Lawyer's Documents

Caveate - This is not about all the practising lawyers in the filed today.  But most of the specimens we go to for day-to-day transactions are probably like this.

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I am sure most of us have had the misfortune of dealing with a lawyer for a sale deed or power of attorney or rental agreement and the like.  The ubiquous lawyer you come across for such purposes is someone who, at best, has a legal degree (hopefully) and has indeed passed legally (iffy).  They carry a double whammy for us -- pathetic language skills and an absolute inability to structure a straightforward sentence.  To begin with, their idea of a legal document is it should be smothered in legalese and should have bombastic language coming out of its pores.  As you can see, this is a deadly concoction and the result is a sale deed in which you invariably can decipher very little except identifying your name and address, if at all.  With our moderately better English, if we dare to suggest some changes in the structure or the language of the document, God help us.  The lawyer takes terrific umbrage and bristles for the rest of the transaction time with us.  And to be fair, it is not even his `own' document to begin with, but some shoddy cut-and-paste job, generously gifted for use by another lawyer-friend, who has similar or lesser credentials to boast of, if that is possible.

Typically such lawyers have one of two reactions when we attempt to infuse some decency to the laguage which is masquerading as English in their documents.  Either they bristle at our insolence in suggesting language changes to what they perceive as an outstanding piece of literary exposition or they shrug their shoulders with utmost indifference. They are wondering `why this idiot is paying me for doing the job and then wants to it himself'! The latter section of the tribe is easier to deal with.  We just write the document in better English and hope that the guy ensures that legally it is adequate, which is the bare minimum we can expect.  The former type is the real blistering problem.  Such guys have a preposterously inflated opinion of their document and, of course, themselves and would not even want us to tamper with a few `whereases' and `hereinbefore mentioneds' in that.  All we can do is some essential editing to satisfy our linguistic integrity and ask him to update the document.  The lawyer's pride and possessiveness about his master-piece will come glowing through when you discover in the next draft that three quarters of the changes we made are back in all glory, mocking at you and screaming out the lawyer's aggressive refusal to accept anyone as more proficient with English language.  

Most such lawyers think that the longer a sentence and more fully loaded it is with multiple synonyms and multi-syllable bombast (not that they recognize what they are), it is that much more convincing to the client.  Many sentences begin well, but are made to meander and stretch so interminably that one loses track of what the beginning was, when the end comes after some excruciating grind.  Once, I remember chopping down one sentence in a legal document to seven or eight individual sentences, which metamorphosis definitely helped in understanding the intent better.  More often than not, such gems of literary eloquence do not add any value to the document, except increasing its bulk.  And there lies the crux.  I realised, from personal experience, that such lawyers are very wary of letting us edit any of their crap out; because then the final outcome has only one quarter of the number of pages they began with, without losing any substance.  According to one somewhat honest lawyer  -- an oxymoron? --  many clients complain he has not done his job well if he skimps on verbiage, because their own legal perspective can only measure his work by volume and not by the quality of content.  To provide satisfaction to such clients, many lawyers insist on heaping up all the meaningless verbosity they can muster from assorted sources, including previously manufactured similar documents.  

Recently I had to do a real estate transaction and a broker was also involved.  This broker was familiar with my need/desire for crisp and precise documentation. He very earnestly told me that I dont have to worry about legal documentation because he has someone who is competent enough to do the job.  When the first draft arrived, I was appalled by the overall quality, since the language was terrible and many statements, long-winded and meaningless.  Redundancy was the hallmark of the entire piece and I shuddered at the shoddy nature of work.  When I rebuked the broker for such a document, he was shocked and blurted out that this was the best of the ten odd lawyers he had worked with in recent years.  After I briefly explained to him what the problems were, he realised his best was even beyond being the worst.  One vignette stood out and I showed the broker that the document, supposed to be a sale deed, had some seven pages of stuff which pertained entirely to a rental agreement, neatly tucked into the middle pages.  There were some twenty paras of how the buyer should conduct himself while living in the apartment and there was an indemnity clause to boot, for the seller's comfort, to cover breach of such rules of conduct by the buyer! Instead of being abashed at being an accomplice to such a document, the brazen broker sheepishly told me to help edit the whole thing completely, so that he can keep that as a master document for the future.  That was what I did free of cost for the broker.  The result, the document was downsized from twenty four pages to thirteen without compromising its legal sense, which responsibility I left to the lawyer.

As bankers, some of us have always wondered why Reserve Bank of India's circulars, containing directions to the banks as well as rules of banking, still rely so heavily on antiquated language from the colonial era. This not only makes reading of the circulars difficult, but requires some internal simplification and re-writing in the banks to enable lower level personnel to grasp the requirements well. In the process, there have been instances of silly errors creeping into the simplified instructions, causing grief to the banks later.  RBI and the lawyers are guilty of the same crime -- long-winded sentences which invariably have a good portion of redundant and/or heavy-duty verbiage.  The core difference is that while RBI's method is establishment-driven and probably requires an institutional shift whereas independent lawyers do not have the same problem, yet persist with antedeluvian mode of expression.

Over the years, I have wondered if younger lawyers coming into the profession would necessarily bring a wind of change and make the documentation easier to peruse and comprehend.  But unfortunately, that does not seem to have happened much.  Probably because of the copy-paste culture which is very prevalent in legal documentation. It will be interesting to find out how many young lawyers have drafted a proper legal document ab initio.  Your guess is as good as mine, but not many probably and not much of it, anyway.  Long live the serpentine sentences and bombastic expressions in legal documentation - posterity will also enjoy the fun!!  One young lawyer I recently met boasted of some fresh and modern methods of producing legal documentation, which impressed me....until I found out that the primary change he has adopted is in the matter of billing the client by the number of visits he made and the time he spent on the documentation!! Little else he had changed.

    

      

Cacophony Of Quacks

Years back, during my school days, one hot summer evening I returned home all grimy and sweaty after a few hours of exhilarating outdoor games with friends.  Grandma promptly screwed up her nose and said `go and bathe'.  One of my sisters, without looking up from the book she was reading, very casually suggested that a dirty cat had brought a very dead rat home! Mother shook her head the usual way and looked askance with a wry smile.  True to form, I royally ignored every form insult and taunt, had my bath and made a glorious re-entry, all cleaned and spruced up, in a rather satisfied state of mind.  That was when my mother asked me `What are those dark blotches around both your ankles?  Could n't you scrub yourself properly'?  My sense of happiness ebbed immediately and I looked at my ankles - yes, there were two semi-dark patches, one on each ankle, etched in symmetry as if someone deliberately planted them there.  I did not, at that time, realise that what I was witnessing was the beginning of a family drama which was going to last a few weeks!! 

By then, an audience of sisters and other senior household ladies had gathered around as if they were being treated to a world-class spectacle, not to be misssed.  They were curious to see what I had got this time!  `Come here' said grandma, always the presiding deity, and carefully examined the damage suspiciously, without touching the spots.  She declared `Looks like some insect bite, which is spreading' and sought clarification from the patient if there was any pain.  I said no and she expertly decreed that coconut oil should be applied to the spots for the next week or more, in order to first arrest the spread and then get rid of the patches.  The tremendous interest the patches had generated earlier, dissipated quickly and everyone went back to what he/she was doing - nobody even attempting to fetch the coconut oil.  When I brought the oil, grandma directed me to apply it myself without anyone's assistance, because the patches might be infectious and we did not want the whole family getting infected and immersing in coconut oil soon. 

At that time, no one had an inkling that we were all part of a two-month extended episode, which would involve a whole lot of speculation, mirth, discussion, verbal volleys and weird recommendations, not restricted to our family.  As the patches became slowly darker and spread wider, as if some internal spider was relentlessly weaving a design under the skin; make it two spiders, because two ankles had to be covered, unless a spider could finish one ankle and travel all the way in the blood stream up and down.  The awful part was, coconut oil did not do the job and grandma had started on a complex paste with five ingredients, to be applied on the ankles three times a day - that meant the ankles stayed covered by home made bandage (pieces of old, torn dhotis transformed into this avtar).  But the old lady insisted there was no need to seek any medical help because she had seen and treated darker patches, which could react to allopathy medicines; she brooked no challenge on that count.  All this while there was no serious problem since I had no pain, not even a desire to scratch the affected part.  So, it was all fun and frolic for the family, with me playing the pliant and hapless protagonist. 

Very soon, the matter became top news in the vicinity and all the unofficial home remedy peddlers from the neighbourhood visited, hoping to look at the patches and prescribe their solutions.  Over the next month, everything available in the family grocery section and what the volunteers brought, free of charge from their homes, was used on me.  There was always a small crowd waiting for me to come back from school, all equipped with their wares, to get to work and insert something new into the bandage.  I recall ghee being used, turmeric, tulasi, cinnamon and garlic in the first installment. after a while, grandma could not resist the onslaught of multiple practitioners and gave up with indignation, with her customary declamation `Okay, do what you want, but all this is not going to work'.  Even then she characteristically refused to concede that she had no other remedy in store either! After that some ten to fifteen different things were used in permutations and combinations in an effort to defeat the enemy, but no one succeeded.

The blotches were very stubborn and cocked many snooks at all the quacks from the neighbourhood, flourishing all the time and slowly extending their territorial boundaries, much like Russia is belabouring to do with Ukraine now.  They did not seem infectious because no other region of my body got affected, but were obstinately refusing to budge.  Since a lot of the neighbourhoold ladies were involved, during their gossip sessions, the blotches around the ankle were a fixed point of agenda and updates were given as to whether any new quackery had been administered.  So much so that when I met on the road someone even remotely acquainted, the only question posed to me was about the `well-being' of the dark patches and the other party promptly went on to suggest yet another remedy!! 

After applying all kinds of things for almost ten weeks, suddenly the patches started waning and all the quacks in the entire neighbourhood were beaming with satisfaction as if their own remedy had worked to solve the problem.  Actually there was no telling what worked, because when fifteen different things were applied, nobody could pinpoint what addressed the issue.  That was the time I learnt that if you apply or eat multiple things to solve one problem you cannot stop anything until well after the issue is fully resolved, simply because you dont know what to stop!!  In truth, the actual remedy was an ointment our compounder had surreptitiously given me to apply daily, asking me not to inform my grandma because he was petrified of her. I followed his instructions fully and in complete secrecy to prevent the quacks from crying foul and prolonging the agony! Also to avoid incurring the wrath of the old lady for myself and the compounder. 

Why am I narrating this now, you ask?  Two weeks back, after a golf session, when I waded into some tall bushes to retrieve one of the many mishit balls, a felt some insect bite.  When I came home, lo and behold, there were two dark patches, small ones, near the ankles.  Now, there are no grandmas, mothers, sisters, neighbourhood ladies milling around and jostling to fix my problem. So I am my own quack now, using multiple creams and ointments to see how quickly I can get rid of the blemishes on my skin.  Still trying after 3 weeks!!  My dear wife says I never learn and she, as usual, is probably right.  The dark blotches on the ankles I carry now are proof of that.   

20th Century Breakfast Experience!

A friend was visiting Bangalore from Bombay.  A rather innocuous suggestion from my dear wife that he should grab a bite at one of the antedeluvian `hotels' (restaurant actually, but those days we did not consciously make that difference) was wholeheartedly endorsed all around.  When I asked him if he wanted to immerse in a vignette from the past, he was indeed very exuberant!  Of course, he would love to visit one of the old world restaurants which still doled out the classic idli, vadai, benne dosai, coffee routine to loads of craving people daily, with very little change in its menu or dishes from decades ago. That enthusiastic response meant a half-hour drive to Basavangudi, with a lot of expectations, for a peek into history with our stomachs. But what we did not factor in was that it was a Sunday and that a sizeable population of Bangalore would have converged on that particular 'hotel' to satiate its pangs for the traditional stuff.  I encouraged the friend not to panic on our approach (he wanted to beat a hasty retreat) saying it was almost 1030, way past normal breakfast time and we should be ok.  I was lamentably wrong -  and there was a hungry mob milling around, at the entrance of the restaurant, as if free food was being distributed from a soup kitchen during a natural disaster or war.

No exaggeration - some 150-200 people were standing in assorted lines and that many hungry souls could never be kept quiet until something substantial went into their mouths.  Most of the people did not even know which line led to what.  Important to note, because they did lead to different destinations as we realised after some 15 minutes of queueing up. One line was for take-away (`parcels' as the restaurant had indicateed on a carefully concealed board, which can be seen only from 6 inches away); another one was to get a token with a number, which then gained some momentum for you by placing you in the main queue, waiting for entry through the golden gate. Many people stood in the wrong line for quite a while before realising they were literally misplaced. I felt very diffident now, because I did not anticipate such a deluge of people for the ubiquitous idli, dosa and multiple queues to contend with. The ultimate prize was entry into the famous, nearly 100-year old eatery, where the menu remained constant throughout the day - yes, one got the same items whatever be the time. People congregated just to savour the food and atmosphere from way back because there is no other logical explanation when the same stuff is available in some hundred other joints, with good quality to boot. 

Fittingly, the gentleman guarding gate to the culinary heaven, keeping the ravenous mob in some semblance of control was a symbol of the bygone era.  Seemed to have bypassed a few decades and generations and descended on this scene.  A blue Gandhi-topee was perched on his top and he was dressed in loose-fitting trousers and shirt, with a generous splash of vermillion on his forehead!  He growled whenever he announced a token number for the holder to make a hasty entry; hasty because people were convinced somehow that even a small delay might cause them to miss their slice of history.  Frequently he was mixing up token numbers, thereby causing frustration and confusion among the already restless. He was moderately dictatorial in his own way, entrenched in his high stool with a modern walkie talkie in hand a-la a war chief, gently reprimanding people when wrong approaches were made.  Due to some malfunction in his mouth/tongue, phonetically he was able to make very little distinction betwen his J and K when he bellowed the token numbers. So when people with K14 enthusiastically responded and tried to jostle through, he was derisively castigating them, with the clarification that he was calling J14.  When we thought our turn was coming up, he took a toilet cum coffee break and extended our agony. In addition to the walkie talkie communication, he also resorted to hand signals and sheer vocal-cord power, to obtain prompt updates on vacancies available inside.

Like all Indian establishments, this also had its own ways of playing favourites.  When people known to the management or the chef or even a waiter wanted to enter, even without a token, they were surreptitiously ushered into the restaurant, giving them priority over others and were secreted in a back-room without access to the public.  And they justifiably gleamed very proudly at being able to bypass the commoners like us.  Why wont they??  These were ushered in,  ignoring token numbers and calling out names of the favourites, making it obvious that something devious and  inequitious was happening and a grave crime was being perpetrated on the waiting mob. And as elsewhere in India, some people were trying to dodge their way inside, using cheatsheets - like one guy said he had left something inside and pleaded to go in. But when we were sitting there after one hour, he was still eating!!  Again a very Indian trait - find a hole in the process and get the thrill of cheating the majority even if it is only for a regular breakfast.

Finally when our turn came and we entered triumphantly, without further ado we were reminded that rules prevailing still pertained to 1900s.  We were two and the table was for four. We were pretty strictly warned not to sit opposite to each other but side by side on one side of the table so that one more party of two can be accommodated opposite. Saring a table with strangers is the norm like in days of yore; if you dont like it, too bad, you can foot it to some other forgiving place.  The waiter who took our order was also half ancient and must have got the job on quota, as a descendant of an old staff member. Seemed dreamily distant and had to be reminded four times about our order.  A smile was not in his portfolio and a permanent frown adorned his face, a reminder of the fact that this place is a no-nonsense old world establishment where nobody had time for pleasanty.  I was almost expecting him to give us something available and ask us to take it or leave it.  And when he miscounted and ordered one dosa extra from the kitchen, he was trying to cajole one of us to eat that extra dosa also!!  I would have done it, if he was the friendly type, but not for a scowling one.  And the autocratic environment was reinforced when we got the items we asked for, in an order unilaterally decided by the establishment.  Apparently, the kitchen chose what to turn out in bulk and when, nobody else had a choice. So, we just gulped down our irritation and self respect along with the food.

Quality?  Was good, but nothing I would travel one hour for and stand in three lines to reach.  There are many restaurants in Bangalore which serve similar food with same or better quality.  So, I personally felt a bit tepid after this experience and may not revisit this any time soon in a hurry.  But the benne masala dosa we brought back for the others was a hit and vanished in no time.  Some consolation, I guess.  My dear wife made the final adjudicating comments - `surely you guys enjoyed the outing with this kind of food to go with'.  We did not have the heart to contradict her, with the gory details of our venture.  She has to be always right!! 

  

   

Frustrating Airmiles

Show me one frequent flier (FF) who is not enamoured of the airline programmes (AFFP), has not been disillusioned by the deliberately quirky processes involved but still firmly attached to them as if bonded by fevicol.  Such an individual would be a rarity because `who can walk away, leaving behind beckoning free trips on the table'? Every frequent flier gets hooked on to a couple or more AFFPs, lured by the justifiable desire to snare a few free flights or upgrades.  I have been, too! To some extent, the free flights do materialise pretty easily.  But, sometimes the experience of dealing with the airline miles can be frustrating, enervating and irritating, all at once.  And to rub salt into the raw wound, that would transpire at the most inopportune moment, when you are least prepared for dealing with the googlies the airlines bowl at you.

It is a fact of life that most of the accruals of free miles happen during your working days - when you fly hither and thither like a headless chicken at your employer's cost.  Since someone else is paying and booking, you dont have to worry about the cost and just demand that the secretary book the seat on the most expensive flight of the day of your favourite airline, possibly accruing the most miles possible.  Nobody bothers when you use those miles to book tickets for personal travels.  Or almost, so.  In the late eighhties, some organizations sought to find out the quantum of benefits employees were collectively enjoying from free miles `donated' by them, as an invisible perquisite.  A feeble attempt was made to monetise that benefit and somehow get a share for the organization itself.  Some oversmart Financial Whizkid dreamt of winning a fat paycheque for saving the organization a lot of money.  But nothing came out of that because the entrenched group of beneficiary bandicoots included everyone from the top to bottom and everyone was most averse to let go. The free miles bonanza continued happily for the gleeful employees and AFFPs multiplied merrily over the years.   

If you have multiple AFFP memberships, you always end up confused as to which one you should patronize when it is time to book tickets.  You waste hours shuttling between various airline sites until you get vertigo - trying to analyse, compare and decide.  By the time the fatigued mind gives up and a less than optimal decision is forcibly made, the prices would have ramped up significantly, thereby annulling the skimpy benefits of the miles you would get.  After all this, when you want to avail of that elusive free flight, you will find that you have tantalizingly 2500 miles/points short of what a free flight to any destination would entail. To add some spice, when you are trying to book a new ticket, you invariably find that the airline offering you the cheapest and most convenient flight is not among your AFFPs; since that is the most attractive on offer, you snatch that and no miles accrue for that flight with any current AFFP for you, as a consequence.  Unless, of course, you being the typical FF sucker who is a smart-alec, decide to add one more, new AFFP to your priceless collection, thereby further diminishing your chances of getting a free flight in the near future because you are not concentrating all your free miles in one AFFP!

When you are looking for the free flight, invariably you will find, initially to your astonishment until you get used to the idea, that the only available flights leave at some god-forsaken time like 3.30 am or 11.45 pm. If you opt for either, you would spend double the amount you saved with free miles for transportation to the airport at an unearthly hour. Add to that a sleepless night either way and the resultant groggy state the next day.  Another spanner the machiavellian airlines throw into the machinery is to show you flights with more than 2 connections to your destination, hiding away all the direct flights.  So, a flight which should take about 3 hours in all, will be completed in 11 hours, with multiple layovers in the boondocks.  You will be so bushed when you are done, as if you had undertaken a trans continental flight. Why would one choose this? You won't. Since the average avaricious human being never learns any lesson, you fly a new airline, become member of another AFFP and further disperse your free miles as a disadvantaged flier, never to reap a benefit any time soon.  

Fortunately, most of the airlines do not attach an expiry date for their miles (in USA and Europe), so your meagre miles continue to languish endlessly in the account without ever getting you a free flight. But, be warned, this is just a mirage. Out of the blue, some airlines surprise you with the threat that miles will expire in six months because they were accrued 3 years earlier. Ah, but they offer a marvellous solution.  Now you are enticed to pay for more miles (yes, pay more money) in order to keep the old miles from expiring immediately and postpone the evil day by one more year.  What one does not realise is one year later the ugly situation would repeat itself, given our sloth, with more miles expiring unused, including the ones you `bought' the previous year.  Sometimes, when you receive the bad tidings from the arilines, you go and check their track record with miles and see that they threaten first and months later, unilaterally extend the expiry by six months to one year, with the grandiose declaration that they do so for the `benefit of the patrons'. So, the next time you receive the expiry notice, you are lulled into just ignoring it (at your own peril, of course), being cockily sure that the expiry would be extended as on previous occasions.  But, alas, no - this time the airline actually carries out its threat and denies any further extension.   The problem is you never can predict which way this will go and the airlines keep you guessing always. Now, you have to think of all possible, necessary and wasteful trips you might take in the next few months and book tickets on multiple-hop/red-eye flights, just to use the miles immediately.  You derive that false satisfaction that you are getting some free flights after all!!

If the airlines offer a choice of an immediate discount on the ticket or accrual of miles, I know what I will opt for.  With all this hindsight, I will happily take the immediate monetary benefit instead of the promised lala-land! Even if quantitatively the former is a lesser benefit.  But, I think most fliers would find the thrill of a free flight irresistible, whatever the difficulties involved in getting that flight are!  Human nature - a freebie attracts us like moths to a light.  The airlines know this irrefutable fact and will never change their diabolical ways.  Why would they, when they know the chimera of miles can be used to lure FF members until doomsday??

When we were discussing this, my dear wife, the contrarian that she is, asked sardonically `why would you look a gift horse in the mouth'?  Fair point, but I am not even sure it is a gift horse.  It is labelled that but I am sure we pay the packed-in cost through the higher ticket price every time we buy one!! 

Hobby, Dear Seniors??

Seven years back, after I had relinquished all my part time consulting assignments and became truly unemployed and retired, a friend visited me to check on how I was faring.  He figured that having been active for so long, without the crutch of some professional work I would be entirely out of depth in the new situation or at least suffering from severe sense of alienation.  I told him I was doing fine and did not have so much spare time to be afflicted by withdrawal symptoms or to worry about depression.  He looked at me disbelievingly as if I was sprouting a few horns on my chin even as he was looking.  I could understand why, because he went through a terrible phase after his own retirement, trying to cope with all the time he had on hand and a relentlessly nagging spouse.  He did not realise earlier that what he had to eventualy confront post-retirement, was that deadly cocktail; did not prepare for it and failed miserably to cope, culminating in intense depression for the first year, which got marginally better when he devised the solution of staying at home minimally until evening. Sad way to end up.  The fundamental problem was that he was one of those workaholics, who did nothing but work in the office, work at home and work elsewhere; went into a tizzy when he had no office work to do.  Could not speak a few sentences cogently about anything other than work, while he could wax eloquent on work related stuff.  He did not foresee the need to develop some hobby/hobbies to bail him out when he would have no work to immerse in.  He was nice enough to check on me when I retired and he was astonished to see that I was sane and happy.  The major difference was that I had adequate cover in terms of multiple hobbies to take refuge in. 

But then I have seen many friends attempting bravely to start developing hobbies after retirement.  While this is commendable and necessary, at the ripe old age of sixty or so, boarding that ship is not easy. I am not saying it is impossible because many enterprising retirees have flourished in new hobbies, to live happily and guide others too.  But, having to learn something completely different from life-time of work is, well, like Javed Jaffrey so masterfully said decades back, Maggi Sweet And Sour Sauce --  Different!! And quite a few could not handle the pitfalls and the effort involved.  Given that,  it is also very important to be judicious about the choice of the hobby one goes for, late in life.

One friend's choice was away from the beaten path - cooking.  His wife had fed him most of his life with excellent fare since she was a great cook.  He had inadvertently, despite himself, imbibed some of the skills during emergency situations which arose and handled things pretty well, to the satisfaction of the boss-at-home.  So, after retirement,  he asked his wife to give him some space in the kitchen to experiment with his own culinary skills and she gladly moved aside.  He was himself surprised by the good quality of the stuff he was turning out and the wife did her bit tohelp him and augment the taste as well as presentation.  What started as a hobby soon became a commercial propostion. He began supplying food to the neighbourhood and in no time at all, established himself and the wife as good chefs, delivering excellent quality.  They are reasonably busy with the venture and make good profits too with their hobby, nay, new profession.

But the above is not the norm and not everybody is so fortunate.  A couple of other friends who wandered into the cooking arena  for passing time, got scalded literally and metophorically.  Their scars showed for a long time to come.  For, even a hobby requires certain amount of commitment and skills.  Cooking is not for everyone, contrary to eating (which anyone can do well, generally), even though they are allied spheres.  If one is the kind who cannot distinguish between sauteeing, shallow frying and deep frying or tell the difference between toor dal and chana dal, one is destined to be a non-starter in the cooking arena, even for a hobby.  Some intense, belaboured trials by aspiring friends have tragically ended up with heart-breaking results, as in the case of top class brick-quality idlis which could have been used as deadly ammunition in a war; or a benumbingly salty and ferociously spicy curry unintentionally produced due to a sad mix-up in measurement of spices.   Of course, one can learn and climb up the ladder but most people don't even get a footing on the second step.  Funnily, it looks one basic qualification for a person to be a decent cook is that he should invariably enjoy what he eats. This comes from some veteran ladies, who have cooked for decades and enthralled multitudes with what they turn out impeccably. Despite this, a lot of us good eaters will never be decent cooks, I believe.  The classic difference between consumers and producers.

Gardening is another favourite of retirees.  Some have done wonderfully well in turning mud patches at home into green oases but not everyone is so lucky.  One chap, over a period of 8 months, emptied half of his neighbourhood nurseries into his backyard and sizable bank balance into the nurserys' accounts in his fruitless attempts to grow something, anything, green.  For some reason, anything he planted remained green precisely for 17-22 days and never beyond that.  Most of them failed to co-operate and committed suicide very early.  Plants, leaves, etc shrivelled relentlessly and breathed their last right under his nose. The half baked gardener of his encouraged him to buy more new plants as the solution to his ills (as is normal, he probably had a cut in the nursery's invoice value) without changing anything else in the process and our hobby-seeker was too desperate to be questioning.  Someone told this chap he had a red thumb as against a green one and the suffering intern did not take that kindly.  The explanation for the disastrous results was always that he had been too generous with water for the plants or there was not enough sunlight or the plants needed more or less fertilizer than was supplied.  A precise and pointed reason was never given and the man's hobby died with the last set of plants when his fuming wife ran the riot act to him to cease and desist.

Photography could have been an attractive option ten years or so back but now every three year old kid shoots good photos with the mobile. Unless the effort is to become a professional photographer, there is little sense in moving away from a good mobile phone for photos.  At least one is saved the agony of watching some unidentifiable lump turn up on the screen of the camera and one cannot explain what it could be.  The serious cameras require a lot of understanding, tuning and syncronization before a good picture can be shot and the learning process can be quite arduous. When the mobile phone is looming as a ready alternative, very few go the other way and so, photography may not be a popular hobby any longer,  Except when one is a mindless shooter of snaps on mobile phones for laods of sharing with the sole intent to persecute them daily.  

Some people have gone into music. Either vocal or some instrument. `When I was young, I always wanted to be a musician' is their standard but eager tagline.  Again, this is like cooking.  One has to have some basic gift in terms of the sense of music as well as a good voice to be a reasonably good singer. For some inexplicable reason, what the whole world realises instantly on listening to their first attempt, our musician is just unable to see or hear -- that music is not his or her cuppa.  Armed with videos of their attempts at amateur singing and the sharing apps, he/see enthusiastically sends the productions to friends and relatives, who suffer silently for fear of hurting the poor fellow with honest feedback.  While some graduate to a higher level eventually, most of them stubbornly remain rooted to where they have been for years, but not giving up.  God bless their perseverance and efforts.

All the above goes back to what I was saying earlier - that hobbies probably should be developed much early in life, when one has the time, energy and ability to overcome issues.  Later in life, simple things become a struggle.  

My dear wife is chipping in with her wisdom.  According to her, the one thing that retirees can and should learn even late is to deal with small kids.  Eventually this comes in handy when you are expected to baby-sit or otherwise deal with grandchildren.  This may not be an enjoyable pastime for many but is practically useful as many would vouch and helps in developing harmony at home, pleasing the progeny and scoring brownie points overall.  As usual, I am with her on this, one hundred percent!

  

  

Murphy's Law Is For Us All !

Murphy's Law (ML) - `Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' is not some esoteric thunderclap that periodically affects only big-time, multi-million dollar projects, sparing ordinary mortals.  Whether those projects have a few hurdles erected by ML or not, each individual would have experienced some ML pitfalls in his life surely.  We have grown used to being confronted by ML so much that we placidly accept its inflictions on us without even a second thought or paying too much attention to the what or why.  Here are a few of my own anecdotal experiences with ML and I am sure most of you can identify with the situations easily.

My first known tryst with ML was even before I knew that some such thing existed.  My middle school days.  My brother had a bout of pneumonia/dyphtheria and was just in the process of recovering.  At such times, we know the victim is banished into a `virtual' dark room where he did not hear or see anything good, especially relating to food, lest he be tempted to partake of accompanying goodies.  So was my brother. I was sternly and categorically instructed by both parents (and a few uncles, aunts, grandparents et al who were part of the scene) that he was not to be allowed so much as a sniff at anything half decent to eat or drink, especially if brought from outside. This coaching was imparted to me repeatedly because I was suspected to be the only possible potential violator of the edict.  You will see, this was not without solid reasons.  Out of boundless brotherly love, I had already smuggled a few assorted prohibited items like pieces of onion pakoda, vegetable puff, salt biscuits, jamun fruit etc (everything sourced from outside of home) into a mutually agreed foxhole, from which my dear brother retrieved them gleefully when he was not under surveillance. I took the risk because there was a very clear agreement about the expected quid pro quo in future, should the shoe unfortunately end up on the other foot.  My father was very punctilious with his own and our lives and followed some hard-coded habits - like leaving for work at 9 am.  My brother and I left for our school at 9.30 am and we never met our father on the way to school, even though all of us took the same path for the first 300 metres.  One day during his convalescence and not attending school, dear brother developed this urge to have this `javvu mittai' (the vendor can shape the raw material of sugar and a stretchable dough into some shapes) or he graciously offered me an option, the stick ice cream. I was very aware of the fact that either of those obnoxious things could have actually caused his illness in the first place and refused to oblige at first.  But the pathetic look on his face melted me and with a sense of adventure, I took him out with me for a walk, for some fresh air.  Time 9.30.  The stick ice cream was available on the way to school and we were both watching our home, not far off, to check on any snooping relative.  The coast was clear and we were quickly devouring the delicacy when I felt a rather firm hand on my shoulder.  I had a sickly feeling immediately in my gut and turned to look at our father, his face flushed with anger, glowering at both of us.  Even in that delicate moment, my brother was happily licking the last of the ice cream, without realising the parental presence and this enraged the father more.  Soon we were hauled back home, I got a severe thrashing while my brother got an earful (he was recuperating, so no beating for him and also being the elder I was supposed to be the beacon of light guiding him!).  Our father was never in that spot at that time in the previous decade or more and never again in the future, but he made his only guest appearance on that fateful day to catch us in our act.  That was the first application of ML in my life!

Context:  Cricket Test, India vs England in Madras.  After a lot of begging and cajoling, my father had arranged for tickets for himself, my brother and myself.  Train tickets booked.  Two days before departure, my brother unwittingly invited chicken-pox to hobnob with him.  His ticket was instantly cancelled.  My father and I left by train, after everyone at home subjected me to close checks under microscope to see if any symptom of chickenpox lurked on my physique too.  After three hours of journey, a man who was sitting next to my father and opposite to me, was whispering something into my father's ears softly.  Then I was scrutinized by 3-4 elders collectively and it was declared that I too had chicken-pox and expert opinion was I should not travel further. So, we got off the train to look for return passage, when my father's cousin came beaming to us, happy to have met.  He was going to my town. So I got transferred and got back home without getting anywhere near a cricket test.  After 7-8 years, ML played another nasty one on me when I tried my luck again when Australia played India in Chepauk.  This time, two days before departure, some typhoid like pestilence took an immense liking to me and thwarted that trip. I had to wait another 3 years before making my debut at a cricket test venue. ML, indeed.

All of us have had trying times waiting at bus stops.  Did you ever notice that if you are waiting for, say bus 27D going towards Mount Road, even as you waited for 45 minutes not one would come your way, 27D to Santhome came to the opposite bus stop about 5 times in those 45 minutes?  And this would happen on a day when you are supposed to be present somewhere about an hour ago.  So, what do you do? You jump into an autorickshaw, literally feeling the hole being burnt into your pocket.  Two minutes into the ride, you turn back and see two 27Ds chasing you.  You curse your luck (that was what you thought it was, without knowledge of  ML) but worst was to come.  One 27D turns a corner breezily and knocks your auto.  Minor collision but major fracas - bus ceases to move, auto had been nudged to take a position in the middle of the road, blocking all traffic. Verbal abuse follows and then some fisticuffs. Great, free entertainment for the willing public, but you are stranded for longer.  Story ends with you still being far away from your intended destination, wringing your hands and waiting for 27D all over again.  No better example of ML.

I am sure each of you have had delayed flights in your travel life.  Once my dear wife and I were at the airport 3 hours ahead of schedule for a flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo.  Everything was hunky-dory till about 45 minutes to departure.  Then came the blaring ML-induced announcement that our flight was delayed.  I looked at the Departures board and out of some 60 flights shown there, only one was delayed.  Ours.  When finally we took off after 5 hours, we heaved a collective sigh of relief - prematurely it turned out.  Just about an hour from Tokyo we were told a storm was brewing and we could not land.  So, fly all the way back to Hong Kong we did, as if we were taking a non-geosyncronous circular orbital flight.  Not without some more drama too.  With one hour to go for landing in Hong Kong, we heard that the same weather system was creating havoc in Hong Kong too.  With just about enough fuel to land and no mid-air-refuelling possibility and a very turbulent weather to contend with,  our pilot was wondering whether he should divert to some other airport when he was ordered to head to a god-forsaken Chinese city in the interior, which had a shack for a terminal and nothing else.  We had to spend a miserable half-day there - no food, no water, no toilet facility, nobody to tell you where you were -  before we were mercifully flown back to Hong Kong and home, which were very, very wet with a deluge, caused by a typhoon. One helluva trip (can we call it that, since nothing was accomplished and we did not go to the intended place at all?), indeed.  My dear wife talks very fondly of this trip because with that she deems to have visited China.

One of my friends, who is a movie buff, wanted to see Come September very badly, bunking college classes. I very wisely refused to be party to such a scheme.  He went with a few others.  Those days we could not afford anything other than the lowest class, within touching distance of the screen.  So, there he was enjoying the movie from close quarters.  During the interval, his uncle who was visiting from another town and was in the privileged balcony class, spotted him (and unfortunately my friend did not notice him).  In the night, when the congregation was stuffing its mouth, the uncle blandly asked my friend `so how was the movie'?  Shrinking like a chicken on which some ice-cold water was thrown, my friend tried to blabber his way out but his uncle had the ammunition ready to nail him - the names of all the other friends with whom he graced the movie.  My dear friend did not know where to look and had to confess to his parents he bunked college and went for a movie - not the outcome he desired.  All the time cursing that malevolent uncle who was not supposed to be there.

So far in life, ML has played truant with me many times, but without any disastrous consequences, thankfully.  My dear wife says hopefully future ML inflictions will be as mild as we have had so far. 

Thank God and Thathastu!!  

  

  

This Mobile Phone Is A Pain In The .....

Recently some worthy-- his wife had presumably left him for good and he had joyfully married his cell phone instead without any fanfare -- was singing paens celebrating this versatile instrument of dubiously mixed value. He rightly pointed out that it has replaced multiple gadgets/props we use in our daily lives, ranging from alarm clock thru radio, tv, calendar, calculator, torch, banking assistant, payment gateway, dictionary, newspaper to its ultimate avator of information provider -- well one can go on ad infinitum.  And he is right. What is more, I for one would not be surprised if the ubiquitous cell phone is also enabled to cool your drink, cook your meal and flush your toilet in the years to come.  But not everyone thinks it has all been a joy ride without frequent bouts of pain.  Literally.  For instance, when you forget you are joined in the hip with this twin brother of yours, the phone in your hip pocket, and plonk down heavily collapsing into a seat, ouch, it hurts the bone there.  But that is not all.  A bum call goes out to someone you have been avoiding for years or worse, an awkward message is shot out to a friends' group instantly.  Every member of the group would gleefully remember and recall this gem invariably in a group so that this embarassing information ripples out uncontrollably, ensuring that you remain the butt of jokes for a long time to come. 

Some phones come with a plethora of proprietary apps and these make life miserable for you at unexpected moments.  Having no interest in such apps, you ignore them completely. All of a sudden, when you are in the middle of a business exchange, there appears on the screen a totally unwanted casino game and throws you off.  Try as you may, this leech of a game refuses to go away and exasperated, you perform that one panacea-act for all ills in a mobile phone, `reboot'. And lose whatever data or content you had been working on.  With a painful explanation to follow to the counterpart who has been waiting for you to get back on line.  Or some strange You Tube like app suddenly blares out an absolutely cringeworthy hiphop song featuring zombies of various denominations, which you cannot get rid of despite valiant effort. Again `reboot' is the only action you can resort to.

A month back, I was aghast when my dear wife asked me to clean up her phone.  Being a hoarder par excellence, she keeps everything received and sent in the phone for years, as if all content is sacred and precious.  Then it takes a month for me to bring it to some semblance of current state when I am tasked with cleaning up.  This time, I found that she had apps for all kinds of things - one for ordering Avakkai pickle, one for paruppu podi, one for appalam, three for different fruit vendors (each one gives good banana, apple and oranges respectively, so three is the minimum required), some sixty seven undeleted groups which are no longer active and many members had already escaped from this world. This multiplicity of groups also meant some thousand messages were retained and approximately 75% just had a thumbs up or some other emoji.  Earlier you could ignore these easily but recently, one messaging system has thought it wise and appropriate to draw your attention the emoticon with the message `Reacted to your message' as if that is a historic accomplishment!  I carefully avoided shaking my head in frustration because her phone is so, so, sensitive that my simple nod might have resulted in unpalatable, mysterious gyrations which would eventually bring my intelligence into question when my dear wife reviews the phone after clean-up.  

They make these phones ultra-sensitive nowadays to score some brownie points and deliberately programme some wrist or finger-tip movements to initiate specific actions, to satisfy some weird market segment. When one is warming up to some spirited argument and becomes all palms and fists, gesticulating feverishly to make one's point, all of a sudden the cell phone reacts, goes berserk and does something as if possessed, which you cannot decipher for the next few hours.  If the all-purpose reboot option works fine, otherwise you have to visit a phone clinic, where a tehnician breezily pushes a few buttons and resurrects the phone.  You end up looking very stupid and clueless.  All because two shakes are programmed to mean the phone does one thing and one and a half clockwise jerks mean something else.  You have to go through the phone manual in the smallest possible font before you figure out the various involuntary/deliberate actions and complicated results thereof.  Older people would fine typing difficult because contrary to what they intend, the phone uses the senstitivty index to type out its own message, add the lottery aspect of auto-correct to complete the task.  Most of the time, people do not check, assuming that what is going out is what they intended.  Those people who have the habit of touching the screen all over instead of specific buttons, find that they have to do multiple iterations of the same exercise before they give up in frustration or succumb to the phone's dictat and send out whatever is there, hoping that the recipient would call to clarify.  The problem is compounded if it goes out to the wrong recipient.

One of the most inconvenient things with the cell phones is you cannot evade any active seeker saying `I did not receive any call', or `I did not see any missed call' or any such inane lie because there is evidence in your phone that a call was indeed received and some people are not beyond checking your phone surreptitiously! They take the liberty to examine your phone and then you are discovered for what you are!  Or worse still, all those not-so-charming faces which you have been happy avoiding for some time and have blissfully forgotten in the process, pop up suddenly in unannounced video calls to bring back all the nightmares of yore.

So, my take is the cell phone is not an unmixed blessing.  It is great in many respects but there is significant downside too, like the hurt hip bone.  Considering that, I would rather call this instrument an `anukoola chatru'!  And to think that, some people carry two phones, each with two sim cards!!  God cannot help them because they have gone beyond the pale!!