Category: Peeve

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The Milletization of India Must Stop

My wife is not gullible; not gullible at all. But propaganda always affects her decision-making. Ever since I can remember, she has made me and others around her go along with her choices. We changed soaps from Cinthol to Medimix to Santoor – solely because one jingle sounded nicer to her than the other. I had to switch from Rupa to VIP to Jockey or nothing, depending on which film actor was endorsing which underwear. Unfortunately, the same applies to our gastronomic choices. It is the hype that makes the lady of the house decide which foods we shall eat. Consequently, at different times, we have consumed vast quantities of quinoa or chia or sunflower seeds or cinnamon sticks. My muted complaints against fennel pancakes went unheeded, as did my protests against tofu-a-la-king. But they were all transitory fads that soon blew over, like some tropical storm or a midsummer’s nightmare.

I had got used to these passing whims and mastered the art of battening down for the brief periods that the craze lasted. Soon enough, the little woman would tire of the novelty and we would be back to wheat and rice and other familiar fare. Sometimes, even when she did not want to, the trend would change because some high priestess of food fashion would decree that chicken fat or carrot leaves were passe and the ‘in’ thing now was pork from Pindari or the sepals of Salvia from Supaul. I suffered through every passing fancy, but none lasted long enough to permanently scar either my psyche or my appetite.

Unfortunately, this stupid millet business started last year and even the FAO jumped on the bandwagon. This craze has now been going on for far too long and I miss my wheat flour, the maida, the dalia and the sooji. In the first flush of hyperbole, the missus adopted the millet route and we started quaffing the horrible stuff by the ton. I had never imagined that millets could come in such variety, but the missus became chummy with them all, and in their various avatars too – as grain, in semi-broken form and even as flour. She also learnt how to dish out the stuff in camouflage, in the form of noodles, pasta and crepes. She insisted that millets were good for her eyesight and for my sciatica. She insisted that every millet dish was yummy! But she never fooled me – because while declaring a dish to be yummy, she had the same crafty expression that she has when she feeds our dog his deworming medicine.

Over the past year, my wife and I had several showdowns over kodo and ragi and jowar. Ultimately, out of sheer fatigue, she promised not to buy any more millets. But fate keeps finding strange ways of getting around this promise and millets keep sneaking into our kitchen. And once the millet – any millet and in any form – has come in, my wife refuses to throw it out. She believes there should be no waste of any grain – no matter how coarse or uncouth it might be.

First, it was an old friend of mine from Patna who sent us two kilos of ‘madua’ without any provocation. Just a few years ago, madua was not even considered worth eating. It was the grain of the truly unfortunate – people so far below the poverty line that they were not even aware that such a line existed. Just when we managed to finish the stock from Bihar, my former office colleagues held a birthday bash for me. I was surprised to find that millets can be used for making not only dosas and idlis, but also dhokla and kachoris. Ugh! When I was leaving, a beribboned packet was placed in my car. I thanked my friends for the party and the birthday gift, which I presumed was a nice single malt or at least a fine selection of Swiss chocolates. But no! When I unwrapped the gift at home, I discovered that some twisted minds had deemed it appropriate to give bajra atta to a retired colleague on his birthday! Four packets of that vile stuff!

So the little woman and I ate bajra rotis for I don’t know how many days. Just as there appeared to be some light at the end of the tunnel, fate struck another blow, and in a totally unexpected manner. My wife, who enjoys her game of tambola in the ladies’ club but has never even gotten a loser’s prize, won a full house! And the prize was ten kilograms of assorted millets!

We had barely started consuming that stock when, last week, our daughter’s in-laws – who otherwise are perfectly normal people – sent us a hamper of finger, foxtail, barnyard and other weirdly named millets as an anniversary gift. I begged my wife to throw the stuff away or simply give it all to the maid. But she refused. “You know how talkative the maid is, don’t you? What will our sambandhis think when they visit us next and Phoolwanti waxes eloquent about the tasty millets sent by them?”

So whether it is by accident or design, we continue to be neck deep in millets and I for one am fed up, literally. I think it is time people woke up to the fact that millets are passe and beyond their ‘best by’ date. Even the FAO has declared that the International Year of the Millet has ended. Wake up, my countrymen! Salvation for all of us lies only in the total demilletisation of India.

(THE WEEK 13/07/2024)

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Vindictive Technology

There was a time when it was not too difficult to gain admission to one of the five IITs in the country. One needed only a modicum of intelligence to be selected, with no need for extra classes, or coaching and certainly no swotting in any Kotah factory. There were some who, after being invited to enter the hallowed precincts of an IIT, contemptuously declined. I was one of them. With supreme stupidity, I had declared that there was no future in technology. Alas! I had no premonition of how much technology there was to be in my future!

Instead of maligning women, Shakespeare should have declared, ‘Hell hath no fury like technology scorned!’ I have discovered the hard way how vengeful technology can be. It has been striking back in a variety of ways over the years even though, quite naively, I had hoped that its wrath would mellow with age. But no, it has continued to exact revenge.

My wife and I live in a multi-storeyed building where technology keeps tormenting us. We are held hostage by the myriad apps that are an intrinsic part of condominium living. Would you believe, we frequently get locked out of our apartment because that villainous electronic lock pretends to malfunction? That wicked smoke detector scares us by going off without any provocation, sometimes in the middle of the night. The electricity gets disconnected on its own. Our maid is randomly refused entry into the complex. And once, we were trapped by the malicious lift! For all of ten diabolical minutes!

When earlier this month, my wife went to our daughter’s place for a couple of weeks, technology saw it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between us. I had not been aware, but technology keeps me under surveillance! I discovered this only because some sneaky apps kept sending alerts to my wife’s phone each time I left our housing complex. And she telephoned each time, “Where are you going? It is well past dinner time! Surely not to that no-good Gopu’s place?”

The nefarious plot to make us quarrel included communicating the names of all the visitors to my wife’s phone. The presswala, the newspaperman and the courier were meticulously listed. Every pizza, every kebab, each and every calorie was counted and reported to the missus.

Now you must understand that my wife and I are no longer at the coochie coochie honeymoon phase of our marriage. In fact, we are at that stage when most questions are prefaced with, ‘Where the hell?’ or ‘What the hell?’  Even then, I was surprised when my wife cut short her visit and returned home early this morning.

“Who the hell is Heerabai?” she fumed.

I got jolted to total wakefulness from my sleepy state. Heerabai? I had no idea. No idea whatsoever.

“She visited you last night at ten!”

“Oh, that was Heera Bhai, the Blinkit delivery guy. I had ordered bread and eggs,” I said and showed her my phone payment app. “See! I paid Rs 150.”

My wife gave me a withering look. “This … this Heerabai charges Rs 150! How low can you sink?”

The implied accusation was so preposterous that it deserved a really absurd response. “See?” I said. “I never splurge money. Always scrimping and saving! That’s me!”

My wife did not find my attempt at humour at all amusing.  So I repeated, “Darling, Heera Bhai is a man.”

But she didn’t believe me.

This incident has shattered me. I surrender. I give up! I just can’t afford to upset the missus! Can someone please help me tender an unconditional apology to technology for holding it in contempt 60 years ago? 

(THE WEEK _ 5/8/24)

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Copy Editors, Oxford Commas and Other Pestilences

Someone told me years ago that J.K. Rowling, author of all that Harry Potter nonsense, had her first manuscript rejected eleventy-six times before becoming a sensational bestseller. Well, dear Joanne certainly had far greater stamina, tenacity and perseverance than I do. My patience and optimism ran out after my magnum opus was rejected by three publishers. But, before throwing in the towel (and my typewriter after it), I thought I would make one last attempt. And voila! The fourth publisher accepted the manuscript and made me sign a contract undertaking to publish my masterpiece in a matter of a few months. Then I heard nothing for more than three years.

Suddenly, last month, the editorial team of the publishing house wrote to me to get my manuscript ready for publication. “But wait!” I wrote back. “What do you mean ready for publication? Haven’t I already given it to you? So, publish the damn thing!”

But no, that was not to be. I was then educated by some underling with an unimpressive designation about the procedure that would be adopted to actually publish my bestseller. I had expected someone with a grand-sounding title – like the Supreme Principal Editor in Chief – to call me up and beg me to come to their office to collect humongous royalties. Instead, I had got an email from a lowly assistant co-editor named Hrisha who claimed that she would find mistakes (not errors) in my masterpiece. I was offended! By Jove, was I offended!

Then followed a series of most infuriating and frustrating email exchanges. The assistant co-editor was clearly uneducated, if not IQ-impaired. There also seemed to be a generational gap between that sweet young thing and the dirty old man that I am. Hrisha had very firm ideas about psycholinguistics and philological propriety. According to her, body-shaming was a no-no! Sexist remarks were to be eschewed! Words indicating bias were to be omitted! And she considered many terms that are an integral part of my colourful vocabulary to be homophobic.

“Sir, such words show that you are prejudiced!”

“Of course I am, stupid!” I wanted to retort, but I let it pass.

I was certain that in respect of many words, she kept saying ‘no’ merely because she had said ‘nyet’ once. I kept offering alternate words – many of which she still found offensive. We haggled over semantics the way delegates at the United Nations do while considering a particularly tricky resolution.

She also stumbled and tripped over almost every reference to classical literature. She had heard of Shakespeare but was blissfully innocent of almost every soliloquy or quotable quote. “What does ‘methinks he doth protest too much’ mean?” “Shouldn’t the name be Alfred J. Prufrock, rather than J. Alfred Prufrock?” “Are you sure there was an author named Coal Ridge?” “Why do you refer to George Eliot as ‘she’?”

We disagreed about the use of lowercase letters and the articles. I insisted it was ‘an hotel’ while she said that such usage was at least a hundred years old. I declared that numerous objects could be counted as lebenty-nine and digity-two, but she said those were made up words.

“You just can’t make up words!” she declared.

“Well, bad luck! I just did! If umpteen can mean a large number, why can’t slepenteen?”

We then crossed swords over punctuation. She primly informed me that they follow ’in house’ rules of punctuation. ‘In house’ rules of punctuation? Whatever does that mean? It is only the Queen (bless her) who may tinker with colons and apostrophes. The Queen and Wren and Martin. But no one else! No, not even the King! But here was this sweet young thing telling me that her publishing house has rules of their own! I could not immediately think of the exact equivalent of ‘ghor kaliyug’, so I merely remarked that the end of the world was nigh. Which again got me rap on my knuckles – the word ‘nigh’ was struck through and replaced by the word ‘near’.

Hrisha informed me in a rather snooty manner that, “We do not use the Oxford comma”. I assured her that I did not use one either, and further that I had been unaware that universities could lay claim on punctuation marks. Just imagine, there could be a Hindu College semicolon or a Mission College umlaut! I had always believed that rules of punctuation were universal, but here was Hrisha, brazenly suggesting the use of single inverted commas where I and the rest of the world would have used double quotation marks!

It was after a particularly nasty exchange of emails that Hrisha took umbrage at my use of the term ‘sweet young thing’. “It is so sexist”, she remarked. I asked her not to take it personally, but Hrisha calmly informed me that ‘she’ is in fact a man and not a girl! The deceiver, Hrisha, then poured salt on my wounded ego. “Don’t forget, Sir, the readers of today are young like me – quite happy to ignore your abstruse literary references, your poetic licence and your obstinate opposition to contemporary punctuation rules. It is time you stopped swearing by your Wren and Martin, whoever those gentlemen might have been, and learned – not learnt – to write proper English.”

Well, that was the final straw! In future I will never approach publishers with my creative works. I will consider self-publishing everything – without giving any copy editors with androgynous names access to what I write. Maybe a better solution would be to altogether give up writing?

The Week – Print edition – July 21, 2024

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Parenting Failures

A peculiar aspect of living in a high-rise condominium is that one never really gets to know all of one’s fellow residents. Not even their names. Thus, in our condominium, I am called ‘Uncle’ by some and addressed as ‘Bhai Sahib’ by others. The children annoyingly call me ‘Baba’ or ‘Dada’. They crawl all over the place, getting underfoot on skates, on bicycles and while playing cricket. I encounter them everywhere — in the garden, in the lift and in the walking area. I see the kids going to school, sullenly trudging behind parents, who carry their bulging schoolbags.

Just the other day, a teenaged girl approached me while I was waiting for the lift. She asked me the time, so I pointed at the clock hanging on the wall. She asked me the time again. ‘The clock is right there, my dear,’ I said. She looked at the clock and said primly, ‘I can’t tell the time from that round thing. I am used to only digital devices.’

Another day, I observed a young boy who was riding a bicycle with flat tyres. I told him that they needed to be inflated. He seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. And nor did his father, who came by a bit later. He thanked me for noticing the flat tyres and promised to buy new ones. When I told him that he only needed to pump air into them, he asked, ‘Uncle, how much psi pressure is recommended?’ I told him that it was clearly written, ‘Inflate hard’. ‘Ah, so it’s not my son’s fault,’ the father said. He added proudly and irrelevantly, ‘My son is among the youngest code writers in his school.’

When my elder daughter was about eight, her school uniform included a necktie, and I taught her how to knot one. Her mother also trained her to dress herself and tie her shoelaces. I assumed that all parents similarly teach their children. But no! In our condominium, I find quite a few children running around with their laces undone. Whenever I stop a kid to prevent him from tripping, he asks me to tie the laces for him! I once saw a woman doing up the laces of her young son; I suggested that she teach the brat to tie them himself. The mother just shrugged and said: ‘Oh, they have to learn so much in school, as it is.’

I am ashamed that my wife and I are failures as parents, and we did not bring up our daughters properly. I mean they knew enough to come in out of the rain, and they could tell the time and change a fused lightbulb, if needed. They carried their own schoolbags and sharpened their own pencils. But they could never programme a computer. They still can’t repair an iPhone. As children, they never mastered the survival skill of downloading an app. Maybe, it is because my wife and I are simple country bumpkins, and we never knew the important things that children needed to be taught.

 

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Haven’t Heard the Last of It

“You are going deaf!” asserted my wife, apropos of nothing. “Eh? What did you say?” I enquired absent-mindedly. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, throwing up her hands melodramatically. “I ask for the third time — do you or don’t you want coffee? You really are deaf!”

“Oh no, dear!” I said, “I’m not deaf. It is just that sometimes I am preoccupied with matters that you would not understand.”

“Stupid old man,” she mumbled, thinking that I would not hear her.

In fact, I am not deaf, and there is nothing wrong with my hearing — at least most of the time there isn’t. I can hear the bells of the neighbourhood temple for the morning aarti. My beauty sleep is equally disturbed by the azan from the mosque. The blaring horns of school buses never cease. I can always hear the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles that add a note of urgency to the day. Nevertheless, like many of my friends, I do not hear the doorbell sometimes, or I ignore the telephone till it tring-trings itself to sullen silence. The missus tries to use these lapses as evidence of my deafness, but I cleverly deflect the accusation by pointing out that I was listening to music through my Air Pods. I plead innocence by also claiming that I can well hear the raucous crows on the terrace, the piercing cry of the vegetable vendor, as also the faraway diesel generator set.

Television anchors were the ones who discovered first that I have hearing issues. So, instead of using the sedate tone of Salma Sultan, they adopted the excited style of Navjot Sidhu for reading the news. They instigated the participants in discussion programmes to outshout the most aggressive of sellers in any fish market. And by Jove, they succeeded! It has now truly become a free-for-all. Even the characters in soap operas, so keenly watched by my wife, have started yelling. I presume they do so to ensure that I can hear them.

Besides the guys on television, the neighbourhood aunties have come to my rescue, too. They always gather by turn in someone’s home and chant complicated mantras to appease various gods. These ‘Bajrangi ammas’, as some youngsters call them, have now started using a loudspeaker for my benefit. Children scream expressly to disturb my siesta. The plumber, mason, carpenter and even the electrician of our condo create a ruckus whenever they can, patently to reassure me that I am not hard of hearing. I am indeed blessed! The whole universe has conspired to prove my wife wrong about my minor hearing problem. My only wish now is to somehow make her speak louder when she talks to me!

 

(Published in The Tribune on 28/04/2023

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Olloo The Puttar

It must have been sometime while I was not looking that the frightening new world arrived. A frightening new world designed for nerds and software engineers. A frightening new world in which old fogeys like me have no space.  They call it the digital world. But I didn’t dig it. No Siree, I didn’t dig it at all!

In this new world, the fact that I am digitally handicapped was brought home to me not just occasionally but repeatedly. Day in and day out. And sometimes at night too. I was regularly proved to be a digital dunce by some things called PINs and OTPs. I always thought that PIN stood for Pain In the Neck, and OTP is the short form of ‘Olloo The Puttar’ – a term I now use for any cocky youngster. 

In the frightening new world, I was confronted by the dreaded PIN or the OTP at every turn. I needed one or the other or both for getting a blood test, for permitting a friend to enter my residential complex, for getting my car serviced, for hiring a cab, for receiving a parcel in my own home that was clearly marked for delivery to me, for receiving a pizza that I had ordered and paid for and even for taking my own money out of my own bank account for my own use!

I found it galling that I needed an OTP for paying my phone bill. Why should the phone company bother to confirm that it is really I who was paying the bill? If someone else wanted to pay my dues, he was most welcome to do so. Why should I have any objections? And why should the phone company object as long as they are getting money? But no! The phone company wanted to be absolutely certain that it was ‘Dear Mr 99 XXX 123XX’ who was paying the bill. My name was certainly not 99 XXX 123XX. Yet I was, and am, addressed in this manner quite often. I really fail to understand where the ‘XX’ comes from.  I have seen the XXX on rum bottles and fully appreciate that. I have also seen the XXX on video films and dare not confess that I fully appreciate that too. But does my name contain any X’s? Not when I last looked at my birth certificate.

It is the same with the income tax guys, except that they address me as ACXXXXXX3X which, if you noticed, is a different set of X’s. Earlier I used to think that these blighters’ sole objective in life was to somehow make me pay tax equal to or more than my income. But then I knew better. They not only wanted my money, but they also wanted to make my life miserable by insisting that I provide them OTPs – for paying tax as well as for submitting a statement that I had paid the tax. This pricey behaviour in the olden days used to be called looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The creature called OTP ambushed me every so often, and sometimes unexpectedly when I had, mistakenly, thought I was on the straight home stretch and that life was uncomplicated. But there it was, the OTP lying in wait – even for stuff like registering a complaint about my fridge. Worse still, sometimes there was not one but two OTPs! The fridge repair company sent two sets of OTPs or PINs or whatever to me, with instructions that I should give one number if I were satisfied with the work and another if I were not. I consider this practice to be bloody sneaky! Furthermore, it is presumptuous on the part of the service company to think that I am incapable of yelling at their mechanics if they render less than satisfactory service. 

There was a time when the Phoenicians’ greatest invention – called money – could buy you anything. No longer – not in the frightening new world! The cable guy, the airline people, the cooking gas company, the online sabziwala as well as his cousin – all demand a digital transfer for which I have to use something called a debit card. This is a fairly uncomplicated exercise for the non-digitally handicapped. But for someone like me, it was as difficult as the labours of Hercules and the labours of Hercule Poirot combined. I did not understand how it was humanly possible to squint at the telephone screen, key in the hundreds of digits of the credit card, expiry date and something called the cvv, all in a minute or less without fumbling. With my stubby fingers and shaky hands, I sometimes hit ‘7’ in place of ‘8’, or 1 in place of 4, and sometimes the screen got ‘timed out’. Sometimes I needed to change screens to read some OTP but then I could not find the earlier screen. After several futile attempts, I usually gave up. 

I often wondered whether there was any activity or field of human endeavour that might remain immune to the dreaded PINs and OTPs. I got convinced that it was unlikely when I received an invitation to a wedding reception in which the card included an OTP for the driver’s dinner. 

This ubiquitous nature of the OTPs and PINs made me wonder how my presswala managed. I did not know who helped Ramu Kaka, or his aged uncle in the village. I know Ram Bharose, my night-blind driver, has not renewed his driver’s licence in the past ten years because he does not know how to apply online. My maid lived in constant fear of being accused of being an illegal immigrant because she never could apply for an Aadhaar number. I soon realised that I was not the only person terrorised by the OTP and the PIN. There were others too out there, equally if not more grievously suffering.

Then one day, out of a deep sense of empathy, I asked Badar Mian, the cobbler who sits at the crossroads, whether he too was a victim of the OTPs. He gave his crinkly smile and declared that the OTPs had provided employment to his son, Babboo, who he said now runs a cyber-cafe. Except that Babboo’s ‘cafe’ consisted of nothing more than a small table and stool that he placed on the pavement by his father’s side. With a laptop and something called a dongle, the youngster offers a variety of services ranging from updating Aadhar numbers to renewing driving licences and other complicated manoeuvres which no doubt requires an unending procession of OTPs.

In a flash, I solved all my problems! I appointed Babboo my ‘OTP Adviser’. Babboo and I have worked out a cosy system according to which he is paid a retainer plus a piece rate, without my needing to feed any OTP anywhere. He is happy and I am ecstatic. Now whenever I need Babboo’s expertise, I just lean out of my window and shout OTP (for Olloo The Puttar). And the OTP promptly comes to my apartment and slays all the demons that come a swarming after me for OTPs and PINs. Once in a while, I need to go to his ‘cyber cafe’ because his computer and Wi-Fi connection are faster than mine. So, if you find me squatting with the Olloo The Puttar by the roadside – half on the pavement and half off it – do not worry. It is me just filing an income tax return or paying my house tax or ordering a masala dosa or renewing my subscription to some old-fashioned periodical like the Reader’s Digest. 

 

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A Journey of Great Discovery

Oh, it was exhilarating! I wish it could have gone on for ever and ever! I have never had so much fun! I am grateful to God that I do not have any job or any other commitment, otherwise I would never have realised the raw power that resides within me!

My great journey of self-discovery started on the second Monday of the month of Saawan, when I and other members of the West Club decided to carry ‘kanwars’ – or holy water from the river Ganga to our neighbourhood temple. It was not easy getting to Haridwar, because no private vehicles or buses were being allowed to ply on the highway to Haridwar. We took the train and I was happy to note that no one dared to ask for tickets because we were wearing the uniform of invincible superheroes –  saffron coloured vests! With such vests, it did not matter whether one wore denims or pyjamas.

In Haridwar, there were tens of thousands of people milling around – some from here and some from there. But that was not impressive. What was indeed impressive was the fact that we were  served breakfast free of charge!  And lunch too! And free tea wherever we wanted to have some! We got the essential kanwar paraphernalia at Haridwar for which the miserly shopkeeper insisted on payment. The bloody so and so!

After a night spent roaming around the streets and lanes of Haridwar, my friends and I started back. It was pure joy that I experienced, hitchhiking on a truck, or a motorcycle or one of those three-wheeled contraptions. The places and their names are now a blur – but how does it matter? One place looks like any other. At one small wayside stall, the teaseller had the temerity to ask for payment for the few cups of tea and pakoras that my friends and I ate. We were in a good mood so we did not beat him up too badly. At another place, a rude kid threw a stone at us and he got a well deserved thrashing. Even though the road had been clearly marked for use by kanwariyas, their was one stupid guy who tried to ride his scooter in  our lane. He almost killed one of our brother kanwariyas and we had no option but to beat him to within an inch of death. On the long journey back, we met just one ignorant policeman who thought that trucks carrying kanwariyas should not be driven on the wrong side of the road. He too was taught a lesson. 

The most mind blowing experience was at one of those toll plazas, where an arrogant clerk wanted to charge a truck carrying devout kanwariyas. There seemed to have been some dispute and those in the truck attacked the tollbooth. My group joined the rumpus and soon we had broken the glass panes and computer terminals available there. Good clean fun! In the exuberant mood that we were in, we also invited some girls travelling in a car to join our gang. They refused to be persuaded, even after one of my friends grabbed a girl’s arm to invite her to dance with him. I thought it was quite unsporting of the girls not to join our jolly band. An old man who had nothing to do with the proceedings remonstrated when one of us whistled. These old fogeys just can’t mind their own business, can they? I had to tell him to shut up. After all, what is wrong with a bit of harmless whistling? 

Ours was a vibrant procession indeed. For part of the journey, we travelled in a small truck that had a very powerful music system. With that music blasting away,  all of us were really amped up. When you have such gloriously loud music, it is easy to be in the zone! We also added a dash of patriotism by displaying the tricolour in all shapes and sizes. It was exceedingly empowering to assert that – justified or not – only we were entitled to fly the national flag and mere mortals could not do so. On pain of being bashed up by us. Incidentally, the flagstaff is a very useful thing to have around in case someone picks a quarrel with you.   

I loved the considerate wayside camps set up by various charitable organisations and local political leaders. We could not only rest here but enjoy tea, snacks and meals. I heard that at some of these wayside camps, policemen were assigned to wash and massage the feet of the kanwariyas!  Even the District Magistrates visited some of these camps and massaged the feet of weary kanwariyas. Such an experience would have certainly given me a buzz! But I missed this good stuff. The administration should make certain that more policemen are deputed at every wayside camp so that no kanwariya is denied the right to have his feet washed and massaged properly. The only consolation that I had was the rose petals that were showered on us from a helicopter. But this was just once. I think the government should also arrange more helicopters. 

It has been truly said that travel broadens one’s mind and one learns so much more. On my journey, I met this simpleton from Bihar who was carrying gangajal in two pitchers slung across his shoulders. I was intrigued by the fact that he was walking barefoot and I got into a discussion with him. He insisted that the true kanwar yatra is from some place called Sultanganj to some place called Baidyanath Dham. In its pristine form, this guy insisted, the carrying of jal or water to the temple is a matter of great devotion and many bhakts travel great distances, singing bhajans and raising cries of ‘Bol Bam’. I found it such a quaint idea – imagine walking miles and miles just to offer water in a temple, and barefoot too! But it is a free country. People are free to do whatever weird thing that takes their fancy. Nonetheless, it seemed such a perverse idea – to fritter away the opportunity of a kanwar yatra on mere piety and prayer! 

It is a bit embarrassing for me to admit it, but I enjoyed myself so much that I forgot that I was to return with a potful of gangajal for the neighbourhood temple!  So I decided to go to Haridwar again. After all, it would cost me nothing and  I could whoop it all the way back once again. In any case, I had nothing else to do. But then  someone told me that the period in which the water had to be carried was over. That is so unfair! I had no option but to fill a bottle of water from the nearest tap and offer  it at the temple.  

Even as the priests in the temple do not know that I got the water from the tap, in my heart of hearts I know I have sinned. To atone for this, I will launch a movement demanding that the government declare it to be kanwar carrying season round the year so that people like me are not forced to cheat and can also remain busy for some days in the year.   

 

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Break Their Heads!

Education is a dreadful thing. It corrupts the minds of the innocent and destroys mental peace. It turns obedient docile citizenry into suspicious anti-social beings. And it incites rebellion in the most timid of souls.  Do not ask me how I know this or why I am so certain. Because if you did, I would need to tell you about Parthasarthy, who plies his taxi in the National Capital Region aka NCR area.

Parthasarthy is a graduate from some college in eastern Uttar Pradesh or western Bihar. For the past seven years, he has been preparing for and appearing at the Civil Services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. By virtue of some rule, sub-rule, loophole or whatever, he is allowed to write the entrance examination many times over. In any event, back home, his folks find it more classy to say that he is preparing to be a Collector Sahib, rather than admit that he is a taxi driver. Parthasarthy himself has little hope of ever getting selected to the civil services but, year after year, he goes through the ritual of appearing in the examination. If he did not, he would have to go back to his village and assist his father till their small plot of land.

Parthasarthy says he might be able to survive the filth and squalor of his village home but he simply cannot imagine living without cable television and wi-fi! He feels it is better to sit behind the wheel in an air-conditioned Wagon R than to work in the sun like an ordinary farmer. Moreover he is a graduate, and no one can expect a graduate to work with his hands! 

Ever since that ordinary farmer named Rakesh Tikait decided to block the roads to the national capital, I summon Parthasarthy when I need to travel to Delhi from my home in the down-market eastern suburbs. At my age, I simply do not have the energy or the patience to suffer the aggravation of driving my own Maruti 800 to Delhi along the assault course that the road has become. Instead of driving along a smooth multi-lane highway, one has to take a narrow potholed diversion of about four kilometers. The route can take up to an hour to negotiate and is hardly a scenic ride, runs as it does beside the fish market, perennially smelling of some putrid hell, and that stinking mountain of rubbish which is mistakenly called the Ghazipur landfill.   

 The road remains choked with trucks, buses, motorcycles, hand drawn carts, bicycles, earthmovers, bullock-carts and tractors with unwieldy trailers. The heavy traffic, coupled with our driving habits, results in everlasting chaos, frayed tempers, long blockades and even fisticuffs. The people riding scooters, or sitting in the buses or pulling the carts pass the time of day exchanging the choicest of abuses in the loudest of voices.  

All this is unavoidable because the kisans have been protesting for the past several months, blocking the road to Delhi. The kisans might be just a handful, but how else will ignorant people like me know that the farmers are not in agreement with the laws of the land? Unthinkable though it might be, the Union Government was so arrogant as to not take permission from Rakesh Tikait before enacting the laws!

Educated people like Parthasarthy fail to understand this. His ignorance is evident because he keeps cursing the kisan leaders and the government in equal measure when we get stuck in the traffic or when we hit a pothole of more than average size. With this level of ignorance, Parthasarthy is unlikely to ever get selected for the civil services.

The other day he feigned innocence and asked, “How long will this tamasha last, Sir?” As if I know. The farmers are squatting comfortably. They have even installed air-conditioners in their temporary shacks. Free water, electricity and sanitation services are being provided to them so that they can exercise their democratic right to protest. None of the ministers or farmers needs to take the bumpy stinky road via the Ghazipur landfill. So why should the farmers abandon their vigil? And why should the ministers bother about them?

But Parthasarthy is the argumentative Indian, if there ever was one.  He said, “Sir, I read somewhere that this road is used by the equivalent of one lakh and twenty cars every day. If I take half the figure for traffic from one side, it translates to two lakh forty thousand kilometers of extra journey. If a car runs twenty kilometers on one litre of petrol, the unnecessary burning of petrol aggregates to twelve thousand litres of petrol. So the cost of petrol wasted is about twelve lakh rupees per day. Most of the time, the traffic moves at snail’s pace so the actual fuel burnt must be at least double. Sir, let us take a round figure of twenty-five lakh rupees. Every day. The farmers have been squatting on the road for about two hundred and fifty days. The direct monetary cost is therefore more than sixty crores since early December last year. Sir please add the wear and tear on vehicles because of this potholed road. Add the time lost. A few patients would have died because of delays on this road.”

“Pish posh!” said I. “What is sixty crores and a few lives lost? The right to protest is priceless.”

To prove my point, I leaned out of Parthasarthy’s taxi and shouted to a man pushing a hand-cart laden with iron rods. “My good man,” I said, “Do you mind pushing your cart four extra kilometers in this heat because the farmers have blocked the way?”

“Not at all Sir,” he said. “If the kisan leaders and the leaders of this country think this is the way the country should be run, who am I to object?”

“See?” said I. I refrained from adding that it is the poison called education that is the culprit. The illiterate guy pushing his cart was not unhappy. The truck drivers sitting resignedly since last night for the traffic to move were not unhappy. The urchins weaving in and out of the stalled traffic asking for money were not unhappy. Only Parthasarthy had problems. Because he was educated.

“But Sir,” persisted Parthasarthy, “Even the Supreme Court has said that protesters can’t block roads in this manner. Why can’t the police chase these guys away?”

I again explained patiently that we are a democracy and our Constitution has enshrined within it our Fundamental Right to block roads.

“No Sir! This is wrong. These guys can’t block the road in this manner. I take this road at least five times a week and I am absolutely fed up. I don’t care a hoot as to who is right and who is wrong. All that I know is that I am the joker who is being squeezed from all sides.” 

“My good man, whatever gave you the impression that you matter?”

“But Sir, I pay my taxes. The Delhi Municipal Corporation levies an entry fee each time I take my taxi into Delhi. Yet this road which now takes all the traffic has not been kept in repair! The farmers don’t even pay taxes! And their agitation site has been provided free water and electricity. It is so unfair!” he wailed.

“At the risk of repeating myself I ask you, Parthasarthy – why do you think you matter? Why do you think life will give you a fair deal? Your fate is to keep paying taxes. It is not your job to question the actions or inactions of the government.”

“I disagree, Sir,” he said disagreeably. “I think the farmers have no bloody business blocking roads. The police should disperse them, and if they won’t disperse peacefully, force must be used. If they resist, their heads need to be broken!”

“Oh my God, Parthasarthy!” I said. “Heaven forbid that you get selected to any civil service or the police. With your weird notions about breaking the heads of law breakers, you will definitely jeopardize and destabilize elected governments!”

Just then, the taxi hit a huge pothole and, inadvertently, I bit my tongue.                   

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Musings of a PSO

Ours is a peculiar plight, Sir. I, and other personal security officers like me, have to protect all types of persons. We have worked with some protected persons who were truly gracious. There were some who always enquired if we had eaten or whether we had rested. We liked them. Some others insulted us; made us carry their briefcases or look after their brats. Or go shopping with ‘Madam’. Some reviled and ridiculed us. And there were still others who didn’t even see us as human beings. We did not like them.

But it’s not our job to either like you or dislike you. Our job, Sir, is to protect you. Protect you to the best of our ability, for which we are tasked and trained. We have to be vigilant every hour, every minute and every second if we are to keep you out of harm’s way.

You, Sir, face threats on account of the position you occupy, as also some threats for the person that you are. We call these institutional threats and personal threats. I have been assigned to protect you because you face these threats. I have been trained to protect, and have acquired special skills. Skills that you do not need to know about. Suffice it to say that it is expected that I shall ward off any and every threat that you might face. And if required, take a bullet meant for you.

It is expected that I will be successful each and every day. The day I am not, I will either be dead or wish that I were. 

I am with you for most of your waking hours, including when you cough or sneeze, belch or fart. Without wanting to, I do hear many of your conversations. I am witness to your peccadilloes, your quirks, your all too human failings. Even when I try not to hear what you might discuss in confidence with your colleagues and your cohorts, I am still privy to much wheeling and dealing that you have to do.

But I, and others like me, observe our unspoken and unwritten code of silence. We strive to be invisible. We try to remain noncontroversial. We observe but do not speak. And we do not reveal what comes to our knowledge while discharging our duties. Mind you, some of it is explosive stuff! Yet how many former security personnel have come out with juicy bestsellers about you and your ilk?

I don’t mind being ridiculed or made fun of. I couldn’t care less what you or other people say or think. Yet, when I am dragged by you into your petty political games, or I am indirectly blamed by you for breaching confidences or outright accused of unprofessional conduct, I am disappointed. Deeply disappointed. And I wonder whether this disappointment shall cause me to react just a split second slower at some critical moment. That split second which might make all the difference?

The disappointment also makes me wonder whether you, Sir, are worth taking a bullet for.

(Please do read the disclaimer page. It is stressed that the views expressed are the author’s, and not those of any other individual or organisation.)