New York, New York -Part I !

The crying need of the hour, as far as long distance travellers are concerned, should be the immediate introduction of seriously ultra-supersonic Concorde-like flights between continents.  Especially those which will cut down travel from India to USA to some 3-4 hours! The very thought is so exhilarating, even though the cost attached to that might be mind-blowingly prohibitive initially.  Like many urban Indian families, we have also despatched two young warriors to the financial minefield that is New York.  The youngsters continue to love the professional challenges there despite all the Trumped-up hurdles erected periodically in the context of visas and green cards.  This means, like many parents in the same situation, my dear wife and I are likely to make our annual pilgrimage for some more years and could gladly do with a massive reduction in the flying hours between India and USA.  The consequential damage caused by the current long flights, to the creaking bodies is two-fold.  One, the actual pain felt by the bones and muscles during the flight and in the immediate aftermath for a few days.  Two, that exotic trauma called jet-lag, which seems to impinge on existence with progressively worsening results as one ages.  Hence the fervent prayer for something akin to the Star-Trek type transporter to be made available pronto!! When someone suggests that we should take the non-stop from Bombay or Delhi, my body involuntarily shudders in response, thinking of 18 continuous hours in a plane.  More so, when it occurs to me that minimum 3 or 4 inedible meals will be served when even two are superfluous.

The immigration clearance has gotten faster and faster over the years and we now get out in thirty minutes flat.  That is providing for some chit-chat with the friendly officer who asks in his native twang, if we are carrying some `molaga podi, paruppu podi, murukku, mysurpak etc' (I swear, this is true).  These chaps have assimilated a lot of knowledge about India and Indians to the extent they can tell that anyone with the long surname is probably from the south; definitely so, if the names ends with `n'.   The prompt for that query about food items inevitably comes from the customs clearance form wherein the risk-averse part of me, especially so in a foreign land, has diligently declared `yes' for `food', valiantly overcoming hissing and nudging  protestations from the wife.  She prefers to ignore for this purpose,  routine stuff such as sambar powder, rasam powder and the rest of the start-up kit that contains tamarind, jeera, some dals etc or forgets that she has sneaked in some `real' food at the last minute, prior to locking the suitcases.  Who wants to get caught by the X-ray with some halwa or pakoda in the suitcase, to be shepherded as a criminal to a segregated area for a full search of the bags??  However nice and pleasant they try to be and are, they are still policemen, right?

Once we get through, the bags take their own sweet time arriving and if you were on an Airbus 380, you should resign to the idea of an hour or more before you retrieve your bags.  Entertainment is provided by a couple of police dogs, which sniff around, making unsuspecting people jump.  The dogs always seem to end up being disgusted with the smell of so many bodies that they seldom do anything noteworthy.  The 6 USD charge for a trolley grates more on your nerve than the machine grates on the credit card when inserted.  New York should emulate Switzerland in this respect, the latter widely advertising the availability of `free' carts (as many as you want) near the carousels. But, if visitors from Asia raise their voice against this atrocity,  Trump might hike the charge to USD100 just to ward off more Indians and partially compensate for trade deficit with China!!

The first thing that changes forthwith on landing is the mobile phone.  Out goes Airtel and in comes T-Mobile.  With that we seem to seamlessly shift to Uber from our chauffeur driven car in India.  Invariably the driver is a South Asian and this and his polite small talk tend to lull us into the false belief that we are in `home' environment,Trump or no Trump.  But then, after so many visits, the city does feel pretty much home for a few months and as we pass through one of the tunnels into the streets of Manhattan, we almost smell the place. Once we check into the by-now-familiar service apartment close to Grand Central, we are almost home.

The first week goes in fighting the acquired fatigue that is the awful by-product of jet-lag, while the pleasure of being with the sons for a few hours daily adequately dulls the pains and aches.  The primary objective during this period is to ensure one is at least half-awake during the boys' evening visits.  But strangely, this jet-lag malady seems to be terribly partial in afflicting me and has absolutely no effect of my dear wife, who behaves as if she got tele-ported in a jiffy.  It is as if God up there had assigned all such discomforts in the family to me while sparing her.  Some people are plain lucky, I say but she insists it is all karma!!

Half-awake or not, we have to accomplish some priority objectives shortly on arrival, in preparation for our two-month stay.  First is the trip to the Indian store, some 14 blocks away to fetch the basic grocery needed and this chore falls to yours truly, as the wife gets cracking on the kitchen in the apartment, asking for cooking vessels, cutlery, crockery etc that the service apartment normally sets aside for 10 apartments collectively.  By now they know her, so there is not even a whimper when the list is read out and the Housekeeping supervisor sweetly says to her that she had just put everything into a cardboard box and will haul it to the apartment.  And in her honour, they give her brand new utensils etc too.

The Sardarji at the Indian store does not seem to age at all -- must be the Indian spices he inhales through the day, especially turmeric.  He looks at me like a surprised frog, half under water, probably because I had gone missing for 8 months or so.  He obviously has difficulty remembering that we do not live in New York, despite that repeated explanation having been advanced every year and opens his mouth repeatedly like a fish gasping for breath while no sound emerges at all.  I presume it is a greeting only by the mustache and beard twitching simultaneously and the comforting absence of choice expletives.  He has his reasons for harbouring mixed feelings towards us; good business for two months but in the penultimate week, the wife starts returning a whole load of unopened packets bought earlier in excess, for exchange.  This causes immense agony to his soul and scalds his feelings.  He sputters even more than on the first day in anxiety and nervousness, but is yet to decline the barter; I have a foreboding that it is on the horizon somewhere. We tend to visit the store once in 2-3 days, to get fresh supplies and have not heard the stodgy Sardarji speak anything more than the total payable amount, apart from the routine `Sat Sri Akal, kya haal hai'?  A very cosy relationship!!

Our most favourite outdoor activity is to amble along the streets in different directions every day.  Normally if my wife points to Battery Park, I tend to gesture towards Central Park, and if her choice is to trundle along the East river, I prefer to go the Hudson-way. Of course, we finally reconcile amicably and democratically, without any external agent's interference and go to Battery Park or East river side, as she decides! We just flow with the crowd, but flowing is impossible if you are in the heavy duty tourist areas like Times Square, Empire State etc.  We do not really care as to where we are headed because each such trip is truly exploratory in essence.  One is just struck by the liveliness of the place, the abundant energy and diversity on display in every aspect of life.  Eminently fascinating pastime with very little effort, except the walk and we are certain to forget most other mundane things in life for the duration of the walk.  All kinds of people one cannot even guess the nationality of seem to converge and jostle along; it is a virtual tower of babel in terms of the languages spoken.  Such a melting pot that even when some immigrants speak English it takes a few iterations before you understand it is a familiar language that you should be able to comprehend!!  Invariably this sojourn ends with a visit to a supermarket, after my dear wife triumphantly sounds the bugle at some point, `Done 15000 steps for the day, enough'!

Her Fitbit must be creaking with all the walks it has monitored so far!  Even without that monitoring responsibility, I am, honestly.

(To be continued in Part II)










 

Ten Years Of Gully Cricket

About 10 years ago, my dear wife and I decided to shift to Bangalore from Bombay.  Our rationale was straightforward. Good climate during most of the year.  And equidistant from Madras (where my folks are congregated) and Mangalore (where she hails from).  But she had one distinct advantage in that many of her folks lived in Bangalore and I had none.  And between us, we had zero friends when we arrived bag and baggage.  Not one family.  All our other friends, strewn over India, tried to frighten us a bit by saying it would be so difficult to form friendships at our age, post 50! But then, we were veterans of so many moves in our lives, into various cities in different countries, where we found good friends  without fail.  So Bangalore should not pose a great problem; that was our repartee.  What made everything a breeze eventually was nothing but the game of Cricket.  Vista, the community into which we moved, had a fairly large cricket team, indulging in gully cricket every Sunday.  The moment I strolled across to the `ground', which is actually a T-junction within the community, surrounded by villas, a very warm welcome awaited me from some 15 co-residents who had assembled there. That was, until I said I wanted to play.  I would be prevaricating, if I did not mention the fact that my grey hair and build received a rather lukewarm reception and the doubts changed to outright disbelief when I mentioned that I have been a wicket-keeper all my life.  They took time to reluctantly hand over the gloves to me and many were very solicitous to ensure that I did not get hurt during my foolish escapade!  The rest, to use a cliche, is history.  My dear wife and I have some 50 families in our community, which we can call `close' and many of these relationships we owe to my initiation into gully cricket in Vista.

The name of the cricket club is Vista Breakfast and Cricket Club (VBCC) and the priority should be clear from that.  Mercifully, however, we do have a quick snack of assorted pastries, puffs and drinks AFTER the game, not before.  Having said that, we do organize a full fledged breakfast for members and their families a few times in a year and based on hard evidence, one can assert that on those breakfast days, the game gets terribly over-crowded!  The venue is a cul-de-sac with houses on all sides.  The only reason most of the residents of those houses do not complain is that they are all founders of the team and play regularly.  A couple of renters, who moved in later and resented the early morning noise and balls smashing into glass windows etc were coerced to join as players or cajoled into letting things be.  The game has never stopped!

First time one plays, one finds it tough to reconcile the physical age of the participants (the eldest being yours truly at 67 and younger ones are in thirties and forties, except for the occasional presence of some genuine youngsters) and the general behaviour on the field.  At the positive end, what contributes to this is primarily the zest, spirit, competitiveness and intensity involved in the game.  On the other side, pretty frequently people indulge in deportment that immature school children may find embarrassing.  Actually, when a couple of youngsters, about 16, stopped coming to play for a few weeks, I asked them why and the answer was very truthful and hilarious simultaneously. `Uncle, you guys sledge, talk and fight more than you play; we don't like that'.  Touche!!  Pretty much the truth, that.  But then, the players are not likely to change anything because the intended agenda includes just not cricket and breakfast, but also some serious sledging and genuine school-day fun.  If there is some meddling with the various components of the game, a lot of the lustre will be lost and things might degenerate to being mundane.

The process begins with a group WhatsApp message on Saturday from the ever-ebullient organizer, asking for commitment to play on Sunday.  If less than 10 commit, the game is off. Six fielders, aside from bowler and wicket keeper, are good enough because we have a plethora of trees, parked cars and frequent intruders in transit who get hit once in a while, who can all add to fielding muscle.  We need 5 per side minimum, even assuming everyone fields for both innings and the umpire is conveniently done away with, so that the room for fights and acrimony during the game increases multi-fold.    Even otherwise, the poor umpire who is from the batting side, is usually the last person to give any decision, after polling all those who have a say and generally the majority rules, seldom what is probably right.  Out of some respect for the oldest player who is keeping wickets, sometimes the decision is left to him only because no one else has seen even that little necessary to start a fracas.  And the most sensible course of action for him obviously is to say `I am not sure', so that others continue to indulge in verbal assaults after a short pause, while he gets to retain that modicum of respect that surfaces occasionally on the field.  There have been occasional successful attempts to cause grievous bodily injury to the wicket keeper, unmindful of his age. These were accomplished by batsmen over-zealously trying to cut a ball (which was too close and absolutely uncuttable), well after it had passed the wickets and then some distance, intruding into the territory usually occupied by the face of the wicket keeper. One more reason the old guy judicially maintains neutrality when a referred appeal involves some normally friendly chap who may decide suddenly to taste blood for no overtly explicable reason!

Team selection is managed mostly by one individual, well yes, ONE. One, who wants to captain at least one side, if not both, even though he pretends to be satisfied with being just a member of one team. And he selects the team in way that enhances his chances of leading both; pliable chaps are  selected as captains to ensure this happens. All done in good fun, without any ulterior motive. Then this individual manipulates the bowling changes, batting order, field placements, who umpires etc for both sides, but is careful to ask his own captain where he himself should field, or when he should bat or bowl.  Just to be seen as a good soldier.

There are a few, very passionate Commissioners involved (you see, we may be chaotic but in a very structured set-up), who drive the rules etc, if necessary, on the fly.  What they decide better be accepted even if the majority is utterly unconvinced, because otherwise you have on hand, a couple of sulking and disinterested individuals, who were excited and very involved till the rule discussion disrupted the game.  Even if  these blokes are away for a month, we text them and ask for approval to amend the rule or just do the change for the duration of their absence and noiselessly slide back to status-quo-ante when they resume.

Sniping or sledging happens all the time and same-side sledging is a defining characteristic of VBCC. Actually between two balls, the umpire and the other players wait for someone to start and finish the sledge before resuming.  As a matter of fact, the umpire starts the sledging quite often. If the game takes about 2 hours for 12 overs a side, 1.5 hours are for the actual play, the rest dedicated to traffic interruptions and sledging/fighting.  This is pretty much the standard schedule and nobody worries about time being wasted, unless he is being sledged too much or he has no repartee to spare.

Serious fights break out, all verbal, seldom physical (being an optimist, I am not saying`never') but thankfully they never leave scars on the those indulging in verbal pyrotechnics, who are all neighbours, occupying the next or opposite house inside the community. But on the field, it looks like all hell has broken out and until the intensity of the fight subsides some members who are left as dumb spectators, just loll around on the lawns, watching the unseemly skirmish unravelling fast. After the game, all is forgotten and everyone joins in the aforesaid snack and tea regimen.  All is well.  I have a feeling that our gully cricket has survived and flourished over the past decade, primarily because of the implicit understanding that after the game or at least after a few days, all should be well.

No lbw, so one can stop straight balls impudently with legs; searing words might be directed at you and even faster balls at your legs.  The physical scars heal and there is no mental trauma in the first place!  No leg umpire, so it is a free for all when it is a stumping or run out at the striker's end.  Whoever is more voluble wins and either the bunch of fielders close to the wicket or the batting team are left miffed for a few more overs.  The straight umpire, as mentioned earlier, is the last person to be involved in most dismissals, with everyone else having a firm opinion and the umpire not even allowed to get in edgeways. There are rules regarding half-out (when a shot hits a prescribed wall directly and most of the time the word `directly' creates massive confusion due to interpretation), on deflection of a shot when some tree branch or something else gets in the way (not even the Commissioners are clear about this one, we get as ad-hoc as possible in this with imaginary measurements of the angle of deflection being brought in frequently) and runs to be granted if the ball gets into a bush or under a car (bush, car and all other terms are subject to liberal and outlandish interpretations).  These are the rules which cause a lot of dissension, rampant verbal assaults, eminent heartburn, but none of us wants the rules to be taken out because the character of our Sunday cricket will be irretrievably lost with that!!

Post game chai and snacks are of utmost importance.  This is the time when wounds are licked and healed; apologies, if any, are tendered half-heartedly and accepted enthusiastically (driving home the point once more vociferously) and technicalities not accepted on the field are conceded and positions reconciled.  Hence the collective pride in the name and penchant for the breakfast part.

Disclaimer: No offence to any one, please.  But if many are offended, I might write a sequel, with detailed delineation of characters in VBCC.  And, please leave that poor, old wicket keeper alone!

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Agony Of Applying For Visas

When was the last time you applied for a tourist visa for Schengen area?  Asking because you should never mistakenly assume you are a master of the process and everything will be a breeze. The simple fact is that each country issuing the Schengen visa deliberately designs its procedure to be slightly different.  Just to pep up the rather dull activity, apparently and inserts its own quirky requirements. And to boot, the process itself is constantly evolving across the board.  I believe they do that just to drive home the point that anything in life without ongoing evolution lacks fizz.  They may be right. Recall the tumultuous feelings and trepidation you have, as you wait for the fateful interview, which are ample evidence of the fact that they succeed in keeping the applicant on the tenterhooks. One knows that there will be a discomforting twist here and a embarrassing turn there and generally one can expect a suspenseful operation till you finally say `phew' and get out.

Most of the countries have visa applications on their websites with elaborate instructions for completion of the forms and the unsuspecting applicant would heave a sigh of relief thinking that it is a good beginning.  Generally, yes; but then, the list of documents they require or things to be done, shown online, would never be complete, as they carefully hide something till the last minute.  As a policy, at least a couple of things would be left out and one of them would require your going home or elsewhere to fetch something you have not carried with you. Or, at the minimum, two extra forms will be thrust into your face for you to sign them in their presence, one of them asking for some information you do not readily recall.  No use your bristling and asking them why these are not part of the requirements in the website.

Photos, as you know, are a perpetual irritant.  One question you can always anticipate is `when was this taken'?  Even if your response is `just before coming in here, in the studio down the road', they look at you with loads of pessimism and sarcastically say `but this does not look like you'.  And my dear wife always says my gnarled, crinkled face with the crooked nose and unsmiling mouth have not changed in decades, meaning the face has not become any more attractive even by some miracle. No room for discussion here with the interviewer and one has to go and get a new photograph done.  Which, when obtained and delivered, looks exactly the same as the one submitted earlier, but is readily accepted.  And all this while, my dear wife is smirking away because she submitted one of her photos from some 5 years back (because that shows her younger, obviously) and is waved through enthusiastically.  To make things more painful, the interviewer is suggestively looking at me as if to say `see, the lady knows how exactly that is to be done; why don't you learn from her'?  She is not the one to miss a fantastic opening like that and eventually rubs it in saying `I hope you realise it is not the photo but the visage'.  I have to sullenly agree!

In one of the visa offices, I was asked to get new photos and I asked the chap specifically whether it can be with my specs on.  He categorically said yes.  When I went back with a new photo, two days later due an intervening week-end, he was a pathetic victim of a severe bout of amnesia and flatly refused to accept the photo with specs.  My protestations did not take me anywhere.  Like this, the photo offers a whole host of opportunities for the visa agency to make you run around -- width, length, teeth showing, eyes off-centre, colour of the background etc.  I am sure readers will add a few more pitfalls in this context.

What puzzles one is even if you apply as a family of four, always travelling together on the same ticket and staying together in the same hotels, some visa agencies insist that you provide them with four sets of supporting documents -- air ticket, hotel confirmations, internal travel documents etc.  Isn't it easier to confirm everything for all the four from one set of documents??  Obviously, a big NO.  When I pointed out that the previous year I submitted only one set for the two of us in the German consulate, this chap got very offended and with an air of superiority said dismissively `but this is not German consulate'! Case closed.

Coming to the serious stage of the interview process wherein the applicant is asked some questions, for the sake of asking.  I am of this firm opinion only because all the information is invariably already on the application form and unless the stringent scrutiny is to check the state of the vocal chords of the applicant and pronunciation skills, no new information will be gleaned.  I was asked if I had provided fingerprints on any previous occasion and this priceless data was already available on the application.  I confirmed it and the next question floored me, `You know the exact date on which you did that'?  Come on, guys, we are growing so rapidly old that we may not remember our birthdays and eventually our names sooner or later.  Don't they have the stuff stored in their database??  We were in another visa agency a few years back, when a couple were being asked questions.  One was `why are you visiting the country'?  The applicant had an outstanding sense of humour and he, without a pause, said `To have oodles of sex'.  The lady who asked the question did not know where to look and recovered well to ask `And you are taking your wife along'?.  He said wihtout batting an eyelid 'Yes, she is going for the same too'.  I am sure their visas were approved pronto, so that further questions can be avoided.

There are various other finicky requirements like only cash, no credit card; exact amount to be tendered, no change available; black ink only for signature; if you are late by 2 minutes for the interview, go back to the end of the line and reschedule.

I immensely like countries like Vietnam which make no fuss in issuing visas when you land and hand over your passport and cash. Some preliminary online request has to be made for other countries and the process is painless at that end.  Countries like Mexico are smart enough to make USA do all the work for them and they approve visa for visitors on landing, as long as they have a valid US visa.

When in the finale, the time came to sign some declaration at the visa agency, the smile on my dear wife's face got wiped out in a jiffy.  Nowadays she is so petrified of having to sign something.  You see, her signature has changed over time and she is unable to sign the same way in two different places, even within the same minute.  Especially if the signature is going to be compared with something old and she is doing this in the presence of people.  I watched expectantly, along with the interviewer, as she went through the long preparatory ritual and finally managed to scribble something which barely passed muster. If I was the signer, you know what would have happened!!

Poster Menace

Four, five decades earlier `posters' meant primarily advertisements for films.  One of the famous heroes and his less famous leading lady (had to be that way, right) appeared on the poster, with minor details like the director's name and the date of the release of the movie.  The hero invariably had his arms spread out, as if to emphasize his mega-reach, striking a pose one would usually see in a song from the movie.  The objective of the poster was clear - an appeal to the viewing public to go see the movie.  In the pre-TV, enervating media blitz times, that kind of a poster made sense as a medium.  Or the poster would have a leading politician's face, either with an appeal to attend a forthcoming meeting, in which he would go into bombastic rhetoric, incessantly frothing at his mouth or showering shameless accolades on himself for some imaginary or assumed good deed in the interest of the masses.  Sure, these faces were not as palatable as the actors' but were still within the tolerance level of the populace. And, very importantly, the posters were all much smaller in size and non-threatening, not repulsive.

Down the line, as people started losing their sense of proportion, realism and normal values and general degradation in public life set in, the poster industry's growth sky-rocketed, because demand for the theatrical bordering on farcical increased in leaps and bounds.  With reality receding to the background with a massive push-back from 'appearance' and people readily and avidly embracing sheer form for form's sake, generally devoid of content, the size of the posters symbolically expanded to mammoth proportions.  The make-believe world of movies and politics attracted one more major homogeneous player, who would fit into the group like a glove fitting a hand, to make a triumvirate in the game of posters -- Advertisements.  All in fitness of things in that there is nothing significantly real about any of the three, all are given to mindless exaggeration and hyperbole and their shared objective was to constantly pull wool over the eyes of the common man.  Of course, they are succeeding in that till today and have concurrently also increased the size of the cutouts, while also spawning a widespread culture of posters at a much lower, grass-root level.  Now, one does not have to be a leader or great actor or anything worth the salt to be appearing on posters, as is evident from what you see.  Essentially because most posters are set up by one's own family or self, with black money supporting the production and erection of the unseemly projections.  Nothing but a blatantly self-serving attempt to thrust oneself into public consciousness, for no achievement or good deed, but just through large size images of oneself, in a clear attempt to encroach that space.

Recently, in our neighbourhood,  The Ugly Indians, that group which tries to clean up various blackspots around Bangalore,  organized an effort.  As part of that, some huge cutouts of the current MLA of the area were brought down from their offending positions.  One should have seen the alacrity with which some paid supplicants, the guardian angels of the politician's interests in the area, pounced on the group and vehemently protested the action in dethroning him, poster-wise.  When the current rule that no cutout can remain in place for more than a stipulated period was politely conveyed to them, guess what happened?  Within minutes, the earlier poster was replaced by another of similar proportions, which magically materialised from nowhere, depicting the revered leader greeting the constituency with folded hands for an upcoming religious festival!  Within five minutes the new poster was up and there was precious little anyone could do.  Surely this group of sycophants would have preened like peacocks and collected their rewards for their fantastic response.  While they were basking in the sun, having a tipple with pickle on the side, with their political bosses, there I was, getting my ears singed by the carping criticism of my dear wife, who justifiably just hates the fact that some ugly posters carrying sinister-looking faces, are sullying the space her group has been striving to keep clean and neat!

Such groups of hired goons, sycophants are omnipresent and have clear instructions from someone with some knowledge of the goings-on.  The other day, the fifth bail application of the son of another MLA was being taken up by a court.  This worthy son had almost killed a youngster in a restaurant, mercilessly beating him up and abandoning him for dead, of course, ably supported by a group of his own henchmen in the orgy of violence.  There was so much negative publicity and sentiment about the incident, all the efforts of the powerful father to extricate his son from jail, on bail, failed miserably for almost 4 months.  If the son thought he would beat the hell out of a fellow human being, dust his hands off and walk free using `influence', for a change it did not work out that way and he suffered the well deserved ignominy of incarceration for 4 months.  But, on the day of the bail hearing, within minutes of bail being granted, giant cutouts appeared, of the son (not the father), euologising him for his heroic acts (read, terrorising and physical violence on another person) and wonderful leadership (??).  To what depths can people blindly using and following money and power sink was evidenced by those posters!!

When one walks through a bazaar/road, one can see some store-fronts being covered by posters of multiple products, overlapping with each other, there being no indication of where one begins and another ends.  You are left wondering what is being advertised.  It is almost as if the number of posters clustered in the same location is the end-game, not the beginning of the attempt to sell.  Most of these posters serve to hide the unkempt, disorganized interiors of the stores which seem to subsist not from sales but from other dubious activities sponsored by political parties and leaders.

The one big change in the poster culture we have to day is that even for common men posters appear now and then.  You see a poster of a middle aged man and on enquiry you will find out that the man in question, aged 45 and father of four children, eloped with another woman who had 3 children of her own.  Retribution followed swiftly and the eloping man was killed by the woman's husband.  The poster was there as an exhibit to share the grief of the community at the fall of such a man.  Other similar cases involved a reckless auto-rickshaw driver who rode roughshod over everything and was living dangerously;  and a drunkard who had permanent residence in the local arrack shop and took breathers only to go home and beat up his wife and children as a pastime. Both appeared on posters posthumously, with the title `Tearful Homage'.

Why not?  There is no longer any qualification to be on a poster, right??  A poster is a mighty leveller.  If it is illegal to fix posters, cutouts etc why should that illegality be the domain of only the powerful and monied.  I am all for everyone sharing the space.  Just that one day I hope the governing authorities and judiciary would wake up and ban posters, period.  No posters for any reason!!

Maids For Seniors

"Have you found the girl"?, was the first query raised by the somewhat feeble voice on the phone.  It was my mother (Amma), aged 85, calling from Madras.  No, she is not in the matrimony business nor is the family looking for an eligible girl for a match.  She was asking about the maid we were supposed to identify and get home in time for her own arrival in Bangalore in a week for her three-month stay.  The anxiety-laden voice betrayed significant tension, understandably, because Amma needs some help with her mobility inside the house and also in managing her daily chores.  Her anxiety automatically transmitted the tension to all of us this side and an already concerned household dispersed in different directions with the single objective of recruiting that most important individual of the moment - the Maid.

Easier said than done, even though there is a plethora of agencies helping people source such maids.  This is because most of these agencies seem to have an existence span slightly longer the ephemeral firefly.  A good agency of yesterday mysteriously develops a level of enviable notoriety in a short span and disappears from the face of the earth quickly.  No one associated with that agency is contactable the next time you try, as if some pestilence pointedly wiped everyone.  The more reasonable guess is that the agency got into some kind of trouble with the maid, her family or with the customer and had to go into hiding post-haste.  These are all single family businesses; the wife manages the Human Relations and Public Relations side - like sourcing, recruitment, compensation, tariff setting, talking to customers and all follow up.  The man of the house has the unenviable job of managing logistics -- primarily picking up newly recruited arrivals, lodging them, dropping them when they are assigned to homes and then picking them up again when they move temporarily or for good.  We know how difficult it is to pick up and drop one woman in our lives, imagine the lot of this unfortunate character whose livelihood and marital life depended on ferrying his wards from/to various locations.  If you thought this is a breeze, you should cast another look at that care-worn visage or the man and the hang-dog expression sported all the time.  This comes from the job requirements as well as having to listen to belligerent instructions bawled at him by the boss day in and day out.

The first major hurdle in getting the appropriate type of  help is that there is always a personality mismatch.  When the oldie is from Tamil Nadu, the available maids are all Telugu speaking without a smattering of any other language.  All of a sudden the supply of Kannada speaking maids surges inexplicably when only a Hindi-speaking maid will do for you.  And so on, with other parameters also.  Compromise you have to and will, at the risk of an unhappy elder, who struggles to communicate with the person who seems to hold the former's lifeline.  Another critical exercise is untangling the very complicated compensation structure stipulated by the agency.  Invariably, one gets fed up with the various conditions and just agrees to pay whatever.  When most of the horoscope and personal attributes seem to match and I heave a sigh of relief, rejection from you know who, my dear wife, is ruthless and swift because of some very minute deficiency which we had all overlooked during the entire process. Then the wait begins all over again.

More often than not, the arrival of the maid with the escort is shrouded in half-mystery because the timing is always skewed towards dusk or dark.  And the escort ensures that there is no scope for too much conversation at that juncture.  It is almost as if the agency does not want to encourage an on-the-spot rejection of the maid on the grounds of looks, appearance etc, so strategically chooses a delivery time when the lady of the household has no way of a thorough examination of physical attributes.   By the time this gets done the next day, all parties expect a reasonably fair run for the maid before serious judgement can be passed.  This ingenious process ensures that even the least desirable girls get equal opportunities and get a shot at the job, until the wheels come off the arrangement shortly thereafter, when she is subjected to closer inspection in terms of attitude, work ethics, cleanliness etc.  But considering the fact that getting an alternative, a better one at that, is well nigh impossible in the near term, more compromises are made willingly unless the situation is impossible.  The reality-based thinking of the agency, supported by empirical behaviour of customers, must be that (1) unless absolutely unacceptable, maids are taken in and trained by the household and (2) if rejection takes place later, such maids are better for the duration of the training in the house and can be parcelled off as better person, which would be an undisputed fact.

Two major irritants in the eyes of the household with reference to the maid's performance are the habits of having a cell phone attached to the ear permanently and thriving on TV-watching for twenty of the twenty four hours in a day.  Try as anyone may, it is a humongous task to separate the cell phone and the maid.  Some maids are more partial to cell phones and others to TV, but there is a special breed which combines the two into a deadly concoction.  We have seen a few of them, sitting in front of the TV and talking loudly on their cell phones, completely ignoring the fact that some elders are also watching the TV programme.  Whether it is Kannada or Telugu or Thamizh, all the maids loudly speak a robust version of the language prevalent in the rural areas, with the gay abandon that is par for the course in the villages or small towns.  The problem is that the decibel level seldom sounds like originating from a single individual; but it resembles more, the roar of a crowd in an IPL match, appreciating a wicket, a four or a six.  When it was politely pointed out to one girl that the elders cannot follow the TV programmes, the cheeky girl had the temerity to say that anyway the elders could not hear much of the TV audio.  And to boot, the first thing such a maid does is taking control of the remote, to play the channel of her own choice in her own language, thereby depriving the elders of the only source of entertainment they rely upon.  To give them credit, these maids actively encourage the elders to learn to enjoy TV serials and shows in other languages!!

Some other quirks in the maids can be sources of entertainment to the household, but for the mishaps that could result and the inconvenience caused .  Carefully concealed personality traits surface when least expected and give you a jolt.  You see while some girls are somewhat trained in a half-baked manner and are from a city or town, these are generally in the minority.  Many come with the explosive mix of zero training, very little knowledge, some native dumbness and a Columbusian curiosity to explore and experiment when they should not.  One lady had never heard of a gas stove or a geyser and was passed on to us as fully trained, with a year's experience in another household and she nearly caused serious combustion with an open gas stove once.  One night, Amma called me from downstairs to come and take a look.  I thought the maid might be trying to help herself to a scoop of ice-cream or a chocolate from the fridge.  These are crimes in the lexicon of the oldies and level 3 misdeamours in the minds of the next generation of ladies, but are to be condoned for peaceful existence, in my opinion.  But when I was on the staircase, I froze mid-step at the sight of the maid slowly perambulating in the hall, with her flowing hair completely open  -- pretty much like the sleepwalking scenes from the old ghost movies.  Only the eerie music was missing but there was a touch of modernity introduced by the girl herself -- the mobile torch to guide her instead of the kerosene lamp swinging in the wind. Soon, the entire household was watching this spectacle with open mouths, not knowing how and where it will end.  After an hour, the anti-climax was that she curled up in her bed and went to sleep leaving the stupefied audience to wonder what was likely to happen in the next hour and also at the irony of our hiring her so that we can sleep in peace!

There was another one who cleaned up the entire supply of shampoo, soap, oil, assorted toiletry (anything that smelt good) from various bathrooms, in a couple of days.  When she was asked about this, pat came the reply "I am keeping myself clean so that the elders do not get infection".  Laudable, but the cost of such cleanliness was going to be twice the compensation agreed for her; so out she went the next day, searching for other homes with inexhaustible toiletry supplies!  All the maids invariably seek indulgence in non vegetarian dishes, fully knowing that ours is a vegetarian home.  They ask repeatedly, as if they expect us to readily cook a chicken or mutton dish only for them and serve.  When they are asked to look for fresh pastures outside to satisfy this craving, they do but soon realise the benefits of vegetarianism, not due to divine intervention but the costs involved.

Then comes the finale of sorts.  Within ten days of arrival, give or take a few days, the maid falls sick, complaining of headache, body pain, flu, cold and unmentionable discomfort to multiple organ failures -- all this when she looks as normal as she does and enjoying her meals, TV and mobile phones without disruption, but looking for some rest and recuperation on the side.  Then the whole arrangement turns on its head - the paid caretaker becomes the afflicted and all the family members including the elder tend to the maid for a few days, as the latter relaxes in a friendly atmosphere without stretching a limb.  Of course, if you were promised a replacement by the agency in such an exigency, you can try as much as you like, but will not hear anything from the agency, which has taken its money in advance and is already in the process of reincarnation.  

Having said all that, let me confirm that there have been very good maids assigned to our home to take care of the elders and we are thankful to all of them for the splendid support they gave us at various times.  It is not always bad.

Election Time, Ahoy!

Our state assembly election is in May.  Peak summer time for Bangalore.  I am sure the rationale is that our incorrigible voters, usually swayed by everything but governance  -- like money power, muscle power, freebies, religious and caste considerations  -- are forced to think a bit through heat, dust and sweat about real life issues.  Like water, roads, cleanliness, lakes, rampant corruption etc. But, one is doubtful of any difference in the outcome.  People like gardeners, drivers and maids told me the going rate for their votes has gone up,  they can get money from all parties and then will vote for whoever they like.  Seems fair, eh, but then the available choices are not great. Picture a ship approaching land and a sailor saying `Land, ahoy!', with the obvious joy of someone who has been at sea for a while.  But, if he knows he will be more at sea on land really, what would be his thought?  That is how one should feel when elections come around; providing hope that things would be different, better, post elections.  But being a realist, one must reckon with facts, move away from hallucination and convince oneself that nothing much would change.

Raking my brains for the good things that are by-products of an election, I could find only one.  All the posters with the faces of politicians of all hues and sizes will be dismantled and consigned to trash bins (where they belong truly and permanently) for a very welcome interregnum, thanks to the Election Commission (EC)'s orders. Some would pine for the EC to exercise the same authority with the people involved in those posters too; only, makes the bins far deeper, so that no one can climb back out in a hurry!  That would be deliverance in real terms.  That is a genuine pipe-dream though, because the day after the election is over, new posters with old/new faces spring up - phoenix like - all over again, to simultaneously smile and threaten the populace traversing the city's roads and lanes, causing immense mental agony and inconvenience.  Symbolic of the fact that a similar lousy kind of government will be resurrected and reinstalled, with the same or different set of unscrupulous individuals.  Voters move on in resignation, with very little changing on the ground in governance and wait for the next tamasha to come around in due course.

The bliss of a poster-mukht interval is severely marred by all the chaos that prevails during the campaigning period.  Heavy-duty propaganda obviously dominates because leaders rely only on that  tool and very little real worth or performance.  High decibel meetings and road-hogging processions make life miserable, especially when one knows the pitiable outcome that will be.  On top of that, candidates actually demonstrate forced humility and fake camaraderie, come up close to the voters, too close actually,  adding to the nervousness of the latter.  I am drooling over the idea of a completely digital election process, in which candidates can transfer vote-money to voters via Government-approved payment platforms; they are barred from everything other than WhatsApp and SMS messages for campaigning;  freebies like grinders and mixies can be delivered to voters through Amazon or Flipkart, errr, Walmart;  voting is entirely through mobile phones and finally, no one cares for results, since they really make no difference, zilch. 


But the voter has to go through a few contortions before vote can be caste, sorry cast.  The first ordeal is to ensure that the name is still on the list.  In the name of cleaning up, someone sitting somewhere with  keyboard unilaterally just deletes names, deeming those people eminently worthy of elimination, without any provocation.  When some voters asked why so, they were asked to prove that they are still alive, online, of course producing their Aadhaar card for evidence, without explaining a process for that.  The onus shifts wordlessly on to the unsuspecting and stricken voter, who has to go through a few somersaults and Houdini acts to prove he is worthy of his vote.  By the time this is accomplished, the results are already published and as I said earlier, what is the difference??  The democracy loving voter is humbled a bit more.

Recently, on the outskirts of the city near the golf course, my car was stopped, the boot was examined meticulously, a policeman even ducked into my golf bag to smell it. They were looking for cash and other goodies meant to suborn voters.  Not finding anything, the miffed policeman asked me who I was and what I did.  Clearly unimpressed by my persona as well as the details, he rudely shut the boot and waved my driver away.  Poor chap, he was looking for some windfall during this season and was peeved when I did not prove equal to the task.

Before the election day, all those candidates who fancy their chances of performing the dirty trick again on the suckers  -- the one who assured us 10 years ago that the lake close to our community will be akin to Interlaken in Switzerland in two years and the other one who said the same thing 5 years ago (except he painted picture of Lake Geneva) make their customary appearance.  They come to us with folded hands, Cheshire-cat smiles and God-fearing visages, ignoring the lake and the occasional foul smell emanating from that general direction (they can no longer tell foul smells I think, wallowing in everything foul more or less continuously).  The same subject is raised, assurances given with not so much of an apology or any reservation; of course, they run out of images to evoke and just say they will clean up the lake.  And, we, the always-conned and ever-willing-to-accept voters joyously nod our heads and cheer the candidate, even as we are fully aware of the foregone conclusion.  It will be nice to see new, imaginative candidates with new comparisons to our potentially-to-be-clean lake - is the only thought crossing our minds.  If this is the abject condition of educated voters like us, what can one say??

We are waiting for that man with the most fertile imagination and glibbest tongue, to come and tell us that he will personally link Godavari and Kaveri (and Ganga, if possible) and bring the new river, Gangodveri,  to run just behind our compound wall.  Now, that will surely be the tallest one so far and if he can have the temerity to fly that kind of a kite, he richly deserves our votes, is unquestionably the most qualified for our assembly, democracy and most of all, he is the one who we deserve completely.

The only good thing among the traumatic turbulence that comes to haunt us once in few years is the performance of the EC, overall.  It deserves kudos for having run elections satisfactorily all over the country and bringing the unruly Indians to some level of discipline in the election process.  Great victory for an Indian Institution!!

Jai Hind and long live our brand of democracy!!

Can We Ever Learn A Wee Bit Of Discipline?

The scene was nothing exceptional for the peak time mess on a Bangalore road -- vehicles milling around, with their noses and front wheels pointing in eight different directions, teasing the curious to guess which path they would eventually take;  people trying to squeeze past layers of cars and bikes which have intentionally overshot the `stop' line by ten feet; frenetic yelling and screaming all around, the blaring cacophony accentuated by mad honking by the privileged ones in cars, who would rather not wait to allow pedestrians to cross.  What nauseated even the most cynical was the sight of lines of two-wheelers revving up and pushing through dense crowds of people on the newly laid pedestrian foot-paths (yes!), making men, women and children do the unintended calypso, to dodge the unexpected assault.

My dear wife grimaced and said she hoped some idiots on bikes would be caught and thrashed, to prevent others from riding on the footpath. The traffic signal prolonged our stay a bit and lo and behold, my wife's fervent prayers were answered forthwith. There was commotion ahead of us, as some people came to fisticuffs in the readily gladiatorial atmosphere of our roads and we saw a couple of them got beaten up soundly.  Only as we inched toward the intersection, we found out poor logic cruelly turned on its head -- that a biker rode roughshod into some pedestrians and in the following melee, punched a few in their faces as a bonus, for blocking his right of way! So, the aggressor and violator got more offensive and got away, leaving the aggrieved parties in tatters.  Believe me, this is not an isolated instance; it repeats itself over and over again in every town and city with appalling regularity, in different contexts and at various levels, leaving most of us wondering where we are headed as a society, who is to blame and what the solution is.

People are perpetually looking to blame something or someone who is not present to retaliate and are always quick to point at that somnolent, ghostly institution called `government', for everything that is wrong with us.  Because it is easy and also this establishment usually richly deserves all the condemnation it gets.  But to an extent this seems blatantly unfair.  Most of the incidents are triggered by people with little or no discipline, deliberately looking to flout rules with impunity, just to get ahead a few inches in life.  They know fully well that they could wriggle out, even if caught, using some clout somewhere and the omnipresent holes in the process. They then use the tested template and repeat the offence at will and the impunity level just creeps up.  Most of us would nod understandingly and agree with this hypothesis because it sounds reasonable, but still find it necessary to question what the government is doing.  Because the actual guilty parties are faceless individuals, too many to count, spread out far too widely and therefore impossible to identify and confront!  So, the immediate challenge is `what is the police doing'?  The simple answer is police cannot be present everywhere, definitely not in all street corners.  And until people get to be decent enough to self-regulate and control themselves to stay within some basic rules, incidents as described above would continue to happen, leaving the general populace in disarray.  It does not take too much for the motorbike/scooter riders to stay off the pedestrian pathways, even if that means they are going to be delayed by a few minutes. The rest of us should stop blaming the government for everything and work towards making the small percentage of offenders realise the futility and iniquity of transgressing rules all the time for selfish reasons.  The problem is we don't know how!

That leads me to the other part of the equation -- have we all become far too complacent and indifferent to the unruly behaviour and unlawful aggression bubbling around us all the time?  Are we forgetting the fact that tomorrow we could be the victims and we should be acting in some way to protest?  While the offenders have lost all civic sense and respect for others, have the rest of us forgotten to join hands and stand up when the need arises?  The answer is in the affirmative. Lack of time may be a small factor but lack of mental fibre is possibly the more truthful answer.  Who wants to get into a tangle with a rowdy on a bike?  Let him use the footpath, so long as he does not hit me -- seems to be the general thinking.  Hence the prevalent apathy.  Most of us are guilty of such pathetic, spineless attitude which cause us to look askance in such situations.  It is true that most of the offending dregs of the society are quick to draw a knife or other deadly weapon out to keep the public at bay as they make their breezy escape after the shenanigans.  This does not inspire confidence in the people at the site to confront the culprits.  Distressing reports of innocuous bystanders/well-wishers being stabbed or clubbed to death are all over the media and this is a big dampener for anyone to interfere and question the offenders.  Who wants to get killed in the bargain, is a perfectly solid rejoinder.

Take the stinking example of garbage on Bangalore's roads.  Time and again we have seen people riding bikes visiting a specific spot, carrying plastic bags full of garbage from home and swinging it into the dump as they ride past. The only qualification the spot has is that it already has a lot of such bags accumulated over a few hours.  Education or literacy has nothing to do with this.  We have seen owners of mobile carts selling food, carefully disposing off garbage into a bin properly while more affluent and educated people behaving atrociously as if the garbage is just an extension of their own selves.  There is no use blaming the government, which is ineffectual any way, because it does make a feeble attempt to collect sorted garbage from homes.  The fact that people come on bikes swinging the garbage in bags just tells us that they do not want to go through the little pain of sorting the stuff.  It is obvious that the government cannot assign a goal keeper to each little garbage dump and this is not going to change until people change.  Next time you see someone doing the honours, at least politely question him; yes, the risk is there that he is carrying a machete and might want to sharpen it on you!

Indian men happily whistling and urinating on the road-side may not be as ubiquitous as it used to be, but that spectacle still happens.  Now, is it the government's fault that when the need arises for an individual, it has not been clairvoyant enough to position a urinal just there, ready for the person?  Can he be disciplined enough to look for the next public facility in the neighbourhood?  Yes, but why do that if the roadside is a good alternative?  I have always wondered why only men indulge in this. That alone should be a lesson to men to hold on and dispose at the right place.  So, why are men so?  Because this specie is absolutely shameless and crude beyond words?? Can we politely ask the person not to -- at the risk of being the target of the pee-shower??

While it is irrefutable that our government needs to upgrade governance in a lot of ways, it is equally true that individuals have to learn discipline and self regulation in a big way for our society to see some improvement in various areas.  Otherwise, we are just doomed to live peacefully in the company tons of garbage, gallons of urine etc whenever we step out of our homes.