Marx to Michael Jackson

Eight years ago, when I first visited Russia, the skyline was dominated by large billboards that sang the praises of Marx and Lenin and generously wished long life to Communism and Socialism. They have vanished and in their place stand shy saplings of consumerism – billboards of varying sizes which urge you to buy shoes, computers, cigarettes and so on. What happened to the old boards? Some, apparently, were torn down with ceremony and amidst rejoicing at the changing of the old order. Others disappeared quietly and the wood was appropriated by the workmen who put it to use in their dachas – that’s capitalism, isn’t it?
I can remember shopping, last time, in stores called beriozkas. Here you could buy handicrafts, crystal, souvenirs and very cheap but high-quality Russian vodka. The medium of exchange was the US dollar. Now these commodities are available everywhere: at street stalls, where the needy might dispose icons and other family heirlooms; and in department stores, where you can catch the attention of surly-looking salesgirls by calling out, “devochka!” the Russian word for girl. Sated shoppers at the one-year-old Sadko Avenue (already a match for Bond Street; already more a symbol of Russia than the Red Square) peel off notes from wads stuffed inside their wallets, confident that there’s plenty more where that came from. The WASP expat newspapers refer to this prototype sneeringly as the man in the lime green suit with the fat gold Rolex on his wrist. But they also tolerate him kindly because it’s he who is firing the economy.
The US dollar is legal tender, but we preferred to make our purchases in roubles as the economical option. Smirnoff, the American vodka made from the fabulous recipe of a long-ago Russian (as everyone knows) was available much cheaper at the kiosks than the dollar shops and it’s possible to shop from one kiosk to the next looking for the best price. The kiosk is a Russian version of the panwallah, and stocks cigarettes, booze, chocolates, lingerie and electronics, much of it imported.
Russian food is not as bad as propaganda has it. But when, in nostalgic fits of longing for more familiar fare, we ate at the restaurant Delhi, we found it as popular as its food is atrocious. We were also told that food here is actually only cooked once a week; that it was now run by the mafia, (a word Russians use to describe the antisocial section of their society) and frequented mostly by Indian expatriates. You can still see a weekly Hindi film on television – the one we saw bits of had Rekha and Shatrughan Sinha speaking such fluent Russian that it quite boggled the mind. The advertisements are peopled by characters who look like they would be more at ease back home in America. And in a country which the world views with concern for its food shortages, we were amazed at the number of television ads for dog and cat food.
I didn’t come across anyone like the Mithun girl this time. They’re there, I suppose – but no doubt leaning more towards Michael Jackson. On one occasion, though, my cabby casually began to chat about Rao (as in the Indian Prime Minister, PV Narasimha) and his political ideologies of which I believe he knew more than I did.
This cabby was in fact not a professional taxi driver, but the owner of a private car who, according to local custom, would be willing to ferry you to your destination for a small fee if it happened to be on the way to wherever he was going. If you stand on the side of the road in Moscow and wave out your hand until someone stops, you can specify your terminus and negotiate a price.
Over a series of meetings in those few weeks, it struck us that this could well be the reason why no one ever seemed to be on time. And on this trip we had another of those interesting coincidences that call forth that “Oh my! What a small world!” refrain. We sat chatting with an Indian businessman and our conversation went something like this:
IB: Oh so you’re from Pune!
We: Yes, that’s right. Do you know the place?
IB: Um … sort of … I have a brother who lives there.
We: Really? Where does he live?
IB: Er… can’t really remember, it’s a funny-sounding name … I think it begins with a W …
We: Would that be Wanowari?
IB: That’s right! He lives in Wanowari!
We: Oh how nice … we live there too! Where in Wanowari?
IB: Er … you know, it’s one of those new gated-community kind of places …
We: Really? We live in one of those too! Which one does your brother live in?
IB: Er … I can’t remember … what’s the name of your place?
We: Clover Village.
IB: Yes! That’s where my brother lives. Clover Village.
We: Wow! What a coincidence.
IB: He has a row house there … I can’t remember the name of the lane but I know it’s the second left turn after you enter the gate.
We: No! That’s our lane, Flemington Terrace.
IB: Yes! That’s my brother’s lane! He lives at No 2 Flemington Terrace.
Me (aghast): No! We live in No 2 Flemington Terrace.
Me (thinks fast): How many children does your brother have?
IB: Two
Me (looking suspiciously at husband, wondering, ARE YOU THIS MAN’S BROTHER BY ANY CHANCE?): But we live in No 2, and our neighbour has four children!
It turned out that this Indian businessman’s brother was our next door neighbour. The extra two children were a third brother’s, who lived with them. Small world, right?
I enjoyed that stay in Moscow very much. I still had enough halting Russian to find my way around on my own. The metros were still as clean and organized as they had been before – relics of a more rigid era. A ticket to anywhere by metro or by bus was just ten roubles, a very small amount. Still, few passengers would buy one. I saw a ticket inspector patiently explaining to a woman who did not have one that she should have and that everyone was supposed to. Sadly, my stop came and I had to reluctantly get off without hearing the rest. But I doubt whether she was led before a firing squad to be shot, which may or may not have been the procedure in the old days.
parts of this first appeared in The Metropolis on Saturday 18-19 Dec 1993

Home out of range

If you lived, say, in Los Angeles, and commuted to work, the most relaxing part of your day would be the journey home.
Commuting, Los Angeles psychiatrists and mental health workers concede, with all its opportunities for unwinding and allowing the day’s events to fall into perspective in the individual’s private space – a sort of limbo between work and home where you are answerable to none – is the most deeply therapeutic technological advance made by humankind. This is what a Los Angeles psychiatrist, visiting Bombay on a powerful grant to make a longitudinal study of why residents of Versova, Marol, and other satellites of Andheri are so insufferable and nasty, confided to me.
This was several months ago, and we were on our way home (to Marol and Versova respectively). Crouched comfortably on the edge of the stony, crowded planks that pass for seats in the Local, we chatted amicably while other women thrust their bags in our faces in revenge for having occupied places they might otherwise have had, and unwound rapidly to the jerking jiggety-can of the train and the high-pitched complaining sounds that the occupants filled it with. Therapeutic: deeply so.
After a particularly vicious jab on the forehead, the psychiatrist casually, quite without thinking, stepped hard on her assailant’s little toe, looking innocently at me all the while so as not to get involved in any scuffle that might ensue. Marol, Versova, Los Angeles, what’s the difference, I mused. The only way to retain my sanity, I decided, was to dissociate myself from psychiatrists.
So I got myself a lovely little place in Town (yes, truth they say is often stranger than fiction), about as far from work as my former home was from the station, and moved.
It was goodbye forever to the Ladies – train compartment, I mean, not toilet. In one smart stroke I had evolved from being a poor sod in a mob, devoid of identity, into a genuine, suave urbanite.
Two-and-a-half hours of travelling time saved every day, and god knows how many calories of energy. I was the envy of the old crowd I was leaving behind to carry on chopping vegetables on their laps, tearing their mothers-in-law and bosses apart, and shredding vendors to bits for bindis, bangles, and samosas all the way home.
Everything is so much more expensive in Town, they said enviously. Ah, but think of how much I’ll save on transport, I gloated. You’ll find my address easy to remember I went on, trying to conceal my triumph. It’s the same as the number of the train we battled our way onto for so many years.
It wasn’t long before I realized that I’d been gloating in vain. The hours dragged, long winter evenings went on and on. And travelling by bus – that was just no way to go, though I will admit that some conductors came close to compensating my deprivations, the way they harangued passengers for change and flung pathetic old geezers off with a nifty ting-ting of the bell.
Of an evening I’d wander down to Churchgate station and gaze nostalgically at the frantic, grasping, gasping crowd – a wretched, lonely onlooker. It was no good. Being a mere observer only deepened my sense of isolation. I searched for solace and found it one day when I discovered the Colaba Woods.
Now this Colaba Woods is not the venue for a teddy bear’s picnic where tree lovers might bask in forest glades or other such poetic concepts. It is a landscaped garden with parallel tracks for walkers and joggers, and very enthusiastic they are, too.
I’d walk down every evening and relax there for an hour, feeling at home. It was quite a lot like rush hour, with toes available for trampling, large abdomens to jab with sharp elbows, and smelly little brats to jostle out of the way. When the monsoon came by, it was even more jolly therapeutic. I’d march down with my umbrella, delighting in watching the walkers and joggers skip smartly out of my way. It was ever so soothing.
That took care of aggression and subliminal vindictive urges. Adventure was a little more difficult. Where could I find an equivalent of dashing young men leaning at desperate angles from speeding Locals, clinging by the skin of their fingernails to window rods or clutching tightly to the roof, seemingly intent on acquiring a one-way ticket to that great Dombivali up in the sky? There was no easy solution to this. I tried to satisfy honour by watching pedestrians break through rope barricades to make a dash across the road through zooming traffic. Not many got hit but occasionally the wrath of a policeman would nab a miscreant and that would keep me going for a day or two. And when my pining for the rabble of hawkers rose to an unbearable ache, I would catch a cab and persuade it to stop at a traffic light. It wasn’t much, but it helped.
first appeared in Saturday Times 27 Feb 1993

Holiest of Holis

Padmanabhakripa, nee Jonathan Fitzwilliam-McDonald stood six foot tall in his bright orange robe. His blonde pigtail stuck up above his neatly shaven skull, giving him an extra two inches. He frightened me nearly witless by marching up and demanding alms. It was my first trip to England and I stood on Oxford Street, London W1, innocently gawking at the other tourists, totally unprepared for this strange apparition and his pack of chanting, ranting, cymbal-clashing Hindus. No one else seemed to notice; they blended well with the strange racial mix thronging the pavement. Intrigued, I followed them.
Jonathan was in the schizophrenic state of mind of one who has recently had his name changed. Seated, his costume turned from outlandish to merely eccentric – and he himself lost much of his former ferocity. Off duty, so to speak, Jonathan was no longer a religious maniac. Glimpses of the confused schoolboy peeped out from under the robe like a vest. “Just call me Padma,” he introduced himself, in a transparent attempt to avoid articulating the troublesome ‘bh’ in his new name.
It turned out that these were disciples of Swami Mahaboolshetra and among the novitiates, Padma had won the distinction of being selected to pursue his mystic studies at the Swami’s ashram in Bombay.
Back home some months later, I happened to visit the ashram in connection with a story I was following. The devotees were gathered at prayer and among the bowed heads I was pleasantly surprised to see the unmistakable blonde pigtail sticking up in the air.
When we parted in London he had been brimming over in excitement at the prospect of his imminent visit to India. But the Padma that greeted me now had bags under his eyes and the tortured look of a man whose dreams have recently been shattered. He was clearly on the verge of a breakdown. “I haven’t been able to sleep since I arrived,” he confided.
It had taken him a few days to orient himself, to reconcile the realities of Bombay with his scheme of things. The beggars, the noise, the dirt were passé; the BBC’s portrayals were realistic if not downright uncomplimentary – and hadn’t he seen the film Gandhi several times?
But the reality transcended these. For one, nothing had quite prepared him for the digestive exploits to which his stomach led him, in restaurants across the length and breadth of the city. Having stepped off the plane with appetising visions of Beef Madras floating delectably in his mind, Padma was dismayed to find that such a thing simply did not exist. And, sample as he may, not one decent curry did he ever come across – at least, nothing to compare with what the Indian restaurants back home had led him to acquire a taste for.
Returning to the ashram from one such expedition, Padma was seized with a terrible fit of cramps which caused him to buckle over in agony. The nearest toilet was godknows how many miles away and in any case the quaint old taxi was not moving towards it. It stood there, motionless, in a tremendous pile-up of traffic. It was the festival of the elephant-headed god Ganesha. Noisy, colourful, thronging processions carried enormous idols of this extremely picturesque god on their shoulders to be immersed in the sea, completely disrupting the traffic. Unable to revel in this joyful explosion of living culture, Jonathan sat there writhing in his tattered back seat, prevented from committing the unspeakable solely by force of his tremendous yogic powers.
His dignity was preserved – for the time being. He was to part with it some days later at a pedestrian crossing in the city. Here he was prevented from crossing the road by two policemen with a rope in a ritual peculiar to Bombay.
And so, it was no surprise to me when I bumped into him again a few months later at the airport, on his way home for good. His pigtail was damp and his robe – which, surprisingly, he had not abandoned – crumpled. A companion from the ashram who was there to see him off confided that on their way to the airport Jonathan had had a bucket of water thrown over him by a complete stranger. This quaint custom of the spring festival Holi appeared to have damped his last spark of enthusiasm. He smiled weakly at me. “I guess it’s back to frightening the darkies on Oxford Street for me,” his eyes seemed to say, but he remained silent. That was the last I ever saw of him.
first appeared in Saturday Times on 27 Jun 1992

My suicide (or Never to Return)

 I walk down to the station

 I go there every day

 But this is the last time.

 Today I go, 

 never to return.

 I walk through the same throngs

 that rush past every day

 scurrying to their offices

 their factories

 to meetings

 to hearings

 appointments for two o’clock sharp

 and births and deaths. 

 They will go on forever.

 Hurrying.

 Their numbers swelling

 every day.

 But not me, I won’t be there,

 I go today

 and will never return.

 No, I’m not dressed for this occasion,

 my last trip to the station.

 Couldn’t bear the thought 

 of all that messy blood

 mucking up anything better 

 than what I’ve got on.

  And I blend well

 with the others

 in their pretty clothes,

 Swinging, slinking,

 marching, lurching,

 flowing, going past.

  I’ve been through here

 before, you see.

 I go down to the station

 every day.

 And back.

 Used to, that is:

 today is the last time.

 Today I go,

 never to return. 

 If you climb the station bridge

 you’ll see a curious sight. 

 People stand there

 poised.

 Concentrating on the track below,

 they stand,

 poised.

 Ready to speed down the steep stairs

 and leap

 into the train of their choice. 

 I shall be poised elsewhere,

 waiting for the train of my choice.

 But how do I choose? 

 I climb down the platform

 onto the tracks 

 to the point where

 thousands cross every day.

 Cross: jostling, pushing,

 shoving, elbowing.

 But the time has passed 

 for me to be part 

 of that inelegant crowd.

  Today I stand

 on the track

 never to return. 

 I have nothing left to live for. 

 Today I shall let the train

 take me to my final destination. 

 My warm blood

 will bathe the tracks

 mixing

 with the mud and grime 

 and the secretions of some urban Indians.

 So I walk a little way down.

 And stretch out.

 Lie flat on the ground.

 And rest my neck

 on the cool, comforting steel 

 of the railway track.

 I close my eyes.

 Happy?

 No, not happy.

 But I am at peace.

 People climbing over the tracks

 climb over me.

 One more thing to step across.

 Or on: 

 someone steps on my finger.

 But I don’t care.

 that is the last time

 that anyone will ever step

 on my finger.

  The train is coming.

 The track vibrates

 against my cheek.

 Now it is sighted.

 People on the wrong side

 leap across in a

 tremendous

 hurry.

 I get trodded on

 badly.

 But never mind,

 I’ll survive.

 Or rather – I won’t, ha ha.

 And then I have a vision

 of something dropping through

 the floor of the train.

 Through a hole

 that was built there

    for people to drop 

    the wastes of their body.

    Those wastes

    are what will drop

    on my decapitated head.

    How undignified.

    How terribly undignified.   

    So I stand up

    and dust myself off.

    Perhaps, after all,

    I will return.

first appeared in Brown Critique Aug 1997

The abandoned

One day I came home from work and discovered that my refrigerator had left me. There was a horrible empty space in the kitchen, right where she used to stand, which gaped at me, mocking. Some wrinkled tomatoes sat on the draining board, covered with shiny beads of condensed water, and a few dehydrated chillies lay beside them. But that was the only sign that I had ever had a refrigerator of my own. She had just taken everything – and left.
It was a horrid shock. I know we’d had many disagreements – but then, what man is there who can truly say that he has never quarrelled with his refrigerator? Who has never complained about her constant need to be defrosted and cleaned, about the electricity bills she is responsible for? No, I never expected it would come to this.
After all, hadn’t I given her a good home – pride of place in my kitchen – and filled her with food and drink of every description? The ungrateful thing! I was angry, and hurt.
But before long my anger turned to grief. I remembered sadly the day when I had first taken her to be my refrigerator. It had been a day of rejoicing and happiness. We had been happy then, full of plans for the future. It was a wonderful feeling to have my very own refrigerator, to love and cherish till death did us part, and I was filled with pride. What had gone wrong?
It had begun gradually enough. There was the odd day when I’d come home hot and tired in the evening, longing for nothing so much as a tepid bath and a hot meal. But she would have nothing to offer but the cold congealed remains of previous repasts. I can tell you that made me mad. I slammed in her door good and hard a couple of times! Then of course she’d begin making a noise. Somewhere between a grumble and a whine, she’d start up with a click when I happened by. It was awful and of course I’d have to go out to eat. It made me feel guilty and all but, I ask you, what else is a man to do?
Finally, things got so bad between us that her light wouldn’t go on when I opened her door. I knew she was acting up when I called in the mechanic and he couldn’t find anything wrong.
Perhaps I should have sensed the depth of her hurt and tried to make amends. Now of course it is too late, she has gone. In spite of everything, I can’t help wondering how she is going to manage.  A refrigerator on her own … it’s a tough world out there. The empty space in the kitchen stares up at me accusingly.
As for me – no ice, the milk spoiling, fruit rotting – no, I could never live like that. There’s nothing for it but to go out and get a new refrigerator.
The prospect is quite stimulating, really. I shall have to look far and wide – advertise, perhaps – but at the end of my search, who knows, I may just find a refrigerator of the right shape, the right colour, manufactured by the right people – and one that works well, too.
first appeared in Business & Political Observer on 17 Mar 1991