My heart in my pocket

There were so many times when I had started to write this and then hesitated, unable to complete it, unable to move forward and post it. The time did not seem right or I failed to find the right words. Mostly, I had not sorted my feelings out, yet. Funerals, I had only heard, were mostly sobering affairs. Then my husband’s grandparents died and right from the moment the phone call came to the time when they were taken away to be cremated, every moment passes through my mind in slow agonizing detail, repeating itself in endless loops each time I let my mind wander.

Thata and Paati were what they were called by everyone and they had been married for 64 years. The path to my marriage was not exactly smooth like an ice skating rink. There had been opposition, lots of shouting and many tears and it took the better part of two and a half years for the wedding to happen. For one of those years, I was in the city of the boy’s home. Good etiquette or maybe some confusing feelings in all parties concerned ensured that I went over regularly to be introduced as the boy’s friend to whoever happened to be visiting too. That was when I first met Thata and Paati. She was almost eighty and read books with the curiosity of a child and he was well past eighty and spoke the language of where I come from with the delight of someone who last spoke it some fifty years ago.

When I did get married and first went to my husband’s home as the daughter-in-law, paati was there to welcome me, with warmth in her face and a smile on her lips. There was the finality of acceptance in the smile. Two days later, she was rushed to the ICU, almost comatose and hopefully with the will still left in her to fight for her life.  She did come home that time.  Some shades paler than her former self and yet, with a book in her hands. A month went by and one day, when we were getting ready to watch India play against South Africa, the call came that she had passed away. The world stopped for a fraction and five hours later, we were there to see her one last time.

She lie in the middle of the floor in accordance to the funeral rites of her faith. She was covered in a shroud. Since she had died a married woman, she was bathed, dressed in the traditional madisaar like for a festival and taken away to be cremated. The rituals dictated that we should pour water and rice into her mouth. There is no dignity in death. Whatever is done, is done to comfort the living.

Within my heart, I did not want to do any of it, did not want to remember her lifeless on the floor. I waited and waited for her to wake up. She was taken away to be cremated and then I knew that she was not coming back. The floors were swept and washed, everything was put away and lunch was served. I suspected then that all the hard work after a funeral like feeding elaborate meals to all the guests were tactics thought up by ancestors who were probably wiser than us to turn the mind away from the grief. Slowly the tears stopped and silently the laughter returned.

Until the day after the funeral, I never did work up the courage to talk to thata. My own grandfather had died when my mother was twenty one and so grandfathers for me were a mystery to be tucked away in some tiny corner of the brain. Gradually, I did work up the courage and strength to try making some talk with thata. The old man who was almost deaf, kept hearing the word paati in everything I said and was soon reminiscing about their days together as a newly married couple, bringing little children into a alien world where everybody around them were from a different  religion and vegetarian food was hard to come by. Not only were the warmly embraced by the community but they lived there for fifteen long years, speaking the local languages and acquiring a taste for the sharp and spicy food, though still they stuck to their faith and remained staunchly vegetarian.

Thata would tell everyone who came to visit him those few days that paati had lived a full life and though they had been married for sixty four years, he was glad she went away only after she had seen it all. As it turned out, he had been lying. On the twelfth day, he did not wake up from his sleep and then the world really stopped. Once again, we flew down to see him and yet, I kept waiting for him to wake up, knowing this time that he would not.

True I did not know thata and paati for long or very well. I was a stranger to the grief of their children and grand children. I heard from one and many about all the wonderful things they could do and all those that they did. Yet, seeing them lying there, looking nothing like themselves, I wanted to go and hide, my grief mine own, a tightness in my chest, desperately clinging to my memories of them laughing, complaining, talking, breathing. Tears were there everywhere around me but mine were locked away, still not believing what I was seeing and when they did come, I tried to hide them, trying to understand them. I learnt then that the grief of the living is often more difficult to bear than the grief for the dead.

Every time I think of the funerals, my thoughts flit to my own grandmother, a frail lady of eighty who insists on living by herself and my heart flutters to think that one day, she would be gone too. I cannot think I shall have the strength then to laugh ever again. But laughter does return and slowly, we bury memories of the death and cling to memories of the dead. When thata and paati died, I wanted to take my heart and pin it into my pocket and mourn for them within the confines of my small corner of existence, afraid to share it with anybody for the fear that they would not understand why I was mourning for somebody who I just knew but when somebody dies, you are not allowed to do that. I finally decided to write this today, just before I finally do pin my heart and allow time to heal me because I decided I wanted to remember. So that when I do not have the strength to laugh again, I can come back here and remember that I will heal and the laughter shall come back again.

 

 

Welcome to Facebook, Mr. Darcy

Once as a little child, I attempted to read, surreptitiously of course, a book from the famed ‘Mills & Boon’ litany. While what little was there in the way of ‘heaving bosom’ and ‘throbbing member’ failed to titillate my then 11 year old imagination, what did make an impression was that all the attractive male type characters had to come across as the strong silent type to make any impression at all on the usually hot headed heroine.

Since then, I have come a long way in reading but that stereotype has mostly been a constant. The society at large, does not seem to have in its collective conscience, a place for a dandy, loquacious, heroic hero.

Cut at light speed to the latest era. Like it, hate it, not know it, be a slave to it, we live in the much clichéd ‘digital era’ which could more appropriately be called the ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’ era. In an age where Facebook accounts are set up for little children before they can even burp on their own and even pets and houseplants get their own Twitter feeds, it should be no time before Batman gets his own grievance redressal community on Facebook and the next great soliloquy is Tweeted in 140 characters or less.

Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, the social media mania has got us all so good that one lame trivia states that there has been a drastic reduction in smoking in young people as their fingers are now occupied, twiddling away on their Blackberrys or HTCs. What with literature holding a mirror to the age, registering the times of lives, so on and so forth, maybe the next bestseller will revolve around the Kindle that got left behind at the beach, that got picked by this yappity guy, impressed by the eclectic collections, launches a hunt on Facebook, dates her smartly relying on Foursquare and Latitude, declares his love on Twitter, and gets the girl finally. Of course I am not aiming for the Nobel here but more like the NYT bestseller list. Takers anybody?

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Music and the minion

What do parents of small children, office minions workers on a deadline and Dieter Stark facing Compys (alright, Compsognathus, if you say) have in common? No? A situation they thought they had in control, which rapidly spiraled into a situation they did not have in control.

Simple things, small things and innocuous things have this way about them. Like the last time I had to work on something which, the way these things usually go, just had to go right that evening. Now, for people with Hyper Attention Deficit Syndrome (HADS) (no, no, not ADHD; HADS, as in ‘I had HADS as a child’ which is widely known to result in stern looks from grammar teacher type people), the most scientific way to get any work done is to stimulate the brain enough while slogging through the aforementioned disagreeable task at hand so as to con it into believing that it shall shortly progress to more pleasurable activities and hence, race after work like greyhounds after the rabbit.

Since adhering to scientific principles has always been a pet of mine, I decided to apply this to my previously mentioned task at hand. Quickly were the songs culled, the playlist setup and winamp typed into the Run command box. For a good 6 minutes and 27 seconds (I have a digital watch on my desktop, ha!) everything was in control. Up came ‘World in Union’ in the playlist.

Even before I had noticed despite the not too subtle pointed looks from various co-minions workers, I was singing along (to the World in Union – various artists version with lots of yodeling and hence the pointed looks I would assume). Unfortunately, halfway through a particularly trying yodel, just as I lost track of what was being sung, a sharp reminder about task at hand was lobbed into my direction. With a most reassuring smile which blinked ‘I have everything under control’, as all good sing-alongers would know, I alt+y ed in Winamp.

Now, since most of my music is downloaded by a friend from peer to peer networks (I shall even swear to this if needed), the ID3v1 metadata is usually meant for human beings to figure out the song is question which alas, was not good enough for the plug-in bot. After a few rather lame attempts at ignoring the greater call and singing along to made up lyrics, I decided to waste a minute quantity of a minute and Googled the lyrics. Alas, the evil corporate firewall, aiming at preventing precisely the wasting of such minute minutes, showed me the blue screen of forbidden things.

Beaten, I almost got back to task at hand until the small wiggle at the back of head started to ping around in my head. Deciding to waste a few more of those minutes, I was now looking at ways to peep over the firewall. While I did find what I wanted eventually, Winamp which waits for neither the listener nor corporate firewalls was already onto the next track. Wham! The stupid metadata nazi had to show his ugly mug again.

All was well with me pounding away at Google, song after song until the Compys struck. The deadline went by, the situation was overwhelmingly out of control and task at hand was relegated to the list of things that did not get done today. Moral of the story? As harassed parents, office minions and poor Dieter Stark, if he were alive, would have told you, be nice to ‘situations’, heed your inner voice telling you to run and stick to task at hand without indulging your HADS impulses.

The Great Line Divide

India has always been famous for drawing lines – lines based on region, on religion and if all of that match, on caste, on economic status and what the heck, if nothing else, lines based on dialects. Bombay, being Bombay, just does not have the time for all that primitive stuff. We, the people, are divided on our adopted Railway Line. As all divisions go, it is a matter of deeply personal (and usually, economically forced) volition, pride and snobbery that go into which line you belong to – Western, Central or occasionally, even the Harbour Line. The Central Line is seen more as a ‘working class’ line and the Western as the ‘elite line’ meaning you get to sniff perfumed underarms instead of the sweaty ones. Smelly underarms or no underarms, the unifying factor over all the above is the Ladies First Class.

Behind every successful man, there is said to be a woman, but on our train lines, beside every successful man in the First Class, there is a woman in the Ladies First Class who has managed to fight her way into that 1/4^th of a rake called the Ladies First Class. Being a Central Line girl myself, who lives in Thane, I have the relative luxury of boarding a Thane originating ‘slow’ which automatically entitles me to a relatively peaceful boarding process (to be read as I do not throw myself into the train in pursuit of a few inches of cushioned bench to plant my arse on) and a comfortable standing place as far as ‘comfortable’ goes in a Bombay local during the peak ‘superdense crush’ load. Then the Bangle Jungle comes to life.

The first sign is of the various cliques. Travelling with the same set of ladies over the years in such little square footage means you make friends. Presiding is the (maternal) pride of the pack, which includes the ladies with the loudest roars and the biggest bites. To belong to the pride, one must

a)       Be 40+ or at feel 40+

b)       Work in a bank/ insurance office/ sarkari organization

c)       Have your office at Nariman Point

d)      Refuse to work for a second over your regular work time

e)       Carry enough Tupperware to feed a small African nation

f)        Have enough girth in your body to occupy standing space for 2

g)       Have the ‘I own it’ all attitude

h)      And optionally; grow gardens in your hair

The pride ensures that they have the seats, the best standing space and that nobody in the pride is left out. Also, there can be only one pride per rake.

Generally occupying the non-window seats or the non-wall standing space is the murder of crows. The crows are characterized by cacophony, concern for the lone college girl hanging out by the rod at the gate, general denouncement of the ‘youth’ and their ways and most important of all, by their ability to cordon of an entire area on the sheer strength of their personalities. Most murders aspire to be the next pride.

The college girls, the muster of the peacocks, are the ones with the trendy haircuts, svelte figures, dumb conversation (mostly on these Overheard – 3 lines) and shrill tones. Usually spotted talking to each other or to their phones with no discernible reduction in volume in either case, these are the most unwanted by the pride and the most anticipated by the rest of the compartments.

The prides, the murders and the musters, all heavyweights in their own time, blanch in comparison to the great Western. Gentlemen, move over for the Western line First Class ladies are here! They are loud, ageless, wear the strongest deodorant, can mouth expletives with the élan of a Delhi driver: they, are the alpha-females. The conversation, your place in train and the menu for the next day’s tiffin entrain, all are theirs to decide and you better toe the line. Else, you might find yourself detrained a long way off from your destination faster than you can spell Churchgate.Both lines of course, have their share of the hands-free wonders enjoying through their ear-buds the best of both worlds – the local radio and the non-local conversations, the starers and the readers.

On a Bombay local, the conversation never ceases and there is never a dull moment or a lull in the chatter. Over a year of local train travel, I have been enlightened (unwillingly too) on movies, the neighbour next door, the bullshit boss, the pain of childbirth (I kid thee not) and the best friend’s love life. The Ladies second class, not to be ignored, is a different jungle. These rakes are the mobile equivalents of downtown shopping districts. Where there is no place for another toe, there is always space for another hair-clipwallah and his buddies – the dresswallah, the colouring-bookwallah and the fruitwallah. The evening trains are usually (not to mention, thankfully) more subdued, the exception being the Ladies Specials which are not a just a world but an entire galaxy apart. Despite the deceptive ‘calm’ the commute is not always a fuzzy peach. It only takes a stray 2^nd classer trying to widdle her way to the hallowed First for the pride to turn into Gorgons or a territorial dispute that starts off as a minor commotion and culminates in  increasingly vociferous exchanges of the phrase ‘you shut up’ for the party to temporarily wilt until interest fades and the routine resumes.

In the Bangle Jungle, conversation does not just flow; it overflows.

Nostalgia

What is it about nostalgia that makes us want things to be the same and yet, different? We are funny creatures. Everyday, we wake up, we go to work, we come back home, we do a million different things in between and yet, nothing brings us as much joy as that feeling that we have changed something today. For, change equals progress equals accomplishment.

Yet, that feeling still lingers, that it were the way it used to be. In a simpler world where comics meant Tintin and Asterix & Obelix and were awaited eagerly to be read glassy eyed and filled with wonder, where books came only in paper, freshly cut and smelling earthy and warm in a way only books can, where instant gratification meant something to be expected in the future, progress was spoken of in hushed tones, by somber men who expected their newspapers to be as fresh as their coffee with a seriousness that came more out of ignorance than intuition.

We strive for it, we yearn for it, we toil for it and when we achieve it, we turn away from it, we push it away with both hands and hide behind what was and call it culture and qualify it with nostalgia. Elsewhere, men can get married to men, love can be found at age 63 and there can still be hope for a life together. While they have progress, we have culture, we have our caste. We have our lines drawn. And when we achieve that progress, we still have nostalgia, about the way things used to be.

Cattle and class

Not one to read up my news like a good Mumbaikar ought to on my daily commute towards the workplace, I missed out on the Great War being waged over a Mr. ST’s ‘cattle class’ tweets and the indignant horror from the all-encompassing guardian deities of that great , ‘Indian Culture’ or IC. What finally caught my attention were the two (not one, but two!) articles, one filed in at 0252hrs IST (!) and the other at 0836 hrs IST in today’s Economic Times. For the benefit of the other daily ignoramuses like me, Mr. ST had seemingly insulted the sentiments of the thousands of Indians who take pride in being able to eat their mini idlis in sambar piping hot some 10,000 ft. in the air by tweeting something about cattle class and holy cows and his solidarity with the same.

First came the howl about the ‘cattle class’ when some vigilant rakshak noticed the slur on our precious, precious holy cows and thus, led to the filing of the aforementioned reports. This brought back to me the entire hullabaloo over a certain Hindi movie and its title when the ‘Hairdressers’ Association of Mumbai’ had to be given premier passes to the movie as appeasement and a word had to be blacked out as it once again, was an insult to the thousands of Indians who take pride in being able to shear the mighty Indian Moustache daily (I am still trying to figure out the exact machinations involved in the slur cast and yet, failing miserably). Since clearly, it is supposed to be against the very ethos of the IC for a profession to get a mention (and there was me thinking all this while that the only thing an honourable bharitya naari should never mention was her husband’s name), should I not be staging a protest and asking for the time honoured method of blacking out the words ‘investment banker’ from the headlines of every newspaper worth its penny spewing out diatribes against those greedy I-bankers?

So going by antecedents set by those guardians of the great IC, I should ask for (big black blot) (big black blot) by Sarah Macdonald at my friendly neighbourhood (big black blot), sue every white skinned man who exclaims ‘Holy (big black blot)!’ as an alternative to taking a certain name in vain, vilify the (big black blot) if he is late with my dinner order and cuss at the (big black blot) if he refuses to ply his auto at my request. Sigh! All hail the great Indian Culture!

The assassination of good sense

Twitter often leads to strange journeys across the internet for me.  Still coming to terms on being able to actually ‘say’ something to the likes of Lance Armstrong or closer home, Shashi Tharoor, I came across one Mr. Pritish Nandy the other day and vaguely recalling that name before from the media, I read through some bits of  ‘conversation’ that was going on.

And then I came across this – a post by Pritish Nandy on the (in)famous Savitha Bhabhi protesting the banning of the site by the I&B Ministry. As I read the article, I became more and more incredulous at the viewpoint of the author as presented.

As per Mr. Nandy’s viewpoint, Savith Bhabhi represents the emancipated, modern day Bhratiya nari ( and many other cliched things, ad nauseum) and is, in the author’s own words, “a symbol of freedom, of empowerment, of the sexuality our women can wield if they are allowed to escape the sham world we Indian men trap them in because of our own fears of sexual inadequacy masquerading as machismo“, even going on to assign the last one to one of the causes of rape.

Lashing out against internet censorship is one thing, but citing the popularity of the website and painting a pornographic comic strip in women-lib light is outright assassination of good sense. Specially so when it comes from a man who is acclaimed in intellectual circles for his poetry, for his brilliance, for his journalism and from someone who writes like this.

Now, I agree that Mr. Nandy, like anyone else who is free, brown and over 21 (which was a favorite saying of a favorite prof. from college), entitled to his right of opinion but what worries me is the standpoint coming from a person such as him. This leads me to ask myself some uncomfortable questions of whether this is outlook of the modern day ‘educated’ man and if it is, disturbs me a great deal as to how far we have gone back in evolution.

We are like this only

One afternoon at the office…

Me: Hey what is the password (using the American pronunciation)?

TSAU: Dude, it is not ‘paesword’, it is ‘paasword’. What do you think you are? American?

Me: Erm… well I am not British either. So?

TSAU: … … …

SN: Why don’t all be good south indians and do ‘What is the paaasworddd?’

Shutterphilia and Photophobia

A picture is worth a thousand words they say. I firmly disagree. A thousand words never made me look like a particularly brown jigglypuff atleast. Everybody has their own pet peeve (carefully tended to with healthy food and the regulatory twice a day brushing of the coat even) and mine is being photographed.

Long long ago (some 10 years ago actually but what with me being the modest nari types who shall reveal her deepest darkest secrets, like her pet peeves for instance but not her age, we shall safely stick to ‘long long ago’), a mighty instrument was procured by the father, all the way from Calcutta. It arrived, enclosed in a yellow cardboard dabba with the familiar Kodak typeface on it.

After the usual healthy dose of squabbling, jostling and brief paragraphs on the technical capabilities of various members of the household were done with, batteries were inserted reverentially and behold! The age of digital photography had arrived at my house.

Being the ‘healthier’ sibling of the two, naturally I was the first to get my index finger on the (not so) tiny (in those days) round button and capture for posterity the household who all of a sudden found themselves the objects of unsurpassed interest (and not always willingly) in their various roles as they went about their lives.

Viciously frizzy waking-up hair that would make the afro-do blush? Kliiicihk Streams of mango juice drooling out of your mouth in all directions while you frantically try to prevent it from staining that white petticoat? Kliiichik Nodding off with your mouth open and saliva dribbling out? Kliiichik Kliichik Wherever they went, whatever they did, I, the faithful would follow, chronicling in sepia, black & white or colour.

Saving the best for last, I finally yielded the camera to the lesser mortals, posing elegantly and consciously. Visions of high cheek-boned, hollow cheeked, pouty lipped beautiful curly-lashed women swam in my head while I tried to ‘hold’ my poses. The pictures were duly clicked and the entire brood herded on the next weekend family gathering into the ‘computer room’.

One after the other, the objects under scrutiny were prodded, poked, smirked, jabbed and guffawed at until onto the screen came pictures of yours truly. But wait! Who was that sulking melon-face? That kid with the widely spaced eyes? What happened to the high cheekbones and hollow cheeks? Surely they could not have been that filled in by all those Dairy Milks? No way those barely there eyebrows were mine!

After various curses were let loose (out of earshot of adult appendages obviously) on the photographer and the camera and Kodak in general, I vowed never to be photographed again. Every time a lens was aimed at me, I would be best captured as a blur ducking behind sofas, chairs, trees, automobiles and if nothing else was available, hiding behind my hands.

Group photos would see friends acquiring weird projections at the sides (that would be erm, the me which could not be covered by slightly thinner friends, thank you) and passport shots being blamed on bad Photo-shopping skills of the incompetent nincompoop who dared to try to pass off as a professional photographer.

Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and Linkedin (your profile is 70% complete. Try uploading your picture) have all only complicated my life, unrelentingly demanding a picture, a likeness of me to be put up. Twitter even goes on to say that at least the photo would help people connect with me and identify me. So the next time you see a vaguely monolithic structure shaped oddly like a dome claiming to be a snapshot of me, remember that is NOT me. I am more like the high cheek-boned, hollow cheeked, pouty lipped beautiful curly-lashed kind springing a random photograph of a random domed-structure to help the lesser mortals connect with me.

Meanwhile in Bombay…

After battling the traffic, the almost legendary autowallas and the horrible horrible power-cuts, I had given up and decided to pitch my tent elsewhere. And the elsewhere happens to be Bombay. And a couple of months later, I really really, really like the city!

Generally, it is at around this point most Bengaluru patrons start drawing out their blades in defense and start the hunt for my blood but Bombay, anyday, with all of it’s thousand and one problems, is better than Bengaluru. The housing was a pain in the arse and I finally settled for Thane and a 2 hour commute time to work (and this is one way), the ‘locals’ are a commuter’s nightmare with one counting themselves to be truly blessed if they manage to get both one of their feet actually inside the train, you find traffic jams (!!!) at 0030 and I need not even talk about the monsoon, BUT, I come back home at 0145 and I live to tell the tale.

Hah! Take that, Bangalore!