Love is not on syllabus

I was living proof that passing out of teens has everything to do with falling in love. I vouchsafe to its pure, altruistic and wholesome essence. I do not know why social scientists clinically analyse love to identify “His” and “Hers” desires. His, to ensure ’sexual gratification’. Hers, to ensure provider.

After my work, I would arrive at her station and wait for the train to bring her home from work. For one hundred days, since that angelic smile lit my soul and kindled love, we smiled and met there. We walked along the tracks, side by side, holding hands, carefully avoiding passing trains.  We talked our way to her home. I can’t recall what we talked about. Must be of no significance, like any other young couples. For most days, we parted near her home. When I went to her place, I discovered that she was a paying guest of her sister. Her sister lived in a two room tenement with a husband and their child. Her husband was a factory hand. He was almost never home.

Most of those evenings, I watched my girl perform her domestic chores. Bringing municipal water from the communiy tap, cleaning and chopping vegetables, mopping the tiled floor, washing clothes, kneeding atta and rolling chappatis. Here was my perfect partner for life, a home-maker. Almost like my mother…

Then, I went out of town for organizing wedding festivities of my sister in the village. Travelling alone, on a State Transport Corporation Bus, words flowed on to paper and my first ode to our love was born. Not a day passed without a new poem caried by the postal department to her.

Mumbai wasn’t the same when I returned. Giant Killer George Fernandes, for whom I had personal fondness, had changed its face, with the Bharat Rail Bandh Agitation. Trains were run by the army. Fearing arson, hardly anyone travelled. Risking my life, I did. She didn’t. She had stayed home. At times, I walked miles to meet her. Until that fateful night. Arsonists caught up with me near her station and blows were exchanged. Bleeding in the nose, I ran to her place.

He was in, the master of the house. If the trains were running normal, he wouldn’t have been there. It had to happen someday, even if the trains were to run, anyway. Men, me included, bestow upon themselves, a special responsbility for safety and security of women entrusted to their custody. Mother, sister, wife, daughter, kith and kin, relatives and paying guests… Only they know what is good for them and how to save them from ‘evil’ and ‘troubles’. So the events unfolded.

I was least prepared. Naive, I wasn’t schooled in the art of winning battle hardened male hearts. Love was not on their school syllabus…

Are you ready fo PPL auction?

PPL?

Yes, Pajaka Power League. Now, what’s that? Haven’t you heard of IPL? Sure, who hasn’t? With every news channel vying with each other to crawl at the gods of crollywood, Indian Premier League is baked stiff and already sold out.

There aren’t much cricketers left to be auctioned. They have gone like the Derby horses for prices unimaginable. When reality bites, as balance sheets will have to be faced, investment opportunities are likely to emerge for equity investors with surplus cash to park. While that is consolation for not having ‘IT’ to ‘buy’ and ‘own’ such crollywood worthies, opportunities exissst in other arena.

I think Federation of Pajaka needs a government for the people, by the people and of the people. The surest way to do it is commercialize it on IPL lines. Pajaka, being a model country, shall pioneer and I, a worthy son of soil, want to own its first government.

Auction for ministerial candidates commences in a fortnight. If you think you are saleable, please bid. This is no ‘jumbo’ sarkaar, so be careful. If you ask too high a price, you may return as damaged goods or even ‘unsold’ damp squid.

Sotheby’s and Christy’s move over. I can conduct my auctions here on my blogspace…

The lord of small people

I get stressed out; anxiety and sadness grips me when I reach Pajaka on my annual pilgrimage. I see rising standard of living. I see incomes are going up. I see the urban conveniences are within reach of this small hamlet of a nearly ten thousand people. I should be happy; but why do I get this strange feeling?

The bus brings me to the edge of Pajaka from Udipi. I alight and a familiar voice calls out: “You came!” “Yes, I came“. “Are you going to be around for a week or so?“. “Well, I am around for two days this time“. “Oh,what a shame! If  highly (!) educated people like you don’t care for us, who will?“ My heart sinks. There, that is a clue to my guilt in prosperous Pajaka.

Yes, I knew her for as many as thirty plus years. She has been living in the same ramshackle hut on the family plot. Her husband was a Mumbai taxi dirver; he used to consume more alcohol than his taxi-car guzzled petrol. Once, as he arrived home from Mumbai on his annual visit,  he sauntered right into the abyss of the gorge next to their hut.  His mother, who lived next door on the same plot in her husband’s house, had leased the family plot to granite miners, who left the exhausted quarry without a care and any restoration effort. He had died instantly. Even when he lived, she had to eke out a living on her meagre income of beedi rolling. Her three daughters managed high school education, funded by charity. They ended up becoming a maid, a nun and a nurse repsectively. Life was finally looking up for her. “ I am also moving out.“ She confided in a low voice, so her mother-in-law living next door would not hear. “Where to?“ “ My eldest daugher, maid in Dubai, got married to a baker there, and he is taking me to Dubai“. “What about the nun and the nurse?“. “The nun is posted in Morocco. The nurse is in Delhi to chase a recruitment agent who has taken an advance to find her a job in Ireland.“

Pajaka is making progress.  The poor beedi rollers and hired workers on floriculture farms, mostly destitute women and girls, are finally climbing on the shoulders of their children for a better living. Those, who are not fortunate to have children of this kind, wait. Their lord is the local communist party of India (Marxist) satrap who occasionally comes distributing his red publicity material and collects a rupee in donation to the cause of the small people’s party. They wait for the dictatorship of the proletariat to emerge, and get rid of poverty; like most have done for almost thirty years. But their faith in this god.., well, that is another story.

Will you wait for me?

Twenty-one year olds aren’t street smart, especially college graduates from small villages. Not in mid-seventies. What do they know of life? The laws of universe, learnt from science textbooks, didn’t help me to deal with this tough adversary. It was out first meeting. But he knew everything about me, my family and my family tree. I knew nothing about him. From what I saw, he was thin and lanky. He should be in his mid-thirties. Only a decade of age difference bewteen us; but the way he saw the future of my relationship with his young ’saali’ proved that we were a generation apart. “You have two older brothers yet to marry”, he said, “at thirty-plus they don’t have what it takes to settle down“. A long monologue followed, lecturing me on marital responsibilities. “Can’t live on love alone, one needs bread and a hearth“. That pearl of wisdom showed his disdain towards starry-eyed ‘romance’. “When will you marry her? And if you do, where will you move in? How can you afford to own a ‘kholi’ with your stipend?“. He was right. I had no right to love. After months of interviews for a job that was ‘right’ for a degreed man, I was hired only six months ago. What would I make during my two years of internship? I was earning big money hawking foreign magazines and ‘lifestyle’ books to the rich and famous of South Bombay. I might afford to buy a tenement sooner than he did. My cockiness didn’t impress him. That was ‘dirty’ money for him. A gentleman, for him, was an ‘employee’ in a reputed firm. His ’saali’ was not for ‘paanwalas’. “When you own a kholi and a monthly salary of a thousand rupees, come back to ask her hand in marriage”. The negotiation and pleading went on for hours. The battle hardened rogue didn’t budge. My girl squatted by her ’saala’s bedside, sobbing as I made endless pleas for her support. She responded by sobbing in silence. For him, her silent sobs were proof that the relatinship was one-way infatuation. “Will you wait for me?“ I asked. She sobbed again.. “Three years”. That is what I asked. In three years, I will return to her, fulfilling all the conditions. Naive that I was, I accepted his demand for not seeing each other during the period. “True love triumps always” I said to myself, as I walked towards the station through the narrow winding lanes between the slums of Vikhroli. Three years is a short time… How wrong I was. A lot can happen in three years and it did. What happened wasn’t what I thought would ever happen. But that is another story…

Not my strong subject

Thanks to Sania Mirza’s playing schedule in Doha, I kept a late night yesterday. I ate out on a Madrasi mini-meal. The rasam and the caffeine ensured that I woke up fifteen minutes behind my daily schedule. I gulfed down my rava dosa with mint chutney, watching Badibilli watch Hillary rave and rant to woo Wisconsin. I noticed that the clock struck 6:50. I got to be at my desk, ten miles away, in ten minutes flat. Just then, she decided to learn about american politics: “What is Republican?” I confess; politics is not my favorite subject. I can’t play politics. Lack of Networking Skills is among my prominent assets. Not that my GK will not get me a decent GMAT score. People who know me think that I am the right candidate to win KBK#3, whenever that happens. “It is a party” I said. BB was maha annoyed at my arrogance. “Gotta rush”, I gushed, “learn that from the idiot box”. I have a voting card in North Mumbai constituency, but have not voted in my life. Since coming of voting age, I haven’t lived in India. If I had US citizenship, would I be a Republican? I associate with registered Republicans, those who annually earn more than 200K; and registered Democrats, the less fortunate ones. All of them vote in every election, especially to put a man in the Lincon Bedroom. My views on life have changed since I became aware of civic issues at age 14-something. Manohar Lohia and Madhu Dandavate impressed me in the sixties. Who can forget the sensational humilation by George Fernandes of SK Patil in South Bombay? After that, because of my fondness for either Indira, Urs or Hegde, I thought I was in Congress camp. But I also had many Udipi freinds with brahminical inclinations of belonging to Sangh Parivar, and I personally admired Dr. Acharya, a Jan Sangh politician. I don’t know if he would approve of my support to a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. As a registered Catholic, I am tortured by the right of the unborn, to life. Republicans are ardent advocates of rights of the unborn. I am not. I agree with them that the right to private property is fundamental to our lives and if this is taken away, all other rights have no punch. But then, I worry about the plight of the poor and weak. I can’t accept that they should be at the mercy of the market and shouldn’t sup with rich. I am with the democrats there, though not agreeing with their specifics. Neither Hillary nor Obama tell the americans what their specifics are. I’m not thrilled by Obama’s ethereal speaches of ‘we can make change happen’. I’m not thrilled with Hillary’s experience to make that happen too. I am not thrilled with George Bush. Mc Cain promises more of Bush. I tend to agree with those who joked that they put a man to work in the White House and he put everyone else out of work. His speaches on patriotism and the need to stand up against terrorists of the kind who blow up non-combatant people anywhere and anytime strike sympathetic chords within me. Registered Republicans among my associates are prompted to look elsewhere for someone they can believe in, support and give their vote to. Hillary Clinton fits the bill; but most are confused and intrigued by the possibility of a WOMAN President. The confusion is likely to benefit Obama, the colored MAN. BLACK is preferable to WOMAN, given the choice. I think 2008 US Presdiential Elections will turn out to be a chocie between sexist and racist attitudes. I reckon America is more sexist than racist. Probably, like me? What about you?

Sania it is…

Arm-chair sports lovers in Qatar spend their working and lunching hours dissecting the state of Indian Cricket, Indian Premier League and important issues affecting cricket such as deeds/misdeeds of Dada-Dhoni-Yuvi-Padukone quadrangles. For me, cricket is swinging a bat and hoping for an accident: ball coming to the bat. 

Last weekend, I treated an ex-Doha cricket player to dinner at my place. The man fondly recalled his days playing with likes of Wadekar, Solkar and such worthies. He showed me his broken wrist: He had dived for a catch at the power-silly point (Is that right description?) in the close-infield. I had a hundred tips of batting, bowling and fielding, after which, I confess that my cricket appreciation skills remained steadfast. It is an accident for the ball to hit the swung bat!

More interesting than what Tata Sky offers on its sports menu, is the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships that ended at Aspire Academy in Doha yesterday. I had posted from this venue, during Asian Games 2006, especially about the marvellous win by Indian Girls in the 4×400m relay. Well, the scene was re-created by Indian girls yesterday, winning Gold and establishing a new Asian record at 03:37:36

India won 17 medals pipping China to second place. For those of us, with a complex about China, that was sweet..

As the Indian Athletics Team prepares to leave Doha, Sania Mirza has arrived in town. She is expected to play tomorrow and take on Olga Govortsova of Belarus  in the first round. I hope the match will begin after 6:30p.m., giving me a second chance to watch her play! 

Love was not on his syllabus

I was living proof that passing out of teens has everything to do with falling in love. I vouchsafe to its pure, altruistic and wholesome essence. I do not know why social scientists clinically analyse love to identify “His” and “Hers” desires. His, to ensure ’sexual gratification’. Hers, to ensure provider.

After my work, I would arrive at her station and wait for the train to bring her home from work. For one hundred days, since that angelic smile lit my soul and kindled love, we smiled and met there. We walked along the tracks, side by side, holding hands, carefully avoiding passing trains.  We talked our way to her home. I can’t recall what we talked about. Must be of no significance, like any other young couples. For most days, we parted near her home. When I went to her place, I discovered that she was a paying guest of her sister. Her sister lived in a two room tenement with a husband and their child. Her husband was a factory hand. He was almost never home.

Most of those evenings, I watched my girl perform her domestic chores. Bringing municipal water from the communiy tap, cleaning and chopping vegetables, mopping the tiled floor, washing clothes, kneeding atta and rolling chappatis. Here was my perfect partner for life, a home-maker. Almost like my mother…

Then, I went out of town for organizing wedding festivities of my sister in the village. Travelling alone, on a State Transport Corporation Bus, words flowed on to paper and my first ode to our love was born. Not a day passed without a new poem caried by the postal department to her.

Mumbai wasn’t the same when I returned. Giant Killer George Fernandes, for whom I had personal fondness, had changed its face, with the Bharat Rail Bandh Agitation. Trains were run by the army. Fearing arson, hardly anyone travelled. Risking my life, I did. She didn’t. She had stayed home. At times, I walked miles to meet her. Until that fateful night. Arsonists caught up with me near her station and blows were exchanged. Bleeding in the nose, I ran to her place.

He was in, the master of the house. If the trains were running normal, he wouldn’t have been there. It had to happen someday, even if the trains were to run, anyway. Men, me included, bestow upon themselves, a special responsbility for safety and security of women entrusted to their custody. Mother, sister, wife, daughter, kith and kin, relatives and paying guests… Only they know what is good for them and how to save them from ‘evil’ and ‘troubles’. So the events unfolded.

I was least prepared. Naive, I wasn’t schooled in the art of winning battle hardened male hearts. Love was not on their school syllabus…

India lives in villages

I love Pajaka, my village. I was born there. I grew op there. For fifteen years of my boyhood, I woke up to the chants of the village temple and the sounds of Om. I drank from the clear streams of water running down the rocks that lined the paddy fields. I had left Pajaka to get a college education. Thirty-eight years; it seems like yesterday. The memory is still fresh in my mind. I climbed the highest rock mountain one last time to look down at all the thatched roof huts. The darkness was smeared with tiny glows of light coming from oil lamps. Electricity was unheard of. When I return every year, the village looks like a new place to me. Many things change within a year. The village temple, the church and the school remain in their places, but there are always more homes, more buildings, more shops and more people. There are new people, new businesses, and new quarrels. I was the first boy who went to a college and earned an engineering degree. I studied under the moonlight with an oil lamp. Today, every home boasts of atleast one graduate, if not a post-graduate. Even the Harijan basti near the primary school has its share of graduates who play cricket with the catholic boys of the neighborhood. Most of them are unemployed; after a game of cricket, they sit around the local tea shop, pouring over city editions of Times of India, Indian Express and Deccan Herald for job vacancies. Some of the lads, Harijans included, drive Rickshaws and run errands in private cars to the airport or to the train station to ferry passengers to and fro thier native homes. These passengers are like me who make their annual pligrimage to the villages surrounding Pajaka. When I was there in August 2005, a fight broke out between two groups of these lads. Each belonged to either Congress or BJP. Politics was unknown in my days. Not anymore. They used small lathis and after brief fracas, they broke loose, boarded the same bus to head to Udupi. Both went to register police complaint against each other!

The country has awakened!

Remembering first love

She smiled. When she did, I thought she was an angel. Like a wave on a smooth sea, the smile danced across her apple-shaped cheeks and lit her eyes like sparkling diamonds. Our eyes met and I smiled back at her. It was mutual; the pleasure of knowing that we shared a common emotion. Was it love at first sight? 

Well, may be. Or was it? Didn’t I meet this girl before? Why didn’t we feel the way we felt now?

Flashback. It’s 3rd June 1972. The sun was about to rise over Sion skyline in Bombay; that is what the sin city was then called. I boarded a long distance bus to Udipi, on my way to Pajaka. The summer holidays had come to an end. My college beckoned me. 

There was a commotion at the front of the bus. The conductor was trying to find a suitable companion for a teenage girl. Her guardian wouldn’t let her travel with a shabby unshaven middle-aged man by her side. Finally, choice fell on me to replace the shabby man; I meekly obeyed and was seated next to her. 

The journey wasn’t as eventful as ‘Mr & Mrs Iyer’ ( The movie wasn’t made then). There was breakfast at Pune, lunch at Karad, and dinner at Belgaum to eat together. In between, we talked and giggled a lot. She was 18 and I, 19. She was Taurus and I, Aries. She was going to enrol in her final senior secondary school class after two years of sabbatical. For two years, she worked in Bombay, including a stint as a domestic help in a Parsee household and learnt to cook Dhansak. I disclosed my fondness for the dish, which she promised to cook for me, if we meet again. 

During the night, we dozed off, at times our heads resting on each others’ shoulders. When the sun rose again next day, it was touchdown in Udipi and time to say good-bye. As we sipped coffee in ‘Udipi Brahmin Hotel’, she pulled out a few rupees and some coins to square our accounts. Sab hisaab chutta karne ka, kuch bhi baki nahi rakhne ka. I protested. How can a man, even though unemployed and without any means, take money from a girl, even if she owed it to me? But, she was resolute. She overcame my persistent protests and deposited the cash in my shirt pocket. I couldn’t but admire her firmness.

I went back to college for a whole year and I didn’t think of her again. It was a chance meeting and a casual one-day affair. There was nothing in it. At 19, I had travelled thousands of miles and met many co-passengers.  She was forgotten just like all of them.

Until that day in January 1974, almost two years later, she spotted me at Vikhroli Station and smiled. Rest is history. I was bowled over. As if hit by a lightning bolt, love struck me. For twentysix hours, I hadn’t felt anything for this girl; and, lo, I fell to a few flashes of female charm! What a life!

Is this how a man is supposed to fall in love? What is this awakening that waits for a precise moment and a particular person? Why does the moment come when it comes and not before? What are these rules of attraction?

Our love affair, that began by the tracks, was de-railed six months later. Her guardian snuffed out our blossoming romance. That is a long story, to be recounted like a Shakespearean tragedy…

Baa and Jack fruit harvest

There was a time in my life when hunger was everything to me. I was six years old, may be? No one really had any use for time, date or calendar in my childhood. The household, including me, woke up with ‘Sukr’ (North Star?). Straight out of ‘mandri’ (mat), ‘mai’ inducted her kids into farm duties such as irrigating the crops, serving breakfast to the cattle. Sun rose and set; moon shone and vanished; we told time by location of carpenter’s square stars in the night, and direction and size of shadows by the day. I knew early bird gets the worm. “Mai’ never let me disown this wisdom: a warm bowl of green porridge of ‘moog’ accompanied with ‘godachi patolli ya idi’ waited for me as soon as I declared that my assigned chores were done. Between breakfast and school time, as I went round the house ‘that’ locked room always beckoned me. I knew it was forbidden territory and belonged to great Satan. I mean Ba. Ba had chosen not to live with us: her eldest ‘bahu’ was dark, short, and ‘bud’du’ and had a brood of kids not too pleasing to her. But she retained ‘that’ room in our house. Curiosity killed the cat, they say. Yes, I was curious nevertheless to break into this room. The opportunity came once, when strong aroma of ripe jack fruits punished my nostrils and burst my palettes. Like a salivating dog, I snooped around and finally broke into the room through the attic. I was an expert attic climber. The rats and occasional water snake that I encountered would not deter me; so strong was the desire to get to the jack fruits. The jack fruits came from Ba’s tree. We had no rights to its produce, though it stood only a few yards from the edge of courtyard. This tree was special. It gave fruits the size of ‘seethaphal’ (custard apple) and were heavenly delicious. Ba kept vigil with her eagle’s eyes and even if bats and crows got to them before her, she always picked me as the offender. How cruel it was to deprive her grandchildren of such tasty fruits and nature’s bounty! This season, she plucked them ahead of ripening on tree and stacked them in ‘that’ dark room under lock to await the vendor, who came around to barter produce with fish or meat. Once I was in, I carried out the surgical operation per game plan. I stripped every fruit of its edible bulbs, sutured carefully to leave no visible marks of devilry, and climbed out to share the booty with my cowardly siblings. The entire operation was carried out while ‘mai’ was away in a village bazaar vending vegetables and the risk of getting caught ‘red handed’ was low. The next morning, Ba came with the vendor. She was extremely pleased to find the lock was intact and nothing was amiss. But she flew into a rage, when the vendor smelled a rat as he handled unusually light fruits and took a closer look … I proved to Ba that I was one of her own brood and equalled her in cruelty and wit. Besides, I could run faster…no old hag could lay her hands on me…