The beatings will continue

For many years I worked for an IT company, and observing at first hand the rate of evolving technology never failed to make me dizzy. So high was the acceleration that it was clear we must brace ourselves for the day, soon, when there would be new and unexpected gadgets, climate changes, lifestyle options, product markets, means of communication, behaviour patterns (and so on) not just after every few decades – but every year, every month, and even every day.
Now, at an age when women traditionally deal with painful personal change at every level of their existence, I peer into my memory looking for a significant moment that changed me more than any other and I spot that afternoon twenty-two years ago when a tiny, perfect, human being appeared in this world and suddenly – unexpectedly – made a wise and important person of me.
In the years that followed, I was gifted an assortment of life experiences that logically should have belonged to many different people. Of them all, this has been the role I most cherished.
Many complain of postpartum depression but I experienced the opposite – an exhilarating energy that turned me into the most blissfully devoted attendant there could be. I remember that I never left my baby’s side, not even once, for more than a year!
Then came a time when it was necessary for me to garner every latent marketable skill I could invent to draw forth some kind of sustenance for the two of us.
As existence spun some fantastic patterns to make this possible, it also now blessed me with the ability to be nothing but relaxed and patient and friendly even as a storm of unhappiness and despair battled within.
I developed a secret empathy for the young women who stand, palms outstretched at traffic signals, with babies slung against their sides. This fanciful affiliation led me not to tearful flights of self-indulgence but instead lent a parallel poetic vision which came in handy to power my byline.
A few short years later, the adored one was narrowly snatched from the inelegant fate of the overfed by a rapid turn of events which abruptly bestowed on her a brother and a sister.
The three were so close in age that, like a batch of cookies baking together, they marched in faultless step across developmental milestones at easy-to-manage intervals. It was hard work fixing dabbas, helping with homework, administering first aid, and mediating in the occasional gory interpersonal squabble. At work I was encountering Japanese productivity techniques like Kaizen, JIT, and 5S, and coolly adapting them for use at home, to deal with fundamental icons of housework such as leftovers and laundry routines. The children knew nothing of this secret life of mine, though. For it was at this time that I achieved the highest pinnacle of success of my career: I was always there when the school bus brought them home.
We had fun too: Disney videos on Saturdays, summer holidays with mornings in the sandpit and ice lollies after lunch, a healthy (high-fibre, low-fat, low-cholesterol, extra-delicious) chocolate cake that bestowed instant popularity, and kiddie birthdays with bright, fancy-shaped cakes and invitations produced in-house. We travelled round the country by car and survived some nasty battles since only two could have window seats. But sulks could easily turn to giggles when the others pulled faces or pretended to vomit or a lorry passed by with something particularly inventive inscribed at the back.
At this time, I became so presumptuous as to write a column loftily airing my views on motherhood. I had experimented with different parenting formats, and read a few books, and the kids did seem happy, so I quite fancied myself the expert.
What I wrote was based on a belief – innocent, but deep-rooted at the time – that when children are given love, patience, and understanding, and when the responsible adults around them try to look at the world through their eyes, and guide them towards a life that is healthy and balanced, using a well-thought-out mixture of discipline and fun – well, surely they would grow up to be good, sensible, loving people and what more could anyone possibly want?
Years passed in this type of self-complacent haze until one day I noticed that my name had been changed and my smug satisfaction turned to dismay. From the once popular, beloved, and idolized “Mumma” I had now become known in an off-hand and rather patronizing tone, as “Mom”. Certain cute and cuddly people had vanished, to be replaced by lanky individuals who stalked about the house, being witty and laconic and saying “Ya, rright!” to each other with lofty disdain. Fundamental rules, in place for close to two decades, were being carelessly flouted!
At that time I remember we had a poster stuck on the fridge, a circular drawn up in a (rare) attempt at humour. We had been implementing ISO 9001:2000 at the office, and I had mockingly documented my Household Laundry System, listing recommended procedures and schedules for linen maintenance, white-shoe polishing and the like. At the bottom ran the line, “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!”
Funny – but was it really?
We never had overt rebellion, as many families do. On the surface we were close-knit and communicative – yet, strange and often frightening events occurred.
It was a confusing time for me, and one of intense reflection. All these years, I had believed that my parenting was sophisticated and effective. Most of the actions I made were painstakingly thought out and carefully implemented. I had exercised the right to express my anger the way I would in any close relationship – having often favoured a healthy, natural, aggressive and potentially destructive reaction over a polite and well-meaning but contrived one. When I encountered areas of guilt and resentment, I had tried to confront, define and resolve them. I had never overworked myself to win their favour in any way that was insincere – cautiously anticipating and sidestepping every trap a stepmother might characteristically embrace.
I now began to wonder whether, in the bargain, I had overdone it and exposed my ugly side once too often. Had I been too domineering? Could I have avoided it? Would we have been happier today if I had taken less trouble to relate, or to guide and monitor in those days? (And had I really been relating, guiding and monitoring – or just messing around with a sledge hammer?) I remembered one occasion when my youngest, an effervescent comedian of age six – now a suave and distant young man of twenty – had earnestly confided that his happiest moment had been the one on which he first met me. The saddest, he added without missing a beat, was when I first whacked him.
Funny – but was it really?
I’d love to pretend that in those days it had been my practice to glide about like a wise Zen master, cleverly concealing a stout staff behind my back and whipping it out occasionally with the express purpose of jolting the little darlings to a higher awareness.
Ya, rright!
As parenthood progresses, supremacy wanes, and now with the wisdom of the powerless I must counsel myself on the responsibility each previous generation has to allow the new one to live life in the new world, its very own special world, on its own terms. After all, I have brought my children up to make their own decisions. How must I react when they choose to do something I don’t want them to? Do I have the courage to watch them make their mistakes and learn what they will without my protective fussing, without charging in to provide perspective, without blatantly insisting they do things my way?
Part of the process of adapting to changes in my physical and mental composition must be the achingly painful realization that I can no longer be the most important person in the lives of those who once, not so long ago, swore me their undying loyalty and devotion in too many unspoken ways to enumerate. When this colossal change comes, will I succumb to the private pain of a spurned lover? To the panicky prospect of loss of occupation and omniscience faced by a corporate boss overthrown in a boardroom coup? Will I resist the urge to metamorphose into that melodramatic Bollywood mother whose anguish and its expression is always a source of mirth?
And will my actions ever reveal the depth of my anxiety at the prospect of regressing to that nameless, shapeless adolescent entity I once was, before I became that most wonderful, powerful, loved and revered of all beings, a mother?
first appeared as Mother Superior in Open magazine on 8 May 2009

Discovering Toronto with Smita

The low red-bricked houses and neatly-marked streets looked familiar, and with dal and alu-bhindi for dinner, how could anyone blame me for thinking that this was just another suburb of London?
My first clue to the contrary was when I tried to get into the driver’s seat – ambitious, considering I can’t drive even back at home – and Smita gently showed me around to the other side. Still, it took a long while of staring at the maple tree outside my window before I could coax out that “Oh wow, I am actually here in Canada!” feeling.
Canada, eclipsed as it is by a bossy neighbour, tends to have an unglamorous branding. And with those supposedly never-ending winters, who in their right mind would go? I myself was only visiting a beloved friend, something we had wanted to do for so long that when it finally happened, it didn’t matter even remotely which country it was.
Years ago I’d read Margaret Atwood’s description in Cat’s Eye, of Toronto as “a world-class city” and I remember thinking, “how wannabe is that!” So when Toronto began to unfold before me, I felt like Columbus discovering a new land.
Toronto is a multi-cultural city and the diversity is such that on a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum we saw children of every imaginable skin colour. Of twenty-five, only about two were white. Canada has welcomed immigrants over centuries, the biggest wave of which arrived in the late 1840s from Ireland, fleeing the Irish Potato Famine and numbering twice the Toronto population of the time.
Over the years, settlers from different European, Asian, African and South American countries carved out sections of the city for themselves. You can browse in the ubiquitous China Town, but also eat spanakopita in cafés next to Greek street signs just as easily as crisp fresh dosais in restaurants with large nameboards in Tamil. With so many different ethnic groups mingling easily, racism is really just interpersonal friction. There are infinite varieties of the English accent, with an Indian who grew up in Kampala speaking a quite different idiom from one who grew up in Trinidad. The immigrants I met were proudly, passionately Canadian, grateful to the country that had given them lives of comfort, opportunity and pleasant stimulation.
It was only in the early years of the Twentieth Century that citizens began to work actively towards the creation of a strong Canadian national identity. One of these was a community of landscape painters that came to be known as The Group of Seven, and Smita introduced me to their work at the National Gallery, later driving me into the country to visit the McMichael Collection, located in the woodland setting that inspired them, and even buying me a beautiful art book representing their work.
Toronto’s vibrant cultural life made me feel that under-hyped Toronto is surely one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Friends took me to the National Ballet of Toronto and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra where the high-quality infrastructure and appreciative audience added to my experience of the performances.
Smita and I had always shared our books, right from the days when we both lived in Bandra and she would drop in to visit on her way back from college nearly every day. I now enjoyed discovering her favourite Canadian authors. Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright is told through letters and narrative and depicts the dramatic lives of two sisters who grew up in small-town Canada. One, a schoolteacher, remains a spinster, while the other becomes a radio star in New York. The Divine Ryans by Wayne Johnston is told by a young boy whose father has recently died and has the mixture of humour and tragedy characteristic of the Irish writers. No New Land by M.G. Vassanji is a hard-core immigrant story filled with struggle, humiliation, misunderstanding, alienation from offspring, and crisply told.
I knew I was in Toronto when, at the shortlist readings of the Griffin Poetry Prize at the MacMillan Theatre, Margaret Atwood was right behind Smita in the queue for the toilet.
Our weekend visit to Ottawa, Canada’s capital, happened to be on Doors Open, a day on which public buildings welcome visitors. So we dropped by at the Supreme Court, Houses of Parliament, and even the Governor General’s home. Security arrangements were in place but there was no trace of paranoia or hatred. This complete lack of fear was for me the most refreshing aspect of this country, and doubtless a consequence of the thanks-to-big-brother-you-can’t-see-me syndrome. The streets of Ottawa are wide and clean. Coming from a land of teeming millions, there arose within me a very loud question, namely: “Where IS everybody?” which made Smita laugh. Toronto by contrast can get crowded – but I found it a relaxed place with the screaming inner-city adrenalin absent.
On our last day we drove out to Niagara Falls where we enjoyed looking across the gorge and gloating at those standing on the American side, peering over but unable quite to see all that we could. As we headed home, Smita’s formidable, internationally-acknowledged organizational ability had two rainbows arranging themselves over the falls, and we rode into a magnificent pink-and-purple Toronto sunset, Lake Ontario rolling alongside, and the deep-throated Canadian genius Leonard Cohen belting out his soulful ballads all the way home.
parts of this first appeared as Steeped in a maple world in Sunday Mid-day on 6 Sep 2009

Post-Partition parallels

Business India 13 July 2008

Sar utha ke jiyo

Over the last few months, a much-played clip on TV has portrayed an elderly gent stepping off a train, shoving away his son’s helping hand. On the platform now himself, he tries to attend to his wife, who is stepping out after him, but she snubs him just as rudely, and struts off haughtily with her head in the air.
“Sar utha ke jiyo!” the advertiser exhorts.
I watch this ad with mixed feelings, trying each time to interpret the phrase, how it would mean different things to different people – and which precise shade of expression in the crowded infinitum from dignity to arrogance would precisely describe, to me in particular, the feeling of holding one’s head high.
When I hear people express shuddering horror at the prospect of having to depend on their children in old age, I feel a little embarrassed.
The truth is, I’m completely dependent on my children even now. I’ve been so ever since the moment they entered my life. I’m not ashamed to admit that when they’re happy, fulfilled, enjoying success or recreation – I feel content. When they’re disturbed, ill, unhappy or confused for any reason, existence feels nothing but wretched. There’s no other dependence that can be defined as simply and as completely.
When babies soil their pants, parents consider it their loving duty to clean, dispose, and disinfect. When toddlers graze their knees, it’s a joy to kiss away the pain. To comfort a school-goer who has lost her best friend is nothing but a gift, a lofty privilege of existence! Parents put aside their need for fun, privacy, even self-fulfilment, and ride their kids to tennis class, maths tuitions, and birthday parties. They’re prepared to pump them with caffeine at any hour of day or night when they’re preparing for entrance exams. They valiantly tolerate mood swings and breaches of discipline, and then lend every inch of their own energy into generating that escape velocity for the children to swing off into orbits of their own.
And yet, just a few years later, these clichés of parenthood run aground. The children extend a helping hand – only to be churlishly pushed away!
To me, this behaviour is surly and uncalled for, and nothing at all to do with ‘sar utha ke jeena’. When old age and illness or disability come to me, my dignity will come from trusting existence to provide me with carers who will treat me with patience and kindness. When my circumstances compel me to take help from others, my dignity will come from learning their ways and adapting to them. When someone holds out a hand to help me, my dignity will come not from pushing them aside, but from my deep gratitude for their presence, and for their generosity. My dignity – and pride – will be enhanced by the knowledge that my helplessness has provided them the opportunity to gain virtue from being charitable. I will proudly feel that I’ve earned my place at the table just by responding to the overtures of affection and kindness of those who are caring for me. I promise not to expect much, and to be grateful for every little that I get.

First appeared in Sunday Mid-day 15 Jul 2007

I live in the house that Iqbal built

In 1993, a home driving distance from Mumbai set amongst leafy glades, with recreational facilities and running solar-heated water, was nothing short of living in a resort. Still, living in a village, we naturally feared that our children would turn into village idiots. They in turn found themselves sadly compromised. Which child would want to live in Number Two? Such was their fate.
Over the years, Clover Village wannabes sprouted all over Pune. Outside our little village, bustling, chaotic activity developed. From being a locality that rickshaw drivers had never heard of, it began to sport traffic jams and specialty food stores.
But a few quiet spots and intensely rural situations prevail. For a brief period recently, my office was in a nearby building a short walk from home. The shortcut led through an open field, a rare un-constructed plot, overgrown with weeds, stray dogs and the odd drunk.
Walking home for lunch one day, an apparition approached me: a beautiful, brightly-dressed woman with a basket of combs, beads, bindis and other intriguing trinkets on her head. Strangers crossing paths on a lonely road, we made eye contact and half smiled and she startled me by suddenly dipping down, hitching her sari to her knees, and proceeding to urinate, the basket still poised on her head.
I did actually have my camera with me. The sky above shone a brilliant blue, and a pair of lovesick goats frolicked blithely. Beyond the haphazard vegetation, the Lego-brick blues and yellows of Clover Village peered over its walls. It would have made a wonderful photograph, the ideal cover for The Lonely Planet Guide to India. But I didn’t dare. The woman was younger than me, and despite all my celebrated strength, she could probably run faster – even mid-stream. Even with the basket on her head.
I myself was dressed in maroon trousers and a white cotton shirt with large flared sleeves. I looked, if I must retain my reputation for honesty, somewhat like an escapee from the Osho International Meditation Resort, perhaps fatigued by the flapping of the sleeves in one of the more energetic jumping-about meditations, and a little inappropriate for the office, some might say.
The thing is, I tend to be a bit nonchalant in the matter of dress, egotistically presuming that garish personality, if bandied about loudly enough, easily prevails over shortcomings in other areas. Just the other day, I was lunching with my friend Shanaz, when she suddenly started to laugh. It began with a flickering smile and built up into a rollicking, eye-watering guffaw. If we’d been eating fish, she’d have surely choked on a fishbone. The waiters drew up in concern. And what was so funny? Apparently madam had suddenly been overcome with a vision of the footwear I had worn on my wedding day.
And another time recently, I went out to dinner wearing my large black sweater with golden motifs on it that makes you look like a Christmas tree. One of the other guests admiringly confided that she had something similar, bought in London, and inquired if mine had the same lofty provenance. I had to confess that I’d bought the thing for a hundred bucks off a cart at Shivaji Market and in the years that followed have worn it to every single outdoor event between November and March. I take it as a tribute to my personal audacity that no one has ever given me one of those sneering ‘haven’t I seen that thing before’ looks. Anyway, if you happen to see a large, bossy-looking woman wearing that black sweater one of these evenings – hello there, it’s me.
Some parts of this appeared in Saaz ki Awaaz under the title A brighter shade of pale in Times of India, Pune on 14 Dec 2006

Veils

I wore a veil once. Semanti and I fancied ourselves glamorous Egyptian beauties and tied little chiffony bits of fabric round our noses and posed for a photograph outside the Girls’ School at Lawrence, also known for various reasons as Red Fort. We were fourteen. We perched our knees stylishly on the garden bench and smiled bashfully into the camera. Semanti was gorgeous – she still is. My knees were stout and lumpy – they still are.
In those days, the bulky knees were a source of deep misery. You have to be fourteen and pasty looking, which I don’t suppose you are, to understand how acute this was.
In later years, I tried to convince myself that the fat had been, all along, just another kind of veil. Like any veil, it included elements of both protection and oppression, each encroaching on the other in a subtle dance – changing position, intertwining, first one sidling ahead and then the other.
The oppression, I told myself, (quoting from the feminist literature and pop psychology fashionable at the time) came from society – horrid, unsophisticated society – where thin was an officiously-defined aspiration. And the protection was created for a sad inner core which couldn’t bear to reveal itself and therefore sheltered under layers of fat.
Finally one day I faced myself with the sad truth that I was fat because I overate and if I stopped overeating, I would eventually stop being fat. Moreover, it was ok to be fat, you could still be loved and comfortable (and healthy) and all those other things that we wend this mortal plain striving to achieve, and if eating was such a great pleasure, then – well – what the hell.
Meanwhile, I had acquired the habit of scrutiny, of keeping a careful watch on precisely which factors of existence served as veils, and which ones were real.
Make-up, of course, was an obvious veil – but then so was beauty. One who projected beauty had the freedom to develop, underneath, in any way they wished – but were equally prisoners of the fact that not many would make the effort to uncover that reality.
Wealth, social position, and material achievement were, of course, veils. They protected one from hunger, cold, loneliness, crowds, dirt and other distasteful possibilities. But they subjugated one with insidious suggestions of conformity to norms laid down by others.
Conformity itself was a veil, suppressing your wants, your identity, your uniqueness, just so that you could feel you belonged even when you didn’t really belong.
Arrogance, snobbishness, superciliousness – even sophistication – these were veils that hid the trembling uncertainty within.
Friends were a veil to cover loneliness.
Maturity was a veil to cover the inadequacy of upbringing.
Even illness was a veil that cloaked despair.
Emotions were veils, too – they veiled each other like anything, anger covering up for fear, fear suppressing sadness, guilt masking resentment, fear of rejection masquerading as entitlement – and under it all a deep, deep sadness, the sadness of basic unlovability.
Was anything, then, real? Or was it true in the end that we were all so controlled, so dominated by that most delicate of all veils of existence, maya as the ancients named it, that no matter how sincerely we shone a torchlight within ourselves, no matter how rigorously we worked to uncover the One which truly existed, maya was a permanent fixture in the sidelines, engulfing us in subtle ways and duping us with images of individual immortality.
First appeared as ‘Veiled Meanings’ in Sunday Mid-day on 12 Nov 2006

Obelix goes to see Pirates of the Caribbean in Mumbai

One morning, Getafix was out in the woods cutting mistletoe for his magic spells when a little sprite by the name of Inbox came to him with a message from a faraway land.
It was an invitation from an indomitable fishing village across the seven seas. Our doings had reached their ears and they had sent Inbox with the offer of an exchange of friendship. They had chosen us, of all the little fishing villages in the world, as their sister village and had invited me, Obelix, on an exchange visit. I would be the recipient of their warmest hospitality, and one of their inhabitants would later come back with me to Gaul to visit us.
Excited by the prospect of this new adventure, I packed a few little boars for the journey and a menhir or two as a souvenir for my hosts, and set off, Dogmatix tucked comfortably on my shoulder. Cacafonix tried to sing a farewell lament in my honour but Unhygenix the fishmonger sat on his head. I tried to wheedle a little pouch of magic potion out of Getafix to protect me on the way, but he refused. As you may know, I fell into the potion when I was a baby and its effects have been permanent. So I climbed aboard the Phoenician trading galley that had brought a supply of silks and spices to our village, and set off for Mumbai.
My host Outforasix and his family were very friendly and showed me around. Asterix and Vitalstatistix had warned me that the inhabitants of the indomitable fishing village of Mumbai were accustomed to strange forms of transport and cautioned me to be careful not to fall off any of their wagons. I assured them that I was quite safe since I’d been on the wagon ever since the morning after our last banquet when I’d woken up with such a bad headache that I could only eat 6 boars for breakfast.
On the first morning, Outforasix said he would show me his office and we squeezed on to the 84 Ltd. Some of the other passengers called me “Jadiya” which, Outforasix told me, means “Handsome Prince”. I knew at once that I was going to enjoy my stay in this indomitable fishing village. These Mumbai people were jolly good fellows.
Outforasix introduced me to his friends Allergictovix, Chinesepunjabimix and Diplomainmechanix who travelled with him to Glasgow every day. I was a little confused by this because I seem to remember Getafix mentioning once that Glasgow was an old Caledonian town but I suppose this is an extension of the expression All Roads Lead To Home. Getafix always says that travel broadens the horizon, and I now saw for myself how right he was.
At one point I looked out of the window and saw some wild boar sniffing around a garbage skip. Naturally I tried to leap off the bus to get them, but a young man by the name of Broadspectrumantibiotix clutched tight to my overalls and since I hadn’t packed any clothes, and Outforasix’s daughters had promised to take me to a Dandiya Nite, I decided I’d better not climb off.
I wandered around on my own when Outforasix went to work and who do you think I met but our old friends the Pirates!
These guys, as you know, do get around a lot but I was really surprised to see big signs celebrating the Pirates of the Caribbean. I tried to push my way in to get them, and was really surprised that the ferocious Mumbai crowds simply pushed me right out again. I wish I’d brought a few Romans along, I would have loved to share them with these guys.
That evening I went to the Dandiya Nite with Outforasix’s daughters Veni, Vidhi, and Vissy. Their names made me feel strangely homesick because they reminded me of something, I’m not sure exactly what. We had a wonderful time dancing and a lot of people called me Jadiya here too. What nice hospitable people Mumbai has. Veni and her boyfriend Teachersbumlix even won a prize for the best dressed couple. Oops! I promised not to say anything about the boyfriend – don’t mention this to Outforasix, will you.
Dogmatix, meanwhile, was getting along famously with the neighbourhood dogs. He loitered around street corners with them and they sang loud songs till late at night, living the good Mumbai life.
It was now getting time for me to set out on the long journey home. I had made good friends with a dabbawalla, Palamburwillfix, who lived right near us. The first time we met I had tried to snatch away his dabbas and get at what was inside but he defended them brilliantly. When I later heard that the Mumbai dabbawallas are certified as six sigma, I wasn’t surprised at all.  Anyway, he invited me to his home and we feasted on bheja fry and kulfi.
When I got back home, the whole village was crowded round, waiting to hear my stories. They refused to believe some of what I told them, even when I gave them the recipes for the bheja fry and kulfi. Perhaps you find it difficult to believe me too but I promise it is the truth, Qasam É Dastaan – or, as we usually put it, QED.

First appeared in Sunday Mid-day on 30 Jul 2006, as part of a series in which Saaz parodied a range of humour writers, using their voices to tell Bombay stories.