The Circle of Life

'Chiquita' is a Spanish word for 'little one', sometimes also used to refer to 'pretty little girl'. But that was not why I chose to call her Chiquita when I first saw her that morning, dirty, hungry and hoarse from crying for food. There was a ring in this word and there was a ring in her spirit that made me want to call her by that name the moment I saw her. Evidently she was an orphan, not looked after, not been taught the tricks of survival that were so characteristic of her species. Infact she did not even know how to lap up the milk that I offered in a bowl. 'It would be challenging,' I thought, but she looked up to me with such large promising eyes, that I knew she would make it.

She did make it... into my house, into my garden, into my life and into my heart. Well, into a lot of things actually. Most mornings even before I got the chance to read the newspapers, it was in shreds. The sofa cushions and all forms of upholstery began to look tortured after a few days and almost all my curtains began to smell of cat pee. If I was lucky someday to get to the newspaper before she did, she would come and sit on the page I happened to be reading. In few days she mastered the art to such an extent that she could actually sit on the exact paragraph which I would be reading at that time. There was no way I could win, she would have it her way every time. Soon I began to feel bullied in my own house... perhaps the only time I enjoyed it! Soon I realised that we could work out our own equation irrespective of what others in the family thought. My husband loved her when she performed her antics and put up a show, but not when his shoes ended up being her litter box! My son loved her when she purred but not when his mother's attention was divided. We all loved Chiquita and we were all tormented by her! There was too much of a 'I dont give a damn' attitude about her. She came in as a scrawny, little thing, absolutely true to her name and eventually blossomed into a gorgeous girl. Neighbours began to envy me when we used to sit out in the garden sipping tea while Chiquita ran around being her nastiest best, killing every form of inconsequential life. Cockroaches were her favourite and though mice scared her, she tried to impress me sometimes by wounding them to the point of no recovery but not killing them either. I, off course, was not impressed by such savagery, which when I made clear to her, she listened to me with droopy eyes, half sorry but half resolved that she would perhaps try again!

Chiquita turned out to be garden friendly. There was nothing she loved more than rolling on the grass and romping around till the outdoors got unbrearably warm. However for some reason unfathomable to man, she had a particular malice towards my beautiful White Ginger Lily shrub. 'Why' is the question I could never answer. From midsummer through autumn the stalks are topped with clusters of wonderfully fragrant white flowers that look like butterflies. The flowers eventually give way to showy seed pods chock full of bright red seeds. The lance shaped leaves of this shrub are even lovelier. Yet Chiquita would leave no stone unturned to see to it that some harm was done to the shrub. Somedays I found the leaves savagely mauled, somedays it was the flowers and on some other days the plant just looked very very sad. I could understand that Chiquita had given it her share of rancour.

It was shortly after we celebrated Chiquita's second year with us and life was beautiful. She grew up to be quite a lady, with large beautiful eyes and lush fur. Misfortunes have a subtle way with life. It strikes hardest when you least expect it to, worse still, it will strike you when you have begin to think that you have safegaurded yourself against it. One morning I woke up my husband in panic. "She is urinating blood" I gasped...... The look on the vet's face was not very good, he didnt seem to want to mince words. Something was definitely wrong. The following week passed in a frenzy of visits to the vet, ultrasounds, and medications. The week following that brought us the bad news. Chiquita had contracted ulcers in one of her kidneys, some of them cancerous. And what followed after that I do not remember. I was much too dazed, much too angry, too full of questions to remember how long that ordeal lasted or how worse it got each day. Chiquita took it all, with patience. She had this indomitable desire to live. She never retorted or complained about the horrible medicine, she went through all the therapies possible, just thumping her tail when it got too painful. She got weaker, unable to romp around the garden. And then we suddenly noticed her bonding with her arch enemy, the White Ginger Lily shrub. She would lie beneath it the entire day without harming a single leaf. The plant regained its previous vigour as we watched our beautiful girl wane away.

We knew this day was coming. The vet told us that Chiquita would not get any better and she was in greater pain than we could imagine. It would be best to let her go. That morning dawned usual, sunny and uneventful. My girl was already in the garden beneath the Ginger Lily shrub soaking up the sunshine. I fed her, her favourite breakfast, and put her in the car. She was excited about the car drive as always. After we reached the clinic, the vet lead me to a quiet room. It was very peaceful in there and he left the two of us alone for a while. I stroked her for as long as I could and she off course didnt know what was coming. As I kept stroking her neck, the vet injected her. I looked deep into her beautiful eyes and whispered in her ears, "Goodbye my friend. We will meet in the great hereafter." She looked up to me and smiled. I think she said, "Dont worry. I will be back soon.. and you would know." It was only a few minutes and she was at peace.

We had a dry autumn that year and a colder winter than usual. I could not tend to the garden as often as I was used to and most of the shrubs looked sad and unhealthy. The Ginger Lily looked worse than usual. All its flowers had dried up, the leaves were pallied and I had to attend to it immediately or it might have died. Nothing changed much other than the seasons. And as is the cycle of life, Spring arrived with warmth and a riot of colours. The garden looked greener, happier and in full bloom. The Ginger Lily shrub bore bunched of beautiful white flowers after a long long time. I went up to it and plucked one. It smelled sweet and exquisitely pretty. I put it to my cheek, looked up at the blue sky above and whispered, "Welcome home, girl"!

So, what are we selling today?!

TV commercials play an enormous role in the life of an average Indian.. maybe an average anyone anywhere in the world, just that I am not very familiar with too many average 'anyones' across the globe to comment on what their lives are propelled by. TV commercials are as integral to the Indian living room as the soaps that they sponsor. Just as sindoor and keeping up with a philandering husband has come to define the pious Indian woman,our commercials also have come to influence the way we think, feel or react to issues and events around us. They are also a mirror to our psyche, of how we define the world around us, how we perceive an alien or a foreigner... most importantly, ourselves.

Having grown up with the idiot box booming in my house at all times, I cultivated a special interest in advertisements. As a child, even as a teenager I believed all of those wonderful lies that used to be aired and as an adult, things changed slightly. I just tried to pretend I was wiser and yet ended up buying a host of products that were honestly remote to what the commercials promised. Over the years Indian advertising has come a long way from models with ghastly lipstick and "Vicco Turmeric.. nahi cosmetic!" Some have acquired the status of a piece of art, while some have been consistent in their drollery. Here are some of my favourite commercials and some of those that were never made to sell the product, rather to show how stoned the Admaker was while conceptualising it!
Fair and Lovely: The funniest advertisements of all times have off course been the ones for fairness products. That also reflects the eternal quest of life to acquire what you have not been blessed with. Races with darker skin tone aspire to lighten it and races with lighter skin tones tan themselves to darken it. We cannot blame the Indian psyche to associate beauty with a light skin tone. What amuses me however, as we move on from one inane commercial to another is the brave attempt to lure low profile dark skinned girls to believe that rubbing Fair and lovely cream twice a day will not only win them prospective husbands (which is understandable enough) but also lucrative jobs. I have always had a golden brown skin and have never been refused any job so far, though I do not even know what that cream smells like! :)

Milano Cookies: Sex sells.. that is an all time business secret in the entertainment industry. There is a bit of a voyeur in all of us. However it gets disastrous when you are trying to sell something as naive as cookies. The tagline says: "There's a secret behind every Milano" and much to the horror of the audience the secret happens to be a raunchy night with an attractive woman in the bakery. You neednt pay any attention to the dough or its composition. You just got to put the damn thing inside the oven, never bother to see whether it bakes or burns.. but you must just go to bed with a woman and Milano cookies will be ready for you! That is the secret behind every Milano. And if that is the secret behind every Milano, who is going to ensure that what comes out of the oven and is distributed in the market does not taste like shit?! An obviously stunned me wonders which nymphomaniac thought of the concept!

Parachute Jasmine and most hair oil commercials: Prospective husbands might be a very important goal in many women's lives, but perhaps all the basic grooming activities of a woman are not directed to that end. I cannot stop laughing when the Parachute Jasmine Ad is aired. A girl receives an abundance of marriage proposals because her hair is lustrous and smells of jasmine. The quintessential question remains: What is one going to do with an abundance of marriage proposals? Ultimately a woman will marry only one man. My hair or the hair of most happily married women I know does not smell of jasmine and were yet lucky enough to have got married :)

All male products: The icing of the cake however must go to the commercials for any and every male product. I had once asked a male friend in desperation if he had any other business in life other than procuring a mate for himself. He offered me an ice bag, sympathised with my dementia and answered, "Off course not!" Yet the ultimate message sent out through the advertisements of any exclusive male product is: If you use this, all attractive women on earth will be ready to get into bed with you! It begins with the morning toothpaste... a man needs to have fresh breath so that any woman on the street should be ready to kiss him. He must dress smartly, wear a Louis Phillipe or a Upper Crest shirt so that pretty women notice him.. not because he needs to look good at office. He must use a deodorant not as a gesture of noble service to all around him, but specifically to have women stop elevators midway and take off his clothes. He must then wear a particular brand of glasses or lenses for much the same reason, female attention. He must use only that credit card that will enable him to spend lavishly on taking a woman out to dinner. He must drive only those cars or ride those bikes that women like, not those that will give him better mileage or value for money. This also raises another observation, the Admakers definitely need to look up the dictionary to know the difference between the words 'woman' and 'whore'!

And then there are those that melt your heart, make your eyes moist, in some instances those that make you weep and the ultimate ones that make you stand up in applause when they are aired uncut, unedited for the very first time.
Idea Cellular: An idea can change your life... and indeed all Idea commercials try to talk about that. They talk about ideas that can not only change one but many lives. The one that touched me most was the concept of reaching out to remote villages and educating children where schools are still a luxury. An old villager brings his grandchild for admission in a school which is already filled to capacity and the Principal has no option but to turn him out. He then seeks a solution in his prayers, when the idea of open air classrooms through Idea's network, dawns on him. This enables him to reach out to many such children in remote villages and educate them. At the end of the year, the same child who was refused admission in school wins a 'best student' award. The other remarkable advertisement was the one made on the idea of saving trees. Done up with a pinch of humour it is indeed an amazing idea in a world of depleting forest reserves and global warming.

Surf Excel: The "daag acche hain" tagline is very movingly potrayed in most commercials of this detergent. If you buy Surf Excel, it will be easy for you to wash off any kind of stain, but what the commercial also stresses on is the fact that if your clothes get stained in an attempt to do a kind deed, then that is a 'good' stain. The recent version shows a child enquiring why his "Rosy Miss" has not turned up in school and is informed that she has just lost her dog. This child runs home to his teacher, notices an untied leash beside her and immediately dives in the mud engages in all kinds of canine activities. Rosy Miss relives all her memories with her dog and her face lights up with a smile. The child's clothes are stained and muddy, but it helped to bring a smile on his teacher's face.

However the award winning commercials of all times have been those aired for Airtel. There have been a series of them so far but the two most memorable campaigns have been "That is the power of human expression" and the "dil ki baat batakar toh dekho" campaign.
"That is the power of human expression": It begins with a shot from the Quit India Movement: "Two words can bring down an empire".Then it cuts to Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I have a dream” speech. The caption with the shot this time: "One dream can change the world." The next frame shows David Shepherd declaring Tendulkar as OUT and Tendulkar glancing at the heavens. Caption: "One raised finger can break a billion hearts." Winston Churchill appears in the frame, addressing a huge gathering during the War. and the caption continues from the previous image "... and two can win a war!" The images that follow (if you are lucky to view the full version of this advertisement) are of:
Dalai Lama – A whisper can inspire hope…
Mother Teresa – One touch can instill faith…
Lata Mangeshkar – Some voices can move a nation…
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – Yet some others can dissolve boundaries…
The demolition of the Berlin Wall – One act of defiance can spark a revolution… and finally, a huge gathering of people holding candles – one hundred thousand candles can end a war… Throughout the commercial,A. R. Rahman's signature Airtel tune plays in the background, as the words "That is the power of human expression" appear on screen… The first time I saw this, I had tears in my eyes!

"Dil ki baat batakar toh dekho": It begins with two little girls, one from the well-off families, the representative face of the haves, and the other a little girl from the have-nots. The interaction is splendid. It symbolises how the haves and the have-nots can come together, speak out, hear each other out and make this place so much better to live. That they can live like equals, sharing the same pleasures, on an equal footing, and not in the perennially unstable relationship of a giver and a taker. This is a paradigm shift.

Then comes the old man and woman by the garden path. It’s not just about the old man reminiscing about his youth and romance. It’s a lot about how we can all build relationships with each other, which don’t need to weaken or subdue with time. We can all be passionately in love with each other forever. Our bonds don’t need to be weakened. Our bonds can defy time, instead of having to forever adjusting to it. Imagine! And to follow this, the scene of the deaf boy relating his happy dreams through his language of signs. If the idea is beautiful, it must be spoken. The scene suggests just that. Then let it be spoken in words, in signs or in action. And let it be from anyone. It is an idea. Not a negotiable instrument. If it is beautiful, show it, flaunt it, propagate it ferociously till its beauty brings something good for the world. Won’t it be wonderful? Think! Then the shy boy who plucks his courage to kiss his lady love. Why do we hide our feelings? Why should we keep our thoughts concealed under layers of social norms? Why should we have to be so perfectly purposeful, so horribly sophisticated? We don’t need it. We don’t need to hide our feelings. We express what we feel. We lighten our hearts. We clarify ourselves. We remain happy. Don’t we?

And it finally ends with the evergreen idea of perseverance. The little girl who tries and tries and tries till she gets her gymnastics right. This world is changing, technologically, economically, culturally and politically. The changes aren’t always the best for everyone. But we can keep trying. We can keep trying till we’ve ironed everything out and gotten rid of all bottlenecks. Why not? This Ad is about speaking. About speaking loud and clear. About speaking everything. It’s about forgetting old norms, about throwing away traditionalist inhibitions and coming out, being brave and speaking.

I wish the maker of the Milano Ad would understand that cookies sell when you tell the buyer that its made from the finest dough and the best ingredients, not when you play love games in the bakery. If one wanted to be a voyeur, he would just go buy himself a 'Playboy' and not a packet of Milano!

The 3 Idiots and a philosophy

It is not often that a visit to the theatre makes me pen down thoughts and words and make the world know that I have a penchant for writing... least of all, a visit to a Hindi movie, most of which try to pack item numbers, Indian values, buffoonery and fighting stunts all in one, within a three hour slot. The voyeur and the grandma... no one feels neglected and everyone feels that they have had their money's worth. Much to the delight and relief of intelligent movie goers however, Indian cinema has come of age lately and has realised that movies can be box office hits without frightening outfits, flourescent lipstick and buckets of tears!

An apprehensive me went to the theatre that cold afternoon to watch '3 Idiots'. I was not sure if I was investing a 150 buck ticket and a 60 buck triangular packet of popcorn in the right place. When I returned home, I was silent, thoughtful, retrospective and happy. Given the incorrigible mush and improbabilities which every Bollywood movie has to pack in... to please the audience, the '3 Idiots' was both wonderfully neat and neatly wonderful. The take away point for me was the underlying philosophy since I could relate so intricately with it. It made me feel as though I was not the only weird person on the planet.. there were other people who could think that way and appreciate that life is not just about speed, not about achievements but something deeper, something more profound! Not many of us stop to ponder upon the ultimate goal of life... if we did, we would realise that it is something as simple as being happy. Though happiness has different definitions for different people, running a race and to be always running, to always live with the fear that you will be overtaken soon.... cannot define happiness for any sane human being. And the viscious circle continues... we add years to our life, deducting life from our years! It is not necessary for knowledge to be encashable in the form of a high paying job. If you are bright at studies, it is not mandatory that you have to be earning more than your not-so-bright peers. There is nothing that any of us have to prove to anybody... since with the strain of trying to prove to others that you are worth something comes the risk of failure and hence frustration of failed attempts. The easiest thing to be in this world where you cannot be anything, is to be yourself.. follow your heart, follow your dreams, no matter how unrealistic they might be and that will be considered as a life well spent.

The Indian middle class, for the most part, is driven by economic reasons to exploit the brighter members of their family to emulate their position in society and 'show them better days' as they frame it. An intelligent child in an Indian middle class family is a prey to his own family. His intelligence is an investment which they must encash in future to go to a bigger house in a cleaner neighbourhood, get their not-so-pretty daughters married to 'suitable' grooms. Sadly enough, an intelligent child in a middle class family cannot acquire knowledge simply because he wants to know... it has to translate to something material. It is time our middle class stopped killing the dreams of their children... it is time we began to feel equally proud of our photographer sons as we would of the engineers!

And to wrap up the loose ends, the 3 Idiots did not forget to pack in a heroine, who was not required at all and proved her redundancy till the last scene... a bunch of engineering undergrads assisting a woman in labour and the new born baby responding only to "All is well" and to no other normal post natal procedure, a bride running away from her own wedding to marry someone she has not heard from in past 5 years... But much to the viewer's pleasure, the loose ends did serve to give the movie its signature feel-good factor. Life's improbabilities are perhaps what we try to explore in the movies and the 3 Idiots packed in a modest dosage. A carefree heart, a journey into the self and the courage to be yourself.. that's all it takes to be happy, that's all that it takes to make life worthwhile!

Hallucinations of an Impulsive Indian

Think before you speak.. speak before you think ! Just this minute re-arrangement of thewords 'think' and 'speak' can make or break (if not your life).. a lot of things related to it. You can choose to speak and think later, think then speak, speak and not think at all,or think and not speak at all. Each of these permutation-combinations have an outcome of its own, some pleasant and some.. not quite so pleasant! Wives speak and dont think at all,husbands think and not speak at all,subordinates think and speak, bosses speak and think later.. or that is how in all fairness the scheme of things operate, that is how they are meant to be. The not-so-pleasant situations arise when one fine morning a certain rebellious husband takes it upon himself to be the symbol of deliverance of all mankind and ceases to
think, assuming upon himself the role of the speaker. Or a subordinate throws caution to thewinds and tired of his state of helotry speaks all that came into his mind about his boss, and designates 'thinking' as a superfluous activity. Wives, as is their habit, will speak, but when that is combined with thinking, it can be quite an explosive situation. Men do not like thinking wives. Intelligence has a surprising capactiy of making women less attractive. One must follow the answers of the contestants of any beauty pageant to establish the fact that dim-wit and beauty go hand in hand. A 'beauty with brains' never existed or existed just as Centaurs must have existed, and the tag 'dumb blonde' actually means that she is most sought-after. There can be nothing more peaceful in life than a dumb blonde or a dumb-not-so-blonde wife.

Coming back to thinking.. speaking.. speaking.. thinking! One day, a priest was sitting in a pew with a very worried and nervous look, and another priest saw him and wondered what was wrong. The second priest thought he should try to help, so he approached his distraught associate and asked him what was wrong.
“Well,” the first priest said, “have you ever heard of a Freudian slip?”
“No,” said the other.
“Well,” said the first, “it's when one slips and says something one is thinkingusually when it is the least opportune time.”
“Oh,” said the other, “so, what happened?”
“Well, today I performed a wedding and you know the part when you say ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’?” asked the first, and then you further ask "Do you Mr. Whoever take Ms Whoever as your legally wedded wife,to treasure and cherish her until death do you part?"
“Yes?” said the second.
“Well that is what I meant to say, and what I actually said was, ‘I now sentence you to death.'"

Fox News anchor Jane Skinner was reading out the bulletins of the day, "The Deputy Police Cheif says 6 police officers were killed including the district's top cock.. tock cock.. top cop while the vehicle he was riding was sprayed with roses.. was sprayed with bullets. Three other officers were hurt..."

A similar slip occured at the Detroit local news Superbowl coverage. "Really the people of Detroit has shined as much as the shitty has.. the city has. And now its time for crappic update.. traffic update!"

Just as the usually-mindless-once-sensible boyband had sung years back, "Its only words and words are all I have..." our life revolves around words. Two doctors opened offices in a small town and put up a sign reading, "Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones, Psychiatry and Proctology." The town fathers were not too happy with the sign, and they proposed "Hysteria and Posteriors." The doctors didn't find it fine, so they suggested "Schizoids and Hemorrhoids." The town didn't like that either and countered with "Catatonics and High Colonics." Thumbs down again. By now the story was in the papers, and suggestions began rolling in: "Manic-depressives and Anal-retentive." "Minds and Behinds." "Lost Souls and Assholes." "Analysis and Anal Cysts." "Queers and Rears." "Nuts and Butts." "Freaks and Cheeks." "Loons and Moons." None of these satisfied one side or the other, but they finally decided on "Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones, Odds and Ends."

Thinking gave rise to psychiatry and speaking gave rise to wars. How does it differ anyways.. the net outcome is pandemonium! The hotline at a psychiatric clinic sound answer:
"If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 4.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 1, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressed, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear."

Whether Freud slipped his tongue or the tongue slipped in his mouth is food for thought. But a Freudian slip can make or break (if not your life) a lot of things related to it. The next time you decide to speak, either think, or dont think. The next time you decide to think, either speak or dont speak. Life is full of endless opportunities.. when you come to think of it and when you dont think of it.. life is still full of opportunities because you have never thought about it.

Riverine

"Wow!" was all I could say when I saw a little lantern blazing proudly in front of a tent. Some riotous breeze was wildly tapping against its flaps, but the lantern blazed on, protected inside the glass casing of the lantern, oblivious to the tumultous Gangetic breeze. A full moon peeped shyly from behind the clouds, and the white sands caught her coy smile and lit up, somewhat reluctant to wake up to alien footsteps at that late hour.

It was a quarter to midnight when we touched Hrishikesh, and what I experienced was beyond my anticipation. White sands, a full moon, a roaring rapid, gelid breeze and lantern-lit tents... and I felt as though I was on the sets of some Indiana Jones movie! I woke up the following morning to a cup of very Indian, very sweet and muddy tea that smelt of Indian roads and had the exquisite taste of roadside eateries. Every sip of it made me soak in India at its crudest best. The first thing I opened my eyes to was the rapid outside my tent. It is the young Ganges here... wild, nascent and untameable. She flowed on like a wanton child, throwing caution to the winds, heedless of any danger that might lie ahead. She was a shade of pale jade and still smelt of the glacier that gave birth to her. For a while I sat on my bed staring at her with sleep-swollen eyes. Not many things on earth could be as beautiful as she was that morning when I first laid my eyes on her! The next chain of events flowed on as they should have flowed. Breakfast, some more cups of the very Indian, very sweet muddy tea, some... rather lots of cigarettes, few photo sessions which proved the efficacy of Indian toothpastes, and we were ready to go rafting. The sun can be pretty choleric and unforgiving on hills at daytime, unlike the bucolic, amiable mountain sun. Quite beyond my anticipation, it was in a furious blaze when we arrived at the rafting bank of Shivpuri and my delicate consititution fought with my insatiable adventurous spirit and finally gave up. The spirit is everything... I realised this entrenched truth yet again, when I managed not to faint in that terribly hot sun. Donning the rafting gear was quite some ritual. Each of us were given helmets, a life jacket which would not let us drown (even if we tried to) and an oar to row the raft. Click... click... click... more smiles... more toothpaste ads... some frowns and grimaces at the blinding sun.. and the end of yet another photo session, to be preserved as proof to our forthcoming generations that parents are not quintessentially a boring race.. they just get that way with time, cleaning diapers, paying school bills and dealing with child tantrums!

....And finally.. the raft! A long list of Do's and Dont's, many adequate gushes of adrenaline... the hot hilly air reveberating with "Ganga maiyya ki jai!", a high-five of oars and we were on our way.. my first rafting experience ever. What followed for the next three hours is difficult to capture in words. Some feelings are too sublime, too ethereal to be coined into any language comprehensible to man. That was how it was meant to be.. that was why the Almighty gave us a heart and five senses. That is where speech and all that has been invented by man became immaterial! We passed through nine rapids on our way down to Ramjhula, our final rafting destination. They all had curious names and I have tried my best to make a mental note of all of them. 'Return to Sandal' was the first one, supposedly the most benign and it sure was! The second one was 'Cash Flow'.. then came "Rollercoaster', 'Golf Course' and.. the rest I do not remember. As we proceeded further and further, relishing the experience mattered more than memorising the names of the rapids. What difference would it make if you named Golf Course as Horseshoe.. the fun derived would be the same. And yet again.. the famous Shakespearean quote,"What's in a name? Call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!"! Profound!
The sun continued to be unmerciful as we flowed and rowed down our way. To avoid the blaze, I floated on the bone-cold river for most of the way. Maybe I prefered the freezing bite of the water than the scorching blaze of an unforgiving sun. While the forces of nature were at war, we intoxicated ourselves with a strange concoction of fun, adventure and the heady flavour of trying out things for the first time. We reached Ramjhula at the prime of noon... happy, excited, exhausted, sunburnt, contented, eager, hungry and looking forward to more fun!

Lunchtime was an usual affair of a well laid out platter of an assortment of vegetables and well cooked home food. The custard was unusually pink though... trying to be the 'strawberry' flavour and ended up being quite remote to strawberry! And then... "Oh incorrigible noontime slumber, that steals the desire of all activity from restless, eager young bodies, and subdues them to let out unrefined and gawky snores quite against their desires..." descended upon the gang! The rest is self-explanatory. Evening descended upon us, smoky grey, a bit of orange... and windy. The river got a wee bit wilder and the rafters that passed by, a wee bit more enthusiastic than the daytime rafters. We sat on the bank.. some on the rocks, some on the grass for as long as we could, till it got dark, till the mosquitoes made life miserable, till it was time to search for a newer dimension of fun! A bonfire was lit, a lantern was placed in the centre, food and drinks arranged and nine silhouettes conversed under that moonlit sky... the moon a little less demure that night, smiled more often from behind the clouds! Some say those silhouettes were actual people who sat around laughing with each other and loving each other that night.. some say they were spirits who came down to earth, spirits of friendship, spirits of brotherhood, spirits that made the world a better place!

The following morning dawned a usual one, slightly grey, reluctant, lazy. We had to pack up to leave and all of us tried not to make it evident that from the next day onwards there would be no riverside, no boulders, no shy moon, no wild breeze, no more lanterns or the feel of nomadic life in the tents. Breakfast once again... another series of muddy Indian tea and multitudinous cigarettes and finally... on our way back. Click.. click.. click... beep.. beep.. honk.. screech... moooo... abey **&$%$!#... the first half hour of the journey out of Hrishikesh comprised of the sounds of final photoraphs being clicked, impatient drivers blaring their car horns, cows reluctant to move and drivers swearing at each other. As we descended up the hill from our base camp, the Ganges looked breathtaking from the hilltop. The rafters down below appeared miniscule, yet the river was the same shade of pale jade and a subtle blue. As we moved on, the sun got warmer, the streets crowdier, the car AC stronger. We divulged ourselved in small talk for a while and then withdrew into our silent shells, each having earned something to take back for a lifetime.. the smell of moonkissed white sands, curiously shaped pebbles, the pale jade river, very sweet Indian tea, or... the memory of those silhouettes that descended around the bonfire on that full moon night!

Shades of Satisfaction

For a moment, Raghu thought he could not take this any more. After all, 15 years of sweat and toil had to amount to something. But then the something that he was looking for was entirely different 15 years ago. He was a wild teenager then, just opening up to the world. Wild, at least that was what he thought. People around him, had different perceptions. His dad thought he was a misguided genius, a genius nevertheless. His mom thought he was irresponsible, and could never fathom the hardships she and her husband went through in even their day-to-day life. Lower middle class families in India always equate happiness with money. Although Raghu's mother would talk of values and the virtues of "santosham param dharmam" Raghu knew that she herself was never convinced of this age old saying. He could not really articulate the logic then, but he thought his mom's idea of santosham was completely different from his. His mother looked at it as an escape route. She could not face the fact that she could not provide her children with kellogg's for breakfast, cheese sandwiches for lunch, "MAGGI" for evening snacks and paneer ki sabzi, which was raghu's favourite dish, for dinner. She could also not let her children feel that they were deprived. And that was where the "santosham" came into play. Deprivation assumes different meanings at different times in one's life. That is when one needs to equate it with necessity.As the blaupunkt softly played "Thoda hai Thode ki........" smriti noticed the cringe on his face. He had been silent for the past 1 hour, and smriti knew what he was thinking.

Raghu was wont to silence when he recollected his childhood, when dreaming of a comfortable life in his dingy shack seemed to be sacrilege. Those were not always sad recollections that made him silent… the joyous… even some of the most funny incidents of those days got him into that state of frozen speechlessness. He thought of the kind ice candy man who unfortunately dug his index finger deep into his nostrils every time he saw Raghu.. as though he invoked all his kindness from the pit of his nostrils. And beaming with his neat, yellow teeth, he would always present Raghu an orange ice stick on those unbearably hot summer days. There used to be a boatman who ferried people across the river to the neighbouring town, where rich children looked condescendingly from their cars at the passers-by. He smelt of a concoction of freshly brewed country liquor, sweat of homo sapiens, some vegetable that his wife might have spilt on him while they were having a fight and pee, which his baby might have accomplished while he was rocking him to sleep. It often left Raghu aghast with sheer fright when he offered him one of those ‘just like that’ boat rides, but the temptation of the fresh Ganges breeze, the horizon spattered with purple at sundown, the riot of colours across the sky was stronger than any noxious odour. The river… vast and endless made him feel like there was nothing wrong with his life, the strange saffron streaks of the setting sun told him that he could dream… that dream was all he could do for sustenance… that life would be beautiful. And in that one eternal moment, under the purple horizon, the Ganges breeze blowing through his hair, the nauseating odour of human pee, sweat and liquor, he felt that magic word which his mother often cheated him into believing.. ‘santosham’… this was it... this was ‘santosham’!

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeccchhh!!! Honk… honk! He was no longer with the boatman or his ‘garlicious’ fumes. That was replaced by the fresh floral bouquet smell of his car perfume. The local song that the boatman sang was now replaced by Kishore Kumar’s baritone ‘Thoda hain.. thode ki zaroorat hain’ emanating from the Blaupunkt. “Doesn’t seem like we have a great evening ahead Raghu.. you don’t seem to feel like talking at all” Smriti complained. Raghu did not respond… not because he did not care, but because he would not be bullied into talking… not today. For a moment he recalled his mother’s face, laced with years of deprivation and neglect. He recalled hearing her speak for the last time and above all, he recalled the feeling of helplessness that gripped him when they had told him that it would require a lot of money to get her up and running again. She however… never got up again. Life had always been tough, but without his mother, it seemed intolerable. His father became an incorrigible alchoholic, his brother took to loafing excessively and he took to trying to tie all the loose ends together. That was indeed a long time ago… but it all seemed like yesterday. There are wounds that heal with time; there are some that get gangrenous as time goes by. ‘Time is the best healer’ does not really apply for all categories of wounds……..

“Raghav… I don’t think this is funny! I mean what have you been doing all these days? I thought you were a bright boy, I thought we were bringing in a genius in our Ad agency when we hired you. You disappoint me… you gave the industry some of the best animations ever and your recent work is so unbecoming of you! Pray, why? Why must I always remind you that this is an unforgiving world… you don’t have space for too many mistakes,” and with that Sandeep went on and on with his tirade for another half hour. Raghu did not listen, he did not have to. There were some things in life that mattered… some didn’t. There was always this thin line between the things that mattered and that didn’t, the only difference being that with Raghu the parameters to gauge what mattered and what didn’t never matched with the rest of the world. The horizon, clean and beautiful, free of the ugly view-blocking skyscrapers mattered to him, the distinct taste of his mother’s delicately cooked lentils mattered to him, his sister’s inexpensive hand made ‘rakhi’ mattered to him… his job didn’t ! And he knew it full well that this made him a weirdo. He knew he would not last long in this job… it was way too congested to contain his creative excesses, there were too many limitations. It was like asking an eagle to fly from latitude x to longitude y, when that majestic bird would love the have the entire sky to himself. His loan bills piled up every month and in the midst of it all, something in him nudged him to dream on, because he knew somewhere in his mind that fifteen years of sweat and toil had to amount to something. He knew full well that not all dreamers made it to where an average man would call ‘success’. Some dreamers go on to become Bill Gates; some became Van Gogh while some just continue dreaming till they shut their eyes to eternity.

The next morning he woke up to another riot of purple and red across the sky at dawn, the twitter of the few birds that were left alive in the unforgiving cityscape, and decided that he no longer wanted to write Ads. He didn’t exactly know what he wanted to do for that matter, but he was sure about what he did not want to do… which in many cases is more important than the former. So it all ended with a brief farewell to Sandeep, a crisp resignation letter, a crisper release note and some last cake smearing ceremony at the office. His colleagues told him that he would be missed… he knew full well he would not be and he really didn’t want that either since he would not miss any one of them. Like always, very few people mattered to him and the ones that did mattered to him to the level of an all-absorbing obsession! Smriti loved him. She was one of those lovely women whom any man would feel blessed having in his life, yet Raghu could not bring himself to feel that way. She was perhaps too perfect for his taste, too conventional… too much like ‘what a good life partner should be’ kinds. That scared him! There was nothing weird about her… she never wanted to go out for aimless drives at 2 am in the morning; she never wanted to eat roadside food in her best clothes, she never swore when India was lousy at cricket… she had done no weird thing ever! Raghu could never love her. Leaving this city and all its associations behind would not be difficult at all………………………………………

“If you don’t hurry up with your milk, you will not be able to catch up with Raghu saab today,” was what little Krishna’s mother told her every morning when she fussed over her breakfast. “But Ma, I do want to meet Raghu saab. He makes me see,” she would reply back and immediately hasten pace of consumption………
………”Ah, so are we all here today?” Raghu beamed at a crowd of tiny heads smelling of coconut oil and neatly combed hair. “Nandu, lets see what you have got with you today,” he called out to a child in the crowd. A thin little boy in the cheapest and cleanest pair of cotton shirt and shorts stood up, and turned his head towards Raghu. He had an a lovely brown face, a beatific smile and where he should have had a pair of impish, sparkling eyes… there were two smooth mounds. He was born that way. He sensed his way out of the other seated children, counted his footsteps, kept his ears cocked up towards Raghu and approached him neatly, without tripping, without making any unnecessary mess. He presented to Raghu what he was carrying in his hands. In the picture Raghu could see a tree, it was sometime around dusk. A mother bird was flying home to her nest with food in her mouth. The chicks had open beaks in anticipation of dinner and the sky was the loveliest shade of orange that Raghu had ever seen. This child created marvel with crayons! “You are amazing Nandu. Someday you will be famous. You will be a painter someday!” “I will be?!” Nandu gasped. “They tell me I am blind, they tell me I can’t see. What is blind Raghu?” To Nandu and to all the other thirty children that Raghu tutored in his little school, ‘sight’ was an unfathomable word. They had never had it, they did not what it meant or what it was like to have ‘sight’ or be able to ‘see’. They only knew that Raghu saab could make them ‘see’, he could weave dreams for them, bring alive meadows and every blade of grass it contained, the tiniest dew drop became larger than life when they were with him. They smelt spring and autumn in the air… Raghu coloured it for them! And there he was… back to his village… back to the riverside, the boatmen who ferried people across, the fishermen’s colony and the tiny shack he had shared with his family years back. It was no longer inhabitable, yet the remnants were enough to recreate his childhood days for him. Another day was drawing to its inevitable end. Raghu was by the riverside emblazoned in a fire of the golden red setting sun. There was a riot of colours in the horizon. Fishermen were sailing back home singing strange, tuneless songs. Nandu, Krishna and Leela sat in the cool evening breeze beside him, their little ears turned towards him, their tender faces smiling and full of trust, lit up in the gold of dusk and immediately Raghu knew that fifteen years of sweat and toil had finally amounted to something. He had found the meaning of his life, this was it… this was ‘santosham’!

An Orissan Odyssey

A trip to the sea side always shows on your appearance... a healthy tan, eyes hot with the sun and blue, reflecting the ocean's mysteries, hair tangled and unmanageable with sand and salt! Et al, its quite an experience. Orissa is a great place to visit, if you're planning to hit the beach on a low budget and also have a fervour for the Divine. I had recently been to Puri, a small sea side town in Orissa, famous for its narrow alleys, filth and cow dungs spattered generously at all vantage points of the town and the ancient Jagannath Temple. Puri is the forerunner of the Jagannath cult in Orissa, which saw the flowering of several temples dedicated to Jagannath all over the state. The vast temple complex occupies an area of over 400000 square feet, and is bounded by a 20 feet high fortified wall. This complex contains about 120 temples and shrines. As I entered the sanctum or the Deul that enshrines the dieties, I realised that religion has a strange intoxication. Scores of people, young and old, weak and strong hummed bhajans mesmerised, indifferent to the jostling of the crowd and indifferent to the constant lashings of the security gaurds who were trying to prevent devotees from standing too long in front of the dieties,so that everyone got a fair chance. It seemed as though I was the only one affected by such worldly discomforts. The others seemed to be drunk of the Divine! It was indeed an amazing sight..they were absorbed in their Lord. Is it this devotion which converts religious fervour into ugly fanaticism? Is it this fervour that makes men kill each other in the name of religion? Is it this love of the Divine that makes men thrust swords into the guts of an unbeliever? Frightening... but worth a thought!

A must visit for all art lovers is the Sun Temple at Konarak. Built in 1278 by the Ganga King Narasimha Deva, it is an amazing peice of architecture. It is also referred to as the Black Pagoda, being built entirely out of granite. Even in its ruined state, it is truly awe inspiring. Standing amidst its collosal pillars was almost like reliving history. It was thrilling to imagine that almost a thousand years ago, there were such amazing artists and architects. The Sun Temple is indeed a marvel of architecture... one has to see it in order to get an idea of its majestic beauty.

There are numerous beaches in and around Puri. The sea here is regal and fierce. It's force and vigour increases with the setting sun, washing away the shores, promising a new beginning! However there are also flip sides of the sea currents. It sometimes brings to shore many small and large sea organisms which then either die a cruel death or are harrassed by humans. One such incident happened while i was with my family on one of these beaches. A turtle was thrust ashore by the mighty waves and the people on the beach were tormenting the poor creature till they were tired. They climbed on its shell, prodded, poked and kicked it and also clicked photographs of themselves in the act of harrassing the turtle. I kept watching this relentless cruelty till I could take it no more. But protest was beyond me as my mother kept pulling me back. I wouldnt be able to stop those retards from their act of cruelty, was her point of view. And as i drove back that evening...I was angry, not at those freaking retards for tormenting the poor turtle, not at my mother who was indifferent to its sufferings....all that she cared for was my safety and it was enough for her that it was not me instead of the turtle that was being kicked and prodded....I was angry at myself, for my inability to punch those creeps in their faces and mutilate them, at my inability to rescue the turtle and hurl it back into the sea, at my inability to free myself from my mother's shackles and do what i felt was right. I felt like a coward that evening..i felt like an inhuman at having watched a helpless animal suffer and not do anything about it. I am still angry at myself...I always will be!

Orissans appeared to be a friendly people. They spoke softly and amicably to each other and to tourists, and greeted each other in the name of Lord Jagannath. Sundown and pack up time came almost abruptly, and bidding goodbye to this warm and convivial place seemed more difficult than we had thought it would. As the train chugged out of the station and raced me back home, I waved back at the sea, the salt air, the temples and the people realising that I had been on an Odysseyan trip... an Odyssey of a lifetime!