Two years, lifetime, everything

Dear Juja

You know you died exactly two years back. I was not there but I knew. I had to go someplace and I knew when I would come back, you would nt be there.

Ten days before you died, you traveled on a train, your spirit vetoing your body, and I know the big-guy did it such that we could meet. These are exactly the kind of things that make you “believe”.

Nothing had changed. When you greeted me after long. It was just like it always is. In your eyes. I did not notice you could n’t move. I just knew we were saying “hello, I am so glad you are here.”. Then I did notice you could nt move. Mum was helping you out and you were looking pained at troubling her. Not pained, because you were in excruciating pain. But in pain because you thought you were troubling Ma for things you would do on your own otherwise. Mama still says she will owe you always.

And me? When I am alone, any long memory of you makes me very sad and quiet. The first two months after you were gone, I thought, I was, infact, not able to cope. I saw you in our regular haunts, by the grass, brushing past the bedspreads. I was hallucinating you were there. I did not know these things happened. My mind had surrendered to the wrenching pain in my gut. And that pain stayed. The deepest kind of pain, from the gut, and the one can make you cry so much you choke. Or make everything implode inside you, churn up your stomach and chest and intestines.

I did choke myself crying the day I heard you died. I used both hands to hold my stomach in, and put my back to the wall. And cried. Breathless and distraught, I felt I was exhausted. I kept telling myself you went away without eating. And that someone should give you something to eat up there. My head was spinning, my eyes felt cold and I just kept saying that. I held an old photograph of you, crushing it and extricating tears from the deepest reaches of my being. I did not know I could feel so much pointed pain. I did not know I loved you that much. These are exactly the kind of things that make you “believe.”

You were a dog. And somehow, I never noticed that. Besides being every bit the dog you were, you were extra sensational. You bit me more than you bit anyone else. No one was growled at more by you. And so many times, you stopped mid-bite. I don’t know if you guys could do that. But you did.

You loved everyone I loved, even if they took me away from you. You mildly snarled registering protest. And that was the last you would say on the subject. You did service to dignity.

When I was ill and cranky, you stood watch over me. You barked out to mom if you sensed I was uncomfortable. I could barely talk that one time. And I could not believe that you managed to fetch Mama. To this day, I wonder if I did tell you anything?

You so did not like Ma talking to me over you. Yet it was you who waited late into the evening for me to come back home. You waited upright and awake.

You stole things from my dresser. You left major teeth marks on them. You did not care that you were destroying property. You knew the exact hour of the day where you could come and bludgeon me with your head to take you out for a walk. Going out for a walk with you was like heaven hamburger. It was like removing the words agenda, purpose, objective, end from my life. It was like being in the doldrums, for a short while, by design.

If I raised my voice, it would ruffle you. I would at least tell you I need to be loud here. Somehow you were never convinced about there existing a sound basis for anyone screaming. You were just fretting when I was screaming. No explaining would do. Dogs don’t like their people screaming. Worry, anger, angst, grumpiness you could always handle. No screaming, we are dogs please.

You are so cool you could have knocked me down with a feather so many times. Your thank you was a tricky set of actions. Dig your nose into not-too-hard a surface and make sniff sounds. Not really sniff, but make the sniff sound. I remember that like my favorite teacher in kindergarten.

I thought I could never go through the gut-pulverizing, eye-freezing, insides-detonating experience again in my life, if I could help it. I could not make friends with a dog and see him/her die. Chances are if I keep a dog again, he/she would beat me to it again. My slam book entry under “greatest regret” had become “not being around when my dog died when I could.”

I know if I could help it, I would never go through that again. But I can’t help it. I erased my greatest regret slam book entry. There are no regrets. Your death is but small in the big, large, milky-way kind of time we had. It is but so small. You endured and guess what, I did too. In the weighing scale of things you can’t measure, you are an out and out 100 pound gorilla.

I will keep another dog. Goodbyes are not the end to anything. Today I know what I would give up if I was scared of goodbyes. I also know the more of you there are, the more fun we will have when I close my accounts here and join you somewhere at your rainbow bridge apartment.

Now all I need to do is live a life worthy of being called a dog’s life.

[Dog]
[Animal]
[Friendship]

Things I have lost and other things I have lost while doing nothing important

(Working title: Hindustan Leavers)

Spoiler warning: Not a self-help wise or spiritual growth-wise rich commentary, despite the whole “here come another 30 year old’s learnings on life” sound of it.

Office vacant
If there is a community on heaven and earth alike that evangelizes specializations, it must be the Greek / Roman Gods. There are Gods / Goddesses for the offices of corn, alcohol, wedding bliss, battleships, paper cuts, golden apples, shorter queues and shrubs. The affable pub in Harry Potter's first adventure, the three-headed cherub watching Hogwarts descent is almost a Greek God (love the sound of that). He was called Fluffy aptly, but, he borrows his stunning head-topography from his other world cousin who is at this present time guarding hell-gates. A fully itemized listing of these Gods/Goddesses/ other executives could run into a book. In fact, it is a book. Several books. But an indexed search could not get me the God/ Goddess/ Keeper of what I was looking for.

The God of Lost Things. I present myself for the offices of the earthly messenger of this said God/ Goddess. I can lose things everywhere. I have left symbolic bread-crumbs everywhere to demonstrate "I was here." Indian Railways, School libraries, Barista, Banks, Desk, Someone else's Desk, Someone else’s bathroom, Water Coolers, Taxis, Airports and what else is there. Losing is my thing.

I should take a bow. Break a leg.

Classic Seeta and Geeta

Walk into delicatessen with three pigs, figuratively. Walk out with three gips, figuratively. The point is you are short three figurative pigs. I stepped into above delicatessen with red bag. Red bag has Dr Spock book (the baby-poop-is-not-all-bad guy) and funny book on baby bloopers and some Calvin & Hobbes merchandize. Former two items were wrapped as gift items for a person. Walk out the other door and away with Red bag. Somehow reach destination (that much wits Iooks like I had). On a random hunch, check Bag. Bag has, ok, no kidding, "Spanish to English" dictionary. Red bag gets swapped, someone has his / her next baby shower gift ready and I think I got the worst deal of all. Seeing as how I already had a cheap "Learn Spanish in a day" book rotting with my other Neural Network books. And a parallel track is explaining to the giftee how this has come to pass. "Sorry I don't know how this happened. I need to be left alone for some time." And what about that other guy? He thinks someone actually stole his Spanglish dictionary. At least that’s worth some laughs.

No bank left behind

I have four bank accounts (and any maths whiz will tell me that is not a proxy measure of current wealth holdings). Right now, I have registered "Lost Password" requests with four of these banks. These passwords are safely encoded and mummified somewhere. No one will find them. I am probably staring at them now and don't know these are my passwords. What else can explain these 16 post-its at my desk? These are my passwords.

River does not run dry

There is no discrimination based on value. I have lost gold, money, wallets, phones, watches, blankets and debit cards. Have dropped

1. Gold jewels in office break-outs
2. Mobile phones in window displays of malls
3. Debit card, and hold the socks, in the ATM machine
4. Handbags in McDonalds. The whole handbag, the whole nine yards. Walk in with it. Walk out without it. (the 3 Pigs situation, minus the Spanish dictionary)
5. The old favorite is back. Mobile phones in gas cylinder units of longish cars.
6. A blanket, a shawl, a bed sheet, a woolen scarf (dhobi-list special) on the upper berth of an AC 3 tier coach of North Western Indian Railways
7. All kinds of food everywhere
8. All kinds of papers/ documents/ ID cards/ passports everywhere
9. Chargers, cables, wires, cords at the last place I used them. So everywhere. And sometimes I lose it in the same place twice.

Game, set, match, championship.

How do I fix this?
This last month I lost my mobile phone (this was the gas cylinder event). I got it back. That is the subject of another dramedy. In the most corny, Bollywood style possible, I retrieved it. For a day during my rescue-phone project I was (and the joke is on me, not these stalwarts)

1. Nirupa Roy (sickening appeal to conscience with excessive grovelling)
2. Pran (unbelievably hammy threats)
3. Prem Chopra (rambling threats with little meaning, focus on dialogue delivery)
4. AK Hangal (really tragic appeal to conscience with excessive grovelling)
5. A Sony Ericsson representative sending death threats to phone thieves

But most of these stories never have this providential LOST&FOUND conclusion. It’s LOST&….wait up, MORE WILL BE LOST.

My mom asks me to make a mental note every time I leave point A for point B to check if I got everything on me (this does not cover losing online passwords for obvious reasons). If my mental note-taking was so good, I would never be so mental about these things in the first place. It is also ironic coming from her because she is down some 19 tooth-brushes. Every year when we went home for vacations, she would leave her toothbrush behind. People would prophesy that Mom will leave her toothbrush behind, and ba-bing, she would.

My personal opinion on all the jokes / humor targeted at my losing things is that those are in extremely bad taste. They are not kind to people with Alzheimer’s and there are definitely not candy floss for me! But that’s just me. Here is one serious lunacy claim I have, and of course, I don’t want people laughing about it.

On the other hand, however – it’s not possible to say this with a straight face – “I am witlessly losing my things everywhere, sometimes same thing twice. I know I am cursed. But you are cruel to needle my misery with cruel jokes.” I tried but I can’t say this with a straight face.

You ask so have I lost my mind?
COULD YOU PLEASE, PLEASE NOT USE THAT WORD, A LITTLE SYMPATHY PLEASE?

Update Oct 30, 2007: Lost phone charger, ID badge (within a day of each other, dont let my pace disappoint anyone)

Mamma Mia, growing up in the 80s

When I think back of growing up in the 80s, oh it feels nice. It was threshold, cross-over and iconoclastic. There are few things that can match growing up in the 80s.

What a zing. Thanks to the 80s, the “child within” is not only alive and kicking, but sometimes neatly elbows out the adult outside. When the culture of the 80s hits you, you will always find a whole ten years to call your own. Your own piece o' real estate on the date line.

Movies and TV

We got the color TVs. I remember we got our first color TV for the FIFA world cup. I can imagine others got theirs for similar motivations - Asiad, Indira Gandhi, Nafisa Ali in "La-la-la" Liril. Who knows? We upgraded from a black and white box that had a dial-like sailor's thing for controls and I think (am not sure) had a wooden shutter? We rented VCRs and video cassettes to watch watershed movies of the year. Probably "starring" Mithun and Padmini Kohlapure. Till Mr India came and restored our faith. My dad took me to watch "Nagina" in the theatres and Sridevi was hot property. Nagina told the riveting tale of a snake-woman (both snake and woman but not at the same time) trapped by a snake charmer with a chronic tonsillitis problem. I watched that movie in Lucknow in one of the "noted" theatres at that time. Even with zero recollection, I can safely say it was either called Mayfair, Regal or Novelty. What other names were there?! Ya, Rivoli.

Back to the Future and the DeLorean. A failed car. A fantastic movie. Michael J Fox’s skateboard-ing and Christopher Lloyd’s every-thing. Its as clear as day. “Where we are going, we don’t need roads.”

TV had Chitrahaar first, and then Chitrahaar twice and then Chitrahaar-Chitrahaar-Rangoli. We complained about ads taking away song-time. And yet we watched those ads with blithe pleasure. We knew the days of old songs and new songs. I say this wistfully at a time when a collective conscience today just zombies through the million movie promos playing all day on TV.

Other white goods

Videocon’s semi-automatic washing machine. In true Henry Ford style, you could have it in any color you wanted, as long as it was green. It was semi-automatic. I can tell you what that means. Five times change water use bucket lift it wring clothes like crazy keep switching them between plastic depression A and B oh hell today its Mum’s washing day something’s gotta give. Old genie granted mom three wishes, one got taken by semi-automatic. She has a brand new one though. Twinkle in her eye.

Some of my friends had that ATARI video game, and it took them fifteen minutes to get to “All Systems Go”. Veritable “Houston we have a problem” waiting to happen. Wires, hitherto hangin’ loose, would rear heads from ugly corners behind the TV. Then be randomly put into little ports behind the TV till the color of the screen became blue/green/chik-chik-khirr. Depends on your blue screen of death. Then the Super Mario with its ping-pong ball sound effects. Whatever that guy did, he signed it off with a ping-pong sound from hell. Jump. Eat. Hop. Double hop. Ping. Pong. Ping. Pong. What’s the deal?

Print Media

They had magazines called Showtime, Stardust, Cine Blitz and Movie then (only Stardust exists these days perhaps in the same form?). To my credit, I only read those when going from place A to place B on train. And then, I memorized them – I did – I mugged them up. So I could terrorize my friends later on in life. It is not with false concern that they wonder how, oh how, I knew Kamal Sadanah's social security number.

I also read this youth magazine called Target. It had one page of funny cartoons by Ajit, among other things. Great stuff. Amar Chitra Katha and Indrajaal comics were delivered by Newspaper-Man (at great peril to life and limb, courtesy my dog) every week. My beats per minute go up when I see Amar Chitra Katha. I have never seen a new Indrajaal in stores; swimming images of Phantom, Diana, Bahadur, Bela, Kerry Drake, Mandrake, Narda call out. Someday, perhaps.

So what is a great value proposition?
Your newspaper man delivering comic books every Sunday. Crisp, ink-meets-paper smell of freshly baked comic. Wow.

Music

80s music, 80s music, 80s music. What can I say? We were there!!!! I heard Baltimora's Tarzan Boy and that sealed it. It was love at first aural. I must have been six. My brother would record 40 songs on a single cassette and we would listen to the whole reel over and over again. Some songs we could n't wait for the reel to get over, so we would rewind, listen raptly, rewind, listen raptly. You get the picture. My brother even had songs such as "Eat it" and "Girls just-a wanna have lunch", a foodie's take on these two infinitely popular songs back then in the Golden 80s. There was of course Karma Chameleon and Brother Louise. Both ripped off into Hindi songs, needless to say. 80s brought alive din-chak, din-chak, din-chak. Hallelujah Synthesizers. Everything was just so freakin "groovy". I will never have an identity crisis in my life, I got the 80s to groove to.

On a lonely rainy day, when there was just me and my radio. And to the beat of the music, I was generally being loopy. My belief is radio is to culture what 80s are to the radio. Extraordinarily, made for each other. At that very instant, the heavens bounty welded into this radio machine. It played "Take on me" by A-ha. I heard it after nearly 10 years on the radio. And what a subtext it had. It was vivid, but certain. In my mind, I choreographed my life's music video to the tune of "Take on me" that day.

Kitschy poetry – a tribute to the 1980s

The 80s to me - a ten-year combustion
Sizzling, sparking and scorching this chemical reaction
Inane lyrics, bad hair, We-are-the-world, WHAM
This was the magic age, the original Kazam
Electronic disco came, changed everything
Brings us back to the 80s zing
Back to the Future's Johnny B Goode
For the gang, all this well understood
The time that gave us David Bowie, Sixteen Candles and Faith, the song
Billy Idol and U2 and Nazia Hassan, it just cant go wrong
Living in the 80s legitimizes my bad poetry
I was listening to “Mickey” in 1983
We stand all in a row, may think apart
The roots unmistakable, 1980s in our heart

Way back in the 80s, people walked like Egyptians. Tough act to follow.

[80s]
[Back to the Future]

Not just funny, its stress

Reads the epitaph of one-who-saw-and-left:

“People at work can't understand why I'm leaving office life to be a carpenter. It's because it's not rocket science, I won't have to re-invent the wheel, I won't have to find a window of opportunity, and thank the Lord - I'll never have to touch base with anyone ever again.”

He who speaks jargon takes it very seriously. But perhaps business jargon is famous because everyone makes fun of it? In the perfect world, even those who speak it. It’s the business guys’ most famous export to the world of normal talk. Where words still meant something and people paid tax for gibberish-like output. Everyone feels a bit of abhorrence-induced humor towards business jargon. Everyone who? Scott Adams, his evangelists, break-aways from business-drone and born-again thinkers who have worked jargon their whole life and now it gives them gastric ulcer. That does sound like a convenient truth.

It is easy to make fun of jargon. All you have to do is smile / guffaw all day. Implying that jargon is being spoken every minute. However, business jargon is sheer stress to many human beings. Why else would Deloitte (an unlikely exponent from the world of management consulting - the very seat / Mecca/ Holy Grail of “business bull”) devise a software program called Bull Fighter which claims to “seek out and destroy" corporate double-speak and pointless jargon.

Some years back, former tech giant Marconi was given a Golden Bull award by the Plain English Campaign (I did not make this up) for a particularly opaque company announcement. It said: "The benefit of having dedicated subject matter experts who are able to evangelize the attributes and business imperatives of their products is starting to bear fruit." Pretty much every molecule in your body flipped over on hearing that. Mine did. Everytime someone uses subject-matter-expert on me, these molecules flip again, as if on cue.

There is just this thing about business jargon. How much business jargon leads the listener to react with, “why didn’t you just say so?”. This is not the spoofy adamism that characterizes how Scott Adams has taken the underpants off business jargon. This is regular, normal people using jargon in the workplace across levels, prompting mass reportage of “hey stop hitting me so hard!” Why speak in PowerPoint, when there is good old Swahili out there. Did I say Swahili? Are you in excruciating pain? Ok, then English.

The whole nine yards, still counting

I have heard these, so I don’t have to make them up. People who are sound in mental health suddenly turn rabid on unsuspecting co-workers. Like the sheriff shooting his citizens, right after the town’s annual community-service ceremony. Its important to give jargon a rap on its knuckles for complicating the most simple things in our life, starting with junior school mathematics.

The pointless - Can you divvy up the work?
Translates to - Can you divide the work amongst us? Divvy, really? Sounds like the seven dwarves, not? Grumpy, Dopey, Divvy, Plus-ee...

The evergreen – “Can we touch base on that later?”
Translates to - There are so many normal, legal ways of saying this that I should not even attempt to enumerate them. My personal reservation is that a friend of mine has completely ruined “touch base” for me by making some very profane references to it.

The high-end - This is high-end.
Translates to - What do you say about this that has not been said before? Gods of business gobbledygook - what is high-end? Is it the west-end of my foot ruler? Is it how high my dog would jump to bring home the bacon ;-)? Is it a pair of deuces in a game of poker? I find it exceedingly difficult to understand how anyone (or rather everyone) has used this to describe (just their) work. I also struggle to keep a straight face when I say it because I feel at least one member of the audience is calling me on “high-end” as I say it (God, I hope, I hope).

The really sad part is that they (always those guys :-)) may actually be right. The work, sure as rain, could actually be high-end. By invitation only. But when I hear the word “high-end”, I think it cannot be. I tune out thinking about strawberries in cream and Goa in November and free movie DVDs. MEGO. My eyes glaze over. MEGO is right up there in sexy internet jargon. And so much cooler than corporate jargon.

Now the heavy artillery: Full sentence jargon

The showstopper – “I need to have visibility into the project resource requirements before I commit something like that.” Or some version of this I think. It is spoken to paralyze the listener.

Whoever says this usually means – “so how strongly does my jaw line resemble God’s? Heck, I have no idea right now how many people and of what skill I will need. You need to let me work on this till December before I can tell you that. Or did everything stop making sense to you after Sunday?”

The meeting tingle or the meeting tingles or the meetings tingle

For some people, and oh yes, there are such people, office meetings are the fount of their existence. They rise, shine and explode in a sort of operatic culmination in meetings. In short, if they are bad outside, watch out for them inside. Entire paragraphs are expended where thirteen words would have sufficed. The release-r of obscene verbosity makes your heart ache for a conversation with the yellow vending machine.

• If there is no agenda to the meeting, be warned of hijack


• If there is miraculously an agenda to the meeting, be warned of hijack


• Practice being able to close your mouth quickly and not leave it agape. You need strong reflexes for this. You need to look involved and not unconscious.


• Whatever you do, don’t clap. Even if your feelings are “wow Daisy, you surpassed you!”


• “Meetings vocabulary” is like the air inside the last flight we took to Shangri-La. The air has not changed since someone clamped the sides together and carpeted the floor. You will hear a lilting Fibonacci series of the same 56 words - value, leverage, we-will-always, we-will-never, status, change, change management, resources, key, timeline, work plan, process, see-we-are-at-this-point (this point is usually a rhombus on a white board), the three cowboys called issues-constraints-bottlenecks, and their uptown cousins strategy-methodology-result-orientation and with-all-due-respect.

The ideas probably made sense in the head. But then someone zapped them into an unidentifiable mass of gooey, living, insane, fungal poppycock. Jargon brings down the best ideas and intentions because of an impossibly wrong combination (probably the least applicable) of words. By someone who is interminably wannabe but wont-ever-be.

However, in the interest of jargon (meaning we lose) is the fact that, well, everyone uses it. Ever since conversations went straight out of the window, and jargon vocabulary went from being inconsequential to critical, things changed.

When we speak sense, its not jargon. When its jargon, it just is.

Business bull, therefore, is not an animal. Alas. Otherwise we could tell it to heel and potty-train it, in the very least.

[Jargon]
[Scott Adams]

Maid about you

I have a maid about me. Two of them actually. I meet them everyday - they come visit me, do some stuff in my kitchen and my house - and then I think they leave. Simplicity itself.

Enter concept warfare of which I am now an experienced veteran. War has evolved from barbaric violence to avant-garde uber-decimation and so have I. And it’s not the US war hawks alone that bring the war-theatre to us. I play the “War lite” version everyday with my maids.

Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Everyday, as we go through the 35 Chambers of Shaolin (there is no particular brand of violence I am endorsing), we take our positions and simulate a war drama that could put Pentagon strategy to shame. Many may believe that to be an easy task. Rumsfeld is known to rely on PowerPoint presentations to draft short-term war strategies. Of course, there is no long-term war strategy at the Pentagon. But the world swims today in anti-US foreign policy press, but not many people speak of the nerve-wars enacting themselves in the ground, first and seventh floors of several urban households. Day by day. (Thanks Peter Tobey Parker, it would never have been the same without your lispy yet cute rendition of day-by-day)

I never used to be around maids that much. When I got married, my assessment of my home making ability was a low 1/10 with a lifetime target of 3/10. I expected that between me and my husband, we would make the perfect ten, with progressively abridged demands on my abilities. While we are on utopia, there are chances that I would have found me a house-help from an old nizam’s disintegrating post-colonial empire. She would make lip-smacking food, listen clearly the first time, and actually have memory! Utopia suggests that she could also show occasional flashes of judgment and decision-making. There is a thin line between utopia and a mad-hatter’s view of life. Maybe we just crossed that line.

Believe me, there is no such thing

A unicorn is a mythical creature. And in any case, it’s not made of liquid silver! So is a maid. I mean mythical not the silver part. A maid is anti-matter. A maid is inspiration for The Matrix. She and her sorority are instruments that we struggle against so that, one day, we will free our minds. We become self-effacing in the storm of maid-management. We humor ourselves, thinking of ourselves as lord-mistresses when all along it is “they” who make us do their will. We aspire to break free and walk away into the sunset. All in vain. The maids, pardon the anti-eloquence, put a suction pipe and suck out the last trace of vanity from us. Enervated, we fight an illusionary war. A quick divine-like x-ray cross section shows who does the whipping. Master, maid, all these are just semantics.


Ground zero – who’s turn?

The first maid I ever had stole dough from my refrigerator. No, wait, that makes sense. She did nt do just that. She sneaked the dough, made chappatis on my home tawa using my gas connection and packed herself a little picnic snack by the time she left home! She even carried it home in one of our kitchen containers. To deal with this transgression, my husband and I opted for a variant of civil disobedience that may not have been the most effective. We knew, she knew we knew, we knew she knew we knew and then the power balance shifted. She quickly maps us as confused city couples, brought up on an overdose of gentility. A parallel to scared mice would not be too far off the mark. Who has the indefatigability to accuse her of petty thievery? He who laughs in the face of death. We were not “he”. So the two of us tried to buy time.

“We are not 100% sure right?”

“Lets watch her for another three weeks and then after this mini-controlled experiment, one of us talks. We pick straws of course”

“I think she knows we know. She is going to see our humane handling of this thing and stop doing it” HA HA HA.

Finally, the most obvious thing happened. My husband and I fought over who was the weakling. Who had called “lets put off indefinitely” the maximum number of times? Who had shown the weakest knees? It was a close finish. That’s when I learnt the first lesson of the art of household war. Keep videotaping handy in the kitchen. That way you will save on the controlled experimentation.

Maintain eye contact………………………………………if you can, that is

I don’t know how this works. Almost every book on “how to manipulate your fellow human beings” has a section on “eye contact” and its various ramifications. When to, when not to, what it means, what it means not. You can tell so much from the way someone avoids your gaze. Here, I do the gaze avoiding. I think “eye contact” would be a later / advanced stage in the exercise I indulge in. When the cookie crumbles and when that fat is in the fire and when you got to face the music, then (having set the stage so) I am usually doing the lowly act of looking in the other direction. Hence, you see the slant towards civil disobedience. When I need to say, “You did not clean up good. There was a large black moving blob on my cooking dish.”, I say, while painstakingly avoiding gaze, “Did you see my cooking dish? There was perhaps, I don’t really know here, a little spot there. But I am not sure.”. A definite maybe.

And I usually say this when I am about 70% physically out of the kitchen. No prices for guessing at what moment I am 100% out of the kitchen.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

The last time I told my cook my own patented rajmah recipe, it was the 14th time I was telling her. I told her, “see, look here, I don’t think I like the idea of large rectangles of onion floating in this gravy. They should blend. B-L-E-N-D”. I see “loud and clear” emblazoned on her face. So I feel we connected.

The next time, they blended alright. In a rare form of carbon stuck inseparably, brittle-like to the inside of the cooking vessel. Then judgment day of course.

Me: How did this happen???
Diva: You told me
Me: I told you to imprint them on the kadhai??
Diva: You told me to blend them
Me: I told you to cook them and take your time doing it
Diva: Exactly

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh”

A couple of oft-repeated quick “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh” situations:

Ask-me-no-questions-and-I-will-tell-you-no-lies situation

Me: Do you remember I taught you to cook this?
Diva: Yes of course
Me: Sure, Diva?
Diva: Absitively

After 45 minutes

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh”

The Flash-Challenge mop situation

Me: This has not been mopped
Diva: Yes
Me: But the floor feels dry
Diva: It dried quick
Me: That quick, I was here all the time
Diva: What can I say, it dried quick
Me: You are lying, you mean she-devil. You are tricking me. What kind of a cuckoo case do you think I am. I secede (obvious dream sequence)

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh”

Ho, ho, deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome some day. The war cry sounds out everyday.

[Housemaid]
[Domestic Violence]


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The unbearable lightness of being my dog

I keep reading about these surveys, right. I generalize them as the “University of Middlesex” surveys or study reports. Last page of my newspaper. Today it reported about how women called Naomi Campbells find peace in sweeping garbage rooms. Stuff like men who wear grey trousers find better wives. Or chances are that bespectacled women are more productive than their male counterparts at the work place. Or children who listen to their mothers grow up with fewer social adjustment problems. You did need that study. A mix of the exotic and the pedestrian.

People who have dogs find themselves a best friend. Great survey talking point. I had two best dog friends. Today, I want to write about one of them. Juju. Short for Jujuska. Named after the first doggie in space who died, but went there before Laika (officially the first dog in space), nevertheless.

I have these dog beliefs which are no different from other dog lovers. I see beauty in their eyes and their tummies and their tails. I know that if I touch a paw, on a good, bad or completely trounce-y day, I will feel warmth. And redoubtably so. No cynic slash critic can break this - you can count on a dog to love his friend. The kind of love that’s beyond comprehension. For they give in bounty and don’t care what they get back. I am not like that - my life is a sometimes- happy, sometimes-sad tangle of many expectations - so I know what level of exulted greatness this is.

Its not the wag, the lick, the bullying paw techniques alone. When you grow up with your friend as a pup and take her to adult doghood, you change too. You just don’t realize it. I realize it sometimes. I was talking about my dog all the time to everyone. She did this, I miss her, she did what, I thought this. I asked my mum to exactly tell me one time “so what percentage of my talking time is spent talking about Juju?”.

This is for posterity’s sake. There have been times when I am feeling tired, weepy and alone (like we do every fourth day) and my dog just asks me, “what happened?”. Its like they know just the thing for a bad day. Its therapeutic. I have now read about four books (easy substitutes for racy reading not elsewhere specified) which speak of how men want to “fix problems” by various methodologies – admitting there is a problem, drawing parallels, leveling analogies and demonstrating sound logical thinking. Outside of some women practicing yogic meditation, all women hate this. And while this may sound like an unfair comparison between men and dogs, unfortunately, it is. My dog never hypothesized a root cause to a bad day, on any day. So many things could have happened to get you so low. All one wants is a coupon to a “hereby released” emotion. It has a lot to do with dogs having mastered the very elusive concept of selfless love. Two rare occurrences in one form. Selfless and love.

They talk to you. But the wavelengths are different. I hate to break this but doggy speak is not gibberish. Dogs spell words clearly, including the “r”s and “s”s. (After crossing six months, they say “how are you?” and not “howl aaal you today, baby?”. :-)

Doggie speak ranges from “Are you really not going to share the sausage with me????” to “I feel bad you feel bad.” to “its 3 pm, that’s the walk time, so what are you thinking?”. Doggie moves range from pawing your magazine, plunking a butt on your lap, and putting a cold schnoz to an exposed arm in anticipation of previously promised favours. Then of course there is the subject of talking eyes, which express emotions not currently vocabularized by the English language. Do a combination of angry, delighted, sulking, expectant in your eyes and you will, without a doubt, look cock-eyed. Not our canine brotherhood.

Does your dog care if you have a good, bad or any opinion about him/her? No. Does he/she think about things? You bet. They communicate without letting up a second of their waking time, it’s just that they don’t use human words. Their integrity is 100%, zero defect. And as I was reading what many great men (such as Lord Byron) think of their four-legged friends, I felt how beautifully dogs transform everyday living. Within seconds, agony becomes belief. For in their eyes, you see that you are not a bad person after all. Its as simple as that. You are the best you can be. And that quadruped looking you in the eye believes that more than you do. What a feeling.

Roy Orbison sings

Every time I hear this song, I cannot help being moved by it. Irrespective of context, situation, experiences or lack of them...a song for the hearts.

The summer sun looked down on our love long ago
But in my heart I feel the same old afterglow
A love so beautiful ....in every way
A love so beautiful
We let it slip away

We were too young to understand to ever know
That lovers drift apart and thats the way love goes
A love so beautiful
A love so sweet...A love so beautiful
A love for you and me

And when I think of you I fall in love again
A love so beautiful in every way
A love so beautiful
We let it slip away

A love so beautiful..in every way
A love so beautiful
We let it slip away

12% Aspiration

Everyone who tells me I don’t look like my mom deserves to be socked. Correction: I want to sock them. She has light eyes and all that, but I don’t think she is a looker or anything. I tell her that. You are ordinary, I am pretty. That’s a “ha ha” joke, if ever there was one.

I am more like one of two parents. And that would be dad. When he retired last year, he added one more prefix to his already crowded name co-ordinates….Retd Major General B K Mohanti. What a name for a gigantic teddy bear. Giant teddy bear is what my dad is….

His model and make has lifetime warranty but that kind of original equipment is out of production. I am saying that for my dad. Others would be saying that for theirs, maybe.

Dad hates most of the things I like. He has no idea who U2 are. He could not be bothered. He will walk away if I speak a sentence that goes like, “Bono blah blah”. Not deliberately, but that manner of noise / sound would have deflected off his physical form. But he will know what Nehru and Tito exchanged at a summer NAM summit. If its in the papers, including a tender floated by L&T for vegetable oil, he would know. He would know the coral reef crisis in Oz and he would also know SRK’s going rate for the latest wedding gig. I put that down as "need for knowledge" of which I got me a part, of course with fewer features. So "need for knowledge" in Dad got trimmed down to "need for trivia" in his daughter, thats me.

I don’t wonder why Dad and I get along. Because for most part of my life, we did nt really need to. He has a short temper and I was somehow always on the wrong side of the line of control. Or the fear that I was had me trying harder to keep that low profile. Its funny but only when I went to college did Dad and I really become friends. It was not that we did not care before. I think there is a time in our lives when we are born-again strangers and then the only way to go is to become friends. We always see that happening with old friends.

Mission control: Dad is on the line
Trademark Dad-me conversation

(includes completely disjoint flow and dischordant questions rolled into a beautiful je ne sais quoi)

Dad: L
Me: Hey, how are you?
Dad: ok, hey I checked this website today
Me: Cool, which one?
Dad: But you know it gave me this win-init error…
Me (thinking) win-it or win in it??
Me: Oh ok….so does everything else work?
Dad: No just that win-init error..what do I do..it says to open this file or some registry
Me (not thinking, talking): I cant tell you what it is from all the way here
Dad: Ok I will call the UPS guy
Me (thinking): What the goose would he know?
Me: Yeah, great. You call him.
Dad: I made Chicken a la Qoof today
Me: You don’t mean Chicken a la Kiev do you?
Dad: Of course not! Its my recipe so its special. I call it Qoof.
Me (thinking): Dad, you will never be able to make the exact same dish even if you wanted to!

Me: Cool. Ha ha aha ah. (real laughter)
Dad: I went to meet Daffy uncle today
Me: Yeah.
Dad: His son, your cousin (he does not say this), is in town
Me: Yeah.
Contrary to popular belief, he is not fishing for some relative-meeting from my side here. He is just giving me information. Giant teddy bears dont do that. Innocent to the core.
Dad:Ok bye then
Me: Yeah, bye (he has hung up somewhere between “yeah” and “bye”)

Dad has a sensational sense of humour that finds manifestation in one very demonstrative form. He laughs through the punchlines always. Always always. He is laughing so hard, that for most part, people just join into the revelry not having a clue what Pedro said in the end. And so, when he starts telling a joke, I have to be very careful that I will hear the punchlines in installments. Insterspersed with quite a bit of laughs.

I read somewhere that leaders use humour to their advantage always. I observe my dad does that a lot. I got my “Pakistan” theory from him. He would scream at the army driver while the poor guy is indulged in the important business of driving. He does that all the time. That’s quintessentially him. So, when he says “Stop here Mangalram”, it means "listen you Mangalram, stop in the middle of the road, where you are, don’t even think of looking out for a clear patch". Invariably, this ends in Mangalram "getting it". And me or mom or “as the case may be” sitting with incredibly tense intestines. Like when they tighten up on you on an occasion of extreme worry or fear. That kind of tense. Then Dad will cool down and say “Mangalram, I asked for Delhi, did not ask you to park in Pakistan.” I always use “Pakistan” to imply great distances. It has that ethnic fun twist to it.

When he retired last year, I thought of how big a part of his life was now in past tense. The OG. The olive green uniform. Wearing which was a matter of unflinching pride. I have seen Dad in Rashtrapati Bhavan in his full uniform turn-out marching to Dr Kalam to receive his medal. I made a mental note that I have never been overwhelmed with such a vicarious sense of achievement and honour. I can relive those goosebumps anyday. I also think that if I could be 12% the human being he is, I could give myself an imaginary award in an imaginary ceremony and feel happy I have done him proud.

I have heard often the adage –“do the right thing”. I have seen in my dad’s life the toughest conundrums of actually doing the right thing or not doing it. After all these years, I know the tougher the conundrum, the stronger the conviction. These are the things daughters learn from fathers. I speak about living light, and I look in the far distance and think of a legacy I would never be able to ignore. Honour, honesty, humour all rolled into a giant teddy bear form.

Sometimes you can never be thankful enough for what you have.

Mediocrity Blues

How is it ok? Its not ok.

Customer care executives at your friendly neighbourhood cell phone company.

1. Meeting someone for an appointment.
2. Airport signs.
3. Email etiquette.
4. Mobile phone etiquette.

I am thinking of all the things that I marked as "large room for improvement" when I was reflecting on why mediocrity is not only accepted in our living rooms and board rooms, but it actually flies! It works magic. Its the highest bar to reach. Yooo Hoo. Above-average is nirvana. So why dream big? Why care? %^&& the extra mile? What exactly does one trade off in exchange for mediocrity? A directory of answers to any situation, to start with.

1. Sorry, hard of hearing.
   
2. Sorry, got the sun in my eye.
   
3. Sorry. That should be enough for you. No?
   
4. You owe me anyway. But I will talk my way through this.
   
5. Sorry, I dont like you.
   
6. This is my responsibility and I can do what I want with it.
   
7. I hate your body language - screw you.
   
8. I am talking to you. I am listening to you. But I am sorry I still dont understand. Back up please. At your own risk.
   
9. I really, really want to waste your time because I think you are nothing in my scheme of things. On second thoughts, if you were someone too, I would probably screw up anyway.

So basically lets take the focus right out of our court to someone else's. Thats what we bring in when we buy mediocrity. Find scapegoats. Nail them. Rationale does not matter. Find the fall guy and he will find his (I would be on my way finding the next one). Lets waste our time in this mind-numbing domino. Mediocrity is what we settle for. Its a state of mind, rather than something sitting on that table.

When inspiration means little less than motivation on overtime, which was suspect in the first place anyway, we are really downing the ante. Inspiration is about impossibilities, its the stuff Lance Armstrong is made of. Its not pretty sounding stuff, its hard hitting. Its really about where you make the difference. Where you pick the mediocrity snag, and blast it away from your life permanently. Everyone of us can do it. Its what we pick to do.

Mediocrity is not the burnt cake, but the short changing of the egg-whisking part. Mediocrity is being ok with not having given your truest shot (how, how, how???). Worst of all, its about having the chance, and just watching it disintegrate, aware, conscious and maybe, satisfied. People who have the choice between mediocre and special (thats the only difference), and choose the former, sit on trees and eat fruits. Its best for them to stay out of trouble. The heat will be too much.

[Mediocrity]

Thing about Mom

How could any budding writer's writing be anything without a mention of mom?

So what do you write about a mom who is distinctly not in Dostoevsky's style? By the ink-blot test yardstick, my childhood was pretty copy-book, now that I think about it. I used to think I am the cursed one when my doc-Mom would nt lay down 13 hours in a row to complete my science project. "My" science project, and no siree, she would nt do it. She had things to do then, exploring illnesses and pouring over black, plastic sheets that I could never play with. (X rays, yeah). She would never scream at me to study because.....what do you think? ....she trusted me? I dont really know, I just know I would kick up such a fuss that she would nt bring it on. She always wondered how the heck I remembered names of obscure, nothing, pathetic films with excitement.

So here is to mom. The one who studied medicine only to give it up when I was 2 feet tall, the email-fearing, dal-loving, absolutely hands-down adorable mother.

What makes my mom tick all these years? I guess the thing about moms is that every new mom gives the words "unconditional love" a whole new twist. My mom is all that and incredibly funny. I told a friend of mine some years back -" Hey wash your cauliflower in turmeric water because then the worms run out.". He asked me back "whoever told you this bizarre thing?". I go - "My mom!". He is all a-laughing saying "Just the thought of those worms coming out, rubbing their eyes...its making me laugh." Thats one to my mother. Mother moment created.

In her 50s, she finally got the time to do all the things she wanted. I cant believe one of them was Sudoku. She quietly waged battles for ownership of the morning papers only for that darned puzzle. And she was spotted doing Sudoku early mornings also. When some unsuspecting person threw a puzzle at her, she has been known to say, "sorry thats in the intermediate category, so no fun for me."

Her idiosyncracies deserve their own hall of fame. I remember some of the everyday ones

1. Wash meat 20 times before you cook it
2. There are mosquitoes here, believe me!
3. The onions need to be golden brown, but you dont seem to have the patience
4. Cover everything. Also in the refrigerator.
5. Wash underwear everyday. Otherwise all this education is a waste.
6. Wash your face with lukewarm water so that the sebum is cleared away (?) and the moisture remains. Dont rub that towel so hard.
7. So where is "My Documents" on this computer? Same place?
8. This meat is undercooked.
9. You slept late last night. A deep killing silence follows. Otherwise this is not complete here.
10. No, its not fever. You are fine, really.

Some of my favourite conversation high points

1. I am eating, stop looking at my food
2. Yes, I will sleep in the next one hour
3. No, I have had dinner
4. No, I did nt read that Mama. Tell me. (Thank God for this, my window to some good centre-left political thinking)
5. Oh God, you are so funny
6. I am sorry I forgot
7. But how could you forget to tell me that?????
8. You know I dont like sitting out with those random guests!!!! Do I have a view now that I am 14? Actually that 14 is a variable x. It starts applying from roughly about 6-7 years of one's age.

She loves her dogs. And I got that from her. Some serious names were thought of here. So poq quiz - who is Gangu bai? who is Chuttan mia?. Yes, my dog was called all these and,bless her soul, responded to these. So I learnt from mom and called my dog "Point Blank" for a few weeks. I really dont know where I got that from. Right, people shoot point blank in gangsta movies but how many shooters say "hey loser, watch while I shoot you point blank".???????

Its endless about mommy. She has three binoculars to do her bird-watching. And she can sit still for hours, drinking in bird calls in the afternoon. And tell that to you in such a way that you want to know more. She once made such a great case for how plants respond to conversation, that though I am not a plants-person, I started saying hi to some of them.

I have not even gone into the part where I think how someone can be such a miraculous package. I have not seen my mom do anything, anything, that did not multiply my admiration for her a million times. She has screamed (take a very mild view of screaming here) at me twice in my whole life. One time was this beauty -"if you dont eat, you will never be able to build resistance. Resistance, you heard me, resistance." I was in class II I think. Just the word resistance is enough trigger for howlarious laughing for me. Few words can evoke such memories. Second time, I was on the train jumping from upper berth to upper berth, doing my regular 10 year old thing when my mom said " If you dont stop that, I will mess your life.". This was legendary. My mind has not stopped laughing at this one.

She gets upset when she has not got the right "dal" concoction for dinner. As she once confided in me - " the dal is the king of dinner, that cant go bad." For someone who slogs three hours minimum in the kitchen because she cant trust them bad cooks, she has her legitimate views on dal.

Sometimes, you just cant be thankful enough for what you have. Right on top of my list is my mother. So a part two must follow.

My first meandering

Nothing much to report. I am at work.