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??

Are we going to be like this only, for ever??

Not infrequently, while you are driving or walking or just idling, watching the goings-on in the vicinity, you observe some uncouth, uncivilized and senseless behaviour and wonder `Why are we like this and why do we do this??  Don't we realise that what we are doing is causing problems to the others'??  Your mind automatically clicks back to somewhat similar situations you have encountered in another country and wonder why there is this manic desire in most Indians to knowingly and willingly abuse our public spaces, inconveniencing people around us and themselves, more often than not.  We are not talking about the age-old issues of spitting, throwing waste or urinating in public spaces but many other ways of offending sensibilities.

There should be a strictly enforced rule that small restaurants, tee/coffee shops and the like should not operate out of any street-corner site.  How often do we see cycles, auto-rickshaws, motor-cycles and even cars parked haphazardly on narrow roads which the joint straddles?  They occupy 70% of the space meant for movement of people and vehicles, forming some unbreakable `vyuha',  just so that the owners/drivers of these vehicles enjoy their cuppa, a smoke and leisurely chit-chat?  All this, while just a few yards from them, there is mayhem and people are milling and jostling to squeeze past the parked vehicles.  When tempers flare and  fights break out on the road among road-users, these worthies snigger and stare insolently at the scene, relishing the commotion they have caused.  If you expected some semblance of regret or apology, forget it.  Obviously you cannot put this down to thoughtless behaviour of the juvenile variety.  There is this deliberate desire to cause offence and pain and that is what is galling.

Take the case of getting into elevators, buses etc.  While 15 people are waiting patiently for the elevator/bus to empty out, the first few people who rush in from the sides are the few mad men who have just arrived on the scene.  Not only would they push through, but also park themselves at the entrance of the elevator/bus, blocking the way for the rest.  Why?  They have to get out earlier than the others!  This could be in/near a hospital, where there are the sick and the elderly waiting to use the lifts/buses, but these offenders dont care.   For some reason, a well-intentioned queue, which had formed before the bus arrived, dissipates into a melee immediately on its arrival and a free-for-all follows, in which the ladies and the infirm are absolutely helpless!

What about this?  Every day, when we drive from home in the morning, we are treated to the sight of two small trucks involved in a messy transfer of stuff to a larger truck, right on the road.  What kind of commercial transaction is being done?  The smaller trucks are transferring all the garbage collected from about 2000 houses in the locality to the bigger truck.  It is bad enough that people without even the protection of gloves go through the garbage, sifting for useful nuggets; but this is done in full public view, with the accompanying stench violating your nostrils.  You get a full demonstration of this activity as you wait to overtake the parked trucks to proceed on your way. It should not be difficult to move the offending trucks to a remoter location where all the sorting is done, but do you think they care??  Their thought process seems to be that `if we have to dig into this mess for a living, you prudes should not be too sensitive about having a glimpse'!!

In case you thought this `offensive' tendency is individual, think again!  Institutions dont lag far behind.  Corporation's workers are laying some pipes or repairing something on the road.  Familiar scene, happens daily.   Knowing fully well that the narrow road has to have at least one way traffic flowing without hindrance and they have to manage this well, what do they actually do??  With a supervising engineer around, the mud, debris, pipes to be laid are all stacked on the road in such a way that the road is just not usable in any sense.  And to add to this misery, they just refuse to regulate the traffic, with the result, on about 40% of the normal road, two way traffic tries to edge past everything and you know what happens!  Men and women in a continuum of  snarling matches; frayed tempers and abusive language; some fisticuffs and general despair -  while some radio is providing musical entertainment - `abhi na jaao chodkar' is playing, ironically - to the 5-6 people digging deeper, with the sole intent of causing incremental grief.

I am sure you have experienced this while driving or riding in a car.  You are at a signal-less, unpoliced busy intersection, trying to turn right.  Traffic is coming from your right and you have to get past that stream to turn right.  You have waited at the intersection for more than 5 minutes, hoping for a gap in the traffic.  You nudge the car forward slowly, hoping to break through eventually, because the traffic from the right is just not stopping.  (I used to ask my driver why he has to slowly insert the car into the oncoming traffic and risk the possibility of being hit and his wisdom was simple - you cannot wait for the waves to abate if you want to have a dip in the sea!). You have come most of the way and just a bit is left before you can heave a sigh of relief.  You look to the right and see three cars coming about 100 meters away, switching on their headlights, firmly indicating their intent not to let you clear  the next 10 feet, so that you can do your turn.  Those cars will go further right, to move around you, almost hitting a couple of vehicles coming from the left, but they will not let you pass.  If the traffic from right stops for one mintue, you and the others waiting with you could turn and be done; but no, that would be far too simple and equitable,  you see.  What causes this??  Ego or something else?  And all the people indulging in this thuggery are not uneducated drivers!!

Similarly, if it is a junction where four roads are converging and the traffic police, in their infinite wisdom, have switched off the lights (that is another mystery I have not cracked yet - why, for heaven's sake??), you can bet your bottom rupee that within 15 minutes there will be a situation where cars, buses, two-wheelers and other assorted vehicles have all come to a halt, with no space to manoeuvre.  The vehicles are at all kinds of weird angles, making it impossible to guess which one was heading  in which direction.  It will take a policeman some 45 minutes to untangle this mess, while all those who created the mess in the first place generate more chaos by blaring their horns and yelling belligerently.  Why did they get into this situation?  Because they did not have the patience and good sense to wait 10 seconds and let somebody else pass and move in an orderly manner.  They would rather waste the next hour, struggling to get out of the ensuing unholy mess!!

Will we ever change??  Or are we destined to be like this only??

One more on Mosquitos!!

Another one on mosquitos; it is revenge, pure and simple - they are not letting go of me and I am reciprocating!  In the context of mosquitos revisiting our community, Vista!!

Varad

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Those unwanted visitors, who intermittently force Vista residents to turn hostile and keep their doors shut, are back.  Theyhave invaded the community in hordes and seem intent on doing a limited Taliban on us by enforcing a stricter dress code.  While there is no official communique from the assailing force about the edict, people have been coerced to abandon their shorts and tees in favour of trousers and full-sleeves even during evening walks.  That seems to be the only way of keeping the attackers at bay.  Vista residents using open spaces are also forcibly taught a few nifty dance steps due to the absolute need to keep shifting their feet to avoid damage; and sources indicate that such coaching, imparted in short bursts in a few minutes, is far

more effective in teaching Waltz, Bollywood, Bharathanatyam, Odissi and other rather unknown dance forms, than all the classes regularly conducted in Vista put together.  

The surprise is in the fact that this is happening in October, after the routine, first dose was administrated in the summer! Are mosquitos getting agnostic to seasons??  It appears so and obviously there is a crying need for some defence which the hapless Vistaites can use to protect themselves.  I searched high and low and have identified a brand new, as-yet-not-on-the-market product which the manufacturers claim will help people ward off the buzzing menace effectively.  They have not found a suitable name for this wonder-antidote yet, so let us tentatively name it BuzOff! Read on!  The substance is from the manufacturers, but in a synopsis of mine.

BuzOff is a Coil for the outdoors.  Unlike other coil-remedies (at the last count, the number of such products in the market being only slightly lower than the number of mosquitos in the neighbourhood!), this one scores with its mobility!  A mobile coil??  Yes, and since it is designed to protect you, mobility is supported by, what else, you!  These coils come in different sizes and shapes; they can be worn on your arms, legs, waist or head (this flexibility should score high in the mind of the users, since it provides them with the option of using

it closest to that specific part of the body they feel is the most vulnerable in a particular location).  Don't fret, the ergonomically designed coils do not burn the body (during the initial phase of usage, as is the case with everything else in life, one may get a couple of scalds, but the discerning would appreciate that is part of the learning and a small cost one pays for a bite-free future).  One can buy these coils of mixed sizes (the closest packaging we can think of is the multi-shaped-and-sized adhesive plasters) for various parts of the body.  After this the only trouble you need to take is to attach the coils to the body, light them up and go for your outdoor activity, glowing all the way. Once you are decked up properly, your childhood fantasy about being a miner deep down in the womb of mother earth, will also be partially fulfilled. You will look like a miner, only better, because you will have lovely glows emanating from the multiple coils.  So, obviously, the more coils you use simultaneously, the merrier!  The operating manual clearly states that lighting the coils should happen only after all the coils have been attached to the body; otherwise the number of scalds you suffer in the process will be proportionately higher.  Avoidable!

When you are in open spaces, the coils start behaving like chimney exhausts - they are designed to.  A good volume of smoke is generated to envelope you.  This is the primary defence mechanism and the idea is to hide you from the offending mosquitos.  They cannot bite you ifyou are behind a thick pall of smoke, right?  For full effect, the manufacturers recommend that you walk in `unlit' open spaces, thereby rendering the task of the mosquitos even more difficult in the dark.  If some egregious ones dodge the smokescreen successfully and break through to identify you as a desirable target, don't worry, they will have to locate some part of the body open for business, to apply proboscis to skin, that is, to bite, very quickly while you are on the move. Since your body is covered by the coil straps at various locations, the mosquitos will face a challenging task and will have to really earn your blood. Hence the recommendation to attach as many coils to your body as possible,

so that the reduced space limits your exposure.  The fumes are not noxious, actually they are just plain fumes and you can enhance the experience by choosing one of the premium coils aptly named RL (for Ralph Lauren), JL (for Jennifer Lopez)  or DO (for Davidoff) to enjoy a medley of smells (the word `fragrances' is eschewed by the manufacturers for some reason). 

As everyone knows, mosquitos abound around stagnant water bodies.  So, if you have purchased a `luxurious' villa located close to what was earlier a beautiful lake and has since been converted by criminally indifferent humans to a cesspool of sewage (this does sound like Vista!), the company offers you something more exciting.  By fitting a few boats with higher-capacity, heavy-duty coils (the quantum of smoke produced equals that from mid-sized factories) and by automating their movement across sections of the lake during evenings when people are likely to be outdoors, temporary eviction notice can be served on the abominable creatures for a couple of hours.  It is absolutely incidental that hardened individuals with fully blocked nostrils can also use the boats for rides on the lake, in a spectacularly miasmatic ambience, at no extra charge!!

You have surely heard about collateral damages like the kind Afghans suffer daily due to the war on terrorists.  Here is an opportunity to reap some collateral benefits from BuzOff. 

 -- If a good number of residents take to using BuzOff regularly, all the lights used for open spaces can be switched off for two hours or so, thereby saving electricity charges for everyone, since the collective glow will be adequate for people to stumble along without permanent bodily harm.  And, do recall that the overall effect of BuzOff is enhanced in the dark.

 -- During festivals like Deepavali, Karthigai and Halloween, people with coils can be manoeuvred into any creative configuration, to mirror the effect of arrangement of diyas, lights etc.  Imagine using intelligent diyas which will move when you so order.

 -- For any occasion involving firecrackers, BuzOff is especially useful since it makes candles, agarbathis etc redundant for lighting up crackers. You would love the unmatched convenience of lighting up from any of the coils attached to your body.  Smokers will also benefit in the same way, but this is not being advertised to    prevent the anti-smoking lobby from derailing the product.

 -- BuzOff is an admirable tool to help you jostle through crowded areas to have a ring-side view of any road-side activity (a very Indian trait).  But manufacturers caution that this be not used hyperactively.

One thing I dont understand is why the manufacturers are bent upon adding an absolutely useless footnote to their packaging - that `only female mosquitos can bite'.  This does not seem to have any relevance to their aim and could actually be counter productive.  But they insist.  Suicidal, you think??

Contemplating retirement, are you??

You are around 55 and nowadays frequently you find yourself lapsing into reveries of post-retirement possibilities, even as critical meetings you are supposed to be chairing are afoot.  You seem to care less and less for corporate shenanigans and many things official which you thought formed the fulcrum of your life, no longer seem to hold the same significance.  The year-end bonus number does not exhilarate you any longer. Well, you are beginning to contemplate retirement, are you??

You began a career at the age of 23 or so and have worked your backside off (happens if it has always been a desk-job and all the flesh seems to shift gradually and inexorably to the front during this period of sedentary existence) for nearly 35 years.  A reasonably hard diurnal toil for 12 hours or more all through.  You have provided for the family well and have accumulated more wealth than you imagined possible even midway through your career.  Your progeny is educated and employed well; daughters have married nicely.  You have a lovely house to live in and all the material comforts you need at this time of life.  And you believe you have adequate resources to protect  your current standard of life without killing yourself with work.  You look around and ask yourself the fundamental existential question as to why you need to slog any further.  You wonder why you cannot take it easy now and make time to do all those fantastic things you wanted to do, but could not because office work always cast a huge shadow over your life.  You also know that your colleagues have not started wondering when you will go, not yet.  Remember, the maxim in this context, as in cricket or films, is `go when people ask why now' - as against doing it when the overall sentiment is `good, about time'! or `long overdue!'.  You mull over this for a few months and consider all the pros and cons of bidding adieu to full time employment.  You bring your rich professional experience and personal judgement into play in making the decision in ripeness of time - 'yes, it is time to walk into the sunset'! But, my friend, it is not so simple; your decision is just one small step in the direction you want to go.  Getting those around you on board is going to cause some sleepless nights for you.

`What?  Are you nuts?  I know something in you was coming unhinged since you have been sporting that cross-eyed look for the last couple of months' - is the mild, initial response of the spouse.  You wish you had a camera on hand, that could have captured for posterity the look of absolute horror on her face, as if you are proposing a `streaking' venture during lunch time, along MG Road, with a couple of pilot cars blaring their sirens to announce the spectacular event!!  But then even if you had a camera, you may not have either the courage or the astuteness to get the job done because the response would have frontally assaulted you into a state of inaction, because you were pretty confident that you had covered all the angles well.  Now, the spouse's riposte could have been prompted by the mortal fear that she might also be forced to quit her job, thereby depriving her independence, financial and otherwise .  Or if she is not employed anyway, the prospect of the painful conversion of a part-time bug (in terms of limited exposure to you) into a full time pestilence could have justifiably produced that reaction.   Any amount of persuasion about spending more fun-time together, travelling the world etc is not going to pass muster with the wife when weighed on the balance with having you like a permanent millstone around her neck for the rest of her life.  If it was earlier the very logical argument that you `have to work till the kids are all settled', now it is a more emotional bleat - `what will you do sitting at home all the time?' that is popped at you.  That the `settled' in the foregoing sentence actually meant all your children successfully going through life towards grand-parenthood, with the expectation that you would continue to slog till then might have been unspoken but if your fuzzy brain did not register such subtleties, whose fault is that??

Given the above realistic scenario, your only choice is to retire from full time employment, but simultaneously enter into that banal world of part-time consulting work.   This single stroke of genius, never associated with you normally, enables you to position your `retirement' as something less sinister than what the spouse is conditioned to perceive.   This way you continue to remain a part time bug as far as she is concerned (actually this is not true; there is a small shift in the status to part-time pestilence, since your wife knows that the time available to you for causing inadvertent hardship to her and the society at large is much more). You continue to bring home some bacon  - not a whole lot, but that is never a serious bone of contention in this context whereas your being a permanent resident and homebody is; and the enigmatic world of consulting is so pliable and agnostic to age that you never have to contemplate full time retirement ever again!!  There are nonagenarian consultants hobbling around on crutches or carried to their assignments on stretchers in ambulances, simply because the world has forgotten how things were done 50 years ago.  This vanishing knowledge is in such stupendous demand, just to facilitate comparison with the current state of affairs and to help people gloat on the technological and other advancements achieved!  Bottom line is that you need to soften the blow on the wife by becoming a consultant, holding out the promise that you will not be a permanent fixture at home.  While this ploy may not ensure permanent peace on the home front, it will give you a temporary reprieve and enable you to get over the huge hump of the spouse's intransigence in the face of your imminent and disastrous `retirement'.

Now that your status in life has changed to that of a `semi-retired' person, how do those people who have only seen you as a workaholic all these decades deal with you??  Invariably, it is a mixed bag.  Those of your colleagues who have never really `worked' in life but are well-versed in ensuring their own longevity with exemplary `survival skills', will look down on you for seeking retirement outside the office instead of following their shining example.  They would believe you have made a bad bargain of a good situation by letting go of the monthly compensation which could have been yours for the next few years, with virtually the same `retiring' kind of life!  Other hard-working colleagues, would tend to feel envious of the fact that you could afford to retire while they still have to continue their struggle with sour-faced and bloody-minded bosses for personal financial reasons.  But the question that would surface every single time you meet an incredulous old colleague would be `But, tell me, sir, how do you spend your time'?  What they are actually asking is `what on earth do you know other than office work?? You have never had a hobby, were never involved in sports or games, did not have even nodding acquaintance with music or books; so their concern is probably very genuine.  You will be hard pressed to convince them that you are actually going to indulge in all those esoteric activities  from now on.  The odds are in your favour, though, because the prevalent belief is that you are going to vegetate out of real existence within the next few years thereby merging with the woodwork at home. When you tell such friendly souls that you are planning to be a consultant, doing some part-time work, the looks you get should realistically be interpreted to say `Ah! That! All we need is one more ruddy consultant'! 

Don't rejoice yet over your retirement.  You have only crossed half the hurdles and some of the toughest are yet to be conquered.  The immediate need, after you have given yourself reasonable resting time, is to first snag that consulting assignment without further ado.  This is the single crucial step that will redeem your retirement and prevent it from going over the precipice down into the cluttered valley of doomed and failed retirements.  Why?  Because this is the one talisman that is going to help ward off all those schemers in the family and neighbourhood from invading your time and space on the pretext that you have nothing to do and so are generally `available and at their disposal'.   With the 'Part-time Consultant' halo around you (evidenced by the presence in your vicinity of one or two mobile phones, a land-line, a lap top which is open all the time, a couple of tomes on the subjects you 'specialize' in and a pen poised on a half written page of a notebook), you can create a forbidding defence around you, which will deter people from trying to take advantage of your time with inane requests.   And if you add to your repertoire a couple of hobbies like reading or listening to music, gardening or community service (if you are a decent actor, for the short term it may even be adequate if you can pretend well to be doing any of these, but I would suggest truly cultivating some hobbies for the longer term), man, you are set!  Your wife cannot then send her full-time housekeeper or driver away to her uncle's brother-in-law's sister's cousin's friend's relative to do some chores; citing your endearing presence at home as the only reason).  Nor can the young couples around your home expectantly seek your help in entertaining their whining and snivelling two year olds for a few hours while they catch a movie or a concert.

Soon people will start wondering how mysteriously you are so much busier after retirement that when you were full time at work.  If this happens, yes, you have arrived as a successful retiree. Once you have crossed this rubicon and have survived about 6 months without descending into the pits of depression or hurrying back to full time employment to salvage self-respect, sense of purpose etc, of course goaded by jealous family and friends, you can start the celebrations!!  As a dignified retiree! Do it quietly though, lest people take notice!   






 

Customer Service

Euphoria should have been apparent in me when my phone company sent the ubiquitous sms, victorious in celebrating the resolution of my complaint.  Euphoria, because they took a month to deal with what was, in my opinion, an absolutely asinine situation wherein my internet was working but my fixed line, which was a prerequisite for the internet connection, was not!!  But, unbeknown to the service provider, my reaction was one of anger and astonishment.  Why??  Simply because nothing much had changed and my phone was stubbornly refusing to be the enabler of communication it was supposed to be.  The petulant voice of the Voice Response System repeatedly and indifferently informed whoever cared to listen that both outgoing and incoming calls from/to the number were barred.

Unwittingly, two months earlier I had sowed the seeds of the problem, which had come to haunt me now.  When we were going away from home for an extended period, I had asked for the number to be placed in an invitingly named facility called `Safe Deposit'.   The service screamed out to me: `Hey, leave things with me and everything will be hunky dory when you want them back'. When I had paid the charges for this in advance after filling a form, I specifically demanded to know whether I had to fill another form for reactivation.  I was being guided by past experience, when I was forced to travel 22 kms to sign a sparsely worded form to resuscitate some other service.  This representative looked at me exactly like a Six Sigma black belt would look at a certified moron and condescendingly explained that another form would be a waste of time, wouldn't it be, sir??   Any novice, wet behind the ears, would have been misled to believe that customer service in India was improving in texture by leaps and bounds.  When we returned home after a prolonged trip, we found that internet was working on the designated date but the phone line was not.  I did not realise that the `safe deposit' they advertised and I fell for did mean returning of things to you when you wanted, but not necessarily in working order!!  Thus began my tryst with the customer service function of the phone company, which was going to provide me with one month of non-stop entertainment in many ways.

I began by calling the given number and baring my soul regarding the issue.  Without even pausing for breath, the omniscient representative pleasantly said `sir, you may not have paid your bill'.  That was pretty thick indeed, as an initial response to a peeved customer! I asked the lady whether she was sitting a-la-hermit in some Himalayan cave, without access to my account.  Couldn't she look at the screen in front of her to see what the position is??  Oh yes, she said and after a break gleefully announced `sir, you have a credit balance for this line'!  Actually the tone suggested that I lacked basic intelligence to be leaving money on the table for a fixed line.  So, now, why was the phone not working??  She probed for another minute and triumphantly diagnosed that the line was barred.   Despite the entertainment value of such a conversation with someone who seemed to have a lot of time at her disposal, I testily said  `yes that is indeed the problem, I am looking for a solution'.  She scratched around for a few more minutes and then finally did what all these people have been trained to do - sound the death-knell to customer service by handing out to you a complaint number, while emphatically declaring that the problem would be resolved in the next four hours.  Just to ensure that the customer's transactional experience is enhanced even further and he smiled in the midst of all these trials and tribulations,  a message arrived on my registered email address, restating that `your complaint will be resolved in four hours, that is, by 2:22:46 (the last two numbers denoting `seconds') pm on August 16th of 2011!!  I was floored; one does not quarrel with that kind of precision!

After the lapse of 24 hours, the stony status quo was well-preserved and my moribund phone connection gave the impression of having lapsed deeper into coma.  I decided to resume my enjoyable conversation with the customer service rep.  This time a male of the species took my complaint number and details and probably scrutinized the unyielding screen in front of him for some clue before telling me `but your problem should have been resolved yesterday'.  Such unshakeable faith in their own system of problem resolution was very heartening, but I bristled with that heavy dose of salt on the open and throbbing wound.  I assured him I had better things to do than chatting with him if I had no problem.  He put me on a hold and probably had a chat on the evening's possibilities with his neighbour before coming back to me.  Then he did what I believe is a master stroke in the way all these service providers monitor their outstanding complaints.  He casually told me he has registered the complaint again and here is the new complaint number.  A brand new complaint number for you to be so pleased, sir!!  Attaboy, had I discovered the most efficient complaint resolution process devised by companies? The ingenuity of the simple mechanism used to keep the slate squeaky-clean was breathtaking, to say the least.  Just close the aged and unresolved complaints and log new ones as outstanding for less than the desired length of time?  Again, I was given the morale-boosting 4-hour time-limit hogwash and a message followed with the second-specific deadline, by which time one could say 'God is in his heaven and all is well with my phone'.

To cut a long story short, the above rigmarole played out for long and I had some 15 complaint numbers given to me over the next 25 days.  I am sure their own system deliberately omits any linkage among all these complaint numbers, for obvious reasons.   Somewhere between the 7th and 8th complaint, I asked for the supervisor and made her listen to my tale of woe, which was brimming over.  She came up with a startlingly new one - `sir, you should visit an outlet and give a letter for us to reactivate the service, have you'??  When I protested that their own people had confirmed that no further written instruction was necessary since the end date of the `safe deposit' service was already agreed upon in writing, she said brightly `sir, that is not the procedure our department follows'.  This is another regular ploy used by service providers - all their internal compartmentalization comes into effective play and it is deemed to be your good fortune to be dealing with multiple stonewalling departments to resolve an issue.  I refused to budge and told her to get things done or lose my custom (a fairly sizeable business for an individual, what with 3 mobile phones, fixed line and broadband) and she did not like that kind of a threat one bit, simply because now she had to do something!  Her assurance that she would treat my case as a special one and get the needful done predictably did not translate into any life-giving potion for my phone and it happily continued its dormant status.  Multiple visits by technicians ensued and hushed discussions amongst experts followed (a casual observer would have thought my personal nuclear reactor had sprung a leak and these guys were trying to fix it, without creating panic in the community!) in and around my house, while the phone continued to be comatose!

When I had enough of this entertaining charade, I got the number of the person responsible for fixed line phone business in Bangalore and called him on a Saturday at 5 pm.  He listened to me and gave me the number of his Customer Services Head, with a very polite request I call the other gentleman on Monday morning.  What about the fact that I have been without service for 30 days and had spent about 5 hours in talking to various reps of his company??  He said he understood, but the Customer Services Head would not be available till Monday morning.

I called on Monday; the problem was indeed resolved in 4 hours.  My demand for an explanation as to why
that took 30 days to do, elicited a cute reply `Sir, I shall call you and explain'.  That was about 15 days ago and I am still waiting for elucidation.  Now, the next chapter of this story is playing out - I have sought refund of charges for the period the fixed line was not functional.  I hope this one gets resolved in the next year or so, because by then I will have to (shudder!!) go through the safe deposit route again.  God bless me!

If you think that took the cake, listen to this - another bathroom fittings company gave me a complaint number for a problem and said their representative would come around the next day.  Two days later, I got an sms `Thanks for contacting us.  We are happy to inform you that your problem has been resolved and the complaint closed'.  That was phenomenal, how did they resolve complaints remotely, without anyone ever even looking at what the problem was!!  When I asked them to explain that conundrum to me,  they promptly tried to give me a new complaint number!!

Another puzzle in this whole process is that after many futile and nerve-wracking interactions one gets an sms asking for a rating for the transactional experience one had gone through!  Generally, I am usually lost for words and do not respond.

I am wondering whether Customer Service should rather be `Complaints Service'??  Worth suggesting, I think.

Deviated Septum (DS)

One has lived in this weird world long enough to say that one has seen or heard of all kinds of deviant behaviour.  Nothing is so deviant that you are shocked  by something, actually anything.  Having spent the best part of one's life in corporate world, one can also feel that very little remains to be seen of devious people.  Such characters seem to be inevitable fixtures in the lives of most people, like villains in the movies.  While one has taken all the above in the stride with the philosophical outlook that it is all part of life, something physically deviant has spooked me from unexpected quarters in the past few years.  A small bone which should normally have grown straight, has decided to take a short, side trip on its own volition, without any provocation from anyone and thereby hangs this tale. 

Initially, about 5 years ago, when I suddenly and repeatedly woke up in the middle of the night after seemingly having slept like a veritable log for hours, I wondered why!  There was no apparent change in anything around me (it was the same wife and same paraphernalia) and I could not figure out what prompted me to wake up time and again with a start.  After a few months of monitoring and analysis (it was tough, because I was too groggy with sleep to instantly shift to `research' mode to identify the causes till the next morning, by when amnesia had set in and I had almost forgotten everything related to the nocturnal episode; anyway, my colleagues never set too much store by my analytical skills even when I was in mid-season form), it dawned on me that whenever I woke up there was one constant -  my left nostril was fully jammed up and completely closed for all incremental traffic.  Pretty much like any Indian road junction during peak hours, wherein everyone from all the four directions have converged as if by invitation for a free lunch and no one could make out who is going in which direction!  Once I had consciously shifted from horizontality to perpendicularity and retained the latter position for a few minutes, status-quo-ante was mercifully restored inasmuchas the plumbing inside the nostril seemed to work a bit and I happily went back to sleep.  But as days passed, the frequency of the nightly disruptions increased manifold and I spent more time in trying to sleep rather than actually sleeping! Then someone helpfully suggested it could be `sleep apnea' (very low breathing due to some block in the respiratory system), with a cheery foot-note that it could be fatal in one-in-a-million cases.  This blessed individual was directly looking at me in the eye when all this was pronounced, making it dispassionately clear what his expectation, nay, hope was!  Now, whenever something like this is mentioned you always believe you are the chosen one, even without any provocation!!  Intuitive perception does not work as well when you are buying a lottery ticket, even if statistically you have a better than an one-in-a-million chance!  So, I ran to the doctor even though there was no perceptible impact on me during the daytime - I was looking as sleepy as I have always been, before this affliction messed me up, people swore. 

`Deviated Septum' (DS)!, the doc enthusiastically pronounced.  Looked like this fella - not the doctor, let me clarify, but the bone - could not even cover a few inches of ground without making a small detour to the right to sniff around a bit to see if he can have a pow-wow with the neighbours.  The result was that the already constrained space inside the nose, reserved for breathing, got further constricted to the point breath threw up its hands and indifferently withdrew!  And this sudden change in my breathing pattern woke me up.  `Not sleep apnea', the doc said and I was so relieved that I was not going to be that powerless pawn in the deadly one-in-a-million game!  Till this point in time, I had never gone to a doctor for anything more serious than a twinge in the shoulder or elbow due to excessive tennis or cricket or whatever.  But now began my travails.  There are about 20 different concoctions inside small spray bottles which `could probably work in about 1% of the DS cases to give some 10% relief'. But as one can divine, the catch is that doctors generally do not know which works for whom.  So, my doc began a well practiced regimen of trial and error (more error, so the trial seems interminable) to see if he can eventually match one spray and my internal mechanism.   In this process I spent a fortune in buying medicines which I never fully used, because somehow half way through the doctor decided that specific spray and I were not made for each other.  All this, while I was sleeping less and less.

After the doctor was satisfied that I had exceeded the target in terms of spending money on half-used-sprays, he told me `let us go the surgery route'.  He did not sound like there was any alternative, so I submissively lay down on the table, while he sharpened the tools of his trade.  He said `you can enjoy the Bombay Jayashree CD you like while I saw off a bit of the bone.  You are being given only local anesthesia'.  After a bit, I could hear only the sound of the saw on the bone and the cheerful banter of those around the operating table, nothing of Bombay Jayashree!! After a few days with a bloody nose and heavy breathing through the mouth, I was pleasantly surprised to note that the left nostril had regained its ability to breath even during nights.  That lasted all of 18 months, when my ego-bruised DS decided to demonstrate that it had a mind and life of its own.   Like any corporate entity facing serious financial difficulties, it changed its own structure a bit and blocked my nostril all over again!!  I have since graduated to general anesthesia during the next surgery, with the assurance that the solution is permanent.   I must admit things are better now, but far from perfect.  For some reason, DS becomes less aggressive after 2 am in the morning and lets me sleep for about 5 hours and I am grateful for that small mercy!!  But I must concede that DS seems unconquerable in spirit, despite all the promises held out by the doctors.  Made of sterner stuff, DS is.

Very funny this - when I was a year old, I had a serious illness, with very high temperature and the doctor had almost given me up, when news trickled in from our native village that my paternal grandfather got suddenly ill and passed away within a few hours.  Miraculously, I recovered (don't sigh, thats fate - who would have written all these blogposts, think!) to go through life, eventually with DS.  Why am I saying this now?......my grandfather's name was, take a deep breath, Desikar Sadagopachariar; that is, DS for short. Has he returned to be with me for a while at this stage of my life, reminding me of what I owe him??  May be!  I shouldn't and don't mind at all.  Thank you, DS.