Story of my lower berth!!

This is something new.  Nowadays, this feverishness sets in whenever I am on my way to the train station.  There is no problem with the reservation - all that was done three months ago, when the online reservation process opens up a wee bit, enough for me to get the foot in.  Obviously, since even the grey market operators do not commence cornering tickets that early, I invariably manage to get a seat/berth I want.  These days, I prefer lower berth for overnight journeys; not because I am too enfeebled to climb up the few steps of the ladder to the upper berth.  This has more to do with my inveterate inability to sleep on trains or buses or flights.

I believe God has been very equitable in distributing good sleeping habits; so equitable that two people in the same family are not blessed with the talent to nod off within five minutes of the vehicle, whatever be the mode of transportation, vibrates from some form of movement.  You can guess who the lucky one is in our family.  It takes some 90 seconds flat for my wife's head to meet her shoulder once the train starts moving.  I think she will sleep earlier, if I just tell her the train is in motion, even if it is not!!  My story is woefully different.  Even in the comfort of home, after adjusting everything surrounding me to be just-so-perfect, after a prolonged struggle, I have to normally sing to myself a lullaby in a hoarse, tired voice in order to attain Nirvana!  I tend to be of least help to myself, since as a habit, I insist on completing the whole lullaby, so the last few minutes before sleep are always tense and filled with drama. With two strenuous and mutually incompatible activities, if performed simultaneously by the same person, fervently competing with each other, one stays in a la-la-land for a period.  But, during travel, my pre-sleep discomfiture multiplies manifold.  I potter around the limited space graciously provided by the Railways, endlessly adjusting the pillow, the bed-sheet etc; trying to read a bit under that abysmally low-wattage lamp they have carefully fitted in the most inconvenient place possible; getting up and walking around a little, all the time thinking if others who are awake wonder whether I am somnambulant!!  Singing a lullaby in a train coach is not an activity even I would like to indulge in, so it gets infuriatingly frustrating when others around you are oh-so-blissfully-asleep so fast!

No, all this is not the ranting of a sleep deprived soul.  The angst comes from elsewhere.  Given the propensity to wallow in a pool of sleeplessness for most of the night, I make it a point to get a lower berth, so that I can sit up comfortably, if required, and continue my struggle to read under the dim lamp.  If one has travelled in an Indian train, one knows this is an impossible task to execute on the upper berth, which at best is good to crawl into and crash face down and then turn over to achieve one's favourite sleeping position!  This is the crux of the problem, which causes feverishness in me two hours prior to the commencement of the journey.  Why should I worry since I have a lower berth, you ask?  Let me explain.

The last few overnight journeys I have undertaken, fortified by the knowledge that I was fully equipped with a lower berth to take on all the travails the long night can throw at me, something goes amiss every time.  Once, someone older than me limped on one crutch into the compartment and even before sitting down, bleatingly asked me if I could give up my lower berth and take his upper!  Since then, if someone slightly out of the ordinary steps into the coach, my blood pressure ebbs significantly.  The next time it was a frighteningly pregnant woman, whose husband stood at the window, on platform and skillfully coached her to extract the same exchange deal.  When it is more than one lady in your section of the coach, you know you are doomed and that lower berth which you have nurtured for three months so carefully is slipping away from you.  The last time it was a man, his wife, a kid and the maid who were co-travellers and when the man popped the usual question, I did try to protest because this was becoming a routine and there was no respect for the effort I make in getting the lower berth at an early date.  But lower-berth-seekers on the train are a fiercely persistent lot.  They tell you sob stories, offer to roll up their trousers to display their old or new injuries, hold up the child as a weapon and even make their women pretend to struggle up the ladder one step, just to elicit your sympathy.  They rest only after they manage to seize what they feel is rightfully theirs and taken by you in an entirely unethical manner.  After a point, how do you stave them off??  During a recent trip, a man came with three ladies and was carrying something large under his armpit, apart from the bags.  When he came close, I realised it was an MRI film.  He actually kept the film out to show to me (I refused the honour) and prove that the only lady in the group who was in the sub-100 kg category, could not climb even half a step due to a freshly minted fracture and consequent treatment in the hospital.  What does one do??  I just heave one of my longest sighs, give up, tuck my tail between my hind legs, climb and crawl into the upper berth.  I cannot bring myself to be rude enough to decline all conversation with such specimens and this tribe can smell a sucker from a couple of miles away and go for the kill without remorse!

So, what do I plan to do?  Am buying a couple of braces for the ankle/knee, so that I can wear one for each journey (and both, if the `opponent' seems overly determined) as my own weapons.  I am also going to append a walking stick to myself.  I will limp my way to my coach and the moment talk of a barter starts, I will bare my knee and ankle and have my own sob story to tell!!  You think it will work??  I hope it does; otherwise, I have to find a different mode of travel because that upper berth is not for me!

God, please mend your ways!

When we were young, frequently we could hear parents admonishing children for kiddish indiscretions - like killing a few ants crawling on the floor thoughtlessly or kicking an elder playfully or wasting food already served.  The kids were told `Don't do that, God will hurt you just as you are hurting the ants'; or, when the next time the kid complains of some pain in the leg, `see, that is what happens when you kick elders; God is punishing you with that pain'; or `Don't throw away food; wasted food will complain to God and He will make sure some day you do not get enough to eat' and so on.  Even if the innocence of those years prevented us from either comprehending or believing all these fully, we were indeed forced to think of God's retribution for every `bad' action of ours.  We were made painfully aware of the Omniscient one watching over our routine activities and jotting down in his ledger against our names what punishment should be doled out on some future date for deviant behaviour.   Did that deter us from bad deeds and serious crimes when we grew up??  That is a moot point.  But, this correlation between our `bad' acts and God's fist descending on us some day for those was deeply etched in our consciousness and conditioned to some degree the way we grew up.

As we left our childhood behind and became adolescents and adults, there was no repreive from the above process.  In the context of every wrong committed by someone, one generally heard mutterings under the breath about how justice will be meted out by God eventually.  Helpless and affected bystanders cursed the offenders with God's wrath.  And the slightest sign of something negative happening to an individual, people promptly ascribed that to a punitive burst from God.   As a Thamizh saying goes, `King kills (punishes) immediately; God waits and kills (punishes)' and the faithful were pretty clear that even if the guilty escaped the clutches of justice momentarily, God will land the knock-out punch in time.

May be today's parents continue to put that same fear of god in their children with similar dire warnings, but generally the theory of crime and punishment seems to be more diffused, if not very diluted now, especially in the minds of grownups.  If a five-year-old falls and hurts himself while chasing an insect with the intent to hurt, a parent is more likely to encourage the kid to pick himself up and continue the chase.  That is the parent's way of ensuring that the kid does not lose his confidence or get put off by failure in life.  Likewise, a lot of things that were taboo earlier are no longer seen as acts `punishable' by God.  Have you ever wondered why that is?  I have and have concluded that people have lost that fear of God's retribution because (a) He is taking far too long to mete out that punishment, given the humongous population explosion that has come about and also due to the enormous spike in all kinds of petty and serious crimes (b) He is waiting for our tortoise-like judicial system to punish the offenders and spring into action after that, if further intervention is required (c) He is taking the Thamizh proverb too seriously and is waiting endlessly to strike with punitive action, even as it has been proven that our government and courts are just not capable of meting out justice.  Whatever the reason, it is clear that most people have gradually lost their faith in the correlation between misdeeds and retribution and this is manifested in the ways they go about their lives.

If you stand at a street-corner and hurl a brick blindly, you will probably hit eight people who should have earned the wrath of the God earlier, but are flourishing in life, despite all their crookedness and guilt.  The son of a minister grows up watching his father conniving and thieving away to glory, completely aligning himself to the `fact' that wrong actions pay and do not hurt. So, when he is barely twenty, the son also jumps into the fray to improve upon his father's criminal record through innovative and well-crafted shenanigans, so that he could carry the flaming torch of success and family pride into the future.  And the minister, the father, focuses on training the son not to get caught while plundering everyone around.  The same thing happens with a contractor's son or a policeman's son (I am sure the daughters are also going that way - going by some recent examples - but let us, for this exercise keep it to the sons!). They see that their fathers have been highly successful in plying their dishonest trade in blatantly criminal ways and have not been taken to task by God during their lifetimes.   They decide that they are not accountable to anyone since God has also seemingly diluted his standards to suit the times and is willing to give a lot of leeway to His subjects; so why should I, the son or daughter, not take advantage of an easy system already perfected by my father and ensure further growth??  Actually, with the home-advantage such people have, if they throw it all and walk away because they believe what their fathers are doing is `wrong', this society will brand them `failures' and `losers' instead of praising them for their ability to distinguish between good and bad.

Who is to blame for this mess?  Elders in the family invariably fault Kaliyug, in which they have seen travesties of justice in all matters being commonplace.  Yes, the first stop should be the government and systems of justice in place now, but then they are being run by the same bunch which is trying to perpetuate their ugly and criminal hold on everything through muscle and money; what else can we expect??   Next in line is God, who was seen to be more prompt and proficient with punishment earlier.  He seems to have lost his touch and also the desire to dole out penalties in order to keep his flock in good shape.  He has to sharpen up and get better technology and systems (one of the supercomputers?) in place to promptly identify offenders, give them a chance to turn and punish if they fail to.  He cannot work his current load with the ancient system of a ledger and cannot afford to wait and kill `eventually'!!  By the time He comes around looking for someone, that guy is probably gone without having suffered the slightest indignity or pain in life, leaving the bad legacy to his descendants.  The only way to rein in the people is for God to demonstrate His ability to punish when someone is alive and is into bad acts.  People today do not bother about after-life, simply because they are busy getting more skewed in their thinking, without fear of any accountability for their actions.  They have to see pain and suffering in this life; the sequence of crime and punishment has to be played out by God in all its severity, for those who cause pain to others so that there is a compelling deterrent.

I cannot but recall the way movies made during those times ended.  Invariably, the bad guys lost and got punished or they confessed to their crime and vowed to change.  The word `Subham' appeared on the screen and the audience walked away, savouring the fact that justice had been done and all was well.  Consider, in contrast, as to what happens today - The Don cocks a snook at everything in sight and jauntily declares that `Don ko pakhadna mushkil nahin, namumkin hai' (Catching the Don is not just difficult, but it is impossible)'.   Sign of the times?? That, in essence, is the prevailing scenario.  That will not improve unless God changes his ways and upgrades His punishment methods to align with the times.  He will have to carry the AK-47, even if his targets are cockroaches.  That is the only way He will regain the respect of the people!

God, please mend your ways!! Don't be a wimp and wait for too long to punish!! We have empirical evidence that it does not work!!

Taking toll on you and me!

Frequent users of the Bangalore-Madras highway, on which they strip one of roughly Rs.240 for the drive, or for that matter, any toll road in India, will find the contents of this post resonating well with them.  This particular road is still good, but has deteriorated in quality over the past year or two -- pretty abysmal, considering the fact that it has been functional only for 4 years or so -- with glaring and recurring evidence of some genuinely `sub'-contractors having displayed their `skills' on the road showing up.  Long stretches of the road are being closed for re-laying the top surface within such a short time, thereby drastically reducing the four lanes in two carriageways to two lanes in one.  This indicates that the age-old practice of  the sub-contractors using sub-standard materials, labour, techniques etc was seriously at work even on toll-road.  Surprising, because one wonders how the contractor forgot that he will have to dip into his own pocket to re-lay the toll-roads and cannot look to the munificence of the babus for government funding. 

While the quality of the ride may have improved significantly compared to the so-called national highway of yore, some of the quirks of road-travel during the trip are throw-backs to the earlier days - almost as if we will not be allowed to forget what things used to be!!

The first thing that strikes you when you line up and pay toll at the booth is that you are not dealing with the toll collector on equal terms, literally and physically.  He is sitting in a box which is at least a foot above the car window and it would be difficult for most drivers to reach out to him.  This difference in levels has created an additional employment opportunity in that the toll companies have had to introduce a special-purpose-vehicle in the form of an interlocutor, standing between the car and the toll collector, to bridge the distance as well as the gap in height.  As you approach the counter, this interlocutor has a single-word-question to all drivers - `single'??  He is not gathering information on your marital status for a survey, but is asking whether you plan to return on the same day, when you can pay the reduced `return' toll amount.  And even before you finish saying `yes' and hand over a 100-rupee note, the next robotically delivered question reaches you - `do you have 5 rupees'?  Invariably the toll is fixed by the company, in their infinite wisdom, at Rs.25, Rs.35 or Rs.45 for some unfathomable reason - I suspect it is only to provide this individual with incremental conversational opportunity - and he always tries to ferret out that 5 rupee coin you seem to be hiding for its numismatic value.  Not that they suffer from a severe dearth of coins; they just love to peel one from you to gloat over their good fortune and do a calypso at the end of the shift and so have to ask.  Once you express your inability to supply the coin of the desired denomination, which most of the drivers routinely seem to do, you do get the balance promptly (this includes a five-rupee coin obviously), along with the receipt, thereby indicating the collector has adequate supply of coins.  The height of the irony is that during one such exchange recently, a third individual inside the booth had some 4 bags of 5-rupee coins and was involved in some serious counting business, when the usual query was popped to my driver `do you have 5 rupees'??  We all laughed and said in chorus, pointing to the guy inside the booth, `No, but he does'.  If you thought this is unique with 5-rupee coins, you are wrong; if the toll is Rs.40 and you gave Rs.100, they will ask you if you have a 10-rupee note, so that they can return a 50-rupee note!! The characteristic Indian hoarding mentality never fails to hold forth and never fades!!

If you have travelled by road in Europe or US, you would have noticed that the right/left extreme lane remains unclogged and is used only by those overtaking others.  Such overtakers pass the vehicle in front and promptly move back to the other lane, as a matter of road discipline.  In India, we are new to the luxury of having multiple lanes to drive in and the inherent and complete lack of discipline that is the hallmark of Indian driver just got multiplied manifold by the generously additional space made available by the toll roads.  The result is that you notice frequently a tempo carrying a full load and then some, travelling at its 25 kmph peak speed  in the extreme lane even if the other lane is free.  But invariably that is not the case, as it is used by an ultra-long carrier holding something humongous -- actually it turns out to be a windmill blade that is about 60 ft in length -- going full tilt at 24 kmph.   That means all those fancy cars which are touted to reach 300 kmph in 20 seconds (of course, conditions apply and will never be met in India!) have to toodle along at 20 kmph and toot their horns in collective frustration, behind the aforesaid vehicles.  But there is some reprieve from boredom though.  Now, the drivers of these cars have to punt on whether the tempo or the carrier will be the eventual overtaker in this rather absorbing race and stay behind that vehicle.  Just that the process might take over 10 minutes, what with the drivers of the racing vehicles taking umbrage at each other for trying to compete intensely and accelerating by about 1 kmph, to keep the interest going for the punters!!  To boot, this might happen in some hilly part of the road where the gradient is steep; this means the speeds in question nosedive to 8 kmph and 7.5 kmph  respectively and you can imagine the agony of the other drivers, waiting for a small gap to emerge to dash through!  Wherever you see signs screaming `Heavy vehicles must stay on the left lane', you should expect in the next 50 metres, steep climbs and clusters of competing heavy vehicles anywhere but on the left lane!!

But it is not always fun and frolic.  Some typically thoughtless actions with possible deadly and tragic consequences are also played out on toll roads.  When you are moving along nicely at about 120 kmph, suddenly a couple of confounding headlights move towards you in your own carriageway - reminiscent of the old, two-lane roads.  This is a 'local' truck or tractor, fully loaded (the driver too, if probably fully loaded!), having used a gap in the verge to cross over and reach its destination on your side by the shortest possible route, ignoring all known rules of safety.  Such drivers have the temerity to think that they have done their duty as well as a big favour to you by switching on their headlights to warn you that they are doing something stupid and illegal.

The toll road is built with villages/towns all along the route (to be fair, the villages were always there, the road came later), very often one sees people standing around in clusters on either side of the road as well as on the middle verge.  Then, literally dripping with suicidal instincts and momentarily possessed by the village deity,  someone steps off the middle verge and runs across the broad highway looking straight, just as your car is approaching; I used to wonder how they knew I was coming and why they choose my car to sacrifice limb or life!!  There is no way of finding out and I have come to the conclusion that I should do serial offerings at all the temples along the route, to placate all the local deities and convince them to opt for some other car!!  The scary part is that most of such crossers are old men and women, who might have lost their vision partly and are probably short of hearing too; nothing else explains their hair-raising run.

Then, there are the mini tankers with their long hoses, used for watering the grass/plants on the verge in the middle of the road.  Invariably, the drivers of such trucks, with uncanny judgement and the exceptional skill they are endowed with in such matters,  park the trucks in the extreme right lane, around a bend in the road, such that you cannot see them even from 300 metres.  And there are no traffic-regulating-cones to warn you of activity around the bend.  As you belt down and run the bend, you suddenly come upon this gay, group activity akin to a lecture-cum-demonstration on `how to water plants using large hoses in the middle of the road' and have to brake heavily and swerve maniacally to avoid manslaughter.  I think the idea of plants in the middle of the road, however beautiful they are and even if they provide miniscule relief from the tedium of road travel, is a century ahead of its time in India.  Make it two centuries, to be safe.  As usual,  my wife disagrees and wants small gardens in the middle, all along the 350 km road, so that local people can also participate in the development of India and have a sense of ownership of roads and camaraderie with the road users!!  I shudder more violently than when I was doing that aforementioned, maniacal swerve!!

A Few Minutes With Rahul Dravid

I dont remember the year, but it was one of those in which Rahul Dravid had a great time in tests, as was usual those days. And it was the time when Ipods and mobile phones had not substituted larger devices like radios and cassette/CD players. I remember this distinctly because the CD player which Rahul was carrying was the reason I got to exchange a few words and spend a few minutes with him.  He had something like a small kit bag on his shoulder, was holding a tote bag in one hand and the CD player in the other.  We were walking out of the Bombay airport terminal at the same time towards the bus that would take us to the plane.  Something fell out of Rahul's hand. As he was struggling to bend and pick it up, hampered by all the hand-carried baggage, I picked it and handed it back to him, with a `hello, it is a privilege to meet you'. He was in his mid twenties then and was somewhat embarrassed by his predicament as well as my words, the humble and down-to-earth guy that he is.  He smiled shyly and told me as much with a simple `that is high praise indeed!' and then asked me about myself. As we chatted, we got into the bus.

I was curious about the rather large CD player he was carrying and asked him whether he lugged

it wherever he went.  He said `yes' and proceeded to explain that acoustics was something he put a premium on and he preferred that high quality CD player in the evenings to listen to music.  At one point, in the bus, near my foot I found a boarding pass on the floor and picked it up and stuffed it in my jacket pocket, obviously thinking that was mine.  Rahul smiled and said to me `now we are even, even if I did not pick it up for you'.  When we got down from the bus, some guys were waiting for him and he said bye to me and went to chat with them.  I boarded the plane, took my seat and was looking for him to come on board.  Even after 15 minutes, there was no sign of him and when I peeked through the window, I saw he was walking back to the terminal, after leaving his baggage near the plane, with someone keeping watch on them until he returned.  I wondered what he had forgotten and the airhostess who was watching me looking at Dravid, came and said `looks like he misplaced his boarding pass and would not let us go fetch a replacement for that.  He has gone himself to do the job.  We will take off when he returns'.  The mystery having been solved, I sat back and started reading the book I had brought.   Dravid returned soon and took his seat two rows in front of me and we took off.  Some 30 minutes into the flight,  I was trying to retrieve something from my jacket pocket and out came this boarding pass, with the name Rahul Dravid, Seat 2A, screaming at me!!   I reeled a bit and stared at the boarding pass, wondering how it reached my pocket.  When I figured that the boarding pass I picked up from the floor of the bus was not mine but Rahul's, I felt bad that a small lapse on my part in not looking at the name before putting into my pocket had made him go through some trouble.  But I also smiled because we were not even after all, as he suggested.  The boarding pass he had dropped twice within 10 minutes and we always thought he did not drop many!!

I walked to him, handed the boarding pass to him and conveyed my regret in having been responsible for his extra trudge to and from the terminal .  When he realised what happened, he smiled and apologised  for having been so clumsy and causing inconvenience to me!!  That kind of summarizes the guy for you, I think. Come to think of it, I should have kept the boarding pass for some bragging rights!!  Did'nt strike me at all at that moment.  My dear wife has always teased me endlessly after this,  saying I could never exploit an opportunity, even when it comes begging!! I assumed she said that with a hint of approval.

Turning Sixty

Till recently, I was quietly proud of my own track record of never having submitted to the ordeal of cutting a birthday cake, not once.  When we were young, that custom was not prevalent in our circles - most probably because egg was taboo at home and eggless cake was not even work in progress.  The celebration, if one can give it that nomenclature, started with the classic pink coloured cotton candy and abruptly ended after a merry-go-round ride, if one could be found.  Mind you, not in a party with the other kids, but just by yourself, accompanied by some frowning elder, who was mortified having to do what he was doing .  Elders could not be blamed because they never partied either.  By the time I was 10 or so, even that small bit of fun ceased because my little brother caught diphtheria after indiscriminately stuffing his young face with cotton candies, especially made for him with a heavier dose of bacteria than what his body was accustomed to.

Since that time, whenever there was an attempt to drag me, even kicking and screaming, to cut a cake, I had always dexterously found some exit route.  For someone who had grown older with such serious aversion to cake-cutting, my pride was dented recently, not once but twice in quick succession, within a ten day period.   My mistake was just that I turned 60 and none around me was willing to concede it was a natural process beyond my control; that it was not some monumental achievement I had worked for, with enormous skills not commonly identified in humans.  My protestations that even animals dumber than me age every year did not cut much ice and I was forced to go through two parties.  Don't get me wrong, the parties were enormous fun alright and the friends who put them together were so loving and thoughtful; but the cake cutting was not a joy! 

The first party was a surprise, absolutely so.  Usually with surprise parties, the only individual who lacks the critical knowledge that the person who is not supposed to know (let us call him/her the birthdayer, for want of a better term) about the party is actually in possession of this priceless information, is the party organizer.   This happens because an obtuse invitee chooses to call on the landline phone and without any preamble asks `So, what time are we supposed to meet for the surprise party'?, not realizing that the person at the other end is the birthdayer.  Or, a dimwit among the invitees meets the birthdayer a couple of days earlier and blurts out something about looking forward to the fun party and moves on without even realizing that he has given the game away.  In my case, this one was a genuine surprise because I had no clue, despite the fact that closer to the date, as a practice, I consciously deploy additional, ultra-sensitive antennae to catch all signals in the ether around me because I am always suspicious of a conspiracy to bring me and my cake face to face.  My dear wife had quietly outsourced the entire process of organization to some friends, with her own singular contribution regarding all the goodies I am fond of.   On the appointed day, I was feeling a bit under the weather and was taking things very easy.  My wife, unusually I must say, wondered why I had not even shaved and that should have sharpened my instincts.  But lethargy induced by the feeling that one was unwell had clouded my antennae completely.  A couple of friends called and tried to pull me out of the house, so that they could create party ambience without my knowledge.  I inadvertently threw a spanner into their machinery by declining because I did not feel like stirring out, without realizing I was inconveniencing a big crowd of 50 people already assembled somewhere else.  And actually went to sleep!! The next thing I knew, this group of people carrying all kinds of eats and drinks, marching into the house an hour later, as I was trying to nap.  There was a shower of confetti by some 10 kids and I was shocked out of my wits, still not any wiser about what was going on.  I was forced to shave, shower and then, horror of horrors, cut a cake, with a knife pointed at my ribs!!  It almost looked like it was either the cake or me, and I wisely opted for the cake to be cut.

The other party was not a surprise in that I knew about the arrangement.  The friend who graciously hosted this one knew me well enough and was afraid that I might just decamp on the day, if I was not told upfront - wise man! But I did not expect such a congregation of friends of a few decades from various cities; but the niggling thought that there was a cake hidden somewhere and would make its menacing appearance soon, was smothering all the joy bubbling up at the sight of old friends.  The fact that I share my birth date with a very dear friend, who was also present,  was a  great consolation because I was not going to face the ordeal alone.  This friend is a shameless, avid cake-cutter (he looks for knives to cut cakes on display in bakeries and his wife has to physically restrain him!) and I knew he would take over without a pause, if I were to prove unequal to the demanding task.  When those tiny wedges were cut off the whole cakes, my friend was beaming from ear to ear, while I felt mortified for a second time in ten days at the sickening thought of my track record having been besmirched irredeemably.

It was so funny, seeing other grey-haired men breezily calling me`old man', just because they had a few more strands of black hair (actually it did not matter, some had no hair at all!) and were two weeks behind me in reaching the milestone of sixty.  Even that is dubious because some of them are very capable of a shenanigan a la the Army Chief - have two different birth dates, one for seniority in the office as well as special situations which demanded `elderly' bulldozing; and another for going around calling others `old men'.

While I was not the least bit uncomfortable about being sixty (I was more worried about the cake-cutting!), some cheer came my way in the next few days.  First, I went to the Indian Railway's website to reserve tickets for travel in May.  Even with three months to go, the chart, as usual, mocked at me screaming `berths not available'; but wait-listing was possible.  So, I went ahead and sought to wait-list myself.  When I hesitantly ticked the box to declare for the first time that I was a senior citizen and hit `go', I had a pleasant surprise.  It looks like there is a separate quota for senior citizens (this is not disclosed upfront for some reason), from which I got a lower berth allotted pronto, that too at a concessional rate!!  Considering that there is not much difference between say fifty eight and sixty,  I wished I was the latter two years earlier, to reap these fringe benefits!  How many times had I been rebuffed earlier by the same reservation system with that foul, stern message that `even wait listing was not possible'?  And then came the biggest surprise - when I half heartedly asked the cashier at my golf club whether there was a concessional rate for `senior citizens', he glumly disclosed `Yes sir; it is less than 30% of the normal rate'.  He knew it was a big cut that my game did not deserve, but could not do anything about it!  That was the icing on the cake, you will agree.  I only hope I don't have to cut any more cakes, ever!  Unless of course, they would let me into golf clubs and trains completely free, gratis!!

Short Story - Accidental Resolution!

The grey Innova, crawling along in the peak morning traffic, surged forward as if it was suddenly administered a booster shot when it was looking elsewhere and rear-ended two auto-rickshaws.  The latter bunch collided into a group of two-wheelers in front and took everyone into the path of the oncoming traffic, with a Volvo bus leading the parade.  The Volvo driver braked hard and swerved, to avoid pulping those in its way and rammed into one, two, three, four cars and managed to distribute the damage further.  A disturbed Bullet rode into the moving phalanx of bicycles, scooties and pedestrians on the opposite side of the road.  The two traffic policemen manning the junction were part of the debris somewhere and could not extricate themselves to be immediately of any assistance to anyone.  Miraculously, there was no fatality, the bullock-cart-like speed of the vehicles ensured that - a silver lining indeed!

Raghav was on his way from home to the service apartment where he had reluctantly parked his parents for the past two days, after  his wife of 2 years, Anusha, served the oft-repeated `The choice is yours - between me and them' ultimatum, but with a finality that sounded, well, very final.  His mother, had had ongoing run-ins with the daughter-in-law on various earth-shaking domestic issues ranging from the quantity of milk to be bought every day to the quality of the current domestic help who was brought in by Anusha as a replacement for the mother-in-law's candidate.  Of course,  the major bone of contention was the primary right of ownership of the domestic pet - that is, Raghav, himself.   The fireworks, which commenced almost immediately after the wedding as the gentle rustle of the sparklers and flower pots had, over the months, obtained the explosive traits of bombs with immensely higher decibel effect.  The women, all said and done, were both somewhat civilized and had so far refrained from going for leather at each other, with all limbs flailing.

While Anusha and her mother-in-law were the prime antagonists in the running battle, Raghav and his father fell foul of both sides because they repeatedly made the mistake of advocating to the ladies the desirability of somewhat rational behaviour and mutual accommodation.  As things stood, Raghav's father had recently been silenced effectively by volleys of verbal onslaughts from his wife of 30 years and consigned to a dark corner in the house to practice the two head movements on which his future depended - one, up and down and the other side to side.  Even with this limited repertoire in which to accomplish perfection over an extended period, Raghav's father got into trouble time and again, because he shook his head the wrong way in response to his wife's forceful demands for support on specific issues, accompanied by Kali-like glares.  That was primarily because a minor disability prevented him from hearing properly any sound below a certain decibel level; and unfortunately, most of his wife's push for support came in the form of hissing noises, driven by her passion for sibilants.  Chastened by recent punitive sanctions against him in the domestic arena, Raghav's father had decided on a brilliant, if somewhat suspect, strategy to minimize disasters with his wife.  He would, in future, closely observe the head movements of that formidable woman as she menacingly urged him to stand by her and replicate the same movements with his own head.  After all, he had searched through his memory bank for empirical evidence and concluded that there was no way she could be shaking her head up and down when she wanted him to say `no' and vice versa.  For a man who invariably resembled a bleating goat, which was cruelly cornered and helpless, that was nothing short of a stroke of genius and he only hoped that his wife would not change her declamatory pattern without appropriate prior notice to him! The irony of his wife's demand that her son be more loyal to herself rather than fall into the `clutches' of her daughter-in-law, even as she herself had been relentlessly bludgeoning her own husband into submission for so many years, was not lost on the old man; but then, very early in wedded life he had embraced the tenet of Tennyson's The Light Brigade and passionately acknowledged that it was `not his to make reply or to reason why'.  He chose to be a martyr-in-waiting!

Raghav, being a resonable man, did not want to take sides and got punished for 'being the veritable, indecisive mamma's boy' by one party and  'a disappointingly spineless son whom the new wife was twirling around her eye-lashes', by the other. He was reaching the end of the tether in terms of patience and tolerance when, two days back the family's own Hiroshima occurred.   He should have known when he sat down for dinner that there was an eerie calm, the kind that prevails when the warriors were busy choosing their weapons before the impending breakout of war.  Being a man of peace and prompted by a good day at work, he was in a jolly mood and was trying to make light of things.  Very juvenile of him, one should agreee; but he had no clue that he was way out of his depth as he tried some verbal jousting with his father first.  That passed without anyone in the audience party displaying the slightest enthusiasm.  You see, he was the only one who did not have the advantage of knowing what had preceded dinner. He had returned from office, had a quick wash and walked into trouble at the table.  There had been a major skirmish for over half an hour between the women, as Anusha opened multiple fronts and ended with the issue of  `excessive use of butter, ghee etc' by the mother-in-law, after which the antagonists had retreated to their quarters for some rest and recuperation and also to replenish their ammunition, should there be resumption of the war.  When they re-assembled at the table, Raghav mistook the calm for nothing worse than the usual, tense atmosphere and he proceeded to spar a bit with people.  Then he turned his attention to his plate and picked up the roti domiciled there.  All he said was `Aha, this one looks and feels like its major constituent is rubber; dont we have any butter or ghee to mix with the dough to make softer rotis'?  Innocuous, you would agree - only because it came from Raghav without the benefit of a life-saving flashback.  But he was aghast at the fusillade of words that erupted from the women simultaneously and engulfed him; all the more so, because only a minute back his attempts at humour passed without extracting as much as a grunt.  Anusha thought the mother-in-law had complained to Raghav about the earlier fight and went on a rampage with the usual accusations about him being under his mother's thumb etc.  When her protestations did not help, the mother-in-law went on an over-drive, raking up all the insults she had suffered during the past few months in such a perfect chronological order that others suspected she had a separate tab in her diary for Insults by Anusha.  Both the women left the table abruptly in a huff, but timing it well for simultaneous departures.  Shakespeare would have noted `Exeunt ladies'!  Being a perceptive observer and blessed with innate astuteness in matters affecting the stomach, Raghav's father stuffed a couple of rotis into his mouth in hurry and vanished.  Would you blame him?   He was very skeptical about the source and timing of the next meal, under the circumstances!  Raghav was left in blissful isolation, to ponder over the exact meaning of the dozen or so catastrophic words he had uttered, which had triggered this nuclear fallout.

Raghav could hear phone conversations from the other rooms, which was customary after every seismic event in the household.  His mother was talking to his sister, who was a marginally more sophisticated version of the termagant his mother was.  True to the strict grooming and development efforts at the hands of her mother, the sister was a very capable long-distance advisor the mother leaned on whenever she, the mother, wanted to hear she was in the right, even when what she had done was totally bizarre!  And, Anusha was getting some expert guidance from her own mother, who as a rule did her best to keep things on the boil for as long as possible, for want of any other pastime.  Raghav was hungry anyway, so he proceeded to finish his dinner; tactically the wrong thing to do when the wife was sulking without touching food, but then his mental state was not conducive to rationalization of the situation.  He then embarked on a search for the essential `truth', in order to determine the next step.  The next hour of cajoling, begging, arguing and gently persuading yielded nothing from either his wife or mother.  Both were well entrenched in their positions that they did not and could not do any wrong whatsoever.  And that was when Anusha categorically told him that he needed to choose between herself and his parents.

He was initially disconcerted but eventually reconciled to the idea of transferring his parents to a small service the next morning, hoping to head off any further unseemly confrontation with Anusha.  During the next two days, he had been going to the service apartment in the morning and evening on his way to and from work, to meet his parents and mull over the long term arrangement.  In this period, there was very minimal meaningful communication amongst the dramatis personae in this story.  Everyone was getting fidgety and irritable - Anusha because she realised that running a home added significant demands on her time and a lot more pressure, but was too proud to admit that she missed the support system provided by her parents-in-law.  She was even more perturbed in the context of her own feeling that she was pregnant  and with the new arrival soon, she would require all the help she could get.  Her mother-in-law was at a loss in the alien environment and had already started worrying about the consequences, financial and otherwise, of setting up a separate home.  Raghav's father found himself in the odd situation where he did not have to agree with his wife all the time, because his wife was too despondent to even talk.  For once, silence reigned in her vicinity.  Raghav had a nightmare of a time, shuttling among the office and two homes and was keen to end this all chaos soonest.  He was on his Bullet, riding while wallowing in an ocean of self-pity, when the accident occurred.

Raghav felt a surge of pain on his ankle as he raised himself from among the clutter of cycles and two wheelers he was forced to plunge into.  He wailed and collapsed in a heap.  It was another half an hour before humans were separated from vehicles and other debris and some medical help became available.  When Raghav opened his eyes again, he saw a pretty, young woman examining his ankle, while someone else was cleaning his bruises and wounds with dettol.  He was groggy due to pain and was in some la-la-land with eyes half-closed; he could not see the woman properly nor could he hear her exclaiming `Oh, is that you Raghav? Do you recognize me'?  No, he could not; actually he would not have recognized himself in a mirror, in that fuzzy state of excruciating pain.  He relapsed into his la-la-land.   When he came to, he was on a hospital bed, with his ankle heavily strapped and in a sling, just like his life was at that point of time, he thought bitterly.   That was when that pretty doctor came in and he immediately recognized her as his high school class-mate, Swathi.  They used to be part of the same group of boys and girls who hung out together for more than 4 years at various homes, malls, games etc  He had not seen her in 10 years and had no idea she was also in Bangalore.  After some chit-chat, she asked `Who is Anusha?  And where is your mother?  You were deliriously urging them through the night to stop fighting'.  Raghav did not require too much stimulus to share his woes with Swathi.   At the end, she said `you cannot use band-aid on such a fractured relationship as the one between your wife and mother; it is a case for surgery and has to mend slowly; I had the same problem in my life and had to deal with it firmly last year. Anyway, what do you want to do'?  Raghav's response was simple.  `I just want to buy peace at home'.  They talked about options and arrived at a conclusion, after which Raghav asked for a phone to call Anusha and his parents to inform them of the accident and his whereabouts.

Raghav was discharged the next day; he told Anusha curtly, as if he was not ready to brook any argument, he would spend the next week at the service apartment with his parents. He would require help to walk around and do his chores and she would not be able stay away from her work.  Anusha was crestfallen but had no better suggestion to offer.  Her pride militated against the idea of visiting the service apartment and meeting her mother-in-law; for the next week, she could not see her husband.  Raghav petulantly made exaggerated shows of unhappiness about the state of affairs and ensured that both his mother and wife understood he was emotionally down in the dumps, thanks to their childish behaviour.  He also reiterated time and again that the accident was entirely due to the pressure the two ladies put on him.  By the end of the week, both Anusha and her mother-in-law were very remorseful, were malleable and ductile, ready to be hammered into final shape.  They were in constant touch with their consultants to identify a dignified way out of the `guilt corner' they were both painted into.  Dr.Swathi accentuated the feeling of  guilt in the women by firmly indicating after an examination that Raghav may have to undergo surgery, even after which he may have a permanent limp - all concocted to help reach the desired climax.  Raghav piled the misery on to his shattered mother and wife, by directly holding them responsible for the sadly limping life he was going to lead for ever.  These bombardments had the desired effect.  The erstwhile antagonists sat down, talked rapprochement, decided to sink all differences and live happily under one roof.   They went together with this resolution to Raghav, who promptly shot it down, to their utter bewilderment.  He grandly announced that he would not commit hara-kiri by restoring status-quo-ante and revisit Kurukshetra.  He was bent upon finding a smaller apartment nearby to house his parents and they all could visit each other, whenever they wanted.  Of course, there would be stressful additional financial burden on the family, but he said he was ready to pay any exorbitant price for buying long term peace at home.


Last heard, Raghav was fighting a two-pronged battle with his mother and wife, against the idea of reunion.   Ironically, the ladies were pushing their case with new-found fervour, standing on a common platform.  Raghav's father was unable to cope up with the demands for support from not only the two ladies, but also his son.  He was reported to have developed a permanent crick in the neck and had ceased all movements of the head and neck.  But would you believe it, he seemed ecstatic about this disability!!

This circus called TV News!!

Times were when TV news bulletins in India were pretty uncomplicated; read by grim-looking men or women, as if they were always on the alert to effortlessly announce a national mourning for 7 days due to the demise of someone.  They seemed to have been chosen especially for (a) their inability to shock the viewers of the day in any way, by deviating from the mandated path (b) their determination not to betray any emotion during the half hour bulletins, regardless of the content of the news and as if invisible guns were being held to their heads to ensure that (c) their ability, at the end of the bulletins, to consistently and painfully pretend to ease their faces into a fleeting grimace or a twitch, indicative of a desire to smile reluctantly!!  Whatever they used to do over the radio without inflicting their physical appearance on the listeners, they continued to do on TV, except that highly unappetising visuals were added.  The most exciting news was delivered in an unwavering monotone, with a tombstone-like expression.  Grainy, low-resolution photographs which stubbornly yielded no clues as to what they were about until you read the captions below, (thereby enhancing the mystic value of the experience), were on offer to provide clinching evidence to the viewers, lest the absence of emotion in the news-readers prompted disbelief!  Why am I into this yarn about the virtues of TV news of 80s and 90s now??  Well, the circus that goes on in the name of TV news nowadays, on private channels, accompanied by noises from the veritable Tower of Babel, is making me wonder -no, I am more or less convinced - if some very farsighted sage in Doordarshan in the early days designed the news that way to save the viewers the present day agony!!
 
Today, when one switches on the TV during evening prime time and favours private news channels, one cannot but flinch in the face of the frontal assault and quiver in one's sandals.  Every news channel produces a barrage of words and the news-reader or the anchor is not the only person using high-decibel lung power.  The TV screen is invariably divided into a few boxes, ranging from three to eight (I am actually waiting for the day when the boxes further multiply to accommodate only thumbnail sketches of some 24 people) and filled with faces.  Faces of an assortment of politicians from different parties, legal luminaries who are not hard-core politicians, but might as well have been, actors who are a bit more intelligent than acting out dumb roles according to the director's bidding, loud-mouths who have arrogated to themselves the right to comment on any event and other chosen `experts' in `general vacuousness'.    If you are not familiar with your anchor's mug shot, you might wonder whether he/she has been nudged out of the screen sideways, by the invaders!  Actually, no need to worry; the anchor is the king and he/she keeps one box on the screen permanently tenanted and lets go only when it is time for him/her to occupy the whole screen between news items!

Do you blame me for being nostalgic about the TV news of the days of yore?  I believe that barring a small percentage of the population which has masochistic tendencies and wants to go through the panelists' collective babel on every news item, most people would be happier if news is given to them without any attempt at interpretation or analysis by experts.  Most of us are capable of interpreting or understanding what a statement or an event means and yes, a couple of sentences from the anchor to put things in perspective are most welcome.   But the chaos that inevitably erupts on the screen when the panelists are identified and the first question is asked, reinforces my theory that the old-style DD news was qualitatively streets ahead. 

Let me explain:
Many of the so-called panelists invited by the anchor have absolutely no sympathy for the viewers and are intent on grabbing attention by offending sensibilities.  They remind me of Mayflies or Onedayflies, which have a very short life span of a day or so - 'here is an opportunity and I will say what I want, whether it makes sense or not and others be damned'!!  Some completely lack basic debating decorum and very seldom one hears a single voice speaking, at a time.  Rude interruptions are the order of the day and the anchor does not seem in control, except when he is ready to shut down the programme. 

Politicians appearing on the panel indulge freely in `newspeak'.  A lot of words are uttered, cliches used and verbal jousting takes place, but do they say anything meaningful or significant?  The good speakers have mastered the skill of saying a lot without meaning anything while the others dont merit attention anyway.  Moreover, in these days when even the senior-most politicians lack clarity as to what the stand of the party is on any issue at a given time, what can be expected of these minions who walk into boxes on TV screens for a couple of minutes?  Even when such politicians are cornered on screen with some evidence of duplicity or something otherwise wrong, they mumble some inane justification without betraying shame.

How many times during one evening can you see the same set of people, holding forth on the same or similar news items, in different channels??  Unabashedly one or the other appeals to the anchor, when interrupted by an encroaching co-panelist, `Arnab, Arnab, Arnab (they have to repeat this because even the anchor does not recognize them otherwise!), either let me speak or I might as well leave now because I have to go to another channel'.  I do wonder if the news channels pay the panelists for appearance.

If you watch BBC or CNN News, you usually see an anchor and another roving correspondent on the screen discussing an event or news item.  If experts are required, to the extent I have seen, one or at the most, two people are asked to provide their inputs, which they do civilly.  There is no attempt on the TV screen to engineer a street-fight kind of scenario involving the panelists.  However, this is indeed the norm in Indian news channels.

`All panel discussions are bad' is not my case.  All I am saying is that there is no need to interpret and analyse every single news item with a panel of about 8 people.  If the event or the news is significant enough, move such a panel discussion away from the news programme and provide a separate platform for that discussion.

I am glad Doordarshan is true to form and is chugging along with pretty much the old format most of the time.  If only they are a bit more lively!  But, who said one can have everything one wants all the time??