Donald Duck in Cowboy Gear

In the early 1990s, I began a corporate career working with TDICI, then India’s premier venture capital fund and, almost at once, I was handed over a portfolio of companies in which we had invested over the years.  Of the two vexatious companies in this portfolio, Gum India was, by far, leading the charts.  It made Big Fun, a rather disgusting pink bubble gum and Gum India was, to use an equally disgusting pun, a sticky mess.    

The bubble wasn't in the gum though, but in the financials (call it a hot air bubble) and the Income Statement and Balance Sheet were products of inspired fiction.  The company owed money to nearly every pedestrian in Chennai, was a marginal player in most markets and made a product that destroyed kids’ teeth, which didn’t quite put it on a pedestal anywhere. The company was driven by its sales people who, inspite of an alleged business education, understood nothing of finance, collections or profitability, leaving all of that to the man who will shortly be introduced as the Chief Protagonist of this story.  

And, if this was not enough, the company founder, a tall, lean chap called Naru, was (and still is) quite a character: full of bluster, grand ideas (never supported by reality, which he perceived to be but an irritant), and an ability to talk the hind legs of the most skeptical donkey you’d meet. In us, he had found not just a donkey, but a pack of them. 

This chap had a mean streak of arrogance, sometimes communicated in the vein of sophisticated humour.  This was partly a result of what he saw as superior breeding and partly his opinion of himself and his education from IIM (blame, Calcutta). Naru knew everything.  Naru had the last word.  This hauteur meant that he consigned me to his beleagured finance manager.

This note then is about Ramk, Gum India’s finance manager. He was a short tubby chap, grey haired, with a moustache and an ingratiating, sly smile that hid more than it revealed. It was a slyness that was cast within, for his was an unenviable position to be in: hounded by creditors, harassed by employees and impaired by a management team that found him to be an impediment in their grandiose plans.  There is no doubting the stress he was under, which at some point presented him with a slipped disc (he wore the collar to every tricky meeting to generate sympathetic vibes).

This is not to imply that Ramk was a suffering, silent saint; on the contrary, he was a skilled manipulator, generating superior, highly convincing fiction on a spreadsheet.  His job was to convert a complainant into his victim - a job he did with unmatchable skill - each of whom was guided gently down a primrose path to nowhere (ask me, I was Victim #1).   

In our regular meetings in his office in Chennai, I was always prepared with stern messages and sometimes rehearsed my lines.  One hour into the meeting, I would be putty in his hands and rich fodder for his spreadsheet-led fiction recital.  The next quarter, he would assert with what I can only call Inspired BullShit (which he had learnt from his boss), would be spectacular for the company. Since that quarter never ever arrived, the next quarter would be a repeat in an astonishing display of chutzpah.    

Ramk’s room was a drab, grey cabin, with little to please the eye, except for a worn poster that was stuck on the wall behind him. It had Donald Duck in a cowboy suit, hat, holster, the works, twirling a gun on his forefinger, with a broad grin across his engaging face. The byline said, “Nothing will happen today that I can’t handle!”. 

And everytime I met him in his room, my eyes would fix on that poster and then on him.  And then back to that poster.  That sly smile, the chutzpah and brazenness....

As the years have passed by, Donald Duck in Cowboy Gear has stood me in good stead, much before the film '3 Idiots' popularised "All-is-well"!  When faced with a fire in my family home in the middle of the night, an airline employee who had closed the flight gates when I reached them or a child who ran headlong into my car (he ended up fine), I have despaired, only to see that poster on the wall and breathe again.  Followed by a picture of Ramk in my mind, his easy, at times sly, smile reflecting confidence in his deft hands and in getting out of this one, skin (and neck collar) intact.  

But then, I hope the writing on the wall - the poster and the idiom - is the only thing I learnt from the inimitable Ramk.

I Once Lived in a Vacuum

About thirty years ago, a company called Real Value, that made fire extinguishers that did not look like they were for exclusive use by the Asian Weightlifting Champion, decided to make a new product called the Vacuumiser.  The principle of this gadget was to put your leftover food in their specially-designed dishes, which were then vacuumised under a motor, making it last forever (make sambar in summer, consume in monsoon, sort of thing.  You get the pic, even if it seems yucky).  

The company I worked for then had a ‘hard furnishings allowance’ (which is the dumbest idea for tax-saving ever.  Ever.  Take it from me).  Not needing any furnishing, hard, soft or in-between, I bought the vacuumiser with that allowance, because the ad by Trikaya Grey, an agency that specialised in doing funky ads for gullible imbeciles who had hard furnishing allowance, looked good.  The product was clearly useless for us, since we had a cook who used to come in everyday, and hence I bought it (most of my decisions follow this pattern.  If you are looking for someone to take charge of a nuclear reactor, ignore my job application in the larger interest).

The first day, I vacuumised the leftover idlis from breakfast in one of their dishes and put it in the fridge.  On day 2, the idlis had shrunk like a Chinese T-shirt (XXL to M in one wash, guaranteed, says the label, but in Chinese).  They were also flatter than a helipad and were now a colour best described in the Asian Paints brochure as Zinnia Bloom.

The math is as follows:

Idlis without air inside = bricks without air inside

Remove ‘without air inside’ from both sides.

Idlis = bricks.

After nearly losing two of my finest teeth, I abandoned the effort to eat them.  So did the neighbourhood cow that, with a look of disgust, deposited some dung in clear expression of opinion and  I briefly considered shipping that dung (vaccumised in one of their bloody dishes) to Real Value.  In a week, we realised that anything with air inside – which is about 97.245% of all food that I know – would no longer have air inside and hence needed rehydration therapy, meditation and motivational speeches and tender loving care before consumption.  

Yesterday’s vaccumised chappatis tasted like the ones found while excavating Harappa, and the chana could be used in construction, particularly of highways, no questions asked.  And the khichdi was transformed into a grim forbidding cake, needing a knife, protection glasses, two hammers and GPS-type navigation. 

When I told my friend and senior at IIMB, Aloo, who was at Trikaya Grey, that I had bought a vacuumiser, he seemed aware of it.  He told me this after he had stopped laughing, which, from a guy who is the closest human form to a potato, was the last straw (no, not a vacuumised straw.  He liked his carbs.).  

He was thoughtful for a minute and then let me know that it wasn’t the vacuumiser, but the fifteen customers who were the only purchasers of this bloody liability who were the Real suckers. 

Alvida once more....

When I reached Random Rubble on the evening of Feb 21^st, about a fortnight after I had last been here, I knew that Winter was leaving shortly: the evening was warmer than it had been and the canopy, that had begun its Great Annual Shedding of Leaves three weeks ago, was partly bare and open.  

Winter is one for leaving quietly: she picks her moments well and I have learnt, with experience, to anticipate her departure. There were moments in those early years when I would think of the many months to come before her return, weeks of stifling heat and evening showers, of two fickle monsoons and flooding, of squelching tyres and a sliding car as it worked the last lap, months of waiting….Today, I enjoy the days of every season, which is probably a testament to the self-help reading that each of us is assaulted with.     

Siddharth, a friend with a passion for wetlands and their conservation, had turned up and was waiting for me, for we had planned a birding trip to the Big Lake of the Mother-of-the-Forest the next morning (and that went reasonably well).  We sat under the stars after dinner and spoke of viruses, birds, science and venture capital and, about a quarter of an hour after I had gone to my room, getting ready to hit the sack, the howls of a pack of jackals filled the silent night.  It has been some years since I have heard them – far too long – but this is, to use a rather atypical phrase, such a February thing, for my notes seem to suggest rendezvous around Valentine’s (they have much in common with otters, which is a reason for my affection).  A minute or two later, the calls went silent and the village mongrels began their reply, one that was far too persistent, me thinks.

I know Winter is leaving when the palash and silk cotton flowers begin to bloom and the noisy rosy starlings busy themselves up in the tree, darting from one flower to another with an urgency that makes them seem like behind-schedule postmen checking post boxes in those days of yore.  

Stand below and a light shower of falling wine-red silk cotton flowers – gorgeously designed, shaped and coloured by evolution -  is destined to bless you (if Nature’s blessing is what you seek.  If you seek photographs of starlings, a sore neck will bless you as well).  And, just as Winter does, these starlings will leave when their time here is done, which is about as philosophical as we can get in natural history. 

When she, Winter, did leave two nights later, she left behind an enveloping mist that rolled in late – around 7 in the morning -  delivering you softly into the lap of Spring.  The morning mist, with its fragrance that suggests poetry and tea and langour, is what she leaves behind, much like a handkerchief with a delicate perfume that a girl would tuck into a boy’s palm.  So, it must be felt, savoured, inhaled, absorbed.  A cup of orthodox organic tea (preferably one in each hand) is strongly recommended.

And when the mist lifts, with the sun up in the sky and the portents of a warm day, the fragrance of mist recedes into transient memory.  I have learnt to live the moment in memory too - some call it nostalgia - with the expectation that the mist will roll in early on the morrow.  That the day after this day will be as today is in some way.  

Which, if you think about it, is a slice of some philosophy too.

The sunsets of Spring

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Day Time

Ok, I don’t know about party poopers and negative people who will read this post, but I have recently become a huge fan of Galgotia, whoever he is, and of his parents who did the initial hard work that popped out one fine day as Baby Galgotia.  Apparently, he was in a typical utterly boring business when someone asked him if he had ever been in Univ.  So, he set up a Univ, having misunderstood the question.  This is more than I can say for you, so let’s give him some respect and treat him as 67% human (for now).

Then he recruited some unsuspecting passers-by and trespassers as faculty and got it all going. Some years later, there was a silly hype on something called Artificial Intelligence which his students badly needed because, if they had non-artificial intelligence, they would have preferred to become toll gate operators in the Atacama Desert to his stellar university. So, Baby Galgotia (who had, in the meantime, grown up despite Societal pressure to have him extradited to the Cayman Islands in a rubber dinghy) set up the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, with himself as the Centre, some batata pav and samosas, and a dog from China as his sidekick that was not a dog but a robot that looked like a dog and fooled everyone into thinking it was a dog because it did to Galgotia’s car tyres what dogs do when they see car tyres.

Then there was some conference in Delhi on this (no, the conference was not on what dogs do when they see car tyres), so he signed up the dog which had an IQ greater than all those trespassers-who-are-now-faculty combined. To keep a close watch on the dog, he sent the trespassers, sorry, the faculty and to keep a watch on the trespassers, sorry, the faculty (why is this autocorrect thing not working when I key in trespassers?), he made a drone out of thermocool that looked so stupid that it did not even fool a reporter from a TV channel called Times Now-or-Never (the answer is Never). Then they occupied a Stall, which, if I may digress with a pithy comment, is a perfect verb to answer the question, How is technological progress best described in India?

It all unravelled sadly when the robot dog did to a pole in the conference what it otherwise does to tyres (what the pole was doing in the conference is one of 3,247 questions that are engaging the attention of Informed Society at the moment) and someone who was observant saw a Made-in-China sticker in a delicate part of the dog’s anatomy that I refuse to describe in further detail out of sensitivity for reader sentiments.

Then hell broke loose, of course, as you may have read, and Galgotia’s Brigade was asked to vacate the Stall, which is such a pity because they were just getting started and, no doubt, hens, geese and cows - with real methane, mind you - were waiting to be let in. I have written a strong letter of condemnation about such extirpative tendencies of these conference organisers who, when reports last came in, had failed a competitive intelligence test where the only other competitor was the thermocol drone. But I am deeply impressed with the bureaucracy that has ordered an Inquiry and taken action with impressive speed: it has neutered the Principal Offender, the dog.  

Nanju's bete noire

On this day a couple of years ago, when I met Ananda, my friend and occasional philosopher-cum-guide, he was all excited. ‘Sir, you remember Nanjundappa?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I remember him,’I said; he has worked occasionally at Random Rubble and is one of those silent sorts with wide open sparsely populated spaces between his ears.

‘Sir, a leopard bit him!’ he said and sat back with satisfaction at seeing the shock on my face.
It turns out that on an earlier day, the leopard had picked up one of Nanjundappa’s lambs and returned this day for another. The man heard the commotion in the pen, rushed out and charged at the leopard. In the ensuing melee, the leopard dropped a lamb and bit Nanju on his palm and then bolted away.

It was a nasty bite, deep and bloody. Now, the thing you expect to read next is that Nanju was rushed to the hospital but then he, as with many others in Doddi, his hamlet, has never visited one in his life and wasn’t about to grace the premises of an Emergency ward with his Divine Presence now and the only thing more daunting than a leopard that bites is a doctor who injects (old jungle saying). So he tore out some old cloth and wrapped it around a heavily bleeding palm and then wondered how he’d manage the excruciating pain.
And then an idea struck him.

So Nanju and his friend then headed out to the local bar about four km away and tucked in a robust round of pegs of potent intestine-churning stuff like PowerBolt, Napolean 65 and BigBang 10000, which meant that in about half an hour, he was pain-free, sozzled to his gills, seeing two bottles where there were none and leopards behind the grill on the counter. He was, to use Ananda’s immortal words, ‘Full tightu, saar.’

Which is the condition in which Ananda and a couple of forest guards, who had been informed, found him. They took a most reluctant Nanju in the jeep to a clinic but the doctor – quite rightly – refused to inject a pain-killer into a guy who was seeing two leopards where one doctor stood, and asked them to go to the Government hospital. At which point, Nanju did what these strong, silent types do when they are plastered to their pinkies: he gave everyone present and voting a piece of his mind - that tiny piece that was still left inside the cranium. In most colourful language, he cast grave doubts on everyone’s ancestry and their parents’ marital status, and continued the performance in the hospital until the effects of PowerBolt + Nap 65 + BB 10000 had worn off.

All in all, he lost about two litres of blood (after we deduct the sales tax in the narration). He was then sent back to Doddi and was taken everyday for an injection and told that, if he so much as breathed BigBang 10000 in, he would be locked up in hospital with a leopard or two for company and, if leopards couldn’t be found, doctors - the kind who carry sutures and thread and sing praises of the devil - would substitute.

I met him the other day in front of his ragi field; the stalks were tall and handsome and richly productive and he proudly told me that he guarded it all night from the machan on top of a nearby tree from elephants and wild boar and the odd nocturnal writer, the keen scrutiny no doubt aided by a generous helping of Napolean 65.

His hand has healed well and the leopard, having learnt that you do not mess with some, has moved to greener pastures (which, you will - one hopes - understand, is an idiom and not a suggestion of a cathartic change in diet).

Now, if this story does not have the happy ending you often dream for, which one does?

No Blues This Morning Please

If the first day of a year is an indication of what the roll out would be, then it is birds for sure.

It was silent enough on new year's night at Random Rubble to hear a lizard drop (with a soft splat, if you need to know the details) and I woke up to the new year to the lovely musical notes of the puff throated babbler, described in the bird app as a 'melodic warble' which makes me want to rename it the warbler babbler and have the rest of civilized society after my blood ("Warbler babbler" ends in birder murder - ToI). 

I just love this sketch....(not mine though)

The puff throated babbler is a lovely bird too, and keeping it company with nervous energy is the lovelier fan-tailed flycatcher (now called the spot-breasted fantail and soon to be called something else by someone who was denied second prize in Moral Science). As I clamber outside to take a look, it hops on the branch first this way, then that, with frenetic urgency, never still for a second, which, of course, reminds me of a lot of some people I know……The fantail unfolds with a flourish often and then folds up in an instant.  In a moment of heightened joblessness, I once tried counting this to tabulate the per-minute frequency and realised that life could be better utilized in washing dishes. 

The bird-life gets into top gear when, to my astonishment, two blue-bearded bee eaters show up on the low branch of the tree by the building.  Even as I move in slow motion towards my camera, one of them perches on the tip of the roof and, half upside-down, inserts its long, curved beak into a tiny cavity.  What on earth is going on here? This is a bird that is a recluse-and-a-half and generally in the higher canopy, with a low opinion of Civil Society below.  As I get closer, inch by inch, to see more, both of them get wind of the human in the vicinity and are gone.  The mystery reveals itself: the buzz of a hundred stingless bees that hover around the cavity tells the tale of a morning attempt at breakfast, some unhappy (and some dead and digested) bees and a human who will write a blogpost on the outcome.  If you haven’t seen this utterly gorgeous bird, do see the lovely image in this excellent article on the bee eaters of India: https://www.natureinfocus.in/animals/the-bee-eaters-of-india.

And then, later in the morning, as I watch the regulars – a drongo, bulbuls, sunbirds, a white-eye, a tailor bird - a movement in the lime trees and the blue-faced malkoha surfaces.  Now, I will happily endorse a name change (and protest till I am blue, but not quite in Malkoha league).  It finds something green – a grasshopper, me thinks – and makes a quick meal, which answers the second question this morning: why would a malkoha hang out in a thorny inhospitable lime bush?  

A movement above gets my attention: it’s a grey hornbill, with that occasional wing-beat and talkative cackle flying past.  This one, and its mate, generally hangs around Random Rubble, perched high up on a  tree, often hidden in the canopy but cackling away to deliberately stress out budding photographers on the ground.  Yes, I have a bone to pick with the Grey (and the idiom could not have been more inappropriate). 

Later in the day, an Oriental Honey Buzzard flies overhead and by then I have seen the shikra and black-winged kite, so we are housefull on raptors.

But then there is always space in the sky……

Wisdom. For a change (but you could pay with notes as well)

The other day a friend and I were chatting about something and he mentioned that it is hard to stay positive (as in, a positive frame of mind, not the charge at one end of the battery cell).  As is usually the case when I disagree, I said nothing.
 
I am now about three generations old.  Back then in 1965, the average life expectancy in India – and this is, if anything, an overestimate – was forty-two and the odds of my surviving the first year if I had been born in a poor family in Bihar would have been around 60:40 (as it happened, it was a C-section birth in Ernakulam and the early delivery was, no doubt, God’s way of handing over the problem after doing his best at getting me to behave in socially acceptable ways).  But back to what the world was like then:  small pox was still around and fatal and polio was amongst a laundry list of diseases that could put someone out for good. India was a horrific basket case, having just got over a debilitating food crisis: we have no idea how many humans - emaciated, crippled, sickened and lost – perished.   
 
As for other species, forests were being rapidly cleared and hunting wasn’t just common, it was, in most parts of India, culturally mandated and wildlife was living a precarious extinction crisis across the world which we thought would be final.  And the world had just overcome the Cuban Missile crisis (for which, of course, I am not responsible, having not yet been born) which brought the planet as close to the edge as it can ever get. 
 
When I think back these years and of what could have been had the call of the dice been different, it is hard – impossible - to stay negative.  Life rocks.  Seriously.  I have thought of this every time I am by a stream or river waiting for an otter to show up (they never do, so it’s mutually exclusive), or when watching a herd of elephants, with a nervous, palpitating heart, or, as in October this year, a flock of snow pigeons at Darwa Pass, after a trek up that I thought would never end (like most of my posts on Facebook). 
 
We live in a world of astonishing charm in the company of the most remarkable species about which we are learning much more every day than was known earlier.  And keeping these species company is an utterly unpredictable, notably idiotic, understandably neurotic, visibly egotistic, extraordinarily chaotic, incredibly talented, generally idealistic, somewhat plurastic one that is, well…., us.  Years ago, I decided to not worry about what I cannot control when I am not at the steering, and instead to enjoy the ride (and to not read the newspapers).  All these species have stories to tell and writing those stories – to inflict on an unsuspecting audience that seeks Literature but is given Peanut Sauce - is the best part of the deal.  This is an astoundingly beautiful world and never has been better.  Truly.  
 
I am off to a river and the forest by it for a few days, hopefully to meet some of the Kuruchiyars I know, among the nicest, gentlest people you could find with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ecosystem.  And to have a cup of black tea twice a day with two delicious unniappams at the world’s finest tea stall.  An apology in advance if I do not reply to that birthday message, but let that not stop you….    

A Monograph on the Inner Psychology of a Bus Driver-cum-GDP Enhancer in God’s Own Country

 I returned to Bangalore from Ernakulam this morning and took the usual airport bus back home and there were times when I thought I was still in the aircraft because the landscape passed by in a blur.  But I did not complain. Here is the crunch: if you live in Bangalore and ever complain about the way drivers of BMTC go about their business of letting others know just who the boss is, I will know that the two places you haven’t visited are Kerala and Himachal.

A private bus driver in Kerala is generally a certified homicidal maniac.  He has a set, grim face and will not look at you (or me or any sub-species like us that are worthy of the deepest contempt).  He generally does not speak to commuters and will grunt or stare in expressive response that tells you that he is not, decidedly Not, Happy. He generally has three states of Being: Not Happy, Unhappy, Furious.  If he speaks a sentence at all - it is generally a whiplash and torrent in one - it means he is decidedly Unhappy (State 2).. If it is more than one sentence, he has moved to State 3.  If you are the subject of State 3, please transform into a boll worm and evaporate in Society’s larger interest.

His principal interest (other than population annihilation, which has been a lifelong passion) is to beat his earlier timing between two destination points. This goal he pursues with determined fervour of the take-no-prisoners variety, inspired by the great white shark of which he has a sticker next to his speedometer. This means driving at top speed on a two-lane road in the wrong lane, giving the oncoming traffic plenty of how-to-handle-the-steering-wheel-while-keeping-heart-beat-at -only-150 experience and providing just the right catalyst for premature ageing and religious belief - they all have pictures of gods, goddesses, crosses and symbols next to their speedometers, clutches, brakes, gear levers, seats, windows and fuel tanks to neutralise GWS (Great White S...).  When he brakes, he doesn’t just press the brake: he screeches, skids, swerves and swears to an inch of the vehicle ahead of him.  The back seat passenger in this vehicle will, in mortal, petrified, shrunken fear, never look back, thus enabling a Life lesson in philosophy that all those motivational videos about Looking-Forward can never teach.

He specialises in sidelining any vehicles in his lane by racing neck-to-neck and then effecting a deft and subtle turn to the left sending the other driver into an advanced state of panic and providing hospitals revenue in their cardiac departments, hence contributing to national GDP (where the P does not stand for Panic). And, as you can see from the picture below, there are even buses named Good Luck that offer a rather dire warning to oncoming traffic.

On a journey in one of these starships, I was offered the sideseat right in front, facing the driver, but the conductor saw the terrified look in the eyes and then said, “Ok, you stand in the middle then and wait for a seat. Many older people find that seat uncomfortable.” I swallowed my pride of course with a “You have no idea. I have rock black hair, it’s just been dyed grey for today”. (No, actually I did not say that to him, no chance in hell, but fantasising never costs you anything). 

The astonishing thing about all of this is that the people in the bus don’t seem to mind.  But that is because they – like all Mallus the world over – are bloody smart: it’s better, they reason, to be inside than out.

The Woes of Vaz

Among the many unanswered questions on the planet is one that boggles the mind.  The question: How did Mrs. Vaz remain, well, normal? 

Normal, for this elevated purpose, is hereby defined as a condition in which a person is not transmogrified, by circumstances, into 

a) a weeping wreck

b) a furious furnace

c) a cowering catastrophe

d) a depressed decadent

e) all of the above and exhibiting delirious symptoms suggesting that there would be more to come.

Mrs. Vaz was the only lady in a small group of lecturers who taught our class in St. Josephs and she did so relentlessly for five years which suggests a resilience last seen in The Charge of the Light Brigade.  She was of medium height, always dressed in a sari with her hair tied in a neat bun, a quiet, demure lady with an impassive freckled face that wore an occasional slow, shy smile, and a reluctant walking style which was in significant evidence when she treaded the path to our classroom. 

Every year, much to her dismay, she would be alloted  subjects like Economic Geography, Political Science, Commerce and Business Administration, which were, to put it mildly, unteachably boring.  Let me emphasise this in case you missed it in a hurry to get to the end – the most tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, lifeless, lacklustre, unexciting, routine, plebian, pedestrian, wearisome subjects were allotted to her, because no one else would touch them with a barge-pole tied to the end of a javelin.  Mrs Vaz was far too good-natured to argue with the clever Head of Department and, consequently, at the beginning of every year, she’d turn up when the bell rang, her face a picture of resignation, her posture defeated but holding a pretence of defiance. 

My class - I cannot emphasise this enough - tested her sorely.  As she took that hesitant step onto the wooden podium (that had once housed a stack of crackers under it) in front of about a hundred boys and girls, the vast majority would welcome her with a collective vacant look of vacuous, languid asininity (which was an independent function of time of day).  If she felt the need to return the compliment, she did not show it, for such was her bearing and sense of dignity.  Some of the girls attempted to smile in an effort at feminine bonding, but the boys just ignored her presence, and an odd fellow - Society's misanthrope - would shout, ‘Welcome Ma’am’ in the falsest of notes, while she would nod her head passively knowing perfectly well that he meant no such thing.

And, much as Dr. Seuss’s immortal Horton the Elephant sat on an egg past his bedtime (Horton Lays An Egg – don’t miss it), Mrs. Vaz laboured through every single class with commendable doggedness, reading out chapter after chapter, her voice a montonous refrain that triggered drowsiness on a warm afternoon.    

If Dr. Seuss were watching, he would present her case succintly:

“Let them ignore

Roar.

Snore.

Let them stare

Dare.

I don’t care.

I will for sure

conduct the tour.”

The large contingent of back-benchers who should have been serving time in solitary confinement for their disservice to civil society, would often stretch and yawn with a loud remonstrative groan, day-dream and express their creative, artistic expression on any available medium (including, once, the shirt of the person in front). Many caught up on their sleep.  Others simply did nothing: being part-time philosophers, they stared out of the window in meditative contemplation

Occasionally, though, a loud giggle would break out at the back.  Or even some laughter.  Or someone would visibly display somnolent behaviour that was calculated to test the patience of a certified saint. 

Or there would be a question asked by an otherwise disinterested superstar (who had spent the last few minutes combing his rapidly thinning hair), followed by much tittering around him and words of encouragement that were as hilarious as they were provocative.  In these not-so-unusual situations, her voice would rise, the rapid flow of words followed by a gesture to the main protagonist to exit the room and, as the offender quickly stood up to leave, others would offer to accompany him or offer loud advice, or say sorry on his behalf or even suggest substitution.  Most of this inflamed her anger greatly and her gentle face would become a noticeable red, testing her blood pressure sorely.  

On one or two occasions, she stormed out of the room, but that was playing right into everyone’s hands.  After a few seconds spent in silence, the mass of prospective Chartered Accountants, MBAs and businessmen would evacuate the classroom to the comfort of the college canteen. While I generally kept quiet when there was mayhem, there were times when it was difficult to not be swayed by the peer group and I joined in the collective merriment – not at her expense, but clearly not at her instance (is this an occasion to assuage a guilty conscience?).

It was a hopeless situation, utterly hopeless.  

My primary emotion, though, was one of compassion.  She was doing the best she could, for you can, after all, only play with the cards you are dealt and, when one of us did need help, she was always ready, her gentle nature acting as a balm.  Despite all those provocations, she never had a bone to pick.  I did well in her subjects and she treasured that - years later, she told me that she ‘knew’ I would do well in my career, an unforgettable compliment but happily untrue for I exited the career race early.

A few days ago, I learnt that she had left for a larger realm and, in the mind's fertile eye, I saw her climbing those stairs with grace, clutching a book or two, the hesitant, slow smile on a gentle countenance as the Maker looked on with empathy.  

If only He knew that one of those books was Economic Geography.....

Please take your seat (away)

I wrote a few days ago about a plane that Air India did not know that they owned, which seems in line with what they normally don't know about things.  These things happen in November usually- the most puzzling news item of November 2023 was that a passenger on Indigo found her seat cushion missing and made a noise about it; puzzling because this is hardly any news, if you ask me (which, of course, you did not).   

Generally, what happens at Indigo is this:  the guys who run it get together every Saturday and ask just one question: What else can we charge for that will make Humanity squirm?  Since, as per some outdated, antiquated, subversive, unconstitutional, superfluous, seditious, pleonastic laws in India, they cannot charge for seat cushions, they have decided to not provide them, which, if you ask me (you did not, I know, I know), is a very sensible decision. 

This means that when the plane lands, everyone - after sitting on a plastic surface which has little hills and valleys and biodiversity and leftover upma from the earlier flight, all of which are designed to leave deep psychological imprints on a part of the anatomy that I shall refuse to describe - will jump up and out of the plane, enabling their acclaimed fifteen-minute turnaround time for the next flight.

This faultless logic was cleverly designed by a BCG-Mckenzie-Bain kind of frenzied consultant with gel in his hair, who travels eight days a week giving people advice to end the world prematurely (when he travels on Indigo, he carries extra gel for the above mentioned part of human anatomy).

The last time I booked a ticket on Indigo, everything had to be paid for separately; this included a neighbour who snored at 104 decibels and only woke up to explore his right nostril in the hope of finding lithium + a tin of cashew that had been plucked just after Tendulkar made his Test debut (no, no, the tin of cashew was not up his nose.  Will you please read carefully).

But I cannot complain: at the counter, they decided that my height, body mass index and shoe size were free and not chargeable, which is why I am forever grateful. 

And, when I entered the aircraft, I actually had a seat cushion, which they had forgotten to take away.  So, I whooped with delight until I sat down to discover that it was made of Ultratech cement with a premium barbed-wire finish, and any semblance to a cushion was unintentional and deeply regretted.   The leg space was designed in the fond hope of transporting penguins, but they are now forced to take in people instead, particularly people with unrealistic and stupid expectations like seat cushions.

As I am generally a sort of chap who looks at the sunny side of life, I noted that the wings were still there and the pilots weren’t in their underclothes and chappals (at least not when they came out of the cockpit).  There were two of them too – pilots, not wings, you ignoramus – so one must stop counting seat cushions and count pilots, sorry blessings, instead. 

ps: there were two wings too.

A Tail, a wing and an occupied cockpit-cum-loo....

I don’t know if you follow the real news as carefully as I do – I mean real news, not stuff like wars and elections and other needless distractions – because the notable news last week was that Air India found a Boeing 737 that it never knew it owned.  This aircraft, if you will pardon an utterly condemnable, entirely avoidable pun, was hiding in plane sight. 

I am not making this up, pinky promise.  The Dumdum guys in Kolkata apparently told the Air India guys to remove their vehicle from the parking lot and the Air India guys said, Which car?  And the Dumdum guys said, The plane.  And the Air India guys said, We generally don’t park our planes in the carpark but our pilots sometimes get late for dinner at home, so let us get back to you.  And the Dumdum guys said, You ignoramuses, the plane, the plane!  The one that hasn’t flown for years.  And the Air India guys said, Well, on a philosophical note, Air India itself hasn’t flown for years.  (All Air India guys are part-time philosophers, with a PhD in Chaos Theory, which is a job requirement). 

And the Dumdum guys (who don’t understand the first fricking fi of philosophy unless Marx had pronounced it) said, You dumb, inert, half-witted, moribund asses, this is a Boeing 737-200 that once took Gopakumar to Pune in the 2001 monsoon through nerve-wracking turbulence and is now parked near the golguppa stall beside the Control Tower. And the Air India guys said, Which golguppa stall?  And who is Gopakumar?  And the Dumdum guys said, The golguppa stall that uses last year’s mustard oil and left-over aviation fuel (and they refused to answer the second question which dealt with an inconsequential human). 

And the Air India guys said, But we just counted all our planes using an Abacus and a scale and found a few missing engines and pilots and one plane with only one wing and one that had three because of an unfortunate exchange, but the planes are all there.  And the Dumdum guys were flummoxed and said, Why did you use the scale?  And the Air India guys said, Because we couldn’t find measuring tape.  And then everyone laughed though no one understood why (so, this sounded like the G20 Meet). 

And then the Dumdum guys said, To repeat, this is the 737-200, you decrepit, fossilised, amorphous, inanimate piece of jelly.  And the Air India guys – regretfully ignoring the compliment of being elevated to the same species salad as jelly - said, We have no 737-200s, we crashed all of them long ago.  And the Dumdum guys said, Look, here is a photo of the plane with the old Air India logo and everything else missing, so it has to be yours.  And the Air India guys said, Gosh, it’s ours!  There’s even a weeping Maharaja in the cockpit.  Or is that the loo?  No, it's the cockpit!  No, it's the cockpit-cum-loo (and here, another worthy chipped in by saying, that's why it was called the 200..., and he said it with sadistic glee)  And then someone else in the Air India office jumped up in joy and said, It’s got wings!  It’s got wings!  

And then they sold it. 

Grass, Patriarchy and the One Against

I am in the gorgeous valley of Sangamchetti in Garhwal, about an hour from Uttarkashi and walking to a village higher up in the hills.  Winter is coming: I hear her gentle footsteps echo in the snow up in the higher mountains and feel her breath in the morning air, see her shadow in the forest canopy and on the carpet of maple leaves on the ground.  

And, as I cross village after village on foot and hitchhike on a passing scooter or two, it is impossible to miss the sight of women hard at work and  I think of the many excursions that I have made to Garhwal and Kumaon at this time of year.  

All through these October days – while in a cab or walking the hillsides or sipping a sweet-milky tea by the road – I have seen small groups of women and girls on their haunches all day (do try that sometime) cut the grasses below chir pine trees or under broadleaved oaks with dexterity and fluid motion and then  carry back-bending loads of grass and firewood, trudging up slopes or picking their way gingerly down steep damp paths of stone and crumbly mud. 

These loads of grass will be hauled midway up poles and trees in their farms for storage.  The menfolk will help in this task, but cutting grass?  Cutting grass is a woman’s job.  

And then I think of another day

That day in October 2018, I had seen the silhouettes of women in a Kumaon community forest perched thirty feet up slender oak trees, lopping branches for fodder for goats and had marvelled and worried for them, for a wrong step – just one - and it would be all over.  I could barely see them up there, but could hear their banter across the valley and occasional laughter beneath which is dead serious intent:  when Winter removes her veil and enters these villages, there is hardship ahead - dull, bitterly cold, grey days of snow and frost – months of waiting that are now just weeks away.  The livestock must survive till the Melt in March as must humans.  The rivers that flow in these valleys are rivers of resilience.

Stocking up on food too is a woman’s job:  in those fields down in the valleys by the Pindar and Sarayu rivers that year were fields of native rice and, on this walk today in end-October 2025, I see women labouring up the valley slope with wine-red harvests of ramdana (amaranth), an extraordinary, nutritious grain that has the name of the diety and is treated with as much reverence.  

And I only see women at work - old moms and young grandmothers, young moms and older girls - harvesting, stacking, hauling; in the walk in 2022 as I crossed a field, there was musical banter, a lilt of harmony and such light-heartedness in the air as they worked that I had stopped to listen, much to their amusement, but today I see a tired cohort walk past with a steady gait:  make no mistake, this is hard, rigorous, purposeful toil.  

The men folk help out too, those who did not migrate or returned in 2020, but it isn’t a partnership of equals……

And today, when I reach the beautiful village of Agoda up in the mountain, after a final back-breaking scooter ride, I think of my trek guide in October 2022....

On that day, we are walking up the hill  leading to Sunderdhunga and I ask Khullu Dhanu – of Rajput ancestry - what his full name is.  ‘Khilaf Dhanu’, he answers and laughs readily when I follow up by asking him exactly what he is Against: ‘Ask my parents, they named me!’ This guy, incredibly fit like true Pahadis, with a ready, winning smile and a generous nature, runs up and down four thousand feet of Himalayan hillside the way I stroll to the club.  He appreciates my interest in the local ecology, so we bond well and chat about things, the way men who have never grown up to understand modern day niceties do.

Along the way I ask him about his kids. 
‘Just two. Both are boys,’ he says and adds, ‘So, we didn’t need to have any more children.’ He laughs, with simple sincerity, this man whom I have grown to like so much.  

A week later that year, I am with Gagan, my old friend who lives in a village near Almora.  He grins at my observation on patriarchy and its flavours.  ‘My neighbour has just had a boy.  After five girls.’ he says shaking his head, ‘Now they will stop the production line!’  He tells me that he only employs women at his micro-enterprise; they are sincere and responsible and trustworthy.  
But not equal……

And that very same evening, I am at Shubham’s store, waiting for the rain - which has been relentless - to stop.  He is away, and his younger sister is a tall, thin girl with a fetching smile and friendly manner.  She has a year more of college in Nainital to finish and I have been told by Kiran and Renu, her neighbours, that she is assiduous, ambitious and motivated.  Perhaps she has no choice.

‘What will you do next?’ I ask.
‘I am preparing to write the Civil Services exam,’ she says, with the confidence and assertion that would win any heart, ‘English is tough, but Sociology and Hindi are fine.’ She thinks for a few seconds. ‘I think I can make it,’ she says with a shy smile.  

It is impossible – utterly bloody impossible – not to be touched.   
It isn’t just the rain that retreats soon after, Patriarchy does too for a moment. Optimism lives in a thousand homes like that little one in the hills.  May it win.

Two faces of hope.....

You Can Choose Any Colour As Long As It's Black

 

Among the many birds with a fetching songo
There is none as versatile as the black drongo
A shapely lissome bird with a dark svelte figure
Which, even when eggnant with preggs, gets no bigger
 
(Aside:
Eggnant with preggs or pregnant with eggs?
Poetry these days is going to the dregs
Does any of your work (myself btw) make any sense?
Or is that an ode to poetic licence?)
 
She’s a staple on the wire, a strategic perch
And for food, she will skip the Swiggy search
(pardon the sly dig at this lazy human lurch)
A flying bug in sight and the hunt is on
The drongo takes off, insect woe begone!
With a pitch, a roll, yaw and pirouette
Aerobatic machine, dusky slender silouette.
 
The insect is history, it’ll soon be digestory
Yet Ma’am will not rest, her appetite is a mystery
The swerve, dip & twist: jaw-dropping to see
(And the buffett, unlike Swiggy, is delivered for free).
Yet, there are even more skills in her family tree.
 
She can imitate the calls of birds galore
(Her mate, of course, says, Yeh dil maange more)
She hasn’t revealed why she was given this skill
To be a Pied Piper (even to the
Rambunctious, cantakerous, cackling ol’ hornbill!).
She is territorial & combative, will dive bomb with gall
Result? in North India, she is often called Kotwal!
(And now she reminds me of a Didi in Bengal)
 
So, I will end this tribute that’s way too longo
By beckoning her ilk in Tambrahm style: Vango!
(I bet you thought I’d end with drongo)
And now you have just been proved all wrongo.
 
ps: In your Swiggy if you’d like insects for free
Please order a chicken biriyani.

Binaca

Some years ago, while browsing through the shelves at a department store looking for toothpaste in a sort of confused daze because of the thousand mindless permutations of flavoured foam, I came across a tube of Colgate Cibaca.  I had forgotten that Colgate had acquired the brand Cibaca (or what was left of it), and, gawking at this unprepossessing tube,  I thought of my childhood.

So would you have, had you grown up in the 1960s and 70s: Binaca was possibly the country’s favourite toothpaste and occupied pride of place in every bath in our home.  It wasn’t the quality of the paste, which was probably ordinary.  It wasn't even the flavour - terming the Binaca taste-in-mouth a flavour would be a flattering compliment as it was, in all likelihood, some mint oil  blended into a repelling green paste and stuffed into a tube.  

No, none of that.  There were two good reasons why Binaca rocked.  

Reason 1: the Binaca Geet Mala, a weekly radio show of the best Hindi songs, hosted on Radio Ceylon by the incomparable, the inimitable, the one-of-kind Ameen Sayani, whose enthusiasm and language was only matched by his extraordinary ability to do the impossible - engage you in light conversation over radio.  But more of this perhaps in a later post.

Reason 2, and this reason made much more sense to a kid and is the subject of this note, was that every Binaca carton with toothpaste carried a tiny plastic animal toy figurine – an elephant perhaps or a tiger or tortoise or a rhino, all the domestic pets, a camel or kangaroo; new ones were often introduced monthly and hence could be collected.  

I must have spent hours in meditative pleasure, gazing at my collection of little plastic toys, arranging them, trading them with friends, placing them on toy trains or little cars or having them perform in a circus to a hugely appreciative, almost fawning, imaginary audience.  Buying Binaca toothpaste was something my parents learnt early to outsource to their youngest son in the larger interest of domestic peace and internal stability, for he would – very shamelessly, it must be added – open the packet in the shop itself, inspect the animal inside closely and then whoop in joy or reject it in ill-concealed annoyance if it was a part of his collection.  Shopkeepers all over the country had, no doubt, resigned themselves to such behaviour, so while there’d be the odd burst of irritation, much amusement was to be had as well, with statements such as, “Beta, the first tiger you got was male.  This is female”, the subsequent laughter letting me know that they were fibbing.  

Then something happened, possibly in the late 70s, that will remain a mystery, much in the mold of Tutankhamen or why the Homo erectus died out:  the little animal figurines were dropped from the product.  Across the length and breadth of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, there must have arisen a collective groan from an entire generation, to which cacophony, I added my robust voice of displeasure.

Just why the company (Hindusthan Ciba Geigy was the despicable villian) chose to do this is beyond my comprehension (and possibly beyond theirs to).  I can almost see some ill-educated, misanthropic, deprived corporate Ignoramus - with about as much capability for emotion as a dining table - taking the decision, supported by the Finance Controller and other anti-social elements that were determined to ruin civilized society.  The Ignoramus must have thought aloud: “We need to do something to save costs.” And, his Financial Controller (who was born twenty-two years old at birth and hence did not know what childhood was like) would have added: “Yessir, we can save 0.04% in overall costs from removing that useless addendum, which will help us ship some more dividend back to Europe (or wherever).”

If indeed the Ignoramus did this, I hope he rots in hell, and is boiled in the sodium lauryl sulphate that is used as toothpaste there, reportedly mixed with acetic acid.  But the ignominy for Binaca did not quite end there. As if to compound the sheer asininity of their actions, another idiot (let’s call him Ignoramus 2, for the numbers are getting larger) changed the brand name to Cibaca.  Maybe he thought he was being funny.  Maybe his parents had done the same to him.  Maybe he had commissioned a market research firm to do a study on the existing name and suggest a new one (which study must gleefully have been funded by Close Up).   The Geet Mala – horror of egregious horrors – too changed to Cibaca Geet Mala and Ameen Sayani could not quite bring himself to roll these words of his otherwise fluent tongue.  The downward slide from greatness had begun.

Colgate, of course, bought Cibaca with the intention of killing it and, it must be said, they have done a very effective job.  The toothpaste I now held in my hand said “Colgate Cibaca 3-in-1. Fresher Breath. Stronger Teeth. Whiter Teeth.

No doubt, somewhere in the Colgate office, there is one product manager, fresh out of his MBA who, while I was playing with the animal figures, was doing differential equations in his knickers to prepare for Kota’s entrance exam, that would help him get into IIT, that in turn would get him into an MBA, so that he could leave his engineering far behind and became a supremely incompetent product manager and come up with such 3-in-1 concotions (which makes him Ignoramus 3).  I mean, consider this: can you think of one toothpaste – just one, from the millions circling the planet – that does not say any of the above?  Is there a paste that says, for example, “Stronger teeth? What are you smoking? See a dentist…..” . 

Imagine the effort that has gone in to make the most pedestrian, utterly banal, profoundly didatic, insanely boring, needlessly verbose claim that you could ever see: an ad agency working late nights, brand and product manager putting up presentations to sleepy senior marketing managers none of whom played with Binaca toys, damn them, a conference to launch the new fresher-stronger-whiter lousy damp story about a toothpaste that masses of kids had bought for their parents simply because it had little plastic animals inside.