Stepping Sideways...

An Impassioned Plea

2009-12-08T17:01:00.001+05:30

Not Abducted by Martians!

2009-11-15T21:36:00.003+05:30

It has been a while.

Let us say, after notching up a 100 posts, I suddenly found myself with nothing to write. The feeling that I had nothing new to say, the feeling that I was repeating myself of late, and my blogger friends and other readers were indulging me purely out of a sense of obligation began to crop up. I stopped writing. My connection with my blog was confined to routine, mechanical publishing of readers’ comments.

But some of those comments expressed cautious concern, not wanting to pry, but obliquely enquiring: Is everything OK? Are you all right? Cynic’s was one such comment. El Furibundo’s was another. Thanks, people. I owe you.

But a lot has happened in the six weeks I have been off blogging.

For starters, I have turned entrepreneur now, joining up with an old friend and ex-colleague. In a way, it is an exhilarating feeling--to be at last your own master, orchestrating the sales and marketing push for an exciting new product, exactly the way you want it done, unfettered by other peoples’ notion as to how it should be done. Suddenly you are in the thick of action once again with product presentations, demos, negotiations and closing deals. You are travelling again to familiar cities, activating old networks and leveraging old contacts.

It’s a nice feeling.

It is also scary; sometimes I have butterflies in my stomach. The fact that you don’t have a pay-check waiting for you at the end of the month, does not exactly do wonders to your sense of security. The “what-if?” dragon raises its head with alarming regularity and has to be put down with a firm hand. You start scrutinising the monthly bills a bit more carefully and unconsciously start charting out strategies for cutting down on unnecessary expenses.

I have also resumed serious reading, having just finished Le Carré’s “A Most Wanted Man” and the first two books of the much-acclaimed, much-lamented Swedish author, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. No mean achievement this, I say so myself, considering that each of the Millennium books is at least 600 pages long!

So forgive me if I don’t blog as often as I used to. But rest assured, I will definitely pop in once in a while to update you on my life as an entrepreneur.

Cheers!

The Pink Flamingo

2009-09-21T12:39:00.004+05:30

Ravan and I choke on our beers.

Have we heard right or has Sidekick gone mad? Does Malhotra saab really expect us to chaperone him to a strip-tease club? Malhotra saab -- the dignified, silver-haired patriarch of XYZ Corporation -- in front of whom, we sit on the edge of our seats to show respect lest he should take offence?

Ravan and I are in Dusseldorf for two weeks to participate in a trade-show and we are put up at the ritzy Ramada hotel. After a hard day’s work, we are back in the hotel and unwinding with a beer in the bar, when Sidekick, Malhotra’s Man Friday, successfully seeks us out and puts forward his boss’s request.

“It’s only 7.30 pm,” says Ravan. “I don’t think the night clubs open before 11 pm.”

Sidekick has it all worked out. We will go for a nice vegetarian dinner, he says. Afterwards, we will go clubbing.

Ravan and I look at each other, not much liking the whole idea. We have to be at work at 7.30 am the next day and can quite do without a late night out. But Malhotra saab is a VIP customer and it would be churlish to turn down his request. So we nod glumly at Sidekick and give our assent.

During dinner, Ravan explains the basics to both the guys. There will be a centre stage around which the tables are arranged in multiple tiers. The dancers will come one by one, do their routine and go back. Once we are seated, girls from the bar will come and try to sit beside us. Don’t encourage them. Their only aim is to make you buy champagne which would be exorbitantly priced. Tell them we are only having beer and they will go away. Then we can enjoy our evening in peace.

Malhotra Saab looks convinced. He nods sagely. Only Sidekick looks a bit disappointed.

But the plot runs off the rails at the Pink Flamingo, the club recommended to us by the concierge at the Ramada. The sight of so many scantily-clad women totally unhinges the normally sedate Malhotra saab. Ravan and I have hardly sipped our first beer when we see our customer with girls wrapped around him on both sides and grinning like an idiot. “What is your names, baby?” asks our Don Juan in his rustic, Punjabi accent. The girls giggle and ask for champagne.

Ravan tries to signal a warning. B-E-E-R, he mouths wordlessly, with not much hope.

“Kya pharak padta hai, yaar? Champagne order karo na!” says the Casanova, who has his hands full by now.

Frankly, I do not remember much about the rest of the night and I’m sure the same applies to Ravan as well. I have a faint recollection of dropping Malhotra saab and Sidekick off at their hotel and reaching the Ramada, well past 2 am.

What I do remember vividly is the attending the briefing session the next day at 7.30 am nursing the mother of all hangovers and not registering a word of what was being said.

Image Courtesy: www.iteamz.com

A Century of Posts: 2

2009-09-09T12:52:00.003+05:30

In Praise of the Stenographer

If you look back over the last 15 years or so, the stenographer as a species has totally vanished from the office scene. You do not see him anymore. The advent of the PC and the laptop, word-processing programmes with spell check features and the unblinking focus companies have brought to bear on headcount-related costs have all played their part in vanishing what was once the constant in any organisation chart..

The Biscuit tin Rider

One hot summer day in May, I find myself stranded in Mangalore without a ticket to Bombay. Lugging my suitcase, with sweat trickling down my spine, I visit the tiny offices of all the major bus operators for a seat on a bus leaving that night, only to be turned away every time. No seats are available. All buses are totally booked out...

Landing in Mangalore

The problem was that the mere prospect of landing in Mangalore airport in the ageing Boeing 737s of Indian Airlines filled me with such abject terror; I could not sleep for days prior to the flight...

Strong Medicine

It is one of those early morning departures and predictably enough it is going to be an Airbus A320 that will fly us to Bangalore. At 6.30 am, we are securely strapped in our seats and about to start taxiing for take-off when Mike surreptitiously palms something onto me.

It is a miniature bottle of whisky...

An Unforgettable Dinner

I indicated to BS that there could be a small problem: while I knew for a fact that Iyer liked beer, I was equally certain that he was a strict vegetarian. He was, after all, a Tamil Brahmin from traditional, conservative, orthodox Chennai and maybe he would have eggs at the most, but fish and meat were definitely a no-no...

Subbudu

The drinks menu is passed around and Subbudu first orders orange juice. Seeing the others order scotch and soda, he changes his mind and asks the waiter to bring Chivas Regal because “he has heard so much about it.” By the time the others have barely finished the first round, our man is onto his third drink and showing alarming signs of inebriation...

A Century of Posts: 1

2009-09-01T19:54:00.003+05:30

Once I publish a blog post, I rarely go back and read it again.

But now that “Stepping Sideways” has completed a century of posts, I felt it is as good an occasion as any, to go through the archives and provide a link to those posts which, on re-reading, still managed to raise a chuckle. Pretty much narcissistic, you may say and I shall not demur. But, what the hell! Here are the links to six old posts that made me smile. In the next post, I will provide links to six more.

Modesty is my middle name, by the way.

The Missing Passport
It is well past midnight and all inmates of our bachelors’ pad in Vile Parle are fast asleep. An alarm goes off, but is quickly smothered after the first ring itself. My friend Moni gets up reluctantly and tiptoes softly to the toilet. Silently he finishes his shave, showers, sprays an expensive deodorant all over his body, gets into a freshly-laundered pair of trousers and puts on a spotless, white shirt...

Unsaintly Thoughts
A letter has come from the Rajneesh Ashram, enquiring about a product that the company markets. I am asked to go and make a sales presentation...

The Mumbai Local
Travelling in overcrowded suburban trains of Bombay forces you to learn many skills. Reading a broadsheet newspaper such as The Times of India holding onto an overhead strap with one hand in a swaying train compartment where people are packed in like sardines, is one of them...

Joshua’s Mumbai
Rakesh, by the way, is quite normal, compared to some of my other friends who have populated these blog posts off and on. Granted, there was that brief period in early 1990s when he declared undying allegiance to the state of Israel and started calling himself Joshua...

In Praise of the Beard
I have been having a beard for over two decades now. Many are the people I have misled into thinking of me as an intelligent, erudite, caring, sensitive human being by the sole virtue of my beard. Likewise, many are the sticky situations I have got out of with Houdini-like adroitness, by simply stroking my beard and looking thoughtful...

Ravan and the Cable Guy
Ravan explodes from his chair, draws himself to his full height and unships a few choice epithets in Hindi and Marathi, outlining the cable owner’s doubtful paternity, his unsavoury relationship with his sister, and his abject inability to satisfy his wife in bed...

Image Courtesy: www.gamespot.com

The Bell Hotel

2009-08-25T23:03:00.002+05:30

When did Mr RS start working on the swimming pool? Was it after he made the container hotel rooms or before? Or, was it done at around the same time? I cannot recollect for sure.

But I do remember this interesting conversation I had had with him while the pool was being dug out. Sivakasi has no public swimming pools, he said. This one was going to be the first. It will give a chance for the townsfolk to learn swimming. It will be a standard size pool with changing rooms, lockers, and showers. Experienced male and female coaches will be available throughout the day and separate timings will be allotted for men, women, and children. The fee will be nominal. As for the hotel guests, they could use the pool at no extra charge, of course.

Amazingly enough, during my next visit to Bell hotel, I could see Mr RS had delivered on his promise. The small-built, soft-spoken genius showed me round the swimming pool complex and its immaculately maintained lawns and was visibly embarrassed when I profusely congratulated him on the successful execution of yet another project.

It did not take him long to realise the container park hotel concept, at best, was a stop-gap arrangement. By this time, he had also learned the ropes of hoteliering and realised the sustained demand for his compact hotel rooms, augured well for the future. So his next step was to totally demolish the container park, and build a brand-new brick-and-mortar hotel in its place.

Today’s Bell Hotel is an imposing structure, boasting of 40 well-furnished rooms, two restaurants, and a conference hall that can seat 100 people. A few weeks ago, after a fairly long gap, I visited Sivakasi and had lunch in one of the restaurants of the hotel and felt deeply nostalgic, reminiscing about its humble origins.

But Mr RS was nowhere to be found. But then, I was not surprised. The hotel brochure tells me that they are now a chain of hotels and Bell hotels can be found in the towns of Madurai, Tuticorin, and Alleppy as well. No doubt, Mr RS must be overseeing some fine detail in one of these properties or he must be scouring new towns in South India to set up yet another Bell Hotel.

P.S. This, incidentally, is the 100th post at Stepping Sideways, a small but significant landmark!

Sivakasi Revisited

2009-08-19T08:30:00.001+05:30

The Bell Hotel in Sivakasi, when it opened its doors to the public more than fifteen years ago, was not a hotel at all. It was just a restaurant. Set in the middle of a huge grove of fruit trees, it was a long rectangular dining hall kept cool by noisy air-conditioners, where the itinerant business traveller could find safe haven during those languorous hours from 1 pm to 3 pm, when the heat was its worst and the whole town hunkered down in an uneasy siesta. The menu was madly eclectic, mixing and matching the South Indian-Tandoori-Chinese cuisines with reckless abandon. But the food was decent and that was all that we cared.

When I visited the restaurant the second time, there were already changes in the air. Mr RS, the enterprising businessman who owned the restaurant, had purchased two 40-feet containers, mounted them on iron girders at a height of two feet from the ground, cut out windows on the sides and had converted them into hotel rooms with air-conditioning, TV, attached bathrooms and room service from the restaurant.

As innovations go, this one was simply marvellous and became a big hit with the small traders and businessmen who came to Sivakasi from all over the country and who, hitherto, had to make do with dingy lodges with smelly toilets near the bus stand.

Within a year or so, the number of “hotel rooms” multiplied–one part of the grove began to look like a well-maintained container park, with fresh water and sewage lines discreetly laid underneath the sturdy, metal trellis. I stayed in one of those rooms once; it was a refreshing experience to wake up to sound of birdsong and sit on the narrow veranda outside (it was actually a narrow platform running on all four sides of the room) and have my cup of morning tea.

But all this was just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg, if you will.

The visionary Mr RS had a few more aces up his sleeve.

Photo Courtesy: http:// fusions.files.wordpress.com

The Honeymoon Suite

2009-08-13T17:29:00.004+05:30

At ten in the night, Tirunelveli bus-stand is a beehive of activity.

Buses turn in from the main road in reckless abandon, scattering waiting passengers and stray dogs alike in all directions. The little shops that dot the perimeter of the holding bay are adorned with blinking, coloured lights as if in a fair ground. Tamil film music blares out loudly from unseen loudspeakers. The food stall owners hoarsely advertise their menu which runs the full gamut from “masala vadai” to “appam and chicken curry”. The smell of food is inviting and churns our stomachs.

But we have to find a hotel for the night before it gets too late.

Most of the hotels look decent and well-maintained, at least from the outside. Unfortunately, most of them are running almost full and can offer us only non-ac accommodation. Finally, my colleague and I end up at an establishment where he gets an air-conditioned single room and I get the suite.

“It’s the honeymoon suite, saar!” says the guy at the reception, grinning widely.

In my dirty, dishevelled state, I couldn’t care less even if it was the gallows suite. I quickly check-in, have a shower and meet my teetotaller colleague in the bar. Nothing like a bottle of chilled beer to raise one’s spirits. We have dinner and return to our rooms.

That is when I really notice the “honeymoon suite”. It is extravagantly furnished in shades of pink. There is a small drawing room area with sofas upholstered in pink satin. In the centre of the bedroom you have a large circular bed with a dark pink satin bedspread and matching dark pink pillows. The curtains are pink and so are the light fittings. On the walls, you have pink wallpaper with some flowery design. I sigh and get into my nightclothes thinking this is how the rooms in a French bordello may look like.

And finally when I lie down, I find myself staring at my own reflection on the ceiling.

There is a circular mirror, strategically placed on the ceiling, just above the bed.

Just before I fall asleep thinking of lovemaking couples and French bordellos, I notice the circular mirror is set in a pale pink, plastic frame.

God is in the details.

Photo Courtesy: The Hindu

Sivakasi

2009-08-04T12:59:00.003+05:30

Twenty years ago, when I first visited the industrial town of Sivakasi near Madurai, it was a smelly, fly-infested place known for fireworks, match boxes, and low-quality offset printing. The industries that dominate the town and give its folks their livelihood remain the same, but the town itself has undergone a subtle transformation now. True, it continues to be a hot, dusty place with mounds of garbage piled up on the roadsides, but now, at least, you have proper hotels to stay in and decent restaurants where you can have a meal without risking a massive stomach infection.

Reaching Sivakasi itself was an effort: you had to make an uncomfortable overnight train journey from Chennai by a metre gauge line to Madurai first, from where it was another two-and-a-half hours of bone-shattering ride along a national highway up to Virudhunagar, where you turned left and drove along a small, ill-maintained country road, all the way to Sivakasi. Air-conditioned taxis were unheard of those days, so invariably you got down from the taxi, caked in dust and with aches and pains all over your body.

I will never forget my first visit to Sivakasi.

The hotel itself looks well-maintained from the outside in the early morning light. But I step into a dark, unlit lobby that smell of decay and disrepair; a surly clerk pushes a thick register towards me and gestures that I fill in the details. The ritual completed, he presses a bell when an old man appears from the darkness and tries to take hold of my overnighter. The clerk hands over to the old man the key to the room, a cake of soap, a pillow cover, and a bed sheet. The old man trudges up the staircase and shows me to my room.

I look around the room and my spirits sink to my feet. It is a fairly large room but has not seen a broom or a mop for a long time. There is dust everywhere and while I cover my nose with the handkerchief and try to open the windows, the old man proceeds to put on the cover on the pillow and sheath the dirty and stained mattress with the none too clean bed sheet.

But it is the toilet that destroys me. I take one look at the “Indian” type commode, streaked liberally with shades of brown, yellow, and green and encrusted at the edges with dark matter of indistinguishable origin and I am out of there, screaming. But there are meetings to be held and appointments to be kept. I brush my teeth and take a shower with my eyes shut tight and am out of the place in less than half an hour.

The whole day I survive on a bottle of water (purchased from the station in Chennai), a packet of biscuits and several cups of sweet, milky tea and coffee offered by customers.

But I have chalked out a two-day programme in Sivakasi. What is to be done? Staying in that hell-hole of a hotel is definitely out of the question. A colleague, who has accompanied me on this trip, suggest we take a bus to the town of Tirunelveli, 140 kilometres away, where, he assures me, there are better hotels to spend the night.

And thus we board the evening bus to Tirunelveli, where another adventure awaits us.

Devappa's Story

2009-07-09T14:53:00.002+05:30

I often wonder about him.

When I first met him, he was one among the many boys who used to clean the tables in the busy Udupi restaurant we frequented as bachelors. Clad in khaki shorts and a matching shirt, he will pick up the dirty plates and dump them in a plastic tray and then would do a perfunctory swipe of the Formica tabletop with a rag dipped in soapy water. We noticed him because he was a friendly lad and was always smiling in spite of the long hours he worked.

In Udupi restaurants, as you might know, there is a well-entrenched hierarchy where the cleaning boys are at the bottom of the pecking order. Above the cleaning boys are the water boys—these are the lads who plonk down a steel tumbler of water in front of you the moment the cleaning guy has finished the swipe. Very soon, our friend, let’s call him Devappa, was promoted as a water boy, no doubt a just reward for his hard-working ways.

We were regular visitors to the restaurant and almost always used to troop in after 10.30 pm; on most weekdays, the restaurant was half-empty by that time, which gave us a chance to exchange friendly banter with the water boys and the waiters. That is how we learned that Devappa came from a small village near Kundapur in South Karnataka and that he was pursuing his studies by attending night classes in a school close to Santa Cruz railway station.

Almost a year after we first started noticing him, Devappa became a full-fledged waiter. He was immensely proud of his white and brown uniform and starched white cap. He continued to be his friendly and smiling self, even during weekend nights when the restaurant was packed with families with large women and screaming children and people standing behind seated customers, ready to pounce the moment a seat or a table was getting vacant.

A few months later we moved out of that suburb and stopped frequenting that particular restaurant. We were busy with our own lives—some changed jobs, some left Bombay for good, and some, like me, got married and moved to more distant but affordable suburbs—and gradually, Devappa became a dim and distant memory. Gradually, I forgot all about him.

Two years later, while seated in a swanky, Chinese restaurant in Andheri, who should come up to me and smile broadly but Devappa, but this time clad in a two-piece suit! He is the chief steward of the restaurant and converses with me in fluent English. I feel so happy and proud of him and my mind is so flooded with memories of my bachelor days that it takes a while to register that my former acquaintance is earnestly recommending me to try the shredded lamb in oyster sauce.

It has been almost twenty years since that meeting.

Where is Devappa now, I wonder. Given his hard work and dedication, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is the owner of a chain of restaurants in Mumbai.

Image Courtesy: www.istockphoto.com

A.K.Lohitadas - A Tribute

2009-06-30T20:40:00.003+05:30

A.K. Lohitadas, a highly respected scriptwriter and director of the Malayalam film industry, passed away last Sunday.

I do not know what it is about the Malayalam film industry that it has lost four of its finest directors within the last two decades at relatively young ages when they were still at the height of their creative powers. G. Aravindan and P. Padmarajan both died in 1991, aged 56 and 46, respectively. Bharathan, when he passed away in 1998, was 51. And now, Lohitadas at 54.

Lohitadas, or Lohi as he was popularly known, came into cinema from theatre as a scriptwriter. “Thaniavarthanam” was a critical and commercial success and Lohi won the Kerala State Award in 1987 for Best Screenplay. The director of that movie was Sibi Malayil; Lohi was to partner with him for the next decade or so to give Malayalam cinema some very memorable movies like Kireedom, Chenkol, Bharatam, Kamaladalam, and His Highness Abdullah.

In 1997, Lohi came out with his maiden directorial venture. Bhootakkannadi, a dark, brooding tale of one man’s descent into a personal hell of his own making, did not exactly set the box-office on fire but was acclaimed by film critics and movie aficionados alike. Many memorable movies followed –Kaarunyam, Kanmadam, Kastooriman, and Arayannagalude Veedu, to name a few.

What I like most about Lohi’s work is that he refused to bow down to the dictates of crass commercialism and spun simple stories of love and grief, sorrow and separation, hope and despair, that touched a chord somewhere in the average movie-goer. The protagonists were always people whom you could relate to and identify with; the very ordinariness of their lives acquired a rare poignancy at the hands of this talented film maker. No wonder that most of his movies did well at the box-office as well.

It is also interesting to analyse how women characters were portrayed in Lohi’s films. Lohi’s women were never mere embellishments to an otherwise male-dominated script like most Malayalam movies of today. Lohi’s women were complex creatures, hardened by adversity, defiant against injustice, and yet possessing an inner core that was both vulnerable and morally incorruptible. It is no coincidence that talented actresses like Manju Warrier (Kanmadam) and Meera Jasmine (Kastooriman) reserved some of their best performances for Lohi’s films.

Fate played an important role in the lives of the characters created by Lohi. In an interview given few years ago to writer and journalist Shobha Warrier, Lohi remarked: “...that is my attitude to fate. Life does not proceed the way we want it to. It has a course of its own and it will move only in that direction.” Did fate play a role in his end as well? Was it fate that made him ignore the doctor’s advice six months ago to go in for an immediate coronary by-pass surgery?

Lohi and his films will be missed.

A Barman in Galle

2009-06-22T15:33:00.004+05:30

It was not much of a bar. But then, it was not much of a hotel either.

We had arrived that afternoon in Galle, taken a narrow winding road that climbed up steeply and offered spectacular views of the Dutch fort and the sea to reach this old colonial mansion masquerading as a hotel, perched upon a desolate cliff-top. It was cloudy and overcast; a fine drizzle accompanied by sudden gusts of wind from the sea, added to the misery. The hotel seemed to bristle with menace, a feeling its forbidding exterior with its pitiless geometry did nothing to dispel. If we shivered, it was not only from the cold. The hotel somehow brought back memories of Wuthering Heights and the windswept, wild expanses of the Yorkshire moors.

An old lady and her manservant check us in. The room is huge with a high, vaulted ceiling and wooden floorboards that have not seen a coat of wax or polish for a long time. An old ceiling fan, the kind of which I had last seen as a small boy in the waiting rooms of Indian railway stations, starts rotating very slowly, creaking and groaning with the effort.

We feel depressed. It has been quite a long journey from Kandy through narrow, winding roads and we can feel the tiredness in our bones. It is an effort to unpack, but when we finally do, find that there are already somebody else’s clothes in the ancient chest of drawers.

The old lady is apologetic: Apparently, the clothes belong to a long-stay guest from Europe who has gone off somewhere for the weekend. Would we please leave the clothes undisturbed and she will give us another cabinet to keep our stuff? We nod dumbly.

An hour later, unpacking done, we get out of the room and walk along the corridor to reach a balcony that overlooks a verdant valley. It is almost dark now, but the rain has stopped and the wind has also subsided. But the atmosphere is heavy with humidity and very uncomfortable. Too early for dinner, I decide to pay a visit to the bar. The wife and the daughter decide to accompany me because they do not want to be left alone in the room.

The bar turns out to be a makeshift arrangement on the terrace of the hotel, with a temporary roof and netting all around to keep off the nocturnal insects. Sofas with lumpy upholstery are arranged haphazardly for the benefit of the patrons of whom we can find nary a trace. In the dim, dirge-inducing light of the incandescent lamps, we spot the barman, sitting and gazing at the sea in perfect solitude.

The barman turns out to be a young lad--a student earning some extra money by doubling up as a bartender--and a cricketer to boot. He seems happy to have our company and we spend an almost an hour talking to him. We discuss Sachin Tendulkar (but, of course!), the state of Sri Lankan cricket, and the cricketers Galle has contributed to the national team—players such as Romesh Kaluwitharana and Upul Chandana.

I remembered that surreal hotel in Galle and its solitary barman recently when I was watching the T20 World Cup finals between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

I am sure he would have been very unhappy with the final result.

Photo Courtesy: www.asiaexplorers.com

Mahatma's Travails: Part 2

2009-06-06T08:00:00.001+05:30

Mahatma has flown in from Chennai, the previous evening. He takes a taxi to Hotel H in Byculla, has an early dinner, and very soon turns in for the night. He sleeps soundly till around midnight when he is woken up by someone softly knocking at his door.

Cursing the intrusion and half-asleep, Mahatma opens the door to find a personable young man who asks him politely whether he would like some female company. Mahatma is speechless with horror and just stands there rooted to the spot, which the young man misconstrues as a genuine expression of interest.

The young man tries to build on his sales presentation, by elaborating further on the services on offer, the virtuosity of the practitioners, and the rates for different services etc., cheerfully oblivious to the fact that his prospective customer has pulled himself erect and started bristling in an alarming manner. Glowering dangerously but still struggling for words, Mahatma manages to utter just one sentence. “No,” he says. “Please go away!”

Our personable young man now, knows all about overcoming objections and closing the deal. He knows some customers act shy and have to be brought out of their shell. Some, he knows, just act disinterested, just to bring down the price. So, as a first step towards breaking the ice and building rapport, he looks furtively around and making sure no one is in the vicinity, drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and asks Mahatma: “Sir, aap service kar rahe hai, kya?” (Loosely translated and put in context: Sir, are you working as a salaried employee in a company?)

Mahatma is taken aback by this sudden change in direction the conversation has taken. He has had enough of this young man and his impudence. He is about to bang the door shut at the young man’s face when the young man, probably sensing an opportunity slipping away, plays what he feels is his trump card—empathy. Vital for building customer rapport.

"I understand you salaried-people’s problems, sir," says the young man in his broken English. "Company need bill for everything. Don’t worry sir, I arrange everything for you. I organise bill for specials meals sir. No need for pay from pocket."

That is when Mahatma finally managed to prise himself away from this engaging conversation, close the door shut and call the reception to keep his bill ready for an early-morning check-out.

The incident created quite a flutter in the office and poor Mantri was at the receiving end of a lot of flak for having booked Mahatma in an inappropriate hotel. An aggrieved Mantri came to me the next day and complained: “Nahin lene ka to, bolne ka. Baat khatam. Itna shor machane ki kya bat hai?” (If you don’t want the service, just say so and the matter is closed. Why make a song and dance about it?)

Mantri never got the point.

Mahatma's Travails: Part 1

2009-06-01T22:15:00.002+05:30

K. P. Mahatma was known for his temper tantrums. A well-built man with a blue-black complexion, K.P, when moved to anger, had the ability to contort his swarthy, Dravidian features into expressions of great ferocity that sent chills down the spine of many of his subordinates. When in a rage, K.P.’s eyebrows will move up and down in an extremely disconcerting manner and he will literally froth at the mouth, drenching the unfortunate victim in a shower of fine spittle. K.P. was our boss man for South and was based in Chennai. Even though all the junior managers sniggered behind his back at his various mannerisms, we were all a little, maybe more than a little, terrified of the man.

By contrast, P.K. Mantri was one of the most affable and laid-back people you could ever come across. Mantri walked the corridors of our Bombay office with a vaguely satisfied smile, his head up at an angle always, gently massaging his prominently protruding paunch. With his French beard and round-rimmed glasses, Mantri looked more like a college professor than a corporate lackey.

One day Mantri approaches me with an unusually grave face. KP is coming from Chennai for a meeting. All nearby hotels are full and the only place where he can get accommodation is at Hotel H, in Byculla.

“My God, Mantri,” I say, “you know that place is a dump.”

Mantri nods sadly. Hotel H those days was known for its “B” and “C” grade clientele from the Middle East and had acquired a very unsavoury reputation. Rumours even had it that the hotel had a secret entrance to smuggle in call girls without attracting the attention of the police.

“The rooms are ok. I have checked personally,” says Mantri. “And you know, the food is quite good.”

I caution Mantri about the possible repercussions and ask him to look for other alternatives. And as it so often happens in office life, I very soon forget all about our short conversation until the next Monday morning, when all hell breaks loose. KP is standing at the reception with his suitcase and he is ranting and raving. Eyebrows are going up and down like windshield wipers on high-speed and the man is generating enough foam to drown an armada.

We somehow manage to calm down Mahatma and try to piece together what had happened.

(To be continued...)

Photo Courtesy: www.cbgextra.com

The Blackberry Warriors

2009-05-24T19:17:00.004+05:30

I have bought myself a Blackberry recently.

It is a sleek, elegant model, quite unlike the earlier Blackberrys which were thick, square and rather boring. This one is slim, light and nicely contoured: the Katrina Kaif of Blackberrys, you could say!

Actually, it was peer pressure that drove me to this purchase. In the new company I have joined, all the directors sport one. Recently, on a week-long association with one of them, I was intimidated to find that he was constantly on his Blackberry, making and receiving calls, reading or composing e-mails, surfing the web and doing a host of other things that left me light-headed.

As all you techno-freaks out there know already, the biggest USP of the Blackberry is its “push” mail application. You can set up multiple mailboxes in your device for your official and personal mails and the e-mails will land in your Blackberry more or less simultaneously with their landing on your mail server. There is no waiting around—your net-enabled mobile doesn’t need to login periodically to check if you have received new messages. It is a wonderful feature, works very well, and can be an invaluable facility for a corporate user, as it frees him to a great extent from the tyranny of the laptop.

But I do have a quarrel to pick with the Blackberry warriors.

Some people call it “The Curse of the Red Flashing Light”. Every time a new e-mail arrives on your Blackberry, a red light starts to flash persistently and in so ominous a fashion, it’s impossible to ignore. Never mind most of the time the messages are mindless forwards from friends bored out of their wits, pathetic scams from exiled Nigerian monarchs who need your help to reclaim their inheritance, or Facebook alerts from distant acquaintances you would rather have nothing to do with, but very soon you find yourself constantly checking the device for that the red flashing light. In no time it starts controlling your life and it has become an obsession.

I have been having the device for over three weeks now and I know I am not obsessed with that flashing red light. Maybe I am not normal. Most of the Blackberry users I know stop a conversation in mid-sentence and reach for their devices the moment the red light starts flashing.

That brings me to another issue, which is the quality of replies that you compose on your Blackberry. Just like most people find an imperative urge to open and read a mail the moment it arrives in their device, they feel equally compelled to reply to that mail that very minute itself. Most of the time there is no reflection and analysis, no search for alternative solutions in case a problem has presented itself, no delay between thought and action. This often results in an impulsive response, not well thought out, leading, at least in my opinion, to sub-optimum results.

While researching for this post, I came across this nice article in The Telegraph, UK by their columnist Bryony Gordon. Please do read it. Meanwhile, you have to excuse me now. There is that red light flashing in my Blackberry...

Image Courtesy: htp://Observatori.ca

Greene and the Chennai Summer

2009-05-17T10:21:00.003+05:30

I know it is not fashionable to talk about Graham Greene these days when bibliophiles wax eloquent about Stieg Larsson and Haruki Murakami, to name just two. But with Chennai wilting under the pitiless heat of a particularly malevolent summer, I am transported back to the hot, tropical climate of Sierra Leone that Greene so effortlessly invoked with his characteristic sense of place in The Heart of the Matter. Replace Sierra Leone with Tamil Nadu, replace Freetown with Chennai, and you will get a fair indication of what we are going through right now.

My blog posts have also slowed down to a trickle now and I conveniently blame it on the weather. In our house the dining table is used not only for the ostensible purpose for which it is intended, but also doubles up as a study table for my daughter, an activities and hobby centre for the wife, a makeshift bar when I invite friends over, a repository for odds and ends which we do not know what to do with, and as a browsing station for the whole family. This is where I normally plonk my laptop to compose my blog posts. But these days, it is too sticky and uncomfortable an area to inhabit—we even take our meals sometimes in front of the TV in the drawing room, which has better climate control.

To come back to Greene.

I had read The Power and the Glory while in college. The book was recommended to me by my father and probably he had his own reasons for suggesting the book, mired as I was at that time in considerable angst and confusion regarding my future. To my surprise, I liked the book immensely and followed up by reading the only other novel of Greene my father had in his collection, which was The Quiet American.

Then followed a long hiatus when I read no Greene whatsoever. More than a decade later, when my wife got a Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) for her PhD programme, I suggested she do something on Greene. By a strange coincidence, her guide liked the idea and finally she ended up doing a comparative study on Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. The icing on the cake was JRF allowed her a handsome annual grant to buy books and we ended up having almost the complete works of Greene (and Waugh, even though I have not read him) which I devoured, a book at a time, during the course of the next few months.

My apologies for this pointless ramble.

I think the weather has something to do with it.

Image Courtesy: www.dailymail.co.uk

Casino Nights in Kathmandu

2009-04-30T11:05:00.002+05:30

I am at the roulette table and I am winning.

Not bad considering that I am entering a casino for the first time. Not bad considering that this is the first time I am seeing a real roulette wheel.

There are three of us: Henrik, Ranga and I, the three-member team that has been deputed to Kathmandu to check out the facilities and infrastructure of the company’s dealer in Nepal. We have arrived that evening by a flight from Delhi which offered stunning views of the Himalayan mountain peaks bathed in subtle shades of orange, pink and grey. It is an awe-inspiring sight and we are still talking about it on our way to the hotel.

We check into the Soaltee Oberoi (it is now the Soaltee Crowne Plaza), the most luxurious 5-star property in Kathmandu. We freshen up and meet in the lobby after half an hour and Henrik announces that we are going to eat Italian that night, at the Al Fresco restaurant by the poolside. We have a nice, cosy meal, washed down by some excellent Chianti which Henrik orders with much pomp and ceremony after scrutinising the wine list in excruciating detail.

After dinner, we decide to try out the complimentary coupons for “Casino Nepal” the hotel has given us during check in. The casino is in the same compound as the hotel and is hardly a minute’s walk from the restaurant.

I walk in with trepidation because whatever little I know of casinos is what I have gleaned from watching James Bond movies: Dashing young men in spotless white dress shirts with bow-ties and jackets; glamorous babes in elaborate gowns showing off their equally elaborate cleavages; vodka and dry martinis; urbane croupiers and stony-eyed bouncers.

But when we walk into the casino, most of the faces that we come across are Indian and the large gaming room seems straight out of a crowded Indian supermarket with pot-bellied, safari-suited businessmen and large women in saris jostling for space around the various gaming tables. The three of us head for the roulette as it seems to be simpler and more straightforward compared to the esoteric complexities of Blackjack or Baccarat.

Henrik and Ranga lose their “free money” almost instantly, but I start winning to our collective consternation. Initially I am playing safe, placing bets on odd and even numbers, red and black and so on, but egged on by my two colleagues on both sides, I start playing riskier, but somehow manage to win most of the time. By midnight, there is almost NPR 20,000 worth of chips lined up in front of me. Henrik advises me to quit after couple of rounds of losses, but when I finally encash the chips, there is still enough money to buy ourselves several rounds of the most expensive cognac at the hotel bar.

Image Courtesy: www.southborough.us

Subbudu

2009-04-21T12:05:00.001+05:30

Herman was the big boss of the Industrial Products (IP) division. A tall, dark man, sporting an eternal scowl, his presence could be forbidding, to say the least. I was not reporting to him; we were just colleagues sharing adjacent tables and that was all right. Herman treated a junior colleague like me with an air of faint but acceptable tolerance. Relations between us, one could say, were cordial.

So one day, when Herman announced that he was getting an assistant, I was curious. Would it be somebody like Herman, cold, humourless, and unapproachable or would it be somebody younger and more fun to be with?

Subbudu turned out to be neither. He was a short, round man in his thirties, eager to please and, as I was to realise later, full of his own importance that made him act in a grave and ponderous matter. We became friends and Subbudu told me that he did not smoke and was a vegetarian and a teetotaller. He had also elaborate plans to revamp the entire IP department and confided in me that Herman was on old geezer far behind his times.

I said nothing.

Shortly afterwards, IP department gets a visitor from England and Herman, Subbudu and Tim Robinson go to an exclusive five star restaurant for dinner. As I was not present, Herman told me the next day about that memorable evening.

The drinks menu is passed around and Subbudu first orders orange juice. Seeing the others order scotch and soda, he changes his mind and asks the waiter to bring Chivas Regal because “he has heard so much about it.” By the time the others have barely finished the first round, our man is onto his third drink and showing alarming signs of inebriation.

The food menu is circulated and Subbudu opts for vegetarian. Conversation happens in fits and starts because both Herman and Tim are keeping half a wary eye on our man who is periodically nodding his head and smiling vacantly into space.

The food arrives. Subbudu finds the “Pork Loin chops in Apple Cream” ordered by Tim to be much more visually appealing than the Indian vegetarian dish ordered by him. He makes a grab for Tim’s plate without so much as a by your leave. While a mortified Herman looks on helplessly, Subbudu starts attacking the pork chops ferociously and untidily, splattering the gravy liberally on his face and shirt front.

A normally reticent Herman all but sobbed on my shoulder the next day. “I tell you Rada, I wish the earth had opened up and swallowed me that minute,” Herman said. “I have never been so embarrassed in my life!”

Needless to add, Subbudu did not work for Herman long.

Image Courtesy: www.sptimes.com

Weeping Carrots

2009-04-07T16:23:00.003+05:30

A hot, sultry evening in 1997. It is the annual day of the pre-primary section of the school. The auditorium is packed with proud parents watching indulgently as their children parade their skills in singing, dancing, and story-telling. The pièce de résistance is a pantomime put up by the kids, in which they act out the part of various vegetables.

Each vegetable is supposed to come dancing to the stage, introduce itself, and extol its virtues; I am full of carbohydrates, I am good for the eyes, for protein you have to eat me, and so on. Finally, all the vegetables come together holding hands and dance in a circle, emphasising how all of them are equally important for proper nourishment and good health.

The pantomime begins and the four-year-olds suddenly find themselves the centre of attention. While some take to their new-found celebrity status like ducks to water, a few are standing rooted to their spots, paralyzed by fear. There are sprightly tomatoes and terrified cabbages. Confident aubergines and sulking pumpkins. Prancing okras and stricken shallots. Potatoes disoriented by the powerful stage lights and teary-eyed beans wilting in the heat.

Two carrots come on stage, a boy and a girl. The girl carrot, already a nervous wreck, sees her parents and grandparents seated in the front row, forgets her lines and promptly breaks into tears. “Appa...” she cries, holding out both hands and beseeching her father to rescue her from this terrible situation. Some of the other vegetables, already on stage, snigger wickedly, especially the yam and the snake gourd. The drumstick and the bitter gourd are also equally mean and the situation is rapidly spinning out of control.

It is left to the boy carrot to save the situation. Showing admirable panache for one so young, he comes up to the mike and putting up both hands on his hips, looks at his fellow-carrot and the audience in turn and announces with a regret-tinged smile: “Arey, yeh gaajar to ro rahi hai!”

The entire audience collapses in helpless laughter.

Yesterday. A hot sultry evening and we are sitting in the same auditorium waiting for the function to begin. It is the farewell function for the outgoing Class 10 students. The carrots and the beans and the other vegetables have all grown up to become self-confident, personable young men and women and it is such a pleasure to just look at them. Most of the batch has managed to stay in the same school and have grown together and the ties of friendship and camaraderie that bind them together seem even stronger than ever before.

I sigh and wonder how quickly time passes.

Picture Courtesy: www.growingyourownveg.com

A Voice Apart

2009-03-27T23:45:00.003+05:30

It was Gauri who wrote a funny post recently on the tactics adopted by network marketers and the elaborate lengths to which they go to ensnare poor, unsuspecting customers. Suddenly my mind went back couple of decades when a person called RTR used to frequent our little flat in suburban Mumbai.

RTR was Moni’s friend. The two used to play badminton together and often used to come to our place straight after practice. RTR was a fitness freak, exercised regularly, kept himself in fine shape, was a non-smoker, and did not touch alcohol. He had a certain glowing vitality to his persona, which Moni and I envied as we slouched in the sofa guzzling beer and watching TV, while RTR sipped water.

If RTR had an Achilles heel, it was his voice. If you were to meet him for the first time, you would have expected a baritone and resonant voice, consistent with his robust physical frame. You would have anticipated a voice of great timbre and depth, a voice which stated its case in clear and ringing tones, a voice that exuded authority and confidence.

The sad fact was that RTR spoke as if he had inhaled helium from a balloon—in a squeaky, faltering falsetto that was mildly funny when you first heard it and rather jarringly annoying when you continued to hear it over a period of time. It was a voice that trilled along weakly, squealing and giggling and setting your teeth on edge with its shrill and fluty overtones.

After a while, I lost touch with RTR when he emigrated to Australia; Moni himself went off to Dubai to better his fortune. Gradually over a period of 20 years, memories faded and I forgot all about him.

Cut to 2006. I am sitting in the lounge at Bangalore airport waiting for my flight to be called. It’s mid afternoon and there are few passengers in the lounge. I am almost dozing off when suddenly I am startled out of my skin by a distinctive, high-pitched squeak which I had last heard more than two decades ago. It has to be, I tell myself, this high-frequency bleat has to be, RTR’s!
And so it was. RTR was holding court a few tables away and I went up to him to say hello. A bit shop-soiled and curling at the edges, but it was RTR all right.

But you may well ask: what has this to do with Gauri’s post? Well, during our brief chat RTR told me he was presently one of the top salespersons (is it what they call them or is it buttonholers?) for Amway in India and being a member of their Platinum Club (?) he had been specially invited by the company to attend a rally in Mangalore.

Wisely enough, I did not give RTR my phone number in Chennai.

Image Courtesy: www.travelingsalesman.org

Strong Medicine

2009-03-20T00:15:00.001+05:30

On 14th February, 1990, an Indian Airlines (IA) Airbus A320 crashed on its final approach to Bangalore airport killing 92 out of the 146 people on board. The incident at that time created a furore, because Indian Airlines had inducted this new-generation aircraft into its fleet hardly three months before. Hyped in the business press as the first civilian airliner equipped with a fully computerised flight control mechanism--the so called fly-by-wire system--the aircraft was supposed to offer a safer, electronically-controlled flight. For weeks after the crash, debates raged whether the A320 was indeed a safe aircraft, whether the training provided to the IA pilots by the manufacturer was inadequate, and whether the aircraft needed air-conditioned hangars to protect its sophisticated electronics from malfunctioning in the hot and humid ground conditions of Indian airports.

My friend Mike James jets in from London, amidst all this brouhaha. We are supposed to work together in Bombay for couple of days and then go on to places like Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi from where Mike will take his return flight to London after a week.

On the eve of our departure to Bangalore, Mike is circumspect. “Which aircraft do you think we’ll be flying in, to Bangalore?” he asks me, a tad too casually.

“Must be one of the new Airbus A320s,” I say unthinkingly and almost immediately regret it, for I can see that Mike is worried, though he says nothing further.

It is one of those early morning departures and predictably enough it is going to be an Airbus A320 that will fly us to Bangalore. At 6.30 am, we are securely strapped in our seats and about to start taxiing for take-off when Mike surreptitiously palms something onto me.

It is a miniature bottle of whisky, the kind that you find on international flights. Obviously, Mike has done his homework and knows no alcohol is served on IA flights.

“No, thanks,” I refuse politely. “A bit too early in the day for me, Mike.”

“Good stress-buster,” says Mike good-naturedly. “I was planning to have just one before take-off; I suppose a second one will do no harm.”

Mike is in great spirits during the entire flight, if you will forgive my unintended play on words, and by the time we are descending into Bangalore, he is chirping like a bird. Suddenly a thought strikes me: “Mike, we have another four or five flights to take before we finish your tour. How are you going to handle those?”

Mike smiles broadly and glances at his feet and that is when I see the white plastic bag pushed into the area beneath the seat in front of him. He allows me a peek. It is full of miniature whisky bottles.

“The stewardess on the BA flight to Bombay was most understanding,” says Mike with a wink. “There must be at least twenty in the bag. Enough to last me for the whole trip.”

I am jolted out of my stupefaction by the heavy thud as the wheels of the aircraft touch down on the Bangalore tarmac.

Image Courtesy: http://clipartguide.com

Hotel Ships on the Rhine

2009-03-13T00:15:00.001+05:30

Like all great rivers of this world, the Rhine has an awesome majesty and a certain timeless quality to it that leaves an indelible impression when you first see it. The Rhine has always fascinated people and inspired artists and poets like no other river perhaps. Today, during its majestic 1320-kilometre journey through the heart of Western Europe, this river links people and cultures, unlike in the previous centuries when it chose to separate them.

Originating in the Swiss Alps, the Rhine becomes a major transport route by the time it reaches the Swiss industrial town of Basel. Flowing through the Alsace region of France, the river enters German territory, going past the cathedral cities of Speyer and Mainz, followed by the famous wine-growing regions and finally by the romantic Middle Rhine with its wonderful castles some of which have been converted to exclusive hotels now. After leaving the Slate Mountains, the river passes through such important German cities as Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Duisburg before it enters the Netherlands and joins the North Sea somewhere near Rotterdam.

Dusseldorf is a city known for its many trade fairs. Although the city has hundreds of hotels, ranging from luxury properties to relatively basic accommodation, availability of rooms can be a real problem during important trade-fairs. This is when hotel ships—ships which are normally used for Rhine cruises so popular with the tourists—are brought in to cope with the influx of business travellers.

Staying in such a hotel ship can be a very unique experience. The cabins are painfully small; while it can be cosy and romantic for a honeymooning couple, a twin-sharing arrangement with another office colleague can be testing within such cramped quarters. And if the cabins are small, the attached bathroom cum toilet can only be termed as tiny, something you squeezed yourself into, every morning.

But it was fun. The ships were always berthed close to the Altstadt, the nerve centre for the pulsating night-life of Dusseldorf and you were always close to all the nice bars and eating places. On those evenings when you did not want to go out, you could have a quiet beer at the ship’s spacious bar, have an early dinner, and go up to the top deck where you could spend hours, enjoying the cool evening breeze and watching the slow-moving river traffic.

And finally when you went down to your cabin and stretched yourself on the narrow but comfortable bed, the river gently rocked you to sleep.

Photo Courtesy: www.simplygroups.co.uk

An Unforgettable Dinner

2009-03-07T00:15:00.001+05:30

Companies tend to stereotype customers. Most times this is done deliberately for marketing purposes, the underlying belief being, if we know the context in which the customer is placed, we can service him better. The context here could be gender, profession, industry, religion, geography, and myriad other factors.

But often, stereotyping can be an unconscious process which could be based less on factual data and founded more on our own personal and cultural biases and prejudices. Leading exponents of management theory caution you to tread carefully around stereotypes and one of them, Stephen Macaulay, puts it very bluntly: “Be wary of stereotypes—they may be a useful template but they conceal as much as they reveal. At best, they are a starting point for further exploration; at worst, they are totally misleading.”

When I read that statement, I suddenly remembered a dinner I had in Germany with BS who was my boss at that time and a customer who shall, for the purposes of this blog, be called Mr. Iyer.

We were in Dusseldorf to attend a trade fair where the company had a huge presence and where Mr. Iyer had signed with us for a substantial order. This, combined with the fact that Iyer had been a loyal customer of ours for the past two decades, made BS feel obliged to offer him dinner. BS wanted to take him to the old part of the town, the Altstadt, which was known for its narrow, cobbled streets, old churches, trendy bars, high-class restaurants and of course, the famously special beer of Dusseldorf, the Altbier.

I indicated to BS that there could be a small problem: while I knew for a fact that Iyer liked beer, I was equally certain that he was a strict vegetarian. He was, after all, a Tamil Brahmin from traditional, conservative, orthodox Chennai and maybe he would have eggs at the most, but fish and meat were definitely a no-no. BS, who was Danish, was rather dismayed by this piece of information, but finally we decided to go ahead with the programme anyway. In a worst-case scenario, Iyer will have to be content with a salad and some bread.

At seven in the evening, we hit Altstadt, which is also (rightfully, I must say) known as the longest bar in the world. The atmosphere is electric. The narrow streets are already filling up with friendly revellers and we get pulled in by the tide. A few hours later, after imbibing vast quantities of Altbier from many way-side bars, we land up at a quaint bistro, off one of the main streets. It’s a warm, cosy place with bright lights, loud music, and young, smart waitresses hurrying about with trays laden with food that looks absolutely delicious.

This is the moment of truth. Seated at a corner table, BS turns around to address Mr. Iyer, who is good cheer personified, after all that beer. “So, Mr. Iyer, what would you like for the main course?”

“What I would like,” says Mr. Iyer with great satisfaction, “is a juicy rib-eye steak, medium-rare, with a side order of fries, please.”

BS glances at me briefly and suppresses a smile. And I, the self-confessed expert in customer stereotypes, watch in fascination as, during the course of the meal, the rib-eye steak is polished off with clinical precision.

Photo Courtesy: www.nycotto.com

Joergen's Famous Letter

2009-03-02T00:15:00.001+05:30

In a competitive marketplace where businesses have to scrap for a limited number of customers, customer satisfaction is perceived as a key differentiator and has become an important element of business strategy. Companies spend large sums of money in detailed analyses as to who are their customers, what are their needs, how adequately these needs are addressed by the company’s products and services and how can these customers be kept satisfied so that their loyalty can be assured.

While all this is very fine, some customers can never be satisfied. SPT, so shall I call him, for fear of libel suits and such like, was an example.

SP, as he was popularly known, was one of our VIP customers in Delhi. SP was a canny businessman and got into exports quite early. Business grew rapidly within a short span of time and with the expansion came the need for more products and services. Suppliers tripped over themselves to offer him every enticement in the book to make him purchase their products and SP played one against the other to get the best deals. Negotiations with SP were long-drawn-out affairs; finally when you managed to snatch the order from the jaws of your competitors, it was, at best, a pyrrhic victory, for there was virtually no profit in the deal—in fact, after provisioning for warranty and related expenses, you could consider yourself lucky if you didn’t lose money at the end of the day.

Negotiating for the best deal is, of course, every customer’s right and that was all right. But with SP, your troubles had only begun once you got the order from him. He bitterly complained and fought all the time about clauses in the Letter of Credit, equipment lead times, delay in installation, deficiency in training his operators, short-shipments, wrong shipments, warranty claims, product quality issues, you name it.

SP was what is politely referred in corporate circles as a “high-maintenance customer”. What they actually mean of course is that he is a pain in the rear.

On a Friday afternoon, Joergen gets a letter of complaint from SP. We have installed a machine at SP’s factory a few months earlier and the letter is a bitter tirade against the company pointing out how miserably we have failed in executing the order. The letter demands financial compensation and also broadly hints to legal recourse if the demands are not met forthwith.

Joergen, who has been personally overseeing the order execution considering the customer’s cantankerous reputation, is not amused. It is obvious the customer is resorting to wild exaggerations, half-truths, and even blatant falsehoods to take undue advantage of the company.

On Monday morning, Joergen calls his secretary and dictates a letter, the first para of which goes something like this:

“Dear SP,
Shortly after reading your letter which I received last Friday evening, I was carried out in a stretcher from the office frothing at the mouth and in convulsions. After having spent the weekend in an expensive psychiatric facility mostly under heavy sedation, I have recuperated enough to come to the office today to reply to the baseless allegations and impossible demands put forth in your letter...”

SP never complained thereafter.

Cartoon Courtesy: www.smalbusinessscope.com.au

Life after a Layoff

2009-02-25T00:15:00.003+05:30

My blog post “Acceptable Losses” elicited a record number of responses in the form of comments, phone calls, text messages and e-mails from both friends and strangers alike. I suppose the post touched a chord in most readers, because it talked about layoffs, a matter of much concern in these times of global economic slowdown.

Sanjay Dattatri was one of those strangers who wrote to me. He said:

“As part of my work, I talk to a lot of companies and people. Very soon I realized that there are a lot of layoffs happening in India, but mostly under the radar. Companies are not interested in exposing themselves to political pressure (like in the case of Jet Airways) and hence are finding excuses to fire people (Transfer them, drastically reduce salary, scrutinize their resumes for inconsistencies, look at their expense reports, dress code, anything at all that can be used to fire people on disciplinary grounds or make them voluntarily quit).

On the employee side, unlike you, most people are averse to letting on that they have been laid off, especially when some charge has been foisted on them. Indians are still not used to the concept of layoffs and there is a fair amount of social stigma associated with it.

Thus I found that people who got laid off had no support, neither societal, nor governmental (like employment benefits), or from corporates.

This prompted me to start a site with a built in forum where people can come to share their experiences, get/give career advice, find job openings and generally get support. This is a purely not-for-profit venture...”

Later, Sanjay came to see me at home. After successful stints in Bangalore both as an employee and as an independent entrepreneur, Sanjay is currently based in his home town Chennai, where he has founded a very interesting jobsite called www.jobsbyref.com, very different from the “monster”s and “naukri”s of this world. Please do check it out.

But the real purpose of this post is to request you to direct any colleague, friend, acquaintance or relative who has lost his job recently, to the http://laidoff.in site and also encourage them to participate in the forum (http://forum.laidoff.in). These are still early days for the site and the forum, but over time and with active participation, it could well grow into an important support resource for those who are fired, sacked, retrenched, laid off, down-sized or right-sized and need help.

Whatever is the term or euphemism used, people who lose their jobs suddenly, need all the help they can get. By directing them to Sanjay’s site, you can help their cause in a small but significant manner.

Cartoon Courtesy: www.lowcred.com

Command & Control Issues

2009-02-18T23:18:00.004+05:30

I was thinking of the happenings in Mangalore recently when a group of seemingly self-righteous men marched in and attacked a group of young women in a pub. The men were activists of the self-styled Sri Ram Sene and the attacks were ostensibly carried out to protect Indian culture and uphold the purity of Indian womanhood.

My grand uncle Keshavan, if family folklore is to be believed, was some kind of sexual athlete whose abiding pastime as a man, until he reached old age, was to bed women. He married couple of times, conducted a few well-publicised liaisons and had innumerable one-night stands in places as distant as Devikulam in the high- ranges of South Kerala to Chemancherry in the North of Kerala.

For a person who sought pleasure and perhaps a degree of solace in the arms of various women, grand uncle Keshavan reserved his more acerbic and caustic comments for the fair sex. While discussing women, he was extremely dismissive and one could always detect an undertone of barely-disguised contempt. In modern day parlance, he would have been doubtlessly nailed as a male chauvinist.

We, his grand nephews, used to analyse this apparent paradox: Here was a man who, if we were to believe the escapades related in hushed tones by the assorted aunts in the family gathered around the ancient grindstone on hot April evenings, went after anything that remotely resembled the female form. The same man also happened to be a copper-plated misogynist who made sneering and cynical remarks about members of the opposite sex that infuriated the said aunts considerably.

The adolescent grand nephews discussing the problem reached a facile, but perhaps erroneous, explanation. We surmised how could he have any respect for them, if obviously he had in his youth found out that women were such easy prey. If the aunts’ accounts were correct, he did not have to really try hard for his various conquests: women came to him like the proverbial moths attracted to the flame. No wonder the man had such a poor opinion about women.

Now we know better. Modern psychology asserts that misogyny, hatred, dislike or mistrust of women, stem from unresolved conflicts between man’s intense need for and dependence on women and their equally intense fear of that dependence. A misogynist feels that his masculinity depends on dominating women. Essentially insecure and racked by deep-rooted anxieties, he feels powerful by subjugating women and tries to control them by destroying their self-confidence. Any encounter with a woman is a battle to be won. He can never say, “OK. Have it your way,” with any modicum of grace to any woman.

Suddenly the paradox does not seem to be a paradox at all and I am able to see the incident in Mangalore in a new light. No, I am not suggesting that Mr. Muthalik and his followers are misogynists and that is why all this happened. Nor am I forgetting the fact that the incident had strong political underpinnings, as it gives fringe political groups such as the Sri Ram Sene an ideal plank to push themselves into the national limelight.

But if we go beyond all these obvious compulsions and explore deeper, I feel we find deep and abiding male anxieties at play, issues of command and control.

What do you think?

Photo Courtesy: www.daylife.com

The Monkey On Your Back

2009-02-13T16:01:00.001+05:30

When I had sent out a mail to all my friends and past colleagues on my departure from the company, one of the first replies I received was from Joergen, wishing me luck and gently enquiring whether I was planning to retire in Kerala. I smiled when I read that message; Joergen had always been fascinated by Kerala.

Joergen was my first expatriate boss and one of the best. A tall, handsome Dane with a balding pate, Joergen, when I first met him more than 25 years ago, must have been in his late thirties. An excellent manager, he had a highly-evolved sense of humour, which sometimes played itself out as dry wit or cutting sarcasm, depending on how you looked at it. While he could be extremely solicitous to the customers and utterly charming to the ladies, Joergen did not suffer fools easily and used to routinely destroy them with the sharp, rapier-like cuts of his delicately wicked sense of humour.

One day I walk into Joergen’s cabin with a problem which I thought was beyond my abilities to solve. I am a 26-year-old greenhorn, new to the complexities of sales management and am understandably nervous when I start blurting out my problem to him.

Joergen makes me sit and asks me to start all over again. He lights up a Marlboro (this was before the days of the “no smoking” offices) and listens to me attentively, interrupting me not even once. I finish my narration and wait expectantly for his reaction. But Joergen is silent. Leaning back in his chair, he is looking up at the ceiling and quietly blowing smoke rings. He seems to be in some kind of trance.

Impatient minutes tick by, as I sit and fidget in frustration.

“So what are you going to do about it, Rada?” asks Joergen, after a long time.

I don’t know. That is why I have come to him. I tell him so.

Joergen looks disappointed. He shakes his head sadly and tells me: “I do not want the monkey on your back.”

“Sorry?” I cannot comprehend what the man is talking about.

Joergen is kind but firm: “If you have a problem, chances are you are the best person with ideas how to solve it. So please think the problem through and come and discuss the possible solutions. I will help you choose and refine the right solution. But by trying to dump your problem on my lap, you are just transferring the monkey on your back to my back. Sorry, not interested.”

We together solved the problem in the next fifteen minutes.

Even today when young managers come to me for solutions to issues or problems they themselves have not thought through, I derive some mischievous satisfaction by asking them not to transfer their monkey to my back.

Thank you, Joergen!

Image Courtesy: www.kchristieh.com

Acceptable Losses

2009-02-06T09:19:00.003+05:30

I lost my job last Monday.

I go back to the office after a month’s medical leave and I am handed over the proverbial “pink slip” with an unsubtle urgency that is vastly amusing: Please hand over your laptop, if possible today itself, and oh yes, you don’t have to serve out your notice period: we are giving you a month’s salary instead. And please close the door on your way out, thank you very much.

So, I closed the door after me, very softly. Banging doors is just not me.

Even a year ago, such an unceremonious exit in India for a senior manager of a company, who has put in more than 30 years of service, would have been unthinkable, unless of course he had committed some financial impropriety or been charged with sexual harassment or something equally unsavoury. But right now, unfortunately, we are not living in normal times. Companies, their balance sheets all bleeding and under pressure by the shareholders to reduce costs and increase efficiency, are becoming increasingly jittery and unsure of what to do.

We know desperate people tend to make impetuous decisions; the same is true for desperate companies as well

By engineering my departure in so abrupt a manner, I could see the company had alienated a substantial number of staff, if the flood of distraught and disconsolate visits, phone calls, e-mails, and text messages I had received over the next two days were any indication. Similarly, by not allowing me enough time to say a proper good bye to my customers, all of whom will have to get to know of my departure through third-party sources, the company may ultimately end up garnering a lot of negative publicity it can ill-afford in these difficult times.

Finally after clearing my desk when I came out of my cabin, the entire floor stood up as one and quietly escorted me down the steps into the lobby, gravely shook my hands, and led me to the car. As I looked at the pinched and unhappy faces of my colleagues, some of who have worked with me for over two decades, I felt a deep sense of sadness welling up inside me. I was not feeling sad I was leaving the company; I was grieving the fact that I would not be working anymore with these wonderful people. It was as if by leaving, I was letting them down in some way; I was leaving them defenceless with none to stand up for them.

As I waved my final good-byes from the back of the car, no, I did not choke.

That would have been very unsubtle.

The First Anniversary

2009-01-28T21:01:00.003+05:30

This blog completes one year on 31st January. Like all one-year olds, this one is also unsteady on its legs, incoherent in its speech and someone has to check its backside at frequent intervals.

Initially, I used to wonder: who would be interested in what I write and why should they, anyway? So, during those early days, I was frantically searching for ways and means to increase the flow of traffic to my blog. I shamelessly e-mailed all those in my contact list, beseeching them to read the posts and leave comments and to the utter consternation of my wife, started writing down and distributing the blog id to casual acquaintances and even perfect strangers.

Nothing happened.

So after a while, I decided to studiously ignore the blog counter that stubbornly refused to turn over and concentrate on the content. Not that the content was great but I started writing about those topics or incidents from the past that made me smile, not really caring whether anyone was reading the stuff or whether it was all disappearing into some black hole in cyberspace.

And slowly, one by one, all of you started trickling in, mostly perfect strangers who happened on the blog by pure chance or idle curiosity; you came by, read some of the posts and decided to stick around. And if today I feel a strong bond of affection and fondness towards those strangers, some of whom are also awesome bloggers in their own right and much younger to me in age, don’t grudge me this feeling of warm kinship for, these are the people who encouraged me with their comments, referenced some of my posts to Desipundit and Blogbharti, put me on their blogroll and in the case of a crazy lady/brilliant blogger, made me part of a limerick about her favourite blogs!

I cannot even begin to thank you for all the love, affection and encouragement you have so selflessly showered on me. You have also ceased to be strangers but close allies who share a common passion, even though I have not met a single one of you in person, excluding my wife who also happens to be a blogger.

A special thanks to the grammar bully. Barring a few of the initial posts, he has been kind enough to read all my posts prior to posting and edit them with a sharp pencil, while careful not to impose his own style on my posts. His edits, I would like to hope, have made the posts crisper, more readable and definitely an improvement on my own original version.

So thank you once again, guys and gals! You have made my past year such a pleasure.

Image Courtesy: bookburger.typepad.com

One Night in the ICU

2009-01-21T00:15:00.001+05:30

I woke up to the sound of someone screaming.

In my heavily-sedated state, for quite some time, the screaming was just so much background noise and I just lay there, passively listening to it. Couple of hours later, when the effect of the sedatives had begun to wear off, I glanced around and could zero in on the source of the bellowing. It was from the bed diagonally opposite to mine, where lay a strapping young man, surrounded by the paraphernalia of monitoring equipment.

He was not just screaming. He was also cursing in general, with lots of wild ranting, partly directed at the nursing staff, and partly at himself. He seemed to be in some sort of delirium, not quite aware of what he was saying or the inconvenience he was causing to the other patients.

I pieced together his story partly from what one of the nurses in the ICU told me that night and partly by using the internet during my convalescence to browse through the fortnight-old newspaper reports that carried his story.

Sreejith, 29 years old, was a CPI-M loyalist and was working as the secretary of a local cooperative society. On 30th December, while travelling on his motor bike, Sreejith was waylaid by suspected RSS-BJP activists and attacked mercilessly. He suffered stab wounds and serious injuries to his head, legs, and hands.

Sreejith’s marriage had been fixed and was to take place on the 28th of January.

When I saw Sreejith that night in the hospital, he had already been in the ICU for over a week. The doctors had already amputated one of his legs and the concussion in the brain made him confused and disoriented. His pulse was unsteady and his BP had plummeted to alarmingly low levels. He was in a critical state.

Even after I left the hospital, I kept track of Sreejith’s condition and felt vaguely relieved few days later when I came to know that he had come out of the crisis and would survive.

For the past decade or so, the northern districts of Kerala, especially Kannur, have seen increasing incidents of violence between the cadres of the CPI-M and the BJP/RSS. Hundreds, mostly misguided young men who know no better, have been killed, maimed for life, or suffered grievous injury in this bitter struggle for supremacy between the two political parties. Mostly, it has been the lowly party worker who has suffered and, in some cases, paid with his life, while his political masters, content to play the puppet-master from a safe distance, have got away scot free.

In the Hospital

2009-01-15T00:15:00.002+05:30

The first time I went under the knife was more than twenty years ago, for a minor surgery. The second time was ten days ago, for a fairly detailed procedure which took about two hours to complete.

The first time, they gave me General Anaesthesia (GA) which was nice. One moment I was nicely sedated and looking up at all those green-masked faces above me and the next moment, I was out like a light. Pure binary. From 1 to 0 with no gradation in between.

After what seemed couple of minutes—when it was actually close to an hour—they slapped me not-so gently on the cheeks and said it was over and wheeled me out. Fortunately, while coming out of anaesthesia, apart from feeling a bit groggy and disoriented, I did not suffer any of its ill effects such as nausea and vomiting. Overall, you can say, it was not so disagreeable.

This time they gave me spinal anaesthesia. This is when they inject the anaesthetic near the spinal cord and onto the nerves that connect to the spinal cord to block pain from an entire region of the body, such as the abdomen, hips or legs. No, it’s not really painful, but the funny thing is, when the surgery is going on, you are aware in a detached sort of way of what is going on, even though there is no sensation and you can’t feel a thing. I could infer that momentous things were happening outside my line of vision; could hear periodic sucking and gurgling noises and muted conversation, but it was as though I had become a sort of dispassionate observer, well, listener, and what was going on had nothing to do with me.

Of course, the detachment and dispassion goes out of the window pretty rapidly once the effect of the anaesthetic wears off within a few hours after the surgery and your back-to-whole body starts protesting rather unsubtly at the trauma it has been subjected to. That is when you become aware of your entire body and also of your pain and they start fusing together and reach the point when you are unable to distinguish between the two. You are your body and you are your pain, and the two are not disparate but one.

I realise now that pure physical pain has no distracting elements. The nearest I can compare it to is to a smokeless blue flame.

So here I am, slowly getting back to normal. Learning, or rather re-learning, how to get out of bed (wince!), how to take baby-steps to the toilet, and how to slowly position myself in front of my laptop and tap out the words you are reading just now.

I feel very humble.

A Wedding in Jaipur

2009-01-09T00:15:00.001+05:30

These days if you have to travel by train from Mumbai to Jaipur, you have convenient direct trains connecting the two cities. For example, if you board the Jaipur Superfast Express from Mumbai’s Bandra terminus at 3.45 pm, you are in Jaipur the next day by 10.40 am.

Such was not the case 25 years ago, when my friend Tata Kumar got married.

During those days, to reach Jaipur from Bombay, you had to travel in one of the main line trains plying the Delhi route up to Sawai Madhopur, where you got down and changed over to another train to Jaipur.

Tata Kumar, no stranger to the regular readers of this blog, is from Kerala and his wife-to-be, also his colleague, is from Rajasthan. The course of true love, steadfastly adhering to a familiar script, has not run smoothly in this case also--the girl’s family has vehemently opposed the match. After many episodes fraught with emotion and drama, during the course of which our hero has unwaveringly withstood with admirable dignity all threats and inducements to break off the relationship, finally good sense has prevailed and the girl’s family has relented and agreed to the marriage, which is to be held in Jaipur and as per Rajasthani traditions.

Thus we find ourselves on a cold morning in Sawai Madhopur railway station, boarding the first class compartment of a metre gauge train which will take us to Jaipur in seven hours. What we did not know at that time, of course, was that the bride’s uncle was a high-ranking official with the Western Railway and instructions had been wired beforehand to the local railway authorities to “take care” of the baaraat.

The “baaraat” is a motley crew consisting of a few members of Tata Kumar’s family, a few of his friends, couple of colleagues, and my uncle MK and his family.

It was to be an unforgettable journey. The entire first class compartment, washed clean, dusted, and beautifully bedecked with flowers, had been exclusively reserved for us. As the train pulled out of Sawai Madhopur, we were handed over toiletries and fresh towels to spruce ourselves up after the grimy, overnight journey from Bombay. By the time we were back in our seats, a refreshing cup of steaming tea awaited us, followed by a fruit platter and an elaborate breakfast served by attendants who were intent on fulfilling their guests’ slightest whim and fancy. It was as if we had moved backward in time and were in the India of the British Raj.

Finally, we arrive in Jaipur to be welcomed, to our acute embarrassment, with rose garlands and much fanfare.

And that night, the members of the baaraat, most of whom are equipped with two left feet when it comes to shaking a leg, bravely try dancing on the streets of Jaipur, in front of the decorated, open-decked car in which Tata Kumar sits in his sherwani and turban, a picture of silent and heroic stoicism.

Picture Courtesy: www.planetware.com

Landing in Mangalore

2009-01-02T00:15:00.002+05:30

In some of my recent blog posts, I have written about the difficulty of and the time taken to travel from Bombay to Mangalore during the days before the opening of the Konkan Railway. You could travel by train or by bus, but both were tedious and time-consuming. There was a third alternative of course, and that was to take a flight. The flight time was less than an hour and one could travel in relative comfort and style. What then was the problem?

The problem was that the mere prospect of landing in Mangalore airport in the ageing Boeing 737s of Indian Airlines filled me with such abject terror; I could not sleep for days prior to the flight.

Now, before the corners of your mouth curl down in barely-disguised contempt and you start rummaging in your vocabulary for the perfect adjective for such weak-kneed quavering, I beseech you to close your eyes and visualise this:

Imagine a hillock, the top of which has been flattened to build a short—and it is really short at 5200 feet—runway. Imagine also that at both extremities of the runway, the edges of the hill drop away precipitously into a blue haze. And, if you have not already switched off mentally by now, imagine that the runway is not level, but slopes down from east to west, almost by 30 feet.

All these factors combine to ensure that landing in Mangalore airport, especially if you are occupying a window seat, is not an experience for the weak-hearted. The pilot has to touch down precisely at one extremity of the runway, apply the brakes immediately, and bring the aircraft to a complete stop at the other end. Any small error would mean either a crash during the final approach or the aircraft overshooting the runway and plunging into the arecanut trees 300 feet below.

On one such flight, Heinz Lehmann is my co-passenger, to whom I solicitously offer the window-seat. As we start our descent into Mangalore, the aircraft is buffeted by heavy turbulence. It is a heaving, tumultuous descent and we go down, down, down. Heinz is looking out of the window anticipating level ground to rise up and meet us and all he can see is hills and valleys all around. His is the aspect of a man, whose heart seems to be in a hurry to convene with his tonsils and probably go further on. I can see his knuckles tightening on the armrests and for a moment when he turns around to look at me, there is sheer panic in his eyes.

Suddenly at the very last moment when you see the runway, you are already on it and the brakes come on. The whole aircraft seems to shudder and scream at the effort. As we turn around and taxi back to the terminal, Heinz looks at me and smiles wanly.

I can see his face is bathed in perspiration.

Masala Dosa, Mexican Style!

2008-12-26T00:15:00.001+05:30

When it came to spicy food, my friend Peter was more Indian than many Indians themselves.

Peter was German by birth. While still in his early 20s, he moved to Mexico, fell in love with a lovely Mexican girl, married her and stayed on there for close to two decades. When I first met him, he had already moved to the US and acquired an American accent. But that was about all: the drooping moustache, the colourful shirts, the easy charm, the laid-back approach to life and the passionate fondness for spicy food proclaimed him to be a true-blue Mexicano at heart.

Whenever Peter visited India on work, I used to travel with him to all the major metros including Hyderabad. After working-hours, it was the unwritten agreement that we go out for dinner together and I introduce Peter to the local cuisine, the spicier the better. Peter was unfazed at whatever I threw at him, whether it was a piping hot Rasam in Chennai, fiery Kozhi Varutha Curry in Mysore, or Chicken Kolhapuri in Mumbai which would have easily cauterized the taste buds of a lesser mortal. Peter enjoyed every meal and held forth at length on how similar, yet different, were the cuisines of India and Mexico; he had this strange thesis that Indian spices affected the inside of the mouth whereas the Mexican chilli peppers gave you a burning sensation around the lips.

Once we are in Bangalore and Peter expresses a wish to have a typical South Indian breakfast. We have been on the road for almost a week and I have been getting rather tired of the “orange juice-toast-fried eggs” routine. Happily acceding to his request, I take him the next day morning to a very popular South Indian restaurant.

It is seven-thirty in the morning and not very crowded. We start with idlis which I tutor him how to have, with chutney, sambar and other accompaniments. Peter takes to idlis with gusto, breaking off large pieces and dipping them alternatively in chutney or sambar and plopping them into his mouth with obvious relish. Four plates of idlis go down the hatch pretty quickly when I, still on my first plate, order for Masala Dosas.

The Masala Dosas when they come are a treat to the senses, golden-brown, crisply folded, and exuding a heavenly aroma that brings tears to my eyes. Peter takes his first mouthful, closes his eyes in intense concentration, opens them and beckons the waiter. He dismisses my wordless query with a gentle, dismissive wave and asks the waiter for a plate of cut green-chillies.

As I watch in consternation, Peter opens the flap of the Masala Dosa and empties the entire bowl of finely chopped green chillies into the filling, replaces the flap and calmly resumes eating.

“It tastes even better now,” he says laconically.

Photo Courtesy: www.gourmetindia.com

Requiem for a friend

2008-12-19T00:45:00.001+05:30

In the normal case, he would have left the office shortly after 5 pm. But just before closing time, a machine breakdown had been reported and he was assigned the call. The problem was a knotty one and took a long time to fix. By the time he got the service report signed, washed, and changed from his work clothes to normal office attire, it was past 11 pm.

It took a while to wave down a taxi. And finally a long wait at Bandra station for the Harbour Line local that will take him to his wife and two kids and his home in Mazgaon.

There were only a handful of commuters in the first-class compartment at that late hour and by the time the train left Wadala station, he found that he was all alone. Not that he was afraid. He was a Mazgaon boy, born and brought up in Bombay and knew the area well. As the train rattled through the night, past the dilapidated industrial shantytown of Sewri and the long-abandoned warehouses of Cotton Green, he fell into an uneasy, fitful slumber.

They came for him at Reay Road.

One look at the three youths that towered over him in a half circle and he knew he was in trouble. Half-crazed with drugs and armed with switchblades, he guessed them to be members of one of the many gangs that operated in the eastern dockland area. He knew better than put up a fight and willingly parted with his wallet, watch and his gold chain.

They wanted his ring as well but try as he might, he could not get it off his finger, which for the stoned youth seemed like deliberate delaying tactics. So they pulled him up roughly to his feet, stabbed him once and jumped out of the train which was slowing down for its stop at Dockyard Road station.

Bleeding profusely but still conscious, he staggered out of the train and managed to drag himself to the stationmaster’s room. Still thinking lucidly, he described what had happened and gave the stationmaster his name, address, and office phone number. By the time the stationmaster with the help of a few good Samaritans got him to a hospital, he had lost much blood and slipped into a coma.

He died two days later.

It took us weeks to recover from the death of a colleague who was liked as much for his easy charm as for his quaint, Goan-accented English. What we found hard to reconcile ourselves to, was the irrationality of it all; how a number of seemingly insignificant factors conspired to come together on that particular night to bring him in front of an assassin’s knife.

Photo Courtesy: www.protectmystaff.co.uk

The Biscuit tin Rider

2008-12-13T00:45:00.001+05:30

During the summer vacation months of April and May, the buses which plied the route from Bombay to Mangalore ran full. Without booking at least a month in advance, it was impossible to get a seat on any of them.

One hot summer day in May, I find myself stranded in Mangalore without a ticket to Bombay. Lugging my suitcase, with sweat trickling down my spine, I visit the tiny offices of all the major bus operators for a seat on a bus leaving that night, only to be turned away every time. No seats are available. All buses are totally booked out.

Finally, the booking clerk in one of the offices offers me a biscuit tin.

“Sorry?” I don’t understand what the man is talking about.

The booking clerk patiently explains to me since the bus is completely full, he cannot offer me a seat of course, but he can place a tall biscuit tin in the aisle, provided I was willing to undertake the 24 hours travel sitting on top of that biscuit tin. Normal charges would apply, he adds for good measure.

Such was my desperation that I agreed and forked out the money.

Only when I boarded the bus did I realise that I was not the only “biscuit tin rider” on the bus. The intrepid bus operator had ensnared three other unfortunate souls besides me and there was not one, but four biscuit tins in the aisle, placed at strategic intervals.

Although years have passed, even today I can think of that journey only as a metaphor for sheer physical agony. By the time the bus stopped in a roadside restaurant in Kundapur for a short break a few hours later, my back was on fire. Somewhere along that long night, I guess I became inured to the pain but the pangs of regret and jealousy I had felt seeing the other passengers leaned back in their seats in quiet slumber, were enough to keep me awake the whole night.

Talk about the kindness of strangers, relief came the next day morning when a passenger offered to exchange his seat with me for the biscuit tin for an hour. I was touched by this gesture and told him I couldn’t possibly accept his generous offer. Fortunately he insisted and very soon my protestations sounded too feeble even to myself.

Ah! The sheer pleasure of sinking into a proper seat and allowing your inflamed back some much-needed succour!

Believe me, it is in moments such as these one starts contemplating the possibility of God and such other weighty philosophical issues.

Photo Courtesy: www.columbuspolarity.com

Video Nights in Belgaum

2008-12-07T00:15:00.001+05:30

The other attraction in taking a “luxury coach” from Bombay to Mangalore was that most of these buses had a video player and colour television and showed at least three movies during the journey. This was during the early ’80s, when most middle-class Indian households had not even a colour TV to boast of, let alone a video player. So there was something incredibly satisfying and romantic at the prospect of leaning back in your seat and watching a movie as the bus negotiated the dangerous hairpin curves of Bor Ghat or as it sped swiftly through the deepening night along the Konkan coast.

The videotapes were invariably pirated camera prints of the latest Hindi film releases. Since the whole process of making a camera print involves someone sitting with a clandestine video camera in a projection room, most likely with the connivance of the projectionist, or even in some undetected corner of the movie hall, and videotaping a movie when it is actually being screened in a theatre, one could hear applause and catcalls in the background and see the back of some of the viewers’ heads as they got up from their seats and made their way across the aisle for a smoke or a toilet break.

The prints were grainy and the colours were awful. The soundtrack, often stepped up for maximum volume for the benefit of the viewers at the back of the bus, screeched painfully and reverberated within the confines of the bus, making sleep nearly impossible.

The passengers took these minor inconveniences in their stride and grumbled good-naturedly and without malice and sat stoically through the movies.

Not that there was no respite, of course. The movie timings were more or less fixed and rest of the time you could sleep or daydream or look out of the window. The first movie started once the bus had left the choked suburbs of Sion and Chembur behind and got onto the Eastern Express Highway to Pune and beyond. The second movie was put on around 3 pm which got over nicely in time for Belgaum and Hotel Ramdev. The third and final movie, which I seldom got around to watching for obvious reasons, was screened around 9 pm and finished close to midnight.

Sometimes you were lucky enough to catch a really good movie from an original print instead of a pirated one. One such movie which I saw on such a bus journey was Mere Apne, which also marked the directorial debut of a man called Gulzar.

Photo Courtesy: bp1.blogger.com

A Bus to Mangalore

2008-12-02T10:50:00.001+05:30

Not exactly the right time for a light-hearted post, but God knows, all of us deserve a break from the sustained grief and melancholy of the past few days. Forgive me, if you find the levity of this post inappropriate.

There was a time when I used to travel quite frequently between Bombay and Mangalore. This was before the Konkan Railway had opened, when trains from western India had to make their way down south close to Madras, go transverse, and then loop back up along the Kerala coastline, to reach Mangalore. It was a journey that took close to 48 hours and was guaranteed to test your patience and physical endurance.

A quicker alternative was to take one of the so-called “luxury coaches” from Bombay to Mangalore. It was less comfortable than the train, confined as you were to your cramped seat for a whole day and night, but had the advantage that it cut the journey time by almost half.

There were many operators plying this commercially-lucrative route and, I suspect, they continue to flourish even today. Most services from Bombay were either early in the evening or late at night. But I preferred the morning buses for a particular reason and it was called Hotel Ramdev.

The morning buses reached the half-way point of Belgaum around seven in the evening and halted at that excellent hotel for a whole hour. Now Ramdev, catering as they did to the weary traveller, had a well-stocked bar; the quality of food served was also quite good. So the more experienced and enterprising travellers, knowing that time-management was of utmost essence here, jumped out of the bus even before it entered the parking lot, quickly freshened themselves up and headed straight to the bar to tip back a couple. Once blood circulation returned to the tired limbs and aching backs, they tipped back a couple more and trooped to the restaurant to feast on the food they had pre-ordered at the bar itself.

When the bus pulled out of the parking lot, these gentlemen came out of the restaurant a bit unsteady on the legs, but none the worse for wear, and clambered onto the moving vehicle with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts.

Never once did they miss the bus.

Photo Courtesy: http://travelbyvolvo.blogspot.com

In Mourning

2008-11-28T12:53:00.001+05:30

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

-W.B. Yeats

Turned On by Sardars

2008-11-23T00:15:00.002+05:30

A recent post by Santosh about a Sardarji’s valiant quest for Nestle yoghurt in Trivandrum transported me back to the Trivandrum of the ’70s where I grew up as a teenager and where my nephew D caused considerable embarrassment to his parents with his infatuation with Sardars.

Before you start doubting the sexual orientation of D, let me hasten to tell you he was hardly three years old at that time.

We lived close to the military camp and Sardars were a common sight. In the evenings, little D would watch with admiration when young Sikh military officers with the wives riding pillion, with one kid standing up in front and the other wedged between the parents, zoomed past in their scooters towards the city. “Sardarji!” he will yell gleefully and the look on his face at that time would be one of sheer beatitude.

Very soon young D learned role play. He will take a thin handloom towel (thorthu in Malayalam) and ask his mother to wrap it around his head. Since it was a small child’s face, the thorthu had to go round several times before the trailing edge could be tucked in, to D’s satisfaction. The imaginary beard in place, D would then seek out his father’s helmet (my brother rode a two wheeler those days) and place it on head. The helmet would come down to his forehead and almost cover his eyes and it was also quite heavy. D would then walk slowly and rather precariously towards his tricycle.

The tricycle, meanwhile, has been miraculously transformed into a scooter and our young hero could be seen for the next five minutes laboriously working the kick-starter. This again was an elaborate ritual where he muttered dark words of frustration, tilted the tri-cycle to the side a few times to flood the carburettor, and looked at his imaginary watch in dismay. Finally with a great roar, the scooter started and D climbed on it with much satisfaction and rode off at high speed, his small hands furiously mimicking the clutch and accelerator controls, while the entire family looked on in amused indulgence.

Then happens the incident at the supermarket.

My brother and sister-in-law are shopping for groceries with D in tow. He is his usual placid self until a Sardar walks into the supermarket and D loses it completely.

“Sardarji!” yells D and frees himself from his mother’s grasp. He runs to the Sardar and embraces him from behind and bites his bum for good measure, before the startled Sardar can even start to realise what is happening.

Frankly this final part I find hard to believe considering the difference in height between the Sardar and the three-year-old. It is quite possible my sister-in-law embellished the incident somewhat to enhance its recountability.

What the hell! It is still quite a good story and the family in its usual kind and considerate manner never fails to remind D of this incident at least once a year.

D’s response:-

The shopping story is true, though I don't recall biting the man. Another highlight was coming to Delhi for a wedding when I was around three and a half. Compared to Kerala, it was turban heaven, every conceivable colour you could think of.

Even last month, when I was up in Mohali covering a game, we were talking in the ABC commentary box about the colourful turbans and the effort it must take to tie one every morning. Not a task for those who wake up, jump in the shower and wolf down some breakfast before rushing to the stadium!

I don't think I've tried a turban since those long-ago days, but I do now live with a Sikh. After that kind of childhood and all those Sikh-and-ice cube jokes to rile a friend when I was in college, I guess it was almost inevitable that I'd end up with a Sardarni.

Nice description of me trying to start my bike. It was a pretty lengthy procedure and I'm often reminded of it when I watch my nephew repairing his bike

Image Courtesy: www.sikhlink.net

Adventures in Copywriting: 2

2008-11-18T00:15:00.003+05:30

One day Prasad comes with an urgent but vague brief from his advertising agency: The customer is a small-scale manufacturer of lighting fixtures. The visual has already been chosen and is a picture of a sunrise with a few palm fronds in the foreground and in silhouette. Prepare a suitable headline and present it tomorrow. There will not be any body copy. Pictures of sample fixtures in small square boxes with brief descriptions will be placed in a row underneath the main picture.

We hit our heads against the wall. How does one connect sunrise, palm fronds, and lighting fixtures? What is the logic?

“Maybe the picture was taken by the owner’s daughter,” says Prasad matter-of-factly. “Let’s get on with it.”

A brainstorming session follows with several bottles of beer consumed in the process, at the end of which, we are nowhere near a solution. Ideas are discussed and discarded; improbable headlines are proposed, scribbled on paper, only to be clumped into balls and thrown across the room. After hours of this futile exercise I say in resignation: “Let there be light!”

Next day Prasad presents his list of 10 alternatives, all more pathetic than the other, to the agency.

“Let there be light!” exclaims the agency head. “This is brilliant! I’m sure our customer would love this headline!” And so he did, because the ad finally saw the light of the day with that headline!

But the campaign which gave our perverted minds the most creative satisfaction was for a line of women’s innerwear called “Love”.

“Cover your intimate secrets in love,” I propose grandly.

“That is disgusting,” says Prasad. “Most women will get turned off by a line like that.”

“Underneath, she is full of love,” suggests Moni, who has dropped in during our brainstorming session.

Prasad looks at both of us with something bordering on pity and says nothing.

“Love yourself in the right places,” I say. Moni looks at me and both of us start howling with laughter. One crazy line after the other follows, each more preposterous than the previous one. Very soon other room-mates join in and we have total pandemonium.

Prasad, who takes his work seriously, is not amused at all and beseeches us to get serious.

Finally, when the advertisement appeared in the newspapers, the headline was pure kitsch.

“She is in love every day of the week.”

To this day, I do not remember which one of us contributed that line.

Photo Courtesy: www.searchenginegenie.com

Adventures in Copywriting: 1

2008-11-12T00:15:00.001+05:30

When I look at a print advertisement, the first thing I look at is the copy. Is it short, succinct, and well-written? Does it communicate to the reader? Does it bring out the salient functions, features, and benefits of the product it is trying to sell? Does the copy integrate well with the visual or graphic that is holding the ad in place? Does the copy make you smile or even better, does it make you chuckle?

During my bachelor days in Bombay I used to help my friend Prasad with some copywriting. Prasad held a temporary job as a lecturer in a management institute and tried to supplement his income by working as a freelance copywriter in a small advertising agency which could not afford a full-time copywriter on their rolls. It was handsome pocket money which we invariably blew up on beer.

We were novices but worked hard to deliver the perfect headline and the perfect body copy. Prasad borrowed books on Advertising and Copywriting from the institute’s library which we devoured with fiendish intensity. We pored over famous international print advertisements, analysed them in minute detail, and poured scorn over what was masquerading as copywriting in India. We felt very superior.

But we realised rather quickly that the agency and its customers, mostly small manufacturing companies, had a totally different aesthetic viewpoint when it came to what was and what was not, good copywriting. When we strived for simplicity and clarity, often what was needed by the customer was exaggeration and hyperbole. When we said humour should be elegant and understated, our agency and its customers were seriously upset. Sometimes, we will go with ten alternatives for a headline, arranging them in our own order of preference and would be chastened and embarrassed when the customer complimented us on our wonderful effort and chose No. 9.

In hindsight, I have to admit the agency and its customers were right. They knew their end customers, we did not. By trying to impose our own sensibilities, received wisdom, and pre-conceived notions on what constituted good copy, we were forgetting that one cardinal rule of good copywriting which is to first understand who you are trying to communicate to.

But some of the copy that we wrote during that time and some of the headlines that found their way to print, were truly hilarious. And just to tease you (Cynic, are you listening?) I will defer narrating them until my next post!

Photo Courtesy: www.a-ofsalt.com

Aisle Seat Pitfalls

2008-11-06T00:15:00.001+05:30

One of my colleagues met with an accident recently. He had stopped his car on a residential street and had come around to open the boot of the car and take out his laptop when a van reversed into him, flinging him onto his own car. He hit his head against the sharp corner of the boot lid, resulting in a deep gash. A lot of bleeding ensued and he had to be taken to the hospital and have the wound stitched up. He is all right now and should be back in action after couple of days.

Something similar happened to me a few years ago.

On flights, I normally prefer aisle seats. You feel less crammed, getting in and out is easier, and you can be assured of at least one armrest all for yourself, without the guy next to you elbowing you out. Once ensconced thus, I ask for a pillow and a blanket and happily go to sleep most of the time.

Once, I am on a late evening flight from Chennai to Mumbai. It is a fairly uneventful journey, most of which I spent dozing. The problem happens when the flight has touched down and is taxiing to its final parking position. Before the aircraft comes to a complete stop, some impatient worthy behind me leans over and opens the overhead bin right above me. A heavy suitcase tumbles out and the corner hits me on the forehead, just above the hairline.

For a moment I am dazed and too shocked to react. By the time I gather my senses and turn around to face the perpetrator of the outrage, I am bleeding profusely and my shirtfront is soaked in blood. While the other passengers cluck sympathetically and move up the aisle to disembark, the stewardesses gather around me trying to stem the bleeding. An ice pack is pressed firmly against the wound and the crew call for the airport doctor.

The airport doctor turns out to be an elderly sari-clad matron. She examines the wound and declares the position of the wound as inappropriate for suturing. Fortunately, by this time the bleeding has stopped. She dresses the wound and ties a gauze bandage around my head. The girls giggle in relief. They say I look like an invader from outer space. The doctor advises me to take some paracetamol tablets in case I feel any pain at night; the airlines drop me in their car to the hotel.

Just before going to bed, the realisation struck me: in the confusion, I never found out who was the guy whose rash act had landed me in this mess. He had quietly slunk out in the mêlée with his suitcase, having not even the courtesy to offer an apology.

Such is life, I suppose.

Remembering Ramnath

2008-10-30T00:15:00.000+05:30

Ramnath was the best stenographer in the company.

A small-made man with a prominent nose and wiry, steel grey hair, Ramanth lived in Mulund and had to take the overcrowded and notoriously unreliable Central Line every day to reach the office in Ballard Estate. Ramnath also acted as the de facto personal assistant to my boss Gana and lived in mortal fear of Gana catching him arriving late to work, which was often, due to the unpredictability of the suburban railway system.

Humble, honest, and always happy to be of help, Ramnath could be depended on to deliver a neat, flawless letter every time and was in great demand among the managers. He rarely used a whitener, never typed over a mistake and abhorred carbon smudges and greasy thumb marks.

Ramnath harboured a cynical disdain for those managers whose working knowledge of English was poor or whose dictating skills were not up to scratch, even though he was careful not to show such feelings in public. I must have shown some promise in both departments because very soon Ramnath took me under his wing and patiently chiselled away and smoothened whatever rough edges I had, when it came to official, written communication in English. He freely edited my drafts, sometimes replacing words or even whole sentences and often, playing around with entire paragraphs. I did not mind this at all because every time, the final result was much superior to my original draft.

A few years later, I knew I had passed the test when Ramnath stopped editing my drafts.

I will conclude this post with this interesting story: One day Ramnath is on leave and another stenographer called Sathe is forced to take dictation from Gana. Sathe is terrified of the great man who dictates in a clipped accent at breakneck speed because when he goes back to his typewriter and looks at his own shorthand, he can comprehend nothing. Finally after several attempts and with a little help from fellow stenographers, he completes the letter and places it reverentially in front of Gana.

There is a moment of silence as Gana scans the letter before signing. Suddenly he sucks his breath in sharply and screams: “Sathe! What do you mean by this? Please check your piles? Please check your piles?”

Sathe realised only too late that he should have typed, “Please check your prices”!

Sathe never took dictation from Gana again.

In Praise of the Stenographer

2008-10-24T00:15:00.001+05:30

If you look back over the last 15 years or so, the stenographer as a species has totally vanished from the office scene. You do not see him anymore. The advent of the PC and the laptop, word-processing programmes with spell check features and the unblinking focus companies have brought to bear on headcount-related costs have all played their part in vanishing what was once the constant in any organisation chart.

One of the skills which I had to master quickly, when I started my career almost 25 years ago, was that of dictating a letter. It is a skill which forces you to think clearly, logically, and in paragraphs, for, it is not enough to just reel off what you want to say, you have to also call out the punctuation marks and the paragraph breaks to the stenographer as you dictate.

The dictionary definition of stenography is “the art or process of writing in shorthand”, but good stenographers did much more than just convert your words into little strokes and squiggles in their shorthand pad and reconstruct them without mistakes on their faithful Remington typewriters. The better stenographers could improve on your original draft by correcting grammatical mistakes and errors in syntax and by ruthlessly editing out verbiage and clumsy usage.

Right from the days of the British Raj I suspect, the monopoly for good stenography was held by the South Indian Brahmins of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. During the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of them, after passing their matriculation from small towns such as Kumbakonam and Palghat boarded trains to Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, and other cities afar to make a living. What they had in addition to the matriculation certificate was a working knowledge of typewriting and shorthand learned at the friendly neighbourhood typewriting institute. Most of them found jobs in government and in large trading houses of that time and a good percentage of them rose up through the hierarchy by dint of their hard work and dedication and went on to occupy key positions in the very same organisations they first joined as a humble stenographer decades ago.

In the company I first joined, they had a “stenographers’ pool” which was almost fully populated by South Indian Brahmins. I still have fond memories of these colleagues finishing their home-cooked sambar rice or curd rice in double quick time and spending the next 50 minutes of the lunch time in quiet slumber in their chairs under the slowly-revolving ceiling fans.

Photo Courtesy: Roberrt's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Searching for the Invisible Light Switch

2008-10-18T19:26:00.003+05:30

My friend Hemant loves to crack jokes. Some of his jokes are so convoluted, only he understands the punch line. But then, you don’t mind. Watching Hemant narrate the joke itself is a performance to be enjoyed.

Like all great raconteurs, Hemant dead-pans when he builds up the story and only the occasional mischievous twinkle in his eyes gives him away. The narration is deliberately slow, with long pauses, and programmed to heighten your anticipation and increase your impatience. And finally when the joke is out, his whole body seems to sag helplessly and he is convulsed in quiet laughter, one shoulder more hunched than the other, face tilted to one side; suddenly you also find yourself infected with the same crazy virus of helpless merriment.

This is a story Hemant related to me about an incident that happened when I was on an extended overseas trip and thus away from the office.

It is Neils Moltzen’s first day in office. Moltzen has taken charge as the new General Manager. Moltzen with his round, plump visage and round glasses is a mild, soft-speaking individual with a perpetually confused look. The poor man has absolutely no idea what a devilish practical joker Hemant can be when he catches the mood. Hemant, being responsible for office administration, takes Moltzen around, introducing him to other colleagues, showing him where the photocopier and the fax machine are located and how to operate the coffee machine. The tour ends in Moltzen’s cabin which Hemant opens for him with a flourish; after which, Hemant walks back to his cabin.

Moltzen is very soon back in Hemant’s cabin asking where the light switch is. He has looked everywhere but cannot locate the light switch.

Hemant looks at Moltzen for a moment as if he hasn’t understood the question. Then he suddenly brightens up and says: “Ah! The light switch! It is sound activated. Just go back to your room and clap your hands. One clap for on and one clap for off.”

Moltzen trots off dutifully back to his cabin and, to the utter astonishment of the rest of the office, starts clapping his hands inside his cabin. No lights get turned on. In frustration, the poor man runs back to Hemant.

Hemant looks at him sternly. “You would not have clapped loud enough,” he says. “Clap more loudly. One clap for on and one clap for off.”

This time around, Moltzen’s claps are like gunshots and pretty soon the entire office is standing outside his cabin laughing their heads off with Hemant looking mournful and serious in the background.

It took Moltzen weeks to recover from the trauma.

“You are joking!” I tell Hemant when he narrates this story for the first time. “You are just making this whole story up, aren’t you?”

I get no reply from Hemant. He has dissolved into a jelly and is quietly laughing himself silly into his glass of beer.
Photo Courtesy: Kate's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

The Whistling Wiles of Ramani

2008-10-12T16:30:00.005+05:30

According to the wife, my blog posts of late have degenerated into little more than stories of uncouth middle-aged men getting drunk and making silly fools of themselves. So let me give my readers advance notice that this post too, is in the same genre, but with minor variations.

Except that Ramani was neither middle-aged nor uncouth. When I first met him he was already in his early-fifties and surprisingly fit and in great shape for his age. As a colleague, when I got to know him better, he divulged to me the secret behind his glowing health and vitality, which was the practice of yoga for an hour every day.

Ramani was not overly fond of alcohol, unlike my friend Ravan. Ramani imbibed rarely and always restricted himself to a glass or two of beer, which he pronounced like most South Indians the way it is spelt, rhyming with Indian words like vir or kheer or mir.

One evening we are at the rooftop restaurant of The Savera hotel called Minar which was pretty new at that time and apart from offering authentic Mughlai cuisine, offered magnificent night-time vistas of Madras city. A blind musician accompanied by a sparse orchestra is singing soulful ghazals of Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali. We are a fairly large group, maybe ten or twelve in all, and it is a very relaxed, long drawn-out dinner. The food, the music and the overall ambience have made all of us loose-limbed and languorous. We are ready pay the bill and call it a night when suddenly Ramani who uncharacteristically has been drinking whisky instead of his usual beer, gets up from his seat and walks unsteadily across and whispers something to the orchestra.

Before we know what is happening, Ramani has grabbed the mike and introduced himself. He is an enthusiast of Carnatic Music, he says. He is also a good whistler. So, if the audience does not mind, he would like to whistle a few popular kritis set in such ageless ragas such as Kalyani, Todi, and Shankarabharanam to entertain the diners.

Without further ado, Ramani launches into his repertoire and for the next 10 minutes we are treated to the extremely difficult art of bringing out the finer nuances of complex Carnatic ragas through the simple act of whistling. Despite his inebriated state, Ramani does an excellent job and finishes his performance to enthusiastic applause.

Recently, the Minar restaurant celebrated its 25th anniversary as part of which, they conducted a week-long kebab festival. One evening I went there for dinner with a small group of family and friends and felt extremely nostalgic. True, the restaurant has undergone some renovation but the ambience was the same. The quality of food was still very good. The service was as attentive as I remembered it to be. To my surprise, even Syed Laiq Ahamed, the blind singer, was there in the designated corner with his haunting ghazals.

I missed Ramani though.

Image Courtesy: www.siskiyous.edu

Camera Capers: 2

2008-10-05T09:00:00.003+05:30

My second SLR was a Minolta 3xi and a gift from my brother-in-law.

Compared to the humble Yashica FX-3, this one was packed with awesome automation, at least so it seemed at that time. The 3xi came with a power-assisted, wide-angle zoom that was a delight to operate. The focusing was automatic. You could play with different priority modes and could even operate it in manual mode, though not so elegantly. It was lightweight, compact, and took beautiful pictures. I was very happy with that camera.

But somewhere along the line, I lost interest in photography. To start with I was never a very creative photographer and considered myself, at best, efficient or workmanlike in my approach to the craft. I could be counted on to take a decent picture, but never a great one, if you know what I mean.

I believe that to be a good photographer, you have to see beyond what you see within the confines of the viewfinder and search for a certain truth, a certain essence that the others either ignore or cannot see. In great photographers, this happens automatically and without conscious effort and everything else—subject, framing, composition, lighting, colour—automatically falls into place. This is why Raghu Rai and you can stand side by side and take pictures of the same landscape and when you look at the final results, yours is just a nice photograph while his is imbued with a certain spiritual aura and speaks to someone deep inside you.

No. I did not stop taking pictures because they were not “great” or because they lacked a “spiritual aura”. I stopped taking pictures because I was getting tired of opening the camera bag, taking the camera out, removing the lens cap, looking through the viewfinder, composing, shooting... the whole process. I also started feeling that photography and the whole paraphernalia associated with it somehow distracted me from the act of simple observation. The camera was getting in the way of that beautiful sunset or that magnificent monument silhouetted against the fading light.

Or, maybe these are all noble excuses and the real reason could be something as mundane as sheer laziness!

Anyway, these days I carry no SLR. My present camera is a Sony Cybershot T10 which is slim enough to fit in my shirt pocket and on those occasions when I have to be the family chronicler of get-togethers and birthdays, it is such a relief to put it in “auto” and click on mindlessly.

The pictures turn out invariably to be surprisingly decent.

Camera Capers: 1

2008-09-30T00:15:00.001+05:30

Recently a fellow blogger wrote about her new Olympus E-510 camera and the fun she was having trying out its manual controls. Suddenly, I remembered Ram and me shopping for my first SLR in Singapore, very many years ago.

The Yashica FX-3 was a fully manual camera with none of the snazzy features that you see in present-day cameras. Focusing was manual and so was the metering. You had to decide what aperture/shutter speed combination to use and a very simple 3-LED system gave you basic feedback whether your picture was likely to be under-exposed or over-exposed. It was an ideal camera for picking up the basics of SLR photography.

“The smaller the aperture, the larger the depth-of-field, which means more things within the frame will be in focus,” says Ram, “ideal for landscapes.”

“Err...umm,” I say brightly.

“But if you want only the subject to be in focus and the immediate background to be deliberately hazy, what aperture will you choose?”

“Err...umm,” I hedge my bets.

“Correct. You will choose a larger aperture, say a F4 or a F5.6,” Ram goes on relentlessly, oblivious to the fact that his dim-witted pupil was having a hard time catching up with all this gushing gyan. “Now let us take shutter speed...”

Ram was a good teacher and I was never to forget the basics of photography that he drilled into me in that hotel room in Orchard Road in Singapore. The FX-3 was also to remain with me for over 15 years, ever reliable, letting me down not even once. Finally what did give away was not the optics, but the leatherette exterior cladding which started disintegrating and coming off in my hands. That was when I sadly made the decision to retire the old faithful.

In my more nostalgic moments, I still think of that first SLR--the aperture ring that clicked into position so perfectly; the tiny shutter-speed dial that one learned over time to manipulate with the thumb and forefinger; the reassuring whirr and click when the focal plane shutter came down and the entire camera seemed to shudder within your grip.

They don’t make cameras like that anymore and this, I state with due apologies to the Olympus E-510.

Photo Courtesy: Lens' Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Language Tangle

2008-09-24T20:28:00.002+05:30

The peculiarities of the English language can prove to be a challenge for the best of us. To my friend Joymon, it was even more a daunting task, having studied in a Malayalam medium school in Kerala. Conversational English especially, was something he struggled with every day.

To his credit, Joymon never gave up and refused to be discouraged when his colleagues took pot shots at his Malayalam-accented English. He was not afraid to make mistakes nor was he ashamed to ask and clear his doubts on the correct usage of the language. Within a year he became sufficiently proficient in English and could navigate the treacherous linguistic by-lanes with a fair amount of felicity.

One day, all of us get invited to the Big Boss’s house party. Big B lives in a palatial beachside bungalow in Juhu. This is an annual event normally scheduled to coincide with the visit of the members of the senior management from Germany.

That year I have to miss the party as the date clashed with an official trip to Bangalore which had been planned weeks ago. I bump into Joymon in the corridor the following Monday and casually ask him whether he enjoyed the party at Big B’s place on Saturday night.
Joymon beams.

“Fantastic party,” Joymon says. “Big B lives in this fantastic house with a huge garden. There is even a swimming pool!”

“So, good food? Great Music?”

“Wonderful,” says Joymon. “Really enjoyed myself.”

“Great!” I am about to move on when Joymon says: “And Mrs Big B...”

“What about her?”

“Such a hostile lady,” Joymon says.

“What?” I am puzzled. I cannot co-relate Joymon’s bright smile as he uttered the sentence with the kind of antipathy one normally associates with the word “hostile”.

“She was taking care of each and every guest,” Joymon explains, “making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink and going round and chatting to even the junior managers. So hostile.”

Suddenly the coin drops. “Hospitable,” I say. “Hospitable is the word you want, Joymon. Hostile means just the opposite, like, being rude and unfriendly!”

Joymon listens intently and vows never to repeat the mistake. He also reassures me that while bidding good-bye, he had not mentioned to Mrs. Big B what a “hostile” hostess she had been!

Photo Courtesy: Woman-with-a-lens Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Ravan and the Cable Guy

2008-09-19T13:25:00.001+05:30

It was 1993 and, as an aftermath of the infamous Mumbai blasts, anti-Pakistan sentiment was at an all-time high. Even though Pakistani serials were very popular those days, many cable TV operators had withdrawn such programmes from their channel-bouquet, bowing to the prevailing sentiment.

However, the cable operator in my area continued to beam the Pakistani TV channel (PTV) in spite of repeated representations from jingoistic viewers to take it off.

One day, casually over lunch, I mention this to Ravan Singh and he flies into a rage. “How can you tolerate this,” Ravan thunders. “We have to put a stop to this nonsense immediately! The fellow should be put behind bars for treason!”

“It is futile,” I say. “The cable guy is an arrogant fellow with political connections and does pretty much as he chooses.”

“We will see about that,” glowers Ravan. He pulls a telephone directory off the rack, finds the number of the service provider, and starts dialling. A lady comes on the line and Ravan asks her to put him through to the owner immediately. When she enquires who she should say is calling, he says with ominous calm: “Tell him this is Inspector Parulkar from Palton Road police station.”

When the owner comes on line, Ravan starts slowly, almost gently: “I have received a complaint that you are beaming PTV programmes in your cable network. As you know very well, this is against the law. Your viewers have requested you not to telecast these programmes, but you continue to do so. What have you to say about this?”

Perhaps Ravan’s conciliatory tone lulls the owner into a false sense of security. He is rather nonchalant in his response, saying that PTV programmes are popular and he is only catering to customers’ needs and many cable operators are beaming them anyway, so what’s the big deal?

Ravan explodes from his chair, draws himself to his full height and unships a few choice epithets in Hindi and Marathi, outlining the cable owner’s doubtful paternity, his unsavoury relationship with his sister, and his abject inability to satisfy his wife in bed.

“Do you know who you are talking to?” Inspector Parulkar shouts. “Do you know I can come with a posse of policemen in the next fifteen minutes and put you inside so fast that no one will ever even know where you are for the next fifteen years? Or should I make it easier for you by arranging a police encounter where a carefully-aimed shot is all that it takes to put an end to your miserable life?”

I can see, like all great actors, Ravan has merged with the character he is playing. At this moment he believes himself to be the tough, angry cop bullying the stuffing out of the criminal who has had the effrontery to talk back to him.

After fifteen minutes of this tirade, at the other end of the line, the cable TV owner is an abject mass of quivering jelly, tripping over words, profusely apologetic, and declaring his undying loyalty to his motherland. “PTV will be taken off immediately sir,” says the broken man. “You will have no further cause for complaint.”

“I give you exactly one hour,” says Inspector Parulkar, back to his deep, soothing voice. “After that, I come for you.”

And sure enough, the owner kept his promise.

Photo Courtesy: Chin Wu's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Introducing Ravan Singh

2008-09-14T20:50:00.004+05:30

I think it is time I introduced Ravan Singh to the readers of my blog.

Ravan was a tall and well-built man with a scraggly beard that he deliberately left untrimmed. He could have passed off as handsome, if only a prominently protruding paunch had not spoilt the overall effect. Ravan had a voracious appetite for food; could drink anybody under the table; and fancied himself quite a ladies’ man.

Ravan and I were colleagues for over a decade during which we became very good friends. Looking back, this was rather strange for, both in appearance and temperament, we were like chalk and cheese. Ravan was the hearty, back-slapping type while I was painfully introverted. Ravan could be impulsive and rash while I was methodical and boring. Ravan was always the life and soul of the party while I generally had a tendency to blend in with the woodwork.

Ravan had a reputation for becoming very boisterous after a few drinks; during office parties the task of keeping him under control or some semblance of it, always fell on me. When he was sloshed, the only person he listened to was me and his obedience on such occasions was implicit and childlike. But there were couple of occasions when things went horribly wrong.

One such was at the Ambassador Hotel in Bombay where we are holding a reception for customers. The business part of the evening is over and those who imbibe have made a beeline for the bar. We circulate among customers, clinking our glasses and making polite small talk. Suddenly someone tugs urgently at my sleeve. It is Ravan.

“I don’t like the way Customer S is behaving,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “He is talking ill of our service, the worm! I think I will pull his toupée off.”

“What?” I am distracted. “What toupée?”

“Everyone knows S wears a toupée,” he says reasonably.” I’m going to yank it off.”

“You shall do no such thing,” I say firmly. “Just ignore the guy and go slow on the whisky, will you?”

Ravan disappears and I forget about the conversation. The evening winds down peacefully and after couple of hours, most customers have had their dinner and have left. So have the top bosses of the company. There are a few stragglers in the bar and I can see Ravan and S having a heated argument. Suddenly, in front of everyone’s stupefied eyes, Ravan yanks the toupée off S!

All hell breaks loose. Ravan is swaying on his legs and guffawing while the hapless S, shorn of his hairpiece and dignity, is screaming and weeping and lunging feebly for the toupée which Ravan holds aloft like a trophy.

No, Ravan did not lose his job. Probably, if the incident had happened an hour earlier when the party was in full swing, he most definitely would have. The next day, Ravan visited S and offered his profuse and unconditional apology for his boorish behaviour.

The customer forgave him and, I suspect, they had a drink together afterwards!

Photo Courtesy: boomSlang's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Kerala and Hindi Film Music: Part 3

2008-09-09T15:42:00.002+05:30

Curiously enough, by mid-1960s, Malayalam film music began to give its Hindi brethren a stiff fight, mainly thanks to a slender young man in whites who came from the suburbs of Cochin and whose mesmerising voice, impeccable diction, and outstanding tonal range took Kerala by storm. K. J. Yesudas transformed Malayalam film music and took it to new heights of glory like no other singer before or after him, ably supported by poets-turned-lyricists like Vayalar Rama Varma and P. Bhaskaran and immensely-gifted music directors like M.S. Baburaj, G. Devarajan and V. Dakshinamurthy.

But the Malayali was not to forsake Hindi film music which, in the 1970s, re-invented itself thanks to another precocious talent called R.D. Burman. Trained in Hindustani classical music, Burman was also in touch with musical trends from all over the world and had this uncanny knack of connecting with both young and old alike. Thus in Kerala, he was appreciated as much for the lilting and melodious “Chingari koi bhadke” in Amar Prem as for the jazzy acoustical arrangement of “Dum Maro Dum” in “Hare Rama Hare Krishna”.

What should not be forgotten here, of course, is the fact that the 70s saw the re-emergence of the versatile Kishore Kumar as a credible singing force. Kishore could be soulful or mischievous, romantic or funny as the situation demanded, and was the perfect foil for Burman’s genius. Burman’s success was also, in no small measure, due to Asha Bhonsle and her sensuous and melodious voice which he was able to deploy in a manner that no other composer before him, with the exception of O. P. Nayyar perhaps, had been able to do.

And thus the Malayali’s love affair with Hindi film music continued to flourish, in the absence of other distractions such as television, cable TV and the Internet.

The 1980s were not a good time for Hindi film music in general, the focus having shifted to action dramas which had little scope or inclination to showcase music. The 1990s did show some marginal improvement but the old masters were either no more or retired from the scene. Crass commercial interests had taken over and the newcomers like Kumar Sanu and Abhijeet found themselves unfavourably compared to their legendary predecessors. But what about today? Are the present-day singers like Shaan, Naresh Iyer and Rashid Ali or music directors like Himesh Reshammiya and Pritam as popular in Kerala as they are in the North?

Perhaps, some young blogger living in Kerala now should write the concluding part of this post!

(Concluded)

Kerala and Hindi Film Music: 2

2008-09-05T00:15:00.000+05:30

Vividh Bharati service of All India Radio (AIR), started operations in 1957 and was designed around a format that gave importance to music, predominantly Hindi film music. This was not surprising, considering it was put together in the first place to stave off the challenge of Radio Ceylon and its extremely popular “Binaca Geet Mala”.

Radio Ceylon played the latest film music no doubt, but transmitted in the Short Wave (SW) metre band which called for a more expensive SW receiver. The reception quality was also inconsistent as the signal waxed and waned depending on the atmospheric conditions. Vividh Bharati on the other hand, beamed its programs from a series of linked transmitters installed in major cities and towns and that too, in the Medium Wave (MW) spectrum. Reception quality was excellent and the signal could be picked up from a low-cost, single-band receiver. Even from the sheer variety of film-music based programming that it offered, the new entrant scored, with specific time-slots targeted at youth, housewives, elders, jawans and so on.

But to come back to the Hindi film music of that era: while the songs were full of touching melody and meaningful as well soulful lyrics, it was still steeped in the traditions of Hindustani classical music and were sometimes heavy, ponderous, and overtly sentimental. It took the music director duo of Shankar-Jaikishan, a maverick composer called O.P. Nayyar and an upcoming actor called Shammi Kapoor to rewrite the prevailing rules of the game and in the process, save Hindi film music from its own excesses.

Shankar-Jaikishan and O. P. Nayyar lightened up Hindi film music considerably by giving it a racy beat and experimenting with a western style orchestra. Borrowing as they did from western music styles such as jazz, swing and rock ’n’ roll, they infused a robustness and vigour in their music, faithfully portrayed on screen by the inimitably-animated Shammi Kapoor. But, for many Keralites of that generation, the music of Shankar-Jaikishan or Nayyar was just a door-opener. Once they entered the marvellously diverse world of Hindi film music, they encountered the varied but distinct composing styles of such talented composers as Naushad, Madan Mohan, Roshan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Salil Chowdhury and were hooked forever.

Within a very short time, Vividh Bharati broadcasts became a rage and became the most preferred radio channel in every Kerala household.

Kerala and Hindi Film Music: 1

2008-08-31T00:15:00.000+05:30

When I wrote about Mohammed Rafi few weeks ago, a friend from Mumbai called me and wanted to know the connection between Kerala and Hindi film music. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, he knew, shared a common border with Maharashtra and both states had sizable Hindi-speaking population. Tamil Nadu was rabidly anti-Hindi, especially during ‘60s and ‘70s when Hindi film music was at its peak and thus hardly could be expected to nurture a culture that bred aficionados of Hindi film music. But in Kerala, the southern state farthest from Mumbai, Hindi film music thrived and flourished to such an extent that you had fan clubs of Mohammed Rafi and Talat Mahmood in places like Kozhikode and Cochin. How did this come about?

It is an intriguing question and I certainly am no social scientist who has all the answers but the history of Indian cinema throws up some interesting facts.

The first Indian talkie was in Hindi. Alam Ara of Ardeshir Irani was released in Mumbai in 1931. From 1935 onwards, great singers like K. L. Saigal and Pankaj Mullick were singing playback for Hindi movies and very soon built up a pan-Indian fan following including in Kerala. Around the same time, the first Tamil talkies were seeing the light of day and Tamil singers such as M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar also became extremely popular in Kerala.

But Malayalam cinema itself was a late bloomer. True, the first Malayalam talkie came out in 1938, but the movies were being made in what was then Madras and in very small numbers. The numbers acquired a modicum of dignity only after 1947, when Udaya Studios opened its doors in Alappuzha and movies started getting made in Kerala. But the industry still moved in fits and starts and had to wait another four years for its major box-office hit, which was Jeevithanaouka, released in 1951.

So it could well be that Hindi cinema, and through it Hindi film music, insinuated itself into the Malayali psyche during that crucial period from 1935 to 1951 when there was tremendous interest in this new entertainment medium, but not many locally-produced movies to cater to this passion. Thus Bharat Bhushan and Ashok Kumar and, later on, the triumvirate of Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand became household names in Kerala, at least among the urban, educated youth.

A happy conspiracy of circumstances helped carry this momentum forward to the 1960s. One was, of course, the fact that Hindi film music was moving towards the pinnacle of its glory at this time thanks to the confluence of such great music directors like C. Ramchandra and S.D. Burman, wonderful lyricists of the calibre of Sahir Ludhianvi and Hasrat Jaipuri and singers of such immense talent and range such as the Mangeshkar sisters, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey.

The other was a phenomenon called Vividh Bharati.

Carol and the Old Monk: Part 2

2008-08-26T00:15:00.001+05:30

Carol gives me a wan smile.

The problem, she says with commendable detachment, is with her head. It weighs a ton. It also hurts very badly. But the real problem, she says staring straight ahead, is that she cannot move her head to the left or to the right. If she does, dazzling flashes of lightning seem to dance before her eyes and it is awful...

“You have a bad hangover,” says Russ, uncharitably stating the obvious.

I look at my watch which shows 9 am. The first customers would start arriving in the next 45 minutes or so.

Carol gulps down couple of tablets of paracetamol and empties half a bottle of mineral water. “You guys wait down in the lobby,” she says, “I will be down in fifteen minutes.”

True to her word, Carol joins us fifteen minutes later. I can see that she has brushed and combed her hair and put on some make-up. She looks definitely better than the ‘victim-of-train wreck’ I saw some time ago. She pats my hand and says everything is going to be all right.

“I shall sit and operate the console,” Carol says. “But I cannot turn around and look at the customers who will be sitting in a circle behind us. If I turn my head, it hurts real bad. So I cannot smile at them. Neither can I answer their questions. The three of you have to manage all that.”

“They will think you are a rude lady,” says Russ, not very helpfully.

“Never mind that,” I say. “Let us do as she says.”

That day Carol excels herself. She sits like a statue in front of the console from 10 am to 6 pm and operates the console flawlessly, neither looking to the right nor to the left, staring straight ahead. She continuously drinks water from a glass and declines lunch. Bob and I try to shield her from questions but when customers ask her a direct question, she answers them looking straight ahead. Fortunately, nobody notices anything amiss and the demos are a grand success.

After a hard day’s work, the entire team goes back to the Taj and my boss says: “C’mon guys! That was fantastic! Let us have a drink at the Harbour Bar!”

Carol shudders visibly, excuses herself and walks up to the lift, looking neither to the left nor to the right, but straight ahead.

Carol and the Old Monk: Part 1

2008-08-20T00:15:00.001+05:30

Carol sits in a sofa looking down, cupping her face with both hands. And when she raises her head to speak to me, I can see she is bleary-eyed and her face is white as a sheet. She is shivering a bit. Her voice is dry and cracked. She looks terrible.

And terrible is the quandary I find myself in.

Bob, Carol, and Russ are the threesome who has come from the US to help us with the new product launch. Russ is responsible for hardware maintenance. Bob is the Presenter and Carol, the Applications Specialist. For the past two days we have been rehearsing the demo and it has been coming along nicely. Bob and Carol do a finely-nuanced Punch & Judy show where, as Bob prattles on about each function and feature, Carol’s dextrous fingers bring up the necessary applet on the monitor.

They are a diverse lot: Russ, short and stocky, with a round, mournful face and careful to drink nothing but Coke. Bob, bespectacled, tall and thin like a reed, looks more like a nerdy college professor. And Carol, sincere and serious, working hard to ensure that the demos go off without a hitch.

Today is D-Day. The demos are to take place at the Grand Hotel in Ballard Estate. The hall has been booked. The hardware is installed and tested and ready. VIP customers have been invited at one-hour intervals, starting at 10 am. We are ready to roll!

When I reach the Taj Mahal Hotel at 8.30 am to pick up the contingent, a nervous Bob meets me at the foyer and says we have a problem. Carol is very sick and can I please come upstairs to her room?

I cannot understand it. Carol was perfectly fine when I dropped them off in the hotel the previous night at 9 pm. Could it be something she had for dinner that had caused her to fall sick? A bout of food-poisoning, perhaps?

Slowly, hesitantly Bob and Russ come out with the story. Apparently, after I dropped them off yesterday, they had gone for a short walk along Colaba when they “chanced” upon a liquor store. While standing in front of the store, they suddenly remembered this excellent dark rum their friend Rada had introduced them to the previous night and also his secret recipe for a cocktail that had equal amounts of cola and soda in it with a twist of lime. So without further ado, they had grabbed couple of bottles of this excellent spirit only to come back to the room and begin to consume it forthwith.

“S***!” I howl. “You guys polished off two bottles of rum between the three of you?”

All three nod in silent misery.

A Man and His Music

2008-08-14T13:48:00.006+05:30

Mumbai.

July 30, 2008. 6 pm.

It has been raining quite heavily the whole day. Traffic is at standstill and we have reached only Dadar. I anxiously glance at my watch. My flight to Chennai takes off in one hour and I am not at all sure we are going to make it.

“Shall I put on some music?” asks Siraj.

I say yes, half-expecting to be bombarded with the high-decibel dance beat of the latest Bollywood hit. But suddenly the soft, mellifluous voice of Mohammed Rafi fills the inside of the car.

Yaad na jaaye beete dinon ki, Rafi Saab sings.

“They have been playing his songs whole day long,” says Siraj. “Tomorrow is Rafi Saab’s death anniversary.”

“I know,” I say simply. I do not add that it is a date no one needs to remind me about.

Traffic starts moving slowly. I look out of the window. It is grey and overcast. I feel depressed.

The RJ, a young girl, talking rapid-fire, English-accented Hindi from a prepared script, mouths inanities about the legendary singer and his honeyed voice. She puts on another song.

Tum jo mil gaye ho to ye lagtaa hai...

“Do you like old Hindi film songs?” Siraj asks.

Just to needle him, I say: “Yes, I can even tell you which film this song is from and who the music director is!”

But Siraj seems lost in thought and does not seem to be interested in taking up my childish challenge. He carefully negotiates the traffic at Sion circle and inches his Ford Ikon through the fringes of Dharavi.

“You know,” Siraj says, “I have given my shoulder to Rafi Saab’s coffin.” He uses the Hindi term, kandha milana.

“How did that come about?” I ask, interested.

“I was ten or eleven at that time. I had gone with my father to the Bandra mosque for the evening namaaz. When we came out, Rafi Saab’s funeral cortege was just entering the compound... well, in the pushing and shoving that followed, I managed...to put my shoulder to...”Siraj’s voice trails away.

We are both quiet for a long time. I think about a singer who died 28 years ago and how his voice and his songs unite a Malayali Hindu and a Bandra Muslim in the small confines of a car on a wet, miserable day in Mumbai, to share a common memory, sacred to both.

The car picks up speed once it enters the Western Express Highway. I feel reasonably confident about catching that flight now.

The song changes again. It is one of my favourites. Another priceless composition from the composer, Madan Mohan.

Tu mere samne hai, teri zulfein hai khuli...

We have reached the airport. Heaving my laptop and overnight case out of the boot, I say good-bye to Siraj.

“Khuda Hafiz,” says Siraj, and drives away.

Soren's Poor Jokes

2008-08-08T00:15:00.001+05:30

This post by a fellow-blogger suddenly made me recollect an incident that happened several years ago.

Pankaj had recently joined the company. He was a very sincere, hard-working young man with a ready smile and a cheerful demeanour. Being new, Pankaj was in that phase of constantly trying to ingratiate himself with all his colleagues and charm them with his social graces.

Soren was an expatriate who worked for our company at that time. A tall, heavily-built man with deep-set blue eyes and a blond, scraggly beard, Soren always reminded me of the Giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. He smiled often, but the smile, rarely if ever, seemed to reach his eyes. Soren could be blunt, irascible, and was prone to such severe mood-swings that his colleagues normally tried to avoid him as much as possible.

Not Pankaj. Every day morning, Pankaj would go across to Soren’s seat and the following conversation would ensue with minor variations:

Pankaj: How are you Soren?

Soren: I’m fine thanks. How’re you Pankaj?

Pankaj: I am also fine, Soren. How’s the family?

Soren: Fine, thanks.

Pankaj: Have a good day, Soren.

Soren: Thanks, you too, Pankaj.

The whole office would listen to this exchange with good-natured tolerance, suppress a smile or two, and go on with their work.

One day Soren is late. Pankaj faithfully wishes everyone else a cheery Good Morning and starts preparing to go out on a sales visit. He is busy cramming his briefcase with price lists and brochures when Soren walks in. Instead of going to his seat, Soren makes a beeline for where Pankaj is sitting and plonks himself on Pankaj’s table. A startled Pankaj looks up from what he is doing and offers a helpful smile.

“How are you, Pankaj?” Soren asks loudly, making sure everyone is listening.

“I am fine, Soren,” says Pankaj, ‘how are you?”

Soren, delighted that Pankaj has fallen neatly into the trap set for him, replies in clear, ringing tones: “I am fine, Pankaj. In fact, I couldn’t be better. You see, I woke up at 5 O’clock, went for a jog, had a shower, f*- ed the wife who had just got up, had breakfast and here I am! I tell you man, I’m feeling good!”

Soren looks around expectantly. The whole office is frozen in silence. Nobody laughs. No one even looks at him.

From that day onwards, Pankaj stopped wishing Soren in the mornings.

Snow in the Mountains

2008-08-03T11:51:00.004+05:30

That winter in Switzerland throws up a lot of memories, most of them amusing.

On the first day, there is a welcome dinner to which I go in casual wear. To my horror I find I am the odd man out with everyone else attired in formal suits.

Heinz Lehman takes me out for lunch to a posh restaurant in Zurich. As a starter, I order a “Crisp Californian Salad” from the menu and get a small, lovely cabbage cut in half with an elegant dollop of white sauce on the side.

In Frauenfeld, I walk into a bar after purchasing a Rubik’s Cube, which was a rage those days. Sipping a beer, I take out the undisturbed cube, turning it around in my hand, admiring the smooth finish and reluctant to start rotating the panel. Suddenly I find myself surrounded by excited people who look at me admiringly and ask me to demonstrate the solution to the puzzle.

Then travelling by train to Engelberg and taking several ski-lifts to arrive on top of Mount Titlis to be greeted by the Sri Lankan in the souvenir shop with: “Vanakkam saar, neengal Tamizha?” (Welcome sir, Are you a Tamilian?).

Schmick giving me a short lecture on how to drink beer: The first beer should never be sipped, but gulped down in one shot or maximum two. That is the only way the beer can hit your sweet spot, he says with utmost seriousness.

Lucerne. The picturesque lake nestling under the majestic gaze of snow-capped Mount Pilatus. The famous wooden bridge across the river Reuss before it was partially destroyed by fire in 1993.

Snow. Miles and miles of it. Enchanting to behold. Exhilarating to touch, to feel, to hold in your hands.

I was seeing snow for the first time in my life.

On the last day, there is a farewell dinner to which I wear a tie and a jacket only to find I have got it wrong this time also.

Everyone else is in casuals!

Photo Courtesy: Abhishek's Public Gallery, Picasa Wb Albums

The Serbs' Dilemma

2008-07-28T11:08:00.002+05:30

At six in the evening, the bells of the St. Mauritius Church in Zofingen start tolling. Being winter, it is already pitch-dark outside and it is eerie and depressing to sit inside your room and listen to the heavy, sonorous sound of the church bells.

Not that there is much you can do outside. The tour of the entire town, consisting of the church, a cinema, a few shops, two hotels and three restaurants including a pizzeria can be completed in less than ten minutes and I have already done it twice.

In an alcove near the hotel reception, I come across a small cache of German and French paperbacks and amongst them, a historical romance in English which I take up to my room and try to read. It is heavy, ponderous stuff and combines well with my travel fatigue to act as an excellent sedative. I fall asleep.

The two Serbians check in the next day morning. They are to attend the same training as I and we travel together to the office of the Swiss company who is hosting us. The Serbs speak little English and are taciturn to the point of being rude when I try to make conversation with them. They chain-smoke and look unsmilingly out of the car window at the snow-blanketed countryside flashing past. They look depressed.

For the next four days life follows a fixed, familiar routine where we are in training from 8 am to 4 pm and dropped back to the hotel by 4.30 pm. Once we reach the hotel, for the rest of the evening the Serbs disappear only to manifest themselves at the breakfast table the next day, looking like death.

On Friday evening, the Serbs ask Rolf, our trainer, about night life in Zofingen.

Rolf, a cheerful young man with a fine physique tells them there is no night life in Zofingen. “You guys should take the train and go to Zurich,” he says.

The Serbs smile, showing yellowed, tobacco-stained teeth: “Yes, we went to Zurich... last four nights,” they say.

Rolf shrugs his shoulders and tells them maybe they should try Zurich tonight also, this being a Friday evening.

There is a long silence when one of the Serbs speaks up.

“What about the bar lady in Hotel Garni?” he asks Rolf, “She is very friendly.”

Rolf looks at the Serbs for a moment but his expression does not change: “The bar lady at Hotel Garni is the sister of my best friend,” he says evenly. “If you guys so much as try to act fresh with her, I’ll mash you both up into a Rosti”.

The silence this time lasts even longer.

Hotel Management in Switzerland

2008-07-23T00:05:00.003+05:30

I land up at the entrance of Hotel Garni in Zofingen on a Sunday morning. It is winter and bitterly cold. The streets are eerily quiet and not a soul is in sight. There must have been heavy snowfall the previous night, for the few cars parked on the street are blanketed in white.

I lug my suitcase in and look around. The Reception is empty. I press the small buzzer affixed to the Reception desk and wait.

Zofingen is a small town, about 60 kilometres from Zurich. For the next three weeks, this hotel is going to be my home. I am cold, hungry, tired after a nine-hour flight from Bombay, and want nothing more than to get into the relative warmth of a room, have a shower, have some breakfast and sleep for as long as I can.

After what seems like a very long time, an old lady appears who introduces herself as Mrs. Schmitt. She seems bright, chirpy and in excellent spirits the reason for which was to dawn on me within the next thirty minutes. She checks me in and we take the slow, ancient lift to the third floor. She opens the door of room number 31 and ushers me in.

It is a small room with just enough space for a single bed, a table and two chairs. There is an equally small TV, placed on a bracket fixed on the wall. There is no English transmission though, she informs me sadly. Only German and French.

Acceding to Mrs. Schmitt’s suggestion, I have a quick shower and go down to the breakfast room adjacent to the Reception. To my surprise, I find her dressed in outdoor gear, car keys in one hand and an overcoat in the other. She quickly shows me the kitchen, the pantry, and the fridge and asks me to help myself to whatever I need: there are eggs, sausages, butter, cheese, marmalade, milk. There is a grill, cooking range, the works. Before I can get over my bewilderment, she informs me cheerfully that she is about to go on a short holiday and will be back only next week, but don’t worry, her replacement shall be at the counter sharp at 6 am on the morrow.

But what about the other inmates? I ask.

You are the only guest we have this Sunday, she says. Then, thrusting a bunch of keys in my hand which includes that of the main door, with a wave and a bye, Mrs. Schmitt walks out of the door.

And thus it came to pass that I managed a Swiss hotel all by myself for almost 24 hours, without causing any mishaps to life or property.

Monsoon Madness

2008-07-18T00:05:00.001+05:30

"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," said Benjamin Franklin. If you are living in Mumbai, you will doubtlessly add one more to the list: the certainty that Mumbai will be paralysed, with all public transport including BEST buses and suburban trains suspended, for at least couple of days during every monsoon. So it was 25 years ago; so it is now.

Some of the most delightful recollections I have about Mumbai are waking up to the noise of a heavy downpour and quickly making the decision to snuggle under my blanket and go back to sleep, because one instinctively knew the train services will be off and there was no point in slogging it to the station anyway.

But it is a nightmare when the skies open up in the afternoon and the train system closes down just before the offices close. The buses are jam-packed and trying to flag down a speeding taxi is an exercise in futility. Wet, hungry, and tired, you are lucky if you manage to reach your home in the distant suburbs by midnight.

One such day, Katara and I decide to go against the grain and not go home. With most of our colleagues milling about in the lobby discussing various means of transport to reach home, we wait for a lull in the raging thunderstorm and make a quick dash to the cosy and warm interiors of Grand Hotel nearby. We sit in the near-empty bar and start drinking slowly and methodically, munching on the delightful finger-food the barman keeps replenishing, listening to the storm raging outside and talking about nothing in particular.

Close to 11 pm, we walk back in the drizzle, none too steadily, to the office which is empty save for the watchman, who informs us the train services are still down and finding transport home at this time of the night will be difficult. We nod cheerfully and walk towards the conference room. Rearranging the furniture, we spread newspapers on the soft, two-inch thick carpet, set the thermostat of the air-conditioner to a comfortable 25 degrees and are out like a light, almost instantaneously.

Next day morning, when I reach my apartment, there is a surprise. Sunitaben exhibits some real emotion seeing me back safe and sound and comes up with a hot, steaming cup of tea followed by a real, sumptuous breakfast.

Happiness!

Photo Courtesy: Sakura's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Uptightji

2008-07-13T17:05:00.003+05:30

What type of garment do you wear to bed?

Depending on which part of the world you are coming from, I’m sure the answer would vary. Talking specifically of India, if you are a man and coming from the southern part of India, chances are you would wear an old dhoti and singlet to bed. A variation to this nocturnal sartorial ensemble could be a lungi and a half-sleeve ‘banian’. If you are from North India, a set of soft kurta-pyjamas could be your night dress. If you are a lady, probably you change into a loose and comfortable nightie before retiring for the night or maybe a worn-out top and skirt.

To see what is the common thread running through all these different attire, one needs only look at the adjectives used to describe nightwear generally: Soft, Comfortable, Old, Loose... all attesting to a certain high degree of informality, relaxation, and cosiness.

Introducing Uptightji.

A deeply religious person and a strict vegetarian, Uptightji followed an unfailing routine every day. Once he reached home in the evening from office, he took a shower and with the wet towel wrapped round his waist, lit a lamp at the small shrine by his bedside. Then leaving the upper torso bare, he changed into a dhoti and lounged about the apartment reading the newspaper or watching TV till bedtime, the epitome of informality and relaxation.

The transformation took place just before bedtime when Uptightji changed again, this time into a pair of trousers. The trousers were obviously old but stitched at a time when the waist size of Uptightji was at least an inch smaller than what it was now and he had to literally hold his breath and pull in his stomach before the waist of the trousers could be brought together and buttoned properly.

When quizzed about this strange behaviour, Uptightji once explained to me that he was horrified at the thought of someone finding him in an undignified posture while sleeping. For a moment, the thought of Uptightji sleeping in a dhoti and carelessly turning over in his sleep with the dhoti astray and exposing his crown jewels almost made me double up with laughter.

But I controlled myself just in time. Uptightji was several years elder to me and a very nice human being and would have been deeply hurt if he thought I was laughing at him.

The Lovedale Station Master

2008-07-09T00:15:00.003+05:30

Nandu is one of those lucky ones who can escape the scorching summers of Kerala every year, by going up the mountains. His paternal grandparents live near the famous south Indian hill resort of Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills in the Western Ghats, in the beautiful valley near Lovedale.

As train enthusiasts all over the world know, there is a metre gauge railway service that snakes it way up from the plains, starting from the town of Mettupalayam, all the way up to Ootacamund, or Ooty as it is popularly known. The little “Toy Train,” much loved by tourists and Bollywood alike, takes more than four hours to traverse a distance of 46 kilometres, but then, this is not a train you take for reaching some place in a hurry, but for the magnificent views that it offers, as it chugs its languorous way through lush valleys, sublime meadows, and neatly laid-out tea gardens.

Lovedale has a tiny little station and Nandu, ever the train enthusiast, spends most of the day there, watching the trains go by. Very soon, he becomes the close friend and confidante of the station master, following him around as the elderly gentleman goes about his daily chores.

One day, he finds his friend, the stationmaster, in a depressed mood. He has been transferred to a remote station, somewhere in the plains.

Young Nandu is sympathetic: “To which station have you been transferred?” he asks.

“Some godforsaken place,” says the stationmaster. “A place called Dasampatti. I don’t even know where on the earth this wretched place is.”

The ten-year old does not miss a beat. “Oh! Dasampatti!” he says with absolute certainty, “comes between Samalpatti and Doddampatti. In the Salem-Jolarpet sector.”

Unfortunately, no camera was at hand to record the expression on the stationmaster’s face for posterity.

Nandu is now past thirty and works in the IT/Insurance sector. He continues to be passionate about trains, loves receiving or seeing off people at Chennai Central and, needless to add, prefers train journeys to any other mode of transport. His knowledge of the trains of the Indian Railways has become even more formidable and encyclopaedic now, a fact he smiles off with characteristic modesty. When it comes to train timings, cancellation rules, Tatkal schemes or booking tickets through the Internet, our family consults no timetable or looks up no reference guide.

We just ask Nandu.

Photo Courtesy: Shiraz's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Nandu and the Indian Railways

2008-07-04T00:05:00.002+05:30

Nandu has been in love with trains ever since he was a little boy.

During summer vacations when his cousins retire to the cooler confines of the house and play board games, waiting for the hot afternoon to ease off till it was cool enough to go out and play, Nandu purposefully strides out to the ground in front of his house. There, under the blazing sun, he draws up a huge rectangle on the hard earth with his big toe. Standing on one corner of the rectangle, with great pomp and ceremony, he proclaims himself to be a certain train, say the Mangalore-Madras Mail, and starts running.

Nandu the train, eases out of the platform slowly, gradually picking up speed, accelerating gracefully and very soon is shrieking past minor stations and sundry level crossings, deep gorges, and dry riverbeds, dilapidated temple tanks and bustling market places, oblivious to the verdant countryside flashing past. He runs and runs, to the consternation of the elders in the house, and slows down only when the next ‘station’ approaches.

Stories about his obsession with trains abound, most of them not apocryphal. His mother takes him on a night train and he refuses to sleep, getting up at each station to note down the name of the station in his little diary. One of his uncles is leaving for Calcutta and young Nandu requests him to bring back the timetable of Eastern Railway as a gift!

On yet another journey, the train stops at a particular station and remains there for a very long time. It is summer and quite hot and uncomfortable inside the compartment. The passengers become listless. One of the passengers comments that maybe the train is waiting to give way for the Malabar Express, coming from the opposite direction.

Nandu, with no touch of self-consciousness, earnestly assures the passenger that this cannot be. The Malabar Express has already crossed them fifteen minutes ago. As there are no trains scheduled to reach this particular station at this particular time, the only reasonable conclusion that can be is that they are waiting for a freighter train to pass.

Sure enough, five minutes later, a “goods” train trundles past in the opposite direction.

But the story I like the most is about Nandu and the station master of Lovedale station, which is the second part of this post.

Picture Courtesy: Bill Gracey's Public Gallery. Picasa Web Albums

Paying Guest Woes

2008-06-29T19:00:00.002+05:30

It is past 11 pm. I approach the door with trepidation and knock softly. After what seems like an eternity, a light clicks on inside, the door opens a crack and Sunitaben’s unsmiling face comes into view. It is obvious she does not approve. Without a word she opens the door fully and lets me in. I quickly tiptoe across the hall, eager to reach the privacy of my room and escape her accusing gaze.

The lease on our flat in Vile Parle has finally expired and we have moved out. The Beatles Fan Club stands temporarily disbanded. Ram has found a job with an oil prospecting company and has shifted to Indonesia. Bisque, after a stint in Bhusawal and a briefer one in Mumbai, has gone back to Kerala. So has Digamber, after suffering several nervous breakdowns. Moni has disappeared and is reported to be living somewhere in Four Bungalows.

I am staying at Sunitaben’s place in Andheri as a paying guest. My room-mate is Prasad, who has a doctorate in English literature. Prasad is a quiet, thoughtful man who normally starts talking only after couple of beers.

After living in a fully furnished apartment with your close friends, to live as a paying guest is hugely restrictive. Sunitaben doesn’t make it any easier. She is a stern-faced Gujarati widow who lives with her ten year old son, Suraj. She teaches Hindi in the nearby school and decides from the first day onwards to impose a certain discipline and control on us which teachers normally reserve for particularly unruly students.

House rules are strict: There is no separate entrance. There is no separate key either. You get a cup of tea in the morning if she is in a good mood. Most mornings, she is not in a good mood. At night, you have to be back in your room by 10.30 pm. Later than that, and you have to make arrangements to stay at a friend’s place.

Two months of this and Prasad and I are nervous wrecks. One night, Moni lands up from nowhere and we go out to celebrate a much-awaited reunion. Prasad has one beer too many and suddenly keels over and is out like a light. We splash water on his face and he recovers but is unsteady and can hardly walk. We are terrified of taking him in that state to Sunitaben’s house.

Moni, ever the Good Samaritan, bundles Prasad into a taxi and takes him to his place in Four Bungalows.

I walk back alone.

The Conspiracy Theory

2008-06-25T00:05:00.002+05:30

I would like to put forward my “conspiracy theory” involving Indian airport management companies and luggage manufacturers. It is so subtle—the conspiracy, not my theory—that I need your full attention for the next few minutes.

Don’t get me wrong: If you are a seasoned air traveller, you sort of get used to your favourite suitcase acquiring a variety of dents, bumps, cuts, scratches and cracks during the course of your travels. You resign yourself to the fact that your luggage will be thrown around, dropped from heights, crushed under heavier brethren, scanned, wrongly-labelled, misdirected, lost, found, and generally subjected to such extreme punishment and humiliation, that it will break the most iron-willed of men, if applied to human beings.

No. These things you learn to take it in your stride. You learn to accept them as the price you have to pay for acquiring all those frequent flyer miles, fancy lounge cards, and the occasional upgrade to Business Class while your boss sweats it out in Economy.

No. We are talking glue here.

Yes. Glue.

When Airport Security scan your check-in luggage, they slap on a tiny, pre-gummed label or “sticker” on your suitcase.

Initially, when your suitcase is all shiny and brand new, you hasten to take off this offending object off your case at the earliest opportunity, with as much care and consideration as possible. But soon, if you are an indolent chap like me, the stickers accumulate and start completely obliterating the front part of your suitcase: the snap-out openers, the number lock, the keyhole – everything. That is when, on a Sunday morning, you decide to clean up your suitcase, by peeling away the stickers.

Disaster! The stickers will refuse to peel away with any modicum of amiability. The glue used is so bad that part of the sticker will stick to your fingers and part to the suitcase. You try moistening the stickers with water and suddenly the problem becomes worse; everything has turned into a gooey mess. Wherever the stickers have come off, there are black, sticky blotches and all your ten fingers have little pieces of stickers attached to them. In desperation, you get hold of a knife or a screwdriver and start scraping the blasted things off the surface, but it is a losing battle. Your suitcase looks as if it has been in a car crash and now you have knife scratches on the fascia to contend with.

With half your Sunday gone, you are left with no choice but to go out and buy a new suitcase before your next trip.

And here is where my conspiracy theory comes in.

Dusseldorf

2008-06-20T00:01:00.000+05:30

Once every four years, a certain trade fair takes me to the city of Dusseldorf in Germany. Although lagging behind other German cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt in terms of population (actually, it ranks ninth with a population of over 600,000 inhabitants), Dusseldorf is a bustling metropolis and is the centre for the German fashion, advertising, and telecommunications industries. It is a nice, sprawling city, dotted with huge public parks, wooded areas, and wonderful old buildings which include some of the most beautiful and imposing churches you can see anywhere in Europe.

What never ceases to amaze me as I walk along the streets of Dusseldorf is the fact that this city was virtually reduced to rubble during World War II and whatever I am seeing now, has been rebuilt from the ground up afterwards.

It was geography that did Dusseldorf in during the war. During World War II, the Rhine-Ruhr valley was one of the primary targets for aerial bombing by the Allied forces, especially the RAF. After all, most of the steel and armament industries of Hitler’s Germany, which fed the awesome German war machine, were situated within the valley and throughout the war, the Allies targeted the area relentlessly. Dusseldorf, being a city bordering the Rhine-Ruhr valley in the north, bore the brunt almost by default.

History records the city going up in flames on September 10, 1942, after a particularly punishing RAF attack. Again, towards the end of the war, in the spring of 1945, with Germany’s anti-aircraft defences all but destroyed, Dusseldorf faced another massive aerial onslaught. Round-the-clock air attacks for seven long weeks brought the city to its knees with thousands dead and half the city’s residential and industrial areas completely destroyed.

There were of course other German cities in the Ruhr valley which faced even greater damage: Essen, Cologne, Dortmund, Wuppertal...the list is long. I have travelled through or have been in many of these cities; if you didn’t know your history, you will be hard-pressed to believe that they suffered so much damage sixty years ago, such has been the precision and care with which they have been reconstructed.

I sit this evening on the terrace of my hotel by the Rhine, enjoying a glass of beer, watching the families enjoying the weekend getting ready to push their little rowing boats into the river. The children’s excited screams hang in the clear summer air for a moment and vanish.

Hopefully, these children will never grow up to experience the horrors of war, at least, not in their corner of Europe.

Photo Courtesy: Kreuzherreneck's Public Gallery. Picasa Web Albums

Tag Time

2008-06-15T23:56:00.003+05:30

I had gone on an overseas trip and returned after two weeks, Wednesday morning. On a long journey, a big fat book—invariably fiction—is my usual companion. Normally I choose fast-paced, racy thrillers, which move faster than the airplane you are sitting on, if you know what I mean. This time was no exception; the book I chose was Michael Connelly’s “The Overlook.” Timing it to a nicety, I finished the book at Dusseldorf airport, while waiting for my flight to Dubai.

The book comes in handy, now that Ideasmith has ensnared me in a tag that has been going around the blogosphere the past one week. The tag instructs you to:

Pick up the nearest book.
Open to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

As the fifth sentence by itself may not make much sense, I have cheated slightly and started with the second sentence of page 123 and the passage reads something like this:

“The light was just beginning to enter the sky. The marine layer was coming in thick and grey, deepening the shadows in the streets. It made the place look like a city of ghosts and that was fine with Bosch. It matched his outlook…”

A bit clunky, you think? Maybe. But Connelly’s thrillers are generally well-plotted and the main protagonist—Detective Harry Bosch of LAPD—cynical, embittered and yet naïvely searching for that perfect relationship is an endearing character with all his failings.

Who do I tag? Umm…let’s see.

OK. I tag Meena, Vijay, Amrita, Gypsy and Philip.

Amen.

In praise of the beard

2008-06-11T07:30:00.001+05:30

I have been having a beard for over two decades now. Many are the people I have misled into thinking of me as an intelligent, erudite, caring, sensitive human being by the sole virtue of my beard. Likewise, many are the sticky situations I have got out of with Houdini-like adroitness, by simply stroking my beard and looking thoughtful.

The deception came later. Initially at least, the idea was to save valuable time in the morning. A habitual late riser, sharing as I did a 1 BHK apartment with one wash basin and one toilet with three other office-goers, mornings in our little flat were incredibly chaotic. Tempers, like bowel pressure, ran high and irritation ruled the roost. Words were exchanged, doors thumped, and trains missed. That is when I made the pleasant discovery that I could shave off, pun intended, a precious ten minutes from my ‘rush-about’ time, by not shaving.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The feedback from both family and friends were ecstatic. Covering up at least part of my visage with the fuzz they considered an immense act of kindness from my side. The more charitable amongst them said: since your face is certainly not your fortune, any embellishments that you can add on, such as a moustache or a full beard, can definitely not add to the suffering of the beholder; if at all, it can only alleviate the pain.

Looking back, my co-existence with my beard has been a happy one. True, there have been hiccups along the way, like that time in a hotel in London, while helping myself to a generous portion of bacon at breakfast, the Bangladeshi restaurant manager whispering a hoarse warning in my ear, mistaking me for a Muslim. Or, those days immediately following the 9/11 blasts, when airport security at Frankfurt singled out bearded passengers for special checks which was humiliating, to say the least.

Now for the immediate provocation for this post: one of my young blogger friends from Mumbai whose blogs (she has two) I read with a lot of interest, has come up with a post in which she states unequivocally that moustachioed and bearded men are not her cup of tea. ”When it comes to gentlemen professing l’ amour for me, smooth faces get brownie points...” says she. I am aghast. I feel distraught. I hope what she is articulating is not the general trend among young women these days. If such indeed is the case, my heart goes out to the bearded young men of her generation.

Or may be, they can take heart from the bard saying: "He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man."

Nervous Bosses

2008-06-06T08:00:00.000+05:30

Nervous and insecure bosses are dangerous. Not only do they try to infect you with their nervousness and insecurity, but when the chips are down or, to put it more delicately, when the shit hits the fan, you will find such bosses are often coated with Teflon: nothing sticks to them and suddenly you find yourself the guilty party with the brown stuff plastered all over you.

Gana was one such boss. A small, dapper man with snow-white hair and a sallow complexion, Gana could be charming when he wanted to, but most times took an unholy delight in making the lives of his subordinates miserable.

Gana’s brow is always furrowed in thought. He is forever calling everyone to his cabin for impromptu meetings and discussions. He smokes incessantly, ‘water-boarding’ his cigarette butts into a huge ashtray half filled with water. His glass-topped table is always full of important-looking files and papers. When he walks out of his cabin, he walks with fast, purposeful strides and has this anxious, anguished expression on his face as if the company’s future hangs on the momentous decisions he is about to make.

Six months into the new job, Gana calls me to his cabin. As usual, his table is piled high with files. He is sitting with a large sheet of paper and is drawing columns and rows with a ruler and a pencil, this being much before the advent of Lotus 1-2-3, Excel and their ilk, of course. My task apparently is to dig into each file and come up with some numbers which he enters faithfully into his spreadsheet. It is boring, repetitive work and not something a Sales Head should be really doing by himself. An hour into this monotony, I can take it no more and start fantasising about women.

I am brought back to earth by someone shouting my name. It is Gana.

“Customer Tejal. You have given me the wrong figures. HOW CAN WE HAVE NEGATIVE COMMISSION?” he screams.

I have no idea what he is talking about. But he has succeeded in making me hopelessly nervous.

“Err...maybe you entered in the wrong column, sir,” I point out helpfully which is a big mistake. Gana is now literally frothing at the mouth.

“SHOW ME...SHOW ME...” he shouts.

I reach out to point out the error and in the process, manage to overturn the entire contents of Gana’s ashtray on to the sheet. The ashtray apparently has not been emptied since the Chinese war of 1962, and a viscous, brownish fluid, smelling in equal parts of tobacco, vomit, and unwashed dishcloth spreads slowly but inexorably onto the beautifully-drawn rows and columns of Gana’s now almost-completed spreadsheet.

I watch in fascination.

Cut to Gana: I am sure the man is dying or at least, having a heart attack. His face has turned an unhealthy crimson. He is trying to shout, but what comes out is a strangled groan. He chokes, he gurgles, and then, with a hand quavering with anger and indignation, wordlessly commands me to get the hell out of his office, which I am extremely happy to do.

They had to keep him under sedation for the next few days.

Tata Kumar

2008-05-31T07:00:00.000+05:30

If you have to travel from the suburb of Andheri in North Mumbai to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Powai, you have to first go through the industrial suburbs of Marol and Saki Naka. Just before the huge campus that houses Larsen & Toubro, you take a left and suddenly the landscape changes: you have the shimmering Powai Lake on one side and fields of verdant green on the other. The scene is almost pastoral in its beauty and even the air seems cooler.

Whoa! Hold on! I hear you say. The picture you are painting–which century does it belong to? There is a lake certainly, but shrunk to pathetic proportions; and on the other side, all we can see are tall, drab residential blocks. The road is in a permanent state of being widened and the excavators kick up a fine red dust that sears our eyes and clogs our nostrils. Traffic piles up even during off-peak hours and the exhaust fumes choke us. Our children have bronchial problems and...

I know. I know.

But this post is not about how Mumbai’s politicians have sold their city’s soul to a cartel of nefarious interests which has resulted in the destruction of the last patches of greenery and led to the creation of charmless, soulless suburbs such as the Powai of today.

This post is about my friend, Tata Kumar.

After finishing his M.Tech, Tata Kumar had shifted to a rented, one-bedroom apartment opposite the IIT campus, where all of us used to get together once in a while. Being intelligent and brainy unlike most of us, Tata would lecture to us relentlessly on Operating Systems and microprocessors and, close to midnight, exhausted by so much gyan, we would all troop into the nearby Udupi joint for some beer and simple vegetarian food. Tata, being a regular, could order stuff not on the menu, alu-jeera fry being one of them.

Tata Kumar was not his real name, of course. When he took up his first job, it was with that reputed industrial house, and he was to stay with them for very many years; his loyalty and admiration to them was so great and overwhelming, that it was Digamber I think, who re-named him as Tata Kumar and the name stuck.

Tata Kumar being a computer specialist, I will use a computer term to describe him: WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get. He is a simple, honest soul, totally devoid of guile or deviousness, ever willing to help, listen or advise. Recently, I met up with him in Mumbai after a gap of almost ten years and he was the same Tata Kumar, with his wide open smile and utter lack of pretence.

Tata Kumar, I am happy you are still the same, even though the Powai we knew so well has changed forever.

Bhusawal Blues: 3

2008-05-25T12:01:00.000+05:30

I have a cloth bag. I have a beard. I am thin and look emaciated. The Bhusawal cops are convinced I am a naxalite from the forests of Chandrapur.

There follows a long, arduous conversation with the cops questioning me in Marathi and I trying to reply in my faulty, constipated Hindi. I am terrified the cops will haul me off into custody and that will be the last anyone would hear of me. I fish around in my wallet and find a crumpled business card of mine which I proffer, with much humility, to the custodians of the law. I can see they are not impressed.

The senior one switches to Hindi and addresses me in patient, measured tones one normally reserves for the mentally challenged: “You have come by the morning train. You say you have come here to visit your friend. But there is no friend. You don’t have your friend’s address or phone number. Now we find you sleeping here in the station. Does it make any sense to you?”

“No,” I say helpfully, “I am waiting for a train back to Bombay.”

“Where is your ticket?”

“Err...” I stammer, “I was planning to get it, once I woke up.”

Somehow, my interrogator finds this answer unacceptable and utterly irresponsible.

“Which train?” he thunders.

“Varanasi Express,” I say quickly, having already looked it up on the timetable painted on the wall of the railway restaurant.

The cops frog march me to the ticket counter and make sure I purchase a ticket back to Mumbai. Then, with a stern warning of dire consequences if I am ever found in the vicinity once the Varanasi Express has left the station, they slouch off, in search of more interesting victims.

So I return to Mumbai and immediately start planning the murder of Bisque.

Only after a week do I come to know of the real story behind Bisque’s absence in Bhusawal station that morning. Apparently, the previous night, he had been diagnosed as having acute appendicitis and had been admitted to the hospital in great pain. When I was having my little misadventure in the station, Bisque was undergoing emergency surgery for removal of the infected appendix.

I felt like a worm the next few days.

But then, as you might have guessed, Bisque’s surgery was successful and, after a period of convalescence, he recovered completely to become the famous Bisque the Collector, two decades later.

Bhusawal Blues: 2

2008-05-21T17:00:00.001+05:30

At Bhusawal station the next morning, I am not in a good mood.

The whole of the previous night I have sat wedged underneath the washbasin of a stinking toilet with five other people. It has been a hot, humid journey in an overcrowded compartment, the predominant impressions of which have been the smell of sweat and urine and a sort of in-your-face intimacy such large number of people in such confined spaces inevitably brings about.

There is no Bisque on the platform.

I splash some water on my face from a public tap, brush my teeth, and go have a cup of tea. Even though it is hardly seven in the morning, one can already feel it is going to be another hot, sultry day. Hours go by and by ten, I conclude something seriously has gone wrong and Bisque is not coming anymore.

I curse the man. I also curse my stupidity. I have no phone number, no address, no way to contact him.

I get out of the station and walk up to the bus stand, with a vague hope of finding a bus that will take me to the Bhusawal power station. The bus stand is milling with people and every bus that turns into the stand releases clouds of fine, red dust that have me running for cover. The heat has by now become unbearable and I beat a hasty retreat back to the cooler confines of the station, ruefully accepting the fact that I am not made of stuff that make for great adventurers!

The silver lining in the cloud comes in the form of golden brown toast done to perfection and a fluffy omelette, with liberal sprinklings of onions, tomatoes and green-chillies, from the station restaurant. Hunger satiated, I walk along the platform and find a comfortable bench under a strategically-hung ceiling fan. It is close to noon and the station is deserted except for stray dogs playing between the tracks and groups of weary porters slumped against the pillars.

I fall asleep only to be rudely awakened an hour later by two belligerent policemen.
Photo Courtesy: Indian Railways

Bhusawal Blues: 1

2008-05-17T09:20:00.007+05:30

The Calcutta Mail is one of the oldest and most prestigious trains of Indian Railways. Every day, she leaves from Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (now renamed Mumbai CST) at 21.25 hours, embarking on a journey that will cover over 2100 kilometres and take close to 38 hours. She will stop at 48 stations in between, before arriving at her final destination in the eastern coast of India. It is a long, dusty haul along the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal and now, after the formation of new states, I suspect even Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Sorry for the Paul Theroux impersonation, but I had to give you this information so that you have an idea about the large geographical region that is serviced by this train. As you can imagine, this train is a lifeline for the large migrant population of North and East Indians and even Bangladeshi immigrants living and working in Bombay. Being less expensive than the super fast trains such as the Gitanjali Express which ply the same route, the Calcutta Mail is preferred by the poorer sections of the society and pulls out, every night from Bombay, with every seat and every berth taken and the unreserved compartments literally bursting at the seams or at the welds, if you please.

So I decide one day to take the Calcutta Mail on an overnight journey to Bhusawal in North Maharashtra. Bisque has been working there in a power station for a year now and has invited me to spend a weekend with him. The train reaches Bhusawal early morning the following day and Bisque has promised to pick me up from the station and take me to his quarters, 15 kilometres from the main town.

Three factors combine to make this journey one of the most unforgettable in my life:

I undertake this trip in May, at the height of summer when the mercury in interior Maharashtra can touch a searing 45 degrees Celsius.

Fully confident of Bisque’s ability to carry out a simple task such as picking up a friend from a railway station, I carry neither his address nor his phone number.

In a spirit of reckless adventure, I decide not to book a sleeping berth and travel in the unreserved compartment.

The retribution comes swiftly enough.

Photo Courtesy: Anir's Public Gallery, Picasa web Albums

Transistor Days

2008-05-11T13:21:00.002+05:30

Come to think of it, a tiny device called the Transistor freed us from the tyranny of plugged-in devices such as the vacuum-tube radio and made music portable. The transistor radio became a rage and a status symbol. The early versions came encased in leather and people used to take them everywhere: to parties, to picnics, and while going on a long journey.

The wife has a black and white picture of herself, seated on her mother’s lap while on a picnic, with a transistor radio in the background. If you rummage among old family albums in your attic, chances are that you will find at least one or two such photographs with a transistor lurking somewhere within the frame.

This portability was taken a step further a few years later, by the tape-recorder, the early versions of which were plug-in devices with spool tapes and cumbersome to handle. Then we had the compact and convenient cassette tape and had a compact cassette player to match, which could operate also on batteries. So now, not only was music portable, but we could also choose the kind of music that we wanted to listen to.

This was a mixed blessing, to put it mildly. I remember a car journey from Palghat to Trivandrum, a journey which in those days took close to nine hours, with a family who insisted on playing the same three music tapes they had over and over again. In between, they would also record random snatches of conversations in the car and play it back with much laughter and evident enjoyment, setting my teeth on edge and reducing me to a nervous wreck.

It was but natural and inevitable that the transistor radio and the compact cassette player would combine one day to give you the 2-in-1. When my brother wanted to buy one, we had serious discussions whether to go in for mono or stereo, whether a “Sleep” function was essential or not, whether the “Pause” button was really useful or mere window dressing, and had a host of other questions, most of which I have forgotten now.

The best part was of course that we could jump into our parents’ bed now after dinner with the 2–in-1 having the pride of place, in the middle. Good conversation to the accompaniment of good music with close family and most often, friends or relatives.

It is an enjoyable combination.

Photo Courtesy: Manolo98’s Public Gallery: Picasa Web Albums

Joshua's Mumbai

2008-05-07T20:00:00.000+05:30

My friend Rakesh was so inspired by my post on Ballard Estate, or so I would like to fancy, that he travelled all the way from faraway Mira Road where he lives, to South Mumbai and took some fantastic photographs of a few of the heritage buildings there. With his permission, I am providing here the link for you to view these nice pictures.

Rakesh, by the way, is quite normal, compared to some of my other friends who have populated these blog posts off and on. Granted, there was that brief period in early 1990s when he declared undying allegiance to the state of Israel and started calling himself Joshua. That was when he went to the Israeli consulate in Nariman Point and requested that he be recruited to the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel. The deputy attaché or whoever it was that met him, discreetly pressed the buzzer underneath his desk signalling the infiltration of a raving lunatic into the consulate premises. The security, with admirable panache and with a kind but firm hand on my friend’s shoulder, escorted him out with no untoward incident.

Surely you would agree these are minor youthful transgressions and something to be glossed over.

To come back to Rakesh of the present: Rakesh hates multiplexes and is of the opinion that they have ruined the cinema-going experience forever with their fancy seats, fancy crowds, and fancy pricing. So he visits only single-screen cinemas like Regal or New Empire in South Mumbai.

My friend is also quite an aficionado of Kingfisher beer and can tip back quite a few pints of the bubbly golden yellow elixir in the company of close friends, yours truly included.

So now you have an idea of how these photographs came about which were taken over a span of several months, several Sundays to be exact. Rakesh lands up in South Mumbai on a Sunday afternoon, catches a movie in Regal or Eros or wherever, knocks back couple of beers in Leopold in Colaba and starts walking the streets, clicking away merrily.

Almost a perfect Sunday that.

Radio Days

2008-05-03T23:25:00.006+05:30

Industrial design in the 1950s had a definite predisposition for Bakelite fascias and rounded corners. If you want to see what I mean, just watch one of those black and white movies of that era with James Stewart or Frank Sinatra listening to the radio or playing the gramophone.

We had a radio like that in our house for a very long time. In fact, for the first seventeen years of my life, I think it was the only source of entertainment we had in the house. Finished in dark brown Bakelite with small, protruding knobs for power on/off, volume, band select, and tuning, with a back panel made out of hardboard, it was a sturdy piece of equipment which travelled with us all over Kerala, suffering the ignominy of several cycles of packing, shifting and unpacking.

These radios used vacuum tubes—so once you turned the set on, it took a while before the tubes heated up and the set started functioning. The more advanced models boasted of a “magic eye” which was a thin phosphor strip inside a narrow glass tube, which glowed brightly when the peak signal tuning point was reached.

In our house, the radio was normally switched on mainly for the Hindi and Malayalam film songs. But on certain momentous occasions I remember the entire family crowding around the radio set and listening with bated breath to news of grave importance. The live telecast of Nehru’s funeral procession was one such occasion. Seven years later, during the Indo-Pak war of 1971, we were to suffer the agonies of war and experience the exhilaration of victory through the humble, old radio set.

As a listener, I stuck mostly to the known and familiar confines of MW (Medium Wave) band and listened to the local transmissions. On days when I felt more adventurous, I hit the SW (Short Wave) highway and would continuously work the tuning knob through the entire spectrum, listening to strange snatches of conversation in unknown languages, strange music and an array of electronic noise that spanned a whole gamut from hisses to giggles to high-pitched static screams.

I believed these sounds were created by alien intelligence trying to contact us from outer space.

I still believe so.

Photo Courtesy: Alois's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Hollywood Magic

2008-04-27T16:15:00.004+05:30

Unbeknownst to the wife, I have loved several women, the tragedy of course being the love was unbeknownst not only to the wife but also to the women concerned.

Rene Russo is one of them. Uma Thurman is another.

If you were to sit up and ask, “Rene who?” no, I will not be offended or surprised, for you are only proving the point I am about to make. This beautiful and talented lady is one of the most underrated and underutilised actresses in Hollywood today. One of the reasons could be that after being a top model for a number of years, she came into films when she was past 35. The other reason could be that she is married to the same man for the past 16 years and may not have given much grist to the gossip mill unlike so many other leading ladies of her time.

To the uninitiated, some necessary filmography: Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4, Outbreak and Ransom, opposite Mel Gibson.

I may have not perhaps mentioned in these posts, but I am a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, right from his “A Fistful of Dollars” days. In my pantheon of Hollywood Greats, old Mr. Squinty is right up there, somewhere close to the very top. And there is one movie where Rene Russo and Clint Eastwood come together and this is the movie I want you to see. It’s called “In the Line of Fire” (ITLOF).

ITLOF is a predictable but well-made thriller where Eastwood plays a veteran Secret Service agent. Russo is his FBI associate and the duo race against time to foil an assassination attempt on the US President. Predictable stuff indeed, but Russo imbues what could have been a typical Eastwood-sidekick-and-love-interest role with a certain luminous charm and gives the character a solid veneer of professionalism and reliability.

What really works for me in ITLOF is the on-screen chemistry between Russo and Eastwood which doesn’t exactly boil over but sizzles quietly in the background. My favourite scene is the one where the duo is having ice cream with the sun setting over the Washington monument. Eastwood says something particularly annoying and misogynistic and Russo asks him ever so sweetly: “Do you really have to try to be obnoxious or is it a gift?”

“It’s a gift,” says Eastwood, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Photo Courtesy: Chuang’s Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

The Mumbai Local

2008-04-23T20:35:00.006+05:30

Travelling in overcrowded suburban trains of Bombay forces you to learn many skills. Reading a broadsheet newspaper such as The Times of India holding onto an overhead strap with one hand in a swaying train compartment where people are packed in like sardines, is one of them.

There is a certain time-tested method of doing this and like all skills, can be elevated to the realm of fine art with constant practice.

The trick is to go against the natural cross fold of the newspaper and fold it vertically in the middle. Run your thumbs pressed together along the vertical fold and make a knife-edge crease. Read the front page one half at a time. Now, fold the right half of the front-page backwards so that the left side of Page 2 and the right side of Page 3 are exposed. Read them. Now fold the entire paper inside out, so that...

I know I am losing you, but you get the drift. When you consider that you have to undertake these dextrous moves making sure you don’t elbow the guy on your right in the ribs and at the same time stay balanced so that you don’t sway into the guy on your left, you will have a general idea about the complexity involved.

Doing the crossword doubles the complexity because you have a new factor here which is the pen. Your left hand is holding onto the overhead strap and your right hand is holding both the newspaper and the pen and to fill in 8 Across or 17 Down you have to momentarily let go of the overhead strap and this is a moment fraught with more tension than the climax of a Hitchcock movie.

Once you have mastered the broadsheet and the crossword, reading the tabloid on the return journey home, is far less complex. Same way, once the tabloid has been conquered, reading a magazine or a paperback in such crowded spaces becomes a piece of cake. I remember reading the four books that constitute the famed Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell, in conditions of aforementioned intimacy.

These days I have far more time than I ever had had in Bombay and I hardly read anything.

There is a lesson in it somewhere waiting to be learned.

A trip to London

2008-04-20T11:35:00.004+05:30

With much prodding and pushing from Herman and Bernadette, I go on a weekend trip to London. The tourist coach is full of foreign college students studying in Paris. They are extremely friendly, but there is a problem: They cannot speak English and I cannot speak French. We manage to communicate though, using a combination of nods, hand signs, head shakes, and smiles.

We get to Calais and take a ferry. As you approach the coast of England, you can see the awesome white cliffs of Dover. Suddenly, I remember Mathew Arnold and his poem “Dover Beach” and think fondly of my father, the English professor, who had never been to the land of his favourite poets and dramatists.

We are staying in a hotel near Gloucester Road and I find myself sharing a very large room with two Algerian girls and a Mexican boy called Filiberto. We quickly become friends and over a cup of coffee, they anoint me as the de facto leader of the small group, the overriding qualification for the post being of course, a working knowledge of English.

So we do the London tour bit: Hopping on and off open top buses, we feed the pigeons at the Trafalgar Square, gape at the graceful contours of St. Paul's Cathedral, admire the Big Ben and complain bitterly about the exorbitant entrance fees at Madame Tussauds. By evening, we are thoroughly exhausted and decide on an early dinner. Rather selfishly, I suggest Indian and, to my surprise, everyone agrees.

It is my first Indian meal after three weeks and I have tears in my eyes at the end of the feast.

The meal revives our spirits and the girls suggest we go to a night club. Both Filiberto and I are a bit apprehensive but the girls are full of enthusiasm and drag us along. It turns out to be a frenetic but a thoroughly enjoyable experience, even though we run out of money after three rounds of drinks. A bunch of giggling English girls who have smuggled in gin cocktails in quarter bottles share their booty with us and a good time is had by all.

The next day we visit Windsor Castle. I do not remember much of that visit; I am sure, neither do my three friends of the previous night.

We were quietly nursing our king-size hangovers.

Photo Courtesy: Openphoto.net

Paris Diary: 3

2008-04-16T22:37:00.005+05:30

There is much about that spring in Paris that I have forgotten, but a few memories remain.

I am sitting in a sidewalk cafe, at peace with myself, watching the world go by. Across the river, I can see the graceful Notre-Dame cathedral, silhouetted against the evening light.

After coming to Paris, I have fallen in love with the wayside café which for the French is not just a place to eat, but also a centre for socialising, relaxation and even rumination. If people-watching is your hobby, hours can be spent just watching various parallel universes revealing themselves all around your table: men in business attire unwinding with a glass of wine before going home; young couples kissing or holding hands oblivious to the world around them; matrons with dogs in tow; old men in chequered caps reading the newspaper or staring emptily into space. For a gifted writer, I think to myself, every table can be the beginning of a story.

On my way back to the hotel, at a newsagents’, I see a stark black and white billboard with three words: Sartre est mort. Sartre is dead. With a mild sense of déjà-vu, I recall reading how the French intellectuals of the post-war era, Jean-Paul Sartre included, were hosted and celebrated by the well-known cafés of Paris of that time, some of which exist even today.

A few days later, Sartre’s funeral is attended by over 20,000 mourners.

I do not go, not knowing where exactly the funeral was taking place. I feel inhibited going alone.

I wish I had gone.

Photo Courtesy: Emilia. Paris. Picasa Web Albums

Paris Diary: 2

2008-04-13T12:24:00.006+05:30

One week into my stay in Paris, I meet up with a group of Indian students. Most of them are pursuing post-graduation in Cité Universitaire. They are a helpful lot and especially one of them, Shaji, takes me under his wing. Both of us have studied more or less at the same time in Trivandrum, though we never knew each other then.

Shaji works the night shift in a hotel near La Madeleine. It is a small hotel, Shaji warns me, but, breakfast included, costs only FF 84 per night, whereas I am paying almost three times that in my present hotel. Shaji urges me to shift and I readily agree, the attraction being of course that I will have company in the evening.

What Shaji conveniently forgets to mention is that the hotel is used by streetwalkers to turn short-time tricks and also by amorous couples for illicit liaisons, not that I would have changed my mind even if he had warned me earlier.

So I shift hotels the second week. It is good fun because by the time I come back from work, Shaji will be behind the reception counter. He would have brought with him a small plastic bag which contained stuff for our dinner, mostly the long loaves of the French baguette, sausages and a few cans of beer. There was a pantry behind the reception and we would reminisce about Trivandrum and cook dinner and talk well past midnight, when I will reluctantly, turn myself in for the night. Shaji will try to catch some sleep in a small room adjacent the pantry and would be off to his hostel by 6 am.

Normally the action started after 9 pm. The “working girls” were easy to spot with their heavy make-up and high boots. While the customer pretended to look elsewhere, the girl walked up to the reception and chatted with Shaji. Money will change hands and Shaji will push the key across. Half an hour later, the couple came down the lift and the girl will hand over the keys, again making friendly small talk. It was all very civilised and done with a lot of, what the French call, savoir-faire.

Shaji had an understanding with the owner of the hotel: He could rent out a room two or three times a night and the Patron did not mind, as long as he got one night’s rent.

This was the Patron’s way of letting a struggling Indian student make some extra money.

Photo Courtesy: Emilia. Paris. Picasa Web Albums

Paris Diary: 1

2008-04-09T21:00:00.004+05:30

My idea of exploring a city is to throw the guide book away and wander aimlessly. While this method can have disastrous consequences when exploring an Indian city, it works for me every time I am in Europe. In the case of Paris, wandering aimlessly can yield surprisingly delightful results, as every unplanned detour or every unexpected turn of the street has literally the ability to stop you dead in your tracks, such being the aesthetic riches the city has to offer.

Such serendipity brings me one late evening to the Place Vendôme, after all the shops are shut and the beautiful square is lit only by the streetlights. I remember standing there for a very long time, completely overwhelmed by the architectural grandeur on display and the serenity that seem to prevail all around.

To start from the beginning...

I land in Paris on a bright spring afternoon. It is a Sunday and the taxi takes me through deserted streets to my hotel, near the Latin Quarter.

A letter awaits me at the hotel. It is from Herman, the person who will be my trainer for the next four weeks. Herman, writing in an elaborate cursive, welcomes me to Paris; gives clear, precise directions how to reach La Défense, the major business district of Paris where our office is located; apologises for the sorry state of the Metro. Apparently, the sanitation workers of the Metro are on strike and it is in bit of a mess.

Used as I am to the suburban stations and trains of Bombay, I can hardly find anything seriously wrong with the famed underground rail system of Paris. True, the trash cans are overflowing and there are scraps of garbage here and there, but I travel in air-conditioned comfort and the morning rush hour hardly holds any terrors for a battle-scarred commuting veteran from Bombay.

Herman is a tall, jovial man in his fifties. Bernadette, his assistant, is younger, but equally friendly. The couple go out of the way to make me feel at home that first day, showing me how to operate the coffee maker, where to find the cafeteria, and how to work the buffet during lunch time. As the days go by, they become really close and start advising me how to see little bits of Paris every day and what to do (or, not to do, according to Bernadette, clucking like a mother hen) during the weekends.

Thus begins my obsession with a city which I keep revisiting in my imagination even today.

Photo Courtesy: Neil - Vacances d’automne. Picasa Web Albums

Listeners' Choice

2008-04-06T12:37:00.003+05:30

Vividh Bharati, the commercial service of All India Radio, turned fifty this year.

As part of their Golden Jubilee celebrations, Vividh Bharati is now airing a very interesting programme where listeners write in, describing how a certain Hindi film song which they heard on radio at a certain critical moment in their lives, had a deep and lasting impact on them. Most are simple but poignant tales where a song reminds someone of an old friend, a parent, or spouse who is no more. For others, they bring back the carefree days of campus life. Some talk about how a particular song rescued them from the depths of depression or even, suicide. For some, a song provided the inspiration for a new beginning or a new outlook on life.

This may all sound a bit trite and self-serving to you if you have not heard this programme. Interspersed as it is with songs requested for by the listeners, the whole show is hosted by a man/woman team, who read aloud the letters with no small amount of empathy, adding their own comments or observations at the end. What amazes me is that these letters are not just from the Hindi heartland as you would normally expect, but from all over India, from places as far apart as Ambala, Guwahati and Vijayawada.

I listen to the programme whenever I can for two reasons: one, they mostly play melodious songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s which I love; two, some of these songs which I have been listening to since childhood, unleash in me by virtue of their association, a strong sense of nostalgia.

Recently, they played the Mukesh song “O mehbooba, O mehbooba” from the movie Sangam. Suddenly, a mental search engine starts working overtime and within a few seconds throws up myriad ‘pages’: Raj Kapoor movie; 1964 release; music by Shankar Jaikishan; you saw this movie for the first time in Alankar Cinema in Bangalore; you sang this song in a music competition in Class 5 with such disastrous results that you never dared to sing in public again...

I think you should tune in. Who knows, you may catch them reading my letter one of these days.
And that should definitely change your life forever! :-)

The Dance of Shiva

2008-04-02T21:52:00.001+05:30

With his piercing eyes and restless pacing, Digamber reminds you of a tiger on the prowl. We are at his apartment in Andheri. Digamber is smoking a joint and the room is hazy with smoke. The sickly sweet aroma of marijuana is all pervading. An expensive Nikon camera body and couple of telephoto lenses are on a sofa.

In between puffs, Digamber sips from a bottle of cough syrup. He is really high now and starts talking incessantly. It is often a monologue about spirituality, philosophy, music, cinema, books and anything else that comes to his mind. Not everyone listens. Ram fiddles with the camera and lenses. Bisque is listening to some music in his Walkman, his eyes closed. Bhoj wanders into the kitchen and after a few minutes, the aroma of freshly-made South Indian coffee wafts across the room.

Today I am Digamber’s only listener.

Digamber narrates to me a scene from a screenplay he has been writing for the past year or so. It is a funny scene where a policeman comes out of a village toddy shop in Kerala and with casual cruelty, kicks a stray dog sleeping peacefully outside.

Digamber flies for Air India. He has long ago got tired of his job and these days, often reports sick. He is an MA in Philosophy and after passing out of college, sat for the entrance examinations of all the premier management schools in India with absolutely no intention of joining in case he was selected. He got selected by all and he rejected them with utter glee. It was an ego thing, he says.

Digamber can talk well and has the ability to transfix you with his erudition and intensity. He is also a bit naive and child-like in so many ways and we are all rather protective of him.

One day, Digamber disappears and we have no news of him for several days. Finally through the Police, we trace him to a hospital far away. Apparently, in a kind of drug-induced delirium, he imagined himself as Shiva doing the thandav and started directing traffic near the Holy Cross Church, when the police had found him and sent him to the hospital.

We get him discharged from the hospital. Bhoj and his brother stay with him and nurse him back to health.

The Sunday Movie

2008-03-29T12:42:00.004+05:30

KK was the one who took me around the narrow alleys near VT Station and the busy side-streets that branch off from Phiroze Shah Mehta Road, pointing out all the good eating joints in the area. KK is no more now, but I can still see him, puffing and panting from the exertion, hauling his overweight form with its prominent pot-belly, negotiating the narrow and crowded streets with youthful aplomb. Thus I came to know that Modern Lunch Home in Gunbow Street served a mouth-watering Chicken Curry and Mocambo was the place to go for Fish Pulav. For Sookha Mutton, it was Bharat and for authentic Karela-Pyaaj, the Sher-e-Punjab. It was important education and invaluable during the fifteen years I spent in Bombay.

KK was my uncle and lived with his family in Chembur. At that time he was a journalist with The Times of India and worked out of the imposing Times building opposite VT station. It was no wonder that KK knew the area like the back of his hand.

At least couple of Sundays in a month, I will unfailingly take a bus from Vile Parle to Chembur in time to be in KK’s flat by 5.30 pm. The attraction was the Sunday movie. KK owned a black and white EC TV which found pride of place in his living room. The whole family were ardent TV viewers, and during week days watched everything from Krishi Darshan at 5.30 pm when transmission started, the Marathi News at 7.30 pm, the English News at 9 pm and all the programmes in between. Those early days of television seem so innocent and wondrous to me now. Only the major metro-s had television of course, so for a country bumpkin like me, coming as I did from faraway Kerala, the television was an object of intense fascination.

The Sunday movie was a serious affair. My aunt would have finished most of the cooking before the start of the movie, save minor chores like garnishing the main dish or making a salad which she would quickly complete during the 20 minutes break for the Marathi News. The entire living room will be made viewer-friendly, with fluffed up pillows on the sofas, comfortable dhurries on the floor, lights dimmed and windows shut to cut out external noise. A few invited neighbours troop in along with their children. The kamwali and her daughter have also stayed back for the special occasion. There is friendly banter all round.

The movie begins. One need not be worried about an unexpected visitor dropping by and spoiling the festivities.

Entire Bombay is watching the Sunday movie.

Photo Courtesy: Novella’s Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums.

Unsaintly Thoughts

2008-03-23T13:11:00.003+05:30

A letter has come from the Rajneesh Ashram, enquiring about a product that the company markets. I am asked to go and make a sales presentation.

I am both thrilled and nervous. The controversial teacher has been making headlines in the Indian newspapers and magazines of late, with his advocacy of sex as a means to spiritual enlightenment. There are reports about the hedonistic lifestyle adopted by his followers and unconfirmed rumours of wild orgies within the confines of the ashram. Bollywood has already made an eager beeline to the doors of the ashram, with celebrities like Vijay Anand and Vinod Khanna sporting the rudraksh and donning the saffron kurta, both considered to be trademarks of a true Rajneesh follower.

The letter is signed by a Ma Yoga P____. In my mind, I imagine an old lady with steel-grey hair tied into a severe bun at the back, peering at me through steel-rimmed spectacles and speaking sternly in a dry, gravelly voice.

Two days later I realise the ethereal creature languidly reclining in the sofa in front of me is far removed from the original mental picture I had of her. This tall, shapely, golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty is a Scandinavian goddess. She welcomes me in a voice of honey-dipped huskiness, offers me an orange drink and flashes a brilliant smile, encouraging me to start my presentation.

I have difficulty breathing.

Half way through the presentation, I am distracted by the thought perhaps she is not wearing any garment of a restraining nature underneath her ochre robe. When she leans forward to look at the samples or reaches out to pick up the brochure, I have glimpses of, what at least in my fevered imagination seems to be, an alluring and endless cleavage.

I continue with my presentation.

Ma Yoga P___ has a sort of guileless self-confidence that comes so naturally to most good-looking people, so when she crosses and uncrosses her long legs that makes her robe ride up her calf, it is with no deliberate intent to tease or to provoke. She is just being herself. She seems to be a genuinely nice person and I warm up to her.

To my surprise, after the official discussion, I find myself discussing Philosophy with her. We talk about J. Krishnamurthy and Acharya Rajneesh and the difference in their respective approaches to the same spiritual issues. She takes me to a huge, impressive library lined with books from wall to wall and asks me to choose a book. I pick up Rajneesh’s treatise on Tao.

On my way back, I dwell on the extreme dualities that can co-exist in the human mind. Sex and Spirituality, for instance.

I am smiling.

John Walker and the Amber restaurant

2008-03-20T22:58:00.007+05:30

John Walker eats the Indian way, breaking a piece of tandoori roti with both hands, dipping it into the Chicken tikka masala and popping it into his mouth with obvious relish.

We are at the famous Amber restaurant off Chowringhee in Calcutta, enjoying a late afternoon lunch. The table is laden with food: apart from the ubiquitous Chicken tikka masala, we have ordered a number of other Amber specialties as well – Fish tikka, Vegetable kadai, Mutton pulav, all to be washed down with some chilled Kingfisher beer.

John is a big eater. Like most Englishmen, he is also very fond of his “curry,” the spicier the better.

John and I are celebrating a big order, won after two days of tough and gruelling negotiations. It is a relaxed, elaborate meal that takes almost two and a half hours. We can afford to dawdle as there are no more appointments for the day. All we have to do is hop into the car and drive to the airport to take a late evening flight to Mumbai.

But while we have been digging into our gargantuan meal, unknown to us, it has been raining heavily and the street outside the restaurant is completely flooded. Perched precariously atop a parked scooter half-submerged in water, our driver shouts at us to take off our shoes and socks and follow him.

Bare-footed, John and I wade into the dirty, knee-deep waters of Waterloo Street and, with our shoes and socks held high above our heads, follow the driver to another, less-flooded side street and clamber into the car.

The road to the airport is one endless traffic jam. The rain has stopped but it has become unbearably humid. We sit in our car, breathing in the diesel fumes spewed out by the Ambassador taxis, trying hard to make ourselves heard amidst the rising cacophony of senseless honking.

We inch forward. John’s lower limbs which had come into contact with the dirty water have started to itch and the skin has become red and blotchy. He is suffering.

Finally, we make it to the airport barely twenty minutes before the scheduled departure of our flight. John rushes to the toilet to scrub down the encrusted dirt and muck from his legs and feet. We run to the check-in desk with our suitcases in tow, panting with the effort.

We need not have bothered. Predictably enough, the Indian Airlines flight is delayed and “is now expected to take off around 11 pm tonight”.

The Maiden Flight

2008-03-16T13:34:00.004+05:30

The company is very strict about travel rules. Juniors are not entitled for air travel, and are allowed to travel only by train. So, from Mumbai (then Bombay), I take the Madras Mail, which takes two full days and a night to reach its destination.

I am supposed to be in Madras (it had not yet been renamed Chennai) for three days. But on the second day, I get an SOS from Bombay asking me to return immediately, by air! Something urgent has come up.

My knees turn to water.

This was the time when Indian Airlines flights used to crash with alarming regularity. In fact, the 1970s had been a decade of horror for the carrier with fatal crashes reported in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976 and 1979. A whole generation had grown up seeing pictures of burnt fuselages and charred bodies displayed prominently in the morning newspapers and become passionate converts to the viewpoint that air travel was strictly for those who had a taste for reckless adventure.

I go through check-in and security like a convict approaching the gallows. I am allotted a seat at the very back, close to the toilets and the pantry. With an impending sense of doom, I fasten my seatbelt and try to control my rising panic.

The flight takes off and hardly ten minutes later, we are facing heavy turbulence. The aircraft shudders and seems to plunge down; I am a quaking jelly, looking wildly at all the other passengers who seem to be pretty casual about the terrible fate I am sure is going to befall all of us.

The moment passes, but I refuse to relax and am keenly monitoring the engine sound for any abnormalities that will signal another crisis. Dinner is served, but I can hardly eat anything.

Suddenly from the back, there is a shrill, high-pitched hiss! For the umpteenth time that evening, I jump out of my skin, convinced another great calamity has befallen us, only to find that the noise is caused by hot water being drawn from a faucet by the air-hostess to make coffee!

After what seems like an eternity, the plane lands in Mumbai and I totter out, mentally and physically drained.

It takes me weeks to get over the trauma! :-)

The Beatles Fan Club

2008-03-12T20:38:00.003+05:30

Every week-end, The Beatles Fan Club meets in our little flat in Vile Parle.

Suresh Baliga is the lead singer and Ram, the lead, or rather the only, guitarist. The rest of the band is a motley crew consisting of Bisque, Moni, Bhoj and a few others including myself.

“In Penny Lane there’s a barber showing photographs...” starts Baliga.

The rest of us cannot sing to save our lives, but what we lack in musical talent we try to make up with some earnest, full-throated singing that gains approving nods from our lead singer, which in turn, urge us on to explore hitherto unconquered peaks of discordance.

Baliga is a short, stocky guy with a thick moustache that lends his face a certain severity. But once you start him on the topic of music, he is a person transformed and a broad smile lights up his countenance.

Baliga is what you might call, a Born Again Beatles fan. Of course he knows all the songs and the lyrics by heart. But he is also an expert in Beatles trivia and have answers to questions like “Which of The Beatles got married first?” or “Which of The Beatles were left-handed?” Baliga knows all the birthdays, the recording dates, the wives, the girlfriends, the inside jokes and more importantly, can translate Liverpudlian slang into common English speech.

We are in awe of him.

In “Penny Lane”, one of the most enchanting of all Beatles’ songs, there is a reference to “a four of fish and finger pies”. With much relish, with miming actions that leave little to the imagination, Baliga holds us in thrall, explaining the sexual allusion behind that particular line.

No. This being a family blog, I shall not be annotating that line for you. You can look it up, if you want, on the Internet.

Meanwhile, Baliga is starting up another song.

It is one of my favorites. It is “Hey Jude”

Bisque the Collector

2008-03-09T11:02:00.001+05:30

Bisque has been a collector all his life.

In college, Bisque for no apparent reason, decided to collect newspapers from various countries. He wrote to all the foreign embassies in New Delhi beseeching them to send him old newspapers in their local language. I guess the housekeeping sections of the various embassies were only too happy to get rid of the junk. Very soon, the packets started arriving: Newspapers in different languages, sizes and shapes filled up his room, which started resembling a ruddiwala’s shop.

Soon, his normally stoic mother became totally fed up with her son’s crazy behavior and when Bisque was out with his friends, sold off the entire sorry lot of old newspapers to a hawker for 46 rupees and that was the end of that story.

But nothing can deter Bisque. He continues to collect with a vengeance. Only the object of his collection changes from time to time. Once it was old Hindi film songs. Then it became old Tamil film songs of the 1940s. Last time I went to his house, there were twenty videotapes of song sequences from Hindi movies of the 1960s acquiring dust and cobwebs, never mind the video recorder conked off three years ago.

But guess what Bisque is collecting these days?

World Cinema.

He started with Hollywood few years ago, with the Clint Eastwood collection, the Paul Newman collection, the Julia Roberts collection and so on. Very soon, he started cross-referencing and started collecting genre-wise: Romance, Action, Thriller, Horror, Comedy etc. Now the crazy coot has awesome looking ring binders with partitions for individual movies where he carefully records details of the main cast and crew, plot summaries downloaded from the net and a unique numbering system that helps him track the movie from the shelves.

Now Bisque is on a spree collecting film classics from all over the world, including Korean, Japanese and Chinese movies. When I last talked to him, including Hollywood movies, he had a collection of over 600 movies!

Bisque is a generous soul. Being a close friend, he allows me to borrow a few movies whenever I visit him. He will carefully note the names of the borrowed titles in his little black book, promptly crossing them off when I return them. Any undue delay in returning the movies and Bisque will start calling and dropping not-so-subtle hints, till you get the message.

I am not complaining.

Cinema: 2

2008-03-05T21:03:00.004+05:30

To get back to the “Ingmar Bergman” retrospective.

On three consecutive days, I watch “The Seventh Seal”, “The Silence” and “The Virgin Spring” and feel as if I have been punched in the stomach. I had not seen anything remotely resembling these movies before!

Looking back, what were the factors that created such a deep impression on me? There was, of course, the magical use of light by the two cinematographers: Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nyquist. There was the barely concealed sexual imagery that in a way highlighted the pain and torment the characters were going through. But above all, it was the sheer scope and breadth of the themes that took my breath away, I guess. Themes such as Love, Desire, Religion, Loneliness, and Death.

Another great master the film clubs introduced me to, was Satyajit Ray. But here, being an Indian, it was much easier for me to get into his idiom and look inside the minds of his characters. What fascinated me about Ray’s work was the subtext, this subliminal element that was being played out in the background, when the main action was unfolding in the foreground. This subtext, which could be small, insignificant actions or gestures by the characters themselves, cleverly mixed external sound cues, or even subtle adjustments with the background score, lend the final movie greater depth and visual appeal.

Once I left the cosy, domestic environment of Trivandrum and moved to Bombay, movie-watching had to, necessarily take a back seat. Of course, one still managed to catch the odd screening at NCPA or Nehru Centre, but they were still few and far between.

With the advent of the VCR, one could have the convenience of watching a movie from the comfort of one’s home. But the movies which were available on rent were often the more popular ones, often pirated and need one say, often of very bad quality!

But for a true movie buff, the humble DVD has been a godsend. The visual quality is fantastic and the choice available is mind-boggling. I can walk into my DVD lending library in Chennai and browse the “International” shelves and decide whether to take home a Fellini, Kurosawa, Kieslowski or Almodovar for the week-end.

It is a great feeling.

Cinema: 1

2008-03-02T10:04:00.005+05:30

I wanted to become a “great” film director and make classics that endured the test of time. I ended up doing Engineering.

Back in 1970s in Trivandrum, where I grew up as a teenager, they had a very active film club movement going. For a nominal fee, you could get an annual membership and could be assured of at least three to four screenings every month. These film societies vied with each other to bring you, not only the great classics, but contemporary world cinema as well. Periodically, there were theme-based film festivals which were either country-specific or director-specific. So, one month it could be “Indian Panorama,” followed by a “Bergman Retrospective,” couple of months later.

You have to see this movement in the context of the college campus scene those days. Campuses in Kerala were throbbing with raw energy and were hotbeds for creativity and political activism. We spent less time worrying about our examinations and grades (terms like TOEFL and GRE being totally unknown those days) and were more concerned about a war being waged in far away Vietnam. We had little time for our textbooks, but were enchanted by the existentialist dilemmas put forth by writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

It was but natural that the young people of my age whole-heartedly embraced the new cinema movement. I guess it spoke to the rebel in them.

It is in this context I suddenly remember a brilliant movie called “27 Down”. Released in 1974, the movie won critical acclaim as well as reasonable success at the box office. With Rakhee and M.K. Raina essaying lead roles, the movie told the story of a young couple in Bombay trying hard to maintain a relationship, with the city and its inhabitants constantly intruding into their time, privacy and consciousness. 27 Down was shot in black and white and had a lot of street scenes including a few at the VT station during peak hour.

The movie marked the debut of a talented Kashmiri director, called Awtar Krishna Kaul. Sadly enough, it was to remain his last film as well. A few months after the release of the movie, Kaul died in a “drowning accident” off Juhu beach, in Bombay.

As for my romance with the movies, it continues to this day.

The Word Artist

2008-02-27T21:17:00.003+05:30

My friend Chandramohan (Chand) sends me an email, congratulating me for starting a blog. Apparently, he has read all the posts meticulously, because he had some good suggestions how to make them more interesting.

Chand works for a software company in Chennai. If you ask me, he is wasted in that industry. Chand should have been a writer. He would also make an excellent blogger. One, he can write beautifully. Two, he has a fantastic sense of humor; and three, he has a wide range of interests that span the full spectrum from sports to literature to world affairs!

Here is an excerpt from another e-mail he sent me recently:

I came across a news item recently which made me take a nostalgic trip to the Trivandrum of the 1970s. The news was regarding the imminent closure of the British Council. I used to look forward to going to the Council. In those days, before one had the television invasion into one's homes, the library was a welcome window into the outside world. The newspapers used to be a week old, but everything in life being relative, they still had an immediacy which was appealing……

The only irritant at the library used to be the rather overbearing attitude of the staff especially when it came to examining returned books and magazines. Possibly they thought the writ of the Raj still held or maybe it was just the behavior of some of my fellow members who were prone to demonstrating their surgical skills using an ordinary razor blade - evidenced by the absence of some of the more colorful pictures in the photography magazines.

Well those were the days when one went in search of news whereas today we are bombarded with information from all conceivable channels…

Hopefully, this post will encourage Chand and a number of my friends who are also readers of this blog, to start blogs of their own.

The more the merrier!

The Missing Passport

2008-02-24T10:31:00.003+05:30

Picture this.

It is well past midnight and all inmates of our bachelors’ pad in Vile Parle are fast asleep. An alarm goes off, but is quickly smothered after the first ring itself. My friend Moni gets up reluctantly and tiptoes softly to the toilet. Silently he finishes his shave, showers, sprays an expensive deodorant all over his body, gets into a freshly-laundered pair of trousers and puts on a spotless, white shirt. With practiced ease, he loops a tie around his neck and effortlessly fashions a perfect knot that he nudges into place. He selects a blue jacket on a hanger from the wardrobe and hooks it up against the door handle, ready for use.

All preparations thus completed, Moni goes back to his bed, slowly eases himself into a rigid, horizontal position and placing both hands in the middle of his chest as if in prayer, goes to sleep again.

If you were a newcomer to our flat and happened to wake up at that moment and switch on the light, say for a drink of water, and see Moni in that position, believe me, you would have died instantly, screaming in terror.

Moni was a flight steward with Air India. Lying down fully dressed and catching those precious five minutes of extra sleep before the transport arrived, was very important for him.

Thus on a New Year’s Eve, Moni sits with us nursing a watered down whiskey the whole evening, while the rest of us are celebrating. Well into the party, the flat is looking like a war-zone with empty beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays, scattered magazines and comatose men. Ram does a quick cleaning up so that the more embattled souls can be rolled into bed and the others can at least stretch their aching backs.

Lights off. Blissful darkness. Silence . Sleep comes easily to all the alcohol-infused souls.

Around 4 am, there is a major commotion. The normally considerate Moni is frantically waking up a snoring Ram! Apparently, Moni cannot find his passport anywhere and could it be that Ram has kept it safely somewhere when he did his last-minute cleaning operation?

Thinking through the alcoholic haze, Ram manages a moment of clarity. Yes, he says, he distinctly remembers dumping a passport and some other stuff into the waste-paper basket under the kitchen sink!

Moni wordlessly picks up his passport from the kuchra basket and goes out to the waiting transport, softly closing the door behind him.

Cooking Matters!

2008-02-20T20:29:00.004+05:30

I love to cook and admire people who can whip up a simple meal at short notice.

We were three guys sharing a furnished apartment in Vile Parle. Eating out every day was not an option, considering our paltry salaries those days. Fortunately, our kitchen was in great shape with a gas connection, cooking vessels and crockery. The other two guys could cook a bit as well. So it came to pass that I joined the group initially as a modest helper, cutting vegetables and laying the table, and gradually moving up the “value chain” to become a cook of sorts!

I used to come back from my summer holidays in Kerala with ruled pages torn out of old exercise books, in which my aunt would have laboriously written out recipes in her schoolgirl scrawl. The recipes would be tried out by the three of us, often with interesting and sometimes inedible results.

Meena is a better cook than I ever will be. She is one of those slow, methodical cooks who take their time first assembling all the ingredients and then sequentially following each step, right up to its final completion. The results are always predictable and, rarely if ever, disappointing.

The problem however, is that she hates cooking.

According to Meena, it is easy for men to say they love cooking, for they do it maybe once or twice in a month and that too, when they are in the mood. It is different for a woman, because you are forced to cook virtually every day and thus it becomes just another chore and hence, boring and monotonous.

Maybe she has a point. Maybe.

Anu, bless her young soul, loves cooking. She is also very creative and is not afraid to experiment. Sometimes we print out a recipe from the Internet and both of us get into the kitchen to try something daringly different, sprinkling rasam powder on Maggi noodles, for example. Of course, we are creative souls who by nature, tend to leave the kitchen in one big mess by the time we are done, which is frowned upon and acidly commented about, by the mother!

We have learned to take it in our stride.

A Pune Visit: Part 2

2008-02-17T09:34:00.002+05:30

Ram and I are sitting on the verandah in front of our hotel room in Pune, sipping our drinks. It is a cool, pleasant night and except for the usual nocturnal sounds, relatively quiet. In the far distance, we can see the lights of Pune railway station.

The day has been uneventful. The demo has gone well and the customer and his daughter have gone back to Pune.

We have chanced upon this hotel quite by accident. It is an old colonial mansion converted into a boarding house. Set amidst a spacious but rundown garden full of fruit trees, the hotel could well be mistaken for a government guest house somewhere in deep country.

We do not talk much. We have been in high school together and also went to the same engineering college. We have been friends for almost a decade now. It is a relaxed camaraderie that puts no pressure on us to fill the natural breaks in conversation with unnecessary words. We sit and drink in companionable silence.

Next day, after a late breakfast, we set about exploring the city. Our wanderings finally take us to Koregaon Park and to the imposing gates of Rajneesh Ashram. We loiter about but feel inhibited to go in.

This is the time when Pune is awash in saffron. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (he was yet to become “Osho” then,) is in residence and the city is full of his foreign devotees in ochre or saffron robes of various hues. There are bearded men with shaven heads, women with marigolds in their hair and beads around their necks, walking, cycling, or zipping past in motorcycles.

Hardly a year later, I will get the opportunity to visit the ashram again, but that visit deserves a post of its own, hence I will not talk about it now.

We take a taxi back in the evening. It is sunset in the Western Ghats and the hills are aflame in an orange afterglow.

It reminds me of Rajneesh’s followers.

A Pune Visit: Part 1

2008-02-14T22:16:00.005+05:30

It was my first official assignment: accompany a Chennai based customer from Bombay to Pune and show him a machine demonstration. The customer will be accompanied by his daughter.

Since the visit is supposed to take place on a Saturday, I ask myself: why not stay on in Pune on Sunday and make a weekend of it? I have never been to Pune before and this will be a great opportunity to do some sight-seeing.

I want my friend Ram to come with me but it is difficult to convince him. Ram is an easy-going, laid-back kind of person who would rather listen to music or try out South Indian ragas on his guitar during the week-end, than haul himself off to Pune.

Finally I hit upon an idea.

“The customer’s daughter is also with him and she is a real stunner,” I say.

“Have you seen her?” Ram is naturally suspicious.

I give my imagination free rein and describe to Ram, in minute detail, a girl I have never seen before. He brightens up considerably during the narration and agrees to come along.

Thus we find ourselves at 6 am the next day, near the Dadar Post Office, from where you get share taxis to Pune. It is a chilly December morning and we huddle against the wall of the taxi stand and wait.

Finally a car arrives and stops in front of the taxi stand. The customer gets down from the front and, as Ram and I hold our breath in mounting anticipation, the daughter emerges from the back.

The first thing we notice is that she has too much talcum powder on her face and neck. The effect is that of a whitewashed face. She is a tall, gawky lady in a sari and looks very formidable. Introductions are made. It is obvious the lady does not think much of both of us. She scowls and says nothing.

Ram flashes me a murderous look and goes and sits in the front seat of the Pune taxi that is waiting for us and does not talk a word during the entire journey.