Freedom Struggle

It’s only been a few days since I learnt what actually happened to Lala Lajpat Rai. The name was familiar, naturally. But thirty years ago, history was not what it is today. I remember hearing, back in my single-digit years, about something called the Sepoy Mutiny. Later, by the time they had renamed it The First War of Indian Independence, I had lost interest and shifted focus to other ostensibly more cerebral disciplines, and remained unconvinced about the whole thing.
Three-quarters of a century later, I mourn for Lalaji, who succumbed to injuries from lathi charge while demonstrating against the Simon Commission in Lahore in 1928. My history textbook tells me that he had been referred to by the fond epithet Sher-e-Punjab.
My tryst with Indian history is a peripheral circumstance of the ICSE examinations. This year my two darling daughters will battle for their lives in the all-important, career-defining, life-and-future-delineating event. So here I am, busy stroking heads to keep panic levels down, administering B-complex and iron tonics, and saying prayers. Besides, of what use is my 100 wpm typing speed if not to prepare long lists of mark-scoring objective questions for easy reference? As I dash them out, I’m swamped by images of the brave and visionary men and women who fought and died for our country.
My own grandfather would have been in the prime of youth at the time. But, with his family responsibilities and personal code of ethics, he was not one of those who quit his government job in hot-headed response to the Non-Cooperation Movement.
This was not a man I ever knew, since he had died when I was only a few days old, but I have a distinct impression of him as a uniformed, stern-looking person, from the black and white photograph on my father’s chest of drawers in days gone by.
And now, along with the images of our (glorious) freedom fighters – images dominated, to be perfectly frank, by scenes from Attenborough’s film Gandhi – I’m further burdened by multiple images of my father who is reduced to a quivering, diseased, inarticulate person, physically dependent on those around him. Images of my dad coolly smashing his opponent’s service, and winning the tennis match. Driving us across the country, singing at the wheel. Entertaining his goggle-eyed children with the great literature of the world  before we had learnt to read. Today he’s ill and helpless, and we with our frantic lives can spare him no more than infrastructure comforts, hurried hellos, and perhaps a few useless, sentimental tears late at night when everyone else is asleep and the cares of office, kitchen, and exams, are briefly on hold. Back during the freedom struggle, he would have been a boy playing football, reciting Elegy in a Country Courtyard for the school elocution, getting whacked for the mischief his naughty sister had run away from. When Lala Lajpat Rai died, he wasn’t even born yet. Today, Sher-e-Punjab is the name of the restaurant on every street corner. And life goes on.
First appeared as ‘Down memory lane’ in a Times of India Middle on 25 Mar 2002

Flights of fancy

That day, the entire Indian cricket team was on the same flight, and he had managed to get autographs from the lot. The most difficult to approach had been Azharuddin. It was early in his career, and the now sulky hero stood in a corner of the security lounge, gawky, his nose buried in a book, but clearly unable to concentrate.
Like any wife who revels in needlecraft, I look forward to these tales of his travels, crafting them into legends as the years go by. And Ajay, who scoffs at jet lag as the ponciest affliction ever defined, obliges every time with tales that would draw appreciative nods from Sinbad and Baron Munchausen. Chance encounters in the ether, with the image of serendipitous threads arcing and intersecting in the sky, are enchanting if not exotic.
The early morning flights between metros held the commuter crowd, which would about-face and head home by the late-night return flight. The Madras-Bombay route was thickly populated with film stars. In those days Sridevi was a regular, yawning politely and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and occasionally even the gorgeous Rekha. Delhi-Calcutta, on the other hand, held mostly the smartly suited community of businessmen. Acquaintances would hail each other happily at the check-in counter, and once on board, wait for the breakfast service to conclude before they got up to stretch their legs and congregate in small groups to chat. Arjun Malhotra was a regular on this hop, and Ajay never failed to marvel at the IT giant’s friendly outlook even to one as insignificant as himself. Today, with Arjun’s TechSpan inching towards the Fortune 500, the vision of him bending down artlessly to touch the feet of an elderly acquaintance is a precious one.
And once, Ajay was on the same flight as Indira Gandhi. This is not a story of VIP arrogance and delays – quite the contrary. It was 1978, and Mrs Gandhi was as out-of-power as anyone can be. Who could mistake that fabulous profile, or the limited-edition sari? Yet, everyone pointedly faced away, and chattered around the dignified woman (who stood waiting in line like the other mortals), feigning deepest unconcern. When Mrs Gandhi stood in the coach to the aircraft, holding onto the overhead strap, the other passengers milled around, still painstakingly ignoring her.
Was it the most obnoxious in human nature, gloating sneeringly over a dazzling star that had collapsed into the viscous scum of the gutter? Was it vicious contempt for the excesses of her Emergency? Or was it merely the stereotypical mannerless bumpkin Delhiite? If he had a seat, Ajay would surely have offered it to her. As it was, no one else bothered.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 21 Dec 2001

Blood Group

Saibhaji is one of those ethnic dishes that defines a community. Combining the nutritional riches of spinach, dal, and a basket full of various vegetables, it’s a one-item meal, tedious to prepare but good to taste.
One day I innocently mentioned that I love saibhaji, and the people I was with laughed and called me a wannabe Sindhi. Through the ancient mists of time I remembered how, as a child, my mother would have to threaten violence before I’d be convinced that saibhaji was good for my health.
Those were the days when I was an ethnic minority so rare that there were only two of us, my brother and me. It’s quite common now for young people to have origins in different regions of the country. But the trend was definitively set by my parents, and, as with any pioneer venturing new frontiers of existence, life was cold and lonely.
‘Cold’ and ‘lonely’, in fact, are words that well describe life on a tea plantation, where we lived in those days – although more positive attitudes might offer ‘enveloping magnificence of nature’, and opulent ‘quality-of-life’ (a concept yet to be defined) which were equally attendant.
It’s amusing to dwell on that social context, in which every fresh acquaintance would first inquire ‘what’ we were. In later years this evolved to a pleasant psycho-philosophical past-time resulting in self-defining moments-of-truth, but at the time, there was a sheer backdrop of pain and isolation when I was unable to shelter in any of the community niches of my compatriots.
There was no language into which we could comfortably slip – like pyjamas and slippers after dinner – and natter on with others who spoke the same idiom. It was always English, and English that brought amused smiles (or, worse, grimaces of pain) – on faces that politely turned aside to hide them – to genuine native speakers of the language. When the relatives met, they would most impolitely jabber away to each respective parent in their native tongue, words flung like unfriendly rocks over our heads, yielding but the occasional glimmer of meaning.
At meal times, we would eat what they now call ‘world food’, my mother even boasting in public that frog legs taste quite like chicken, and I bitterly envied all around me, whose staple was the formula Indian Vegetarian Meal (now revered as a coveted genre by all major world airlines).
We were always outsiders – but no one sang Paeans to our Plight or wrote Epics on our Experience. Over time, it became part of my consciousness to be constantly seeking a peer group, permanently striving to fit in: from zodiac sign, to old school tie, to IQ, waist-size and more; an insatiable hunger to find others of a common denominator.
Now, with my fortieth birthday galloping, giddy and relentless, towards me (a horrible cosmic calculation-mistake, I’m convinced), at last I’ve found where I belong. Through an inexplicable chain of events, here I am, deeply embedded in a close-knit group of intelligent, competent and highly ambitious IT professionals. A burgeoning population. Blood group? Simple. It’s C++.
First appeared as ‘Outsider’s place’ in a Times of India Middle 15 Nov 2001

Tiger chase

At the gate of the Panna tiger reserve, our jeep driver confided that a tiger had killed an antelope and now lurked nearby. Just the previous day, he had driven in some foreign tourists and as the tiger gorged the remains, the tourists feasted their eyes. And two days ago, his jeepload had seen all of four tigers.
Until that point, I’d been sceptical. I grew up in an area replete with wild life. We drove through the nearby sanctuaries dozens of times and I never once saw a tiger in the raw. I had come to the philosophical conclusion that to see a tiger in a jungle, stepping haughtily through the undergrowth, was simply not in my scheme of things. But now there seemed new hope.
We drove through wild tracts of great beauty, ignoring acre upon acre of golden grassland that would have driven Van Gogh’s reapers green, intently scanning its deepest reserves for streaks of stripe. Every rustle in the thicket drew the jeep to a halt. The guide generously pointed out wild boar and sambhar, antelope and spotted deer, mongoose, langur and birds of every kind. We resented the lot, knowing that if they roamed free thus, no tiger lurked nearby. When he indicated a tree with massive claw marks running down its sides, all we could think of was Baloo skipping along, singing about the ‘bear necessities’ and carelessly outwitting Shere Khan.
We stood over the Ken River in a remote tree house restaurant, and it flowed gorgeously blue and shimmering in the morning light, rapids rippling over elegantly configured rocks, and dense thickets encroaching down to the water – but what was the use? There simply wasn’t any tiger, crouched on the banks, sipping of its bounty.
We stopped again at a picnic spot, with what was probably a stunning view of a slate-encircled gorge, and the guide leaned gallantly over the protective fence, shouting, “Hello! Hello!” to the resident echo and I pleaded, “Tiger! Tiger!” in the hope that someone would hear and do something.
Several bumpy hours later, all covered in fine clay-dust, we drove, dejected, towards the exit, musing bitterly that we hadn’t even seen tiger pug marks. (Everyone I know has come home having seen at least pug marks).
And then it happened. I gasped. A dim, majestic shape loomed in the distance, merging subtly with the trees in the forest light. My heart leapt with joy. But then my eyes focussed and it took form. How embarrassed I was to realize that this was only another sambhar. Tall and beautiful, wild and proud it was – but, for god’s sake, it was not a tiger.
From Panna to Pune is but a short syllable away and soon enough we were back in the big safari park in which we live. Dog committees congregate on street corners, yapping canine concerns deep into the night. As we drive along the road, herds of plodding water buffaloes amble, pendulous and ponderous, out in front of the car. It’s true that ‘Buffalo, buffalo, burning bright …’ doesn’t have quite that ring to it – but for the time being it’ll just have to do.
Fewer buffaloes are herded through Pune traffic in 2011 - though the bikers and motorists are just as unsightly and dangerous.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 17 Apr 2001

Black booty

I walked through the door of my house, and nearly fainted at the words I heard blaring over the music system. Before I could wonder if I’d imagined them, there they came again, loud, cheerful and mellifluous: “I want to see your underwear …”
Until that moment two years ago, I had naively and somewhat egoistically imagined the generation gap to be a figment of fevered imaginations which, like Santa and time travel, simply did not exist, and if it did, merely represented the incompetence of my own parents. Even more painful was the fact that none of my children were yet of an age to be interested in anyone else’s underwear. It struck me that tastes in music define a generation as clearly as traits such as hard work, birth control, fondness for hashish or a facility with the newest technologies.
Another reminder of the generation gap came recently at the Black Country Museum in England. The Black Country, immortalised in print and celluloid by British media personality Meera Syal, is so named not for the numerous Indians who inhabit it but for its role in the Industrial Revolution. “Black by day and red by night, unmatched for vast and varied production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe,” the American consul in Birmingham declared in 1868.
The museum is set in a twenty-six-acre site and recreates the living and working conditions of those days. We went down into a coal mine, took a ride on a canal boat, visited ironmongers, sweetshops and apothecaries, saw a silent movie in a shed-like hall, and even had a lesson in a Victorian classroom where the teacher wore a black gown, spoke in a shrill falsetto, and kept a wooden cane at hand.
Much that we saw, including the cinema, buildings, and some products in the shops, were familiar to me from my own childhood. Tea-plantation bungalows and wooden-floored boarding school dormitories in the Nilgiris still retained much of the Victorian era a quarter century ago, and perhaps still do. So when we walked into a shop and one of my teenage daughters pointed at a bacon-slicing machine saying, “That must be the photocopier,” I was startled into a sudden vision of what a different world my children live in. By the time I dared to imagine such a miracle as a photocopier and could believe that I no longer needed to painstakingly write out copies of documents or roll messy carbon papers into the typewriter, I must have been in my twenties. For me the museum had been more about nostalgia than novel experience.
But in the end, the Black Country Museum presented us with an encounter which reassured us that the world is indeed a familiar and cosy sort of place. At the fossil and gift shop, there were beautiful stones for sale. When we told the man we collect stones like these from the ground around our house, he politely asked where we were from. We said, “Pune, India.” He laughed, picked up one of the stones and showed us a label which said that it had been brought here from “Pune, India.” So of course we promised to come back again soon, this time with a big box full of stones.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 23 Sep 2000

Knitty-gritty

I learnt to knit when I was only six. But unlike taiji, who shares the same distinction, I was not married off shortly thereafter.
My introduction to this fine if sturdy art happened during a brief and utterly desolate period of my life in the boarding at Nazareth Convent. Yes, that same Nazareth Convent immortalised in the Booker Prize-winning God of Small Things. Everyone else in Class Three was learning to knit during their spare time and so did I.
Knitting, I’ve heard recently, can serve as excellent therapy. Some teach it to convicts and other antisocial elements in the hope of calming them down. My mother was a committed knitter. Not so much to keep her on the straight and narrow as occupation for the long winter evenings. This was decades before television came to our remote corner of the planet.
So knitting became part of my adolescent angst and I viewed with disdain people who said, “Oh isn’t that sweet, she’s just like her mother” when our every social call was interspersed with the speedy clickety-clack of both pairs of our knitting needles, and I longed to stab them between stitches. If my mother was a better, and more experienced, knitter than I, it was surely just coincidence.
But it was true coincidence that, twenty years later, the older women in my husband’s family turned out to be great knitters. This gave us at least one major binding force, and the wool market in Delhi, with acres of brilliant bales and loops of wool, was practically on the doorstep of the family home.
Over the years, I also learnt the metaphors and clichés of knitting.
Knitting, for all my youth and energy, was something only tired old women did. If at all a young woman knitted, it could only mean that ‘good news’ was on the way. I was acutely aware that knitting needles could be used for purposes of excavation when ‘good news’ was actually not good news but very, very bad news indeed; as for example in the case of Noelle in Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight.
Knitting was also the embodiment of patience and I owe it my aptitude for perseverance and tedious hard work.

106, Wodehouse Road, Colaba

Now knitting is a dying art, a pastime of the previous millennium. Both my daughters were duly indoctrinated; so was my son, on grounds of gender equality. But none cared to bear the mantle of the family tradition. To them, cable only means cable television, and filet has to do with meat rather than needlework. They know nothing of jacquard and aran or other bywords of my world. Yarn shops have closed down the world over, replaced by burger joints and gymnasiums.
But knitting was always a part of my life, even during the several years when I lived in Bombay where, someone once told me, there are only three seasons: hot, very hot, and unbearably hot. It was a way to pass time between suburban railway stations. Climbing off a Local onto the clamouring platform, holding the knitting needles aloft, was always a good way to get those nimble-fingered bottom-pinching rascals skipping neatly out of the way.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 6 Apr 2000

Evolving language

Bangkok and unsavoury images associated with it have been much in the news lately. It all reminds me of the time I was newly married and fondly imagined Singapore and Taiwan to be suburbs of Pune, where we live, because my husband travelled there so often.
One day a woman I know, slightly hard of hearing or perhaps with an attention deficit, asked me with concern why my husband went so often to Thailand, and I was speechless with embarrassment.
It struck me then that Thailand is a word that badly needs a euphemism. Scandalous associations have evolved it into an improper expression, to be employed with caution. This is a request to the politically correct brigade to coin and replace it with a more appropriate version forthwith.
Tempering words with unpleasant connotations really needs to be done on a more regular basis. We’ve all got quite used to kindly calling the blind, the deaf and the psychotic as visually, aurally, and mentally challenged. We need no longer say, “idiot!” but can choose between cerebrally constrained, wisdom challenged, logically under-enhanced, and knowledge impaired. A crook is only morally out of the mainstream; a poor person economically disadvantaged, and a jailbird merely a client of the correctional system.
Meanwhile, other concepts have been sullied by repeated usage and mis-usage. Why, for instance, can’t we have a kinder incarnation for the word ‘kitty party’ which unfairly gives rise to the image of vapid, uncultured women on an intense mission to outdo each other?
Another outdated expression is ‘antibiotics’. Nobody wants to be associated with antibiotics any more, and people recommend doctors to each other with the words, “He/she is excellent! He/she never prescribes antibiotics.” And yet, how can an acute bacterial infection be treated? Provide another word, please.
If you have many friends and business associates, you become guilty of having ‘contacts’ and of ‘networking’. It’s not about being friendly and enjoying relationships, but rather about being conniving, exploitative and slimy. Isn’t that sad?
‘Servant’ these days is a pretentious-sounding word; the user is almost certainly upper middle class, and therefore insincere. ‘Middle class’ – there’s another rude expression, topped only by ‘nouveau riche’. What’s wrong with working hard and making a lot of money, I’d like to know?
‘Maid’, meanwhile, is not a happy alternative for ‘servant’, with old maid and milkmaid hovering humbly close behind. Slave, although by no means an alternative, in an interesting turnaround, is no longer a bad word. It has other connotations, such as slavish, which only means flattering, and sex slave, which is fascinating, not scandalous like Bangkok.
When I became a Reiki master, I cringed at the sexist title – but retained it, because I didn’t fancy calling myself a mistress. Similarly, words like mother-in-law and divorcee, with their strident vibrations, definitely need upgrading. And the day someone coins a softer version for that harsh, shrewish, fairytale stereotype, that mythical beast of yore, the stepmother – they are more than welcome to use it on me.
first appeared as ‘War of words’ in a Times of India Middle on 2 Aug 1999

Alternative poisons

Finally, the other day, I did it. I gave my husband Arsenic. It was, as they say, Indicated.
He resisted but briefly, then took it like a man. It all began on that annual check-up at the dentist’s, when the kindly fellow offered to extract my wisdom teeth, a saga that ended in bloodshed and tears. But firmly of that cheerful school of thought which vouches that Everything Happens for the Best, I recognized this as a Sign that I must now turn to Alternative Medicine.
Reiki was easy to acquire. Like any fresh convert, I began regaling my friends and acquaintances with my new powers. Until I realized that it was “Not if I see you first!” that they were muttering in reply to my cheery “See you soon!” In an attempt to regain some credibility, I pinched four enormous volumes on Homoeopathic Medicine from a certain kind person and, staggering under their weight, embarked on a voyage of knowledge and discovery.
Soon my mind was agog with all manner of preparations. There was Xanthoxylum and Argentum, Chamomila and Pulsatilla, Gnaphalium and Lycopodium, Sanguinaria and Staphisagria. It was a quaint, faraway world, a poet’s dream.
Of the many useful and interesting dysfunctions I learnt about, I soon noticed a wide gap between what they called Men’s Problems and Women’s Problems. The first focussed on virility, performance and endurance. Women’s Problems, by contrast were, one and all, stern attempts to sort out their messy and disgusting internal plumbing.
Indignant, I sought about for means to inform the Politically Incorrect Language people forthwith.
Homoeopathy, I also discovered, had sweet and simple, miraculous provisions for everything from fever, warts and piles to the pains of childbirth – and even shyness and masturbation.
Making out a list for brain tonic, cures for talkativeness, chocolate addiction and pain in the neck, I rushed to the friendly neighbourhood homoeopathy store. And found, to my dismay, that a huge population had had the news in advance and were waiting their turn before me. A disinterested and rather po-faced woman stood placidly behind the counter, ignoring the waiting customers with unmistakable satisfaction. I whiled away my time thinking up a homoeopathic remedy for her condition. And in case you have had a similar experience, here is my prescription: Silli Nit or Silli Tart. If this doesn’t work, try Yucks Vom. And if you still have no improvement, give her a dose of her own medicine, Kali Bich.
first appeared as ‘And the sceptics be poisoned’ in Indian Express Time Out on 5 Dec 1998

Medal in the Sky

It was early evening as the train pulled into the yard outside Jhansi station. The year was 1974. For many of the boys on this forty-day educational tour round the country, part of their final-year engineering course, it was the first trip outside Delhi, and they were determined to make the most of every moment.

Dhyan Chand with the ball agains France
in the 1936 Olympic semi-finals

As Ajay, Sunil, Ajit and Satguru stepped into the town, it struck them that Major Dhyan Chand lived in Jhansi and on an impulse, they decided to go and seek him out. They stopped an autorickshaw. “Dada!” the auto driver exclaimed, wagging his head with enthusiasm. He drove them to a playing ground where the hockey legend spent most of his evenings coaching. But he was nowhere to be found in the crowd of players. Disappointed, but still excited and proud to be taking fans to see the great man, he ushered them back into his vehicle and drove on.
They pulled up outside a small village house with a mud wall. A cow was tied in the enclosure. No one was about, and they hesitantly entered. A woman came out and when they stated their mission, welcomed them warmly and seated them. They declined the offer of tea – surprised at being treated like honoured guests when they had been uncertain of even a glimpse of their hero.

Sunil and Ajay relaxing by the victory stand
Delhi Polytechnic c1974

The kind lady went inside and they could hear her bustling around. Suddenly, Satguru spotted the Olympic gold medal. There it was, hanging from a nail on the wall. In awe and excitement, the boys got up to examine it, daring to let their fingers stroke its contours before they sat down again, silent and awkward.
The front door swung open and Major Dhyan Chand strolled in. Introductions were made, and the gangly, tongue-tied boys called on their halting powers of adolescent conversation. They politely asked about his routine, and how his son Ashok Kumar was doing. The gold medal was taken down, and they each marvelled over it again (this time officially). Dhyan Chand, the incomparable hockey idol was the most unassuming of people – simple, fulfilled, and relaxed. Somehow, an autograph just didn’t seem necessary. The auto driver was waiting to take them back to the railway station and stoutly refused payment for his services.
Ajay told me about this incident decades later.
We were on board an Indian Airlines flight from Delhi. Coffee had been poured, and Ajay picked up his cup – and it nearly clattered from his fingers when he saw who had poured it. He smiled and asked eagerly, “Ashok Kumar!”
The steward stepped back, embarrassed, and mumbled, “Yes,” his brilliance on the hockey field camouflaged under a new persona. His smile was polite but there was not the slightest flicker of pride at having been recognized – not even a trace of memory of his days as one of the top sportsmen of this country. Even when we stepped off the aircraft, there was the former Olympic player standing by the door, wearing the bland, trademark IA namaste smile and a distant, formal expression in his eyes.

With Ashok Kumar at his academy in Bhopal in December 2015

For years to come, when Indian media moaned about India’s poor showing at every Olympic Games, I thought about Ashok Kumar standing at the aircraft door, a non-entity hero, and felt a pang of pain thinking about how the Indian government and the Indian people have failed our sportspeople.
first appeared as a Times of India Midde on 2 Dec 1998

From Russia with love

What struck me most the first time I visited Russia was that there were no spies anywhere. Perfectly normal people walked down the street on their way to work, to shops, or home, or to pick up their kids. They smiled at each other, and behaved like people do anywhere. None of that sinister cloak and dagger business anywhere at all. Amazing.
James Hadley Chase, Leon Uris and Ian Fleming, and the Western media in general, had helped create internal archetypes which, it had never occurred to me, were ridiculous. I – and so many of my generation – had been thoroughly conditioned by the great American concepts of the evil of communism and the essential villainy of the Russian. It took me several months to recover from the experience of strangeness that Russia was a normal place with normal people. Today the clichéd vision of Russian as KGB spy is somewhat outdated, having given way to one of an abject, poverty-stricken individual belonging to a nation driven to its knees by the might of capitalism. Poor fellow. Yet another stereotype.
Between these two extremes, I had a range of tourist experiences. On my first trip, I met a young Russian woman who longed to marry the Indian film actor Mithun Chakraborty. She had, she confided, seen his film Disco Dancer forty-two times. She had written a letter to him, describing her passion, devotion, and intentions, and entrusted it to my care to post to Mr Chakraborty.
As it happened, in those days I lived just down the road from the disco dancer. I had seen his nameplate when I went to visit a classmate who lived in the same building – although, to be frank, I never once bumped into the much-desired gentleman in the lift. So I knew what address to mail her letter to, and did. I don’t know if there was any happily-ever-after there, but we would doubtless have heard about it if there had been.

With the Kulbakin family at House of Soviet Culture, Mumbai,
in 1982 

What astounded me most about this episode was that the young lady who wanted to marry Mithun was twenty-three years old; not a goggle-eyed teenager. I was precisely the same age at the time, and considered myself a mighty sophisticated woman of the world – though I persisted in refusing to drink wine for fear of what might happen next. I just could not believe that she was serious.
But I believed it when she brought her mother to meet me the day we were leaving. We got along very well. I had been trying to learn Russian for a year by then, and could manage some basic conversation. A while later, her mother took me aside and pulled out her wallet. Rolling her eyes and making mmm…mmm noises, she slid out a picture from a secret compartment and showed it to me coyly. It was a photo of Amitabh Bachchan. Of course I knew where Amitabh Bachchan lived. Hardly anyone in Bombay could escape that knowledge. But in this case, I desisted from trying to arrange an alliance.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 29 May 1998

Bored Housewife

One Sunday morning I read an article by an aspiring woman writer who explained why, while deciding what to write, she had rejected the idea of a Middle.
Her reasons were: one, a Middle was too insignificant; and two, she didn’t want to be mistaken for a Middle writer, since Middle writers (she said) were invariably either cranky gentlemen retired from the Armed Forces, or else bored housewives.
My mind reeled, and my Sunday was ruined forever by the realization that since I had never served in the Armed Forces, I must be a bored housewife.
Some hours of self appraisal ensued. Couldn’t I be an energetic and fulfilled housewife? With growing dismay I realized that could never be. The sad truth of life is that to be a housewife is to be bored – just as to be a teenager is to be flighty, to be a corporate boss is to be dynamic, to be a mother is to be nervous, and to be a dog is to be faithful.
Now these are not mere clichés. They are not even just politically incorrect stereotypes, although the list does include ‘erratic’ women drivers, ‘giggling’ schoolgirls, ‘inscrutable’ Orientals, and more. It is simply the nature of existence. And so, if you are in company, it must be august; in public debate your opponent has got to be worthy. If you have loyalties, they must be fierce. And if (god forbid) you are a drunk or a whore; you most certainly have a heart of gold.
I was a housewife and therefore I was bored. There we were, my (dynamic) husband and I; our three children speeding recklessly through the relatively stress-free years between learning to spell ‘daughter’ and ‘neighbour’ and experimenting with cigarettes. And there was nothing but my Monday morning bridge game and an occasional Middle between me and catatonia.
Now one of my sworn duties as a bored housewife has been to churn out family aphorisms to flourish at one another in moments of stress or dominance.
Some of these are:
Yes, I know but LIFE is not fair so you might as well get used to it while you’re young.
Be content with what you have.
Aww poor baby but never mind, you know you can’t grow big if you never fall down!
There are dozens more in similar vein, but most significant is one that says, sharply, “Intelligent people never get bored.”

First appeared as ‘Pared Away’ in a Times of India Middle on 6 Mar 1998

Honk, who’s there?

All of a sudden, overnight as it were, there was courtesy in his every move. At the red light, he no longer pressed ahead, straining to get past at the exact fraction-of-a-second when the signal changed. There would be a great blaring and honking, and feelings of aggression and agitation would rise in a swarm all around us, but he would be impervious to it all. When the furore died down, he would proceed along the road with great calmness. The change was so pleasant and wonderful. After all, how did it matter if we missed a few seconds getting to our destination – wasn’t the quality of life in the interim so much more important?
Now we slowed down to let others pass, and never once got angry while trying to overtake. At intersections, we would ‘give side’ ungrudgingly and these occasions in particular would fill me with a sense of the beatific wonder of human existence! How vastly improved civilization could be, with but the infusion of a little civilized behaviour! I was amazed, and pleased, at the transformation in him. This was my soothing influence at work, I convinced myself with great smugness.
I further noticed in him a growing alertness. An awareness of the environment, to the needs of others on the road – an easy willingness to please, graciously allowing other motorists the first move and giving pedestrians right of way: always anticipating, open to changes of mind, generously permitting every individual response. For this I knew I could not take the credit, and I wondered more. Surely this was that evolution of the species, the emergence of the New Man, the spiritual awakening and leaning to cosmic consciousness which everyone seemed to be talking about these days!
But when I saw him slow down politely to avoid a gaggle of giggling girls walking unconcernedly abreast on the road, with not the least trace of irritation at their uncivic behaviour, I began to worry a little. We would be driving along and suddenly find that the car was surrounded by placid, ponderous, plodding buffaloes, swaying and treading their imperturbable way to pasture. He would merely slow down and await an opening. He remained similarly unmoved by the villainous Pune Municipal Transport buses, swerving dangerously, dashing desperately the wrong way down one-way streets. He would not so much as mumble in complaint when the blanket-coddled racehorses crossed the thoroughfare skittishly, causing traffic to be halted at a safe distance. Not even when the fragile hose pipes were laid across the road to water the mess lawn, and the subedars waved vehicles to an imperious standstill before grudgingly allowing them to proceed over the lumpy barrier.
The uncharacteristic forbearance began to upset me. Was this, then, the onset of Age? Absentmindedness? How would this deep personality change affect his work, our lives? I needn’t have worried.
All of a sudden, overnight as it were, things were back to the way they had always been. We got the horn fixed.
first appeared in Times of India as a Middle on 4 Oct 1997

USA, Gujarat

We first met Blandine in Paris, and she was very kind to us. Two young Indian girls travelling across the continent, unescorted and ill-equipped with funds, was something of a rarity in those days. She extended her hearth, and heart, to us; giving us our first exposure to things exotic, educating us (as far as we were capable of receiving such education) on French art, history and cuisine. We, on the other hand, Amita and I that is, were simple and innocent; gauche, even, and I can remember refusing to try the wine for fear of what might happen next.
But Blandine took all this in her stride and went as far as to make us welcome at her sister’s in Monte Carlo and her mother’s in Lille, revealing a strain of Indianness in her nature that eventually overcame her and she married a Coorgi tea planter by the name of Ravi Aiyappa, and they now live happily ever after in Paris.
Back then, Blandine was a great traveller and, like many of her country folk, revelled in the East. On her first trip to India after we returned, it was of course our bounden duty to reciprocate and we sent her off to spend a few days with Amita’s parents who had recently returned from a lifetime in various locations around the globe to the ancestral village in Gujarat. The idea was to acquaint her with The Real India, the India of the villages. And Blandine went, duly equipped with mosquito repellent for herself and imported chocolate for the village kids. And returned with a perspective on Indian village life that entranced us.
Now these villages of Gujarat were never told of by Kipling, and, well, tales are crying to be told of them. Tradition has enjoined their sons and daughters, over the generations, to export themselves across the seas and set up shop in more congenial corners of the globe. Every family has at least one such prodigal on its rolls. In strange lands – distant in space, and time, and manner – they replicate their village lifestyle with no more than a cursory concession to attached bathrooms, toilet paper, frozen food, central locking systems and the like. Food processors churn out dough for dosas and dhoklas as obligingly as for pancakes. Or paincakes, as local dialect would have it.
Through it all, their hearts remain in the hot, dry and dusty villages of their birth. And the exiles recharge batteries with periodic trips back home.
They come laden with gifts – the fruit of their toil in the unfriendly faraway lands. And it is these that Blandine saw, and marvelled at, driven to poetry by the incongruity they threw up. The dusty village houses were equipped with the latest in electronic gadgetry, but they couldn’t use it – the electricity, when present, was given to wild fluctuations. Cupboards were overflowing with synthetic fabric – but the weather was not conducive. Sores, rashes and conjunctivitis – these were the lot of their children, marvelled at for their strange accents and exotic manner; and diarrhoea – with no Best Before date to use as a guide, and cowpats to substitute for playdough.
At bath time, Blandine was equipped with soap and shampoo and hair-conditioner, all of differing nationalities, and headed to a bathroom fitted out in splendid matching tiles, basin, commode, and towel rail. Unable to resist, perhaps from force of habit, she turned on a tap but not a drop dripped out. Gushing water, after all, was only a phenomenon of the monsoon skies. And Blandine, reasonably versed in the art of bucket-bath, made use of one filled with water drawn from the well.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 18 Dec 1995

Monsoon country

She was looking for a good place to spend a few weeks writing her poetry. So, of course, I suggested Bombay. After all, the rains were due to arrive, and what more poetic concept exists on this planet, as sure as June rhymes with monsoon, as sure as one brings the other?
So she wafted in with the cool breeze from across the seas, bringing a whiff of exotic scent, and it blended and was lost forever in the heady aromas of monsoon Bombay: the new batch of fuming automobiles crowding the thoroughfares; the nearly-dried fish caught unawares and turned soggy by the early showers; the squatters’ rights that floated up from along the tracks where they are dropped every morning and cling to your hem as you struggle to cross roads knee-deep in the swirling cocktail that comprises equal parts of rain water and overflowing sewage.
I could tell she was intrigued, and on one occasion leaned forward delightedly, asking, “Is that a flock of migrating birds?” It wasn’t, of course; the little dots of white that roosted on the beach below were merely more squatters, delivering up still more of that early morning business to the sea.
Duly chastened, she sat back, and, some weeks later, didn’t say a word but peered, suspicious and disbelieving, at the peacocks that we could see thronging Malabar Hill and dancing on the roofs of old houses in unbelievable, illusionary glory.
In Bombay, visitors are fondly informed (in a kind of cultural counterpoint to “lovely weather we’ve been having lately!”) that there are three seasons: hot, very hot, and unbearably hot. After a few weeks of this I noticed she no longer smiled but nodded disinterestedly, having realized that this was not a little joke, nor even mere propaganda designed to lure unwitting tourists. The poetry was doing fine: the quality of rain (quoth she) falleth mercilessly from heaven and is a bit difficult to describe. We agreed that it was not quite the monotonous never-ending sleet depicted by Maugham and his empire-building cronies in an attempt to ruin the reputation of the monsoon countries. Neither was it the little patter of raindrops to which she was doubtless more accustomed back home. We got one excellent sample through the shutters of a Local into which the stereotyped mass of commuters (hapless victims of one another’s odours) was crammed, racing off to collect the pot of gold at the end of their own personal rainbows. Another time, thunderous buckets overflowed over us, a foretaste of the revelry to come on the auspicious occasion of Gokul Ashtami.
Greenery had sprung up across the city just as if it had been invested in the stock market. We had noted, with some alarm, the new trends in full coat-pant type rainwear, the kind which enables one to bike to work and stay dry, yet drip over the others in the lift.
It was time for one of those episodes in which the city is ‘thrown out of gear’. And it came to pass that it rained full speed on high tide day. People lived to tell the long and boring tales of how they were trapped in the bus (or car or train) for hours and hours, with no respite from the rain. Finally the deluge began to abate. Systems were restored. We were survivors!
Recovering from the terrible blisters induced by the gorgeous genuine-imitation plastic rain shoes the poetess had ventured to acquire from a roadside hawker, she found herself, in the language of the day’s headlines, limping back to normalcy.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 28 Aug 1995