The Pink Flamingo

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

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

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

Devappa's Story

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 Voice Apart

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

Landing in Mangalore

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!

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

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

Aisle Seat Pitfalls

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.

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.

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

Carol and the Old Monk: Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Uptightji

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

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

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

The Dance of Shiva

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.