De-Mentor

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Kids of all ages, and from all backgrounds, playing cricket on the road. Mother is overseeing the garden. Daughter is giving her company.

Bang! Thud! Whoosh!

A green bolt from the blue whips through the air, hits the compound wall, ricochets from there, and in one swashbuckling move, sweeps Mother's favorite plant off its feet.
The breathless sapling bends in double, and becomes a hybrid creeper.

Mother is furious. She commands daughter to confiscate the weapon of this destruction. Daughter scrambles amidst the brambles, and finally emerges with a 'Ah-ha, Gotcha' look.

The little and not-so-little fellas crowd near the gate.

"Ball, aunty", one of them says.
"Balla vathu, keelavathu" (doesn’t need translation, and doesn’t have one. Merely added for rhyme and emphasis.) " Onnum kedayathu. (Nothing doing.) ", Mother retorts.

"Where is your house? Bring your parents. “, Daughter adds, just in case, some of them in the motley gang didn’t understand the vernacular.
"Sorry Aunty", apologises one.
"Pleeeeeeese Aunty" , pleads another.

Mother and Daughter are stoic. No relenting this time. This has gone too far today.
"Yarukavathu adi patta , enna pannuve?" (What will you do, if someone got hurt?)Mother uses rhetoric.
Heads lowered in shame. Or supposed- to- be shame.

Just then, father seizes his commercial break, and tears away from the TV. He had been fidgeting in his chair, in two minds. Whether to miss a ball in the India-Pak ODI or to put in his two cents in this altercation of serious concern.

Seeing Father finally realize his responsibilities, Mother gives a wide smile. Daughter is confused, and looks up, searching for any rain clouds. This event demands a thundershower from the skies.

Father picks one tiny tot, with a cricket bat that towers over him by inches. "Hey You", he begins in typical Class of 1960's English. Mother eyes glow in expectation. A long sermon is definitely due to follow. Those brats deserve every bit of it.
Daughter debates mentally, whether gray can look white, still craning her neck towards the heavens and concludes that it is an optical illusion.

Father straightens his shoulder, and gathers height. Makes him more intimidating, Mother beams.
Father clears his throat.
"Don’t you know any other shot? Why do you keep swinging in one direction? You are not a good cricketer if you play the same shots. In the real field, they would have real fielders. Not this Aunty, who can’t catch hold of a balloon placed in her hands. You should play a variety of shots. Next time, keep the bat straight, Man. Straight Drives make a Gavaskar."

Father triumphantly glances at his clan. Clan throws back a murderous look. Daughter stops craning neck. Those clouds are indeed white.

"Bring the ball and give it to these fellows. They needed someone to tell them how to play", Father orders and marches back to his throne in front of the TV.
"The Maharaja has spoken, go do his bidding" Mom mumbles. As daughter hands back the tennis ball to the smirking lads, Mother reflects aloud "God only knows how many windows your father must have broken, in his younger days. Only guilt can prompt such a show!"

Just Wondering -9

An optimist's view of a pessimist:
Coming to think of it, atleast a pessimist never gets any rude shocks in life !

Of Hawks and Eagles.

Whenever you have a problem in life, become a hawk. Soar into the sky.
Zoom out.
Zoom out so much that the problem becomes a tiny little green pea.
Stay zoomed out at this precise altitude for a while.
Till you enter a stupor.

Then zoom in again. Zoom in so fast, that everything around you is a blur.
Stop. Brake at a height where the problem turns into a piece of cake.

Now hover for a while. Stare at the problem. See the connections. Check for any dynamite remote switch properties that the problem may have.

Now, continue to zoom in.
Make a dash, headlong, eyes closed.
And land spread-eagled.

Dusty Pages

I get this inexplicable delight whenever I spot a best seller or a famous book, at the pavement book hawker’s.

Call it a vestige of middle class upbringing, but the day is made if I manage to steal a deal after hours of harangue, fully acknowledging in a remote corner of my mind, the unprinted pages, the typographic errors and other minor flaws that lurk within those glossy covers.
This sort of mutated into a mild addiction, a couple of years back, and I began to amass books. Books that were neatly stacked in my cupboard, amidst a hoarde of other miscellany; books that were never read beyond the blurb and the preface.

Books that were lent to friends and relatives, with beaming pride in recollection of the bargaining mastery behind their possession. Books that were dutifully reminded to be returned, with a statutory warning of not revealing the contents, for they were yet to be read by the owner, and would be read someday, sometime.

Not that I am a poor reader. My reading speed is average,and my attention span can hold for alteast a couple of days. The longest book I have read was of 1200 pages. The genre of my reading is decently wide, and I read a range of authors.
Although I have always liked reading, I have never really owned books. I used the library, or liberally borrowed from everyone I knew.

Maybe the lack of pressure to finish a book (now really owning them), or sheer intimidation by the length of printed matter made me put them them away for later.
With this hypothesis in mind, I began to feed on a staple of short stories, various collections borrowed from the library. I read them whenever I could find a moment, once even dropping a book into a bowl of sambar that I was stirring.

Revitalised by this exercise, I began to plod through those books I purchased. But, sadly they got tucked under the pillow, stashed beneath the bed, and a few even found their way to the attic. They had began to symbolize a lapse. They sent me on a guilt trip whenever I chanced a glance.

Then my mother started nagging me about the clutter they were making, and threatned to throw them away along with the old newspapers. The thought of the fruits of my labourious bargain being reduced to meagre change spurred me into action, yet again.
On a fine lazy Sunday, I locked myself up with one of those seemingly innocuous ones. I drew up a chart, with the targetted no of pages, Vs an ambitious time estimate. I set the alarm for the first chapter. And began to read.
The alarm rang. And I woke up. Chin deep in page no 5, chapter 1.

I still wage my war against the dusty pages. Managing to cajole extra time out of my mother, now and then.

My current (will always be current) list of dust collectors:
1. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence
2. A collection of Shakespere’s tragedies
3. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
4. Some Irving Wallace novel (forgot the name)
5. Bourne Series (Read the Ultimatum, from the library)
6. And countless e books (my battle against e books deserves a seperate post)
What’s yours ? *:)


P.S :
* : A desperate measure to absolve myself of all that guilt.

Economies on Rice.

On a sultry summer evening, with the humdrum humming of the ceiling fan coping up with a low voltage, as the background score:

A live and let live policy seemed to have established itself wordlessly in the household.

Both mother and daughter are deep into their magazines, daughter curled up on a chair with a film review; mother squatting on the floor, lost in a vernacular women’s weekly.

The head of the family, reading the moods of his subjects, cautiously mutes the TV, and is mentally transported to the cricketing stadium, replete with lights, action, dancing girls, crying sportsmen, slaps and claps; but sans the sound effects.

Peace prevails.

Mother suddenly looks up from her tips-for-anything-and-everything magazine and says “You should get this special herbal rice for me, they say it is good for keeping down blood sugar levels.”

Father, his eyes still glued to a swashbuckling Dhoni, replies in all earnestness, “Oh no! If you should start consuming like this, then food prices in USA would hit the sky. Then my niece in Virginia would face the brunt. Bush was right. The Indian middle class sure has a growing appetite.”

Daughter chuckles as mother makes another entry in her growing list of unsettled scores.

The Uncommon Man

I happened to see an interview of R K Laxman on CNN-IBN, today. The wit and brilliance of his answers made it a masterpiece of a show. The interviwer , a Ms Anuradha Sengupta, was so unlike the rest of the CNN-IBN coterie. Her questions were reflective and intuitive. Moreover she seemed to be enjoying the intelligence of the legendary cartoonist. This was a follow up to the Indian of the year award function, where he was honored with a Lifetime achievement award.

Some bits that I relished (recollected from memory, may not be verbatim) :


Interviewer : Your cartoons depict corruptness of politicians, lack of implementation of schemes , traffic jams and other such decadence. Is Mr Laxman a cynical man?
R K Laxman : Yes, I am a cynical man. I was born a cynic.
Interviwer: Don’t you have any optimism?
R K Laxman : no. Optimism is believing everything will be good. It only makes things worse.
Interviwer : Do you think the media of today, the papers and the TV channels give the common man a voice?
R K Laxman.: The common man will never speak. He is not interested in being heard.



Interviwer: Mr. Laxman, in today’s world, do you see yourself as a moral crusader?
R K Laxman: No. I don’t. There is nothing to learn from my cartoons. I simply want people to see the ridiculousness of some situations.I am no moral crusader.
Interviwer: Why not?
R K Laxman : It is not my business.


Interviwer: Is Mr Laxman a difficult person to live with?
R K Laxman : Yes. I have my demands.
Interviwer: Like what? Do you need to be left alone?
R K Laxman: Yes. I like to be left undisturbed.
Interviwer: Do you give others such liberties?
R K Laxman: No. I don’t.I correct them.
Interviwer: Mr Laxman, you have double standards.
R K Laxman : Yes. I do. Its good to have double standards.


R K Laxman’s satirical sketches have always been succinct and right on target. Some of them are gems to be framed. It was a rare treat to savour a sample of the Uncommon mind behind the Common Man.


P.S : Do try to catch it, if there is a re-run, or if it is available on the web. A must watch.
P.P.S:Cross posted at the media blog.

Update: The transcript of the interview can be found here. Link courtesy : Aravindh

Har Har, Jujhar.

Happened to watch Headlines Today the past two days. Was forced to run away from the drawing room leaving behind a half eaten dinner* for the first time in my life.

Day 1:

The Host: Jujhar Singh

The topic of discussion: Women’s rights groups up in arms against profane ads.

The cause of Nausea:

The ‘ad-nauseum’ in question was one advertisement for Amul Macho showing a couple of ladies grow green when the village belle seemingly sees bliss in washing her man’s underwear. The arbitrator Mr. Jujhar Singh pitted Mr.R.Balakrishnan (of Cheeni Kum fame) against a women’s rights activist. I am perennially skeptical about anyone with feminist leanings, and had been reasonably impressed by Mr.Balki from the reviews of his movie, and was naturally quite interested in how the argument was going to fare.

Mr.Balki defended his fraternity with a fairly lame argument saying the ad was infact liberationist by showing a female boldly expressing her sexuality. He also did not fail to commend the “creative” juices that poured into the “masterpiece”.

There are so many brilliant ads that so many of us have grown up with, and cherish even though the products they advertised have long become obsolete, and they did not resort to such blatant profanity to be creative. But our dear Mr. Arbitrator lapped up this argument, with a fervent “Aye Aye, Sir”.

This rights activist was slightly different from her ilk, in the sense, that she didn’t raise her voice, although she didn’t really approve of her opponent’s views. She quietly discounted all the aspects, that she had initially put forth, (like women’s dignity, sensibility, blah blah, and the like) but hung on to one particular PoV, that of the aesthetics that this kind of explicit lewdness would instill in young Indians. Mr. Balki had no solid answer to this.

That’s when our heroic arbitrator jumped in and drawled with a resonant belch (that was meant to pass off as a stylish nasal accent), “But, ma’m, don’t you think we are over-reacting and stifling the creativity of our talented young ad-makers?”

Tolerance Meter hit red, and I ran out, secretly wishing I had a stronger hold on my senses.

Day 2:

The host: Jujhar Singh again.

Heated Debate on: Yuvraj vs. Yuvraj.

The cause of Vertigo, Nausea, and partial deafness:

Yuvraj Singh’s birthday bash case. Neelam Mahajan poised to create a new record in pushing the decibels, the wronged mother fuming in the studio, and Mrs.Singh, on the phone. Our dear arbitrator went tipsy with glee. For the lady beside him was set for some action.

The matter being sub-judice was of course something that HT and our dear Jujhar had so graciously chosen to overlook. Mrs.Singh not being able to hold up to Mrs.Mahajan’s well-toned vocal chords looked like a lamb ready for sacrifice.

Had it not been Jujhar and HT’s shrewd move to keep the two ladies physically separated from each other, the damage to life and property would have been immense. A heated exchange of words ensued. Some even warranting a defamatory suit, that might have had Mrs. Singh in the studio, and Mrs. Mahajan on phone, maybe, for want of a refreshing change.

Jujhar gave a toothy smile, and blurted out something inane in his guttural twang. In case, you had been counting the morsels on your plate for want of a suitable diversion, and had to lift your head fearing a crick in the neck, the progress of the fight flashed on the screen, each scandalous utterance making way to a new line of trash, uhmm… flash.

Tolerance Meter went bonkers. I stumbled out of the room, fighting for dear life and desperately clinging on to what was once my sanity.


*: Was forced to flee, as for reasons best known to him, my father insisted on keeping HT on at full volume. Jujhar kept chasing me to the remotest corner of the house, with his debonair din.