Tyrannosaurus Felix

After all the games Feli and I have been playing it finally happened. Last night I actually dreamed about a robot. We were at a party and there was this robot in black with a masked face, serving drinks. At some point Ayse went up to him and gave him a kiss and he turned into a man – still in black but with a human face and wearing spectacles. This morning Feli came downstairs early and I told him my dream after which he related six dreams to me, centred around a mixture of spiders, robots and dangerous sharks.

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The weather has been holding up which is a pleasure because it is possible to spend time outdoors. Sat on a bench downstairs for over an hour yesterday with Sammy sunning himself by my side and purring away loudly.

Ariela left left for Switzerland yesterday. She took a train because she wanted to meet someone there who is to help her with a film script she is working on about illegal immigrants in Germany. A. said it is weird but she began the script several months ago and then in the middle of it, the cleaning woman was arrested. It felt almost as if her script were coming to life. Anyway now she wants to meet this ex-policewoman called Jutta who is part of the community around Samuel because she feels Jutta will have a lot of information on the subject of illegal aliens. Thomas and I will drive down on Wednesday morning and reach Lüsslingen by late afternoon. I will stay with Ayse who lives opposite Samuel.

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Sonya is currently cleaning up the kitchen. She is the new household help and she comes from Croatia. Her husband works in a restaurant in Prien so at least her status is legal. I think from now on Ariela will be very careful before employing anyone. Sonya has a four year old daughter called Adriana who sometimes comes with her and is extremely chatty. When I asked her her name she said “Atheliyana” and I thought it must be some Serbian or Croatian name I’ve never heard of, until I heard her mother calling her.

"Atheliyana"

With Ariela and Thomas away most of the day yesterday (he drove her down to Munich to drop her off at the station and returned only after six in the evening) Lioba and I took take care of Feli along with some help from Lilly. We spent two hours in the evening playing sharks and whales and dinosaurs. This is a very simple game in which Feli plays the dinosaur or some other dangerous beast and comes growling at us and making fierce faces and we have to whimper and moan with fear and it can go on for hours. Lioba was exhausted at the end and said she would have to take the train back to her hotel because she was too tired to walk.

Tilmann wants to visit his father in the afternoon. I mistakenly killed off the old man in a mail to my parents but it appears that Tilmann’s dad is in an old folks home near Munich and suffers from dementia.

(For the next few days I'm away so most probably wont be able to write until I return at the end of the week or early next week. Have fun meanwhile!)

Sunny Weather

Thomas relaxing in the courtyard in between renovating the downstairs apartment


Lioba and Felix
The last two days in Prien have been sunny and warm so we've been spending a lot of time outdoors. Now that the doc downstairs has vacated the premises and the B's have the whole building to themselves we make full use of the little courtyard which has been laid out with benches and a table. It's especially pleasant sitting out in the afternoon.

In addition Lioba is in the vicinity for a few days. She's rented a room in a nearby village and walks down most afternoons to Prien. Lioba (the name means "love" in Latin - at least I think it's Latin!) is Brigitte's sister (the therapist in Lüsslingen) and works in an institute in Stuttgart for teens and young adults with learning difficulties including ADS. (Attention Deficiency Syndrome). She supervises the tests which are administered and then decides where to place each person. They can go for further training in a whole lot of professions including catering and carpentry and when they've graduated they're helped to find employment.

Lioba's cowboy pose

Tilmann

Lulu and Felix are both away at the moment - Felix only for a couple of hours - his baby sitter Julia has taken him for a walk to the mini golf course near the lake. Tilmann has gone shopping for tonight's dinner and other stuff we need. It's one of those rare quiet spells and Ariela is upstairs making the most of it.

Dracula Duo: Lulu and Felix

Thanks to the good weather I've been able to start walking outside, and was able to hobble to the Chinese restaurant this afternoon and after that, to the local supermarket and back, without any help, though with Lioba at my side. That did me good although when I got back home I discovered I had a shoe bite. But Tilmann gave me a plaster to stick on it and now I'm resting the foot a bit.



Lulu, off to help at the stables for another week, before school begins

Some Pics

Finally I managed to find an easy way to connect my camera with the computer, with Tilmann's help. Tilmann is the guy who's rented a couple of rooms on the ground floor and is often in and out of the house. His grinning face and cheerful nature make up for the lack of sun on cold and cloudy days.

Anyway here are some of the people I already wrote about.

Irina and Ose. Irina is the musician who gave the piano recital at Ose's place the evening we arrived in Munich. She lives in Hamburg and is married to a guy from Togo, who runs a restaurant in Hamburg.

Julia and me. Julia is the daughter of my old friend Sabine and lives in Frankfurt

Ten month old Aidan. (Julia's baby)

















Jenny, the au pair from Bogota (Colombia). She makes a great dracula.

Busy Days

Felix with his flying dolphin

Been super busy entertaining Felix. This morning we watched a couple of short documentary films, one on dinosaurs and the other on Egyptian mummies. He has probably seen each of them a hundred times. At one stage Felix turned up the sound so much it hurt my ears and I told him not to do that. He gave me a reproachful look and explained. "You don't understand. I love dinosaurs so much, the sound has to be loud." When the second documentary came to an end he said that when he grew up he wanted to be a "dinosaur researcher" and a "mummy researcher".

The other day we went to the lakeside for lunch, Ariela, Felix, Lilly, me, Ose whom we had visited in Munich and her friend Irina who is a music teacher and who had given a piano recital at Ose's place the day we arrived in Munich. After lunch, Lilly lights up a cigarette and Ariela looks and sounds most unhappy about it. Feli says to his mother in a most matter of fact tone, "Mama, don't look at Lilly just now, then you wont see her smoking."

Apart from Felix there has been a spate of visitors. Andrea came over a couple of days back and is here again today. Right now she is with the kids in the workshop downstairs where they are busy painting pictures. She's come with her 9 year old daughter Ines who is quite a handful. She and Feli make quite a pair, dashing across the house and screeching at the top of their voices. Julia, my friend Sabine's daughter, had visited yesterday with her ten month old baby Aidan, and Aidan's baby sitter, a really nice young woman from Colombia in South America. She reminded me quite a bit of a South American girl I used to know in Paris in the days when I was an au pair myself - Graciela, who was from Venezuela. She had the same quick mind, the same sense of humour, the same warmth. Jenny's year in Germany is over and she returns home tomorrow, so now Julia will have to look for a new au pair. Meanwhile I have an invitation to stay with Jenny and her family in Bogota - anyone want to join me?

I've been taking photos but it's a bit of a pain transferring them onto the computer. I do hope to get down to it at some point though.

Getting Away

There comes a point in your journey when, having checked in for the flight and had immigration clear you, you heave a sigh of relief and put your feet up. Of course your bags still have to be x-rayed and your body to be patted all over by some listless deeply uninterested security officer in a khakhi uniform but at least for the time being you've got through a couple of the big hurdles.

So thanks to my parents who were travelling business class I was able to wriggle alongside them into the business lounge with access to free drinks and snacks and having crossed the threshold almost immediately regretted it. It was smoky, packed, and the three of us at least initially couldn't sit together. Outside we would have been part of the hoy polloi but at least there was a lot of space and you didn't get the feeling you were in a cramped delux prison cell.

As I sat feeling a bit disconsolate at first, a nice looking hostess passed by and gave me a really nice friendly smile. That made me feel a bit better. She brought me a glass of red wine and I thought of what a difference "the personal touch" makes, though at a slightly later point I caught her smiling not only at everyone but at everything, including the walls and the sofas and I realised that the smile had frozen on her face and she probably wasn't even awake but sleepwalking.

The flight itself was super uneventful. We landed in Munich at around noon, checked into our hotel in central part of town and went on to have a pretty good time over the next three days, meeting many old friends, including Ruth who had accompanied me to India in January and Ose who had treated me with homeopathy during the time I was recuperating from my broken ankle in Prien.

Thomas picked me up yesterday from the hotel and we came to Prien while my parents went on to Champaign in the U.S. where they will spend time with Vishnu and Peg.

More in the next few days, just wanted to say Hi and all is well.

Ingmar Bergman - An Unlikely Tribute

Ingmar Bergman is dead. The morning papers brought me the news. I went through Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s tribute to the master, over coffee and cereal and then, as I usually do while reading the newspaper, turned the page to see what was next (a follow up on the recently released Bangalore doctor, Mohammed Haneef, bird flu in Manipur and Rajiv’s dream – according to Sonia - about a woman president in India). A couple of minutes down the line I suddenly realized my brain wasn’t registering what my eyes were reading, at all. The reason was this funny lump in my throat which refused to go away, which I was eventually forced to acknowledge and look at.

I realized it had to do with Bergman. Funny, I thought. I seldom react this way to the death of public figures, no matter how sorry I might be at their passing away. The last time anybody’s demise had affected me personally had been over twenty years ago when J. Krishnamurti, one of my favorite philosophers and teachers (whom I never personally met) had died, leading me to babble sorrowfully a day or two later while lying on the psychoanalyst's couch.

What was it about Bergman that now made me feel sad? It struck me that it was not only to do with his own death, but with the passing of an entire era, that is to say, with the graying of an entire generation of youngsters who imagined time would stand still and that they would never see the wrong side of forty, let alone fifty or sixty as some of us are doing. Bergman in my mind is inescapably connected with chicken rolls oozing mayonnaise eaten in the dark, loud arguments about the merits of his various films and silent giggling. There was the time when some of us went to see “Wild Strawberries” for example (I think it was at the Excelsior) and sadly enough the only thing I remember today is trying not to choke over the shock in the voice of a German friend among our group, who had nudged me and muttered in a panic stricken voice, “Retts – there are retts in this hall!” while the rest of us watched a large rodent scampering up and down the aisles with more than a little amusement.

It’s not only the image of scuttling rats in cinema hallways which Bergman brings back when I think of him now. It is also memories of a bunch of us exuberant film buffs getting together after every show to dissect what we had just seen and experienced. Mostly we would land up in the pocket sized PG room which the B’s, a mad, carefree couple in their late twenties, had rented on Peddar Road, just round the corner from where I lived. So, over drinks and snacks we’d fill the air with the sound of our own voices as we argued and fought with each other over what had just been screened. Some of us loved Bergman’s pensive, often dark treatment (me) others intensely disliked his style though most of us agreed that his last film “Fanny and Alexander” a fairy tale cum horror story centered around the get together of a rambling, adulterous, philosophical family, was possibly his best offering – a positively magical piece of work.

On one occasion we’d been so preoccupied tearing each other to bits over some obscure aspect or other of a movie we’d just seen, we’d completely overlooked the shortage of food at home, which came to our notice only when our stomachs began to rumble in unison at about ten at night. Please note, this was before the days of fast food service when uniformed, decorous young men on motorbikes rumble to a stop before your door bearing a stack of thin crusted cheesy pizza or a plate of tandoori kebabs to fill the cavern expanding in your belly.

On this occasion, someone was obviously required to go and fetch some food but because nobody wanted to break up the party and step out we eventually decided to cast lots. A young fellow called Golly (I never figured out how or why he got his nickname), became “it” and wishing us a melancholy goodbye, set out to fetch us all biryani from the closest Irani restaurant a couple of kilometers away, while the rest of us continued to pour ourselves generous measures of rum from the B’s waning stock of liquor and to wax eloquent on the meaning of life, death, relationships and dark areas of the human soul, topics which Bergman’s movies invariably threw up.

Half an hour passed. An hour passed. There was no sign of Golly returning and remember, again, this was before the days of the mobile when you could track down each cough and fart of a loved one who had strayed. An hour and a half later, when we called up his home with bated breath, imagining the worst, we were told by Golly’s mother that he had returned a while ago, finished his dinner and was already in bed.

Oh well. It is ages since that happy group disbanded for various reasons. The B’s who had decided to turn into responsible adults and to complete their joy in life by producing children, packed up and left for Pune which they figured was a more healthy place to bring up kids than Bombay. Two of the group went on to become well known film critics. One of the couples emigrated to the U.S. Golly got married and had kids of his own. And I dropped freelance journalism to become a psychotherapist.

That’s life. We don’t meet that often any more and when we do, of course it’s not the same. Not really. I don’t expect or even want it to be the same and yet, thinking of Bergman today keeps bringing back that funny lump in my throat.

The Happy Couple Finally Get Hitched

Chandran and Meher who met through our music med group roughly three years ago finally made it "to the alter". Well no alter in this case, only a ceremonial fire which I missed, since it was scheduled for the evening and I had to return home soon after lunch. (Which was fabulous). Music med types can look forward to a get together very soon at their place and meanwhile here's a pic:

Visit From A Kindergarten Buddy

Rani, my kindergarten buddy from Queen Mary's had visited earlier this month. This pic was taken by Aparna, after Rani's trip to Ladakh. Well these days Rani and I are civil with each other but time was when ranting, raving and throwing objects at each other seemed to be an intrinsic part of our relationship (which I sorely missed when she left India for the U.S. way back in '72.) Since then she's settled down in Baltimore with Peter though she does visit Mother (India) quite frequently. Rani, though she is my age, is still full of beans and it is sometimes rrrreally difficult to keep up with her. She teaches grade one (I think) in Baltimore and the kids there love her. So that shows you her physical age at least.

The rains seem to have done the disappearing act. It is getting warm and sultry again and there is to be a power cut for most of today - from 10 in the morning to 5.30 in the evening, so I am preparing myself for a long sweaty haul. And also here at the computer before breakfast so that I can wrap up today's mailing etc.

Ornery Things

I no longer dread going for a haircut the way I used to some years back. My hairdresser (I think they prefer to be called "hair stylists" these days) is either getting used to me and my hair, or getting mellow. Time was when, no matter what I told her, she would send me away with hardly any hair on my head, with me wanting to go and hole up somewhere till I looked a little bit less like a plucked chicken. Dwight was there on one occasion I remember, he had also come for a haircut (which she did quite well) and back in the car, every time he glanced in my direction he went into a fit of giggles. Now my hairdresser not only asks me how I would like to have my hair, she actually does what I want. She still can't resist asking me every time if I don't want it short and when I fix her with a grim look and go "NO WAY" she smiles this indulgent smile and snips off just the bit I want her to do away with.

Vijay came along with me. He's what the Germans would call a "Kumpel". A good guy to hang out with, have a beer and a cigarette with (yes we burn up the weed once every two or three weeks, so like today we just bought ourselves three cigarettes to share between two of us which we really enjoyed.) Vijay is good to go shopping with, whatever you want to buy - clothes, electronics, CD's, anything. After he patiently sat through my haircut we dropped in at my parents' apartment though they weren't at home but luckily I had the key. Missed seeing Mishi around - it was the first time I was visiting after she died. And then we topped off our rounds with lunch at the club.

Am now back home and since it's raining and I can't sit out on the balcony as I usually do in the evenings here I am at the computer, updating my blog.

Comments about the monsoon

A comment from an irate citizen on the recent floods in the city: "In Bombay everything has been going down the drain except the water."

Monsoon Day

pic by Suresh Dhaadve

It's been raining heavily since last night and the gray skies and frequent downpours, the flooded roads everywhere in the city bring back memories of school days when heavy rains justified a respite from school. Memories return, of the jubilation with which we would dump our school bags in a corner and settle down to some pure schoolgirl fun. I would run off to my pal Aruna's place. Aruna who was a classmate, happened to live next door and we would while away rainy days sitting companionably together on her bed surrounded by a heap of comics which kept us occupied and eating hot chips, toast or bhajiyas which her mother would produce for us at intervals.

As usual the rail traffic has been disrupted so Sudha and Sharat who were supposed to come over this morning are not able to make it. Parts of the city are very likely under water. I haven't yet watched the news. Our city fathers chant the same old mantra every year about how "this year it will be different and we will be prepared." Like hell. As one irate reader commented in today's newspaper, the government is not and never will be prepared so we ordinary citizens better be.

Enter The Monsoon

The monsoon has set in and high time too! We have been at the end of our resources, struggling to keep awake through the heat and humidity. All of a sudden it has cooled down but of course muggy spells in between are still to be expected.

Yesterday there was a bunch of people from the neighbouring slum colony, all of them standing on the rocks just outside their door, gazing raptly at the gigantic monsoon waves rippling through the sea and crashing on the shore, sometimes spilling over the wall around their hutments. In the picture here you see the view from our balcony at high tide - the sea comes in almost to the foot of the garden wall. It's great. The sunsets are a treat - when there are any to speak of! Dark clouds intermingled with startling shades of orange and pink. An artist's paradise.

Weekend Jinks

Once in a while it does good for Aunties like Sudha and me to revive ourselves with what Suhail calls "Eng bled". Su does this hilarious imitation of his south Indian neighbours in Bangalore in the days before they moved to France. Well last weekend Moll (Aparna) and her husband Shivraj came over to cook us a steak dinner which lasted the entire weekend and included two fiercely competitive rounds of UNO (Saturday and Sunday evenings) which lasted till almost two in the morning and was unbelievably noisy. Sudha and I decided to represent the Kannara Saraswat Mahila Mandal and Aparna and Raj played for the Mallu team. After making an initial fuss about never having played the game Sudha and I (actually I) won hands down. Shine on Kannara Saraswat Mahilas! Ha ha ha. (Of course I am not wholly Saraswat, one quarter of me is Tambram).

The steaks were delicious. There were three marinades - a mango pickle marinade, a pad thai marinade and a classic one with olive oil and rosemary. Mmmmm.













Incidentally Shivraj who handles the guitar with almost professional aplomb even serenaded my parents after dinner and before they returned home.

When A Child Is Abandoned

I read about a four year old boy called Om, in the Bombay papers this morning. He had been found abandoned at a railway station in the city. The report is accompanied by this picture of a really cute kid with big rather sad looking eyes and behind him you see the social worker who found him at the station. He had been sitting next to a suitcase containing his clothes, some toys, a pair of shoes and a watch.

Anu Khan was on her routine visit to the central station where she interacts with juvenile ragpickers and beggars, when she saw Om sitting alone. An hour later when she passed that way again he was still there and talking to him she discovered that his mother had left him there saying she was going to get tea but she never came back.

The kid has apparently been abused because the police who took him in and sent him to an orphanage discovered a burn mark on his arm, left by a hot press. He admitted that his mother was bad tempered and had hit him badly on the train for crying.

It isn't only in India that children are abused or abandoned. I still remember the report I read in Time magazine years ago, about a four year old girl abandoned by her mother and the mother's boy friend on a highway somewhere, who was later spotted by the police. I guess it must be happening all the time, all over the world.

As far as I'm concerned it's the ultimate nightmare and I can't even begin to understand how this can happen - how parents can abandon such small kids without batting an eye. What happens to those kids? Are they ever able to trust any human being again? Why do we let each other down so badly at times?

Open Letter To Richard Gere

All those who have been following the outcome of the "Richard Gere- Shilpa Shetty Kiss" several weeks back will find this perspective interesting and maybe even agree on what the writer, Sudhir M, has to say about it. Incidentally my friend Suman mailed me the letter a few days back. Here is Sudhir:

Dear Mr Gere,

On behalf of the Indian people I regret to inform you that your offer to apologise for violating the modesty of an Indian lady is rejected!

We, the people of India, do not accept such acts of lewdness and open display of affection in public. What you did was morally wrong and socially unacceptable in India and has hurt the feelings of every Indian.

Let me demonstrate to you the enormity of your error. Even Vatsayana, in his epic Kamasutra, has not dared to depict any kissing scenes. He explains and depicts various positions for sexual intercourse but none for kissing. Likewise, our temples all over and Khajuraho in particular depict explicit sexual scenes but none of male and female forms are ever shown kissing each other. This kind of intimacy is simply not acceptable. That is why you will never see men and women kiss each other in India.

We are proud that we do not engage in visible exhibition of our affection. We have other ways of showing our caring love and affection and respect for women. Mostly, we show our respect for women by raping them. At times it is done in groups of several men which is our way of paying tribute to the strength of the female form that it requires enormous effort by men to subdue.

We also love and respect our women enough that we force them to get a handsome dowry from their parents at the time of wedding and then throughout her life. This is done to ensure that she is able to lead a comfortable life. If for whatever reasons, the parents are unable to fund the dowry requirements, we normally tend to kill our brides by burning them or pushing them from the roof a tall building or force them to commit suicide to save them from discomfort and guilt that she was unable to provide a comfortable life to her husband and his parents and his uncles and aunts and his nephews and nieces etc.

Mr Gere, in India, the female form is equated with Devi i.e. Goddess. We very firmly believe in this and that is why we have no hesitation in piling her with all responsibilities, hard work and hardships. In many parts of our country, when a man dies, his wife is expected and made to self immolate only to save her from the guilt of not having been able to protect and save her husband despite of her being a form of goddess.

I hope it has become abundantly clear to you that we care and respect our women enough that we cannot accept your immoral behaviour. Had you proceeded to rape Ms Shetty (with a condom on, of course, in line with your prevention of AIDS advocacy), we would probably not have found the act as offensive. While you would be in trouble with the law, the people of India would have not had any issue with you as this is a common occurrence for them.

I hope you have learnt your lesson and in future rape an Indian woman before engaging in the heinous act of kissing her in public. We could be in trouble with law in both cases but at least if you rape her, people will not say that you are inhuman, insensitive and immoral. Moreover, in case you do commit a rape, the law is likely to take a while to catch up with you because unlike kissing in public there are so many rapes happening everyday. And then you are likely to get off on a technicality.

Sudhir M is a common man from the streets of India and can be reached at sm789@yahoo.com

A New Cat On The Scene

Vishnu and Peg have won the race to get a new cat. Here is a pic of Mia and some news about her from Vishnu:

We brought home the 1-year old cat that we saw at the vet last week. They kept her for a few days to have her spayed and a night extra for her to recover partially. She has been home for two days now and is gradually exploring the house a little more each day. Peggy's original
thought was to name her Jeannie and subsequently I came up with the name Mia which Peggy liked because the cat miaows and is moderately vocal. She doesn't have conversations with us like Lucy, but gives a little trill when she feels a little insecure or wants some attention. Also, when she sees something unfamiliar, she gives a very brief soft growl, as she did when she saw the bath tub for the first time.

I am sending you three photos of her that I took this afternoon when we were all sitting on the patio, just before grilling some sirloin steaks. Mia is quite affectionate and gregarious but doesn't like to be carried like Lucy did. She likes to sit with us on the sofa or on the coffee
table and trots after one of us whenever we go from one end of the house to the other. Sometimes she runs in front and gets in the way so we have to be careful not to trip on her or step on her.

One of the photos shows her sitting on the leather Eckornes recliner, to which she has taken a liking. She will probably fight with Mummy as to who gets to sit on that chair. In fact, she wanted to get on when I was sitting on it and looked at me like Mishi used to look at you when you were using one of her chairs.

She is like a cross between Lucy and Mishi. She has the same colors that Muthu did has and a rather narrow face. Peggy calls her monkey-face sometimes. She can be greedy and usually tries to lead us to the laundry room where her bowl is kept. There's just one unpleasant habit she has. She sometimes farts, rather stinky ones and pretends she doesn't know anything about it. She did it several times the first evening we had her, less on the second day and
less today.With luck, it will taper off. It could have been due to her being on anaesthesia and being constipated for a couple of days.

Well I'm hoping to get a new cat here in Bombay too, but since I am leaving for Europe in August and will be away for about 6 weeks, I think I will wait till I get back home in September before I go hunting for a kitten.

Marve Retreat

Our retreat at the beach shack in Marve, with Pankaj and gang generally went off well but Jesus! How noisy the place has become! We deliberately chose to avoid the weekend and to go there during the week and yet we were bombarded by motor bikes racing up and down and disco beats blasting the air from passing car stereos. The worst was being woken up at one thirty in the night by a string of firecrackers that went on for over ten minutes and these included several ear splitting "atom bombs". It felt as if the craziness of the world was all concentrated along the strip of beach outside our house and I am wondering if it isn't time to say goodbye to this great place which has been home to us for so many years. To add to all this we ran out of water by the second morning - the municipal supply just didn't get to us. So the "boys" patiently stood and filled bucket fulls of water into the tank from where it is piped up to the bathrooms, from a storage bin next to it. But generally we had a good time so I'm not complaining.

Off With His Head!

A couple of days back our cook A entered my room in a flap. "Something to tell you," she said, "But let me finish my work and then I can talk." Before I could die of curiosity she settled down on the couch and started pouring out this dramatic real life story, of what had happened to her the previous day as she was getting back home from work at about nine in the evening. She had just crossed the maidan over onto the road leading past her house when she saw a fellow slowly cycling along. Behind him, unknown to him was a guy trotting after him with a chopper. Before anyone knew it the guy with the chopper had knocked off the head of the cyclist and run off and as A said, her hands and legs "liquefied".

What shocked her the most was the fact that she knew who the killer was, it was a young man who lived in a nearby building, whose father was respectably employed as a driver or something. Whooo! Anyway A had her wits about her because before anyone could spot her, she dodged into her building and once back in her room, collapsed onto the bed. "If I had "bud payshur" she said, "I would have had a stroke by now or I'd be dead." We figured out that both guys must be members of rival gangs, that too gangs related to some big time mafia dons about whom one is always reading in the press. (Later on I learned that the boy with the chopper was arrested by the police).

At times like this I see how far apart our lives are, A's and mine, although we don't live all that far away from each other. Violence seems to be built into the environment of working class people. The other day during our fortnightly get together T also spoke about how volatile the atmosphere in slums and chawls is. The least provocation can set off a really bad reaction. Must be quite a task to maintain any degree of sanity in those surroundings so when I do see people succeed at it, it awes me.

May Meltdown

May is the month in Bombay when you shower after breakfast and before you've thrown on any clothes, want to head straight back for bed. Each moment, each step, each word practically, costs you tons of ENERGY. Sometimes I just stand around doing nothing and am fascinated at the way my face, neck and other parts of me start to drip. A whole month or more to go before the monsoon sets in. Sigh.

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Are Indian politicians growing up by any chance? Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's remarks in the Lok Sabha about the influx of immigrants from U.P. and Bihar into the city sparked off quite a reaction among members of the RJD, BJP and Samajwadi parties. But whereas in the old days they would have been pelting her with tomatoes, rotten eggs and chappals, this time, members angered by her statement just "protested". Of course their protests effectively stopped the house from carrying on with any work until Sheila Madam apologised. Laloo, not known particularly for his sense of maturity, took everyone by surprise by saying that although she was wrong, it was time to leave the incident behind and move on.

Another Great Cat Says Goodbye

Barely a week after our cat Mishi left us (in Bombay) Vishnu and Peg's (my brother and sister-in-law's) cat (Champaign, Ill.) took her leave as well, at the age of about eighteen. Here is an excerpt about Lucy, from Vishnu's email this morning:

I know how sad you and Mummy must be at not having Mishi around any more. We also feel that way about Lucy. Peggy said that most cats are cats people like in spite of their personalties. With Lucy, there was no “in spite”. She was sociable and affectionate and introduced herself to people who visited her except very small children since they tended to chase her away. She spent a good amount of time following us around from room to room and often sat on the tables next to our PCs when we used them.

She was quite a hunter in her prime, and we remember 3-chipmunk days and 3-rabbit days in Bloomington. Once she jumped up into the air and caught a bird with both of her front paws while she was about 2 feet off the ground. She also chased Wim and Margaret’s cat, Melody, around their house which embarrassed us, especially when we were talking with Wim and Margaret right in front of their house.

The funniest incident I remember was when she left half a mouse for me on the patio doormat in Bloomington. She had eaten the top half which must have been the tastiest and left the rest for me. I tossed it over the fence and she brought it back within minutes and put it right back on the doormat. Each time, I tossed it father away, and each time she retrieved it and looked at me as if to say, “Now don’t do that! I brought it for you!”.

This brings back shades of Mishi too, who used to be quite a hunter in her heyday. Not to mention a number of other cats who have lived with us in the past forty years, each of whom we remember with amusement and some amount of horror (the gruesome offerings we've been made!!) but never without affection . Cats - oh well. I don't know about you but for all their quirks I do find it difficult to live without them.

Adios Mishi

Born some time in December 1987

Left for the happy hunting grounds April 30th 2007

Mishibishi

As great and eccentric a cat as the rest who have graced us with their presence.
Had a horrendously loud and raucous mew and often vented her feelings during our evening meditations.
Loved being hit all over by a fly swatter. Especially after dinner.
Mad about pizza - any kind.
On the nights that she decided to sleep on my bed she drove visitors out of my room by 10 PM by screeching at them to GET OUT.
We'll miss this crazy cat.

Summer

The heat and the humidity are catching up with me so my brain is not at its best right now. What I like to do most is to listen to music, read and yes, clean up, because that doesn't take much brain power as such. Last week Tukaram, the two ladies and I took a look at the spare room next to the kitchen where the ladies have been requested to sleep. The things that emerged from it were amazing.

At first, the two beauties joined me in looking up at the loft and gawking at the odd looking heaps and bundles with which it was crammed. They very cooperatively seconded my feelings of disgust though they didn’t quite as enthusiastically back up my suggestion that we start to actually deal with the mess. Well, at the end of about two hours we had found stuff which had been rotting there for I don’t know how long. Mouldy slippers belonging to my grandmother, moth-eaten cardboard files, a huge mysterious trunk filled with holes which had been shrouded in a faded cotton sheet, whose contents nobody had bothered to check for a lifetime, because, the two maids, (when asked why they’d never bothered to take a look at it) said, “it was locked.” So we broke open the lock and found that the trunk was quite empty. There were not even any rats or roaches in it. It turned out to be the one my mom had taken with her on her first trip abroad when she’d sailed to England to join my father in the summer of ’53.

Well, the room is looking a whole lot cleaner and more respectable minus the junk. And now there is this huge loft up in the study where I'm working right now, begging me to also take a look and relieve it of the rubbish which is decaying in it. I will, soon.

Computer Hassles

My computer's on the blink. I haven't been able to use it since Sunday and the computer engineer who showed up yesterday whisked it off for god knows how long, saying there was some problem with the motherboard. So I have swiped my father's laptop and am watching him do a restless jig in the background. What to do. I told him I use it a lot more than he does and that it makes more sense for me to have it than for it to be sitting around in his flat so he can look up his mails for five minutes every day. He sighed and gave in. He probably thinks, first it's my shirts, then it's my camera, then it's various other knick knacks I've bought, now she wants my computer. Yeah, that's what daughters are for, to help lighten their dads' loads in life so they can walk light and easy on this earth.

A Tantra Session

Lyn who passed through Bombay on his way back to San Francisco last week, conducted quite an interesting session for us last Saturday evening, based on the "Tandava dance" He talked to us before that about Tantra being the philosophy of acceptance and oneness, rather than an attitude of rejection which negated all desires.

Lyn had spent six months in India on this particular trip, and visited Kerala, Auroville (which sounds like an intriguing place) and Chennai where he met George over lunch. It's not his first trip to India either, he's been coming here since the late eighties - almost for twenty years. Anyway it was fun talking to him and we also exchanged a lot of music on his last evening here.

Five Star Crap

It wasn't a case of overeating or indigestion. No. It was downright food poisoning. Five star food poisoning. As bad or worse than what you can get from eating bhel or pani puri from a roadside stall. Baaaah! It took me over three days to recover but now I'm back to normal and my stomach yearns for food again, at mealtimes. Too bad. When I told Ariela about my being ill on the phone, she said well maybe I would lose some weight. Not half likely. The pound or two I lost has probably come right back.

Ouuuchhhh!

This morning I woke up feeling like I could go the next fifty years without eating. There was this huge rock in my stomach which I suspect was either the tuna steak I had last night or the lemon butter sauce poured liberally on top of it. Our German friend Veronika had invited us to the Trattoria for a meal which I had looked forward to, all day and now look where I've landed.

So I decided to meditate for a bit on the heaviness inside me, bordering on pain, and came to the conclusion that it felt more like a hangover. The question which naturally followed was, can you get a hangover from eating Tuna? No, well, I remembered that the evening had also involved some red wine, but not that much. We shared a bottle of Cabernet Shiraz between the four of us which is pretty decent. Nobody can accuse us of being alcoholics.

So anyway, today, instead of starting with breakfast as I usually do, I decided to begin with my morning exercises, went on to have a shower, then moved to the breakfast table. Maybe the muesli or the coffee helped because along the way there was a good long burp which kind of lightened the load in my tummy - I presume by helping me let out what P calls "gaze", which she also suffers from and for which reason she probably burps and groans all day. Well now I know what she feels like, but don't know why she does, considering she never eats tuna or lemon butter sauce.

I am currently struggling back to my normal state but it is going to be a while before I actually feel hungry again.

+++

I've finally had a haircut though my father says it looks like the hairdresser removed a single strand of hair from either side of my head and left the rest the way it was. Ok. I'll leave all of you to decide the truth of this statement when you see me in person. Veronika who had gone on at me to cut my hair when we met last week, said to me yesterday: "You call this a haircut?" Then she spent the first five minutes of dinner looking at me like she'd bit into a sour lemon. But I didn't give her a chance to go on looking like that, I was as charming as it is possible for me to be and she finally had to stop looking disgusted.

Household Matters

The latest in the household saga. S and P continue to put up a stiff fight against returning to their own quarters next to the kitchen and insist they be allowed to use the recreation room at night. Then when one of us needs to work on the computer or wants to watch TV after ten, P harrumps and snorts and makes other noises of disapproval and disgust to indicate that her sleep is being disturbed. Last week when Sudha (who is acting as mediator) asked them why they refused to move to their own room, they said it was because years ago part of the ceiling had collapsed and P had narrowly missed being squashed by a slab of cement. So they were duly informed that at the time the entire house had been in a state of disrepair due to bad materials used by the builder and that not only P but all of us had been at risk. However in the last couple of years the ceiling in all parts of the house has been checked and the weaker areas have been reinforced. Now there is no more danger of it coming down on anybody's head.

So they pulled out a second reason for not sleeping in that room. It was dirty they said, and cockroaches got out of the drain at night and they didn't like to think of them crawling over their beds. Right. So at that point we suggested they gird up their loins and clean up their own room (which is supposed to be "the cleaning woman V's job"). If necessary they could enlist T's help (the odd job boy who comes in every day to fix all broken things and clean the windows and stuff). They listened somewhat sullenly and a couple of days ago T came to me with the third reason the two ladies did not want to spend the night in their room. Ghosts. The place is apparently haunted. They hear voices at night and a lady jangling her bangles and I don't know what else and altogether there is "bad energy" in the room.

Hmmm. Jyotsna has good advice on this point. She says, "Call in a priest to do a puja. Or better still call in somebody to do a little chilli burning around the place. Undertake the thing with seriousness and then clap your hands and say ok now you can sleep in peace here. You can also sleep there a night or two and hold P's left hand and S's right hand . Before putting off the light say "Courage Mon Braves" and start snoring."

If anybody else has any good tips please let me know. I'm waiting.

Week Of The Visitor

Ruth sitting next to Asha a bit of whose arm you see in the pic

This evening we're off to have dinner with Veronika who is visiting from Frankfurt. It's been the week of the visitor. Jyotsna was here from Pune a few days back, to get a couple of visas done and a day after she left Ruth returned from Goa, on her way back to Germany. Ruth, with her rainbow coloured dresses and shock of gold hair flowing down her back. She was to have flown out of Bombay on the 9th of March but decided to prolong her stay in Goa by two weeks, giving me the job of getting her ticket extended.

Air India might have been okay to fly with but getting changes of any sort made is a royal pain. Poor J. who was anyway headed for town the other day agreed to take Ruth's ticket along, to get the new date endorsed. When she reached the AI office she was told that she would have to wait 2 hours in the queue. There were about 50 people already there before her. Why should it take so long for AI to service their customers? Who knows? Like all good government employees maybe they break frequently for tea or intercept their work with long telephone exchanges or friendly chats with their colleagues like the sales people at Cottage Industries do when you're hanging around the counter waiting for them to finish writing out your bill. Anyway good old J. achieved the impossible and returned home triumphantly with the new date endorsed on Ruth's ticket.

Otherwise life's pretty much the same. Am slowly getting back to climbing stairs and now and then I toy with the idea of going for a haircut but still haven't got down to it. I look more and more like Sai Baba. Maybe the day someone actually mistakes me for him I'll call up my hairdresser and go over. Or maybe I'll just play along and pretend to be him. It will be a new and interesting occupation.

Domestic Peace Keeping Attempts

Much time in the last few weeks has gone into figuring out how to keep the peace at home. It is not easy to live with others, especially if the "others" are people like S and P the two maids whom I inherited along with my grandmother's flat when she died a year and a half back. S, fortyish, is the younger of the two and happens to be P's niece. S sulks at the drop of a hat but when you make fierce noises at her she does her work reasonably efficiently (mainly fix my breakfast and evening tea and a few other equally simple chores) . P sulks but does not work even at the point of a gun. In fact before you can hold up your gun she fires her own back at you. So in the past couple of days a lot of verbal fire has been exchanged resulting in P threatening to leave after being with my grandmother for thirty three years - which I have now told her she is welcome to do.

The problem is in trying desperately to keep everyone happy including myself and it doesn't seem to be working. I am looking for some kind of equality between us all but the idea has backfired, with P having elevated herself to the position of "chief of all equals." In the past few months she has taken to sleeping in the recreation room which has the TV and my computer and every time she wants to rest, tries to boot out whoever happens to be watching TV because she wants to sleep in peace. My suggestion that she find some other place to sleep (she has her own room next to the kitchen, for example) was met with huge indignation and I was told not to shout and insult her (which I would hardly think of doing!) So now she scowls at me every time our paths cross and I am wondering how long I will be able to stand it. What if she doesn't leave!

An inside look at "Crorepati"

Sheila M. dropped in for tea last week along with her friends Ashok and Moyna with whom she was staying, in Bandra. A whole lot of people in the film industry are bound to know Sheila who has been visiting India for over thirty years now. She first came here through my aunt Chitra, with whom she attended the East West University in Hawaii in the early seventies.

Sheila is one of those Americans who knows the Indian film industry inside out and is able to make erudite comments on every movie from Mother India starring Nargis and Sunil Dutt to the antics of modern heroes like Shahrouk or Saif Ali Khan. Don't ask me how she manages it without knowing any Hindi but she can follow every little detail in an Indian film without the slightest problem.

Well during this particular trip to India she got it into her head to try and wangle a pass for the shooting of "Kaon banega Crorepati" - the quiz show which Shahrouk has taken over from His Holiness Amitabh and is currently filling up with his coy dimpled smiles. So apparently Khalid M organised one for her. We got to know from Sheila that the whole shooting is anything but a simple direct affair. The one hour show (with commercial breaks) lasts over three hours during which time nobody is allowed to leave the hall. I dont know what would happen if you needed urgently to pee, maybe you could find a way to crawl to the exit, without anyone seeing you and breaking up the shoot. And they also do shots over again I found out, if the first shot isn't right. So the guy who won 50 lakhs was supposed to do a second take and to try not to act like he knew he'd just won that huge amount which means, he was obliged to produce the same gasp of wild surprise at seeing how far he'd come.

I don't normally watch Croreopati but I decided to, on this occasion. I kept looking out for Sheila in the audience but didn't catch the smallest glimpse of her - or even anybody looking like her. But I had the satisfaction of watching the lucky participant act surprised when he won his fifty lakh rupees at the end. Maybe Yash Chopra or Rakesh Roshan will now offer him a role in the next blockbuster they come up with.

The Air Kiss

I woke up this morning to the sight of Liz Hurley and Shilpa Shetty exchanging an air kiss at a party. I normally sleepwalk to the dining table a little before eight in the mornings, spread out the morning papers before me and between the first and the twelfth sip of coffee (depending on how I've slept the night before) my brain snaps open to register the first few photographs or headlines of the day. Sometimes it is an old man feeding pigeons by the seashore, sometimes it's a dog indulging in a leisurely scratch on a park bench. This morning it happened to be the air kiss. Both Liz and Shilpa stood a few centimetres from each other, eyes shut and lips puckered as if each expected the other to bridge the short distance between them in order for mouth to meet cheek. Whether the kiss actually materialised, I am unable to say. Not that it matters.

I have to confess, I was actually thinking of writing a sarcastic piece on the party hosted last night by Mrs. P. Godrej for the most celebrated newly wed couple in recent times but a titbit that caught my eye shortly after the air kiss, made me change my mind. It had to do with Chateau Latour wine. I thought to myself, "I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!" because I can't think of anyone else who would appreciate a bottle of Chateau Latour (or any other good wine for that matter) more than me. Besides, whenever there is fine wine flowing at a party there are also fine canapés to go with it, ranging from Caviar to Pate de fois gras, which I also love.

Well, it so happens that I wasn't invited to this exclusive party and I think I know why. Apart from the fact that our paths in life have somehow not managed to cross till now, Mrs. G's and mine, it was because the reception for the royal newly weds was a "black tie" affair and Mrs. P. Godrej's secret service men had informed her that I don't own a black tie. I don't own a blue or a yellow one either for that matter. Nor do I have a pair of black trousers at the moment (I've outgrown the last pair I bought), but what the hell. I have a red spotted bandana which I fling around my neck for formal occasions (which could help me pass of as Rajnikant's female side kick) and a pair of dark blue jeans which by candlelight could be taken for black by tired eyes.

Some other time, Mrs. G. I'll start shopping for appropriate party apparel right away. Meanwhile, apart from the Caviar and imported cheese and the Chateau Latour what I missed was the police crackdown on the premises following complaints from residents that the blare from the loudspeakers had exceeded the 10 O'clock deadline. Several guests interviewed by the local press claimed that they had no idea they were disturbing the entire neighbourhood with their shindig. Frankly I wouldn't have known either, even if I'd been to the party.

By half past ten, having polished off as much of the wine and canapés as I could have held in me not so little tummy, I'd have made my way home and with some luck would have been curled up in bed by then letting myself be seduced into the world of alternative dreams by a CD which, though far from new, happens to be my current favourite: "The Serpent's Egg" by Dead Can Dance.

A Peaceful Day

Holi passed off mercifully quietly. As I do every year I had got out my scruffiest clothes but I needn't have bothered. I could have dressed like a queen for all the attention I attracted, adverse or otherwise. Except for Sudha who stayed over from the Saturday evening session there were no other guests. It was quiet in the building as well and the little bit of noise and fun I could catch a glimpse of, was all in the shanties adjoining our building. About the only real disturbance was in the late afternoon when a couple of loudspeakers started to blare out Hindi film music dominated by the usual squeaky tones of the top female singers.

I'm not complaining. This is one festival I can't say I am particularly fond of, which as a child I thought was positively grotesque. Suppose it's all a matter of upbringing?

The Budget and Other Snacks

I woke up this morning feeling a shade depressed and wondering why. I don’t often feel that way but yes, some mornings it’s as if the gray smog outside my window in Bombay fills up not only my lungs and eyes but seeps into my mind as well.

When I reached the breakfast table I found the budget report splashed across the front page of the morning papers. Then I knew it. The reason I felt depressed was the budget. I couldn’t understand it. Over the next few days some would say it was good, some would say it was bad and I would sit here scratching my head.

Scanning the papers I discovered that the budget was not the only thing I didn’t understand. There was stuff about Baghdad and Egypt and the CIA in Europe. I realized that in general I didn’t understand politics and economics and never had. It is depressing to find out that there is apparently something that makes the world of human beings go round and you can’t understand it. It robs you of your self importance.

There was a time in my early twenties though when I pretended to understand all these things, and managed to con not only myself but a number of other people into believing I did, through having mastered what had earlier seemed like totally incomprehensible themes. I started devouring newspaper editorials and books on political theory and began to bone up on international affairs and modern Indian politics and before long found myself using a lot of very important sounding words and phrases which I would give anything to remember now so as to reproduce them here and make you believe me. People began to look at me with new respect and the more admiration I got the more determined I became to plow through even more chunky tomes and articles to back up my impressive “grasp” of politics.

But then you see, the reason I got started on the road to politics was not because politics or economics interested me per se but because a handful of individuals I’d got to know at the time and whom I was trying desperately to befriend, were themselves deep into Marx and Mao or things like the Balfour Declaration (wow, I’m patting myself on the back for remembering that one!) and all kinds of really intellectually meaty stuff which provided us with so many hours of rich conversation over beer and kebabs in the evening.

So what went wrong? Did the beer lose its appeal? Was I waylaid by other interests? No. I think what happened was this. I realized one day in the midst of one of my really wise sounding statements on the future of Chinese agricultural reforms or something similar, that I was walking on thin ice. Although we seemed to be making a lot of sense to each other, I hadn’t a clue as to what I was saying. I had just become very (really very!) good at putting words and concepts and some basic information together on topics which my friends wanted to discuss, without knowing what I meant. I panicked to think that at any moment I might be found out. I felt a little like Frank Abagnale Jr . (Catch Me If You Can) attempting to pass himself off as the various people he really wasn’t.

Then I thought to myself, if I don’t know what I’m talking about, do the others? I couldn’t be that sure. I felt my entire world of ideas collapse about me. And to this day I am not convinced that people who spout clever sounding theories which remain inaccessible to the common man, really know what they are saying. I ask myself whether they are not being clever out of a deep rooted need to command the world’s attention the way I found myself doing years ago, rather than from a genuine concern for mankind. Because let’s face it, with such a large pool of intellectual talent at the world’s disposal and so many knowledgeable individuals in positions of power wherever you look, you would expect a lot more to happen in the way of peace, and economic justice than what you see happening.

So at the end of the day I am left with the feeling that real change comes from a source other than politics or the kind of economics that we are familiar with today. It comes from how we feel about each other, and - maybe it sounds naïve to say this - but it has to do with how much we really care about each other and the world we live in. It doesn’t have to do with theories, it doesn’t have to do with weighty explanations about how the system works. The trouble with that is, it means you and me having to look at ourselves and at the changes possible for us to make as individuals, instead of constantly discussing the lives and pronouncements of other people threadbare.

I guess that’s why we prefer to bury our heads in the sands of abstractions which are meaningful only to an exclusive club of intellectuals and not to the ordinary people who make up the world. Oh well. Now you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t be so judgmental and that all those debates and arguments and sermons do have their place in life. I know, I know. I agree with you totally, they do. Sigh. They go really well with beer and kebabs in the evenings.

The Politics of Eggs

Anything can become a subject of debate in politics. Music, books, clothes, Valentine’s day, even eggs. Especially eggs. Remember Gulliver’s Travels, where old Gulliver lands up in a crazy situation between two nations at war with each other over how to eat an egg? Well, Jonathan Swift seemed to not only know what he was talking about but like Nostradamus he seems to have had the gift of foretelling the future, in a land far from his own.

They’re fighting over eggs in Karnataka. The JD government had the idea of serving eggs to school children as part of a nourishment programme, on two accounts. Because eggs are generally a good source of protein and also because there is a huge surplus of eggs in the state.

The BJP has said that instead of serving eggs to school children, the government ought to include milk or fruit in the supplementary programme because these foods were more nourishing. The JD replied that milk and fruit were too expensive to be distributed free of charge to schools. The outcome? No milk, no fruit and no eggs for the children.

Officials from the Women and Child Department and several prominent figures from Kannada’s literary world suggested that the children be asked what they preferred and a subsequent survey revealed that 97 per cent of the school children voted for eggs. What is the BJP going to say to this? Hmmm. Let me guess. That the kids should want to eat fruit instead of eggs, just as they should want to sing devotional bhajans at four in the morning, and they should want to give up wearing modern clothes and turn the cultural clock back a few hundred years. Afraid I have a hard time following their logic.

The Gawking Indian

You know you’re back in India when you happen to blow your nose somewhere outdoors and a group of about twelve people gathers around you, open mouthed, to watch exactly how you go about it. You wonder where they find the time and energy to occupy themselves with the mundane details of an individual’s private life but don’t worry, they do, somehow. Unfailingly.

A couple of days back my brother, who is visiting from the U.S. suggested he help me shape up a bit and offered to hold my hand while I practised climbing the stairs again, which I haven’t done in quite a while. My brother is a health freak and becomes a nervous wreck if fewer than four separate dishes containing green leafy vegetables are served for dinner. So of course it’s understandable that he would have his only sister’s (only sibling’s in fact) interests at heart and want to do his best to help her recuperate from a godamn broken ankle.

So we take the elevator down to the ground floor and decide to tackle the stairs from the bottom up. Before I’ve gone up two steps I find I’m paralysed. I just can’t seem to move. The guy who operates the elevator is standing right next to my brother gawking at me, following every move of mine including probably the perspiration that breaks out on my forehead at the sight of him gaping open mouthed at my struggle to climb up.

Well, I managed to do two entire steps about three times before my nerves gave way and I dragged my brother back upstairs, saying I’d had enough. My sister-in-law says that next time I give it a bash she'll help out. She’ll tackle the liftman.

I’ll give her a box of Kleenex so she can stand next to me and pretend to blow her nose and hopefully the guy will take his eyes off me and gawk at her instead.

A closer look at terrorism:
Basicindia Reflections

What is going on?

There was this weird report in the newspapers a day or two back. The headlines said: "In Mumbai’s backyard, youth tied to pole and beaten to death." This young man was apparently found tied to an electric pole and allegedly beaten to death by residents of New Panvel. There is even a gory photograph of the incident to prove it. But the police have not registered the case as murder, they call it an “accidental death.” Why? Because, they say that the post portem does not clarify the cause of death. The police claim that they do not know why the man was tied to the pole and the best reason for not registering the case as murder is that there were no eye witnesses.

Even this is not true because one of the residents, 17 year old Pramod Patil, said he was woken up that morning by people shouting, and saw fifty to sixty people with sticks, beating up a person tied to an electric pole. Several others apparently also confirmed this version but don’t want to be named.

I don’t think I quite understand what’s going on. Or maybe I do but can hardly believe it! Maybe I'm just naive.

Who me? I'm harmless!

Ruth and I are winding down our guitar practice for the evening. It's the night before she's to leave for Goa and she reminisces about the time we first met, about five months ago in Germany, with a nostalgic sigh. It was at Thomas and Ariela's place, in the kitchen in fact, we were all sitting around the dining table, some of us drinking tea and the others downing apple juice mixed with soda. Ruth, along with others had come over for a workshop that weekend which Ariela and I were going to be conducting.

"I thought you were so harmless when I first saw you," she says. Pauses for a moment and then goes off into peals of laughter. I mean peals as in an uncontrollable fit of giggling .

I ask her blandly, "Well? Aren't I harmless?"

Again she has an uncontrollable fit and almost ends up coughing. Till the end I didn't manage to get a coherent reply from her. I have a feeling her reaction is related to my occasional abrupt moves to stop her in her tracks when she starts babbling by telling her I feel tired. Not that I see anything bad in doing that. I consider I'm doing people a favour by telling them that I've ceased to listen to them, I mean why should they unnecessarily waste their energy sharing views and info which the ears have decided to block out? To her credit she didn't let that get in the way of our having a good time together and has been a real brick, helping out with odds and ends and making endless suggestions as to how I can hasten the process of recovery as far as my ankle is concerned.

Anyway, Ruth is in Goa now, I just got about five SMS's from her to say she had reached safely. If you're reading this, Ruth, have a great time and dont forget the guitar strings and capodistra or whatever its called. Meanwhile I'm practising our new version of "Lady in black" and "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho" for when you return and we play for whichever hapless individuals happen to be around us when we decide to hold our concert.

Any tips on a good hair dresser?

Ruth and Asha (our cook, friend, philosopher and everbody's guide)

Since getting back home my hair has been getting a lot of attention. It looks nothing like what it did when I left India six months ago. Charmayne who visited recently, along with "the other Uma" and Suresh, said I didn't look at all like I did in the pics I had been posting. Obviously. Those were taken a while ago when I was still looking relatively sober and my hair stood respectfully around my head.

Since I haven't been able to have a haircut in the last several months and now that I've got back my own stylist says she is too busy to come home and give me a haircut, I will have to put up with this bird's nest for the next two weeks at least, or until I am well and truly back on my feet and able to hobble along to her outfit for my next proper haircut.

Me exercising like mad to keep my weight steady and get my muscles into shape

Until then, feel free to inspect the wild forest around my head. You might even come across a dingo or pygmy deer hiding in it.

What the hell is this all about?

The most disconcerting thing about returning to India, has not been the noise, the pollution or the dirt. Those are things I have got used to in the last 50 odd years of my life and although in the months which you've spent in a spanking clean European city you do tend to forget their existence, you also learn to gracefully accept it all when you're back.

No - the thing that fazed me when I returned from Germany a few days back was the newspapers. For four months I had not had much to do with news of any kind, neither on TV nor through newspapers (except for the bit when Sadaam was executed and we spent about three minutes discussing whether he might not become a martyr as mostly happens when eminent individuals are killed) . In all the time I saved on reading about mafia murders or emininent leaders rolling in the dust in protest against something or other, I learned to play the guitar, enaged in household chores and generally got to know myself and people around me better.

The other day, thinking that maybe it was time for me to get back to the "real world" I picked up the Indian Express lying on the dining table next to my coffee mug. The subject that has all of India on fire (or is it only Mumbai - or maybe only certain journalists who write about these things?) is apparently the forthcoming Liz Hurley-Arun Nayar wedding. Apparently everyone is busy trying to fiugre out how many people are invited, what form the event will take, where the guests will stay, what Liz will wear (a 4000 Pound brocade sari or something like that) what Arun will wear (a gold embroidered dhoti maybe with gold dust sprinkled on a moustache which I think he should really grow for the occasion).

Of course I read the report to the boring end so now I feel very much in touch with the world as the newspapers would like me to be. But am not sure if the world the newspapers bring me in touch with is the world I want to be occupied with. So I think I will go back to the just surfing the net and looking at the sea and playing the guitar together with my friend Ruth who flew down with me last week. It should keep me happy for now.

Back home

With so much excitement in the last few months and me being on edge as to when I would travel and with whom, I was sure that till the moment I actually landed in Bombay I would be sitting on the edge of my seat, biting my fingernails. It wasn't quite that bad. The day we left Prien for Munich I got the heebie jeebies because it started to snow furiously and I was terrified we wouldn't reach the airport on time and miss the flight. But we got there early in fact and it all worked out smoothly. Spent the last three days in Germany with Ayse and Suhail with whom I had a marvellous (actually hilarious) time and was dropped off at Frankfurt airport on the 30th morning by Ayse and Bernd who came to Cologne more or less for the evening, the last day that I was there.

There were a whole lot of Indians milling around the airport and when I told Ayse how weird and discomfiting it felt to see so many of my countrymen all at once after having seen none for the last four months, she had a good laugh. Ruth, who had already arrived from Munich, efficiently went about organising a wheelchair for me and when we finally sat in our seats on the plane I was able to heave a sigh of relief.

I wont say that I have actually become a fan of Air India (this was my very first AI flight) but it was not as bad as I had so often been told it would be. The aircraft and the seats generally seemed a bit tacky, but they were generous with the drinks. When I asked for red wine (big surprise aint it!) and the stewardess actually gave me two bottles of Beaujoulais, which kept me 'appy for quite a while.

Am now settling down again in Bombay, and slowly feeling at home again here. More in the next few days.