If You Follow An Elephant, Click The Like Button On Your Torch

At Random Rubble, the farm, an enthralling addition to my vocabulary is the utterly delectable phrase, “One tarah looju”.  Now, being the studious, researchy sort who likes to get to the root of the deeper questions of Life (such as, Why are there so many certified idiots on Whatsapp groups?), I embarked on the project to enrich Society’s vocabulary and get to the bottom of it (the phrase.  Not to the bottom of society, which will not be a pleasing sight in daytime). For a long time, I had no clue on what this laden-with-meaning phrase meant until the power went off one day at RR and a local electrician looked at the switchboard and told me that the problem was with the fewju which was looju.   

Tarah, of course, means ‘like’ and it’s only fair that everyone and his cow use it, since the younger gen in the city say Like whenever they say anything (about which deeper question of Life, I have, like, published papers. This you, like, know).

Ananda, my indispensable farmer, friend, philosopher and guided missile, uses this phrase to refer to anyone he thinks is – in his immortal words – ‘mental’.  Which is much of the rest of humanity who has views that are below his exacting standards (I almost certainly fit neatly into that category, but he has not called me One Tarah Looju yet.  Maybe because I pay him.  Call this protection money). 

There is a broad and generous brush to the usage of this priceless label as well.  A couple of years ago, a prominent male elephant in our area named Makhna was in musth and it was promptly agreed by all present and voting that he – the elephant – was One Tarah Looju.  And hence to be avoided by anyone, unless that anyone was…, well, you guessed it and you are getting better, One Tarah Looju as well.  

But Ramappa, my neighbour, is known to follow an elephant in the middle of the night on foot, shining his torch at the elephant’s backside (which, you will rightly argue, is unlikely to increase his body temperature, if that is Ramappa’s admirable objective) so this luminary, this shining light of Modern Civilisation has been regrettably labelled One Tarah Looju as well. 

Others – most of whom do not follow elephants on foot in the middle of the night - can be One Tarah Looju too.  Such as a distant neighbour, an overweight, opinionated windbag who thinks no end of himself (given his size, it admittedly takes a while to find the end).    Ramappa claims to have seen this One Tarah Looju stalwart with a cap on and nothing else under the broadly liberal definition of clothing, which visual has me awake at night with a torch and quivering, Makhna-the-Musthful-Misanthrope be damned. 

Our larger Society forms opinions on grave topics like One Tarah Looju generally after the third peg of Red Knight Deluxe - courtesy Tasmac - has lit a flame in the small intestine and is radiating in seven unspecified directions.  In such senior leadership conclaves in our village, the following sub-species are classified as One Tarah Looju: 

- people who spend more money than is prudent, in Society’s opinion

- people who do not spend more money than is prudent

- people who use a tractor

- people who do not use a tractor

- people who don’t work

- people who work

- people

You get the picture.  Hopefully. 

If not, there is a chance – a slender one, just a sliver of a ghost of one, a fractional proclivity – that you may be One Tarah Looju.  

Doing a somer-salt

Sometime in the early 1990s

Mr Ramu opened his tiffin box: it was curd rice again.

He used to eat curd rice about seven times a day, which is why there were more blocks in his heart than in our water supply, and his best friends were plumber-cardiologists. And, when he was not eating curd rice, he ran two companies, of which we had invested in one, Sundar Nutritions in Chennai.

The company was set up to produce iron-fortified salt, which - at least if you read the report that recommended that we invest - had a market that was as endless as the south Pacific ocean.  Or, if you think that the analogy is limiting and does not do justice to Ramu, let me amend this to, as endless as the calls offering me a free personal loan.  

Ramu’s daughter had developed the technology - at least that is what they said and ICICI had no reason to think otherwise (or think wise), being touchingly ingenuous and deeply trusting (try not to laugh please).  Dad+daughter+pomeranian had a small production facility on the outskirts of Chennai and so life, you could argue, was all set.

The only minor issue was that there were no sales. Not one of India’s millions wanted to buy his salt and, as someone who had had a free sample once, I made the case with my boss, Sudhir, that the salt was just not worth, well, its salt, which, to complete a litany of disgraceful puns, was rubbing iron-fortified salt into the wound.

Every time I met Curd Rice Ramu, he would speak optimistically of the Tamil Nadu Government’s impending plan to include this salt in their mid-day meal (without curd rice) scheme.  He would then complain about the corruption inherent in the system being the block (roadblock, you imbecile, not the ones in his myocardium). And everytime I’d return from the meeting convinced that we needed to exit this investment the day before yesterday.  My boss heartily agreed - another hearty pun - but no one above was ready to bell the pomeranian (that would be adding in-salt to injury.  Gosh, that was bad).

When I once visited him, I happened to mention in conversation that I was going to buy my first-ever car soon. “My son-in-law’s Premier Padmini is up for sale,” he replied, “it’s a good car and he wants only 65000 for it.”  Back then, 65000 was around three-fourths my annual salary, but a new Maruti would be two years of slave labour.  

So I reasoned - in my perfectly rational way - that the son-in-law he had chosen (which he admitted to doing) would probably live on curd rice anyways and hence be utterly unable to misuse the car by, say, doing a Sonic Spiral Jump or something. So, I drove back from Chennai in this Premier Padmini, now christened Rockstar Moto, and sent him the cheque in a day.

The next Sunday, while I was driving Rockstar Moto to Whitefield, the tail pipe fell off. It was pointed out to me by a passing motorcyclist (when he had stopped laughing), who noticed it trailing the car a few feet behind. When I took the car for repair to the local mechanic, he opened the hood and, with a look of utter delight, pointed out that this was the worst car he had ever seen and could I please leave the car and a blank cheque with him and come back in a month?

In the ensuing days, I made two significant disinvestments:

- The company’s shareholding in Sundar Nutritions was sold back to Curd Rice Ramu, for the equivalent of a few bags of Sona Masoori

- The car was driven back to Chennai and sold at about Rs 18.50 per kilo

Teesta - Run, River Run

To stop the river, they built again.  Yet another wall
Power. That energy aphrodisiac had them in enthrall
Thousands of tonnes of steel, cement, gravel and sand
And an inflated Excel projection that promised wonderland

 

“Yet another dam is raised; this river’s a subdued beast

Power for the malls, for rapacious urban feast

Any water that flows to the ocean is a economic waste

Dams.  More dams!” Built in cupidity and haste.

 

There were naysayers too: from tradition and from science

Who warned of the dangers, for they read between the lines

“You know of cement, yes, but you know not of this sky

When it rains, it pours and these waters aren’t shy.

The glacial lake is brimming and if the head stones unturned

An avalanche of water……have you no lessons learned?”

 

“This mountain is our mother and the river is our blood

Revere their bounty as is and only our hearts will flood

When the story unfolds, the loss will be ours indetermined.”

But these words of caution, alas, were cast to the summer wind

 

Well.  The story unfolded.  Over dusk and stormy dawn

And, like a paper between two fingers being unevenly torn,

That wall of hubris was ripped to a sentinel jagged shred

Lives and dreams lost forever amidst ominous dread

 

Every pebble in the Teesta has a poignant story to tell

But those who wear the shroud of Hubris hardly listen well

Never.  Never. Never must this happen ever again.

But we know it sadly will for the builder feels no pain.

 

My heart goes out to you, stoic Lepchas of the Mist

To the soldiers whose lives we lost in Destiny’s twisted tryst

To those who warned unheeded of the fate to befall

And to the mystical, magical, enigmatic, sacred Teesta river,

……now under a fallen wall.

Pressure Cookers are Sexist. So I stay single.

Post-millenials – the crowd born in and after 2000 – just don’t get it.

The urban post-millenial has seceded from India and settled – with visa and Pringles – in Utopia. About five days ago, one of them and I were talking about something and the topic turned to marriage gifts. 

“What!  Tell me again, like how many pressure cookers did you get as wedding gifts?”

I repeated my answer with anticipation, because the next question would be, “But, like, why?” Post-millenials use ‘like’ about 2124 times a day.  If they don’t like someone, they get confused and say, “I like don’t like you.”

She didn’t ask the question, instead running her fingers through the patch of purple in her hair.  The purple was one of the patches in her hair and VIBGYOR was well represented, but with post-millenials you don't ask questions that go, "Like, why have you coloured your hair purple?" because she will then get all offended at having her choice questioned and say, "like, it's kinda like cool", which of course leaves you wondering if grey is even better. 

"I think it’s like sexist to gift pressure cookers,” she said as if I was now entitled to lifelong gratuity and monthly freedom fighter pension for having endured that phase of struggle.

Seeing my raised eyebrows (in case you didn't know, raising eyebrows in the most diligent part of my exercise routine), she continued, “Your parents’ generation – that’s like my grandparents – all thought and like still think that a woman’s role is in the kitchen.”

Now, you must never ever argue with post-millenials if you want them to think, “I like like you.”  I shut up of course and changed the topic. 

The reason we were gifted fourteen and a half pressure cookers at our wedding was not because the gifters saw my wife as a talking kitchenette.  It’s because their kids had got married before us and they had seventeen pressure cookers to gift away.  For three years after, we gifted pressure cookers with touching generosity and indiscriminate sexism, even to a new born baby (who, we hope, never heard about it, because he’s writing the civil service exams now).

Post-millenials, you see, just like don’t get it.

Bamboozled at Terminal Two

Terminal 2 at the Bangalore Airport is a novel – and interesting – experience.  For now, it is hardly crowded and you make your way in surprisingly quickly, taking in the heady cladding of bamboo everywhere.  Everywhere and on everything. 

It’s nice at first, but then sort of gets to you. You walk past one book-cum-toys-cum-chocolates shop that doesn’t want you to buy anything because it disturbs their slumber.  And there’s Liberte-Qualite-Adore – whatever that is, it sounds hideously French, though the inside looks pretty cool - and those shops selling stuff that appears forbidding and for good reason (at Forest Essentials, you need to pay for a soap with a housing loan on EMI, trust me.  Buy a shampoo there and you are in bonded labour for two generations).

You then head for breakfast upstairs, passing by a tribute to that genius, Paul Fernandes, whose sketches of life in Bangalore-as-we-knew-it are without parallel – what a treat those images are! 

At the food lounge, most folks are, as you’d expect, busy with their phones or their breakfast or are talking to each other (often while stuffed with food, as is the case with the two chaps next to you, both of whom need to see a dietician pronto) and they all miss the lamps that have splendid hues of tasteful opulence. 

And then you stand and stare at the work of an unknown artist who has painted Karnataka’s coffee country – Coorg & Chikmagalur - across a long wall.  It is excellent work, and done with a careful brush. Something, in particular, catches the eye.....

It is hard to not be delighted at the careful, fastidious attention to the painting of the Coppersmith Barbet.

Now, who would have thought of that?

...and a tale of two cars.....

What's a nice guy like me doing in a painting of Paul's?

What's a nice guy like me not doing in this painting?

How Kerala produces champions

It’s 6 am and I am on a bus to a hamlet where, in a lovely little home with low doors and tiny windows, now alas demolished, Dad was born a hundred years ago in mid-June 1923.  The bus stops by the turn on the road and I get off to walk the distance to the ancient village temple.  With its long outer walls – kept in immaculate condition – and neat little garden and the silence within but for soft invocation, the temple exudes an olde world charm.  A rush of memories, now tinted sepia and fraying at the edges.  Leave Time in a bag at the door.  And take the shirt off too, tucking in the tummy instinctively, for you want to present your best self in Higher Company. 

 

Beyond the back wall is the large temple pond that I haven’t seen in years, so, a while later, I walk up to take a look.  A man in a corner washes his dhoti, another shoots the breeze, yet in the pond a dozen children are swimming.  Not thrashing around and gasping or gulping water down or chasing each other around but Swimming, I emphasise, with practiced ease across the exhausting length of the pond - that must be about a couple of hundred metres -, skilled technique, speed and grace in evidence. Some swimmers are wearing snorkels and are slower, others tear freestyle through the water. A couple of coaches are instructing more kids by the side, and, heartwarmingly, there is an equal number of boys and girls.  I am a swimmer too, but I can see that I am in Higher Company here as well, these kids are pros and this spectacle of open-access, professional training is awesome, absolutely extraordinary.

At the tea shop by the temple, I see a poster of the champions this little village of Kakkayur has produced and at my cousin’s lovely old home a few steps away – now in its 101st year – I meet a grand-niece and nephew just back from an hour in the pond, now heading to junior school.  Their favourite stroke, I am informed, is the butterfly (I admit immediate defeat and swallow all remaining pride).  How much do you pay for your coaching? I ask.  About a hundred rupees a month, my cousin replies with a shrug.  
And that is how this village has produced champions.  

And those champions have won medals and jobs as coaches abroad, in the army and the railways.  And some champions have returned to produce more of their kind from this little hamlet.  I remember that one of them grew up in this very house, next to the temple.

We have the best team in Kerala, my cousin says with pride and a fetching smile and, while she just might have stretched a point there, what can be more inspiring than to know that you live amidst coconut and palm trees, fine paddies and finer champions, all in a little hamlet of the winding road to the hills of the Neliyampathis?  

..err. there was a toddy shop right there, once upon a time and path to it that was made for walking....

The Old Order Changeth.....

Mangalore
5.30 am.  A cloudless sky

I think of Mangalore as a precocious teen that has grown a trifle too soon.  On the main roads, I walk past malls, shut at this early hour, and the rest of urban paraphernalia: endless rows of shops and restaurants, buses rushing by and tall apartment towers with awful names like Elite-something and Vishwas-I-am-Ugly something and an eyesore called Stone Heights, which should be called Stone Heights-of-Hideousness.

So, I turn off the road at the first possibility and enter a side road – of not much help – so, then a side road off the side road.  

It is an entrance into a different, ancestral world; an old stately house, now in ruins, its porch a remnant of colonial grandeur, each window seeking solace in repair.  A cattle trap and a road beyond that is now home to Colocasia.  

A lovely villa called Howzaat! – the owner wants you to know that he lives the game and retired from LIC – and walls of laterite and tile that live, if you know what I mean, carrying a profusion of biodiversity and memories of better days, yet holding tenaciously on to a fragile present.  

Sometime later, I cross the main road and enter another lane and the stately houses live on, here in better, occasionally impeccable, condition.  The designs reveal their vintage, some built in the early years of the 20th century with heavy mortar, thick walls of laterite stone and round pillars, tiled roofs and all-wooden windows, others in the immediate post-colonial years and yet others in the 70’s and 80’s when cement became ubiquitous and grills were implanted in windows.  About the only thing I disapprove of are the needlessly-intricate designs of some of these grills, particularly those that have been added to old homes.  As someone once said, grills are not the main thing, they are the only thing. 
I think that someone was me.

These villas once received the fragrance of the sea each morning and, as I walk, I imagine that old homes and stones have stories to tell; of an era that lived tradition and slow food and joint family, with all its drawbacks and constriction, yet this remarkable town, as it used to be, was far more liberal, evolved and aware in its time.  I imagine stories of drama, valour and intrigue that would be enthralling to hear.  But this is – as you have now guessed - a flight of fancy and morning wanderings of the mind (and absence of tea in the system).  The Rasquinhas and Kamaths and D’Souzas and Pintos and Shenoys who have lived in these homes for generations are some of the brainiest people ever – it’s eating fish every day, no doubt, that endows those brains.

I walk around a cricket field: a charming little building alongside the field houses a Military Hotel (for those from a later era, a Military Hotel is one that serves non-veg, a Hindu MH is one that will not serve beef).  This field has fine banyan trees, ones that regular walkers pay little attention too, and I hear parakeets and mynahs in the canopy. 

A convent with a stunning jackfruit tree by its side, a man walking past with an umbrella – which, this morning, is the pinnacle of pessimism – a white-breasted kingfisher shrieking past on its always-urgent errand, a walker who has spread his morning newspaper out on the stack of stones around a tree.  

And, finally, a God-awful syrupy glass of milky tea. I have forgotten – for once – to pack tea in my luggage, so call this Divine Retribution. 
It’s time to hit the road – rather the rail – again.