You who?

One day my kids asked me to relate the embarrassing things I had done in my life. When they were tiny, they wanted to hear stories about "When I was small", so this was an indication that they were now in their teens and they believed that I had hidden a lot of tales from them because, as far as they could see, a person like me must have embarrassed herself several times a day. They were not wrong. But the unfortunate part for the lot of you who are now expecting to hear it all, is that I have forgotten each little incident so you may as well go back to the important work that your boss needs by this evening while I complete this piece, so that you have no embarrassing tale to tell your folks at home like, "Honey, I got fired because I was reading up a useless blog while my company's billions were going down the drain". (How embarrassing will that be when he/ she discovers that you had no hand in the plumbing scenario, eh?)

Oh well, so you have been warned. And you persist. Maybe you have a death wish and think boredom is a good way to die.

To my dying day I will hear the story of how I used to trap & kill tiny frogs with my tiny slippers, all of 3 inches long, and how I used to catch flies with my bare hand and quick eye and pop them into a tiny tumbler ostensibly meant for drinking water, (and keep them there with my other tiny hand till I had a whole cricket team, with extras). Four generations of my extended family repeat this tale at every family gathering in fear of the awful scenario where they will have forgotten all the embarrassing things I ever did. As if I have no creativity in this respect! I scoff at their lack of faith. Its not even like I'm smart enough to keep all the stupid things I do from them (or anyone else in the world for that matter).

Everyone has heard of Mrs K who said "Hi" to me at the Sector 14 market. How she immediately gleaned from my expression that I was desperately trying to remember which friend-of-which-daughter's mother she was. Do you remember me? she asked.
Of course! I said, and how is your daughter? (Upto here I'm fairly smart, all little girls hate boys and I have been doubly smart in restricting my progeny to the same sex)
So she goes on about her daughter for a bit and sure enough I have nothing else to say after that.
You dont remember me, she says kindly, willing to tell, but now its time to put my foot in my mouth, a feat I will easily accomplish with all the practice I have.
I decide to continue the small talk by asking her if she lives in the vicinity. This would have been another smart move because I only met my children's friends in school and it would be safe to say I didn't know where they live, but bear with me a bit (if you haven't accomplished your suicide yet) and you will soon know why it wasn't.
She shakes her head, pityingly this time and repeats "You dont remember me", and I suddenly remember.
But I do, your daughter is Kritika, I say, wedging the fore-mentioned foot so well in my mouth its not going to come out without some painful surgery.
Because you see, her daughter was Kritika, no doubt. But I had also remembered another important fact that should have convinced me to admit I had actually not recognized her, if I was smart thinking in the first place (something I would have done well to practice than the useless kinds of yoga I've been going on about here). I had designed her house & supervised the construction for a year. And no, it was not in the vicinity. No doubt she was now convinced that I was completely crazy. And I hope you are also convinced that I have such a bad memory and you wont get a single embarrassing tale out of me. I really have forgotten them all.

Tax(i)ing times

Taxis have changed the way one thinks in the capital of the country. If one happens to live in some of the areas in the National Capital Region (we don’t use words like suburbs, you see, for fear of offending regional identities), then taxis affect one in a big way. Acutely affected individuals give up driving & prefer to travel on the floor of the vehicle where they cannot see out of the windows and, maybe, get a glimpse of these monsters.

One of the reasons all of those in the Haryana region of the NCR love the Metro is that they can cock a snook at the taxis. But if the Metro isn’t going their way, often they have no choice but to call the taxi guy. Only a few hardy creatures would dare wait for the bus service, which many equate with the Loch Ness monster & the Yeti, but I assure you it exists. I have missed getting run over by a Roadways bus once and, while you groan over my blog, you do realize that I’ve lived to tell the tale.

For those of us who work in places where the Metro may not deign to go in another 20 years, we have the “Office taxi” which we gratefully board every morning, mainly because we would rather be in it than next to it or in front of it, and eventually under it. News channels often just report accidents as “3 people were seriously injured when the car they were travelling in was hit by a speeding.” They have got to quickly get to the next “breaking news” which their rivals reported yesterday, and besides we all know what a “speeding” is. (With the exception of a sub-species known as “cab drivers” who have been brainwashed into believing that every other driver on the road is just plain jealous of them, by their colleague whom they all look up to and who has mowed down 17 vehicles in less than a year and still has a licence!- What a man!)

When not wreaking terror on the road, the office taxi driver is a largely untapped resource. I would recommend he be called to board meetings where employee performance is evaluated. An odd one listens to Bhajans while he zips in and out of the traffic causing dents & heart attacks, but by and large the cab driver is listening to his passengers. Who hates who and for what reason, who manages to stay in his boss’ good books, but is a totally useless worker and who is leaving for what salary, the driver knows it all. From 9:00am to 5:00pm, while his stupid passengers are struggling with office politics, he is sitting with his colleagues working out all the equations. So, in my humble opinion, if one doesn’t want to offer him a job in HR, one could at least lean out of the window and ask “Oye, Anil! Mr Gupta ka promotion hona chahiye ya nahin?”

You can be sure to get the right answer, even if Mr Gupta lands up in hospital on his way back home in the office taxi and is perforce non-productive for the next 2 months.

Revenge: sweet & garnished

The two best ways to get the better of one's opponent: Pursue the illogical path or refuse to fight. All the serious guys and diplomats can go back to work right away, this blog may not be for you.

(Which serious guy was looking at my blog anyway, whom am I kidding, eh?)

Woman gets into Delhi bus. Conductor leers "Where are you going to, Madam?" Woman ignores the tone, gives the money and tells him the destination. Conductor gives her a ticket and continues to leer, "Here you go, Madam." She takes the ticket. Then she says in a very dignified tone (guess what): "Thank you". Later her friends ask her what sort of mad woman she is, who ever says "thank you" to a Delhi bus conductor. The answer is, well, no one. Which made it all the more priceless: his expression when he nearly fell off his perch, glared at her suspiciously and muttered "Is that so?"

In our office we had an office boy who only deferred to the boss. The rest of us were treated with impatience bordering on contempt while the young fellow struggled to find his feet and fortune in the big city. The idea was to tell him what to do & then to turn completely deaf. But once the senior most architect snapped and gave him a mild rebuke. To his horror the lad stood in the middle of the office & yelled his head off. All work was suspended, all eyes were riveted on the fight scene. Would the general shoot the soldier or would he run for cover? The eyeball match did not last too long and the senior said gently, before turning back to his work, "Who would have thought some one who read the Bhagwad Gita all day long would be so full of anger?" A miracle occurred that day and our office boy now treated one more person like a human being (while the Bhagwad Gita got more dog-eared and rest of us still waited for our Krishna moment).

Ok, so those were the Gandhians. We can't all be like them. Some of us like our revenge, we gloat while our enemies splutter indignantly or beg for mercy and no logic stands in our way.

I stepped out of my Gole Market office one day and found the buses had been diverted because of a religious procession. I was at the mercy of an autorikshaw driver who refused to start his meter & was asking for a flat rate thrice what I would need to pay him in less desperate circumstances. But then I had no choice and we set off towards Gole Dak Khana & thence towards India Gate. Less than a kilometer down the road we discovered another diversion ahead and I quickly calculated there was no short route towards my destination & I would have to leave this auto & walk a bit to catch another mode of transport. But wait, what about my revenge?

Soon we were almost at the diversion. By then the driver had mentally sifted through all the options, discovered that getting me to my destination in the decided fare would not be worth it, and tried to re-open negotiation. "The road this side is blocked," he ventured. But he was destined to froth & fume, to watch (by then with relief) as his prey slipped away from his fingers. (In those days that was the appropriate description for the ones who sat in the rear seat of a Delhi autorikshaw: prey).

I leaned back in my seat and studied my finger nails. "And what" I asked him sweetly "am I supposed to do about that?"

Con sense

My maid was sick and her husband brought home a "Babaji" who gave her some dark pellets to cure her. Of her reluctance to give him all her earnings was what her husband was hoping, and of her skepticism was what Babaji was hoping. The latter got his answer right away when she peered suspiciously at the pellets and declared that there was no way she was going to eat goat droppings. But hats off to the rogue, he was caught, but did he blush? did he hide? Never. He immediately proceeded to explain how a goat roams around the whole forest and eats 300 types of medicinal herbs and thus its droppings are actually worth far more than the 100 rupees he was charging.

My guess is this is where we are going to beat the Chinese next. In the pharmaceutical industry. Those poor devils face international censure when they kill tigers, make balms and what not. Then they package it all in snazzy looking bottles & sneakily sell it where they can. Our Babajis just take a short walk behind a goat and sell this wide spectrum drug wrapped in a bit of newspaper (its good for everything, if you go by the notice outside the doctor's tent, it only doesn't cure the whatchamacallit one gets from eating animal waste. You've got to take your bleak chances on that).

If one is not too keen on keeping an eye on the behind of a goat, there are numerous other opportunities. A whole lot of 5 rupee rings set with colourful glass could get a profit of 2000% if sold by a knowledgeable looking guy with a glib tongue. All he needs to do is read your hand and give you the appropriate colour that will guarantee you eternal happiness or your money back (after eternity, naturally). He will, for good measure, make you feel guilty for spending twice that money on a movie, or a piece of butter chicken. This is your Eternal Happiness at stake, dimwit!

My mother is very secular in her disposition to all religious salesmen who regularly turn up at her doorstep (and on everyone else's, just in case you thought they particularly hated her- although they should, she never gives them much more than a curt brush off). The saffron clad one tried to ask her plenty of questions so that he could invent her future appropriately and get something for all the time he was wasting, but got no more than a hostile stare. The cheerful couple who came to give "Good news" were bluntly told, "Yes, I know. Jesus is coming." The poor guys couldn't even sell a Bible to one who knew it all.

No one, however, makes the mistake of going a second time to her mother's place. The ones who turn up on a Saturday to take away your misfortunes for a few coins especially give her a wide berth after she offered to take their Shani maharaj and the misfortunes upon herself. "After all," she explained, "I am an old woman and you've got your whole life ahead of you. Come now, give that to me...." For a particularly pesky "Holy man" who wouldn't take no, or go away while she ignored him and worked in her backyard, she pulled out a shallow stool and said, "You may as well sit down if you wont go away." A year later he breezed in, cursed when he saw her, and breezed out. No more than 15 seconds in all. She's training them well!

Con men come in all shapes of course. On my way to my office one day I was fooled into parting with some cash when I thought I was helping to get a pregnant woman to hospital. A colleague told me that this was a common enough trick those days. A few days later, pillion riding on a motorbike, I saw this group of people pulling the same wool over people's eyes at a traffic light. It was a good opportunity to apply balm on my wounds (no, not the Tiger one, not still thinking of that are you?). I put on my most sympathetic expression and beckoned to the pregnant one. She slowly ambled towards me passing by 4-5 cars full of soft-hearted people who would have easily parted with much more than I was going to. When she reached me the light was about to change.

"Tell me," I asked her solemnly, "Do you have your baby every day at this very crossing?"

Here we go

The Metro is the newest form of public transport in India, still out of reach of most Indians, not because of cost, but because of its scarcity, Metro lines being restricted to very few cities & very few routes. Like everything new that is introduced to our country, we have embraced its use, never forgetting that most of us would not bat an eyelid if we had to sit in a bullock cart to get to our homes from the Metro station, if that was the only mode of transport available. As it is we have to take the "shared auto" and that's not a huge difference.

Before I go further on this post, let me clarify that "overloading" was never a bad word in the world of Indian transport. We're so many of us, and when we gotta go, we gotta go and no lack of transport is going to stop us!

In fact about 30 years ago the Delhi Transport Corporation which ran the only mass public transport in the city came up with the brilliant idea that an ordinary DTC bus could be converted into a Luxury DTC bus by merely increasing the fares to 3 times. This would result in less people getting onto the bus, so the lucky souls who did could have the "luxury of breathing without discomfort". Either the passengers were conned into getting on by the unassuming exterior- which was a carbon copy of the non- luxury fellow, or they just couldn't get into the bus which went ahead and decided they would forgo half a kilo of onions the next week (an odd fellow would have won the lottery recently, but was not brave enough to get into a taxi or an auto rikshaw, the drivers of which were considered more dreadful than the dacoits of the Chambal). Once a cynical guy who belonged to the former species refused to pay the exaggerated fare and argued that the bus had no curtains, no air-conditioning & no fancy seats, so why was it called a Luxury bus?  The conductor solemnly replied, in a tone that brooked no further argument, that this was a luxury bus, "Because the ticket was a Rupee."

All the way back about half a century ago or more, "bus number 11" or our two legs were considered good enough to get anywhere. Back in our village a senior IAS officer would think nothing of walking to & from his office 25 km away in Delhi. Younger men, who offered to keep him company would be gently told, "Son, you wont be able to keep up with me". When one needed to transport luggage, one collared one's neighbour who would pile it onto his bicycle & spend half a day walking with one to the railway or bus station.

Then along came my generation, pseudo villagers who grew up in the city and would, much to the disgust of the robust villager, fall down & threaten to die after 8.23 km. Alternative transport had to be arranged for us weaklings and so we traveled in horse carts, bullock carts and on bicycle carriers up to the bus stand, only to get into an over crowded bus. Till the advent of the Car.

Let me clarify, the Car existed everywhere in the world. It had been seen and it's existence was not doubted in the village, but it took a brave man with a stick, such as my father, to bring his car to his village. He had to stop every 500m once he had entered the village, to chase away children (waving the aforementioned stick) who were hell bent on committing suicide by slipping under the wheels. Not that that is what they has set out to do, they were merely chasing the car in an attempt to touch it, a chance that they got only once in a few months. This was never a difficult task, considering the lack of roads usually reduced the speed of the car to walking speeds sometimes and the suicidal kids could be even as little as 3 years old.

A lot has changed since then, but across the country one can see a vast range of means of transport, some very old but still very much in use. To all the foreigners who have been told by funny Indian expatriates & amusing net friends that we go to school by "Elephant", I'd say, Believe it.

A friend once picked up an American lady from the Airport on her very first trip to India. "Would you believe it," he later groaned, "in the very first 15 minutes of her arrival to the capital of India, we saw a Camel and an Elephant on the road!" See? She witnessed this with her own eyes, who are we to tell her any different?  But if she was adventurous enough, we could take her on even more exciting rides. After all, what sense of achievement does a person who goes down the Niagara Falls in a barrel feel as compared to a Mumbai local train commuter who manages to extricate himself at the station he planned to, eh?

Quotation on successful authors

There are two kinds of successful authors, those who are good & those who are inspiring. When one reads the books of the latter, one thinks "If they can write this and be successful, why not I?"

From the book "Happy Sisters' Insights"
(yet to be written, by me of course- when I'm sufficiently inspired, naturally)

Way to go

When I was a little kid, my teacher gave us an assignment to make a map from the school to our respective houses. I dont remember what my map looked like, but ever since I have been afflicted with a bad case of mapophilia. Before Google maps became a rage, I would have voted for the Eicher map of Delhi in the contest for the greatest thing that happened to Delhi in the last century. Given the state of the city, the locals would have sniffed at the award, of course, and would have probably handed it to something like this or maybe a sari from Karol Bagh. But you get the point, dont you?

Before any reasonable map was available, the only way to get anywhere was to ask for directions. Mostly if you followed the directions faithfully, you would get somewhere, but not necessarily where you set out. The idea was to keep an open mind and possibly lunch out at a roadside dhaba instead of at Kanta mausi's house. If you were lucky you could reach for dinner, but then she may not still be in the mood to feed you, a topic you may want to evaluate before you bravely wandered the city after lunch instead of returning home.

The office I worked in at that time got regular jobs for property valuation. Every morning a handful of people specifically appointed for the job, would set off in various directions to addresses they were supposed to check on. A new guy, who was obviously doubly handicapped in a city where too many people were themselves lost, would pounce on the first pedestrian he saw outside the office for directions. "Bhai Saheb, would you tell me how to get to..." He would fish out the paper and rattle off the address of a property 7 km away in a city of 11,000 persons per square kilometer right down to the floor he wanted to visit. The result would be that even if the person could have safely guided him to, say, Janakpuri, he would regretfully have to shake his head when it came to 2nd floor, House no. 103, C1 block, Janakpuri. The chances of finding a person who knew exactly that house were so minimal that our friend soon found he had the most challenging job in his life and was completely in awe of those who managed to cover 3 or 4 properties in 8 hours and have a leisurely lunch in between.

As for me, I greedily devour the city map whenever I go to a new place and often I cant bear it if I'm regularly with someone who knows all the routes in my own city. My husband spends more on petrol when he is traveling alone because he is so used to an aggressive navigator in the next seat, he often takes the wrong turns when no instructions emanate from there. If he is perchance bringing my mother back from an outstation visit, my father and I add an hour and a half to the normal estimated travel time, some for the wrong turns & some for 2 relaxed souls jabbering away and momentarily forgetting where they are headed.

The high point wearing my navigator's cap came when I sat in a bus which plied from the Interstate Bus Terminus to Gurgaon, about 30 km away. While still a long way away, the driver came to a diversion because of some road repairs and was soon lost and looking about helplessly for guidance from the passengers. It was as if I had come across Van Gogh admitting he was colour blind, till I realized the poor guy probably had no need to know a single other route than the one he faithfully followed day after day. I saw my moment and moved to a seat closer to the front. Someone was trying to help and I couldn't just jump in knowing how men in these parts react to women telling them what to do. A little later I made a suggestion, and then another. Soon both the guide & the guided were looking to me for instructions. And so it came to pass that not only did a woman tell a Haryana Roadways driver where to go, but also for the first (and maybe last) time a bus rattled through the posh Embassy area like the Starship Enterprise!