SHOOTOUT AT “I’M OK, YOU’RE NOT OK” CORRAL

My valued friend, I am complete
Don’t add to me, or take away
You, who sit in judgment’s seat
On behalf of the moral elite
And think you know a better way.

There’ve been a thousand instances
I’ve faced the Critic’s Crew
I’ve heard each kind of remonstrance
And faced each disapproving glance
Now show me something new…

Don’t ask me what I think of you
I’d only spoil your day
It’s sad, of course – your hot wind blew
When I was trying to stay cool
But hot wind finally blows away.

Hell is full of folks like you
Each one has cursed and died
Go on and curse – there’re blessings too
Maybe you should learn a few
Invest a bit on Heaven’s side……

Let’s thank God for each point of view
This world would be a bore
If we resolved our differences
And united in our nothingness
To agree for evermore…

The God Of Small Things

Ashish D. is not his real name, and this overweight disgrace to my neighborhood could thank me for my discretion in keeping him anonymous.

The man takes his morning walk an hour later than I do. This means that he’s just starting off on his perambulations when I’m on my way back. He’s a regular, just like I am, but I never paid him much attention over the years. You know how it is – we see people, yet their existence registers as more of an abstract concept than an actual fact.

I’ve never so much as exchanged thoughts on the weather with him, and the only thought I ever spared him was an idle wondering…. how can a man walk like that for years and never lose an ounce of that gross flab? And why, if these nominal saunters have proved so utterly futile, has the oozy blighter not done something more constructive about his improbable girth? I mean, he has surely got a clear title deed for a 3BHK flat in Heart Attack Country and he’s bound to take up residence there anytime. Doesn’t that BOTHER him?

Anyway, one day the fact that he does figure on the landscape was driven jarringly home to me. The realization came in the form of a loud, agonized canine yelp. Jerked from my pleasant dawn reverie, I cast about for the source of the sound. A weathered dog was making tracks for the opposite side of the road as fast as three legs would allow it. Three, because the other one was drawn up against its belly in a tortured spasm of muscle and bone.

Ashish D. threw me a brief grin of vicious triumph as he took after the injured animal, brandishing the heavy stick he has picked up to launch the morning’s festivities.

“Saala kidela _____ (worm-raddled %#@>),” he cursed, enjoying every second of it. “Come sniffing at me once more and I’ll……”

He emphasized this sentiment by chasing the dog and giving it another lash of the stick, which caught the hobbled beast squarely on the back. The dog was out of its mind with pain now and was squalling like a bagful of BEST bus brakes during the peak hour crunch.

I was stunned into complete, impotent inaction. D. delivered three more blows to the animal before a window flew open above us and an irate woman leaned out.

“Oye, stop this immediately. My husband can’t sleep!” she screeched in hellish accompaniment to the dog’s vocal efforts. The dog in question used the lull to crawl beneath a paan shop and cower there for dear life.

D. flashed a spitless grin at her, favored me with a fading version of the same and discarded the stick. Then he waddled off, his mind obviously already switching gears to the stock market or some other good-time stuff. The beleaguered mutt crawled out from under the paan shop, scanned the surrounding topography and found it fortuitously bereft of fat middle-management prototypes headed for Stroke City.

Fade to black…

No, of COURSE Ashish D. bears no resemblance to any of us. WE wouldn’t kick a defenseless street dog just because we feel so hugely superior to it, would we? Nor would we tell a street urchin to scram when he or she sucks up for a spare coin just because the sight reminds of too uncomfortably of how our own kids would look if the Powers That Be had not somehow transpired to set them above such a lot, would we? OTHER folks do such stuff, right? Sick folks. Folks like Ashish D. Right? Huh? Right?

What circumstances spawn such moral bottom-feeders in the first place? A desire to rid the city of unsanitary elements such as stray dogs? The trauma of having been bitten in the butt by just such a cur back in childhood? I don’t think so.

I close my eyes and see a different scenario – one littered with bugs that squirm and scamper for the shadows when sunlight hits them. Behind my closed eyes, I see a Ashish D. who is not as secure in his precariously overloaded skin as he pretends.

The economy is see-sawing wildly, inflation has eaten into his once unassailable bank accounts and he may just have to pull his bounder son out of that fancy ‘international’ school next year. His wife, no less bloated on excesses than he is, treats him like the last dirt on earth – just like his dad did before him. His boss has chuckled forlornly every time Ashish has hinted at that promotion. Ashish smells his essential powerlessness over the world he inhabits with every wheezy breath he pulls into his blubber-cased lungs.

He does not like this smell, and he needs to rid himself of it.

What old Ashish therefore does is treat each waking hour as another opportunity to bolster his sagging pride by taking pot-shots at the various hapless targets that the world has placed at his disposal. Therefore, the beggar on the road is cursed and waved away like a leper who has dared to cross the Holy Temple’s threshold. The street kid is treated to a look and words of utter loathing and revulsion. The maid is threatened with sudden unemployment every time she goofs up. And the street doggie gets a kick in his scrawny backside if he is presumptuous enough to make an appearance during Ashish’s fruitless morning waddles.

He does not have what it takes to tell his wife what HE thinks of HER. He doesn’t have the courage to tell his boss to shove his job up the old waste-pipe and look for a better prospects. His dad died of an apocalyptic, ghee-induced stroke years ago and is unavailable for settling scores with.

He is the overgrown schoolyard bully, even now desperately trying to salvage his self-esteem by preying on those who seem weak enough not to put up a fight. And, of course, he’s going to die in un-heroic circumstances before his time; he isn’t man enough to save his own ass. If that isn’t enough to sign the death warrant of every stray dog within kicking distance, what is…?

Pune – Lost in Transformation

From Pensioner’s Paradise to Pseudo Boomtown… Pune’s story of degeneration is being rewritten every year. The city’s infrastructure rocks and reels under the onslaught of reckless urbanization; the town planning authorities dither over where (if at all) to plonk the international airport. Meanwhile, Pune unfolds itself in a sweeping signature of chrome glitz and tinted sheet glass like something out of a bastardized Transformers episode written and directed by Ram Gopal Verma.

Is anyone complaining? Not yet – there’s no time or scope for regret when you’re dancing as fast as you can, after all. However, we do have what the Pentagon would describe as ‘a situation’. We’re talking of major identity theft here. Or should I say identity abandonment?

Pune has sacrificed its human side on the chrome altar of crass commercialization. Traditional youth hangouts like Empress Garden, Sarasbaug and FC Road wear a faded, jaded look as the city’s brand-conscious yuppie crowd heads for the new shopping districts and watering holes to scuttle their call centre and software salaries. Camp’s iconic MG Road barely manages to hold its own.

As the mountains that previously kept Manic Mumbai at bay and Pune’s clement weather in place surrender to the bulldozer of metropolitization, the line that divided Sin City from the Oxford of the East grows hazier. As physical and spiritual distance between the cities reduces, Pune is turning into a cheap Mumbai clone – in appearance, in temperament and in values.

Who cares? I do! Damn it, this city is my foster home, and I love it for a reason!

Sure, I moved to Mumbai to pursue better career options, but with the consolation that nothing and nobody would steal the peth-and-wada culture of Pune from my heart. I would endure the kicked-anthill craziness of Mumbai just as long as I had the option of withdrawing to Pune’s blessed peace, quiet and laid-back laissez faire when I needed to.

My visits to the city are turning into a poor joke – these days, I find myself wondering where Mumbai ends and Pune starts. Kondhwa looks suspiciously like Bandra did a few years ago, before it gave up the human element forever. Kothrud and Karve Nagar bear a doom-laden resemblance to Dadar and Mahim – not the city’s ‘happening’ places, but more of its congested launch points to the glitzier locations. The once proud Puneri is bending over backwards to sound either like a Dharavi tapori or a Nariman Point magnate. I can’t see the ‘misal’ for the McDonald’s anymore!

Hello, Ground Control calling Spaceship Pune – you’re spinning out of control. Return to base before you run out of fuel and crash….

Confessions Of An Absentee Dad

“Can you come down this weekend and attend the inter-school choir festival? She’s taking part in it and would love it if you are there.”

As calls from my ex-wife go, this was one of the more memorable ones. She does occasionally remind me that ‘I still have a daughter despite the divorce’, but the context is not usually this positive. This invitation was very different from the usual guilt ICBMs, and my mind did a quick inventory of the times I had made myself available for such events in the past. The resultant figure made me squirm.

As a chronically unavailable father, I had never made time to be part of my daughter’s school life. I think that I believed, at some level, that paying her fees and incidental expenses covered my burden of obligation on that front.

“I’ll be there,” I said firmly.

That weekend three years ago, I boarded a train to the city I had left behind even before I regained my ‘single’ status in court. During the journey, I came to terms with some unpalatable truths:

• I had effectively abandoned my daughter after the divorce. I had literally thrown the baby out with the bathwater
• In terms of being a real-and-present Dad, I fell short by a mile. Even before the divorce, I had always been preoccupied with only my own affairs. After it, I continued to be – only with a sense of justification attached
• My daughter’s childhood had passed me by. As a result, the thought of how her needs had evolved intimidated me

I had been playing the undemanding role of the archetypal sugar daddy – in town occasionally to shower her with gifts, then breeze out again.

Her face glowed as I picked her up in the hot afternoon sun. She seemed to take special pride in meeting me in her school uniform. The tie was ineptly knotted. I reveled in a strange sense of wholeness as I set it right. I stepped back and examined her.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” I said. She giggled with delight. At thirteen, this lady-in-the-making had just received male approval from her rightful primary provider. In the rickshaw, she snuggled up to me until we reached the school.

Pandemonium at the inter-school choir festival’s venue. Every school in town had its student choir taking part. The scene was a splash of brightly coloured school uniforms.

She was in her element, introducing me to some of her classmates. How had she been handling questions about her father’s whereabouts in the past? I would have been at greater ease in a boardroom full of strange business suits.

Her class’ choir was the second act after the intermission, and we sat together in the audience until then. It was a mind-blowing experience – these kids could sing! This was not just some kiddie-school do that parents sat through with bored, condescending smiles on their faces… this was a genuine musical event.

She threw me a shy grin as she marched down the aisle with her class’ choir group. Moments later, the geriatric MC announced their rendition – ‘Reach For the Stars’, and they were on.

It was a perfectly choreographed rendition of Shirley Bassey’s timeless song of hope and optimism, which had once made it to the #1 slot in the UK charts.

There’s a place waiting just for you
Is a special place where your dreams all come true
Fly away, swim the ocean blue
Drive that open road, leave the past behind you
Don’t stop – gotta keep moving
Your hopes have gotta keep building
Never ever forget that
I’ve got you and you’ve got me, so…

Reach for the stars
Climb every mountain higher
Reach for the stars
Follow your heart’s desire
Reach for the stars
And when that rainbow’s shining over you
That’s when your dreams will all come true…

After the show, we ambled through the dark streets. I held her hand and breathed in the sights and sounds of this peaceful town I’d left behind. We talked of nothing deep, and it was awesome to share this simple, undemanding moment with her. I bought her a soft toy at a store we passed, overwhelmed by the pleasure this seemed to give her. She has it with her to the present day.

We shared a spicy fast food meal and an orange juice further on, and then I dropped her off at her mother’s place again. There was a lump in my throat… maybe a minor throat infection brought on by the cool weather?

I knew that the deeper stuff would eventually come. She was a teenager now. There would be tricky questions – “Why did you and Mummy split?” “Was it something I did wrong?” For the moment, however, we were still safe. God had given me this fleeting moment of real togetherness with my daughter, at the very fag end of her childhood. No tough questions yet – other than the ones I have been asking myself since then. Of course, it’s possible that I’m taking myself far too seriously.

I did learn something for sure that evening – my daughter doesn’t love me for my parenting victories, or hate me for my shortcomings. She loves me because I’m her Dad. My wife (yes, I remarried a couple of years ago – and she’s the light of my life) assures me that children retain their uncanny ability to love unconditionally right up to the moment we teach them to be adults…

Mumbai – A Bohemian Rhapsody?

Kamlesh (not his real name) arrived from Delhi with stars in his eyes and a spring in his step. That had me wondering, since he had a grueling second-class train ride behind him. To land in the blast furnace of Mumbai after a non-AC train ride from the sweltering capital in such ebullient spirits is no mean feat.

I had told my wife that I would spend that Saturday with my Delhi buddy. She had been agreeable to the point of indifference, which probably meant that she had planned to join an extended hen party at our neighbor’s place anyway. Women are never averse to more things to complain about at such events.

Anyway, I helped Kamlesh sort out his luggage at Dadar TT and flagged a taxi to take us home. He asked the driver to stop along the way so that he could pick up a couple of beers, and I once again wondered at this laissez faire on what was supposed to be a company-sponsored business trip.

“Mumbai!!” he exulted when he’s stashed his bottles on the back seat. “Sin City! Man, I’ve always wanted to check out Mumbai, and now I have three whole days for it!”

Sin City?! I mean, sure, there is a lot of shady stuff going on in Mumbai that the media just love hollering about. But that doesn’t make the other metros Abodes of Sanctity either. In fact, if I recall right, some Bollywood offering or the other attempted to showcase the slimier side of Delhi’s ‘social’ circles. I asked him to explain.

“Oh, I know, I know,” he said dismissively. “People who live next to the sea never go swimming. You Mumbaiites are so engrossed with the daily grind that you miss out on all the fun that this city has to offer.”

“Well, I do go to the movies with the family,” I countered defensively. “Not that I want to… it’s a sort of recurring weekly hijack. And I take them to every new mall that blots the landscape, too….”

“Pah!” said Kamlesh. “Movies! Malls! See what I mean? You’re missing out on all the REAL action. But then, you’re married.” He said that as if referring to some unfortunate physical defect. I’m sure that there are folks who would agree with him on that. I’m not one of them, and my dander was up anyway.

“Okay, so what do you hope to do in Mumbai after you’re swilled those beers?” I asked him, mindful of not raising my voice. The taxi driver could not have understood much of the conversation, but he had hear the name of his city spoken in less than reverend tones and was glaring daggers at us through the rearview mirror.

“Have fun,” said Kamlesh smugly.

“You may wish to expand on that,” I said reasonably. “You know nothing of Mumbai and you’ll need some local guidance.”

He pondered this. “True,” he said. “Okay, I want to smoke some good Afghani dope, get hold of one of those bimbos Mumbai is so famous for and generally lose ten years of my life in three days!”

I was taken aback. I had never seen evidence of Kamlesh’s bohemian tendencies before. I believe he pushes magnetized mattresses from Japan on unsuspecting customers in Delhi for a living – I mean, it’s not as if he’s in advertising or anything like that. But that was not the point. He had apparently judged this city as degenerate and was all set to exploit the degeneration.

“I hope you don’t expect to find that particular fun package where I live,” I said, though I suspected he would if he looked hard enough.

“Forget home, then!” he countered passionately. “I’m not interested in wasting these three days in some backwater suburb! Drop me off at a hotel in some happening locality. I mean it, pal… I want to make the most of this trip!!”

“What you have in mind is pretty perilous for someone who hasn’t been in Mumbai before,” I said evenly. “But have it your way. Just let me know before you leave for Delhi again. It’ll be interesting to know if you got what you wanted.”

I got off to take a separate cab home and asked the driver of this one to take Kamlesh to Colaba. I added that he might find it worth his while to help my friend find a hotel there, and to supply some classified information. The man nodded sagely and off they went. My home was deserted when I got back and I resigned myself to watching Oprah or something equally soporific on the telly for the rest of the day.

Next morning, I got a call from Kamlesh while I was at work. He wanted me to bail him out at Kamathipura police station, where he had been taken after he was found high and sozzled at one of the better brothels there. The cops had also retrieved a small amount of hashish from him – thankfully not enough to mark him as a peddler. I took the local to Grant Road and went to the chowky.

Kamlesh’s wallet, gold ring, watch and Ray Ban goggles were gone. His right eye was blackened and his shirt was torn in various places. He himself was a chastened man and none of the effervescence of two days ago was in evidence. Five hundred bucks and a strident lecture from the PSI later, he was out of the chowky. I took him back to his hotel, where he showered and changed. Then he took a taxi to VT, from where he would catch the first available train to Delhi. I didn’t expect to hear from him again too soon.

A hooker glanced a silent question at me as I approached Grant Road station to catch a train back home. I waved at her with weary good cheer and went my way.

Yes, he was right. People who live next to the sea never go swimming… but that’s not all there is to it. In Mumbai, we live with an understanding – supply does not necessarily equal demand. I hope Kamlesh finds his peace with that fact eventually, or else he won’t be safe anywhere at all….

Goa Vacation Survival Guide

So, you’re going on a Goa vacation. You’ve made an online booking in what may be the last of the decently priced hotels in Goa, have your flight tickets in your hand and are raring to go. Goa beach culture – here you come!

Good for you. I salute your prudence and good taste. To be sure, there aren’t many options that compare to a Goa vacation. You’ve made an excellent choice. I love Goa, and recommend it highly over India’s other beach-based tourist destinations. Kerala’s Kovalam? Gimme a break. Mumbai’s Juhu? You’ve GOT to be kidding me. Lakshadweep? Hey, I thought you want to be where the ACTION is!!

So, your plane lands at Dabolim Airport. Or your train pulls into Margaon Station. Or your bus wheezes to a halt a Panjim. Or you’ve survived a self-driven car journey and are trying to figure out if this IS Panjim or just another of those towns with pseudo-Portuguese names that you’ve passed through. Read the hoardings and see what area the joints they advertise are at, dummy. Don’t tell me you can’t see all those Dantesque monstrosities that vie for your attention. Eat that lobster platter. Drink that beer. Take that pleasure cruise down the Mandovi River. Move into that Goa resort, because no other resort even comes NEAR in terms of ‘tropical ambience’, hospitality, facilities, cuisine (don’t bother looking for the room rates, though).

(Read the complete article on http://www.goa-beach.com/goa-vacation-survival-guide.htm)