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I am very unhappy. Unhappy, and sad. Why me, almost everybody is unhappy and sad. Perhaps unhappy and sad more or less mean the same, but unless I use both repeatedly, you will not get a fair idea about my mental condition. In fact, apart from being unhappy and sad, I am angry. Very angry. And so is everybody else.

And why should I not be angry? What does this Dhoni fellow think of himself? I mean, is this his father’s rule (baap ka raaj) that he will include just anybody in the team and not include the ones I prefer? I mean, here the world was crying hoarse that a particular off spinner must be included in the India side, but Dhoni, the adamant fellow that he is, persisted with only a single off spinner. If you can have one off spinner, why not as well have two of them? Don’t one and one make eleven (ek aur ek gyarah)? In his simple high headedness Dhoni included a particular fast bowler. Why? Why could he not have opted for the other guy who not only bowls, but dances well, and picks up fights apart from wickets? And then Dhoni has the cheek to comment about poor fielding. What is the point in making a comment? You are the captain, not the commentator! You should have taught the fielders how to field, rather than complaining, Dhoniji. But what will he do? Money has gone to his mind - these advertisements shadvertisements and all.

Now see the result! India lost. Shameless fellows. Why do you play the game if you are going to lose? In my childhood, whenever I was on the brink of losing, I used to topple the carrom board, throw the chess pieces, and tear off the playing cards. I never lost a game. Never. My first condition before I agreed to participate in any game was that I could not be defeated. There are so many sports lovers like me who now sit on their sofa sets with broken hearts and shattered dreams. See, how happily we used to jump and raise hands whenever the camera zoomed on us in the stadium! You could not but admire the fighting spirit with which we jostled and occupied the entire frame, till the camera moved away.

All our happiness stands punctured now. I wish the guy could listen. But then, no one listens to me. Going to the office and coming back and sitting in front of the TV and having food. Had I desired, I would have become a really big sportsman. Even bigger than this Dhoni fellow. Or, I could have become a better singer than Sonu Nigam. Or a better actor than Shahrukh. But, proper studies were more important for me, not this nach gana and khelna kudna. So I studied, and got a job, and am working. But that does not mean that I cannot give these guys a run for their money. Ab bhi waqt hai Dhoni, sambhal ja! Baad mein mat kehna ki bataya nahin (Get your act in order while there is still time, Dhoni. Don’t complain later that I did not warn you.).

Give and Take

Author Khushwant Singh in a recently published column recounted his birthday celebration. He had turned 96, but that was beside the point. He painstakingly described the gains from the birthday celebration – two bottles of scotch and something else that I have forgotten.

He reminded me of a relative, a lady, a wife of a brigadier on the verge of retirement. The lady attended some function and had to give some gifts. She was happy on her return, showing us the gifts she received at the function. She even calculated the price of the bouquets handed over to her, and was happy to explain that the receipts overweighed the expenditure.

A friend had a habit of scrutinising the rear cover of the greeting cards he received, to figure out their price. Another one has a habit of visiting stores looking for items identical to those received as gifts, to ascertain their price. She says, the exercise is to ensure that she is not found wanting when it is her turn to gift an item to the particular person!

This is just fantastic! A gift, a token of love and delicate sentiments, associating with crude commercial considerations. What should one expect next? Parents expecting children to pay for their stay when they grow and earn?

My thinking about the great Sahir exaggerating in the following lines stands changed:

Jawani Bhatakti Hai Bezaar Ban Kar
Jawan Jism Sajte Hain Bazaar Ban Kar
Jahan Pyar Hota Hai Vyapar Ban Kar
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai!

Boisterous

Boisterous! I looked at them, and thought.

I was trying to enjoy my small meal of mushroom soup, salad, baked potato and fried chicken as they had entered the restaurant. The captain had showed them a table that was close to where I sat. Eager to occupy the closest chair, as only little girls can do, they had sat with a sense of victory and looked around. Only, they were no little girls. They were definitely on the wrong side of fifty. All four of them. If they had seen me, and they could not have missed me, they had taken no notice of me. They had slung their coats and bags over the chairs with urgency, cracked some joke, and laughed. Midway, someone among them had passed a comment, resulting in eruption of bigger laughter. And, before this fresh wave of laughter could die down, another storm of laugher had risen from the aged throats. Shaking all over, they were controlling themselves with difficulty, wiping tears from their cheeks and continuing to laugh like mad.

I munched. Looked at the wall in front. And then my eyes drifted towards them. I could not be accused of staring. After all, the world appeared to have ceased to exist for them. Only four of them existed. No one else mattered.

Their laughter subsided, and they looked at the menu in amusement. It appeared to be full of jokes. They read the entries aloud, and laughed. I looked at them carefully. Perhaps they were from the working class. Most probably, they were janitors. Their black skin was dull. Their hands were rough. They wore little, and cheap, jewellery. Their clothes were nothing extraordinary.

They passed the menu around. Only the best appeared to be acceptable to them. And they wanted to be doubly sure before ordering. The captain entered the scene again, explaining each entry in detail, while the ladies giggled and playfully slapped each-other.

The first course arrived. Colourful liquid in tall glasses, with straws of unique shapes. Each lady had offered a different drink. They looked at the drink in front of them, looked at other drinks on the table, looked around, and put their lips eagerly to the straw. Happiness oozed out of them as they drew their first, rather long, sip. Their eyes became brighter. Another sip, and some exclamation. A third sip, and the burst of laughter hit the ceiling. The talk became more animated. The decibel level rose further.

It was time to order the next course. They consulted the menu. This time, more on the right side, where the rates were printed. The tone assumed proportions of conspiratorial whisper. They agreed and disagreed. Bags were opened, wallets were retrieved, and cash was carefully counted. Some quick calculation followed, and there was agreement again. The next course was ordered.

My dinner was over. And what a fantastic dinner it had turned out to be! I had never seen a happier bunch of grown ups. I smiled, casting a last look at them. They did not bother to look at me. They were happy eating, talking, and joking. It did not matter to these women if they had a moustache, if their shoes were not shining, or if they reeked of poverty. It was their day, and they were relishing it to the full.

Boisterous? Who cares?

Two Sides of the Same Coin

When you walk out of an airport after flying continuously for more than fifteen hours; you do not exactly look forward to a bus that does not arrive at the appointed hour and promised place. Or, to a phone that fails to resuscitate. Or, to rapidly falling daylight. Or, to find other passengers finding definite means to travel, leaving you to run to every other bus and realise that it does not go to your destination.

All these occurred together as I walked out of Terminal 5 at the Chicago airport. I had been travelling for more than 39 hours! I had started from Bangalore at 1:22 PM on Saturday, to catch the 12:30 AM American Airlines flight departing from Delhi on Sunday. The intended flight got cancelled, and I was accommodated on a later flight to Delhi. At Delhi, the midnight flight got delayed by over twelve hours, and departed only in the afternoon the next day.

A typical day it was proving to be. It was already my birthday in India. It was going to be my birthday in USA in another few hours. A birthday to remember, for sure!

I stood next to the Omega bus sign, holding on to two bags and shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. The letter for the last bus which had already gone. The sign advised calling up a certain number. I had a cell phone. I punched the code, read with glee the message, “CODE ACCEPTED”, only to realise moments later that the phone failed to catch any signal. It could as well have been a toy. My watch read seven in the evening. The place was getting deserted. And, none of the buses went to Hyde Park, sorry!

I walked to the taxi stand. It would be about $50 to the Ramada by cab, informed the burly attendant. There goes one third of my daily allowance, I sighed, and signalled the taxi. It was a well maintained vehicle, and I was happy within the security of the automobile.

“You speak like an Indian”, remarked the driver. I told him that I not only spoke like an Indian, I was actually an Indian.

“Where are you coming from?”, came the next question. I replied that I had disembarked from a Delhi flight Delhi, had failed to get the bus, and so was travelling in the taxi.

It was about an hour long drive. The conversation had to continue. The driver informed that he hailed from Islamabad. He came to USA several years ago, initially drove a taxi in Alabama, and for the last four years was settled with family in Chicago.

“A very good place. There is no discrimination. Most of the people you find on the streets of Chicago are immigrants”, he informed. America began as a country of the immigrants, I thought, but did not say anything.

We talked about the Mahatma Gandhi Road in Chicago, places where one could get good Indian food, law and order, blah blah blah. The driver pointed towards Hancock towers on the skyline, McCormick Place, etc., etc., till we finally reached the hotel. The fare was $45, the tip rounded it off to $50, and thus walked I into the hotel at 8 in the evening.

Another day I walked to the taxi stand next to the hotel. The driver was an African. Not the overweight sort, not even the lean and mean types, but a rather frail looking man.

“Will you take me to the Hilton on South Michigan Avenue?”, I asked.

“Yes, I will take you to the Hilton on South Michigan Avenue”, responded the driver.

A very detailed reply, almost like one from the suspense movies!

It was a fifteen minute drive to the Hilton. I paid the fare and gave the tip, and got off the taxi.

The taxi driver on the return trip was one Mr Patel from Mumbai. A postgraduate, he claimed to have faced rather rough weather in USA..

“America ki sarkar jhoothi hai. Sirf dikhawa karti hai. Isko sirf apna matlab nikalna aata hai (The Amercian government is not straight forward. It indulges in pretensions. It only knows how to drive its selfish motives)”, a rather disgruntled Mr Patel ejaculated.

Mr Patel claimed that he was cut for a much better job, but never got the opportunity. There was a lot of discrimination in USA, he said.

“Not only foreigners – this government forgets about its own people also”, informed Mr Patel.

He went off recounting an experience.

It was a lean day. A beggar signalled Mr Patel’s taxi. Obviously, there was no possibility of the beggar being able to pay for the trip. However, it was a lean day. Mr Patel stopped the taxi. The beggar claimed that he was a war veteran, who had to go to a certain office to collect his pension cheque. He assured Mr Patel that the cheque would be encashed within five minutes, and he would have about $1200 to burn. Mr Patel, took a chance, and found the claim to be true. The taxi fare came to $40, but the war veteran paid $100, $60 being the tip! The rest of the money would go on clothes, shoes, party and prostitutes, the war veteran informed. By the end of the month, he would again return to the state of being a beggar!

“Why can’t this government take care of people who fought for it?”, wondered Mr Patel.

Well, if one is bent upon ruining oneself, what can the government do, I thought and got down.

As I walked rather lost on State Street in Chicago one day, confident that bus number 6 would never arrive, I hunted for a taxi. Here he was, with a beard but no moustache, mumbling his prayers. I gave him address, and we started. He was from Pakistan. Karachi, to be precise.

“Zindagi tough hai, lekin Pakistan se to bahut behtar hai (life here is tough, but is much better than that in Pakistan)”, he claimed.

I talked about the repeated failure of Zamhuriyat (democracy). He agreed. I talked about the famous Mr 10% of Pakistan. He said Mr 10% had now become almost Mr 100%. We both agreed that Mia Musharraff was much better than the present rulers. He felt that India was much much better. I too felt the same.

Surprisingly, I never felt any hatred towards any of the Pakistani drivers. No feeling of discomfort, either. They were as human as I was. Two sides of the same coin. I actually felt more comfortable with them than I did with the African drivers!

Lovers of Doom

Our school, sometimes, held unusual assemblies. Such assemblies were called abruptly; usually during the mid of a period. Students used to throw their books in happiness and run to the assembly area to listen to the principal. For, such assemblies were held to announce the demise of some important person and to declare the closure of the school for the rest of the day after observance of silence for two minutes in the memory of the departed soul. The delight at the sudden revelation that one could go back home early and get rid of the boring lectures was too great to be suppressed. Students giggled with happiness while observing the silence; ending the ritual with a dash to the class room to fetch their bags and run towards home.

That happened when I was a child. Death those days bore hardly any significance other than being a harbinger of the welcome news of the sudden termination of the misery of being in the school, albeit only for part of a day.

Matured people are expected to react differently to death. Or, to any failure, for that matter. But we don’t. We rejoice at the failure of others. We take pride in predicting failures. “Take my word -- India will never win this tournament!”, is an oft heard declaration. When a rocket launched by India fails, the ‘Mr Know It Alls’ are fast to comment, “What else did you expect from India?” Near misses of aeroplanes over the Indian sky are reported with great enthusiasm, the agency never forgetting to add how many people would have died in case the collision had not been averted.

Today’s newspaper carries the picture of a young girl sentenced to life imprisonment. Just behind the girl walks a happy man, eager to have his face captured in the frame. We are happy when others fail or perish. We are very reluctant to acknowledge the success of others. For example, the same newspaper which never fails to report incidents of murder and rape, never reported the extraordinary achievement of Dr Tathagat Avatar Tulsi.

Tulsi did his high school at 9, BSc at 10, and MSc at 12. Jealously raised its ugly head, and Tulsi was accused on an international forum of memorising heavy sounding scientific terms and vomiting them out without understanding a single word. The boy went into a shell temporarily. In 2003, the prestigious Time magazine named him among the world's seven most gifted youngsters. Tulsi, when 21, completed his doctorate in Quantum Computing from the Indian Institute of Science. He turned down offers from Waterloo University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER), Bhopal, to become the youngest faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology at Powai in Mumbai at the age of 22. He is set to join as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics from next week.

The story of Tulsi did not appear on the front page. Not on the back page. Nowhere. News of Tulsi does not sell. News of death and failure sells.

Are we the lovers of doom only?

The Mixed Mandate

About two hundred persons perished in the rail sabotage yesterday at West Midnapore. Earlier this month, several innocents died in violence at Dantewada. Last month 75 CRPF men succumbed to an attack in the same region. The government admits its inability to do much because of the “mixed mandate”.
One wonders if one would ever have a stronger mandate to take effective action. The government comprises of representatives who win elections on the basis of votes supposedly cast by citizens under their free will. Several people don’t exercise their franchise. Those, who do, may not always act under the so called “free will”. Money power, muscle power, caste considerations, peer pressure, and several other factors influence the “will” of the voters. Candidates spend a fortune and toil hard before elections. If the purpose were only to serve people, it could be achieved more effectively and without bearing so many hardships. The purpose of getting elected is evidently entirely different. The rewards of the office are so attractive, that people try to get elected every time the elections are held.
Under such circumstances, how can elected representatives speak against their own electorate? And why should they allow anyone to take action against their electorate? Doing that would mean bidding a permanent goodbye to their goldmine. So, whether it is a ‘khap’ or a ‘dalit’ or a ‘marathi manus’ or a ‘maoist’ cause, the policy makers of our nation continue to wag their tails, bowing before selfish sectarian interests, and making lame excuses before the rest.
The common man is accused of inertness. It is said that one gets the government one deserves. The reality is different. Common man is so occupied to make both ends meet, arrange education for children, run around doctors, and stand in different queues, that he cannot even dream of contesting an election. All that he dreams of is about leading a peaceful life. Life, that includes happy reunions with relatives and friends. Life that involves getting down peacefully from a bus or a second class train compartment, and hugging the dear ones waiting to receive him.
Unfortunately, all that the dear ones receive today are severed body parts, coffins, and empty promises. But they should not complain. They should understand that the mandate before the government is mixed. And wait for their turn to die in a similar fashion.

We Don’t Care Two Hoots

A man joined a Mahatma Gandhi organisation. One day Mahatma Gandhi visited the organisation and the man found himself standing face to face with Bapu. Mahatma Gandhi was a world famous personality. This man was just an ordinary person. Nervous, he tried to introduce himself. Gandhi patted his shoulder and said with warmth, “Yes, I know you. You are such-and-such person’s son!”

The man stood stunned. It was true that he, along with his father, had met Mahatma Gandhi earlier; but that happened only once, and that too years ago. It was remarkable that Gandhi not only recognised the man even after the lapse of so many years, but also remembered his father’s name.

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore once saw two children walking with their hands on each-other’s shoulder. He found it overwhelming, and tears started flowing from his eyes.

An interpreter sat beside Mrs Indira Gandhi during a long discussion. As the discussion was over and everybody started departing, Mrs Gandhi turned and said, “The interpreter did not have anything to eat. Please ensure that she is served well.”

Mohammed Rafi used to thank every accompanist after a recording, while most other singers just walked out in a hurry to catch their next recording.

A young lady employee stood alone at night in front of the Tata Centre in Mumbai. She was waiting for her husband. To her amazement, she found JRD Tata walk up to her. JRD gave her company till her husband arrived. He did not want the lady to stand alone in the night.

These people were perhaps more busy than we are. They perhaps had many more important issues to tackle than we have. Time was perhaps more in short supply for them than it is for us. Yet, they behaved far better than an average person does.

What makes us ignore the sentiments of others? Why is it a matter of pride for us to snub those who have less money, yield less power, or are physically less attractive? Why does a minister not think twice before ordering his bodyguards to open fire on citizens trying to air their grievance? Why does a boss fail to notice that his subordinate has wished him? Why does a man find nothing wrong to call his younger siblings or wife names?

The situation changes dramatically the moment the so-far-weakling acquires a position of power. Voice becomes laced with honey. Nothing but respect oozes out of the body language. An ear-to-ear smile is flashed at the slightest opportunity. People who were nasty lose count of your good qualities.

Man, how can you change so much? Neither your hatred, nor your love is true. You don’t care two hoots for anyone! I never forget these lines from a decades old Sahir nazm:

Har Ik Jism Ghayal, Har Ik Rooh Pyasi,
Nigahon Mein Uljhan, Dilon Mein Udasi,
Yeh Duniya Hai? Ya Alam-e-badhawasi?

Jahan Ik Khilona Hai Insan Ki Hasti,
Yeh Basti Hai Murdaparaston Ki Basti,
Yahan Par Ke Jeevan Se Hai Maut Sasti!

Jawani Bhatakti Hain Badkar Ban Kar,
Jawan Jism Sajte Hain Bazar Ban Kar,
Yahan Pyar Hota Hai Vyapar Ban Kar!

Yeh Duniya Jahan Admi Kuchh Nahin Hai,
Wafa Kuchh Nahin, Dosti Kuchh Nahin Hai,
Yahan Pyar Ki Kadra Hi Kuchh Nahin Hai!