Education

Isn’t is shameful that I, Siddharth Tyebji, son of a Muslim father and a Hindu Bengali mother, neither can speak Urdu nor Bengali?

- Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

Though it’s hard to define the primary goal of education, the result of education should ideally lead to an enlightenment of the student towards the world outside, to provide him with a better understanding of things within him and without, so that he could use those skills in their betterment in some way or the other.

What shouldn’t it be? Most importantly, education should not solely be a means to livelihood, it should not only be the process one has to undergo to earn a living in this world, it should not only mean the passing of an exam or the stamp of a degree.

Unfortunately, it has become to mean exactly that. The idea of a holistic education meant to broaden the mind is almost non-existent today. We live in an era of ‘specialisation’, and it, by definition, demands a narrowing down of interests, a sort of isolation. Where the proliferation of choice is seen as the biggest positive development, it is not a surprise that the belief has percolated to the field of education as well. Education is the ice-cream parlour, the subjects are the various flavours on display. Take the one you like. No one’s better than the other. The vendor has no suggestions to make.

School

Take, for example, the schools under the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE). As early as Standard IX, students are required to select their ‘Second Language’ (it is named so as studying English is, of course, mandatory). The options available in my school were Sanskrit, Hindi, French and German.

While Sanskrit might look like a welcome inclusion in this list, anyone who has been at school knows that the picture isn’t so beautiful when it comes to its application. There are a very few students who take Sanskrit out of natural interest. Instead, most of the people who do are the ones who want to have it easy in their 10th Standard Board Exams. The fact that Sanskrit is a ‘scoring’ subject in which not too much hard work is necessary to get you a 95 out of 100 is known to all.

This has perverted the whole intention behind imparting knowledge about one of India’s ancient languages. A historically rich and beautiful form of communication has been reduced to becoming a way of acquiring numbers on a sheet of paper. A subject that can potentially open up one’s mind to a universe of knowledge is being mugged up mechanically by students, just as they had done for the multiplication tables in preparatory school.

On top of that, the options given to them are French and German. Now, for a child who has been familiar with phrases such as ‘the big, mean world’ and the ‘cut-throat competition’ outside, it is fairly easy to guess what language he or she will choose. In the new globalised India, where one might be involved in workforces constantly in interaction with foreign clients, a little knowledge of French or German is seen as an added ‘asset’. For the urban middle class India today, Sanskrit and elements such as that are part of the old India, the India gone by, and empowered by the chance at financial success and a superior quality of life 1991 has provided them, they are firm in their rejection for everything old. As if we there was actually a demarcation like such, where the old died and the new was born. But in their minds, it is clear.

I would like to iterate here that I have nothing against the teaching of foreign languages. The more appropriate way would to give students an option between Hindi and Sanskrit (and the local language of the place, if different from Hindi) and in addition, provide an optional Third Language option which facilitates the leaning of French, German and the like. The obvious argument to this would be that it’ll further increase the already immense workload the average school-goer suffers from. The obvious reply to this would be that perhaps languages are the only definable entity by which we stay connected to our culture, to the past. To subvert the study of the same for the sake of more ‘scientific’ education can be disastrous. In short, the study of history and culture, or in other words, what connects us to the past is of prime importance. The marginalisation of this defeats the very aim of education.

The underlying belief behind the existing state of affairs, though it might not be stated explicitly, is that education’s primary responsibility is to make products out of human beings. The phrase ‘duniya ke liye tayyar karna’ has taken a wholly absolute meaning today. Children have become raw materials, who are then processed with education, after which they are let out into the big, wide world as finished products. The system of examination prevalent today only furthers the extent and impact of the above style of thinking. We rely primarily on memory-based questioning which encourages students to stack up as much as they can within a period of time, just to vomit it all out on the day of the examination. There is very little emphasis given to imaginative or divergent learning, or to anything that falls beyond the scope of the textbooks.

All this is a result of a society which demands only concrete results. What you know and what you feel is immaterial to them. What matters is only the final number on your grade sheet. This is also a society that doesn’t permit failures. The emotional ostracisation that one has to undergo in case of the same is enormous. The numerous cases of suicides by students unsatisfied with their 10th and 12th grades are a big example of that. If that is not a cause of worry for us today, and if it doesn’t lead to radical change, it’s hard to say what will. The recent measures taken by the government to make the 10th board exams optional is a long-awaited step in the right direction.

Note: As I was writing this part of the piece, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal also came up with a proposal making the teaching of Hindi compulsory across all schools in the country. This, however, is ridiculous as imposing Hindi on a Tamilian is as unjust as imposing Tamil on someone from the Hindi belt.

Universities

Albeit, it is heartening to see Kapil Sibal eager to implement the suggestions made by the committee headed by the 82-year old Prof. Yash Pal (a full copy of the report can be found here). This report on higher education in India spells out the problems it is suffering from and also suggests policies and concrete steps the government should take to overcome the same.

As Mr. Sibal puts it, higher education today has become ‘compartmentalised’. That is not only to say that streams operate independently of each other, but also that research and education, which need to go hand in hand in order to produce quality teachers, are also seen as separate entities. Quoting the report:

It should be necessary for all research bodies to connect with universities in their vicinity and create teaching opportunities for their researchers and for all universities to be teaching and research universities.

While the report acknowledges the importance of imparting knowledge about a varied set of disciplines at least at the undergraduate level, it adds that there already are some current universities that offer such opportunities. For example, there are some engineering colleges today which offer courses on subjects such as history and philosophy. But even at those centres, they are very rarely taken seriously by the students. The report’s suggestion to counter this shortcoming:

One way of improving the quality of teaching of these additional disciplines and stimulating students’ interest is to allow students for whom a subject is additional to study along with those for whom the same subject is primary. For instance, a mathematics student should study and undergo evaluation in philosophy as an optional subject along with students for whom philosophy constitutes the primary subject.

The whole idea behind the report is to make education more inclusive by way of integration, be it in terms of disciplines such as science and humanities or fields such research and education itself. Should only a part of the suggestions mentioned in the report be implemented, it will lead to a significant positive change in the way education is perceived today.

The currently fashionable idea of ‘specialisation’ has taken a totally different form when it comes to universities. While schools, through electives, deprive the child of essential basic knowledge, universities, which are the last step for a student before starting on a job, work in near complete isolation with each other. The many engineering, management and medical colleges around the country have been lacking in this regard, and this does not exclude the much-aspired-for IITs and IIMs. An student who has taken admission into an engineering college is delivered education pertinent to his field of specialisation only; there are but very few colleges in India which encourage the study of subjects beyond its principal scope, depriving the student of exposure to innumerable possibilities where different fields of study interact and co-produce, leading to over-all, all-inclusive development. Development – this is one aspect of education very conveniently forgotten today. The Constitution is unclear about its regard for education as an agent of transformation or change. This spirit is lost when education starts to be seen as something that only ‘adds value’. The proliferation of private educational institutes offering higher education is a prime example of such change in view. Most of these institutions are nothing but money-minting ventures which take no responsibility for what their duty is towards the society at large. Rather than looking at the multi-national firms which recruit people from such places and the fat pay packages they give as criteria for judgement, universities should be judged by how much they have done to reduce disparities such as gender, class and caste.

The Death of Familiarity

“Why don’t we ever learn that all changes of place are for the worse? It’s not love for the place; it’s the familiarity, like old winter clothes.”

- English, August
Upamanyu Chatterjee

How does he start?

It was like being in the presence of an old lover, there was familiarity but also the knowledge that he didn’t belong here anymore, that it belonged or was going to belong to someone else very soon. Yet, everything was there as he had left it, books and papers strewn on the table, the almirah wide open with some leftover clothes, some leftover books and CDs. Even the graffiti on the wall, and the little Mao Zedong mask, hanging rather precariously.

He had only a few hours to himself. His last few hours as the owner of this hostel room, one that he had inhabited for four long years, his territory. He had to check if anything worth of value was still left to be taken away, throw out the remaining garbage and pass on the room possession to the supervisor.

The place almost felt eerie, naked and abandoned. To think that not so long back, this place had been full with conversation, laughter, Floyd and Morrison, was unimaginable. He felt heavy with feeling, something that was hard to explain, even to himself.

How does he start?

He looked into his drawer. It was quite a melange, from everything like newspaper contacts to received rakhis on display. There were also a broken nail-cutter, some shampoo pouches , fee receipts as old as four years and keys for which he had now lost the locks.

He picked up the rakhis; they could not be thrown away like that. The shampoo pouches – they could still be used. And what about the newspaper contacts? Couldn’t they be of use later?

Suddenly, he felt tired, physically and mentally. He closed the drawer and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Was it possible for him to take away everything? Was it even desirable? Was it correct wanting to create an exact replica of this room, with its drawers, racks and closets, wherever he was headed next? Is it right to carry memory as baggage and not leave behind things knowing that they didn’t belong to you anymore, and indeed weren’t even needed?

With some effort, he got up again and headed for the almirah. It had been wide open for the last couple of years, in the exact position as it was now, owing to his lethargy and near aversion to cleanliness. There were cobwebs and dust all around, and retrieving things felt like digging up stuff from debris. There was not much to take really; the few t-shirts, socks and handkerchiefs littered weren’t fit for public consumption anymore, and he let them remain where they were. There were a few assorted CDs too, perhaps the only thing worth taking away, and he pulled them up.

He felt rather exhausted. There was dust on his hands and his whole body was soaked in sweat. Why, he thought to himself. What’s all this for?

It was over. Whatever remained would be thrown away. He walked to the door and looked at the room one last time. He tried to sum everything up – the room and him, but his thoughts failed him, or his intelligence did. Irritated, he switched off the power, walked out and locked the room.

Ready to walk away, all of a sudden, he felt the urge to see the place once more, now for the last, last time. He opened the door again, switched on the lights and had another look. Unanticipated, a wild surge of emotion ran through him.

Why, why does he even have to leave this place? Why can’t he live here forever? Why do we ever move away? Why do we ever leave our homes?

He felt angry, repulsed – whether by himself or the room, it was hard for him to say. He walked out finally, locked the door and walked away, without looking back, with as much confidence as he could possibly fake.

Mirror

He looks into the mirror and asks - 'Do you wish to become a monster?'

The mirror pauses for a moment and then says - 'No, I'd rather remain a human being.'

Dark Man IV

The near-darkness to which the brown curtains subjected the room was making Amir almost feel drowsy. The heavy thick piece of cloth had something resembling flowers stitched on it. He ran his hand on the contours, absentmindedly, not knowing how really to spend time. It was a holiday, and an afternoon, and with Papa asleep and Maa busy with chores, there wasn’t much to keep himself busy at.

The eyes were slowly giving way now. He was almost half-asleep.

Just then, the door bell rang. Far from being irritated to be disturbed when just about to doze off, Amir felt rather excited. Activity was activity. And on an afternoon with nothing to do, even to open the door for the maid or the dhobi was an event, an occurrence that gave the passing time some shape, some meaning. So before his mother could even call out to him to answer the bell, he was almost there, ready to finally let some sunlight in.

Through the netted door, Amir saw a man, dark, spectacled, slightly bending forward with a beaming smile on his face. Even he, as little as he was, could see that the smile was fake, forced and rather shaky, that of a man eager to please. On his shoulder, he carried a thaila, and in his hand was what looked like a box wrapped in plastic. Before he could ask the man anything, he himself spoke.

‘Bete, mummy ghar pe hain?’

‘Haan hain….kya kaam hai?’

‘Unko jaa ke bulao…’

He had ignored Amir’s little query. Children have to get used to their little queries being ignored.

He gave the man a momentary stare and then rushed inside. Maa was in her bedroom, recording expenses in her diary, the one household task she seemed to enjoy most. Looking at Amir entering the room now, she gave her writing hand a pause.

‘Kya hua? Kaun hai?’, she asked.

Again, before Amir could speak, a question had been thrown at him.

‘Koi aadmi hai. Bola ‘mummy’ ko bulao’, replied Amir, then eager to provide some extra useful information, ‘Lagta hai kuchh bechne aaya hai…’

‘Bolo woh ghar mein nahi hain.’

‘Lekin hum bol chuke hain ki who ghar mein hain’, Amir lied.

His mother looked up from her diary now. For a moment or two, she looked at Amir, wondering whether she should get angry at him, and then decided against it. Instead, she clicked her tongue, threw the diary on the bed and stormed out of the room.

‘Kya hai?’, she shouted at the man outside. She stood in the dining room, in the darkness. The man couldn’t sight her, and as he hadn’t really seen her coming, he took a little while to reply.

‘Didi zaraa idhar aake dekh to lijiye…AquaGuard Zero-B sab bhool jayiyega!’, he finally did, holding something he had just taken out of the box.

‘Nahi chahiye!’ is all she said in reply and then stormed back into the bedroom. The man kept pleading behind her, begging her to give the machine just one single look, offering her the world’s cleanest water, and even free installation of the contraption in the household kitchen.

Amir looked at the man closely from behind the netted door. He appeared exhausted, if anything. Mentally and physically. Sweat poured down from his forehead, pure transparent drops of crystal, like the clean water he promised. The flat was on the 3rd floor. God knows how many such he had visited this afternoon, Amir thought, and how many steps he had had to climb, only to be snubbed at the doorway.

After this latest unsuccessful attempt, the man prepared to pack up and leave. When just about to turn back, he looked at the door and saw the kid gazing at him.

‘Bete…ek glass paani pila doge?’, he asked in a low tone.

‘Haan, ek minute rukiye…’, replied Amir, without even a moment’s hesitation and ran to the kitchen. He didn’t need his mother’s permission. You never deny a thirsty man water if he has asked for some, he remembered having been told by his elders many a time. Surely, Maa doesn’t need to be bothered for this.

He filled a glass with water and walked back to the door. Silently, trying not to attract his mother's attention, he kept the glass down, unlatched the netted door (something that required both his hands), lifted the glass and placed it into the man’s extended hand. He did it all almost like a ritual and it gave him an immense sense of satisfaction. Why, his little mind wasn’t quite disposed to fathom yet.

The man drank the entire glass and gave it back to Amir, saying ‘Thank You’. He himself replied with a neat ‘Welcome’ and closed the door again. He then watched the man pick up his thaila and walk down the stairs, to ring the bell for another potential customer, to sell the world’s cleanest water.

Angrez Chale Gaye II

A thought: If we Indians happened to be white in skin colour, like the firangs, and if someone saw one of us walking down the street, would he be able to guess our nationality? Would he be able to tell whether we are Indian, or American or European? Probably not. And why? Because today, where everything from clothing to behaviour is being homogenized, where everyone talks the same language, wears the same clothes, similar to everyone else even in mannerisms, it’s only our skin colour that establishes our uniqueness.

Because we are the urban Indians. And like the Americans living on the other side of the globe, we talk in English and think in English, wear t-shirts and jeans when casual and suits and ties when formal, have coffee rather than tea. All whitewashed. If one thinks about it, food preferences are perhaps the only thing that have still not changed; although we love burgers and pizzas and pastas, most would maintain that rice and dal is what is best for everyday consumption.

It is fascinating to see the gradual shift in Indian lifestyle in the years after independence. The British Raj insured that Indians would never again be comfortable with their own identity; the five-cubit-tall sahib would forever hold a psychological edge over the third-world, backward Indian. Even before the British left us, this inferiority complex had settled itself in the Indian psyche. To emulate the foreigner in everything he did, to talk, dress and behave like him, indeed to be him, has always been the Indian’s ulterior, if not declared, goal. Of course, this phenomenon, this aspiration to become someone else is not just restricted to our country, but to many others which have been subjected to colonial rule.

But curiously, this desire to ‘be’ English has faded away gradually. To be replaced by an affinity for everything American. And the sort of maniacal attachment the young urban Indians have for it is rather interesting, when not annoying. One look around and it’s easy to recognize how much American preferences have permeated into our own lives. The introduction and subsequent success of fast food joints, the coming up of brands like Levi Strauss and Dockers, the market for American films (or rather, ‘movies’, which are always, by some unwritten law, better than the material we produce here), the stupendous speed at which coffee joints have opened (and tea centres have disappeared), the inception of words like ‘stuff’ and ‘bucks’ in everyday conversation, our carelessness in spelling ‘colour’ as ‘color’ and ‘centre’ as ‘center’ etc etc. The Indian obsession for education in the ‘States’ tops it all. American college t-shirts are so popular and common now that the last time I visited Sarojni Nagar in Delhi, I even saw a roadside shop selling fake cheap red sweatshirts with ‘UCLA’ printed on them.

Of course, for most parts, this inclination towards American attitudes is but natural. What Big Mac does, the Toms, Dicks and Harrys do it too. The Americans are, after all (and I borrow a phrase rather famous in diplomatic circles), ‘the shaper of global sentiment’. But even if you leave this very human tendency aside, they deserve most of what they have managed to do. American universities are some of the best in the world, Levi Strauss is the last word in casual wear, McDonalds does deserve its status for the sheer quality of the food it has to offer. And till the day Indian brands come up with the same standards, the above are bound to stay on top.

But sometimes, it all becomes too much to take. They can’t be the world’s best in every single darn thing they do, can they? Sometimes, if not quite often, this phenomenon becomes rather nauseating to assimilate. Sometimes, if not quite often, one is bound to feel that that our little tendency here is only an inch short of blind aping. Sometimes, if not quite often, one is sure to think that if this continues to be the case, the Indian in us will slowly fade away, making us what an American Macaulay would love to see us as – Indians only by birth, but Americans in behaviour, lifestyle and education.

Of course, one might ask – Is that a problem we need to address? For me, it is. And yes, there are some solutions too that come to my mind. But leave all that for some other post, at some later date.

Perfect Imperfections

Bombay is a mad city, and that is probably why, despite its thousand troubles and limitations, it is very easy to fall in love with it, to lose yourself in the madness, become one with it. And perhaps, that is also why someone who’s spent even a little amount of time there finds it so hard to leave it, feeling incapacitated everywhere else. The city, through its imperfections, sucks you in. And if it doesn’t drive you insane, it’ll fascinate you like very few other places ever will.

For example:

• Refer to the last post, third segment. There was a snake sighted in the locality I was staying in, and rather than actively taking measures to look for it and possibly save lives, the apartment management just put up a hardly noticeable notice on the walls, saying that if anyone did spot it, he or she was to contact the watchman, who would then see where the snake moves. I doubt if any more sightings of the snake or even casualties would have made a difference to the urgency shown.
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, remarkably co-incident with the snake sighting, the front door of my cousin’s flat broke, leaving a small gaping hole at the bottom. When I asked him whether we should get it repaired lest the snake sneaked in at night, he just shrugged and changed the subject.
  

• Given that the city was devastated by blasts very recently, on my way to Colaba by the local train, I expected to be frisked all over. Nothing of the sort happened.
  
  I could have been carrying a live bomb. It was Diwali night. On this day of celebration, the city was one man’s will away from being blown to pieces. Yet again.
  

• During a three-day stay, I came across two instances of people lighting crackers on the road, that too in full, evening, Diwali traffic. In the latter case, the man was setting fire to chakris and throwing them on the main road, while auto-rickshaws, cars and buses turned and swayed and evaded them without complaint, as if it was all a harmless video game where nothing really valuable was at stake.
  
  The man kept laughing all along, his joy multiplied manifold when the cracker flinging sparks in all directions made another man on a bicycle almost lose his balance. He kept laughing even when a rocket launched by him boomeranged onto his own chest, before he frantically pushed it away to avoid harm.
  

Whichever way one would like to put it, this kind of indifference to adversity, or the confidence of the people in their ability to handle it, is baffling. But that’s how most things in Bombay are. In a city where the cost of living is very high, the cost of life, on the other hand, is very low.

Loss

Amir woke up today morning to find his Self missing. The realization came to him quite suddenly; he first felt the void in his head, then he sensed it going down his neck, his spine and then travel to every single part of his body. It wasn’t something ordinary that happened every other day. That much was pretty clear. For the void, rather than giving him a feeling of space, made him feel strangely heavy. A vacant heaviness or a heavy vacant-ness - both meaning the same.

He got up from the bed and the void travelled with him. He didn’t know what to do with it, or even what to do at all. On an ordinary day, he would have brushed his teeth, prepared for himself a cup of tea, and then sat down on the balcony with the morning newspaper. But all this seemed senseless at that moment. Inconsequential. Not that these tasks had overwhelming significance in his everyday life anyway, but the futility of it all struck him to the core today.

Therefore, leaving everything, he went and lay down on his bed.

Where could it have gone? Suddenly, without warning. He had felt quite alright last night, nothing had happened to make him uncomfortable. They had had a drink session at Ari’s place, and after hours of dancing and singing, he had returned home in the late hours of the morning, exhausted and happy. Where had the feeling gone? It was replaced by this weird dullness, this inexplicable sensation of loss.

Looking at the parking lot overlooking his house, where a bunch of car-washers were getting on with their job, Amir tried to think of a possible solution. What could he do to make the situation better? Where to look for the darn thing?

Where would he find his own Self?

It wasn’t just a thing, not his wallet or the lighter. It was him. He couldn’t just jump out and try to look for it beneath the bed sheets, or check whether it had, by mistake, slipped underneath the bed, or remove the junk off his study table, thinking that maybe that was what hid it. He could not even tell anyone about it, simply because no one would believe him. They would laugh it off, blaming it on the hangover. This was something so huge, something so personal, that he couldn’t even hope to regain it by talking it over with a friend, or by holding a loved one’s hand, or by looking into someone else’s eyes. This was, and he knew it already, much beyond that.

With much mental effort, he walked over to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Suddenly, his own face seemed alien to him, the eyebrows, the curve of his cheeks, the mouth, the chin – everything seemed new and cold, as if it belonged to a different person. Who was he, Amir found himself asking. Was he living inside another person? Did this assortment of organs even belong to him? He looked at his hands, his legs, and he felt he wasn’t even real, just playing a character in some video game, using someone else’s body, who controlled everything but had no claim to ownership.

The feeling of emptiness, the loss of Self, was overbearing. He couldn’t stand it and found his legs shaking rather alarmingly. Somehow, he pulled his body, which felt now like a rented piece, to the bedroom. He lay down on the bed again, staring at the ceiling, contemplating sleep. Maybe that would freshen up his memory a bit. In any case, Amir simply didn’t know what else to do with himself.

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What he also didn’t know was that the realization that had dawned upon him today was the end result of something that had been going on for many years now. He had lost his Self long ago, misplaced it somewhere and hadn’t even given a damn at the time. Time had passed, and though sometimes he did feel lonely and vacant, such moments were pretty short-lived, overcome by spells of prolonged activity, or lost in the laughter and nonsense of everyday conversation. All this while, he had never felt a desperate need to question himself, to look within and see how he had changed and was changing. The Self had left him a long time ago, just that its realization, which had remained hidden from him until this day, had finally made its presence felt.

And Amir didn’t know what to do.

Pack-up Man

My name, you ask? What do you want my name for? That hardly holds any significance. If anything, let me tell you what I am and how I look. I’m middle-aged, around forty years of age (no one in my family remembers the exact date of my birth), with a slight paunch, drooping shoulders, and a head that’s getting bald with every passing day. I am dark, around five feet nine inches tall, and keep a beard which has gone completely white with time, at odds with the hair on my head, which is still more black than white. People, intrigued by this peculiar contrast, ask me whether I dye my hair, to which I can think of no reply.

My family has been a family of farmers; since generations, we have known no other means of livelihood. But now the times have changed. With big landlords eager to get hold of as much land as possible, ready to pay amounts which are too hard to refuse for people like us who never know what tomorrow would bring, its very rare for a man with meagre land holdings to get enough to pass his days. He has to look for a new job, that too in a place where they are hard to come by.

I got a job in one of the many multiplexes that have come up in this little town over the last few years. My task, as they told me, was to maintain cleanliness in and around the place. I am not the only one assigned this responsibility, there are a few others who work with me, and together we clean the floors of the porch, the lobby, and also the toilets, once in the morning at nine, and then in the evening at four. The building is huge, with two floors, there’s a lot of ground to be covered, and it turns out to be a tiring task, especially because we rid the floors of dust with a broom first, and then polish it by wiping it with phenyl and water. To make it shine. As the manager, our boss, likes it. We also, along with the above, hold the responsibility of cleaning the halls between shows, empty coke glasses, food packages and popcorn strewed here and there. But that doesn’t take much time.

As the oldest among the workers, and the one who looks most reliable, I have also been given an additional piece of work. On weekends, in the evening, just outside the entrance to the halls, they have a music show. A bunch of youngsters, all of whom look like they have just got out of their beds, come together and sing noisy, mostly English songs. My job is to assemble the equipment before the shows starts and dissemble it after it ends – the stand on which they keep the keyboard, the drum set, the huge black speakers, the microphones.

It isn’t something that takes too much effort, just fifteen minutes before and after. But what’s exhausting about the task is the wait, to stand there and wait for the show to get over, to hope that the song they are playing will be their last for the evening. When the rains are around, I can’t even leave the place for a moment, lest it starts pouring suddenly and the equipment needs to be replaced to safety. The manager thinks me responsible, and I’m too eager not to lose his confidence. So, I sit in a corner and wait.

I sit there and look around, the players - working away at their instruments, looking absorbed and lost in the music, smoking cigarettes without break, one after the other, the crowd – people eating at the cafeteria just behind, more youngsters, some standing and some sitting on the floor, listening to the music, many of them constantly smoking as well, and then there are, of course, the people who are here to watch a film, who just pass by, some pausing to listen to the music for a while.

The variety of people that can be seen near the place is quite remarkable, there are all kinds – boys and girls dressed for their evening out, company executives just back from office, uncles and aunties who wonder what the fuss is all about, and very old men and women, who don’t give the band as much as a glance. Yet, they are all together there, who have come to this multiplex for some form of enjoyment or the other.

Somewhere between ten and ten thirty, the band stops playing. I, in anticipation, go into the crowd and stand there much before that, hoping that they would wind up soon. This is the most difficult part of the waiting, it’s late and I am desperate to get back home. I can see a few eyes turning towards me, giving me a cursory glance, wondering whether I too was there for the music, and I’m conscious of the fact that here, where almost everyone is dressed to kill, having a good time, I look odd, a man who doesn’t belong, maybe even a blot on the landscape. But it hardly bothers me.

When it’s all over, and the whole place seems immersed in sudden, complete silence once more, I pick up everything from the stage and put it inside the store room.

My work for the day is over, and I leave on my bicycle, for my home in a village just a few kilometres away.

This is what I do. Clean. Assemble. Dissemble.

Bridge Chalein?

All the characters and events in this piece are entirely fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

From the flashlights of the motorcycle, it was pretty clear to all of them that what stood ahead, just about fifty metres away was nothing but a police jeep.

Their little plan had all it takes to get into the deepest possible shit. It was past one in the night, they, Abbas, Muahid and Tayseer were on someone else’s bike, in a relatively unknown city, without anywhere specific to go, but sure in their minds that they had to go somewhere. After all, they were happy. That’s the least they could do. Go somewhere.

So, having taken a packet of wafers and two Thums Ups for their little picnic from one of the very few places that were open so late, they decided to go to the famous bridge, a broken one, about two to three kilometres into the wilderness. On their way there, the talk was of murders, encounters and cover-ups, and many other possibilities their lives could meet at the bridge, depending on which they might accidentally meet there, the police or some scoundrels. None of them suspected that weren’t after all building castles in the air. The first sight of the jeep was just the preamble for what was to follow.

‘Abey koi hai wahaan pe…truck ya jeep…’, said Tayseer, as if this was a fact that needed mentioning.

‘Jeep hi hai…police ki hai kya?’, added Abbas, fearing the worst.

‘Haan police ki hi hai…’, replied Muahid, and after letting the realization sink in, ‘Waapis chalna hai kya?’

This was a crucial question, the sort which one would rather like to pose than answer. There was a brief silence, not more than a few seconds, as the question needed to be answered quickly, the three of them getting closer to the jeep with every passing moment.

‘Abey chalte hain….faltu mein panga na ho jaaye’, Tayseer, chicken heart, finally uttered. This was all the other two chicken hearts needed, and without wasting further time, Muahid, who was driving, took a U-turn and headed back.

The danger dealt with, the three breathed easy again. Ripples of nervous laughter were complemented by remarks such as ‘Bach gaye yaar!’, ‘Kya kismet hai!’ and ‘Ab kahaan jaaye!’. But this hadn’t gone on for long, before Abbas interjected.

‘Abey waise problem kya hai?...na humare paas daru hai, na kuchh aur…bas 3 dost hai, chips aur cold-drink peene aaye hai…unko isse kya problem ho sakti hai?’

This was another good question, again one which was really difficult to answer. It is hard to say what transpired next, but within moments, chicken hearts turned into brave hearts, the bike headed back towards the jeep, all three infused suddenly with a new-found confidence in the innocence of their little outing.

They parked the bike just a little beyond the jeep, and though it was pitch dark, each searched for the others’ eyes, for a mirror to their apprehensions, waiting for someone to break the uneasy silence. It was broken, but it wasn’t they who had spoken.

From the back of the jeep, came out a moving a torch, and a voice beckoning them. None of them were really taken aback, they were expecting it, almost waiting for it.

As they approached the back of the jeep, it turned out that there were no less than four policeman present at the spot, three at the back with one asleep, and one in the front, who as they would later discover, was their boss. One of the two awake sub-ordinates, whom we would hereafter refer to as Good Cop, was the first to speak.

‘Kahaan se aaye ho tum log? Kya kar rahe ho yahaan?’

‘Kuchh nahi uncle…woh aise hi…’, replied Abbas, leaving Tayseer a little surprised as to how quickly he had moved on to buttering the policeman, calling him ‘uncle’.

‘Raat ko dhai baje tum yahaan aise hi aaye the! Woh kya hai haath mein?’, Good Cop retorted, his tone a bit harsher this time, pointing to the chips and soft drinks in our hands.

‘Kuchh nahi uncle…woh chips hai….aur…’, Tayseer replied, thinking at the same time whether ‘sir’ would have sounded better.

‘Bas yahi laaye ho?....’, Bad Cop finally spoke up, sounding rather disappointed. He sounded drunk, and excited, this little incident perhaps being the only diversion in his otherwise long and uneventful night vigil. ‘Yahin khade raho.’, said the Good Cop now, and both of them walked towards the motorcycle.

What they were looking for was liquor, and had it been found, it would have been the perfect excuse to have the youngsters jailed for the night and extract some nice cash out of them in the morning. But as they found nothing, even after an elaborate search, they returned silently, almost not knowing what to do now.

Having won a point in their favour, Abbas, Muahid and Tayseer now started to ask the cops for forgiveness, saying that they would never come here again, that they were just a bunch of stupid, innocent teenagers wanting a good time, that they had absolutely no idea that a small picnic on a deserted piece of land in the wilderness at two in the morning wasn’t the safest thing to do.

When they had no more excuses left, all three fell silent and there was a rather uncomfortable silence for a second or two. Bad Cop now took over the proceedings.

‘Thane le chalo sabko! Saale chutiye…subah tak inko wahi rakhna hai…tab samajh mein aayega inke…jab newspaper mein photo niklegi na….’, and then, as if struck with a sudden amazing idea, ‘woh India Today walo ko bulaon….haan wahi jo poore din idhar udhar ghoomte rehte hain’

Good Cop had gone on staring at the hapless three all this time, while they looked ready to shit in their pants. They started on their pleadings again, to which Good Cop said he understood but they had to talk to their boss once before anything could be done.

The boss sat in the front seat. He was asleep, probably on two or three bottles of desi liquor. When Good Cop explained the situation to him, he suddenly got up on his seat, as if awakened by a call of duty and scowled at the three.

‘Band karo inko!...madarchod kya karne aaye the yahaan?...bhodsi ke!’, and then as if exhausted by this sudden surge of activity, he dropped back into sleep again.

Bad Cop, now encouraged once more, added that the three must be thieves, as only thieves come out at such hours. To this unbeatable piece of logic, none of the three had an answer.

‘Kahaan ke rehne walo ho tum log?’, he now asked.

‘Dilli ke, sir’, Tayseer replied.

‘Kabhi dilli mein 8 baje ke baad nikalte ho?’

Another stupid taunt. Tayseer wanted to laugh at the policeman, but kept quiet, knowing that this wasn’t what he was looking for.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed in this fashion. The three of them kept pleading, calling the policemen ‘sir’ and ‘uncle’ alternately, the Bad Cop pouring taunts and threats, one after one. Good Cop now started to talk calmly to the three. He explained how there was a suicide by some Maharashtrian youngster in this area just a few days ago, and how much trouble they had to endure for it, and how unsuitable this place was, therefore, for a midnight picnic.

Slowly and steadily, as Good Cop talked to the three, they started to feel that there was still a way out of this, that there could be a negotiation. And no doubt, Good Cop finally offered to let them go, only if they pay the fine for their little adventure.

Tayseer didn’t even have his wallet with him, Muahid had all of forty or fifty rupees, and Abbas a few hundred. They informed Good Cop of this fact straight on his face; he was disappointed, but did well to maintain his composure.

‘Kitne hain tumhare paas?’, he asked, getting down to the bottom of it all.

‘Mere paas to kuchh bhi nahi’, Tayseer apologetically replied, ‘Iske paas 40-50 honge’, looking at Muahid, ‘aur tumhare paas?’, turning to Abbas.

Abbas dig into his purse and said ‘300…350….’

Muahid, who wasn’t really keen on paying the policeman more than a hundred in any case, who even in such dire circumstances was keen to hold on to his money, now reproached Abbas by hitting him on the arm. Good Cop noticed that, and when Muahid tried to speak again, he asked him to shut up and learn some tameez first.

Tayseer now did all the talking, intentionally sounding soft, trying to make Good Cop feel that he could start crying any moment. Good Cop finally gave in, showering elderly advice on the three, telling them again and again how difficult the job of a policeman was, how they had to cover up so much, how the world would break into pieces if they didn’t do their thing. He sounded like a depressed Atlas, on whose shoulder all the burden of the world rested.

Having exhausted (or bored) himself ultimately, he asked Muahid to fetch the motorcycle, and continued talking to the other two.

‘Ye ladka theek nahi hai…chutiya kahin ka!...poori tarah bigad chuka hai yeh’, said he for Muahid, perhaps remembering the earlier fine negotiation, and then for no apparent reason, added, looking at Abbas – ‘Tum bhi aadhe bigad chuke ho…’. Abbas might have wanted to ask him why, but stayed shut for good.

The three got on to the motorcycle, and after saying ‘Dhanyavad’ and ‘Shukriya’ about 5-10 times, sped off. Their little adventure was over, they had come out unscathed, without even parting with a single rupee (the three had repeatedly informed Good Cop that they were 'student log' and could therefore may kindly please be exempted from the fine), and though their nerves hadn’t quite calmed yet, they laughed loudly, maybe at themselves, maybe at each other, maybe at the hour just gone by.

Then, Muahid, the courageous asked – ‘Ab kahaan chalna hai?’

Angrez Chale Gaye...

On my way to Delhi a few days ago, while I waited to get my boarding pass at the airline counter, it was rather hard not to observe and not be amused by the man just ahead of me in the queue. He seemed like one around forty years of age, clean shaven, wearing an impeccable suit and tie, looking all prim and proper like all these senior company executives do. He was talking to the girl at the counter.

‘I would like an aisle seat. Just see if one’s available’, he declared to her, his voice and tone heavy and commanding, which took the girl by surprise a little.

‘Just a moment, Sir. I’ll just check if one is’, she replied quickly, getting on the keyboard.

‘Yeah. If you don’t have that, give me a window seat. But not one in the middle in any case’, out came the second declaration, by which time the lady was jumping frantically on the keys.

Her hurried behaviour seemed rather odd at first; she would be used to hearing a hundred such requests in a day. But what was special about this one was that it wasn’t really a request, it was a declaration, almost an order. It wasn’t its nature but the tone with which it was delivered was what took her aback that little bit.

The man was an executive, a confident, self-assured executive, who knew where he stood, who knew what the pomp and exuding self-belief in his deliverance of the English language meant and signified, that it would impress and rattle the young, naïve-looking female airline employee, and that it would definitely be enough to get him the best seat possible. He knew everything, at the back of his mind at least, if not entirely consciously. He never as much looked at her in the eye, looking hither and thither all throughout. That was part of the game, the performance.

A few moments later, in the flight, having got an undesired middle seat for myself, I started with the novel I was wisely carrying. On my right, by the window, was a middle-aged, mustached man with a rather healthy paunch. One look at his face suggested that he was either very upset or very angry with something. He kept looking at the air-hostesses that passed by, shifting nervously in his seat throughout, as if not sure what posture would look most respectable, and would also be most comfortable at the same time.

Now, it happened that by the time they reached our row for serving dinner, all the non-vegetarian meals they had were finished. In crisp, air-hostessque English, one of the girls explained to him that as they had run short of the non-vegetarian meals, to take the vegetarian one was the only option he had. At this, the man’s already unpleasant expression turned even more so. He looked offended, as if being subjected to a gross injustice.

‘Non-veg nahi hai aapke paas? Yeh kaise ho sakta hai?’, he barked at her, more of an outburst than a question.

‘Sorry Sir. Lekin kuchh problem ho gayi hai. Galti se vegetarian khana zyada aa gaya, aur non-veg kam.’

This apology was all he needed. He didn’t really abhor vegetarian food, after all. Now sated, he murmured something incoherently, to which the girl didn’t reply and handed him the food plate quietly.

After she had left, he laughed and murmured something more to me. I couldn’t get anything of what it was, and only nodded slightly in return, thinking it would be enough to quieten him down. It was. Having embarrassed the hostess as he intended to, and visibly pleased with his performance, he now started with the food in front.

He had surely needed this little tantrum, without which his feeling of dislocation would only have been accentuated. To have this brief argument with the hostess, and that too in the language he was most comfortable in, was his way of getting level with the people around him, all of whom, as he must have noticed, were looking much more ‘sophisticated’ then he, and therefore superior in his eyes.

The English language is, as they say, the best thing the British ever gave us, and in that, I would agree with them. But on occasions (which, by the way, are not rare), it acts as a sheer monstrosity. One that cannot just be ignored.

Chai Ho Jaaye!

‘Tara, chhat se kapda utha!’, shouted his grandmother, in a tone so filled with alarm that it would have sounded more appropriate if the entire house was on fire. And without waiting for any confirmation from the maid, leaving the brinjal she was slicing in the kitchen unsliced, she ran frantically to the balcony to do the needful there.

The monsoons had arrived, and to little Amir, it seemed that it rained nowhere in the world as it rained in Patna. A moment before, it seemed like a perfect, idle, hot, summer afternoon, and now, all of a sudden, all hell had broken loose. The unlatched doors banged against the walls ferociously, the clouds roared, all tree tops pointed horizontally to one direction, as if showing a stranger the way to his destination. It was perfect, sublime chaos, turning the impeccable tranquility of the entire household to over-frenzied activity in a jiffy. As Amir saw, everyone in the house was running, everyone had suddenly sprung to action.

He ran to the terrace and stopped at the door, looking at the maid who was busy picking up as many clothes as she could in one go and depositing them at the nearest dry place. No one could have been more efficient right now; she did it as if her whole life depended on it.

‘Kuchh kapda tum bhi utha lo. Khade ho ke dekh rahe ho!’, she shouted above the rain when she saw him.

‘Rehne do na. Kya jaata hai? Bheeg jayega to kya hoga?’, he replied, teasing her.

‘Kya hoga! Agar tumhari Nanima ne humko baad mein daanta to? Tum bachane aayoge?’

‘Kyun nahi?’, Amir said, smiling his most mischievous smile. Leaving Tara behind, he now walked back into the house to see what the rest were up to.

His grandmother had returned from the balcony, satisfied and exhausted, and sat at the dining table, just below the ceiling fan. The look on her face was almost triumphant, as if she had just diffused a time bomb only a couple of seconds before it was supposed to go off.

‘Kitne jaldi aaya baarish. Bhaagte nahi to sab kapda bheeg jaata!’, she said when she saw Amir, explaining the supreme importance of the task, waiting for someone to commend her for her effort.

‘Hmmm’, Amir replied and went to the kitchen to fetch her some water.

The maid returned, the clothes replaced to safety. All was still once more, the household relaxed, only the sound of rain falling outside to be heard. His grandfather, who had carried on reading the newspaper quietly all this while, unperturbed by the abrupt bout of activity the world inside and outside had been in, also came in and sat down on the divan.

‘Chai ho jaaye!’, he cried, as always, as if the moment called for a celebration of sorts. In a way, it did, thought Amir. The rain always called for celebration, even in Patna, where there was never any scarcity of it.

Tea was brought, and as little Amir wasn’t allowed to have it yet, he sipped quietly on his Bournvita. The coming of the rains was almost a ritual, everything happened the same way every time – the runs to the terrace and balcony, the subsequent tea session, the small talk. Watching everyone have this unplanned chat, with the sound of the rain in the background, Amir felt strangely happy.

Tag, aur kya?

As I simply have nothing better to do, (exams might be around the corner, but that doesn’t count), I have been tempted into accepting the tag by Marvin, IC. Here it is. Mast bak hai!

Last Movie Seen in Theatre Jodha Akbar. I had been waiting for it for a long, long time. And though it disappointed most people, I found it an entertaining watch.

Too long? Don’t care.

Historically incorrect? Don’t care.

Book Being Read None right now. Exams coming up. Plan to start with Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude soon after that.

Favourite Board Game Has to be Ludo! I’ve played Monopoly and Carrom as a kid, but nothing beats the sheer unpredictability and senselessness of Ludo. Ready for a game anytime!

Favourite Magazine Imagine a cricket-crazy kid who can tell you with unbelievable precision how many runs Dravid scored in the post-tea session in the 2nd test between India and Australia in 2001….that was me till around five years back. Thanks to Cricket Samrat and Cricket World and Wisden Cricket and the rest.

Then one day, I found myself looking at Alfred in the mirror, pulling my front teeth out and saying “What, me worry?” and its all been pure MADness since then.

Favourite Smells Nothing like wet earth. Without the shadow of a doubt.

And yes, the ‘smell’ of idle summer afternoons.

Favourite Sounds The rhythmic sound of drums and bells played together at Durga Puja. I wait for DP every year so that I can just close my eyes and for a moment at least, forget everything but that one sound.

And one more. OK. It’s a very ordinary, commonplace sound, I know. But I’ve always been in love with the sound of ceiling fans. Might have to do with my fascination with summers again.

If I think about it, those big, noisy coolers sound nice too.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up? Simple. How can I get back to bed?

Worst feeling in the world Many of course. Hard to pin-point one. But being ill and alone at the same time has to be somewhere at the top.

Favourite Fast Food Place McDonalds. McVeggie Burger with cheese. Affordable and fulfilling.

Future Child’s Name You know what? I’ve been silly enough to actually decide on one. Not that I’m going to tell you.

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…” be confused about what to do with it.

Do you drive fast? Sometimes. Rarely, in fact.

Ek baar bahut zor ki potty lagi thi, tab kasam se bahut tez gaadi bhagayi thi!

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? No. Of course not. Happ!

Storms - Cool or Scary? Dumb Question.

Do you eat the stems on broccoli? Zara hindi mein samjhayyega.

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice? Black. So that it amounts to not dyeing my hair at all.

All towns/cities you have lived in Patna, NewDelhi, Patna, Sindri, Patna, NewDelhi, Chandigarh, NewDelhi, Gurgaon, Gadhinagar. I wish Bombay is next.

Favourite sports to watch Cricket. Nothing like spending the whole day on bed, watching a test match day from morning to evening.

Football and Tennis are a good watch, but only if there are big names involved.

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you Dumb Question.

What’s under your bed? Two brooms, a discarded pair of floaters, countless number of thrown biscuits and chocolate wrappers, and a whole lot of dirt and dust.

Would you like to be born as yourself again? Yes. Weighing this against that, yes.

Morning person or night owl? Morning, for me, is the most dreadful time of the day. I think you have your answer.

Over easy or sunny side up? Ya Ya…

Favourite Place to Relax My grandparents’ house in Patna, with time suspended.

Favourite Pie Yaar main to ek hi pie jaanta hoon. Chocolate Pie. Wahi favourite hoga.

Favourite Ice Cream Anything with chocolate. Like Vanilla and Strawberry too. Free mein mil raha ho to koi bhi chalega.

And now, because most of the people I could tag have already been tagged, I invite only Calvin and Alien to carry on with the crap.

Also, now that Jezuz has shown signs that he is still alive on Blogger, I tag him too ;)

CG Road

I sit down beside a chai-wala, on the pavement, the evening traffic rushing by in front of my eyes. I am tired, I have walked miles around the market in search of the shop Maa asked me to go to, and get this thing she so sorely wanted.

I feel like I’m half dead, the legs hurt and it takes considerable effort to keep my back straight. So I sit down on the pavement, without any thought for decency, place the tea cup on my side and light a cigarette.

Everything feels unreal, as if from a half-dream. The mind feels numb, the noise of the cars and their horns hardly proving to be disturbance.

There is an auto rickshaw at a few feet from me, and having convinced myself that I can’t possibly find the shop alive, I decide that I’ll take this promise of relief and go back to Income Tax, and then to the college. There are not many such promises to be seen around where I’ve sit, and I hope this one stays glued to the spot till I’ve finished my short break.

A few minutes pass by, and a dark man walks up to me. He is carrying several figures of clay, mostly of gods and goddesses, all for sale. This is the last thing that I need right now, and I try not to look the man in the eye, wishing that it puts him off and he goes away. But he doesn’t, he shows me a face sculpture of Ganesh, and asks me whether I would like to take it.

I try to get rid of him without any more conversation and not be rude at the same time, something that always requires a lot of effort. I say that it’s nice but I don’t have any money. He of course doesn’t listen to it, my clothes and demeanour betray me. He persists, saying that he could give me a handsome discount if I like the thing so much. I stop listening and concentrate once more on the traffic, the mind going numb again.

I give the rickshaw another look, the driver sits on the front seat, relaxed, doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. But I know I am stretching my luck, and its time I get going. The dark man meanwhile stops speaking, and instead just stares at me with almost accusing eyes. I look at him straight for the first time, pull both my front pockets out, showing that they don’t have any money, hoping that he would finally take pity on me and leave.

The tea is finished, and so is the cigarette. The auto-wala sits on his seat as before. The dark man stares at me as before. The cars rush by me as before. I get up, with some effort, planning to take the rickshaw.

But as if in a dream, a real dream this time, as soon as I rise to my feet, the dark man and the auto rickshaw leave, almost together, as if this was a joke they had planned on me beforehand.

The tea is finished, and so is the cigarette. The work is not done. The auto rickshaw has left, and so has the dark man. I am tired, and I now have to walk to the next red light almost a kilometre away, just to get a ride.

Have you ever felt that the whole world is against you in some dark, unbelievable conspiracy? I have.

Madman

The madman sits beneath a tree, from morning nine to evening five. The tree provides him relief from the sun overhead during the day, perhaps the only comfort he has decided to bestow upon himself.

He is always dressed in a grey full-sleeve shirt and white trousers, colours of both being judge-able only through close examination. He looks young, hair all black, skin unwrinkled, almost like a boy in his teens. His skin is jet-black, so much so that no one can tell where the forehead ends and the hair on the head starts. His eyes are small and weird, as if he was suffering from permanent eye-flu. The pupil isn’t even visible; all one can see is a small, dirty white in a forest of black.

He sits cross-legged, carrying a string of beads in his right hand, which he keeps turning incessantly. His left hand is free, resting on his thigh. He doesn’t sit still under the tree; he shakes, twists and turns, jolting all parts of his body vigorously, like a man delirious with fever. He mutters things under his breath, loud enough so that you can hear the sound, low enough that you cannot make them out.

In between this act of pure, crystalline madness, he stops. Suddenly. As if he was in a game and someone had just said FREEZE. He then gets to his feet, moves a little away from the tree, looks up at the skies, smiles – first to himself and then to the intrigued strangers around him, and gets back to work.

He is a madman. His work is madness.

Patiya Ma

When my mother was a kid, there was a maid who used to live with her at my grandparents’ place. She did the cleaning and washing for the house, and also looked after the children when my grandparents were away. She stayed with my family for about ten years, returning to her village home when my mother moved out after her marriage.

Everyone called her Patiya Ma. I don’t really know what her real name was, and what Patiya means, if anything.

Anyway, some years ago, on a visit to our village, my mother and I went to meet Patiya Ma at her place. Patiya Ma now lived alone, her children having deserted her with all the money after her husband’s death. She had a house, but it hardly could have been called so. It was a kachcha makaan, with a tin roof placed on top to prevent sunlight from coming in. She herself showed no sign of well-being, old, wrinkled and thin.

All I remember of Patiya Ma from the brief meeting is she squatting on the ground, hands joined together, wearing a worried expression on her face. She said she wanted to die, and when my mother asked her why, her reply with a faint, twisted smile was “Jiyab ta ki ki nai dekhab”, which translates roughly as “If I live, god knows what more I’m destined to see”.

She repeated this line after almost every thing she talked about – her family, her health, her shortage of cash.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

But why am I writing about it? What’s the point?

It’s just that for the last few days, when I’ve been having all kinds of examination papers dished out at me, when I’m feeling utterly helpless trying to cope up with it, when the world seems to leave no chance to annoy, trounce and demoralise me, I feel suddenly reminded of Patiya Ma and her favourite words.

Jiyab ta ki ki nayi dekhab.

Another Dark Man

Gurgaon Railway Station. I have just got off my train from Ahmedabad. As I keep the luggage on the back seat of my car parked just outside, I feel my throat dry. I walk over to the market opposite to the station to get a bottle of mineral water.

The scene here deserves special mention. This is old Gurgaon, not the sort of place you associate with the name, poles apart from its savvy incarnation. There are no malls here, no six-lane highways, no high-rise apartments.

Instead, there are narrow and dusty roads, a bunch of innumerable estate agencies and liquor shops, cows and pigs. For all you know, this could have been your local village bazaar. There is also the sun right above, putting on the heat. Everyone around looks busy with himself, typical mid-day time market scene.

Amidst all this, on the narrow road divider, there lies a grey-white cement sack, and a man. The man is dark, and very thin. He is wearing a white shirt and a dark blue lungi. He lies there in a very peculiar position, as if he had first dropped down on his knees and then, had suddenly dived head down into the sack. His face is buried deep into the cement, the sides covered by his hands which seem to be holding the hair above his ears.

For some reason, he looks annoyed, angry. He looks annoyed with his world, like a child would be with his mother if denied a bar of chocolate. Something about his demeanour suggests that he is determined, very sure about the fact that unless his world comes up to him personally, gives him his bar of chocolate, and apologises, he won’t move an inch. He’ll stay right there all day, with his head buried in that sack, like an angry, spoilt child.

The world, meanwhile, gives a yawn. No one takes notice of the man. The sun above shines its November shine.

Girl at Andheri

She stood at the side of the road outside the Andheri railway station. I, with my cousin, had just got down from the auto to catch a local to Bombay Central.

She wore a short-sleeved top and a pant, the colours of each being hard to guess. They might have been white originally, maybe light pink or maybe even blue. All they looked to me now in the limited visibility the street lights provided was dirty brown, at some places dark and at some places light, in patches all over the cloth. Her hair looked brown too, but the yellow light above gave it a somewhat orangish touch. Her face was beautiful - innocence written all over. From her two eyes came out two thick drops of water, both heading down but vanishing before they reached her mouth. On the face still were the dried remains of many such drops her eyes had shed during the day. And of course, she had nothing beneath her feet.

She was thin and small. Not more than 7-8 years old – I’d have thought.

She held her hand out shyly. She was asking me for money.

Kudo Thakur

His name was Kudo Thakur. A barber by caste, he had been so all his life. From age 15 to age 70. In his own words - “From when my hands learnt the trade to the time when the same hands started shaking when I picked up the scissors.”

But he was a very old man now. He said he thought he was something like 80, but he looked more like 120 to me. Most of his teeth were gone. And it seemed that the ones which were still there were so only out of goodwill and respect for the man. All of them jutted out, irrespective of whether he was smiling or frowning. All that was left of the face were those sagging wrinkles. If there was a competition for the World’s Most Wrinkled Man, Kudo Thakur would have bagged the first prize for sure. The hands and legs were as thin as thin can be, you could easily circle his legs with your palm, and make your thumb and index finger meet, like they do with their hands at the pillar near Qutab Minar.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t bald. Not by a long way. Specks of white on his head shone in the sun and I think I even spotted some which were still black. This for a man who had almost lived the entire last century ! He carried a stick with him, a piece of wood really, pieces peeling off the surface all over. I couldn’t help noticing that his stick was as thick as his two legs, so that if you saw his silhouette, you might just be deceived into thinking that he had three of them, three legs or three sticks to stand on.

Everyday, while I was there in the village, he would come early morning and evening, and sit there on the bench in the veranda, gazing at everything around him. I found his stare somewhat uncomfortable at times, his head always positioned slightly forward, aggressively, as if he was a teacher, asking you why the homework for the weekend wasn’t complete. He had a constant expression on his face, what I would regard now as a cross between a jovial smile and a disgusted frown. I remember thinking to myself that if Kudo Thakur had to laugh or cry at something, the expression on his face would remain exactly the same. One face for all emotions. One expression to express all expressions.

“I have shaved your Nanaji’s head too, once, when he was even younger than you are”, he told me one day. I gave him an as-if-I-believe-you look. For me, small that I was, the image of Kudo Thakur shaving my Nanaji’s head, with a pair of scissors in his hand and the mirror in front, was not that easy to imagine. He was the oldest man in the village, one person who had watched everyone else grow and many perish before him. He was conscious of this fact, he seemed proud of it.

I took his presence in the village home as granted. So when, a few years back, I hadn’t seen him since I had arrived in the village, I asked my grandfather where he was.

He was dead. No one knows whether he completed the century, or just failed to do so by a year or two. Even Kudo Thakur himself wouldn’t have known, I imagine.

Dark Man

I climb up the stairs and step into the medical store. Its name is 98.4 degrees, one of the many such private outlets that have risen around Delhi in the last few years. The tagline, just below the company logo of a hand holding a flame, says Your Chemists For Life.

I walk to the counter. There are two men, one sitting on a stool and the other standing up, both in white coats, as if they were doctors at a hospital (Lets call them White Coat 1 and White Coat 2 respectively, for convenience). White Coat 2 takes the prescription from my hand, studies it briefly and then goes over to the racks at the corner of the room.

Meanwhile, a little, dark man, (And we shall call him Dark Man) in a white shirt and navy blue trousers enters through the glass door. He then pauses, gives everyone present a glance, looking conscious of the fact that everyone’s eyes are on him too. Dark Man is short in height; he looks ragged, sweat dripping from his forehead, visible on his eyebrows. His overall demeanour doesn’t betray the first impression that he is at maximum, only a peon or chapraasi. He walks quietly towards the two White Coats, taking position alongside me. After pausing again for a second or two, he takes a piece of white paper out of his breast pocket and murmurs something to White Coat 1. He hardly seems to take notice, not even looking up from his register, in which he seems to be making some sort of entry. Dark Man doesn’t look hurt, gives me a slightly embarrassed glance and stares back at White Coat 1, still holding the piece of paper.

White Coat 2 now comes back with what I asked for. He shows them to White Coat 1, who then looks at them and proceeds to make the receipt. White Coat 2 then puts the two strips of medicine into a white envelope and hands it over to me. My turn over, I expect him now to listen to what Dark Man wants. He doesn’t and Dark Man, still as courteous as he was initially, murmurs something again.

Just then, a tall, burly man (Let’s call him exactly that, the Tall Burly Man) enters through the door. Nonchalantly, he walks over to the counter and hands over the doctor’s prescription to White Coat 2. As with me, White Coat 2 gives him an affirmative nod and leaves to get the medicine.

White Coat 1 finally has everything ready for me. He gives me the receipt, I say “Thank You” and turn towards the door.

As I’m about to get into the car, I can’t stop myself from giving the shop one last look. I see Dark Man standing there, leaning over the table, still looking humbly at White Coat 1 the way he was earlier. Tall Burly Man, meanwhile, gets his receipt made.