Utopia

Most democracies grant their subjects the right to a full and happy life, if the subjects have the means to get around the quirks of their particular democracy.

In India, for instance, if one has unlimited funds with which one can bribe every government employee from the person who sweeps the streets (or leans drunk on his broomstick at the street corner, anyway) to the Prime Minister who has not even swept to victory in his own constituency, then it’s a wonderful life. In Bangladesh if one can cross the border over into India then the above holds true too. In the United Kingdom, one has to make sure to keep one’s face masked while looting random stores while the country is in the throes of violent riots so that when the rioting is over one can enjoy the loots of labour without being turned into the face of the I’m-so-virtuous-I-turned-my-child-over-to-the-police-for-participating-in-patriotic-looting magazine by own's righteous parents.

I’m not sure what the absurdities of other democracies are, but I’m sure each has its share.

But India is a country more curious than most; it has more than its fair share of eccentricities, like you’d expect from anything that’s more than a few thousand years old: its oddities are more convention inspired than economic-system inspired, having stood the test of everything from monarchy to the caricature of democracy, which is what in place now.

One of our least offensive oddities is that we have signs for everything. Signs that, on the face of it, seem bizarre but if you dig deeper you'll see that they stem from our fundamental lack of consideration for another's convenience and comfort, and a general contempt for civil rights.

Why else would we need signs on the gates of private driveways that tell us "Please Do Not Park In Front Of The Gate"; signs nailed into trees advising us not to "Stick or nail signs into trees"; signs on public walls requesting us to "Please not urinate here"; or signs in public parks telling us not to "Spit or litter in the lawn"?

Why else would we drive over the "Handicapped Parking" sign board in our rush to occupy that very parking spot? Or need a lift-man to ensure the safety of the very people who endanger themselves and him by rushing to squeeze into an already wheezing lift? Or need to be informed about the ‘Silence Zone’ around hospitals that only spurs motorists on to honk louder and more consistently than usual?

I see only one way out. Since we Indians neither fear nor recognize any mortal authority, it is only the threat of pain in the afterlife - everlasting pain - that can make us mend our ways. But Hell, as it is now, is not a very efficient deterrent to discourage bad behaviour. So to make our world a more habitable place, I have here a two-step process to put into place a more effective curb on our selfish ways.

The first is to make the penalty for not leading a model life so cruel that everyone becomes anxious to get himself or herself into Heaven. The second step is to open up the communication channels between the living and the dead. For unless the tormented souls in Hell can get their message across to the people who still have hope, the new Hell will have no advertisement; and marketing is everything in today's world.

However, the idea of a blanket Hell for everyone, one Hell to which all the wicked souls on earth go, is intellectually disappointing. It’s like a party for the Evil. Heaven, on the other hand, is more customized. Sure, there is the usual moksha, God's presence and white, puffy clouds. But there is also the fulfilment of all your desires; and of course every soul is going to have a different set of desires for which it has been sold. Heaven is so much more personalized.

This makes more sense if you think of Heaven and Hell as two, let us say, clubs or restaurants. One is reserved for the elite and the other, well, anyone can walk into it after paying a nominal entrance fee. Being evil is so much easier than being good, even in the widest sense of the terms. So the price one has to pay to get into Heaven is millions more, spiritually, than the price one has to pay to get into Hell. And for such a steep price a little tailoring cannot be begrudged.

This argument is specious: the idea of a blanket Hell leaves much to be desired.

Think about it: what is Hellish for one needn't be so for another, though both might be equally wicked; a relaxing dip in a tub of hot oil after a long, hard life may be just what the doctor ordered for some people for them to emerge all reinvigorated on the other side of eternity.

So what we need are alternative, even unconventional, rehabilitation measures to ensure that the afterlife is daunting enough to keep still-mortal souls on the straight and the narrow path of virtue.

For instance, when a young man who likes to fly down a congested road on his motorbike with his thumb glued to the horn drives abruptly into a lamppost and finds himself being tended to by the guardians of the ever-lasting fire, what we have is a chance to try to direct his more fortunate friends on to the path of moderation. Instead of a warm oil bath, we have a wonderful opportunity to let our creative sadism loose. Imagine how much more effective it would be if this young man, let us call him Unfortunate No. 1, found himself strapped down on to a Hayabusa, a magnificently loud horn at his disposal, an endless stretch of smooth, tree-line road -- just made to speed over-- rolling out in front of him; and only a foot that weighed as much as two bikes put together standing, as it were, between him and his paradise, for all eternity! Now, if, along with this, communication channels between Unfortunate No. 1 and his friends on earth were opened up, we’d be well on the way to Utopia, wouldn’t we?

Similarly, if each of us was faced with the possibility of spending eternity with the thing we love the most on earth just-just out of reach - for ETERNITY -; and unable to do anything about it, I think we’d clean up our acts pretty fast; it would be like the weight lifting off Unfortunate No. 1’s accelerating foot.

A terrorist given all the ingredients to make a bomb that would blow earth out of the solar system, but no mixing cauldron; a nymphomaniac in a chastity belt faced with a line-up of Brad Pitts; a politician with all the money he wants in Hell’s equivalent of a Swiss bank account the number of which he just can’t remember; I can go on forever, quite literally.

Make me Hell’s event manager, and the world will be a better place for posterity.

The Abused Article

There was once a time when the little people of the English language, a, an and the, had a place and purpose in the great scheme of things. They knew where they belonged, who their partners were, and where they would always find welcoming arms. There was no ambiguity about their billet and station in life. They were used when needed, otherwise they stayed safe in the sanctuary of security of purpose, away from the violence and turbulence that plagued the rest of the language.

 

Now their life of comfort has been snatched away, leaving them bewildered about their raison d'etre.

 

I place the blame for this deplorable state of affairs at the door step of modern laxity of speech: when we read with indulgence the ramblings of would-be writers camouflaged in the guise of bringing the language closer to the common man, we condemn the articles to obscurity. What is forgotten in this quest for propinquity is that the language in which they write is only the illegitimate child of English, an indelible blot on the escutcheon of a proud language.

 

There are books being written, by the roll of the printing press, the mantra for which, supposedly, is accessibility of the language. I would say that the purpose of these books is to clothe the ignorance of the language with the garb of innovation. But innovation starts to lose its sheen when researchers abound aplenty.

 

When we can read without wincing a sentence like: "Following are a detail you wanted", we become conspirators in hastening the language to its demise. When the superflous apostrohe in a board indicating that we can buy fresh "Fruit's" here doesnt elict a shocked gasp, at the very least, from us, we can be certain that we are battle-hardened soldiers, whom no horrors may astonish. And when a request such as: "Will you please bring science book which you have gave me earlier", doesnt reduce us to tears, we may conclude that we have lost all our finer feelings and sensibilities.

  

The newspaper: that guide to the language, that torchbearer for the masses; is also the ring master of prowling thieves of the sanctity of the language. The articles are used so frugally that one starts to wonder if they are in short supply, and whether one should use one's contacts in the black-market to start hoarding up on them. But its not just the articles; grammar, in its wondrous entirety, absents itself with an unnerving frequency from the pages of our newspapers. One can see the astonishing prowess of the country's police-force when one reads of twelve men being "arrested with 50 kg of Ganja". What is even more distressing is our placid acceptance of the absurd.

 

Indeed, one doesn't need to go through the trouble of buying a book and reading it, or even turning the pages of a newspaper to find examples of betises that hound the language. Just drive by any random road and you will find ample evidence of abuse. Shops that want to encourage people to sample their 'western out feet' are not hard to find.

 

A hoarding advertising a playgroup for children reads "School for children with health-care"; one can only wonder whether to tack on 'issues' at the end. Send your offspring to such a school, and you can complacently expect a generation that speaks, at best, a perverted variant of the language.

 

Convention seems to suggest that as long as you get your point across grammar is irrelevant. That is, language is nothing more and nothing less than a medium of communication, and the rules of grammar can be buried six feet below the ground as long as we understand each other. In that case, we might as well start burning up the works of art of every language that we can lay our hands up on. The fallacy of this argument is that rules, convention and tradition in every language have developed with the sole aim of communication. Through the ages they have gathered legitimacy,almost a ne plus ultra. Language, some may argue, is not a destination, but an evolution. In forming new traditions, we must not transgress the established.

 

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I must confess that, when it comes to language, my blood doesnt rebel against establisment. Every misused 'a' makes me want to rush to it with first aid, every missing 'the' hits me like the loss of a loved one and each absent 'an' makes me weep.

 

When Lord Byron wrote the lines:

 

"And when I laugh at any mortal thing

'Tis that I may not weep",

 

it must have been in anticipation of times to come.

The Perfect Job

I recently attended a Strings concert; first things first: Wooooh!!! It was brilliant, notwithstanding the fact that though I had a VIP pass I had to be content with imagining Bilal and Faisal and their magic for the first half-hour. Things got better soon; in fact I was able to squeeze my way to the front and for the rest of the concert I was in the first row: the V-VIP row.

And that is when the voices in my head started competing with the acoustic love-making.

As I sat there, the wet grass ensuring that my favourite pair of jeans would forever remember Strings, my ear-drums trying to retreat into my head, a beefy, pan-chewing member of the security came and planted his trouser seat between Faisal and me. This set me thinking: there are some jobs which are best suited to those who would hate the job. Consider, for instance, the security at concerts. It has to comprise of tone deaf people who are intellectually and morally opposed to music. Only then can they successfully glower murderously at the performer and his audience alike. Only then can their mere presence attract magically the weapons of would-be assassins and other silencers of music. Only then can they, when the singer, oblivious to danger, and in the throes of applause, tries to throw himself into the arms of his audience, keep him glued firmly on to the stage. It is only when every member of the security, in harmony, hates music; and consequently, his job, can a singer tour the world, wooing audience after audience and then proceed, each night, to sink into safe slumber. It is the ideal arrangement.

Imagine the disaster that would follow if the managers of concerts had not the good sense to steer clear of music-loving muscle-men to ensure the safety of the singers. Were this to happen, this is what I envision: The concert is on in full swing; the audience is in a trance; the star is the hypnotist; the security sways as a body to the music - eyes closed, mouths gently agape, puddles of drool at their feet - suddenly shots ring out: the drummers are shot and masked men emerge from the audience, leap on to the stage and drag the lead singer away even as the hands of each member of the security move, as one, to grope drunkenly at their respective holsters for their guns. This makes the headlines in the country's newspapers the next morning, completely overshadowing routine political upheavals. The tearful why-was-I-so-lazy-about-filing-my-divorce-papers wife now has to run to the stunned insurance company which will have to come up with schemes to evade payment ("We told you not to employ a music-loveing security, you should have made them plants in the audience instead.", "We told you not to tour in such an uncivilized place as India."). The next thing you know, the ransom has been coughed up and the singer emerges, gaunt and humble: filled with new respect for life, all set to write a heart-rending account of his stay with the kind-hearted barbarians of a third-world country and grammarians across the world wait with bated breath for another sock in the jaw for the language.

And all for the want of a music-loathing security.

This is not the only profession in which a job-hating victim would make for a better employee than a willing drone.

Take surgeons, for example. A surgeon who is a little squeamish about blood would be vastly more desirable than a bloodthirsty one. Think of the massacre that a surgeon with a case of the blood-lust can unleash!

Writers, too, are better when they are miserable about everything in general, and about life in particular. Byron, even as he was being hounded by most European nations, churned out beautiful poetry. Indian writers too uphold the literary tradition of 'the more suicidal, the better' works of fiction.

In conclusion, what any young person about to begin the very serious life-work of earning his living has to decide at the very outset is: does he want to enjoy what he does or does he want to be good at what he does? For, as we have just established, in most noble professions excellence and passion are incompatible.

Atithi Devo Bhava

Everywhere one goes in Karnataka, one can see boards proclaiming to the world that "Athithi Devo Bhava", the irreverent 'h' being a pet of Southern India. However, after one visit to the Scotland of India, one can see the celebrated Indian hospitality crawling away, clutching at its broken ribs. If this is how God is treated i can only be grateful for my own mortality. Every person one meets in Coorg gives one the impression that having to converse with one is the last straw after a year of dealing with the plague, an attack of the locusts and suddenly not-so-dormant volcanoes. The very first conversation my family had with a native of Karnataka opened a gash so deep in our hearts that even Time will find it difficult to mend the wound. A venerable old sage castigated us for not knowing the habits of the local rickshaw wallahs, despite the fact that three states had to be traversed for us to reach the warm hospitality that is unique to Karnataka. Apparently our ignorance had preceded us with uncanny premonition, by years, nay, decades, and ruined a wonderful city. With this knowledege of our sins bearing us down, we nevertheless crawled to the derelict old bus station that housed the miserable excuse for twenty first century transportation that would carry us to our dream, away from disapproving old men, a quality we deemed sufficient to create Utopia. We had, however, faced harsh opprobrium, since we were the reason the city was what it was (and believe me, what the city was could drive Pollyanna to despair), and shame lends surprising humility. It led us to pay and use toilets no one could previously have bribed us with gold to use, sit mutely in a bus that, besides having been hidden so skillfully that it almost left without us, would most likely plunge us to death, and bear with forbearance the threats of a cocky conductor. Apparently, his sitting on our tickets could be reason enough for him to throw us off the bus.

The next morning we were retched out onto warm tar by a bus that shied from every curve and screeched like a ticklish banshee at every bend. A bigger shock than homicidal busses was, however, journey's end. When we found our bearings it was to discover that we were marooned amidst clots of humanity. Instead of reaching the serene, charming, old-world village promised by travellogues, we had mysteriously reached a congested little town; littered with garbage, hawkers and fellow disconcerted tourists. When we finally found our way to our hotel, which a travel site had proclaimed to be the best Coorg had to offer (I found no cause to fault the website in the duration of my stay), we were greeted, initially, with blatant disbelief at our reservations, subsequently with smirks and whispers of "lets see how long these suckers last", and finally with stone-cold breakfast served by indifferent waiters. The incident that best describes the luxury we enjoyed here took place on the third or the fourth morning of our stay (yes, we stuck on that long).

On the third or the fourth morning we were reminded of how humans are slaves to habit. Usually, we just had our morning coffee in our rooms, preferring to delay seeing how much our presence inconvenienced the housekeepers and owners of the hotel. On this morning, with unwonted optimism, we hoped that they would be civil and ventured out to have coffee and breakfast in the resturant. The lone waiter who would do us the honours seemed not to see us though, as he sailed past with the life giving brew. I was assigned the task of finding him and bringing him back. Keen detective that I am, I was able to follow him by the trail of mud coloured liquid that he had left behind. And when I finally tracked him down, he was knocking on my locked room door. The easy bit done, now I was faced with the Herculean task of getting him to believe me that there was no one in the room.

I started out with a tentative, "There's no one in there, we are in the resturant."

He ignored me. I tried again, "We want the coffee in the dining room."

He spared me a glance, before going back to knocking the door (the knocking had, by now, taken on the timbre of blows).

I tried saying the same thing in Hindi, to no avail. He went on knocking.

Then the steward joined him, and the two of them started hammering at the door.

I pulled out with a flourish my Tamil, "Coffee yenake Dining Roomle venu, namba ange irrikun." (I want the coffee in the dining room, we are all there).

The original drummer shook his head at me reprovingly, as if to say, "Don't distrub an artist at work," and the orchestra continued.

I tried sign language, pointing at myself,the coffee, then at the dining room. Four blank eyes stared at me.

Progress, the drumming ceased! I pointed at the room and shook my hand to say that there was no one there. They stared at me and resumed their knocking. All I had done was remind them that they had stopped.

Exhausted, I gave in, unlocked the door, led them in so that they could deposit their prize, and then picked up the tray and took it to my family to tell them of my gallantry and cunning in retreiving our morning beverage. I needed it more than any of the others; afterall, even Sherlock Holmes got the photograph.

The next morning, we prudently breakfasted in our respective rooms, then set out to shake the dust of Coorg from our feet; never to darken the doorstep of the most beautiful, scenic Hell that I have ever seen.

Once we left behind musical, but imbecile waiters and the congested town, Coorg lived up to all that was promised to us by various friends (sadists, of course, not to have warned us that the people there do not speak 'human') and tourism websites and the Karnataka government. The greenery, steep mountainsides, thick plantations, serene waters, all washed our memories clean.

For, however displeasing the experience with our fellow humans was, Nature did not dissapoint us.

And into the Light

Sometimes, I look into my mama’s (uncle) room, expecting to see him peer inquisitively into the rest of the house from his vantage point on his bed, and it breaks my heart a little to see him gone. Once I went in to ruffle his hair (which he used to love) and when I realized I’d never do it again it was like he had died all over again. My mama had been with us from as far back as I can remember; many of my earliest memories feature him.
Mom recently called Aaji (Grandmother), and in the natural flow of conversation asked, “Nagesh kasa aahe? (How is Nagesh?)”. Dad and I were scandalized but Aaji took it philosophically. He had been such a major part of our lives, influencing every decision, right from meal times to who took their vacations when, that it is sometimes difficult to remember that mama is no more. His handicap (he had Down’s syndrome) made him the centre of our familial universe very often, and none of us is certain that it was entirely unconscious.
The bedroom was his and Aaji’s, but he had strategically taken it over. He had won the conquest by switching off the fan in the scorching Ahmedabad summers and switching it on in the winters, pouring water on her bed, and doing everything short of pushing her bodily out of the room to claim it as his own. But claim it he did, and even now it remains Nagesh’s Room. The prize among his spoils was an old, worn out lipstick case.
From childhood onwards we were accustomed to him being around all the time. In fact, when mama and Aaji went to visit relatives the house would feel bereft. It was not an entirely unpleasant feeling, nor was it wholly pleasant. It was difficult to adjust to the freedom of his absence, even when it was temporary. Once, during a period of such absence, Mom, my brother and I were standing on the porch of our house, when a car, with a Nagesh look alike on the back seat, drew up to ask for directions and we very nearly called out to him, forgetting for the moment that he was in a city hundreds of kilometers away. Even now, when I see someone else unfortunate enough to be afflicted with Down’s syndrome, I have a nostalgic pang for my mama.
The passing of a loved one is never easy. In this case, since mama was always there, in the background but never quite content to stay there, it is a loss that we have to deal with constantly; even the simple freedom of being able to go out together without having to say “Nagesh, be a good boy”, is something that one has to get used to.

This obituary comes as a belated farewell and a posthumous ‘I love you’ to someone who would never have understood the words, but with whom every interaction was an embodiment of the sentiment.

My Days in the Purgatory

I am sure everyone has a peculiarity that they are certain is unique to them. To take a few random instances, I know of a man who can eat sixty cockroaches in as many minutes (I am rather glad that he alone is the proud possessor of this dubious talent, I wouldn’t want every other person I meet to have cockroach breath; just the occasional whiff will do), and another who can go without any nourishment for more than a month. What I think puts me in the company of these eminent personalities is that I can recognize all my immediate colleagues by their feet. No, I don’t deduce anything by their footsteps, or their tread, or anything even remotely in the league of the Sherlock Holmes line of deduction, but their feet. It may seem futile to some, but I know that I will be noticed and snapped up by any passing carnival, and given top billings, alongside the bearded lady. How many people can honestly say that they can distinguish between two people purely by the way the veins on their feet run?
The other lesson that I have learnt in the big bad corporate world is to pass seven to eight hours of my day doing absolutely nothing, and doing it productively. In fact, I fill out my work diary with details of my hours devoid of purpose. This will then be sent on to the mother ship, as it were, where these records will determine whether or not I can be deemed worthy to be inducted into the noble profession of Accountancy and Book-keeping. Of course, I am hardly being fair to my profession. It is, after all, the Financial Genius that either rides any nation on to economic glory or plunges it to the depths of depression. Only, I cannot see how we are to learn to chart the fortunes of nations while staring at dysfunctional computer screens in a labyrinth of urinals, lined with lecherous colleagues.
The prime of my life, the morning and the spring time of my life, I spend ensconced in a passage way meant for one not-too-particular-about-hygiene person with three other people. If it were a recognized prison, human rights activists would take up our cause. However, since this, though state sponsored, is not recognized, we have no rights.
So, hypnotised into believing that this is one instance where the purgatory comes before the sin, I square my shoulders, clench my fists and walk into my office, day after day, everyday, for three years. After all, after that, the years are mine to sin as I please.

The Age of the Walking Cadavers

We live in a ghostly age. Everywhere I look, I see wraiths flitting about with the lower halves of their insubstantial forms draped in trousers the diameter of which looks less than even the diameter of phantom legs. Blink and you’ll miss this unearthly sight. But blink again and a kin will come floating by. I don’t know whether it is the bite of their jeans, or the other-worldly joy of being able to fit into a pair of leggings, but these spirits always walk with a spring in their step. Their feet hardly ever touching the ground, they drift about in a realm far removed from the rest of us mortals who have to scrape away a lot of flesh in order to clothe our skeletons.
Recently I was taken in by the unwonted optimism of my inner self (who, by the way, lives a completely sheltered life inside me and is not to be blamed) and I decided to buy myself a fresh pair of jeans. Perhaps it was the sight of so many translucent legs-in-denim that pushed me into the hands of blind tailors or maybe it was the very real threat of finding myself in a stage of undress only suited to a lover’s eyes in public. I rather think it was the latter. Still, I am glad to say that I am no longer the naïve, wide eyed young girl who walked into shop after shop after shop, haunting the assistants in my search for a pair of trousers that would fit human legs. In fact, as I stalked out of the last few of my would-be wardrobe suppliers, I rather think I heard hysterical laughter and dying-duck gasps. But, in my defence, I do think shop assistants should be made answerable for the misdeeds of anorexia-supporting, cloth-constrained guilds of tailors.
Still, whatever agonies they suffered, I am sure they pale in comparison to what my body and soul were put through. My legs were chafed raw with the relentless expulsion into leggings at least four sizes too small. My back feels crippled by the frequent twisting around to see if my derriere looked like something a hippopotamus dragged about. And my soul has a king sized dent from discovering each time that I did, indeed, resemble the hindquarters of a fairly greedy hippo. The last mentioned wound may never heal, and I might have to forever live a cursed half life, especially if my poor, battered soul keeps receiving these socks in the jaw that knock it out cold for days on the end.
The Kalyug of Indian mythology has arrived; the age of the walking cadavers is here. I must admit that I am a tad surprised at how remiss medical researchers are. They spend all their time (and a good deal of resources) trying to find cures for obscure diseases (and publishing reports about the percentage of people with one toenail longer than the rest who will live 5 months longer than their peers, or some other such fascinating fact) while there is an exodus of skeletons making merry on our streets, unchecked. With Kareena Kapoor bringing back the size zero with the swooning sway of her barely-there figure in Tashan, toilets all over the country are reeling under the additional strain, while farmers and other agriculturists watch and weep over piles of food grains going to feed farmyard rodents.
There are, of course, righteous (and rather, for the want of a better word, substantial) people continuously slamming the disappear-into-thin-air physique. But who wants to listen to reason, the voice of reason carries no weight with us.
Anyway, to stop digressing, let me end the day dreams of those of you who were hoping to encounter a half nude girl hysterically wandering about (or shudders, if you pictured an African jungle colossus disguised as a human). You won’t. I did find myself a pair of trousers which do not make me look a like hippo that has been stuffing its face childhood onwards. I only resemble a starved one now, one that hails from the famine stricken lands of Ethipoia.