An Ode to a Roaming Man

Khaleej Times / 25 May 2013

I have just turned away the third sales person to ring my doorbell in a week.

It is not very often that I respond to peddlers at my doorstep, for two reasons – one, my fear of the unknown assailant on the prowl in the garb of a salesman, and two, my abject incompetence to curtly refuse a person whose wages depend on the benevolence of those like me.

The former, based on theories floated by people that opening the door to strangers is an invitation to danger, has me tip toeing to the door, squinting through the eye hole with bated breath, trying to get a view of the distorted form outside and figuring in my mind if that’s the typical look of an intruder. Alas, there is no way to tell the good man from the goon these days, and I stay put behind the doors, knowing in my heart that it might have been just another genuine guy desperate to meet his sales target.

I have always had a soft corner for the roaming vendors who brave everything from sun and sand to rain and rudeness just to take home an incentive, keep a job or eke out a living. My earliest memories of them include encounters with them on the roads and rails of Mumbai. I harboured an unknown sentiment for the persistent knick-knack sellers, just as much spite I had for the nagging eunuchs at the traffic signals, and I often bought little things that I really didn’t need, but could spare money for. It gave me a sense of having done a good deed. I didn’t forget to respect them for earning a living than getting it free.

A little later when India ushered in consumerism and technology in a big way, a dogged tribe of door-to-door salesmen came armed with cleaning equipments that promised squeaky-clean homes to a populace swept by urban dust. The vacuum cleaner man was exceptional because he was undeterred by refusals, and he returned to coax and convince with baits that were hard to resist. They have been the hardest sellers I have ever seen.

Slowly, the number of people ringing our doorbells with assorted merchandise swelled and they began to annoy us. Some people back home put up warning signals on their gates – Salesmen, beware of dog. I often wondered if it referred to an animal inside or a resident. Such was their conduct when a daring salesperson walked into their premises.

They were bothersome indeed, yet they were intriguing. Tucked in their bags were entire curio shops that spilled out odd things from remote control covers to toilet fresheners; from sarees to scents; from potato wafers to pillowcases. They were unsophisticated but had a unique flair for selling. Some even used sentimental ploys, and we often ceded to their plea. It was another act of good deed that we could afford.

The ubiquitous salesman has become a fixture in our lives. He now meets me on the road, handing out pens that often don’t work, incense sticks that give me headaches, children’s books that I won’t read and a host of other items that I really don’t need. I comply out of kindness sometimes, but it is impossible to be so all the time. I know that their subsistence depends on my decision, but I can’t take a new credit card every time a young banking executive makes a sales pitch; I can’t buy membership to aqua parks when I don’t enjoy them, I can’t have five different water cans lined up in my kitchen, I don’t need more than one newspaper to read…

It’s hard to say ‘No’ and watch their face fall, but when said with an apologetic smile, they accept it gracefully. Behind them I say a prayer and hope that they meet their target for the day.

Battling Space Invaders

Khaleej Times (Life) / 18 May 2013

WE WOMEN are a weird, possessive lot. Many of us are possessive not just about our men, clothes and jewellery — in no particular order of importance — but also about the physical space that we permeate and perform our everyday antics in.

We brook no incursion into the domestic territory over which we hold supreme authority and we are categorical about it – stay out of our premises or bear the brunt of undiluted female wrath. Here are some caveats on our behaviour, for all — including husbands, friends and relations — to remember.

From being mere eye candies in the office space, we are now making ourselves counted as policy makers in the boardroom. That in no way means we are abdicating our control over the home territory. The kitchen is still where we rule the roost. We would like everyone personally associated with us to know that we don’t allow alien presence there, although some of us are now forced to give the power of attorney to cooks and maids, thanks to our blue-chip interests. We lament our loss of total ownership, but we realise that we live in a ‘something for something’ world.

If we invite you home, be only a guest. We appreciate your desire to lend us a hand, but we expect you to understand our compulsion that makes us inherently despotic about the way we handle our kitchen affairs. Though we perform the same tasks in our individual territories, we differ in styles and manner. You can’t rule country A like you rule country B, so we expect you to respect the differences.  We know that you have your own personal writ that you may not like to be challenged when we visit you. Trust us, we won’t offer assistance and mess our clothes up when we come over.

We are fussy when it comes to scouring dishes and cleaning the table top, about chopping vegetables and rolling rotis. We are fastidious about the way we lay tables and arrange glasses. About the way we stack clothes and water plants. You see, there is something sacrosanct about our space and we cannot allow it to be sullied by external influences. For some reason, we can’t handle interference. We wheeze and begin to get seizures when we see invasive acts from you. We were born with the belief that no one can do our things better than us. So, please desist from offering us services. It is not easy to be polite when you insist, even if it’s out of love and obligation.

We are extremely personal and touchy about our bathrooms too. It has taken years to train our husbands and kids to be civilised in their use of the bathroom and we wouldn’t want you, as guests, to come, break their good habits, and turn them into barbarians.  The last thing you’d want is our young ones to come and whine in front of you, “Mamma, they have turned our bathroom into an aquarium. Won’t you scold them?” It can mean RIP to our precious association.

The bathroom now isn’t just another dingy space with a permanently whirring exhaust fan, soaps, shampoos and toilet rolls. It plays host to phones, laptops, newspapers and best sellers. It’s not a place where you conduct essential biological businesses alone. It is where executives confer, students cram and writers think. It is where harried souls find peace in blissful isolation. We intend to maintain the serenity of this space, so please tread in and out of it with respect. Inspect before you exit. Wet floors, sprinkled seats and stained basins can make us hysterical.

Slam us, but we can’t change; for that’s how we women are designed and conditioned. But we are not the only ones in the world to be possessive about our spaces or to build virtual boundaries around our domain. Think about it at leisure.

The Big, Fat, Indian Wedding

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 3 May 2013

Attending AN Indian wedding is like living a delirious dream, or in Bollywood terms, it is like partaking in a Karan Johar blockbuster stuffed with glitz and glamour.

 From sober settings and modest marquees, our wedding milieu has now become theatrical, involving a curious, yet engaging, display of money and mirth. Opinion is deeply divided over the need to be ostentatious in our personal celebrations, and I leave it to the idealists to spar over it and arrive at a conclusion. Today, I would confine myself to incidental things about the Indian wedding, reliving the amusement that we get so little of these days, thanks to our distance from home. I may be excused if the references seem tilted more towards women, but it is inevitable in the current context.

It isn’t important who is getting married. What’s relevant is whether you are going to be in the cast, and should you decide to be there, no marks for guessing who the central character in it will be. You! That much is undisputed. So you need special costumes and jewellery to grace yourself with. The ones that have been hibernating in the closet either don’t fit or they have already been displayed at weddings and family gatherings. Who said people don’t remember what you wore on a certain occasion many years back? There is sufficient record of it in every home, courtesy of digital cameras in every pocket worth its size.

So you arrive at the venue and step on the carpet, the choker necklace or the Band-gala sherwani doing exactly what they are designed to. Stifled, yet in control, you traipse down, feeling like a celebrity on an Oscar night minus the media fever and flash. You imagine that all eyes are on you. You can’t afford not to imagine, for you have invested heavily in your looks.

Inside, there is a galaxy of stars outshining each other — men fidgeting in their suits and sherwanis, women fumbling with their sarees and stilettos, and children, oh so garishly cute! There is a ceremony taking place in the middle, but you can barely see anything, for shutterbugs and videographers have invaded the space. So you settle in with a group in a circle and catch up on things. Men discuss stocks and work, and women, everything else under the sun.

It is time for the main event and you are handed flowers to shower on the couple. You throw the petals from where you stand and they fall on the polished pate of a man three rows in front. Everyone has blessed everyone around with flowers and dry rice. There is a man at the far end who is not blessed, for he is caught in Sudoku. Some people can be oblivious to even earthquakes. Blessed souls!

There is a snaking line waiting to greet the couple and hand them a lifetime’s worth of unwanted presents. There is a spot discussion within your group on who’s giving what and you are smugly satisfied. Some hurry to shove extra currency into their envelopes. Together you decide to have the meal first. The buffet is too elaborate for you to decide on your fare, so you ask around for what’s delectable, palatable and avoidable. Someone quips that he has had better food in the dhaba in his neighbourhood. Half filled and half empty plates get dumped and everyone departs with ambivalent stomachs.

A month later you receive a pile of pictures in your inbox and you painstakingly sift through them to find a snap or two that feature you. Feeling mightily pleased, you save it for posterity as a record of your ‘esteemed presence’ at the extravaganza.

P.S: We shall talk of the gross, superfluous nature of our wedding ceremonies another time. For now, let us just be a little frivolous and foot loose. Come on, it is not necessary to be staid and strait-laced all the time!

Being Politcally Correct

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 11 May 2013

These are turbulent times in the history of mankind at all levels existence. Strife is the general setting and hostility is the dominant sentiment.

Peace goes begging as we take to combat and conflict in all spheres of civilised life. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something amiss – between nations, between people, between hearts. Let’s keep love out of this. It is too abstract, and by now, abused as a tool for living. Its presence is as ambiguous and misleading as its absence. Let’s not drag hatred into it either. It’s a rudderless, nonsensical thing that has gained undue importance in our lives. There is something more immediate and practical than these that is lacking - discretion in conduct, tact in language and an overall felicity in our interpersonal transactions.

Life, quintessentially, is a ball game played between the goal posts of Yay and Nay. Playing it well means making the right passes and build up that will take you to the right end. How many times have we goofed up and ended up scoring own goals by going wrong with our choice between Yes and No! How many times have we mishandled situations, made the most politically incorrect statements and pushed relationships into their graves!

Diplomacy, taken as an art of negotiating, bargaining and appeasement, is a trait not many are endowed with. Whether between countries or individuals, obtaining a desired outcome by using tools of inducement is a hard task that requires a unique power to influence. I have often been intrigued by this sphere of human interface, a failure of which has pushed countries to war fronts, and the triumph of which has improved equations and situations between warring people.

Many of us are absolute disasters when it comes to effective communication, posturing and use of soft power. Imagine you have a gripe, a genuine case of disapproval or an act to condemn against someone unsympathetic or even intimidating. What do you do? Spell it openly and face aggression, or bite your tongue and avoid accruing resentment? While the former can be catastrophic, the latter will make you vulnerable to habitual bullying. It is a tight situation that many an international diplomat will find himself in, as much you and me in our every day travails. When people defy reality and challenge opinion against their own conscience, a dialogue can progress only if one has an aptitude to bargain or beguile.

While this takes away the freedom to express facts as they are, a deft diplomat who knows to choose between force and enticement waits for the opportune moment to broach issues afresh. It is an on- going process of negotiation and persuasion, hammering hard nuts in the hope that they would crack someday. Ask wives who have been at it, devising ways to wangle out the elusive ‘Yes’ from compulsive Nay-saying husbands.

Avoiding a conflict is as much a strain on our civility as it is to resolve a standoff. Whether in the firing line or as a mediator, it takes immense charm and tact to keep either side in good temper. A man wedged between his wife and mother would agree that knowing when not to speak is as critical as knowing what to say. In diplomacy (at home or outside), it is a matter of timing, as they say.

A play that I recently watched laid bare the dilemma that formal negotiators often confront during the course of official arbitration. It also drove home the point that persuasion is not a matter of mere coercion. It is related to the conscience and can fructify only when the people involved put themselves on the same page. Diplomacy is not just about answering loaded questions smartly; it is also about disarming an adversary with one’s heart and mind. It is all about creating conducive atmospheres for people to relate and connect.