Two Lives

Two Lives

Just finished reading “Two lives” by Vikram Seth. As with all books that deal with that pain filled period in recent history – the Nazi regime and the holocaust- it has taken me two days to pull myself together and talk. No,the book is not all about the holocaust – well of course, with all the press publicity, even those who haven’t read it know what the book is about. It is part memoir and part biography dealing with the lives of Seth’s grand uncle Shanthi and his wife Henny, a German Jew who escaped to England but whose sister and mother died...

An act of kindness

An act of kindness

He stood near the bed and took the frail hand in his. She opened her eyes and on seeing him there was a glimmer of light in those dull eyes and her lips lengthened into a smile. She asked him to sit by her side and gently pressed his fingers while asking him if he was happy in the new job.Dear old Nani, always concerned about the happiness of others. His eyes brimmed with tears as he told her not to exert herself. The nurse came in to check the IV fluid.He sank into a chair near the bed and his thoughts went back to the times when Nani was young...

Lonely sunsets

Lonely sunsets

There is a beautiful poem from the sangam period in Tamil literature ( about 1 to 3rd century a.d) translated by A.K Ramanujam which goes like this:"What she said:dont they really havein the land where he has gonesuch thingsas house sparrowsdense feathered, the colour of fading lilies,pecking at grain drying on yardsplaying with the scatter of the fine dustof the street's manureand living with their nestlingsin the angles of the penthouseand miserable evenings,and loneliness?"The image is of a young girl perhaps in her late teens whose husband...

dress code for dreams

dress code for dreams

"In the dream where you show up to school naked, why do you never go swimming?" That is the question on my blogger profile. I think it requires a special kind of brain to think up these questions. From where do they get these? My three best guesses are:1. from some drunken teenage party game 2. from a questionnaire at a psychiatrist's clinic or 3. from some translation software ( which usually gives you completely grammatical but totally meaningless equivalent for what you fed in). Now for the answer I had a choice between fact number 1 that I...

5 a.m

5 a.m

5 a.m on a november morning in Bangalore.Breathtaking beauty of a black sky heightened by a crisp slice of moon and a few stray sleepy stars. Stillness of a morning still early for birds broken only by a distant bell. Winds,virgin untouched by the smells and sounds of the day carrying just a trace of their flirtations with the flower buds.Cold winds,not biting but playful, indulgent and gentle.Anger and betrayal,pride and arrogance and all the meanness of the world faraway and locked inside closed doors,buried under blankets.You,cane chair on the...

insiders and outsiders

insiders and outsiders

I have always thought it was a major exaggeration when people said or wrote that they felt the ground under their feet shift leaving them stunned and shocked. What could possibly happen to a person to create such an extreme reaction that you lose touch with your bearings and question the firmness on the earth you are standing on? What could shake the foundations of your existence, and make you think that your whole perception of yourself so far is a lie and you are just an alien?Happened to me when someone asked me if I was a kannadiga or an "outsider"in...

Degrees of Faith

Degrees of Faith

Is there anything called near faith?Can you call it faith ( or belief or trust ) when it is a cocktail of belief and doubt in whatever proportions they are mixed? Even when a whole glass of faith is spiked with a hint of disbelief?Faith has to be complete, absolute, total. There are no degrees or levels to faith - anything less than 100 percent is not faith at all.Come to think of it it is the same with all qualities that make a human being perfect - like sincerity, honesty, simplicity- it is hundred percent or none at all!We often hear people...

My Hit list- top 5

My Hit list- top 5

These are people you don’t know and god, you seriously hope that you will never have to know them. But these people affect you in ways that you wish you could catch them by the scruff of their neck and bang their foreheads against the nearest wall. (No, I just don't mean those scum who would stoop to levels worse than worms by bombing market squares, buses and trains and hope for martyrhood. No, those are fiends in human form they are not "people")The people who top my hit (hate) list are : -ones who pee on the roadside (in particular people...

Farewell

Farewell

You watch her lying in bed,face still beautiful at 73, the body shrunk to a skeleton after a thyroidectomy. She is in a lot of pain in spite of the hourly painkillers and you can see her rubbing her hip and legs but she does not whine about it. She has never complained in life - she has always demanded things from life and got them exactly the way she ordered. She is not about to make her exit leaving the memory of a shrivelled, suffering person. She is determined to face it by herself and if possible go with a smile. But Fate likes to humble...

Weighty conversations

Weighty conversations

One of the things I dread when visiting people after a few years is the comment on one's appearance. There never seems to be a right weight to escape notice.When you lose weight you "look like a ghost" and when you add girth you never hear the end of it. Just as you gracefully accept what seem like compliments about the "healthy" look, subtle hints come along, compounding insult and injury,about the need to watch one's weight at "this age". You will be told that you look "just right" but anything more would be "dangerous" and this is when you retract...

King of good times

King of good times

Went to chennai for 4 days with lots of excitement and anticipation but ended up with an intestinal infection and a ruined trip. The only good memory of the trip was the onward flight.Kingfisher airlines was great - from the time you reach the departure gate at the airport, they take over. A valet in a red plastic coat takes charge of your luggage till you receive your boarding pass - the staff in charge of boarding are courteous and smiley ( a little too smiley).The aircrafts are spacious and sparkling clean. The seat belt metal straps have...

Hitching the wagon to a star

Hitching the wagon to a star

A deaf-mute boy, from a poor family in rural south India – that is how many handicaps you can count on the path to becoming successful? Wait there is one more - I’d like to believe that the religion of the person should not be an obstacle but definitely there is one other major one – parental resistance, a monumental one. This is the story of Iqbal. Like a lot of Indian boys he loves cricket but there is perhaps a slight difference - he eats cricket, breathes cricket – and the game is his religion, his reason for existence. His dream – a place...

of Karma,killer instinct et cetera

of Karma,killer instinct et cetera

I received an interesting mail from a friend who compares the Chinese to Indians and wonders why, even though we both have similar socio cultural traditions and similar traditional baggage, the Chinese seemed to have overtaken us in many fields. He traces it to the principles of Hinduism like Karma and Fatalism and our pre occupation with the life after rather the present. The stress seems to be on GOOD life rather than a good life.In contrast, the Chinese seemed to have easily adapted to the western way of life which seems to have helped them...

Another outsourcing opportunity?

Another outsourcing opportunity?

Bangaloreans like to "sound off" about the problems they face in the city and when they are asked for suggestions for improvement they invariably look for the solution in the IT sector -that IT industry captains should pay back their debt to society by taking responsibility for one or other of the malfunctioning areas in the city. For example the other day one reader said that they should sponsor the city central libraries and restore the joy of reading among the Bangalore public. Today another says that in stead of complaining about the lack of...

The weakest link

The weakest link

There used to be a game show on television called the weakest link ( Kamzor kadi kaun?)- I used to enjoy it for the brusque and brisk manner in which Neena Gupta used to anchor the show. She would not mince words in commenting on each one's performance and in hauling up people for their intentions in voting for whom they considered the weakest link for elimination from the next round. It was all fun and enjoyable until I understood the strategy that is used in the elimination. In the initial rounds people eliminated the ones who had the fewest...

Dignity

Dignity

I have these sudden awakenings of memory and all of a sudden something long forgotten comes alive fresh and vivid and I can almost see it as if it happened a few moments ago. Sometimes it comes with side effects like memory of the smells and sounds. This morning I woke up thinking about what constitutes "dignity" and suddenly I remembered one of my mother's short stories. My father ran a publishing house and he and my mom were writers of sorts although my mother's love for writing got lost in her struggles to balance family life and her own serial...

Essential goodness of man

Essential goodness of man

The following is an interesting excerpt from the book "freakonomics:"There is a tale, "The ring of Gyges" .. It comes from Plato's Republic.A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates, who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like feldman's economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible. With no one able to...

Selling ones shadow

Selling ones shadow

One thing that strikes me in my conversations with the bright young generation of college students and fresh graduates in family gatherings, at the French class etc, is the narrowness of their goals. For example I was talking to my niece who is in her 5th semester Comp Sc. in a very good engineering college and was shocked to find that she chose to limit her life to a job in an IT company, with a starting pay of around 20K, had no plans for further studies, because she felt that her basic B.E. in computer science was “enough” to get her a job in...

Designer stuff

Designer stuff

I saw an ad in the newspaper last week which offered a gift of a designer watch (allegedly worth 20,000) on purchase of jewellery worth 40,000. There was a picture of this watch in the ad and I looked at it with great curiosity - perhaps it was cased in 22 carat gold or studded with precious stones? No. It was just like any other watch. Or perhaps it doubled up as a computer or a television or a music system? Else why would you spend 20k on a simple device that told you time which is admirably done by electronic throwaway watches available at...

Real life Heros

Real life Heros

She is the third of four children in a middle class family from a town in North Karnataka. She had a traditional South Indian middle class upbringing and was quite happy to let her parents choose her groom. She had no great expectations from life -all she wanted was a normal happy life. But for some people even that is too much to ask! On the evening of their marriage the groom helped himself to all her jewellery and gambled them away. What seemed like the beginning turned out to be the end. But that was a beginning in another way. The docile,...

little acts of thoughtfulness

little acts of thoughtfulness

I feel sorry when peoplerush past old people and people with children to deplane or at immigration counterscannot think of offering the first auto to someone with a lot of stuff or a child cannot let someone with just one item to bill at the check out counter to go first while waiting with a cartload of purchases.These gestures cost a few extra minutes but cause so much gentileness to go around in the world. A simple act of kindness has such a cascading effect in making the world a better place to live in.Whenever I am in such situations I always...

Fine policemen

Fine policemen

“To maintain order, enforce the law, and prevent and detect crime” – that is the dictionary definition of Policing. One assumes that there would be more stress on prevention than detection which would be necessary only when prevention fails. At least one wing of the police department seems to be in disagreement – the traffic police. Anyone who has been driving in Bangalore is familiar with the following scenario:You need to quickly pick up some medicine or bread or whatever,look for a parking lot and finding none, park it under a tree near the...

A life of one's own

A life of one's own

This neighbour's house is being painted and these days she seems very busy and active; normally there is a lost look about her when we meet during the evening strolls. Yesterday she was glowing as she told me that her son from the U.S. was coming on a holiday after 5 years - she was bursting with the news and it seemed like she wanted to announce it to the whole world. Humouring her I said, "Ah, now i see what's with the painting and all" and she told me how she had been waiting for this all these years and how she has not had the enthusiasm to...

whats the big hurry?

whats the big hurry?

Yesterday I was at Forum mall and while waiting for the lift, i was amused to watch a young boy pressing the lift call button impatiently every 5 seconds. Actually it had taken just a minute and a half for the lift to arrive at the floor but he had already pressed it some 15 times.And once we were in the lift he could not keep his hands off the "Door close" button - he wanted the lift to descend straight to the basement without stopping in any floor. He wanted to save those three minutes - too long a time for him.The speed that we have got used...

Match fixing

Match fixing

Shelly, the tortoise heard a loud knock on his shell and peeped out cautiously.It was Mr.Fox. He was agitated.“What is with this race tomorrow – you taking on bunny rabbit? Don’t you know you will be humiliated? “ asked the Fox.“It is alright, foxy, it is only a game;and all for a good cause. The money is going to the SPCA. Winning or losing does not matter. It is the participation that counts!” replied the wise tortoise. Anyone who had lived as long as he had to be wise and know what he was doing.They had no idea that bunny was behind the bushes...

Windows

Windows

I have never been so obsessed with windows like these past few days – oh no, not the microsoft variety but the ones you have on buildings, the ones that let you see what goes on in the world outside the house apart from giving you the control to keep wind, light and rain out of the house. The steel frames of many of the windows in the house had got corroded and hence we are replacing them. They knocked them off in one go but took their own sweet time to fix them back (welder came but not the carpenter; carpenter came but so did the rain and so...

surprise!

surprise!

The prize winning "surprise look"?Not the practised eyes wide open , carefully manicured hands on the cheeks , real action in slow motion "oh my God" look popularised by ever so many Miss Universes.Not the shell shocked , "Damn,this is my 30 seconds of glory;lemme say it all;but I cant seem to remember a single sensible word" look at the oscars.It is a puppy letting out a cute, tiny bark for the first time, looking all around to see where that sound came from and freaking out all day everytime that sound comes from his throat!!!Now that is definitely...

A mom moment

A mom moment

A mother's joy is great when she bears a child ; but greater is the joy when she hears others praise her child.("Eenra pozhudir peruduvarkum thanmaganaisaanron enakketta thaai")That is a Kural by the tamil poet thiruvalluvar(first century B.C.)who in two lines packed all the wisdom, philosophy and human psychology one possibly needs in life.He said little and kept it very brief but said them all!I knew the full import of this couplet today when I read Harsha Bhogle's column in the Indian Express today:"For years there were hypotheses; based on...

Musings after Black...

Musings after Black...

Blind , deaf and Mute.People and objects in their lives are just smells, a sensation, a warm hug, a rough touch, a soft kiss, a cold splash , a painful sharpness, a soothing coolness!Their ideas have no colour, shape or name and no expression.There are no words as theirs is a soundless and lightless world – it is all a silent darkness. I do not know if it is black or gray or a muddy brown – anyway how does it matter what colour infinite sadness is? To be sitting in front of the sea and feel it only as a cool touch, not to be able to be awed by...

Ban on Boxing

Ban on Boxing

Saw the movie "Million dollar baby"- great performance by Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood. But I just simply could not watch the boxing scenes - could not understand the heroine's passion for this sport or anyone's. Is it a sport at all when it seems to be founded on the principle of hurting another person fatally? It is not something which tests your defensive skills but positively all energy is directed at offending - the intimidating looks , the posture, the jabbing, slapping, and flurry of blows - how can civilised people enjoy...

random reflections

random reflections

Outside a "fun" school for kids I saw a board saying they took kids in forPlay school,pre school, nursery,L.Kg and senior Kg. Now is this how many levels that kids go through before entering std.1? so when exactly do they start - right on the day they are discharged from the maternity ward?There was also something on the same board about "young achievers" in the age group of 5 to 10. So the pressure to "achieve" starts from that level!!That same evening,while waiting for asha and company before the Indian ocean & strings show at IIM, amboj...

Music of the folk

Music of the folk

Jagjit was melting hearts on a moonlit night in the open garden of IIM.Wonder if God cast that voice in gold and wrapped it in velvet before putting it in ( well, souvik, THAT voice needs a God!) A voice meant for singing about love, life and God - the theme of all ghazals and the result was magic. People of all ages were remembering the time they first fell in love or if they did not have the experience , they were falling in love with love itself.(It was agelessbonding!!-like what he sang in one of the songs: "na umr ka seemayein; na janm ka)...

Catastrophic..nearly!

Catastrophic..nearly!

Accompanied Vaish on an important mission before the class last saturday - changing the water and food for Kitkit, Anita's cat as she was away doing Tsunami relief work at chennai. Both of us were nervous to say the least as we hadn't the tiniest clue about cat behaviour. On top of it Anita had warned that kitkit waits behind the door when she hears it being opened and charges out as soon as it is. The last thing we wanted was to lose her cat as we were pretty sure we would never know how to coax her back if she decided to charge out. So we opened...

They sit in the park benches placed around the walking path - these very old people,in sweaters and mufflers,alone.Sometimes two of them share a bench without uttering a word to each other. Would you forget words if nobody spoke to you for days on end?I look for the feeling behind those faces - are they sad, are they worried, are they contented? Or do they just wait helplessly and alone with only Death to claim them as his own? What happened to all the people who they thought "belonged" to them, the ones with whom they laughed and cried and LIVED?...

Barrenghatta Road

Barrenghatta Road

Have you been on Bannerghatta road recently - specially the part that leads from JP Nagar to IIM? Yeah, the potholes have been covered,a layer of tar has been poured and the road is divided and looks broader. People driving the economy (as well as qualis vehicles and fancy cars) to and from call centres and Mantri Paradises look happier - at last "Bangalore is catching up", they say! Only the birds sit pensively on the corner temple looking lost.They are confused by the sudden disappearnace of those large trees that used to line the side of the...