket, but it was obvious he had tried his best to set his hair down with a quick dash of his wet set gel and the overwhelming scent of the deodorant just confirmed that he hadn’t taken a bath this weekend.

El handed over the pint bottle of beer that she had in her hand to Raj and they sat down in front of the TV on the midsized couch. El knew exactly how to play on Raj’s weaknesses. Conversation was on mundane topics, the TV was muted but the scene showed a new on screen actress trying hard to make her mark with the usual skin show. But El knew where Raj’s eyes were. The dirty bastard; his idea of Catholic girls were probably shaped watching pictures like “Julie”. She suppressed the urge to slap him on the face and said “Raj, let’s go for a drive”. Raj wasn’t exactly keen on the idea. His chances of something happening between them were in his calculations the maximum if they stayed inside the house. But still he reluctantly agreed.

El knew that the key in making him do what she wanted was to keep alive his hopes of something happening. Men!! She thought. She pulled on her worn out blue jeans, tied her hair into a pony, grabbed her favorite jacket from the closet and started to the door. Raj was still trying to gulp his beer down and El had disappeared outside.

“Where to?” asked Raj.

“Hmm, let’s take the highway and towards Noida”, said El. DJ lived in Lajpat Nagar which was on the way to Noida. She was hoping it didn’t come to his mind. She diverted his attention by touching the label in his jacket. “UCB? Cool jacket Raj”.

“Oh you like it? I got it when I went vacationing to New York during Diwali. My jijaji runs a store there.”

Despite the bitter cold El decided to pull the window down. Partly because she hoped the cold and the wind would clear up her head and partly because she hoped the noise of the wind would stop Raj from continuing with his blabber. But that wasn’t to be.

“Listen, El I know something is bothering you, you can tell me whatever it is.” Raj slowly put an arm around her shoulders and waited for a response. She felt as if there was a leech on her shoulder but still kept mum. A shudder ran down her spine the kind of feeling she used to get when she had to clean her bathroom drain. El decided to play along still. “Yea Raj, things haven’t been going well you know, generally”. She knew Raj would assume that things are not well between she and DJ and that’s what she wanted.

Raj grew bolder. This girl was apparently in distress. He saw his moment in that. Damsels in distress were his favorite prey. He brushed a strand of hair that was falling over the side of her face behind her ears. That was his standard modus operandi with women. He could see it working with the so far infallible El. Yes, finally this would be the day. They were coming up on the Lajpat Nagar fly over and the Yamuna appeared up ahead. The highway lay desolate stretching across the wide river bed.

“Raj Raj, are u sleeping or something. Stop the car over here”. He was brought back from the labyrinth of his sullied thoughts. What? What did she say, stop the car? Maybe she had to take a leak. No that can’t be it. Maybe she doesn’t want to wait till we get to the isolation of the Yamuna Bridge.

As soon as the car stopped Elaine opened up the door and jumped out. “I’m going somewhere, it’s just around the corner, you don’t have to come. I’ll see you on Monday then. Bye and thanks for the ride”

Before Raj could even realize what was happening Elaine had crossed the desolate road and had disappeared into a lane on the opposite side. For a minute he thought about running after her. But he knew there wasn’t any point. He had realized what the girl had done. DJ stayed in Lajpat Nagar, he now remembered. That girl was smart. Smart enough to outfox a fox like him.

Elaine reached DJ’s house. The light was on in his room. She jumped on to the guava tree in the yard and nimbly climbed to the balcony outside DJs room in the first floor. And just as she landed the door opened and DJ stood there smiling at the girls antics. “You know mom would be proud she’s getting a circus acrobat for a daughter in law”, he said smiling. Elaine laughed and gave a hard punch on his stomach as they moved into DJ’s room. “She’s getting much more than that, a fox tamer too”, she thought.

Letters from an era of 5 paisa candies.

If there ever is a Guinness record on most love letters handed over I guess I would be a strong contender for it. Ah if only it was an Olympic event, I would have probably got to fulfill one of my biggest dreams of representing India there. As a lanky school boy the only time I got to represent my school in the state athletic meet was in quiz competitions (don’t ask me why but the ICSE board had deemed quiz fit to be conducted as part of the athletic meet rather than the cultural meet) and watching the athletes garner all the glamour and attract all the eyes I had secretly pledged that it would be the Olympics or bust for me. Turning on the wrong side of twenty five I have all but given up on that dream. The easiest step now seems to get into that chair of the President of the International Olympic Committee and pull a few strings to get my desired ‘sport’ on the list of Olympic events. Coming back to handing over of love letters, I guess I still should have the knack for it. It’s an inborn talent, it wouldn’t vanish I suppose. But the last time I tried that out was I guess fifteen years ago.

Growing up in a residential society of around fifty families has its advantages.

Choice of cricketing targets: You get to have your pick of windows to break during cricket. Fourth floor windows came with an automatic prize of an egg puffs and drinks (ahh, memories of those two rupee cold drinks).

Anytime access to food: some or the other family would always have put out those delicious pickles in the sun to dry. The Konkani family in the third floor had a particularly tongue tingling recipe for sun dried mango pickles.

Free entertainment: Now this is complicated, but I guess you young boys who grew up in pre ‘tata sky’ era would know. A little magic trick using insulated copper wire connected to your TV and attached to a twisted metal shirt hanger placed strategically near the path of your neighbor’s cable gets you free cable television. My dad still thinks I managed without TV those times during the study holidays in March when the cable connection used to be disconnected.

Acrobatic lessons: You know that quintessential water tank in every housing society on top of a tower. Yea, even ours had one of those. It stood above even the tallest buildings in the society. And not many of my creed (that’s 12 and stupid) dared climb up the 88 rungs of that ladder to its top. Let me confess now Mukundan uncle, (he was the secretary of the residential society) it was me who threw all those plastic bags in the tank that blocked the water supply for three days. And also for the record that cricket ball that hit the back of your neck (he had to walk around with a neck collar for a week) , was intentional. And in those days if your Bajaj scooter refused to start in the morning it was probably because early morning pee (A lot of boys my age in that society perfected their aim on Mukundan Uncle’s scooter’s petrol tank mouth) and petrol didn’t mix properly.

But probably the biggest advantage of all was that you had guys and gals aplenty of your age to partner with in a thousand crimes (Don’t worry Jerry I’m not confessing to anything here). This brings me back to those love letters. Me being the innocuous little boy was the preferred love letter carrier for many hot blooded young turks in the society who decided to try their luck with the pretty maidens there.

There was this chechi* in the society, let’s just say ladyB. Now ladyB was 18 at the time and I was 12. She was the prettiest girl I knew. Her long frocks (ala Kavya Madhavan’s when she skipped across the green fields of paddy to the tune of a valluvanadan* song) as she walked in grace used to send my heart a fluttering. I was her only true friend (from among those other 12 year olds who used to ogle at her so rudely) and we used to have these intellectual discussions (I wanted to let her know that I was extra mature for my age and convince her that the idea of eloping with me is not entirely preposterous) every evening as it turned dark and the regular games of kallanum-policum (chor-sipahi) with the ‘kids’ was done. I saw myself as her guardian and wouldn’t bear it if any of the boy talks (and at 12 believe me there are many) started drifting to any‘thing’ to do with her. Sorry Satish for that broken tooth. Pals? now that neither of us got her?

It was one such evening when ladyB and me were engrossed in discussions (probably about the vanity of life or the transcendent nature of love) that Arunchettan called me. I hated that a*****. I was one of his primary ragging targets as a five year old (I spent more than a dozen years in that place), but now that I was all grown up we were buddies (or so he thought).

Arunchettan: Vinu kutta* how are you da, long time. We don’t spend time together anymore kutta.

Me: (Can’t you see that I was with my lover) hehe, yea ArunChetta, how’s your college going. Mom was telling me that you got into Engineering college (his dad in the gulf must have paid lakhs for that seat).

Arun: yea its great da..Vinu, do me a favour my man. Give this letter to someone wont you?

Now I’ve acted as a courier service to Arunchettan several times before (never knew what happened of it all) and I was glad to take up the call to what was now almost a vocation.

Me: Oh anytime chetta*, ippravashyam vellathum nadakkumo? (Will something happen this time?)

The bloody Casanova had raised his targets now that he was an engineer to be. As soon as he said that the letter was for ladyB the blood started boiling in me. My eyes bulged and the little sinews stretched and the next thing I knew, I had thrown myself at him and had knocked him over from the ledge he was sitting on. I was scratching his face with my finger nails and was about to bite his nose off. But Arunchettan was thrice my size and a regular at the local gymkhana. He regained his composure after the initial shock and just lifted me and threw me away as he would do a pillow. And before I even got back to my feet he was pounding my face with his huge fists.

A crowd quickly gathered and ladyB was also among them. Somebody pulled away Arunchettan from atop me. My spunk had still not been driven out (not a thousand of those mighty punches would have done it that day), and I was like a Doberman (some might call a dachshund, because of my size but hey I know better) tugging at its leash. I yelled out all the abuses that my ‘refined’ pals of the housing society had taught me.

“eda, patti (you dog) how dare you write a letter to ente pennu (my girl)”. I saw ladyB’s look change from wonder to shock, from the corner of my eyes.

Fifteen years ago and that’s how I sacrificed my career delivering letters. Well it didn’t go to waste. Arunchettan as far as I know never dared give a letter to ladyB. But on the flip side ladyB’s parents married her off before she turned 20. I was heartbroken and didn’t have dinner that night of her wedding despite mom having made her special fried rice and chicken curry. But all wasn’t lost. LadyB’s sister was coming back from her nursing studies the next month.

*chechi - elder sister literally but used for any female who’s older than you

*chettan - elder brother literally but used for any male who’s older than you

*valluvanadan- pertaining to valluvanad which I guess is somewhere in north Kerala.

*Kavya Madhavan – Mallu actress.

*kutta – affectionate name for a small boy (nothing to do with kutha in hindi)

PS: Mukundan uncle thankfully didn’t have burly sons who’d have otherwise shown me the righteous path. But in case he has grandsons of the type, please hear me out, you would have done the same had you been in my position. 

A Call across the Teesta...

Siliguri is a blink and you miss sort or town. A curve in the road, a couple of bridges over fast flowing rivers, shops on either side, mountains in the distance. Except for me it was my destination and I couldn’t afford to blink. It was around five in the evening when we got out of the bus and collected our baggage from the rack. After eighteen hours in the rickety bus from Kolkata Gaurav and me were really looking forward to resting on a flat bed, but the journey wasn’t yet over. Gangtok was another three hours from here and the last buses up the mountain left at three pm. It was as if everything that could go wrong was in fact going wrong. We had missed the train from Kolkata yesterday. Blame it on the mercurial traffic. Salt lake to Sealdah station in normal days took not more than half an hour. Yesterday it took us one and half painful hours. We then went to Ultadunga hoping that we could hitch a ride on one of those private buses to Gangtok or Siliguri or Darjeeling. We had four days off, and really didn’t mind where we were going. Having stood for an hour at Ultadunga it became obvious that we wouldn’t be going anywhere from there, and on someone’s suggestion decided to go to Esplanade and check our luck from there. Esplanade was from where all the long distance buses started. We managed to get two seats on an ‘additional’ (which actually meant ‘makeshift’) bus to Siliguri. The rickety bus broke down twice on the way and eighteen hours later dropped us off. Stepping out of the bus we were swarmed by beggars, hotel agents, taxi walas and various peddlars of goods ranging from children’s toys and Darjeeling tea to ganja and charas. We practically swam past that crowd to a nearby tea stall and sat down on a wooden bench.

Rain was like a curtain in the backdrop. It was always there and even in the summers of Bengal you wouldn’t be surprised if it turned dark all of a sudden in the evening and the clouds burst with mighty vengeance. Right from the time we started it was there flirting romantically and threatening furiously at the various times. Here in the valley it was floating in the air. Tiny droplets almost moved in the wind rather than come crashing down with fury. I sipped down my second tea, served in little round cups of clay, my mind trying to figure out the course of action. We didn’t have hotel reservations in Gangtok, and not sure if we’d be able to make it up the mountains and beat the falling darkness to our destination. Gaurav wasn’t the one who’d normally keep his mouth shut, but the mood of the day seemed to have got to him too. I saw him gazing intently at a snail making its way to a hole in a fungus infected piece of log. The tea done and seeing no point wasting any more time we set out to find someone who would take us up to Gangtok and managed to find a Sumo already filled to the brim calling out for more passengers. We got two seats in the back which faced sideways and were absolutely cramped for space as there already were two others there. Three hours through the winding roads in this wasn’t exactly going to be a pleasure trip.

My mind wandered, thinking of holocaust and concentration camps and lines of trucks and rail wagons with people cramped like sticks in a matchbox. The taxi started and we sped through a well paved road with an overhead canopy of thick trees making the driver switch on the headlights. But soon enough the road began to wind as we approached the base of the mountains. The lowest folds of the Himalayas were fairly nonthreatening. It was much like the demure façade of a wicked witch almost enticing you to come closer before it revealed the jagged ridges and jutting rock faces.  I get an eerie feeling whenever I start on such mountain journeys; I guess remnants of several trips to Munnar gone bad long long back. The road started twisting and turning as our Sumo boldly took on the hills and the Teesta soon appeared to our right almost in reassurance to keep going. And almost as if inspired by it a Sikkimese girl who sat in the front with the driver and two other girls started singing a hindi song in a sing-song Sikkimese accent and a strangely soothing nasal voice. Apprehensions of a treacherous journey melted away and I was soon drifting off to sleep and didn’t notice the darkness envelope us and the rain getting heavier.

We were nearing Gangtok at around 8, when I was brought back to consciousness by a vicious turn in the road. To my amazement the Sumo had shed many of its passengers on the way. The group of girls an old couple and we were the only ones left now and Gaurav had moved into the middle row of seats and was chatting away excitedly to the singer girl, whose name I later found out to be Ganga.

Gangtok was a typical hill town with one arterial road, a mall road and a market. Gaurav had talked with the driver of the Sumo who agreed to take us till Lachung in North Sikkim the next day from where we could hike to Yumthang to the origins of the Teesta.

The next day we started very early in the day and I was surprised to find Ganga and the other girls also were traveling with us. This time Gaurav and I took the seats up ahead with the driver and the girls were sitting in the middle row. The distance to Lachung was just about 125 kilometers but it would be a whole day’s journey through treacherous terrain made accessible through the snaky roads of the Border Roads Organization.

Half an hour into the journey, bending a curve we saw the first glimpse of Kanchenjunga in the distance. The majestic snow capped peak glimmering in the golden morning light was magnificent. Throughout the journey our driver, Lapang Sherpa, a young man of 21 was chatting away as if we were long lost friends. Ganga and Lapang were both from Lachung and they knew each other. Along the way Lapang picked up people and it seemed that practically all those people knew him from such travels earlier. He has been ferrying people and goods that route for years. Lapang and Ganga were both prolific talkers and by lunch time we had made good progress and were in schedule to reach Lachung before nightfall. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch which was nothing more than a small hut and the lady served us rice and chicken, which for me tasted much like that I was used to at my home.  

By around two in the afternoon we reached another small village from where I bought a pair of woolen gloves and a cap because I was having apprehensions that the flimsy jacket I had with me was going to be no match for the harsh mountain cold and Lapang advised that I should get reinforcements. But then when we were about to resume our journey we were told that traffic up ahead was stopped because of a minor landslide and it would take at least an hour or two for it to be cleared. Lapang suggested we spent more time in the village rather than get stuck in the middle of nowhere. We went back to the shop from where I had bought the woolens which also acted as a grocery store, a vegetable store and a tea stall. Gaurav bought two woolen scarves and gifted them to Lapang and Ganga, which they accepted extremely reluctantly but with much gratitude. We sat sipping warm tea flavored with herbs and spices and watched the sun slowly starting to go behind the mountains above the village.

It was almost dark by the time we started from the village and we had another couple of hour’s journey left to Lachung. Ganga started talking about her dreams of coming to Kolkata to study to become an airhostess and making it big. Lapang teased her that her life was in the village and there’s no point weaving up impossible dreams. The other girls who had started out with Ganga had got out on the way. The last leg of the journey to Lachung all of us shared our stories. Gaurav of his rather farfetched adventures of being attacked by a jaguar in Hrishikesh, me about life in Kerala which to them might as well have been in another continent and so on. By around eight in the night when we reached Lachung the small town was almost entirely dark. Lapang found us a place to stay. For dinner we had rice and a stew of all different meats thrown together, which to my surprise was extremely delicious. After dinner we bade good bye to Ganga and Gaurav made sure that she got his mobile number and asked her to give him a call when she came to Kolkata for her air hostess training. We found a place where they sold liquor and we got a half bottle of whiskey.

The next morning we were awaken by the sounds of Lapang banging on our doors. Our plan was to travel to Yumthang on our own and then travel back to Gangtok that day evening to Gangtok. Lapang had come to say that he was free for the day and that he can take us up the mountain to a place called Katao which is actually an outpost of the Indian army near the Chinese border and was forbidden for tourists. Villagers were talking of it having snowed up in Katao throughout the night and Lapang made us feel that it would be almost scandalous to come till Lachung and not visit Katao. We decided to go with our excited Sherpa friend and take a chance. The sight out of our balcony overlooking the village of Lachung was absolutely amazing. It looked like a lost village that I imagined up reading Enid Blyton’s and others’ novels as a child. The village was at the confluence of two of Teesta’s tributaries and a steel bridge over it was reminiscent of some war movie.

Our trip up the mountain to Katao started with the crossing of this bridge and it was straight up hill from there. We could see snowcapped peaks quite near and the chill in the wind was getting unbearable. I put a hand on Lapang’s shoulder and thanked him for having asked me to get those woolens yesterday. But in stark contrast to the Lapang that we had got used to, he was quite silent. I tried gently prodding him to see if he would open up. He kept his silence for some more time focusing his attention on the road and the herd of Yaks that were walking around freely by the road, and then almost when I was about to give up he started talking about what was bothering him. He told us that Ganga and he had grown up together in Lachung and that they were in love with each other. Nobody in their families knew about it.

Lapang was a darling of the village and even Ganga’s parents liked him. He was much like the run-to man in the village. But the problem was that Lapang was a Nepalese and Ganga was Sikkimese. Their parents would never agree to the marriage no matter what. Moreover he was an uneducated taxi driver, a sherpa and she was a graduate with big dreams. He said he’d do anything to see her achieve those, but this village wouldn’t be the place for it. They had to get out and that too soon. Kolkata was the most logical port of call, but they didn’t know anyone there. Gaurav and I were keen to help. We gave our phone numbers to Lapang and assured him that we’d do all we can to help. Lapang’s eyes were almost filled with tears when we said this and the look of relief, hope and anticipation combined, conveyed his gratitude more than words ever could.

Three days later we were back in Kolkata. Three years since that trip, and I haven’t heard from either Lapang or Ganga, neither has Gaurav. Our phone numbers have changed now. For a long time I kept my old Kolkata number active even after moving to Mumbai thinking that he might someday give a call. It never came.

Dosti ki Kasam!!!

When C announced that she’s gonna transform herself to an expert chef from the ‘sadistic-home-laxative-maker’ that she was currently by the time she’s to be married, I never knew the price of laughing like a jackass at the idea would be so heavy. She added a post scriptum to her announcement by making it amply clear in front of all friends/colleagues at the table that I am to be her official ‘taster’ and I couldn’t have an option of opting out. She swore on our two year old friendship that if I so much as even dared to smirk at her culinary concoctions I can forget about getting an invitation to her wedding. Apparently the phrase “dosti ki kasam” means something up there in Punjab from where she is. Down in mallu-land we would have cared two hoots if the ‘kasam’ meant chewing at half baked beans which would make jersey cows opt for root canal treatments and pushing down half inch thick rotis down your throat with a foot long ruler. Well so much for dosti and I became the designated guinea pig for C’s experiments in the kitchen.

It started with chapattis which felt more like sheets of rubber hanging in my grandpas smoke house. I said it wasn’t bad and perhaps she should consider using the same technique next time she makes pappads. She didn’t find my suggestion amusing. I ended up mixing the dough despite there being a food processer in her kitchen for the whole of next week.

Next on the menu was Chana Masala. She cooked up a delight for the horses that pulled Maniandi’s cart. I didn’t say anything to her this time, but she found out that I hadn’t eaten it myself when Maniandi approached her for claiming compensation for his horses getting violent diarrhea.

Similarly the aloo jeera that I threw in the vacant plot behind my house gave a fine crop the next year. The spuds I was told had jeera embedded inside and was a huge hit in the madiwala market. The aloo mattar helped fill the leak in the roof. Her aloo gobi gave Gopi our cook a strange case of perennial hiccups. But these were for only those creations I managed to convince her that I’d have at the comfort of my own house (Because that’s where I could enjoy in peace each bite of the delicious ambrosia). Most of her cooking had to be consumed for lunch in front of her at the office food court. Many fields of aloo had been laid bare and much water had flown down the Sutlej River, in the course of the time that C learned cooking.

It was with these memories in mind that I visited C for dinner in Delhi after almost two years last January. But getting up after dinner I was pleasantly surprised to see that C had managed to pull it off. She had actually made that transformation to a wonderful chef indeed. Perhaps it was partly because of the fact that five years out of Kerala (especially those two spent in Kolkata) had finally given my body the capability to produce those special enzymes that digest ‘aloo’, but mostly it was, I’d like to believe the result of all that (guinea) pigging around I did. Dosti ki kasam.

PS: C doesn’t know this blog exists. Neither does she know about the aloo-jeera bio variant. In case she questions me about either of those, I know whose murky hands to test my new kitchen chopper on.

Sunday Spill-a-thon!!!

Sunday saw a spill-a-thon at our home. It started with me spilling half a bottle of water on the floor while I was getting up to attend a call. (Sundays around my place are spent on a horizontal position mostly and getting up itself deserves special mentioning. You bet it was an important call. Vigneshwara liquor boutique just down the street just reported dangerously low stocks of Carlsberg beer.) Then Bhatia spilled an entire regular size glass of coke from the McDonald’s McChicken meal. He was balancing a coke, two burgers and two fries and managing just about fine when a divine revelation forewarned him that he better get a plate to keep the stuff before attempting to climb the four flights of stairs to his upstairs room. He did heed to it and got a big steel plate and neatly arranged everything, burgers, fries and coke into it and was climbing up the stairs when a never seen before floor mat decided to play the slippery truant under his feet and send him crashing down. The coke flavored chicken burger was a delight said Bhatia, later. The coke stains on the marble floor made the maid go crazy in the morning today and I tried explaining to her in my broken Mumbaiyya (that’s hindi with lots of ‘Re’s and ‘Le’s at the end of every sentence. But you got to know where to put the ‘Re’s and where the ‘Le’s, coz if you get it wrong they’ll think that you are a Bihari and there’s nothing worse than that in these parts) that if she doesn’t clean the bathroom even today she’s gonna see coke spills a lot more around the house from now on. But the worst of all the ghastly mishaps came towards the end of the day when we were sitting down to watch Kolkata Knight riders play the Deccan Chargers. A VVS Laxman sixer and a jumping Krishna sent a full bottle of “Black Dog” Scotch crashing to the floor. Five synchronized hearts skipped several beats together. Time stood still but the bottle came down as if in slow motion and smashed into a hundred pieces. I hadn’t seen a grown man cry in such a long time. Bhatia swore this was the worst day of his life.

We were praying that this was just a glitch in the Matrix. O puppet masters up above, just reverse the clock a little bit and we’d take better care of all our bottles henceforth. None of us in the house were really religious. We had more faith in the logic of the Wachowski Brothers than that of the Bible, Gita or Quran. If you need any proof – haven’t you seen the second hand of the clock go backwards a tick or two but then when you keep looking at it, it pretends as if nothing’s wrong and just keeps ticking forward. We could see a pattern here. The masters were just in the mood for some spill-a-thon fun on Sunday. Because never in the history of Vigneshwara liquor boutique has it ever ran out of the official drink of BhootBunglaw, their biggest single customer (that’s what they call house no. 74, Navi Mumbai) in all the time that we have lived there. Bhatia had never before needed a plate to carry his burger meals and worst of all when was the last time that Laxman ever hit a six?

Lion Hunting....in Pala

At five in the morning, the summer sun was already peeking its way through the tall rubber trees in the hills behind our house. The morning fog was perpetual in these parts. I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window and listened for sounds. Sounds like perhaps a trapped elephant or a wounded lion. The only movement I could see was white shrouded people, like ghosts in movies, moving in the distance, somber and quiet. Squinting my eyes further I could make out they were nuns on the way to the morning mass rather than ghosts. All of a sudden there was a noise and I saw a murder. A murder of crows took to the skies as if startled by something. I kicked at the pile lying next to me. My cousin Sunil, he was wrapped as if in a shroud under a thick blanket. Thankfully he stirred. Another kick and an irritated face appeared from under the pile. The good morning greeting was the choicest expletives of the mallu language. “what’s wrong with you? It’s not even light outside”. Then a sign of recognition appeared on his face. “Do you think something’s there?” he asked. I just gave a knowledgeable smile and bolted out of the bed and started running towards the hills in the backyard. Sunil knew the look and started after me.

I was running as fast as my eight year old naked feet could. Haha, I’m gonna get there before Sunil and if it’s a lion I’m gonna claim it mine and take him to Trivandrum. And anyways the lion wouldn’t like the Kochi climate. It’s too humid. What good will the sea do to a lion. In Trivandrum you have hills, forests are just a small distance away. And best of all there’s the zoo just in case he gets bored and feels like seeing his other friends from the forest. Running and thinking simultaneously could be extremely injurious to your health. I found this out quite early in my childhood then and there, as I was flying head first into the ground, brought down by a thick root hidden beneath the undergrowth of touch-me-nots, wild grass and fallen rubber tree leaves. By the time I got to my feet ignoring the red liquid oozing out of two cuts on either knee, Sunil had caught up and was threatening to overtake. I started running, my lead cut down drastically.

Every summer my parents used to drop me at with my grandparents in Pala, a small hill town in mid Kerala. Me from Trivandrum and Sunil from Kochi would be there during summer vacation for two months of un’adult’erated bliss. And by unadulterated I mean free from all the irritating intrusions of adults. Other cousins would visit sometime during the two months but for brief periods of a week or two. It was just us and the grandparents, who were themselves past adulthood and in their second childhood.

Sunil was fast but in normal case he wouldn’t overtake me but I guess the pain in the knees was slowing me down. What remained now was the climb up the hills. The undergrowth was thicker and the morning dew had made the ground slippery. ‘Caution’ was still underdeveloped in the brains of eight year olds. We kept running and I soon realized that Sunil had taken a slightly different path and was ahead of me. Crap.

By the time I reached the top Sunil was there looking down at the hole that we had dug the day before to catch lions that might be roaming in the adjacent forests. A three feet deep round hole covered with newspapers on a frame of twigs, and sprinkled on top were green grass and dried leaves, it was the result of a whole days work. It was another thing that the forests adjacent were the rubber plantations of our neighbor Kuriachan and the nearest lion would be in the Trichur zoo, two hundred kilometers away. But logic defied the minds of eight year olds. Rather minds of eight year olds defied logic.

From the look in Sunil’s face I knew something exciting had happened. But it was more shock than excitement. Oh goody, perhaps there were two lions. Now I’ve got to convince him to let me keep them both. But what I saw in the pit made me realize that both of us would be lucky to see the next morning. There was no lion in the pit. Instead the one year old kid of Chippi our goat lay their looking up at us. It wasn’t on its legs and from the look of it we both knew it had broken its leg. Chippi and its kid were tied to a jackfruit tree the previous day for grazing and in the evening it was our responsibility to bring them down to the shed near the house. I guess in the night the kid must have freed itself somehow and walked into our Lion pit. Did it not know that it was meant for lion’s alone? Stupid goat. Now the terrifying Lion that threatened to eat us up was none other than our Grandfather. We would have to explain a lot of things starting with the broken leg. The little goat while wandering around had nibbled at the trunk of several rubber trees. Sure as hell we knew we would be dead when Ichachan (that’s what we called our Grandfather) found out. We carefully pulled the kid out of the hole and checked her leg. There was no way it could walk down the hill. Carrying the little goat between us, our minds were working overtime thinking of ways to explain the condition to Ichachan. A hundred excuses, explanations shifted across the mind. Considered, discussed but discarded. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill we had our story ready. Practiced and perfected by the time we entered the house. At the end of it let’s just say that eight year old minds never let you down and we lived to see the next morning.

NB: Apologies to Sunil. I know you were the one who always used to wake up before me and sadistically kick me in the ass till I woke up. This is my revenge J

A Vishu in mind...

I remember a time in school, looking out the window I could see the lone kanikonna* in our school grounds. The blooming of that tree signified a lot of things. To every true blood mallu it heralded the imminent festival of Vishu. But for most school going children it was like a lighthouse calling out the arrival of the summer holidays. Unlike the rest of the country, schools in Kerala broke for the two month vacation earlier in the year, by March end.

The kanikonna is attributed several qualities besides of course the obvious aesthetic one. In Ayurveda it’s used as a laxative which reminds me of the time when a certain friend extracted the white sap from it and tried to convince his sister that it was milk. Good thing the bond of trust between the siblings was so strong that she didn’t buy the idea despite his heavy persuasions. I bet had he tried a dose of reverse psychology and had asked her not to drink it she would have downed the whole thing in a gulp. The dynamics of a brother sister relationship I know can barely be fit in anything less than a PhD thesis. The parental protective shield means that that brothers the world over needs to seek such subtle subterfuge to extract their small victories in the lifelong battle of the sibling. But one thing the konna isn’t known for is the strength of its branches.

This lone konna of the school grounds hadn’t bloomed so far that year. Exams were pretty much over, Vishu was just a few weeks away, but the tree stood ‘unblossomed’. We had biology exams that day, which for me always seemed the easiest paper (This was high school. Cut to 11^th standard and Biology had turned into an unconquerable monster for me). Having got over with the 2 hour paper in a little more than an hour I was dozing off over the answer sheet killing time till the bell rang. I nudged Vinay who was sitting just ahead of me to finish it off so we can get out together. Vinay, who was the perpetual last ranker in the class for some reason was almost always the last to get out of the exam hall. You have to give it to him for trying. He would try to peep into the papers of those sitting next to him, turn around periodically trying to make out my cryptic handwriting and fail miserably. All he had to show for the effort at the end of the exam was a cringed neck. Seeing no signs of him getting up I rested my head on the desk and stared out the window. Just one exam to go, that too Moral Science (I had catechism instead, and nobody studied anything for those.) and the konna didn’t have a single flower. Crap, doesn’t it realize that without that tree in bloom I just wouldn’t feel like it’s the summer holidays.

Handing over the paper to the invigilator, Vinay was as in the high hopes. He always was. Not once had I ever heard him say that he had an exam tough.

Vinay: “Dude how about catching the noon show of the latest Mohanlal flick?”

Me: “You crazy? How do you even suppose we get past Pattalam (the security guard)”

V: It’s all planned my ‘little’ friend. He snickered.

Vinay was 6ft 3 and a 110 kgs. For him he was the right size and the rest of us little. We were quite the Laurel and Hardy pair of the class.

With utmost stealth we walked the corridors of the school, breathing suspended, heartbeats paused. The tensest moment was crossing the doors of the principal’s room and then it was a dash down the stairs taken four at a time and the final jump over eight stairs to the bottom landing. Teachers still claim that the nursery wing of the school was rebuilt because Vinay’s jump caused a crack in the foundation. Once we were outside the building the dusty open school ground lay before, offering no cover from any of the teachers who might be glancing out the window in the staff room. Or worse, what if the Princy himself was out in the corridor to spit out his paan. Vinay was always two steps ahead in his thinking. As I looked bewildered, Vinay laid himself flat on the dusty ground and started rolling. The white shirt and white trouser turned a reddish brown. That’s when I remembered that Predator was his favourite movie till date. He got up spitting dust from his mouth and smiled at me with a sense of accomplishment. I said, “no ways dude, I’m not doing that”. He didn’t wait for my approval but scooped up a pile of fine sand and threw it over me. Those big hands were like bulldozer buckets. In three or four handfuls I was brown head to toe. The camouflage done, we started running across the ground towards the konna. Vinay was always the leader and by the time I caught up to the tree he had started pulling on to the lowest branch. The plan was to scale the school wall by climbing the tree and then on to the other side. I couldn’t believe him, the tree would never…..

CRAAACKKKK…… the next thing I knew I was lying under piles of leaves and branches and my best bud some distance away calling for his mummy and clutching his left arm. I couldn’t lift myself under the weight of the branches over me. I could hear voices coming from the direction of the school. Obviously Vinay’s call for his mummy, although didn’t get as far as his mum, but definitely had reached several people in the school. I decided to wait until somebody came to assist and rested my head on the ground. Up above on a branch thus far hidden due to the branch that had come down, I could see a bunch of yellow flowers, swaying in the wind. The konna had indeed blossomed.

 

*konna OR kanikonna – golden shower tree or Bendra lathi in hindi.

I hope you too get to rejoice on the memories of your childhood this Vishu.

 

 

The Easter Special!!!

I’ve been inside this moving contraption that they called a special deluxe for Bangalore for around 18 hours now and the feeling of frustrated relief, frustration at the long journey, the bed bugs in the seat, the hot weather, relief at having finally moved into the city borders of Bangalore, had left me in one of my sarcastic moods again. In an unadulterated frustrated mood there generally is in my mind an absence of all thought. Here there was relief too. Thoughts were unleashed.

The bus was moving at a snail’s pace, rather at a cow’s pace. Or that of the particular cow that decided to go on a leisurely mid-noon stroll through National Highway 7. The hot mid summer sun injected through its rays a dose of lethargy in every being I spied on the road. The fruit seller with his dust covered face was silent unlike the norm of his vocation, yelling out the price of guavas to a kilo. The street dogs on both sides of the road chose to lie under the shade with eyes half closed instead of venturing into the opposite gang’s territories and trying their luck. The only thing that seemed fast paced was the mind, capturing the scenes and making mental notes. It gave words to the expressions on people’s faces, sounds to the crows in the distance, life to inanimate things.

I saw a line in front of an ATM. The board above it said “ABN Amro Bank ATM –24 hours”. In all these years I’ve so far failed miserably to find an ATM that’s not “24 hours”. You know one that opens from 10 till 5. One in which god forbid if you are trying to withdraw money at say 4:59pm and during the transaction the clock ticks over to 5, instead of giving the cash it will just show a smiley on the display with its tongue sticking out and asking you to buzz off and come back at 10 tomorrow.

I had a friend in college. He was the one who came to college in a car (that was a big deal in that part of the world in those times. Believe me), drove all the “cool dudes” of the batch to the bar in the city and almost always ended up footing the booze bills, even though he could barely gulp down more than half a pint of beer. He really was an ATM for many in those times. The best thing about being in a government college for me was that it gave me a perspective of life. A much more realistic one of society than what I was exposed to in the sacred corridors of a catholic school. I believe the most persecuted ones in a catholic school are the poor catholic students themselves. The little lambs were forced to fight demons of sleep while the reverent father vice principal tried to instill catholic values during catechism classes that were mandatory for catholic students in the school. Talk about discrimination. The poor ‘minority’ had to go through this while the rest of the folks had moral science and rumor goes even ‘sex education’ in those hours. I never could find out till 6^th standard when I lied to the teachers that I wasn’t a catholic and attended moral science classes for full two weeks till some god fearing mate of mine decided to reveal my self-emancipation from the faith to the vice principal. Let’s just say that the ‘vice principal’ truly decided to live up to his name. Pure Vice.

For all his divine demeanor the father vice principal was one of the most hated being in the school. Everything about him was slow. The way he talked, the way he walked, even the way he thought. We would cross the father in the hallways and instead of wishing him something like “good day father”, they would say “good dog father” or even meaner things. His hair burdened brain processed just the first two words and would walk away nodding none the wiser to the children’s antics.

What brought me back the present was the fatso, I mean the extraordinarily well built gentleman, in the next seat stirring in his sleep. This person sitting in the bus next to me had taken up all the space in the arm rest and then was spilling on to my seat too. I mean his arms would extend over to this side and his elbows would start poking my sides. Along the journey I had devised a clever strategy to make him shift his arms while avoiding a confrontation (Me, normally not one to avoid one, but this guy was nothing less than a hundred and twenty kgs). I would periodically lift the arm-rest up all the way and then bring it down after sometime, all the time pretending that it’s a perfectly natural thing to be doing during a bus journey. I looked outside and we were not far from where the cow was blocking the highway. It was 19 hours since I started. The Special bus that the travels so kindly decided to bring out during the peak Vishu-Easter season was turning out to be a special journey indeed. Madiwala at this pace would be another thought unleashment away. Atleast.

Happy Easter :)

 

Shiny, blinky people.

The desire to adorn oneself with jewellery I thought was just a feminine fixation. Until I looked at it from a different perspective. Perhaps the man-jewellery may not be made of shiny gold or sparkling diamonds but it’s no less blinky or flashy or for that matter any less expensive. Just take a look at the Bluetooth contraption hanging from his right ear. (and here I was thinking that hanging adornments on the right ear was a sign of certain things not having gone ‘straight’ during the manufacture of the man). I remember the thick round loop of an earring which itself created a larger loop on my grandma’s ears. I used to stare at my grandma and think how weird fashion was a hundred years back. I’m sure it wouldn’t be until their grandsons of these dongle sporting metrosexuals point it out to them that those sporting the electronic earrings would realize how stupid they really look.

Perhaps every generation had its own body embellishments. Have you ever wondered what exactly the word “thevaaram” in the usage “kuli and thevaaram” means? I understand its all those prayers that they do, all dressed up and made up to get to the way the likes of chanthu, othenan and aromal of ancient mallu folklore used to do to get to they way they looked. Imagine the hours they would have had to spend in front of the mirror grooming your face, and not to speak of the hair to get your head chopped off on a sword fighting rink. I guess its history goes even beyond that. I can just imaging little Julius Caesar walking out of the bathroom in a ‘thorthu’ (a sort of loin cloth used as a towel)  and his mother running after him with an olive wreath and warning him that he if he doesn’t wear the wreath he can forget about going out to the coliseum to play cart racing with his buddies. Or the primordial Mr.Homo Erectus being yelled at by the missus not to forget his designer snake skin scarf when he goes out hunting mastodons.

But really the things that men wear these days have me bewildered. Someone please tell me what’s the point carrying your mobile in a leather pouch attached to the belt when u could much much more easily keep it a few inches away in the trouser pocket. Or is it that they just couldn’t wait for all the crocs and snakes to be killed for the leather, that they decided that they might aid that process of extinction in their own little way.

And these days if a school teacher asks a student what a watch is used for and he replies – “to know the time”, I’m sure the whole class will burst out laughing. Same is the case with mobile phones. Frankly if it’s just to keep in touch, a five hundred rupee reliance instrument would do the job.

This is a tribute to those creative minds in the fashion world around the globe who time and again convinces a whole generation of apparently intelligent and smart set of young minds that to wear a blinking electronic earring is what constitutes fashion or that a three kilogram watch which supposedly would work fine even under five hundred meters of water (rest assured the wearer wouldn’t even expose it to the shower in his bathroom, let alone five hundred meters of water) is the ultimate macho symbol. I believe their acts of mass brain washing is no less an accomplishment than what the likes of Osama or Muthalik has done convincing their followers of what religion, culture and ethics is and should be all about. And then, ‘we’, the knowledgeable middleclass of the educated world call those of the creed of Osama and Muthalik as uneducated and misguided. 

Disclaimer: I am one of those ardent believers of contemporary fashion. My dad calls me a "brand baby". But i guess in this time and age when people like Maneka Gandhi whose heart used to bleed when a stray dogs tail was so much as even stepped upon, endorses the cutting of arms of men, I guess i can speak for or against anything and everything in this world, regardless of where my beliefs lie.