Five + Five Ants = Tenants

If you found American politics comical and entertaining, then clearly you are missing out on Apartment politics, which make Trump look like Amrish Puri decapitating seven sidekicks and American politics more boring than reading a bank locker rental agreement. 

So, it all begins when the owners of a new apartment complex come together to form a Whatsapp group. If the builder owns some apartments there and is part of this group, then the others create a second Whatsapp group which is generally named Residents-cum-Victims, with the image of a noose as the DP.

A retired Army officer is generally the most active member because he feels that civilians are so disorganised that they cannot manage anything. Civilians feel that he is so organised that he cannot manage anything.

There is always one financial planner in an apartment complex who comes up with the bright idea of investing the corpus of Rs.8.72 lakhs in an equity mutual fund that he normally would not touch himself with a spear-tied-to-a-barge-pole. Such adventurism is promptly castigated, of course, particularly by the above retired Army officer whose endearing approach to Life since 1971 has been to Shoot the Bloody Bugger.

Almost always he becomes the President of the Building Association, being completely unemployed except for his evening Patiala peg. As President, he tables the proposal to acquire CCTV and nuclear missiles because he feels that the apartment could be invaded anytime, particularly by spotted doves, which are drones sent by a neighbouring enemy country.

Generally, at least one apartment is let out to bachelors, resulting in the creation of another Whatsapp group to keep watch on the above and to debate if the smell emanating from that apartment was burnt rasam or weed. Since none in this group can identify the smell of weed and surfing the Net only tells you how horribly you can die from smoking up, everyone asks everyone for help, but no one wants to volunteer that his/her kids could expertly tell the difference.  

The Bachelors-at-Bay make matters most interesting by hosting a party in the middle of kids’ exams, which gets all the WhatsApp groups super-active, with everyone and their mothers-in-law voicing opinions, judgments, stern warnings and dire outcomes (‘They don’t CARE’ or ‘Mark my WORDS’, clearly indicating a need to conduct classes on When-to-use-CAPITALS ) and forwarding videos of Recovered Alcoholics because they could not find anything else to send.

This apartment owner lives in Minneapolis and therefore is one fricking, big help in this whole situation, but will nevertheless apply American Rules and suggest that an Officer of the Law be called, on which issue the Doves-Are-Drones Army man has strong views generally after his second peg. After the party, someone takes a video of the bottles outside the apartment and posts it everywhere and tags the PM on Twitter, thus achieving a Dutiful Citizen I-Love-My-India status with tiranga and bhel puri.

Owners also choose their apartments carefully as a result of which there is someone from Coorg who cooks panni curry on Sundays living next to a Mylapore maami who thinks garlic is Ravana Incarnate.  The resultant neighbourly affection, of course, results in the creation of two Whatsapp groups and vibrant lively conversations on manners, right- and left- wing, ancestry, calling-the-cops and fictional childhoods. 

Then, in one of these groups, someone will post a highly relevant message like ‘See What This Man From Venezuela DID To His Dog’, which, of course, makes the sender neither Left-Wing nor Right-Wing, but belonging to the North Wing of the apartment complex.

And the Armyman replies that We Must Shoot The Bugger.

The Dugong Strikes Three

 Dugong
(this one is male
not the species, but the tale)
 
The dugong’s a fascinatingly different fellow
He swims effortlessly in waters shellow
Munching and brunching on crunchy sea grass
And, boy, does he need a lot of biomass!
 
He belongs to the animalia order, Sirenia
That have been around for, well…., millennia
And is related to the family of manatees, no doubt
But what makes him different is that deflected snout
 

And a flipper that is short and a body so slim
(Did I just say that? Am I horribly dim?)
But a Sirenian specialist said once on a whim,
That the dugong is a manatee that goes to the gym!
 
Good news! Protect dugong turf and bring sea ghass back
That is an awesome step along the climate track
But. 
But.
But I have a grouse and a reason for my whines
So, this para has an added two lines.
Naming this fellow a sea-cow is WRONG
A cow should be named a land-dugong. 
 
Moral: ghass isn’t ghastly.  Says so a veggie.

The Magic Wand

 Music and memories sit together in a way we do not understand. 

I think of those moments of my childhood staying with cousins, my ammumma - a generously built and indulgent grandma - two aunts and an equally indulgent uncle in a beautiful old family home in Marayil lane in a Kochi of yore now preserved in sepia.  

A warm summer evening and we move about listlessly amidst the adults, the cool black oxide flooring smooth as a river pebble.  My uncle has his office in a charmingly fashioned building in the same compound and, his work done for the day, has gone upstairs to play records on his player. In a corner of the living room in the family home where we all are, up by the ceiling, is a wooden box with a speaker embedded in it.  That speaker is connected by a tenuous wire to the record player in his room.  

Ammaman, as he was to me, plays a number of songs, largely Malayalam but Hindi as well, yet the memory that sticks with me is of one: the film Chemeen is considered a landmark in Malayalam cinema, as are its songs; this one has stuck with me, a soulful, slow, deeply moving rendition sung, unusually enough, by the inimitable Manna Dey.  It was his first Malayalam song and, though at that age I don’t quite understand the lyrics, his pronunciation is flawless (which is more than I can say for myself).

And that is how I first remember Salil Chowdhury.  I then remember the audio tape - a selection of his best music - that I had bought across the college campus at that little store with the unsmiling owner. And I remember his music in Anand - another landmark film in Indian cinema - with Rajesh Khanna singing by the sea and a song by Lata, Na Jiya Lage Na, that is as much raag-based as it is Rabindra Sangeet.  And the flute in Maya…..And Madhumati, Kabuliwala……And Rajnigandha…...And Choti Si Baat…..And Annadata with its mellifluous, gorgeously unusual Raaton Ke Saye, that I have heard a hundred times.  And so much in between.

If, over the years, I have been a diehard - what sort of word is that, by the way? - listener of RD Burman’s music, Salil Chowdhury has been the first change, for when you are done with chalk, cheese is welcome, if both are the finest there is.  And, like all great music, the more you listen, the more it grows on you.  

A musician friend and I once spent an hour listening to the music of our generation, much of it in silence.  He then shifted in his chair, stretched a bit and took a deep breath and sighed. “These Bongs,” he said, tapping his head, and there was reverence in that voice, “they are as brilliant as they are crazy.”  QED

If Salil Chowdhury had been around, he would have begun his 100th year tomorrow.  To a genius then, it is time to say Thank You.

This medley is an extraordinary tribute. Play on.

Life's Big Misfit

 A funny thing about the USB stick
It never fits into the port
I push and adjust and try every trick
While the laptop plays Valdemort.

And then, aha! I figure it all out
Turn it around with a smile
I push and adjust and use my clout
No luck. Am starting to rile. 
(Steam clouds gather
And lather).

Then I switch it distractedly around again
And try in last-ditch despair
It fits in perfectly with disdain
While ignoring my malevolent stare.