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.

Coming full circle

Khaleej Times / 26 April 2013

 

Every time I teach The Seven Ages of Man by Shakespeare to my students, I feel a tremor in my body — an inadvertent mist blurs my eyes — and I experience an emotional turbulence that is deeply spiritual. Reading classical poetry has always been a meditative experience to me.

The verses that hold a mirror up to life and its vicissitudes affect me profoundly, and sometimes they push me into pensive contemplation like it invariably happens with The Seven Ages.

Every time I read this gem from the greatest of Bards, I witness the bioscope of my life roll behind my eyes, unravelling the obvious as if they were great mysteries. The intense emotions that this succinct chronicle of human life evokes are the same as the ones that I experience when I am in the company of old people. Trapped between their eagerness to quit life and death’s reluctance to embrace them, I see them as representations of my own future (should life allow me that long a lease). They remind me of a quake-ravaged town, once blithe and buzzing, now reduced to a stub of tenuous yet defiant relics.

It is not easy — neither for them nor for those around them — to cope with the time wrought inadequacies that afflict them and gradually turn them into pale shadows of their vivacious past. To those of us straddling the middle age and already pounded to pulp by modernity, having old people in our lives is becoming a vexing proposition. Yes, let us squirm in our seats at this caustic statement that we know is true, but will never for the life of us admit. We woefully share stories of senile persecution at home with friends and colleagues, giving pictorial details of the old folks’ imbecility and singing paeans to our endurance. Yet we refuse to accept at the confessional of our conscience that they have indeed become intrusive and irrelevant. God bless us!

Living with old people brings with it heaps of difficulties and truckloads of predicaments. There will be innumerable instances of disconnect that can push the limits of our patience, but they aren’t the only ones to have given us trying times. Didn’t our young ones do it at one time and did we whine then? Tantrums, obstinacy, weird demands — which of these didn’t they hassle us with? Shouldn’t the unconditional love that defined our parenthood hold good when we take our old folks into our fold?

Someday, we shall all be there too. If you thought you were prudent enough now to make flawless blue prints for your old age by learning from their behavioural inconsistencies, think again. Will our dwindling resources and floundering mental faculties enable sound reasoning and rational thinking then? Can a mouldering body bolster a buoyant attitude? If we feel harassed by their expectations of us to be their ‘extended limbs’ as someone recently put it, let’s take this as time for reciprocation.

The people we are talking of as ‘infirm’ today were people of immense worth in their prime. The geriatric frustration at losing their ability to synergise their diminishing powers cannot be stressed enough. The impatience to reclaim their due place in the changing contexts of our lives drives them to commit bizarre acts of self-assertion that we view as ‘childish’ and insufferable.

A long view of our old people would represent a revolting mob pitted against their robust wards. Zoom in your view, and you will see a nursery of aged infants — ‘sans teeth, san eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

There is no anti-aging treatment that can defend any of us against this eventuality. It’s a humbling thought that can help us accept the angst-ridden presence of old people in our lives with less distaste and more empathy.

The Demise of Political Hope in India

Two recent events that hogged the Indian media headlines and gave us fodder for inconclusive debates and discussions prompt me to write this piece. One, the tragic death of a student leader in Calcutta and two, the mass judgment and rejection of India’s young political icon turned whipping boy of the ruling party, on the back of his debut speech as the second in command of the Congress. The two episodes raised several questions in my mind regarding the prospect and participation of India’s youth in its political future.  

The former brought back memories of my college days when pitched battles between the police and students were commonplace in the heart of Kerala’s capital. In smaller towns where student unrest wasn’t rare, the dissonance was heard in spurts and it rarely flared and assumed violent proportions of the kind that could be potentially fatal. Campus politics straddled two levels at that time. One, to which a majority of youngsters - mostly boys - belonged, adopted it as an activity that was an essential part of campus existence, one that gave them macho image among a bevy of girls and a group of peers. It provided them with all the necessary ingredients to make their stint at college a blockbuster, complete with stunts and bravado. The student leaders were heroes in their own right, fighting for privileges as trivial as a clean canteen to graver things like conducting elections and forming college unions.

Political leanings for the followers were largely a matter of chance than choice, and allegiance to a faction was more often than not based on factors that were whimsical than ideological. College elections were high octave events that were fought with as much verve and fierceness as public polls. For those in the fray and their committed followers, it was a chance to foray into the larger aspects of professional politics, and for the followers, it provided the experience of participating in the political process that upholds the democratic tradition of India. To the leaders of the parties that backed them outside the campus, the youngsters were pawns in a bigger game – adrenaline driven and impressionable, they helped in spicing up the slugfest outside. Some of the young, uninitiated ones fell victim to the vicious plans. Politics in the campus was largely indoctrinated and influenced, and it rarely produced icons of the kind the country had much use for in the future.

Not many of the above, neither the leaders nor the foot soldiers, carried the spirit forward to become politicians; fewer still became officially anointed leaders or representatives with a distinct political voice. They moved on to become professionals of other kinds, the political heydays becoming just a blast from their past to be recounted in personal memoirs and alumni gatherings. Political activism, which was a favoured occupation within the campus confines, petered out of their life for more than one reason. The situation doesn’t seem much different more than two decades later.

Politics, in India, is a sullied word, and a career in politics is viewed with disdain, thanks to the conduct of men and women who claim to be advocates of advancement and champions of change for modern India. The history of Independent India has given very little reason for its people to consider politics as a serious vocation. Although no one discounts the importance and role of modern politics in matters of democratic governance and public policy, there are very few takers for the job among the educated youth, for it neither commands genuine respect in the public eye nor it offers complete fulfillment in one’s private estimation. How many young boys and girls that we know mention politics as their chosen career option even though they root for a strong leadership to manage their macro economic and social affairs? In a country where social sciences still don’t get the preferred ticks in college application forms and in a civil society where the responsibility of governance is easily passed up as someone else’s job, the probability of youngsters taking up roles of national obligation is abysmally low. India is a nation of strong opinions, a lot of which emerges from the young and the restless, but the vociferous voices either become a din that achieves little or fizzles out in collective frustration. No family, except those inheriting a sterling legacy, wants its progeny to take up the cause of nation building and political stewardship. Those who willy-nilly chart the forbidden course lured by the heady mix of muscle and money power it might offer, end up being wannabe administrators with minimal exposure and maximum ambition, a lethal combination that in no way improves the prevailing situation.  When the scope of political activism stays restricted to protest marches and sloganeering fuelled by the parent bodies to achieve their larger motives, and when political proclivity is fired by limited private goals, there can be neither true leaders nor staunch followers. The upshot of such rash adventurism will either be trivialization of political maxims or radicalization of ideas, both of which will leave collateral damage of different kinds.

In a country that sets out on democratic adventures of all kinds, where the eclectic mix and the elitist miniscule co-exist (although in severe conditions of feud and discord), where political equations are so fluid that policy making often takes a beating at the cost of national interest, the dearth of able statesmen and administrators signals bankruptcy of a disturbing kind. This is where the second major event of the past weeks, namely, the crucifixion of a political scion, which his opponents started and was then duly completed by the mob and the media, comes in.

Was I disappointed? Yes, I was acutely disappointed, for till recently I had hoped that the youth idol would someday grow in stature and assume the cosmic form. The nation badly needs an iconic change. It needs reprieve from time worn ideas of the old school that brawls more and governs less. It needs fresh blood in its veins to surge ahead. When Rahul’s speech plonked, it was my hope for this major alteration in the nerve centres of India’s body politic that crashed. It is certain that I was not alone in mourning the fall of the glass citadel.

 We don’t expect the Prime Minister to give us quick fixes to the running list of our problems, but we at least want solemn promises that would drive us to the voting centres in the elections to come.  There is a clear difference between a leader who says “Yes, we can,” and one who says miracles don’t happen. The impatience of a billion plus population cannot be assuaged with existential aphorisms. The million mutinies of a chagrined nation cannot be doused with sentiment and philosophy. I don’t intend to indulge in any kind of Rahul bashing here, but I can’t imagine the electorate handing over the future of our nation to a Cambridge educated youngster who has yet to learn the ropes of nation management.  It isn’t enough to inherit legacy and earn a degree in International Relations to run a country.

Whether Sudipto would have stayed a commie for life and been someday on the Politbureau is anybody’s guess. Whether he had harboured political dreams of larger dimensions is unknown. If he had had greater political ambition that could have transformed him into a national figure of any political worth, then, his death is a huge national loss that we all must deeply mourn.  

The new generation lacks bonafide political aspirations that would eventually lead them to serving the public with a fair amount of legitimacy and credibility. Those who do steer towards the vocation are pitifully deficient - either in education or experience or both. The intellectuals who graduate from universities may have the right tools that could shape public policy and influence public opinion, but they unfortunately are not the faces that greet us on the hustings. If we need erudite men and women to govern us, we must nurture them when they are still young and receptive by providing the right climate to grow and spread their political bough.  It might be irrational to imagine that this can be realized in this day of confused and misplaced polity. But it is certain that the gaps that exist between the campuses, scholarly retreats and the house of the people will result in major tectonic shifts in the democratic crust of India, and the impact it will have doesn’t augur well for the world’s largest democracy. Against this back drop, the demise of a student leader and the fall from grace of an erstwhile hero are tragedies that call for a solemn candle light memorial at our town squares.

A Little More Conversation

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 13 April 2013

 

I love watching interviews and discussions on TV. The feverish exchange of views and the verbal volleys many times serve as great exercise to the intellect, and they offer panoramic views of the various takes people have about the business of life.

 Agreed, a number of these debates slip into the realm of the absurd, thanks to people who are bursting with thoughts to purge, and are tightly closed to ideas from outside. However, there are also people who can disarm you with their wisdom and flair, and keep you glued to a discussion on a subject of the remotest personal interest to you. I am not sure if the art of speaking (sense) is acquired, or if one is inherently endowed with it, but some people can make conversation extremely delightful and engaging.

Being in the company of people can throw up myriad possibilities for conversation. There is the mindless banter between friends, which has a merit of its own. It is like watching slapstick movies that have no use for the brain, but can unwind you to the point of going bonkers with fun. Then there is the silly, yet high on emotion gossip among the incurable lot among us women — hand it to us, we excel in it — that offers a gratification of a unique nature that only we women can appreciate. It is like watching TV soaps — high strung and hyperbolic, yet greatly appetising.

Discussions at the dinner table with family can be somber or buoyant, depending on whether you are talking about exams or a holiday. Sometimes it is just business as usual. They can remind of you of proceedings in the parliament — sometimes sober, sometimes animated and at times staid.

At parties where the wine does most of the talking, things are a bit sketchy, with no clear distinction of who babbled what and when. It is almost like watching a commercial break - colourful and assorted, but too cacophonous to make much sense.

Ever been in the company of people so full of themselves that they spill a bit of their lives each time they exhale? Turn the ignition on with a question and watch the Harley Davidson vroom at full throttle. All you need to do is punctuate the barrage with some more questions, and switch yourself off till the radio station goes off air. At the other end are folks who can make you feel like a question paper in the hands of a dullard who can’t answer in more than a few laboured words.

There are also the intimidating kinds, people sitting on high horses who can make you feel so diminutive that you wish you could vanish from their sight. They are brilliant all right, but their brilliance pales you into insignificance and knocks you out of existence. Being in their midst can make you feel like reading the medical encyclopedia — full of highbrow stuff you can barely ingest or digest.

And then there is the crème de la crème — discoursers who wear words like a well-tailored suit. Dapper in their manner, crisp in articulation, scholarly in their thought, diverse in their interests and surprisingly unassuming, they make you an equal partner in dialogue. They engage you in conversation, taking your views, offering theirs, never once allowing their authority and sophistication to circumscribe your identity. Listening to them is like exploring Wikipedia, picking up nuggets of insight and information as you navigate. Talking to them is like posting your thoughts on your Facebook timeline.

It is a rare combination, and rarer still is the chance to cross path with such people. When you do, as it might happen once in a blue moon, you feel as if you have witnessed a fine symphony of human faculties. These are prized acquaintances that we will cherish long after life has moved on to newer territories.

Labour's Love Lost

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 6 April 2013

 

There are some things you just don’t get on a platter these days. Happy marriages, for instance. Rarer still are happy jobs.

While discussions on the former are still secretive and nibble the ears, the latter is lending itself to vociferous expressions of discontent and has become a trending subject for conversation at dinner tables and social dos.  A casual, “How’s work?” question will return responses that range from words of utter despair and lame resignation to measured nods and unsympathetic shrugs, none of which is too complimentary to the institution of organised employment.

Job satisfaction today seems as mythical as a mirage and, as a term, it is so mutually exclusive that for eight to ten hours every day, the world becomes an insufferably morose place full of men and women who leave their hearts in their homes and turn into robots that complete mechanical chores at the work place. Someone  feels that they are underpaid, someone is overworked, someone else has a bad boss, someone thinks his colleagues are out to get him for strange reasons, someone just doesn’t think he fits his work profile and someone else feels that this was the last thing he had ever wanted to do in life.  Even a person who holds a job that others would die for says he is just getting by.

So, where has all the happiness at work gone? Why does an office now resemble a classroom of kindergarten kids on their first day at school?  What ails us that we bemoan our work life so severely? 

Our fathers retired from where they started their careers, had modest income with which they got us all literate and liberated, (many storing nothing for their feeble years), didn’t know what luxury meant, yet they were happy people who even now wax eloquent about their workplace experiences like proud war veterans.

We now leap from one job to another like crazed primates, earn hefty salaries, wallow in nauseating extravagance, visit the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids, send our kids to the best schools in town, put away enough for our retirement, and yet, wail like war widows when asked about our jobs.

Even as we put our dissatisfaction down to ‘poor work culture,’ and secretly acknowledge our aspirations and expectations as reasons to our woes, we miss to recognize the most vital ingredient necessary to keep us ticking and humming at work. Love. We simply don’t love what we do. I hate to say this, for it might hurt, but it’s undeniable that a majority of us work either for money or to satisfy our mammoth egos or both. Our achievements carry either material worth or are laced with self-glorification. Our compelling need to find utilitarian purpose to our activities has usurped our love for our occupation.

No one stipulates that we put away money and ego trips. They are must haves in the limited confines of our corporeal world. But sans love, they will only lead to abject misery.

Consider this. The cleaner in my sister’s home in the US isn’t essentially a ‘house maid.’ She has a husband who earns handsomely yet she dons the domestic help’s apron for the sheer love of doing domestic tasks. A priest at the temple near our home in India chucked his job in Dubai to take up the religious vocation he had been longing to do, and a man I know very closely remains unperturbed amidst rattling turbulence constant at his workplace because he loves his assignment too much to be deterred by what happens around him and the peripheral chaos have no bearing on how he conducts his work. Nothing but pure passion for the job at hand can create such fine examples of labour. Job and satisfaction as a pair will be less estranged if only some love creeps into their midst. The secret is no different from that of happy marriages.

The Great Indian Disservice

India is a nation of great ironies.

Forget about the political incongruities, the secular fabric that is fast fraying around the edges and an economic paradigm that is waltzing in the chasm of inequities. These have become boring topics. I am talking about curious things like how you get to spend a night in the cozy company of bed bugs in a second class air conditioned train compartment for a few thousand rupees or how you need to drive around only five kilometers and burn fuel to get a mobile top up card, because shops in your area are closed, thanks to a 48 hour general strike.

Agreed, maintaining Indian Railways, which is one of the largest networks in the world, is no joke. But who is joking here? I mean serious business – the business of having systems in place and giving the tax payer the due he deserves; the business of getting people to do the job they are paid for. Someone suggested the night after we were severely bugged that we must have made a complaint to the ticket examiner. In a country where railway cops push ticketless travelers out from a moving train or evil men transgress openly in a compartment, what can a ticket checker do to fend off swarms of silent bugs and roaches?

There is certainly someone else responsible for providing the public with services that it is paying for and more under him to implement the services efficiently. It ticks me off to see that there is neither the will to serve nor accountability in areas of public service. It is okay to provide dirty blankets in the train, because people take the unclean (w)rap lying down. The news of a rat biting a senior citizen in a railway coach is read with more amusement than alarm, and forgotten. The ‘dry run’ in the toilets continues amid soiled seats and smelly space. We groan, yet go on, because we have no advocates to plead our case.

That people aren’t doing the jobs that they are taking the wages for irks me. I wonder if it is a trend peculiar to India alone. The tendency to shirk work has become so regular that we have now learnt to work our way around it. If the guy at the government office is missing in his seat, we merely wait till he returns from his extended coffee or lunch break. That is the biggest perk of holding a government job. No one can fire you for playing truant.

Again, how does one accept the arrogance of a porter at the station who would rather cool his heels than reduce his wage demand and do the task for his own good? The 48 hour national strike of February might have its supporters for all the purported reasons, but how does one understand the psyche of a people that only needs a whisper about a general strike to go on a self declared holiday, as they did in my home state? Inflation, corruption, minimum wages, economic policies are fair concerns, but to call for a national shut down and to add to the loss of a staggering economic condition hardly makes sense. The irony of it amuses me. The finance minister is at pains to generate national income and his people out there are staying home and celebrating a strike at the cost of over 200 billion rupees. That should be the priciest national holiday ever!

Every time I travel to India, I return with mixed feelings about its prospects. On one hand are the elevated living and excessive spending triggered by private enterprises. On the other hand is the general ennui in the public domain that is hurling the country into a huge, freewheeling space. Alas, service in India doesn’t come even at a cost these days, and the greatest irony is that somewhere we have ourselves to blame for it.

 

Bending Laws, Breaking Rules

Khaleej Times (LIFE) April 9, 2013

I have recently assumed office as the spokesperson for a spanking new organization – GRuBA – Global Rule Breakers Association. Yeah, sounds kinda grubby, but that’s how some acronyms are. There has been a need for a club of this sort since the time man has been eating and drinking, but the absence of a concerted effort has seen this slighted lot of rule breakers getting their most basic rights crushed under asinine rules and statutes.

When I was offered the role of GRuBA’s brand ambassador, I asked, why me? They were candid, and said my space in a national newspaper could just be the right thing for them. They said they wanted someone who could genuinely understand them and propagate their ideas. I pounced on the opportunity. Of what use are my skills if they can’t be utilized for ‘larger social causes’?

After great deliberation, a charter statement was created and I have been given the task of floating it. The following is the gist of the document.

The primary objective is to claim our right to break rules as fundamental to our existence. We believe in democratic values and consider the world to be a huge republic with no stifling regulations. (One can choose to call it a banana republic at one’s own peril). Our fight is for establishing a freewheeling system where pointless Dos and Don’ts don’t bind us.

For starters, we would like to highlight issues that may sound downright frivolous to an uptight conformist, but to us are distressing because they hamper our movement and have a debilitating effect on our lives.

We are a lot born with mobile phones as an appendage and we carry rights to employ it at our discretion – in the plane, at a concert, in the prayer hall or at the meeting.  Asking us to arbitrarily switch off or silence it is tantamount to gagging us. So, let the ringtones play and let’s discuss the day’s menu with the cook or fret over an undelivered consignment even in the midst of a spiritual discourse, or give a running commentary on the flight even after we have belted up or update our FB status at a live show.

We can fight over our freedom on the roads till eternity, but you cannot deny us our right to not use indicators, cut lanes, zoom past the amber and red, or honk. Rules are for ninnies and you follow them at your risk. If our approach irks you, cross over and join us. You will then feel less violated as a driver.  

As pedestrians, we have been a hassled lot. We’re not ‘joy’walking, we’re merely crossing the road wherever we want to. Why should we cross elsewhere when the store is right in front of us? Please stop cribbing and start using your brakes and reflexes wisely to avoid mishaps.

Jumping queues is a genetic issue with us and pardon us for it. Further, if there is a privileged line with a fee, we shall jump more happily. Money can sometimes be useful, you see.

We shall dump waste outside garbage containers, photograph when prohibited, (double) park where we like, spit, litter and do all we please.

There are larger aspects of rule breaking that will need extensive debate within the existing parameters of morality and social code. We have yet to examine and establish to the world how rule breaking in many instances is forced and how it is even for the general good. These are intricacies that we shall discuss continually as we evolve as an organization.

We don’t seek political rights. We only demand social recognition and respect from the righteous wing that never errs and constantly demurs against us. Rule breaking is our birthright and no law can stop us from exercising it.

God bless (save) the GRuBA community!

Disclaimer:  Readers are advised to use due wisdom and judgment before seeking membership.

 

Too Cool to Care

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 21 March 2013

 

THERE IS something I quite like about Facebook — that little, blue ‘Like’ button.

It’s a blessing in a fastidious world, where making impressions and earning brownie points is as tough as getting a raise at work these days. It has become an effective agent of appreciation in a tight-lipped age that for some reason can’t utter the ‘Wow!’ too easily.

A niece recently wrote in asking me to add some punches in a speech she had prepared for a contest at her pubic speaking club. She wanted me to add a few gag lines that could make people crack up, because, in her words, “people there don’t laugh easily”. Now, why people don’t laugh easily is as much a mystery to me as why people don’t applaud at a concert or a man doesn’t tell his wife that she looked pretty in her new outfit. The reason, in my limited understanding, is that we are very stingy with open acknowledgment.

The popular theory is that appreciation at the work place breeds complacency; that it reduces excellence to mediocrity. The added danger, according to some, is that it leads to expectation of an incentive for the good job done. So the boss opts to keep words of appreciation in his chest pocket than hand it out. It is as true of the corporate world as it is in the domestic set up. Housewives and house help will vouch to being equal victims of this grudging. Ask them. Wangling out a mere “well done” is as impossible as squeezing superglue out of a year-old tube. 

I wonder if you have noticed our behavior as audience at concerts and live shows. We had been to two music performances this month, and on both occasions, the host had to appeal to the crowd to be generous with their applause.  At the second event, the honourable Consul General of India, in his inaugural address, rightly pointed out that it was as if we had “fragile hands” that was at the risk of breaking if we put them together. What an inglorious tribute to our pathetic sense of appreciating talent and giving due credit to those who deserve!

Oh, did someone out there say that well-mannered people don’t overreact and there is prudence in muted responses? Come on folks, discretion on such occasions is not the better part of valour. It doesn’t matter what the person next to us thinks about us, let us hang bells and whistles to our manner when it comes to appreciating effort and excellence, and imagine, it doesn’t cost a dirham!

Nothing satisfies an artist as knowing that he has regaled us with his performance, so let’s make him know that from the distance of our seats. Nothing satisfies a chef at a restaurant than knowing that his guest has had a delectable meal, so let’s tell him that we just had the best biriyani ever. After all, he never gets to hear our ungracious belches, and who knows who pockets the tips we leave?

Nothing thrills our children than knowing that their parents consider them intelligent and smart, so let them know. No, they won’t ‘climb on our head’ if we know our job. Nothing gratifies a dedicated worker than knowing that his management values his work. So give the devil his due and he will not rue about the long pending hike. Let’s raise a toast to our friends and family and tell them once in a while what they mean to us. No, it is not mushy or clumsy, it’s just being audibly grateful.

The next time we have an opportunity to applaud, let’s do it loud till our palms tingle. There is a lot that a generous heart and two unrestrained hands can do than a small, blue button on a social networking site can.

When the Shoe Fits

Khaleej Times (Life) / 15 March 2013

My flat feet that can walk only in a particular brand of footwear had a fancy for other people’s shoes. The tall kind, the stiletto sort, the open toes, closed ones — everything except the ones that they are destined to fit into.

Imagining myself in the another man’s (actually, woman’s) shoes has been an amusing distraction for me. There were many things that I wished I had been, many others that I wished I hadn’t been; roles that I wished I could revise to live the lives of other people, especially the illustrious and industrious ones.

For instance, if I were to be born again, I had wanted to be an investment banker-cum-author. There is something beguiling about these folks who crunch numbers for lunch and munch alphabets for supper; something romantic about the idea of being a banker by the day and a writer by the night and eventually a best seller by the morning after. Amish Tripathi recently landed the biggest signing amount ever for an Indian author, Chetan Bhagat continues to rake in the moolah for his highly ‘flick’-able texts, David Lender made a ‘tsunami’ of a fortune with his e-book, Ravi Subramanium made a banker out of God Himself…the tribe is growing and how! Seriously, do they teach creative writing in Business Schools?

When I saw my friend and former classmate take home a jolly good pay cheque from an MNC, I wished I could be like her. A working woman enjoying the professional roller coaster and leading a happily chugging family life, she has the best of both the worlds. Women like her who juggle business at home and work amaze me beyond words. A woman entrepreneur I met a while back as part of a freelance assignment is a powerhouse of hardcore professionalism. Living the high life and constantly on her toes, she is a go-getter, with precise ideas of what she wants out of life. I wished I was like her, knowing what I really wanted to do with my life and then knowing how to get there. Those were times when the feeling of acute inadequacy over powered and crushed the stay-at-home woman in me.

When I saw young reality show contestants sing, I wished I had taken music lessons and given my latent talent some chance to bloom. My voice has now gone down the drain and presently I am a match only to the monsoon ragas of toads and frogs.

Often when I saw Barkha Dutt, Christian Amanpour or Lyse Doucet on TV, I wished I had carried my talent as a scribe further and given my journalism degree some credence. I wished I had grilled and barbequed public figures with my questions. Now I try to wring answers out of a reticent husband who descends into diplomatic silence whenever he is carpet bombed with questions.

I marvelled at the eloquence of eminent orators and wished I could reel off expressions as easily. I drooled at the talent of my young nephew who runs public speaking courses and wondered if I must join Toastmasters just to fork myself out of the pits of inferiority. I wished I could ‘speak’ and not just ‘rattle’; be articulate and not be just verbose.

As ridiculous as it may sound, I wished I was in the shoes of all those I admired for all that they were, but I was not. I wished I could do many things that others did and be them, until one day a friend casually remarked, “I wish I could be like you. Busy, doing things that you so love to do, at your own pace and will. You are one blessed soul. I am jealous of you.”

It was a truly defining moment for me.  After a whirlwind tour of fancy footwear stores, my feet returned to my own shoes, where it fit snugly.

Climbing the cliff

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 6 March 2013

THE KIND of things people tell you soon after you return from a vacation!

Most of it has to do with your looks and overall bearing – a kind of ‘before and after holiday’ reaction. How can you escape a comment or two on your bulk from people who seem to keep such a close watch on you?

The last time I returned from India, a friend said, almost with alarm, “Oh my God! Whatever has happened to you? Lost so much weight!”

She sounded as if I had shrunk so miserably in a month that I could now pull out my primary school outfits and fit in comfortably.

“Oh yeah? Good for me,” I said.

Soon a second friend came along and exclaimed, “Gosh! Look at her cheeks! So full and rasgulla-like. Looks like you have been eating like a horse for a month!”

The hilarity of the situation made me want to whoop out loud, but I quashed the urge in time. I tried not to look at my first friend for the fear of finding her acutely mortified. “Mom’s cooking,” I said and shrugged.

That was in the halcyon days when I did not care a fig about fitness for I wasn’t bulky, nor did I belong to any of the weight watching categories because I wasn’t a victim of slimming woes. Bathroom scales were then used only to weigh holiday baggage. It was a time when life was awash with ice creams and faloodas, garnished with butter and cream and I lived in the blissful ignorance of a silent scourge in my body called LDL cholesterol.

Actually, there was no blessed need for me to go and take a test, but I did. A regular check-up was warranted after forty, people said repeatedly, and after a long period of inaction I finally subjected myself to a complete medical assessment in the supreme certainty that all would be well. But Murphy has testified that things would go wrong if they possibly can, and so I returned with figures that ushered in forbidding terms like clogged arteries and heart attack into my chirpy life.

The wickedest thing you can do to yourself is to go to the physician when you are in fine fettle and there are no major anatomical grievances. Wisdom has always made late entries in my life and so I got a fool’s due. A moratorium was declared on all my dessert drives, and my daily bread lost the intimate company of butter. Milk was toned down and yogurt became enviously fat free.

It is only some weeks since the heart breaking news rattled my peace and so far it hasn’t been easy to follow the doctor’s diktat of salad and ration. What do you do when you have a three-day wedding to attend with four meals to savour every day? What do you do when you visit relations after four years and they serve you copiously? What do you do when a young nephew takes you out for a treat to celebrate his new job? Imagine telling them all that I have become a rabbit and would henceforth eat only carrots and cabbages, and so would they please make arrangements for the flavourless fare? 

It is going to be an uphill task to shed the bad fat and burn the calories, but when the menace is stark and staring in the face, one simply has to comply and tighten the belt. I have no clue how I am going to achieve it, and how much of external counsel from veterans and internal control from a weak will I am going to follow. But the writing is on the wall – age is catching up and it is no more fashionable to say it is enough to feel young at heart, when the heart itself is at stake.

Foggy memories

Khaleej Times (Life) / 16 February 2013

IT IS ONE thing to cherish wintry mornings and another to confront foggy conditions.

Fog can be a nasty thing, especially if you are on a snarled up highway and you can almost hear the driver behind breathing down your neck in pointless exasperation. It is worse if you are at the airport waiting for a flight on a foggy day, biding your time between dumb display monitors and clueless duty managers.

Airports are chaotic places, but the eagerness to reach a destination often makes the difficulties of modern-day international travel seem rather trivial. Everything is taken in the stride – security checks, snaky lines, knocks from trolleys behind, baggage woes etc. But what we do not bargain for is an indefinite delay. 

It can make the waiting lounge look like a tin of sardines. The air conditioner suddenly seems ineffective and soon the boarding pass doubles as hand fan. The man at the counter asks us to wait for the elusive announcement.

“Can you please tell what the whole thing is about?” we ask him politely.

The fog, he says, while pointing at the clear, mid-noon light outside. He doesn’t deem it necessary to divulge the details, but we try to gather information from other sources. We eavesdrop a bit and learn that incoming flights are delayed. But the arrival board reads that our flight has landed, which means that it logically has to take off on its return journey soon.

I approach an airport staff member with my queries and he says that the flights that have come in are being diverted elsewhere. This is not fair — this jumping the queue business, I fume inwardly. Moreover, do pilots on the Indian route know the aerial path to Aleppo or Alexandria? Won’t they lose their way and land somewhere else, I wonder aloud. My husband gives me a glare  that expresses his annoyance.

There aren’t enough chairs to seat all the passengers and some are beginning to squat on the floor. We are lucky to find two seats, but one latte and fifteen minutes later, I feel a need to go to the restroom. I shun the sensation and glue myself to the chair. But you can’t ignore nature’s calls for long, so I risk losing my seat and rush. The restroom staff is livid over the massive footfall in the facility and grumbles that people are flocking there because they have little else to do. I return to see my man struggling to keep my seat safe from the onslaught of chair hunters. Now he needs to go too. I have an obligation to guard his place. “Make it fast,” I say. He glares again and mumbles. Indefinite delays can make devils out of saints too. Patience is running out and tempers are flaring at some distance. I crane my neck to know what’s transpiring, but the argument is in Arabic. I rue not having learned the language in all these years. I miss the action unfolding there.

We are three hours behind schedule. I am bored. I try not to fall asleep for the fear of tilting and spraining my neck. The elderly gentleman next to me strikes up a conversation. He is hanging his boots and going home leaving a working wife behind. Isn’t she going with him, I ask. “The secret of a happy marriage is separation,” he quips. I grin at the wisecrack and ask, “Especially after retirement?” He is chatty, but I don’t mind. We spend an hour in conversation. He tells us many interesting things. He is a man who has seen and known life. Listening to people like him is like viewing through a kaleidoscope.

The plane to our hometown is finally ready. We take leave thanking each other for the company. I may never see him again, but the thoughts he shared with us in that final hour of our waiting will stay with me forever. Foggy arrivals can sometimes end in happy departures.

What good is your money?

Khaleej Times (Life) / 23 February 2013

I was barely 12 when I wrote my first poem. It was titled, “What can money do?” Written at an age when I didn’t have a concrete notion of money in real, worldly terms, the poem was my first brush with words and wisdom.

I still cannot fathom what made me write about something that I had so little knowledge about— that is, the vacuous nature of wealth — but the poem became so popular in my immediate circle that it was published in my school magazine and circulated among relatives, who still consider it my best piece till date.

The poem could at best be defined as a rare occurrence of ideas that had nothing to do with what I was to become later in life. It was no indication of the values I would imbibe or the belief systems that would get indoctrinated in my adult life. It merely expressed a lofty thought that was beyond my years and experience.

The notion of wealth I had at that naïve age only got more tenuous as years passed by. Like many other things in life, it was difficult to put a post-it note on wealth as either a virtue or a vice. I found it difficult to dismiss it as superfluity, even as I realised that it wasn’t all that one existed for. Experience had taught that money was necessary to sustain physical and social life, but the ever-changing parameters of ‘need’ and ‘want’ distorted my views time and again. It was nearly impossible to spell the importance of wealth, more, its use and purpose beyond food, clothing and shelter.

For all the philosophical opinion we hold and disburse at will about materialism and its futility, I suspected if we could let go of our riches and relinquish our positions even if we made billions, if anyone who has built an empire by dint of his labour can give off a share without agonising over the attrition, however small; if we could ever say, ‘enough’ and gift the excess away. Soon, the squiggles in my head found answers in philanthropic anecdotes about some famous, rich people. The cosmos responds to our questions if we ask hard enough.

As if to endorse my newfound beliefs, I read about Warren Buffet gifting 600 million dollars worth of company stocks to his children on his birthday last year, not to add to their assets, but to run their charity. The man’s life and his mammoth proportions of wealth has always amazed me, but this time what transformed my perception of the super rich dad was the grand objective behind the transit of money. I found a new meaning and purpose to the act of bequeathing wealth to one’s offspring. The fact that the rich dad has rich kids who have more than enough to spare the millions for charity cannot take away from the spirit of the generous action. That they had the will to share was inspiring enough.

When Bill Gates recently said that he had no utility for money beyond a point, I wished I had the firm conviction, if not the wherewithal to say the same. I feel overwhelmed when I imagine that someday I would make such massive money to be able to say that, but should that happen by a quirk of fate, I wonder if my soul would expand in tandem to give a huge share away. It’s a daunting contemplation I would rather pass up now.

Today, my perception of wealth as merely a means to worldly comforts has altered. Being rich need not be a state of self-centered delusion that provides for materialistic variables alone. I am becoming increasingly aware that possessing wealth has many noble dimensions beyond the limited confines of personal use. It is a view that is so different from the one I had several years ago as an impressionable 12-year-old.

All that glitters...

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 5 February 2013

 

Just as poignant I feel about the anomalies in life and disappointed with the violations in the world, I feel equally amused by the eccentricities that are put on show by the quirky lot among us.

The kind of odd things we sometimes do tickles me, even when they cannot be dismissed as petty, considering the enormity of the situations.

Recently, there was a report on how a daughter in India decided to take legal action against against her father, who gifted her imitation jewellery for her wedding. Considering the skyrocketing prices at which gold is selling these days, and the parents’s desire to send their daughter(s) utterly decked up in gold that makes onlookers feels jaundiced in his eyes, this was bound to happen sooner or later.

I must admit that we Indians are famous for our love for the bling-bling. Baroque and Indianness are inseparable. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked about the heavy neck chain that I wear as part of my mangalsutra. “Do you always wear this?” the Filipina at the salon asked me once. I nodded. “You are very rich,” she quipped. “Nothing about wealth, just tradition,” I explained.

But how much of our ornamental leanings is actually tradition and how much unadulterated vanity is a debatable topic. But the truth of the matter is that our cravings for ostentatious things have made us such hopeless freaks that a dad, and a well-heeled one in the daughter’s version of the story, chooses to give his daughter counterfeit gifts.

The same love for the gold has made Indian women good bets for those in the artificial jewellery business. No jokes, unless you are so savvy to see the real from the rolled one, anyone can easily pass one for the other. Two cases in point — I was at a shop recently looking for some imitation stuff (come on, who said I was immune to the bling fever?). As I was haggling and trying the ear rings out, the salesman asked, “What are you wearing on your ears now?”

“Er..diamonds,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously, and tightening my grip on the originals.

“How are these different from yours? No one can make out the difference, madam.”

I ‘bling’ed and felt like a complete idiot. So why on this good earth did I spend those hefty Dirham bills last year?

In another place, when I argued over the price of an artificial ‘uncut diamond’ piece, the guy dictated airily that I take a walk down the road, look at the things on gold shop windows, come back and tell him if I found any difference except in the price tag. The man seemed to know his business.

I went, and believe you me — certain things in the gold store looked not a shade more real to me than the ones at the artificial shop. Some even looked tarnished and junky. They said it was the antique kind and the seemingly lacklustre chunks hark back to the historic times. “Jodha Akbar, madam,” said the salesman, but his clever sales pitch neither made me feel like Jodhabai nor Ashwariya Rai. Wedged between two ranks of ornaments, I got seriously reflective about how the real and the bogus had overlapped in our lives and how the space between them had got so nebulous that only the most discerning eye could tell the difference. Truth and lie have become interchangeable.

Honesty now looks pricey and antiquated. Deceit looks easy and inexpensive. We wear glitzy masks to cover malice and meanness, and peddle ourselves as ornaments to each other. It suits our pretensions and satisfies our self love. No one can ever make out the travesty of our times because it has become so invasive and inseparable. I surveyed my life and wondered if on several occasions I wasn’t like the dad who gifted his daughter the imitation stuff? It was moot point to ponder.

With compliments

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 9 February 2013

There was a time when diaries, calendars and fountain pens made for great corporate gifts.  As kids, we eagerly looked forward to our father to bring them home at the beginning of the year. Sometimes there was such a surfeit of stuff that the diaries were used for practising school composition and hand writing, and every room in the house had a calendar for decoration. The pens were kept in safe custody and handed out on special occasions such as exams or an essay writing contest in school.

Those were the times when the compliments, as we fondly called them, were innocuous gestures that acknowledged good will between business associates. They were just part of corporate camaraderie, and to some extent a promotional tool for the brand, that was accepted and reciprocated, almost like exchanging sweets on Diwali, Eid or Christmas.

But things have changed and how! We are some weeks into the New Year and I don’t have a calendar on my walls yet. Since I have no major use for diaries and pens, thanks to the superfluity of gadgets around here, I don’t rue their absence. But I miss the calendars. It is not that compliments have become an outdated concept, it just that they are not anymore what they used to be – simple gestures of business good will. Corporate gifts have now gone high tech with tabs, smart phones and the like going out to clients and customers, making the giveaways look more inductive and influential than appreciative.

The methods of complimenting these days are so lofty that it makes one suspect the purpose. Is it more to entice than to encourage? Does it play on the agenda of buying people out than paying tribute to their association? For securing prospective deals than to build relationships? No matter how covert the agenda, it is hard to ignore it. Let us accept it - showing carrot is not a new human tendency. It is just that we have discovered discreet ways of doing it. Cynical as it may sound, yet much of what we give is for winning favours in return than out of a generous spirit. It is a deeply entrenched habit in us, which we have now converted into a tradition. We promise our children presents if they will excel in the exams, we buy people gifts so that we stay in their good books, we tip the cleaner at the carwash so that we get more than the customary service...why, we even turn the cartoon channel on to induce our toddlers into eating or allow an extra hour of PS3 to our boys and a day out for our girls if they do our bidding.

Knowingly or not, we have cultivated a character that looks for easy routes to achieving goals. We have now found better backhand strategies for clinching deals and seeking favour. When it is open and naive, we call it a compliment. When it is clandestine and devious, we call it a bribe. When we do it in our private circles, we call it a token. When it is done in the public domain, we call it kickbacks. And when the proportions are big and scope is infinite, we just brand it as corruption.

The concept of giving and taking is too complex to understand. It is tough to define what is fair and what is unscrupulous, for there is a huge grey area in between. What probably determines its moral standards is the intention that drives the act. Often the intention is less than complimentary and charitable. Just as bitter is the truth that there are no friendships without self interest, there are probably no giveaways without an agenda. It would be foolhardy to imagine that it is all out of love and kindness, for believe me, there truly are no free lunches in this world!

 

 

 

Just pain, no gain

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 18 January 2013
 

Even a third grader would know that birds fly southwards to escape winter in the north. But some dumb homo sapiens, like the twosome here, defy common sense and always head the other way by default.

Ours is the kind that is so geographically challenged and directionally deficient that we ask Lady GPS to guide us home every day.

Take this for instance. The price of gold was surging. Go, get the gold, they said. The rich cows flocked, grazed and had their fill, smartly stocking up on the bullion. The lesser ones, like yours truly, kept slavering at the effervescent market with no dough to expend on what the experts said would fetch handsome returns. We waited for the funds to collect and finally went and got the bar. Pity, that we didn’t use the gold dispenser at Atlantis. It would have added glamour to the asset that everyone believes would turn around and help us in old age. But no one told us that we had just hit the North Pole in winter. The metal faltered, got grounded and didn’t take to the air again. “It is good in the long term,” we whispered wearily.

And then, a need for cash arises. Let’s get the gold out, we decide. What we hear at the gold store makes us see red. “It was at a high the day Obama won the election. It has fallen again,” says the gold man. “That was only two days ago. Can’t you do something to get us those rates today?” I plead, staring at the loss. The gold man smirks as if to say, “Lady, get a grip. I am not trading potatoes.”

Scenario two. The Dollar was riding high against the Indian currency. Thank you, said the Gulf Indian who had funds in his local accounts. Some, like us, said, “Where do we go for Dirhams now? Didn’t we buy gold with it? We tracked the rates and queues at the exchange centre spitefully till the Dollar began to flounder again. It was a huge relief to know that the world around us had slid back from an ‘advantage’ point, and we were on ‘deuce’ again.

A few months down, the money collects and we wait for the Dollar to appreciate. Following Murphy’s law, it doesn’t. That’s exactly when there is an urgent need back home for cash. We wait for a week before the emergency presses on us and we dump the money at a six month low rate. We rue the notional loss for days, even as we watch the Dollar’s upward swing. Two months later, the US dollar regains its former glory against the India rupee, and all we do is slump with the currency, stare at our dismal bank statement and swear.

Scenario three. The business channels blare out that the stock market is on fire, and our spirits rally in tandem. As market amateurs, we waver, unsure of where to wager our money, reading up company fundamentals and corporate news, looking for cue.  By the time we do the homework, the stocks have soared and we buy some crap at illogical prices. Soon the market corrects, tanks and we wait to cross the red and exit with nearly burnt fingers and crushed sentiments.

We recently bought the scrip of a beleaguered Indian private airline hoping that it might be revived by a takeover, a la Satyam. The stock promptly slid and we panicked, even as no news about a resuscitation plan for the company emerged. We finally sold it at a loss. A few weeks later, we saw reports of a foreign airline’s plan to shop for stakes in the airline. The stock heaved and we sighed.

“Do you think the creator forgot to put the financial compass and navigator in our system?” I asked my husband.

“Apparently,” he said wryly, and switched the business channel off.

Wishful thinking

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 4 January 2013

 

I lost two chunks of my heart in December, as the year drew to an unceremonious close. They were prised out of my chest by a maverick 20-year-old in Connecticut and a group of bestial elements in Delhi.

It wasn’t for the first time that I was feeling the rupture at the centre of my existence. It has happened many times before, and it will happen again whenever evil strikes. But strangely, this time, I didn’t feel the usual numbing pain. There was only a fleeting sense of Déjà vu, which induced an initial feeling of nausea, soon settled into the void created by the lost pieces of heart.

I mutely watched the world up in arms against unhindered use of guns, demanding lasting solutions and an entire sub-continent baying for the blood of half a dozen savage creatures, and feverishly discussing means and methods to stop these acts of evil.

It was a coincidence that I had shared little thoughts of a theological nature with my pupils only the other day. They were small, yet significant dialogues, on the existence of evil as an inexcusable, yet all pervading element, in the world. Even as I explained to them that vice existed as a complimentary to virtue, and it was the way nature chose to find its balance, I was looking within me for answers to more compelling questions about the nature of evil and its resolution.

Stepping aside from the surrounding din, I quietly descended into a space that was beyond the uproar and distress that had built up in the wake of the twin events. I watched from my little log cabin the helplessness and misery of a human race lost in the wilderness of its own insensitivity. For once, I knew that that answers lay not in legislations. No civil code, no matter how severe, can tackle the issue of impulsive wickedness and immorality. Fear of retribution can be a deterrent only to a sane, rational mind. It can produce no effect on an insensitive, dehumanised being that has no ethical bearings. If you or I don’t indulge in an evil act, it is predominantly because of our inner sensibilities. Fear of law is only a supplementary binder. Instances of abject inhumaness are fallouts of the combined absence of this instinct to abstain from offence and restraint by law.

So, who in the end is to blame? And when will we find a solution? Does the buck stop with regime controls, or is it an incurable malaise of a doomed society that has lost sense of what’s good, bad and ugly? It is easy to proclaim that the social fabric is in tatters and it needs mending, but pray, can we put things in order with just platitudes on moral behavior and poor upbringing? It is so simple to speak about the other man’s faults, which we tactlessly separate from our own. To us, it is always the government, the justice system and the society (that excludes us) that are flawed. We hunt for punching bags, as if the onus of working out solutions lay outside of us - he, she, they…

Aggression is an inherent quality that hibernates when the soul is in place, and takes evil forms when it goes astray. It is this missing soul that we need to recover to bring succor to a battered humanity. Now, more than ever, we need apostles who can help mankind tap its innate goodness.  We need a genuine miracle that will restore human conscience, and plant our race in a realm of godliness. We need salvation from our own spiteful vein.

As grief and anger coagulated across the US and India over the gruesome incidents, it was for this miracle that I prayed – silently and ardently. It was an inward journey towards finding lasting hope, peace and faith.

The downs of life

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 15 December 2012

Thoughts about disease and death are awfully frightening; talking about it is even worse.

But that was precisely what the insurance consultant sitting in front of us was doing – telling us about the two most imposing reflections that our mind chooses to sidestep, while we merrily dig into the meatball of life. We behave as if the two big D’s were things that could happen only to someone else, even as our core instinct prompts us about the possibility of the former and the certainty of the latter in our lives.

“I am sorry, but I have to be a little raw about this,” he announced, giving his audience a grating presentiment of what was to follow. We felt our stomachs tighten as he spoke of all the things that we had to know about ‘possibilities’ and ‘eventualities’, but had chosen to ignore for obvious reasons. The session wasn’t as innocuous as it had been when we had taken our Life Insurance policy many years ago from the ubiquitous LIC agent back in India. It is strange that the phrase ‘in the event of death’ did not sound so sinister then as it did now.

With a health insurance card from the company that takes care of medical expenses here, there was little else that weighed on our mind until we cruised into the mid-forties and the shades of grey started showing up. We realised that old age (albeit, still some distance away) was not just ‘a natural occurrence that we could handle when we came to it.’ Instances of critical illnesses among old people (and some younger) we knew and the utterly prohibitive cost of quality health care and treatment that we heard about forced us to do some serious reality check. It wasn’t an easy exercise, but who said life beyond the glam years was so easy?

The literature that we were handed out blew the living day lights out of me. It gave us a heads up on the worst possible ways to die. I felt as if I was being asked to choose my most (in)convenient way to do it, and then I was being given not a clever way to buck it, but a fair chance to beat it. There were, of course, no guarantees on coming out alive and well, but we all have the right and responsibility to put up a fight, and to do that, it is now not enough to have guts and gumption. We need lump sum cash in our pockets.

My grandpas and grandmas ended their run on this earth so peacefully that not even the seasons noticed their passing. The paper in my hand suggested that things might not be so peaceful. Along with new inventions for better living, there are now newer, mysterious and often unpleasant ways of quitting this world. Blame it on life style shifts, natural inequities or plain irreverence to the cosmic law; we may, for all you know, get the short end of the stick, and we had better make ample provisions for it. 

It is certainly not a jolly thought to dwell in, especially when life is riding the crest and things are gung ho, but it helps to swallow the bitter bill and be prepared. Not all of us can boast of chunky bank balances to support our future medical needs. We often scrimp and save for our children’s future, our retirement, a world tour, but very seldom for that prospect of falling grievously ill.

It will be tough to convince the irrational mind that taking an insurance cover against such a contingency doesn’t mean that we are going to contract something critical. Far from it. It is only like carrying an umbrella in our bag even when the skies are clear, for, as Forrest Gump’s mama often said, “Life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

Finding a perfect Recipe

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 8 December 2012   I am a lucky wife because I have a husband who makes my morning tea on the weekends. That just means two days of tolerating a concoction that he has fondly labeled garma garam chai (piping hot tea). Truth be told, he has never got it right despite all my efforts to teach him the recipe; yet every time he asks me to comment, I exclaim, “Super!” He smiles thankfully knowing that I have lied yet again. The only thing he hasn’t ever figured out is whether I lied out of obligation or love. This charade between us has gone on for years now, even as he asks me, “What exactly do you do that I don’t to make it so well?” I want to shrug and say “I don’t know,” but I cock a brow and say airily, “extra love, perhaps.” I have never tried to master the art of cooking, thanks to the undemanding palates of my family. Like many other skills that I possess only in passable degrees, I have just got by with my culinary capabilities. With no fixed methods, it has always been a little bit of this and a little bit of that going into the pot, with the result that I turn up different versions of the same dish on different occasions. Mind you, they have not always been as delectable as I would have liked them to be. I am as clueless about a lip-smacking outcome as I am of a disaster — no credit to the cook or blame on the book for either. I have often seen cookery as a parallel to life, especially when taken within the constructs of success and failure. Mitt Romney must have spilled as much man-hours and money on the campaign trail as Obama, yet the outcome we had on the election day would see the former spend a life time contemplating on what went wrong. There was something missing in his recipe that he would be at pains to fathom. Obama, for his part, would still be wondering through his worry-tinted smile how he got those ticks in the electoral boxes. Ask anyone who has won life’s grand slams and he would rattle off platitudes likes persistence and planning as the stilts that raised him to glory. A discerning few mention grace as the catalyst. A team at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, recently claimed to have cracked the code to achieving box office success for Bollywood films. It beats me to think that one can win handsomely with some smart number crunching alone. If only success was so easy to compute and arrive at, if only it was math and not a matter of how the dice fell, many of us would have been bestselling authors or screen scorching stars or globe-trotting entrepreneurs. While it is within everyone’s individual capacity to slog and stretch one’s limits, the abstract ingredient that we call ‘luck’ is something that one doesn’t find in recipe books and road maps to success. It is something that plops into our cooking pan and makes even the humble porridge a contest winner. It certainly helps to take tips from the experts and add value to our methods, but eventually we make our own dish with a unique taste of its own. It is nearly impossible to say what makes some enterprises so wholesomely successful although one can ascribe several variables to it; just as it is impossible to say what makes my tea taste better than the one my husband makes, although I can claim a dozen things, including the love ingredient. The truth of the matter is that there is no perfect recipe — either to cooking porridge or brewing tea or crafting success. We all follow our own recipes to make our meal and in that lies the relish.

It's our second home

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 2 December 2012

It is that time of the year when my nationalistic sentiment stands deeply divided – this period between Diwali and the UAE National Day.

It is almost impossible to not feel the joy of belonging to a country so doused in the gaiety of a festival that makes entire neighbourhoods in Dubai take on an Indian avatar. It is equally impossible to be not in awe of the euphoria that sweeps the UAE in hues of red, green, white and black in the days ahead of December 2 every year. 

For an Indian to who Independence Day and Republic Day back home just meant two days off work and the national parade watched on TV, the fervour that is displayed here in the days leading up to National Day is a source of wonder, and many times, acute envy. As I wade through the sea of national colours now spurting in all possible forms, I put my patriotic responses under the scanner and fetch results that might explain the ambivalence prevailing in my heart.

There are no two ways about the fact that I love my country, but it is like the love a parent has for his or her wayward son. You love him because he is your flesh and blood, and it is not within your capacity to hate him despite his deficiencies. You censure him for his errant manner. He doesn’t give you sufficient reasons to compliment him yet you celebrate his birthday because you can’t disregard the congenital link.

You can’t disown him because he defines your existence in many ways. Often, you conceal your parental love and berate him, even as you wish that he gave you a chance to put him on the pedestal and raise a toast to him.

And then you have a friend, whose son is an epitome of virtues, and you almost wished that he was yours. Over a period of time you establish a bond with him that nudges and dislodges your parental leanings. A war in the heart ensues. Your affection is put to test. You have to choose between your son who went astray and your friend’s boy who gave a new meaning to your life with his charming ways and endearing company. You loathe making comparisons between them, but you do it anyway. For all the admiration you have for the latter, you know he can’t be yours. Sooner or later, you have to return home and share the roof with your incorrigible brat, in the hope that someday he would turn the corner.

Year after year, during vacation, I suffer the pangs of my divided love between the land of my birth and land of domicile. Just a few days into the holidays, once the early charm of homecoming wears off, I long to return to Dubai. The reasons are too stark and murky to merit detailing in the present moment. Back here, life acquires a rare charm and quality. It gains an even tenor, making monsoons and monsoon weddings in the family a distant memory that I cherish, but don’t sigh for audibly. Even my houseboy who shares a ten-by-ten room with seven of his friends and slogs for more than 12 hours a day says life here is a fairytale for many reasons.

Every expat here has more than one reason to love this place. Like the friend’s son, it cannot be completely ours, but while we are here, we owe a large share of our happiness to this land that we have nested in.

For this reason, l’m going to don some merchandise in the Spirit of the Union colours this weekend to express my gratitude and appreciation towards the nation that makes me smile every time I get off the plane. Sometimes, it feels good to wear your heart on your sleeve.