Happy Half

There must be something ironic about being a reluctant frequent flyer who finds solace in Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar. Or is it nostalgia that drives me deeper into the pages of this 1975 travelogue I discovered only last week by chance?

It was a hot humid afternoon walking down Sudder Street, the hippie-haunt of Calcutta and treasure trove of second-hand books on adjoining Free School Street. Both streets exist only unofficially, their current names being something else. I know that the latter is now called Mirza Ghalib Street and have often wondered what the शायर would have thought about having a red-light road named after him where autos and rickshaws will gladly take the perspiring tourist to a place of pleasure.

And then I remember the auto – that ubiquitous symbol of Delhi – with a couplet silkscreened on its yellow back:
शाम होते ही दीपक को बुझा देता हूँ, दिल काफी है जलने के लिए.

If you’ve ever been on one of these autos that scurry around the capital, the mood of the शेर is completely incongruous with the character of the mobile medium. But then, who am I to judge the anonymous poet or the happy plagiarist who copies it minus any credit and prints it on the auto? It’s better than seeing cheap website URLs advertised, I guess.

‘Only connect’ wrote EM Forster in Howard’s End. And the mind connects the auto with the mobile phone, with the शायरी SMS’d from Bombay every so often by a friend who, in turn, receives it from another, a full-time brand consultant and happy half-time couplet-creator। The medium does nothing to detract from the depth of the poet’s mood and I wonder whether we’ll soon see a tiny book on SMS शायरी…

Here’s one that came my way recently (copyrights are reserved by the Happy Half, as he will be known here only because real names are not to be mentioned in my world of masks):

Bekhabar maut aane ka bus yeh gham hoga, mohabbat bayaan karne ka waqt kam hoga.
बेखबर मौत आने का बस यह गम होगा, मोहब्बत बयां करने का वक़्त कम होगा.

Time, indeed, is running out and sleep is what I’d like most right now as I sit on yet another flight (my fourth between Calcutta and Delhi in the last ten days) and wonder at the marvel of cheap fares that make it possible for almost every person to fly. Paul Theroux could well write a sequel: The Great Indian Airport Bazaar. (Or maybe I should.)

I have, for company, on this trip a Bengali family of eight that includes one number non-Bengali son-in-law along with wife and month-young child. The patriarch is evidently the only one who’s flown before, everyone else is a first-timer. My hunch is that even Baba has flown just a few times before but, like it is in the villages, the one guy who’s been to the city (even if it is for a week as a peon) becomes the expert on urbanisation. Or on airplanes and all things related. Much ado is made about sitting together because their seats are scattered and Baba vociferously takes over, requests people to adjust (that smooth act every seasoned traveller does on trains when berths are to be shuffled so that womenfolk do not have to sit next to strange men). I voluntarily move back a row in the interest of domestic integrity but have to suffer the ignominy of seeing a wife quickly shifted away from me by her protective husband and question whether my unshaved appearance has anything to do with their fear that I may join the mile-high club with Mrs Dumpling.

Dumpling can’t help but smile to herself when the aircraft picks up speed on the runway and one can see years of ambition being fulfilled. This is the only time I admire Air Deccan for getting the insight right and capturing it in their launch TV commercial: we all want to fly, only some are lucky enough to get a cheap fare.

Dumpling’s equally chubby hubby, a thirty-something, wants to know what to do with the juice carton he’s just finished; his wife nudges him and shoves hers into her purse. The matriarch, it seems, hasn’t approved of her oldest daughter’s marriage to this North Indian (I later realise, he’s a Muslim) for she sits silent, sulking almost, smearing sticky sweet red mixed fruit jam on to her kulcha (no non-veg breakfast for her, thank you). She’s the only one not dressed to the hilt; either she had no time this frenzied morning to change into the finery flouted by the rest of the family or she’s still silently protesting and going along because she simply can’t be left alone.

From their conversations, it’s evident they’re flying to help the new parents settle down in Delhi – older daughter must’ve come home to deliver the baby… another stupid Indian custom in which the expenses of childbirth are picked up by the girl’s parents and not her in-laws or husband.

But I’m sleepy and another Happy Half शेर comes back…
या तो एक कन्धा हो जिसपे सर रखके रोयें, या चार होँ कि हम हमेशा के लिए सोयें.

Cheerzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Surviving

Why is that we spend all our lives trying to live a better life when all that lies at its end is death?

Why is it that a 'better life' has to translate into more money? A car instead of a motorbike. Two cars instead of one. An apartment. Clothes. Shoes...

Why is that we spend so much time chasing things and not enjoying what exists?

This isn't called living, it's called surviving.

And, to survive, is to live with what is left.

Midwife

Having just relaunched a news website, and discovering several glitches that need fixing, the mind is preoccupied. Not just with solving the current problems but also ensuring that these don't recur in subsequent changeovers.

The editor of the news portal complains how I haven't had the time to chat with her and, perhaps, congratulate her. But little does she know that I am merely the midwife: having delivered one child with whom I cannot be attached for too long or too deeply, it is time to move on to the next delivery.

There are babies queued up, waiting to be born. This is, after all, India. And changing times mean there's actually very little time.

Loving detachment, remember?

JurassicFest

2900 sweaty bodies rubbing against each other on a sun-soaked beach

Sand in their shoes and God knows in which orifice.

Beer being knocked back with no हिसाब ... and blending with every other spirit besides.

Rain dances, never-ending nights, incestuous agency employees forming multiple alumni associations at the same time, pretty young things in tiny skirts accompanied by sulking, bearded guys holding them on a long leash...

There are many ways to look at Goa - depending on your current age and state of mind. To the under-30s, subsidised by the Advertising Agencies Association of India, this was GoaFest at its best.

To the over-40s/50s/60s, jaded by the continuous bickering on the split between media and creative agencies, this was not GoaFest but JurassicFest. Dinosaur-like agency heads, supposedly respectable figures, squabbling on a public forum - it couldn't get worse! Nor could it have been more appropriate that the principal sponsor of the fiery panel discussion was the ABP Group, whose corporate line (crafted way back in 1997) is 'Power of Words'. (Words, is an anagram of sword - did you know?)

At least there's consistency: scam ads still win awards.

But, sandwiched between the crowds, one can be alone. Really alone without being lonely. That's when it strikes you it's the 20th and 21st of April and that the last time you were here was the 20th and 21st of July. And then you wonder whether you can ever get back to Goa with someone you really want by your side (not those thrust on you by the coincidences of corporate conferences). Just someone with whom you can wander the wet, winding roads, watch the sun go to sleep, awake each others' senses till your smells intertwine. Soon, you hope, before life takes another turn.

But then you wake up and set out to walk the beach while it's still unpopulated. And then you come across this:


And you wonder whether this road is best not taken.

One for None

I work in an organisation that has 23 conference rooms in the building. That's right... 23!

And yet there's one particular room that's not available to anyone because it's booked all day, all week - apparently by one person who, officially, sits in the open area on that floor along with others of his ilk. But since he wants to work out of a room, and isn't entitled to one, he books this conference room and moves in with bag and laptop.

Neat trick... except that if we move out to another building with fewer conference rooms, then will this gent be able to work with the hoi-polloi? चलो, देखते हैं।

हिंदी Rules OK?

आख़िर गूगल ने भी हिंदी भाषा की औकात मान ली... :-)

Friday the 13th

The morning starts with an SMS that redefines old age as that point in your life when a sexy babe arouses your memories instead of your you-know-what.

Funny, I guess.

Mid-morning and I realise a female colleague is being flirted with on the email by a middle-aged, perhaps dirty, man with lewd intent.

Not funny, for sure.

Afternoon: a girl who works with me is about to leave for Amritsar to get married and has come by to say 'bye but does so by bending down to touch my feet!

Embarassing. And disgusting.

Early evening and another female colleague recounts her advertising agency days when a client booked her and two male colleagues in a hotel in Bombay that turned out to be a pickup joint.

Cheap.

Should I hate guys who do this to women? Or change the circle of male friends/colleagues I have?

Heaven & Hell

Why do people go up to heaven?

And down to hell?

Why can't it be the other way?

There are some things that are better when one goes down...right?

Human Flu

Two lovebirds coo away in a cage, awaiting freedom.

A mother tending to some household chore, sneezes in rapid succession right over their cage.

And the seven-year old girl, whose birthday present the birds were (in the reluctant father's futile hope that she would let them loose sooner rather than later) stands with her hands on frail hips and admonishes: "Mummy, can't you sneeze elsewhere?! They'll get human flu!"

Life's like this only. Bless her.

The Patient Pandit

Can an x-ray machine be a leveller of mankind?

It can if it's a baggage scanner at Mumbai airport on a Friday morning.

A long queue of dusgusted passengers wait to get their bags scanned because only one machine is operational - probably because the operator/security guard has rushed off to ensure that his bowesl evacuate his backside at the appropriate location :-)

There's the businessman sending his wife to get a copy of The Times of India and then, realising it's free, sends her back to get The Economic Times as well. Slavery exists yet.

There's the college-going, backpack girl with mom in tow wondering whether this is the right queue to be in.

A suited-booted CEO-type hitting the Blackberry... at 6.15 in the morning!

And then, right at the end, unassumingly stands the man who made the santoor so popular. Not irritated, not impatient. Just calm and soothing like his music.

He goes through the pain we all do, waits in the lounge, boards the aircraft and drops off to sleep. Celebrities need to learn from him before they start pulling strings and creating cacophony.

Beyond the Navel

A gent, known for his rather profound, motivational statements (most of which aren't even understood by his colleagues, let alone practised) said this today: "Most of us are like the deer which doesn't realise the value of its navel where musk is created (probably because its nose is too far from its navel anyway). And so is it with us... we can't look beyond our nose and see the value of what lies beyond."

True, I guess.

As for me, more than my rather long nose, I'd prefer to look beyond a navel.

Cheers!

Timing

At a Scenario Planning Workshop in Bangalore held over the last four days...

Case study: list down key 'drivers' that will impact the real-estate industry in India.

One 'driver' suggested by a participant: extra-marital affairs!

And then, the next day, from the driver of the hired car taking us into town in a new Toyota Corolla with no number plates but paper stickers on both front and back windscreens, when asked why he had no number plates: "Timing saar!" (i.e. "no time").

Talk about coincidences...

Pune: the past and the preacher

February 10th was a weird day in Pune.

I met an uncle retired from the army who I’d been meeting every few years. Nothing noteworthy there.

And then I met – for just the second time in my existence - another uncle who had retired from life itself when I was just two or three years old.

One spent his life in green battle fatigues dodging bullets. Another, clad in saffron, continued to preach love and peace as a sadhu.

Green and saffron… the colours of India?

It takes all kinds to make up this world I suppose. But, caught in the conflicting worlds between the two, I wondered whether the rest of us were in the twilight zone.

And then on the drive back to Bombay, down the Expressway, the car’s antenna picked up a radio signal. And there was AB – awesomely best – sharing the pain of Rozana in Nishabdh. If there is a deep ache in anyone’s voice, it is here. If there are memories it evokes, blame no one but yourself and your past.

The present is nothing but a transition between what was and what will be. Rozana is just that… the agony of a man who knows what he’s lost and knows too that it will not return.

Perhaps that’s why we can only remember the ones gone by and not revel in those who are.

Hip-or-crazy?

A frequent traveller to another at the airport one morning: "My wife in Bangalore is convinced I have a girlfriend in Hyderabad. And my girlfriend in Hyderabad is sure I have a wife in Bangalore! Doomed I am…”

Remember My Fair Lady? “Get a woman in your life and you’ve got eternal strife!”

Also uttered by the same gent (in his mid-50s I gauge) to his companion, caught between his diva and the spouse: “Why did Amitabh have to do Nishabdh? It’s the first film of his that I hate. How can he play the role of a 60-year old in love with an 18-year old? Chhi-chhi!”

So it’s hip for Mr Doomed to balance two lives in two cities but not for AB to put on yet another mask and stage another performance?

Leaves me nishabdh, I say.

Long Time

Long time no write...

Long time no free time left!

Only the good die young?

Off Park Circus in Calcutta, down Zakaria Road, lies a Hindu cemetery. (Yes, some Hindus do get buried, not cremated.)

That’s where He was buried exactly 13 years ago, to this day.

His father didn’t even see His face, just held the little lifeless bundle, lost to the family, wrapped in cloth. Joy turned into almost instant, inexplicable despair.

Nor did he go to the graveyard. He couldn’t. The boy hadn’t survived more than 20 minutes after His birth. But the living needed looking after.

So the father didn’t bury Him; His uncles did.

Was it Billy Joel who sang “Only the good die young”?

Try explaining this to His grandmother, whose birthday it also is today. Or to the wife who carried him within her all those nine months?

Tell me, Mr Joel: if the good do die young, is it the bad that die old?

Pallu Wedding

On February 9th, in a Bombay suburb, a Panju married a Mallu.

Now, does that make them a Pallu couple?

Cheers!

An Indian Spring

The weather's changing up north. Winter's giving way, not so reluctantly actually.

Small B's got engaged to Ash (officially).

Shilpa's defeated Jane (unfortunately now we'll have some more trash to spew out in the media unless there are more people like these).

India may score over West Indies today (but even if they don't, advertisers on TV will have won over audiences).

SRK looks like he's going to do a successful imitation of Big B. Again. So Star TV will survive on the strength of KBC again (it may even consider rebranding itself as Phoenix).

And the Tatas have won Corus.

Looks like the hype is turning into reality... poise is in the air.

Growing Old

Last week, I met someone I'd last met in October and she observed: "You've really greyed in the last four months!"

While I don't think that's true, I was reminded of Will Smith in Hitch when he comments: "Age is a question of mind over matter... if you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

True, I guess.

Remote (out of) Control

We weren’t the first family in the building to own a TV set way back in the days when there was just one channel and no one more entertaining than Tabassum to watch on Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan (Mr Karan Johar, please note: no coffee, just dimple-cheeked Tabby talking non-stop while the person she was interviewing tried valiantly to get a word in edgeways). No MTV, just Chitrahaar. The brand we bought was Televista, not Weston or Beltek, because it had sliding doors that shielded the precious glass screen. So, we weren’t the first family with a TV set but we were the only ones who allowed the neighbours and everyone else in the vicinity to happily crowd our drawing room when the film was telecast on Saturday (Bengali) and Sunday (Hindi). No Act II popcorn, no Coke, just water or tea and some home-made Sindhi-style pakoras depending on Mummy’s energy levels keeping up with her generosity quotient.

And there was one number Pye radio set whose valves took time to light up as we waited in anticipation while Dad tuned the knobs to get the right frequency and expose us to Ameen Sayani from Radio Ceylon doing the Binaca Geetmala. Or the cricket commentary on Vividh Bharati.

Life was boringly simple. And we yearned for variety.

Yesterday, I wanted to rewind my life and get back to those days.

Because yesterday it finally struck me that my life – always run by remote control by some unseen hand(s) – had been taken over by four remote controls that sat beside me. Lifeless but capable of ruling one’s life completely.

A remote control for the three-year old TV (a Sony Wega that’s working perfectly fine but will probably get exchanged for a flat-screen plasma TV because, again, we’re not the first family in the building to show off a wall-mounted piece of plastic electronic art).

Another for the Pioneer DVD player that came in from a trip to Malaysia four years ago.

A third for the eight-year old Sony music system that’s been connected to the TV to create a home-theatre like sound system.

And the latest entrant to the RC clan is the one that comes with the Tata Sky set top box.

Now, try and watch a movie with everything on (including the Tata Sky box on just in case one of your children sleepily saunters in looking for that missing teddy and you don’t want her looking at a scene that’s a bit steamy and need to quickly change channels pretending you’re watching the news!). No immediate problem until the power goes off and everything shuts down till the generator kicks in somewhere and you need to restart everything. That’s when you realise that irrespective of whether you have two hands or four or none (in case you encountered a Gabbar-like character who took them away) remote controls work one at a time. No two will work simultaneously when pointed in the same direction.

You struggle to gain mastery over these six-inch long objects and wonder if it’s all worth it. They’re making you lazy and they’re not exactly the most co-operative or intuitive pieces of technology, are they?

And then, you ask yourself: if buttons are all I have to hit, why can’t I punch the right ones in my life?

Why can’t I get back control of a life that’s supposed to be mine?

Why, like the plethora of TV channels that get beamed at us, do we have to multi-task and live multiple lives within this one life?

Why can’t we control the remotes?