My 'Brother' Akheel

When I was a little boy, Iraq meant -The Land of the Scud Missiles. Thanks to Pronoy Roy's - The World This Week the incessant visuals of the flying Scuds never left a child's mind. In our campus the big guys would play the "Americans" while the puny little ones would be the "Iraqis". The winter evenings were spent with the Americans chasing the Iraqis all around the children's park. The skirmishes often ended with an Iraqi returning home in a torn woolen sweater. On rare occasions an American would receive an embarrassing black eye in the hands of a worked up opponent. The underdogs would hail him as "Saddam". At sundown we would declare ceasefire and trudge back to study lessons and homeworks. Those were the evenings when juvenile ignorance allowed us to play an innocent charade of a gruesome war. Then the years flew by and I forgot all about the children's park-wars, even as America's obsession for Iraq continued.

Sixteen years later, on the smoldering Texan summer I was walking up to my apartment in the Mexican neighborhood; Almost leading myself to believe that I was Gary Cooper from The High Noon, when I heard someone conversing in what sounded like animated Arabic. Now an Arab in a Mexican town would be like Lawrence, in Arabia, I said to myself. A character so out of place, and yet not. As I approached the iron stairs to my apartment there stood a hairy source of that Arab dialect (the 'hairy' part I knew since he wore an unbuttoned grey shirt). A man with a crow's nest of a head and an overgrown mustache. Akheel was yelling at his friend who was inside his apartment and was yelling back with equal zeal. As our eyes met he flashed an armory of stained teeth. Yes, that was how I first met Akheel. The guy was all you could get wrong in a country paranoid with men of Middle-Eastern decent.You could not tell what he did for a job (except that he volunteered at times to fix my friend's car); It was impossible to tell how he landed in the middle of Texas. It must have been a Colombian boat if you ask me. I had no idea what he was doing in a University town either other than to ogle at girls in pink shorts. He definitely showed no scholarly inclinations, failing consistently to construct a single legal sentence in English. There was "Illegal" written all over this guy. And just to remove any modicum of doubt, he chewed a cheap cigar. This one was Saddam, Gaddafi and Castro pressed in one, right in Bush's backyard.

Akheel was friends with everyone. He chatted all day with  Ronnie the big Afro-American who stayed upstairs. He was friends with Pedro and Pepe the Spanish maintenance guys, the mailman, the burly Bill who owned a pit-bull  and of course the numerous college going girls who passed our property on their way to the University gym. But the worst of his traits was that he called me "Brother". The more I tried to disassociate myself from the creature he interfered with my life. If I was studying in my single room apartment with the door open, he would walk in with that obnoxious cheap cigar (half wet with his slime) dangling from his mouth. He would insist that I let him in as a guest to the University gym. As a student I was allowed to bring a 'visitor'. He knew my gym-timing and would wait by the stairs everyday leaving me with no choice. Once in the gym as I walked in with this rogue in toe I could feel a hundred suspiscous eyes on us. I would try my best to lose him. In the training room while lifting weights I would spot him through the mirror. There he'd be wallowing aimlessly on the indoor synthetic track as the college team sprinted by trying their best not to bump into him. Akheel of course was oblivious of it all for his eyes only cared for the rows of slender legs on the assembly of treadmills. No sooner than I had warmed up for some serious workout that I would feel a prodding on my shoulder. "Let's go Brrother!" came the irritating dictum. Those extra 'r's he put in 'brother' succeeded everytime in pushing my patience to the edge. They had warned me about culture shock at the American Center in Kolkata. An integral part of that education was the famous American syndrome of "rolling the 'r's" (not to be confused with 'arse'). Who would have imagined that I would experience that phenomenon through my Arab brrrother Akheel. Anyway, man learns to survive against many odds and so did I with him as my neighbor.

And then one day we struck a common chord.

I must also tell you that Akheel drove a white mini-van that was in no better shape than the owner. Actually I did not even know if he owned it. When asked he replied that it belonged to one of his 'brothers'. Knowing by now the broad scope of that word I strongly suspected the van to be a stolen one. One evening while I was standing by the front porch sipping coffee Akheel's van wobbled across the street and stopped right in front of our apartment. Out came he with a broad smile and two large carps in either hand. Now life as a graduate student in the US had not exactly been how the advertisements back home portrayed. You could buy a few things from your on-campus earnings; But fresh fish wasn't one of them. Firstly, because you did not have a decent shop near Arlington that sold fresh fish; And secondly, if you did the price was exorbitant anyway. Thus the fish-eater in me was in the process of dying a painful death when his eyes fell upon the smiling Arab holding out his prized catch. He dangled them in front of me as the setting sun glistened on the silvery scales. "Good fish brother; Fresh fish" he said with his typical mischievous demeanour. That evening he told me how he takes his van every Thursday to a nearby stream, where he sits and fishes for hours. He made me believe it was just a fun jaunt with more dividends than effort. By now I had got the sweet taste of the forbidden fruit. So we struck a deal. I was to accompany him on his next fishing trip and we'd split the loot at the day's end. Little did I know that I was shaking hands with the serpent. Thus began our brotherly partnership.

So it was that on a Thursday evening in the summer of 2007 I came home running after attending the day's lecture. I changed into a pair of shorts a casual t-shirt and put on my tennis shoes and hopped into the rear of the dilapidated van, all set to experience the greatest fishing experience of my life. The van gurgled loudly as Akheel revved its engine. Perhaps a case of a silencer gone bad. I thought. As we journeyed I found other components of the vehicle that had reached what in machine lingo is known as EOL (End of Life). It huffed and puffed and spewed carbon-rich smoke as Akheel egged it to maintain the speed on the highway. A couple of vehicles gave a mocking honk as they whizzed by. Akheel greeted them with flashing teeth and a middle finger while I hid my head in embarrassment. The Iraqi sure was learning to give back the surprise punch. While we drove Akheel spoke of his parents, his wife, his children and the rest  of his family. He kept rambling about life in Iraq, at times raising his voice in frustration. I felt that bitter pang of having to live far away from family. But then I did not know what sort of a compulsion drove him from his homeland to the USA. Who knew, perhaps it was a crime he comitted there that if caught might have costed him his limbs, or perhaps his manhood too! I assured myself that there was nothing I could do to empathize with his predicament. I concentrate on my fishing.

Inside the van was expectedly a mess. There were disassembled fishing rods (mostly dysfunctional from their looks) bundled under the seat. A small plastic container lay on the seat. Inside it was a polythene packet filled with a doughy substance. It looked like a mixture of flour, raisins, strips of dates, and what looked like fine grains of wheat. All Akheel would tell me about it was that, "Good fish like this food". I didn't know if he meant that fish in general liked this good food or it was a particularly good breed of fish that liked this food. To me it looked like a medley of all the unused grocery in his house.

By now we had reached a point where the highway led to a bridge that went over a tiny stream. Just before the bridge Akheel steered the van off the road towards the right and parked it at a vacant spot. This was no parking spot as far as I could tell. He had claimed that land by virtue of regular usage. He got off the vehicle and looked around probably for the cops. I felt like a thief's accomplice as I did my share of the perusal. We then gathered the packet of fish food, the several twigs with lines wound around them, and a couple of disassembled fishing rods. From that spot to the stream was a steep grassy slope. The wind was blowing down the slope and along the stream. I could tell that the wind always blew this way for the grass blades lay somnolent like a dog's fur constantly caressed by its master. And that made the slope slippery. Akheel being the veteran positioned his body sideways and galloped down the slope. For me it was just a fast and furious slide. My tennis shoes slipped the moment they set foot on the grass and did not stop until I landed by the muddy bank. I quickly got up and brushed my embarrassment. Luckily I wasn't carrying the fishing lines or I might have been the first catch of the day.

We sat on the grass while Akheel setup his primitive contraption. He pushed one of the branches that we were carrying half way into the ground. A little more than a couple of feet stood above the soil. Then he tied one end of the fishing line around the branch knotting it several times to ensure it did not break loose under duress. At the other end of the line was a dead weight and a rusted fishing hook which he covered with a lump of the doughy substance. Then with a mighty heave he threw the line so that it landed in the middle of the stream. In minutes he had sprayed out five or six such lines tied to as many branches dug to the ground. Having laid out his usual traps he assembled one of his fishing rods. Then he ambled along the bank of the stream to finally settle near a rock. Having swung the rod to drop the bait in the water he sat with his knees bent near his chest quietly waiting. His instructions to me were simple, "Brother dont pull when fish pull, Let him eat. Only pull when he pullll". So I waited with my eyes on the lines. Every now and then a line became taut, I looked at Akheel. He would raise a hand asking me to wait. This one must have been a seasoned killer, I told myself. The lines rose and fell like guitar strings and like a novice my eyes kept focusing from one to the other till my forehead hurt. The prey kept nibbling as their fate danced to the tune of those strings. And then suddenly, one of the lines went taut and rose all the way to the middle of the stream. Before I could stand on my shimmying legs Akheel was onto the line like a leopard. A struggle between man and fish ensued, during which the line snaked over the water making a hissing sound. He pulled like an expert. As the fish neared the surface of the muddy bank he turned and ran up the slope with the line. I saw what that did. If he had gone closer to the water to catch the fish he would be playing to the prey's advantage. The bank was devoid of grass and muddy and hence slippery. The fish could easily have slithered out of grip and a single mistake in leaving the line might have ended in a futile attempt. Instead he ran uphill, dragging the fish out of the water and away from the slippery bank and on to the grass. The grass blade took away the slime and made it impossible for the fish to escape. It also made for easier gripping. We had got our first catch.

A few hours and a couple of catches later I was still sitting by the branches playing my mental metronome not having contributed in the least bit in this collaborative effort. It was almost time for sun down and a squadron of mosquitoes had become airborne. They droned over our heads and every now and then one of them launched a kamikaze on our flesh. Wearing a pair of shorts had not been a good choice, just like the decision to wear tennis shoes.  Akheel was his usual self lighting a half burnt cigar that filled the air with nauseating smoke. That smoke, along with hunger and the pressure to perform was having an irritable effect. As time passed I began to feel irritated by Akheel's presence. Perhaps I never thought a man from a desert country could beat a boy who grew with the Ganges flowing behind his backyard in a fishing contest. I must have forgotten about the Euphrates, the Tigris. And while I pondered sulkily about the ills in the man one of the lines began to move. This times there was no cadence of rise and fall. Instead it was a monstrous pull that snapped the branch. Had it not been for the Arab's reflex the game would have been already over. But Akheel's bear-like paws had grabbed the branch, and now he was holding the taut line.

The branch-and-line combo was a primitive equipment. Unlike a fishing rod it did not give the liberty to let the line loose to give the prey a lease of comfort and then wheel it back slowly. So Akheel walked all the way to the edge of the water to simulate a lesser tension on the line. After a while he would walk out of the mud. And each time he did he ensured a yard or more got reduced between man and prey. With the tension around and the mosquitoes above I decided to stand up and walk slowly move towards the mud. The tennis shoes were brown by now and the crevices of the sole filled with mud to make it precariously frictionless. We waited as the line drew closer. Then with a sudden splutter a tail rose above the water and then vanished. It was a big fat buffalo fish. It was now panicking as the line drew it towards the shallow end. Akheel whispered to me to be ready. Not knowing what that meant I bent me knees and spread my arms like a goal-keeper. I quickly tore a tuft of grass and rubbed them, for I strongly suspected that a hand-to-hand combat was around the corner.

Soon enough the huge head of the buffalo fish reared out of the water. Akheel reverting to his usual tactic started climbing up the slope. But this was a heavy one even for the Arab. So the piscine giant struggled in the mud throwing splinters of dirt that splattered my face and half-blinded my vision. In a moment of courage I lowered enough to grab its torso. But the slime on its body was too much and it slipped not before leaving my palm bleeding with a jab from its pectorals. The blood somehow made it easier to muster that extra courage and I dug my knees on the mud and almost fell over it. It was now fanning its lengthy dorsal fin that had been somnolent till now. It scratched the side of my face and I could instantly feel the warm gush of blood. Then it suddenly went quiet. Days later when I revisited that encounter I realized what a masterstroke that was. Seeing that the fish had gone still Akheel had left the line and ran down the slope to  help me pin it down. And I seeing Akheel running down must have become a tad complacent. In that millisecond of carelessness our adversary gave the jerk of its life. The jerk blinded me and I instinctively went to clear the mud from my eyes. Akheel was running downhill and in no position to trap the slippery buffalo. He only managed to trip over the line and clumsily fell on me. Entangled in a grotesque mixture of mud slime and grime we both stared cluelessly as our adversary escaped deep into the bed of the stream. It was an hour past sunset when we trudged back to the van.

That night I was the laughing stock among my roommates. Taking my defeat quite sportingly along with the raw scars on my palm and right cheek I was busying myself in the kitchen when the door bell rang. And sure enough there was the Arab, two carps in hand smiling as always. He had come to give my part of the deal. When I reminded him that I had just been a bystander even less useful than the deadweights he just smiled. And of course exhaled the obnoxious fumes from a half-wet cigar. That night we all sat in front of Akheel's apartment eating baked fish from his portable grill sipping cheap beer and taking long drags from his oversized hookah. I smiled as I thought what the folks at the American Center at Kolkata would think if they saw me now. In a few months I left school and I never met Akheel. I think he just kept living life in the true spirit of the Maverick.  

The Society of Mediocre Engineers

Well let us start by not denying that we are a section of contemporary society best represented by the Pied Piper's mice. Only here, the Pied Piper is but an invisible and omnipotent career path.Yes, we are the Engineers. Neither the best, nor the worst; Just in the middle. Let us call ourselves ME, the Mediocre Engineers, as that sounds most appropriate both as a word as well as an acronym. If you are not an engineer or if you do not consider yourself to be a just-in-the-middle kind of an engineer, then you cannot be ME. So please accept my apology and step behind the sideline and watch ME make a mockery of myself.

For the rest, my fellow comrades what do we do about ME? Let us be realistic. This is obviously not going to be an intellectually intense discussion as that is beyond our premise. Remember, "ME is mediocre", that is the mantra. So we cannot let ourselves be carried away by deriving equations of Euler and Gauss or Laplace or Bernoulli. Let us first put our heads together and define who we are.

We are the ones who have got a degree in the engineering sciences without having any knowledge whatsoever of at least half of our coursework. We have stumbled while overcoming a few courses but have eventually made it to the greener pastures. We have collectively hated the first batch of go-getters who cracked the first campus-interviews; but have soon proved our mettle in the second, third or fourth rounds when the "lesser" companies scooped us up. We have shunned the morning lectures as inept and lacking in "concept" only to return to those wooden benches to scribble down the notes because we realized late in the game that the concepts were too big for our little heads. We alienated ourselves from the dull boy Jack because he refused to play. But we were no better at any game either. We played to escape the routine not to enjoy the games. Our cricketing skills were as good as our table tennis. We mocked the intellectually weak for being stupid and the ones superior to us for being bookish (...in some cases we have mistakenly called them "bookies"). We jumped about but never took a leap. We did everything and yet did nothing. And above all, we have no regrets for what we did. In fact we fear regrets, we detest regrets and we protest against anyone amongst us who regrets, for being ME. For regret forces one to think, and thinking is outside our rule book.  

Today we are angry. Very angry, because we have not got the recognition we deserve. Some say that we lack the imagination, courage and foresight to be different. That we run like a starving pariah towards the first morsel that is thrown. But what do they know. They were not there when we packed our bags and left home in our teens, to be different from the boy next door. They weren't there when he dared to journey across the country without a train ticket, just to be different. They weren't there when we walked the hostile streets of an alien land in the darkness of the night, just to be different. If today we meekly stand in line it is not because we were born this way, but because time has taught us to know better.

Among us stands poets, writers, singers, drummers, guitarists, footballers, cricketers, political enthusiasts, debaters, photographers, historians and absolute crackpots. Once we were all different in our own ways. Despite being so we failed to be different. Why?  Because we cared too much about the tears that welled out of the eyes of our loved ones every time we failed some insignificant exams. Because we worried more about our neighbour's snigger and the laughs that reverberated from the front benches when we were rebuked for not understanding the subject that we detested. We cared more about society's feeling than our own. Then why today does society treat us like its dreg? It is an insult upon our clan when the others point towards us and call us IT. It! Nobody told me in grammar school that humans can be addressed as "IT".   Friends, this is our classic Shylock moment, and we must demand our pound of flesh. We must look up from the diurnal routine that enmeshes us and proclaim to the world that "IT is not ME". But there's the rub. How do we do that without taking the mediocrity out of ME. How?

Failing to do so we continue to walk the streets of the metropolis craving to be noticed. Our work is "appreciated", but we have long since known that the word means nothing. It is not worth mentioning in ones epitaph. Our efforts are "recognized" yet only by the people who do not care for it. We are told to stay "motivated", but do not know to what end. Such is the ambiguity about us that we know not whether to rank ourselves as success or failure.

Phew, I feel so good to have exhausted my limited ability to argue. If I put forth one more intelligent argument the whole lot of you may rusticate me for failing to be ME. And since I still fear being rusticated after 13 years of passing out of high school, I will certainly not take the risk. So here I end my rambling with a sincere wish to all my fellow mates of limited success, a little bit of happiness, a slight salary hike, a small car, a tiny flat and everything else in small enough portions as not to disturb the mediocrity in your lives.

Remember never to ask yourself, to ME or not ME. It will end in a tragedy. I tell you.

The Raging Bull

Have you ever had a conversation with a raging bull? No, not Robert de Niro; I am talking about a real raging bull! Well, last week I did, and this is how it came to be. I happened to be sitting inside the Starbucks on 2 Broadway, NYC. I had walked in the coffee shop with the sole intention of being able to use its restroom (If you have ever been to New York City you will know that this is not as uncommon as you think). Not finding one there and running the risk of being caught red-handed I sheepishly ordered for a small cup of cappuccino and sat down in one of those stylistic yet uncomfortable wooden chairs.That is when I saw the raging bull charging towards me from across the street. One could feel the blast of hot air gushing out of his flaring nostrils. I instinctively stood up to avoid the bovine being crash through the glass facade onto my delicate self. But to my surprise inches before the beast was to crash his cranium into the glass, he paused; and then in an urgent yet civilized demeanour stretched out his hoof to open the door and strutted straight towards the counter. He ordered the same drink as I did, took the steaming cup and after a quick glance spotted the empty chair across my table. He walked straight at me and after offering a hasty greeting under his hot breath, sat down with his tail between the rear legs of the chair.

New York is a city of many surprises. So it was not surprising to see that the only one who looked flummoxed by the event was I. The rest were going about their business as usual. Convincing myself of the commonality of the event I sat down on my chair, facing the bull. The hot air blowing from his nostrils was creating surfs in my coffee mug and spilling the overpriced beverage. So, I timidly pulled the mug away. "Summers are the worst" he bellowed, "The weather turns everyone into a tourist; and I hate tourists!" I must confess that despite being a tourist myself I bear an unexplained abhorrence towards the stereotypical NYC tourist, especially the shutter happy ones driven by the compulsion of stapling their smiling selves in photographs of every nook and corner of the city. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised when Mr Bull struck a similar chord. What followed was an hour long tete-a-tete between us. Here is what precious little I gathered about the life of the Charging Bull.

Bull had been in Bowling Green, NYC ever since he was born. As long as he could remember he was a grown up bull, never a calf. In the summers the wind would blow from the Atlantic over the Upper Bay and graze the lawns of Battery Park before making his tail swish in the air. He loved the coastal breeze. But he was a New Yorker, and like all New Yorkers, he loved Broadway more. So even with the lure of the coast hanging close he always looked the other way, towards Broadway. He often dreamed that a day would come when he would strut down the famed road amidst a shower of confetti as his admirers from Wall Street would cheer him from the high rises that stood as eternal sentinels. In the winters the cool breeze would transform into a chilly Nor'easter and scream through Broadway freezing his spine as everyone else ran for cover. The snow ploughs would pile the snow off the street on to the pavement leaving only a narrow strip for him to amble. But unlike the fragile stock market he represented, the bull weathered time's whims in a more stoic way.

Years passed until one day a curious trickle of humanity walked down Broadway to visit him. These were not the people he had known or seen in the past. They were an innocuous bunch who meant no harm and seemed inordinately interested in him. The bull was surprised. He could scarcely come to terms with his sudden rise to stardom. Everyone posed with him as the shutters clicked. The bull did his best to look proud, important and photogenic. The sound of the shutters filled the air of Bowling Green and were accompanied by the incessant luminescence of the electronic flashes as the sun sank below the horizon. The carnival continued into the night.

As days passed every morning the bull awoke to the stream of humanity flowing down the street. With every bunch came a new imaginative idea of a better pose for a more ingenious photograph with "The Bull". Fathers started hanging their children by the bull's horn; girlfriends smooched the bull while they posed for their jealous boyfriends; boyfriends leapt on the bull and held it by its horn to drive an important point to their girlfriends, while some inquisitive old man poked his walking stick at the bull's nostril to check if indeed there was a hole.

The unending charade had cast a cloud over the confetti of his dreams. The bull was aging in mind more than in age. From a proud, energetic, larger-than-life creature it had been reduced to a wounded, senile, irritable being. The tail now kept permanently fluttering in the air even if there was no cool breeze as if to warn all of inevitable danger if they neared him. But it only served as yet another vantage point as young tourists did various orangutan-acts by swinging as they held on to the fluttering bronze tail. The camera shutters clicked by. The local police tried to manage the crowd and requested that they form a queue and patiently wait for their glory moment with the bull. Yet impatient as humans are they would start posing with whichever part of the bull's anatomy was available at the first opportunity. Soon enough there were postcards, key rings, fridge magnets and little plastic mementos of the bull that started getting sold on the pavements. Sadly, he had transitioned from a subject to an object down a steep and slippery slope.

And then one day the inevitable happened. A bus load of football players came down Broadway to see him while he was in the midst of a siesta. After the usual sessions of posing the captain of the team came up with an idea. He wished to be photographed while posing for a penalty shootout; And since there was no football in sight he decided to make use of the bull's precious assets. So he posed with arms akimbo as the bull stood taut in anticipation of the event transpiring behind him. And then the over-enthusiastic striker went a little further with his pose, with spiked boots. As the metal spikes grazed against his bronze masculinity the bull eyes shot up and he swished his horns in the air like two brandishing daggers. He kicked the striker with his hind hoofs and swirled to kick up an arc of dust. Then with a head aimed down at the screaming crowd he charged down Broadway. For long he had hoped that one day there would be a red carpet laid along Broadway in his honour and he would walk on it; But he had only got red capes from humans. "All bulls are meant to charge at red capes, aren't they?" he thought. "Today they have indeed been successful in reducing me to just a bull."

And that is how I had happened to cross roads with him on that eventful afternoon. After our chat we exchanged pleasantries and parted ways. As I looked over my shoulder I could see him walk back to where he always stood. The dust had settled and the triangle was empty. Perhaps they would now respect his privacy a little more, I thought. As I got inside my car and turned the ignition on a tourist bus screeched to a halt across the street. I turned the wheel and decided to stay clear of Broadway. I had just met a raging bull and was not yet ready to meet a rampaging one.

Thank You for wishing Happy Father's Day!

Amidst all the eloquence floating to thank fathers around the world on Father's Day here is an attempt to see things from a father's point of view among the sudden accolades.

Dear Child,

Today I woke up in the morning and reached out for my spectacle on the bedside table. On the table among sundry items including my father's old timepiece a few strips of multi-coloured capsules and a small bottle of cough syrup, was a greeting card. It read Happy Father's Day. Since you are the only child I can claim to have brought in this complex world, I assume it had come from you. So, Thank You! You do make me feel guilty, you know. In my days I had done quite a few things for my father, especially during his last few years when he'd do potty in the bed and call for me to do the cleaning (much like you used to do just a few years back). But one thing I had never done was give him a card to say thank you for being a father. It wasn't in vogue during those days you see. But anyway, shit happens. So along with the bitter pill I now take every morning, I accept your gratefulness with as much grace as a grumpy old man can muster.

Your card made me ponder what exactly it was that you wished to thank me for. The card reads "for everything", but I doubt you truly remember everything, unless you are Abhimanyu. You know your mother and I had spent nights planning how we would bring you up once you came in our life. We often ended up fighting with our prejudices rather than coming up with a plan. She wished that you would be a boy, just so she could dress you in those little traditional dresses and take you along with her to the temple every week. I argued that a little mannequin like the one that stood in front of Wonderland Toys would suffice to fulfill that desire. But I guess she wanted it to smile and play around as well. I always wanted a girl. They always hang around longer than you expect them to. They are the dark horses people fail to bet on. But your mother would argue that I who have never been a girl child would never understand the torments that came with it. Even in those days she had the knack of coming up with arguments that were preposterously off-track and gave me little matter to argue against. So I would turn around and go to bed appeasing myself that a girl less in my little family would not be a bad thing after all.

And then one day you were born. Just like Newton's apple, you fell on my lap. You were heavy, but I did not complain. Everyone congratulated your mother and spoke of the pain she had gone through in bringing you in this world. The matron at the hospital kept reminding me that this pain was something I could never imagine or comprehend in this life. I could do nothing but agree even as your sphincters relaxed for the first of a million times in my arms.

After coming home from the nursing home we were a very happy and peaceful family for the next few weeks. Your mother was happy, and you were peaceful. Your mouth at least did not open without warning. Those were the days when Huggies' were only used by the nannies in Buckingham palace. For poor you there was just a tub of hot water, a bottle of Dettol and my hands. I did not complain. A man must reap what he sows, I said to myself. I spent hours at office thinking of the things I would teach you, the stories I'd read to you and the complete human I'd be successful in making you one day. After office I would run to the stores to get your massage oil and the over-expensive food for your toothless mouth. Before I could teach you anything you had enlightened me on the topics of accounts, math and expenditure calculation. So thank You!

Gradually you grew out of that amoebic towel wrap. How I wished I could hold you captive in that wrap for a little longer. All the wonderful stories that I always wanted to narrate to you got entangled in a bag full of disassociated alphabets as I struggled to teach you ABC. We fought, you won, and returned victorious to your mother while I sat in the drawing room licking my wounds. When it was time your mother and I got you in the best school in town. I dreamed that one day you would be an explorer, or at least the historian I could never become. Your mother said she would settle for a world leader. In your first week at school you almost met our expectations. You learnt to dig your nose and scratch your ass to explore and discover dark aisles and crevices. You also proudly led a pack of kids behind the school premises to where a street dog had hid its litter. Alas, your teachers had not shared your enthusiasm. Nonetheless, I stood bravely chin-on-chest in the headmistress' office trying to enlighten her that she was dealing with a future genius. But she had refused to listen. So we changed school in protest.

You kept growing like a pending task. Soon I could no longer carry you on my shoulders and had to put you down. Poor child, you finally had to walk by yourself. Sorry for the trouble I caused you. But before you came down you gave me the gift of hernia which I carry to this day. Once you found your feet on the ground you ran like a hare, hither and thither and everywhere except where I wanted you to go. I spent the next twenty years tracking your footstep and dragging you out of the mud (often a pit of quicksand). But a man must reap what he sows, I reminded myself, every time.

Today after all these years when you thank me for "everything", I wonder if you truly mean it. I certainly don't remember all the things too well. But when I think of all the things I did for you; I think I owed it to myself rather than you. You did not ask to be born, did you? So, today while I accept your gratitude with a warm heart I will also take that heavy bag off your shoulders and set you free, to explore the unknown in your life. There is an explorer in each one of us you see. Don't bother too much about me.

Sydney Poitier in Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner says all of the above in as few words as below when he says this to his father,

"I owe you nothing. If you carried that bag a million miles you did what you were supposed to do because you brought me into this world...and from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me, like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me."

Sounds rude; But the truth often is. Happy belated Father's Day.

Lovingly,
Your Father           

Fool's Paradise

We believe what we want to believe. The rest does not matter. That is the truth that gets written in stone, as we grow in age though seldom in wisdom. So when I saw Sholay for the first time, I needed no coaxing to believe that it was an absolute masterpiece, that had been masterfully thought, written, directed, acted and duly appreciated. I remember seeing it for the first time on one of our country's numerous national holidays. It was an afternoon and the streets were desolate (as most holiday afternoons in Bengal are). Gabbar's rhetorical questions kept ricocheting from every building in the campus. His constant threats were only countered by the barking of the pariah dogs that had congregated under the lamp-post in an effort to celebrate their short-lived dominance over the human race on the streets.

The film stayed long and deep in my mind, every time I saw it. When I was younger I enjoyed the drunken revelry of Veeru. I failed to understand Thakur's obsession of having the last word with his not-very-lethal nagra shoes; but did laugh heartily at the overconfidence of the anglicized jailer and at Soorma Bhopali's buffoonery. I was too young to comprehend a complex emotion such as revenge, and therefore must have missed the entire premise of the movie. As I grew older I saw the movie in a new light. The evil embodied by Gabbar by now seemed all too real. Thakur's penchant for vendetta seemed suddenly rational; Helen's dance found greater appreciation, and Kishore's songs kept egging the good Samaritan in me. The angry man was by now standing tall among the rest of the film's cast as my favourite. Soon enough, mere love for the film was replaced by jingoistic advocacy for this truly original Bollywood movie.

They say ignorance is bliss. They also say that ignorance is not innocence, it is a sin. I perhaps got caught in the labyrinth of these two wise sayings. In my effort to do more than just enjoy the movie I started reading about it. The places where the scenes were shot, the numerous takes it took to get the perfect shot, the books that were referred, and the movies; Yes the movies that inspired it. I did not give much thought to the last part until many years later.

Then one fateful night I watched Once Upon a Time in the West. The glass bubble cracked, and the air of a self-anointed movie critic in me escaped with a whiff. There was Jason Robards straddling a horse and chewing the cud (or straw or something), emulating Amitabh. I was in no way ready to accept that the truth may be the other way round. Good movies are bound to have coincidences, I told myself. And just as I was feeling reassured I heard the periodic screech of a swing. What followed was the silhouette of a man on a horse appearing over the contour of a hillock. The sound of the swing had a Pavlovian effect and I sat up expecting to see the betel stained teeth  and the sinister smile of the devil, Gabbar. The teeth were stained alright, but they belonged to the face of Henry Fonda and not Amjad Khan. Fonda though did not deviate from the script I knew so well. He pointed his gun towards the little boy (who was not Thakur sahaab's pota but a tawny haired Caucasian kid), and just as he fired the shot the screen filled up with bellowing smoke from a steam engine and the prolonged whistle filled the air, just as I had thought it would.

This enchanting spell of parallels was broken when the very pretty Claudia Cardinale got down from that whistling train (instead of Sanjeev Kumar); But soon enough  she decided to ride to her husband's dwelling where she was met with four shrouded bodies lined up on the porch (along with the Raamlals of the west, if you can imagine them). Claudia stood with a pensive look on her face, but I could not resist imagining that any moment now she would jump on to a saddled horse and charge madly towards daaku Henry Fonda's lair! Luckily she proved to be wiser and saved me from having to see her beautiful arms being amputated. The parallels just kept flowing till I was confused in my head as to which movie I was watching. What followed over the next few nights was the viewing of a long chain of Spaghetti westerns. All originals! Till I watched the bag full of Kurosawa's movies and found where they were inspired from.

If I were to write a precis on this it would look like this. A Japanese director came up with some stories (I do not know for sure if these were inspired as well!) that inspired a bunch of Western movies which were then collaged into one mega Hindi-movie that wowed an entire nation and stands as its movie industry's magnum opus till date. A truly original tale in itself. Long ago in school I had heard the following: churi bidya boro bidya, jodi na poro dhora (the art of stealing is a great art, if you are not caught). I have only realised the profundity of the saying lately.

The purpose of writing this is not to do a parochial analysis of who stole what from whom and how. I realized through this experience that sometimes some things are best enjoyed without delving too deep into the specifics. While a deep understanding is desirable, it is not an absolute requirement when the intent is mere entertainment. And since I am no director, not even a mediocre movie critic, I shall continue to be satisfied as long as I am entertained.  The two wise sayings are both true but the unspoken truth is that one must be wise enough to know which one holds true, and when. As for me I still believe Sholay to be an original, in the sense that it does heavily take bits and pieces from elsewhere but presents to us a collage that is representative of all the different nuances of emotions, facts and dreams that make us a nation as a whole. And that I did not find in Once upon a Time in the West or The Seven Samurai, or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid. 

Puzzles To Puzzle You

Shakuntala Devi passed away last month, perhaps being finally releaved of the pain of having to witness the thing that she loved most turn into just a cog in the wheel of a very mechanical job-selection juggernaut. Her Puzzles To Puzzle You now stands in exalted company alongside Bhagat's Five Point Someone as the two most sought after books by a generation of "techies".

I remember my final semester in college when everyone around had collectively accepted Puzzles to Puzzle You by Shakuntala Devi as the new bible of the the modern cult. The lady with curly hair smiled from every book shelf and desk of every room in the hostel. Every hand that carried the book felt assured of its secret power and promise of success. The excitement lasted usually till the fifth puzzle before a sudden headache manifested and eventually induced an early-night slumber. And each time a tired average mind closed the book and flopped it on the bed, there she would be looking out of the book's rear cover with bright eyes twinlking mockingly at yet another fallen foot-soldier. The book true to its name had claimed yet another victim.   

The uniqueness of the book lay not in its puzzle-filled pages but in its ability to evoke a sense of stealth and discreetness in its owner. Those were competitive times, and the ability to solve one "problem" more than the general mass could mean getting ones first job in a Multi-National Company (one nation companies had ceased to be in vogue by then). Every man true to his soil could not afford to give up that sort of advantage. If you spotted someone solving problems from the book you could expect an immediate self-deprecating response... "Arre mae to aise hi yaar.. yeh sab problem solve krne se job nahi milta.. sab luck hai!"

The reactions were varied and surprisingly reflected the mentalities we harbour as a generation today. There were few who spent nights solving the puzzles from the book behind closed doors yet feigned in public to have never heard the name of Shakuntala Devi. Who's she? A mythological character? An actress? One among our million goddesses? Never heard of her! Then there was the other type. This type walked around the campus with the book eternally in their hands (as if it was just another appendage of their body). They were not good enough to solve the puzzles in the book but felt that by some strange conductive effect "carrying" the book at all times would somehow enhance their ability to unravel the mystery behind its puzzles. Shakuntala Devi must have secretly wept for them. The third type were the enterprising ones. They would make groups, decide time and place and punctually solve four problems each day. Eight years later I still see such coteries spread across different spheres of life methodically doing the task with a "not to reason why, but to do and die" attitude.

Then came the final type. The intelligent yet aloof ones, perhaps the ones who would have actually enjoyed the book if they had the time and patience. There's one of this type in every batch. Maybe a couple in others. But usually in very small numbers. One of this type would show up at a dinner table, solve the problem which the not-so-bright ones had being scratching their heads at and walk away for a daily dose of ethereal bliss. This type akin to comets came unannounced and left a tail of destruction behind. One could feel the dnner table turn into an area of very low depression (literally). The dull ones failed to understand which problem had just been solved and kept enquiring about the page number in a desperate effort to capture the steps and memorize them for posterity. The mediocre ones felt jealous and flipped the pages to find another "solvable" problem with the hope that the one just solved would not "appear" in the job selection-test. The clever ones of the lot schemed at ways to lure this "comet" to sit close to them during the actual test. This ploy usually worked well and costed just a pack of cigarettes or a cheap bottle of rum. I can vouch that the last type are the ones who successfully survive in the industry today.

I bought my stipulated copy from the roadside stall in front of Chennai Central. It stayed in my bag for a full semester ensconced under dirty laundry. I only ended up solving a couple of problems from it before delving into the life of the author, Shakuntala Devi, her life as the daughter of a circus performer, and eventually digressed further away and into the lives of other Indian mathematical phenomena. Digression has been a chronic disease I have suffered from. Perhaps that is why I did not need a book of puzzles to puzzle my mind, further.

Eight years later, strangely there is a bigger puzzle that puzzles me than all the ones the smart lady could put together. What was the purpose of all those problem solving sessions? Was job-selection the solitary hurdle that her book promised one to conquer? I doubt if she meant it to be so. The book was very effectively reduced by some marketing group from an entertaining exercise for math-lovers to a mandatory formula-cramming must-have book for job seekers. And sadly, of those tens of thousands who secured jobs by virtue of the book only a handful use basic mathematics in their daily work today. The rest can simply do without it. Sadly that is the tale for most of the text that I went through (or more appropriately, had the fortitude of not going through) during my engineering days. As for Shakuntala Devi, she tried. The rest of us were just not good enough.

The ailment of truth

Long before I had come across the word "malingerer", I had practiced the art myself. As a Bengali it came naturally; And I must say that I climbed great heights of this magical art at a considerably tender age. A prodigy I was, and might very well have become a master of this trait only if I did not have to taste it one fateful day.

The year was 1994 and I was in the 6th standard then. Even then, I had loved weekends and hated Mondays. But the bitterness towards those Mondays were as different from now as chalk and cheese. For some reason (and you'll soon know why), even to this day the mention of "chalk" never fails to raise the bile up my esophagus. So there I was sitting on my crumpled bed on one of those Monday-mornings looking at the perennial flow of the silver of the Ganges. Back then we lived by the bank of the river, near Belur Math. I had often sat by the window and wondered if I could drop school and become like Tagore or go about peregrinating the country like Vivekananda as only 6th graders can. My thoughts on that morning were less noble though. Ma had come with a cup full of milk and kept it on the side-table, and returned to the kitchen. I had a general uncanny liking for milk since I was a child, but on Mondays the steaming hot white liquid inevitably evoked a sense of nausea. I gulped half a glass of the liquid and dragged my feet to the bathroom. The mirror above the wash basin was fixed to the wall. For an adult with a 6 feet 2 inch frame like my father's it was placed at a perfect height. For me it was only about seeing the disheveled hair and the drooping eyes. That morning those eyes said a sad story. They forewarned of impending disaster if appropriate action was delayed. Suddenly, as if on cue the churn in my stomach increased and the mercury galloped a couple of degrees, and I flopped back to me bed.

Ma came and found her little one curled under the blanket. She was not one to give in to juvenile tantrums. So, in a sterner-than-normal voice she asked me to get up and get ready for school. The engine in her revved and I could feel it. But by now the churn in my stomach had upped the ante as well, and the mercury had just managed to scale the 100 Fahrenheit summit. I decided to give all the bacteria, virus and other imaginary micro-organisms in my body a little more time. In fifteen minutes it would be show-time. The car would blow the horn downstairs demanding me to come down to be whisked to school, and Ma would have no other alternative but to make the solitary phone call to Papa. So I moaned in my bed writhing in pain and slipped incoherent words out of my mouth that sounded like "stomach-ache", "absent", and "school" all in one breath, and directed them towards the kitchen. Sure enough in a few minutes Ma whizzed past the bed mentioning some incomprehensible punishment if I ever ate outside again (which I had done the previous night). She reached for the phone and dialed my father's office phone. The battle was reaching a favourable end. The microbes in my body cheered like Gauls and I shivered under the blanket with a sheepish grin on my face.

In a minute, the car was gone, my school clothes went back to the closet and an extra blanket came over me. An irrevocable writ had just been passed by a man sitting with a telephone receiver in one hand and a half-burnt Wills Navy-Cut in another; And most importantly, Mullick sir's knuckles would have to find someone else's cranium to crack on today! "I love my father", I reminded myself. Men must at all time be able to take such irrevocable decisions and one day I must remember to be one such man, I told myself.

Every Monday of my life in 1994 was a chapter from an Edgar Allan Poe novel. The morning classes of English, Mathematics and History were progressively unlikable sessions. Then there was  a lunch-break, followed by the assembly bell (or rather the death knell). Mullick sir would walk in tip-toed wearing a well-pressed dark coloured trouser and a cream coloured shirt. The golden buckle of his belt shone like the hilt of a sword tucked in a scabbard (and he kept touching it as if to remind others that it was there). He was a well-oiled machine (as was apparent from his back-brushed hair) throwing sparks of Bengali literature to burn down the few hatochhara baandor's around him. Though I never acted like one, my inability to rote the 16 golden lines of a vernacular poem inevitably classified me as one. Some Monday's were better than others, because the poems were easier to memorize. I could memorize the first four lines and then the rest fell in place like hills and valleys (or do they call it "iambic pentameter"/). Those poems strangely reduced my Monday morning stomach aches. And then there were the hurricane-poems which twisted and turned mid-way and played a game of Chinese Checkers with my memory. Those invoked the plotting devil in me on those mornings. The punishment that came along with the title that sir conferred was unique in its concoction of comedy, pain and humiliation. He would pull the students left ear down till the head and torso were horizontal to the ground (like plucking a fruit from a high branch). Then with a swift action he would release the reddened ear, but before the head sprang upwards he would bring down the knuckles of his fist directly on the cranium of the unfortunate head. Before the dizziness waned he would write a full page of remarks in the student's diary in affluent English, just to prove that his ken of knowledge did indeed transgress language barriers!

Such have I fought many a Monday-morning battle in my youth. But even great warriors do have chinks in their armor. In my case it was just that! Ma always forgot the previous Monday's incident, making it easier for me to stage the same show over. But somehow the fact that stomach aches were showing up too often in his son's belly did not go down well with my father. I forgot to mention that after the Monday morning veto that my father would pass over Ma, he would send the company doctor to see me. Now, I do not know if this doctor knew that my stomach aches were as concocted as the strange sounds that he claimed to hear when he placed the stethoscope over my stomach; But his smile always had the I'll-tell-your-daddy-this-time look. He would then prescribe some medicine which I could swear were rank placebos, because they silently entered my system and left it, without making a noise. And then, one fine day this doctor pulled a Brutus on me!

He suggested to my father that I may have some "unexplained" stomach ailment, and that I take a "barium test". As inert as the substance may sounds, the test proved to be a torment. The test started at five in the morning with a full glass of "chalk-paste" (a.k.a barium sulphate) thrust down my food pipe. I felt being embalmed for posterity. All the Monday-morning nausea that I had conjured in the past returned for real and tears welled out of those drooping eyes seeking instant penance. I spent the rest of the day being X-ray'ed at two-hour intervals while the chalk-paste traversed the entire route of my digestive system. Needless to say that the reports came squeaky clean. My sins had been white-washed, thoroughly. Mullick sir's knuckles were now a dream that I looked forward too. My appreciation for Bengali poems scaled newer heights as my brain kept switching off after rehearsing 12 lines. The memory of the barium-sulphate though egged me on.

PS: The barium-sulphate suspension came out of my system in all its glory on a Monday, Tuesday and the following Wednesday.                  

Cross Connection!

This post appeared on a well known satirical blog site www.amreekandesi.com on May19, 2012. Here is the link. http://amreekandesi.com/2012/05/19/cross-connection/

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If England and America are two nations divided by a common language, India is a collage of nations glued clumsily by a common desire to ridicule one another. For example, a Bengali will tell you solemnly that the word Marwadi is synonymous with unscrupulous buccaneers even though Bengal's economy today rests majorly on their hard work. A Marathi will tell you angrily that the word Bihari means job-stealer, notwithstanding the hardened lifestyle that goes behind that stealing. A Northy will affirm that a Malyali is one who can voice undecipherable sound bytes in the name of 'language', while a Southy will swear by his mile-long name that all Manipuris are direct descendants of Chengis Khan. A Punjabi will swear by his patiala-peg that all Bengalis are effeminate poets while the Bengali will in turn write a book accusing the Sardar of being philistine and Gaulish. The vibhuti on the forehead, the big round bindi between the brows, the nath (nose-ring), the white lungi, the orange pagdi, the stylized dhoti, are all objects of ridicule in this beloved land of ours no matter how integral/sacred they may be to ones' culture.

So one can well imagine the pandemonium that breaks out among relatives, neighbours, and outright strangers when a ghar-ka-beta walks in with a girl from a doosra gaon. The girl is viewed as a Japanese fighter pilot hell bent on disturbing the tranquility of Pearl Harbour (i.e. the groom's house). Typically, Indian marriages are all about rank strangers discussing intimate details of the to-be-wed, momentarily forgetting their own domestic worries and focusing the sun's rays on the hapless couple through a magnifying glass. This continues till the couple feels the scorch on their backs and run for their lives to seclusion, euphemistically termed as the "honeymoon". So when an alien-beti walks in, she causes several problems. 1) She does not understand the local language. So she cannot participate in a vernacular conversation that is intended to dissect her hitherto little known love life. An utter disappointment! 2) One cannot fault her for not following the all-important local customs because she does not know them in the first place. So, no chhi chhi, no hare ram hare ram for entering the house with the wrong foot, or wearing the bangle on the wrong wrist, or forgetting to wear the all-important mangal sutra, or walking in public without the ghunghat on! 3) One cannot test her in the kitchen! She may not know to tell between mustard oil and phenyl but may know to cook five types of dosas and nine types of idlis to make a unique breakfast for an entire fortnight. So, does one consider her a good cook or not? You see her premise is uncharted territory for the jury. On the other hand if she is intelligent she can use this ignorance to her advantage, by learning a few vernacular sentences (like my wife who's Konkani by birth but has learnt to say, kemon achho, ki korchho, kothae giechhile and kokhon khabe in Bengali very quickly) and throw a doubting neighbour off guard. She can also learn a few local dishes which would have been an "OK" for a local girl but is an "A+" for this alien-bahu. A slippery customer this alien-bahu can be, I tell you.

As our hallowed epics tell us, the groom however need not pass any such agnipariksha. If there is one thing in common across most cultures in our country it is the deification of the boy-child notwithstanding the simpleton he is. A stupid one is considered the incarnation of Bholenath; a rotund sloth an incarnate of Ganesha; a philandering one is Lord Krishna himself, and a headless gym-holic must be an avatar of Bhima. With such reputation the alien-damaad struts in his beloved's household. He wears a smile with a carefully measured aperture (ranging from 0 to 32, the unit being the number of teeth he is allowed to show). He cannot talk the vernacular tongue, nor does he have a common topic to share with the several Predator-like eyes that are scanning every inch of his being like a US drone. So he looks for a familiar face in the bride's household and strikes an animated conversation that starts with the humid weather and inevitably ends with the salary that he gets paid and the number of foreign-trips he has made.

The most feared part of this alien-damaad's endeavor to assimilate with the bahu's culture however is the food! A girl will scream at a restaurant if she finds an unfamiliar object on her plate, but cometh the marriage hour rest assured that she will gulp an octopus down her throat if that is the custom of her in-laws. The damaad will however have to be force-fed at the girl's house like they show in Saza-E-Kala Pani. If it is a North Indian boy charting in South Indian waters, he will dabble with the drumstick like an oar in a pool of sambar and look morosely at the curd-rice wishing it was kheer. The "mixture" will remind him of his Patiala-peg and the gobi manchurian of the roasted chicken legs. If it is a Southy lad in Northy waters, only a pilgrimage to the Tirupati temple will suffice in washing the sins of which he will be a part. It will start with a drunken revelry with everyone ranging from the bride's grandmother to the colony's watchman doing Bhangra on the road as if no one's watching. A non-vegetarian meal will follow where every specie will be represented on his plate. If he is unlucky indeed he will be made to sit through a qawwali/antakshari session where discordant acoustic missiles will be hurled at his eardrum. Eventually, he will have his freedom sleeping on a bed underlain with roasted paapad.

The real stars however in such weddings are the parents. They go largely unnoticed despite the concessions they make during this day for their child's happiness. Imagine asking a veteran Viking warrior to abandon his inherent boisterousness and adorn a toga on his ward's wedding and move around with a pallid face of a Roman senator (or vice-versa). With all the liberal mindset in the world it isn't easy to act and be a part of an alien culture (that too on the all-important night of your bete/beti ki shaadi). You may watch the 1967 Hollywood classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner  to remove your doubts. For the bride and the groom they have each other at the end of the cataclysmic day. A parent sits dazed wondering if the event went well or was it a disaster. Their heads buzzing with the vision of rituals they did not understand in a place full of people who look and talk different. It can be unnerving to say the least.

In a world today that is rapidly going grey (with whites, browns, yellows, and blacks breaking sociocultural barriers with startling audacity) India is playing its part from the forefront (knowingly or unknowingly). In ridiculing each other we are perhaps becoming more aware of the slew of cultural shades our country exhibits to the outside world. That would explain the million momo-stalls in Bangalore, a Bengali bride wearing a lehenga at her wedding and rasagollas being served at a ceremony in Andhra!  Soon, we may even collectively begin to understand what the word "Indian" actually means.

A Time of my Life : Part 4

The most interesting time in a hostel is the fortnight before the semester exams. This is when; the music band develops original notes and practices all night to the chagrin of the studious few; practical jokes reach a consummate level of excellence; the nearby tea stall turns into a parliament where all social issues are pondered over cups of half-tea; a mild-mannered freshman suddenly decides to have his first puff of a WILLS Navy Cut; cultural barriers are forgotten during hours of group study or revived during the night long fights over trivialities, such as a casual vernacular expletive directed towards no one in particular. Emotions run high and the adrenaline keeps pumping. Some yell in anger, some shiver with tension, some cry in despair, while others visit the nearby temple every evening asking for redemption. The best (or worst) however are the ones who come out of their semester-long slumber and demand on understanding the concepts of each course (on the night before the exam) from a nervous wreck who has painstakingly grasped the concept (only barely) through laborious hours of studying.

It was one of those nights in 2002 before the EM2 (Engineering Mathematics II) exam. Not a particularly difficult course taught by a remarkable lady this was not intended to be our worst night-out. So, after dinner we went for a short walk outside the college precinct for the customary half-tea. We usually did our bi-hourly reality checks here asking each other the percentage of preparation completed till then. The Bangali said, 30. The UP-wallah settled for about the same. The Bihari sheepishly said, 80 (which was greeted with a barrage of expletives in five regional languages). The Jat as usual had just woken up (which would keep him at 0), and the Gujarati said that he could not tell since he was unsure how much 100 was. With faster heart-beats (except for the Bihari who was feeling content within) we returned hastily to the hostel to study. At the gate, we met half-Mallu. Now, half-Mallu had been an interesting inclusion to our colourful group since our freshman days. Unlike all the Malyalis who had gone through the rigorous period of "ragging" in the initial months of our first semester, half-Mallu had cited his half-Malyali-half-Kannadiga parentage (of which I remain unsure to this day) to disassociate himself from the group (thereby escaping the ragging). He had done the same with the group of Kannadigas too. By the beginning of the second year however he was making inroads in both groups and reaping the harvest. In short, half-Mallu had proven his smartness at a very young age! So we liked him.

half-Mallu had come with hot news. He had heard rumours that somewhere in the state the EM2 paper had "leaked" and there was a good chance he could get a copy of it using his multi-pronged sources. The Bihari said he thought it was a bad idea and that we must get back to our books. He was unanimously chastised for having made his exam preparations in advance (no one had taken his "80% complete" remark sportingly) and now trying to steal our moment of glory. So he kept quiet but hung around. The UP-wallah had got down to negotiations and was asking the pertinent questions of who, when, where and for how much. half-Mallu said he would get the answers but this must be kept within the group. We pledged allegiance.

Back in the room preparations for the exam had reached a standstill. The Shakespearean dilemma was too much for the Bangali and he decided to take a half-hour nap. The Jat put on his shawl and went out to  amble through the hostel corridors in search of any hint of conspiracy among the other groups. The UP-wallah was more enterprising. He knew that even with the questions in hand, it would require a good deal of effort to solve them (and leave time enough to commit to memory) before the exam. And with the Bihari not too keen in this endeavour we needed someone else to provide the "solutions". So, he went out in search of that somebody. In a kennel full of mongrels there is always one well-trained dog who cannot resist the wagging of a bone. He found two. Now, all was set and we waited for the paper to arrive.

half-Mallu arrived at 11 in the night with a cyclostyled sheet. We looked in horror as none of the problems in it looked familiar. The Gujarati swore that we would have been dead fish if we hadn't got this paper in time. There were differential equations and Laplace Transforms that even our newly recruited experts had not seen before. A sort of Lucretian pleasure filled the room as we discussed the plight of the poor souls who had not got their hands on this paper tonight. Someone hugged half-Mallu and kissed him for being the saviour. He struggled free and made us promise not the "leak" his name in our excitement. He was probably feeling like Al Capone by now and fearing incarceration at the Alcatraz. The next couple of hours saw incessant brainstorming. We were taking turns to (or at least trying to) solve the problems and committing them to memory. The UP-wallah suggested that we share our loot with the girls in the ladies' hostel. The girls, genetically punctual and methodical usually kept well-written class notes for all courses. These had helped us in times of crises and it seemed morally correct to take them in confidence. However the Bangali and the Gujarati vetoed the proposal stating that the girls would find it impossible to hold their tongue till daybreak and would inevitably spill the beans in their hostel. So, they were left to their fate.

At about four in the morning disaster struck! half-Mallu came rushing to the room with another cyclostyled sheet; with an entirely different set of questions. He said he had got this copy from another of his industrious sources and was unsure which one was the real question paper. The Jat wanted to kill him, but the others intervened. Everyone quickly realized the need to be able to solve at least 40% of both the questionnaires to ensure pass marks irrespective of which one popped up the next morning. So, the toil continued till daybreak and beyond. By eight in the morning every one had mindlessly memorized so much garbage that simple sentences were not registering in the brain. One went to take a bath without a towel, while another wore his shirt inside out. Together we ambled like zombies towards the examination hall.

Holding the paper in our hands we realized that not one of the problems in those two cyclostyled sheets had shown up. We looked up to seek sympathy in each other's eyes. There was none to be found. The Bangali slept at his desk for about ten minutes till the invigilator shook his shoulders thinking he was ill. He was ill indeed, suffering from brain-freeze. The sound of scribbling filled the air. Everyone in the room was wielding their pen like the Excalibur. The EM2 paper was a cakewalk, but not for the ones who had memorized the most complex problems all night with minimal understanding. The UP-wallah was chewing his pen to a pulp. The Jat was plotting ways to asphyxiate the half-Mallu. The Gujarati was looking at the fan wondering if it were the blades or his head that was spinning. The Bangali was still in a reverie imagining how this tale would rank against the great tragic stories he had read in school. At the end of three excruciating hours we came out with dark circles around our eyes. The bout with the paper had been a comprehensive knock-out. That night we sat in the room and laughed heartily at our plight. Inside, we all knew we had deserved what we got. Someone commented that the girls were lucky we did not share our loot with them.We imagined them in our place and had a good laugh. Late that night half-Mallu crept in to say, sorry. Our Al Capone had had a bad day at office and had turned to his clients for consolation. We lent him our shoulders. Together we went out to have our half-tea where the Bihari welcomed us with a flashing smile...

Donning the Cowboy hat

On August 14th 2006 I landed in cowboy country, Texas. From above, I had seen the arid landmass, the tawny pastures, with a few horses galloping across under the uber-bright sunshine. If it was a spaghetti western I was watching the scene would have been a delight. It was not though, and there was no Gary Cooper to save the day. I had chosen this place out of all places in North America to come to study, to invest the last bullion in my parents' coffer. I tell you it had looked less dismal from half a world away.

The American Airlines flight (with its Arsenic and Old Lace-style air hostesses) landed in the massive Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport and kept taxiing in circles and ox-bows till I felt like Abhimanyu entering the Chakravyuha. As I exited the airplane, human sizes seemed to have gone up a scale. My 6ft 2in frame barely escaped the Lilliput-tag. My girth however couldn't, and I still looked small. There were godzilla-sized humans all over the place; males, females, blacks, whites (with patches of red that made them look angry. Little did I know that I was seeing the real rednecks). I looked around but could not spot a single shotgun, leather belt carrying bullets, or a pair of boots with metal spurs attached at the heels, as Mr.Leone had promised in his movies. I was not complaining though since my hands were full already, literally, with my baggage.

A saviour named Karthik from the University's Indian Association had promised to rescue me from the airport. I scanned through angry, polite, suspicious and condescending faces but could not find a brown one that could go by that name. So I eventually picked my bags, belly-full with sachets of garam masala, paanch foron, haldi, a pressure cooker, pots, pans and other useless items that everyone back home had sworn would not be available in the godforsaken land of the Yankees.

I waited with two 30kg bags like Claudia Cardinale for her husband. True to the plot, the husband never arrived! So, I eventually fell in line to take my own trolley so that at least my dear luggage could rest. On my turn I realized that the trolleys did not come for free. I had a couple of 20 dollar bills, but not the "quarters" that the machine would take. Behind me, Uncle Sam was frowning at this poor Indian farmer who had probably come here to rid his son of his daily bread. Buhind im the owld laidee was verrry verry aingree 'cus this brownie lad dint kno nothin! So, there I was in my first Mexican standoff!

People (including Indians) often think that Indians are not brave. That is not true. You just have to push them to the corner and choke them till they have nowhere to run and no air to breathe. It just takes a bit longer to shake the inertia of fear out of their system. I turned back to Uncle Sam and asked, "Can I borrow a few quarters from you?". Americans are an independent breed and do not understand the share-and-prosper attitude like us. They do not share cars, backyards, kitchen utensils, or apartments for convenience. Uncle Sam replied queryingly, "What was that?". That was the first time I encountered that expression (Since then, I have learnt how common it is and have pre-emptively used it on people at the first opportunity). It has such a you-stupid-fool-what-language-are-you-talking-in undertone that it demoralizes you first and eventually makes you forget the topic and concentrate on your fake American English accent. I twisted my tongue to grotesque angles to talk like the old man. I spoke the English language with the worst pronunciations I had ever spoken in my life. That somehow seemed to work. He gave me the much needed quarters.

Outside, the place was the sun's anvil (that expression is out of the Lawrence of Arabia movie). There was no Clint Eastwood wrapped in a Mexican shawl on a well-fed steed waiting for me. However there was Karthik with his white Toyota. Don't ask me how I knew it was him. I just knew. He drove me to the University in silence, with a chivalric air of Don Quixote saving one of his ladies from captivity. I made a few feeble efforts to befriend him with inquiries about graduate courses, campus jobs, grocery stores, and grading systems, but to no avail. I think the combination of the sweltering heat and a querying desi-boy was getting to him. I kept my mouth shut and breathed the warm air in.

The roads in Texas are much wider compared to other states in the US. I did not know this then. I marveled at the six-lane highways and the speed at which everyone drove. I was amazed to see respectable-looking people driving what looked like TATA 407 mini-trucks. I was informed by Mr. Quixote that they are called "pick-up" trucks, and I should not be surprised to see my professor drive to school in one of them. He kept repeating "school" till I deciphered that the University is also referred to as graduate "school". On reaching the graduate school campus Mr. Quixote became a little more chirpy (I think his earlier silence was probably just due to the tension while driving on the highway). He educated me on traffic rules (primarily to acknowledge the importance to the life of a petty pedestrian), on the concept of yield, and on not trying to be a pilot car to an ambulance.

The campus bore the look of the Atacama desert. Not a soul was to be seen. It reminded me again of Gary Cooper and of High Noon. Mr. Quixote parked his car in a corner and we walked to one of the University's housing complexes. He took a print-out from his pocket. It was a list of fresh Indian imports for that semester. I spotted my name with a number next to it. We looked for that apartment no. and knocked at the wooden door. A red-eyed desi face popped out. I was glad. I had enough of the culture-exchange for a day. Disheveled hair (that had been gelled before last night's party), a pair of Abercombie shorts and a basketball vest (with the Longhorns symbol in front) characterized my friend. Soon four more pairs of red eyes appeared from the bedroom (I looked around but could not spot the Jack Daniels bottle). There apparently was a graduation party on the previous night and that was all they remembered. Laughter and crazy talk filled the room. I felt transported from the wild west to my undergrad hostel days in the heart of Karnataka. I felt at home. I said goodbye to Mr. Quixote and joined the crowd. After all, I did not need to be a Roman to survive in Rome. I had met my group of Gauls!

A Time of my Life : Part 3

With time, memory fades but memoirs remain. The exact reason for this post.

This was possibly the Summer of 2003.

JNNCE. An engineering college in the midst of nature, far from humanity and beside an agricultural college where fruits, sweet enough for the palate as well as the eye could be found in abundance.

Fruits-for-the-eye were spotted long back by young boys in our batch who fought their biological clocks to go for early morning jogs especially to that corner of our cricket ground where they could be spotted.

Deepak Verma was not one of them. He was all for fruits for the palate. Being the university champ in weight-lifting, he was the only 2nd year student who had the privilege of staying in the single-room Sharavati hostel usually meant for final year students. For obvious reasons Deepak never had to face 'ragging'. He was amazingly pious, vegetarian, and extremely strong... everything that I was not.

Sometimes he would descend from his high echelon and meet the devils purging in hell (Room 219 & 220 Tunga Hostel). On this night he brought with him a plan that would send a chill down the spines of hell itself.

The Plan: There was supposedly a mango orchard at the rear of the agriculture college ('AG college' as we called it) and Deepak wanted to loot it in the middle of the amavasya night. I wonder if mango isnt the true forbidden fruit because it succeeded in luring the saint to sin. Sagar, Pandu, KK, Vishal, Uncle, Thakur and I answered the call. We just needed something to do and the plan sounded chivalric enough to a young boy. Uncle by the way was christened so because of his shrill voice which sounded more like a dog being ass-whipped.. his actual name being Amit Kishore.

Now, this was the pre-google map era . We had no idea where in the midst of the 500 acre college was this Garden of Eden.We got hold of black (or near black) trousers and t-shirts to camouflage ourselves. I wore a deep blue track-suit which i used to wear to the gym. This was the time when I had barely started gymming primarily as a response to Deepak's taunts and encouragements. Each one of us had a massive travel bag. These bags had a strange life cycle. They would be filled with new clothes, and condiments at the beginning of every semester when we arrived from home and with garments soiled beyond recognition when we headed back home at the end of the semester. This was mid-sem, so they were lying supine in our closets unknowing of the misfortune waiting on them. To avoid suspicion from the prying eyes of our inquisitive hostel mates, we threw these bags out of our window. They now lay on the grass by the pond at the rear of our hostel.

It was around 11 in the night and the hostel gates used to be locked at 12.The theory behind it was to save the students from 'outside elements'. Given the fact that these students were a dangerous section of human race, my opinion was that the hostel gates were locked to keep the outside safe from them. The concept being similar to that of a zoo. Anyway, we trickled out in ones and twos without raising any alarms. If we came across 'Suresha' the usual excuse would be that we were going to 'Mamu's for milk, phone call, smoke or 'chikki' and that we 'd be back in 5 mins. No issues.

Now 11pm is evening by hostel standards. Our journey was scheduled for midnight. So the next stop was at Chandu's apartment in DVS. DVS was an archipelago of individual houses located just behind our college premises. The house owners rented them to students on the basis of 'goodwill'. If the hostel was a zoo.. DVS was the natural reserve for the preservation of wild animals. If you did not know anyone there, you would be ill-advised to venture there especially in the night. Chandu's was the only house we used to visit in DVS .. and with good reason.

Eight boys cladded in black, with rucksacks slung over their shoulders knocked on heaven's door... and archangel Gabriel answered. Chandu had prepared his extra-spicy Manipuri style chicken curry for us and we ate with a silence belying us. Deepak was the one who did the pep-talk while we ate. He pointed out that there could be night-guards at AG and in the event that any one of us got caught, the rest would not abandon him. Chances were high that there would be just a couple of guards. So, we stood a better chance to fight them if we stayed together than to abandon one of us. It was decided that if need be we would beat up the guard if he disrupted our escape attempt. The history books would note it down as the second battle in Indian history to be fought in a mango orchard after The battle of Plassey.

A suggestion was also made to wrap our heads with dark towels to become unrecognizable, but given the visibility of an amavasya night, it would prove to be more a hindrance to us than to the opponent. Hence, the suggestion was dropped.

At 1 in the night, we started. No maps, no compasses, no pole star... just a hunch and Verma's direction.. we headed south-west. Shimoga is a very green place, but during summer when rain is scarce the place can become very arid. This was summer and the farm lands through which we were traversing now were dry. Big chunks of earth had been ploughed and abandoned, waiting perhaps for the rain to return. All of us wore sports shoes, but occasionally would trip over each other and utter an obscenity. Through the barren land we walked. It was pitch dark. After a mile we found a rock which stood like a monster forcing its ugly head out of the parched earth. We rested on it. KK lit a cigarette. The red glow and the spiraling smoke looked like an ominous beacon. Deepak was not impressed. While the torch was doing its Olympic relay, we discussed our plan from here. Most of us were quietly listening as Deepak spoke. Sagar i think cracked some of his unique jokes to make Deepak a bit more angry. Uncle was the live wire. In his attempt to keep his unique voice down to a whisper, he was sounding funnier. We warned him that the orchard was a place to steal mangoes.. not to eat them. The devouring could be done once we were back in our den. All done we resumed our journey.

After about a mile more of trudging we reached the barbed wires. Beyond it was AG, dense in its foliage even in the summer months. about a 100 meters from the barbed wires was the banana plantation which ran for the next 300 meters. Then came a meandering road crossing which one would reach another fence of barbed wires. Beyond it lay the garden of Eden. The silence of the night was marred by the rustling of leaves from the yonder array of eucalyptus. They looked like dancing phantoms mocking the escapade of eight mortals. But, first, the barbed wires in a row of 3, the highest being about 6 feet.

The fence had concrete columns at a distance around which the wires were wrapped. We threw our bags to the other side. Deepak was the first one to cross the fence. the rest did it with a couple of bruises and torn trousers. Pandu was in front of me. Being about 20 kgs heavier than me, he needed a couple of attempts and an extra leverage of my modest strength in the right place to go to the other side. Finally, we had entered the promised land.

We moved in twos through the grassland till we reached the banana plantation. The only thing consistent was the sound of the heart beat between the ears. The tension was palpable. Every now and then, someone would spot a light seeping through the leaves. Was it a street lamp, a torch or an innocuous bulb hanging in an AG hostel room , we did not know. Occasionally a dog would bark ensuing a chain or myriad barks from myriad directions. At one point it looked like the place was guarded by the hounds of Baskerville. A thief's mind has to think of all possibilities and half of us were already voting for a plan to steal the bananas and leave the mangoes for later. Sadly, this wasn't the time for banana harvesting.

Deepak said, here on we'd have to crouch and move so that our heads did not bob above the long grass. We obeyed. It is easier to see an actor in a Prahaar or a Lakshya do the same. By the time we reached the meandering road we were half crawling and half swimming in the grass. I can still remember my back and calf muscles begging to let go. I had lost habit of doing sit-ups since my kindergarten days. But, the promised land lay just across the road and beyond another fence of wires. This time there was space beneath the lowest row of wire underneath which we could sneak in, one at a time.

Another small meeting, and the instructions were that a pair of us would take one tree and strip her bare of all her fruits (or till our bags were full... whichever happened first). These mangoes were big and hung at ground level, hence, there was no need to climb the trees. They were so heavy that one hand had to hold it and the other had to just tip the stem at an angle to pluck it off. Pulling the mango with brute force had two disadvantages. 1) a kind of syrup would spurt out from the plucking point. This syrup was dangerous for the eye and the skin on contact. 2) the plucking could make the whole branch ricochet and make enough noise to arouse suspicion. And there was going to be NO whispers in the orchard. Once the bags were full, each of us would return to the rendezvous point from where we were to quietly depart. The loot would be evaluated later in the hostel. Fool proof.

The orchard was surprisingly small. We could see the lights in the guard's room about a 100 meters away. But it was thick in foliage. The mangoes hung at about 5 feet from the ground. Even in the dark they looked paler than the leaves and were easily spotted. The problem was to be the dry leaves that covered the base of the trees. The lighter you trudged on them, the noisier they became. Deepak and i took the first tree to the left. I kept plucking the mangoes and he deposited them in my bag. Within minutes my bag was full. We changed parts and filled his bag. I used to weigh around 65-70 kgs in those days. An addition of another 30kg was significant. I could feel it. I was trying not to think of the miles we would have to travel till i could throw myself on my cot.

Then through that eerie calm came a shrill voice ... arre yeh aam to mast hai yaar !!! ... it was Uncle. Apparently, Uncle had broken the code and given in to his instincts. He was sitting on one of the high branches of his designated tree eating a mango and making obnoxious noise apart from his voice. I could feel Deepak turn red. We quietly went to his tree. I think his partner was Sagar (correct me guys if i am wrong) and he was constantly coaxing Uncle to come down. Deepak tried using some expletives and threats of abandoning Uncle in this wilderness if he did not obey. Uncle finally obliged. There was also an instance when we thought we say someone about 20 meters away and thought it was a security guard; only to realize later that it was one of our black-cats. And then the dog started barking. This was a consistent bark coming from not more than a hundred meters from us. We headed for the fence while it kept barking, and immediately realized than now, each of us had a 30kg baby on our back.

I cannot put in words how it feels to move with bent knees, piggy-backing your 30kg guilt. is it the burden of the weight or the sin .. i do not know... but we did it. most us did not care a damn if our heads were bobbing above the grass. We were just running with all our might till we reached the first fence where Pandu had slipped.

Men, learn to give our foot soldiers as much respect as you can because they deserve more. That 300 m dash gave me an inkling of how it feels to climb mountains with heavy ammunition (far heavier than a bag full of mangoes) to fight the unseen enemy with the singular motivation of fighting for ones motherland. NO mangoes and NO cots to enjoy when you reach the end. An enemy bullet if you are unlucky and respite if you are lucky. Salute them whenever you can and make every attempt whenever you cannot.

I do not remember much of our journey back to the hostel. Only that we waited for about a couple of hours at the rock where KK had lit the torch to mark the beginning of our venture. We lit a couple more to mark the end. Deepak would occasionally give a hand to one of us when we were tired and could not carry further. At all times he was carrying two bags. Finally, it was 5 in the morning and it was time to re-enter the hostel. We would have to wake up Suresha to open the hostel gates. The train from Bangalore used to reach Shimoga at around 5 am and the plausible explanation was that we had just returned from Bangalore. This practice was common among hostelites and not susceptible to interrogation. Our travel bags and attire made it sound believable. The fact that he saw none of us leave the previous night was just a lucky coincidence.

The loot remained in room 219 and 220 Tunga hostel for the next two months. Every night we would buy packets of milk from Maamu. Deepak had a plastic jug and a churner using which he diligently made pure mango milk shake for his bandits.. and his bandits drank till they could have no more. Every morning the dustbin would be full of mango seeds and skin and hostelites would wonder who got so rich to buy mangoes every day. We wondered too along with them and said we wished whoever they were would give us some to eat.

Coming from Kolkata I have had mangoes aplenty all my life. None tasted better than these. A lot of things in life leave a better taste with an iota of juvenile delinquency.... mangoes too. I returned home at the end of that semester with a bag full of garments soiled beyond recognition... but smelling fruity. As always... Ma did not complain.




PS: A couple of months later KK and I made another venture to that orchard. This time the season was over and we did not return with anything. However we did spend a whole night in that wilderness enjoying the pristine beauty of Mother Earth.. something which I had missed on my first trip.