Good-Bye Home

Good-Bye Home

When tear-screened dear ones
Say good-bye and wave their hands
You leave behind your belongings
And board the heavy plane
To bargain a synthetic smile from
The air hostess.

Tinned food, beer cans
And a large - they invite you
To the emotional desert
Which makes you lonely, lonely, lonely.

Withered, fallen and sunk
You thirst for everything
And hardly taken care of.

You have returned to the land of
Concrete jungles, concrete minds
And earning machines.

Gossiping through the small screen

Gossiping through the small screen

Of late people sit mesmerized in front of the TV watching who talks behind whom. In the absence of real gossips going around houses, idlers sit glued to the small screen somehow realizing the object of life being fulfilled. The prime time is thus usurped by the popular channel giving a psychological label of dissecting the characters, their motives, their motivation and thus generalizing viewers. Devoid of music and melodrama this soap still finds viewers all over the state minting money from innocent watchers. The saddest thing is that the people are also made part of the game in the name of voters. Who knows how many voted and for whom? Novel devices are introduced to keep the inmates as well as the viewers engaged. Weirdest games are invented and incredible is made credible with the omnipresent cameras and an invisible, omnipotent manipulator. The characters are probably losers in the tinsel world and might have grabbed this wonderful opportunity to show themselves and incidentally earn some money as well. One or two victims to this show in each household will suffice to take control of the remote device and drive others to other chores. Let’s  also count days to get rid of this menace out of our home. 

The old vendor

Aval vendor

During the forenoon while I slowly drift into my morning nap amidst the newspaper browsing, suddenly I would be awakened by the shrill shout of the vendor. The frail looking old woman steadfastly walking more than five kilometers a day under this summer hot sun carrying a ten kilo pack of aval (flattened rice flakes)on her bare head is a symbol of suffering farmers.  I did encourage her once out of pity by calling her in and buying a kilo of the ware. But warned by my wife about the steep difference in price from our regular store I stopped buying from her long back. But this lanky old lady is persistent with her voluminous yell especially on our door front.  I have never seen anyone from our street patronizing her. With the only hope of reviving our old bond she comes week after week braving the hot weather and repeatedly yells  aval, aval .  More than once I responded her desperate call by saying that we don’t  need it and that we stopped eating it ( much against the truth).  But during those occasions she would pretend as though she hadn’t heard it right and repeat her plea. When once I explained how her  commodity is dearer than that of the store, she justified that her ware is homemade and safer to consume regularly.  I felt that her explanation was hardly credible and thereafter I remained stone silent whenever I hear her. Even when she entered our street from a distance I could hear her frail shout which gradually became louder and louder as she approached our house. With liberty she would open our gate, walk in and plead us to buy her aval. All of us have learned how to react to her imposed presence. I have also learned not to lose my temper, considering her age and urgency. She is never offended by our stoic silence and retreats with the same nonchalance with which she walked in. She never seemed to be disappointed with our negation.When confronted she would smile with her hollow cheeks and repeat her bargain.  We have to learn a lesson or two from this old illiterate vendor. 

Euphemistically yours

We, civilized folks often boast about hygiene and dutifully practice the same in public though exercising hygiene in private is one’s own privilege and option.  I could cite many instances on these but I refrain from those considering time and space. But have we ever heard about verbal hygiene? Our words sound less offensive and more pleasant when we choose to name something as something else, The Sunday morning newspaper sported a lengthy column on the innovations the Japanese had introduced in the toilet field. Reading through the article, I became aware how our language gets polished day by day especially in this field. Toilet itself was a more pleasant word when youngsters found it necessary to call it more  friendly as loo. Public places preferred to call it as his or hers. Language barriers necessitated to replace it with just a figure. Now people like to call it a rest room. In another decade it would be called with more pleasant words as the Japanese writer  Junichiro Tanazaki chooses to call it a place of spiritual repose. He claims that some poets had their finest ideas springing from there. I remember clarifying my doubt to one of the less qualified plumbers  regarding the name of a cleaning device used in Indian toilets. He instantly declared that the object of my interest is a health faucet. How artistically the engineers clouded the clumsy facts! The Japanese technology goes a little forward and provided as many as eight operations on a simple toilet seat – raise the lid, raise the seat, big flush, small flush, rear bidet, front bidet, dry and stop. The user needs to educate him/herself to avoid any kind of embarrassment in private. Beware of going to Japan in future. 

A get away

A get away

A synthetic smile welcomed us. After some formal verification we were led along a tree lined pavement to a small cottage where we were destined to spend two nights and three days. There was only one room with an attached bath which was all kept spick and span. With nothing else to do, we unpacked and set out to explore the area. A narrow paved path led us to the back of the property ( that is what they liked to call it) from where the watery landscape offered a unique vision and a remote feel. We settled on a stone bench to catch up the sun set wind  and the occasional boats that were  breezing on the black water. The amused tourists on those boats passed queer looks at us. After about an hour we trod back to the pool area from where some noise was heard. The people should be entertained so that there would be no murmur about the huge investment they had made in the name of  happy holidaying. The restaurant displayed all kinds of exotic cuisine which were priced far above the market price. Fresh fruit never includes apples or grapes or oranges or mangoes. It is always water melon and papaya. All the chicken dishes tasted the same but the consistency and colour varied. Fruit juice is always served in never- to be -seen tall glasses meant to eat up your wallet. All the attendants who came to the cottage wore an expectant look. Other guests avoided looking at each other. They were easily amused by the organizers of activities. Loud applause and stray comments kept them together. But somehow I felt out of place. An artificial air enveloped me. I just wanted to get away from that heavily guarded property which might have been acquired from middle class inhabitants for peanuts. Most of the previous owners should be living across the high compound wall that screened their poverty. It is God’s own country. 

Penniless Ride

Penniless ride

I was on my way to Salem seated in an air-conditioned two tier coach tasting the dinner carefully and tastefully packed by my wife. Eating in a train is always fun. Your hunger coupled with the immediate environment, the choice food, the window visions – all these make the dinner different and more palatable. It was when I almost finished the meal that I got a phone call from my daughter overseas announcing the withdrawal of the high denomination currency. Sometimes you hear the local news from those reside thousands of miles away. With amusement and anxiety I peered in my pocket to see a couple of one thousand and five hundred notes. The Prime Minister had announced that these notes would lose their legal tender by twelve midnight which was hardly 130 minutes away. The early morning arrival at Salem and the subsequent itineraries threatened me with unpleasant experience. Fortunately a taxi driver was waiting patiently for me at the station having been instructed by my friend who requested me to participate in the programme. In fact the useless money was idling in my pocket throughout my two day stay because everything was covered by my hospitable host. Small currency   had high value everywhere. Those who had them  flaunted them proudly whereas a few that had the new pink 2000 notes cowered behind counters fearing rejection. The irony of life changed the pride of the rich and scarcity of the poor. Long, worried faces patiently stood in the winding queues braving the hot sun and dust for the pea nut cash the ATMs were offering. You are all smiles if you could get smaller denominations from banks, commercial complexes and counters. Heated debates, articles galore, personal stories and media humour were all about the present predicament. People began to weigh their immediate needs and carefully shelved their dreams and extravaganza  till things resumed to normalcy. The restriction of withdrawal from a bank – Rs. 24000/- a week – made people to avoid depositing their extra money in their bank accounts. Everyone had a mini bank at home carefully stacking all denominations for their needs. Exact change was no more a painting on the wall; it became a reality. Demonitisation thus made us saner than ever before.

The Pink city

 It was the last day of our sightseeing trip through Rajasthan. We were through the fertile and sterile land of this colourful state that brought alive the yester years of ambitious rulers, their comfortable citadels accommodating all their conjugal partners and their desires, anxious military hoardings, massive forts and protective stone walls devoid of any of our technological and communicative devices. Today we are breathless about power cuts, network problems, recharging failures, computer crashes and what not. But people of those days never seemed to have complained about all these human failures.

                      The bright day began with the customary visit to Birla Mandir, at the foot of a huge hill. Contrary to the locations we had visited all these six days, this pristine white marble temple for Goddess Laxmi and Lord Narayan  was built in 1988 by the industrial tycoons well known in India. There wasn’t any entrance fee.   After a brief sojourn around the courtyard and photo poses, we moved to the old walled pink city. The buildings were all in pink to please a British King who had visited the city in 1727  when the city was ruled by  Jaisingh II. The city palace attracted many tourists from all over India and abroad. As usual an English speaking guide led us inside stopping now and then to explain a historical tale to half listening tourists. The overpriced entry fee went to the descendant of royal family. They say that a particular flag’s position in the mast publicly declared the presence or absence of the royalty.  A pair of huge silver pots drew many of us around them. The king whose habit was to drink water from the holy Ganges was constrained to travel abroad and hence his forethought of carrying these silver pots filled with the holy water. The royal family members were habituated to eat in silver dinner wares which protected them from poisonous adulteration. The silver containers would change their colour if the contents are poisonous, we were told. Soon we were driven to the Amber Fort, built in the sixteenth century by Raja Man Singh.  The narrow roads leading to the fort could accommodate only small vehicles and hence we had to hire jeeps from the parking lot.  Having visited forts almost all six days and learned about the whimsical preferences of the rulers, we quickly went around the vast courtyards and halls. Nobody should miss the Sheesh Mahal or the mirror palace built with beautiful precious stones and glass. The walls and the ceiling were all painted with floral decorations. One wondered how much of effort and wealth were spent those days

 to accomplish such display of art and wonder. It is said that without architecture we cannot remember. This tour helped me to remember indeed, the ambitions of yester rulers, their private and public life, their contributions and service. Long walks since morning  left us tired and hungry and most of us wanted to taste Rajasthan cuisine. A hotel at the foot of the fort had food enough to cater to our taste and with memories of our tourism hungry journey we were heading towards the capital to board the flight back home.