GOLFIE

This blog is not my story. It is kind of a second-hand story, for it has been taken from Other Half’s repertoire of life experiences.
Two days back he returned from his evening round of golf and announced to me, “By Jove, Golfie has really grown!!!” The delight in his voice spilled over onto his smile and eyes shining, he remarked, “He is a now a big strapping fella, full of health and life…”
So then, this story is actually about Golfie. And his saviour, Sandy Boy. First let me start with Golfie and in due course, the story will on its own, run into Sandy Boy.

Golfie is this stray Indie dog, muddy brown in colour; and when I had happened to meet him a few months back, he was a just a toddler- a scrawny little thing with ribs sticking out from his emaciated frame and a thin, almost hairless tail. But in spite of his poor health, he was a friendly little fellow with a furiously wagging tail and adoration of the entire human race dancing in his great liquid eyes. He was still recovering from his illness and hence the scrawny look but everything about him shouted that he would soon recover.

Golfie had been discovered about a month previously, a malnourished decrepit little mongrel pup dying under a shrub on the Golf course by Other Half and his three golf buddies. It had looked like the dreaded Parvo viral diarrhoea to Other Half and he had declared that the pup would surely succumb soon if not treated. It was then, as if on a whim, Sandy Boy had announced: I will take the pup with me. Everyone was enormously surprised and to explain why, I must tell you a little about Sandy Boy.

Sandy Boy is the archetypal soldier: tall, sturdy, gruff, dispassionate. And he disliked dogs wholeheartedly. He was not scared of them but he did not like them. At all. But for some inexplicable reason, that crucial day he offered to adopt that dying pup and nurse it back to health. As they say, God does move in mysterious ways.

Once adopted the little dog had to be given a name and what was more apt for he who was found on the Golf Course than “Golfie”. So Golfie was christened ‘Golfie’ and he recovered from that dreaded parvo to bloom into a beautiful Indie under Sandy Boy’s care.

Golfie’s little story with its happy ending makes me think: compassion is the most precious and the most beautiful of all human emotions. I rate it even higher than love, for love has its own agenda that is not always selfless. Compassion on the contrary, is the purest form of altruism and hence, automatically superior. It is the emotion that defines the humanity of Homo sapiens and ensures that, in spite of all the bad around us, the world still goes on.

FLUSHED

I travelled from the capital back to my home a few days back. The forbidding cost and the vagaries of weather makes air travel fraught with uncertainties in this sector and therefore the safest bet is the Volvo, two by two AC sleeper coach. It’s pretty comfortable too and therefore I always travel by it whenever I need to visit the Capital.
The HIMSUTA is an overnight bus and stops somewhere beyond Panipat for the dinner break. This place is kind of a motel cum Food Court, though I never eat anything there for the prices are beyond unreasonable. But I do use the washroom, for these are reasonably neat. This time too I headed for the ladies’ room to freshen up. The restroom is tucked in one corner but is pretty spacious with large mirrors, clean washbasins with running water and almost spotless toilets. As I walked in, I noticed a woman sitting on the floor within the washroom premise along with a young girl who looked to be her daughter. I assumed she was the washroom attendant and I was correct.

I used the cubicle just opposite to where she was sitting and when I emerged, she called out: “Didi Didi…..paani chalaya….?”
I was headed for the washbasins and though I heard her, I didn’t think she was addressing me. As I freshened my face, she called out again, “ O Didi…!

This time I looked at her and gesticulated, “Kya?”
She asked “Paani chalaya?”
At first, I couldn’t believe my ears: Was she really asking me whether I had flushed?????????????
I repeated, “Kya?” This time my voice was a tone higher.
She asked, “Paani chalaaya Didi?”
I felt the indignation, the offended gall rise up my throat and pound in my ears: What the hell!
I answered her icily, “Haan chala diya!”
She muttered “Accha.” But she was not satisfied. She asked her daughter, pointing to the cubicle I had just left: “Ja dekh kar aa.”
I washed my face, patted it dry, powdered and painted it into shape as if nothing had happened, but I was not done with her.
‘How the hell did this two-bit safaiwali ask me whether I had flushed or not?’ Went the voice in my head. ‘Me, Doctor Saab, Colonel Saab and what not, me the impeccable pillar of society?’
I walked past her, the affront thudding in my temples. As I crossed her, I spat out through clenched teeth, “Tassaali ho gayee?” The little girl looked frightened by the unprecedented viciousness in my voice while the mother only gave me a resigned look as I stamped out, fuming with indignation.
My sister had packed a lovely dinner for me but its pleasure was kind of lost to me. As the bus began moving through the dark of the night, I pondered over what had just happened. That safaiwali attendant was not to blame, not in the least. And my hoity toity high horse indignation was totally uncalled for and completely wrong. Think about it: How many countries there are on this planet that needed to employ someone at restrooms solely to remind women using it to flush?
We, Indian women, educated, well read, sophisticated; we with our designer clothes and designer handbags filled with expensive perfumed wipes and handwashes and sanitary sprays, we who scrunched up our noses with disdain at the mention of public restrooms, calling them dirty and stinking, we did not flush after using public toilets.
Why? Because it was not our home and vaise kya phark padta hai? Yeh to vaise hi gande rehte hain and ise saaf rakhna hamara kaam thodi hai…
And that woman sitting on the floor of the washroom, who watched thousands like us walk in and walk out, every day, strutting on our stilettoes, she knew our dirty stinking little secret………We Indian women did not flush…….



PS: Of course I had flushed!!!!

Of This and That

It’s raining here incessantly as if the Monsoons have been mandated to empty their entire cargo of clouds solely over Dharamshala. Although it is undeniably beautiful outside: all smoky and mysterious and Gothic; it does tend to get boring for one is confined to one’s coop of a home by the constant rain. And to top it all, when this coop is dark and musty and full of fungi having a field day in the humidity laden atmosphere, it does make one feel a tad bit depressed and a whole bit lethargic.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining and therefore, thanks to the depression and the lethargy, I discovered TEDx talks on YouTube. Impressed by these thought-provoking discourses on varied thought-provoking topics, I snooped around the Internet and learnt that the TED is a non-profit (??) organisation that deals with ideas and their dissemination. I binge watched a few TEDx talks viz. one by Sue Klebold, mother of the Columbine High School shooter, another by Monica Lewinsky (yes, she of the Bill Clinton fame), a talk on laughter by a cute Neuroscientist about how it comes in two forms - social and spontaneous and one called “A Queer Vison of Love and Marriage” by a queer married African American couple. I say queer, not because the husband was a transgender man (a ‘trans’, who had transitioned from a woman to a man) and the wife a heterosexual woman, but because such a union is unusual, strange. I would never use the term to refer to their sexual orientation for it is derogatory and I personally harbour no prejudices against the LGBT community. Absolutely none, even though I work in an institution which has absolutely no acceptance of such orientations and where the only connotations I have encountered are either loud crude jokes or scandalised silences. But I am definitely curious and insanely so, for being a cis woman (that’s the trending term for those heterosexual), I cannot quite figure out how someone could be attracted to another of the same gender. So it was only avid curiosity that led me to continue listening to them, but after the first one and half minutes, I was hooked. Tiq Milan and Kim Katrin Milan were warm, eloquent, humorous, poetic and very much in love; and there was something mesmerising about the way they spoke of love and humanity and the path towards inclusivity. They talked about many issues, all pertinent; but what caught itself in the brambles of my soul was one beautiful line spoken by Kim Milan, the wife. She said: “we are creating a world we have literally never seen before, organising families based on love and NOT on blood….” Immediately, something I had heard or maybe read many years earlier came to mind: the ex Miss Universe and the beautiful Sushmita Sen telling her adopted daughter Renee about how she was born, not from her mother's womb but from her heart.

Of all the beautiful things that Kim Milan spoke about, it was this one line that echoed through my mind because in it I found an echo of my present state: you could say my family was kinda queer too, with two dogs instead of children and therefore based on love and not on blood.

I think the problem with the world is that it doesn’t quite understand love. It understands only logic and therefore gives legitimacy to the ties of blood and or as in the case of the LGBTQ community, the conventional heterosexual relationship. And because it cannot explain or figure out the workings and algorithms of love, it is either suspicious or it simply derides and declares these ties as illegitimate.

Case in point was our application to buy land here in Himachal Pradesh. (Now don’t say: kahan se kahan kheench rahin hai. Do listen me out).
I have already written about the draconian Section 118 under which no outsider may buy land in Himachal. In case you read my blogs, you would know of how my application for permission to buy land in Himachal was rudely rejected by the govt of the State. Well, determined to fight it till the end, we drove all the way to Shimla to pursue our case with the state machinery there. At Shimla, we were told that the only reason why our application was rejected was because the bureaucrats could not understand why we wanted to settle down in Himachal at all.
“Aap to Bangal ke hain…..why Himachal? Itni dur ghar se?’ Asked the Babu in the office, his face wearing a genuinely puzzled expression.
“We love your State.” I naively tried to explain to him. “It’s such a divinely beautiful place, God’s own country….” I told him earnestly, enthusiastically. He stared back at me, face blank. He could not understand why I would want to settle down in a place just because it was beautiful.

“Ghar aapka kalkatte mein hai….”, he said, as if trying to drill some sense into me. He understood the ties of blood, but could not fathom the ties of love. I could explain further, but good sense prevailed and I desisted. Other Half and his friend took over from me quickly, before I could wreak more damage. They then put forward reasons to the Babu using semantics he could understand: things like post-retirement medical practice opportunities and other such prosaic things.

Our application is still languishing in Shimla, awaiting reconsideration and the prospects do not seem too bright.

And that is why Kim Milan’s words touched my heart. And that is why people like the Milans, however abhorrent to the mainstream consciousness, are essential in these times, for they are going about creating a different world, a world we have literally never seen before, a world organised not on the basis of blood but of love….....

Monsoon Mists

Himachal Pradesh has a draconian law called Section 118 that rules that a person who is not a Himachali by birth, (even if he is an Indian citizen) cannot buy land to build a home on its soil. But like all laws, this too has some little exceptions under which I had applied to the Hon'ble Govt machinery to give me permission to buy a tiny tiny piece of earth to build my tiny tiny dream home where I had planned to live till the day I died. Well, yesterday, I received a curt reply from the Hon'ble Govt: आपकी अर्जी अस्वीकृत किया गया है! And of course, no reason, none at all was offered for this heartless denial of permission.

I am devastated. There is no justice in this world. Just because I am only an aam junta with no teeth: neither connections in high places nor trunks full of cash , that I have been denied the permission. I feel it is a travesty that genuine Himachal admirers and ardent environmentalists like us are denied such rights on the pretext of conserving the ecosystem of these hills while all along unregulated urbanisation goes on unchecked: tearing down the hills, killing it's fauna and ransacking its flora, activities to which the same Hon'ble govt turns a blind eye because its eyes have been shaded with the colour of money and power.

🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
The last few weeks had been busy at work, uncharacteristically so and I had been rushing through the days at breakneck speed, trying simultaneously to meet deadlines and to ensure a certain standard quality of work, an undeniably difficult proposition. In fact, I was so breathlessly busy that me, the ardent nature lover, had failed to realise that summer was long gone and that the monsoons had arrived with full gusto.
Yesterday I had gone with some files to the Old Man's room and finding him busy on the phone, had stepped out onto the verandah for a breather. I had stood on this open porch that rings our office watching the world, now sopping wet with rain around me. All was silent and still, like the pregnant calm that precedes a monsoon storm. Occasionally, a faint bird call broke the stillness from someplace high up in the branches of the silver oaks. Soft swirls of mist flowed gracefully, like the fingers of Bharatnatyam dancers, towards and then over me Watching them, I suddenly realised: "Oh my, this was not mist but clouds, real clouds....!!!Oh how lovely!!" I had gushed, unable to control my delight. The clouds swooped over and around me, touching my skin with light, wet touches: caressing, playful, as if they relished my delighted surprise...The Norfolk Island pines on the road below, rose like Gothic shadows from behind the translucent cloud swirls, the cars parked in the driveway looked for all the world like Victorian horse drawn carriages and everything appeared unreal, mysterious, dreamlike. Completely bewitched by the beautiful monsoon vista before me, I had fallen into a kind of trance.
"Yes, isn't it beautiful? So much better than inside the boring old office!" The Old Man's voice startled me out of my reverie. He had emerged from the office after his phone call and we stood together for a few seconds admiring the untramelled beauty that lay around us. But duty called, for a lot of work was to be done and fast and we had to tear ourselves away from the magic, back into our staid old office.
💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦
So, this is how wondrous these mountains are and come what may, I'm determined not to leave this Dreamland. Whatever those red taped, rule-trapped poetry-deficient bureaucrats in their dusty offices decry, I'm unfazed. Like a lover besotted, I will not end my lovestory with these mountains just because they deny me sanction. Oh no, never. My lovestory is older than all their stupid and musty rule books....
जन्म जन्म का नाता जो है हमारा....

12 Julys- Over the Years

I was born on the 12th of July. Yesterday, i.e. on the 13th of July, an old, dear friend, now overseas asked me impatiently: "Tell me how you spent your 12th July."
Getting ready for work, I told her lightheartedly: "Have patience and I'll give you a poem."

So, here it is. Only, if you are finicky about what constitutes a poem or does not, treat it for all the world, like prose. It doesn't really matter, as long as you like my words.You see, my poems are 'like this only": akin to a walk in these hills: up, down, right, left.....driftingwith no defined agenda, over no trodden path...

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”
- HW Longfellow

🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀
12th July: Over the Years

I

12 July and there's a birthday party for me. Kite paper streamers, thin, red balloons and a home-made cake without icing. The guests arrive: colony kids and their mothers. Everyone sings 'happi bdday', eats ghugni, payesh, the cake without icing and leave. It's time to open the presents: lower-middle class families of the eighties with nil disposable income- a pencil here, a "scent" rubber there, a set of crayons ( such a luxury) and two exercise copies bought from the ration shop near by. But the paper of these copies is smooth and sepia and absorbs ink beautifully. I practice my favourite subject, English language in them.

Sometimes now, I write with ink on paper, like in those childhood days, just for the nostalgia: find I cannot remember the faces of the kids who gave me the sepia ruled exercise copies as birthday gifts.

We are but ships that pass in the night..


II
12 of July, an empty day, the monsoons have just arrived.
I ask Adit: "Want to take a walk, upto the olive green bridge?" Nodding he clasps my fingers and we stroll downhill to the river, chatting; we are good friends.
A man passing by stops to ask: " Your son?"
'Son?' Startled I correct him, "No no. I'm not married." "Accha." Says the busybody and carries on.
Adit is a four year old boy and I am only the young woman from next door.
The birthday ends with a cold glass of tingly Coke on lots of ice cubes.
Adit must be a young man now. Must be, though I have no idea.

We are but ships that pass in the night..

III

12th July eve, an occasional shower and a knock on my door at midnight. Sleep sits heavily on my eyes as I open the door: two friends with a cake and a present, at the stroke of midnight; just like the birthday eves from hostel time.
They are my friends and they are husband and wife. I am grateful for their kindness but they dismiss it: "Arrey baba, how could we let you pass your birthday alone.....?"

Is love a fickle bird or is it just a colour, a natural dye that fades fast under a strong sun? My friends have since parted ways, with each other.
And as for us, them and me- we have parted ways too,.......we talk rarely
Or not at all...

We are but ships that pass in the night...

IV

12 July and the trees drip incessant raindrops. A young woman brings two flaky veg pastries, loads of effusive good wishes and bares her soul to me.
As I listen to her, my phone screen blips- a message in monsoon green!
My heart leaps.
(Can you drown in a warm sea of words?)
I can't breathe but I'm all contentment.
The girl is gone now, she was claimed by Life. And you no longer send me words in monsoon green.

We are but ships that pass in the night...

V

12 July and another wet, grey day. The office boys gather at my door: before they can wish me, I say ,'Thank you thank you!" and laugh. Samosa, veg plum cake, cookies as treat, they are happy.
In the evening, me in my crumpled pajama, the old faithful comes with bread pakora and slices of strawberry cake. A colleague brings a surprise Tweety cake.
The cake is full of cream and possibilities: could turn a colleague into a friend.
The old faithful and I drown in Marula on masses of ice, she in happy expectations, I in my old what-could-have-beens.
I know soon Life will claim her too and there will be no more such drownings in this Marula milkshake....

We are but ships that pass in the night...

A Fit of Frustration

Have you heard of a 'Mukbang'? A raging entity on YouTube these days, it is a video of a man or woman eating on camera. There is nothing really special about the eater and it's the food that's placed in front of the camera that is the focus of attention as is the act of eating. The Youtuber films himself or herself eating various kinds of foods and in humoungous quantities. These mukbangs are immensely popular with each video clocking anywhere between 15 thousand to 15 million views, thousands of comments and millions of subscribers. Watching one such mukbang, I compare sadly the contrasting status of my blog: three or four subscribers, about fifty thousand visitors (that is over the last four and half years) and one or two comments on each post. हाय रे किस्मत! I wonder about what it is that is so attractive about watching someone hog food you cannot touch or smell? On the face of it, the thing sounds kind of gross but on pondering further, I come to the conclusion that vicarious gratification is the only probable answer. That and the fact that this gratification is instant. You see, this is the age of instant noodles, instant coffee, instant news and instant gratification. We have become creatures of limited patience and therefore the old pastimes and hobbies such as reading books are both passè and fading. No one has the time or the inclination to sit down, open a book or a newspaper and read at leisure. Or put pen to paper to write a letter or an email to a near and dear one. And why not, when you can derive the same quantum of instant gratification by simply watching a film of ninety minutes made on the very same book, scroll through your Twitter feed for news delivered to you in succinct 280 words or describe your life's happenings in actual photos on WhatsApp or Facebook?

I often get told by friends: oh you must publish. In the beginning, I would be flattered no end by such advice. These days, a disgruntled me just retorts icily, a sarcastic smile pasted on my face: would you buy my book?
And if that someone, still not feeling the frost of my sarcasm, answers: yes of course; I tell them, frost a degree colder: so what and when was the last book you bought? Even the most persistent of people get the hint and swallow their effusive encouragement after this.
Truly, who reads books today? Or blogs with a literary tilt?
My dreams of fame via blogging have quietly retreated underground these days. Sometimes, when they do rear their timid little heads above ground, they are pushed back into hiding by advice from supercilious relatives that go something like this: oh why are you running after fame? You must write for the pleasure of writing...karmanye vadhikaraste ......

Pah! I am not some karmayogi looking for nirvana. I lust for fame. I want my two minutes of basking in the sun, my instant gratification ...

Tell me, would you like to watch and subscribe to a channel that has a fat, fifty year old Indian woman eating bhaat(rice), maccher jhol and ekti kaancha lonka (one green chilly) on YouTube?

To Kuttush with Love

Kuttush died yesterday afternoon; Kuttush, my great biscuit coloured Labrador with the proud otter tail who's fur was tinged with gold, as if angels had sprinkled him with sparkles of sunlight. Kuttush was special all right, and his gold flecked fur was more proof that he was from from a place angels and fairies and other such beautiful things come from. Other Half felt this too and often remarked: Kuttush's a saint! He was, but a hedonistic saint, one who loved his comforts: hearty meals of large and frequent proportions, a cool place to splay himself on his back, all four legs in air and gently snore the day away.....He relished all the little pleasures that life has on offer: the library of interesting smells from the fields around our house where he spent hours and hours snooping, sniffing and gallivanting, the cubes of ice a friend always offered him when he went visiting her, the tangle in the hay with the buxom lady Alsatian next door, the Fauji ration potatoes that he filched with impunity from atop the dining table, the never ending adoration from his numerous human female fans... everything. In some ways he was very much like me: fat, lazy and unduly fond of his physical comforts like food and sleep. But in so many ways, he was completely different from me: detached and free of silly emotional attachments. But that does not mean that he was apathetic or indifferent; on the contrary, he was full of fondness for all living creatures around him: from the ill-tempered cow that entered my garden on the sly to the evil stray who had bitten him more than once, Kuttush loved one and all; without exception, without discrimination. He was specially fond of socializing with humans and made it a point to plonk himself, right in the middle of my living room when we had guests over and contribute to the raging debate with the occasional loud and empathetic 'Baoow'. And he was a complete gossip master and the neighborhood snoop, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of all my neighbours. And unlike Mimie or Khushi, my female labs ( both of whom have crossed over) I know Kuttush loved me more than anyone else. I know it as surely as I know that the sun rises in the east. So what was he to me: a child who grew old and frail faster than me yet always remained my child? I can hear him say: Huh! I was never your child, ladki. On the contrary, YOU are my child. Don't remember how you put your head over my side and slept/cried/laughed/confided like little girl to her Mom?
Yes, I was his child, we both were, myself and Other Half for only a parent can give you so much love and so much forgiveness; and take nothing in return, absolutely nothing.
I am crying as I write this and I am trying to stop too, for I know Kuttush would never approve of all this sniffling and sobbing. He would put one paw on my hand and say, Ho ho ladki, kyun roti hai? In this endless journey of birth and life and death, we'll meet again somewhere, pucca. So quit the tears and get on with life. And keep the potatoes ready, girl. Who knows, you might find me just round the corner......