Sunday, March 9, 2014
"Man-maid"
I do not really know how to deal with this world. At office, when I don't chant a 'good morning' to my colleagues and subordinates, people call me 'arrogant'. But when I say a 'good morning' to even the tea-boy, people think that as a weakness - that you're being humble because you are weak. When I tell a person he is handsome, he thinks I am a sycophant - as though all I am saying is a bowl of lies. And if I don't notice him at all, he complains I am ignoring him because I am an unsocial and selfish jackass. At the time of paying at the store, when I tell I thought I had money in my wallet which now I see I don't, my friend thinks I am lying. As if all that I wanted in my heart all this while was to just not pay. But when I tell him to let me pay instead, he thinks I am showing off - as though I have too much money and I want to show it all off on his face. When I tell the truth, guys think this world is not the right place for honest people. I mean honest people are not right for this world. And when I tell a lie, guys question me what's the truth. When I tell a woman to do something for me, she thinks I am taking her for granted. If she asks something to be done and I do it, she thinks that was the purpose of me being born. If I let a lady open her door, she thinks I am being rude - unexpected of a gentleman. And when I do actually open the door for her out of real respect and gratitude, she thinks men are dogs. When I wish my friend a happy birthday in the midnight, he says he's been sleeping. When I wish him the next day morning, he says I am already too late. When I bring a token gift for a friend, he looks at the price. When I don't, he tells me the price. When I adore a kid and give him a candy, he looks at my pockets for more. When I don't give him a thing, he gives a faint look at me and utters 'asshole' in his mind. When I pay up the police for overshooting a traffic signal, he thinks am being over-smart since nobody can just own up in today's world. And when I try to hide from the police after an error of judgement, he shouts I am trying to abscond. When I am ill and don't see a doctor, my mother scolds I am neglecting myself - that I should be more responsible about myself. And if I happen to see a doctor as soon as I have fever, my mother sniffs I am not hard enough. When I speak one bit a pitch higher than normal to my maid, she complains I am barking at her. And if I speak softly, she thinks it's I who is the maid. When I ask for one more drink, people say I am an addicted zealot. And when I say I am done, they ask me why so soon. When I dance to the hard rock for hours, people say I am crazy. When I just lift my knees to show I won't, people tell me I dance really well. When I say I can't do without good food, people say I'm being demanding since there are people in this world who don't even get to eat a square meal a day. When I say I can do with anything on my plate, they say I don't have good taste. When I speak, people say I am dumb. When I don't, people think I am dumb. When I tell a lady I like her, she thinks I am a womanizer. When I tell a gent I like him, he thinks I am gay. :-)
Thursday, October 20, 2011
A Sam-Jacked Party
(Dedicated to all my 3T friends, who are trying to figure out what's there in life in an effort to understand what's absolutely not needed to be there!)
Shyamsundar Balakrishna Murlidhara Iyer is his full-name. Apart from being a Brahmin, he is also a software engineer.
Like most of his breed, he has those eyes that hide behind the pair of Bausch & Lomb glasses, a tilted nose that has taken too much of the bugs as his problem ever since living beings appeared from cosmic micro-organisms, and taut ears that know how to disregard the howling noise erupting from his manager’s cubicle. He swears at his shitty job at day, by lunch-time remembers how he is being paid for this shit, feels his wallet like a hardened penis, pays his bill for his meal-plate, and rides on his own back to a conference-room in the evening with an eagerly waiting bunch of team-mates who are staring at an apparatus that has the voice of a certain Mr. Jack sitting across the Atlantic Ocean, trying to allay his own fear of losing his job any moment.
Mr. Iyer’s moment of happiness is the time during the call when Jack asks for the status of his task, beginning his address of him as “Sam”. Ah, his big name is mutilated beyond recognition, fine, but then his name is now ‘Sam’, which is far more a Western Avatar than he could have demanded of life. Next to him comes only Dennis Ritchie, the founder of C Language, and James Gosling, the Java guy who used to sell coffee, and well, to some extent Michael Jackson – for all the moon-walk that he did on Earth. They must have been called Dennis, James, Mike respectively, reflecting what a ‘Sam’ might mean to the world that has come to consider everything Western as good. As for the rest there is Heaven where God lives, and fixes code from above, for Man is just an instrument in the hands of God. The code executes on the Server, and the good thing is, Sam knows that. The program crashes one fine day in winter, when the temperature is really low outside, and Sam thinks he could have done without this bit of a nuisance. And when the message on his mobile trips in at the end of the month – “Your salary is credited to your account”, Sam feels happy and high at the same time. Life is good, he thinks to himself.
Sam has a laptop that he takes home, swinging on his shoulder. When he runs with his laptop on, it looks like a baby-monkey clinging to its mother. Let me correct the gender – father. His joy had known no bounds when he had received this gadget from his manager, but now he understands it was meant to make him work more, to kick his ass. Whenever the pager rings, he is supposed to switch on the laptop, and not rest till he undoes all he had done the previous day at office. If he doesn’t work, he does a re-work. Every time-logging attribute has a matching crap to latch on to. Being a qualified software engineer, he doesn’t think he’s doing justice to his talent, but everybody is not Rajnikanth. If this industry bumps into a recession today and people lose jobs, he knows he’s not good for anything – except perhaps, to show people he can run, walk and twist his tongue. And for that, people won’t even throw stunted or burnt peanuts at him. He skips lunch sometimes due to work that does not exist, and feels happy to explain how work had almost got him off his lunch.
He has honked his way into the portals of adultery and corporate hypocrisy that go hand in hand, and never ever realized that intellectual circumcision had brought him into this promiscuous world of ills and frills in the first place. He calls his dad at night on the phone, at peace that the latter is happy for him. His mom has already made her neighbours’ in their village go green with envy, for her son is doing well in life. His sisters have by now procreated in their mind’s womb – the idea of marrying only a software engineer in their life, as for to them, all else have started to seem to be lesser mortals. Mortals no good. And his only brother, still an engineering student aspires to be one such enlightened soul of software one day at the end of the tunnel. Sam is the face of a mirage called India Shining.
Sam’s typical lower middle-class background makes him happy for what he is today. He now knows “Silence of the Lambs” was the name of a movie, knows Pears Brosnan was James Bond, and both were Americans; that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country and not a continent – shame on her; that ‘Guinness’ is a beer and not just a book of world records; that Bill Clinton and Bill Gates are two entirely different people; that hip-hop is music where you move much and understand little; and a big burger the size of a human head is called a Whopper. This is the Sam way and he is proud he has achieved so much in such scant a time. If he hadn’t, he’d still be a clerk at some unknown hideous village where women-folk set out in the morning with hands curled around pitchers, and where cattle-fodder comes cheap and farmers eat pesticides to test if there’s life after death. He would have been extorting cattle from their dingy swarms sliding in mud-bogs. Else he would be catching fish to feed his siblings or selling the crop of bananas to the local middleman doing brisk business in town. Worst, there would be load-shedding in his village, where crows would sit on electric wires all day long, and Sam would have time to think all day why they never got electrocuted.
He now thinks about his father’s job as a clerk and what hardships he would have faced. Sanitation meant going to the fields to pass out, and scavenging was a norm nobody thought would ever change. In the mornings, the railway tracks that crisscrossed his village would be too occupied with an entourage of people starting their day, counting stars in the sky that would appear at night. There would be the village postman, who seemed to be the ultimate hero, and anybody coming from the city would be given a glance or two of adoration, and a few winks of jealousy for lack of opportunity.
Sam is now the modern icon for his village-folks. His English accent is queer, and difficult to understand. Only Mr. Jack can understand that, not his own colleagues at office. He now knows Facebooking and Twittering, and his great leap in communicating with people have done all the good to the world. Sometimes, however, he takes his communication skill a bit too far. When he wrote that letter to the Australian customer of his project the other day – “I will do oral support”, all that he meant was the modus operandi by which he would be available to support the client’s applications by not physically being in office, but over the phone. That certain Mr. Jack would have felt really liberated of his woes reading that line, and smirked at his mouth, and squirmed on his seat. It wouldn’t go that far, Jack would have thought to himself.
Another addition to Sam’s vocabulary was “Yeah, yeah”, with that longish pinch, that would make him an American instantly. It wasn’t particularly interesting when he tried to explain a team-member his dislike for his manager who makes women in his project to work hard – “My manager makes them work too hard. He squeezes the juice out of them. It leaves them tired after such hard work.” It was as if he was translating everything online in some crazy website of his mind which offers some free and crazy translation.
On being asked once if he had already sent a mail, he had written: “I have already kept the mail yesterday.” The grapevine has it that Mr. Jack had plans to do laundry that day, but had instead ended up cleaning the files from the top of his table the entire day, praying God intermittently for a timely respite. When he finally found out, that by “kept” Sam had actually implied “sent”, Jack almost fainted, got frustrated, and thought George Bush was the worst President the world could ever have, leave alone America. He also thought if Plato or Aristotle ever have had to do their own laundry.
Sam had lately ‘fixed’ up his Trichy accent, and lulled himself into an even enterprise in trying it out at meetings and one-to-one’s alike. Most of the times, he would respond immediately to Mr. Jack’s question, while most others would still take a while to get to the bottom of what was just told. When Mr. Jack had asked in the call: “I really love my dog Hanky. So how many of you have dogs at home?”, it didn’t take time for Sam to respond: “The reports will be delivered on time Jack.” Nobody understood what he meant. Sam understood the questions wrong, and got his answers right. It was probably his way of thinking ‘out-of-the-box’. Problem was, he never thought inside.
On a separate note, Jack would however have thought dogs don’t deliver shit. Software engineers do. As for Sam, when second thoughts in him would have beckoned, he would have realized his incorrect answer, and thought he could well have said how much he hated Venky (just like Mr. Jack loved his dog Hanky) . Venky and Hanky – the names matched almost to the level of a rhyme, only difference being - Venky was his manager at office, and not a dog at home. After this few years of being in job, not that the difference mattered to him whatsoever, anyways.
Sam has his own set of doubts, but clarifications only helps confuse him more. When he was apprised of the fact that “a bottom or a base” also means “a butt” or “an ass”, the world of conference calls changed for him forever. It marred him, so to say. Whenever somebody says “Let us touch base at our 9 ‘O’ clock call tomorrow morning”, he isn’t sure if he is the only person getting ideas. As for him, once he almost asked the guys in the call: “Do we still have the touch-bottom meeting next week? Or is it postponed?” Good Lord, he aborted telling so at the eleventh second and in doing so, saved face, or bottom, or whatever.
When one day Sam was on a work-from-home from his village (where he had been on a vacation for a bore-well being dug up at his house), he had to chip in to a conference call. There was this rooster that spiked up its croak that moment to make a shrill “kukru-koo” sound – the way it does in the wee hours. It drew everybody’s attention in that conference-call to the rooster, and Mr. Jack attempted a general throw-in: “Who is that?” Sam replied: “It’s my cock, Jack.”
Almost instantly, peals of laughter of all present ramped up into heaving sighs.
Next time, am sure, Mr. Jack wouldn’t attempt anything so outlandish, leave alone asking anything so substantial in public. Getting Sam’s cock for anything that he utters, am sure, is not worth the effort he has taken to keep his job, let alone keep up with it. ***
Shyamsundar Balakrishna Murlidhara Iyer is his full-name. Apart from being a Brahmin, he is also a software engineer.
Like most of his breed, he has those eyes that hide behind the pair of Bausch & Lomb glasses, a tilted nose that has taken too much of the bugs as his problem ever since living beings appeared from cosmic micro-organisms, and taut ears that know how to disregard the howling noise erupting from his manager’s cubicle. He swears at his shitty job at day, by lunch-time remembers how he is being paid for this shit, feels his wallet like a hardened penis, pays his bill for his meal-plate, and rides on his own back to a conference-room in the evening with an eagerly waiting bunch of team-mates who are staring at an apparatus that has the voice of a certain Mr. Jack sitting across the Atlantic Ocean, trying to allay his own fear of losing his job any moment.
Sam has a laptop that he takes home, swinging on his shoulder. When he runs with his laptop on, it looks like a baby-monkey clinging to its mother. Let me correct the gender – father. His joy had known no bounds when he had received this gadget from his manager, but now he understands it was meant to make him work more, to kick his ass. Whenever the pager rings, he is supposed to switch on the laptop, and not rest till he undoes all he had done the previous day at office. If he doesn’t work, he does a re-work. Every time-logging attribute has a matching crap to latch on to. Being a qualified software engineer, he doesn’t think he’s doing justice to his talent, but everybody is not Rajnikanth. If this industry bumps into a recession today and people lose jobs, he knows he’s not good for anything – except perhaps, to show people he can run, walk and twist his tongue. And for that, people won’t even throw stunted or burnt peanuts at him. He skips lunch sometimes due to work that does not exist, and feels happy to explain how work had almost got him off his lunch.
Sam’s typical lower middle-class background makes him happy for what he is today. He now knows “Silence of the Lambs” was the name of a movie, knows Pears Brosnan was James Bond, and both were Americans; that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country and not a continent – shame on her; that ‘Guinness’ is a beer and not just a book of world records; that Bill Clinton and Bill Gates are two entirely different people; that hip-hop is music where you move much and understand little; and a big burger the size of a human head is called a Whopper. This is the Sam way and he is proud he has achieved so much in such scant a time. If he hadn’t, he’d still be a clerk at some unknown hideous village where women-folk set out in the morning with hands curled around pitchers, and where cattle-fodder comes cheap and farmers eat pesticides to test if there’s life after death. He would have been extorting cattle from their dingy swarms sliding in mud-bogs. Else he would be catching fish to feed his siblings or selling the crop of bananas to the local middleman doing brisk business in town. Worst, there would be load-shedding in his village, where crows would sit on electric wires all day long, and Sam would have time to think all day why they never got electrocuted.
He now thinks about his father’s job as a clerk and what hardships he would have faced. Sanitation meant going to the fields to pass out, and scavenging was a norm nobody thought would ever change. In the mornings, the railway tracks that crisscrossed his village would be too occupied with an entourage of people starting their day, counting stars in the sky that would appear at night. There would be the village postman, who seemed to be the ultimate hero, and anybody coming from the city would be given a glance or two of adoration, and a few winks of jealousy for lack of opportunity.
Sam is now the modern icon for his village-folks. His English accent is queer, and difficult to understand. Only Mr. Jack can understand that, not his own colleagues at office. He now knows Facebooking and Twittering, and his great leap in communicating with people have done all the good to the world. Sometimes, however, he takes his communication skill a bit too far. When he wrote that letter to the Australian customer of his project the other day – “I will do oral support”, all that he meant was the modus operandi by which he would be available to support the client’s applications by not physically being in office, but over the phone. That certain Mr. Jack would have felt really liberated of his woes reading that line, and smirked at his mouth, and squirmed on his seat. It wouldn’t go that far, Jack would have thought to himself.
On being asked once if he had already sent a mail, he had written: “I have already kept the mail yesterday.” The grapevine has it that Mr. Jack had plans to do laundry that day, but had instead ended up cleaning the files from the top of his table the entire day, praying God intermittently for a timely respite. When he finally found out, that by “kept” Sam had actually implied “sent”, Jack almost fainted, got frustrated, and thought George Bush was the worst President the world could ever have, leave alone America. He also thought if Plato or Aristotle ever have had to do their own laundry.
Sam had lately ‘fixed’ up his Trichy accent, and lulled himself into an even enterprise in trying it out at meetings and one-to-one’s alike. Most of the times, he would respond immediately to Mr. Jack’s question, while most others would still take a while to get to the bottom of what was just told. When Mr. Jack had asked in the call: “I really love my dog Hanky. So how many of you have dogs at home?”, it didn’t take time for Sam to respond: “The reports will be delivered on time Jack.” Nobody understood what he meant. Sam understood the questions wrong, and got his answers right. It was probably his way of thinking ‘out-of-the-box’. Problem was, he never thought inside.
On a separate note, Jack would however have thought dogs don’t deliver shit. Software engineers do. As for Sam, when second thoughts in him would have beckoned, he would have realized his incorrect answer, and thought he could well have said how much he hated Venky (just like Mr. Jack loved his dog Hanky) . Venky and Hanky – the names matched almost to the level of a rhyme, only difference being - Venky was his manager at office, and not a dog at home. After this few years of being in job, not that the difference mattered to him whatsoever, anyways.
Sam has his own set of doubts, but clarifications only helps confuse him more. When he was apprised of the fact that “a bottom or a base” also means “a butt” or “an ass”, the world of conference calls changed for him forever. It marred him, so to say. Whenever somebody says “Let us touch base at our 9 ‘O’ clock call tomorrow morning”, he isn’t sure if he is the only person getting ideas. As for him, once he almost asked the guys in the call: “Do we still have the touch-bottom meeting next week? Or is it postponed?” Good Lord, he aborted telling so at the eleventh second and in doing so, saved face, or bottom, or whatever.
Almost instantly, peals of laughter of all present ramped up into heaving sighs.
Next time, am sure, Mr. Jack wouldn’t attempt anything so outlandish, leave alone asking anything so substantial in public. Getting Sam’s cock for anything that he utters, am sure, is not worth the effort he has taken to keep his job, let alone keep up with it. ***
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Anti-peristalsis: Surviving Gandhi
(First published in Scroll literary journal, October-December 2011 issue: http://litmagscroll.blogspot.com/ )
What makes India weak?
The zeitgeist of a post-colonial era, till now, just seems to be an irrevocable continuum, burdened, and short of any reprieve the way we are going today. Our potatoes are blighted. Our pesticides adulterated. Our petrol prices soar. Our politics smacks of dualism. Corruption is rampant. Judiciary is a farce. Red-tapism abounds. Our Bhopal still stinks with the obnoxious smell of flesh and enmeshed blood fibres. Bureaucratic turpitude gives anything but solace. Social organizations have donned the role of remittance services. We think we are the best. We envision India to be a Superpower in the years to come, which, however, as epochs translate into eras, never happens. We bask in our past glory, glorify ourselves beneath a conceited facade and dream one such glory will visit us in the future. This future evades us, somehow. Our country squirms in her shoes. If "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny...", we should have had a fair idea of our Destiny by now. 'India Shining' is an Utopia, am empty verbiage. It is Sir Thomas Moore's perfect society on an imaginary Island, or a leviathan melodrama tantamount to a ridicule of the self. Applied the best of polish, India is not going to shine this way.
To extract ourselves of this morass and do anything commendable, or derive sporadic blinkers of even slight repute, we need to come out of an idea called 'Mahatma Gandhi'. I am not here to objectify Mahatma Gandhi's contributions, or accomplishments, or character. Neither do I have the wherewithal of my own to quantify them (which is again impossible), or extrapolate them to create a shadow-and-effect diagram probing the contemporary world affairs. I am not here to conclude a dissertation of a research fellowship on his status as the 'Mahatma/Father of the Nation' or what it means to our people, or to contest or investigate his (non-) nubile aspirations and concepts on Brahmacharya. Nor am I here to delve into his martyrdom in conjunction with Indian Independence, or for that matter his austere or self-effacing living. It's immaterial I love him or hate him.
What matters here is that in the real world, the angle of elevation doesn't quite equate to the angle of depression. It never does. Real life is not trigonometry, or else simple matters of life would have been really simple. The dictionary defines 'idolatry' as 'the worship of idols; the worship of images that are not God.' Our society, by virtue of its pluralistic ethos, maybe, is always in a need to find a common ground as to be able to see a single image while perceiving itself in the mirror. At the time of Partition, when the people of different princely states and sections looked forward for a common thread - there were two things in the firmament. One, a shared history. Second, Mr. Gandhi. I am not trying to belittle his tumultuous participation in India's freedom struggle - nobody can. His contribution was immense. But the way our history books have been portraying India's Freedom struggle is demeaning to the struggle itself. Self-defeating. India's freedom was not the labour of love of Mr. Gandhi alone, portrayed as the absolute pacifist. He is not the only person who got India freedom. Multiple factors, intrinsic or otherwise, as with the tide of the times and turn of events then in the 1940s, plotted themselves onto a swathe of miscarriages on the part of the British, colluding with the timeliness of the same.
The Indian National Congress's history alone is not the History of India, neither their ideologies can be construed to be the paradigms on which people of an entire Nation would rest their beings, views and identity. It's not an eternal dogma begotten from enlightenment of all and sundry. We can contort and falsify texts for consumption by the 4 year olds who are taught Mr. Gandhi as 'the Father of the Nation', but my point is - why is it needed? Rather, is it needed at all? India's freedom was not Mr. Gandhi's personal property, though people around him, a world full of sycophants and yes-men, tried to make it seem or look so, even post-Independence. Why do we have to have the 2nd of October celebrated each year? What happened to the other freedom fighters and the unsung martyrs who laid their lives at the pious feet of their Motherland? Remembering our ancestors for their extraordinary feats and impeccable deeds and emulating them is one thing, idolatry is another. We believe in hero-worship, and that's the feeder for our cannons – and in heart of hearts we know we wouldn't be able to do without it. Blind psychoneurotic hysteria pepped up to rever an exalted Demi-God is our grass for existence. Idolatry calls for an abject abnegation. India today needs to come out of the shadow of Mr. Gandhi. An ubiquitous allegory will not do anybody good.
Has telling 'India' as 'Gandhi's India' helped us all these years? We know the answer is an emphatic 'No'. If one doesn't agree, then how can one account for the immense corruption, scandalous misappropriations, wilful negligence, monetary embezzlements and misdemeanour evident in our society ever since we got Independence? We are sure Mr. Gandhi's ideology and the wisdom it implies can never be related to these vices, not even made an oblique reference to, but if our society believed in his principles there would be meagre chances we'd be what we are today. True? Are we not being hypocrites then? How come then that to get our sewage line cleared, we need to pay bribes right from the overseer in the local Municipality to the Chairman, which will anyways be siphoned off, in measures exacting to the appropriate proportions based on the designation of the public office holder. The christening of "Harijans" for the lower strata of the Indian society was itself whimsical, not even idiosyncratic. The very name fragmented the Indian society into a million parts, never to be reconciled to a one-ness that was many a vision for a Dynamic India. If non-violence was an inbuilt feature, why were our countrymen sent out to clench their fists and drink their own blood at the war-fronts in the Zulu, Boer, World War I and II wars, which did nothing but enhancing the Queen's stamina to continue colonization. Would we, then, allow ourselves to believe it was a means to sabotage the Indian freedom fight (there's a thin-line demarcation between 'fight' and 'struggle'), or defeat the ideologies and purposes of the rightist wings championing aggressive nationalism? The foremost question here would be - did we ever dare to question ourselves? 'Thou-holier-than-me' can be devastating, in equal measure, as 'me-holier-than-thou' attitude.
If non-violence could be the answer to all ills in this world, why has violence ruled the world, as if for Eternity? It is a crammed piece of idle thought - "Non-violence won India its freedom. Not a drop of blood was shed." No lie can outdo this mother of all lies. With the number of people dead fighting for India, you could well have created an entire civilization of millions. Why did we let go of our soldiers for the World Wars - because we couldn't convince the British of the fruits of non-violence? If non-violence could do wonders, why did Jallianwalla Bagh massacre and Noakhali, though discrete incidents and non-related, happen? Would you have parroted the same tall-talk if your own mother, or father, or brother or sister would have perished that day? Chances are that you might have - for it takes men of mettle to rise up like a Phoenix and construct a World Order. Without compromising, or acceptance of servitude. Nobody in the world has felt the need for peace unless and until violence taught them a lesson or two. Be it a clan, a group, or entire nation of people. Right from the Early Man. Peace descends only when violence comes to a logical conclusion, and a genuine need is felt for peace. Not within, nor without. It is acyclic. Not that Mr. Gandhi was wrong in his pursuit - he might have been right, or wrong. It was just his improvised methodology employed seemed to work out what he thought was correct. Men do mistakes. They correct that on contemplation, on self-introspection, sometimes. At other times, in a society, the message for correction might come in the form of a negative mandate or vibes from the people. Mr. Gandhi, oftentimes, fell short of any compunction or thoughts hovering on how something could have been done better. Mr. Gandhi is an epitome in himself, but then, he was a human afterall.
Sartorial cultivation of our text books won't help either. Government after government comes and goes, and the Truth remains to be told. Hinging the entire spectrum of India's freedom struggle on just one person has left too much to be desired. It is a matter of disrepute and disgrace that India is still economically unstable, its status of being self-sufficient in agriculture has been eroded, and its Army can only pray there's no war in the future. Our volatile neighbours still pose a threat to us, and we have an eunuch's wherewithal to treat them to contingencies and hammer off the threats raised by them. Non-violence is a good dictum, but is circumstantial. Mr. Gandhi believed in Gita and the Ramayana. How can the acts of violence manifested by Arjuna in Mahabharata and Rama in Ramayana be corroborated, explained? Mythologies are myths - yes, true - but when you believe in them, you try to base your day-to-day ideals on the working principles of such text, advertently or otherwise. This applies across a religious plane, though the amount of such transpositions might vary, constraint to conflicting personal convictions. In Mr. Gandhi's case, it pretty much seemed to be in conflict.
In the last sixty years of Independence, we have acted weak. The present generation has been crippled with overbearing references made to the preceding generation. We seem to devalue self-worth, and demoralize our young men today against anything constructive to bring light to this world of, mostly darkness. This generation cannot operate when it fathoms a shadow of many an excessive, each vying to outdo the other in order to grasp the limelight for a few insignificant trivialities. By doing so, we present ourselves a blithe jeopardy of real issues taunting our country today. Mr. Gandhi will live in our hearts forever. Let us not make a mockery of him by allowing individuals and parties trying to interpret him as their sole property and vouching by his ideology. For the simple reason that, like India's freedom struggle, Mr. Gandhi can't be tied, his spirits prisoned, or his personality obliterated, howsoever one might try. We would do great service to the Nation if we leave him to rest alone, and not imbue him with our worries of contemporary connotations of ill-repute. To be strident and take a step forward, a step backward has to be taken first. We, as a Nation, would need to come out of Mr. Gandhi's shadow.
India is not weak because it was made weak over the years. India is weak today because we have preferred to remain weak. Self-introspection as a Nation is the call of the day, which we haven't felt at ease enough to attend to. Till date. We don't heed it at our own peril. We need to derive a conclusion on our next course of action, and again, not harp on what Mr. Gandhi, if alive, would have thought, or said, or done on the same. Times have changed, and that calls for objective and contextual solutions. Truth itself is not absolute. Mr. Gandhi had deep faith in the caste-system and views against population-control, and the same are not commensurate with the times. There's a need to delineate our past, and only carry forward the limited 'filtered extract' spun out as a balancing act between the relativity of Truth and the immeasurability of Time. To achieve this, we would need enlightened visionaries more than ever before. To control the damage, to decongest, and to envision a New Era of a strong India, our own wishes should morph into the greater vision. The preceding generations have to stop garnishing and amalgamating the accomplishments of yesteryears to see what they make out to be the future. This mix-up doesn't help. Mr. Gandhi's shadow is the first, if not the last thing, to be done away with.
Today, how else would we account for one of the lowest HDI (Human Development Index) that we subscribe to, when a population of one billion billows-and-fumes to get anywhere close to even a fraction of a gold medal at the Olympics, inflation spirals up as if it's gone utterly berserk, the judiciary can be bought, the legislature can be manipulated, the executive can be held hostage to a ransom, long-standing foreign policies butchered at the altar of principles, trains collide on jaundiced railway-tracks even in this age of modern technology, the Fourth Estate and media are in a haze of the metaphorical reality being subservient to inane trivialities, the buyer and the bought camouflage in shallow politics for the perdition called elections, and there are hypocritical speeches doled out on Independence Day each year from the ramparts of the Red Fort. And yes, we are buying pulses at Rs. 110 per kilogram! Because - you need to eat to be alive! Are we a total failure? Are we mocking ourselves? Are we an imbecile creature who should not have entrusted ourselves to rule? Rule, huh! who - but ourselves?
The sooner we get to the crux of the matter the better. It's high time we rectify the cataract clouding our priorities and wean away the aberration that's creating a mindless pandemonium and inconvenience for thought to even trickle down to something meaningful. It's high time we come out of Mr. Gandhi, and his closet, as to know our real 'we', our real 'selves', who can do much more in the next 10 years than the last 60 years of Independence combined. Mr. Gandhi’s shadow is, understandably, not the sole reason for our plight today, but the foremost amongst the many. Only when we dare to ask the right questions, shall we bestow on ourselves the chance to stumble upon the right answers.
If we do not act on it now, it might be too late before we could ask ourselves this question again - 'What makes India weak?'
What makes India weak?
The zeitgeist of a post-colonial era, till now, just seems to be an irrevocable continuum, burdened, and short of any reprieve the way we are going today. Our potatoes are blighted. Our pesticides adulterated. Our petrol prices soar. Our politics smacks of dualism. Corruption is rampant. Judiciary is a farce. Red-tapism abounds. Our Bhopal still stinks with the obnoxious smell of flesh and enmeshed blood fibres. Bureaucratic turpitude gives anything but solace. Social organizations have donned the role of remittance services. We think we are the best. We envision India to be a Superpower in the years to come, which, however, as epochs translate into eras, never happens. We bask in our past glory, glorify ourselves beneath a conceited facade and dream one such glory will visit us in the future. This future evades us, somehow. Our country squirms in her shoes. If "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny...", we should have had a fair idea of our Destiny by now. 'India Shining' is an Utopia, am empty verbiage. It is Sir Thomas Moore's perfect society on an imaginary Island, or a leviathan melodrama tantamount to a ridicule of the self. Applied the best of polish, India is not going to shine this way.
To extract ourselves of this morass and do anything commendable, or derive sporadic blinkers of even slight repute, we need to come out of an idea called 'Mahatma Gandhi'. I am not here to objectify Mahatma Gandhi's contributions, or accomplishments, or character. Neither do I have the wherewithal of my own to quantify them (which is again impossible), or extrapolate them to create a shadow-and-effect diagram probing the contemporary world affairs. I am not here to conclude a dissertation of a research fellowship on his status as the 'Mahatma/Father of the Nation' or what it means to our people, or to contest or investigate his (non-) nubile aspirations and concepts on Brahmacharya. Nor am I here to delve into his martyrdom in conjunction with Indian Independence, or for that matter his austere or self-effacing living. It's immaterial I love him or hate him.
What matters here is that in the real world, the angle of elevation doesn't quite equate to the angle of depression. It never does. Real life is not trigonometry, or else simple matters of life would have been really simple. The dictionary defines 'idolatry' as 'the worship of idols; the worship of images that are not God.' Our society, by virtue of its pluralistic ethos, maybe, is always in a need to find a common ground as to be able to see a single image while perceiving itself in the mirror. At the time of Partition, when the people of different princely states and sections looked forward for a common thread - there were two things in the firmament. One, a shared history. Second, Mr. Gandhi. I am not trying to belittle his tumultuous participation in India's freedom struggle - nobody can. His contribution was immense. But the way our history books have been portraying India's Freedom struggle is demeaning to the struggle itself. Self-defeating. India's freedom was not the labour of love of Mr. Gandhi alone, portrayed as the absolute pacifist. He is not the only person who got India freedom. Multiple factors, intrinsic or otherwise, as with the tide of the times and turn of events then in the 1940s, plotted themselves onto a swathe of miscarriages on the part of the British, colluding with the timeliness of the same.
The Indian National Congress's history alone is not the History of India, neither their ideologies can be construed to be the paradigms on which people of an entire Nation would rest their beings, views and identity. It's not an eternal dogma begotten from enlightenment of all and sundry. We can contort and falsify texts for consumption by the 4 year olds who are taught Mr. Gandhi as 'the Father of the Nation', but my point is - why is it needed? Rather, is it needed at all? India's freedom was not Mr. Gandhi's personal property, though people around him, a world full of sycophants and yes-men, tried to make it seem or look so, even post-Independence. Why do we have to have the 2nd of October celebrated each year? What happened to the other freedom fighters and the unsung martyrs who laid their lives at the pious feet of their Motherland? Remembering our ancestors for their extraordinary feats and impeccable deeds and emulating them is one thing, idolatry is another. We believe in hero-worship, and that's the feeder for our cannons – and in heart of hearts we know we wouldn't be able to do without it. Blind psychoneurotic hysteria pepped up to rever an exalted Demi-God is our grass for existence. Idolatry calls for an abject abnegation. India today needs to come out of the shadow of Mr. Gandhi. An ubiquitous allegory will not do anybody good.
Has telling 'India' as 'Gandhi's India' helped us all these years? We know the answer is an emphatic 'No'. If one doesn't agree, then how can one account for the immense corruption, scandalous misappropriations, wilful negligence, monetary embezzlements and misdemeanour evident in our society ever since we got Independence? We are sure Mr. Gandhi's ideology and the wisdom it implies can never be related to these vices, not even made an oblique reference to, but if our society believed in his principles there would be meagre chances we'd be what we are today. True? Are we not being hypocrites then? How come then that to get our sewage line cleared, we need to pay bribes right from the overseer in the local Municipality to the Chairman, which will anyways be siphoned off, in measures exacting to the appropriate proportions based on the designation of the public office holder. The christening of "Harijans" for the lower strata of the Indian society was itself whimsical, not even idiosyncratic. The very name fragmented the Indian society into a million parts, never to be reconciled to a one-ness that was many a vision for a Dynamic India. If non-violence was an inbuilt feature, why were our countrymen sent out to clench their fists and drink their own blood at the war-fronts in the Zulu, Boer, World War I and II wars, which did nothing but enhancing the Queen's stamina to continue colonization. Would we, then, allow ourselves to believe it was a means to sabotage the Indian freedom fight (there's a thin-line demarcation between 'fight' and 'struggle'), or defeat the ideologies and purposes of the rightist wings championing aggressive nationalism? The foremost question here would be - did we ever dare to question ourselves? 'Thou-holier-than-me' can be devastating, in equal measure, as 'me-holier-than-thou' attitude.
If non-violence could be the answer to all ills in this world, why has violence ruled the world, as if for Eternity? It is a crammed piece of idle thought - "Non-violence won India its freedom. Not a drop of blood was shed." No lie can outdo this mother of all lies. With the number of people dead fighting for India, you could well have created an entire civilization of millions. Why did we let go of our soldiers for the World Wars - because we couldn't convince the British of the fruits of non-violence? If non-violence could do wonders, why did Jallianwalla Bagh massacre and Noakhali, though discrete incidents and non-related, happen? Would you have parroted the same tall-talk if your own mother, or father, or brother or sister would have perished that day? Chances are that you might have - for it takes men of mettle to rise up like a Phoenix and construct a World Order. Without compromising, or acceptance of servitude. Nobody in the world has felt the need for peace unless and until violence taught them a lesson or two. Be it a clan, a group, or entire nation of people. Right from the Early Man. Peace descends only when violence comes to a logical conclusion, and a genuine need is felt for peace. Not within, nor without. It is acyclic. Not that Mr. Gandhi was wrong in his pursuit - he might have been right, or wrong. It was just his improvised methodology employed seemed to work out what he thought was correct. Men do mistakes. They correct that on contemplation, on self-introspection, sometimes. At other times, in a society, the message for correction might come in the form of a negative mandate or vibes from the people. Mr. Gandhi, oftentimes, fell short of any compunction or thoughts hovering on how something could have been done better. Mr. Gandhi is an epitome in himself, but then, he was a human afterall.
Sartorial cultivation of our text books won't help either. Government after government comes and goes, and the Truth remains to be told. Hinging the entire spectrum of India's freedom struggle on just one person has left too much to be desired. It is a matter of disrepute and disgrace that India is still economically unstable, its status of being self-sufficient in agriculture has been eroded, and its Army can only pray there's no war in the future. Our volatile neighbours still pose a threat to us, and we have an eunuch's wherewithal to treat them to contingencies and hammer off the threats raised by them. Non-violence is a good dictum, but is circumstantial. Mr. Gandhi believed in Gita and the Ramayana. How can the acts of violence manifested by Arjuna in Mahabharata and Rama in Ramayana be corroborated, explained? Mythologies are myths - yes, true - but when you believe in them, you try to base your day-to-day ideals on the working principles of such text, advertently or otherwise. This applies across a religious plane, though the amount of such transpositions might vary, constraint to conflicting personal convictions. In Mr. Gandhi's case, it pretty much seemed to be in conflict.
In the last sixty years of Independence, we have acted weak. The present generation has been crippled with overbearing references made to the preceding generation. We seem to devalue self-worth, and demoralize our young men today against anything constructive to bring light to this world of, mostly darkness. This generation cannot operate when it fathoms a shadow of many an excessive, each vying to outdo the other in order to grasp the limelight for a few insignificant trivialities. By doing so, we present ourselves a blithe jeopardy of real issues taunting our country today. Mr. Gandhi will live in our hearts forever. Let us not make a mockery of him by allowing individuals and parties trying to interpret him as their sole property and vouching by his ideology. For the simple reason that, like India's freedom struggle, Mr. Gandhi can't be tied, his spirits prisoned, or his personality obliterated, howsoever one might try. We would do great service to the Nation if we leave him to rest alone, and not imbue him with our worries of contemporary connotations of ill-repute. To be strident and take a step forward, a step backward has to be taken first. We, as a Nation, would need to come out of Mr. Gandhi's shadow.
India is not weak because it was made weak over the years. India is weak today because we have preferred to remain weak. Self-introspection as a Nation is the call of the day, which we haven't felt at ease enough to attend to. Till date. We don't heed it at our own peril. We need to derive a conclusion on our next course of action, and again, not harp on what Mr. Gandhi, if alive, would have thought, or said, or done on the same. Times have changed, and that calls for objective and contextual solutions. Truth itself is not absolute. Mr. Gandhi had deep faith in the caste-system and views against population-control, and the same are not commensurate with the times. There's a need to delineate our past, and only carry forward the limited 'filtered extract' spun out as a balancing act between the relativity of Truth and the immeasurability of Time. To achieve this, we would need enlightened visionaries more than ever before. To control the damage, to decongest, and to envision a New Era of a strong India, our own wishes should morph into the greater vision. The preceding generations have to stop garnishing and amalgamating the accomplishments of yesteryears to see what they make out to be the future. This mix-up doesn't help. Mr. Gandhi's shadow is the first, if not the last thing, to be done away with.
Today, how else would we account for one of the lowest HDI (Human Development Index) that we subscribe to, when a population of one billion billows-and-fumes to get anywhere close to even a fraction of a gold medal at the Olympics, inflation spirals up as if it's gone utterly berserk, the judiciary can be bought, the legislature can be manipulated, the executive can be held hostage to a ransom, long-standing foreign policies butchered at the altar of principles, trains collide on jaundiced railway-tracks even in this age of modern technology, the Fourth Estate and media are in a haze of the metaphorical reality being subservient to inane trivialities, the buyer and the bought camouflage in shallow politics for the perdition called elections, and there are hypocritical speeches doled out on Independence Day each year from the ramparts of the Red Fort. And yes, we are buying pulses at Rs. 110 per kilogram! Because - you need to eat to be alive! Are we a total failure? Are we mocking ourselves? Are we an imbecile creature who should not have entrusted ourselves to rule? Rule, huh! who - but ourselves?
The sooner we get to the crux of the matter the better. It's high time we rectify the cataract clouding our priorities and wean away the aberration that's creating a mindless pandemonium and inconvenience for thought to even trickle down to something meaningful. It's high time we come out of Mr. Gandhi, and his closet, as to know our real 'we', our real 'selves', who can do much more in the next 10 years than the last 60 years of Independence combined. Mr. Gandhi’s shadow is, understandably, not the sole reason for our plight today, but the foremost amongst the many. Only when we dare to ask the right questions, shall we bestow on ourselves the chance to stumble upon the right answers.
If we do not act on it now, it might be too late before we could ask ourselves this question again - 'What makes India weak?'
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Yes, Prime Minister, what’s in your mouth?
The problem is that Manmohan Singh thinks he is the Prime Minister of India. People of India think he maybe the Prime Minister of India. The rest of the world knows he is the Prime Minister of India.
The problems don’t end one bit, there. They start right at that point, and proliferate.
‘Life of Pi’ is now passé. The new kid on the block is the ‘Life of MMS’. The quintessential educationist and scholar, who has not let education come in the way of Sonia’s ass-licking. No less an example of the fact that good education takes you nowhere, unless you have the talent and wherewithal to use it to a logical conclusion for which it is meant, and even then, it is subjective. You can buy a stick, but you cannot guarantee it to measure up to all the yards in the stray fields. Like the voyeurisms of pirates who sniff out deals over the high seas, and then fall mum to their own fatigue and infective short-breathedness, MMS owns a perennial fetish to sustain a low metabolic rate wherein opening the oral cavity (otherwise called ‘mouth’) is considered an extreme drain on calories. In fact, MMS needs nothing that can get-set him for a go.
In fact, he doesn’t want to make a ‘go’ in the first place, and if at all he’s tagged to the word ‘visionary’, it must be just a lame duck trying to hold the walking stick. Last time, when India won the cricket match against Pakistan, where diplomacy was both rife and ripe, having MMS and Geelani lap up the goings-on, it was a matter of many a bet as to whether MMS would clap, out of joy, if India wins. The bookies, as reports evidently point out, were perplexed. The odds were high, for Sonia Gandhi would be up the stands too, with a populist gimmick of procuring a spectators’ seat at the Common stands, and having the security commandoes for whose upkeep ordinary citizens of India (read tax-payers) spend millions of rupees, just to make sure she comes alive on Television, cheering for Mother India. No, its not her mother, and surveys have found Indians aren’t good at adopting either. Not to digress from the point - Nobody expected MMS to clap on his own or adhere to his own free will. Some say, he clapped only after Sonia clapped, to make sure he sends her the message once more that he is always the ‘patient, sincere and diligent’ follower of the lady. ‘You fart, and then I shall’ being the motto.
I had always thought a person could be either educated or wretched, until MMS arrived, and then thrived. He wasn’t that bad if he had a mind of his own. He writes himself off at the flick of Sonia’s finger, and that’s a blinker of a bad omen. He sings paeans for the lady, more like a dim-witted sycophant, sculpturing some sort of a living eulogy to a crass, moronic sub-mediocrity that is Sonia, and her henchmen of course. Henchmen, yes. Like sperms, they thrive too. And only one will make it. For MMS, the story was different. He didn’t have to compete with anybody. He was the dandy, the good boy who talks less. In fact, nothing at all. He was hand-picked by Sonia, and catapulted to the throne. ‘Catapulted’, and ‘dumped’ are entirely different words, but for MMS, there wasn’t a difference. The problem is that MMS thinks the throne instead to be a Shrine, and Sonia the hand of God. MMS has never won a Lok Sabha election, foraging always through a backdoor entry to the Elders’ House. Interesting as it might seem, however, Sonia’s reason for his selection was his popularity and clean image among the Indian populace. Don’t believe that crap! He was selected because he doesn’t open his mouth. Mummy’s boys keep mum. Here Mummyji and Madamji are not two different people – hypocrisy breeds a single resource who will know the exclusivity of a person’s usage and worth as a means to get to the end. Mask, disguise, camouflage, whatever, just do it. MMS, conniving with all his inner faith for a peaceful co-existence in both his own and Madamji’s dreams, has been instructed to open his mouth only at the Dentist’s Clinic, at a categorical behest of the latter, or only if an excruciating pain pricks the better out of him.
What perturbs most is the Times Network article, titled “At 78, workaholic PM puts in 18-hour days.” One can’t be sure how much money MMS’s Public relations firms would have paid the Newspaper to bring out this report. “Singh said he works 18-hour days and does not go on holidays.” The item begins – “Invariably polite and punctilious, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s energy levels and intense concentration can give someone in his 20s a run for his money despite two heart surgeries. Disciplined and balanced in his lifestyle, 78-year-old Singh can keep punishing schedules, switching between reviewing Afghanistan and Pacific security with a visiting prime minister and meeting MPs with localized grievances.” Now, wow, that’s a lot of money!
I rolled with laughter when I read it. When I regained some sanity and a bit of balance, I read this: “Unlike some of his predecessors, Singh does pay attention to detail and holds regular sectoral reviews instead of leaving matters to top PMO officials.” Yes, more than half a dozen scams and Colossal financial irregularities and embezzlements of public funds quite proves this point! If he does ‘pay attention to detail’ and the public is duped with scam after scam rolling down the cupboards, I pretty feel either the journalist who wrote this piece was high on Meth – a drug worse than cocaine or Ecstasy, or else he hardly cares for his own resilience in writing and credibility. TOI doesn’t have either of these, so I can understand there. It sells its space for money, and some instant gratification begotten from a page-3 hullabaloo of semi-clad nubile nymphets holding a peg of rat’s piss, and which in their parlance is supposed to be stylish. And then the part that trumpets MMS ‘reviews instead of leaving matters to top PMO officials’. Oh God! Do the people of this country have to take all this in one life! Gross, sir, madam, people, gross.
When I went to take tea in the evening, at the local Chaiwallah’s ‘Thela’, the other name for a makeshift tea-shop on wheels, I asked for a tea. ‘Sitaram’ is his name, an affable guy who knows me now for years. He would have a tea everyday, which he would call ‘Special Chai’, and a placard on his shop would display the name for the day. That day’s special was what he christened as ‘Manmohan’. I jokingly asked him what good was it (tea) for. In his inimitable style of a grin mixed majorly with a gingerly smirk, he placed: “Nothing, sirji.” But I insisted – “But this is just a tea whose name is Manmohan, and there should be something it has to be good at, for people are paying money to have it!” Sitaram, in his wit-laced humour and a slipping spectacle, quipped: “Manmohan, the one on whose name the tea is based, isn’t good for anything. How can the tea have any quality, sirji? The people of India are buying him, aren’t they?”
Before I could comment, he said: “Didn’t you have tea at my shop yesterday?” I nodded a pale-faced no. “Well, you missed it then! Yesterday’s special was named ‘Sonia’. How would anyone buy Manmohan if Sonia isn’t there in the picture?’
I laughed, we both laughed.
“But do you defend Manmohan even for all the scams and price-rise and not bringing back the black money stashed in banks in Switzerland? See the corruption everywhere, the prices, no?” I asked. “Well, sirji”, Sitaram upped, “That is not Manmohan’s fault. It’s just that he is the 13th Prime Minister of India, and 13 is an unlucky number. It brings ill-luck to all. And I don’t defend him. There is Sonia to defend him, for he must be doing daily chores for her. I think he is a paid servant of Sonia. He is an object, more like a stamp-pad. Not worth even my time. I will just stick to defending my tea.”
Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people puts MMS at Number 18. For a Chaiwallah, he means nothing though. He is credited with the end of the Licence Raj system, helping to open the Indian economy to greater international trade and investment. Once I received one of those e-mail forwards - a bio-date of MMS, which clearly resonated the fact that he is the most educated Prime Minister in the world. His education at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and Nuffield College, Oxford, his doctoral thesis, his stints at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Ministry of Foreign Trade were admirable. His tenures as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, Secretary-General of the South Commission were successful. In 1991, he was given the Finance portfolio by the then Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, during which he implemented policies to open up the economy and open India’s socialism to allow for greater capitalism, and in the process dismantled the Licence Raj, a system that inhibited the prosperity of private businesses, and obstacles in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). ‘Globalization’ as a term came into being then, lively, and changing the lives of people. It also initiated the process of privatization of the public sector companies.
People and press have referred him as the Deng Xiaoping of India. At least in India, people know MMS is not a Rabri Devi or a Uma Bharati or a Mayawati, for whom imbecility transcends genre, age, and the demographic details of their audience, and ineducation is writ large on the freewheeling highway of absolute stupidity in politics. With all the education, MMS was supposed to bear his head on his own shoulders, not lean often over the walls, and walk his own walk – at his own pace. It is both interesting and appalling to see just the opposite happening – he is being dictated on how to walk the rope, having to keep a lady in good humour who is not even his equal in any given noble respect. Is this ass-licking not an impending holocaust in the offing?
MMS is not fit for himself, let alone the country. If he doesn’t open his mouth now, or voice his thoughts, or shoulders responsibility and accountability on his decisions when the country expects him to, when would he? Having integrity and being polite are not enough to lead the country – even a trained donkey can be so. Will his character mortify itself within the empty environs of what he would, when he writes his autobiography, down the line, construe as prejudice and subjugation and blame it all on a vindictive Sonia? Or would he have the strength to call a spade a spade now and come out of the deep bog he has got himself into, thinking it to be just a shallow morass – a making of Sonia’s tender caress and cajole?
What actually does he work on, for 18 hours a day, through the weekends, and bereft of a vacation ever? On Sonia? Ruminating on the next loot? I bet he can do a good job for the country if he knows what a good job means – else he is both unproductive, and inefficient. With a payload like Sonia to succumb to, that wrings him out dry for howsoever trivial his object of enterprise, the going wasn’t going to be easy anyways. Magic-mohan Singh should’ve known. Oh dear, dear, how, when will the axe fall? Double jeopardy, this.
I wish he understands India is his own country, not Sonia’s.
And yes, by the way, the Chaiwallah had the same opinion too.
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Unending Pie ( A tribute to Anant Pai)
(This article was first published in the the literary journal 'Scroll':-http://litmagscroll.blogspot.com/p/book-salon.html#Pie in the April issue, 2011.)
I always wanted to meet Uncle Pai.
He was the Unending (‘Anant’) Pie (‘Pai’).
In the impressible minds of fertile aptitude, ‘Endless Pie’ reigned supreme - a pie of every child’s fantasy and imagination, that speck in a child’s mind, whose work of sheer creativity on traditional folk-tales and mythologies amalgamated with real life, like conjoined Siamese twins. Millions of children were fed on the charm of his characters in the comics, with a distinct moral take-away to top it with a beauty. Generations of youngsters have been stirred in their souls, making fruitful forays into what great lives of history are meant and reflected in the perceptive minds of current times. I could wish I was as wise as Birbal, as magnanimous as Akbar the Great, as sagely as Agastya, as naïve as Suppandi. The demons were black and the Devas were handsome. O what miracle was Ghatothkach’s leaping out of the flames! Raja Harishchandra’s story instilled in children the virtues of truthfulness, even as Shivaji rendered them wings to conquer, the touchy scruples of Panchatantra which would have a weighty message woven the most simple way in that a 6 year old could easily comprehend. There would be Kalia the crow, the wisdom of Hiuen Tsang, a Greek tale of valour here and an Arabian tale of humour there. The caricatures were lively and lovely, and appeared to speak through, with the eyes of a famished teenager gobbling up text, wanting more. Their parents, in their thirties or forties, would check out their kids once in a while – to see what’s it that they have been reading since long (surprised by the pin-drop silence), and sure enough, the parents would themselves get engrossed and captivated alongwith their young offsprings, as they sit down to read along!
The 1st Annual Indian Comic Con was held on the 19th-20th February, 2011 at the venue Dilli Haat, New Delhi, which was a conclave for comic book creators, animators and publishers. The lifetime achievement award was to be given to Anant Pai. However, he could not attend as he had a foot fracture, resulting in a surgery. His award was received by his longtime editor Reena, on his behalf. On 24th February, 2011, just a few days later, Anant Pai succumbed to a heart attack, in a Mumbai hospital at the age of 81 years. While living, he was endless, a legend. Death was meant for him, as if to ratify his claims to immortality, which he so deserved, just like his comics.
My first interaction with him was in the year 1988, when I was a fifth-grader. I had written a story for ‘Tinkle’, a children’s digest produced by Uncle Pai. In those days, you had to make submissions through the post mailbox, and if your manuscript made though the grind and came out good, you would be notified by a return postal mail. My story about a king and a witty commoner was selected by Uncle Pai, and the amount awarded was rupees twenty. With that award money that time, I bought myself a cool-drinks (quite rare at that time) and a few more Amar Chitra Katha titles. Uncle Pai sent me a hand-written letter, with an autographed picture of his. It had words of encouragement to ensure I keep writing. Tinkle was a monthly magazine that time, costing rupees four. Those were the God-sent words for me as a child, when the mind was young, the pen a fickle instrument for adventure, the amorphous ideas nascent and volatile.
Anant Pai was born in 1929, in a place called Karkala in Karnataka, whence he lost his parents at the age of two. At the age of twelve years, he came to Mumbai, and studied the science subjects, being a dual degree holder from the University of Mumbai. His first attempt to create a children’s magazine (Manav, 1954) failed and hence was followed by a career as a junior executive in the Times of India books division.
It so happened that Anant Pai was watching a TV program aired on Doordarshan in 1967, in which he noticed the participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but failed answering as to who was Rama’s mother in the Indian epic mythology ‘Ramayana’! He left his job and started the Amar Chitra Katha the same year, with the help of G.L Mirchandani of India Book House. It was started as an educational comics series. He had approached other publishers too, but they had rejected his idea. The giant publishers that time, like Allied Publishers and Jaico had taken no interest. Anant Pai went all by himself to don the role of writer, editor and publisher all in one. A couple of years later, in 1969, he founded the Rang Rekha Features, the first comic and cartoon syndicate in India, and started the children’s magazine in 1980. He hadn’t known that time that Amar Chitra Katha would sell three million comic books a year, in English and more than 20 Indian languages. In the early days of the comic, Anant Pai would himself stand at the petrol pump kiosks to vend his titles. Well, to straighten out the statistics a bit more, here’s a comic book that has already sold about a hundred million copies since its inception!
The first title, Krishna, was published in 1970, but the idea didn't take off immediately. The publishers lost over Rs 50,000 in the first two years. "For three years he worked without getting a single paisa, but Anant was patient and didn't want to shut down his business. And from the fourth year, we flourished. Money was not very important for Anant. He was happy and satisfied with people learning our culture," said Lalitha, in an interview to a leading newspaper recently.
“Story-time with Uncle Pai” was a series of audio book versions of Amar Chitra Katha, where he would be the narrator-storyteller. His voice was one of a grand-dad telling bedtime stories to the kids and teenagers of the present generation. No wonder Anant Pai has been acclaimed as the ‘Uncle’ with whom an entire generation of comic-lovers have been in love with and been brought upon. He had a role to play when Times of India came out with Indrajaal Comics in the 1960s. He carried over his learning and experience to the door-steps of his own venture. Anant Pai’s expertise helped to conceptualize most of the mythologies for Amar Chitra Katha, with the art-work being done by his coterie of faithful art-designers like Ram Weerkar, Dilip Kadam, Pratap Mullick, Souren Roy, Jeffrey Fowler, Madhu Powle and Chandrakant D. Rane. What ticked this entire group on, and glued them together till date, is a matter of conjecture. Also, its interesting there have been no court-cases or law-suits filed against the stories (or Anant Pai) on the ways they have been depicted – knowing mythologies are subservient to the malady of variable interpretations. We have a fair idea how the mob gets swayed by the depictions they construe as incorrect or blasphemous – and how pelting stones at the creators’ houses, burning effigies, hurting the family members and disrupting business becomes the order of the day. All this fanatic allurements have origin in a greater or lesser degree of a political clout meant to target a distinctive religious sect for the purpose of votes. In a country where educationists fight over the profiles of freedom-fighters and their place in history books, it is indeed suprising how Amar Chitra Katha could manage a smooth-sail without a ripple of a roar.
The punch in the lines, the scripts, the illustrations were all a labour of love – those times when there was no google or Wikipedia to get ready-made hard-boiled eggs without boiling, when each story or fable had to be meticulously worked for and worked upon, researched, and when his team-members had day-jobs as ad agency illustrators to take care of! I do not think Anant Pai ever saw himself as a nation-building educationist who can bring about a change. Rather, I would use the word ‘educator’ for him, one who invented comics as a medium to delve into the past without the ordeal of getting bored, and for which reason generations of readers have become his fans. Myths and mythologies would be mined from the bottomless Oceans of the scriptures, plots would be sincere with a pint of contemporary overtures, and all loose ends of the characters’ voices would be tied up eventually as the story progressed. Remember, Anant Pai took up this immense task on his own volition, where a man sets his own target in life! It were those ages when comics was seen as a shitty sediment of the un-intellectual milieu, meant for shallow stories taking up refuge in the dungeons of idiotic narratives, and which invariably had parents barking at their kids to castigate and trash ‘those comic books’ if they ever wanted to do anything in life!
Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle changed it all. Now there were parents who would promise their children titles of the comics if they stood first in class or got a 100 percent marks in their Mathematics examination. A sea change! As much for the charm, as for the languor. The Anu’s Club section in the monthly magazine ‘Tinkle’ was the story of a group of children hanging out with Uncle Anu — a character based on Pai himself — learning about science in a fun manner. Well, again, Mirabai sang not for herself, but for Lord Krishna. A man is born with a purpose in life. Some people do certain things because they were born to do certain things that way and die one day, immortalizing themselves and their work. While alive, and in death, they live beyond time. Anant Pie was one such.
While Anant Pai was trained to be a chemical engineer, he spent only three months working as one — "one month plus two months' notice". Now here’s an anecdote to savour. Atal Bihar Vajpayee, a statesman and a poet himself, and an Indian (and world) leader of stature, once remarked how the appeal of Anant Pai was comparable to Chacha Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehru). Obviously, it might have implied the appeal with regards to children. But an entire Nation knows today, it was much more than that! It has shaped up and molded the minds of youngsters who are the citizens and leaders of tomorrow. It is also said that Mikhail Gorbhachev, another world-statesman and leader once called him up on the phone to understand better the meaning of a quote in Sanskrit. His marriage with his wife was a love-marriage. They had met in the Hindi class in her school at Dadar and Anant wanted her to meet his parents. As Lalitha said in an interview to a leading newspaper: “But I was only 15 then and told him to wait or else my parents would ask me to sit at home and not let me complete my education. I was a school-going girl whereas he was a college boy. Both of us lived in Wadala and we walked down to the school together. I asked him to meet me after five years for marriage. He was determined and came back after five years and asked me, 'Do you remember me?' I too liked him and my parents granted me permission to marry Anant.”
It is quite strange that the Uncle of the millions of children across generations should not have a kid of his own. That too, knowing the decision was one that was consciously taken. "He was very busy with work all his life. To bring out one comic, he would read hundreds of books for research so that there was no error. Sometimes, I do feel that we should have had our own children, I do miss it... but it's okay, I have been very busy along with him. We were invited by a lot of parents all the time, people were extremely fond of him” said his wife Lalitha at a recent interview.
Anant Pai has edited some 439 titles of Amar Chitra Katha alone and fed generations of Indians who now know the innumerable famous and obscure characters of Indian mythology. You flip through and browse an Amar Chitra Katha or a Tinkle comics at the Comics section of the bookstore on a Sunday post-siesta afternoon, there’s a one-in-a-zillion odds for you to quit reading the comics midway. I bet you would read it till the end, on your knees!
No drab sessions in Indian history and mythology this, its Uncle Pai.
One who would write a postcard back to each child who wrote to him!
Unending, Pie, The.
I always wanted to meet Uncle Pai.
He was the Unending (‘Anant’) Pie (‘Pai’).
In the impressible minds of fertile aptitude, ‘Endless Pie’ reigned supreme - a pie of every child’s fantasy and imagination, that speck in a child’s mind, whose work of sheer creativity on traditional folk-tales and mythologies amalgamated with real life, like conjoined Siamese twins. Millions of children were fed on the charm of his characters in the comics, with a distinct moral take-away to top it with a beauty. Generations of youngsters have been stirred in their souls, making fruitful forays into what great lives of history are meant and reflected in the perceptive minds of current times. I could wish I was as wise as Birbal, as magnanimous as Akbar the Great, as sagely as Agastya, as naïve as Suppandi. The demons were black and the Devas were handsome. O what miracle was Ghatothkach’s leaping out of the flames! Raja Harishchandra’s story instilled in children the virtues of truthfulness, even as Shivaji rendered them wings to conquer, the touchy scruples of Panchatantra which would have a weighty message woven the most simple way in that a 6 year old could easily comprehend. There would be Kalia the crow, the wisdom of Hiuen Tsang, a Greek tale of valour here and an Arabian tale of humour there. The caricatures were lively and lovely, and appeared to speak through, with the eyes of a famished teenager gobbling up text, wanting more. Their parents, in their thirties or forties, would check out their kids once in a while – to see what’s it that they have been reading since long (surprised by the pin-drop silence), and sure enough, the parents would themselves get engrossed and captivated alongwith their young offsprings, as they sit down to read along!
The 1st Annual Indian Comic Con was held on the 19th-20th February, 2011 at the venue Dilli Haat, New Delhi, which was a conclave for comic book creators, animators and publishers. The lifetime achievement award was to be given to Anant Pai. However, he could not attend as he had a foot fracture, resulting in a surgery. His award was received by his longtime editor Reena, on his behalf. On 24th February, 2011, just a few days later, Anant Pai succumbed to a heart attack, in a Mumbai hospital at the age of 81 years. While living, he was endless, a legend. Death was meant for him, as if to ratify his claims to immortality, which he so deserved, just like his comics.
My first interaction with him was in the year 1988, when I was a fifth-grader. I had written a story for ‘Tinkle’, a children’s digest produced by Uncle Pai. In those days, you had to make submissions through the post mailbox, and if your manuscript made though the grind and came out good, you would be notified by a return postal mail. My story about a king and a witty commoner was selected by Uncle Pai, and the amount awarded was rupees twenty. With that award money that time, I bought myself a cool-drinks (quite rare at that time) and a few more Amar Chitra Katha titles. Uncle Pai sent me a hand-written letter, with an autographed picture of his. It had words of encouragement to ensure I keep writing. Tinkle was a monthly magazine that time, costing rupees four. Those were the God-sent words for me as a child, when the mind was young, the pen a fickle instrument for adventure, the amorphous ideas nascent and volatile.
Anant Pai was born in 1929, in a place called Karkala in Karnataka, whence he lost his parents at the age of two. At the age of twelve years, he came to Mumbai, and studied the science subjects, being a dual degree holder from the University of Mumbai. His first attempt to create a children’s magazine (Manav, 1954) failed and hence was followed by a career as a junior executive in the Times of India books division.
It so happened that Anant Pai was watching a TV program aired on Doordarshan in 1967, in which he noticed the participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but failed answering as to who was Rama’s mother in the Indian epic mythology ‘Ramayana’! He left his job and started the Amar Chitra Katha the same year, with the help of G.L Mirchandani of India Book House. It was started as an educational comics series. He had approached other publishers too, but they had rejected his idea. The giant publishers that time, like Allied Publishers and Jaico had taken no interest. Anant Pai went all by himself to don the role of writer, editor and publisher all in one. A couple of years later, in 1969, he founded the Rang Rekha Features, the first comic and cartoon syndicate in India, and started the children’s magazine in 1980. He hadn’t known that time that Amar Chitra Katha would sell three million comic books a year, in English and more than 20 Indian languages. In the early days of the comic, Anant Pai would himself stand at the petrol pump kiosks to vend his titles. Well, to straighten out the statistics a bit more, here’s a comic book that has already sold about a hundred million copies since its inception!
The first title, Krishna, was published in 1970, but the idea didn't take off immediately. The publishers lost over Rs 50,000 in the first two years. "For three years he worked without getting a single paisa, but Anant was patient and didn't want to shut down his business. And from the fourth year, we flourished. Money was not very important for Anant. He was happy and satisfied with people learning our culture," said Lalitha, in an interview to a leading newspaper recently.
“Story-time with Uncle Pai” was a series of audio book versions of Amar Chitra Katha, where he would be the narrator-storyteller. His voice was one of a grand-dad telling bedtime stories to the kids and teenagers of the present generation. No wonder Anant Pai has been acclaimed as the ‘Uncle’ with whom an entire generation of comic-lovers have been in love with and been brought upon. He had a role to play when Times of India came out with Indrajaal Comics in the 1960s. He carried over his learning and experience to the door-steps of his own venture. Anant Pai’s expertise helped to conceptualize most of the mythologies for Amar Chitra Katha, with the art-work being done by his coterie of faithful art-designers like Ram Weerkar, Dilip Kadam, Pratap Mullick, Souren Roy, Jeffrey Fowler, Madhu Powle and Chandrakant D. Rane. What ticked this entire group on, and glued them together till date, is a matter of conjecture. Also, its interesting there have been no court-cases or law-suits filed against the stories (or Anant Pai) on the ways they have been depicted – knowing mythologies are subservient to the malady of variable interpretations. We have a fair idea how the mob gets swayed by the depictions they construe as incorrect or blasphemous – and how pelting stones at the creators’ houses, burning effigies, hurting the family members and disrupting business becomes the order of the day. All this fanatic allurements have origin in a greater or lesser degree of a political clout meant to target a distinctive religious sect for the purpose of votes. In a country where educationists fight over the profiles of freedom-fighters and their place in history books, it is indeed suprising how Amar Chitra Katha could manage a smooth-sail without a ripple of a roar.
The punch in the lines, the scripts, the illustrations were all a labour of love – those times when there was no google or Wikipedia to get ready-made hard-boiled eggs without boiling, when each story or fable had to be meticulously worked for and worked upon, researched, and when his team-members had day-jobs as ad agency illustrators to take care of! I do not think Anant Pai ever saw himself as a nation-building educationist who can bring about a change. Rather, I would use the word ‘educator’ for him, one who invented comics as a medium to delve into the past without the ordeal of getting bored, and for which reason generations of readers have become his fans. Myths and mythologies would be mined from the bottomless Oceans of the scriptures, plots would be sincere with a pint of contemporary overtures, and all loose ends of the characters’ voices would be tied up eventually as the story progressed. Remember, Anant Pai took up this immense task on his own volition, where a man sets his own target in life! It were those ages when comics was seen as a shitty sediment of the un-intellectual milieu, meant for shallow stories taking up refuge in the dungeons of idiotic narratives, and which invariably had parents barking at their kids to castigate and trash ‘those comic books’ if they ever wanted to do anything in life!
Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle changed it all. Now there were parents who would promise their children titles of the comics if they stood first in class or got a 100 percent marks in their Mathematics examination. A sea change! As much for the charm, as for the languor. The Anu’s Club section in the monthly magazine ‘Tinkle’ was the story of a group of children hanging out with Uncle Anu — a character based on Pai himself — learning about science in a fun manner. Well, again, Mirabai sang not for herself, but for Lord Krishna. A man is born with a purpose in life. Some people do certain things because they were born to do certain things that way and die one day, immortalizing themselves and their work. While alive, and in death, they live beyond time. Anant Pie was one such.
While Anant Pai was trained to be a chemical engineer, he spent only three months working as one — "one month plus two months' notice". Now here’s an anecdote to savour. Atal Bihar Vajpayee, a statesman and a poet himself, and an Indian (and world) leader of stature, once remarked how the appeal of Anant Pai was comparable to Chacha Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehru). Obviously, it might have implied the appeal with regards to children. But an entire Nation knows today, it was much more than that! It has shaped up and molded the minds of youngsters who are the citizens and leaders of tomorrow. It is also said that Mikhail Gorbhachev, another world-statesman and leader once called him up on the phone to understand better the meaning of a quote in Sanskrit. His marriage with his wife was a love-marriage. They had met in the Hindi class in her school at Dadar and Anant wanted her to meet his parents. As Lalitha said in an interview to a leading newspaper: “But I was only 15 then and told him to wait or else my parents would ask me to sit at home and not let me complete my education. I was a school-going girl whereas he was a college boy. Both of us lived in Wadala and we walked down to the school together. I asked him to meet me after five years for marriage. He was determined and came back after five years and asked me, 'Do you remember me?' I too liked him and my parents granted me permission to marry Anant.”
It is quite strange that the Uncle of the millions of children across generations should not have a kid of his own. That too, knowing the decision was one that was consciously taken. "He was very busy with work all his life. To bring out one comic, he would read hundreds of books for research so that there was no error. Sometimes, I do feel that we should have had our own children, I do miss it... but it's okay, I have been very busy along with him. We were invited by a lot of parents all the time, people were extremely fond of him” said his wife Lalitha at a recent interview.
Anant Pai has edited some 439 titles of Amar Chitra Katha alone and fed generations of Indians who now know the innumerable famous and obscure characters of Indian mythology. You flip through and browse an Amar Chitra Katha or a Tinkle comics at the Comics section of the bookstore on a Sunday post-siesta afternoon, there’s a one-in-a-zillion odds for you to quit reading the comics midway. I bet you would read it till the end, on your knees!
No drab sessions in Indian history and mythology this, its Uncle Pai.
One who would write a postcard back to each child who wrote to him!
Unending, Pie, The.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
ONI - The new currency
"New Year Offer - 5 kg onion free with purchase worth Rs. 10,000 and above."
As I hogged for space amidst blaring horns and tentacled traffic that doesn't seem to subdue one bit, my eyes chanced upon this metal-embroidered wooden slate in front of the Gemini Stores, that stands Colossus-like right across the BTM Bus stand, Bangalore. My bus was crammed with the stench of fresh sweat on tired flesh, one that starts to drip when the bus stops to gorge itself with passengers, and dries off when the air from the windows snaps over the face as soon as the bus starts to move. The passenger sitting beside me was a bespectacled man of moderate charms, who would drool much and sleep often. Until a wholesome jerk from a breaker or squinted potholes laying bare would wake him up with a diminutive shock. 'What's that?' he swerved, even as he opened his eyes, 'Onions!'
Monday, October 25, 2010
An Asshole Roy As a Noun
I drive taxi in New York. In New York, you need education only if you've decided you wouldn't work.
For all other things, you can be illiterate.
I am.
My recent date with English has been profoundly new. I took the weekend coaching classes paying 1500 dollars for five months. Darn! See, how I just looked up the word 'profound' in the dictionary. Am always in search of long words that will impress you. The best part is that I can look up the dictionary now and find a word for myself. Well, I am talkative, but let me tell you one thing. Ever since I started to surf the news channels two days back, I read this joke about Arundhati Roy's recent remark.
Let me laught a bit first.
India is a circus!
For all other things, you can be illiterate.
I am.
My recent date with English has been profoundly new. I took the weekend coaching classes paying 1500 dollars for five months. Darn! See, how I just looked up the word 'profound' in the dictionary. Am always in search of long words that will impress you. The best part is that I can look up the dictionary now and find a word for myself. Well, I am talkative, but let me tell you one thing. Ever since I started to surf the news channels two days back, I read this joke about Arundhati Roy's recent remark.
Let me laught a bit first.
India is a circus!
Saturday, October 23, 2010
A Servant Out Of The Closet
New Delhi couldn't have gotten better than what it did when I hit its roads on the 19th September 2010. The thrifty guile of the over-anxious winds closely mixed with the aptitude of the inundating rains. This made plausible bargains for what would seem as a very cunning ploy by the rain Gods to dampen the amorphous spirits of the wild and outgoing hearts. For a quarter less than two full days, I remember being grounded at the guest house where I had put up, sitting placidly at the window-sill only to watch the rain-drops lose inertia. It was time to acknowledge we might play the truant, but rain can play the perfect spoilsport to drive us to our own pitiful resignation.
My mother was to undergo a major surgery the next day. We were to report at the hospital no later than 8 am in the morning. A government hospital of conspicuous repute, where getting a date for the operation would bear close analogy to discovering land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that happens when your dream survives to see a new day, which, again as you know, is hardly ever. Which is why nothing should go awry on the day that matters. We would need to get up early and hop ourselves into hospital-readiness as soon as we could. For all intents, the last thing we could afford would be to miss the dot timing.Precarious.
My mother was to undergo a major surgery the next day. We were to report at the hospital no later than 8 am in the morning. A government hospital of conspicuous repute, where getting a date for the operation would bear close analogy to discovering land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that happens when your dream survives to see a new day, which, again as you know, is hardly ever. Which is why nothing should go awry on the day that matters. We would need to get up early and hop ourselves into hospital-readiness as soon as we could. For all intents, the last thing we could afford would be to miss the dot timing.Precarious.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Because You Live Only Once
[(c) by Shubham Gupta, orginally written in 2004-05 ; posted at another blog of mine on 16th December, 2006. Re-posting it here on popular demand. Dedicated to my close friends, and friends of friends who are software engineers, but this applies to all - Because you live only once, and in parts!]
You had been to office early, for a lot of work that was pending,
And backed home only late, finishing the rest that needed your tending.
The very hard work you put in, the way you work shows,
Lots of appreciations and awards follow, means the company also knows.
On those days you are late, your breakfast goes in for a skip,
And if Luck has its way long enough, even your lunch suffers a slip.
You work on endlessly , for the company pays you well,
For ultimately at the end of the day , your fat wallet swells.
You do not have time for others, for the next day repeats the same,
Week-ends are the days you bank upon, to put your family in frame.
Saturdays , Sundays come and go, they do not wait for you,
You feel you can do nothing about, your life doesn’t have a clue.
You had been to office early, for a lot of work that was pending,
And backed home only late, finishing the rest that needed your tending.
The very hard work you put in, the way you work shows,
Lots of appreciations and awards follow, means the company also knows.
On those days you are late, your breakfast goes in for a skip,
And if Luck has its way long enough, even your lunch suffers a slip.
You work on endlessly , for the company pays you well,
For ultimately at the end of the day , your fat wallet swells.
You do not have time for others, for the next day repeats the same,
Week-ends are the days you bank upon, to put your family in frame.
Saturdays , Sundays come and go, they do not wait for you,
You feel you can do nothing about, your life doesn’t have a clue.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Chinaman's Clutter on my Radar
Chen Xinghua is my new friend.
Since everything in America is now made in China, he is a Chinese too.
I almost ran him over and mowed him down. It wasn't an eclectic selection of a chance as much as it was to the mere randomness of the event. Blame it on the morning, the timing of it - rush hours. 8 am this longitude, breakfast time. I didn't know his name then. Obviously, how would I? However, my expectation of a climactic thorny diatribe from this otherwise puny man rendered me lost to even think of asking for an apology. I heard clumsy whimpers though, for his elbow had been hit, and at any rate, this whimper was a lowly noise of inconsequential returns.
Experience over time has ensured I be seasoned enough to make an accurate distinction, on my own, between a Chinese noise spurted out like a word and a Chinese word sounding like a noise. I am quite a craftsman at it now. Have chiselled my lingual acumen for garbled evocations, and have honed my skills in doing so. And when I say a 'Chinese word', the oblique reference precipitates to the series of monosyllabic noise emanated in such close proximity as to leave them meaningless to the lone non-Chinese observer of modest means. Or spelt out as a constipated exercise, again, faring no better. As for Chen, I shall stick to the purring whimper.
Since everything in America is now made in China, he is a Chinese too.
I almost ran him over and mowed him down. It wasn't an eclectic selection of a chance as much as it was to the mere randomness of the event. Blame it on the morning, the timing of it - rush hours. 8 am this longitude, breakfast time. I didn't know his name then. Obviously, how would I? However, my expectation of a climactic thorny diatribe from this otherwise puny man rendered me lost to even think of asking for an apology. I heard clumsy whimpers though, for his elbow had been hit, and at any rate, this whimper was a lowly noise of inconsequential returns.
Experience over time has ensured I be seasoned enough to make an accurate distinction, on my own, between a Chinese noise spurted out like a word and a Chinese word sounding like a noise. I am quite a craftsman at it now. Have chiselled my lingual acumen for garbled evocations, and have honed my skills in doing so. And when I say a 'Chinese word', the oblique reference precipitates to the series of monosyllabic noise emanated in such close proximity as to leave them meaningless to the lone non-Chinese observer of modest means. Or spelt out as a constipated exercise, again, faring no better. As for Chen, I shall stick to the purring whimper.
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