Onward Bound!

Every time I prepare to go off on a longish jaunt I have these tender visions of keeping the last few hours before departure, the last few moments before venturing out into the big bad world, to reminisce about my life and the people in it, and saying goodbye to friends and getting sentimental and making the kind of future plans one is never sure of working out. And then invariably, those last days and hours are spent, not in serenely contemplating the journey ahead or what has gone before, but simply in turning the house upside down, looking for something or other which I desperately need to take with me. Eg an air pillow for the long flight; a light weight shopping bag for groceries; knick knacks I bought for some kids the previous year which I suddenly remember that I should take along at least this time. And then “Where did I keep that damned travelling hairbrush?! What about batteries for my alarm clock? Why has it conked out now? Those batteries are hardly a year old!”

Then there’s stuff to be collected, which I ought to have done ages back but forgot due to the pressures of everyday life, eg. a table lamp which stopped working three weeks after I’d bought it. Of course, now with all the last minute chaos caused by the latest terrorist plot to kill the world, I have been largely occupied with questions like, how will I be able to clean my hands on the aircraft without soap? Will they allow me to carry a pen drive or is that also considered a potential ingredient in the manufacture of explosives? How about ordinary ball point pens? Heck, those terrorists are anyway so smart, some day they will figure out how to make bombs out of spit and other body fluids, so that for each passenger the airlines will have to employ a guard and you’ve just got to hope that the guard is not himself/herself on the payroll of the terrorist faction.

So I leave you for a while with these cheerful thoughts, to join Suhail and Shasha in Paris for a couple of days, who have promised to greet us with the usual assortment of wine and cheese and good things of life. (I feel guilty even thinking about it now, in view of the “serious predicament” the world is in.) Hope to keep this blog and Basicindia going during the journey but in case of long gaps, you will know that I didn’t have access to the net.

The Day of The Mosquito

Our lives are being taken over. First the bomb blasts, then raging floods in the state and as if that weren’t enough we are now being invaded by squadrons of mosquitoes! From zero or close to zero count in the last months, the mosquito count in our flat as shot up to several hundreds. They are everywhere, shoving their evil little faces into your skin and sucking your blood like the parasites they are. And whining while they’re about it. Hell. You can’ even sit peacefully in the bathroom any more and commune with nature – unless you consider mosquitoes also a part of nature. (Though not quite the part you would choose to communicate with, I’m sure).

If biting was the only thing that mossies did, well I would accept it with grace. But on top of biting you and leaving you scratching yourself in the most undignified manner they pass on deadly diseases like encephalitis and malaria, which more than a couple of friends have been recently struck with. The latest victim has been my friend Mandira’s sister, Rotna whose new pet Beagle puppy I believe is looking after her and nursing her back to good cheer if not good health.

I don’t know of any truly effective means to keep these damn pests away. Smoke, mosquito repellent – we’ve tried it all but their effectiveness is limited. Maybe someone has a special mosquito mantra that will help to drive away those little whiners? If so please share your gyan.

The joys of mud:
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How To Create A Sensation

Unhappy Psychiatrist (or psychologist?) gesticulating her indignation at the Art Gallery


“Tits, Clits and Elephant Dicks” was the title of this art show presented recently at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay, by artists Vaishali Narkar and Sanjeev Khandekar. I have to say that the subject didn’t interest me enough to actually make the effort to go and take a look but I did read some reviews of it – both good and bad. Even the reviews were not nearly half as interesting, though, as the reaction to the show by a local psychiatrist in her late forties, who goes by the name of Pushp Vhijula. In the photograph I saw of her, she was angrily waving her arms while presumably talking to the press. In one newspaper report she was introduced as a psychiatrist but in the next one, in the same newspaper, she was said to be a psychologist. To Indians it is all the same I suppose. Psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist. All of them are considered “psychos”.

This woman at any rate, was so incensed by what she saw that she actually lodged a complaint against the show at the Colaba police station. The police instantly swooped down on the gallery and ordered the artists to COVER THE PAINTINGS. In spite of their protests and other artists protesting I gather they had to follow orders and maybe it got them even more publicity than they would normally have got because in a newspaper photograph I saw a visitor, a woman that too, lifting the veil of a painting to peer at its unholy contents.

Meanwhile dear old Pushp V. frothing at the mouth, revealed in an interview how, back in school they were rapped on the knuckles for even using slang. She was too shocked and embarrassed by the paintings at Jehangir to even mention the name of the show.

I dread to think of what kind of psychiatrist or psychologist Ms. V must make. Or to think what she must be doing to her clients. Does she forbid them from using any words during the sessions, which are even vaguely related to this unmentionable act which is mostly at the source of life?

I always had a suspicion that a good number of professionals in the field of mental health were themselves basket cases. This incident at the Jehangir Gallery kind of proves it. Unless of course - god forbid - the artists actually employed the woman as some kind of publicity agent to organise the kind of press coverage for them which they ended up getting!!!

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Shopping Spree

Once every few weeks or couple of months the gals and I go shopping. The gals are mainly Saru and Parvati (Paru) who look after the house and Asha who is our Wonder Cook. This time Saru, Asha and I went off to Dadar at Asha’s suggestion. One of the busiest shopping centres in town. These days, I was told, the crowd has eased off, the pavement hawkers have been shunted off elsewhere so that one can actually walk on the pavements. But it is still pretty crowded and the wealth of shops standing cheek by jowl are apt to stun you so you don’t quite know what to buy or what to even look at.

There are shops selling children’s clothes, towels, underwear, ladies garments, gents’ suits, plastic ware, fruit and vegetable sellers and all kinds of stuff. I was looking for some lightweight and handy presents to take with me on my trip to Europe and Asha was looking for a baba suit for her grandson which she finally found after two hours of traipsing around. I zeroed in on a bagful of very colourful scarves which I felt very tempted to keep myself. In fact I often end up keeping presents I have bought for other people - which intrigues Asha no end. When she helps me to clean out my cupboard for example, she will turn a brown paper bag upside down and out pop a whole lot of little brass figurines or carved wooden pocket mirrors or handbags and she says “But I thought you bought these to give away when you went to Germany last year!” So I look at her foolishly and say that I am planning to take them this year and she catches me out with, “But then why did you shop for those scarves this year if you had all this stuff left over?!”

Saru was very amused at the way Asha made me trudge around the place, manoeuvre broken down pavements and hop over ditches and muddy spots. At the end of it all when we were ready to go home the gals went and bought some samosas for tea and decided that for once I deserved to go home and put my feet up and enjoy my evening tea.

July 30th

Goodies for the deceasedSunday 30th was the anniversary of my grandmother Nalinima's death. Actually we had quite forgotten but Tukaram and Parvati reminded us about it and said they would like to observe it with a puja. We just needed to be there for the ritual lunch. On this day, the dead person's favourite foods are prepared and put on a thali which is then laid out in the garden as an offering for the crows.

There is a small ritual where each of us is expected to show respect to the departed one by sprinkling a little of the red kumkum and some other powders, uncooked rice and water onto the plate before it is kept out. So we did all that and settled down to eat. The lunch was delicious - Nalinima's favourite dishes. There was a dal, some plain dosas with kofta curry, "patrado" which is made out of the leaf of the banana plant, sweet kheer. Quite a spread.



Saru, Parvati and Tukaram

Back again!

Oh it feels goooood to be able to connect once again with the world - to be able to say what one wants to, to be able to access one's own and other people's blogs. It's like being able to breathe again. Hallo Hallo Hallo!

I am now set up in the study in my grandmother's flat. Earlier this used to be a bedroom but now it has become the computer and TV room. Parvati and Saru who work here are fascinated by what I do and spend hours standing behind me, watching me key in data or fool around with the mouse. It is really testing my patience but I decided to keep quiet and to be good about it. At some point I presume they will tire of gaping at me open mouthed and retire to their own stuff.

The room overlooks the main road and is raaather noisy. Cars and taxis honking furiously as they speed down the road. I am much more in touch with "the spirit of Mumbai" here than I was back home, where we were sheltered from the outside road, cocooned as we were by the sea.

Weird stuff

The blogs are still down but this morning I read about a site, in the Indian Express, which helps you to access blogs which are blocked. This is http://www.pkblogs.com/

I tried it just now and was able to access the laidbackrebel blog (hosted by blogspot) but not basicindia as yet. I’m still reeling from what the government has done to us. The way it has arbitrarily snatched away the basic right to express oneself. It’s a little bit like making sure that the pen with which you write doesn’t contain any ink or that the paper on which you’re writing fails to show up words. I guess our leaders must feel they are mature enough to decide what is good for us and what should or should not be spoken about, even as they shout each other down, plot each other's downfall, throw chappals, tomatoes and rotten eggs at each other in the assembly.

Such weird things have been happening in the past couple of weeks. First the downpour which paralysed transport in certain parts of the city, then the bomb blasts which paralysed our nerves, now our blog sites being blacked out and made inaccessible. According to Mandira who is staying at the “other apartment” at the moment (my grandmother’s which I am doing up) all this has to do with my placing the beds wrong. I have rearranged the beds in a north south direction which M claims is disastrous in every way – disastrous for my body, for my soul and probably for the country as well.

Actually it is the government that should be calling in the Feng Shui experts to place cupboards and tables and filing cabinets and tea pots in the right place so that the country can get back on track.

Modern madness

Enough has been said about the bomb blasts last Tuesday so I don’t want to add to the platitudes with which we have already been flooded. About the “spirit” of Mumbai and how “we will win the war against terrorism” among other things. What is now apparent at least to me is a sort of delayed reaction to the violence. A spirit of despondence. A pall of gloom along with a desperate attempt not to acknowledge it. A denial of any sense of tragedy. This is what is really behind the so-called spirit of the city, isn’t it? True, in the moment of need hundreds responded with gallantry and genuine kindness as they have so often done in the past. Vendours close to the site of the blasts, handed out free cups of tea to the people who had come to search for missing friends and relatives, chemists doled out medicines free of cost, incurring a loss of thousands of rupees. My friend Suresh who lives in Bhayander together with his friends, redirected passengers looking for a way around the mounds of debris on the platforms.

Crises always summons up a fighting spirit but as soon as the moment of crisis itself has passed, the aggression returns, our lives are once again jammed with frenzied comings and goings behind which you sense a fierce resistance to any sort of looking inward, a search for a new lifestyle. Fear of facing the isolation and sense of alienation of which terror and violence is an outcome.

The city is too full of noise. Our heads are filled with noise. Most people here can’t be still for a single minute. The air is filled with tension, a neurotic effort to evade reality. In view of the situation the theme of our last workshop seems to have been just the right one. Strangely we had fixed it weeks before the blasts occurred. Conflict. For more, go on to the basicindia site:

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India - Global Superpower?

“Unfortunately the harsh reality is that if India succeeds in establishing a just and fair society, it can definitely kiss all its dreams of becoming a global economic superpower goodbye.”

The statement above does not reflect my own thinking. I am not making it up either. I actually read it in the Times a few days ago in the Letters to the Editor section.

This was the response of one Diana Pinto, to an article by Swaminathan Aiyar Anklesaria, a commentator on the economic scene in India. In his article, Swaminathan Aiyar put forward the view that unless India first did something to iron out the economic inequalities and establish a higher standard of living all round, we would not get ahead as a nation.

So as you can see, it is possible to look at the whole business of equality and exploitation from quite another perspective as Ms. Pinto (whoever she is) shows us. If we want to become a global superpower we have to overlook the fact that three quarters of India’s population is still scrabbling for two square meals a day, that millions of people are grossly underfed if not actually starving, that millions more are suffering from diseases caused by malnutrition and so on.

Among the views that this reader puts forward is that all super economies are based on the exploitation of the majority and that suffering is good for the soul and encourages people to strive harder. Hmmm. That’s food for thought, no? If we want to be a superpower – and Ms Pinto seems to be all for it – we will have to just overlook thousands of farmers who have committed suicide on account of their failed crops, overlook the gross injustice we see all round us, forget about fair wages and just about everything else that distinguishes a civilised nation from the barbarians.

Even as I’ve been writing this a super idea has infiltrated my brain. If we are talking of destroying individuals and human values to become a global superpower, which is what many businessmen and politicians apparently want – something that will make them feel PROUD to be Indian - maybe we should get someone to help us with a job which our own politicians have started on and so far carried quite successfully – though what they lack it sometimes appears, is brute strength, stamina and the final bit of stupidity needed for the job. Which is why I am thinking maybe they should call on Dubbya some time at the White House and ask him for a helping hand. Having accomplished so much in the department of destruction and injustice in the attempt to retain America's superpower status, he wont mind sharing some useful tips.

Open Space:
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Rain Diary - more of the (squelchy) same

Saru in her orange raincoat bringing us our dinner from grandmother's place (where the kitchen continues to function)

July 4th

Today is the third day of the downpour. The sky continues to frown on us and the latest news is that the roads are all clogged and traffic is moving at a pace slower than a snail's. Glad I'm in here, not out there. Poor Tuks has got caught though. Tukaram is our odd job boy - our Man Friday - the most important guy in this family's joint lives. He fixes our electrical problems, our plumbing (when he can), my computer occasionally and today he fixed our DVD player whose connection with the TV seemed to have been screwed up. Then he went off to help someone else with cleaning out the water with which their flat had got flooded and just five minutes back his wife called to ask what time he had left here. Well I didnt like to tell her it was a while back. Hope he doesn't have to wade through mucky water to get home.

The horror stories of last year are still making the rounds - how during the floods last July over a hundred people died, through being trapped in their modern cars or just drowned because the water in many areas was more than neck deep.There is not a soul in the compound at the moment other than Govind the sweeper, togged up in a bright yellow raincoat and rubber slippers, gathering up all the rubbish which people chuck down from their windows and dumping it into the garbage bin. Govind is asthmatic and always looks quite ill - now more so since he has begun to sport a seven day growth. But he gets around,is immensely cheerful and says "Please" and "Thenk Yew" at the drop of a hat. Have to remember to give him money for his months supply of medicines.

Off to have a little post lunch snooze now. and now that the DVD's fixed maybe I'll watch a film later this evening.

5th July

Watched a pretty dumb movie on TV last night: Legally Blond. Just the kind of thing for rainy weather though. In between I kept hopping channels to catch the local news and saw shots of waterlogged areas in Bombay and cars being stuck in several feet of muddy water, urchins screeching and jumping around in the rain, commuters trapped in traffic jams. One of the municipal corporators being interviewed by a belligerent anchorwoman bumbled and fumbled and err-ed and ah-ed through the questions she shot at him about the state of the city's roads and drainage system.

The sky has still not cleared up. Grey clouds continue to obscure the view. The buildings across the bay which normally loom up like Frankenstein’s monsters are invisible today. And when it rains it comes down in sheets. The papers this morning have life size pictures of people wading through streets which have turned into rivers. But .... yes Tuks our Man Friday reached home safe around four o'clock in the afternoon yesterday and not only that, has actually turned up for work again today. I told him to bring a change of clothes and that if the rain continued he should probably stay overnight rather than risk falling down a manhole! Half of Bombay is sick. Either coping with bad stomachs or with the flu. My mother is slowly recovering from a three day bout of cold and fever. Today is the first day I see her up and pottering around again and dispensing advice on various things.

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Indian Monsoon

It is raining. Whenever I decide to get off my ass and do something outdoors it starts to POUR. Sushama says the government should hire me out to drought prone places. All I have to do, is go there, pick on a time to go shopping and voila! Rain clouds appear, lightening streaks across the sky and the gods empty down buckets of water. And going out in the rains here, isn't at all entertaining, because it comes down in sheets, floods the roads and you find yourself picking your way through streams of water whose source is most dubious. Part of it is pure rainwater of course but it is partly also gutter water. The gutters are always overflowing during the rains. And I know of more than one person who fell down an open manhole.

For some reason manhole covers always get displaced regardless of whether it is raining or not. One of the people who fell down such a hole is my uncle B.D. Though we split our sides laughing to hear him relate the episode, some weeks later, I dont think he could have enjoyed it very much. One girl recently fell down a manhole and would have been carried off by the stream of gutter water but she managed to claw her way to the surface and to scramble out, presumably covered with shit from head to toe.Well, that is Bombay. It has stopped drizzling now and I am going to venture out. Will write about what happens in my next blog!

check out basicindia's calender july to december 2006
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Putting Things in Order

Am super busy at the moment. A new feeling for me because most of the time I tend to be so laidback with enough time to sit and look out of the window and contemplate the world and all that. In the last few days, Sushama (my friend from Delhi who is staying with me at the moment) and I have been shopping for chairs and rugs and table lamps and all kinds of odds and ends to get the flat in shape by the 2nd of July which is when we have our first workshop there.

Meanwhile another friend, Rotna has donated me a mattress which folds up neatly into a sofa, which I've placed against the wall near the standard lamp. The major change will happen when the TV set is moved to the front room which I am going to use as my office room, making space for people to lie down for the meditations.

Am learning to be orderly and to do first things first. The new stereo has been set up and it sounds quite good - its is actually a set of five way speakers with a subwoofer (quite cheap) as a stand by. I just connect my MP3 player to it. The Real Thing will be installed when I return from Europe in October, by which time the monsoon will be over.

Sushama is really enthusiastic about doing up the place and has millions of suggestions on where to place what, where to buy stuff, whom to ask about getting furniture made. If I remember to I'll take my camera along today and take some photos of how the living room looks just now though it is still far from being complete.

Basicindia calendar of events July to December 2006 :
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Shopping in Bombay

Big Bazar was one of the first malls to be set up in Bombay a few years ago, in the area which used to formerly belong to a whole row of cotton mills which closed down. (Phoenix Mills compound as it is still called). At the time it was something to marvel at because it was one of the first supermarkets with trolleys like they have in shops in Europe. Till then shops tended to be rather poorly stocked and one had to depend on one’s visits abroad or to catch hold of friends going to Europe or America to bring back stuff you needed. But in recent years all that has changed and most of what is available outside India is also available here. You could saunter around for example, gazing at a variety of products ranging from kitchen ware to cosmetics and food. Our cook Asha was very impressed by it.

Today Bombay is crawling with malls and Big Bazar seems like a poor cousin compared to the fancier ones like "Atria" which Asha and I visited the other day, for kicks. Simbly. If nothing else we got an afternoon's worth of exercise strolling around the arcade. Much of it is still unfinished and whatever stuff is on sale is horrendously expensive. A lot of it was clothes. Jeans and tops and salwaar kameezes. The number of clothes shops never fails to astound me, for example around where I live there are hardly any good restaurants, hardly any good stationary shops or places to get down to earth stuff but - there are millions of shoe shops and clothes shops. You sometimes get the idea that in India the upper classes don’t eat food, they eat yards of silk and georgette and spangled jhig-mig saris.

Well, walking around Atria, Asha and I came across a store selling chairs. Reclining massage chairs. We decided to walk in and find out how much they cost and discovered that the cheapest one was like Rs. 90,000 and the price went up to Rs. 300,000. When the salesman tried to persuade us to just "try them out" Asha and I burst out laughing and slowly but surely backed out, saying we would definitely visit again. Like hell.

On the way down we joked about it. A small apartment in the suburbs would cost that much, we figured. I said to Asha, maybe we could turn the chair into a small portable apartment, you know, two people could squeeze themselves in the space under it and two could sit on it. It might just about hold a family of four. Asha loved that idea and cackled loud and long.

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Spring Cleaning

June 8th

Finally finally finally! Have got started on the project to refurnish and re-organise my grandmother's flat where I am supposed to be moving in. The painting and wiring has been already done. Dont know if it is the weather or the Indian temperament but everything takes so long here. Even to make a simple decision like getting started. A lot of spring cleaning is still in progress. Tons of books have been disposed off. When I get started on the old junk like family photos and letters (and some awful poems I wrote when I was seventeen) etc. I often dont have the heart to chuck things out so I am making a file now of archaic documents and pictures which I can keep looking over when I am ninety five. (If I l live that long which I really doubt).

I even came across a black and white photo of my great grandmother posing against the background of some hills in Europe which she visited in 1939. Maybe it was Vienna. I know she visited it. It was a historic visit, because that was the year Hitler was getting ready to pounce on Europe and everyone knew that the brownshirts were after the Jews. My great grandfather, reasonably fair skinned (for an Indian) and with his big long nose was warned by a lot of people in Austria to lie low! My great grandmother sent a postcard to my grandmom which my grandmom never forgot and which in retrospect seemed to ring so eerily true. She wrote that it all seemed like a " picnic of horrors".The heat has eased up somewhat and there is a light breeze flowing in through the open window. And now I am going to get back to "work" which is planning some courses for the next six months.

June 10th

Still at it! More spring cleaning. Recovering more dusty files, boxes, cookery books (all out of my grandmother's chest of drawers and most of the pages slowly falling to bits), empty perfume bottles, a dubious looking folding parasol, paper knives, post cards sent by me to my grandmother from Europe, more photos of the family.... whoooo. I also recovered four ancient looking metal bedpans from one of the cupboards in grandma's room!!!! When I asked my mom about it she said they must have belonged to my great grandfather!

My grandmother's younger maid Saru helps me with all of this. I spread my grandmom's old red and black spotted sari on my lap before I start anything because the first day when I failed to do that I was covered in dust. Anyway - Saru who also likes to cook, was keen that I keep the cookery books because she likes to try out new stuff.

Sometimes I come across something or other - a blouse, a particular sari - which my grandmother used to wear and I start to feel kind of sad and miss her. She was a real cute lady, about four feet eight inches at her tallest (she kept shrinking as she got old) and 96 years old when she died. An intelligent, obstinate, defiant, little chatterbox. Very advanced for her times. She couldn't stand being without company. Always wanted someone around. I was often there in the evenings, we would sit on her balcony watching the sea. I would drink my usual ginger tea and she would sip at her soup and talk of the old days and of people she knew and British rule in India.

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The crazy Media

Rahul Mahajan

The media is a watch dog they say. I don’t know about the real watching part, but yes, most certainly the media does behave like a dog for better or worse. The way it goes after people at times, has a downright surrealistic feel to it. I would even say it is depressing. I am no supporter of dear Rahul M who is now cooling his heels in Tihar jail after his champagne and cocaine binge last week and still claims to be “innocent”. (As my friend Sushama says “innocent of what?!”) But truly, seeing the way the press and TV channels behave, one gets the feeling of a huge snarling drooling canine going after a smaller snivelling cousin with the word “KILL” stamped fiercely on its brain.

Sure, I am like anyone else and the first day or two I gobbled up all the news there was to be had, and waited eagerly for more. And yes, the waiting had the same feel to it as waiting for the next episode of the “Bold and Beautiful” or this moronic serial I watch once in a blue moon these days called “Bhabhi” which is replete with wailing females and people getting shot or falling over the edge of a cliff and so on. The Mahajan serial was a bit more exciting if anything because “real life” thrillers usually double the high. But at some point I noticed it got too much, even for a “kind of soap opera friend” like me.

You begin to almost wonder whether the whole thing, every “real life” drama, all of life these days in fact is a media fabrication, for them (exactly who?) to be able to give you “news” and make sure that millions of morons will stay tuned to their channels and continue to act like morons.

To date I have not come across a single news channel, newspaper or magazine concerned with looking at the truth under the surface. The role of the media is to go after sensation which they term “the truth.” The truth is that exposure and punishment for various crimes and all the rest of it may be one aspect of getting people to reform. (Not necessarily the best I would say but well, that’s the way I think …) The other aspect has more to do with a long term effort. With education, self awareness, self respect, inner confidence which real education brings and so on, which is the only thing finally that will bring the crime rate down. Regardless of whether we are talking of drug related crimes, economic exploitation, of violence or anything else. It is the only thing too, that will make life with each other more liveable.

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Old Times

I am not one for taking long nostalgic walks down memory lane. Or not frequently at any rate. I never think of my school days with tearful eyes. During our final graduation ceremony at the BIS in fact Nazneen and I were the only two dry eyed individuals and as soon as it was over, and before other people’s tears had dried, she and I almost collapsed in each other’s arms with joy at never having to come to school again and be subjected to horrible subjects like maths and Hindi. (Hated Hindi back then though now I am looking for a teacher who can help me bone up on the language so that I can communicate fluently with my non English speaking clients!)

Now and then however, it feels good to catch up with old classmates so it was fun to see Yesha again after a gap of at least six years. (We seem to meet every five or six years or so). She is flying again after having served on the ground for a few years and it being her day off yesterday she phoned and asked if I were at home because she was coming into town.

Yesha was one of those kids who used to wander around school in pickle stained uniforms and had the reputation of being somewhat eccentric because whenever she got bored during class she would wander out, run around the courtyard a couple of times and come back and quietly sit at her desk. The teachers normally didn’t say anything to her because on the one occasion when they came down heavily on her she ran back home (she lived close to school) and returned quite defiantly with her father who yelled at the principal for allowing his daughter to be tortured by ignorant teachers.

Anyway after school Yesha transformed herself into this very svelte and fashionable young woman whom you would never dream of associating with pickle stained skirts and landed a job with an airline – where she still works.

So now she sashays into the flat some time around noon. I am just done with a client and wander into the living room and no sooner have I parked my butt on the sofa than she tells me in astounded tones how very stout I have become and how she just cant get over it. (Not that Yesha herself has gotten any thinner I smirk inwardly). Well I tell myself, things haven’t changed much since kindergarten when we would inflict the cruel truth on each other several times a day ("You're stupid! No you are a FOOL!!! Your dress looks so silly" etc. etc.) and then turn our backs on each other (Katti) for a few minutes or hours.

We went to the club for lunch, where the grilled fish and lemon butter sauce was approved of, though the vegetarian speciality “Thalipeet and pitla” got the thumbs down from her. During lunch we traded reminiscences and Yesha spoke of some tips I had given her when we met in Europe in ’74 or ’75. I had apparently told her that blue jeans didn’t need to be washed more than once in six months because the dirt never showed on the outside and inside anyway your pants came into contact only with your skin and if you were reasonably regular about baths (once in five or six days?) then you were safe from being smelly.

The other bit of advice I apparently gave her (and yes come to think of it I do remember this one) was that you should never pay for your coffee when you go to one of those street side cafes. If you sit for a while someone is bound to offer you a cup. It worked for me, I know. There were any number of lonely Algerians and other expats at a loose end waiting to be entertained for the price of a cup of coffee. So one accepted the invitation gladly, one exchanged pleasantries for a while over an ice cream or an espresso and at the point when the bloke asked you out or asked you home you told him you were so sorry you couldn’t because your aged mother was waiting for you to return and fix her supper.

That was a good tip, said Yesha, except it doesn’t work so well any more. I guess you gotta be young for anyone to want to pay for your coffee. She sighed. I sighed. Then we both got up with reasonably full bellies and I dropped her off at Mahalaxmi station before returning home for a snooze.

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Chocolate Therapy!

This one is about chocolate. By now we all know that chocolate and wine are the best way to keep healthy, to keep young, to avoid heart attacks, ward off contagious diseases, keep away insurance salesmen with bad breath and god knows what else. Maybe if you investigate the matter thoroughly enough you will find that chocolate and wine are the doorway to immortality. Till now I thought it was drinking wine and eating chocolate that was good for the health but now I have found out that what does you more good than eating chocolate is to rub it all over your body. Yes, there is this article in one of the Sunday papers that gives you a blow by blow description of how to do it and all the benefits you can look forward to. Here goes.

It’s called Chocolate Therapy and involves a Chocolate Fondue, which is put together from grated cooking chocolate, full cream, icing sugar, and orange peel. Sheeesh! And instead of eating all this (Oooooh Yum!) you rub it all over your face and neck! A spa at Kemps Corner actually offers you this treatment because, as the spa manager says, “Cocoa extracts have a unique biochemical composition which stimulate the fat burning process, lipolysis, and restore the skin’s fresh appearance.” (Buzz magazine).

Sounds good? Well the only reason I am not going in for an external cocoa treatment is that I am not a cat and can’t lick off the face mask after I am done. What a waste to have to wash all that creamy chocolate away. Maybe I will just up my daily intake of dark chocolate instead because the same article informs me that eating chocolate not only keeps heart disease and high blood pressure at bay but also doesn’t get in the way of weight loss. Whatever that means. Maybe that you can eat a few bars every day and be sure of not ending up resembling an ocean liner. Seventy per cent Lindt, here I come!

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Youth and Age

The police are getting to be very civilised these days. I had to visit them in order for them to okay my new passport and was asked to present myself at the nearest chowky last week. The only minor lapse occurred when I called to ask if they were open and if so, till what time. The receptionist or whoever answered the phone barked, “It’s all written on the form!” When I said sure, but couldn’t he tell me anyway, he barked a second time, “It’s all down on that form!” OK OK, I said, I will take a look at it and come along at the right time.

After a short wait in a small and rather cramped parlour with a bench at one end and some chairs along the wall facing the bench, we were asked to sit down in the investigating officer’s room. Polite doesn’t quite describe the guy who "interviewed" me. He was required to fill in some forms with mundane details such as where I was born and how long I had lived in Bombay, and seemed positively concerned and friendly while doing that. The second officer by whom I had to get the form signed at a later stage, was even more chummy if that is possible.

He looks at my mother and then at me and asks who is who. I tell him, well, I am Uma and I have come to get police clearance for my passport. I point to my mother and say "That's my mother." He shakes his head and says, “Mother is looking younger than daughter.” Such a nice guy, I tell you. Needless to say Mother could not have been more pleased. This statement just about vindicated the one made a couple of years ago when my mother had taken her mother for an outing to the race course and the elderly gossipy women who used to gather there had (according to my grandmother’s maid Saru) remarked on how my grandmother looked younger than my mother.

It figures, folks. My grandmother looked younger than my mother and my mother looks younger than me. That can only mean one thing. That I look older than my grandmother. Ok, what’s all this psychotherapy about if it doesn’t teach you to accept the facts of life? Right then, to answer your question, yes I think I can live with the truth.

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Christmas Pud

Mother just read the previous blog. She said, "I don't really care for that telegram. I would prefer the Queen to send us Christmas Pudding."

A letter from the Queen

Dad was reading out stuff from the papers yesterday. "In three more years," he tells Mother, "We can qualify for a congratulatory telegram from Queen Elisabeth II who recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. She sends it to all couples in the commonwealth who have celebrated their sixtieth year of marriage."

So we agreed that Mum (who is 76) and Dad (like Queen E. also 80 years old), no matter how furiously they quarrel and get on each other's nerves should definitely first of all, try to stay alive for the sake of the telegram and secondly try to stay together for at least the next three years. Then the telegram comes. After that they can part ways. Dad can go on his jaunts all over the world (which Mother who is a homebird, hates to do). Instead Mother can stay back and continue to supervise the plumber and the carpenter at their work and get the washing machine and the AC fixed when they give way and tend to umpteen other chores. But there is the matter of the royal telegram. Who gets to keep it? Well we decided that rather than fight over it they can neatly tear it in half and each of them gets to keep a piece.

And meanwhile for all who are interested in Queen E's tireless efforts to keep up goodwill in the world - she is a patron saint (oops not saint but patron queen) of 600 charities in the world has sent over 100,000 telegrams to individuals who hit a century, 280,000 telegrams to couples celebrating their 60th anniversay (so in three years time my parents will probably be the 460999th to get that royal certificate) and has given over 78,000 christmas puddings to her staff. (They dont say in how many years). In November 2007, she will be celebrating the sixtieth year of her own wedding to the man who called her a monkey on one occasion.

Follow up (Mum's point of view)

When Life Gets Surreal

Was feeling kind of sad yesterday evening. And even as I became aware of it, I saw how little most people like to acknowledge feelings like sadness. How we mostly cover it up with jokes, with hectic activity or in numerous other ways. I couldn’t quite figure out what made me feel like that yesterday – kind of down. Maybe it was the cloudy sky which greeted me during my daily sunset meditation. Or generally thinking of the world. Maybe it was Arun K’s phone call early in the evening. He had called after ages. Back presumably from shooting some film other.
“I’m feeling so old,” he starts in a morose tone of voice and just as I begin to chuckle, he hastens to explain that it has not so much to do with the body, but more to do with the mind. Not being able to quite cope with the outside world any more and the cult of violence, "and Indians being so bloody uncaring – they don’t give a damn about anything." He sounds more and more depressed by the second.

A couple of hours later, as I sit watching the dark clouds piling up in the sky, Parvati hands me a mug of tea. "Looks like rain", she says, and I nod. “Quite true.” She says aggressively as if she had not spoken a word and I am talking to myself “WHAT IS TRUE?!!” This is definitely not a day for smiles. She looks moodily around and stomps off and I ask myself what kind of day must have had, to sound like that.

Then I think about the photos of the Mahajan family splashed in the press these last few days and the crying wife and his daughter and the aged mother weeping at the funeral. I also think of the smug looking brother who looks quite pleased at having “goli chalaoed” his sibling and it occurs to me, how surrealistic life is becoming. It's not just about one brother gunning down another. (Actually what is it that makes a crime by a blood brother seem so much worse than a crime committed against any human being by any other – considering in some remote way we are all related!)

The surrealistic feel is augmented by the thought of the brother who was shot. And I ask myself is any of this real ? Are politicians real? Is there really a live person behind the cardboard cut outs you see on the roads, towering over us at election time? Do those pasty smiles come from a human being? When the people in magazines and movies start to seem more real in fact than your own friends and neighbours you do wonder what is happening to the world.


Then for some reason, I think back to two women I had casually happened to see out of a moving car a few hours earlier. One, walking down the road in a bright yellow sari with a plastic shopping bag in her hand. She looked like she’d been out buying groceries. The other emerged from a building, and walked towards a taxi across the road. The woman in the yellow sari had a very ordinary face and wore spectacles. She had a string of mogra in her hair. The other woman had red-gold dyed hair and wore a fashionable salwaar kameez – a designer brand no doubt. And I must say it was the woman with the mogra in her hair whom I found a more comforting sight. Somehow the groceries in her hand and the flowers in her hair made me feel a bit more alive and real myself.

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Adventure on a pleasant and normal Bombay evening

It’s such a normal pleasant evening by the sea. Mom, Dad and I slouch back on our deck chairs on the balcony as we sip our sundowners. Dad has poured himself a whisky, I’m having a feni and soda and my mother is enjoying a local red wine. Red wine, she claims, is good for her asthma and her heart.

So we’re talking about this and that when I see a shadowy form flit across the tiled floor. It scurries in a zig zag fashion towards me and before I know it my legs are in the air to avoid the wretched creature. Long before I know what the hell it is my brain has informed me it’s a roach and has done its usual hysterical act. Luckily the roach which seems just as hysterical has zig zagged faster than Michael Schuhmacher towards my mother who is so surprised at the thing brushing past her feet that she goes “Eeeeek!” And she prizes herself on being so calm and nonchalant in the presence of cockroaches and laughs about me being the scaredy puss!

So anyway Roachboy, intent on saving his own life takes off for some dark corner where he presumably gets lost and we forget about him and get back to chatting about what’s been happening generally, about the traffic problem and about Mahajan’s state of health and other stuff, when my mother picks up her glass, inspects it, smells it, gets up casually and goes into the drawing room and looks into her glass carefully again, by the bright light indoors.

“What?” I ask her and my worst fears are confirmed.

“Cockroach,” she says – and I must say she is very calm and tranquil as she breaks this news to me. “That darned insect must have fallen into my glass.”

I am flabbergasted. When?! How! We were all there and none of saw anything! Anyway it’s happened and there’s nothing to be done about it except to pour out the remaining wine, rinse out the glass and pour in some fresh wine. “I smelled something funny,” Mother says. “It didn’t smell like wine any more and I had a strong suspicion the cockroach must have tumbled in. It’s happened once before. Cockroaches like red wine too, apparently.”

I ask her, “Did you drink any of the wine after the creature fell in?” And mom shrugs. In her usual pragmatic manner she says, “I don’t know. But I’m glad it was one of the cheaper Indian wines. Imagine how much worse it would have felt to have to toss out a glass of expensive, imported Shiraz or something else!”

The Throw Away Culture

Two days back a man in Bombay, shot his brother. Not to say that this is a common event but it is not the first time in the world that such a thing has happened either. If the man had been some ordinary fellow the news item would have been sandwiched between umpteen other bits of news somewhere between the middle and back pages of the papers. But the bloke who fired the pistol in this case, happened to be Pravin Mahajan, an unsuccessful businessman constantly in need of money, and the brother he shot happened to be Pramod Mahajan, the BJP general secretary, whom many have been touting as “India’s future prime minister.”

Brothers have been known to get into a foul enough mood to occasionally kill each other. The Biblical story about Cain and Abel is not just some fairy tale. In this case younger bro was pissed off with older bro because older bro had refused to support him through his business flops any longer. He refused to even meet him without an appointment. So, humiliated and furious, the younger brother just walks into the older brother’s flat one morning and fires four bullets into his non-cooperating sibling’s body – an act which now has the older brother fighting for his life in a city hospital. What actually threw me was the statement that Pravin Mahajan subsequently made to the police, to explain his act. “He was not useful to me any more so I shot him,” he is reported to have said.

In a way this attitude about sums up our throw away culture. We are constantly throwing away everything from used batteries to plastic bags to plastic syringes. I suppose it is a logical development to extend this “throw away” attitude to human beings as well, who have ceased to serve a purpose in our lives. What Pramod M’s younger brother did to him of course as many people know, is what Pramod M (the victim in this story) is himself alleged to have done a few years ago, to a New Delhi journalist supposed to be carrying his child. But with a true flair for recovery he seemed to bounce back to his political career unscathed by having been named as prime suspect in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case.

I am not trying to get moralistic here or to say in the least, that Mr. Mahajan had it coming or anything remotely like that. Nor that he deserves to have been shot at by his brother. One crime hardly justifies another. All I am saying is that there is something very screwed up about the times we live in. Because in a throw away culture, you never know who will want to throw you out next, because you have ceased to contribute anything to their lives. The psychiatrist who has examined the culprit - and the police too, maintain on the basis of psychological tests which were carried out, that the guilty man is mentally sound although Pravin M’s wife and lawyer insist that he has been depressed and mentally unstable for a while.

I would tend to go along with the wife's opinion because anybody who can shoot another human being – brother or stranger – without remorse, has to have something wrong with him. In this case I tend to think that there is something very wrong with the tests which have been carried out on the trigger happy man which say he is actually, mentally sound. It seems to me that here, it is the psychiatrists who believe in such tests, who are mentally unsound. Because it shows how superficial their examination is, and the fact that nobody wants to look even a bit under the surface for the true cause of violence. And when members of society whom ordinary people look to for understanding, themselves turn out to have such a superficial understanding of who is sick or not, then well, it is somewhat scary, I guess!

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Two causes for Optimism

Two things I read in yesterday’s papers made me feel quite optimistic, generally. One was on the personal front, the other on the public. What made me personally happy was a photo of Laura Bush in Japan, in the middle of a Japanese tea party. I have always felt intrigued about this custom and at the same time a bit disappointed because it involves being togged up in a kimono and squatting on the floor, and I can’t picture myself doing either. But Laura Bush was wearing an off white three piece suit and was sitting at a table with her mother next to her. She was pouring tea into a cup watched by a smiling, bowing Geisha girl. (Do they call them just Geisha’s or “Geisha Girls”? At least sometimes I like to sound politically correct). Laura’s mother was also smiling affably in the photo.

So first of all I thought, the Japanese tea party is now within my reach as well. If Laura Bush can drink Japanese tea in her off white suit, I can pour out the tea and drink it wearing my blue jeans. I can even take my mother along to Japan and she can wear her blue jeans or a pair of bright blue peddle pushers, which she is rather attached to and which she wears every second day when she goes for a walk. We can both sit and pour out tea in a genteel fashion with some nice looking Geishas smiling over us and I can at last satisfy my desire to participate in this age old meditative ceremony. Then I will get back to my group in Bombay and introduce them to the tea drinking ritual, though most of them will probably only want to drink chai, which might not be all that meditative as far as drinks go.

+++

The second piece of news which made me happy and has more consequence for society is the fact that 74 per cent of the readers in DNA’s poll on the Narmada dam, said they support the NBA (the anti dam group) and are against the monstrous dam being constructed on the Narmada river. This comes as a real surprise just when one thought nobody cared.

Not that anything is likely to come out of anybody’s feelings, because the government is going ahead with plans to raise the height of the construction and thousands of tribal people living on the banks of the river will be done out of their homes. Now, following Medha Patkar’s twenty day fast the government says they will at least help to resettle them in an alternate place (the last time they made an effort, the affected villagers were all hustled off to a vast tract of barren land where nothing could grow).

The bad news is that the government is just not able to see the fact, that the vast expense, the destruction of tribal land and harassment of thousands of villagers is to provide only a few select areas with electricity – with no regard for the consequences of the environmental damage that most huge dams cause. But at least people are waking up, they are demonstrating their concern for the displaced, they are showing that they do have a sense of what is right and wrong. And that feels good.

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The Dangers of a Kiss

What has apparently shaken up Delhi recently, is not the fact that there is so much violence and factionalism in the country, nor that a large number of people still go to bed hungry every night, or that women get such a raw deal in life. No Sir. What is shaking up the city is the fact that Farhad Suri, the guy who was elected Mayor of Delhi two or three days back was PUBLICLY KISSED by his wife when she got the news. Ahem.

The papers quote a long list of notables who have condemned this barbaric act of passion. She should not have done it. He should not have allowed it. Public figures should behave themselves. Kissing is a private act, not meant for public consumption. Etc. etc. And boy do they all sound like self righteous prigs. But that is India. The holier than thou attitude is one of our major distinctions. I am my brother’s keeper and I am going to decide what he does, what he says and what he should think.

Let me quote the views of BJP councillor Subhash Arya on the subject. “ Suri has created history,” says Arya. “Never before has such a scene been seen before. Sitting on the Mayor’s chair or dais this is unacceptable. He should have stepped away from the dais and then what the couple did is their personal life. It (kissing) is not a part of our tradition and cannot be tolerated.”

This is very evident. A kiss has to do with love and when I see what we Indians do to each other in the name of God and religion it seems to me that it is true, love is not really a part of our tradition. Duty is, or at least the idea of it. But love? Love is not to be tolerated. (Of course India is not the only place in the world where people are intolerant and smug, so let's burst some crackers at this point, in celebration).

If you want to really show someone you love them you should first make sure that nobody is around to see you because to exhibit love openly is a sign of disrespect for the person watching you. Love is something to be ashamed of. No wonder the majority of us are so screwed up! The lucky ones are the people who at least know they are screwed up and are trying to get the knots in their minds and lives unravelled, in whichever way they find best. The not so lucky ones are those who believe they are always right. I would not want to be one of them if you paid me a million bucks and promised me a free flight to the moon. Come to think of it, maybe that is where the Mr. and Mrs Know It Alls of the world belong.

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Train Rides in India

It was ages since I’d stepped into a train in India. The last time had been over five years ago, when Christoph had come down from Switzerland and the gang had decided to organize a workshop in Goa. That time we had opted for the overnight train from Mumbai to Madgaon which was supposed to reach Goa (Madgaon) by 11 AM. Come 11 AM however, we were nowhere vaguely near Goa. Midday we were still hoping to make it at not too late an hour. We were chugging away at a rather leisurely pace when at around half past one in the afternoon just as we were beginning to get tired and hungry and ready to stuff just about anything into our stomachs, (there was NO food in sight on this particular train) we came to a grinding halt. A gang of protestors waving red flags were prancing around the tracks refusing to let us pass “until the government promised to build them a station at the point where they were holding us up.”

We were running out of food, we were running out of water and also out of patience by then. Not that it made any difference. We were held up for over two hours, the only person enjoying it all being Christoph who darted here and there, taking photographs of the protesting bunch from as many angles as he could. When we pulled into Madgaon it was raining, it was becoming dark, we had an hour to go before reaching our final destination by road and I swore I would never again take any train to anywhere in India.

Now, with memories of the discomfort well behind me and Sudha informing me about this “fast train” to Goa (fast means covering 600 kilometres in something like 9 hours), as well as tickets for a throwaway price I decided to go for it.

So on the appointed day we stumble out of bed at the crack of dawn (Sudha has decided to spend the night at our place) and by 5 am, having haggled with the coolie who helped us carry our luggage, we are comfortably ensconced in our seats, Sudha and I across the aisle from each other. Within a few minutes the two seats next to mine are taken by a very amiable couple with a grinning baby who specializes in firmly clutching people’s hair (she tried to clutch mine and also to grab my spectacles). Mom and Dad cheerfully and amiably occupy three quarters of the space on the row of seats leaving me a narrow bit of seat to squeeze my ass into, as we chug out of the station. If there was any hint of sleep left, the din of hawkers selling chai, coffee, snacks, cold drinks and “garam garam tomato soup - pio pio” has me wide eyed in no time.

At the very first stop about twenty minutes or half an hour later, an ill tempered man followed by his fat wife stomps his way into the compartment, stops in front of me, checks the tickets in his hand and proceeds to bark at the couple with the baby. Apparently the seats they are occupying belong to him and his wife. So off goes the poor couple with the baby, after gathering their belongings, their hajaar potlis and baskets and water bottles and baby. Barking Dog, having settled down in his rightful seat attempts to smile at me (I don’t think he is actually capable of smiling – it is more like his lips are struggling to move upwards in an effort to appear friendly) while his wife Fatty, fishes out a bagful of red and white pearly beads from her pouch and a reel of nylon thread on which to string them, though shortly after beginning to work on her fancy thingummy she falls soundly asleep.

Sudha sitting across the aisle has a woman sitting next to her who is part of a pilgrimage tour. Various members of this group take turns sitting at the window, stumbling over Sudha’s feet in the process and then promptly falling fast asleep. Watching all the sleeping souls around us Sudha and I start to drift off too, heads lolling against the backrest waking up every now and again to shouts of “Garam Samosa! Hot Soup!” etc.


When we pull into Madgaon and I try getting off the train I am almost swept aside by an army of passengers who want to board it. But even as I goggle at them and start flapping my hands in a futile attempt to ward them off, an elderly gentleman yells at the hooligans to step aside, grabs me by the hand and leads me to safety. When I thank him he smiles. “You’re welcome.” Thank god for small mercies!!! It hasn’t been half as bad as I expected and when it is time to return to Bombay a week later not only am I ready to weather another nine hours on the tracks but am on the way to becoming a fan of the Indian railways.

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Walking on Indian Roads

Last night I got the feeling I would like to respond to what Sudha said in the last post on this blog, about the time we spent together in Goa and all that she felt while walking down the village roads there, with me. It is true, walking around in India is a big headache for me and generally for people with any kind of disability. But I have to say that the conditions in India make one feel more handicapped than one really is. I was telling Sudha for instance, that in the west I am far more mobile and independent than I am able to be here. The roads are smoother, the pavements are almost level with the road and not five feet above the ground requiring major acrobatics to climb up. The buses are manned by drivers who keep a watch on passengers boarding or gettinf off the bus. Buses do not take off while one of your feet is still dangling in mid air and while you’re liable to fall off. Trains are very accessible (except maybe for the Paris rush hour which can be BAD!).

The two years I spent abroad as a young adult, going where I pleased, entirely on my own, were therefore among the most fulfilling in my life … and yet I chose to return to this chaotic country with its incomprehensible ways. Maybe because all said and done, this is where I “belong”. This is where I feel most at home. Because something in the atmosphere strikes a chord in me. Quite simply, broken pavements notwithstanding, I have started acknowledging the fact that I like living here!

Still, it would be so nice if India could make a bit more of an effort to cater to people who are physically disadvantaged, not to mention mentally disadvantaged or lacking in other respects. This darker side to our attitudes and to our mentality is also a reality. I have so often seen deaf people get laughed at because those with normal hearing find the way they talk, hilarious. The physically handicapped are ignored when streets and housing or public spaces are planned. The mentally retarded … well the less said about society’s reaction to this group of people the better. The blind…they are pitied as much as they are cheated when shop keepers/taxi drivers and others feel they can get away with it. This is what I learnt from my blind friend Venky, who in spite of everything has managed to travel all over the world on his own - from Xanadu to Zurich or London.

Oh well. I continue to grumble but not as viciously as I used to. Things take time. It will take time for us to catch up with the west in matters where we need to catch up. I’m learning to be patient!

Sudha's take on Goa

1. Sudha sent me her thoughts on our recent trip to Goa. Here goes:

The Goa trip with Uma turned out to be much more of an introspective experience than I expected.

1. Uma... Have spent a large chunk of my childhood with her…loving her , hating her, (she used to LAUGH at me!), but mostly liking her a great deal; agonizing over her handicap and keeping mum about it, because she hated anybody mentioning it. And somewhere along the way, taking it for granted, even rationalizing it all to myself. She has so many other comforts to make up the loss.. and other nonsense.
   
   This time in Goa, we take a walk down to the nearest store and it hits me. She can’t undertake a casual stroll without company; a small undulation can cause a bad fall ; and even idle chatter as we walk distracts, and is not without risk. And I thought I was a sensitive soul! In one of our Mumbai sessions, Uma had asked whether we got different perspectives of ourselves from feedback. That day I came face to face with myself, and didn’t like it much.
   
   Walking with Uma starts another trend of thought…it is so much easier when I match my stride to hers. Have I been doing that all the time? Matching my stride to other people's so that everything is easier? Uma has no choice, but what about the others in my life? Have I even given them a chance to match their strides to mine? What is my stride? Do I know… do I even want to know? And if I did find it and nobody wanted to match my stride, would I be ready to walk the path alone?
   
   We sit out on the beach every night after dinner. There is no moon, and the sky is dusty with stars. I feel distant from Uma, and realize that this feeling has persisted for some time now. Is this the authority problem which Venky and Sharat have been mentioning? No - I accept her superior understanding of the work we are in, and accept it gratefully.... then where is this distance coming from? If I accept the distance, it is not an uncomfortable feeling. Just that I know I love her more than this, and am unable to express it.
   
   The following day, over lunch, I start telling her about my passion for writing about films, and she interrupts with “What is in it for you” ; I resent that, but curb the feeling and buy time, by saying “I will think about it.” I think she catches on. Next day, Uma does a ‘dry run’ of some new exercises for the group. Surprisingly, it touches the very issue that’s troubling me. And I can tell her that I find she is too much ‘therapist’ and not enough ‘friend’. I mention my earlier resentment and she says maybe all it needed was for me to tell her not to interrupt her. Simple. Point taken.
   
   Somehow it is easier to talk to her now, and as we sit on the beach at night, I reach out and hold her hand. It is like being kids together again. It has been a good trip.
   
   Group website: www.basicindia.net
   

The Bad and the Ugly

I just heard of this Mexican film maker about whom there was an article in yesterday’s papers. Arturo Ripstein is the name. The movies he has made include “No one writes to the Colonel any more” and “Time to die”. In the old days I used to watch a whole lot more movies than I do today, and used to be better informed about directors and their work. No longer. In any case I am not sure if I would really have wanted to know about Senor Ripstein, even if the information had been available to me back then, because here is his philosophy of life:

“I believe in hate, revenge, sin and guilt … happiness is a ray of light you see from a taxi. Happiness is very boring…” etc etc.

Maybe I should first see a film by Ripstein before commenting on his values but I am impatient to share my thoughts about his views on life right now, and what I think is, that he seems to live on the planet of overgrown schoolboys.

In a way his philosophy helps me to understand the world and the way people react. It brings with it an insight into the violence, the greed, the fear of happiness in fact, which we mostly experience on earth. People are afraid to be happy because they imagine that it is boring to be happy. Which only proves how silly they are, and how little they understand of happiness. Or how little they see that it is hate and revenge that are boring in the long run because there is such a sameness to feelings like that. The energy they bring in their wake is enervating and monotonous. It is the sort of energy which kills – sometimes slowly, sometimes directly.

Is it that people are too stupid to see beyond their fascination with hate and guilt and associated feelings – too mesmerised by it to want to go beyond it? Are we mostly going to be stuck at this level of intelligence and to be condemned to live and re-live stories based entirely on the most primitive aspects of our psyches?

Of course the encouraging part is that Ripstein's work is not hugely popular. He is apparently funded by the government and claims not to be concerned by the fact that nobody sees his films. But then there are so many other film makers whose concentration on the gory side of life brings massive returns and a great fan following.

Maybe it will really happen some day. The earth will go up in a cloud of fire and poisonous gases. And a few of us who did not want it to end that way – if we are lucky – might be able to migrate at a speed faster than light to some far away planet and start a new species of life, (name yet to be decided) - devoted to that wonder called “awareness.”

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Goa Routine

Sudha asks me as we sit on the beach one evening, “Do you miss Bombay?” I realise very definitely, I don’t. There is nothing I miss about it, except maybe my cat – and my parents. I don’t miss the flat, I don’t miss my room, not my computer, nor internet, nor email. I don’t miss the books, haven’t even thought of the music system. Well well well. Even I feel surprised when I think about it. I have even been writing – as in writing with my hand! Carrying on with the translation from Samuel’s latest book and discovering I haven’t yet lost the ability to use my thumb and fingers, completely.

Pinjone

In a short time a routine is established. Mornings we carry our chatais onto the beach and spend a good half hour exercising by the sea, watched by one or two fishermen pottering around their boats and various dogs who come by, sniffing at our faces and our feet and checking out to see if we are interested in friendship. (Which of course means food for them). Our training is followed by breakfast, a short walk to the nearest general store from where we pick up a mango drink to enjoy at Max’s place. Then it’s two hours of solid work for me – either translating or planning out future sessions, while Sudha catches up on her notes. Twelve thirty means it's time for beer and lunch after which we pass out for a couple of hours because it is too hot to actually do anything.

Peshtone

The best part I find are the sunsets and our post dinner meditations on the dark moonless beach. We don’t know much about the stars and constellations but it is lovely just sitting there and watching them and once in a while going “Ooooh!” as a shooting star appears from nowhere and curves down in a graceful arc and once again vanishes in the dark.

Often, sitting in the restaurant we watch Max’s two boys playing in the sand. The older one, Preston, who is two and a half, is very shy and even a bit fearful. Max says he once saw a cow bolt in his direction and although she meant him no harm and stopped long before she reached him he has been terrified of animals since then which probably means humans as well. The younger one, Princeton, a year younger than Preston, is more outgoing, curious, and constantly tottering around the place, in his zeal to explore the world. We’ve renamed him “Penguin” because that is exactly what he looks like, especially on the days that he wears his yellow and black T-shirt , or the black and white one, with his arms flailing at his side to help him keep his balance. Fatima, their grandma, Max’s mother, calls them Peshtone and Pinjone.

The worrying thing is not knowing how long it will be before the marauding mobs descend on this more or less isolated beach and turn it into a discotheque with their boom boxes and stalls and what not. There are signs of increasing huts and rooms being built in the village but as yet (thank god!) no luxury hotels. Only hope the old man/woman in the sky thinks fit to protect the place and keep it intact. At least for a million years or so.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Goa in March

Stillness. Peace. Tranquillity. Balmy evenings by the sea.

Afternoon beers and evening pegs of feni with lots of fish and squid to go with it.

Silent after dinner meditations under the starlit sky, watching white crested waves crash on the shore.

Chats with Fatima about recipes and children and travel and the price of fish, as the grandchildren played around her feet with their spades and plastic boxes, filling sand into fanta bottles, emptying them out - again, and again, and again. Tirelessly.

Exchanges with the local school kids who used to pass by our cottage on their way to class every morning just before eight. Good morning! How are you? What is your name? How long you staying?

Palm trees, palm trees and more palm trees surrounding Max’s place, where we stayed this time. And pigs scuttling around and occasionally squabbling with each other and also with the local dogs. And lots of chickens. No sign of bird flu yet!

Bet you envy us our week long stay on the beach. And that’s it for now since I’ve barely got back home. More to come in the next few days.

www.basicindia.net

Cultural Progress!!!

Reading about some of the tribal societies in India really makes you wonder where Indian culture is heading – where culture in general is heading. The Dards and the Broghpas for example, are a tribe living in Ladakh, with none of the usual inhibitions which hamper the rest of us civilised Indians. Supposed to be descendents of a group of soldiers who lost their way returning to Greece, after the battle with Porous, they settled down in the fertile valley of Dhahnu in Ladakh. According to Norboo, a scholar who has extensively studied this tribe, they worship the cow, offer sacrifices, are fond of music and wine, and dance together at the onset of spring.

The interesting thing is that the Brogpas traditionally practise polygamy and polyandry and pre-marital sex is not looked down upon. “We didn’t know what shame was,” says one of the tribesmen, Tashi. “But we are learning it gradually, because of modern education and giving up our culture and traditions.” And so polyandry has vanished although instances of polygamy are still to be found, with a man having two wives and up to ten children.

The sad thing is the way the Indian army has succeeded in breaking down local culture, labelling tribal practices as “uncivilised.” Till 1970, groups of men and women would kiss each other openly without consideration for marital partnerships. “Now we do it only when there are no outsiders around,” says Tashi.

It takes so little to destroy the freedom and innocence of others, and so long for us human beings to retrieve it – if it is at all possible to get something like innocence back! Sexual innocence. Do any of us in the civilised world even vaguely understand what that is? In fact many people will try to counteract the notion with instances of sexual abuse in the western countries, or indeed, all over the world. But then one has to see, that sexual abuse and perversion is not the same thing at all, as freedom.

Questions as to why and how sex began to acquire the connotations of shame and guilt which they have today, will continue to bother those of us who have an inkling of the role that sexuality plays in the drama of life. Of the frustration and violence that result through our lack of understanding of the subject. Those of us brought up with the kind of conditioning which has made us almost neurotic, will know what it means to struggle with such issues and continue to grapple with the riddle. The rest will continue to seal the subject up in a mental box, not meant to be looked at or spoken about and will continue to act prissy and a bit weird all their days. Never quite realising all that we have lost, in losing our freedom and innocence.

(Am off to Goa tomorrow morning and will be back next week. See you then).

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Kids Parties

I hate to sound like an old grandmother (which I find I am doing increasingly these days) but when I was a kid, our parties had a different flavour to them than what you see today. We met, we played hide and seek, we ran around, we chatted, we drank stuff like orange squash and ate cake and potato chips. Occasionally when an adult got it into his head to organise games for us we found ourselves playing "pin the donkey’s tail" or taking part in a lemon and spoon race. By seven o’clock our mothers and fathers or ayahs would turn up to take us home and off we would go, after screeching out prolongued “Bye’s” and clutching a balloon or a packet of sweets in our hands.

Well a couple of days back, this four or five year old kid’s party was celebrated with a bang (literally!) in the garden downstairs. It was one of those stage managed affairs. A hu…uu…uuuu …ge blue plastic playpen was set up at one end of the lawn with green plastic palm trees at the corners and a huge wobbly plastic clown in the centre with steps on the sides and ropes hanging down for kids to practise their rappelling skills. There was a fire-eater, a young DJ who kept making silly jokes and various games which had the kids run to and fro all over the lawn. All of which might have been okay if it hadn't been for the music.

Two huge loudspeakers blared out thousands of watts of noise to crack your ear drums. The DJ kept up a running commntary on the mike and a woman in a light green trouser suit (the manager of the event?) busily attended to the details. The party must have cost a bomb. As I watched it all from our balcony on the first floor, I wondered what it must be like to be a kid these days, in Bombay, being fattened on this kind of wealth. Also, what it must be like to not be rich and to attend these kind of parties and then throw a tantrum at home because you wanted the same kind of party on your birthday and your parents couldn't afford it. I wonder what it must be like to be parents these days at all. So dependent on money and artificiality to prove your love for your kid. I am just glad to have grown up in the days that I did.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Who is What?

Manisha with friends

Shahnaz with Dinyar

Another meeting with the people at “Anchorage” this time at the workshop itself. When we had met a few weeks back during the dance class, Meghna and Shahnaz had suggested I come over for lunch one afternoon so there I was last Thursday. It felt good to be not only recognised but greeted like an old friend by the crew – by Manan, (who beamed at me and pinched my cheeks like I was a five year old!) and Dilber and various others.

Lunch (provided by the staff – that is, by Meghna, Manisha, Bhavna, Shahnaz and Nirupa) was a pretty lavish affair with mountains of teplas, dhokla, two different kinds of chutney, salad and vegetables. And glasses of fresh lassi.








Dilber, Meghna, Dinyar and Yasmin

I got some more information about how the place was initially set up in 1989 – about the handful of parents of mentally retarded children. (I refuse to use the term “mentally challenged”. I don’t like it any more than I like to use the term “physically challenged” to describe myself. Prefer to stick to good old fashioned terminology like physically or mentally handicapped because they are perfectly adequate and anyway euphemisms don’t change a damn thing about the way other people actually see you. I will write more about this later, some time!)

Dinyar and Nirupa (popular fellow!!)

So anyway, a group of parents had got together to found what they call a ‘sheltered workshop’ for their children who were fast growing up and needed to learn to be independent. The five founder members got together with a special educator to organise productive work contracts so that they could train young adults in a small garage. Today this cooperative offers many services which include training in various areas of work, teaching life skills, yoga, arts and crafts, music and dance and so on

Bhavna and group

During my visit I saw people busy at work putting the finishing touches on costume jewellery and switches as well as involved in packaging products like paper handkerchiefs. As on the previous occasion when I had met them everyone seemed to be having a ball and I had the feeling at the end of it all when I came away, that maybe we need to seriously look at who’s who and who is what. I mean, if those young adults busy at work at the Anchorage are supposed to be mentally challenged (hmmm ok I will make an exception and see what it sounds like to use this term!) – then maybe the rest of us are emotionally challenged or challenged in terms of self expression, generosity, spontaneity and all the rest of it. Let’s put it more simply, the rest of us are “egoistically challenged.”

Website: www.basicindia.net