Mahadevan Ramesh's Blog

Algebra of Democracy

2011-05-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

It was fun time in India last week, with election results coming out for five state Assemblies. Being a political junkie, I didn’t have enough of those political commentaries, insightful interviews, breaking news and plain hot air. Now that the last political observer has gone home to roost, let me talk about a numerical election conundrum.

Let me state the problem first. Let us say there is a hypothetical tiny Indian state called Jungal Pradesh (JP) with a ten member Legislative Assembly. The state therefore has ten ‘constituencies’, each electing an MLA. Let us say there are 10 Lakh voters in this state and that the population density is so uniform that each constituency has exactly 1 Lakh people. (Ten lakh people divided into ten constituencies)

Let us also say that there are four political parties in the state – Party A with a popular support of 40% of the state population (4 Lakh supporters in all), Party B with 25% of popular vote (2.5 Lakh supporters), Party C with 20% of popular vote (2 Lakh people) and Party D garnering the remaining 15% vote (1.5 Lakh people supporting it). And I am the leader of Party B, Mr. Haraami Lal. The popular vote percentages are gleaned by opinion polls and are generally agreed to be reasonably good estimates. Question – How many MLAs will make it from each of the parties? In particular, how well will my party (Party B) fare in the elections?

First of, this is not a trivial question. As we will see, democracy works in strange ways.

Before we do data crunching let me point out that we don’t even have to have elections if we know the popular vote percentages. We can simply have ‘proportional representation’, meaning you get to send MLAs in proportion to your popular vote percentage. Party A, for example, has 40% of the popular vote and therefore it seems only fair that they get 40% share of the MLAs, which works out to be 4 MLAs. Similarly my party will get 2.5 seats, Party C 2 seats and Party D 1.5 MLAs. (since half MLAs is ridiculous, let us say that my party gets 3 seats and Party D, 1 seat. Remember, I am a slimy, sneaky politician) This arrangement seems very fair to everyone. Not only that, but since every party gets representation, we can be reasonably sure that all aspects of issues will be thrashed out and the resulting policies will be fair to everyone in the population. But the problem with this arrangement is that no party has a working majority and if you don’t build consensus, the government activities may be completely paralyzed or we may have compromise hotch-potch policies and laws. Of course, parties can form alliances and establish a majority. But the reality is that these political parties have different identities and any amount of alliance building can come apart at the seams any time.

Let us look at what happens when we have standard elections. Let us look at Scenario 1 where we assume a totally homogeneous demographics. That is, not only do 4 Lakh people vote for Party A in the entire state, each constituency in the state also votes in a similar manner. That is, each constituency contains 40000 people (40% of 1 Lakh) supporting Party A, 25000 supporting Party B, 20000 supporting Party C and 15000 supporting Party D. Now, what happens when you have a good old fashioned election? (Assume for the moment there are no prior electoral alliances between parties) Party A will win all ten seats and will land 10 MLAs. And there will be nothing for any other party. Newspapers will be full of stories about the landslide victory of Party A. There will also be no problem regarding majority. The most popular party gets to rule, which is fair. But the other parties, with a combined numerical majority of 60% get zilch in the deal, which seems so unfair. And democracy is supposed to be representational.

Let us look at scenario 2. Remember I am Mr. Haraami Lal, the leader of Party B and I am a sly politician. I will do a dirty, hypothetical trick. I will try to manipulate the demographics. I will artificially force my people to relocate in the state. I will move my 2.5 Lakh voters such that 51000 of them are now in Constituency 1, 51000 in Constituency 2, 51000 in Constituency 3, 51000 in Constituency 4 and the remaining 46000 wherever. Once I have this redistribution, if we have elections, my party, Party B, will win the first four constituencies where I have numerical majority. In other words, Party B will have 4 MLAs. Party A, with a high numerical lead can still win most of the other constituencies and get the majority and form the government. But compared to Scenario 1, where I got no seats, now I get a whopping 4 seats!! Enough to become a force to reckon with. Or at least enough to be a nuisance.

And here is a twist. The same ‘redistribution of the population’ can be done by Parties C and D as well. Party C can plant 51000 of its people in Constituencies 5, 6 and 7 and win 3 seats and Party D, similarly can distribute its sympathizers and get 2 MLAs and the poor Party A will be left with just one seat!!!

So, we see that demographics is very important. Even if you don’t have state-wide popular support, if you have local popular support there is a good chance that you will pick up seats. Inverting this argument, if you want to start a new party and win MLAs, just grab on to an issue or a problem that is worrying a majority of a local population and project yourself as the leader.

Caste is the simplest example of such an issue. If caste sentiments are rampant in your constituency, become the leader of that caste. The only problem with this is that we have so many castes in India and you cannot be the leader of all castes. And also in many parts of India, caste is becoming a non-factor. Religion, regionalism, farmer’s crisis or any of the other single-issue issues can be used to skew the demographics in your favor and win yourself elections.

Now let us look at scenario 3. Remember I am Haraami Lal, leader of Party B. I see that I only have 25% of the popular vote. But if I joined hands with Parties C and D and form an alliance, I can command a total of 60% and beat the vote leader, Party A. So, I will walk up to the leader of Party C, and suggest that we form a coalition. I will allocate him 2 seats after much horse-trading. (which works out to be 20% of the total number of seats, representative of Party C’s popular vote percentage of 20%) I will also walk up to the leader of Party D and offer him 1 seat (because this is almost equal to his popular vote of 15%.and also because I am slimy. Of course, I promise to make him a minister. If I were nice, I would have given him two seats by using a different round-off error) And I will contest in seven constituencies. Because the coalition’s total percentage of popular vote is 60% we will sweep the elections (assuming homogeneous demographics) Newspapers will rave about our ‘clean sweep’ and I will win seven seats and get the majority strength. And remember, I am the slimy politician Haraami Lal. So, two days after the elections I will dump Party C and Party D and rule by myself. From zero seats under scenario 1 to seven seats under scenario 3. I have leveraged off my 25% vote into a majority!!!

Scary, isn’t it? By just doing a few tricks – dirty ones, no doubt - and by forming suitable alliances you can really run for the roses.

The obvious conclusion is that pre-election coalition politics – the multi-partner marriage of convenience is absolutely harmful to democracy. We got to have very strict laws in place to check its game changing ways. It serves absolutely no democratic purpose or ideological integration or synergy - other than the numerical aggregation of popular votes. The only driving force is the greed to win at all costs with zero attention to integrity and honesty. We should not ever have a Scenario 3.

Here is what we should do:

(1) Stop pre-election coalition alignments completely. Post elections, we can have alignments. The election process will hopefully weed out smaller contestants.

(2) Should coalitions be allowed, an independent body should choose the coalition composition and how many seats each party gets. Make sure parties like Party B in a coalition does not end up with seven seats.

(3) Perhaps a USA style two party system is the answer.

(4) No role in the government (no ministerial posts) for tiny members of coalition alliances. Basically, make sure there is not a huge leverage of numbers.

Long live democracy!!!!

New MBA courses

2011-04-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

We are living in an exciting time here in India, with so many scams and scandals unfolding. We have a good time sitting in front of the TV (at the edge of the seat, no less) and watching all these celebrities getting ushered into jails and courts. It seems like the country is being run by the Supreme Court and the CBI for all practical purposes.

We heard that a top business school in India has decided to add one more year to their MBA program, with the following high specialty courses to be taught in the third year. .

V Semester

MBA 301 - Politicians and other human resources management.

Palm greasing; effective lobbying; computer modeling of bribe amount; identifying key resources; code words to be used in bribal conversations; Interaction and neutralization of political activists and other negative influences; politicians’ life cycle; counter-intelligence; Levels of customer service and how to provide it without a trace. Class Project – how to ‘buy’ both, a union minister and his cute secretary

MBA 311 - Advanced Bookcooking

Book? What book? The old Sathyam process of ledger keeping; knowledge-based trick accounting; new mathematics; funny money principles and its accrual; payroll stuffing; fiduciary practices when you have zero income; double entries; auditor education; triple entries; auditor physical education; elementary bank frauds and transactional analysis. Case study – peruse the given Income statement and Balance Sheet. Develop a procedure to get any number between zero and infinity as the income.

MBA 341 - Ballistics and Cycle Chain Management

Intimidation and goondagiri; attitude adjustment of dissenting people; how to deal with that nasty tenth cousin of yours who is also in the Board; negotiation skills using one arm; Physical force theory; Goondagiri Information System (GIS); geographic organization of Goondagiri; e-Intimidation. Case Study: What are the ‘people skills’ needed for effective control of disagreeing people? How would you scale this up for large organizations?

MBA 305 - Insider Information Technology

Risk management; managing hedge funds and fudge funds via networking; commodity speculation with no unknown variables; the Mela theory of foreign exchange; How to inform about forthcoming IPOs and get such shares; channels to use for spilling negative news. Class Project – Your company is going to be bought over tomorrow by a bigger fish. Only five people know this. How will you ‘inform’ your forty five friends without Mr. Wiki or the FBI listening to you. You only have one SIM based cell phone with two minutes of charge and five dollars of balance.

MBA 307 - Business Decision-making, using sharp objects

Intimidation, Power struggle and mudslinging; expectations management by goondagiri; diversity awareness through religious intimidation; break-back analysis; essentials of kidnapping and extortion. Role playing Class exercise – Effective team building in the Dharavi slums

MBA 303 - Corporate taxes – and how to avoid paying them

How to reduce double taxation to a single taxation and then to zero taxation; how to show losses and accumulate such losses; fundamentals of write-offs; bad loans; inventory obsolescence and burping computers. Class project – How can one spot a country with almost zero tax consequences? What is the most efficient way to transfer your profits there?.

VI Semester

MBA 322 - Mergers, acquisitions and front-company establishment

The abcs of benaami entrepreneurship; ten uses of your wife in business circumstances; how to set up a company that provides no goods or services; how to scale this ‘front’ company using economies of scale; setting up bank accounts in your pets’ names; unfriendly mergers and takeovers and how to effectively achieve them; real estate business is not just for dummies!! Class project – come up with a business plan and entrepreneurial timeline to go from zero rupees to one thousand crores in two years.

MBA 314 - Advertisement – tall claims, absurd claims and false claims

Indian ethos and Indian values – and how to make a fast buck out of it; the use of gods – especially the Bollywood and the cricket gods in various media; effective deception using cute stuffed animals and fat kids; role of piles-of-clothes-washing-yet-smiling Indian moms in TV advertising; effective use of vaasthu, Akshya Tritiya, karwa chauth in advertising. Case study – what do you feed your kids and how do you advertise this regimen so that they grow to become hundred kilos heavier and two inches taller and without any mosquitoes zinging them?

MBA 302 - Black monetary policy – theory and practice.

Strategic money laundering; money stashing schemes; Maslow’s extended hierarchy of needs and how to put away money for all those needs; geographic study of Switzerland, Bermuda and several small islands in the Caribbean’s; personal investing at the billion dollar level; Hawala fundamentals; managing change as well as several billions of rupees. Class Project – How do you bilk the Indian government of a thousand crore rupees, convert the money into your favorite country’s dollars and then bring the money back to India after ten years?

MBA 392 - Global networking with international crooks

The concept of a global criminal village; classification of International crimes; building world-class Cross-border criminal networks; cross-cultural crime experience; International law and crime syndicate words of honor. Class Project – How do the commodity price rise and inflation affect international business cartels and their relationships?

MBA 308 - Effective Managerial communication from inside the prison

Elements of denial, denial using body language, phony positive attitude; effective heart attack faking; 360 degree communication inside prison; communication across firewalls. and prison walls; Scam and Scandal management, Case study – Draw the organizational chart and the social network diagrams of all the high power Tihar jail inmates

One World Cup. Three Indias

2011-04-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

Barely has the hangover of winning the cricket World Cup passed, we are already seamlessly transported to yet more cricket - the inaugural pageantry of another IPL season, with his imperial majesty, King Khan, personally jiving on the stage. Skimpily clad cheerleaders match him wiggle for wiggle and are already bending their bodies into poses that are too challenging even to the most seasoned Yoga instructors. Never mind that these females don’t know – and perhaps don’t care – about the rules of cricket. And of course, all these are annotated by a voice in the background in chaste Australian accent. It is raining cricket in India.

Welcome to the new age Indian cricket and how a mere game played by the excesses of the Raj gentry is blindsiding an entire nation of nearly a billion and a quarter people.

To understand this, let us first look at the World cup. The buzz about winning the cup will not subside any time soon. All kinds of ripple effects are still taking place. People are clamoring for a Bharat Ratna award for Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketing phenom. Move is afoot to make cricket the national game of India. Perhaps there are moves afoot to make cricket the national animal of India as well, and the national bird and the national what-have-you. And crown Tendulkar the emperor of India. Gifts, accolades and plain flattery have been pouring in on the World cup winning team – not to mention all those fat endorsements and advertisement contracts. The Central government, in its infinite wisdom has decided to exempt the BCCI’s World Cup profits from taxes and this has added about Rs. 400 crores to their already bloated kitty. Even the Chief Minister of Karnataka has decided to give 25 Lakh rupees to each member of the team, although no one in the team is from Karnataka.

Here is where I want to press on the brakes. If you think about the Karnataka largesse, this is money taken away from building new high schools or putting teachers in those schools. Many of the government funded schools lack in basic amenities like a hygienic toilet and this is the kind of money that could have built toilets in nearly five hundred schools. Five hundred schools and thousands of school children lost out to sixteen willow-wielding men. If this is not an example of the rich getting richer, what is? I wish I saw newspaper headlines that Dhoni and company donated one crore rupees toward some charities or that an IPL team has given away a thousand free tickets to slum children. (but then, why should they?) Obscene amounts of money are generated, transacted and put away in India in the name of cricket that we need to have a national introspection on the whole thing. There is something that is not quite right about the way we cricket in this country. You can argue big time about how the national morale is lifted by the world cup victory and so forth. But going overboard with tax reliefs, free plots, government prize money etc. is ridiculous.

Cricket, as we know it, has been taken to the proverbial next level in India. Cricket today is not what it was when Duleepsinghji played and our grandfathers watched. Now all cricket is international – a Maharashtra vs. Gujarat Ranji Trophy match (with no Australian commentators) simply won’t cut it. Today’s cricket is a powerful product, that is packaged attractively, marketed aggressively and kills its competition ruthlessly. It is a money and fame machine – so much so, many politicians from all parties have a finger in it. Although cricket in India at any level is a private enterprise in the hands of a few powerful people, the local Bhayya Lal and Ramaswamy feel very patriotic aboui the Indian team and think the team is selected by a government body that regulates it. Cricket’s hold is so powerful that it is not just the opiate of the masses; it has replaced oxygen in the atmosphere in India.

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The dizzying world of Dhoni and company, the dismal world of Ramaswamy and Bhayya Lal – and the non-descrept world of everyone in between make up the three Indias that I want to talk about. I know the conventional wisdom is to divide India into two Indias. But the faux sociologist that I am, I will stick in another layer – and try to make a case for why today’s cricket negatively impacts all three layers.

The elite top layer – and I am going to call it the India-shining layer is the India Inc. layer whose creature comfort levels would make the American upper middle class green with envy. The vast middle layer is what I would call the jugaad layer. And the equally vast bottom layer, the scum of the earth layer is who I would refer to as the Aam aadmi layer.

The India Inc layer is the creamiest. The rich, the visible and the powerful dwell here. This is the layer that the NRI crowd plugs into and rave about to their white friends. They are the billionaires, CEOs, millionaires, assorted top government ‘servants’, the elite of all shades and your ordinary crorepatis. They holiday in Europe (or maybe they go on eco-tourism these days in some pristine corner of the globe), shop in Harrods, have a retinue of servants (and their maids network through Facebook) and dine in restaurants with liveried waiters. Their Rolls Royces and BMWs cruise through the Golden Quadrilateral. They typically have just one or two kids who are hard-wired for success and send them off to Australia or the USA for higher studies. The lucky few of them would get their kids coached into IITs and IIMs – breathing on their necks right from kindergarten. They are the ones who were lucky enough to get the World cup tickets and they are the ones who would shell out the American prices charged for the IPL tickets.

Like in all other layers, life in the India Inc layer is very competitive too. The elite does not want to surrender their place in the hierarchy. They pass the baton to their children and make sure that their children have every advantage in the book, be it attending an acting school in New York or getting an MBA from Ivy League. Today you have to be from a well-known public school, with celebrity parents, with solid credentials even to play the boy next door part in a movie. Heartwarming stories like a Vinod Kambli making it to the test team or a Rajnikant rising to superstardom are confined to just the history books.

With so much action all around, no wonder kids in this bracket are jumping over each other to play big league cricket - just when playing professional cricket is becoming more and more difficult. There are no transparent and fair farm systems in India that spot cricketing talent, groom it and feed a constant supply of it to the teams. A vaguely subjective bunch of selectors picks the team. So, what we have now is an army of cricket moms (and their relatively benign but deep-pocketed husbands) pushing their progenies into cricket camps – sometimes even sending them to England and Australia. In gated communities of suburban India, child cricketers flourish – all with shimmering cricket bats (and all of them wanting to bat, but nobody wanting to field) And if cricket is not the calling of their children, the cricket moms are quick to change color and push their kids equally strongly through chess camps, modeling and creative writing camps. The World cup victory has made these tigress moms spin even faster. Now they will probably enroll their already-cricketing children into attitude-tuning classes and focusing attention classes.

And for a whole bunch of India shining folks – males in particular - winning the world cup is the right excuse for non-stop partying in five star establishments. Some of them also go out and buy the ‘IPL limited edition’ cars and male fragrances – advertised by models who look like Greek Gods (they don’t look like Indian gods, mind you). Everything is connected to cricket. Everything connected to cricket is pricey. Every India Shining guy spends on that pricey thingummy associated with cricket. Never mind inflation and rocket prices. Everyone is happy. Exactly like in the descendancy of great civilizations.

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The middle India is the Jugaad layer. ‘Jugaad’ roughly translates into ‘workaround’ and basically stands for the quintessentially desi trait of somehow beating the system – any system. Even though the India Inc. layer indulges in jugaad, they are often rich and influential enough to buy happiness and advantage. It is the middle class that doesn’t have that kind of money, but still wants to maximize their happiness. They try to be innovative, clever, wily, aggressive, sneaky – whatever takes them ahead. They are the ones who jump red lights at signals if it gives them a few minute advantage. They are the multitude who dot the gridlocked roads and streets in motorbikes. They are the lakhs of people who write the UPSC exams and queue up in long lines for the job interview. They get into the street corner engineering colleges, go to ‘Spoken English’ classes and the lucky few will get IT jobs. In a few years, some of them may even sell off their rickety bikes and buy used Nano cars. They communicate to each other through missed calls. They send ‘Happy Diwali’ SMS messages to a hundred friends because they are on the unlimited SMS plan. (The clever service providers got wind of this and have decided to charge a fee for SMS sent on festival days. So, what does the jugaad layer do? It sends advanced Happy Diwali messages two days earlier, for free) They are the ones who sell out tatkal train reservations in ten minutes. They ask for soft drinks without ice. Expediency is the key word. You have to rush, you have to be quicker than the thousands who are thronging, you have to be meaner – and you have to be ahead. (There was even a New York Times article about expediency and the Indians)

And the World Cup and cricket? The juagaad layer can’t afford to go to the stadiums. So, they all watch it assiduously on TV. Never mind the lost productivity. They pore over newspaper stories. They analyze IPL advertisements. Since they cannot buy IPL edition of anything, they talk proudly about their uncle who went to a game. They whisper about Yuvraj not being on good terms with Dhoni, as if Dhoni personally told them. Their children fervently watch the IPL games which fall exactly in the same time period when school final exams are scheduled. (In India today, more children know the Duckworth rule than the Pythogorean theorem) They play phatta cricket enthusiastically. Yet not one of them stands a chance of ever making it to any cricket team, at any level. The jugaad layer thinks that anybody’s cricket knowledge is indicative of their jugaad skills themselves.

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The third segment of Indian population – the ‘Aam aadmi’ class that persists in the background as little blobs, crowding up the landscape - has it the worst. They are the millions who are below the poverty line. (India has more poor people than the entire sub-Saharan Africa). They are the ones who have no hopes in life; who drop out of school before completing class ten; who don’t have primary healthcare in their villages; who defecate in the open; who drink away their wife’s one month pay in one giant drinking binge and then borrow money at 4 percent interest (that is 4 percent per month); whose children have just one set of clothing and no IPL clothing at all and since they don’t have good drinking water, they face all kinds of infections and diseases; they kill each other for ten rupees; they have no representation, no voice and no mechanism of organizing themselves. It used to be that most of them worked in the agriculture sector in the villages. But these days, many of them migrate to the cities or work in the so-called rural employment schemes, building roads to nowhere. In a bizarre reverse Robin Hood effect, their hard earned money finds its way to the Shah Rukh Khans and the Rajnikants because the aam aadmis are repeat movie goers. (the Jugaad layer simply downloads it from somewhere and the India Shining layer sees just one show in a multiplex with popcorn and soda)

Cricket touches the aam aadmis too – at least some of them. (No, they don’t realize that their chief Minister has willed away their development money to Dhoni and co.) They know there was a Cup and that India won it and yes, they should feel proud of it. Some of them even cash in on it, by hawking cricket trinkets at traffic lights to the India Shining layer in their cars. The India Inc. doesn’t buy anything, of course. The merchandise is fake and shoddy anyway, (made by some aam aadmis in Ulhaasnagar) Already there is significant penetration of cricket in rural India. There are even children named Sachin and Kapil Dev in rural Tamil Nadu. But it is what they don’t know about cricket in aam aadmi India that impacts them much more.

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I am coming out and saying that cricket – as it exists today - is the bane of modern India. It is that ‘ten step backward’ for every positive achievement made in India. I am sure a lynch mob is already being sent to my house to hang me from the nearest lamppost. And a lot of you, who have been reading up to this point probably feel that I am a jealous whiner who needs to be reined in.

On the other hand, we may yet live peacefully and equitably with cricket and not be tyrannized by it. A few recent events are the resons for my optimism.

First, the visit of Warren Buffett and his beckoning the India Inc. big shots to donate more to charity – bringing to focus the need for private efforts in mitigating poverty in a country like India. There should be really no aam aadmi class. Open your purses, start soup kitchens, sponsor poor schools, educate the underprivileged, control virulent diseases and keep on going. I am sure the Ambanis and the Hindujas, the Dhonis and the Mallyas are reasonable and generous people who would want to leave legacies far bigger than their business empires. Second of all, there are general elections to the State Assemblies in several states and I think this is where the jugaad class will play a big role, by debating about parties, issues and the candidates. And finally, the fast by Anna Hazare crusading against corruption. Someone who has no bank account, no property and lives in a 10 X 10 room has to be the biggest aam aadmi of them all and kudos to Anna Saheb for giving voice to his layer of people.

Perhaps the next World cup team will donate five crores to the welfare of Karnataka school children. .

The Life and Times of the Cheshire Cat

2011-03-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

(This piece was written for the Golden Jubilee of IIT Kanpur - and is about the student magazine called 'The Cheshire Cat', that we used to run when we were students. Some old issues of the Cat, created almost a generation ago, are preserved somewhere in the IIT K Alumni websites. A Google-search might get you there)

We are talking about a generation ago. When IIT Kanpur was littler and fitted in your pocket. Well, almost. Those were the times when the campus was just a sum total of a few Lecture Halls and even fewer hostels and no auditorium to speak of. When ‘computer’ used to be that big fat thing that needed an entire room for itself and worked on a deck of weirdly punched cards. The Computer Center was a citadel guarded by a battalion of sleepy security men, well past their retirement age. The SAC building and the swimming pool were just blue-prints and Cultural Festivals did not have a name and took place in a crude, apologetic ‘pandal’ which used to collapse every once in a while. Ominous looking tempos ferried us back and forth on our occasional visits to the city to lap up the greasy Chinese food dished out by some filthy, but wildly popular eateries. We led deceptively simple lives punctuated only by lectures, quizzes, sleepovers in the library and an eventual exit out of the institute with a fresh degree. And the elite among the students got either a US offer or a thousand rupees a month job. Yes, a thousand mega bucks. There was a pattern, an algorithm and predictability to our lives. And we lived on.

Until one day when some of us decided to get together over cups of chai and reflect on our young student lives. None of us in that group were poster boys of IIT Kanpur - our JEE ranks had more digits than our PIN codes and if you took the reciprocal of our JEE rank, you pretty much got our GPAs – and we barely managed to swim with the sharks and the ten pointers. We figured that we were gross misfits who could never meet the merciless expectations of the faculty or our parents. (Although the key difference was that our parents were usually in the dark about how the IIT K relative grading worked whereas the professors knew much more than they need to on the grading system) After the seventh or eighth cup of tea, it dawned on us that instead of bemoaning our marginal existence as IIT K students, we might as well ‘grin and bear’ it. And for more grins, take an inside-out, upside-down look at the whole IIT K student life – discover humor in everything IIT K-ish - all the holy cows and stuff talked about in hushed tones. We resolved that we start a student magazine just for this purpose and douse the campus with self-deprecatory humor. Call it audacity, call it sour grapes rationalization, call it escapism – or even call it overdosing on Nair’s double-density tea – the Cheshire Cat was unleashed on IIT Kanpur and it roamed the campus for quite a while. .

We were lazy and disorganized. Other than coming up with a few jokes which we found funny, we had no clue about running a campus magazine. Nobody wanted to be the editor and it turned out that we never had one for the entire period the Cat was published. (In fact, ‘Published by a few guys’ became our tag-line.) And many Cat-writers preferred to be anonymous, fearing reprisals. The Student Gymkhana refused to fund us, claiming that there were already too many student rags (which was true) and we had to cough up our own money. Since our finances were so dismal, we could afford to print only a handful of copies and thus we were forced to launch the Cat as a ‘wall paper’ that was pasted on hostel notice boards. We would secretly hang around by the notice boards to gauge the readers’ reaction – and sometimes even explain the jokes to a few un-hip students who dared to read it with a grim face. Our ranks would swell around the time of Cultural Festivals, but it got pretty lonesome in the Cat quarters after the Festival girls went home.

The production of a Cat issue itself was an interesting process. We lived in pre-historic times when photocopying technology had just been invented and Xeroxing anything cost an arm and a leg and needed the signature of every single Dean on campus. So, we had to resort to what was called ‘Cyclostyling’ where you literally sculpted a plastic-backed paper with your typewriter and made copies – where anything after the fourth copy was just a rumor. We discovered that a certain Guptaji, dwelling in a nondescript office in the Faculty Building would do this in his after-hours – for a fee, of course. So, after gathering our stories and articles, we tracked down Guptaji and spent long hours with him and his precious IBM typewriter. On days when he was in a particularly pleasant mood, he could even be coaxed into changing the ‘wheel’ of the typewriter and give us more fonts. Since everything was manually typed, typos and mistakes got etched in stone and we had to live with them. In fact, many of our best jokes died at Guptaji’s typewriter, falling victim to his brutally minimal typewriting skills. Somebody among us enrolled in a class on lino-cut lithography and made a die to stamp out our logo, which we proudly flashed on the front page. Eventually, the Gymkhana embraced us and we even got some office space in the SAC - until one day when one of the guys painted a huge picture of a frog on the walls and got us thrown out.

Then one day we decided to come up with our magnum opus – a bumper Cat issue (actually only about twenty pages thick) that was truly offset-printed and that we later sold for fifty paise a copy. We had sufficient articles to warrant it, but the economics was not working out. Even after the few hundred rupees the student Gymkhana was willing to throw in and a hefty amount we extracted from two advertising sponsors, we were still in a hole for a few thousand rupees. After a few chais, we came up with the idea to sell T-shirts with IIT K logo in the next cultural festival and funnel in the profits (or what would be left after the customary ‘treats’) into the ‘printed’ issue. We settled on a design featuring Rodin’s ‘Thinker’ sculpture, right under an ‘in your face’ emblazonment of the letters ‘IIT Kanpur’. We intimidated other potential T shirt sellers into believing that we had the best design and the Cat artist indeed did a great job of faking the original. (I should know, because years later, I did see the original ‘Thinker’ sculpture in the Rodin museum in Paris).

We scrounged around some money and two of us went over to Mumbai to buy blank T shirts. We roamed through the bowels of the city, procured our precious cargo in a seedy mill (my pocket got picked at 6.00 AM in a local train, but then, I am digressing) and somehow managed to lug them to the campus, despite grilling from our suspicious parents. A few weeks before the Cultural Festival, we got the printing done and box after box of ‘IITK Thinker’ T shirts showed up in our rooms, ready to go on sale. We signed on the Mr. Hall III as our brand ambassador, who at sixty five kilos, was a relative hulk compared to the rest of the students. We had our shirts displayed in all the food stalls around the Festival pandal – till one day when we discovered a kebab stall owner using one of our shirts to wipe his hands. All in all, we didn’t do too badly – with guys and girls clamoring for our T shirts left and right - and the ‘printed’ Cat issue eventually became a reality.

The Cat was not the only one to bring out a ‘printed issue’. Our rival magazine The Spark also did it every year. They collected old newspapers around the hostels and raised money for producing it. The Counterpoint – the semi-official student rag, with its Gymkhana funding had it slightly better and didn’t have to invent a scam to fund their special issue. Although our competition, these magazines really had some gifted writers, who had very creative minds and a way with the language. But, unfortunately, these serious literary efforts got lost in the hustle of quiz-today, exam-tomorrow kind of student lifestyle and were confined pretty much to an elite fringe of the community. I wish some of these special issues were archived for posterity. We at Cat were so low-brow that we promptly parodied these issues.

Cheshire Cat covered various subject matters and most often we would dedicate an entire issue for a single topic. But mostly, our protagonist was the hapless IIT K student and we would lampoon his misadventures. For, he lived a life of contradictions – at once being a shy, geeky top-ranker who humiliated the computer in chess, but also wanting to be a swashbuckling hero in front of the girls. We found humor in the highly un-romantic, male-heavy student demographics. We quipped at the faculty, the director and the myriad official bodies. We mocked the student elections, the student senate, the campus ‘lefties’ and just about anyone who took themselves seriously. We didn’t even spare the large packs of dogs that used to migrate to the campus from the city – apparently n search of better food. (Better food? In the IIT mess?!?!!) We were very affected by the irreverent style of the MAD magazine of the USA and by the wry, off-beat wit of Woody Allen. And yes, we made fun of the Cheshire Cat too.

After three years of run, with reality hitting us in the form of graduation, we decided to cease publication and get out. Even after we left, the Cat apparently had several new lives and showed up from time to time in the campus.

It was a generation ago, alright. Like most IIT K alumni, I too consider the years spent as an IIT Kanpur student as the most memorable slice of my life. The Cheshire Cat experience added to it. I don’t know if it honed my sense of humor any, but it certainly added a measure of introspection to my life and perhaps even a shred of humility – especially when people were trying to put us on a pedestal. Gazing into the mirror has never been the same since then.

Pass the tea, please!!

A Swansong in Raag Mishra Mand

2011-03-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

Fiction

The Intensive Care Unit of C. S. Hospital is a very quiet place, if you are willing to ignore the rat-a-tat of life support equipment and the occasional buzz of an alarm sounding off. Tangled in a cobweb of wires and tubes lay Panditji – the great classical singer, Padma Bhushan Dr. Ram Lal Dhanvantari or Dhana-sahib, as he is popularly known. He was alternating between consciousness and oblivion – almost exactly like how he would glide between high notes and low notes in his concerts. The stroke he suffered two days ago has really reduced him to little more than a vegetable.

Even last week he gave a soulful concert in Agra, against the backdrop of the Taj. It was well attended, with rows and rows of VIPs straining to listen to him. There was no hint that he would soon be cut in half and thrown to the dogs like this. He could even recall every word of the Chief Guest, in spite of the powerful sedatives fogging up his memory.

“The ancient Dhanvantari healed people with his medicine.” The Chief Guest spoke “And our modern Dhanvantari-ji heals people with his music….”

Loud applause.

“India has not seen a musician like Pandit Dhana-sahib in the last hundred years.” He continued “And we will not see another one like him even if we waited another hundred years. He is god’s gift to our country. He is Krishna’s flute…...”

Krishna’s flute? What an imaginative figure of speech!!

Panditji was immensely pleased. Although he has heard every single word of praise that there is in the dictionary, they still surprised him by coming up with something new like this. But then, he was no ordinary musician. He was a master performer and a legend. The magic man who held the entire concert hall in a hypnotic trance.

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In fact, so powerful is the Dhana-sahib mystique it always produced maximum effect every time he unleashed it.

His image started with his get-up. His exotic, crisply ironed silk kurta became his trademark. The prominent dot on his forehead, his neatly dyed and well-groomed jet-black hair and the numerous rings on his fingers symbolized him. The seductive smell of attar added to the effect. He was a celebrity, an icon and a brand name. all rolled into one. Isn’t music all about showmanship?

He would even time his entry on the stage. It has to be dramatic. As he glided to the center of the stage with folded hands, the crowd would break into loud claps and cheers and he always took this to be an endorsement of his tremendous popularity. He would then carefully squat on the plush carpet and reach for the microphone. That would always silence the audience.

“Check, check” he would almost croon into the mike, his falsetto voice barely above a whisper. The audience would hush even more. He would continue in the same thin, faint voice – welcoming the crowd and thanking his sponsors and getting into details like the house lights being too bright. If he was in a mood for it, he would throw in a weak joke or an inane anecdote – or even some quasi-philosophical pronouncement.

“A musician cannot not be a musician” he told his Agra audience “Even the croaking of a frog is tuned to Komal Re (rishab). You climb a staircase to the beats of Teen tal and when you sing, you feel that even the chairs and sofas are actually listening to you. The musician always finds music in everything …..”

Another big round of applause.

And at one point in his speech he would always point his finger toward the sky.

“It is all His doing.” he would go on “I am doing nothing. He is manipulating me. He is controlling my pitch, my surs and my gamaks. I am just a lowly servant of His, on a mission to spread joy to humanity”.

More claps. More cheers.

His manipulation? Spreading joy? Hogwash!!! The Panditji felt a quiver deep down his guts.

Who are you kidding, Ramu? Isn’t it all about money, fame and ego? How many times have you given shoddy performances and half-baked concerts just because some little thing put you off? In the final analysis, aren’t you just a fake? A ruthless businessman who would even sell the raag Ahir Bhairav for an ounce of gold?

Whose is this little voice that is mocking him and make him doubt himself? Could it be the damned medications?

Panditji’s befuddled thought processes tried to fight back. Why should I not be a shrewd businessman? There is no way to survive in this world otherwise. I am doing what a computer engineer would do. There is nothing wrong in making sure that I don’t get short-changed. I can do that while having a divine experience….

Stop, Ramu. We are going to look at everything. Absolutely everything - on this day of your judgment.

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When the Panditji woke up next, he was transported back to his Gurukul days in Acharya Gaumukhi’s little farmhouse by the river Jamuna. It seemed like it was only yesterday. The Acharya was a very serious man – and an extremely learned one - who lived and breathed music. Besides Ramu, there was only one other student, Chandra Mohan, a few years older to him. The two of them shared all the household duties – right from fetching water from the river, to washing clothes, to helping the Acharya’s wife in kitchen chores. With Acharya’s strict upbringing – on top of a grueling apprentice-ship - those years were definitely very intense – and somewhat traumatic for Ramu.

Chandra Mohan’s father came by the Gurukul several times a year, carrying all kinds of gifts and fruits for the Acharya, whereas his own father would come just once a year. Panditji’s memory wandered over to the few times his father came to the Gurukul. Those were truly horrible days!! Each time it was the same thing. The Acharya would complain at length about him to his father. And his father would walk up to him and slap him a few times, to appease the Acharya. And then disappear until the next year, paying only a measly amount of money for his schooling. Once or twice, Ramu tried to hide when his father came. But they always hunted him down and caught him. Why was his father so poor? And why wasn’t he born into a rich family? One day – just one day - I too will make money - a lot of money. I will have so much money I will never, never, never run out of it, Ramu would resolve.

Chandra Mohan and Ram Lal were as different as can be. Ramu caught butterflies and sometimes even dismembered them, whereas Chandra Mohan admired them from a distance. After long and strenuous hours of practice, he and Chandra Mohan would sit by the river and chit-chat till it was time for the next round of singing. Sometimes half burnt dead bodies would float by and Chandra Mohan would look away. He would rather enjoy the serenity of the flowing river. He was the mature and gentle youth and Ramu was the other boy who made trouble and was difficult to handle. How many times has he used sly tricks to make Chandra Mohan do more than his share of work around the Gurukul?

Music training would go on almost around the clock. Right from the wee hours of the morning – one exhausting lesson after another. Some drills took forever and Ramu would be bored. By any account, Chandra Mohan was the better student and Ramu got most of Acharya’s cruel punishments.

“You think this is severe punishment? I can tell you what my Acharya used to do. He would starve us till we got to sustain the tivra ma note for five full minutes” the Acharya would lecture Ram Lal “Chandra Mohan is going to carry forward the torch of Amirpur Gharaana. You are at best going to be singing in some Maharaja’s vanity court or become a low grade artiste in All India Radio. You sing poorly, but somehow expect everyone to appreciate it and shower high praise on you.”

No wonder Chandra Mohan got Acharya’s special attention. Ramu remembered the time when the Acharya took Chandra Mohan aside and taught him the song ‘Hari darshan ki’. Ramu begged and pleaded with the Acharya to be included, but the Acharya felt the song was too difficult for a simple-minded student like Ramu .

Such humiliation would instantly trigger a rush of hatred for Chandra Mohan. The Panditji remembered some of the terrible things he had done to him – like the times he soiled his Acharya’s clothes and Chandra Mohan got blamed for not washing them well. Or that time when he poked a hole in the harmonium and framed Chandra Mohan for it. The Acharya was so furious he beat up Chandra Mohan senseless.

But Chandra Mohan never retaliated. Or held any grudge. He even taught Ramu ‘Hari darshan ki’. And today, this song is a highlight of Dhana-sahib’s repertoire. People would swoon when he performed it on stage.

Isn’t it that Chandra Mohan would sing that song much more beautifully? Some of his glides and vibratos were so amazing even then. I can never equal him even now, the Panditji reflected. How many things has he taught me! And how many times has he stood by me.

Maybe when I get out of the hospital – and not float by the Jamuna as a half-burnt body - I should get back in touch with Chandra Mohan and have a long chat with him, Dhana-sahib promised himself.

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The Acharya was proven grossly wrong. In two ways. First, Ram Lal moved to Delhi and his rise was nothing less than meteoric. That was the time when a classical music renaissance was taking shape in Delhi and the obscure, but rich musical style of Amirpur Gharaana caught the fancy of many classical music lovers. Indeed the Acharya had taught them so much that Ram Lal not only achieved stage success, but went far beyond that.

He was as much a social climber as he was a deft musician. He made sure he hung around the glitterati – the bigwigs who ran the Delhi Music Conclave, the movie stars, the persons who mattered. The haute society embraced Dhana-sahib with open arms. He pandered and pleased the most powerful of his patrons, while carefully cultivating an image as a lively and charismatic musician who performed, instead of merely singing. He was a consummate politician who cut down his rivals and marginalized his potential competitors.

He was bestowed a string of honors – awards, cash prizes, honorary doctorates, tours to foreign countries whose names he can’t even remember, Rajya Sabha membership and a Padma Bhushan. When it rains, it pours!! Every year he got a new title and a higher fee. His shrewd investments in property and gold made him quite wealthy.

And simultaneously, Chandra Mohan just dropped out. Panditji heard vague rumors that Chandra was somewhere in district Gorakhpur, eking out a living as a music teacher. He saw him last at Acharya’s funeral – more than twenty years ago!! He wanted to gush out to Chandra Mohan and make peace with him, but something made him hold back and look over Chandra’s shoulders. This time he was not going to hold back.

Feel guilty, Ramu! That a second rate musician like you has become so successful while a true talent like Chandra Mohan is having a pitiful existence today. Can it be that all the nasty things you did to him drove him up the wall and resulted in his downfall? Did you steal his success?

Oh, little voice, be quiet!!!

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And Dhana-sahib’s audience lapped up his mannerisms. His temper tantrums and sanctimonious lectures are equally legendary. It is all a part of the Dhana-sahib cult – his trademark, if you will. In fact, they even come to the concert halls half expecting the Panditji to display his fireworks. The more he yelled and screamed at the audience, the more quiet they became – and more they believed that they were getting a better performance out of the Panditji. He expected a military-like discipline from his audience. Anyone caught chatting in the back rows would get a firing – and sometimes, even got thrown out.

“I am not harassing anyone. Classical music is not something that you put in a juke box and dish out. The musician will always have to be personally in command.”

If anyone’s cell phone dared to ring, that person would get the death sentence.

“Sir, this is concert hall. Not your office.” He would chew up the offender “But, go ahead. Talk. I will stop till you are done talking.”

He has been called a megalomaniac and a difficult person to deal with. In fact, once he even walked out because the organizers didn’t put enough saffron in his milk. He was also labeled the ‘perfect singer’ – one of the vanishing breed - who demanded and got the classical ‘respect’ out of patrons of music.

“He is the reason why classical music is even surviving in India. He is the guardian of arts.”

Adulation came from all quarters.

That may be so, Ramu. But why are you particularly nasty to people who dare criticize your singing? Remember the time when a critic described your concert as ‘a flat and unexciting recital ..….. and that your musical phrases are not thrilling any more’?

Yes, Panditji remembered everything. He phoned the newspaper immediately and lambasted the reviewer.

“Do you know the difference between ati vilambit and madh-vilambit? Do you know the difference between a cow and an elephant?”

Not only did the reviewer apologize, but even the newspaper editor apologized and sent you a personal note the next day. The same critic will probably write your obituary - that Dhana-sahib’s amazing voice is silenced forever on this earth….it is a tragic loss for music lovers everywhere.

The next round of consciousness and the Panditji found himself in a dusty, nameless village with his father and a dozen of his relatives. They were pointing to a demure girl at a distance and told him that she was Bimla Devi and she was going to be his wife.

Wife?!?!

The wedding went on for several days and the entire village turned up to celebrate it. Right after that, Panditji remembered he and his bride getting into a horse carriage and riding home on a dirt track. There was romance in the air and he was pretty sure that raag Zila Kafi was playing somewhere in the background.

But five years later, when she still did not bear him any child, every moment with her seemed like a waste and a punishment. She was an embarrassment and became the wife he cannot be seen with in public.

Ramu, so many times in your concerts you have sung ‘Beloved, when will you come?’ with love and longing ness in your voice. Why haven’t you said that to your own wife? Why?

Sometimes media persons asked him about his wife.

“Is your wife also a gifted musician like you?” a reporter once asked him.

“You see, this is a musical household. Even my gardener knows music.”

What a liar you are, Dhana-sahib !!. Bimla Devi knows nothing about music. How many times have you belittled her and harassed her about it?

“But she has no time for music. She is always busy in the kitchen. The sweet that you are eating is her handiwork. She makes the best mithais this side of Allahabad”

Your back-handed compliments are not going to hide your true feelings about her, Ustad.

But, at least I didn’t fool around with other women, even though many women threw themselves at me, the Panditji tried to protest.

You didn’t philander because of your own inadequacies, Ramu, not because of your high moral standards. Face it. You are just a terrible husband!! And Bimla is such a devoted wife. She hasn’t even eaten the last two days. She has been keeping a vigil in the lobby outside ever since they hauled you into the ICU. Repent, Ramu!!

Then there was that listless summer day, when a man walked into Dhana-ji’s house with a boy.

“My boy, Jugal Kishore, can sing well, Acharya-ji.” The man told Panditji. “Please take him as your student. With your tutelage he can become a great singer. Of course, if he is no good, throw him out on the streets and let him become a cobbler.”

“Sing a song, son.” – Panditji.

The boy’s singing pleased Dhana-ji. He immediately agreed to take the lad as his disciple. At that time it seemed like a perfect solution – perhaps Jugal Kishore was the son he always wanted to have. Even Bimla Devi liked him. Panditji promptly renamed him Malhaar. Jugal Kishore was too unmusical. The boy’s father left and never came back after that.

But it was downhill from then on. Malhaar wasn’t cut out to be a singer. Any amount of coaching or punishment just did not improve his abilities any. In fact, right after his voice broke, Malhaar absolutely refused to sing and Panditji had to accept with great disappointment that he was not going to leave behind a musical legacy named Malhaar. From being a favorite son, Malhaar fell into the abyss and became just an errand boy who opened car doors for the Panditji or carried his flask and his tanpura.

Ramu, weren’t you so frustrated you hated Malhaar with all your heart? And how abusive you got with him sometimes.

Then one day, unable to take the indignities any more, Malhaar just disappeared – with about seven thousand rupees in cash. Dhana-ji was so beside himself that he didn’t even complain to the police.

“He is not my son, anyway.” he told his friends “I tried to give him life. He doesn’t want it. I never asked him to come. And I never asked him to go. He is legally an adult now. I am not bothered about him.”

Malhaar did come back after a year or so, with the seven thousand rupees. But the Panditji wasn’t interested in taking back the money – or Malhaar. Eventually, after much imploring, he did forgive Malhaar somewhat. But the damage was already done and Panditji could only keep him at a distance. Malhaar found a menial job at the other end of town and moved out of Panditji’s house. Even then, he came by often and still did many chores for the Panditji. Didn’t he see Malhaar in the lobby outside with his many fans and well-wishers? Or someone just like him?

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It was almost midnight and a new set of nurses and doctors were taking over ICU duties. Nurse Renu has just finished giving instructions to nurse Poonam about the patient in bed number eleven – Pandit Dhana sahib. Renu was telling her that he was still not out of the woods. In the display behind, they could see the rhythmic dance of his ECG trace. His pulsoximeter was fluctuating like the nuances of a musical phrase.

“Ladies and gentlemen, heeeere’s Pandit Ram Lal Dhanvantari-ji once more!!”

Could she have imagined it, nurse Renu tried to reason with herself. It sounded like an announcement of sorts, like a radio or a TV was on. She looked around. No, nothing was on. But where did it come from? Did the duty doctor say something? No, Dr. Gupta just stepped out and there was no male at all in the ICU at the moment. Why is the hum of the ICU machines sounding almost like the tanpura and other musical instruments warming up for a musical concert, she wondered.

“This may sound bizarre, Sister Poonam” Renu told her “But I can hear voices….actually, more like a crowd inside a theatre or something. Maybe I am just imagining…”

Poonam cocked her ears to listen. “Oh, wait, even I can hear it. Look Renu. The Panditji has grabbed his IV line and talking into it, like it is a microphone or something. This is out of the world.”

“Oh, yes. How strange!!”

“Where? What are you ladies talking about?” the ICU technician came over and tried to see “I can see nothing. He looks like he is in deep sleep. He is not even stirring.”

The commotion attracted even the cardiologist, Dr. Sinha to the Panditji’s bedside. “This is so surreal. Even I can hear everything - loud and clear. Shh. Quiet. The musician is going to say something.”

“Check. Check.”

Panditji is speaking !!!

“I am going to dedicate my final song to several people.” He began his little speech “First, to my Guru, Acharya Gaumukhi. I owe it all to him. And I am going to ask my dear friend and older brother Pandit Chandra Mohan to sing with me – wherever he is. I am sure he can hear me. Even though he is not very well known, he is ten times more talented than I am. I want to pass the torch on to him……… all recording companies, please rush out and sign him. He is the future of our music. Brother, as a mark of my love and respect for you, I am going to sign away all my royalties to you and your family.”

A big round of applause.

“You guys over there. Keep it quiet. You are going to disturb the other patients.” – Dr. Gupta. He is back in the ICU.

The Panditji continued. “And next, I am going to dedicate this song to my foster son Malhaar – the son I am so proud of…..I know you are not very interested in music Malhaar, but all the same……And son, I am also going to give you my Lucknow home as a mark of my love for you. You are so close to my heart….”

Again a loud applause. Dr. Sinha and the nurses were clapping too.

“You guys are crazy. There is absolutely nothing going on in bed number eleven. I see nothing at all. You are just imagining things. Get back to work – NOW!!” – Dr. Gupta.

The Panditji cleared his throat for effect and kept going.

“In America, they always say ‘my beautiful wife’ . I have a beautiful wife too – Bimla Devi. Please stand up dear. This song is dedicated to you too.”

Thunderous ovation. Renu and Poonam clapped the loudest.

“I have a surprise for you dear. We are going to go on our much-delayed honeymoon to Switzerland. And this is one trip where no tablaichi or Tanpura strummer is going to come along” .

“Ladies and gentlemen, my final song is a folk song. A kajri in Raag – Mishra Mand

The raag Mand goes ‘Sa Ga ma pa dha ni sa Sa ni dha pa dha pa ni dha pa ga ma ga re sa.

In Mand, the phrase Ga Ma Ga Re Sa comes often. This is a light classical piece”

jhir jhir barase saavan ras buu.Ndiyaa.N
ki aa_ii gaile na ab barakhaa bahaar

Cluck cluck fall the raindrops

For, the rainy season has arrived!

(ab barakhaa bahaar ki aa ii gaile na)

”My god, Sister Poonam! How well is the man singing!”

”Yes Renu. Can’t believe it. He must be confusing the sounds of the ventilator machine with the drum beat. He thinks he is in a concert.”

“Who is singing? The musician? You must be dreaming. To me he looks still … and fighting for his life. You must be hallucinating … just like him.”

“Can’t you hear it? Look at his lips move. His voice is rising.”

“Ab barakhaa bahaar ki aayi gaii na. Come on everyone. Clap and dance.

Feel the rains!! Soak ii in!!! Don’t just sit in your chairs. Sing along. This raag is anyway a mishra, so any extraneous note is okay……Sir, you ….in grey kurta, it is okay if you talk on the cell phone. It could be an important call. I won’t think anything of it. Come on guys, clap!!!”

“Doctor, I too can see that he is really singing.” – the ward boy.

“Hey, come down to the ICU. Remember that famous musician who had a stroke ? He is actually singing in his bed. Unbelievable!!!”

(Dhan dhan baman…

Ki kab aiii hai ab piyaa hamaar

O brother, ask the astrologer to read the portents:
When will my lover come to me?

Ki kab aiii hai, ab maut hamaar)

When will my death come to me?

Death?!?! This line is not in the lyrics!

“He is getting loud. He is going to disturb the other patients. Increase his sedation.”

“No no. He is alright. Music can be therapeutic to other patients too. So, let him sing. He should tire himself out soon.”

“Can we have some sanity here please? Nobody is singing. You are all experiencing mass hysteria.”

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By now, a sizable crowd has gathered around the Panditji’s bed. Bimla Devi was straining against the glass window to peer inside, desperately praying that nothing terrible was going on.

“This is even more bizarre. He is kind of becoming younger!” – nurse Renu, again “His wrinkles and grey hair are gone. He looks only forty-ish”

“Wow!! Look how rapidly he is getting even younger. He is almost a young man now. He looks very cute.”

“You guys must be crazy. He looks the same. He is not becoming young or anything. You are not in a seedy bar. This is the ICU, for heaven’s sake and patients need your attention. If you fool around any more, I am going to report you to the authorities”

“Look he has already become a baby!!”

“He is starting to throw his clothes away. Watch it, he is chucking the hospital gown.”

“For the last time - he is remaining still – like he always was. You guys must be smoking dope. Get out of here. Poonam, you need to replace his bag in a few minutes.”

“He is throwing his little kurta, he is taking off his diapers. He is throwing off his name tag.”

“Where? He is not!!”

“Oh, watch it!!. This devil of a child is throwing all the CDs around. That is Panditji’s favorite one – the Kirwani he sang in London.” Bimla Devi was wailing from the lobby.

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In a few minutes, the child was done tossing his clothes – and all the CDs. He was buck naked, except for the beautiful smile on his face. Then he slowly toddled his way toward the bright lights and beautiful angels on the other side of a magical portal. At the exact moment little Ramu crossed the mystical threshold, the ECG machine went flat and the oxygen saturation level dropped to zero. In a few hours, the hospital sent the mortal remains of Pandit Dhanvantari in an ice box to be cremated in his native village.

The world woke up to the news that Pandit Dhana-sahib was no more. “It is a great loss for music lovers everywhere. ….” They wrote in the newspapers “Dhana-sahib’s amazing voice is silenced forever on this earth …...but it is now playing in heaven for all the gods.”

They are very wrong. The heavens only hear the childish babble of baby Ramu.

Author’s note: My thanks to internet sources for the lyrics and translation of the kajri.

Singapore Blogs

2010-08-16T01:31:00.001-07:00

Singapore Blogs – Part 1

Singapore is a great place – lush green vegetation, industrious people, very law abiding population. And people are so courteous that transactions are always pleasant. Where you can take a taxi ride without the mortal fear of being ripped off by the cabbie. Where if you dropped your wallet in a crowded place, there is a good chance somebody would find it and return it to you. There is a nice feel good factor about the country. For me, I have deeply personal reasons to be connected to Singapore, as you can see from this Blog, written about a dozen years ago. Read on!!

The first thing to hit me, as I stepped out of the air-conditioned interiors of Changi airport into the city-state of Singapore was this thick, sauna-like air that I could have cut with a knife. It fogged up my glasses and the cab driver, who was ushering me into his waiting taxi, found it hilarious.

“This (is) Singapore, luh.” He explained to me in his Singlish (= Singapore English), as he drove off to the Westin Stamford/Plaza hotel, which was to become my home away from home for many, many years.

The second thing to hit me, later that day was quite literally a broom that was sticking out of a janitorial push cart. It was my fault – I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy hanging around the Raffles City Mall (actually the bottom floors of my huge hotel complex) to get a feel for the place.

“Sorry, sorry” apologized the janitor, who was pushing the cart from bathroom to bathroom. “Very sorry, luh”.

I said no problem and gave him my confused tourist look. He was perhaps in his early twenties and definitely looked very Indian. On an impulse, I introduced myself.

“Hello, I am Ramesh, Indian, but living in America. I am here on business and will be staying in this hotel for a couple of months. You speak Hindi, Tamil?”

He spoke Tamil and his name was Suresh. “I am a local Singaporean.” he extended his hand hesitatingly.

After some initial small talk, I proposed “Say, how about some beer when you are done with your work?”

“Can, can” He replied in the affirmative. (can can = yes yes)

Not only did he show up promptly, but also brought a janitor-friend, Ashok along

“Ashok dance oso (= also) very good” Suresh introduced his friend to me..

By the second beer, we had not only broken the ice, but were beginning to be really comfortable with each other. They were friendly, fun and easy to relate to. But mostly, I was really enjoying the novel experience of being with utter strangers from a completely different socio-economic background, in an alien country.

They were very impressed that a fellow Indian, such as myself, could actually be staying in ‘their’ hotel where they were working as mere janitors.

“Didn’t study good in school, luh. When I was in P5 (= Primary Five, fifth grade) never go to school every day. Dat is why become janitor. My sister, she finish O level” Suresh explained, somewhat regretfully.

Not that it mattered to me whatever hell their profession was. I was so glad that I managed to get some ready company, that too so soon after arriving in Singapore. No wonder we started hanging out together after work right from that day.

They also took it upon themselves to orient me to their country and came up with tidbits and information about Singapore. (some of which patently wrong and prejudiced)

“In Singapore you do only two things luh, Shopping and eating” they would try to explain in their folksy style “Dat is why Malls and Food Courts full of people always.”

I learnt from them that Kopi Tiams are twenty four hour restaurants. And that Te Tarek is actually a name for Malaysian-style tea, where they poured the beverage from glass to glass (much as they do in South India) I also got to know their favorite eating joints (“Newton Hawker Center, best”) Every minute was a new experience for me and each dose of wisdom dished out to me was a revelation.

It was on the third or the fourth day of my Singapore stay that I got to meet, Nagarani, Suresh’s sister. A plump woman with somewhat stubby legs and a large, pleasant smile, she was older to Suresh by not more than a couple of years. She said she worked in Watson’s, (a local pharmacy chain), in Bugis. And yes, she was single.

“Don’t like my name, luh.” She told me with a big smile “Sounds like Bodoh. (= dumb) Call me just Rani”

Yes. Even I preferred the name Rani.
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Singapore Blogs – Part 2

My hotel was quite exquisite, with all the trappings of modern hospitality. Me and my colleagues from the USA were given ‘Preferred Customer’ rooms on the sixtieth floor, with our own exclusive Club, where alcohol flowed like rivers and food piled up like mountains during the Happy Hour. My room itself was a kind of a suite – with delicately cut and arranged fresh flowers, a basketful of ripe, juicy fruits, drapes that went up and down at the press of a button and at least two dozen towels of various sizes for my drying pleasure. Massive breakfast was served in one of the exclusive dining halls, overlooking the sprawling city, permeated by whiffs of piped music (including, sometimes, A. R. Rahman’s music) Of course, there were occasional, minor inconveniences – like the time we had a mock water supply drill – when they stopped water supply for an hour, just to get a feel for such an emergency should Malaysia ever decide to cut off water to Singapore

Although I had planned to work through the weekend – rumors were that our competition was going to launch their product in two weeks – I had to call it off because of some Supplier problems. With time freed up and itching to explore the city some more, I decided to call up Suresh and gang on my newly acquired handphone (handphone = cell phone) and see if they were free to hang out somewhere.

“Today not going office-ah?” Suresh asked me to make sure and suggested that Orchard was a nice place to goof off. “You come yourself. We come ourself. Can?”

I stumbled my way through the MRT subways and met them in Orchard. Rani had come along too – in fact, right after our introduction, Rani became a regular member of our gang and took part in all our outings and activities. She was the most animated of the whole gang and did most of the talking. She would come up with all kinds of sociological observations about Singapore – she knew that I was hungry to know more about Singapore.

“In Singapore, most girls want to join Singapore Airlines as Flight Attendants, luh” she would inform me about the country’s warped new generation “O they want to go dance in Vasantham Central.”

“What is Vasantham Central?” I asked.

“It is the Tamil TV channel, luh”

We went into huge stores like Takashi Maya – some as huge and just as glitzy as the big stores I had seen in New York and Paris. They showed me a shop that exclusively only sold condoms. They talked about the biggest theatre in Asia being in Singapore, biggest bookstore in Asia being in Orchard. The biggest this, biggest that – biggest almost everything in Asia was in Singapore, if you believed them.

And Rani stopped by at every single sidewalk shop and checked out the merchandise.

“Dis T shirt very nice. Dis, guy one o girl one??” she asked the hawker trying to find out if the T shirt was male’s or female’s.

“Girl one girl one.” – the hawker.

“Girl one, ah? Nowadays guy one girl one same same luh”

“You want o not?”

“Don’t want. Don’t want. Oso, look, Uncle, dis shirt spoilt orredy“(= already)

I remember staggering into an all-you-can-eat place for lunch. A buffet place with a catch - that you have to finish off what you take in your plate. You leave stuff on your plate, they will fine you an amount equal to the food you wasted. Can’t say I ate too well over there.

I had to excuse myself that afternoon and get back to the hotel because I had an appointment to meet my e-friend Devagi Sanmugam for high tea at one of the hotel restaurants. Devagi is a remarkable individual and an authority on Singapoe-Indian cuisine. A cookbook writer (her recipe for crab rasam is supposed to be the ultimate), a food critic and a cookery teacher, she also ran her own spices factory. In fact, she gifted me several packages of her own masalas for me to take home to India – and later I made history by becoming the first Desi to take masalas into India, in a bizarre case of reverse transportation of Indian spices.

Barely did I bid Devagi a goodbye and reached my room, the concierge informed me that I had some visitors. It was just Rani and gang.

“I am damn curious to see your room,” Rani explained why they came “Dat is why come now. Don’t mind luh.”

She couldn’t believe how decadently luxurious my room was and wasted no time in thoroughly inspecting everything in sight. She opened the closets, tried out the sparkling white robe that was there, checked out the shower faucets, walked into the balcony and bit into the mangustan fruit. And finally lay on the bed.

“Close the TV Ashok” she ordered about, so she could savor the moment . “Off the TV now”

Suddenly she got up and saw my laundry basket filled with my neatly ironed clothes.

“Laundry free o what?” she asked.

“Not at all” I replied “In fact, it comes to nearly a hundred and fifty Sing dollars a week. It is daylight robbery. They charge me two dollars to wash my socks. For that price, I can buy a new pair every time.”

“Why don’t you go buy them then?”

“Because my company will rather reimburse the washing costs, but would not pay for new socks.”

“Six hundred dollars a month!!!” she was still in shock “No luh. From now on, I only wash clothe. Give dirty clothe to Suresh and I wash, iron. Don’t waste money luh”

I tried to dissuade her that she was only saving my company money and not me personally. But she was stubborn. That’s how I got myself a brand new laundress.

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Singapore Blogs – Part 3

My factory was in a locality called Ang Mo Kio and it was a very modern and wonderfully neat production facility cranking out millions of disk drives under exacting conditions. (The canteen was a god-awful place though, lousier than even my Ohio State dorms or my IIT Kanpur mess ) Slowly and slowly, my work was getting ramped up and I was getting back to my hotel later and later. Still, somehow the laundry deal with Rani kept going smoothly..

“Yesterday I wash orredy" Rani would tell me enthusiastically and ship them out to me through her brother. And she absolutely refused to take any payments from me. Sure, I bought her an occasional lunch and a dinner. But her time and efforts were worth much more.

The following Saturday, we decided to check out some temples in Singapore – not that I was religious, but my new-found friends were super-religious and really wanted me to see the temples.

Our first stop was the famous Mariamman Temple, right spang in the middle of Chinatown. There were many ferocious looking figurines – gods, goddesses and demons – with several hands, each clutching a deadly weapon. My friends proved to be good tour guides. .

“We have ‘thee midhi’ (=firewalk) every year, luh” Ashok explained “Suresh oso pierce mouth and walk on fire”

I was told that it has now become a tourist spectacle. Even the yard where the firewalking takes place has an arena like feel about it, with double-decked observation gallery like in ancient Roman coliseums.

By the time we finished a couple of more temples, we were already in Little India. We made a beeline for the famous Komala Vilas – easily one of the finest South Indian vegetarian restaurants in the world – and pigged out on their palate-tickling food and capped it off with ‘rose milk’

The next day I decided to surprise Rani and Suresh and stop by their house. Their apartment was nestled in a jungle of apartment buildings somewhere in Toa Payoh After a bit of hunting around, I knocked on the door. It was opened by an old lady – their grandmother. I said a meek hello. She gave me a strange look, but guessed who I was, right away. I could see Rani and Suresh in the background. I tried to walk in. The old lady suddenly freaked.

“,Sappaathu sappaathu (= shoes) No shoes inside the house” she screamed.

I quickly retreated and dropped them off in the verandah. The old woman still gave me dirty looks.

And wash your feet before sitting down, boy. You call youself Tamil.don’t know these o what?”

I followed her instructions with a weak smile. She then gave me a glass of water.

“Drink, boy” she insisted “This is Tamil culture. Supposed to drink at least water when you go visit somebody first time. Don’t know this oso?”

I flushed it down.

“Dat old lady, never mind, luh” Rani was all over me. “What happen? How come you decide to show up? Why you never tell? Suresh, on the aircon (= airconditioning) please!!!”

We stepped out of the house and wandered all over Bishan Mall. I took the MRT back to my hotel (and washed my feet upon entering my room!). Late in the night I was exchanging text messages with all of them. God, I never sent a single piece of text message in the USA. But Singapore thrives on it.

‘Good night,. 143. came the final message from Rani.

I phoned her and asked what 143 meant.

“You looking for trouble, izzit?” she giggled on the phone “You do that – you act like bodoh, I whack you.” At once I figured out what 143 meant. Ouch!!

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Singapore Blogs – Part 4

The hotel and the Raffles City Mall were so huge that it was a world within a world. It was crowded to the max any hour of the day – almost as if every Singapore citizen was required by law to go through its portals every single day. I remember holding the massive door open, out of courtesy, to let a few people go through and when I finally let go of it, at least two thousand people must have passed through it. They had some sort of a cultural festival going on most evenings in the Mall and the place got even more jampacked those times.

But the mother of all crowds showed up for the National Day. Our hotel offered a spectacular view of the Padang (Parade ground) and of the parade. Rani and gang came over bright and early and we grabbed the vantage points in our Club room. Columns upon columns of soldiers, dressed in various uniforms, marched stiffly to the sounds of bugle and horn. They all looked like toy soldiers from where we were perched. There were all sorts of military gear paraded around for everyone to see – although half of them looked like tow trucks. There was even a Chinese lion dance on the side. The grand finale was a group of loud jets flying in formation, spewing a trail of plume. Rani was like a child, refusing to let go of the window, even after the last squad of soldiers disappeared.

We ate in one of the Malay restaurants in the hotel itself. I had Rojak and some dessert called Ice Kacchang, (a mixture of crushed ice, syrup and nuts – guaranteed to give a sore throat five minutes after you eat it). I even tasted a bit of durien pudding – durien is a huge, thorny fruit, much like our jackfruit and is so smelly the government has banned people from carrying it in trains and buses.

In the night we decided to hit an Indian nightclub called Minnalae. Since there were too many of us boys, Rani invited one of her girlfriends Anita to join us to lend our group a bit of gender-parity. She however warned me about Anita..

“She is a Bengali, luh” she explained. (The Singapore Tamils call all North Indians Bengalis) “Dat girl, Anita, work as telemarketer, Cannot trust luh. And careful. She is kay-poh (= bad) and she steal boys like dat. Bad girl, like dat. Gossip always, like dat.”

If she is such a bad girl, why did she ask Anita to come in the first place, I asked Suresh.

“Because she and she are frend frend” was his bizarre explanation.

The two girls sat in front of the mirror, applying make up. They were certainly very excited.

“Ramesh, you very good in dance, what?”

I gave them my stock answer about looking like an orangutan in heat when I try to dance.

“When I was in school I go dancing every week” Rani explained “Ashok dance so fast, never stop, not even when I ask. I try hard oso cannot do luh”

Then it happened, much to everyone’s surprise. Rani stepped away from in front of the mirror, like a woman possessed, tossed the make up kit on to the bed and blew her top off.

“I don’t look good. I look like a pig. This foundation not even staying. It is coming, coming. I hate”, bursting into tears.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Anita walked up to her, calmed her down and helped her with the make-up. Rani then disappeared into the bathroom for another eternity, trying out the three dresses she had brought along. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, her face had bloated up, her make-up in shambles. She was seething. She ran toward the bed and collapsed on it.

“I am so fat and big – like mama pig. I try three dress orredy. Red dress oso don’t fit.” She was sobbing. “Anita so pretty. I no looking good. I am so ugly. I am no coming. You go luh. You go”

There was an embarrassed silence everywhere. I have never seen Rani to be anything but chirpy. I thought I should give her a pep talk and cheer her up. I asked everyone else to get out and wait at the lobby. I walked up to Rani and put my hand on her shoulder.

“Rani, actually you look real good.” I kind of lied to her “This red dress is gorgeous. I am sure a lot of guys will give you looks. You are just hard on yourself”

“No, luh, go dance with Anita. I stay in the room and sleep.” She wouldn’t stop. “You know something? I never work in Watson. I don’t work anywhere. I never have job. I simply told so you like me.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether you have a job or not. You are a nice person and that’s what matters”

It took me nearly fifteen minutes to sweet-talk her into coming and for her to touch up her make-up. We took a cab up to the nightclub. It was crowded to the hilt and we had to wait. When it was finally our turn, we pushed open the huge door and trooped past the sentries. It was like walking into a thermo-nuclear explosion. A sea of humanity was gyrating away to ear-splitting music – ear splitting Tamil music – and confusing stroboscopic lights.

Suresh, Ashok and the girls lost no time in jumping into the dance floor and spinning around. As advertised, Ashok was pretty good and a number of strange girls were trying to dance with him. I was happy to simply stick to a chair and guzzle beer. Song after song, the tempo never seemed to slow down. The disc jockeys too mixed it up – right in the middle, they even slipped in a 1950s song and the dancers went absolutely wild. I remember Rani walking up to my table, grabbing my hands and dragging me to the dance floor and making me dance with her for a couple of songs. She was back to being her usual cheerful self.

.After much dancing, boozing and eating, we returned to our hotel, as totally wasted human beings. They stayed over in my room for the night. Since the girls slept on the bed, I lay bundled up in a sheet by the balcony door. In spite of all the reservations Rani had about her, Anita did not do anything nasty and Rani herself enjoyed the evening greatly – her ill-fitting red-dress notwithstanding. She came up to me and said a big thanks.

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Singapore Blogs – Part 5

We did all the touristy things in Singapore – Sentosa Island, Bird park, Crocodile Park, Night safari – you name it. All said and done, Singapore is a treadmill of a country. No matter where you go, you are still there.

With time dragging on, me and my gang of friends decided to foray into neighboring countries. Our first visit was to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We boarded a luxury bus and went through a scenic highway. The Malay version of A. R. Rahman’s hit song from Roja was playing in the background. The multi-storied bus station of Kuala Lumpur was one of the most confusing structures that I have ever seen. Somehow we navigated through it. We visited the Petronax towers and so forth.

“No Tamil hotel here what?” Rani asked and just to please her, we searched and searched until we came across one - Gomathi Unavagam - a tamil hotel alright, but a Tamil hotel in that part of the world meant a Malay-Tamil restaurant serving Singapore-tamil dishes like Nasi Goreng, Nasi Lemak, Mee Goreng and so on – not exactly what you would get in a restaurant in Chennai.

We next visited Batam, Indonesia. We stayed in a cozy hotel and simply hung around the city. In the marketplace, over boom boxes we heard strains of what else, A. R. Rahman music.

Everywhere we went, we found the loudest guys in public to be the Americans, followed by the Desis. The local population barely spoke above a whisper, in comparison

Our final trip was to Bangkok, Thailand. I had accumulated enough frequent flyer points to get free rooms in the Sheraton, even including the extra cots for the extra people. Due to the quirks of designing Time zones, we found that we arrived in Bangkok earlier than when we started out in Singapore, local time-wise.

It was the height of the Asian economic crisis. (remember Asian crisis?) The hotel was almost empty and we had a nice room in one of the upper floors. The staff was fussing over every little need of ours. We could see (although mercifully not smell) the river by our hotel and look at all the boats causing massive traffic jams in the river.

“In Thailand you sin in the night and propitiate for it in the morning” advised a friendly hotel staff. “So, go visit nightclubs and then temples in the day time” The same man tried to strike a deal with me the next day to smuggle Viagra for him the next time I came to Bangkok and split the profit with him.

We took a fun ride in the tuk tuk – vehicles much like our tempos and share autos. We took a day long guided tour – stopping first at the many palaces and temples. We then saw a soccer match between elephants. (they were more flexible and athletic than me!!) Next we, the tourists, were shepherded for a crocodile show, which turned out to be little more than someone beating the crap out of a crocodile. Finally, the bus stopped at a non-descript fake jade factory, forcing the captive passengers to go in and spend some money on something they didn’t need.

Rani, of course, succumbed to the temptation and got herself a fake necklace made up of worthless plastic. I offered to pay for it, anyway.

“This is a bargain for you, sir”. The salesman explained to me “I am giving a hundred baht thing for a mere fifty bahts. Don’t tell anyone that Thonchai sold you this piece for so cheap”

Yeah, right. I am going to forget your face in two minutes and you worried that I might cause a stampede of foreign tourists jumping over each other to buy your lousy fake gems?

On the flight back, I decided that I should buy Rani a real necklace.

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Singapore Blogs – Part 6

Next Sunday, we decided to hang around Little India area (or what is known as Teka by the locals). As always, I overslept, trying to get rid of all my week-long stress brought on by production problems and confusing failure analysis results. On top of this, I had to move to a different hotel room, because according to Somebody’s rule,,long term guests could not stay in the same hotel room for more than thirty days.

They were all waiting for me at the Teka market. We decided to eat the Kalyana Bhojanamu (‘wedding feast’) at the Andhra restaurant. My friends were describing the compulsory military service that all boys had to go through in Singapore and how the parents and kids cry on the first day when they dropped the kids off at the camp.

“In a year, kids become man, luh” Ashok explained.

They talked about Suresh’s twenty first birthday celebration, which took place in the Void Deck of his block and how he got himself a chain with gold key. Apparently, twenty first birthdays for boys is a major coming of age ritual in Singapore.

They showed me Haneefa textiles – the most auspicious saree store – they emphasized; the world-famous Mustafa shopping center where they sold watches by the ton.. We even had some snacks at the Mustafa canteen and met a Chindian (Chinese father and Indian mother) friend of theirs working there. We also walked through a mini red-light district in that neighborhood. They showed me an old Indian style flour mill (the only one in Singapore, they vouched) and an Indian style barber shop. That was a Sunday and so there were throngs of Indian immigrants piled up on the streets.

“Every Sunday, it is holiday for them, luh” Suresh explained “They all come to teka and meet friends.”

That was when I surprised Rani by telling her that I was going to buy her a gold necklace.

“Really o what?” she couldn’t believe it. She made minor protests and said I shouldn’t do this. I persisted.

“It is for all your hospitality and making my Singapore stay so enjoyable. It is for all the time you spent with me. And mainly, it is for washing and ironing my clothes for two months.”

We quickly arrived at one of the jewelry stores in Little India. The saleswoman (Auntie Tan) was trying to sell us the most expensive necklaces.

As usual, Rani tried on practically every single necklace in the store.

“Auntie Tan, Dis chain not costly what?” she would ask “I like dis one oso.”

Finally, at the end of the day, she made her selection and I paid up. Auntie Tan tried to sell us some more jewelry and offered us juice. But we escaped from there. The necklace was beautiful – and Rani wasted no time putting it on. I have never seen her that happy. She was walking around like she was the Big Queen of Little India.

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Singapore Blogs – Part 7

My work was winding down in Singapore. The mass production was transitioned. Still there were a few unresolved problems. But the factory should take care of most of them. I was scheduled to leave Singapore next week. I decided to go to Suresh’s house and bid their parents and grandmother a farewell.

We decided to grab a bite in Ramu’s Curry before we went to their place. We ordered Chicken Set and Mutton Set and Roti Prata Ramu spread banana leaves in front of us, and cranked up his boom box (yes, A. R. Rahman music!!) Theemun Achar (cucumber salad) and Oodan Sambal (shrimp sauce) and morsels of several side dishes were geometrically arranged on our leaves. A ton of rice too was dumped and I had a tough time trying to use a fork on a banana leaf!!

“I like Oodan sambal luh, Dat’s why go eat every day” Rani explained her taste to me. Her new necklace was such an eye-catcher that it was sticking out.

We reached their house. As usual, their parents were not there. Only the grandmother was there. This time she didn’t offer me anything to drink.

“Boy, that necklace was lovely” she told me, as she rocked back and forth in her chair .I waited for her to say something more. She did.

“I know you like Rani. Rani too like you boy. I am happy. Rani’s parents happy. Nagarani and us want to come to India next year, talk to your parents and ask them permission for her to marry you, boy”

What?!!? I was blown away.

“Wait, grandma. Whoever talked about marriage? Rani and I are just friends. Isn’t that the fact, Rani?”

“What friends boy? You go Bangkok, you go everyday with her. We allow like dat. Only because you tamil boy from America”

“But Suresh and Ashok were also around all the time. We hung around as a group.”

“You want to be alone with Rani?” the grandmother shrieked “Never. Boy, never. In our family we don’t leave girls alone with boys. This is Singapore, not America.”

“This is a big misunderstanding. I like Rani. But that doesn’t mean we are in love”

“You from America. You rich. You pay hundred over (= over a hundred) dollars for hotel.” She continued spouting “We oso can, boy. We damn capable. We give gold and silver for wedding to make you damn happy. Tell your parents.”

“No, no” I stammered “I have absolutely no interest in marriage now. I am sure you can find a nice groom for Rani right here in Singapore. She is a great girl.””

“Why you so stupid, Rani?” the grandmother turned her ire to Rani “You washing so many his clothe every day. Every day”

There was an eery silence in the room. At this point, Rani who had been quiet the whole time, got up and turned to her grandmother.

“Stop it, grandma o I am going to scold you” She breathed fire and then turned toward me.like I was some kind of a villain “So, Ramesh, you don’t like me, izzit?”

“Of course, I like you. You know that. But we were not behaving like we were interested in marrying each other.”

“Stop talking luh” she sobbed. “you guys all same what? Don’t want to talk to you anymore. I feel one kind luh.”

“No, no. I really like you. Listen to me.” I stammered, trying to reassure her. “But she had already disappeared into the bedroom, leaving only a trail of sobs behind. ”

"You know what happen luh?" Suresh tried to explain to me. Sure I knew. I knew enough. I knew enough orredy. I quickly got up and after staggering for a few moments, I said a bland goodbye and barged out of their house and retreated into the womb-like confines of my hotel room. Good bye, Rani.

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Singapore Blogs – Part 8 Epilog

As somebody pointed out to me later, Rani’s tale is a typical colonial love story – where the Prince comes visiting from a far-away land and falls in love with a commoner girl in the colonial territory, carries on a fairy tale romance - only to dump her and return to his native land after a week. Two and a half months, in Rani’s case.

Following my somewhat disastrous first visit, I made many more trips to Singapore – and through all my trips, I stayed close to Rani and gang - yes, we did make up..Over the years, Westin Plaza hotel has become Swissotel. They have now built a nice underground mall under City Hall. There are now MRT lines to Little India and to Changi. In these years, Suresh had tried his hand at starting a push cart lunch stall in their favorite Newton Hawker Center. But it didn’t pan out. Ashok had a stint as a Security Guard in a building, but that too didn’t work out. I was the ‘angel investor’ for the three of them on a wedding make-up business they tried to set up, but that too fizzled. I have lost contact with them, now that I have returned back to India, but last I heard was that Suresh has gone back to being a janitor and Ashok was working as a multi-purpose errands man at a large European populated condominium.

And Rani?

She is still looking for her Raja.

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A New Treat

2009-02-15T00:50:00.000-08:00

Apparently, a right wing Hindu organization is in the final stages of making a major splash in the beverage market – by introducing packaged ‘cow’s urine’. According to sources, the product will be marketed in various customer-pleasing flavors, including something as exotic as aloe vera. Me and a friend of mine (who is from an Ayurvedic pharma company) managed to catch up with Mr. Kumar, the Managing Director of this new enterprise. As he took us around his facility, I tried to break the ice by remarking ‘Being pissed off is no longer a theoretical expression for your cows’. He made a painful grimace, but started talking about his new venture.

“It doesn’t get any more organic than this.” He explained to us “We go through a multi-step filtration process and follow an ancient method of refining it. We have even obtained ISO 9001 certification for it. However, we don’t subject it to Pausterization because it removes not only the germs, but also the holy properties of our product.”

“That is bullshit” screamed my companion.

“No no. Bullshit is another product that we are currently working on. Don’t confuse with that” Mr. Kumar explained. “At present, we are experimenting with seven or eight flavors. We also have the premium product, which has been aged for over two decades. We will also bring out the janata variety that is affordable for most people. Remember, our products don’t have any expiry dates”

“Ah, I see.” We marveled.

:”We are also coming up with a line of household cleaning and ‘propitiating’ products using the same raw material - especially suitable for people buying new homes.” Then Mr. Kumar proceeded to substantiate his statement with a short sloka about how a cow gives and gives.

“We tried various taglines – like ‘there is a wow, In every cow’ or ‘You charge and we discharge’. But we finally settled on ‘Holier than cow’” Mr. Kumar added. He then explained his marketing strategy a bit, although he said that he is not at liberty to give us the details.

“In blind laboratory testing, we found no difference between our product and Coors Light beer – even the pH matched. So, we are optimistic about capturing the obese, North American market, and also penetrating the Euro Zone.”

“Sir, who will be your brand ambassadors?” we popped the question.

“Again, I cannot reveal it just as yet. But several celebrities have already signed up, including politicians, actors and businesspeople.”

We fired a final professional question. “Tell us, Mr, Kumar. Which would you recommend for your customers, bottled or canned version?”

Mr. Kumar had that cynical laugh. “This question has been around right since the Vedic days. Actually, the best form of delivery is ‘on tap’. But that may be a bit difficult for several of our customers, because you will have to get between the legs of the cow and push the tail away and start tickling the cow to get output. Not recommended for some of our overweight politicians.”

Moo over Pepsi, Coke.

(The above conversation is fictional. But I am dead serious about the news of such a drink)

Slumdog Millionaire and beyond

2009-02-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from the resounding success of Slumdog Millinaire, in the USA and in India, Bollywood is wasting no time in re-releasing yesteryear’s Indian hits in the USA. Yesterday’s Beverly Hills mega opening of Jai Santoshi Maa (re-named Maa dot com for the American audience) is truly symbolic of how far Bollywood has come in winning over the West.

The event was organized by Mr. Raj Gupta, who has the distributions rights to the film in the USA and was attended by a veritable who’s who of Hollywood glitterati. “This is not about making a fast buck on the current India wave, but to introduce the Americans to quintessentially Indian sensibilities, like mother sentiment, Ajit phattas and the Seeta-Geeta twin conundrum.“ He told reporters that extra footage, shot in dharavi, was added to the film’s re-release, in response to the overwhelming curiosity the West has shown about the Mumbai slum, considered the largest in Asia.

Already Dharavi is proving to be a major ‘Terror-tourism’ destination, where for prices upwards of $ 2500, strong-stomached tourists can experience first-hand pickpocketing, all-female gaali competition, mugging, gang-fights etc. A three day premium package includes a live political assassination and a thrilling election booth capture, midnight smuggling cruises kind of adventures. There are also economy packages which include self-guided tour of Dharavi, but the operators do not guarantee your return passage though.

The scene outside the fashionable Mann theatre, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles resembled Rio’s carnival, with celebs dashing in and out of stretch limos. This reporter managed to catch up with a few of them.

“The subterfuges of the subliminal in a polychromatic emotional canvass caught me completely off-guards” said Kate Winslett, the winner of two recent Golden Globes, dressed in an elegant light blue churidar dress, specially designed for the occasion.

“It is interesting – in a sort of, kind of way.” said Martin Scorcese as he emerged from the premier of the movie “The character arc of the Mother figure, going from the mother the protector to the mother, the destroyer is thematically very powerful.”

“The movie defied any classification” admitted Clint Eastwood, who was recently snubbed by the Goldern Globe awards. “It smoothly crossed over from the ‘action-comedy’ to the ‘family drama’ genre, with touches of ‘Horror’ and sci-fi. I have never seen anything like this.”

With the Hollywoodization of Bollywood and the Bollywoodization of Hollywood, can Tollywood and Kollywood be far behind, ask industry experts.

When contacted at her residence in East Godavari district in Eastern India, Pichaayee Homeopathi, 76, the star of the movie, said that she was still in shock. “Just imagine, getting a call from Steven Spieldberg. He wants me to do two movies for him – both without any make-up.”

Gupta also told this reporter that he is currently working on several projects – including re-releasing classics like Dara Singh’s ‘Lootera’ (Loot it, dude, for Hollywood) and the timeless ‘Daku aur Mahatma’ (dubbed ‘The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Mahatma) But for now, he is busy working on the re-re-release of Maa dot com in India with the new title Amma

Golden Globalization

2009-01-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

As someone who lived in the USA for dog years, I still have a voyeuristic interest in the goings on out there. I am a confirmed CNN junkie and come evening, me and my mom will have these major TV remote wars over which channel to watch. But with events like the Golden Globe presentation or the Inauguration, she is now a convert. Occasionally when she gets fidgety watching yet another hour of CNN, all I have to say is “Mom, they are going to show India” and she will be alright. Like several other desis, she too feels that there is an India Wave sweeping the world and she too likes this inside-out view of the new globalized Indian.

It certainly warmed a lot of desi cockles – mine especially – to see A. R. Rahman receive his Golden Globe award with quiet dignity and humility. But I was focused more on Anil Kapoor and gang clowning around boisterously without a hint of embarrassment. But then, I always look at the negatives. When people were busy trying to analyze the sub-text of Obama’s Inaugural speech, I was looking for gaffes and glitches. While the diaspora felt a collective lump in their throats after Obama’s “Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus…” bit, I was wondering what if somebody quietly slipped a huge pot of Green Dal Slime Slime from my old hostel mess, into the Inaugural luncheon spread.

By the way, have you everr noticed – that whenever you see a picture of Queen Elizabeth taking part in yet another meanigless ceremony, there is always a guy standing next to her who is three feet taller than her?

------ X ------- X ------

The PAN IIT meeting took place here in Chennai recently. Reluctantly I parted with two thousand odd rupees and registered for it. I saw a lot of my old friends. The grass outside the Students Activity Center, IIT Madras, was dotted with Srinis and Balas. And more Balas and Srinis and Palvayanteeswarans. Some of the NRI crowd, of course, behaved like they had never been in India before - incongruously wearing tie and jacket for ‘casual lunches’ and asking all sorts of penetrating chemical engineering questions about the local mineral water. One of them refused to walk a half a kilometer up to where I parked my car, because he did not have his walking shoes on. But the award goes to a critter that asked loudly if he should put a tea bag inside a steaming cup of coffee to convert it to tea!! Serious, folks!!

As usual, I did not attend any of those serious ‘Plenary’ sessions. The first day, I really made an honest attempt – pushing and shoving my way through the crowded auditorium when somebody said :Hema Malini aa rahi hai.” At which point, there was a stampede for the exit and we all rushed to the hall where she was going to be featured. She gushed that she was thrilled to mingle with ‘intellectuals’ – her euphemism for IIT nerds.

“Look, Hema Malini naach rahi hai” somebody else shouted, raising the temperature of the hall.

“No no. She is just walking. At her age it might look like she is dancing.” Someone else explained.

I guess the true purpose of meetings like the PAN IIT is to re-live the teenage fantasies – like finally being able to see their ‘dream girl’ in person, now that they have the money and other wherewithals to pull it off.

The next day, I actually managed to find a seat in the Plenary session. A phoren CEO of a consumer products company – which is more than six degrees separated from anything IIT-ish – showed an ear-splitting, graphics-heavy video clipping before he started to pitch for his corporation. When he said something like how his household products make bathroom-cleaning ‘fun’, I walked out.

The last day’s keynote speaker was Prof. Amartya Sen. Of coursse, I bunked that too and headed straight to the dining hall, where I had the entire buffet line to myself and proceeded to eat my tenth ‘fish fried’.

Fools and Bigger Fools - A Modern Day Fairy Tale

2009-01-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

This is the story of Jaggu the Fool, as he was known around the rundown slum he lived in. Some people said that it was his ferocious wife who drove him to this sorry state. Nonetheless he remained a fool and it was a miracle that he had not yet choked on a balloon while he blew on it. It’d happen sooner or later, some others would wager.

Jaggu was the balloonwalla of the area. He toiled all evening at a busy intersection, decking up his little push cart with a lot of colorful balloons, inflating them with helium gas (and sometimes with his lung power). He would twist and knot them into all kinds of funny shapes. This would fascinate and amuse little children (and even some grown ups) and they would crowd around him in a circle to watch him work. A little puppy was everyone’s favorite, with little ears and a short tail. He would sell it for almost four rupees a pop. He would scratch and rub his balloons, making that cantankerous screeching sound and the crowd around him would go wild. The noise beckoned even more customers from across the street and some days, he sold out his balloons and went home even before the street lights came on. Occasionally, when business got dull, he would linger on and on and would even come up with some silly jingles to pump up business – and he would look ridiculous when he sang.

You might think that Jaggu was some kind of a fun balloonwalla. But no sir, he was not. In fact, he was grouchy to the core, and this coming on top of his already bad reputation as everyone’s fool. He always shouted at his customers. He was particularly irritated by little kids who simply stood around him and never bought a damned thing. He would also get into arguments if they didn’t have the right change.

“You wanted the red balloon and I gave it to you. And now you want the yellow one, instead?” he would say yet other times, to admonish a fickle-minded kid. “If you can’t make up your mind, then don’t buy my balloons.”

Most of the days Jaggu made enough money to put food on the table for himself and his wife – they don’t have any children, mind you. He would even diligently put away some money each day towards his next bottle of helium and other supplies. Even after all this, some days there would be an extra few rupees left - to buy himself a shot of the stiff local brew. On those days, when he staggered into his little thatched hut, his wife would be hopping mad.

“You are no good. A complete waste.” she would scream “And now you are drunk too. You are a twice over fool.”

Jaggu has heard this before. Yes, I don’t bring as much money as our neighbor. I am not as strong and handsome like some of your relatives that you could have married instead of me. I haven’t even produced you a child. Yes, I fight with everyone and lose all those fights. Yes, I am a burden to you. Yes, I am…..But I haven’t kissed your beautiful lips in two years. I am really in a good mood now…… . So, why don’t we…But you never let me come near you….

At which point, his wife would toss something heavy at him and yell even louder. “How dare you!! First make a hundred rupees and then talk to me. You don’t know how much suffering you bring to a wonderful woman like me. Go away.”

Utterly defeated, Jaggu would curl up in a corner, sleep away his night; but deep down inside him, he was always hopeful that one day his wife would change her attitude and become that husband-worshipping, sweet talking, shy-as-all-hell woman, who put up with all kinds of tribulations. Maybe I should go away abroad and earn tons of money and woo her back….His mind would swell up with erotic fantasies…

------------------------------ X ------- X ---------
And one day.

Jaggu was standing at his usual street corner, inflating his baloons. His little push cart looked overcrowded with a lot of balloons tied all around it. Little kids have already gathered around him and Jaggu was at their epicenter.

“This is the festival season. I am expecting a lot of business.” He snapped at the children and chased them away “And you little devils, don’t block my customers.”

As he was yelling, a strange thing happened. Jaggu thought the earth was collapsing from under his feet. Tsunami or an earthquake or something. But, no, it wasn’t the earth. It was his cart! The darned thing was slowly taking off and beginning to fly – with Jaggu clinging to it!! He knew helium balloons can lift off. But he had not imagined anything like this. The gas has so much power it is actually lifting his entire cart, the balloons and himself!!!!

Half fascinated and half scared, he yelled at the crowd below, which had by now swollen up to almost fifty strong. Some of them even thought it was yet another one of Jaggu’s sales gimmick and began clapping and cheering..

“Make it stop and bring me back to ground.” Jaggu pleaded from above

But he was rising higher and higher. Very soon the applauding children on the ground became littler children and then little dots and finally disappeared all together. Jaggu realized that he was floating way up in the air. The tallest buildings in his city could be seen below his cart. He clutched his cart with both hands, hoping for a smooth landing somewhere soon. It may take him till late in the night to go home. And his wife would be even more mad and call him all sorts of names. The city soon disappeared and he found himself gliding over small villages. Many, many years ago he too had migrated to the city from one such village. Whenever he passed a village, people on the ground would disbelievingly look up the sky and wave to him. It was such an unusual spectacle to see a man fly in the air with a cart.

“You must be the eagle-man. Come on down and meet us.” Someone on the ground shouted. Jaggu was barely able to hear him.

“No, I am Jaggu. Where am I? And which town is this?”

“You are over Lalpur.”

“Where is Lalpur?”

“You don’t know even this? It is next to Rampur.”

“And where in the world is Rampur?”

“You must be a total fool. Everyone knows that Rampur is next to Sitapur” the man on the ground explained, shouting himself hoarse. “And by the way, use a better underwear next time you want to fly over our town. You look positively obscene.”

Jaggu was beside himself. He was tired, scared and hungry. Maybe he will go to the nowhere land. Maybe he will crash into a huge mountain. Maybe he will collapse to ground and die - and that ought to make his wife happy.

------- X ------- X ------ X ------
When Jaggu woke up, he found himself in a totally strange land. It was almost like a jungle, but there were neat huts – some of them very large and ornamental. His little pushcart – and his helium cylinder, all the balloons, his cash box with some change, were all there, in tact. Suddenly, a group of tribal people appeared in front of him and for a brief moment, Jaggu feared for his life. The Chief among the tribals said something to Jaggu in a strange language. Jaggu had no idea what he was saying, but knew that the Chief wasn’t particularly hostile or threatening - if anything, he was more polite than his own wife - bless her, wherever she was.

The Chief picked up a balloon and was fascinated by it. He had not seen anything like that in his life before. How can nothingness become energy that can be stuffed into colorful, little devices? These angelic icons are such magical, mystical things that they defy gravity and float up!! When the Chief accidentally let go one of a balloon, it flew all the way to the top of a tall tree and got stuck in the branches. And he had one of his bravest subjects retrieve it. Otherwise it would have flown up, up and away – and would have reached the gods. This man who descended from heaven must also be god’s agent, who has personally come down to bless him and his tribe..

That moment forth, Jaggu became an honored citizen of the tribal land. The Chief made him stay in the finest hut in the kingdom. Jaggu slept on a silk bed. Young pigs slowly roasted over fire would be served to him, with jugs of delicately brewed liquor. Five men and women were assigned to look after his every need. Although Jaggu did not understand a word of what they said, sign language was enough for him to take care of every one of his material comforts.

The Chief had his entire palace decorated with Jaggu’s balloons, with a red heart-shaped balloon tied to his throne, to give it a royal touch. Exemplary citizens of the land were awarded balloons, as also the Chief’s favorite wives who were dutiful to him. If occasionally someone caused a balloon to burst, the Chief would have them flogged with a sharp whip. For all his benevolence and good nature, the Chief also had a terrible temper – even more horrible than Jaggu’s wife. And when that happened, the tribals knew better than to hang around in front of him and be his punching bag. All in all, the balloons changed the face of the tribal country completely. Thanks, Almighty!!!! The Master of Inflation and Floatation!!!!

And one day, the Chief told Jaggu (in sign language, of course) that as a special envoy from heaven, he should marry the most beautiful woman of the tribe - a coy, long legged beauty who doted on her man. A ceremonious wedding took place and the tribals all wore special wedding barks and ornamental beads. Several balloons were given away as the bride’s price – and Jaggu was in a dream world.

According to tribal tradition, the groom had to close his eyes while the bride garlanded him. When Jaggu opened his eyes, to his horror he found a snake around his neck. He was petrified. But everyone around laughed. The bride showed her own garland and it too looked like a snake. He then realized that they were not real snakes, but some tribal ornaments in the shape of a snake. In fact, she was even wearing ‘snake’ bracelets and amulets. The exchange of garlands was soon followed by an elaborate feast, where pigs, deer, lambs, wild fowls – just about anything that lived and breathed - were cooked and served. Exotic liquor flowed like a river and the event was capped by a sensuous ritual dance that lasted through the night.

Under the gaze of the stars, Jaggu embraced his new bride. And scooped her off the graound and carried her into his beautifully appointed hut. This is what he deserved!!! For a fleeting moment he thought about his old short, fat, nagging wife he had left behind at his far away homeland. Nobody deserved someone like her. Really. Nobody. His new wife was ten times more beautiful; she smiled at him all the time; adored him and played little games with him..She even taught him how to weave leaves and blades of grass into those snake-shaped jewels. Jaggu was in seventh heaven.

And then it happened. Jaggu simply ran out of gas – helium gas, that is. He had carefully stretched his cylinder of gas all those months, filling just one or two balloons a day. And now this had to happen, just when some of the palace balloons were shriveling up and needed to be replaced. The Chief could not believe it. Maybe Jaggu was playing a dirty trick – perhaps trying to initiate a rebellion and eventually take over his kingdom. Or maybe the gods are angry at him for some sin he had inadvertently committed. Oh, God, why have you turned nothingness back into nothingness? He was angry, frightened and restless. Jaggu was no longer God’s man, but an evil person with a sinister plot. The Chief began to physically torture Jaggu since that day forward. “Re-start your magic, and bring joy to my land” he would order him, while his men gave Jaggu ten lashes. – and his new wife would watch helplessly from afar with tearful eyes. This must be my end, Jaggu thought.

And one day, the tribals gagged him, tied him with a rope and rolled him down a hill – out of the tribal territory. For good measure, they even pushed his cart down over him. His wife, unable to bear the sight, came screaming after him. But a couple of tribal men strong-armed her into submission and dragged her back into their land.
-------- X -------- X -------- X -------
A few suspenseful hours later, an army jeep patrolling that area spotted a human bundle of Jaggu, found him to be still alive and nursed him back to life in a military hospital. A few days later he was taken back to his city. A policeman escorted Jaggu to his old home and knocked on the door. When his old wife opened the door, her jaw dropped and she freaked out.

“Tell me I am dreaming!!” she shrieked “Where in the world had you been, you lousy, no-good piece of human trash?”

(An aside: At this point, the escorting policeman scratched his head and produced that sheepish grin. Jaggu’s wife at once understood what was happening and took out a hundred rupee currency from her bosom and handed it over to him as ‘mamool’. And the policeman quickly disappeared)

”And whatever happened to your cart and all your money?” she screamed “Did you drink way the money? Why have you come back to haunt me? You don’t know how much I have suffered all these days, by myself. . Wish you were dead and gone. At least then, I would have married again.”

For a second, Jaggu wanted to tell her about his adventure, the tribal land and his new, wonderful wife. But decided to keep quiet. His old, shrew of a wife wouldn’t believe him anyway. What a wonderful life he had in the tribe when his helium tank had gas. How they worshipped him. The roast of a young pig…..

“Don’t just stand around, you idiot. Get another cart and start making some money. I have already piled up a huge debt.” His wife was relentlessly yelling at him. “Bring me money.”

What a turn of events, Jaggu sulked, He dragged his feet outside. His slum looked the same. Maybe a few new faces here and there, A few kids had grown older. Somebody even asked him where he had been all these days. But Jaggu never gave him a straight answer. He walked up to his usual corner from where he sold balloons. ..And a brand new cart was standing there, with a brand new baloonwalla!!! He was surrounded by the usual joyous children. Unlike him, this new guy was a cheerful man who played with the children and kept talking to the parents. He even made silly jokes to amuse everyone. And he was busy collecting money and filling up his kitty. From the sound of it, Jaggu figured that the guy was making much more than he ever did. It could have been him, Jaggu bemoaned. And now he has even lost his place in the bazaar. Jaggu looked across the road. There was another baloonwalla there with another cart and another bunch of kids around him. I am doomed, thought Jaggu. The only profession I knew, I cannot carry out any more!! He pondered for hours and hours and finally came up with a solution.

-------- X ------- X ------- X -----

Jaggu has now set up his new shop in the same corner, right next to the new balloonwalla. This one, not a balloon stand, but hawked snake-shaped trinkets – garlands, necklaces, amulets, bracelets, anklets – just about anything. There is always a crowd of teenagers around Jaggu. They love what Jaggu has to offer and would lap up everything on his cart.

A girl in jeans and T shirts was trying on some new snake bangles.

“These are so cool yaar.” She was telling her friend over the cell phone “They are also supposed to be good luck charms and guess what, they are Vaastu compliant too. You ought to get some yourself.”

A college guy in a motorbike swooped by and paid good money to Jaggu for two garlands, one for him and another one for his girlfriend. His neck was already loaded with a couple of these leis. Exchanging snake shaped garlands has now beome a craze in the city, because it is supposed to get the blessings of snake god.

Jaggu could not control his glee, as he counted his cash – there was enough dough – enough to cover for food, his next week’s supplies, some new clothes, a bottle of foreign booze - and even some spare change for his witch of a wife.

Taj Mahal

2007-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

(Fiction)

Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com

I am Sadiq Ali. And I built the Taj Mahal – in a manner of speaking. All those highly-nuanced inlaid ornamental work, meticulous inscription of the Holy Koran verses on the marble tiles from Jaipur, all the jasper and onyx and carbuncle artistry, the gold and silver embroidery that so awe you when you visit the Taj Mahal – all were done by me or under my supervision, by my faithful workers.

Even as a young man, I had met Khurram – that’s what emperor Shah Jahan was known as before he became the great emperor he was. My father, who had emigrated from Persia, introduced me as the most promising stone and jade artist he had ever trained, with such a gift of calligraphy and stone sense.

“He has God’s hands.” He described me. ”Diamonds and rubies actually speak to him.”

Little did I know then that I was going to be involved in the construction of the Taj. A few days later I went along with my father to a royal wedding of king’s relatives near the palace and that was where I first met Rehena. She was the dancing girl – only for royal functions, as she emphasized later – not any nautch girl. She floated in the air, glided through the upraised stage in a nifty movement, sang the highest notes and intoxicated us with her eyes. She was at once flamboyant and lily-in-the-pond quiet. I began to see her more and more.

“I may not be the most handsome man on the land, Rehena” I told her.” But I have the largest heart and …the filthiest mind.”

She would laugh and pour some more old wine into my tazza. Oh, how many days I have spent like that! Oh, how many years can I spend like that!! I was in Love – so hopelessly in love that my entire life was defined by it. My every waking moment was shaped by it. And should I die, my history would be written by it.

And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass!
------- x ------- x ------- x -----

Then it all happened so suddenly. The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan – to be the greatest edifice to celebrate Love. I could endorse it. After all, I had my Rehena. But then, cruel are the ways of fate. I still remember her pulling me to a corner and telling me.

“Dear, I have something bad to tell you.” She started “That big soldier-commander, Rayan Khan wants me to marry him. And I said yes.”

“What?!!!?”

“I thought about it all night and all day. I think this is my final answer and a correct decision.”

“Is it because he is better than me? Is it because he is a mansabdar also and therefore can collect taxes and pocket a part of it and afford you gifts? I am noble too!! My ancestors had palaces in Persia.”

“It is not that. You are a nice man, too. And you will find a nice woman for yourself. It is just that I have to choose a good life for myself. Who knows, with all his bravery, Rayan might even become a governor of a province…”

“Rehena, you are mad.”

“Since I am going to be another man’s wife, I should not even be entertaining you like this. Please leave!!”

I walked out, hopping mad. I vowed never to see her again or think about her. But she was right there in front of me – when I closed my eyes and also when I opened my eyes. This concept called love is a double-edged sword. It can elate you and thrill you and it can also send you on a flight down the misery lane. I turned up at her house many, many times and even talked to her mother. But to no avail. I became another bitter, lonely man afflicted by rejection. Rehena and Rayan married in a spectacular ceremony. And this was one royal wedding in which she did not dance.

I hated this Taj Mahal thing, as we were getting more and more into the project. How can anybody glorify such an awful thing called Love?

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song
-------- X -------- X --------- X -------

Slowly and slowly, the Taj Mahal took shape – slab by marble slab. Nearly twenty years in the making and with nearly twenty thousand artisans and other workers. From Persia, Baghdad and Csonstantinople even. Mosques were built on either side of the mausoleum. The four spires in the corners were mangnificent. You could read the Koran verses from thirty feet away. The neatly laid out gardens lent a counterpoint to the structure. The emperor’s sense of symmetry and aesthetics of reflection in water were marvelous. Taj Mahal - a joy to behold and a symbol of the most romantic human emotion, namely Love.

How wrong!! Love is an emotion you can neither abstract nor approximate nor articulate. It vitiates your entire body, mind and soul like a fine poison. It is filth, it is evil. It is the low point of human existence. It is… It is….

Oh, the great Emperor Shah Jahan, the world is not going to remember you for building this huge edifice for this raw and naiive emotion called Love!! The world will only remember the hundreds of hapless workers who died trying to give shape to your delusion of grandeur. You think the onion dome in the center just dropped from heaven one day? No. It consumed several people’s sweat, blood and lives. Future generations will only talk about how you bankrupted your entire coffer because you were so obsessed building this marble behemoth. What a waste of over four crore silver rupees!! How you taxed the poor peasants to death and how your unscrupulous tax collectors swindled everyone including yourself. If you are so sincere about Love, why didn’t you build even a small monument for your first wife, Quandari Begum? Why only build it for Arjumand Bano – your Mumtaz Mahal - after she dies during the birth of her fourteenth child at the age of over forty? Is it a way to flaunt your rich arrogance? Is it a way to reveal the shallowness of your thought?

“Emperor, Sir. A question has been nagging me for a long time.”

“Ask, Sadiq.”

“In my humble opinion, don’t you think that love is more of an infatuation than a mature sentiment? “ I submitted. “You have built Madrasas and hospitals and the Moti Masjid. Did you really have to build this colossus called Taj Mahal?”

“What???? Such temerity in front of Our Royal Self?” he shouted in anger “Thou shalt learn to keep your flea-infested mouth shut. I decree that nobody shall question this wonderful human feeling called Love. My beloved Mumtaz Mahal – even the moon would hide in shame in front of her beauty.”

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one
----- X ------ X ------ X ----

It has been several years since we finished constructing the Taj Mahal. Times have changed – the emperor’s son Aurangzeb has deposed his father, got rid of his own brothers and crowned himself the new emperor. The old emperor is now imprisoned behind the great walls of the Fort, a shadow of himself. I hear that he barely talks or walks, attended to only by his faithful daughter Jahanara.

A little shantytown has cropped up around the Taj Mahal, filled with drunks and derelicts and people talking in the new language, Hindi. They even call the place Mumtazabad. I too started going there in search of small pleasures in life.

And then one day, who did I see, but Rehana!!!

“Rhena, stop. This is Sadiq Ali.” I yelled “How has god’s grace been on you?”

She recognized me at once. “What are you doing in these parts?”

I told her about myself.

“Rehena, my jewel. After all these years, I still cannot forget you.”

“You should not be talking like this.”

“But my feelings are true. True as god’s words.” I continued. “In the last so many years, there has never been a day when I did not think about you. You are my love, my life and my paradise.”

“Go away.”

“Please come with me. I have enormous wealth and I can pull you out of this squalor you are in now.”

“I am doing very well thank you.”

“It has been over a year since your husband Rayan Khan got killed in the Battle of Khajwa against Shuja, Aurangzeb’s own brother – Rayan was hopelessly cut by a charging elephant and a cannonball. “ I persisted. “It is time to forget him and your old life. Come to me and be mine. I hear he did not leave you with much money…”

“Go away, you monster.”

“I will do anything for you. I will send away my wife Faiza and my children to my ancestral village in Persia. We will live out the rest of our lives in peace and solitude.”

“Go away, you dog.” She screamed at me. “Or stay here and lick my feet.”

Here I was – the greatest artisan of the Mughal empire – who has personally embedded emeralds and garnets into the Peacock throne – going on his knees to woo a lowly, aging dancing girl for her hand – all because of the potency of this emotion called Love! Love is sicker than the satan.

And those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
------ X ------- x ------- x ----

And one day, when I was strolling through Mumtazabad, I heard the news – that Rehena was dead! From a disease that attacked first her stomach. Just like that! She is gone! Such a graceful form of femine beauty can never die.

In spite of her fame as a danseuse and as Rayan Khan’s wife, very few people had come for the funeral. These days, of course, the emperor has banned dancing in the weddings and the present generation may never know what it is like to have dances in weddings. Apparently she had few relatives and it was a pity tht she saw a lot of penury and strife in her last days. If she were not that silly and stubborn, she could have lived in the laps of luxury with me. ..

It was raining. At the funeral somebody asked me if I was related to her. I said yes, without explaining. Prayers were said and she was thrust into the ground. Farewell, my love.

Too bad that Emperor Shah Jahan was not able to build his Black Taj Mahal across the river from the present Taj – supposedly with granites from the Rajput kingdoms. Or I would have been the first one to work on it. That would be such a great monument for all the negative aspects of Love.

It rained some more.

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies
----- X ------- X ------- X ------

I was walking aimlessly in the town. This is the end of my love story. Unrequitted and unfulfilled. Forever to remain a grim reminder that love is painful and gory. Let this be a lesson for others. I kept wandering some more. Because of Alamgir’s (Aurangzeb’s) new laws against drinking and gambling, Mumtazabad even looked pleasing.

Suddenly, there was a rush inside me. I had to do it!!

I grabbed a couple of people smoking ganja and lured them with promise of one gold Mohar coin each.

“Bring me the best mule cart there is.” I ordered. “And four able-bodied men”

I gathered them and went straight to the place where we had just laid Rehena to the ground.

“Dig up that coffin and carry it in the cart to where I am going to lead you.”

“Sir, the laws against desecrating graves are very severe” one of them protested. “Besides, it is proscribed in God’s book too.”

“Do what I tell you. I am a friend of the emperor.”

In a few hard strokes to the ground, the coffin was dug out. We hurriedly placed it in the cart and rushed out of the cemetery – toward the Taj Mahal complex! We stopped right at the entrance by the gardens.

“Bury her here.” I ordered “Hurry up and be done with it quickly.”

As she was lowered into the ground, against the backdrop of Taj Mahal, it filled my heart with a straange sensation of having conquered something. Now if anybody stood at this spot and gazed at the Taj Mahal, they would only sense that Love is such a folly. Bury her deep!! Bury Love deep!!! Oh, I feel so liberated.

The last of the urchins was paid. I stood there by myself. I simply had to drop a fistful of dirt on the grave and I would have done my duty. Then I can take her off my mind forever. I dug into the ground to scoop out dirt – and came up only with a few grains of dirt – because, where there once used to be hands and fingers, are now simply blunt stubs, thanks to Shah Jahan chopping away my hands so I will not build another Taj Mahal.

But, Shahbuddin Mohammad Shah Jahan, I have just finished building my Taj Mahal.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under
Dust to lie Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

(All verses from Omar Khayyam’s Rubayyat)

Law and Justice

2007-01-09T04:36:00.000-08:00

Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com

It has been more than a week since Saddam Hussain was killed and put away. Video footage of his last moments was an assault on one’s senses and sensibilities. It was probably just another day’s work in the office for the executioners, but as somebody said, it was they who looked like terrorists, while the ex-dictator seemed like a dignified martyr waiting to be enshrined. President Bush called the hanging a ‘milestone in Iraq’s democracy’ – either he is lying or he doesn’t know the first thing about democracy or milestones.

In that fleeting moment when the noose went around Saddam’s neck, some primeval feeling inside me erupted – and proclaimed yet again that there is something absolutely abhorrent about death penalty – especially in this evolved and enlightened stage of human civilization. It is amazing that the same human being who dissects stem cells in order to prop up life can sink into a moral abyss and sniff out the lives of people, based on his own self-justified formulation of legal order.

Put these criminals and murderers away for life, please. But don’t lower your moral barometer and become equal to the sick criminals. The idea of retributive justice is to reform the criminals, not criminalize ordinary populace. (Any opposing viewpoints? Please send them)

Public opinion in India was overwhelmingly against the manner in which Saddam was tried and killed. As a nation, India seems against death penalty. There are already social outfits which routinely protest executions. I think it is only a matter of time before India outlaws death penalty, to join some of the more humane nations in the world. Call me a wimp. Call me Kumbayah-singing-naïve. But to hell with death penalty.

Indian foreign minister has expressed his ‘disappointment’ over Saddam Hussain’s execution. I certainly hope that he has the same sense of leniency when it comes to sparing the life of Afsal who stands to be executed in the Parliament attack case.

------ X ------ X ------ X ---

There is a rash of high profile murder cases prosecuted in India recently. Maybe the lifting of legal impunity against Members of Parliament has something to do with it. Well known names like Manu Sharma and Shibu Soren are now behind bars – for murder, no less.

By the way, it is claimed that more than one hundred out of the present five hundred odd MPs in India have criminal cases against them. (Out of the remaining MPs, over a hundred must be ex-Bollywood stars.) On the flip side, Tihar jail looks like a veritable Country Club with all kinds of celebrities. We are probably the ultimate crossover society.

Mr. Shibu Soren’s case is interesting. He is in jail for killing his personal assistant. Mr. Sashi Nath Jha. It is alleged that Mr. Soren was given a bribe to support the erstwhile Narasimha Rao government and Mr. Jha came to know about it and demanded a cut in it. Later it is said that he started blackmailing Mr. Soren, which in turn resulted in his gruesome murder. A typical dirt-on-dirt crime.

Mr. Jha’s daughter came on TV and said that they should have hanged Mr. Soren, to achieve a closure. Again, although I empathize with a woman who lost her father in this manner, I do not share her enthusiasm for death sentence. Who knows? Maybe one day in prison, Mr. Soren will come up with the sordid details of the bribe he was given to support the Rao government and name names. Maybe he would express remorse at the killing. THAT might bring about a closure to the whole episode.

---- X ------ X ------- X -----

I also think there is a ‘dumbing down’ of crime and criminals – especially in India. Most crime in India are the old Feudal-era variety and very few of the criminals have adapted the modern, high tech way of committing crime. Our best and the brightest don’t even seem to consider crime as a career. For all our IT savvy, we cannot boast of a single internet-destroying virus that originated in India or any modern computer crime worthy of a Hollywood movie. My family poojari, (whose first cell phone fell into the sacred fire) had his latest cell phone stolen and the police found it in a matter of hours because the idiot who stole it didn’t realize that he was leaving a trail of clues behind. ATMs, Cell phones, video cameras, modern computerized banking, RF-id etc. seem to have completely crippled the crime industry.

What kind of superpower will we be, if we don’t have the world’s most sophisticated cyber-criminals? Right?

----- X ------- X ------- X -----

Being an engineer/scientist/professor, I hardly come across people from orthogonal professions such as Lawyers. My first encounter with a lawyer was way back when I had just arrived in the USA. A friend’s wife introduced herself to me in a party thus “I am a lawyer and I work for the IRS”. Then she let go a little self-mocking laugh and continued “No wonder people avoid me in parties.” I laughed dumbly, not knowing what she meant.

Later, I obtained a lawyer’s services when I was processing my Green Card in Pittsburgh. Through the entire proceeding, I had never physically met him, although he would consult (and charge) on the phone. I finally got to see him on the day of my visa interview at the INS. It was a short walk from his office to the INS and on the way I kept giving him stock tips, suggestions on vacation spots, my ranking of Indian restaurants in town and so on. As we stepped into the INS office he told me (and here I am paraphrasing) that I talked too much and that I should not open my mouth unless he instructed!!! “Don’t volunteer information, for heaven’s sake!” he begged me.

Too bad the INS officer missed out on Oracle stock’s huge run-up those days.

----- X ------ X ---- X ------

When I was in Denver, a friend called me up one day and told me about this Sri Lankan asylum seeker who was in jail in Denver and who only spoke Tamil. Could I be his interpreter?

So, off I went to the jail with my friend. At the entrance I was joined by a lawyer – who was actually volunteering his services for free for this case. This was a private jail and one of the eight or so Immigration jails in the country. It seems that if you are illegal in the USA and somehow managed to step on the US soil, and then have the misfortune of getting caught, you have a whole slew of ‘rights, than if an immigration guy catches you in an airport or at the border. This Sri Lankan guy was nabbed at the airport.

After a rather long wait – during which the lawyer made several trips to the prison administrator’s office to request that we be let in – we were finally led toward the visitor’s room.

First we were given an elaborate body search – my first ever. (Those were the pre 9/11 days, of course. These days I get a similar search in every airport. In fact, during my last trip via Japan, a female security personnel in Narita gave me such a sensuous and intense body search that we might as well have had sex) Then we were taken to a room with three stools and guards all around. The Sri Lankan was brought in. I thought that he might be glad to see a guy who could talk his language. (He didn’t have even the bare minimum of English language skills) But the guy was pretty indifferent and barely answered our questions. From what I gathered, he was attacked by both the army and the LTTE and so he escaped from Sri Lanka.

Although I gave up soon, the lawyer kept pressing him on for details. After nearly an hour, the guards came in abruptly and asked us to leave. Later, I had lunch with the lawyer (and he didn’t charge me for this ‘service’) where he enthralled me with various immigration stories.

“I have seen people from all countries” he said somewhat exaggeratingly. “Except New Zealond.”

I never saw him or the Sri Lankan guy again – apparently, the Sri Lankan guy did not want anyone to represent or help him. But his ‘girl friend’ and her brother kept phoning me up every once in a while from Toronto to get their family-to-be, out of jail.

After nearly a year and a half, the girl friend phoned me up to tell me that he was deported to her town in Canada. End of story.

----- X ------ X ------ X -----

While I was in the heat of the battle at my company, just before a new product launch, I got an official letter calling me for Jury duty. Even though I consider trial by jury to be archaic and anachronistic, I had no choice but to go. There, a huge congregation of fifty of us, potential jurors, was seated and I was counting on the laws of probability to bail me out. But, you guessed it. I was selected as a member of the jury of six and had to spend that entire day at court.

It was an interesting mix of people in the jury. Boulder County, which is where I used to reside, is one of the most educated counties in the country and perhaps that is why three of the six of us happened to be Ph. Ds. There was a VP of Sun Microsystems and the basketball Head Coach of the University of Colorado, Mr. Riccardo Patton was another juror. (quite an interesting man and he talked more than me!!) The lone remaining juror was a student.

This was my very first visit to a court in session – my opportunity to observe the judge, lawyers, witnesses and the dynamics between them. Every once in a while, the lawyers would have a ‘side-bar’ discussion with the judge - in whispers, so that we, the jury, could not hear.

At one point, the defense lawyer was cross-examining the plaintiff’s mother, who was a witness. She put on quite a show, crying and play-acting for the jury.

“Mrs. Brown, you have lived in the Boulder County for the past five years, right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Before that you used to live in Lafayette County for three years, right?”

“Yes, sir”

“So, let’s see. You have lived in Colorado for eight years – five years at your present residence and before your demotion at work, you were in Lafayette County…..”

As soon as he mentioned ‘demotion on the job’, the Prosecutor jumped and raised objection. The judge agreed and told us, the jurors, to expunge the defense lawyer’s comment. But, heck, the damage was already done. We had already put a negative mark against the woman. The lawyer was brilliant and every bit like those emotional movie lawyers, making dramatic statements and gesticulating animatedly.

“Look at my client there, members of the jury” he beseeched us “Could he have committed a crime?”

The accused was looking so silly that I barely resisted laughing. At any rate, it took us less than a minute to arrive at a unanimous ‘not guilty’ judgment to acquit the accused. That spared us nearly four hours to chit-chat and get to know each other.

So, what was the case about?

John Silly and Mary Silly married as teenagers and split a couple of years later with a child as a by-product. John had the custody of the kid on the weekends and Mary, the rest of the time. (The kid was about three years old at the time of the trial) The child-exchange took place in a parking lot of a shopping center. One Sunday, John had to go somewhere early in the afternoon and so, wanted to drop off the child earlier than usual. So, he called his ex-wife on the phone. Since she did not answer, he rang her up several times more – seven times to be precise. This was seen on the caller ID of her phone and so Mary and her mommie dearest decided to file a harassment case against John and wanted him ‘restrained’.

No wonder Mary and the public prosecutor lost their case. Such a case wouldn’t even be taken up in these days of pervasive cell phone use.

------ X ------ X ------ X ----

Two Silly Poems on Lalu and Missus

2007-01-06T00:03:00.000-08:00

Poem 1

If Brazil’s Lula meets Lalu
It’ll be a Bubba meeting a Babu
But if Chairman Mao had met Thurman Uma
Or had a rappo’ with Oprah
Or Buta, he’d’ve been breaking a taboo.

Poem 2

Once there was a Devi called Rabri
Everybody who was anybody thought she was a nobri
But Bihar crashed and burnt
Nary a lesson learnt
Did we witness a great daylight robbery?

The Creature that came from Outer Space

2006-12-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com

It has been slightly over a year since I reverse-migrated back to India. Now that I am on this side of the NRI-divide, I often play host to expatriate desis on their motherland visits. They come in all varieties - people purporting to be my distant relatives, first cousins whose memories I have been trying to black out, folks claiming to be my ex-classmates (a large social category, given how many centuries I had spent in colleges). Plus assorted wife-beaters, paleontologists and general US taxpayers. They all descend down on Chennai, as if Lufthansa is giving away free air tickets and as if the Mayor of Chennai is personally giving them golden keys to the city.

Their modus operandi is eerily similar. First they would send you an email to your junk mail box. The email would be filled with ‘Suddenly I thought of you’ kind of niceties, ending with an ‘oh, by the way, me and my entire brood are contemplating a trip to India this December. Hope to see you then. Cheers’. This will be followed by a long, deceptive silence, during which time you may lull yourself into denial. But come December, they will hit you with Karmic precision. One cold morning, a surprise local phone call will announce to you that they have already arrived, well-rested and rid of jetlag. And when can we meet?

----- X --------- X --------- X -------

But, the Creature that came from Outer Space was like no other.

The Critter was a vestige from my high school days, a vague blur on one of my dying brain cells. In fact, he was so vague I actually remembered his real name and forgot his nickname. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in ages. He called me from his parents’ home. Just like that, the Creature said lunch and I said yes..

“No dhabas or Udipi restaurants, please” he beseeched, perhaps fearing my low-brow tastes.

So, on the appointed day, a mutual friend and I headed toward that star restaurant in mid-town. From afar, I could see a shadowy figure, nervously pacing up and down in front of the portals. It was the Creature!!! It was clad in a circus tent-sized three quarter pantaloon, which amazingly still only barely covered its loins. An undersized ‘University of Minnesota’ T shirt was choke-holding its enormous, desi carbo-belly. Suddenly I started remembering him and all the shenanigans we did in high school. It was him, no doubt!! My god, I never thought I would ever see him again in my life!! He used to be the skinniest kid in the class and would get picked on by everyone. Even I had hassled him quite a bit. We joked about it.

“Do you remember that fat girl from Besant Nagar? “ I poked him in his ribs “She used to beat you up every day. Wonder whatever happened to her.”

“Yes, yes. Those were the days. She really used to wallop me” he reminisced. “By the way, Ritu and I eventually fell in love and she is my wife now. So no snide remarks about her.”

He told us that he had dispatched his wife and kids to a fat farm in Kerala – an Ayurvedic resort. “They give them only one slice of bread in the morning, one chapati in the night and a tall glass of louki juice for lunch and make them run five miles.” He sang praises of the place “They have already lost ten pounds in three days.”

Just then, a doorman dressed in leftover British Raj clothing showed us in and stuck us to our chairs.

“Mineral water please” the Creature ordered even before we could sit down, lest we might conspire him into drinking gutter water that we natives always drink. The waiter respectfully brought in a bottle and the Creature subjected it to a serious visual inspection, like it was fine wine. The label said it was from Mount Everest. The Creature looked very pleased. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that perhaps the water was harvested from under an industrial dump outside Mumbai.

“Last time I came to India, I picked up an infection.” It explained. “This time I am taking no chances. I brought my own toilet paper and enough mosquito repellants also. I don’t want to catch diseases like Malaria and Chimichanga.”

-------- X ---------- X ---------- X ---------

Like all NRIs, the Creature too had an infinite appetite for Indian junk food. It pored over the ‘multi-cuisine’ menu for hours, changed its mind numerous times and finally ordered various high calorie items and truly enjoyed every morsel. We also attempted to make conversation. It was years since we all met and much had happened to all of us. The Creature was doing most of the talking, especially after the second Kingfisher dark.

It came up with long stories about its office, its boss, office politics and that one cunning Desi colleague who always cuts into his chances. We all yawned. Then a lecture on ‘Single malt whiskeys, beers, pilsners, pale ales and lagers’ - just to display its newfound sensibilities. We still yawned. Inane (and nane), observations about India. (‘To analyze India, we need something stronger than statistics - a super-statistics - because even if you are one in a million, there are thousand people like you’) Some mild jokes to lighten up the mood (‘I used to be athletic A runner. Actually a runner with a drinking problem. Now I am a drinker with a running problem’ and things like ‘In India, even a Dentist becomes a Vedantist at the slightest provocation’) And a major discussion on India and China.

“Look at all the potholes in India.” it pronounced, as it poured itself another beer. “The Infrastructure in India needs to improve.”

Still, we were really not connecting with the Creature. When it was time to leave, the British Raj guy brought the bill. The creature quickly swooped on it.

“Lets not make a fuss” it said, as it fished out its Gold American Express, “Lets see, I will pay for the dessert and one third of his bill plus forty rupees for your coffee and oh, since he didn’t have appetizer, I will pay thirty percent of his bill plus one third of the tip….plus ice cream for …...”

Our mutual friend grabbed the bill from him and paid it. The Creature didn’t resist much.and was deeply moved by this gesture.

“I will treat you when you come to Green River, Montana” it said with a lot of feelings “We have a nice joint where you can get home-cooked baked potatoes and chives.”

------ X -------- X --------- X --------------

We decided to drop in on our old high school on the way back. So, we all got into my car. I was sitting in the front seat and the Creature was in the back seat. I heard some funny noise from the back seat. The Creature was trying to shackle itself with the seat belt.

“I am so used to putting it on that I have to do it.”

It is India, dude, but Si vous voulez!!

At the school, the schoolchildren were amused to see the Creature and our Principal was excited to see such an illustrious ex-student of the school. The Creature grabbed the Principal’s limp arm in a firm Texas handshake,

“Hi. I am Raaaavi RaviShaandran” it introduced itself to the stunned Principal. (Not to be confused with say, Ram Ramaswamy and Kris Krishnaswamy) But the Princy quickly recovered and pitched for the Creature’s tax-deductible dollars (while completely ignoring the two of us) The Creature too promised him the heaven and the earth. It fingered everthing in the Princy’s room – the massive trophies, old phots hanging on the wall, a centuries-old wall clock – and the Princy was so glad to see us leave.

While on the way to its home, it smiled broadly at cars honking, bicyclists cutting in front of our car, the occasional bullock carts and got to know the price of ‘gas’ in dollars per gallon. It was awed by the fact that even rickshahwallahs have cell phones these days.

We dumped him at his place – a huge apartment complex, where no matter where you park your car, the security guy would ask you to park it somewhere else – and when we reversed the car and about to get out, we saw the Creature running toward us..

:Stop!!!” it yelled “This is not my house. Mine is on the next street, I believe”

We made sure that it was his house, this time and waited till it actually disappeared..

Where did the mutation occur? Why is he like a clumsy Prince Charles trying to lock step with the aborigines in a tribal dance? India, which used to be its life, dreams and love, has now been reduced to something akin to a rerun of a second rate TV show, to be watched with amusement, horror and suspicion – and to be switched off at the end of three weeks, never to be turned on again for many, many years.

------ X -------- X -------- X ------

The Creature is also very uncool, in that it still used landline phones. And it had a ferocious, gatekeeper of a dad to answer phone calls.

“Uncle, I am Ramesh….”

“Never heard of you..”

“Can I talk to your son, the Creature, please?”

“No. You cannot. I can’t tell you where he is.Buzz off.” Click. Click.

So, when the Creature invited me to his dad’s eightieth birthday bash, I readily accepted because of my morbid curiosity to see such a rude and grumpy old man.

For all its rude behavior on the phone, the dad turned out to be a creature thrilled with itself and its pack. A sprightly, rodent-toothed, miniaturized human being. I could see the Creature itself busily mingling with the crowd, onion-wrapped in a massive dhoti. Its brat was digital photographing the crowd at random.

The Creature saw me and came up to me, sat next to me.and asked me all kinds of personal questions – how much salary would he get if he quit everything and migrated back to India.

“You see, I always want to do that. What do we have there? Nothing. It is only for my kids that I am staying there. I think my market price should be seventy or eighty lakhs here.” He said without batting an eyelid.

“Is it per year or per month?” I asked sarcastically.

It had all kinds of questions about real estate and stock market and medical insurance.

“Of course, I don’t have time to do any of this in this trip” it confided. “I will have to do it only next time.”

“And when will that be?” I asked.

“Oh, it will be February of 2012. Because next year Pinky has her Arangetram. Then 2008 I have a conference in Kyoto. In 2009 we plan to go to XYZland (where XYZ = Ire/Naga/Switzer/Swazi/Hol) and the year after that is Pinky’s graduation….”

------- X -------- X --------- X -------

Our next meeting was dedicated to simply ferrying the Creature and its wife from one fashionable shop to another. It made a big splash in the poshest jewelry store in the city, where the security details rival those of the Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Then a pit stop at a sporting goods store where it bought a cricket bat that won’t wilt away in American winters. A quick stop at a specialty Masala store located at the edge of the town in a vague cul de sac, saree shopping in a Saree House with two million sarees, several hours in handicraft stores, where they make all kinds of junk out of all kinds of junk.

“A statue of Dancing Ganesha. How rare!” It drooled, sticking out its credit card for the umpteenth time, not perhaps realizing that these days the Chinese are flooding the market by mass producing these ‘rare’ things.

A quick hop at the music store to buy the ‘1956 Hits of Uma Kumte’, whoever she is. And lastly, we hit the bookstore. It thoroughly ransacked the entire place and finally emerged with two armpits full of Mega-sized coffee table books with such titles as ‘An Illustrated History of kuans of Hyderabad’ and ‘Lalu Prasad Yadav’s views on Panch Sheel and Windows XP’.

Then it was almost time to drop off its wife at the Tanjore Painting class (!) and pick up its son from its Music class. It whipped out its Palm pilot, checked its shopping list and crossed off items. I could see its smug face in the rear view mirror as I drove off.

------- X -------- X ------- X --------

It was the last week of its stay in India and the Creature was busy playing the end game. Hectic visits to various relatives (They are all IAS officers and Bank Managers. And their sons are CEOs of multinational companies, of course. Unlike my relatives, who are all street bums and extortionists.)

Then it disappeared for a few days.

“Been to Mumbai to meet my Brother in law’s mother in law.” It explained.

“Mumbai is such a modern city. Even the beggars have cell phones there.” It marveled. Then it told me that it made a detour to the Taj Mahal for some Patel pictures (‘Our kids should know about our history’) and a whistle stop tour of places like Raipur to visit the likes of its Bhilai Mama and Dalai Lama and finally, a near-mundan experience at Tirupathi.

“Why don’t you stop by now?” It invited me “I am free between 3.11 PM and 4.20 PM…oh, wait, what did you say, mom? Krishna Uncle is coming only at 4.45? Okay, then Ramesh, we can spend time till 4.45….”

I politely bailed out. In fact, I never met it again. And since I never heard from it again, I had presumed that it had quietly slipped out of India. But it surprised me with a midnight phone call – from the free airport terminal phone, while trying to push and shove a hundred others wanting to grab the same phone and make similar free phone calls.

“Sorry my last couple of days were completely out of control” it apologized, somewhat disingenuously “Next time around, I should manage my time better.”

It said it had a wonderful time. It said it accomplished all its missions. And before disappearing into the huge black hole that is America, it even thanked me profusely for my gift to him – a specially gift-wrapped five kilo bag of Toor daal, which apparently was in short supply those days in the USA.

Newspaper stories

2006-08-05T00:14:00.000-07:00

By Mahadevan Ramesh
Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com

(This is a rather long Blog entry, folks. So, pour yourself a very large cup of coffee if you want to get through this)

Every couple of months or so in India, a totally wacky, irrelevant, regressive, divisive non-event grabs the headlines, gets totally blown out of proportion, hogs the airwaves endlessly, saps the national energy, increases the collective blood pressure, rocks the country back and forth and eventually asymptotically exits, only after another equally ludicrous news event dislodges it from the front pages.

Last month it was the Sabarimala vs. actor Jayamala episode. It all started innocuously with one of the priests of the famous Sabarimala temple, Kerala, claiming to perform what is termed as ‘Divine Prediction’. He pointed his crystal ball toward the past and in it he saw a woman entering the temple complex several years ago. Nothing to write home about, except that this popular temple has a Victorian moral code with a Manusmriti age covenant which prohibits women (other than prepubescent girls and post menopause women) from entering the temple. Right after the ‘predictions’ an actress in Karnataka, Jayamala, quickly claimed that she was the woman in question and that not only did she enter the temple, but she also wandered into the inner recesses and even touched the idol as well and therefore committed multiple blasphemous acts.

What followed this was an almost nuclear chain reaction of she-said-he-said, she-touched, no-she-did-not, I-regret-touching-the-idol, the-priest-is-a-liar, Jayamala-is-hungry-for-publicity, let-us-get-her. When I last checked, the prognosticating priest had been summarily sacked from his holy duties - and ironically he did not see it coming - and Poojas were being commissioned to ostensibly ‘cleanse’ the temple after such ‘violations’. Legislators in Kerala and Karnataka did their bit parts and raised hell in their respective Assemblies. High courts and the Supreme court were ‘moved’. More actresses came out of the woodwork and claimed to have entered various other temples, clearly violating the temple bans. It was such a bizarre and amusing spectacle to see otherwise grown men sitting down and arguing about utter nonsense, knowing fully well that not even a single iota of good will come out of all these, for more than ninety nine percent of the population.

It was like watching a badly-produced TV serial minus the commercials. Sure the Sabarimala temple is rich and popular. Sure there must be a lot of turf wars going on for controlling its management. But to subject the entire country to this silliness? What is even more intriguing is that there was very little discussion on some of the ‘universal points’ that seem to fall out of the whole incident. That such a famous temple even has gender-based discriminatory rules and that they follow archaic and questionable practices like ‘divine astrological prediction’. It is even more shocking that there was not even a flutter from any of the women’s groups or rationalists forums or from the Brinda Karat kind of Communist politicians. “For all its left leanings and high literacy rates, Kerala is still a highly feudal society.” Says a Kerala journalist friend of mine. Not just Kerala. I would say the entire country is mired in such chronic feudalism that we are unable to liberate ourselves from stupid things like this. Performing poojas to propitiate the sins of women entering a temple? In this twenty first century? In the name of tradition?

Covenants or private rules, such as those issued by the temple in Sabarimala, unfortunately have a legal basis. Private entities can have their own rules and regulations which supercede your fundamental and god-given rights – pardon my pun. You always have the option to not patronize such places, if their covenants put you off. This is no government office, where you can argue about equal rights.

But on the other hand, the public can use its tremendous leverage to pressure the temple to get rid of such rules. In a land where Meera Bai’s single-minded devotion is the stuff legends are made of, a Meera Jasmine is prevented from displaying the same kind of devotion. Yes, there are other religions which have equally discriminatory and sexist practices. But that should be no justification for our retrograde rules.

Another interesting thing that stares out of this news brouhaha is this peculiar practice by us Hindus of having our own favorite temples and gods, the importance we give to pilgrimage etc, Being highly ritualistic is now becoming the watermark of our Hindu belief system. Like teenage boys showing loyalties to their football teams, we align ourselves to a Tirupati temple or a Badrinath temple or a Kumbh, and don’t for a moment mind all the inconveniences, (sometimes even the probability of death by stampede) expenses and so on in visiting those places. Even eighty year olds who need to be carried away in dolis to the temples don’t mind the troubles, just because they earn brownie points from god. (In fact, the more hassles they go through, the more spiritual they feel) Why are we so crazy? Isn’t it said somewhere that all temples are kind of equal and doesn’t adwaita tell us that our own inner spirituality is equivalent to the external supreme being that we idolize? Why don’t we visit our corner temple instead of trekking it all the way? Why don’t we have healthy national debates on aspects of religion instead of people clinging to their wild beliefs?

We, as a nation, are so immature that we get carried away by the heat of the battle that oftentimes we don’t even bother to figure out why the battle is being fought in the first place. We don’t parse the headlines or digest the news. We get seduced by the statements, press reports on-camera antics of people that we believe the superficial to be the reality.

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A couple of weeks ago, the lead story was this five year old boy, named Prince, falling into an abandoned bore well and subsequently getting masterfully rescued by some great men from the army and the Mumbai fire brigade. All parents watched with heightened tension, perhaps clutching their own children, as Prince was yanked out. (and there were others who watched, purely out of morbid curiosity) Right after the kid came out of the hell hole, he was declared ‘mentally and physically’ fit, and off he went on his fifteen minutes of fame. He and his parents were all over the TV and they were even given some cash awards. Who knows, if Maneka Gandhi doesn’t let loose her Animal Rights brigade, we may even see Prince on top of an elephant next Republic Day, clutching his bravery award.

From time to time one hears of such miraculous rescue efforts of kids falling into wells. Remember Baby Jessica McLure in the USA? She fell into a well in Texas and created the same kind of hysteria and voyeurism. She was even an honorary marshal in the Independence parade after her ‘brave’ fall. (Remember Woody Allen’s classic movie Radio Days, where he depicts similar scenes?)

Great story. But I’d say enough already.

If anybody should resonate with this event, it is those careless guys whose human error it is that the pit was left open. They should be identified and prosecuted for an extremely avoidable tragedy. Potholes and crevices and deathtraps are all over the country, even in highway systems of such model cities like Pune and Bangalore, causing unfortunate accidents. This incident should have highlighted the black hole menace countrywide and how to systematically plug them. We should have had debates on child safety and public safety.

It was wonderful that the army stepped in and performed a miracle. If anybody was a hero, it is them army guys. Instead, we seem to make a hero out of the boy who had the dumb luck of taking one misstep. The kid did exactly what any other five year old will do under a similar circumstance. To bestow extra bravery and intelligence on the kid because of the situation is ridiculous. It wasn’t as if Prince was applying MBA methodologies and Universal problem solving techniques sixty feet below the earth.
Surely we don’t want every five year old to think it is cool to fall into a well and be instantly declared a hero. Why do we learn the wrong lessons?

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All the Tantris of Sabarimala and Prince – please go away! Out of my face, please. Out, out!!!

You know who my heroes are? Mittal and Nattu. That is Mittal as in Lakshmi Mittal and Nattu as in N. R. ‘Nattu’ Natraj.

Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian, recently merged his Mittal Steel company with the European Arcelor Corp. to create the largest steel company in the world, employing hundreds of thousands of people. He, by the way, is the third richest dude in the world, according to Forbes, with nearly twenty billion dollars to his name.

Nattu Natraj, just last week completed the Badwaters Marathon in Death Valley, California, donning the Indian tricolor flag. This race is dubbed as the ‘baddest, toughest foot race on the planet’ and Nattu was among a selected group of 85 world class athletes from twelve countries. The ‘marathon’ is actually over five marathons long, covering a distance of nearly 210 km. Death Valley records a bone-melting 125 degree heat (50 deg C) which goes up to 145 degrees on asphalt. The temperature is so high that credit cards are supposed to melt and cold drinks turn into tepid soups in ten minutes, according to a reporter of the Washington Post. And the course goes through approximately five kilometers of vertical ups and downs. Nattu Natraj came in at number fifty overall, finishing the race in about 46 hours.

The Mittal news caused only very small ripples in the standard American newspapers. Even on the day of the deal, there was no news story in the USA Today – not even in the Money section. The ‘smart money’ in Europe was rooting for Sverstal, a Russian steel company to merge with Arcelor and not a lowly Mittal owned outfit.

And the Nattu Natraj story wasn’t even mentioned in any of the Indian publications. When marginal Indian sportspersons, who flunk out in the second rounds of silly tournaments get so much of air time, it is a shame that a true national achievement is completely missed out.

Man has been dealing with iron since the stone ages. (alright, alright – since the iron age) It went out of fashion so long ago that many of the developed countries don’t even indulge in iron mining or steel making any more. You can see ghost town upon ghost town in Pennsylvania, when you drive along the Allegheny river. “A commodity like plain steel is low down in the food chain.” I myself have taught this in my Supply Chain Management course to my MBA students. But somebody has found this unlikely engine to fuel his way to the top rungs of the rich people list. Mittal’s beginnings were humble enough, in rural Rajasthan. By his own admission, his English was so bad, he felt inadequate when he was in college. What are the odds of a simple Indian striking it so rich in a non-sexy pursuit?

I have known Nattu Natraj for nearly twenty years now. He is a graduate of IIT Madras and a Ph. D from Carnegie Mellon and now lives in the Boulder, Colorado area, just down the road from where I used to live. He was even my roommate briefly (during which time the 9/11 happened and we both actually sat in front of the TV for hours on end). In many respects, he is a card carrying South Indian – his meals were not much more than the traditional South Indian rice-sambhar-yoghurt variety (in fact, a while back, I had published his famous sambhar recipe on the net) Somewhere along the line, he developed his interests in physical endurance activities and would casually do a marathon or climb a fourteen thousand feet peak as a throat-clearing exercise.. Nattu probably has zero body fat, while most of the rest of us hang around Desi parties with possibly the hugest paunches ever recorded in the history of Indian civilization. .

When I examine Mittal and Nattu, a few common things emerge (other than the fact that they both are iron men). They both chose a non-glamorous domain to build their self-actualization dreams. Once identified, they pursued the dream with a single-minded dedication, first by gaining the domain knowledge and skills and then by developing a game plan for the long haul. They both have that infinite patience, unwavering ‘stick-to-it’ive ness, in spite of so many distractions and naysayers around them. They allocate their physical, mental and spiritual resources for the entire duration of the course, avoiding dropping out or quickly burning out or settling for simple things. And most importantly, they stay the course – which is considered almost a sin in many corporate boardrooms, because most corporate types expect ‘action’ and ‘progress’ every two minutes. The Mittal plan is quite different from the Tata, Ambani model, because he did not diversify like them. In the last year, I have owned shares of Tata Steel, Inland Steel, Carpenter etc. and know how much patience it takes to endure the static or downward price movements. Similarly, Nattu has not followed the P. T. Usha model of participating in many different kinds of events. He has stuck to ultra marathons and endurance challenges. I had been also a long distance runner for over a decade and I know that it is a lonely pursuit with few cheerleaders and with nothing more than a cold beer at the end of the race as reward.

I would go as far to call this total dedication to the end-goal and systematically pursuing it without getting distracted by sidebar events, a National Soft Skill we have in India. After all, we have had rishis who performed long penances in isolated spots in the Himalayas. We should identify people who have such mental tenacity and sharp focus, impart them with relevant hard skills and let them loose in all kinds of spheres. I predict that the first medal India will get in the Olympics, whenever that is, will be in an endurance category like the 10 km race, rather than in hundred meters sprint.

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I am still bummed that the USA Today nearly blacked out the Mittal story. The Western media, in my mind at least, is very WASP-centric.

God forbid, if Mittal becomes the richest person in the world, I won’t be surprised if Forbes even stopped compiling the Richest List, because it is so ingrained in many Americans’ minds that the richest person in the world has to be a white American.

If you do a spectral analysis of Western media’s headlines practices, you will see that it becomes news if ten white people die in a train accident. In the same train accident, about a hundred Indians or Chinese will have to die if it were to become newsworthy. In case of Blacks, several hundreds of them will have to die before the media feature it as news.

If terrorists strike the US or Europe or Israel, they will be labeled ‘terrorists’. If the same terrorists hit India, they will be simply called extremists or militants.

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I am also miffed that there was no bandwidth given to Nattu in India. Perhaps the newspaper gods thought it wasn’t newswprthy enough; or maybe our news folks don’t have the wherewithal to pluck such news stories from the internet or other sources. Most of the time in India, politicians’ utterances, however inane they are, pass off as news.

It is old news that Jaswant Singh, the Foreign Minister in the BJP era, published a show and tell book (yes, the same guy with a face full of eyebrows, causing eyebrow envy everywhere). The highlight of the book was his allegation that there was a CIA ‘mole’ in the Prime Minister’s Office when Mr. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister. Understandably, this accusation sent shock waves in the capital, with every reputable retired IAS officer scurrying for cover and issuing defensive statements. A witch hunt is going on even now and journalists are already speculating. Yesterday, Mr. Singh came out and announced, without batting an eyelid that ‘he wasn’t trying to sensationalize anything’. I beg your pardon? This man has opened the Pandora’s box and then issues a George W Bush kind of statement, completely whitewashing the reality. Thanks, Mr. Singh for teasing the nation and putting us in the black is white paradigm. Surely you weren’t writing a book on Euler’s theorem and trigonometry, If there was indeed a mole in the PMO, why didn’t you do something about it all those years you were a minister in the Central cabinet? Shouldn’t you be prosecuted for neglect of duty and betrayal? It may very well turn out that the only mole in the PM’s Office ten years ago was on the left cheek of Mr. Narasimha Rao, in which case shouldn’t you be prosecuted for rumor-mongering?

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This has been a pretty ‘heavy’ blog thus far. Let me try to lighten up a bit.

Another headline that usually screams out of our newspapers is ‘PM to meet the President today’. Come on, folks. The two guys live in the same town and are practically neighbors. One would think that one of them will make time – maybe on the way from office - to meet the other person, without making such a fuss and letting the whole world know about it. This headline, of course, will be followed the next day by the ‘the PM met the President yesterday’.

Some headlines are born. Some are created. And some are thrust on us. One of those that was thrust on us was the now-famous quote ‘One small step for me and giant leap for mankind’ when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. Yeah, right. Here is a man who endured a five day ordeal of traveling in a cramped vehicle, hanging upside down, eating lousy food and in a crazy suit that was biting into his groin – when he finally steps on a firm surface, his most likely reaction would be ‘Pardon me, but where is the nearest bathroom?’ Instead we hear a well-rehearsed statement, which has been making the rounds in all the TV GK quiz contests for the past forty years.

As I close this rather long Blog, the next inning(s) of the farcical Jagmohan Dalmiya vs. the Cricket Board vs. Saurabh Ganguly vs. all politicos is just about to begin, The West Bengal CM has already hooked a short pitched ball against Dalmia and Mr. John Wright, the erstwhile team trainer, has just published his kiss and tell book, to which Mr. Virendra Sehwag has responded. Dig? We are in for an August of discontent.

A couple of news items in today’s newspaper caught my attention. A guy in West Bengal gets life in prison for killing his wife, because she only gave him half an egg and kept the other half for herself. And in U.P, two policemen will be given Rs 50 per month as ‘moustache allowance’.

Perhaps Mr. Jaswant Singh should apply for a possible eyebrow allowance.

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Some Random Points on Reverse Migration

2006-07-14T05:13:00.000-07:00

(This post is mostly for the NRIs who are ensconced in the USA. But others can also read it for fun)

I can’t believe I have actually completed my ‘reverse migration’ to India, after having lived in the USA for centuries. The first, tentative steps were taken nearly three years ago and at every step, there was this danger of the ‘N+1 syndrome’ cropping up and dooming the entire move. The good thing was that I had enough dough tucked away in all kinds of investments, which made it possible for me to kind of ‘retire’ and not be a wage slave – I didn’t really have to find a sucker Indian corporation which would treat me like a brown saheb.

I have been getting several requests on how one actually pulls off this Mayflower-in-the-reverse trick. As a summary response, I have recorded ten points, which I am going to share with you.

(1) It is important to go slow on making the move.

First of, I took my own time to make the transition. India has changed so much in the past n years that you have been in the USA and you need to get familiar with the new place. Even your relatives and friends have evolved and you don't get that impact during your once in a few years visits to India.

Since the last time you visited it, there has been a telecom revolution in India. And this has completely changed the landscape. Just to give you an idea, there are now a hundred million cell phones in India (with a hundred million unique ringer tones for them), which is double of what we had just last year. It’s only a matter of time before every single man, woman and child in India will be armed with a cell phone.

Everybody has a favorite cell phone story to tell. Mine is about our family Punditji, whose cell phone accidentally fell into the sacred fire while he was performing some holy something. (I bet his colleagues around the fire quickly chanted “Om Cell phonaaaya swaahaaa…” or something) The man tried to exchange the charbroiled cell phone for a new one, but even though the gods were on his side, the Nokia guy apparently refused to budge.

Thanks to modern technology, India is also now a land of junk courier mails. The most inane and useless pieces of paper are mailed via courier and one has to affix his or her precious signature and pick up the trash.

Most of you probably haven’t been to hell yet. But if you want to witness something close to it (and get a glimpse of new India) all you need to do is visit your corner school in the evenings. You will see two hundred cars and a thousand two wheelers parked every which way outside the gate. And come the school closing hour, there will be sheer pandemonium, with honks tooting and vehicles revving up their engines and children crisscrossing, lugging their thirty pound school bags. Remember how you walked to school?

But then, India is a country of contrasts – where the ultra modern shares space with the ancient. A country that is littered with cell phones and couriers still has people who use Morse codes and telegrams. Even as we manufacture jet engines, our roads are open to bullock cart. There is good news and bad news about eco-friendliness in India. The good news is that most traditional things that people use are bio-degradable. But the bad news is that the damn thing bio-degrades in front of your house.

The point is India has changed while you were away. So, wake up and smell your coffee – in a trendy coffee shop and pay nearly a dollar for it.

(2) Take a lot of stutter steps first.

I visited India many, many times before my final move.

I know it is an expensive proposition. But unless you actually ‘taste’ the new Indian life a few times, you may be quite surprised when you actually make the big move. You can include a few ‘things to do’ with each such trip – such as finding out if you can afford that latest condo they are building in the poshest part of your city or if the elite school you want to put your children is so exclusive that you need a letter from President Kalam to get them in.

(3) Import only the sentimental and 'familiar' things from the USA when you move. Everything is available here.

I had a tough time abridging my 3500 square foot Colorado home into twenty five boxes. Except for my sentimental collection of classical music, photo albums, etc. (a lot of which got damaged in the floods a few months after I received them. But then, that’s another story)

There are furniture stores in India with IKEA catalogs who will readily build you that fake IKEA piece, if you wish. Instead of wading through JC Penny’s in search of that elusive pair of pants which fits you exactly, in India you have the luxury of getting it tailored to suit your weird NRI derriere. So, don’t overload the boat.

(4) It takes only a few weeks to get used to the dirt, dust, rudeness, inefficiency, heat, potholes, relatives' chatter etc. (Well, actually, you may never get used to the Indian rudeness.)

After about the first week, I got over the urge to reform every single Indian that I came across. The following week, I even managed to finally see a commercial on TV without Amitabh Bhacchan in it. You get ‘immersed’ fairly quickly. Cricket is still everything in India and they still talk about ‘uppish’ shots or fielders ‘shying’ the ball. I soon re-learnt exactly how to slouch over a sofa and ask a bunch of similarly-slouched folks ‘All out for??’ and be instantly accepted by them. You will realize that the Barry Bonds-like hulk who slugs the balls away, is called M. S. Dhoni and that he is the latest heart-throb of every teenage girl in India. (It is Sania Mirza for boys, but then, she probably deserves an entire blog)

If you want to endear yourself to the older generation, all you need to do is to look your cynical best and complain ‘Hmm. They have increased the Railway cancellation fee to forty rupees. What can the public do?’ even though you have no clue as to what the fee was earlier or what it ought to be.

You will see that you can easily comprehend a staid newspaper like ‘The Hindu’, because it divides itself into the Blood Bank page, Obituary page and the Sharapova page. In fact, I have been privy to every move of Sharapova after I got back to India. You will realize that the picture of the dignified lady, staring out of the newspaper, is actually that of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s. Among other things, you will discover that the Sensex they talk about here in India has nothing to do with the Sensex marriage we have in the USA. You will also get the feeling that with every passing week, the magazine ‘India Today’ looks and feels more and more like an airlines in-flight magazine – a far cry from those days when it used to be the gateway to the happenings in India.

Basically, getting back into the swing of things in India is very simple – much easier than you will realize. Somewhere in the very back of your mind, you have actually stashed away all your Indian survival instincts and sensibilities and they will all rush to the forefront right with your grand entry into India.

(5) Establish your own norms and priorities here.

Don't become another 'body' available for family functions. Sure, meet and spend time with relatives. After all, that is one of the reasons for your transition back. But don't be consumed by the extended family.

You will find that every other day someone or the other is either getting married or celebrating their kid’s second birthday and that you are ‘specially’ invited. But there is no end to it. Watch out for the eightieth birthday celebrations – they are major traps which will suck you in for hours. That’s where you will meet a hundred of your senior citizen relatives and other hanger-ons (each of whom has a son or daughter in New Jersey). The food is usually good, but remember there is a high price to pay for it. .

(6) Don't get hung up about the USA.

India has become quite modern too. Familiarize yourself with the modern banks, schools, computers, plane reservation, shopping, investing etc. Qualitatively, there should be very little difference in all these activities between the USA and India.

For those of you who are completely out it, the Indian dollar is called the rupee and is literally only worth about two cents. Even though there are dirt-poor people in India who would kill each other for a rupee, you will have plenty of it, because with your American bankroll, you will most likely belong to the filthy rich class here in India. Learn to divide everything by fifty and pretty soon you will realize how things are cheap in India.

You will see that you don’t have to give your right arm for that dental procedure, even though your Indian dentist’s office is more plush than your American tooth fiend. For the price of a couple of large pizzas, you will be able to travel first class, A/C from Delhi to Kanpur. And you can make reservations for it on-line and get your ticket in a few hours by courier and even thank Lalu for making it all possible!!!

(7) Whatever maybe your chosen profession, be that mover and shaker and help push the Indian economy a bit further

I teach Production and Operations to MBA students in one of the top colleges in Chennai. But I made sure it is only an Adjunct position, just to give me enough traction to stay in action, and not be a careerist. Since I have worked quite a bit in factories and Production, I have a passion for Manufacturing. I am slowly trying to spread my message and hopefully in a few years, I can graduate a few good Production Managers. Indian planners firmly believe that close on the heels of IT revolution and the IT enabled Services revolution, we are going to witness a major increase in Manufacturing activity – watch out, China!!!

India is booming economically and there is so much of excitement that it makes up for everything else. I am really kicked about all the possibilities. Contribute to India’s growth. Think of it as a debt repaid – for, the government did spend hundreds and thousands of its meager rupees in educating you in the IITs and the IIMs.

(8) You should have some extra activities to get more out of your India return - music, dance, religion, writing, travel and whatever

One of the reasons I moved back was to further my writing career. Strangely, over the past three years, I have hardly written anything, even though several Tamil actors have been wanting scripts from me. One of these days, I hope to settle down enough to write. I hope!!

(9) Come back with the intention to give something back to the society and when you do give back, do so actively and not just as a dole to some charity. (which is also okay, if you think about it)

A good part of my return to India is also altruistic. I have a large surrogate family of underprivileged kids whose education and well-being I sponsor. I have recently put three of them in engineering colleges at great costs. I spend a good part of my weekends teaching them Laplace’s transforms and ‘spoken’ English. It is such a pleasure to see every positive step these children take – especially considering they had pretty bad upbringing. I wish I could write more about my experience. But it is too personal. Maybe in a later blog…

The point is, there are so many wonderful organizations in India, NGOs and other non-formal outfits. You may be able to identify with some of them. Or if you have a cause very dear to your heart, go for it. You can make so much difference to the society around you that it will be a sheer joy to see the change you have effected.

(10) Attitude is everything

Finally, it is not as traumatic as people make it out to be. People who meet me don't even realize that I had spent dog years in the USA. (These days, I have begun to call the letter z 'zed', I am at least half an hour late to all my appointments and I eat gulab jamuns with my bare hand - just kidding about the last two) Don't expect to be treated like demi god just because you were in the USA, although people just might. You will meet so many amazing people in India and you will discover that those wonderful people (and even celebrities) are highly accessible here, (unlike in the USA) that you may feel that the whole of India is shrinking into a tiny India Association. .

So, come back to your old motherland!! I strongly recommend this to you, if it agrees with everyone in your family.

Tampico! Tampico! Tampico!

2006-06-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

By Mahadevan Ramesh
Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com

1975 Mexican restaurant magnate Marno McDermott and investor and ex-Green Bay Packer football star, Max McGee, opened the first Chi-Chi’s restaurant in Minneapolis, Minn. Over the next several decades, the restaurant chain grows in size and stature.
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About an eternity ago, I was studying in the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Unlike most desi students, I was among a handful that chose to live in the dorms and eat in the Commons. (For those of you who reckon things in Queen's English, the 'Commons' is American for 'Mess'). The food was not exactly gourmet, obviously, but it met our loose student standards of plentiful-ness and junkiness. The tragedy of the situation was that dinner services closed at 6.30 itself and come ten in the night, we would get those monstrous hunger pangs, threatening to implode our stomach walls.

Like primitive predators, we would prowl along the hallways, stand paralyzed near vending machines without proper change and finally, gather similarly afflicted people and head straight towards possible sources of food – just about anything on the food chain with the possible exception of nascent nitrogen. Any sane person would probably hit the local McDonald’s or grab a bag of chips at the nearest convenient store. But as students, we suffered from a chronic shortage of money, no matter which phase of the economic cycle prevailed. We had to be fiscally clever. And that’s when somebody snooped around and discovered that various watering holes around the campus have been on a promotional campaign, offering free munchies if we bought their cheap alcohol.. It took our graduate students brains just five seconds to figure that campus bars are the ideal solution to whet all our collective appetites – with junk food and drinks. With the minimal opening of the wallet too.

If you had ever been to the Ohio State University campus, you will know that the campus is spang in the middle of a forest of bars and pubs. And this process of choosing an ideal bar for our nocturnal pursuits was not easy. There were happy hours and happy hours. Impromptu promos. Unreliable word of the mouth endorsements. One wrong move, you would pay five bucks for a lousy beer and get a mere five morsels of non-biodegradable popcorn. Sometimes we had to scour the entire stretch of High Street to discover that el cheapo bar du jour.
. .

It was in these desperate times that I had my first brush with the Chi-Chi’s haute couture . One day, someone packed some six of us in his huge Chevy and drove to the nearest Chi-Chi’s. The car ride took an awful long time and we almost had to reach the left armpit of the city.

At first glance, the Chi-Chi’s restaurant was stunning. Even though we confined our presence to only the bar area, it wasn't like anything I had been in before. It was very modern compared to the Mohenjadaro-esque campus salons. When we kept our elbows on the table, they didn't get stuck to the table. The waiters and bartenders were patrician in their manners, unlike the boorish campus area waiters who were grumpily moonlighting to eke out that minimum wage. The atmosphere was so festive it was like a mega party was going on, to which we somehow managed to finagle an invitation. We felt very self conscious and half-expected someone to discover that we didn’t belong in there and throw us out.

The drinks were pricey, of course. So, we had to nurse one single margarita for hours and hours and put on our best faces when the waiter came back for the thirteenth time asking us if we needed our next drink. There was food, food and more free food in the bar, which was why we were there in the first place. All kinds of dips, salsas and cheesy goo to go with a seemingly bottomless basket of chips.

On one of our subsequent trips, we found out that on certain days of the week, until the Cinderella hour, they sold their margaritas for a mere 99 cents, (Still a substantial sum, given our abject poverty) which made it all affordable. We soon had our second margarita, and then a third, in the same night. We even experimented with all sorts of margaritas - strawberry, gold and blue - you name it - margaritas on the rock, with crushed ice, with salt, and margaritas made out of god's own manna.

We would wistfully look at the restaurant section of the house, watching all those well-dressed gentry being hustled to their table by a goddess-like usher, almost like kindergartners being led by their teacher. Not that we could not have afforded an occasional Chi-Chi’s meal. But it was just that our restaurant dollars were reserved for stuffing our faces in the Indian buffet restaurants.

One day, just some day, I too will get to eat in a Chi-Chi’s, I resolved.

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That 'some day' came very soon, right after I moved to Pittsburgh.

Me and a bunch of ‘Fresh off the Boat’ desis were hanging around the Parkway Center Mall, when we noticed a Chi-Chi’s restaurant situated at the perimeter of the Mall, almost like an afterthought. On an impulse, we made a beeline for it, although none of the other guys had ever been inside a Chi-Chi’s before, obviously. A minor financial note here - Carnegie Mellon University paid their Graduate students better than the Ohio State those days and so, money wasn't a major hassle.

"Oh, you will like it." I hyped it. "I have never been to the restaurant section myself. Been only to the bar."

We opened the massive fortress-like doors. Inside, the atmosphere was just as cheerful and festive as in its Columbus counterpart. A bevy of hostesses wearing low, low, low-cut blouses confronted us and seductively asked us if we could spend the rest of our lives with them, er, I mean said their usual "Welcome to Chi-Chi’s."

My friends were suitably impressed by the place, by our reception. This was one of those experiences they would not wait to tell their long distance friends about.

'This way, please.' the shepherd among the waitress gang, led us into the restaurant, hiding her spacious bosom behind a thick stack of Menu booklets. Suddenly a whole new world came into existence in front of us. There were elegant tables, chandeliers, pretty looking things hanging on the walls for no reason, fake plants, sizzle of fajitas, genteel, unimposing conversation noise all around etc. etc. Is this how it was supposed to look? I savored every bit of what I saw. It was a major Rite of Passage for all of us - from the ignoble days of coupon clipping at the campus McDonalds and the shameless binge eating at the desi restaurants. I had finally arrived - to act like a gentleman and eat like a gastronome.

Once we sat down, my friends first opted for that Official Desi Drink - Water Without Ice, for they were still nervous. I put my foot down and made it a margarita for everyone. We then cracked open the menu and studied it like a research paper.

"Have you all decided what you want?" the angel appeared after five minutes and asked us.

"Yes, I will go for a Tampico."

"I too will go for it. I am a vegetarian. and this is the only veggie dish they have."

"Make it three, please."

"Copy cats! I was going to go for it first. I will have a Tampico too." - Me.

"So, lets see, all of you want Tampico, is that right?" the surprised waitress asked, just to make sure.

Pitchers of margaritas were imbibed. Tampicos came and got devoured. Great conversation occurred. It was a consummate dining experience and finally I got to enjoy it. At the end, we even left a generous tip and Manohar Rao, being the mathematics whiz kid, quickly figured in his head how much each of us owed. Once the bill was settled, we staggered out of the place in a state of supreme bliss.

Burrrrrrrp!!!!

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We desis in the Carnegie Mellon area, Pittsburgh, existed those days like one big monolith. A virtual joint family. Every desi did exactly what every other desi did. We all patronized Salim’s pita bread, had the same design on our Corelle plates and shaved off our sorry mustaches the same eventful week in spring. – and we began to flock to Chi-Chi’s like there was no tomorrow..

Chi-Chi’s was where Anurag ‘treated’ us for his summer internship and brought a closure to the whole issue. This was where Abhishek Bacchan (not his real name) first noticed how cute Aishwarya Rai (again, not the real name) looked and proceeded to romance her and marry her eventually. This was where Arti Gupta’s brother who came from out of town met with R. S. Srinivas’s friend, who had also come from out of town and discovered that their respective (desi) advisers were blood brothers.

What would start out as a romantic evening by a desi couple would evolve into a major social event, with the Squirrel Hill gang deciding to show up as well. We broke all kinds of records for the number of people in our party. When the waitress (who would be dressed like a bridesmaid in a society wedding) took our orders, we would go ‘tampico, tampico’ like a jury handing out its verdict. We consumed so many tampicos like they were going out of fashion. And finally, at the end of each session, Manohar Rao would use his abacus brains to crunch the numbers to the second decimal point and settled accounts then and there..

Oh, yes, someone even gave our party’s name as ‘Janata’ just to hear the ‘Janata Party, your table for ten is ready’ go up on the Public Address system

One day, someone discovered that the Chi-Chi’s performed a near-tribal ritual on your birthday – with a bunch of waiters and waitresses clapping their hands and singing an off-Spanish birthday ditty, embarrassing the hell out of even the most thick-skinned, hard-assed desi student. There was even a free, albeit cheap, cake to boot. And since most new students had just bought their first expensive cameras, this was an ideal occasion to break them in, Soon everybody’s calendar was recalibrated to include everyone else’s birthdays.

Such fun!!! Those were the days, my friend. Each of our lives was weaved together with everyone else's, like a large multi-colored quilt. The desi Golden age in Pittsburgh!!!!

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Like a lot of things in life, even Chi-Chi’s got to be a bit stale with the passing of time. There were newer, snazzier restaurants cropping up all around us. In fact, Satish Dharmaraj discovered an ‘authentic’ Mexican restaurant, about two tunnels and five Burroughs away, where they made you wait for two hours for a table, as if that was a hallmark of authenticity. Just as Chi-Chi’s was beginning to fade away entirely from the Pittsburgh desi radar screen, an unusual turn of events gave it a second wind.

That turn of events had to do with our old, clunkers of a car that many of us had bought the previous summer in one major buying spree, They all had to undergo a draconian State Vehicle Inspection for them to be registered for another year and our cars were flunking the inspection left and right, Either we forked out hundreds of dollars and got our cars fixed or forever kept them off the road. Which was when the desi ingenuity took the center stage and Lalit discovered an unsung car mechanic – a Greek immigrant called Guz – operating out of a dirty, concealed garage on a hillside, He had a seemingly infinite inventory of junkyard parts. Once he stuck the right metal thing in, it would breathe new life into our cars and make them pass the State Inspection. And what’s more, he was far and out cheaper than Midas and Muffler King.

The only problem with Guz was that his garage was in such a godforsaken place that only Lalit knew how to get there. This was the pre-cell phone days, folks and all our desi heuristics did not help us. Fortunately, the nearest major landmark was of course, the Chi-Chi’s – which every one of us could navigate to with our eyes closed. Our logistics became very simple - carloads of desis drive their beat up cars, converge on the Chi-Chi’s and after lunch, go in a convoy behind Lalit to Guz’s garage.

My final Chi-Chi’s visit was actually a farewell party to me and Manohar Rao, organized by the rest of the gang. For one last time, we ordered our margarita on the rocks and for one last time we filled the atmosphere with the Gregorian Chants of ‘tampico, tampico, tampico’. And for one last time, Manohar Rao figured out the per-capita dollar damage and helped with real-time settling of accounts, although both he and I were excused from payment, since it was our sendoff ‘treat’.

I then moved to the Denver area. Even though I made good faith effort, I could not find a Chi-Chi’s in and around Denver, I was told that they did not operate there. Slowly and slowly, Chi-Chi’s began to evaporate out of my system..

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2003. “Over four hundred people were infected with Hepatitis A virus in the Pittsburgh area and three died of it, after eating in the Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant” -

Oh, my god!!! The news item shocked me to no end. Unbelievable!!! Heck, it could have been us desis!!! How many zillion times have we eaten there!!! I began to wallow in a huge dose of nostalgia. My thoughts drifted aimlessly from episode to episode of my Pittsburgh days, from one Pittsburgh friend to another. All the good times, some bad times and a lot of time-pass times. On an impulse, I reached for the phone and dialed up one of the guys, who had since moved back to India. We hadn’t spoken in over five years now. Not even email exchanges for over a year now.

He was surprised out of his wits to get my phone call. After an exuberant exchange of initial pleasantries, I told him about the Chi-Chi’s news and he 'Aw shuck'-ed the loss of lives.
.
"It wasn't our Chi-Chi’s" I informed him. "I believe this one is in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh"

We moved away from Chi-Chi’s and kept rambling on. Suddenly we realized that our conversation wasn’t going anywhere. There was a hint of embarrassment, unease and sheer boredom. What the hell was happening?

We made a detour and started talking about our common friends.

“Wonder what Manohar must be doing now.”

“Haven’t heard from him in a while. He must be calculating the Federal Budget Deficit for the fiscal year 2002 in his mind.”

There was a labored laugh at the other end. The more we kept talking, the more we felt strange. It wasn’t like old times. What in the world was going on? We came back to Chi-Chi’s.

“We must have been the largest consumers of tampico.”

He agreed meekly. We perfunctorily discussed each other’s jobs, almost hoping that the other person would say a bye and hang up. There was a pregnant pause, which was threatening to become terminal. Can this be the same guy with whom I used to have long conversations till the wee hours of the morning?.

It was then time to play the end game - meandering from silly topic to silly topic and losing our grip on the conversation completely. He tried to pump up the enthusiasm level by asking a few anthropological questions about desis and India Association in Denver.

Finally we came back to Chi-Chi’s.

“How could something in the stratosphere of fine eating go through such a mess?” he asked philosophically.

Again there was a suspenseful pause. Can this be the same person who shared my life in Pittsburgh?.

“When you come to India, be sure to visit me” he implored me.

Then we said our byes and hung up, just like that. I felt a huge sense of disappointment, I am sure he too was not too thrilled to have gone through an interruptive, semi-meaningless phone call. We both hurriedly retreated into our respective bubbles - populated by our today's friends, today's family and today's worries. Once upon a time we remembered and celebrated each other's birthdays. Now we don't even phone each other to announce births, deaths and marriages. I knew - and I am sure he too knew - that we wouldn't call each other up for another five years - at least. The phone call was such an anti-climax.

My thinking about my Pittsburgh days became more and more cloudy. I couldn't even begin to guess how many zigzags my life had taken since those days. Nostalgia is good for the soul and the heart, But heck, we have moved on. I will live another week and at the end of it, I will have forgotten the Chi-Chi’s entirely.

Tampico, tampico, tampico.

The round robin pronouncement coming from ten desis sitting around a table, is still ringing in my ears.

God! It seems like it was only yesterday. It also seems like it was a million years ago. All I know is a lot of innocence has been lost between then and now.

2004 Chi-Chi’s shuts all units; Outback buys site rights: Mexican chain, in Chapter 11, retains brand, operations, recipes, trade secrets

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Copyrighted by Mahadevan Ramesh

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