The Idea-smithy

He picks out the notes to a vaguely-familiar tune that I recognize as a part of the ‘Beginner’s Basics’ on a guitar. Mornings are practice times. During yoga class, he’s the only one who can bend over and touch his toes gracefully. This following week, he’s signed up for a workshop on Kallaripattu, that ancient martial art-form from Kerala.I am not sure but I’m willing to bet that in the second, just as in the first, he’s the oldest member in his class.

He’s well over 50.

He’s the first man in my life. Also The First Man.
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Happy Mother’s Day to my maddening, delightful, one-and-only mom!

(Click on thumbnail to see the comic)

More idea-toons!

When I was a kid, I remember a huge tin drum standing right next to our kitchen sink. It was taller than I was and was used to store water. Water, precious water, worth everything in summer.

Do I exaggerate? I was around 5 or 6 then. Old enough to feel the shortage, too young to do anything about it since I couldn’t even lift a full bucket by myself. Moreover a thick pall of gloom lay over the household. Mum, harried at the thought of having to fit cooking, cleaning, drinking water and the household’s other needs within a limited water budget. Dad, brooding over the questions of plumbing, drainage, borewell fittings and tankers, not to mention having to rush to work.

Everyone woke up early to catch the running water before it ran out. Vessels were scrimped on to avoid washing. Clothes were doled out as per strict hygiene requirments to save on laundry water. I also remember tempers flying high and getting scolded for a lot of things that never otherwise bothered the adults. Water-shortage time was always a period of suffocating, dark, depressing gloom.

What a sweet, unparalleled relief it was, the day the water shortage ceased and we were back to having 24-hour water supply! In the years to come, the water supply and plumbing systems evolved. (more…)

This was written a long time back. I’m recycling it since I don’t think any of the people who read my blog now knew me then. And because I like this piece.

29 October 2004

8 a.m. on a weekday morning. Mumbai’s crankiest best. Sweepers shuffling dust into the air with a vengeance, cars spelling out “Eat my dust” in their fumes, people shuffling to work. I stood at the bus-stop frowning into thin air, waiting for a bus that was always late on days of important appointments.

A little boy and his grandmother walked past me. The boy in a pair of faded trousers and shirt hanging out in a state of shabbiness only little boys can perfect. The grandmother was little, white-haired, bespectabled and slightly bent in that endearing ‘grandmommy’ way. Both were holding hands tightly. For a moment I wondered, who was escorting who?

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The otherself was on the phone.
Best Friend was entertaining…and trying, successfully almost, to be entertained.
Astra opened her eyes from the earth-healing meditation and hugged her mother.
Precious was in deep slumber…one hopes.
All was as always with the soul-family.

The pater and mater were hugging the alter-pater and alter-mater at the airport.
The photo-negative was muttering a silent plea.
The villians were smiling at their families.
The eternal love was kissing his wife happy new year and saying hello to the big Three-O.
The cast was in their places, ready on cue.

Preacher was admiring the stars (human and astral).
The child was grinning from ear to ear and counting down 7…5….4….6…3…..
Shooting star was watching the fireworks with a sinking feeling in the stomach.
The badgers stood firm, feet planted on the ground, ready as ever.
The peripheral was intact and the circle complete.

A hundred little bubbles were bursting inside her head
While tiny light-bulb filaments flared and sizzled out inside his
As the grey-white filaments of air swirled around them
Each of them donned their party-hats and hung on the matching accessories -
Brilliance, exuberance, cheer and a wide smile.

Home was waiting and watching
An eternity, a lifetime, a constellation away
While the blue-green planet turned another revolution around Sol.
I smiled back.

I’m thinking of F who gave me my first lesson on my work at my interview. At an office lunch, shortly after, she skipped dessert. Diet, I assumed, till I saw the others pass on their plates to her for inspection before digging in. She liked looking at sweets and sometimes smelling them, she said. At the traditional cake-cutting ceremonies at office, F was the designated knife-handler since she was the only one who could be trusted to not gobble up the cake before the others got to it. F and I worked together for a year. Then she got married, moved to an overseas office, came back and resumed work. She recently delivered a baby boy. I hope her little one will inherit her impish grin and her warmth.

I’m thinking of my old tuition teacher, alternate mother. Aunty had a reputation for turning near-fail marks into top-of-class grades. She had been a regular housewife till her husband lost his job. And then she took her degree to use by starting to teach one kid. In ten years she had become the best tutor this side of town. Aunty was stern and effective. Dedicated to her calling. A frail little lady who seemed to tower over all us. Except on an occasional afternoon, when she’d apologize for failing health and proceed to take lessons lying flat on her back.

I’m thinking of my uncle, former bad boy, echoes of which still remain in the back pockets of his faded jeans. Mama was always a good cook. I’ve had such exotic things like authentic Italian pizzas, Chinese-style noodles (not Maggi!) and vegetable Stroganoff. Mama doesn’t eat most of these delights anymore. And his late nights/late morning brunches have dropped off. The wild one has come home.

I’m thinking of my thatha. Upright, honest government servant to the world. Doting grandfather to me. Terribly stubborn spirit to the rest of the family. My earliest memories of thatha are of going hand-in-hand with him to buy an ice-cream off one of the carts parked near India Gate. And badurshas at the sweet market. Rock sugar at home after the morning puja. Those were the early days. And once catching him scraping the remains from the ghee-making pan to eat with sugar. And wondering…when do you start policing those who’ve laid the law for you? Around the same time I learnt that his feet, eyes and kidneys were all susceptible to failure. All of them succumbed.

And finally, most of all I’m thinking of mum. Chef par excellence, wit beyond compare. I’m thinking of the puddings, diwali sweets, chocolate cakes and numerous other delicacies that churn out from her kitchen. I’m thinking of her fading eyesight. I’m thinking of her still-lean frame. I’m thinking of how she never touches the delights she makes for us. I’m thinking of the weekly reading on the meter. And the syringes stacked neatly in our ice-tray.

I’m thinking of all the people I know who are part of the statistic that calls India the world diabetes capital. And I’m thinking that among the many problems each of us face, some wage a daily war against their bodies every day. And live among us, spreading their brand of sweetness, unaided by sugar.

Today is World Diabetes Day. It isn’t an occasion to wish anyone. It isn’t a day to start movements. All it seems to be, is to think of some people. Do it anyway.

Mum was my first teacher, especially in English. I think I get my love of language and words from her side. Oh, and the sense of humor too, perhaps?

We’ve been subscribing to the Readers’ Digest for donkey’s years now. I don’t even remember when I started reading it myself. Only that it was one of the many books, newspapers and magazines always around. I started with the end-of-story filler jokes and then graduated to the colorfully illustrated Laughter-The Best Medicine, Life’s Like That and All in a Day’s work. Before I knew it, I was reading the stories and articles as well and my parents had one more contender to the monthly issue. It was always a tussle.

In the house that I grew up in, we had a magazine stand, stuffed to spilling point with mum’s Tamizh magazines but also with the month’s issue of RD discreetly tucked away. Once it was found under a pillow after the last reader fell asleep on it and made the bed over it by mistake. But there was always a struggle over who got to read it the day it arrived.

Now, I find that RD eventually ends up in my parents’ room where both of them take their turn reading it and then it lies atop their respective bedside ‘to-read’ stacks. Then the next one arrives and the ‘old’ issue is relegated to the newspaper drawers. I don’t get to see it at all unless I salvage it before it goes to the raddiwallah!!!!!!

Foul! I cried and stole it away this month, whereupon it lay on my bedstead for 3 days with dad turning their room upside down looking for it. Though I actually got to read it only today. Sprawled on my tummy with mum idling next to me, I leaf through it and announce that I am going to do the Word Power challenge.

Aloud, she urges. So I start…little thinking that it will turn out to be another episode of Mum’s haha-pie. Ten minutes later, after I’m done, I read out the answers with the notes that follow (”knowing the root of the word improves your understanding of other related words…a trick I picked up after the CAT entrances” I tell her). She yawns in response and I am tempted to make my usual wise-cracks about…

I need all this. After all, I didn’t study in a convent like you! All I went to was some unknown village school.

All because the area my school was in, used to be a village in…godknows, the 18th century?

Ahem, ahem, I preen, anticipating a high score…and tell her that ‘tangent’ is derived from the Latin word tangere.

She says,

I’ve heard of Tanjere. I think its a place in Africa.

I interrupt her to tell her that she might be thinking of Tanzania.

No, there’s some place called…

..she continues

Or maybe you’re thinking of Tanjore, where our ancestors were from!!

And we both dissolve in laughter as she calls me a very silly girl .

Every word and its meaning becomes a new discussion, a new joke. So ferre contributing to circumference turns into a story of faireewallas who are actually those men who pull hand-carts.

Maybe they’re called that because they ferry things around, I observe.

She laughs and tells me that it’s more likely because they do feras around the city with those carts.

When I get to genus and read out the example: ‘Some trees are called oak but do not belong to the genus Quercus’ , mum says it reminds her of a childhood poem and starts to chant. Mid-way through the first word, I join in and we go

Oak before ash, in for a splash!
Ash before oak, in for a soak!

As we end in unison, she asks wide-eyed, if I had studied it too. I tell her no, I’ve just heard her say it so often, I may as well know it too now.
Parse (meaning to analyze grammatically) has mum observing in all seriousness,

So a parson is a person who analyzes the sins of the parishioners?

And she begs me not to be write this down, for fear of offending our Christian friends. I laugh her off and tell her not to worry, everyone has a funny bone somewhere.

Integer leads us to a weird conversation since it comes from the Latin word for ‘intact, whole’. This makes perfect sense to me but mum asks why we say something is an ‘integral part’ of something. I tell it that’s used to describe a part without which the whole does not have integrity. I conclude,

So it is something that brings integrity to the whole.

She disagrees and tells me that it has to do with doing what you say you will. And when I shake my head, she counters with

If I’ve said I will murder somebody, I must do it or lose my integrity???!

Great. Grammar lessons turn into philosophical debates with mum. I laugh and announce that she’s not meant to be thinking of such esoteric ideas.

Precambrian has us both stumped. The options aren’t of any help either:

a. 50 million years ago
b. 200 million years ago
c. 400 million years ago
d. 2 billion years ago

No wonder we didn’t know it, we weren’t around then!

says mum in finality which ends the discussion.

And finally there’s pedagogy which sounds vaguely familiar to me but she claims to not have heard of.

I only know synagogue!

My claim to knowledge goes kaput as I get it wrong too. And I read out:

Relating to education; the profession or theory of teaching. Greek paidagogs (slave who escorted children to school). You had one of those, didn’t you?

She bristles and says,

He wasn’t a slave! He was an orderly, a paid, government servant.

Whatever…I grin and shut the issue. Dad wants to read it and my grammar lesson is over.

A whole year-and-half after this, I present the second edition of Mum’s cooking…errm…laughter. Those of you who have met my parents have mentioned what nice ‘normal’ people they are. Well, don’t go jumping to conclusions…most people don’t know that I howl at the moon every fortnight (and keep that to yourself or I’ll come visiting for an extra pint of the red….muhahaha). I have to get the genes somewhere. Here’s what mum had to say this week about….

BMC: The disaster management cell has asked people to stay home all weekend because they know that their management is a disaster!

Tushar Kapoor: The best thing about Gayab is that he was gayab all through the movie!

Queen Elizabeth: (in response to my quoting something I saw on TV “Even the queen’s husband is not permitted to touch her in public”): I don’t suppose he touches her in private either.

And that led to a catty conversation about the royal family with our usual debate of “What did Charles ever see in Camilla when he had Diana?” and the absolute kicker “Is he ever going to get to be king?”

Mum: I wonder why she doesn’t abdicate for him.

Me: A la “I abdicate the throne of England for the man I love”?

Mum: Apparantly even she doesn’t love him. Tsk tsk.

Miaow!

I was at the hospital last week. I didn’t schedule it well ahead on my calendar and keep looking at the date with gnawing hunger. I just picked up my bag at lunchtime and walked out after a brief word with my manager. I took a cab there, walked in, waiting for the appointment and took a cab back when I was done. When my colleagues asked me where I was, I uncharacteristically didn’t say a word, just a “Some stuff to get done.”

I stopped to have a dosa in the hospital canteen before the appointment, which is when I actually thought about it. When did I get so numb over the experience?

My earliest memory of a hospital visit was for my grandfather’s cataract operation during the school summer holidays. We were told to keep as quiet as possible and ’see’ thatha but not disturb him. I was on my best behaviour and since my cousin-nemesis-fellow mischief maker was too, things went off smoothly. We came back with thatha who had to wear an eye shield for awhile after that. I was glad that experience was over.

The next time was a few months later for the other grandfather. And this time round, I came back to school to an essay about a visit to the hospital. My descriptive 7-pager got the proverbial star as well as a discreet comment from the teacher on how to spell opthalmology.

There was the time mum was in the hospital for a fortnight, when I was in college. I froze into an ice-block, carrying out all the required tasks, robotically moving between home, college, hospital and the empty darkness inside my mind. It never occurred to me till much later when I was reading a book about body language that for six months following that period, I slept curled up foetus-like.

I do remember sitting outside the gates in the rain, alone, waiting for it to be visiting hour. And I remember walking down to the paediatrics department to listen to the breathing of newborns. And a baby in the incubator there. Her mother would cry every evening watching the 6-month-preemie gasp for breath and I remember telling her that the baby had finished all its suffering before she was fully born so she was going to have a good life from there on. She died 2 days before we left the hospital.

There were the months in and out of hospitals and clinics and labs in Delhi and Mumbai. There was blood transfusions, a rainfall of test reports, chemotherapy, consultation fees, second opinions, third opinions, so very many opinions. There was cancer. Twice over. And above all the overriding antiseptic smell.

And then there were none.