Strong Medicine

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

The Monkey On Your Back

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

A Wedding in Jaipur

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

Masala Dosa, Mexican Style!

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

Searching for the Invisible Light Switch

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

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: 1

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

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

Paying Guest Woes

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.

Tata Kumar

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.

Joshua's Mumbai

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.

The Beatles Fan Club

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

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.

The Word Artist

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

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.

A Pune Visit: Part 2

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

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.

Nandan 1

Nandan writes to me from Dubai, pointing out several mistakes in my posts and reminding me not so gently, “a blog is in public domain, so please maintain a minimum quality in syntax and spelling and also, style!”


Nandan, he of the acerbic tongue and caustic wit, is my cousin. In his past life, he was a journalist in Delhi. Editors of some of the leading newspapers in India and the Middle East live in terror of receiving his stern missives, roundly chastising them for their abject editorial practices, and lowering what according to him are already, pathetic journalistic standards.


Many years ago in September, I was in Delhi. I come back to Hotel Ranjith after a hard day’s work and take off my shoes. The phone rings and it is from Kerala, with the news of my mother’s death. She had been ailing for quite a while, so it was not a shock really, but suddenly I was this little boy who had lost his mother.


The last plane to Kerala had already left hours ago.


Krishnan comes around to offer his condolences. Then Nandan comes and stays with me the whole night. Nandan is not good at consoling. Like me, he comes off as clumsy and embarrassed in such situations. We lie in adjacent beds and the silence is choking. Finally, I get up around four in the morning, get dressed and take a taxi to the airport.


Nandan also asks: Do you have it in you to continue this blog, day after day, week after week? The answer is: I don’t know. One thing is for sure. I will not allow the blog to control my life. I will not put pressure on myself by setting up deadlines I have no intention of meeting. But with encouraging feedback from all of you, who knows, we can keep it going for a while!

Delhi revisited

Delhi was bitterly cold this Monday.

It brought memories of other visits to the city, other winters, rum and coke sessions with colleagues and friends at the Jaipur Inn and Ambassador Hotel, the company guest house in Jor Bagh..And Ranjith Hotel, how can I forget Ranjith Hotel? I don't think it exists now.

Krishnan could not be called a friend of course, even though he was one, certainly. He was at least ten years my senior and respected as such. Krishnan swigs his drink in my room in Ranjith and complains in high falsetto how the company has gone to the dogs now. How it was better when the European bosses ruled.

And then, he takes me to his house in Karol Bagh and treats me to a delicious Kerala meal.

Years later, when I met him, he looked gaunt and tired. He had left the company by then, of course. He told me how he suffered a heart attack while driving. He drove with the pain to the hospital and the doctors told him that was a stupid thing to do and he was lucky to be alive.

Krishnan died three years ago. Funny, I started out writing about Delhi, but it became a kind of note on Krishnan. Ah! Well!