No Laughing Matter

When we were studying, Kannada medium schools started off with English only in 5th Standard and of all the songs that we had, I remember only this one, which we had in 6th -

My aunt she died a month ago,
And left me all her riches;
A feather bed and a wooden leg
And a pair of calico britches.
A coffee pot without a spout,
A mug without a handle;
A baccy box without a lid
And half a farthing candle.

Actually while I liked this poem, I totally failed to grasp the humour of it. I would place the blame squarely on Gerald Sir who seemed to have been interested only in giving it a pretty tune which of course I like very much. May be it's only thanks to the tune that I remember the song fully even now. But wait, I do recollect something else. Did we also have "Hot Cross Buns" in 5th? Or was it in 7th?? Don't tell me!

When we were in 10th standard, Sister Lilia was our class-teacher and she had the reputation of being a terror. But she was a good singer and whenever she had the first period of the day, she wanted us to sing a prayer before she entered the class and she herself had taught us some English ones. We did follow the instructions faithfully until one fateful day when we sang an English song which was no prayer but was all about a cock which died and which could sing no more!! Whose idea it was, I don't remember now. I'm not sure if I was the culprit but even if that was the case, I can only say that it was not exactly deliberate. We just got tired of singing the same songs, that's all. I guess it was a collective decision after all. But Sister Lilia was outraged as she barged into the room and as none of us could help her in finding the brain behind it, she made us all stand for the entire length of the period. I think most of us laughed at the comedy of error though the Sister missed it totally.

Immersed

Work, work and more work. This week has been as hectic as I ever had. Even late-night support calls!! Estimations, trainings, discussions, reviews, bug-fixes, arguments....no, I'm not complaining yet. I think it'd better be this way, at least for some time. This weekend is going to be packed too with tomorrow going towards guests and if we can squeeze in Lalbagh and Sunday I hope we can attend the concert.

Multiple Ganeshas have been immersed in our lake and it is not a pleasant sight anymore, though not on account of the idols. It periodically gets dirty, stinking, unbearable and then someone cleans it up and it sparkles for some time, just to get dirty again. Just like my mind I think!!

It's a marvel to me how people, especially ladies, pick up an accent so quickly. Within a year of living in Bangalore, most of them speak as if they've been here all their lives. I've also observed that this trend is more so in housewives. But I seem to have been a failure in this department. Even when I think I'm speaking the best of native tongue, bus conductors and auto drivers ask me if I'm from Mangalore side and nod with satisfaction when they see the incredulous admiration on my face. Anyway, I've decided to be myself now. I like our no-frills accent much better.

Got to finish at least one Tejaswi tomorrow. Goodnight!
 

The Colour of God

Watched The Colour of Paradise on Friday and I must watch it again. S, I'm indebted to you, I don't know if it would've happened otherwise. I liked the movie of course, though I was longing for some more, or something more, in the end. The first half went totally in laughing and crying and both and in the second half I was just following the flow. I rarely cry watching a movie and even if I do, they are mostly tears of joy. But this time, I couldn't help it when listening to Mohammed's conversation with his teacher about God. I'm a bit upset that the movie is short and they didn't show more of the boy.

Actually I liked the way his father acted too. Throughout he was like a guy living a nightmare, from which he would like to wake up and find his son gone. He did very well. Also, for the first time I saw a pair of hands emoting so much. They were like Mohammed's eyes, or may be more, feeling the air, the feather, the bird's open mouth, little waves in water and everything, may be much more than a boy who can see. The picturesque Iran countryside makes you feel even worse because his house is in such a pretty place and he loves nature so much and he cannot see it.

My weekend is almost done with Saturday going in playing host and Sunday as a dutiful guest. Whenever I have to attend these mandatory ceremonies, I feel wretched that I'm wasting golden hours of weekend but I always return feeling guilty about it because most of the people I meet make me feel as if they were missing seeing me very badly all these years and they are happy just doing that. Ignorance is bliss indeed!! Anyway, this time I went only for Aayi's sake and I won't have to go every year I hope. My mother is very rigid in these matters; she'll honour any invitation at a relative's place which is in the radius of 5 hours of journey!! Don't know where she gets the energy from.

Temples and Tempers

Having exhausted all the devotional songs for the last two days, Ganesha MandaLi has decided to dish out pure entertainment to Ganesha and the devotees in the form of "Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast..."!!! We have a temple in the lane right behind us and a Goddess is having another one built right next to it. I have no problem with it except for the associated loudspeakers but it's just that they are one too many. We already had one temple down the lane and there was BEML Ganesha anyway. Why more? As if people want to step out of their homes and trip right into the temple and fall in front of god!

Whenever I think of this particular song, I can't help thinking of our school-day in 1994 and Auntie. "Tu Cheez..." being a rage that year, teachers were enthusiastic to cash in on the popularity and V, who was in 6th, was supposed to be one of the dancers. But Auntie had other plans. She was incensed when she heard at the way a girl was being called a 'commodity' and was appalled at the way the school was taking the decent people around for a ride. I don't think I had any strong opinion regarding this except for some wild imagination as to the possible meanings of the 'derogatory' wordings. Anyway, Auntie was not to be silenced; first she made V quit the troupe, then marched to the school and gave her piece of mind to the HM too. As a result, a truce was reached; that year for the first time, a dance was performed only to the background music and a lot of youngsters returned home not entirely satisfied with the outcome.

I love Bhupinder's songs. As I hum "Ek Akela is Sheher Mein...", his deep and soulful voice rings in my ears, making my own rendition sound like a pale imitation. How beautifully he's sung that simple song!

God of Small People

Chouti is here again and my son ate as if Ganesha got into him to taste all the dishes. All of us were literally agape as he tasted everything in front of him, in decent quantity that too. As I write, he's going for another helping of the payasa. Great! In fact, Lord Ganesha is a favourite of his and our main door is filled with sketches of the God and some quotes about him.

Quite a few things made and eaten today; Kadubu, payasa, panchakajjaya, poori(accidentally), banana halva and vade along with the regular food. It makes me happy just to think what more others must be making!!

Sometimes I wonder if I believe in God just so that he should be helping me when I need it. People fast, go to another end of the world for pilgrimage, indulge in other physical hardships but I never feel like doing any of them. If God were to judge his devotees by any of these paramaters, I'm going to fail very much. I do pray to him, imagine him saying certain things to me and feel that he is part of my conscience, one who makes me feel guilty when I do wrong.

I remember the first time I believed in the existence of God very well; I was six year old then. We were returning from my mother's place to BCR after our summer holidays and as usual my father wasn't there. V was only a year old, the boat was ferrying us towards Taribagilu and we had a big sack of coconuts and a tin can of coconut oil to carry apart from our usual bag. We were getting late already, we had about 2 miles to reach Honnavar after reaching the shore and if we missed the 9 o'clock bus, we would have to wait for another half an hour at least. It was then that my visibly nervous mother asked me to pray to God, asking for help. Of course I did; I prayed to Lord Rama as I was told and asked him to make sure that there was an auto ready to take us to the bus-stand the moment we got down from the boat. I wasn't sure then if someone really heard it but when we reached the shore, there it was, an auto, just like I asked for!! I can relive the feeling of exultation and reverence that filled my heart then and I'm a fan of Lord Rama ever since.

Sprucing Up

My son is fearful of our aging and my increasing grey hair is giving him a cause for concern. He asked me alarmed the other day about it and I told him it was because he was getting me worried too much. He thought for a minute and said, "You'd better apply Garnier"! He's not new to hair-dyes; his grandparents do it at home, his father goes to a saloon.  But I've resisted it so far probably because my laziness forbids it. If you do it once, you have to do it again and with my quantity, it's going to take long. I told him I'd rather spend that time playing with him.

Now my daughter is becoming very conscious of how she looks and what she should wear! She has taken an aversion to all the old clothes that she's been wearing so far and she herself decides which dress she would wear for the day. And next, she has to go and stand in front of the mirror to check how she looks. The other day, I dressed her up in the hall and she immediately went inside and after a while when I went in, she was still standing in front of the mirror, smiling at her image and tapping her fingers on the pane and when she saw me, sheepishly went away. Hmm...I foresee a tough time ahead! Her latest trend is to wear her brother's green swimming goggles.

There are two buildings coming up right next to one of the dump-yards and I hear that one of them is going to be an International school and another, a dental college. But where is the playground? I don't see any empty piece of land except TBTA tennis ground which is pretty small as such. And where are the roads? The one in front of our apartments is hardly 20 feet wide and the other side of the L is half of that! Wonder who gave them permission to set it up in a place like ours.

Today I had to go to the 5th floor toilet and someone had stuck a notice inside which read, "This is not a laboratory. Do not leave your blood and stool samples here!" A great stinker! Our floor needs one badly too.

Guilty...Plead not-Guilty...

The hike numbers were announced on Friday and they are too good to believe. I hadn't imagined something of that sort, especially after seeing the bonus and my boss was almost like "you'd better keep quiet now". I will of course, I'm a bit scared now. But I also know that not everybody is happy and that's making me feel guilty. I know I couldn't have helped it and I'm sorry, really sorry. But I'm not great at consoling people and it's much more difficult when the other person knows that you are supposed to be the happier lot. I think I have problem putting my feelings across in an effective manner - be it empathy, sympathy, sadness or joy or whatever else. The trainer in our team-building workshop had all of a sudden come near me and said, "you should open yourself more to people". I think it's not easy for me.

Spoke to L yesterday and I miss her badly at times. Her life is very tough at the moment and both of us agree that we hadn't imagined it would be like that. But she's hardworking and she enjoys challenges too and I hope next year will be better for her. My association with her has been of 16 years now and all these years she's been just the same as ever - down-to-earth, fun-to-be-with, caring and very dependable. She was the first girl I met as Pappa and I entered our old hostel block and I still remember her tomboy looks and even what she was wearing then. She wasn't my roomie and I don't remember how exactly we became close friends. We were in the same section and may be out of the 6 girls in our class, we were the most compatible. In the first year, we moved everywhere together; sometimes only two, sometimes in a gang of 6. We went to downcorps(!, is that the name really?), SAC, library, beach, beach temple,lighthouse, Sads, Karkera and where else? Once all six of us took 3 umbrellas and went to the beach at 9 in the night, sitting on the stone embankment, listening to the roaring sea and getting badly beaten by the splashing rain, our umbrellas all overturned in the wind. Next day the seniors took us to task is another matter. Another time L and I ventured from the beach to reach our campus through someone's coconut grove, only to be caught by two ferocious dogs, lunging right at our chests and for a moment we thought we were gone! Then we found our voice to cry for help desperately and were rescued by the owners of the dogs and we were still shaken as we reached the hostel! Of course it sounds pretty funny now whenever we recollect it.

There are other memories too, like whenever the mood went bad, sitting on that rock submerged in water looking at the sea for hours not saying a word, going to watch DDLJ in sac and almost stepping on a snake(how L jumped about that time!), the Office Committee days and singing "O Sanam" again and again, returning from Lalit to hostel walking and having a competition with NS(L almost won!), like watching HKKN in the midnight and coming to my room singing "Kya Hua Tera Vada" and getting scolded by Pal, watching latenight Sampras-Agassi matches, trip to Bekal Fort, singing "Laila O Laila" in the crowded bus coming to hostel(actually, I hardly started when I glanced at N and he gave me a hard menacing stare and I shut my mouth up. But Pal and L didn't notice it and they went on and on. Next day it was me who had to face the music of N's outrage at our 'total lack of judgement'!!) ...I hope I'll have many more to look back at when I hang my boots and our long-pending trip to the Himalayas will be one of them.

Diving Deep into Shallow Waters

My son is yet to learn diplomacy. He is very vocal about his feelings and tells anybody and everybody what he thinks about them and leaves us with a tough task of damage control. It's all the worse because he looks much older than his age and people may not take all the remarks very kindly. I guess he'll learn with experience like we all did.

I don't exactly remember if I was told explicitly not to speak an unpleasant truth. I think we just picked up the 'manners' just by absorbing how others behaved. I do remember an incident in 4th standard when I told a notorious senior who was making fun of us what I thought of him. I called him and his friends monkeys but the teacher reprimanded me very badly for that and didn't say anything to him. Next must've been in 7th standard when I told Meenakshi teacher that she was always giving A+ to M whereas I, who wrote as beautifully as he did, mostly got an A. She too got angry with me and shut me up with a harangue.

I don't think I ventured into anything like that till Engineering first year when for the first time I fought with someone seriously. L and Manjula was roomies, L was my best friend and Manjula considered me hers. L tought Manjula so many things because being from Diploma background she was finding it difficult to follow Maths etc. But there used to be plenty of misunderstandings also b/w them and one fine day it went to such a level that L told me that Manjula was going to complain on her to the warden. I was of course shocked and went to her room as a peacemaker but as I heard Manjula accusing L of so many silly things, I couldn't take it anymore. I just exploded and told Manjula what I thought of her. The way I let caution go shocked myself and of course Manjula but I could see that L was happy for the support. Things cooled down after that but they weren't the same between Manjula and me.

I've been guilty of being too diplomatic once and that has rankled me for a long time. That was in Hyderabad when I came back from Mumbai to join Shab in our rented house to find that there were two more housemates. Things weren't great between those two girls and Shab,mostly on account of financial settlements. One day things went pretty bad and even when I came to know it, I didn't do anything other than lending an ear to Shab's complaints. I don't know why I kept quiet - just for the heck of being perceived as a 'nice' person by all the parties? I was Shab's friend and those people didn't matter to me and I should've naturally defended Shab but I didn't. I am still ashamed of myself for that.

I think now I've improved a bit. There have been many occasions when I've fought with my boss to defend my team when I thought they were doing their job and I've never hesitated to argue on something that he said if I thought it was a bad idea. I know I still have a long way to go to achieve a balance but I'm trying.

Swaying to the Wind...

When growing up, the paddy fields in front of our house were an integral part of our lives. There must've been about 10 acres of them all, split among many owners and into many pieces stretching between our stream on one side and the railway track on the other. There were at least 4 ponds in between all except one drying in the summer.

The onset of monsoon meant that the fields would be out of bounds for us for some months but we had other things to look forward to. The ploughing would start off the proceedings and soon the tiny saplings would be everywhere making the whole area look like green velvet carpet. Then would be the time to pluck them and plant them again in bunches. That would be a grand affair for us - Appi, Janaki and other ladies from nearby would all be there singing "O Bele O Bele"(I used to remember some more lines), pulling each other's leg, having small fights,teasing us and in general having fun and making us happy.

The fields were our shortcut to reach BCR via the railway track and in rainy season we had to navigate both the muddy red stream and the slippery banks of the fields to reach there. While crossing the fast-flowing stream was a welcome adventure to us, the fields weren't an easy task either. Adding to the sliminess of the path, since the usage was low in the rainy season, the touch-me-nots would be all over the place, toads would jump from nowhere putting us off-balance and the slippers would get stuck in the mud if not tread carefully. Soon this would pass and the plants would grow high, green and milky rice seeds would pop out and slowly the plants and the seeds would turn yellow. This would be the time we all waited for. The moment one of the fields got cleared, we would barge in there in the evenings with our badminton rackets, mothers in tow. There would be other games too, like run and catch, hide and seek, with the uncut rice plants offering a very useful cover. Of course when we return home after all the fun, the whole body would itch badly and I would have to swallow mother's reprimands as she applies coconut oil on my back. But it was irresistible; we would be at it again the next day.

There was only one problem though. Some of the fields were just below Convent, a girls high school with hostel for students coming from far and boarding for the Sisters. This was the school where all of us went in due time and the present and future students didn't want to create an impression of being too naughty on the teachers. So even in the middle of all our prancing and playing, one eye would be steadily kept on the landscape above and if any human shape appeared there, our noise levels would drop to whispers. Badminton would be played very seriously until and unless the person happened to be only a fellow student and we were assured that no Sister was in sight. Occasionally even a Sister would appear and rarely she would get into pleasantries and even rarer, would throw some rose apples grown on the premises.

There is a sad end to this happy story. If you go to that place now, you wouldn't be able to recognise it a bit. Half the fields have been converted into areacnut plantation and the at the other end, you have a sawmill. The remaining area is already a famous place of worship. Why? One of the ponds that I mentioned was 'discovered' to be miraculous a couple of years ago; it seems its water contains healing powers and devotees have been pouring in to worship 'Vanadurga'. So that's the end of the story!!

Man Proposes...

God disposes! Never felt the truth more keenly than today. My emotions seem to be like this year's Monsoon; not at all following the protocol. Unfortunately, I'm only a mute spectator as usual. Sometimes I remember what Sir had told me once - that I'm like a spring and I bounce back easily. Hope I can, always.

Went shopping with V over the weekend. It had been such a long time since we two went out together. Of course my son accompanied us and got what he wanted - both to and fro by bus. My mother had requested him to let us sisters sit together in the bus so that we could talk and he had agreed. But when we got into the bus, V let him sit next to me and sat next to a middle-aged man right behind us. After a while, my son remembered my mother's words, got up and asked V to sit next to me. She didn't know the background so she was like 'no, it's alright' etc when the guy next to her got confused too. He thought my son was being 'protective' to V and started saying, "it's alright, she's like my sister, don't worry" !!! My son didn't get head or tail of what he was saying and I, who was the only one to understand everything couldn't help laughing out loud.

Reminds me of something. One of my lunchmates is getting married this weekend and a large contingent is planning to attend, mostly her batchmates in the company. They asked me to accompany them and I said let's see. Then they called my boss and he asked who all were going. The immediate reaction from one of the girls was "all of us youngsters". Then she bit her tongue and said "most of us are going" and we all laughed it off. Now I'm almost a decade older than these girls and my boss even more but surely that statement pinched us for a second.

If only our men were to learn their manners well, our roads would be much safer and cleaner to walk on. They spit so indiscriminately that it's disgusting and of course, unhealthy. Why don't the idiots just swallow it off? This reminds of my visit to BBMP office the other day to complain about the garbage pile round the corner. The guy was evasive at first saying it was but natural(!!!) and all but once I talked about diseases, assured me that it would be cleared within a day or two. It's been a week since and I guess I have to visit the office again.