Dear Sohini,

When my most awaited first pair of Levi's ... a gift from my cuz in the US ... finally arrived, I figured I shouldn't have lied to her about my waist size. Never knew she's gonna send a pair of Levi's Strauss jeans!! If I knew, I would have told her that my waist was 30. I cannot describe the despair and pain I felt at that moment. And there was nobody to empathize either. Nobody knew about what a Levi's meant to an Indian middle-class guy of 22. I tried telling my girlfriend but she didn't understand why I felt so let down. Buy another pair was her advice because she didn't know that my dad thought a pair of jeans symbolizes the onset of consumerism on our otherwise virgin culture. Jeans are for Americans and that's the last thing we wanna become...American. Thou shall carry your umbrella in Calcutta lest it starts raining in Leningrad.

Out of all the dudheads in Banaras who were unaware of the importance of a pair of Levi's, I suddenly met someone who always dreamed of owning a pair of Levi's probably more than I ever did. It was Sohini, a very young girl who had just come to the university. Those days, we didn't know of jeans for women, so it wasn't difficult for me to sell that pair to Sohini for about Rs 1500. Yes, Shylock would have been more lenient. It was the dollar equivalent that I asked for, so you can't blame me for accepting Rs 500 from her for three months. Those days, you could manage an entire month in a hostel for about Rs 1000. Not bad money. Pretty little Sohini was happy, her eyes twinkling through her glasses. Her waist was 28.

I had forgotten about Sohini until today although I remembered my jeans well. A former classmate informed that she passed away recently fighting cancer. Everything came back to me in a flash, her beautiful smile, our little chat about the iconic brand and how we are more American than the other fellow students. How I almost had tears parting with my jeans. Couldn't remember what I did with the money though.

That ill-gotten money has left me morally poorer than I've ever been. Fifteen years later, it was suddenly difficult to look into the mirror today.

Hindus

The next time you find a VHP guy wielding a sword and a saffron flag, throw a molotov cocktail at him, if you can. If you have the cover of a wall, or if you are behind a burnt car, just do it, wilya? Otherwise, you can get that guy home and ask him what a Hindu is. Who are Hindus after all? What is Hindutva all about? What are they being so sensitive about when a couple hold hands and roam around in the relative privacy of a park? What in that act is anti Hindu?

If you don't know what Hindu means, you can't answer these questions. It is such a difficult question, people have to study hard for years and come up with explanations. They have to write fat books on what Hinduism is all about. Simply put, this religion itself is a big farce. It is just some thousands of different customs and rituals masquerading together as a religion. A Marathi hindu and an Assamese hindu are so different from each other in their culture and practices, they can't be of the same religion. A Tamil hindu landlord will not allow a Malayalam hindu tenant to cook fish in his kitchen. While the Bengali gods are made to look like beautiful humans, the Gods down south are carved out of black granite and don't resemble humans. The names are different, the practices are different, the languages are different, the offerings are different. Can you offer a whole fish to any god in UP? There's Kali, who accepts only human sacrifice as prayer, while some gods have eaten just sweets all through their lives and are about to die of diabetes.


So, is there anything common between all these various races and cultures that form the Hindu corpus? If there is anything common, it is Brahminism, and not Hinduism. A person who lives on this side of the Indus is a Hindu, no matter what faith he or she practices. Why do we confuse it to be a religion? If you are a Hindu, you don't have a religion yet. You can either adopt one from the various on offer, or stay like you are, an Indian living on this side of the Indus. The Brahmins were the educated class (not caste), who could offer prayers to a god, anywhere in India. If you aren't a Brahmin, why do you care if you are a Hindu or not? You might as well be an Indian from Kerala or Maharastra or Himachal or Bengal, practising your own set of prayer rituals and being tolerant of other Indian rituals practiced elsewhere.

Did the Hindu religion come up for a nationalistic cause? Some common chord to bind the people and raise the fervor of nationalism in their minds and make them stand up against the British?

We will talk about the perils of narrow-minded nationalism in a later article, but in that I will directly lift from Tagore's fierce criticism of nationalism as a curse of the world. It is the biggest singular reason for all the wars and political divisions of this world, which was perhaps better off as Gondwanaland.

However, keep the molotov cocktail ready for the next VHP activist you see on the road. They have to be purged off our land as soon as possible.

Suckers

Rajendra Prasad, the first prez of India put Nehru in a spot once. He had a political background and wouldn't take shit lying down. During his term, Nehru knew he had to get a stooge up there next time on, somebody who would suck up to him. And none better than Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, who was a sycophant of the first order. He had a case against him for having directly plagiarised from S.N. Dasgupta's book. How to make this guy, my personal valet, the next prez? thought wily Nehru. So he sent him to the USSR as the Indian ambassador to get him some credibility as a prez. Radhakrishnan came back and became the vice prez and then was made the next president of India.

A guy who is known to be a scholar and was the vice-chancellor of my alma mater Banaras Hindu University, was nothing but a clever thief, lifting from books by scholars who weren't bothered about making a name for themselves.

Such are we Indians. We forget the truth and start celebrating teachers' day on his birthday...while the real teachers go unnoticed and unsung.

We love thieves of any kind. People who blatantly borrow and steal stories and ideas from the west and make movies here, for example, are hailed as gods in Bollywood. The other day I was watching a pathetic Hindi movie called Dus Kahaniyan, and the first story by one Sanjay Gupta is a direct lift from Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat by Roald Dahl. And tomorrow Sanjay Gupta will be hailed as one of the stalwarts of Indian cinema, am sure. What is his background, I wonder? My close pal, an ad guy, is awestruck with Sanjay Gupta's charisma, so that probably means he has made some brilliant ad films. If you delve deep, am sure you will find them not so original after all.

But I leave that delving deep to you, the reader, the worshipper of the wrong Indian gods.

disclaimer for earlier post

sorry guys for ignoring the greater menaces of ethnic and religious intolerance, of absolute lack of primary and vocational education, of the country being ruled by criminals, of utter lack of sanitation and medical facilities, of the most pathetic government hospitals that even Africa will dread . . .

there's more than just that plaguing us. it wasn't oversight. i would attribute not mentioning these to lethargy.

my hundredth post

It is not special and there's nothing much to write about either. Over the last few days there's been this cricketing controversy in Australia that has brought the entire nation together. And that made me wonder why the nation doesn't come together at other times. In a dream, this collective outcry for justice is not misplaced jingoism. But in reality it is nothing more than just that.

But, for the sake of the hundredth post, we will skirt reality and the real issues plaguing us and indulge like a birthday boy. We will assume there is this conglomerate of all the Indian business houses, not unlike Capone's syndicate, but for a better cause. We would assume today that the Tatas, Birlas, Ruias, Ambanis, Murthys, Premjis, Majumdars, Mahindras, Godrejes, Mittals, and Mallyas have formed a circle, holding hands. To make it even more dramatic, take a low angle shot and make the sun set from between the legs of the tallest among them. That should be Ratan Tata, I think. They are holding hands and have formed a huddle like our Indian cricket team, with their heads lowered and chanting something unintelligible. In unison. They are in a pledge. Are they talking about how to help India overcome the shame of being number 127 in the world (the poorest of the poor are here too, so don't run to Bangladesh or Somalia when you want to adopt a child) and also close the gap between the poor India and the other image of India which makes it the eighth richest country too? "I mean, hellowww?" they must be saying right now.

I look to my right (and by some strange cliched imagery embedded in my mind all this was happening in front of the Gateway of India, Mumbai...even the sun setting between Ratan Tata's legs was setting into the Arabian Sea...) and see a young IIM graduate talking about her dream to a bunch of her frnds. She is worried about the migrant laborers and their children. Her dream is to make sure these children get free education wherever their parents go. For now she wants to start in Bangalore, a city that has seen an unprecendented amount of concrete structures come up in no time. She has already started by getting a few people in her area to teach the kids. And as she was talking, someone in the group suggested getting medical insurance for these people. How will she convince these guys to part with Rs 1000 every year for the sake of medical insurance, I wondered, and moved along the promenade. There were more interesting things to see.

At the next congregation, there was a hot debate on about why India doesn't get a medal from the Olympics. Dola Banerjee is the world number 1 in archery, Vishy Anand is the chess world champion, we are the twenty-twenty world champions, Narain won the A1 GP in China, but we don't have athletes or swimmers. One guy suggested we should get enough money channelized into athletics to pump up the sagging spirits of parents who put their children in tennis and cricket classes. Like hockey has seen a revival, let us get the sponsors too. Who will give this fool his money? A cricketer can make more off the field just by posing for a brand . . . why will parents listen to this dreamer? I walked on . . . soon we will have 5 million software engineers and 2 million cricket stars . . . I wonder who will build the bridges over the Godavari and the Ganges!

Dreams tend to end when you are at the most interesting part. Mine, however, faded. I walked down the beach and there was a lot more to hear, emerging voices of the youth who have idolized Che thirty years after he died, of Indians who have come back from their cushy jobs abroad to do their bit for the country . . . and by the time the sun finally set that night, I knew India had changed. There's hope of a few Indians who love their country to emerge from the shadows of petty personal goals and to stand up for one cause or another. By the time the sun rises again, these men and women will replace the Pappu Yadavs and Deve Gowdas and stand beside the Jyotiradityas, Rahuls, and Omar Abdullahs.

Am awake now. But something makes me want to believe the dream.

(My belief in "someday" is strong. It is baseless, but strong nonetheless. You gottu give me that much for being an emotional, oversensitive Indian. One such someday reads like this: "Someday, we will either quit spitting on the roads, or will reach such a height that there will be special schools in Denmark teaching kids how to spit on the roads.")

joke of the year

a journalist questioned Ricky Ponting's "integrity."

Lofty Dreams and Little Ones

Dreams are either lofty or little ones. Some people think big and actually pursue their dreams. That separates them from the aam admi, the hoi polloi. Others are happy with their little dreams. Manjari Shukla, a classmate at the university, called up and asked me what I am doing with my life. Working for a corporate university. And why? Because I have a son to raise. So what's your dream? I don't have one. Why don't you write?

Yes, I've heard that from another Manjari (Manjari Rathi), my best buddy colleague ever. She is the most apolitical person I've ever met. Everybody in the office is a mini politician otherwise. The Bongs stick to the Bongs but backstab them, the Mallus are always going on and on in Malayalam. The Punjoos are always talking about Mrs Chopra's new sofa and Mr Chaddha's tax evasion strategies and the Gujjus about how tasty vegetarian food can be and how one makes better dhoklas than the other. Manjari isn't into any of this. Her ethnicity is hardly discernible because she comes across primarily as an Indian, which is such a welcome change. She is nice. She wants me to write too.

So does Christine. "You must write your memoirs," she wrote once. Christine was my boss earlier and I guess we connected for a brief period once. She feels I should write my memoirs. About how the urban Indian woman has changed from being absolutely inaccessible thirty years ago to someone who would sleep with you tonight and forget about you the next morning. How they have triumphantly crossed the virtual limits put around them by the misogynistic society of this subcontinent. How, despite facing a lot of discrimination at the workplace and otherwise, they are breaking all the barriers and coming out. This is nothing short of a revolution, only we haven't been able to accept it as one. We are afraid to accept that the girl student outscores and outshines the male counterpart by a few miles. And one such emancipated young girl walking to her apartment last evening spied three little children playing some weird games. She removed her ipod earplugs, went near them and realized they were playing "sex sex" with each other. Two girls and one boy, probably around seven or eight years old. Every new generation is shocking the earlier one out of their wits. Christine wants me to write about that because she thinks I am a new-age feminist. Because I was particularly polite with her, perhaps? I liked the compliment though. Who doesn't like compliments?

And like them, there are plenty of others who keep asking me to write. Only they forget that I am a person with little dreams. My lofty dreams of being a writer, a rally driver/rider, an actor, a blues harp player are just dreams. I love to live with my immediate, little dreams. What is the difference between the lofty and the little ones? If the lofty one is to be able to write fiction, the little one is to be able to express your immediate angst in a blog. Manini Chatterjee, the editor of The Telegraph (a Kolkata newspaper), once told me why she is not really happy. She has published a couple of books; she has won the Rabindra Puroshkar for her book Do and Die; has a son studying Philosophy and History at St Stephen's, New Delhi; has built a nice retreat up in the hills of Kumaon (remember Jim Corbett, anybody?), but is still not happy. She is content, but not happy. "You know why you and I feel we still have something more to do? That is because we haven't written fiction so far. Our lives will be unfulfilled if we don't get recognition as writers." It was very polite of her to include me in parentheses, but she is a writer and she will be able to write fiction some day. I cannot. Because my dreams are still little and I am talking to you here.

If the lofty one is to be able to beat Moudgil in the Raid de Himalayas next year, the little one is to be able to take my Royal Enfield out every weekend for a 300 km ride. How can you participate in a rally when you have to keep aside money for your son's school fees, your tax-saving investments, your mortgage payments, and other day-to-day expenses? You cannot. You can just buy a copy of the Bike magazine and read about Sachin Chavan, Moudgil, Prashant, Easha, riding up there and living their dreams. I have accepted that I cannot live up to those dreams so I want to live my little dreams of touring. The next little one is to ride all around India, leaving aside the extreme corners of course, alone. Achievable.

Aparna Sen will never know about me, but I feel I am so versatile. I lack any definite topography of face and can pass off as anything from a Korean to a Puerto Rican. I feel I can act. But can I? I can never find out, so that lofty dream has to take a backseat as I sit in my living room and watch Easy Rider, Motorcycle Diaries, Riding Solo to the Top of the World, Amelie, and think about my wrinkles. No little dreams here either. Maybe someday to strap a handycam to the gas tank and ride off, preaching salvation through a surfeit of something you desire for. A time comes when you don't want it that bad.

And my dreams are coming to an end now. The last one is to be a blues harp player. I think of visiting Peter Isaac one day and finding out from him how to think blues. You have to think blues but all I can think while playing is of John Denver, easy John Lennon, and Kishore Kumar. You have to learn to think the blues. That dream is strong, and will probably be the first one I will actually wake up and run after.

But for now, the little one is to be able to sit alone in the attic and hear the echo make my rendition of Chalte Chalte more soulful.

the real thing's missing

We all bribe. When I can't take Aaron out on his bike every day, I end up buying him a scaled-down VW Touareg over the weekend to make up for it.
That is as effective as having a fruit massage instead of eating those fruits. Cucumber, when eaten, is far more effective than when placed on your eyes. Time spent with your kids is a lot more precious than any expensive gifts you might buy them . . .

Movies in Batches

I spent the last few months watching really nice movies borrowed from a frnd who has an enviable collection. She doesn't usually lend her movies to people, but thankfully I could impress her by returning the first set on time and stuff like that. She lends me on two conditions: I buy her tuna subs from Subway, and return the movies intact.

Last weekend I watched Crash and Amores Perros. Made by Paul Haggis, this was perhaps the movie I was waiting for for a long time.

Crash, as you know, won something at the Oscars in 2006, but that's not what I wanna talk about. Whether the judges at the Oscars like a movie or not doesn't make any difference to the inherent quality of the movie. If it is a good movie, it attracts a universal audience and doesn't have to win awards. Awards are forgotten the next year but the story remains in your mind and grows old with you. Crash is such a movie.

It has many little stories woven into one, and masterfully so. It captures the stereotypes in a typical American's mind sometimes subtly and sometimes in outrageous hues. A tattooed, hispanic locksmith fixing locks at this white DA's house is bound to sell the duplicate keys to his gang, right? Wrong. He quietly goes home to his daughter and tells her a story of how once an angel gave him a bulletproof cloak. African Americans are bound to always like hip hop? Some even enjoy country music. An apparently racist white cop risks his life saving a black American woman from a car crash, while a politically correct white cop ends up shooting a black guy thinking he is pulling out his gun.

I can't write well enough to do justice to the movie, but whoever has made it, has done a brilliant job. I watched it thrice and every time I enjoyed every bit of it. And each time I could sense even more clearly how it must be to belong to a religious minority in India. What are the stereotypes we have in our minds about Muslims? This theme can be borrowed and adapted to our scenario here. So easily.

We have seen Indian filmmakers telling us about the horrors of particular incidents (can think of Nihalni's Dev about the recent riots in Gujarat and also Aparna Sen's Mr and Mrs Iyer talking about how an urban Muslim guy is protected by a Tamil Brahmin woman by being given a Hindu identity) about the collective fear in our minds, but cannot think of a script that can match that of Crash's right now. There are many stories in many minds . . . is there a chance those stories can be brought together to form a nice script in our Indian context?

Like I wrote earlier, I also watched Amores Perros, a Spanish movie about various characters. This again is a pastiche of people woven brilliantly together, but it is more on an individual level, if you know what I mean. These are stories of individuals and does not address a greater menace like dangerous stereotypes in our minds. Of the two movies, Crash is still alive in my mind. I saved it for the last, and now I have finished watching all the movies in this batch, which also contained Amelie, Cinema Paradiso, Motorcycle Diaries and such biggies. I can't think of these movies as stories told in other languages. They all seem in English to me now that I think of them.

I owe this frnd a lot more tuna subs for helping me discover this moviegoer in me.
The next batch sounds more promising.

Malpe trip

If you are driving in India, you better beware of black cats crossing your path. It is supposed to be dangerous for your onward journey. I have to google for where this superstition came from, because it reeks of some medieval European superstition from the dark ages. Indians, however, being democratic in nature, have included cats of all colors, lest they feel left out. So, to modify my earlier statement, "If you are driving in India, you better beware of cats crossing your path." You are supposed to wait a little and let another vehicle pass you before you move.

However, in Malpe, you don't have the luxury of waiting because you will have cats crossing your path at least ten times a day. Malpe is this fishing town on the West coast of India, and the stench of fish all over this small town is so overpowering, that it draws cats, Mallus, and Bengalis alike. Unable to resist the smell, they run here and there in search of fish (raw for the cats and cooked for the Mallus and the Bengalis)... and are bound to cross your path more often than once. I pardoned the cats and drove on. Driving on and off the beach was our mantra for the four days we were at Malpe.

The trip was an unplanned one, although I had applied for leave on Friday much in advance. We have to go somewhere, but that "where" part was kinda undecided till Oct 31. When we left home early morning on Nov 1, we did not fight over the route much until we reached Nelmangla, 26 kms off Bangalore, on the Pune highway. I was all for driving to Shimoga and then to Gokarna, while Sayantani wanted to turn left toward Mangalore. Her parents must have been silently supporting their daughter sitting on the back seat, because, at Nelmangla my car suddenly veered to the left and went straight towards Hassan. So much for being the driver cum husband cum son-in-law . . . talk about being lonely in a crowded jeep.

The road vanished after crossing Sakleshpur. All the fast cars that had overtaken me earlier were stuck there, trying to negotiate the potholes. Pardon me, guys, for that faint smirk on my lips when I overtook all of them, did the bad roads at speeds of around 30 kph, and left them far behind. The road is nonexistent all the way to Mangalore, so they couldn't catch up with the Bolero even in their wet dreams. However, I must admit that I missed the 16" wheels of the Scorpio. There were some Terracans and Endeavors that didn't need to worry about the potholes at all, but those are real SUVs after all.

Shuvo told us of this really bargain place at Udupi that had big rooms on offer for only Rs 400 a night, but I was skeptical about Udupi being this religious town with only vegetarian food available. I was so mistaken! While I expected young, barebodied, tonsured Brahmins clad in dhoti roaming all around town, I got to see a very cosmopolitan crowd there. The food at Hotel Kediyoor was a wide choice from steaks and cold salads to delicious chicken kababs. Surprise of surprise, there was even a Bunts Hotel serving awesome pork sarpotel, the Catholic cuisine in Mangalore/Malpe. Bengalis always look for places that serve a lot of meat, and once we were satisfied with the menu, we headed toward Malpe beach, only 4 kms from Udupi.

We liked what we saw. The beach was clean and not very crowded. Not much of the local crowd, and not littered with poop either. The fisherfolk on the shores have constructed nice little bamboo toilets for themselves (could have been an NGO that constructed these for them), and we could sit there watching the odd couple making out in the sea. The sea is rough and you are not supposed to swim, but there were adventurous people who could be seen like black dots in a really dark sea till late in the night.

We had an awesome dinner at Paradise Isle Beach resort, facing the beach. They have a nice spread and if you like seafood, you have a lot of choice. At least we thought so until we discovered Hotel Karthick the next day. At Hotel Karthick, you get sting ray (called Torakkai) fried in a lot of masala. It was spicy and can serve as a fantastic starter with beer. One morning we thought of driving some 60 kms to Maravanthe, but had to come back after having traveled 20 kms. The roads were nonexistent as usual, and my in-laws didn't like being tossed around inside the vehicle. The first day they didn't have a choice, but this time round we had to drop the Maravanthe idea and head back to Malpe and Udupi.

We compensated for that by trying a ride on the water scooter. Aaron sat at the front, holding the handlebars and I sat behind the guy who drove it. It was just after sunset and there was a chill in the air that our lifejackets couldn't protect us from. And when this sexy little thing zoomed into the waves and was thrown high up into the air, I could feel my heart trying to come up to my mouth. With my mouth firmly closed I wondered how my little son was braving it, sitting way up front, the first one to take in all the sea water. The thing bounced and almost flew over the water and man, was it scary! We came back intact, thanks to the skilled driver (who tried all sorts of antics with them waves), and little Aaron wanted to do it again. I said it was getting dark and avoided a second trip, but was surprised to learn that while I was trying to hold on to dear life, he actually checked the speedo in that thing!

The route to take while coming back was something that put us in a spot. For the first time we all agreed that we should come back via Manipal, Perdoor, Agumbe, Shimoga. Asked around and even the local guys agreed that this was still an okay road. We started off on Nov 4 with our minds full of the waves, the beach, and the taste of seafood. And it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The road got better after Manipal, and although it was pretty narrow, the greenery all around made up for the slow speeds. We stopped for tea at this time-warped place called Perdoor, where a local gentleman chatted us up. People there seemed untouched by the urban hustle and were nice and smiling. Almost felt like we were back in the hills where people are hospitable and nice. We cheered up and moved on toward the Agumbe ghats. Stopped to click some pictures all through the route until we reached Shimoga. It took us four hours to do only 148 kms, but it was worth the time. Shimoga to Bangalore was the usual route, peppered with aggressive drivers with KA02 and KA03 numberplates. My jeep failed to keep up with the fast cars again as they were happily doing 160 kph, rushing back to the mad, modern world, scowling at life in general. I keep hoping Aaron will not be one of them, but for a guy who checks speedos at the age of five, one can never tell.

P.S. Do check out this video . . .

and for some more pictures, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/42521957@N00/sets/72157602938366911/

July 2, 2007

We planned to go to Ooty to spend our tenth anniversary. After speculating a lot about the West coast, we realized it is gonna be hazardous to try going anywhere near the sea. There were thunderstorms anywhere and the memory of the tsunami was still fresh on our minds. Ooty again? Nobody liked the idea much, but what the heck!

This is not a travelogue. We reached Ooty and got nice rooms in Hotel Darshan. We could see the Ooty lake from our windows. The food was awesome, and because we mostly had to stay indoors because of the rains, we kept eating and planning the next meal. The only problem was the noise of people pounding up and down the stairs.

On the morning of the 2nd we heard someone screaming and running up the stairs. Very early in the morning. It was my sister, Suchi, running up to inform us about her mom-in-law's death. They had just been informed and we had to leave.

We rushed back to Bangalore airport in about six hours and they left for Kolkata.

Later when I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I realized that the first picture we clicked in Ooty was rather eerie. Uncanny coincidence, but rather scary if you think about it. Was that a hint that there was a death about to happen in the family? Check out the photo and tell me what you think.

.

Sept 10, 2000

"Hello Shuvo" she sounded kinda faint over the phone

"Hey mom, where were you all these days?" I could hear my dad prompt her from the side. Then he came on to the phone, "hello?"

"Hi Baba, why don't you guys come over now? Do you want me to send the tickets?"

And they agreed to come over. I was feeling happy all of a sudden because I couldn't remember where my mom had been, and why I thought of buying just one ticket for my dad. She is coming after all.

When the dream ended, I woke up feeling a little sad that it isn't true after all. She is dead and gone.

A little later, while having breakfast, we were calculating this month's expenses and realized that we have run out of all the cash already. How do we manage? We have some Sodexho passes, and can withdraw from another dormant account, etc. were the solutions that came up.

"Fucking tenth of the month and we are broke, huh?"

And that's when it struck me that it is my mom's seventh death anniversary. Sept 10, 2000.
Is it eerie? Is she there? Did she come in a dream or did she really visit me?

I don't have an explanation today. I have a lot of work to finish during which I might even forget to ponder upon this, but I need an answer some time. Was it a remote calendar in my brain that sparked a reminder? The rationalist in me wants to believe that... but this hunger for a supernatural mystery wants me to believe she had come.

Who can crush a dinosaur?

These days Aaron keeps quizzing me about everything. If he knows something, he asks me to check if I know the answer too. There is this fossilized corpse of a mosquito on the bedroom wall for many years now. I remember how I jumped and slapped it dead against the wall one evening. It has been there since then, just below the CFL bulb, almost resembling a sketch of a mosquito instead of a real one.

"Who crushed it?"

"I did."

"Can someone crush us against a wall like that?"

"Yeah, why not, an elephant can. A dinosaur could have." I offered.

"And who can crush a dinosaur?"

"Umm...nothing."

"You don't know."

"Who or what can possibly crush a dinosaur like that?"

"Why? What if a rock comes from Mars and falls on earth? Won't it crush the dinosaurs?"

And I wondered who came up with the theory of dinosaurs being destroyed by a large asteroid crashing into our earth. Someone with an unbridled imagination?

Trip

Hey,

You asked me if I ride now.

I used to ride a bicycle from 82 to 95.
And, when you are sleepy, that's where the story ends. When you are partly sleepy, you probably write a few more sentences about the time you went to see a dead Royal Bengal tiger hung from a tree by the villagers who killed her.

Poor girl just escaped from a circus. And looked for a jungle to escape to.

We were either three or five of us on our bikes. Hearing about the tiger in the morning, we went riding to a village some ten kilometers away. Could have been twenty, I won't know. We could ride on and on then and never heard of Tour de France. We could ride without water for hours. Racing each other. We were never tired. It was unheard of. And then played football in the afternoon.

I had a tape recorder that had an output of 2 watts. Sanyo. We would come back and listen to In Square Circle in that. The cassette was recorded from an LP. Stevie Wonder! What a guy, we would think...and then his famous chromatic harmonica. We also had Nat King Cole to listen to. English songs were almost frowned upon unless some really respectable, elderly uncle came and recommended them. Nobody recommended Stevie Wonder I remember. Those fat uncles hadn't heard him. Just Nat Cole and Frank Sinatra. So we got to hear some of their music. Couldn't figure most of what they sang, but we did sing along.

Dad had a Hero harmonica stashed away somewhere. It was a C. I started on that later. Much later, after I left school. Michael Jackson's Thriller was available too. Just one copy that changed hands. A cassette tape.

And Europe. The Final Countdown. Cyndi Lauper. All on the Sanyo.

You asked me if I ride now. I used to. Trip, that is.
Keep writing. And do sign in to chat too. You ride now, I know. I will join you like I joined my gang of little urchins every day. Just let my knees heal...

Me

Forgotten Names

When Bini died, I didn't go to see her. I could not look to the end of the street where her mom kept her body and was crying. I didn't see Bini when she was alive either, but her mom Aduri used to do the dishes at our place for a meagre sum of Rs 30 a month. This is way back in the 70s, so I guess she could make do with whatever amount she earned then. I just hope she could. I don't know. Like I never could get myself to go up to her and console her for her daughter's death, I couldn't look at the little hut they used to live in. The hut was so low, one would have to crawl inside. I would walk past. But I was pretty civil to Aduri. In fact loved it when she came over to clean the house. I wouldn't have to study then. I would just follow her from one room to another and listen to her speak.

I could speak her dialect. And she definitely took pride in that.

My mom, when she gottu know about Bini's ailment, paid for her treatment at our local hospital. But they couldn't save her. And I forget what happened to her. And cannot ask my mom either because mom too passed away some years back. And believe me, she has taken away with her some awesome recipes...of dishes that I grew up on. I miss her.

Aduri in Bengali means someone who is loved and cuddled all the time. Our Aduri definitely didn't have time for that. She was too busy working as a household help in some ten houses all through the day. And in the night her drunk husband would either beat her up or try to get her pregnant again. That is, unless she already was pregnant.

She was always pregnant. When I remembered Bini's death (just the faint wail of Aduri sitting at the corner of the street in front of her body) last night, I placed a hand on Aaron. He was trying one of his Z poses in his sleep as usual. He can be a great contortionist. One just has to make him sleep during the show.

And then I wondered how Aduri would have felt at her death. She couldn't cry her heart out...she didn't have time time. And then she had her other children to feed. Her eldest was a son, probably my age, a guy who played all day. Believe me, I envied him. I met him later when I was in senior school. I had gone to one of the local hooch shops to buy liquor for the first time in my life. Me and some friends of mine went up to the shop and bought some country liquor, saying it was for our dads! As if the guy selling the stuff cared who we were buying it for. I don't remember how much it was for, but we did fall short by ten rupees. And this fellow, Aduri's son, lent that money to me.

I never saw him after that. I eventually left Durgapur and then moved on to Banaras, Delhi, and then Bangalore and forgot all about him until last night. I remembered him because I remembered Bini. Or her death. But I don't remember his name. He must be grown up now, working somewhere. And I calculated how much I owe him back. Going by the sensex way back in 79 at 100 points, I should owe him a lot today. The sensex has breached the 15,000 mark, and those ten rupees would be? Rs 15,000.

I called up my friend in Durgapur today. He said he will find out about Aduri. She must be really old, probably still working as hard, scrubbing the plates, mopping the floors...how much do we actually owe her? Can I buy her a retirement package? Not with Rs 15,000 for sure. You can buy just a couple of standing wooden speakers from Sonodyne with that kinda money. And I've been eyeing the Sonodyne Sonus speakers for the last three years now.

What if I say I don't have that money? Will the wail stop coming back to me?

Trust

I'd been meaning to write about trust for a long time, but I guess I needed to be pushed into writing about this. There is this picture of a waiter passing a laden tray from one compartment of a train to another waiter in another compartment. The funny thing is, the train is moving, and they are hanging out of their respective compartment doors to reach out to each other, their lives depending on how strongly the handles are bolted to the door. Each handle is bolted to a door at two ends, with two bolts at each end. Enough to make you trust the strength of that handle. Enough for you to lean out and be sure you won't be thrown out onto the cactii in the fields.

We trust our machines. When I ride through the 40 kms stretch inside a jungle infested with elephants and even tigers, I trust my motorbike not to break down. I trust that any nail lying on the road would not pierce my tube and deflate it. Such is the strength of trust. And most people garner immense strength from their trust in various gods. When you don't have any gods to turn to, you have to trust yourself. I know my engine is sound enough not to break down now. I know the tyres and tubes are new and "shouldn't" ideally go flat, leaving me an easy prey to whoever is out there, waiting.

And being able to trust gives you a lot of strength. When you know you can close your eyes and just let go backward knowing someone's behind you to hold your fall, you feel powerful. You feel cushioned and safe. And we all need that cushion. And I am happy for all of you who have found your cushion in god/s. For others who do not have that luxury, there are other people. Like today if I want to talk my heart out to someone and I know I can trust one person, I am lucky.

Tomorrow, if that person spills my secrets to someone not even distantly related, you suddenly fall. It's like you were promised that you will be held from behind when you fell, but it was just a prank being played on you. Imagine someone cutting off your bungee ropes?

So, for people who haven't the luxury of sitting in front of some gods and pouring out their miseries, for people who have to turn to other people to even talk normally ... there's a fine catch. Can you trust an apparently trustworthy person? Someone who appears to be a wall, taking in all, can actually be like a dam on the other side, gushing everything out for public consumption.

It is absolutely okay when you don't find out. It is quite another when you do. Those are times you wish you allowed your neighbor to give you that labrador pup.

hospitalis

I was walking out of the hospital reception when I overheard this conversation between the lady at the reception and a guy from Near East, probably a Turk:

"Afterr this you go to Radiology for Yax-Ray, saar, and then you had your breakfast with this coupon," said the nurse as she handed over a coupon to the guy.

"I haven't had my breakfast, madam," the guy was a little puzzled by now. He had probably come for his fasting blood sugar check up and now had to eat at the cafetaria upstairs. But the nurse insisted that he had had his breakfast already.

"Yes, yes...you go had yourrr breakfast now..."

At this point I had already reached the door and couldn't really stay back to hear the rest of the conversation and how it was eventually resolved, so I stepped out. I had given my blood for various kind of tests, but I was unsure whether these guys did an HIV test as well. So I approached the lady at the HCU desk, "Hi, does this VDRL also include HIV?"

"Uh? No, sir."

"Can I get an HIV test done?"

The lady went violet and looked away. As if I had asked her to come home for coffee.

"Hullo? I asked you something..." I tried again.

"Santoshaaa?" she screamed at the ward boy, "Idu pyapera nodi," she instructed him after handing him a sheet of paper, and walked away without replying.

I mean, where do you get an HIV test done if not at the Wockhardt Hospitals certified by the Harvard Medical Association?

P.S. And what shit was on the muzak?

Haloom

Meghadoot called up this morning and said Haloom. And then we went on how apart from being a tiger's roar in Bengali, it also can be a sondhi of Hello and Shalom.

After debating on how loud a Haloom should be for about five minutes, we discussed football. About Zidane and about a businessman who wants to send his son to Germany to learn football after he finishes school. He might say futbol, but at least won't call it soccer for no reason. What's wrong with the Americans?

Aaron and I were downstairs playing basketball when Meghadoot called. It soon changed to football because I was holding the phone in one hand. I hit him with the ball once. Not purposely though. I am bad at football. At basketball too. We couldn't slam dunk many times after that. There is this small basket at the basement. Belongs to Ashwin who plays tennis mostly.

Came up for Loknath Baba's payesh. My in-laws believe one Loknath Baba lived for 150 years. So they made payesh for him. Which we had to eat. Payesh is sweet. And harmful. No wonder Loknath Baba couldn't live beyond 150 years. He must've died of excessive sugar.

Now Aaron wants to go downstairs with the basketball which he will use as a football anyway. Babu and I kicked his football into the sea once. It came back but was soggy.

It happens to be my 36th birthday and I am still in my pajamas. And this keyboard downstairs at Babu's place sucks. But he has a faster net connection.

Now my mouth is sour from all the sweet payesh I had eaten just ten minutes back. Shit. What a birthday.

"A short dictionary of misunderstood words" (part two)

45% in MA English Literature: Just stand up and salute if you come across someone who has scored these marks from Calcutta University. Because, for all you know, this person can write ten dissertations on anything starting from Chaucer down to Saul Bellow or even Toni Morrisson. He/she is nothing short of a genius. This person will also tell you everything about one Zimmermann, and probably play the harmonica or the guitar better than your neighbor in California. This person will also put New Orleans to shame with his/her knowledge of jazz music. You see many of them working for The Statesman or The Telegraph. Such men are bearded and wear glasses. The women wear glasses and sport khadi kurtas.

Such a person will perpetually be found smoking rolled tobacco. They are Democrats.

Sourav Ganguly: My weakness too. Horribly sinned against by the rest of the regional cricket boards in India, this former captain of the Indian cricket team is very unIndian in his charisma and strength of character. Someday will be the Prime Minister of India. Amen.

Bearded fellow: While in the rest of India a beard is almost synonymous to being a Mussalman, in Calcutta it signifies the urge to be known as an intellectual. Anybody who wears a beard is either dabbling in poetry or the arts of some kind. Do not discourage them. At least that keeps them from being communal.

Poet: Everybody has tried poetry, so don't go around saying you are a poet. Everybody is a poet in Calcutta. And believe me, this is the only city where anthologies find buyers. Be it Bishnu De, Sunil Ganguly, Allen Ginsberg, or Jim Morrisson, Calcuttans read all poets.

Artist: Again...a generic plague. Everybody is an artist. Everybody can be seen doodling in class. Except for the ones who come to Calcutta to study engineering.

Books: I mean, if a book hasn't sold in Mexico? It will still find many buyers in Calcutta. They are suckers for the printed word.

Godmen: Conmen

America: God's own country

Calcutta: Now this is the toughest term, man. Every Calcuttan thinks Calcutta is very prominent in the world map. Like Sourav Ganguly, Calcutta was once the capital of British India. (Calcuttans love everything British btw. Even a Calcuttan who opens his umbrella when it rains in Beijing would love the idea of speaking perfect RP. Try telling him that RP is long dead, but nobody is listening.) And now, New Delhi, a place that belongs to nobody and is ruled by the aggressive, uneducated, and philistine Northies, happens to be the capital of India.

Someday, Calcuttans would love to bring it back to Calcutta. That status, the glory of being the only emancipated city in India.

"A short dictionary of misunderstood words" -- Milan Kundera

If you come to Calcutta in 2008, Strunk, here's a short dictionary of Bengali terms for you. It is not in any order and is in no way comprehensive. But a start, nonetheless.

Communication gap (occupational hazard for a Calcuttan): This happens quite often in Calcutta. The buses go on strike or the metrorail service between Tollygunge and Dumdum is suspended. People, who mostly use public transport, panic about a sudden communication gap. Otherwise, the communication inside Calcutta is pretty okay. Public communication, I mean.

Do not use the term "commute." You may be held as a CIA spy trying to find out about the Communists in Calcutta.


Presentation (n.): If you find someone fretting about what presentation to give, do not offer him/her any help. I know you would be tempted to from your vast experience in giving presentations everywhere from your college to all the STC conferences in the world, but you know zilch about how to give a presentation in Calcutta. In Calcutta, a presentation is a gift. And every wedding season you can find people scratching their heads about what presentation to give. Nothing to do with PowerPoint, lemme tell you.

Markin/Markini (adj): There will be many podia on which people can be seen calling America and George Bush names. Never go near those gatherings. In West Bengal you can get votes and stay in power for more than forty years if you keep shouting slogans against Markini Capitalism and Oppression. Markini is "American," by the way. Bengalis will side with the Cubans, the Talibans, the Bamiyans, the Iraqis, the Democrats, the Russians, the Chinese, but send their children only to Republican America to study and work. (I wonder what harm the Americans have done to the Bengali Communists. Can you find out?)

Samrajyabadi: The guys who talk about Samrajyabadi are most often seen at the foreign exchange counters selling the dollars sent by their children. I still haven't figured what it means, but it is used in a derog sense. If you are not begging on the streets or are not a laborer waiting outside a locked out factory, you are a samrajyabadi. And that is very bad, lemme tell you. Hey you, you have money? You are a samrajyabadi. (I agree with Russell Peters that being called Samrajyabadi is way better than being called a "fucking blow job" for which there is no good comeback, but being called samrajyabadi is almost equally bad.)

*someone translated for me: it means a capitalist. You do NOT wanna be called a capitalist in Communist Calcutta.


Jewish: Equivalent to Christians to Calcuttans.

"I put my daughter in The Jewish Girls' School."

"Oh, really? Good thing, bhai. She will learn good Christian values. They do have a chapel inside, I believe? With an organ? I am looking at the AG Mission school for my son. These Catholic missionary schools teach good English."

(And obviously you can see that the difference between Catholic and Protestant is lost to an average Calcuttan.)

White: Christian

European: Hippie/backpacker/Salvation Army Guest House

American: "You fucking Samrajyabadi!!"