Domestic Problems

My dear wife stood there and glared her trade-mark glare again, trying one more time to accomplish something she has attempted relentlessly for many years now - convert that semblance of potential energy in me into the kinetic form, early in the morning.  This posturing has been happening a bit too frequently now, as the readers can also vouch if only they chose to go back and refer to some recent posts.  The problem could be that I told her she looked impressive in her `glaring' posture and that compliment may have become an unintended incentive.  Or it is entirely possible that those around her (why should I be the sole culprit?) are slipping up more often in the due discharge of their assigned duties.  This is forcing her to take that patented stand, to yank the offending issues centre-stage, for a mutually acceptable and amicable resolution, obviously aligned with her stated position.  She has been voluble in the past weeks about tiny, mundane issues of routine life causing serious problems to her lately - something I have maintained is an 'antithetical oxymoron'. That morning, another flaming trigger was provided - the gardener has been absent for four days and she wanted me to stir up and be the substitute.  Hence the glaring.

Life teaches you that domestic trouble is par for the course; everybody has an inevitable dose now and then.  No, I am not going to wash dirty linen in public.  Bringing my dear wife into each blog in a sentence or two is more like an invocation I am used to and I do penance for that privately. Actually, that is one of the reasons I have not graduated to something elongated like a novel or increased the frequency of my posts, because there would be seismic consequences for multiple references.  But this is digression -- domestic trouble is par for the course, meaning, problems bundled with having many domestic staff members are manifold too.  And one cannot escape the fate of hiring a gardener, a maid, a driver and a handyman if one has an independent house, a penchant for relative comfort and some disposable income.  Once you become a bulk employer in the neighbourhood with a complement of domestic staff, you cannot avert going into frequent tailspins and sustaining heart-burns, as we will see.

With due recognition of and apologies to the small minority of the tribe which is very punctual, extremely dependable and regular, let me venture to say that one inherently essential attribute of a domestic staff member is the need to take time off frequently and at the most inopportune times, if possible.  Think of that day when your stickler of a boss wanted to borrow your car and driver for an airport drop at an ungodly hour and you had given the driver one month's notice of the impending event.  On the D-day, even as `dawn' is only a vague and distant suggestion in the cold darkness, the driver calls frantically to deliver the shattering news.  That he has to take the first bus to his village to deal with the critical illness of an elder, who is so distantly related that he might as well be in a parallel universe and the driver has to use a worm-hole to reach him!  He is kind enough to return a week later, after you have incurred the red-hot wrath of your boss and are still assessing the extensive damage to your career.  His, the driver's, first lament is lack of liquidity to even feed the family and his request for a hefty advance has to be catered to without demur.  Otherwise, you will be like Arjuna with the bow poised and your Krishna doing an unscheduled vanishing act in Mahabharath.  Only way worse, because those worthies were not stricken by Bangalore traffic at 2.5 kmph peak speed, compounded by the deadly hazardous particulate matter suspended right overhead.

The housemaids, who help our harried wives to hold the edifice together, have their own set of problems - many genuinely do and others pretend that they do.  Invariably - again, there are exceptions, let me state for the record - they seem to be in wedlock with willfully under-employed husbands, if not hopelessly unemployable ones.  One wonders how they all make the same choice!  And, the situation is complicated further by errant, unsupervised children and mothers-in-law made out to be eye-gouging monsters.  Either way, they toil for 48 hours a day as primary bread-winners to support the family - these people deserve to be mentoring investment bankers who seem to work as hard and late into the night, just to rehash the pitch book with no deals in sight. Not just that. To be left alone with their kids to lead their lives, they also provide a decent bribe to their menfolk to imbibe liquor and stay in a state of perennial, stuporous apathy. Confronted with emergencies, this tribe has to take time off and at the extremity, they resort to 'killing' the same non-existent uncles and aunts over and over again, to play on sympathies.  When this becomes too repetitive, our lives face huge disruptions in multiple ways.  Then the employers recognize the importance of maids, just as a freshly minted amputee learns to appreciate a limb of the body which has been forcibly separated.

The flare-up referred to in the first para of this post had come to pass due to our gardener playing truant, to attend his nephew's wedding.  He returned to work 'temporarily' and sought additional indulgence for a niece's marriage. Surely he must have reasoned that one more nephew getting married so soon would have been less acceptable.  When he encountered serious resistance from his multiple masters (poor chap, his was all part time assignments, which meant being reluctantly yoked to too many ploughs simultaneously), he was inventive enough to try something novel.  He came with a bandaged foot (my wife swears there was a tinge of blood visible) and limped his way into our hearts, stating he had a cut with some implement elsewhere and needed medical rehabilitation.  Then he went and told the other part-time benefactor that the unplanned incision occurred in our garden.  When the employers chatted during some perambulatory movement which usually passed for exercise, truth surfaced.  All he wanted was to have his way with time off, which he did.  My wife, without realizing that untrained replacements would actually have a couple of real injuries doing what the gardener does effortlessly, was insisting I literally chip in!!  Readers can hopefully comprehend my reluctance and empathize.

Our community's email platform, just like everywhere else, is fully leveraged by those sending out angry/insistent/pleading/resigned communication (1) seeking new domestic staff because they, the employers do not like the ones they have (2) same as (1) above but the issue being (not stated clearly for obvious reasons) that the domestic staff do not like the employers and have walked out wordlessly (3) levelling minor/major allegations against domestic staff and advising others not to employ them ever in the future at any cost (4) expressing deep disappointment and pain because an immediate neighbour in dire need did precisely the opposite of what was sought in (3), the very next day.  An attempt to compile a list of `undesirable' domestic staff (a blacklist, if you will) didn't see the light of day because there were concerns that (a) employers may manipulate willfully to include names out of anger and unreasonable personal grudge and (b) anyway, the black list would turn grey shortly and lily-white eventually due to the acute shortage of domestic staff.  That should explain why 80% of maids had at some point or other worked at 80% of the homes here.

But, this scribe heard confidentially from reliable sources that the blacklist did not emerge because some of the aggressive domestic staff made it known that if it was indeed published, there would be a retaliatory negative list of employers in the community, with detailed 'inside' information for each.  Now, who wants his/her dirty linen paraded (not even washed) in public, that too by the domestic staff? 





   

Life Is Different For Kids Now!

The last fifty years have seen a transformation in the way kids live their childhood days, if you think about it.  Children of the 60's/70's grew up differently, compared to the current pack, in several ways.  This author would not venture to hazard a statement to the effect that one is better than the other because that is a matter of perspective and personal experience; and also, he knows what is good for him.  The safest way of describing the situation would be to fall back on that TV commercial about Maggi sweet and sour sauce - `it is different'.  To reiterate, this is not an attempt to pass judgement on anything relating to the different generations figuring in this essay.

To begin with, do kids have to go to 'school' at the delicate and vulnerable young age of 3, when they are just attempting to differentiate between home folks and strangers?  This diabolical oh-so-early-to-school conspiracy must have been hatched by a bunch of harried working parents with no family support for managing life's chores, so that they can park the kids in some seemingly safe place for the better part of the day.  We are all sympathetic spectators to the sight of the wailing and flailing child being stuffed into some vehicle which is built to hold only half of its current consignment.  As a post-script to this morning ritual, a concerned parent jogs along the wobbly contraption, administering the final admonition to the driver:`Ensure that she does not fall off in transit'.  With that the lopsided journey into `development' begins for the child and symbolically the vehicle is so overloaded that it is at least entertaining vague thoughts of tilting to one side.  Would the kid be happier to be playing randomly with other children in the neighbourhood, learning a bit in the natural environment, as was the case earlier?  We will have to wait for some elite market research company to publish an investigative  report on this, as there is no known record of kids' preference on this particular issue.

During the later years in school, a veritable rat-race inevitably takes over and all parents are compelled to participate and children are left with no choice.  Earlier, if a child went for tuition, that meant he/she is marginal in a specific subject; today, however good he/she is, tuition classes after the school are de rigueur and are akin to an insurance policy the parents gladly elect to take.  They baulk at the thought of a cynical neighbour or interfering uncle laying the blame squarely at their door if the kid has sub-optimal marks  in a critical test and consequently misses out on, err..... whatever.  Coaching classes for competitive examinations are an incremental burden for the children to carry, making their already bustling lives hectic.  I would love to decipher if these kids miss flying out of homes after  school, playing two or three different games serially every evening and spending a lot of time in the open with friends??  May be not, because they don't know better and they are likely to be satisfied and comfortable with their video games and other in-home entertainment.

When children are a bit more seasoned, say at 5, they begin to take buses to `international' schools (the only determinant factor here is the hefty fees, one would think) which are suitably located farther away.  They spend some 3 hours daily in the commute in some cities, shrivelling in the heat, pollution -- go to school half asleep, bleary-eyed and return almost unconscious! I wish somebody would do a study to see if kids who begin schooling only at 5 or 6 (if this tribe is still around) are any less `successful' in adult life.  It is entirely possible that due to the later start and lack of early use of the brain, they will be something other than software engineers - how bad can that be??  We were able to walk/cycle to school, come home for lunch and be free by 4.30 pm.  This is not to suggest we turned out to be geniuses but at least life definitely was not so painful.  `And that explains a lot', one can hear a representative from the later crop, smirking a bit more than usual.  And my dear wife seem to agree, going by that smile of hers!

The previous generations' males, even the alpha-ones, to the chagrin of their spouses, often betrayed this child-like weakness, a heart-wrenching yearning for their mother's cooking from time to time.  This was the inescapable result of being tied into mom-cooked delicacies consumed avidly till one moved out of home. While there may still be some lingering signs of this now, it may not be as prevalent to be a serious point of friction between the spouses as it used to be.  Obviously the older trend was primarily due to the home-bound eating habits of the family those days.  Restaurant meals were frowned upon, considered unhealthy and it was also an avoidable expense -- except on very rare, special occasions.  Children being blessed with pocket money was a rarity.  Today, kids thrive on restaurant food, aided and abetted by tired and willingly collaborative parents (who themselves are forced to eat out) and they grow to like and prefer that fare.  No blaming the working parents, who understandably have genuine difficulty in catering to all such requirements, while they hurtle back and forth like the shuttle in the weaver's loom.   With due respect to those moms who still engage in cooking for the children without the intervention of external agents, let me say that a majority of the grown-up children living away from parents today are likely to beat a straight line to a favourite restaurant of theirs in their home-town, directly from the train station!!  The good thing is they think that is par for the course.

Take festivals now.  Deepavali always was synonymous with a plethora of sweets and crackers for the earlier generation.  Today, one can see the ironic sight of middle-aged fathers going berserk with explosive crackers and smoking rockets, while their children, big and small, keep protesting from the sidelines about pollution of all sorts and the resultant damage to the earth.  The kids are absolutely right, no doubt, in their `child-is-the-father-of-the-man' behaviour and in thinking that the older generations have actually brought things to this pass.  Having said that, one wonders if even some rejoicing in the traditional way on Deepavali is taboo for these kids!  Dietary restrictions bellowed out by mothers to kids kick in when it comes to consumption of sweets on Deepavali or any other festival day, even as we see fathers nursing bellies of varied sizes, stuffing their mouths with all the goodies.  How life has changed!

One other facet of life has undergone a metamorphosis and that is the family reunions that kids used to enjoy during holidays.  All members of a family enthusiastically congregated every year at the native place and spent a few days in a celebratory and convivial atmosphere; renewing relationships, with the kids enjoying the warm and somewhat exaggerated attention of the elder relatives.  A lot of mirth was on offer during the helter-skelter of group interaction.  Reality today is that many kids sadly do not even know the existence relatives somewhat removed.  Honestly, where is the time when the children are busier with their school schedule than the elders?  When it is time for a vacation, families settle on a fashionable venue in a distant land rather than converging at the native village or town every year.

It would be fantastic to gauge whether kids of today would prefer the other kind of childhood.  But that is going to be well-nigh impossible to fathom.  So, the easier alternative is for the older generations to chew the cud on this and determine whether they would have preferred to live their childhood like today's kids. What say??









  

Online Shopping - Part 2

Dedicated to my youngest reader, who lives around the corner - Anjali Mallena. Thank you, Anjali.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface:  We are all ageing by the day in modern world, so to help those who have become victims of partial or complete amnesia or other related maladies in the intervening two months, here is how the earlier serving on Online Shopping ended: "To be fair, we (meaning, the author's family) do order a few things online nowadays and not many have gone wrong.  (To be continued in Part Two)".......Now, with that bit of restoration having been done, we can move along.

A few months ago, about that time in the morning when this scribe usually enjoys his best sleep, he was shaken up with a fair degree of violence (granted, that was unusual) by his dear wife.  When he woke up all bleary-eyed and flustered, he saw the lady standing by the bed-side, arms akimbo and eyes flashing - a typical posture assumed to signal that all was not well, especially for the individual trying to stir up.  Empirical knowledge oozing from accumulated wisdom and very swift analysis of the stored data relating thereto made the author recognize pronto, the unfriendly environment for what it was, even though he was still coming abreast of the fuller details of early morning existence.   Without a cheery`howdy' or other preliminary niceties, she opened the proceedings in that deliberately 'controlled' (those who are sympathetic to the author may choose to substitute `menacing', without straying too far from the truth) tone she employs to barely conceal irritation and/or disappointment (like Aunt Agatha did with Bertie Wooster).

"What flight did you book my mother on"? she queried.  Even as the victim was mildly bewildered as to why on earth her mother - always calm, kind, truly grounded and soft-spoken - had to take flight, the portends slowly sunk into his brain, which was still crackling out of slumber.  His distressed demeanour, akin to that of the veritable deer-in-the-headlight, must have broadcast his confusion with FM clarity --  that the intake rate and comprehension levels were way below par. For she proceeded to clarify by crisply adding: "Flight from Mangalore"?  Now, you must admit that your author is smart as needles otherwise and vividly captures the picture once adequate pointers are provided by the counterpart; but here he was, labouring below peak form under foggy conditions as he was shifting posture from horizantality to perpendicularity for the first time on the day.  Despite all those handicaps, it all came to him in a flash and he remembered that his mother-in-law and brother-in-law were to fly that morning to Bangalore on tickets booked by himself online earlier.  Masterfully suppressing the trepidation that was rising from his stomach-pit, he managed to mumble  "Why, what happened"?  The response was clear, cold and like the knife gliding through soft butter - "They are at the airport and have been told that their tickets are booked for the same date two months later".  All you need to know is they had to buy fresh tickets at an exorbitant price to fly that day and the author's perilously positioned stock nosedived even further on that side of the family. 

That fiasco came about only because this author did not follow the rigour that online booking of tickets demands, without giving one too much leeway to correct mistakes.  Especially if one had looked high and low for tickets for flexible dates and did not conclude the booking process for some reason.  When you return later to triumphantly seal the best deal of the day, you should not assume that the dates of travel you had in mind are captured correctly on Kayak or Jet Airways, whatever.  Remember, two decades back all this work was thrust on the travel agent, who earned his commission doing this for a job.  Now we tend to go over the top, over-analyzing available options online, simply because the entire airline schedule is at our finger tips, literally.  By the time you experiment with all the permutations and combinations of airline, departure time, date, pricing, auspicious day for travel etc, fatigue sets in and you tend to overlook something critical.   For some reason, while booking this ticket, the wrong date was picked for one leg and the rest was misery for one individual, the booker! It was another story that I had to write 100 times, reminiscent of the imposition in school days - doled out as punishment to atone for some misdeed - that "my mother-in-law was obviously welcome at our home any time"!! 

I had no defence the second time this happened, when at the airport we found that our tickets were again for the wrong date and we had to take an unplanned road trip to Madras. I can assure you that had not even the remotest resemblance to the one Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif enjoy in `Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara'.  Another disaster that strikes when some smart alec tries to play the system endlessly to get the best possible deal. A friend lost the last remaining seats for USA on a good flight because he was avaricious enough to wait overnight.  He ended up paying some 60% extra for the same seats when he woke up next morning.

If that was a date-related goof-up, venue-related hiccup is not far behind.  I booked tickets for a movie recently and we presented ourselves at the box-office at the appointed hour to collect the same.  We were flabbergasted to be told that the movie was not showing in that multiplex at all.  Bristling at this nonsense that they would issue tickets for a no-show, I was preparing for an onslaught when something deep inside me demurred. Before my belligerence got the better of me, I checked the ticket and lo and behold, it was for a multiplex with a similar sounding name belonging to the same group, about 15 kms away.  We grinned in embarrassment and bought fresh tickets for another movie and enjoyed it too.  The redeeming feature was that the loss this time was only Rs.200 for two tickets since it was a morning show!!  It was my imbecility alright, lulled into a comfort zone by the oh-so-familiar online platform; I swear it would not have happened, had I gone to the theatre and booked my tickets like in the good old days.  But, let this scribe declare in unequivocal terms that the immense convenience of the new age process beats the old one hands down, no doubt (especially in booking train/event/bus/airline tickets), so long as one is not averse to face up to the occasional discomfiture resulting from errors of commission and omission.

One thing I intensely dislike about some e-commerce portals is the way refunds are handled, assuming clients are dummies.  Even if you had paid by a credit card earlier, they try to take the mickey out of you by crediting the refund to your account with `them' instead of crediting the card account.  That way they believe they are doing smart business because you have to buy something from them again to use the refunded amount and they are not out of funds at all - dual benefits for them.  Somewhat like the practice of toll booths on highways trying to pay you the balance (change) in `chocolates', when one is not even sure whether you are getting the right value back.  Once, when I got 4 chocolates as change, I tried to give them to the next toll both (belonging to the same company) for the same value.  I had to argue for 5 minutes before they got accepted, not because the attendant was convinced by my argument but because of the persistent honking of the drivers behind!!

Now, let me go back to the first mishap mentioned in this blog, the Mangalore-Bangalore ticket for my mother-in-law. When all the hubbub had subsided and I imagined I was clearly out of the danger-zone, I ventured to politely ask my dear wife as to why none of them (she herself, her brother and mother), who had checked the ticket after booking, picked up the error and got it corrected.  Valid question, you would think?  All I got was a benign stare like the one she usually reserves for one of her less-gifted and errant children in school and she asked blithely `Now, trying to shift the blame, are we'??  I knew better than to answer, because all the people involved were from the other side of the family! 

When God Is Out Of His Depth!!

All of us have probably sympathized with a friend or relative, who has gone through a rather prolonged rough patch in life for an inordinately long time, without any sign of remission on the horizon.  To such an extent that the `patch' seems to expand and envelope the land mass around the victim.  This happens, for instance, when an individual builds a house on a lake-bed which has been bone-dry for half a century just in time for incessant rains and a deluge to destroy it. Then he invests in a transport business, hoping to reap the reward of moving grains after a bountiful harvest, but an unusual diesel shortage and an enforced ban on movement of trucks ruin his chances.  When he decides to sell umbrellas there is drought for a few years and when he chooses money-lending business because he had been a good borrower, he ends up with 50% bad loans. Add to this a weird accident which comes visiting without advance notice and in an unscheduled illness afflicting someone near and dear.  My readers being intelligent and perceptive, would have grasped the lay of the land by now.  There is no reprieve for this chap and when he cries in desperation `Oh God, why are you doing this to me', we tend to soulfully join in the sufferer's bleating plea.  There are only so many blows on the snout that a man can take, you see.  But what if God is in a similar plight?? Where does He look for succour?

During the recent Ganesh Chathurthi festival, as we were stranded in traffic due to that ubiquitous procession with an idol, this author's mind wandered to the aforementioned scenario and his dear wife gave the usual sympathetic and understanding ear to his ramblings.  In that context, he wondered how big the Ganesha idols would end up in about ten years, having grown from 9" in height during his childhood to a mammoth 12' now.  This was an absolutely thoughtless remark, which turned out to be a red rag to the bull of an ecological warrior in my wife and she turned an impassioned orator for one, for the next half hour.  The car was completely stationary, providing a good and helpful platform for this and readers should imagine what happens to a captive audience in such circumstances.  She was almost hoarse by the time she concluded her denunciation of the entire process of the so-called-immersion --recklessly dumping the huge idols in lakes, rivers and miscellaneous water bodies, thereby causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem. There is really no way of knowing whether it was the physical exhaustion or the incapacitated larynx or the emotional drain, which brought the proceedings to a halt, but let us say they cumulatively silenced her then. But I got to hear the left-over, two last paras of the declamation at home in the evening, when she picked up the strain exactly and effortlessly where she left it in the afternoon -- an uncanny ability indeed, you will agree!!

That night I had that strange and bewildering dream! A huge Ganesha idol, lying on His side, half immersed in sea water, some body parts badly damaged in the process of providing entertainment to man during the festivities, was crying out in anguish as to why people do this to Him year after year.  He was carefully holding his trunk aloft above the water level, to avoid inadvertent intake of salt water  -- understandably that was not His favourite beverage either --  just as we do while snorkeling. But doing that for long hours can be physically taxing and so traumatic even for the Gods apparently and Ganesha was close to breaking point....errrr....actually He was pleading to be broken up completely and immersed properly, so that He could get home and rest in peace rather than in pieces. This state of limbo in which He had to dwell for a few days (until people finished with revelry, help arrived and all the idols were disposed of some haphazard way) was roughly the equivalent of people being left struggling and gasping for breath, deep down in the debris of a collapsed building, He said. He wanted to avoid the same nasty predicament in future and looked like he was soliciting ideas.  I must have blabbered something in my sleep, to the effect that if as God He did not know the way out, as a mere mortal, I was damned if I had a clue!! Very cogent for a sleeping man, you would agree.  At this stage, the game was over because my dear wife was shaking me up violently, predictably wanting to gather information as to who I was in conversation with, why and about what.

Really, think of what we do to Ganesha in the name of a celebration.  This spectacle of pandals, processions and immersions are way out of line as far as religion is concerned. They seem to be social manifestations of man's desire to impose his will on God. Otherwise, why would the simple ritual of a half-foot Ganesha idol in clay being piously moved from one's home to the well in the backyard for immersion in 10 minutes become such a farce?  This cannot be called evolution, obviously because everything around the festival has only degenerated over the decades.  Every part in this modern spectacle -- the unreasonable size of idols, the pomp, the collection of money etc, the drunken revelry, the blaring music and the contorted dance movements (the same dance as performed during marriages, funerals and festivals) and finally the damage caused by the immersion process -- should strike a rational community as woefully deviant, if only we pause to think.  One is certainly not against the festival or celebrations but is sad as to how things are done.  Nobody should be surprised if even the Gods are complaining actually.

I remember a story I read somewhere.  Three friends of three different religious denominations, who do not know swimming, go out boating.  In the middle of the lake, the boat suddenly springs a huge leak and begins to take water in.  Everybody prays to his personal God.  Two guys, whose Gods arrive promptly, are saved forthwith from drowning and taken ashore.  The third one, predictably a Hindu, seeks the help of Ganesha.  Lo and behold, Ganesha arrives and begins dancing to some blaring music, on the water around the sinking boat, much to the consternation of the devotee.  When the frightened man questions Ganesha as to why He is not playing the saviour, Ganesha merely says `I am just doing what you people do to me every year'!! The story was not taken to conclusion, but being Ganesha, I am sure He did not let the devotee be `immersed' painfully slowly.

Yes, this author can empathize with Ganesha and fully understand His sentiments. Hopefully people would not wait till He decides to show his anger in some form!  

Online Shopping - Part One

One was not seeking the Holy Grail, which might also have been available online for the seeker with the right kind of profile and thirst!   My quest was for something very rudimentary -- to usher some new kind of light into our lives.  To state simply, to buy some LED bulbs, after being bombarded with messages through multiple media sources about the Modi government's initiative.  Whether the Light Emitting Diode bulbs eventually become the rage to brighten our Prime Minister's face or not,  the mind-boggling process I went through did emit reasonable quantum of weariness to stir me.

As one who prefers the conventional touch-and-feel as well as show-and-tell kind of shopping, my first attempt was to pull out one of the normal bulbs and show to the chap at the electrical goods store and ask for an LED bulb to replace that.  He peremptorily dropped a couple of customers he was handling, with a thud too and came rushing to me.  His over-solicitude made me wonder if I was myself emitting some irresistible halo!  It turned out he hadn't had too many people hankering after the stock of expensive LED bulbs in which he seemed to have tied up sizeable capital.  When he saw a window of opportunity opening ajar, he pounced on me and laid it on me thick.  But the price he quoted for various brands, ranging from Rs 230 to 650 for one bulb, not only confused me but made my antenna shoot up sharply in defence.  No wonder, he was unable to reduce that particular part of his inventory, I thought and beat a hasty retreat.  Where is Rs 20 for a normal bulb and Rs 500 for this novelty -- sounded outrageous.  Just because the latter is likely to last 25 years; (the 650 one boasts of longevity beyond that) -- neither the seller nor the buyer (in this case) may be alive to even validate that exalted claim!!  When I later voiced my disappointment to a younger, technology-driven friend, about not contributing to the government's effort towards a laudable cause, true to his age and approach to life, he suggested I go online to shop for LED bulbs cheap. I should have known better; that was the beginning of my problems.

One essential prerequisite for a successful e-commerce experience is thorough and absolute knowledge of what one wants - including minute specifications.  In the absence of that, the buyer is asking for a rude awakening and will only get frustrated with the run-around he gets, as can be evidenced by this one.  Going to that amazing e-commerce platform, I chanced my arm to buy LED bulbs - straightforward enough on the surface.  What I saw in response to my input of  'LED bulbs' beggared belief - there was a flurry of activity and there were 348 items displayed.  The first 45 had something to do with LED bulbs of assorted descriptions.  What followed were not even remotely connected to bulbs!!  Realisation quickly dawned that it was just not adequate to differentiate between screw type and pin type bulbs, because the site angrily demanded further edification regarding E14 or E27 - specs relating to the size of the screw that goes into the holder.  One felt shrinking further with embarrassment because one had no clue about the basics of the particular bulb being used for decades; and the bulb itself coyly refused to divulge where it belonged! Extensive research and visual reviews of actual bulbs and pictures from the site, induced in me the feeling that I was stumbling from terrifying wilderness to somewhere in the bewildering ballpark.  After a few more hiccups in deciding the wattage (suddenly all the known wattages were being rapidly diminished to single digits), the colour (cool white or yellow?) and other paraphernalia, the moment of truth arrived as the order was placed.  The buyer was over the moon thinking the ordeal was over, only to discover it was only baptism in the first stage of the ordeal!

Are you crazily interested in knowing whether your bulb is somewhere between two localities in the city, the names of which you have never heard before? Or do you really want the 16-digit tracking number the e-commerce site keeps throwing at you via email or SMS, just so that you can find out whether the first bulb of the four you have ordered has moved a couple of feet in a day?  As if the spam one gets in the in-box is insufficient! Then came the personal touch - a very pleasant and beaming voice over the phone announced that the light of your life would be arriving the next day between noon and evening (that helps!).  Being our first LED bulbs, my dear wife and I parked ourselves near the door and waited with bated breath, to be blinded by their unconcealed radiance.  To our chagrin, the same pleasant voice soothingly told us later that the bulbs had lost their way and would be delayed - we were almost devastated as we moved away from our stoic positions for the afternoon.  The next day brought unadulterated joy in the form of the bulbs ordered.  My dear wife quickly extracted the bulbs and examined them.  Alas, she found to our collective dismay that as against the order for 4 yellows we got 2 yellows and 2 cool whites.  She had categorically and unequivocally stated `cool white' was anathema.  She glowered at me as if  she was accusing me of having appended an offending coded signal to the supplier, altering her command behind her back .  And when her anxious attempt to use the yellow bulb in one of our table lamps turned out to be a miserably failing engineering feat, we realised that the two yellows were pin types, just the opposite of what we had ordered. So, still there was no new light!!

If you had noticed, all the e-commerce sites boast that they have a superlative `return' policy and process.  It seems reasonable to ask them whether handling returns was their primary business since they are highlighting that with such pride.  But the way our first order went lucidly explained the mystique behind the hype about the `returns handling' prowess of the e-commerce retailers to a wet-behind-the-ear shopper.  It almost seemed they were trying to demonstrate to us why it was more important to show chutzpah in dealing with the returns than take reasonable care to make the right delivery in the first place!  After another iteration of the latter part of the above process over the next few days, we finally got a few of our lights lit up with LED bulbs. Something we could have done in five minutes after that shopkeeper offered to sell that high priced bulb to me, if I had gone with the conventional option, my dear wife said with a smirk.  But one learns!!

 To be fair, we do order a few things online nowadays and not many have gone wrong.

(To be continued in Part Two)

                  

We Indians Are Always In Touch!

When we were young, we eschewed contact sports -- football, hockey, etc. since we were just about alright with our own sweat and were averse to sponging off others'.  So, we focused on all other ball games and favoured cricket, tennis, table tennis, badminton. Ever since, during all these years, as a cricketer I have never had any body contact with another cricketer (except for hand-shakes and the like) -- well, almost never. I will be less than honest if I do not record the major exceptions.  Once in college, as I was standing up to a leg spinner as wicket keeper, the burly batsman used his brute force to take an exaggerated swing with the bat after stepping back deep inside the crease and made successful contact with the bridge of my nose.  A similar instance recurred recently in our weekly community cricket game and my glove was the beneficiary of contact this time. Needless to say, in both cases, the batsmen did not touch the ball but were nevertheless hugely satisfied with what they thought were better results.  I can visualise some of you shaking your heads in disagreement.  Yes, technically, these were not body contacts.  But you know what I mean.  Those days, we were too young to read any other major significance into our choice of sports.

 Now, after 40 years, this author harks back and sees a great message and a massive irony in that.  Without displaying this on any psychedelic panel, our youth was preparing us for a future full of contact -- unrelenting, unavoidable and frequently unpleasant at that -- with our tribe at every single turn of life, right and wrong. We were being shielded from too much of contact then because a gigantic dose of that `contact' was awaiting us in a bustling existence, with maddening crowds and sobering queues being hallmarks.  Only that we did not recognize the signs then and thought we were engaged in gentlemen sports, by choice!! You dig??  Let us revisit some normal, day-to-day experiences to illustrate what this scribe means.

You are in a movie theatre, in a line waiting to wave that omnipotent cell phone at the clerk there, which act would materialise the tickets.  You are third or fourth in line, even though there is a larger crowd milling around the counter space, because each person in front has some four friends jostling around.  Why are they in the queue? -- aha, there lies the rub - literally.  To provide that inevitable contact experience.  You derive some solace from the fact that there is none behind you, but not for long.  Soon, a couple joins the queue and the experience gets more intense forthwith.  The guy behind is talking to his girlfriend and he has to turn some 75 degrees to do this.  He is loathe to provide that tiny space required for him to turn without touching you and this is not for want of space behind him. So every time he has to do some koochikooing (this happens some 30 times in 5 minutes) he will nudge your back - left side first for a start and then to restore balance and equity, right.  All the time, blissfully unaware of the discomfiture he is causing.  When you have had enough, you turn around fully and stare at him after the 10th nudge.  He smiles at you benevolently and says a pleasant 'sorry' but still does not make the necessary allowance in space to avoid further unpleasant contact. This goes on till you tell him testily that you are not waiting to be touched.  Then he looks at you as if sympathising with a loser and responds patronisingly `I told you, I am sorry'!  Your experience might be enhanced qualitatively if the pre-movie ritual for such guys is a good meal of dishes generously laden with onion and garlic.  In that case, when they are finished with you, you have a had a glorious time bathing in that exhilarating smell and your shirt will have to go for dry cleaning (preferably with you in it!).  Sounds familiar?

Someone pushing a trolley at the airport is another scenario, loaded with immense potential.  Even as you are careful to avoid bumping into the person in front, the one at the back will, after some preliminary manoeuvres,  run the trolley's front wheels generously between your legs.  Making you go wide-angled suddenly and also making it difficult for you to steer your own trolley properly, resulting in your jamming the guy in front.  Others are somewhat considerate and avoid pestering you with the trolley wheels, but they have billowing suitcases spilling out of their trolleys which do the job.  So, when they push forward, that extra large suitcase is always in contact with you (yes, all this is not direct, but vicarious contact), caressing you now, nudging you a little later and then when they lose it a bit, hitting you behind the knee and making you buckle.  Through this process too?

One boards the aircraft after the customary jostling in the aero-bridge or the bus + ladders, as the case may be and feels somewhat relieved.  The tension abates.  But then one forgets a couple of scenarios, which are likely to resurrect the pain.  Inside the aircraft, moving along the aisle you are forced to notice that the lady in front of you, travelling alone with an infant in hand, has sprouted bags all around her.  In the Indian scheme of things, excess baggage payment is an insult to intelligence and therefore taboo. So, whatever cannot be stuffed violently into the checked-in bag, will be strung around the persons boarding the flight.  More so, if you have an infant, even though the cabin bags cumulatively have 50 gms of milk and two diapers intended for the kid and nothing more. This scribe can venture into a guess as to what the rest of the baggage is but will pass so that he does not incur the wrath of women, represented by, you know who!  Now, this lady has to move to the end of the aircraft, some 28 rows down, with the infant wriggling in one hand, a trolley bag on the other hand, a tote bag on the shoulder and her own personal bag hanging magically from somewhere.  And no, she does not know her seat number and has her boarding pass somewhere inside one of the bags.  Now she will swing to this side looking for it, hitting you gently in an introductory attempt. Then to that side, to the other bag, hitting more of you.  Even without the excuse of an infant, there are people who carry backpacks and tote bags big enough to hold another passenger inside and bulldoze their way. When such people are passing, if you happen to be in one of the aisle seats, you may possibly get a couple of bruises when they find that either they can pass or their bags can, but try to make it all go together nevertheless!!

We can go on and replicate the scenario in a wedding hall, waiting to bless the couple or be blessed with a meal.  Or inside a lift when people are seriously trying to prove that the maximum capacity indicated is wrong.  This happens all the time in India but outside you do not see much of this.  My tut-tutting wife says `less people and more space', is the reason. May be. But I still think this has something to do with where we come from and our ethos. Recently, my dear wife and I were returning from Sri Lanka. At the Bangalore airport, behind us was a foreigner (turned out to be Britisher) who surprisingly was behaving like he fulfilled all the `local' requirements, pushing the trolley quite aggressively into me.  He apologised when I asked him to stay back a bit and he did.  Later on he disclosed that he had been living in Sri Lanka and India for a long time and loved the climate, people and the bustle.  That explained a lot, my smiling wife told him pleasantly with a smirk!

Force Majeure, Indian Way

During childhood, we used to be vaguely amused by a neighbourhood dog starting a barking concert whenever the moon appeared large in the sky, closer to full-moon days. This conductor-dog commenced the music with a few others soon joining the chorus and the orchestra had a raucous run for about thirty minutes.  Then, drained by their effort and absolutely baffled by the unyielding moon, which refused to acknowledge them in any way, they curled up and went to sleep. That was a ritual which recurred with amazing regularity for a number of years and we sought some edification from our parents once.  We were told that probably the lead-dog had been witness to some tragic event earlier, which took place when the moon was shining in all its glory.  What we were frequently witnessing was apparently a visceral reaction to something from the past.  Someone else told us that the reason why a dog chases speeding cars, all the time barking the head off, is that a mate might have been killed by one such car.  This hot pursuit is an act of retribution, even if it does not affect the car or occupants in any way, much like the moon in the other episode.

Why this random talk of dogs and their sporadic acts of angst??   Recently, that erudite gentleman and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor who famously said `My name is Raghuram Rajan (RR) and I do what I do', decided to walk away from a possible second term.  This, despite his stellar first tenure of three years which saw India gaining stability and respect in the eyes of the whole world.  Not being privy to all the cloak-and-dagger action behind the scenes, pundits nevertheless generated all kinds of scenarios and dissected everything in sight, to arrive at their own concoction of what happened.  That was inevitable anywhere, but mandatory in India, where absolutely inane and puerile utterances by even low-lifes become eminently newsworthy.  Such bilge tends to occupy prime TV space for a week in some ten channels in multiple languages, keeping a bunch of otherwise unemployed and self-appointed celebrities pretending to be very busy!!

One very observant friend opined that all those loose barbs and unsubstantiated accusations by a senior ruling party member must have got RR's goat and he must have said in disgust `enough is enough'.  But, when one accepts a political assignment (the RBI governor is appointed by the Prime Minister), one cannot be super sensitive to criticism because you are in public domain; with all kinds of quasi experts mindlessly churning out their home-grown theories and palliatives while you are trying to prescribe some effective antidote to a real malady.  One should also be acutely aware of the powder keg (political pressure and consequent unpredictability) that is strapped to one's back for the duration of the assignment. Not being cognizant of that would be naivete bordering on stupidity.  RR, being neither naive nor stupid, was not decamping because of some loud, insane barks here and there -- he would not have expected unadulterated adulation sans any criticism for all his actions as RBI governor.  So, why was he not being the veritable moon, glowing down indifferently on the source of all the commotion below, unperturbed??  Running away like a wimp due to the vicious carping of a few, RR was not - that clearly militated against the personality involved.  Something more at play??  The choice of the specific high-decibel critic (not a petty politician, but another scholar and a respected individual in many quarters) and the fact that there was no serious effort to rein him in would lend credence to there being, what else..... Force Majeure??  More importantly, was there a moon-dog kind of relationship between the protagonists of this drama?  One never knows.

Another dear friend, who does not dole out opinions loosely, helpfully added that meritocratic bureaucrats like RR (not being pachyderms like seasoned politicians), deserve to be nurtured and protected by the political establishment instead of being exposed to random allegations as RR was.  That is required, if we want to see the rise of meritocracy in the government.  No doubt.  This implied that the Government itself was not keen on retaining RR for a second term, so it did not make any effort to shut down the shrill critical voices, exacerbating the situation and resulting in the current imbroglio.  The fact that the government wasted precious little time in saying adios to RR and began its search for the replacement pronto suggests that the vicious campaign in public might have been orchestrated from elsewhere.  Obviously RR was aware of the various sub-plots boiling and the build-up to this denouement must have started long back.  That would explain his gentlemanly exit on to the high ground.  But this author does not support the `protection is needed' theory.  People like RR are in position because of their ability to lead with their intellect and skills.  They invariably end up doing things their way, even if they are out of whack with the political managers' expectations and compulsions.  RR would have got protection if he, like a loyal political appointee, had probably moderated his focus on inflation to let interest rates fall earlier and more, because then he would have done the bidding of the government.  That would have helped the government to gloat that `good days are back'.  But, that would have been out of character for RR!!  By the same token, he would not have expected protection either??  So, Force Majeure, it probably was??

Talking of protection of a meritocrat who was intent on hacking his own blazing path forward, this scribe is reminded of the former Chief Election Commissioner, T.N.Seshan (TNS).  This gentleman was so focused on leaving his own individual stamp and imprimatur on the way elections were conducted in India, he did not think anything of turning against the same party (and all the other parties that were part of the system) which appointed him in the first place.  His rebellion against his political bosses was so severe in the context of elections that the latter pushed for a couple of legislations aimed only at bringing him to his heels, but did not succeed.  Could RR have followed that path?  Well, he is not cut out from the same cloth as TNS, when it comes to pugnacity, belligerence and a devil-may-care attitude, even though betterment of the system was/is their common objective.  RR, being suave and classier, reacted in his own way, by taking himself out of the scene whereas TNS continued to bulldoze the system against all odds.  May be the options were just not there for RR - Force Majeure definitely?  Then there is the case of Manmohan Singh - a supreme meritocrat, if there was one, in his earlier avatar.  But he contrived to compromise himself so seriously at every turn subsequently that all the lustre (and may be, a bit of his skin too) came off by the time he ended his career as the Prime Minister!!

Well, the damage is done and the goose is cooked, as my dear wife says, in terms of an embarrassing spectacle for the country, while simultaneously asserting that nobody is indispensable (meaning RR) and the politicians were always botching things up.  Pithy summary. She supports RR clearly in that development should not be seen purely in terms of generation of new jobs but it should also ensure that those struggling with god-given and man-made poverty at the bottom of the pyramid do not get stricken further by rising costs spiraling out of control.  Now, this author, even though not as smart as RR, knows what is good for him and he agrees completely, since this is a known Force Majeure closer home!!!