Jhatka Ride

 I have this unadulterated antipathy towards `forwards’ via Whatsapp.  It won’t be an exaggeration to say that my fingers are wired to the auto-mode to delete the item instantly.  But let me not digress at the very beginning, this is not about forwards.  That can wait for another day.  Very rarely a `forward’ triggers a spark in a writer to hark back to something in his own bag of experiences.  And follow through with a piece of his own, which may or may not have seen the light of day otherwise.  One such prompt a year back ignited a spark in me to reminisce about a commonplace occurrence in mofussil towns of India in the 60s – a ride on a horse cart.  Yes, the humble Jhatka (horse cart), which was perceived a quantum jump from the bullock cart of earlier years because of the increment in speed purportedly achieved by the former. Although one has seen some bullocks clocking up higher velocity than horses! The `forward’ in question was a piece on a horse cart ride the author had taken from the train station to his home in a small town in Thamizh Nadu.  Most of us in that generation have had similar experiences in our childhood and this is about mine.

We used to live in a place called New Colony in Thuthukudi those days.  Most of the commute was done on one’s own legs because generally the distances were pretty short.  Those who were better off owned bicycles and the upgrades were like cycle rickshaw, horse cart for public transportation, apart from bus. When a family had to make that cherished, occasional trip from home to the bus stand or railway station for a holiday, with a multitude of people and assorted bags, the jhatka was the answer.  Even then a couple of sprightly youngsters were asked to walk or jog along the vehicle for want of space inside.  There were about half a dozen jhatkas plying their business in that area and we were all familiar with the names of the jhatka owners as well the horses.  Our favourite jhatka owner was Karuppan (meaning Blackman).  There is no racial slant, intended or otherwise, involved in that name in that area at that time, so please don’t pounce on me for committing a political impropriety. Black was the predominant skin colour of the locals, with allowance for various hues of black in complexion.  But, to put things in perspective, the name might have come about because the parents wanted to give the child the exalted name of a local God, Karuppasamy, which later got truncated to Karuppan.

Karuppan was the first port of call normally when a family wanted to make the periodic, heavy-duty trip with a fully laden cart to the train station.  Our protagonist was about four feet tall when he is fully erect and stretched a bit, with the top of his head almost measuring up to the face of the horse, if the horse is standing still and not attempting to climb up from its usual horizontal position. You get the picture?  His midriff had a good protrusion because obviously he ate well and there was very little space else, except for his pot-belly, for the digested food to get gladly assimilated into.  So, the first impression any quizzical onlooker would have was that it was going to be a mammoth task for the man to assume his driving position in the cart.  The onlooker need not have worried.  Once the time of departure arrived, the man and the animal worked in amazing unison as Karuppan jumped up with alacrity, placing one foot on the wheel and assumed his assigned seat.  That is an exaggeration because after everybody and everything requiring transportation had been accommodated in the cart, what was left was just enough space for one butt of his to rest on the cart.  But for that small vacant perch, he would have hung out completely and we could have none of that.

Karuppan knew that his rather emaciated horse was not a thoroughbred and we all knew that too.  But no one had told the horse that, so it started off in a brisk canter, as if it had the strength and mien of a race horse, -- may be, just to pretend to impress the customers.  But after just a few steps, reality prevailed and it sobered down to a slow trot which translated to about one kilometre per hour kind of speed.  It could not have miraculously done anything faster because out of the earnings, a very meagre amount was spent on the sustenance of the horse.  It did not look like there was any apparent long-term plan to invest in the horse to bring about a drastic change in status-quo, due to the current and projected income-expenditure patterns.  It was all very short term and what mattered was the next two kilometres, that’s about it.

This piece will not do justice to itself if it fails to describe the cart involved.  The main arched, canopy which provided the occupants some relief from the elements itself was antiquated, very plain and non-descript.  It could have done with a touch of paint, not having seen that luxury in many years. The two large wheels, on the move, were somewhat wobbly around the axils and they seldom moved in a straight circular motion.  There was a hint of a gentle, crisscross movement as they rolled, pretty much like the gait of the models when they walk the ramp.  There was a cushion inside the cart, made of dried grass which had metamorphosed into powder over a period, inside an old bed cover.  That provided some protection to the riders from shocks pulsing up from the roads, that essential ingredient of any such trip.  A sack hung down the bottom of the cart and contained some grass, supposedly refreshment for the horse if it collapsed during a ride. Some upgraded carts had a dirty length of cloth decoratively draped as a curtain at the back, to provide the riders some privacy from the prying eyes of the town populace.  But Karuppan’s cart did not boast of any such frills and was rudimentary in all respects.

In Thuthukudi, the bus stand was between our home and the railway station, meaning the cart would have to pass the bus stand if the station was the destination.  And the horse carts were all parked at the bus stand almost permanently, awaiting business. There is a reason why I am laying out the topography for you.  The process of going to the station involved, as a first step, the boys of the household running to the bus stand, looking out for a cart and invariably snagging Karuppan for the ride.  Next, all the people and the luggage would be stuffed into the rather elastic inside of the cart until there was no space to squeeze out.  The horse always sensed that the cart was overloaded and resented that. It protested meekly for a minute, shuffling its feet without moving forward an inch.  After some expert cajoling by Karuppan, the journey started.  The horse moved at its own customary pace, as if it had a prior, iron-clad contract of partnership with the train that the latter would not depart before the load is transferred successfully.  On the way, there was always a minor incident.  When the cart was crossing the bus stand, invariably the horse made an involuntary turn towards its `shed’, its resting place while not plying the trade.  Karuppan had to use the carrot-and-stick method (except that the carrot was missing here) to coax the horse to understand that the time was for work, not rest and that the desire for recuperation had to remain suspended for a while longer. 

Towards the end of the journey there were always some anxious moments when the horse thought it was highly overburdened and firmly refused further co-operation. It had to be bullied, begged and treated with fresh-grass-incentive for any further progress.  When the destination was reached, the whole cart-load, including the baggage, heaved a collective sigh of relief.  This whole scenario had been repeated in our lives multiple times, but as children we never got bored or tired of this journey.

My dear wife is ambivalent about this.  She thinks we could have all walked to the station with the cart left carrying just the luggage, so long as there was no really superannuated individual in the group.  That would have been fairer to the horse.  But then, she also says after she read this piece, that the experience itself was invaluable and cannot be artificially replicated.  No amount of wide-bodied-jet travel comes anywhere near the jhatka trip – not by a few thousand miles!!  So, for once, she did not have to frown at me and pass a serious indictment!! God bless her.

Burden Of Being A Landlord

The title does not refer to the troubles of the owner of inherited land in an ancestral village he/she never visits. Meaning, the owner is an absentee landlord in this context and he does not even know if he is really the owner or someone else has appropriated the land in his prolonged absence. Most often, he is not,  because some scheming local farmer who leased the land fifty years ago and had never paid the lease value, has now taken over fully, whether the actual owner likes it or not.  Why this long-winded explanation?   Just to say that this kind of `ownership' is not a burden because there is nothing weighing down on the owner, he knows who legally the owner is, reality is different, that the land is gone.  I am referring the burden or owning a residential property somewhere, renting it out for the paltry compensation received every month and in the bargain, facing constantly irritable problems arising from the quirky demands of the renter.

If one is lucky, one gets a good company, which happily signs successive leases for its officers, with a routine increment of some pittance.  So long as the accommodation in question is well maintained, this just requires the landlord to tolerate a couple of visits by the prospective tenant for inspection and approval.  Sometimes you do get those nose-in-the-air parties, who will not get any place for the next few years since they are looking for something close to Utopia. But mostly they are reasonable because the previous occupier has done the good job of explaining the pros and cons of the apartment/villa. Such a corporate lease is a blessing because it saves the landlord the draining experience of having to identify a new renter every 2-3 years. That exercise brings in a horde of brokers, who are circling the properties like vultures all the time and want to bring in somebody every two days to earn their brokerage, even when they know most of those people are not the right fit. Every client of theirs they usher in as if a presidential summit has been organized with you.  Then follow prolonged negotiations, which make one wonder if the party of the second part is buying out the entire apartment or villa complex in a multi billion dollar deal, rather than entering into a lease agreement for a single unit.  You heave a few long sighs of relief when the deal is done, you see the broker's back and the new tenant arrives.

Every new tenant, especially expatriate - even from Vietnam or Mexico,  pretends that the landlord is a poor serf waiting to do his bidding and he is royalty, who can demand and get what he wants.  One will ask you to relocate the guest bathroom or the study room to a location of his preference, which is always a no-brainer.  Another will ask for supply all the furniture etc for the whole apartment, because he did not ship anything from his country, knowing the short term nature of his assignment. Fair enough. But, the landlord has to be wary of this because if he makes the mistake of buying all the required items for this tenant, he is likely to be doomed, when the lease expires and the next kingly tenant walks in. This one will probably say he does not need any furniture since he has brought his own and the landlord has to take out all the timber already there.  The latter will now have to scurry around to either store the extra furniture and pay storage charges for the near future at least or sell the whole stuff and incur a loss.  One gets wiser with experience and bluntly declines any initial request for additional stuff and asks the tenant to rent the required items himself.  There is a likelihood that the deal falls through because of this, sometimes.  

The landlord should know better than to gleefully imagine that now that the tenant has moved in, he can be relaxed.  What he does not realise is that it was not the end, but rather the beginning of a string of issues which pop up with alarming regularity during the lease period,  which need resolutions forthwith. Even if some door creaks a bit, these foreigner tenants feign lack of understanding about local support and come after you.  This despite the lease clearly indicating that all ongoing maintenance should be the responsibility of the tenant.  Once or twice the landlord can help initially but should firmly put his foot down sooner or later and point the tenant towards the maintenance team in place, for future help.  Otherwise every second week he gets woken up in the middle of the night for one reason or the other, just because the tenant has chronic insomnia. 

One tenant called me at 2 am and said he is unable to sleep because the airconditioning had conked off. When told that he should contact the AC support team in the morning, he innocently queried how he was supposed to sleep without airconiditioning.  When told that there were 3 other rooms with working ACs where he can go, he seemed surprised!!  By some strange coincidence, those tenants who tend to be overly fussy and complaining non-stop seem to get all the hitherto-unknown problems cropping up during their stay.  An electrical burn-out, a gas leak, water seepage, being locked out of the apartment due to loss of keys -- all these are par for the course and the landlord should be on his toes to provide relief in a jiffy as the household comes to a standstill with the members standing bemused, wringing their hands in despair.      

Some belligerent tenants are bent upon a course of non-coperation with the apartment's association, cutting corners or blatanly violating rules all the time.  Such ongoing friction causes headaches for the landlords long after these tenants vacate and vanish.  One such tenant persistenly had raucous parties well into the night, with loud music, punctuated with high-decibel shrieks at least twice a month.  He just refused to back down, even when association members warned him repeatedly.  He almost demanded this as his right, saying in him home-country he did not face any problem.  Finally the landlord got a notice and had to seek the intervention of the company to stop the orgies and calm the neighbours down. 

Finally when the tenant leaves, one more test awaits the landlord.  The lease provides for the tenant to put everything back in the same condition as it was when first taken over, except for normal wear and tear.  One tenant's kids had damaged most of the walls by using non-erasable markers to sketch all kindds of pictures.  Even the ceilings had some spray paint in many places.  When told that some repainnting had to be done and the costs will have to be paid by the tenant, he revolted.  His point was that with small kids in the house, all these should be considered normal wear and tear!! Nice try. He held back the keys even after the company agreed to settle everything and close the deal.  It took a lot of persuasion by the company and the broker before the matter was resolved. Another tenant tried to say that all broken appliances were given to him in the same pitiable condition, so he would not pay up.  With every such experience, the landlord gets aged faster.

The perennial dilemma is this - does the measly compensation of 3% of yield on the capital as rental good enough for the landlord to take all this angst in his stride??  But as usual, my dear wife has the answer and the last word.  What is the alternative, she asks.  Do we want to keep the apartment locked up for years together?  Then the cost of restoration due to disrepair and non-maintenance will be much higher with zero returns in the meantime,  she correctly points out.  So, for one more time, in such an august presence, I just shut up as is customary and prepare for another re-run!    

   

Newspaper Reading

Multitude of people of older vintage would nod vigorously in agreement with me as to what a supreme pleasure it was to snatch a sheet of that day's newspaper from rampaging siblings and read gleefully. After the father finished with the paper and put it down, the entire household would descend on that bunch of printed sheets as if it was a treasure involved in a veritable battle of partition.  There would be a scrap among the children to get hold of the Sports page, specifically.  After the initial fighting, things would settle down to a state of relative calm, when the kids read their sheets and then started exchanging with the others, so that at the end of a half-hour period, all the sheets would have become things of the past, really history!  Still, no one dared to touch the paper till the father had slowly consumed all the news, along with his morning cuppa, at first.  Even when he was reading the English newspaper `The Hindu', the Thamizh paper `Dhinamani' would sit invitingly there untouched, waiting for its turn, just as we all waited for our turn. 

At that time none of us realised what was happening.  We were unconsciously cultivating the venerable habit of reading newspapers.  Which will grow in intensity with us and survive to aggressively compete with all the other news peddling media like radio at first and then TV, online channels and of course, born gossipers in our midst of whom there was and is never any dearth.  Our territory was part of the backwaters, where English Literature courses were taught partly in Thamizh (!!), entirely due to the students' inability to grasp the foreign language well, let me hasten to clarify, lest our Literature gurus curse me from afar.  A lot of us owe whatever initial proficiency we had developed in English language to the newspapers, magazines like Sport and Pastime and radio commentary on cricket, tennis matches and events, Radio news and the like. There have been times in our later lives, when we were either travelling for an extended period overseas or were on foreign assignments.  Apart from badly missing our kith and kin, two major things we longed for were home food and Indian newspapers.  To such an extent that we earnestly cultivated friendships with Air India personnel in our locations and asked them to retrieve for us, the newspapers given to the passengers on flights and avidly read news which was at a minmum 3 days old!!     

The story of how the newspapers reached our thresholds daily during our childhood days was also something very captivating.  The papers were printed at Madurai or arrived there by the first flight from Madras.  They were hurriedly bundled into waiting private taxis doing this `paper-trip' daily, even before too much sunlight seeped into the world.  The taxis covered the distance of about 150 kms to Thuthukudi in about 3 hours in champion ambassador cars, with top notch maintenance all round the year.  Because if there was ever a delay, Thuthukudi's entire paper-reading public would be up in arms, demanding someone's head for the lapse which prevented them from getting their daily staple in time! Even though there were other newspapers which were printed in nearby locations and delivered earlier, the demand was only for the abovementioned papers + The Indian Express, in most households.  The maharathi drivers of those Madurai-Thuthukudi paper-run taxis were real-life heroes for most of us in childhood for the daredevilry embedded in their driving throughout the year.

Now, cut-over to the present day.  While the newspaper reading habit is not exactly dying or moribund, it seems to have shrunk drastically overall. Many old timers have also chosen to discard the newspaper habit because it is a redunduncy in the age of mobile phones, which provide more up-to-date news.  Youngsters, of course, never even begin their association with newspapers, with exceptions of course, because the reading habit is not very appealing to them, outside of the screens they perpetually peer into.  So generally, it has become fashionable to look down into your mobile phone/tablet with crinkled eyes for news, rather than read a newspaper relaxedly, for the majority.  Children fighting to grab sheets of newspapers to read, as was the practice with us, is no longer a common sight nowadays, surely.  Probably also because most households have ceased buying newspapers daily - not required and a waste of money!

For those who are still sticking to the old-world habit of buying newspapers and reading them, the reasons could be very real or imaginary. Absolutely no doubt, there is a huge element of nostalgia in the whole experience.  They like the touch-and-feel type of experience everywhere, be it the newspapers or shopping.  This group is very unlikely to order on-line for items which require sensory perception to be experienced, like clothes.  The very unique smell of the fresh newspaper sheets, the joy of scanning the paper from top left to bottom right, covering all the columns, the pleasure of seeing the name of a village, town, enterprise or people one was associated with long back, included as part of a news item -- these are enough for the inveterate newspaper readers to pursue the habit for ever. You cannot substitute these small pleasures by watching TV or going online always.  Having said that, there are novel challenges to the enthusiasts now, to maintain their composure and love for the paper, despite what can only be seen as irritants and provocations.

Those into newspapers would not have missed the thin strip of extra paper sticking out on the side (how can they?), with some printed ad, raking a bit more money for the publisher.  For some reason, this innocuous intrusion causes distinct angst in avid readers.  They first want to tear that stip off, from top to bottom and bring the newspaper to the `normal' shape and size before starting perusal.  But stripping that piece off is not very easy because once you start, the tear veers off into the paper and a small portion of the actual news is also lost sometimes.  More irritation!! The damage being done, people can only look at the unevenly torn page and do some cluck-clucking, while cursing the publisher wholeheartedly.

A sizable number of newspaper lovers are probably in the over-50 quadrant.  That means most of them also sport spectacles, perched gingerly on their noses while peering at the paper.  When the fonts used by the publishers gradually reduce in size and sometimes necessitate a magnifying glass to decipher what is printed, it is distressing.  The least publishers can do is to ensure that news is readable by an average person, even with specs by sticking to a decent size font.  But, the smaller font, the more space they get for moolah thru ads, so that is that.  So, most old people keep their specs on and also have a magnifying glass handy to ensure that they do not miss anything -- that is what the they buy papers for, right?

Another stupid mistake publishers make is printing news items in colour (who is asking for this?), choosing the colours indiscriminately without any thought for the readers.  Try reading anything printed in green against red background, or dark blue against black and the like.  Publishers know the readers are probably on the older side, so why frustrate them with such a punishment? Do all the colourful gimmickry with the ads, which appeal to youngsters, but the reading material should be printed in conventional fonts and colours so that the older generation feels comfortable and satisfied.

The worst grouse we have is that while there are 10 pages of news, there are 50 pages of Akshaya Trithya ads + 20 pages of property ads + 50 more pages of assorted furniture, biriyani, restaurants ads. People like me are glad that there are pull-outs most of the time for ads and related material.  We can comfortably just ignore that.  But when ads are constantly mixed up with news on every page, that is a major intrusion which cannot be condoned easily. Avoidable, that is.  Reel in all the ad revenues you want, publisher, but keep the ads as separate pull outs or at least on separate pages.  Those who are interested are most welcome to read the ads only and throw the news, while we will be happy to do the reverse. We too deserve some attention; after all we pay for the newspapers; not getting them free!!

My dear wife is going through her leisurely read of to-day's newspaper and decreeing that there should be some authorised proportion of ads to news for everyone and all in the form of pull-outs. And there should be a serious Ombudsman to oversee compliance.  She is on our side!!

      

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.  

The trigger for this piece is a sale deed I had to get done.  My dear wife did warn me I was going to end up drafting the whole thing and asking the lawyer to put some `law' into it.  That is what happened finally.  Why do you think she is omniscient??

    

      

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' (restaurants 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!!