The Well

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Bai is running at the speed of light, and working with both hands and legs to send the family to their respective destinations. The pace builds up from half past seven and the fastest sprint occurs from eight to nine in the morning, culminating in each of them rushing out the doorway. Invariably the winner and the first to exit would be the master of the house with his tie half tied, breakfast half way down his throat, and shoe laces dangling. These are assumed to reach their positions by the time he reaches his office. The lady of the house would be shoving food down the throat of her son as he gets late for his school bus and untangling his shoe-laces and combing his hair. He is the second one to exit, as he gets pushed out the door unceremoniously, in the direction of his impatiently honking bus. The Memsahib begins her activities next, with a rush in and out of the bathroom to complete what she calls her shower, another quick entry-exit into the prayer room, dab of makeup along with the breaking of her fast, giving directions to Bai at the same time in a continuous buzz that gets lost here and there. There is nothing new, and Bai does not pay much attention to it.

With the exit of the Memsahib, Bai falls back onto the chair with a sigh of relief.

"Gummoning", says a tiny voice.

Read More...

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The Week That Was

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Disappointment
You tell me if the fault is mine. The other night I decide to order pizza from D-, the Pizza people. I call up and order a couple for our dinner. I have a few coupons from a previous order, but the jargon of discount is beyond me ("Buy one large pizza, garlic breaksticks and a coke and get 20% discount on the next medium pizza, but this discount is not valid on Xyz pizza", and so on to more complicated combinations), so I did not ask the person at the other end about it. (Especially since he efficiently got me to spend a few bucks more than I would have, but that is a story for a different day). After the order is made, I go back through the coupons and I have this feeling that one of the coupons (which said Rs.100/- off) would fit the order I made, but one could never be sure. The delivery man comes along less than half an hour later, and I show him the coupons. He says yes, this one fits this order perfectly well, but you should have spoken about it to the person who took the call - as the payment is already 'made into the system'. I tell him that's fine, you go back with this coupon and inform them that I had this wonderful coupon with me and was unaware of it. He refuses. "You could use it in the next order, Ma'm." I murmur to myself (so that he can hear), "what is the use of coupons, then?"
Talk about "Customer Delight"!


Pleasure
I go out for a walk and unexpectedly meet an ex-colleague. He tells me, "I saw your book, and quickly read the first 2-3 stories. Awesome! It's admirable that you put your effort into getting your book published!"
You can imagine how pleased that made me feel.
(That reminds me - the Book Giveaway contest is still on!)


Bewilderment
When I land at Kochi in the first week of Sep, my mobile handset is switched off (equipment interfering with the navigation signals and so forth). After landing, I switch it on, (beep indicates the arrival of "Airtel welcomes you to Kerala, wish you a pleasant stay") and the clock in the mobile automatically sets to 11:15. I am surprised since the scheduled time of arrival was 11:45, have we landed 30 mins before schedule? Does not seem likely, the flying time from B'lore to Kochi is 40 mins, I don't think we have covered it in 10 mins. So I manually adjust my handset clock to 11:45, against its better judgement. Last week, I land at TVM, I go through the same procedure. Switch off - switch on, and, as Airtel-Kerala welcomes me again, my mobile clock insists that the time is 30 mins behind IST. I force it to IST, and during the while I am in Kerala, it follows the time I insisted on. As a result, my text message recipients claim that my messages arrive with a timestamp of IST+30 minutes. I travel in car and for a couple of minutes, my handset goes out of range and pops back, without my being aware of it. Suddenly, beep-beep. "Airtel welcomes you to Kerala, wish you a pleasant stay" and bingo! Clock goes 30 minutes back. I return to Bangalore, and all is fine. Clock automatically comes back to IST.
Which Timezone (country?) is Kerala (or, Airtel-Kerala) in?


Love
I have this back pain that sometimes troubles me (not too much, but enough to remind me that I have a back). So one day I am bending over some work and when I straighten, my back groans and so do I. My son comes over, kisses me and says, "I have kissed your pain away."
The pain really feels a lot lesser, honest.

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Questions of a three-year -old (contd)

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1. Why does loud sound come out of our mouths? (When I asked him not to speak too loudly at night.)

2. Is it because my Father is a big man that he has to stay at office late? (When I said bigger children have to stay more time at school, as opposed to half-day for him.)

3. When I grow up and you become small, I will not give you chocolates! (When I refused him chocolates one day, about a year ago. He seems to have learnt since that his Mom won't grow smaller with time, which could be an issue, as he cannot take vengeance on her.)

4. Why are girls happy when they get flowers? (After this observation, he makes it a point to pluck flowers and give me whenever we go out for a walk!)

5. Why does Tom seem to like girl cats? (I admit I did not have a good answer to that.)

6. Is the Chairman a person who makes chairs? (He probably encountered the Chairman of his school that day.)

7. "... and the little cow said, I want to go to the Daddy cow." (During the story time with his little toy animals. Also sometimes enters Mother Bull whenever the little bull cries for her.)

(Read previous Questions of a three-year old)

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Post it Notes

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I had come across the Six Sentences blog during my meanderings through the Cyberland. I liked the idea and wanted to try writing something in six sentences. Here is the outcome.

Thank God for post-it notes. Had it not been for them, I would never have managed to convey my modest requirements to the world at large. Ever since I became a work-at-home Mother, my interaction with mortals has reduced considerably, so much so that on an average day, when there are no pleasantries to be exchanged with the milkman, newspaperwallah, ironwallah (pronounced "eye-rrrrun-waala" out here) or my neighbours, my utterances are limited to answering my son's occasional queries. When my husband is around, our actions and words are mainly focussed around or determined by our son, and hence the administrative and management discussions of our home are pushed farther to the rear seat. As a result, the reminders to 'Pay electricity bill', 'Grocery purchase', and queries as to 'Did you call up so-and-so today?' find themselves pasted on our walls, with the queries posted by one and the replies against each by the other. If this goes on, I wonder whether I would lose my speech-skills which I once had aplenty, and if such is the case in my home where one of us does not go out to work, what would it be where both the husband and the wife are office-goers?

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Education - where is it headed?

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The Indian Education System is in a frightening race against itself. And like an inward bound spiral that can find rest and solace only at infinity which it would forever strive to but never really achieve, I fear that it would self-destruct in the process. And yet, being the optimist that I am, I hope that someday light from the skies would dawn on someone (someone who can do something about it, who is not a helpless creature like me) to halt the spiral in its mid spin, take it apart and see it for what it is, and really do something to straighten it.

But by then, my son would have crossed the back-breaking hurdles of Kindergarten (at the completion of which he is expected to master the reading of three-letter English words and probably a good deal of Hindi and arithmetic), School (the syllabus of which I am terrified to even take a look at, it probably involves Calculus in first or second standard) and maybe Entrance exam coaching classes (which are inward bound spirals in themselves, with the classes starting a half hour earlier every year - this year it is 5AM. When would we stop making castles in the air about Medical/Engineering careers and start accepting other professions as respectable ones as well?).

I have never given much thought to the fact that English (and related languages) have Capital and lower case alphabets. When my son writes a tiny 'B' in his book and asks, "isn't this small B?" I have no clue how to explain what is meant by upper case and lower case. I silently thank God that Hindi and other Indian languages do not have the upper/lower case styles. But once he has mastered the concept in English, it would be probably more difficult to explain why Hindi does not have this. When I was at school, as far as I remember (oh it wasn't too long ago) we were given one language at a time. There was a gap of two or more years between the introduction of each language. (Okay, so we have to learn English, Hindi and Mother tongue. Harrowing, indeed. Which is why I thunk this profound thought when I did.)

I go dizzy every time I ask myself, is this the best way of teaching little children? As all other parents have already wondered, do we really need to fill in their little heads with all the stuff; are they ready to handle this?

The most fantastic outcome of this all is, that the little ones master it (grumbling and groaning nonetheless) beautifully at the end.

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Book Giveaway! Just post a comment.

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I have been attending wee too many contests across the cyberland that I am tempted to do one myself. In fact I have been thinking about this for a while now. So this is a Book Giveaway Contest, and the winner gets a copy of my book, the collection of Bangalore-based short stories Tales from the Garden City. (Click on the link to read more about the book.)

The contest is pretty simple. Just answer one question. Leave a comment here with your answer. I will choose one of the best answers from your comments - either the one I liked best or (if there are too many to choose from) I will select one by drawing lots.

So here is the Question:
Assume that a Very Reliable Someone has predicted your death in September 2010 - a year from now. What are the 5 (or more, or less!) things you would want to do if you are given only ONE MORE year to live?

So, go ahead, think about it, post as many comments as you wish - make a wishlist of the things you would do if you are warned that your life would expire a year from now - in Sep 2010.

The last date for sending in your comments is Oct 18, 2009.

Do spread the word!

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TVM diaries: Helicopters

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People of TVM jokingly refer to two things as 'Helicopters'. One is mosquito and the other is auto-rickshaw.

Mosquitoes have been TVM's woe for a number of years. I cannot remember a time when we did not worry about mosquitoes. But the mosquitoes themselves were quite organised - they never struck before dusk, and they retired when darkness had fallen. In short, the time between 6.30PM and 7.30PM was allotted to them to march around sucking human blood, droning their rotors like Helicopters in the offensive, and humans sought safety between the concrete walls of their houses, windows and doors barred against the invaders. As per the unspoken agreement between Men and Mosquitoes, any one within the vicinity of the Mosquitoes during the wartime is their property to treat as they wish, and when windows and doors opened at 7.30PM, not a single Helicopter would trouble Man. If ever a young'un made the mistake of crossing the Line of Control after hours, they were shot down by a Mosquito repellant or coil. As days passed by, the Mosquitoes started evolving at a pace that would have put Charles Darwin to utter chagrin. At every visit to TVM, I began noticing that they were growing larger in size, their syringe held more stronger stuff than before, and most importantly, they were invading during cease-fire time. Nowhere else in this Universe do Mosquitoes attack mankind at 10 o'clock in the morning! And yet, such a thing is seen in TVM today. And today they truly look like Helicopters, as opposed to the tiny, almost-invisible ones of the past.

The second 'Helicopter', namely auto rickshaws, and their pilots - drivers - of TVM have also evolved, though in a much pleasanter way. Auto drivers of the past had always been difficult beings to reckon with, some were pleasing, some were difficult, some refused to take you for a ride (I mean a real ride), and some showered profanity on their customers for paying only the exact meter fare and so on. This visit, I have been pleased to note that all the four or five times I hired an auto, the drivers have been polite, even referring to me as "Madam", which is quite new to TVM, and quite content with the fare that they received. Perhaps, in this case, the change is not for them alone. I have changed too - for in the intervening years, I have encountered the incomparable Bangalore Autowallah! And once that Encounter has taken place, TVM autowallahs seem nothing in comparison.

Also read:
TVM diaries: Water Crisis
TVM diaries: At TVM airport

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First Reviews: Tales from the Garden City

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The first set of feedback for my book, Tales from the Garden City, has started coming in. Let me share some of them here.


"A story is not just about the literary skills of a writer but her ability to make the reader feel like they are living the scenarios depicted through the course of the story. You have succeeded in presenting a very convincing and visually absorbing kind of story telling. Each story stands on its own and cannot really pick any one as my favourite. The stories prompt us to look at life at a much deeper way, even while each story is presented in the simplest way possible. For people who like to read stories as reflections of life, this is the book to get their hands on...."
- Arun Kunjunny, by mail


"The stories I liked the best are The Well, A Variant Perspective and All in a Day's Work. You have presented the Other Person's views quite well, especially in these stories."
- Mridula Gopakumar, over phone

"While reading thru the stories, something came to my mind. Is there any touch of reality there?
I liked the stories The Well, Rendezvous with Terror, The land of my forefathers, All in a days work, etc.
Its really commendable... that you took pains to do it and focused on it..."
- Manju Sreekantan, by mail

"The stories I liked the most (i) A Variant Perspective (ii) The Well and (iii) In retrospective.

I could feel a level of freshness in your stories and I like the way in which you have carved some of the stories on simple one liners. I did enjoy reading the book and some of the characters refused to leave me for some days."
- Ninan John, by mail

"I liked A Variant Perspective and Premonition the best."
- Prema Itty Eipe, by mail

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