Courting rituals

Of the many different ways of experiencing the US, I had the misfortune of indulging its judiciary. To those of you who may be secretly unleashing toothy smiles picturing me at the gaols, I'm sorry to say that nothing quite as interesting happened. I did not get jailed, & outside of my careless yawning while I was being made to promise something I did not want to promise, you can call the whole thing fairly innocuous. Even boring.

It all started on February 18th. We were driving to DC & a green light turned yellow - as they often do when you're about to miss a bus or train. While some people, sometimes labeled "normal", may experience an urge to slow down, I had the exact opposite exhortation. I sped & got to the intersection just after the light had turned red. Which was all fine for people around here are incredibly nice. However, there was one slight glitch. Or, a cop.

The officer chased me down & had me cornered, thanks to some prudence of my own - though kind of late -, before the next signal. He checked my India Driving license, & not my passport. He listened to what i had to say, including my precise narration of the Virginia law which allows me to drive for six month's without a local license - provided I have my home country license. He disappeared for what felt like a decade. Presently, in the next decade, he surfaced with a ticket for violating a steady red light. All according to plan, you may think. And you'll be wrong. Again.

He then produced a second ticket, just as I was about to roll the window up & drive away. This one, he said, was for driving without license. Or a local license. My encore performance of State Driving law rendition seemed to have fallen on deaf ears or, at the very least, ears that do not listen very well. However, as a gesture of whatever he thought it was a gesture of, he told me that the judge will probably let me go if I did get a local license before my court hearing. Nice as ever, he did wish me a good night & a safe drive home.

Exactly how I went about procuring my local license, a story in itself, is another story. In summary, as I drove to the court today, I had my local license, my India license, my visa papers, & probably my marriage certificate as well. It was easy enough getting there, & after little searching I was seated in the courtroom awaiting the Justice.

I soon learnt that Justice was on his way & goes by the name "Buttery"! Well, if there is one name a Judge should not have, it is buttery. I mean, imagine the ordeal. Can Buttery be greased, etc? Well, there I was musing on these funny lines when he called my name - rather well, mind you -, & I was facing him trying to not laugh or some such thing.

Well, it turned out that Justice Buttery was an incredibly nice chap; he ignored my yawning, & kept me there for precisely 5 minutes. The case was over before it had begun. I was found "Not Guilty"

And what better way to celebrate than to say a boo to another yellow light on the way back. Only this time, it hadn't turned red.

To Die For - III

Recently, a gentleman mailed me about campaigning to redeem Hinduism from the clutches of rising Islamic clout - the protection it gets from apologists, the secularists, & the government in the name of welfare. As always, when somebody asks me to actually do something, I begin to shift my weight uncomfortably knowing that this'll require me to make up my mind about the issues, & the mind is the last thing I like made up.

I pointed out that I'm an atheist & feel uncomfortable campaigning for purely religious issues; however, I understood that his position was really against political manifestations of religious protectionisms prevalent in our country primarily as a means of electoral strategy. And some forms of these protections & allowances are outrageous & I'm against these just as I'm against reservations in jobs & graduate schools while maintaining that the scope of education should be improved so that it enables people enough so that reservations are not needed.

At the same time, the increasing clout of political Islam is certainly obvious & dangerous to the extent it stems from Wahabism, is reactionary, is exclusive & is intolerant, & this will continue to be the case as long as there is Saudi money flowing into Mecca & being dissipated to the rest of the Muslim world preaching Wahabism.

So that is my limited knowledge on the subject. I know next to nothing about Hinduism. I do not know even how to define a Hindu. I know that people have killed in the name of religion for centuries & we're the only species capable of killing or giving up our own lives for an idea.

I think that reform, neither propaganda nor protective laws, is the answer. And it has to come from within. It is at these times we can look back & appreciate why the Renaissance was an event of such colossal importance.

It is time for heroes.

Signing up!

As a part of setting our rented apartment up, I called up a telephone service provider. It took us, I & the customer service representative, the better part of two minutes to get through all the information that was needed to set us up with a landline connection.

The representative first guessed my name as a Greek one. And then, as he was entering all the information into the system & going through the process of setting my account up, he told me how he had been to Sri Lanka on the ship he worked for back in 1980 ( & said I was exactly three years old then by the way of proving his arithmetic abilities!), & how he had wandered off into the streets looking for local cuisine, & how he had eaten one of everything on offer in a local restaurant ( he did not say whether he had paid for each one, too), & how the color of his face had changed with the spice content of each dish. He then said that it was quite a show & children gathered all around him laughing at this quaint American doing strange things. And he said, that, not knowing how to react, he decided to join the children in their merry laughter.

He went on to say that how similar people are anywhere you go, & how governments just represent the politics of a country & how this representation is often mistaken for what people are like.

At this point, he said I was all set & thanked me for bringing up fond memories.

The devotee

Recently, there was an editorial in TOI about the Islamic world & a very short historical analysis by Murad Ali Baig on why certain aspects of Islam are the way they are today. Particularly, there was a note on how there was one consolidated Medina version of the Qu'ran compiled in 665 A.D. & how the various other versions of the holy book were burnt.

Now, it is very possible that such a representation of history is totally inaccurate. It is possible that Mr. Baig had done no research of any sort at all & there were never versions of the Holy book which were burnt. It is possible, also, that his research is indeed accurate.

I asked an Islamic friend of mine to read the article & tell me if he agreed to Baig's points of view. At the time, my motive was to understand Baig's representations, analysis, interpretations & conclusion & I did not really mean to question the authenticity of his historical research.

My friend told me that he did not agree that the book burning incident ever happened. When I asked him why, he said, almost choking himself with passion, that it is by Allah's dictate that the Qu'ran cannot be changed in any way imaginable, & so there could not have been any versions of it.

While I sat still half-apologetic, & not a little annoyed at his faith-based reply, that I ever brought this topic up; it was, in a way, the stark encounter with raw faith which was an absolute first.

Even if I were to discount this as a thought process borne out of a minority complex, I perceive that there is a general rise in staunch religiosity in the world in general, & that makes me very very uncomfortable.

Every once in a way

The good part about being in India is that you toss your clothes into a basket & back they come washed & pressed. In the US, you can still toss your clothes into a basket but in this country, they just sit there looking dirty & crumpled. So you'll have to demean yourself by washing your own clothes. And while you're at it, you might as well be reading a book by the hotel's poolside, if listening to the washer & dryer is not exactly an eclectic practice of leisure as far as you're concerned.

So there I was sitting in my most nerdy pose looking absorbed & boring when a sweet woman came by & said that I'll have to excuse her for lunch. I figured that she was in charge of looking after the guests by the poolside & the gymnasium. I quickly assured her that I had no intentions of jumping into the water or out of the building, & she could bet a hundred dollars that I wouldn't touch the gymnasium with a barge pole.

Now I carried on reading & in the absolute solitude of the poolside, it occurred to me that I should tell the woman about how she is working for a "visionary" company. I say this because the book I was reading was "Built To Last - By Jim Collins", & it spoke about these great companies which have been exemplary in both their commercial & social aspects - so much so as to be treated as icons in their respective industries. Marriott, the hotel I was staying at, was one of them.

So I read for a while more before the woman came back. I calculated that my clothes must have dried by now. So on the way out, I excused myself & explained to the woman what I had read about Marriott & asked her how she felt about working here in the light of what I had just told her. Here is what she had to say in her slightly Hispanic flavoured English:

“Thank you, Sir. I have not read the book. But it does not surprise me. I know that I am working for a great company. I know because I see it on the face of everyone that works here.”

Goa

It was, in many ways, a typical Goan dinner.

Candles & alcohol on a windy seashore. A confusion of lights on pretty faces. Irregular conversation & flashes of skin. And the Orion, perhaps having mixed drinks, a wee bit tilted and amorous on the horizon.

And though this nothingness was beautiful, it was the next day - having walked about over a kilometer with luggage in the hot afternoon sun, hungry & breathless, the shoulders a bit painful, the throat considerably dry - that produced a warmer memory. As self & A settled down to a well earned beer at "Chances", I recalled how I had dined at that very restaurant almost exactly five years ago - having come to Goa with my circle of friends from post graduation days.

Even that night was windy. And starry. Even then, everybody was drunk.

The insular

Its about 1730. SA, having tried his luck at mastering fiscal policy earlier in the day, has been sleeping in a grotesque posture for the last forty five minutes. VH is in Madras. MG is doing his weekend supervision of the house he is building. And SC...well, he is, lets say, just away. And I was sitting in the balcony upon a very accomodating bean bag with my cup of Darjeeling second flush looking at times at the falling leaves, listening to a stupid cow making uncivilized noises & generally attending to such matters of national importance when suddenly it occurred to me that I must be such a pucca screwball for wasting such a pretty evening.

Subsequently, it occurred to me that arms are, in a way, a measure of distance & that the itch in my eye is a memory.

Are you game?

About nine -ish each evening the bean bags are strategically positioned to save the telly and the sound boxes in the hall. The doors are pulled. A stool is summoned. Light at one end switched off. A plastic bat is harnessed and a tennis ball dug up, & a group of gentlemen in their late twenties, not to mention shorts, gear up for a quick game of cricket.

I am sure that each one of us has some unique experience to tell, but for me & SA its about out thinking your opposition. For SC, ostensibly, it is extinguishing any chance I have of furthering my lineage, which is probably a good idea in the whole scheme of things anyway. Each one of his deliveries, projected from his super height & hurled with a great deal of sidespin, is targeted to pitch, gather ample turn and bounce, and end up with a soft thud a few inches below my waistline. You should see him beam with endless joy, but since we are friends & all that he stops short of doing cartwheels & happily lends me a cigarette afterwards.

SA, like I said, sets you up. He showers you with bouncers so that your feet grow roots & then suddenly there is ball turning away from you at which you play like Ganguly - play the most inelegant stand n deliver cover drive & get a solid nick. Embarrassment & sheepish smiles follow. General happiness all around. Chu**** Saala & the like, you know.

Then there those searing yorkers that he unleashes. Just when you are happily checking out if your head is still attached to your neck & wondering if the next bouncer will end it all, comes this yellow trace of a tennis ball , your weight still on the backfoot, & violently shakes the stool behind you. Sometimes, if your reflexes are fast enough & you think you are beginning to read this trick, you can bring your bat down fast enough & crush your own toes. That is adding injury to insult.

MG is probably the most complete cricketer amongst us. SA has the most guile, besides being a very safe pair of hands. SC, like you might have figured, is absolutely fatal when bowling & suicidal, like you might not have figured, while batting. He continues, though, to be a champion of perseverance. And, VH has not been around lately.

And me, well, I am still hanging in there. "Shaken, not stirred!", as James Bond puts it.

Taking stock

There are 206 bones & 600 skeletal muscles in the typical human.

I can feel almost all of them....ache by ache.

The pill

SA, my roommate & close friend, has gone & twisted his neck. I asked him how did he manage it but he was not very sure. It could have been the game of badminton, but exactly what acrobatics on the court would potentially twist his neck like that, he did not know. It could have been the long hours he spends supine & otherwise on his kingsize bed, alone mind you, but then after twenty six years of proven expertise on the art of dormancy, that was unlikely too.

Whatever the reasons for this mysterious twist in the neck, he did not seem to like it a bit. He sat sadly watching the crocodiles on Animal Planet. He refused to play football. He started studying. All in all, he showed all signs of a man whom nature has dealt an unfair blow.

So he went and sought some professional advice. First, it was the barber. After giving him a really smart haircut, the barber, growing in confidence, held his head between his hands & said, "Nikaal doon kya?". Obviously, that would have been getting to the root of the problem; but for some reason, SA did not really seem very keen on the idea. I mean he is the kind of person who keeps his head under the most trying circumstance & this was but a trivial pain in the neck. So back he came with a just a massage, flashing his perfect set of thirty two, the massage having soothed him, for the time being.

However, the pain returned soon, the marsupials started jumping again on Animal planet, more refusal to kick the ball, & more serious contemplation on Business Communication. This time, he chose to see a doctor who, as most doctors do, gave him a pill.

This then, dear readers, was the moment of truth. With Neo-esque dilemma and a glassful of Bisleri, he looked all set to take the plunge; rather, plunge that pill down his throat. He proceeded to do so, shortly. With the pill just beyond his tonsils, just beyond recovery, it occurred to him that the pill, a muscle relaxing one, may not be able to figure out which muscle to relax!

A pain in the neck is bad enough. And roommates howling like a bunch of wild hyenas is not very comforting at eleven in the night. The last thing you want is a wrong muscle deciding to take it easy at the promising age of twenty six and a bit.

The wait was agonizing but SA was able to sleep through most of it. He woke up rather early, at nine in the morning. He bathed & pushed for office.

His limbs are fine, his eyeballs still doing the rounds, his jaws crunched away at the sandwich this morning.

I do not know if he will feel like playing football this evening, but I think I'll ask him.

The citizen

The four railway reservation counters at the Koramangala BDA complex were working to capacity. Mahalaya, demarcates the beginning of the festive season, & therefore the holiday season, here in India. There was a long queue of people waiting to get their tickets, some going home; others just going away. The serpentine waiting line terminated in four rows of chairs for the people to rest their tired legs & from there it was just going to the next chair & so on, until one reached one of the counters.

The final row almost always, without an exception, had its last chair, sometimes the last two, empty. The people who had already made it that far could not probably wait any longer & just ceased to keep on moving. They just wanted their chance at the counter. A lot of these people were formally attired, a few of them wore their jackets with the logo of the multinational company they worked for, & all of them seemed educated well enough to fill up reservations forms at the very least.

And yet, the fact that two empty chairs at the end of the last row of chairs simply meant two more pairs of tired legs awaiting a seat did not seem to strike a lot of us in that room.

Everyday, smart & intelligent executives do not take a few extra steps towards the ashtray to stub out their cigarettes in the smoking area of their swanky office buildings. Daily, at some shop, somebody barges past you to get his shopping done first.

Sometimes, I struggle to ask: "So, what is the country doing for us?"

The prostitute

Recently, a news channel did a report on AIDS activists working towards spreading awareness among the sex workers in Sonagachhi, Calcutta. The coverage showed an activist talking to these ladies about HIV and the various aspects of preventing or minimizing the chances of the virus spreading. She also spoke of a quiz that will be held to gauge how much these ladies have understood the threats that AIDS poses. Funnily enough, she also went on to explain what 'quiz' meant describing the process in Baangla.

Following this, there were short interviews of a few of these ladies.

In general, the ladies spoke of various instances of their lives when they have had to dodge the onlooker a bit, so as not to arouse any suspicion.

However, what was striking about the narratives was the in-your-face honesty of the manner in which these stories they told. There was no pretence, no guilt whatsoever. Infact, most of them were told with a nice dash of humour & most of the women present laughed easily.

And I sit here in the air conditioned comforts of my office each day; struggling to strike a balance, rushing for covers.

A reason to smile

Cricket has always been a close accomplice! Right from the days of learning to divide faster & faster to keep up with the required run rate, to learning that a projectile thrown with the same force covers the maximum distance if released at 45 degrees - so that’s you throw the red cherry back to the wicket keeper - , to learning the art of chewing gum, to learning poetry from a lethargic, almost reluctant, Azharuddin flick past square leg, to learning flight from a certain Jonty Rhodes, cricket has been a constant, fun filled, philosophy of life.

In the recent Brisbane test, the Aussies were bowled out for a respectable, at best, 323. This after they got off to a brilliant start and getting upto 260 odd for the loss of just two wickets. They had lost 8 wickets for a paltry 60 runs. It was India's turn to bat.

India had had a despicable start to the tour & pathetic memories of Aussie stints in the last decade or so. They had a lost to a county side leading up to this test. There was moisture in the air & clouds further up. There were talks of 'chin music' that the Indians will face from the Aussies. We debated if we could save following on even if the rains curtail play. Our cricketing faculties were crippled and would perish, sooner than later, I concluded.

India scored a clinical 350 odd runs that day at an average of over 3.5, helped by exquisite strokeplay by VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly.

It isn't often that I get my cricket wrong. And It usually does not feel this good.

The cut

I remember how the protagonist in Andre Gide's "The Immoralist" was thrilled at the sight of fresh, warm blood oozing in profusion from the young finger of a child who cut himself while playing with a scissor. The protagonist was convalescing from what could have been a terminal illness and this crimson liquid that poured before his eyes filled him with a sense of health that was amiss and life that could have been.

I write this today as this imagery suddenly came back to me while I was staring with no insignificant fascination at the copious drops that squirted from a deep cut on my own little finger of the left hand. I marveled at its lusty volume, its lucid texture, at its engaging colour. I looked captivated as it traced its path around my palm and my wrist, wetting and painting them. I was charmed to see the water turn red in the basin, the skin split into a deepish furrow & the affliction of impudent, cold water on raw flesh.

I was enchanted at this sudden reminder of life.

The fan

What with a certain modicum of a Kingfisher Strong inside of me & the calm confidence that comes from tucking into a succulent leg of a chicken, I was hoping that the game that unites us a nation, mostly in despair, will have a surprise for us. And to top it all with a Foster's halfway through the game & to continue the spirited performance lacing our veins with Romanov, throwing in some potato chips in between, else they'd feel left out - you know- , and enduring a headache, and lucky distorted positions in the armchair, and not urinating as all the luck may flow out, letting in mosquitoes through the backdoor open exactly at thirty five degrees to the the normal, all that & more - and they go and lose the finals!!