The Lord’s prayer

Dear children,

I have been meaning to write to you for long. But never got around to it. Now the time has come when I cannot put off the unpleasant talk any longer. I’ve been dreading every second of waiting for this moment to come. Who would have thought that one day the creator would end up praying to his creations? No I’m not on my knees, I’m not rolling around a temple in wet clothes, I’m not going to print this out and tie it with a piece of yellow thread on a banyan tree or brainwash you saying the end is near and you will burn in hell if you do not read this. I am simply sitting in front of my PC and keying in this mail. Yes, it is only a mail if you choose to look at it that way but to me it is more than that. To me, it is a cry from the heart, a plea for mercy and ages of unshed tears put together. Ironic, is it not? To be truthful, I find it a bit humiliating but what has to be done has to be done. Please do not take offence to anything in this mail and go around burning temples, churches, dargahs and other places of worship to showcase your anger at me. Remember children, that we will definitely meet some day. We can settle scores then. Once and for all.

First of all, I have to tell you how difficult my job is. For example let us just consider one day. Today. In Earth, I have approximately 346528364 prayers being sent to me in all possible means every second. Right from how Raju wants help to clear his entrance exam to join LKG to Yangste Ki who desperately needs the rare AB- blood to save her husband who’s in the hospital to Abdul-Muhaimin in the Guyanese river basin who wants to catch a Piranha for dinner tonight. You get the drift don’t you? Add to this the Martians, Venusians and all other life forms alien to you. And then I have to be present at 237252930346297383633 places of worship including churches, temples, mosques, Kabbalah centres, gurudwaras, etc during the prayer times. I have to be there for Mundakarumaariamman kovil கூழ் ஊத்துற function as well as the Ramadan season fasting prayers. I have to be at so many places at the same time that I’m finding it so difficult to be omnipresent. And I have to take up the million identities you have thrust on me, that I am getting a multiple personality disorder. I have to monitor tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, flood situations, droughts, famines and terrorist attacks since prayers at a huge scale are directed towards me from regions affected by these. And above all I have to save the ecosystem, flora, fauna and your fellow human beings, who you are so keen on destroying ruthlessly day after day. Tough job? You bet.

I know you have little time for lectures from God (you are too busy killing yourselves in my name). But I have to tell you some more about my job. My job has three faces to it – Creation, Sustenance and Destruction. I would like to believe that you all are being too kind these days. You seem to be hell bent too keen to share my work and make life easier for me by creating and destroying by yourselves at such an astonishing rate. You are, in fact, creating more than I can sustain and destroying much more than I ever want to destroy. For one, making holes in the ozone layer and destroying it never occurred to me ever since I made it. For every new species of fauna that I create you seem to destroy 10 other species and wipe them off the face of the Earth. Most of the rivers I created are nothing but poisonous toxic wastes and mass cemeteries today. And for each and every single baby that is born you destroy the lives of a million others. After all, it did not take ‘God’ to kill 11 million people. It took only one of you – one man known as Adolf Hitler. Now that leaves me with the most difficult job of all – protecting the precious lives that you want to destroy. And this mail is a plea from me to you, to let me do this job.

You know what pains me the most? The fact that most of this mass destruction and cruelty takes place in MY NAME. Children, I was only God. You created Shiva, Vishnu, Brahm, Allah, Christ and every one of those 321721519 identities I have today. Did I ever come down in a cloud and roar amidst thunder and lightning that I wanted to be called by any of these names? You gave me those names. You gave me those identities. You made your rules and religions and now, you use the very names you gave me to shed the blood of millions. You built me magnificent temples, majestic mosques and heaven high churches over the graveyards of hundreds of my children, burying them and burning them under the name of Ram and Allah. Children, remember? I made you. It was not the other way round for you to know or fight over my exact birthplace. You pray to me for peace and prosperity. Then you go out and train your children to become suicide bombers and religious terrorists and call that a holy war. What you forget is that a war is only a war. It can never be holy. You name political groups after me, calling yourselves my army. Then you go around humiliating women, raping them in public, robbing them of their rights and treating them like dirt. Do you not remember children, that one of the very forms you created for me, the Arthanareeswara is half woman? Or the deity you worship in hordes every morning is another woman, Kali? You murder and maim, burn and kill, rape and mutilate and then smugly say, We did it for God. I only have one question. What exactly did I, as God, have to do with all this?

The Aesthetics Atheists seem to be a more peaceful group. They do their work and let me do mine. They don’t pray to me and do not make me pray to them. They seem to be ‘cool’, so as to say in Earth lingo. I have only one request to make of you, my children. Do not think I am being impertinent or rude, but mind your own business please. Each one of you. I know to create, I know to destroy and I most certainly do not need your help. You have done enough damage. Let me undo a little of it now. If you cannot see your fellow men as friends and brothers, at least see them as strangers, but not as enemies. If you cannot serve to protect, you don’t have to, but please don’t destroy. If you cannot treat women with dignity and respect, well, there is only one option – please come to me. There is no place for you on Earth.

This is a prayer, children. To you. From the old chap who has the toughest job in the Universe.

With love (that is running out day by day),

God.

P.S. Can I please be addressed only as God hereafter. I don’t remember all those million other names. And frankly, I don’t care.

Work and Food :)

Weekends simply fly. Start it with a lazy morning, throw in some household chores, add a dash of afternoon nap and top it up with a visit to the Church/Relative’s wedding/reception and pooh!!! the weekend is gone. Earlier when I used to have a two-day weekend, it used to be heaven. But now having got used to having just the Sunday off, I usually don’t know what to do if I get an extra day away from work! I never knew that I, of all people would say this some day. That I’m bored to be away from work, that I wish we could work on Sundays too. I can see the horror on my own face as I write this, so I can as well imagine the horror of people who know me, while reading this. But now I realise that I’ve begun to enjoy my work so much that I can’t stay away from it. In IT I was just a speck amidst the millions of code writers. All I had to do was change a few lines here, attach XML tags here and there, comment out lines that make problems and create bugs and other insipid, unispiring things which were mechanical, dull and routine to say the very least. Or it could be that, I hated computers and coding and Java so much that I couldn’t enjoy what I was doing, however challenging it was. Now things are different. I know that the job I do would directly impact the functioning of my workplace. I know that people look up to me to bring about improvements and changes and that makes me want to work harder. I know I’m trusted and that makes me more responsible. And above all I’m not micro managed which makes me want to prove myself. Now I know what people mean when they say, ‘Find a job that you love and you’ll never have to work a single day of your life.’ Finally there’s come a day when I can proudly say, ‘I LOVE MY JOB’. What more as a professional, can I ask for!!

The other day we were at Mainland China for an early lunch. I was really excited since it was known to be THE place for chinese cuisine in Chennai. We had to make an advance reservation and was given a time slot and reached there only to find a long queue of hungry people already waiting outside the place. Probably Tirupathi Darshans are easier. We walked up to a Nepali girl dressed up in Chinese traditional wear at the reception to confirm our reservations.

P : Umm, excuse me, we have a reservation for a table for 4. One thirty.
She: Chi?
P : Ughh, pardon??
She: Chi res? (Points to a notebook and looks at P with a benign smile)

Thankfully P had the presence of mind to search out his name in the register and pointed it to her triumphantly. The rest of us look at this fascinating conversation wide eyed. I mean, it was one thing to dress up people in the traditional clothing to get a feel but making them speak in Chinese/Mandarin was too much for effect. She scribbled something in the register. I strained to see if that was in Chinese as well. She smiled again at P and said, “Gow un”. He looked uncertain for a second, then his face cleared up and he rushed us to an empty couch. “She’s asking us to wait!” We were about to sit when the girl rushed up to our side and pointed to the door shaking her head vigorously. “Unnnn!!! Goww Unnnn”
“P, she’s asking us to GO IN!!! It’s English only”, I whispered. We barely managed to keep straight faces as we walked in. It was much more howlarious inside. At the reception at least there was a nepali woman talking in chinese sounding english. Inside it was perfectly Indian men talking in the same chinese sounding english as if they were born and brought up in some obscure chinese province to the north of the Yellow River.
“Wod u lyks huv bozzul wotor ar rezulor wotor?” meant “Would you like to have bottled water or regular water?” szrim sop mil cler” meant “Shrimp soup is mild and clear” The menu cards weren’t much help either. ‘Tsang hi Chicken’ read an item and the description was ‘minced chicken in vegetables/meat of your choice in sauce of your choice’. To know the choices we’d have to ask the service personnel for which you would have to be fluent in Chinglish(Chinese + English) which was a new language they’d invented. After some intense deciphering which would put even Robert Langdon to shame, we managed to order the Chicken Vegetable Clear soup and Duckmeat soup along with Crackling spinach and Diced chicken in black pepper for starters (We basically chose the stuff we could read and pronounce on the menu). From the beginning I had a bad feeling about the Duckmeat soup and when it came my fears were all confirmed. Guess they took the duck out of some dirty smelly pond and cooked it in water from the same pond. The soup was stinking horribly and I had to hold my nose with one hand and spoon the soup into my mouth with the other, all the while giving murderous glances at P who had ordered the thing, wanting to be adventurous. Then I had a better idea and drowned the soup in white pepper. It was more edible after that. The Crackling Spinach lived upto its name. It was crisp and crackling but made me wonder if it was a starter or dessert. It was a bit too sweet to be a starter and tasted almost like Haldiram’s mixed sev. The Diced chicken was heavenly though. It was the right blend of all subtle spices but even that was dangerously bordering on the sweet side. For the main course we were desperate for something spicy and had no choice but to take the waiter into confidence. The menu was no help since there was a picture of a chilli near some names and at the bottom it was explained that one chilli = pungent and two chillies = very pungent. Now what exactly this pungent was, nobody knew and we din’t want to risk the Duckmeat disaster once again. So after ordering the mandatory schezuan fried rice and noodle dishes, we asked the waiter for some spicy gravy choice on the menu.

“Tsoi Hoi Chicken” was his response.

“Err… Is that spicy?”

“Tsoi Hoi Chicken. Chi”

I din’t want to order any dish which the waiter himself had certified as ‘chi’ but I had no choice. So we ended up ordering Tsoi Hoi chicken. After ordering we noticed that in the menu the dish had 2 red chillies drawn next to it, whcih meant it was going to be ‘very pungent’. I imagined something smelling like rotten eggs and ammonia put together and braced myself. But the dishes that came to the table was quite harmless. Tsoi Hoi chicken was a mildly spicy dish that was still sweet but not as much as the other dishes and it went very well with the delightful fried rice. Only then we realised in Chinese meal dictionary, the word pungent meant spicy. But I found even their so called ‘very pungent’ dishes only mildly spicy and the Chinese must also be using more than half of the sugar produced in the world. They practically use it in EVERY dish they make man! But the main course turned out to be delicious after all, and hence no complaints. I hogged like I hadn’t seen food for ages and polished off the meal with some sinful sizzling brownie in hot chocolate sauce. After some word wrestling again with the waiter asking for the bill, we left after paying a hefty 2000 bucks, tax inclusive. It was a bit on the expensive side but one can indulge once in a while, right? Next time have to try their buffet lunch, me and P have decided, so that we can escape the chinese vocab torture and dive straight into the food. Game anyone??

Honesty ‘tags’ along

*Starts typing rubbing hands with glee and with a stupid grin plastered across the face*

Tagged! Veti has presented me an award (ahem, ahem) which I have displayed proudly below:

As a bonus I have a tag to do as well. Thanks Veti, more for the tag than the award. The rules of this tag are:

“When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

I love tags. Primarily because it’s easier to answer questions in a readymade format than rack your brains to come up with something readable every other time. But this tag seems like the kind which might end up making me think since it asks me 10 honest things about myself. Which means I have to do quite a bit of introspection at the end of which I’m sure I’ll be just where I started. Clueless. Ok, let’s not get disheartened now. After all we love tags don’t we?? So here we go!

1. I am a classic example of an ambivert. I can be gregarious, playful, funny and sarcastic with a certain set of people as much as I can be disinterested, bored, excruciatingly polite with others. I cannot feign false interest in matters in which I have absolutely no interest in, and that includes mega serials, gold jewellery, long and tiresome shopping, etc. I can be as tongue tied as much I can’t stop talking sometimes. Simply put, I cannot socialise for the sake of socialising. And it’s more of a bane than a boon.

2. I am paralysed each morning until I get my hot piping dosage of theobromine and feel incomplete until I’ve read the newspaper from cover to cover. And talking of tea, I go into a trance every time a steaming cup of tea/coffee is thrust into my hands. That’s the time I think out solutions to work, decide what book to read next, make up elaborate weekend plans and work out experimental recipes. In short, that’s probably the only time of the day I THINK.

3. I am a hard core, true blue Foodie. I love food. Love experimenting with various cuisines and flavours. When making plans for a weekend, the first thing that I plan is where to eat and work out everything else around that. Yeah, I’m that bad! When I’m travelling, all it takes is the sight of a favourite restaurant for me to launch into long monologues about the restaurant’s history, their speciality dishes, and anecdotes about what happened when I was there last, etc unless someone reminds me to stop. Every time I binge out I take this irresolute resolution to cut down but I know it’s only a passing phase. After all, resolutions are never meant to be kept.

4. I love being alone. It does feel a bit weird to say it, but yeah I love the time I get to spend all by myself. I love the days when I used to impulsively call in sick at work in the mornings, pack off mom and dad to work and spend the entire day all by myself. Simply lazing around the house, making scrambled eggs and drinking cold coffee, reading passages from favourite books, sleeping like it’s nobody’s business… I love the silence and solace of it. I’ve been bored with dozens of people around but I’ve never been bored alone. I love the company of my loved ones but I love my own company as well Like they say, if you can’t stand your own company, who can??

5. I’m scared of technology. Actually I’m diffident of it. I have always had the thought that I’m technologically challenged and its so deeply ingrained into my system that even if it’s something that I know like the back of my hand my initial reaction is to panic when someone asks me anything slightly technical. I may know my laptop inside out but when anybody starts a question like ‘Does your CPU utilisation match…’, next second I’m ready to flee the room. But there is even a positive twist to my technology-phobia. It has made me realise that it’s not always about knowing things but its more about believing that you know them.

6. I’m communication challenged. I don’t call people for fear of disturbing them. I don’t attend calls since my phone is on silent mode most of the time. I see text messages hours after they had been sent and don’t reply because it would be very rude to reply late. Yeah it’s ruder not to reply at all but well, that’s me. Thankfully these days social networking is big. Orkut, Facebook and now the latest in-thing Twitter are god sent for me. Without these I’d be marooned and constantly missing people I love but never really in touch with them.

7. Confession time! I don’t know why but I really enjoy reading tabloids and all these film magazines with glossy covers and beautiful people on them. Half the time I’m only flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures but every time I see these overpriced glossies on the stands, my hands itch to buy one.

8. I hate my writing (I pretended not to hear that collective SO Do We). Sad, but true. When I hear all these writers and artists talk fondly about their work like they were their babies, I sigh like the Whistling Woods. I am hyper critical of each and every word I write and each time I write a new post, I think it’s so bad that it doesn’t deserve to be put up on the blog. Then I console myself that it’s all that I can do, that I can’t possibly get any better and end up putting it up on the blog, not wanting to read it again ever, pitying all the poor folks who might be unfortunate enough to read it. Pathetic?? I second it.

9. I’m a living example of Murphy’s Law. If I’m happy that something is going fine, it goes horribly the very next day. If I’m glad that my laptop isn’t giving me any problems, tomorrow it’ll crash without notice. I touchwood thinking I haven’t fought with anybody recently and there is a major world war in the cards the next day. If I happen to even think I haven’t fallen sick for long, I fall sick at once. So then, brilliant that I am, I tried to work it the other way round – having all horrible negative thoughts so that they end up happening positive. And then I found out that it doesn’t work the other way round. Murphy never had it easy, did he?

10. I’ve been thinking of some thing nice, but honest, to say about myself all along and I could come up only with this. I value love and respect above everything else. I believe that they are the foundation upon which any relationship can be built. And I don’t think they can be mutually exclusive. Where there is love, there should be respect above everything else. If not, then it is not love. As simple as that. I’m anti male chauvinism. And Anti feminism. I only stand for humanism and mutual respect of human beings.

Sabba!! Done. Not an easy tag at all. Next time I’d prefer easier tags like ’10 favourite restaurants’ or ‘last ten books you read’ or ’10 ideas of how to do nothing’ I really can’t afford to tag unwilling people and endure curses forever after. Been there, done that. So I’ll just let anyone who wants to, take this tag up and bare their souls out. Tchau!

He he… Adjust please…

I’m fed up with this Indian epidemic. I don’t know if it’s only our national syndrome or pandemic to the world but it sure gets on my nerves. This he-he-adjust-please syndrome. Why do we expect friends, relatives, strangers and everybody else to ‘adjust’ according to our own whims and fancies??

I get into a train, huffing and puffing, bag and baggage in hand, hunt for my seats waiting to crash and I find a couple already getting cozy out there. I check my ticket and confirm the seat numbers again which takes a full five minutes considering I still don’t have a place to keep my luggage (they deposited their 8 bags under MY seat), and all the while the couple is even oblivious to a poor struggling soul standing there and trying to get their attention. After enough polite coughing to stop them feeding Lays chips to each other, they look at me like I was the designated railways sweeper waiting with a broom to sweep under their feet. One even crinkles a nose at me. When I tell them that it’s my seat one of them has parked their bottoms on, they look at me the same way I looked at politicians who wanted Shashi Tharoor to resign over the cattle class remark. The is-this-even-a-problem look. The man looks at me condescendingly and says, “You see that we are together right? The entire family is here. Shift to B42.” And then adds as an unnecessary afterthought “he he.. Adjust Please.” Only then I realise everybody in that coupe was family, thaatha paati, two kids, and the couple et al and I was the lone outsider. If I stood my ground and asked for my seats, they would start Gandhigiri mutiny against me, shoot hostile glances until I felt like I was Kasab in an Indian courtroom, whisper conspiratorially but loud enough for me to hear all the nasty things they were saying and the kids would stamp my feet and throw well aimed darts at me. So I nod stupidly, mumble “no problem” and trudge to B42. All along the occupant of my seat doesn’t even budge and remains glued as if his name was calligraphed there. This happened to me 4 years back and hasn’t stopped happening ever since. I can understand when it’s about children and women thrown alone away from their families, some physical conditions which require help at hand etc etc but even then why do people make requests that sound more like orders? What I find most appalling is that these people even forget that THEY are the ones needing a favour and put on these superior and benevolent airs like they were doing the other party favors instead. After all, I only ask for what I paid for and what is lawfully mine. Is that even too much?

Over the years this phenomenon has been steadily on the rise and has under its clutches not only trains and buses, but also flights (My wife needs to look at the clouds. He he adjust please!) and now gasp!! Movie halls!  The other day I was at Satyam to catch a movie and I find two lovey-dovey people(again! Always?? Why me ??) already making themselves comfortable in A12 and A13, popcorn and cold coffee in hand. The only hitch – I had booked those very seats battling with a bad net connection and shelling out 20 bucks extra for having had the ‘priviledge’ of selecting those seats online. Me and P stand confused in front of the seats cross checking our tickets and seat numbers while inside my instinct screams nooooo…not here…. not again…. The checking only confirmed what I already knew. The seats were ours and whatever little self control I had, teetered on the blink of a rage when the couple tried to crane their necks to look at the Lalitha Jewellery ads on the screen to show us that WE were blocking THEIR view.

I took a deep breath and began politely. “Excuse me, A12 and 13 are ours. Could you check your tickets please?”

The guys gives me a so-you-are-the-stupid-moron-I-have-to-convince look.” Oh. Yeah our seats are D20, 21. Down somewhere there. Can you adjust and sit there?”

Grrrr. I was going to explode. Control. Control. Where was P? He has to handle this. I look around horrified to find that P had already walked away to look for D20 and 21! Now you know what P stands for. Peace loving Extremist.

Deep breath again. “D20,21 seem to be perfectly good couple seats as well. Could you shift to them and let us sit in ours please?”

The girl who was drooling over the jewellery on screen thinking it would be matter of seconds before the pests (us) would be scurrying away, opened her pop corn stuffed mouth now to whine, “But we already sat here!!”

“We already paid for it”

The look that they gave me was nothing short of PRICELESS. Like I was the French bourgeois oppressing the peasants. They scowled, mumbled, fussed and made a big show of collecting their things (must have been really difficult with all those three cartons of caramel/butter popcorn and armloads of sandwiches. Bah!!) and left with scathing looks. And I ended up counting up to ten and then backwards (calming down strategy)for the next 20 minutes, effectively missing out on most of the first half of the movie in the process. P was absolutely unperturbed and was completely engrossed in the movie within seconds. The entire movie watching experience was ruined (added to it is the fact that the movie sucked big time) and left me wondering if all the fuss was worth it and whether I should just have swapped seats quietly. This is one case where the victim always ends up looking like the hunter. Time we realised that our freedom does not include taking advantage of other people’s goodwill and robbing them of their rights. Sigh! At least I think so.

The Judgement

They rained kicks on his groin and stamped his face with boots. He did not make a sound. He did not move.

“Oi Maari! Stay here. Inside the jeep.  No coming out, ok? Veera you stay here with him. You can go for tea after we come back. Yena??”

He sat crouching inside the jeep. His arms were wound tight around his knees. The skin around his clenched fists was paler than the dark brown skin of his hands. His eyes were red as he watched the Inspector pull up his pants to rest on his paunch and walk away. He thought of Shanthi and Viji. Shanthi would have created a ruckus by now, sitting in the hut entrance, near the tin door and open sewer, surrounded by women folk. She would be wailing and heaping curses on him, his parents and forefathers.  Avan kai kaal velangaama poga. Andha padupaavi paya nallaave irukka maaten. Aiyooo yen pulla saava kedakudhe… No, he thought. All that would have been over by now. She would have pawned the one or two ever silver vessels that had mostly been on Marwadi shop shelves than the hut ever since being bought 5 years ago. You didn’t buy them for me, Shanthi always used to retort. Yengamma veetu seedhanam.

“Yenna pa Maari. It was a matter of 1000 rupees. Now see what happened. 2 weeks in jail. Who will look after you wife and family. That too in temple. Even if the court pardons, God won’t. Saamy kuththam aagidum pa… ”

He stayed silent. Who will look after your wife and family? Shanthi and Viji. His wife and his sick daughter, who would be lying on the cold General Hospital floors now. Free treatment, they said. But you need to bribe the nurses for a bed. You need to bribe ward boys for the free medicines. You need to bribe everyone from the watchman to the woman at the pharmacy counter. He couldn’t bear to think of Viji. Some mysterious sickness seemed to sponge out his little daughter’s spirit until she could do nothing but lie in a corner of the stone floor and lift her hand with a weak smile when he entered the house. It was more than a week since she fell sick. No money, take her to GH, the doctors said. 100 rupees for a bed, the nurse at GH said. He remembered the last words Viji spoke to him as laid her down on the hospital floor, the cold seeping into her body through the torn blanket. “Appa, yeppo pa varuva.. Na sethuda maaten la” The last words she spoke to him before he left to get money for her, for his little daughter. He tried asking all his friends. There were only bare hands and empty eyes. After all, where would they get the money from ? They were in the same state as he was since the strike hit them two weeks ago.

His mind wandered back to Viji. He couldn’t stop the sobs this time.

“Ada Maari, Yenna pa… Be a man. Stop crying now. Hmmm… What’s the use crying now.? You should have thought of all this before breaking into that temple..” The jeep driver took a long puff from his cigarette and looked at him. “Do you work anywhere or full time thief only?”

He sobbed louder. He had told all this to the judge in his room only ten minutes back. He had begged for mercy and had almost fallen at the man’s feet. He had told the judge that he worked as a cleaner for a private lorry company. That he had been out of work for two weeks since the lorry strike began.  His meagre savings had only lasted for one week. He had no work, no money and then his Viji fell sick. He had nowhere to go. No one to ask. Then he went to God. His last resort. He didn’t want one paisa for himself. Only for his daughter’s life. If God won’t help him save his daughter’s life, who will? He broke that hundi. He took the money. And he got caught. He was not a professional thief to do clean work. Ironically it was a group of beggars who slept in the temple entrance who rounded him up and beat him up till the police came. He had to tell everything to the judge in person. He had somehow thought that the judge would understand. He looked like a good man. He couldn’t be so insensitive to a poor man’s misery. When I tell him the reason, when I tell him about my Viji, he will understand and help me, he thought. He had begged and pleaded with the policemen to let him meet the judge once.

District magistrate Nagarajan V looked impatiently at his watch first and then at the stooping man before him. Had been hit quite badly. The damn policemen never listen. They blame the public. Especially in these damn theft cases, the public almost kill the man before handing him out to the police. He had a meeting at 2.30. A very important meeting. Another five minutes. He was usually assigned the important and tricky cases but sometimes petty thefts and minor issues came up and he couldn’t help it. Like this man in front of him. Maarimuthu. Lorry Cleaner. Broke into a temple and stole from the hundi. 1000 Rupees found on person. 2000 fine or 2 weeks RI. Rigorous Imprisonment. The man had been talking nonstop for the past ten minutes. Could hardly make out what he was saying. These damn slum people and their Chennai baashai. Something about a sick daughter and God. He looked at the watch once more and cleared his throat. Such people have to be handled carefully. They could get violent sometimes. He had seen angry convicts break his colleagues’ noses and throw acid on their faces. He didn’t want to risk a broken nose when the important meeting took place. It could, after all, change his life.

“Idho paaru pa, un per yena? Ahhh Maari, Nothing is in my hands now. I may be a kind and compassionate person. I understand your difficulty. I want to help you. But I cannot overrule the law, can I? The law says that taking another person’s money is wrong. Whatever be the reason, you have stolen what was rightfully somebody else’s. If I let you go this time, Next time when you pick somebody else’s pocket or break into a house, you will think that you can justify it and walk away. And that too you have stolen from the temple. Judgement has been passed. You make sure you don’t resort to such means again. Don’t lose your integrity and honesty. Death is better than that”

He looked at the watch again and then at the constable standing next to Maari. “Take him away. I have a meeting”

He could do nothing now. He had no money to pay fine. None to bail him out. He didn’t know if his daughter was alive or dead. He didn’t know if he would ever see her again. He had nothing more to live for. He lifted his head for the first time and ran his eyes through the court compound. Black coats and khaki shirts filled the campus. A lot of people with a lot of problems. It was then that he saw the man in the ill fitting safari suit standing near the jeep. He was holding a shoulder bag that screamed Nike in bright fluorescent orange colour. The student bag looked like a mismatch in his pudgy hand. He seemed uncomfortable with it and kept shifting it from one hand to the other. His eye wandered around the building restlessly. He looked unsure about where to go. Maari kept looking at the man. There was something wrong about him but it was difficult to point out what it was. The man took out a mobile phone from his suit pocket twice but put it back inside without making a call. Now Maari couldn’t take his eyes off him. Veera, having finished his smoke, went back to sit in the driver’s seat mumbling about how long it took for the Inspector to have a coffee. That too with a convict in the jeep.  The man took the phone from his pocket again and hesitated for a second. Then he nervously punched the numbers.

“Hullo Saar? Aiyaa’s PA.. Saari for calling saar. Aiyaa is in the car. He asked me to hand over the bag to you. I didn’t know where your room is. Aiyaa will scold if I ask. 3C hot cash. Saari saar saari saar.. Ok saar I’m coming. Saari saar.. ” He put the phone hurriedly in his pocket, wiped the sweat from his shiny forehead and started walking. Maari saw him knock lightly and enter the same room he had left five minutes ago.

He had almost reached the magistrate’s door when the policemen saw him running and started behind him, pulling out pistols from their holsters and yelling loudly. When they entered the room, they saw him spitting on the magistrate’s face and slapping him repeatedly. They saw a man in an ill fitting safari suit cowering in a corner , his mouth and eyes open wide in shock. They saw a black shoulder bag with Nike written on it, a bundle of currency notes peeping out through a slightly open zip. They quickly looked away.

They rained kicks on his groin and stamped his face with boots. He did not make a sound. He did not move.

Cobweb Clearing!

Ok I’m not dead. Dusting off the cobwebs once again like I’ve done many a times before. I wanted to be back with a bang, with some meaningful writing, a story perhaps, but no meaningful writing seems to be coming to me any time in the near future. So I’m back to the kind of writing that requires no meaning or thinking whatsoever. Rambling.

In the past few weeks,

Was admitted into a hospital after a long time. Actually, a very long time. So long that now I don’t even remember being admitted in a hospital before. Not even a vague memory. Amma tells me often that as a child I was admitted into a hospital once at a very critical stage and after 3 days there, I pointed to my tummy and made hand signs asking for food. She says she feels like crying every time she even thinks about that incident. But I have absolutely no memories of this supposedly ‘emotional’ moment and getting to stay in a hospital now was a very exciting and new experience. I actually liked being there for a lot of reasons. For starters, everyone was doting on me like never before. All that extreme paasam made me feel like the thangachi in thangachi paasam movies. People only didn’t stand around me in a circle and sing ‘Azhagaana chinna devadhai’ while patting my head and pinching my cheeks affectionately. Everything else was done. Relatives came visiting every evening in hordes and we had to get chairs from the reception to accommodate everyone. P who usually doesn’t lift a finger at home stayed with me during the nights and was running around with water basins and medicine prescriptions. Dad had become my competitor for the hospital bed by the end of the second day and had to take medicines as well. In fact I wasn’t even dying or had some six-months-to-die kind of sickness. Just the good ol’ routine typhoid which has already struck me some four times and something the entire family is very nonchalant about.  Now I may talk cheeky but I didn’t hate it one bit when it was all happening. I was basking as much as possible under all the hospital light glory. Go away typhoid and stay away, any other sickness! It isn’t time for me to play harps in heaven already. Too many people love me here.

Watched two movies, one of which should go into history as among the best made in the country and the other should never have been made. 40 crores, Mexico, superhero, kokarako dance, pichumani, shriya… there was no end in sight to the miseries that Kanthasamy unleashed on me. I walked into the cinema hall, a full 40 minutes after the movie started wondering if it was really worthwhile going to watch a movie after missing out so much of it. I usually get the kick of having watched a film only if I watch it from the opening credits to the vanakkam at the end. But after the Kanthasamy ordeal I thanked God Almighty and Chennai traffic for having made me miss out on most of the first half. At the end of it, I was left gaping at the screen with a lot of how-could-they questions and a WTH feeling. How I wish they had made a true Superhero film minus all that fake masala! Sigh! And then there was the other one.  Kaminey. What a fantabulous movie! A true blue gangster caper that is raw, edgy, intelligent, dramatic and funny all at once. Jaw dropping screenplay, on-the-streets cinematography, mind blowing music, brilliant is the word. Ok, I’ve run out of adjectives. Vishal Bhardwaj is a rarity in the world of Indian cinema that has come to become melodrama, mindless action and songs in foreign locations. A truly well made movie pulls you into its web. It makes you relate to its characters, laugh with them, cry with them and run with them. That’s what Kaminey made me do. I’m not against the slow paced arty kind of films but give me a completely commercial but rocking Kaminey over them any day. I hate feel good happy endings but this one time I was left praying that neither Guddu nor Charlie (for all his ultra grey shades) should die. And Kanthasamy, well it made me long for the superhero to die or atleast get caught as soon as possible. Mudiyala da samy!

Caught up with a lot of pending reading. The other day I was at Odyssey when I came across a book titled ‘The 50 most influential books in the world’ It seemed to span all genres from fiction to nonfiction to history to science. Bible was on it and so was The theory of Relativity by Einstein. What caught my eye was The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Having seen this book on almost all ‘best books list’, I decided to find out just what was so influential about it, only to realise after reading that I was now too old to be influenced by it. The book is a slice out of a teenager’s life, how he gets chucked out of a fancy prep school, what he does enroute to going home after being dismissed, his face offs with people whose kinds he isn’t accustomed to coming across in life so far, his love for his sister, and the inherent child inside every human being irrespective of age. Teenage is that period in life when you are so vulnerable but put up a brave front to hide and mask all the bewilderment. From that point of view, this book is a teenager’s bible and it’s written in an abstract disjointed way, much like Holden Caulfield, our teenager in question is actually sitting across the table from you and having a conversation. But at the end of it, I was left wondering, ‘Now how does this INFLUENCE people in any way’. Then the ever nagging inner voice said, ‘Girl, it doesn’t influence people your age. You are way too old for this. Should have read it 6 years back. Too bad you were busy being influenced by Ayn Rand back then’ So there, Catcher in the Rye was another reminder that I was getting too old – for even some serious teenage literature.

Now I’ve reached this stage where to even ramble any more I have to start thinking, which I’m not really inclined to do (unless forced, as always). So I’ll stop here and get back when I really have something to say. Might take real long, who knows!

Two Worlds

He sat on the rocking chair near the window in the living room. “There’s a lovely breeze this way in the evenings. And you can watch TV from here without being in the way” Sudha had said as she put the chair there and sat on it to see if it was the right angle to watch TV from. Without being in the way echoed in his ears hours later as he sat in the rocking chair waiting for the lovely breeze that never came. He looked out of the window only to see the curtained and shuttered window of another apartment. He squinted at the remote for the Play button. They all looked the same to him. The remote, the huge television set stuck on the wall like a giant beetle on a flower, the house, the city, his daughter, her family. They all looked the same – dusty, distant and alien.

It was almost six and a half months since Raji passed away. His wife of 37 years. She died a good death, he thought. No fuss, no fancy hospitals or painkillers, no suffering or unwanted pain. She died peacefully in her sleep, her trademark red bindi only slightly smeared, a small dribble of saliva on her chin and the stench of bladders loosened by death. She was out of everybody’s way with minimum discomfort. But until her death Krishnagopal and Rajeshwari had never known discomfort. They had lived in a small village Kurinichiyur on the outskirts of Thanjavur. He was the headmaster of the local school and she, the quintessential wife cum mother. Thanjavur itself was only a small town in their times. They raised Sudha in the village amidst lush green paddy and coconut fields, goat sheds and hen coops. They lived a simple life amidst simple people. When Sudha wanted to study computer science after high school, they sent her to Madras to stay in a hostel and study engineering. Krishnan had his own apprehensions but he did not want to tie down his daughter to the village life that he loved. And four years later when Sudha told him that she was in love with her colleague, he didn’t pick up the sickle or threaten to immolate himself in the name of caste or creed. He was an honest man who had nothing to fear for, no society to answer to. He booked a splendid wedding hall in Madras, the same way Sudha had wanted, got her married to the man she loved and left the very next day to his village. The only thing that worried him was city life which he felt was too inhumane, suffocating, noisy and money driven. It was Sudha’s choice, Raji reminded him gently when occasionally while shooing the hens into their coop in the evenings, he would remember the pollution in Madras and mutter under his breath, “If only they lived somewhere on the outskirts at least… the air is simply poisonous…too poisonous…” It was their daughter’s decision to make a life for herself in the city and they left it at that.

“Saar…”

The maid’s voice woke him up with a start. He had dozed off in the rocking chair. The left hand felt cramped and uncomfortable.

“Lunch is in the hot pack. Tea is in the flask. Washed the dishes and folded the clothes. Washing soap is over. Tell Sudhamma when she comes saar. Lock the door and sleep Saar. City is full of robbers these days. Even last week…”

He watched her wipe the sweat off her neck with the pallu of her saree as she closed the door behind her. The clock showed 1.45. Another 6 hours before Sudha would be back home. Another 6 hours of loneliness and claustrophobic suffocation. Not that Sudha spoke much when she came home from work. She usually poured herself some tea from the flask and went over the day’s papers. In between reading the headlines, she threw sporadic questions at him like seeds being sowed on a well ploughed piece of land. Did he take an afternoon nap? Did the maid sweep the balcony? She usually forgets. Did he put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket?  Then she microwaved some leftovers from the fridge and settled in front of the TV watching soaps till Raghav came home. They would have dinner together, but separately. Raghav in front of television with CNN for company, Sudha on the couch with a fashion magazine and he, on the dining table. He often wondered how two people who had been so crazy in love had  exhausted all of it so soon. He hardly found Raghav and Sudha talking about anything other than work or dinner or which-channel-to-watch-on-tv since he started living with them. There were no fond glances, no fugitive smiles or hushed whispers. None of those small but beautiful signs of love that he’d seen in abundance five years ago when they got married. Maybe it was the cut throat work pressure. Or the now-or-never urgency to have a child. Or maybe, he thought, they simply got bored of each other.

He wondered why he had never got bored of his Raji. Not once in the 37 years of their life together. Thinking of Raji gave him a heartache. He missed his wife in a way which he would never come to terms with. When she left him, she took most of him along with her. And what was left behind was lost when he left his village to live in this inhumane concrete jungle. He missed his village life as much as he missed his wife. He missed the coconut groves, the animals he raised like children, the pump sets and muddy roads. Above all, he missed the innate simplicity and friendliness of his own people. He felt alienated and alone in the city, in his own daughter’s house. Nobody smiled. Nobody greeted each other on the roads. People didn’t have time for pleasantries. Not the barber, the grocer, the neighbour or the maid. Everyone was suspicious of the other person. All doors were locked. He felt suffocated.

The doorbell rang. “Appa, don’t ever open the door without looking through the peephole” echoed in his ears. He fixedly avoided looking at the peephole and opened the door. It was the small boy from next door. He’d seen the boy rushing out to catch school bus in the mornings. He was a chubby little boy who looked about 8 years old.

“Thaatha, did Amma give you the house key? I usually take it with me but forgot today. First time I forgot, you know?”

Krishnan smiled. It had been so long since someone called him Thaatha.

“No, she didn’t”

“Oh! I can’t watch Popeye then” He looked sad for a moment. Then he removed his very large school bag, placed it carefully next to the lunch bag and sat on a staircase step.

“Why don’t you come in here and wait until your mother comes home? You can have something to eat. And watch Popeye too.”

He looked puzzled and thoughtful. “Mom’s told me that I’m not supposed to talk to strangers or eat anything they give” He said it like a rhyme and then added, “But you are not a stranger. You are only Thaatha who sits on that chair and drinks coffee everyday” He pointed to the rocking chair and said with a sly smile, “I sometimes peep in when you leave the door open”

He picked up his schoolbag in one hand, lunch bag in the other and walked in through the door. Krishnan followed the boy inside and looked at him with wonder. What a lovely little boy! He is too articulate for his age, but so are all kids these days. He went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of milk and biscuits. The boy was looking at the fish tank.

“Milk! I love milk. But mom only gives me Horlicks. I love to play in that park too. See, you can see it from this window! But she never lets me go. Says the bigger boys will beat me up. We lived in another house sometime back thaatha. It was very small. But I had so many friends. Here I have no friends. I hate this house.” He pursed his lips and scowled.

“Do you want to go to the park?”

“Will you take me? I won’t run around. Promise.” He looked pleadingly.

“After you finish up your milk and biscuits”

“Yayyyyyyyyy!!!”

“What is your name?”

“Ashwin. Ashwin Prakash. 4B. St. Peter’s Matriculation School.”

Hand in hand, they walked together towards the park. Krishnan couldn’t stop beaming. He felt a spring in his step that he hadn’t known since Raji died. He sat on the bench and munched peanuts watching Ashwin run around with gay abandon, jumping on to swings and see-saws and climbing the Alphabet Bars as if they were Mount Everest. He felt light at heart for the first time at months. Felt like he was in human contact after ages. He felt human. Felt alive. Felt like a grandfather. Ashwin came running towards him with his hands stretched like the wings of an albatross.

“Thaatha I want a balloon”

“Tomorrow. Let’s go home now. It’s getting dark. And your mother might have come”

“She usually comes only after 6. Thaatha balloon… Please…”

He had burst the balloon and made bubbles out of it by the time they reached the apartment building.

“Thaaaathaa raceeeeee”

He was sprinting up the stairs riding an imaginary bike. By the time Krishnan huffed puffed and reached the fifth floor, the ‘vrooooooommmmm’ had stopped. Ashwin stood in front of his mother tears streaming down his cheeks. She gave Krishnan a spiteful glance before proceeding to spank her son on the back repeatedly and pinch his ears.

“HOW MANY TIMES have I told you not to talk to strangers?? Where did you go ALL THIS WHILE? I would have gone to the police in ten minutes. ” She pulled him by the ear into the house. “Do you know how many children get kidnapped…” Krishnan stood staring at the door that shut with a loud bang.

Epilogue

“Appa, please… Why are you always looking for excuses to go back? The milkman is staring. Neighbours are not talking. Everybody minds their own business. Nobody has time to be nice. Life is so mechanical. Listen appa. This is not kurinichiyur for you to know each person in the locality by name and live as one big joint family. This is a CITY for God’s sake. Here people do get suspicious if you take their kids out all of a sudden. It’s natural. They might not even know that you live next door… ”

He locked his suitcase and looked calmly at her. “That is precisely why I want to leave. I can’t live here. Not in a place where people don’t know who lives next door. I am not blaming your world. I don’t want to change it. I only want to go back to my own.”

Raghav looked up from his Economic Times. “Sudha let him leave. He let you live your life. Now it’s time for you to let him live his.”

The skies were still dusky but dawn was about to break when Krishnan walked out of the house, back to where he belonged.

* Kurinichiyur is imaginary

H.O.M.E

(Planning to migrate a few posts here, from my older blog(which i had to close down due to ‘edhir katchigalin thittamitta sadhi ‘). These are the ones I think are worth migrating, atleast so that I can read them whenever I want to without logging in, giving passwords, etc. This post was written exactly a year back. Happy anniversary HOME!! )

A paint peeling, concrete arch proclaiming the name of the street. A narrow tar road dug up in a few dozen places. The tiny grocery shop at the corner. A primary school. Pullaiyar Kovil. Methodist Church. A few hundred houses. And another few hundred hearts. This is the constitution of the place that I’ve been calling ‘home’ for the past 10 years. Whenever I think home, it’s never a single building. It’s always a parcel of the street, friends, neighbours, roadside cricket, the huge neem tree next door and occasional squabbles. The picture is incomplete without all these.

When my parents decided to buy a plot and build a house where it is sitting pretty right now, they almost drowned in the discouragement that followed. The place is good for nothing. It is nothing but a breeding ground of pigs and stray dogs. It is thief infested. There are only two other houses in the entire locality. It is a low lying area and will not survive the first monsoon of the season. And the worst part was that each of this was true. Even my mom was half sceptical of the idea. She always wanted her dream house in a posh locality. Anna Nagar was top on her list, not some nameless hole in the by lanes, a region between the heart of the city and its suburbs. But dad was adamant. So in six months, the parents and 12 year old me shifted to our first own house, all eager and joyful. It was a modest one bedroom house. A very modest beginning. The house was ridiculously small when compared to the one ground of empty space that lay sprawling in front of it. But in less than a month again, the empty space had transformed into a lovely garden. Marigolds and Chrysanthemums framed either side of the pathway leading from the gate to the main door. Coconut trees were planted dotting the compound wall. The rest of the space was a mini farm growing ladies finger, brinjal, tomatoes, green peas, pumpkins, snake gourds and herbs. The garden became the pride of the neighbourhood (which consisted of five houses now), and they contributed seeds and saplings zealously. It was like living in a separate planet away from the pollution and noise of the city. The early morning Bharatnatyam practice surrounded by the scent of blooming jasmine flowers and roses, badminton sessions in our very own farm-cum-playground, hide and seek with the chameleons and frogs, all stamped in memory, fresh now as ever.

Slowly I graduated to high school and the street graduated to a few more houses and tar roads. Globalisation reached as far as our private planet and dad thought we needed a bigger home. The flowers vanished, vegetable patches were pulled out and we got a majestic gleaming new home in return. Now new houses mushroomed, one here and another there at a rapid rate and we suddenly had neighbours smiling at us through window sills and bringing home sweets for Diwali. There was Sundari aunty in the opposite flat who waited with piping hot coffee every evening when I came back from school. Now I didn’t have to stand waiting on the road till mom came home if I forgot to take the house key. I could take my pick from Teacher aunty’s rolls and buns or Shobha Akka’s idli vadas and keep munching to my heart’s content till mom was back. Street cricket with Sathish was a daily affair till his dad got transferred toBangalore. Even after moving to college and hostel subsequently, Friday evenings back home were never complete without snacks at Vaishu’s place. If animosity existed, it was fought out at Margazhi kolam competitions and diwali crackers. Pullaiyar and Jesus sat smug and contended, a stone’s throw away from each other. Even during the first few weeks in hostel, when I was home sick, I missed my neighbours as much as I missed my parents. Only then did I realise how the entire neighbourhood had become an integral part of what I called my ‘home’.

Things seem to have become a wee bit different these days though. All the kids have grown up. Some are doctors, some engineers and IT professionals, some settled abroad. The youngsters are too busy to notice neighbours and the grown ups are too old to socialise like before. Their occasional window sill conversations have shifted from sweet making and sarees to diabetes and arthritis. The warmth and love exists but it is more restrained and even a bit wary sometimes. The owners of a couple of high rising apartments that the street can boast of now, hardly ever open their doors or windows and sneak in and out of their own houses like burglars. I realise now that it has been more than six months since I dropped into any of my neighbour’s home for some hot coffee and hotter gossip. I make a mental note to do it this weekend. It takes a wedding, a birthday or an occasional power cut to bring everybody together and relive the old gold days again. People seem to be afraid that if they stop to talk to each other or care, life may whiz past by. I wish we could rewind back to the time when all that life meant was to stop, talk and care.

All in a day’s work…

When I worked for an IT major, I always thought my manager had it easy. We were 42 people under him in 5 different teams. As far as I knew, all he had to do was

1)    Take up weekly status calls with the client who’d ask a million questions (none of which would be answerable unless you are either God or the Solaris box on which the product is running) and get insulted in the most polished polite manner possible.

2)    Call for team status meetings and transfer some of the scalding he got to the team. If the team didn’t take him seriously enough (which is almost always), start using menacing terms like ‘mitigation’. ‘productive competence’, ‘recessive trends’etc.

3)    Make up elaborate AI’s and ETA’s which never, repeat NEVER, are met on time.

4)    Make up excuses as to why the AI’s and ETA’s are never met on time.

5)    Draw up totally incomprehensible bar charts and pie charts in Excel and make PowerPoint presentations with notes copy pasted from Word. Yes, the three technologies my manager had totally mastered were Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Nobody could ever beat him at it.

6)    Take the Client out for coffee and discuss world politics and oil price in Kazakhstan with him for hours so that he’d be too confused and distracted to notice that the latest build we released has a thousand bugs which would never, repeat NEVER, be fixed up.

7)    Take the Client out for lunch to Mainland China and feed him up to his throat. Don’t forget to bill him for the food. Don’t forget to keep all project review meetings ONLY after the massive lunch every day.

8)    Make you work like crazy for 6 months sweet talking about ‘Outstanding’ appraisals and then give you a ‘Meets Expectation’ stating ‘wrong attitude towards work’ and ‘does not gel with the team ’

9)    Join the gang for lunch (reconfirming the belief that God never really listens to sinners’ prayers) and talking nonstop for 45 minutes about all that we despise in the world (stock markets, railway budgets, SEZ, yawn!!!). At the end of lunch we are usually left with neck sprains from all the heavy duty nodding.

10)   Power nap on in the cubicle leaving the rest of us yearning for some sleep but forcing eyes to continue staring at the monitor however bleary it may get.

Now after having such horrid notions about managers (which are almost always true), imagine my consternation when P told me that I’ll be working mostly in a ‘managerial’ capacity when I joined his company!!! An alien work place and culture, a field I was totally unfamiliar with and on top of that a job I know nothing about. I’m constantly interacting with people within the business and outside of it, making decisions, telling people what to do what not to (!!) and now I painfully acknowledge it’s not as easy as I thought it was. It was a zillion times easier working with that piece of overused machinery (read computer) than working with people because

1)    The machine doesn’t talk back. You ask what 2+2 is and it says 4. It doesn’t say nonchalantly  “Depends on where both the 2’s came from” or  whisper conspiratorily “Ummm.. don’t believe 2. It isn’t what it seems to be”. It simply treats facts as facts and doesn’t attach human elements to everything unlike human beings.

2)    The machine does not point fingers at others. Again in the 2+2 scenario, it doesn’t say, “Hell, I’m not the accountant. That’s not my job.” It just does what it’s told to do.

3)    The machine most importantly does not play work place politics which I find is on par with what is played by Mayawati, Mamata and the others at the national level.  You ask the machine what 2+2 is and it doesn’t say, “I always told you that 2 was more attached to 3. If you put 2 with another 2 they’ll start bitching about each other and you can never total it up. What about 3 and 6 instead. They’re very sweet” Or it doesn’t whine, “Why am I always asked to do all this difficult addition and she gets all the easy subtraction. This is not fair.” Or it doesn’t retort, “I can’t work with 2. I HATE it” It doesn’t cry to you saying 3 treats it badly or it needs more pay to sum up to 4. The machine simply adds the two numbers. People do everything else but that. By the end you finish dealing with all the politics and dynamics of who has to what job, who can work/can’t work with who, who can be/can’t be trusted with the job, you end up forgetting what the job was. Like I always do.

4)    The machine does not give you a you-are-out-to-make-my-life-miserable-look every time you look at it.

5)    The machine doesn’t smile sweetly at you and pass nasty comments once you are out of sight. In short, the machine doesn’t bitch.

And the machine doesn’t do a million other unnecessary things that people do. It only does its job. Probably this is exactly how my previous manager felt too but even now I feel managers in the IT field have it a bit easier when it comes to dealing with employees since in IT, there is at least no public cat fighting or open bitching. People at least pretend to like and be nice to each other. Any animosity is not taken up to the managerial levels and is just left to cool off by itself. When asked what 2+2 is, they do all the fighting and bitching among themselves and only tell the manager that it is 4. He is spared of the means! The rest of the world isn’t so hunky-dory and I face new challenges and pressures every day. It’s been a great experience to be fair and I’m NOT hating it. I love playing the ‘Naataamai’ and love discovering new aspects about my work and the people each day. All I want is to hang around and see if that wonderful day when 2+2=4, without any other strings attached, will ever arrive. Hoping it does. SOON!!

Shirley…

(A very long personal post ahead. Not for light reading.)

Shirley weds Antony.

I saw the simple, elegant wedding card lying on the sitting room table, half of it peeping out of the white cover. My mind drew a blank for a fraction of a second before registering that Shirley was actually getting married and I got to knew about it only accidentally. From a card lying on a table. Dad was watching some news broadcast on TV as if his life depended on what happened in the Parliament meeting for the day.

“Shirley’s getting married?”

“Ummm… hmmmm” He grunted, eyes fixed on the TV still. Clearly, my question didn’t even sink in.

“DAD!!!”

“Ok, What???”

“Shirley’s getting married?? Nobody even told me!! She didn’t even call me to tell…” My tone grew more accusatory by the minute.

Dad cut me off rudely.

“When was the last time you called her? Did you invite her personally for your wedding? You only get back what you give” His eyes were cold and he went back to his television news not even giving me a further glance.

I opened my mouth to protest only to close it again not knowing what to protest about. What dad had said was true. When was the last time I called Shirley? So long ago that I don’t even remember when. I couldn’t let myself argue saying she never made the effort to keep in touch as well. I knew she wouldn’t. Not after all that she had been through.

I met Shirley for the first time while we both were in tenth grade. Our mothers were old friends, who had got in touch after a decade or so when Shirley’s family shifted to the same neighbourhood as ours. As the two women caught up with the details of the years gone by, they left their two shy daughters to get acquainted with each other. Both Shirley and I were painfully shy kids back then and I remember how we used to sit in the same room for 45 minutes a day without saying a word to each other, merely looking at the walls and ceilings, not wanting to catch each other’s eye. It took a while for me to open up to the lanky bunny toothed soft spoken girl with whom I spent a lot of time more out of compulsion than by choice. We were put in the same school, travelled in the same school van and were in adjacent classes studying the same subjects. So talk we finally did. We had to. A few words at first. A hi in the morning while getting into the van, a smile when we came across each other in between classes. Later sitting next to each other we would talk for a couple of minutes about zoology lectures and maths problems. Then we would start ‘catching places’ next to each other in the school van so that we could talk all the way home. And then we started dialling each other’s number first thing after getting home. As with all girls, once we hit off, there was no stopping us.

Shirley was shy. She was funny. She was an introvert. She had loads of wit. She spoke softly. Each word was laced with slapstick and sarcasm. She was frail. She was a tough nut to crack. Oh, duh! She was a bundle of contradictions. One minute she’s almost be in tears that it’s been years since she saw her dad in person (he left to work abroad when she was really young and visited very rarely) and the next moment she’ll be smiling through her tears and singing a song, flitting across the room. We loved each other’s company. But what Shirley loved most in the world was her mother. Since the father was away, Shirley’s mom doted on her boundlessly. Her entire being revolved around making life comfortable and hassle free for her daughter. I’d even noticed that most of her conversations with my mother started with the words “my Shirley…”  Shirley had the perfect confidante, friend and guide in her mother. I even remember envying the kind of pampering her mom showered on Shirley. She was a blessed child.

We grew up together for 2 years. When we were in high school, every weekend we used to go for entrance exam coaching to join medical college. We did everything other than getting coached there. We bunked classes and roamed the streets, cola in hand. We licked ice cream cones and chased kids on bicycles. We shared and confided in each other our dreams, hopes and ambitions. And the deepest secrets and darkest fears too. I knew what Shirley feared the most was losing people she loved. She yearned to be with her father and fought to him over the phone almost every day to come back home so that they could live together as a family again. Her father always promised he would but never kept his word. And Shirley was determined not to let go.One day, she seemed hyper excited and started whispering excitedly as soon as she got into the van. “I did it!!! Dad’s coming back!!!! It’s final. Only the paper work remains!! In a week!!” The words came out in gasps coated with joy and excitement. I was happy that the only piece of jigsaw missing from her life was finally falling into place. I prayed along with her for next week to come sooner.

Next week came. It was the morning her father was arriving. I was busy rushing for school when the call came.

“Hello?”

“Shirley here”

“Hey!!!! Dad came??? What did he…”

“My mother passed away. Heart attack.”

I was left standing with my mind numb and the click of the phone echoing in my ears.

The house was crowded. I had never seen her father before but I knew him from the way he was weeping inconsolably, sitting at his dead wife’s feet. Relatives were scattered all around the place like chaff. I scanned the room for Shirley. She was not near her mother. She was not sitting in any corner weeping. I asked a stranger and he pointed me to the kitchen. I went in. She was sitting on the floor by the door, hands around her folded knees, staring at the kitchen sink. I sat next to her.

She spoke softly as usual. “Remember she used to stand there making coffee.”

“Shirley…”

“She was so particular about the sugar. It had to be just right. She used to pour some coffee separately and taste it before serving guests” She turned to me. “Remember??” I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I broke down and started sobbing loudly. She continued staring at the sink. A relative came rushing near us. “She’s been sitting like this from the morning ma. Not a single drop of tear from her eyes. We’re all scared. Tell her to cry and let it out ma… Ask her to give vent. Tell her please…”I couldn’t say a word. All I could do was sit next to her and sob until her mother was taken away to be cremated. She didn’t come out to see her mother being carried out for the last time. She didn’t budge.

That was the last time I went inside Shirley’s house. Her days after her mother’s death became hell. It was more hell because she wouldn’t let the hurt penetrate and show through her. She came back to school in 3 days as if nothing happened. She spoke of the changes that the death caused as if they had nothing to do with her.

“I plaited my hair myself for the first time today”

“Do you know where I can get a good mop? The old one is worn out”

“I made sambhar today. It was burnt up.”

She only made matter-of-fact statements but I knew how hard it was for her to lose her mother at an age she needed her most. The girl who didn’t even know to turn on the stove or hold a broom was cooking for the family, doing the washing, cleaning and trying to cope up with the loss of the most precious thing to her, all at once. I sometimes felt like shaking her up and screaming at her to let it out. To cry and get it over with. To scream and yell that life was unfair. But I knew she wouldn’t. And I knew I couldn’t do anything to make things easy. We joined different colleges and kept in touch occasionally. She got used to the life she was thrown into or so I presumed. She never invited me home or came if I did. She was topping her department in college and called up every semester to compare scores. I always scored lower and started dreading her calls. Sometimes I wouldn’t even pick her calls especially if they came close after semester results. I was home from hostel for a particular weekend when dad asked me over coffee one evening, if I’ve been in touch with Shirley. Not recently, I said. Six months since we spoke or longer. Why?

“Her father has stomach cancer. Incurable stage. The poor child is running from hospital to hospital but no hope. He only has a few months to live. Give her a call”

I didn’t give her that call. And I regret it till date. When I look back and think about what held me back from reaching out to her during those dark days, I have no answer. I could have been there with her, holding hands and speaking comforting words. But I didn’t. I knew it was because deep down I didn’t have the mental strength to comfort her. I couldn’t hold back tears like she did. I couldn’t pretend to be strong and brave seeing her worst fears coming true. I might have rushed to her side if I knew that she’ll come running into my arms crying out for help as soon as she sees me. If I knew she would sob her heart out pouring out all the mental agony and get soothed by my gentle pats and tears. I knew she wouldn’t. She’ll probably show me hospital reports and discuss the prospects. I was simply not strong enough for that. I did not make that call. I was afraid of her grief. And I did not go to visit when her father passed away a couple of months later. I thought I don’t have what it took to be with her in her toughest times. What would I say? What could I possibly do to ease her pain? Even trying to comfort would seem meaningless, I reasoned. I didn’t realise that I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to talk. Didn’t have to hug or hold hands. I only had to be there. And I wasn’t.

I always used round about means to enquire how she was doing. Mutual friends, distant relatives, her classmates in college, her neighbours who I met in supermarkets… Once when I asked a mutual friend about Shirley, she shot back, “Why don’t you ask her yourself? She always tells me you used to be her best friend but stopped being in touch all of a sudden.” But I didn’t call her once. We used to bump into each other sometimes in Church. I had a thousand things to talk about. A ton of unanswered questions. But all I could manage was the usual how are you and how’s work. She smiled, answered and left hurriedly. I knew she thought I betrayed her. It wasn’t her fault. I was the only one who could have bridged the gap and I never did.

The wedding card still lay on the table. I would go for the wedding even if I was not invited. I didn’t want to go up the stage and tell her how happy I was or ask her to forgive me for not being there when things were tough. But I would still be there, sitting in a corner, seeing her smile. But before everything else, before it’s too late, I would first make that one little phone call.