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.

Mediocrity

Mediocrity. That shunned state. That foul M-word. The word from which strong professionals shy. Average is passé; perfection reigns.
Yet, in a world that becomes more excellence oriented by the minute, I find myself wondering if some mediocrity isn’t what we need.
Distinction, excellence, merit are all of the greatest essence to a country, an individual, the society. But will they suffice? The excellent, indubitably, has transcendence over the middling, but it gains eminence only when placed in juxtaposition with mediocrity. This seems to me to be reason enough to demand, even expect, mediocrity.
The race to achieve perfection seems to be in keeping with the Darwinian theory of evolution and of the survival of the fittest, but have we ever questioned if it is Man’s place to lower himself to the field of the unintelligent animal? When shall we rise above this to prove that Man is, indeed, Nature’s ultimate creation? We shall need to rise above this quest to achieve wondurous distinction
Have we ever spared a thought for the average, struggling, let us say, artist? He dibbles in his passion. He lives his dream. He is, by no stretch of the word, excellent. But neither is he bad. He is just that, average. He has a thousand cousins. The mediocre writer, doctor, manager---they abound in every field. They throng the world and still they have no role in the great scheme of things today. They are being pushed to the ends of the earth by the great exodus of the eminent.
So where exactly does your average man fit in? In this era of excellence versus. excellence, where does mediocrity belong? We need to find it a place, a position, award it its due recognition, even reverence.
Only so shall we be saved the humiliation of excellence becoming redundant. For if this happens, then where shall we be?

Over the Top

The virtue of simplicity is lost on Indians. The more garish a particular something is, the more is its Indian Quotient. Everything is a riot of colour and music. While it is a wonderful celebration of life, sometimes celebration is unnecessary. Or rather, celebration that involves the auditory organs of the entire city is not always vital. Just as I sit here, pondering over how to put this without wounding our sensibilities (another innate Indian trait – sensitivity that does impressive overtime), a wedding parade marches past blaring its loud music; the obscene gyrations proclaiming to the world that these two wonderful, lucky people are going to be initiated into the world of marital bliss. The joy flowing through me at the thought almost makes me want to go join the party or at least start a wild head-banging in time to the beat. Only, I am not invited. I am just shown tantalizing glimpses of what I am missing. But the distraction is enough for me to lose my train of thought.

At the time of Ganesha Visarjan, when Lord Ganesha is bade goodbye after ten too-short days, one would expect mournful faces to be part of the processions in which Lord Ganesha is taken on the farewell journey. However, from my vantage point in my stranded car (the roads are blocked by delirious mourners) I can see masses of people dancing to chants of “Ganapati Bapa, Moriya!” and I am baffled. Ten days these people have devoted to this deity, whom they profess to love, there has been grand celebration, and now he is leaving them for a whole year, and joy abounds. There is colour in every-one's hair, in their clothes, on their selves, there is loud music, elegant dancing, camels, oxen (or bulls) and elephants; all in all, it is the Great Indian Party. When I shared this puzzle with like-minded people (little did I know), my astonishment doubled. For, my puzzlement was their puzzlement, and the subject of my puzzlement was a non-issue.

Festival times are excellent opportunity to cast silence to the winds and have an orgy of noise. I am sincerely surprised that we don’t see corpses doing the dandia and bursting crackers. But festivity during festivals is absolutely necessary, and if noise is part of the package, then so be it! I am honest enough to admit that my Indian blood boils at the thought of a quiet Navratri.

Anybody who has had the unique experience of trying to study for an important exam while two denizens of the same city are getting married will bear testimony to the impossibility of concentrating on anything other than your punctured ear drums. And the wedding doesn’t even have to be in your vicinity; if you are anywhere within a 10 kilometer radius, you will be an integral part of the auspicious occasion, a ring-side, seasons ticket holder.

Possibly this riot was justified when India was a bunch of villages. A wedding in one family probably meant that the entire village was enlisted to help out. Then this noise would not only be welcome, it would be inevitable. Now though the borders of the villages have broadened, decibel levels have stretched to accommodate the extra distance. One would expect the drumbeats to fade, but they just don’t.

Strangely enough, my idea of having a ground dedicated to weddings, where weddings can be conducted with as much noise as one wants, without making sure the rest of the city stays up with the happy couple, doesn’t have many supporters. And I still can’t see a flaw in the plan. Maybe there is and the noise over load has deadened my senses.

Well, whatever the discussion, the point still remains that noise is here to stay. So with a whoop and a holler, lets drink to the Great Indian Celebration!

Stupor

A couple of grunts permeated my unconsciousness; the jarring sound forced itself on the blank plains of my mind. Since the stupor of the class was unbroken, I looked around for the origin of the noise, vaguely interested. Then I felt my friend’s dazed pen in my side, and came back to join to un-dead with a start, to realize that the grunts were, in fact, snores, and I was the culprit, or the victim, whatever you want to call it.

This, then, is the general air in our evening class. Dramatic critics talk about the willing suspension of disbelief. The bunch of unlucky slaves in class every evening suspends not only disbelief, but everything that raises Man from the field of the animal. Sir drones on from the front of the class and the only competing sound is the steady hum of the air conditioner. Indeed, most of the time, the air conditioner makes more sense than Sir. At infrequent intervals he turns to the board to write in a sudden fit of energy, and I am roused enough to make illegible scratches in my notebook, marks that will defy interpretation when the need arises. Then it is back to dreamland, where food is the main motif, with sleep a close second.

The fact is all of us in this scene are CA students coming to class from a long day at work, where we get kicked around at the whim of the entire organisation, since we are at the bottom of the pyramid of importance (I speak for myself, but there is little evidence to the contrary that most of my fellows, if not all, reside with me at the base). And before that most of us have attended a similar session early in the morning, a time which God intended to only be used for sleep. After this delightful day when I arrive at evening class, the most I can do is plop down in a lumpy seat and go to sleep. It is so difficult to take Sir seriously about the various methods in which one can calculate the value of the shares of a company, when he is just a vague blur, signifying a three hour barrier between me and food.

Sometimes the voices in my stomach clamour so vigorously that I am tempted to make a dash for freedom; the seduction of hunger is a powerful thing, when Sir will cunningly say the only words in the English language that could have stayed me, “And now for the last sum”. However that is just deception, for he has seen the rebellion in my eyes; he will then continue for at least three quarters of an hour more. When he runs out of material relevant to the topic at hand, he starts to try to entice us with bits of professional gossip. Some of the more susceptible ones give in and try to hold up their part of the conversation on behalf of the entire class, while the rest of us glower, sleepily rebellious, at both the parties to the conversation. When Sir finally gets the hint, we have been stuck in class for nearer four hours, instead of the promised three.

And my extraordinary will ensures that I get home safe and stay conscious long enough to eat. After that its bed time, in preparation for another day, so strikingly like today, that the boundaries blur in my befuddled