This Day, That Year…

The year was 2002. The day was November 18. And I had just woken up into a warm Monday morning cooled by the humming Air Conditioners within the confines of my room at Hotel Poonja International in Mangalore. I lay motionless in the bed listening to my watch ticking the seconds off counting down to the biggest moment of my then life – the first day of work. Hours later, I would start nervously, clad in my new shirt, new trouser, new tie, new shoes and new socks, almost spill a drop of sambhar on my trouser, and take the elevator down to catch the bus to work. To Work! How awfully strange it sounded on that day to say I was going to ‘Work’!

It felt so much like a newborn baby, with nary an idea what to expect out of a career – except that, it should be ‘great’. The nervous pride of beginning a career in a dream company overshadowed the nostalgic memories that were being created in those very minutes. It was still like good ol’ college days, and the first few weeks of training meant I would continue to pour over notes and write exams and wait for results. The 90-member class room – where I always sat in the last row – seemed just another extension of the college-day classes.

And when one such session was in progress we were told not to call the instructors ‘sir’ like we were so used to calling the college professors, but to call them by name; it was the corporate culture, after all. “Welcome to the corporate world”, one of the instructors had told us with an ironic smirk on his face. Life was never going to be the same again.

Well, it never was. Five years later, today, there is just the sepia tinted pictures of those days etched in memory. I do continue to work for the same company where my career was born on this day and brought up this far; where I grew from an anxious kid into the stuff that adulthood is made of. Today, I know why it’s hard to write software, why they call customer the king, and why they taught stress management in college. I know age and energy are inversely proportional, and, needs and responsibilities increase with income. And I also know that choosing the seat next to the emergency exit gives you the maximum leg room in flights.

So five years, it has been. Enough time for a newborn to go to school. And that’s how long it has been since my professional life was born. A stutter here and a stumble there, but it has kept moving nevertheless.

On a Fine Morning After a Prolonged Sickness

Not many things keep me away from writing, except when I’m down with a prolonged sickness and start seeing the nine (or is it eight?) planets of the solar system rotating around my head every time I cough - which was pretty much all through the day. So over the past two weeks, whenever the planets were not eclipsing my view of the world, I spent time reading some good old classics.

This morning I took my usual seat holding a sweet smelling copy of Somerset Maugham’s Collected Short Stories and turned to page 193. And when I read the line – Madame Coralie powdered her nose and gave it, a commanding organ, a brief look in her pocket mirror – I noticed two strange men hovering around me. One was an old man who wore his pants above his belly, and the other was a young one with a flashy ponytail. The former sat next to me, while I continued reading as if he were non-existent.

When you start reading alphabets instead of sentences, you know you are actually being engulfed with an irresistible urge to slip into what Freud calls an elevated mental state for disguised fulfillment of our unconscious wish. To you and me it is simply called sleeping. So, watching the morning sky fade into a premature grayscale enveloped by water-laden clouds receding down the horizon, I slowly drifted into a peachy bed of sleep. And then I didn’t know anything that happened.

For example, I didn’t know that the bus was stuck at a signal where there was no signal, that sunlight cracked for a second between the clouds, or that the old man who wore his pants above his belly was playing a game of solitaire in his mobile phone.

I opened my eyes, as it was the most natural thing to do after you are ejected out of the comforts of slumber. I glared at the outside world, where my little slumber didn’t seem to have had any impact. The earth continued to rotate on its axis and men continued to walk on two feet. The sun was not visible, but it was there nevertheless.

The bus screeched to a halt just outside our office after going around the world in sixty minutes. “This is the office?” the old man who wore his pants above his belly asked me. I affirmed and nudged him with my eyes to get down, while I carefully closed the Somerset Maugham taking particular care that I remember the last page I read (because I don’t use bookmarks).

The old man who wore his pants above his belly beckoned his counterpart who smiled a wry smile and went behind him, wagging his ponytail. And I walked away playing a random line from the archives of my memory – The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Eight-Thing Thingy…

This doesn’t happen often, but I’ve been held to the ground with a tri-tag. DG, Amrita and Tanay have all tagged me and I’m supposed to blow my own trumpet with eight random facts about myself and tag eight other unsuspecting victims in the process. So, here are my eight nothings.

1. I’m lazy to the core. But I tend to get hyperactive to hide the fact that I’m lazy.

2. I eat a lot. Especially junk food. A “Sweets at my desk” email that someone at my workplace sends out to the rest of the team always has a post-script “FCFS, before Kishore finishes it.” My 66 kilo weight or my stature is no indication of how much I eat. But oh, I eat a lot.

3. I have a bad brain. And an awkward memory. I can more-or-less-precisely remember what I was doing this day last year, the previous year. And with a little effort, the previous-previous-year too. But I forgot to pay my credit card bills, which was due yesterday. And I was supposed to have taken a conference call last night, and I should have sent a mail to the team this morning, and…

4. At my workplace, I use the word ‘Amazing’ so much, that people have begun to associate the word with me just as they associate the morning with a sun rise. Once, A, replied to some mail from E with a single word “Amazing”. E replied back to A, “Kishore, what are you doing at A’s desk?”. See what I mean? If that is not weird enough, then take this – I hardly ever use that word outside of my workplace. Amazing, right?

5. I can watch Cartoon Network all day long (except when there is a cricket match on TV).

6. I love Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes. My work cubicle is filled with Dilbert cartoon strips and I have a Vista Gadget on my work PC which shows a random C&B strip when clicked.

7. I love creeping people out. And this one might just do that – I was born with a full grown tooth!

8. Now that I’ve probably creeped you out, I’m back to being my lazy self and don’t know what to write for the eighth point.

Tag time now. I tag Jax, Mahen, Arunima, Neels, Shub, Vidya, Sanny, Prat.

Trichy and Srirangam…

His business is still on, and still at the same spot

I reached Trichy city after the eventful trip in the dinky buses. There was a time I used to call this city my home - when I was this little schoolboy bemused with his first pimple on the cheek, clad in maroon uniform shorts and driving a Streetcat cycle. This was also the city that saw me grow from being the little schoolboy into an interesting adolescent, my first big crush, and then a mature graduate ready to move out of the small city into the big bad world outside. 

Eight years after I left the city, I went there for a friend’s marriage. It was a surprise how little the city has changed. Whilst I find Bangalore a different city with every passing year, years have not had any impact on Trichy. The Central Bus Stand has hardly an unknown spot, the bunch of hotels around the bus stand still stand the same, the roadside shops, flower dwellers still seem seated where I remembered them, the one-way roads continued to be so. And it looked like the signboard of the school I studied, had not been repainted ever since.

We refreshed quickly on our rooms and set out to the Srirangam temple. Unbelievably, the ticket from Central Bus Stand to Srirangam still costs four rupees! The bus took me through places I remember walking in my childhood days - a Pastry shop and ice cream joint where I ran out from school to grab a mouthful, the bus-stops I stood, the road leading up to my college - everything stood as if frozen in time.

The Rajagopuram of Srirangam temple

Between all the nostalgia, the fun began when I got down in Srirangam. An old man suddenly grabbed hold of my hand and said (in Tamil), “Give me one rupee”. I said trying to relieve my hand, “Excuse me? Can you leave my hand first?”

“Give me one rupee.”
“Yeah, but leave my hand will you?”
“Give me one rupee.”
“First leave my hand.”
“Give me one rupee.”

And I used my left hand to reach out to the wallet behind my jean and stretched out a one rupee coin. He plucked it out of my hand and went his way leaving me gaping.

But Why?

I resumed walking towards the Rajagopuram, said to be the tallest in Asia. As I entered the premises of the Agraharam (the area encircling the temple), highly orthodox flavors of a Tamil Brahmin culture began to abound - men wearing Veshti (dhoti), women in nine-yard sarees, Kolam (rangoli) on the roads, shops selling stuff used in typical religious rituals.

There were also a few faces staring at me in some strange way. One of them asked me in Tamil to leave my slippers at his shop and when I turned to face him, quickly switched to English and repeated the same thing. That’s when I actually realized that the “I heart NY” tee shirt (remember those typical ones you get in New York?) may not have been the best choice to wear in Srirangam.

The sacred lamp, in sepia

Being a Saturday, the temple was crowded and we squeezed ourselves through the crowd. Srirangam reflects another of those astonishing constructions that many South Indian temples are famous for - parts of it carved out of a single stone. Admiring the architectural splendor of the temple I was shocked to find a board that prevented non-Hindus from entering. If a temple cannot tolerate a fellow human just because his belief is different, aren’t we being hypocritical about all the talking of God being one and all such crap? They say non-Hindus spoil the purity of the temple. Well, how do you know a Hindu entering the temple is pure in the first place?

Mix with some water, lemon and ice

We moved on to the temple store to eat my favorite Puliogare. The MTRs and ready-mixes only go so far, but anything for a temple-made Puliogare! After clicking some photos around the temple we started our exit and ran into a human traffic jam. A huge number of cycles and people had got tangled within themselves (though I couldn’t imagine how) in a narrow junction and we detoured into the agraharam taking the longer route to the bus stand.

That took us through lanes hosting houses that have been standing for many decades, some, for a century. The long dark pathways inside the house, the thinnai - a seating place in the entrance, the entrance itself decorated with rangolis extending till the middle of the road, made one feel as if transported back in time. Srirangam would never see a high rise building or a shopping mall. Tamil Brahmin traditions and culture have taken such deep roots that people here live the city solely for its orthodox tradition. The past hasn’t given much way to the present, and neither will it in the future.

And I also helped myself to three glasses of Nannari Shorbet - a delicacy more famous in Southern Tamil Nadu, and one that I just couldn’t stop drinking. For seven rupees it gives you a huge relief from the scorching heat and tastes next to nothing. The heat was too much, and we bought ourselves a bottle of water - which happened to be costlier than the Shorbet - and took a comfortable seat on our return bus.

Hitchhiking All the Way…

When you board a dinky crowded bus that wouldn’t go faster than a forty, shakes the life out of you every time it changed gear, sit beside a window that won’t open more than half, have four men seated in a three-seater with six bags under the footrest, you know you are up to experience the quintessential tour of semi-urban India.

You have to admire the village folks when it comes to high tolerance levels to what we urbanites find extremely irksome. You could find one squatting comfortably near the bus door surrounded by his sacks, one hand on the sacks and the other holding on to whatever they could hold on to - and be perfectly at ease with it. And there was also this belligerent lot sitting in the next seat squabbling how they were cheated over the price of fish and seemed bent on spoiling whatever little sleep I was hoping to get.

Inside the dinky bus, when it stopped for coffee

The bus stopped at Krishnagiri for - as the conductor claimed - coffee. And the driver and conductor hopped out for theirs, while I got down for the heck of it and some fresh air. But what I got instead was a smack of nauseating stink of pee, and the ignominious sight of moist walls reflecting the dim light from the café, surrounded by a lush green bush. As I rushed away into the café, more people got down and walked to that stinky spot, their back facing the road and did their stuff until they returned to the bus with a satisfied smirk. Yes, the café did have a restroom inside.

I got down at Dharmapuri to join another friend and we walked through a narrow one-lane road which had a two-way superfast traffic including roadside-parking. There were shops named Coffee Bar that served only coffee and tea (the ‘Bar’ was a misnomer), a Chick Chick Chips and Cool Drinks (oh whatever), a non-Dhaba which was named (in Tamil) Tamizh Nadu Thaba and served rice and drinks. Incidentally, that Thaba was where I went for a light dinner. Light, because I’m not a fan of Thaba food and there often are times when I hate human metabolism and I happen to believe in Murphy’s law.

We boarded a better looking bus that would take us to Trichy, soon to realize that looks are deceptive. We took a seat just behind the driver and I made same desperate attempts to close my eyes ignoring the constant droning of the engines and blaring horns to catch some sleep. I don’t know if I slept or was just twisting around on the seat, but I woke up when the conductor called out that we were stopping for coffee and tiffin. Coffee? At a sleepless 3 AM? And he wasn’t even kidding. Well, apparently, it happens to be coffee and tiffin for the driver.

With sleepy eyes I got down, barely balancing a stumble from the footboard. And there went another herd of men grouping together at a little distance with their back towards the bus. Do they ever teach in the Human Behavior class why men pee in a herd? Later, just as the bus was about to resume the driver realized the headlights were not coming on. And much to our horror, decided to go ahead to a depot in Musiri village - 30 KM from where we were - to get it repaired!

So the great blindfolded journey began. The bus cruised at a speed of 20 kilometers, driven by two hands on the steering and twenty eyes on the road guiding with whatever they could see (which was zilch) and warn the driver where to turn (and where not to), where there was a bullock-cart on the road, where the cyclists were and where he was about to ram into the tree ahead.

As the highways don’t have streetlights, an occasional oncoming vehicle gave a momentary relief, but soon it was darkness all over again. I was already imagining possible morning headlines - Bus falls into bridge after headlights blew; Bus rams into tree; Terrorist driver blows headlights and hijacks bus; Bus disappears in the dark, alien abduction suspected.

With heart in mouth we counted every meter until we reached the village limits of Musiri, which had streetlights. The driver had enormous guts, and we had our little prayers. The repair was quick and as the morning light trickled in, we reached the city limits of Trichy. Despite the blindfolded hullabaloo, we managed to reach intact. Sleepless, tired, but intact.

Hangout Evening…

I could hear myself giggle above the soft instrumentals that enlivened the ambience at Crossword. Bill Bryson is always a joy to read. More so, when you are seated stretching your legs on the red cushioned chair in the Crossword reading lounge. The spectacled little kid sitting next to me flipping pages of a thick volume of Calvin and Hobbes, turned up to look at me with a sort of wink as I smiled at that innocent face of the next generation.

Crossword Bookstore, Residency Road, Bangalore

Hours before, I had set out on another of the now proverbial weekend hangouts as a mild but bright sunlight accompanied by a soft breeze warmed the city after overnight rains. After being away from home for the last few months, I finally went to Forum to catch a movie with friends.

First was to brave the traffic outside Forum. Where people stick together in a little group and place themselves on the edge of the traffic signal, with one eye on the unlit red light and another on the busy road. And as the signal turns red and the vehicles stop, the horde begins to move, still sticking close to each other, not breaking until they have reached the other side safely. There’s something about this unsaid uniformity that grows in you, where you are momentarily glued to unknown faces, all on a common mission to brave the traffic.

Once on the other side, I looked at the imposing structure of Forum. Such structures about which, much is being spoken these days – the Mall-Culture et al. Already there were familiar faces all around. Those faces of fellow youngsters – waiting, chatting on their mobiles, working their fingers through their mobiles, munching fries and ice creams – the faces of Cosmopolitan Bangalore. I walked past them, past a multi-million rupee Audi greeting the visitors beyond the frisking point where I had a few friends waiting for me.

The floor receded below as we moved up the escalator getting a glance of everything from apparels to jewelry to McDonalds to the assorted noise of a Saturday afternoon. The menu at McDonalds spoke another familiar language. A language I readily understood - where McAloo, McGrill and Happy Meal meant Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. The language of Corporate India.

After the movie, I escalated down to the second floor which houses my favorite hangout – The Landmark bookstore. Amen to whoever said, “A bookstore is one place where you can spend long hours, everyday, without spending a penny and still nobody will kick you out”. So there I was wading through aisles of books, with nothing particular in mind but just reveling in the pleasure of turning the pages and reading a few lines.

Books are addictive. I always need more of it, even if I were to own a million. And that’s why I headed from Landmark to Crossword at the Residency Road, to spend some good quality time with myself and a book in the reading lounge. Watching the little kid reading Calvin and Hobbes added fun to the minutes there. Was I smiling at the kid’s antics or Bill Bryson’s lines? For once, I couldn’t differentiate.

Demystifying Feminism

The tag thing is up again, and this time on a rather serious note. After Am started it, DG tagged me in her Feminism in a desi setting post, and here I go with my take.

From email forwards to movies, there has been a pattern of trivializing the opposite gender in the name of fun. But between all the fun, what is not apparent is an inherent attitude of dominance that gradually gets established in men, and that of submission in women. Blame it on the generations of conditioning. A girl, as soon as she is born, is being conditioned to be ‘womanish’. It seems the most natural thing to train the girl in what people have laid down the generations as duties of a ‘woman’ – cook, wash, manage home, while her brother is groomed to play the Man of the house.

A simple excuse in some circles being – women are biologically inclined only for such chores. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, gives a brilliant insight into the biological and psychoanalytical aspects of understanding feminism.

The first — that of the passivity of the female — is disproved by the fact that new life springs from the union of the two gametes; the living spark is not the exclusive property of either.

There is nothing in the DNA that defines the duties of a woman. It’s just a result of the relative superiority that men have ‘forced’ upon women – a superiority which has no rational or biological basis!

N, in Women like us notes rather shockingly, 

I find it disturbing that the representative of a feminist publishing house is not clear about what feminism means, not to the world at large but even just to them… That three other writers with her believe that “women like us” don’t have “such problems” therefore, women like us don’t have to write about them.

It’s a pity to see that some women themselves fail to acknowledge the fact that feminism is not a radical occult movement, but a simple thought process that aims to give womanhood its due position in the society.

A cousin of mine once told me, “It started off like just another calm good day. And suddenly I flare up at him for no reason!”. She went on to say how her husband remained so cool despite all the rubbish she poured over him going through a rather rough phase of PMS. Even religion hasn’t spared a woman, by restricting most of the holy chores to men - because, women menstruate. Neither is she spared at the workplace. As would say this recent report from BBC. 

Women civil servants in India have expressed shock at new appraisal rules which require them to reveal details of their menstrual cycles.

Can anything be more disgusting? (Update: Uma tells me via email that they’ve apparently withdrawn it. The BBC news update here. Sanity prevails, I guess.)

Firstly, it’s vital for men to come out of their haze of masculine superiority. An irrational dominance does nothing useful to the cause of a relationship, other than nurturing a false pride by feeding their own ego. Secondly, it’s vital to understand that feminism is not a revolution; it’s a call for a balanced state of mind. Is that a hard ask?

These days, my cousin tells me, she marks the days in red in her calendar and gears herself up to face the adventure. As for her husband, he knows what all the red markings in the calendar are about and he too gears himself up. And they lived happily ever after.

Mr. Annoyance

Have you ever been with the most annoying person in this world? I mean, it’s a large world with infinite possibilities and there has to be someone in this world who’s the most annoying of everyone. And there is every chance he works somewhere near my company, and his car breaks down and he commutes by the same bus as me, and worse still, sits next to me.

On that ill-fated morning, when Mr. Annoyance grinned as he sat next to me not even noticing my rather loud “uh-oh”, I knew what was coming up. And I was not to be disappointed. Not on this ill-fated day, when foiling all my attempts to appear disinterested, annoyed, reluctant, this, that, add-all-your-favorite-adjectives, he was determined to ensure nothing worse could happen. Having given up on my lame escapade attempts, I resigned myself into putting up my worst possible smile and mustering enough courage to last the next thirty minutes.

All because, I don’t want to know how he ran into a roadside trash-can when his car broke down, or his fifty grand PDA where he had stored four movies including the one he hid from his wife, and why he hid it from her, or why his mother-in-law was the best of the breed in this world (vairy phunny story!), or what his seven year old daughter thought of Salman Khan, and how fast his kids were growing up (like it took me twenty-six long years to grow this old!). Neither do I need a sermon on how mother-in-laws ought to be (Oh please!), because I’ll never be one, or why her banana chips had too much banana in it, because, I don’t care. You understand English, yes? I said, I don’t care!

Finally the moment of truth arrived and he got up to say “Bye, catch you later”, and brimming with tears I said ‘Bye’, actually meaning to add “But no thanks”. There was an unbelievable relief, but the damage was done and blood had been spilt.

So Mr. Annoyance, the next time you stand in front of your mirror, remember to ask – Mirror mirror on the wall who’s the most annoying of them all. And if it doesn’t show your face, I promise to eat carrots and live in a burrow all my life.

Returning to Clichés…

“Who will help solve my bugs”, “Who is taking over from you”, “Is he as good”, “Can I call you if I need help”, “Take care”. Those were some of the parting pleasantries I received from the team in the last few minutes of winding up my assignment and rushing to Meenambakkam. It’s been a longer travel than I expected. And in the final count, it feels good to know some people may actually miss you.

The past seven months have given me some interesting experiences. A hang of the Chennai heat, the biting winter cold in Columbus, the unforgettable visit to New York City (oh, I love that city), another short sweaty sleep-depriving stint at Chennai, and finally the fatigue getting the better of me. I reached past Friday midnight and didn’t move from the bed until this morning.

There have been some good memories to carry forward, engraved as tiny picture post cards – pictures that would remind me of the good times and some hard ones – that I would flip through in future, in times of solitary retrospection. Now, other things have to move on. I’ll have to rediscover my routines and get back to all my clichés, resume doing all that I didn’t because of the constraints excessive traveling pushes on you.

Well, atleast I wouldn’t have to worry where I would go for my next dinner, or how I would spend the next weekend. Or what book I would buy next – I would just hop into my library! I wouldn’t have to worry about remaining connected – my Inspiron would serve my needs. There is something soothing about clichés. And I’m back in the midst of more of it.

So after seven months of running around the world, it’s now time for some rest - as the earth continues to rotate on its axis, and men continue to walk on two feet.

Travel Tales: Chennai

It was quite late at night, when I stepped out from the Meenambakkam airport to be greeted by a swarm of auto-wallahs pushing against themselves in search of, possibly, their last customer of the night and a sudden smack of gripping heat that slapped against my face. The latter reinstating the arrival of Chennai city.

Chennai has never disappointed me. Be it the young girls adorned with jasmine flowers, or the rushing office goers commuting on the footboard of dusty green buses, the auto-wallahs who never switch their meter on but nevertheless always have one, the ecstatic and aromatic beaches, the erstwhile conservative outlooks that some say is changing of late – albeit slower than the snail next door, the Central Station that still radiates the nostalgic remains of the past, the gripping sticky sweaty heat that is sure to engulf you like you are out of a steam sauna.

More so, when you are just coming from a bone numbing cold weather of -24 degree Celsius in Columbus. It was only over 48 hours ago, that I was wrapping myself in multiple layers of woolen clothing over a thermal wear and topping it all with heavy jacket – all to counter the heavy snowfall and the cold wind that cut across the face. And here I was, wearing the thinnest possible tee and a jean, and already wiping the sweat off my face becoming more restless by the minute to seek refuge in the guest house.

Thirty minutes later, I checked into the guest house where I would be spending the next few weeks. The AC in the guest house was, ironically, warming. A much needed relief from the sultry outside weather, even at that time of the night. After spending the past few months warming our Columbus apartment to over thirty degree Celsius, it now seemed time to cool down, as I set the temperature to 18 degrees. Brick walls and carpet-less floors made sure the cold permeated all over the place unlike the wooden homes of the colder hemisphere that restrict the movement of cold.

Now that I am in Chennai, there are a few things I should keep in mind. Like, I’ll have to endure the 1.5 hour journey to my workplace (where, my mobile – which has a local connection now – often slips into roaming automatically for god knows what reasons) from the guest house, if I miss the morning bus I could only hope to make it to work in time for lunch, there will not be any high-speed wireless connectivity which was my lifeline in Columbus. And the foremost being – never sit next to a woman in the city’s buses. Because, in this city, you are not allowed to.

This begins the last leg of my travel episodes which began last September in this very city. As they say, what goes around comes around.