Biggest fool of all

The emperor Akbar once made a huge advance payment to a horse trader from distant Persia for bringing him a large number of the finest horses he could find. The man took the money and vanished, never to be heard of again. Sometime later, the badshah asked Birbal to draw up a list of the biggest fools in the kingdom. Birbal dutifully complied, but left the top two places unfilled. When Akbar asked him why, he first sought protection from royal ire, then said he would like to put the emperor's name at the number two position, because he trusted complete strangers from faraway places with large amounts of money. Though rattled, Akbar could not help laughing in agreement. Then he asked the obvious question. Birbal replied, 'Jahanpanah, I should like to put myself in the top slot, because I have chosen to serve someone like you!'

I sometimes draw up such a mental list myself, me holding the top slot for choosing to spend a lifetime trying to teach my jahanpanah, the public...

Too serious to be funny?

It is said about Antony in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra that "he was disposed to mirth, but on the sudden/ A Roman thought had struck him". I too have just been struck by a 'Roman thought'. Perhaps it is because my image is too deeply set as a solemn sort of person that too few of my readers visit this blog, and even if they do, feel uneasy about commenting on it?

If that were true, it would be sad indeed. I daresay a lot of people cannot accept the whimsical side of my character, and either haven't noticed or haven't bothered to reflect upon what I intended when I put up that quote from Bertrand Russell as a fixture on the right hand sidebar...

to see oursels as ithers see us...

A 15-year old drew the above cartoon at my behest in class. Do let me know how you liked it, everybody!

Those who are mystified by the title, look this up.

old 'naya' paise

The above is a photograph of a one ‘naya paisa’ coin dating back almost to the year of my birth.

I recently came across a few old one- and two- and five- and ten-paise coins in my collection. When  I was a child they were in wide circulation. Indeed, there were still lots of things that were available for five and ten paise: toffees and phuchka (three or four for ten paise), to name just two. With creeping but relentless inflation for more than half a century, such coins have long fallen out of use, of course (I read somewhere that a rupee today would be worth just four or five paise in 1950 in terms of purchasing power): you hardly see anything worth just a single rupee any more, and very soon, even one- and two rupee coins are going to become collectors’ items too, while one hundred rupee coins will come into vogue, as well as Rs.5- and 10,000 notes.

My grandfather used to tell me about new imported bicycles that cost Rs. 30, and my father bought a new motorbike in 1967 for about Rs. 1500. Sounds like a fairytale to the 50% of Indians who are below 25 years of age, I am sure. In 1977, the father of a friend of mine, a director of a large manufacturing firm, drew a salary of Rs. 8,000 a month, and he was considered rich.

Very soon our currency is going to go the way of the Italian lira and the Japanese yen, and we’d have millions of millionaires.

Those interested in coins might look up this website…

Jiyo, SRK!

Heard on UTV Bindass channel at 9:13 p.m. on Saturday, October 15, in the course of Preity Zinta interviewing Shah Rukh Khan: 'King' Khan not only admits that he had played a monkey during Ramlila many years ago, but that 'main toh abhi bhi bandar ke jaise acting karta hoon' (I still act like a monkey).

Well, you've got to hand it to him for honesty!

iCon gone!

Steve Jobs is dead. And this is the type who are mourning him most loudly.

Until the next poster boy comes along... that goes without saying. Then it would be 'Steve who?'

Who wants to bet they'd still be talking about him a year down the line? Five years? Ten? 

Joy maa Durga

Durga pujo has arrived again. An excuse for millions to gorge, splurge, dress up, preen, make noise, run around like beheaded hens, quarrel furiously with all and sundry in the course of having fun - and, most importantly, shirk work more or less for a whole month. 

Yay.........!

Ugly Indian, part two

Pot-bellied policemen in Delhi have been warned: get back in shape either by dancing bhangra or going to the gym, or face penalties. And in my town a lot of shopkeepers are telling me that they can't give out the wafer thin plastic 'carry bags' (what a silly name!) any more, now that the municipal authorities have seriously cracked down on this particular form of customer addiction...

At least some people in this country are bothering about some of the worst aspects of our culture. I'll keep my eyes on the news, because another aspect of the same culture is that most of our many enthusiasms are notoriously short-lived! Remember the 'anti-corruption' circus?

Fancy tag

One expression that has come into widespread use over the last decade or a little more is ‘life partner’. The Oxford online dictionary, I found, defines it as ‘a person with whom one is in a long-term monogamous relationship’.

Funny, isn’t it, that the older term spouse has been quite forgotten? Also, as far as India is concerned, I cannot get rid of the suspicion that the term is a direct translation of the expression jeevan saathi, for the popularization of which all credit must go to cable TV and the matchmaking industry.

Funnier still is the fact that the term has caught on precisely in an age when no one can be sure any more whether a marriage will last out a single full year. Old-fashioned as I am, I should have thought no one who has not celebrated his or her silver jubilee, at least, with the same spouse can earn the right to call that spouse a ‘life-’ partner!

Ugly Indian

As I wrote in the blogpost titled Atithi devo bhavo exactly a year ago, I was thrilled to bits to see Aamir Khan in a public awareness campaign on TV, exhorting fellow Indians to mind their public manners a little. I wonder how much it has affected our behaviour: haven't seen much signs of improvement myself. Today, an old boy called Sunup Varghese Kurien sent me a link to this website. I am very glad indeed to see that some people feel the way I do, and are doing things to change things for the better, even if it is ever so little. I have immediately asked Sunup to let me know if and how I can help. Meanwhile, some of my readers can write in, if only to tell me that they too feel like us, and very strongly, and would like to pitch in whichever way they can.

Purpose of life?

Do go through this little essay, and let me know – did you find it gross, or sad, or funny, or just stupid? I couldn't make up my mind.

Just right

I often read and remark on T-shirt legends. One moronic (or uber-wise: take your pick) tag read 'I was born intelligent; education ruined me'.

But I was pleased to see that somebody has got it just right on a pupil's T-shirt this time round: 'I was born intelligent, but twitter ruined me'.

Doctors' bane

I had a very minor surgical operation on my leg under local anesthesia at a neighbourhood nursing home yesterday. I strode into the OT and chatted with the doctor while he operated (the nurse had solicitously offered to blindfold me - good heavens!), and all the while he assured me I could resume my daily routine directly the procedure was over, including normal diet, walking, using the scooter and so on. Well, I swung my legs off the table as soon as he gave the word, and was striding briskly out of the OT when he yelled after me, with obvious alarm in his voice, 'Slow down, slow down, don't hurry like that, you're acting as though nothing has happened...!' I obeyed, of course, but I was puzzled: hadn't he just been saying that I could start doing everything 'normally' as soon as he was done?

Reminded me of a more serious operation I had four years ago. On that occasion I was back on my feet within 24 hours, and insisted on leaving the hospital and getting back to work on day three, in spite of being advised 'complete rest' for at least seven days, and the doctor had grumbled about 'the patient (being) too impatient'...

Culture shocks preferable?

Someone asked what 'culture shock' meant, and I illustrated with the example of the governor of a certain northeast Indian state, himself hailing from the northwest, a passionate dog lover, who presented the chief minister with a little poodle. Sometime later he asked the CM whether he was happy with the present, and that dignitary replied, 'Oh yes, certainly. It was delicious'. This, with a smacking of the lips...

When people are very different in their tastes and manners, such experiences of culture shock are bound to happen every now and then. In one country giving a girl a red rose is a compliment; elsewhere it's a deadly insult. But, I was wondering, isn't that better than creating a world which is so homogeneous that you won't know whether you are in Sao Paolo, New York, Mumbai or Shanghai? Twenty-odd years ago, I had a feeling while going round a certain Wal-Mart outlet in a small American town that if someone were suddenly knocked unconscious and whisked away to another Wal-Mart outlet a thousand miles away, s/he would never notice any difference. Now Indian cities are beginning to give me the same feeling.

We are the music makers...

I read a remarkable line today in, of all places, a book of grammar. "Let a man be free to write the ballads, and I don't care who makes the laws". I wonder who said that. And even more so, whether it makes any kind of sense to my readers, though it took my breath away...

Looking for a new name

Mamata Banerjee's new government says it wants the name of this state to be changed. I cannot help seeing their argument: 'West' Bengal is silly and out-of-date, since East Bengal has become Bangladesh long ago. They also say that since the name starts with W, our state figures at the bottom of all lists when the central government considers the needs of the various states, which puts us at a quite avoidable disadvantage.

So I fell to musing about what alternative tag we might put on. Bangla, Bongo, Bongo Pradesh, Bengal 2? Or, harking back to history, Bangal, maybe, or even Gour? Do my readers have some suggestions?

In the dark

The mid-eighties – precisely the time when I was going to college and university – were the worst time to live in Calcutta, for eight-to ten hour power cuts daily were considered normal. It is a miracle I didn’t go blind, doing so much reading by candle light. They have left some permanent nightmares: one thing I most definitely would never consider romantic is a candle-light dinner…

Of late the monopolistic state-run power utility from which we are compelled to buy electricity here in Durgapur is apparently going through one of the worst phases in its chequered history: I hear it is on the brink of collapse. As a result, frequent power cuts, from minutes to hours long, have become a part of the daily routine, and no respite is likely very soon. My generator has become a heavy duty necessity, not only because my classes depend on the lights and fans going, but also because I cannot bear to have those nightmares come back.

Almost every evening my house is the only one which is a blaze of lights when the rest of the street is plunged in darkness. Most of my neighbours, well-off as they are, prefer to mope for hours together in the sweltering, stifling darkness. You can at most see a single oil lamp or ‘emergency’ lamp gleaming fitfully here and there.  Strange are the ways of men.

I still remember

Increasingly frequently, my pupils write "I still remember..." when they are narrating something that happened only a few months, or at most a year or two ago. When I use the same expression, I refer to things that happened decades ago.  

In the same vein, the newspapers gush about married couples in filmdom, "still" in love three months after getting married...

Does this say something about changing memory maps humanity-wide, or what? What does "a long time ago" mean to most people these days?

Interesting map...

If Uttar Pradesh were to declare independence, it would be the fifth most populous country in the world. Yet, when you look at the state's per capita income, it ranks nearly at the bottom of the pile on any kind of international list.

Here is the kind of comparisons that I like to draw in my classes to make my pupils aware of the reality of things. Play around with it and let me know about your reactions.

Brainwashing

An elderly neighbour came over to ask me to fill in an application form to get an extra mobile connection with his landline. A simple chore, and of course I obliged. 

What I reflected upon later was the incongruity between the fact that this gentleman, too scared to fill in an application form on his own, can give the most fiery and learned political lectures in public - I heard him going full blast during election time recently. What a miracle of indoctrination, to be sure. Like today's candidates for engineering entrance examinations, he can obviously perform very well without understanding, or bothering to understand, a word of what he is saying!