When does Life begin????....or end????

This week I say
"Hats off" ......
To one of my oldest friends...
Oldest..both in terms of age and acquaintance...
As she steps off a Cruise down the Nile..
And looks the Spinz in the eye..
A sprightly 70 plus..

Still looking for adventure..
For that Road to Machu Picchu.....
In geographical space..
And in her mind...

Two years ago, she did Angkor Wat..
Climbed up those forbiddingly steep steps..
While the rest of her Gang of Four gals..
Trailed behind...

She inspires me...and makes me wonder???
When does life begin? or end?...

Sweatshop comments and conversation would have me believe that it has ended already ....for me..
At least...two decades ago!!!!
Funny!!!...... considering that several of my co-workers are trailing..... close on my heels.....
But then ....

As I get on in life..I find that age matters most to the young...
And the muddled...and the insecure...
They gloat and exult in it...
Comparison with those older makes them feel good....
I guess..

But age has never really mattered to my friend...and
My mother's best friend...then and now...

I met her first...when she was in her mid 20's...to my 8 or 9...
Playing a now defunct game called L-O-N-D-O-N
With her landlady's children!!!!
The first time I had ever seen an adult play with children!!! And enjoy it as well!!!
I see the same interest..when she bonds with Ash...my 12 year old niece...and checks out Ash's nail polish collection!!!!

She and my mother took us for long walks in the evening...
Down to the sea...in Waltair....

So many memories..
Scrambling over the sticky sandy beach..
Chasing the waves...
Jumping up high.....when the breakers turned and rushed back at us........
The sea....so dangerous...and alluring...
And then hailing a bus at dusk..in a township which had no bus stops..just unscheduled stops at the door step of its passengers...

Each of our outings were tinged with adventure....
New thoughts...new experiences...new feelings...
It felt as it we were on to something every time we set out with her...
A Julie Andrews-Mary Poppins type of quest..

Who knows what the next bend in the road will bring???...
A goblin?? No ..only a lone cyclist bent over as he cycles up the incline...but maybe next time...

She was studying to become a librarian...
And wrote middles and stories in women's magazines...
It was her description of the sea from our house that first drew my attention to Nature..made me notice the world ...out there...

We lived then in a house...
Atop a little hillock..
Overlooking the sea...
Redlands...it was called...

All that land around and under it had once been under the sea..
And when it receded.. the sea left its mark..in the peaks and crevices...in the undulations...the contours.... scooped out of the red sand...

At night, the jackals howled...in the dunes ...nearby..
And later still we heard the half chuckle of a family of hyenas that gazed at our lawn...from the other side of the fence..
Saw their beady eyes glisten in the dark.... feeling safe behind our glass doors!!!

The article she had written described the scenery we saw every day..
From the huge bay windows in each bedroom...
Yes......the sea....so many shades of blue...
As the waves kept coming...
Crashing over the bottoms of the two capsized ships on the Naval Base side of the Bay..
And washing up on the boulders at the base of Dolphin's Nose..then a huge uninhabited rocky hillock jutting out into the sea...now the site of luxury resorts!!!!

Such a beautiful place...and she first made me notice it...and then it became a habit..

She never married...there were family tragedies...her career as a librarian at a leading University kept her going...
She went riding every day..played tennis..and kept tabs on her Mother in Coorg..just a few hours away...

Over the years, she kept visiting my parents..
In times of joy...and in times of pain..
We holidayed together...as a family...
We did Jammu and Kashmir..
And then Nepal...Gauhati and Shillong...
Delhi..
Rajasthan...

And now..
She is family..
Not bound to us by bonds of blood..
The bonds we have forged are deeper still..

Perhaps Winner sensed that when he bowed to touch her feet and take her blessings ....the last time she was here..
It made me feel happy and proud...

Our lives are so moulded by those around us...
And..
We need to be inspired...to just get a move on......

She inspires me..
To believe that life never really ends...no matter the number of years that slip by...
For those touched by the Spirit of Adventure....
The best is always yet to be....
Only when Interest in the world around us dies...does one really die..

So do take a leaf out of my friend's book...
And believe that Life will keep surprising you...sometimes when you least expect it to..
Here's to Life and Living!!!
And three Cheers to my friend!!!!..

Even the longest life will seem short...in the end!!!
So let's just plunge in and live life to the fullest...
Whaddya say?????

No more tomatoes in my soup!!!!!

I never thought I'd live to see this!!!...
A time when tomatoes would rule at Rs 60 per kg...in Chennai..
Equal to the price of a liter of petrol...
About the price of quarter kilo of meat...OR...
The price of a house in Detroit on eBay!!!!!......

Is this the beginning of the end?.....
Of the world as we know it????...
Or the beginning of the beginning of ...
The world food crisis...much talked about and feared!!!!

If things continue at this pace....
We may soon have to wait in line outside the ration shop..
For our weekly quota of tomatoes...through the public distribution system!!!!!

What's going on in Veggie World?
Is it the global crisis?...the usual show spoiler these days......

Or
Sky rocketing inflation?
Higher transport costs?
Bad harvests?

Methinks it is...
The Tomato Mafia at work here.....the middleman taking advantage of all the above three factors...
And holding consumers to ransom...

With Diwali in the air...
It is also Make-a-fast-buck-at-the-expense-of-the-Stupid-Common-Man-time...
A lethal combination of forces are at work..apparently...

At the state level no politician has made a statement regarding this...

Maybe they believe that the arrest of a Vaiko is of greater importance to the common man than the price of the food on his table?
Or to empathize with the Tamil Eelam cause...
With a human chain in the rain..
Made up of NSS and NCC cadets forced outdoors for the sake of attendance..
Putting commuters to inconvenience....
To a five to six hour ride in slow moving traffic to reach home in Adayar from Anna Salai... ON A WORKING DAY...is somehow going to endear them to us all?


That political theater and rhetoric will make up for inaction?...
How out of sync with the Common man's most basic needs and aspirations can our politicians be?

Food prices will emerge as a major election issue...
And the price of tomatoes alone can upset the apple-cart of the ruling party on polling day...
Not all the flyovers in Chennai....
Or the public parks that keep sprouting up...will make a difference..
If the food and vegetable prices situation is not contained....

Don't you agree?
And while you mull that over...
I'll just go on and place my bids..on eBay..
No...not for tomatoes!!!...

Iceland..I hear...is on the block ....
Maybe I'll get lucky and snag that...
For the price of six kilos of tomatoes in Chennai!!!..

How about that???
If I get lucky I'll send you tickets to ringside seats...
To watch the Northern Lights light up the Arctic Skies this December...
Nature's own Festival of Lights in the Sky...
On a grander scale than our own Festivals of Lights..

So Happy Deepavali...
One and All!!!..

And Do have a Feast...
Even if you have to limit the number of tomatoes in your soup!!!!......

The times..they ain't always a changin'....

They say..
Times change....
Names change...
As in.. Madras is now Chennai...
And grand ole Victoria Crescent is Dr Cherian Crescent...
Even patterns of behavior change.........they say...
And so I thought too...

Until a letter from a student of a prominent Chennai college for women...
Of which I am an alum...
To the youth supplement of a local English newspaper..
Threw me off....
Proved me so wrong....

An obnoxious young man was flashing his wares..
From behind a pile of newspapers..
While riding a motorcycle at the same time...the letter writer said...
Yech!!!

When Chennai grew...it swallowed up those lonely, dark spots where exhibitionists love to lurk...or so I thought...
The breed must have died out...or migrated to B and C grade towns in the hinterland...or so I thought...again...
Apparently not!!!!

The letter took me back to the time when we lived in the hostels attached to this very same college...

In the evenings from 4 to 6......
When a bell rang!!!.......
To signal time out!!!!
Hostelites were allowed to exercise....
By walking around the Crescent...

In giggling gangs...
We circled the walls of Our World then..
To peer at the world outside Fortress Hostel...

Round and round we went..
Like those fabled armies that went around the walled city of Jericho...in Biblical times.......

When someone spotted the intruder.....

A clean-shaven, quiet looking young man with a briefcase....
He appeared quite suddenly...
And then...he did it...
From behind the briefcase...

The gangs of perambulating girls stopped in their tracks...
Some were shocked...
Some were angered...
Some were disgusted..
Some were giggling...
Some were shocked, angered, disgusted AND giggling...

And in this Strange State of Being...... raced back to the hostel..
And thundered up the stairs....
To the the very top of Top Floor....
Of Auschwitz Block..
With its own live-in Warden...
To be scolded..
By the Resident Lesbian Couple..
For startling them!!!!!

Fiddler on the Road...we called him!!!!
He kept us indoors over the next few days.....
Then the vacations came...
When we returned he was gone!!...and we put him out of our minds...
His memories dredged up only now by this desperate plea in the papers.... for action.....

Sexual misbehavior of this kind elicits derision...especially from cops..
The offender becomes an object of ridicule..and that's almost about it..
The attitude clearly is..we have far more serious matters to deal with...this is light stuff in comparison...

For hardened cops ......yes!!!!
But how about those like the writer of the letter????...
Young and so unexposed to exposure!!!!!
And without the knowledge that...
Show-offs of any kind are only about show and tell...
Not action!!

But then..coming to think of it..
Exposure is no serious offense on Chennai's streets....

With the monsoon clouds all over the place...
And a cool nor'easterly blowin' in from the Bay..
The drive down Spur Tank Road...is a sight to avert one's eyes from...
As one zipper inspires the unzipping of another....

They stand in a never ending line...
Along the margins of the Cooum's banks.....
And they are no Daffodils!!!!
Wordsworthian or otherwise!!

No sign of shame or fear.......at all!!!!
What would happen if that Writer for the Lonely Planet Guide to the city were to drive by???.....
You tell me!!...I shudder to think!!!...
Wouldn't she be tempted to put this at the head of her list of Must-see sights in the city??? Huh???

That there is a deep interest abroad in India's underbelly is very clear from Aravind Adiga's White Tiger Booker victory...
This would only take the interest down a notch lower!!!!

To come back to the fiddler...
If caught..he will be left off with a fine...
And what good does that do???

Fines...
May reduce smoking in public....for a while....
May make the Marlboro man bite the dust...
And make jingles like "the Made for Each Other Blend" so much ancient history...
May help cops make a fast buck...
May make NGO hot-shots feel important..
Make other eager-beavers feel good...
But not much else...

In such cases...of fiddlers....
Psychiatric treatment is sorely needed....

And for those other Spur Tank Road-type offenders????
It takes much more to change the way they are...

Maybe we should learn from Olde Siam where...
Subjects once loved to spit on the sidewalks...
A Wise Monarch then decreed that the Siamese must stop with the spitting on the streets forthwith... Or else...
And it worked...

It has worked for us too....in the past....
We moved from "We two, Ours too many"
To "We two, Ours two"...
Mostly inspired by Sanjay Gandhi's Or else tactics.....
Adopt family planning
Or else face nasbandhi aka forced sterilization...for the men!!!!

Only two choices...
Most men decided to be sensible and wisely ticked off Option One....
Rather than have their manhood tampered with in makeshift-tents-turned-operating-theatres!!!!...
It worked then...though the entire country hated it...... and that man for it.......

Or else then is the best agent of Change in such cases...
Absolute power to say "Or else.....Off with your..."
Will do the trick...
Will allow you to step into puddles in the rain without wondering what else is in it???... other than rainwater??!!!...
Will stop that guy from aiming at your freshly white-washed back wall....

Just think of that...

And now.......
That said...
Its pouring outside and...
I have to GO.....
Outside...

To a party!!...

Gosh!!!!!! What WERE you thinking???!!!!

Anxiety on Anna Salai....

PANIC......
A familiar feeling these days...
It momentarily gripped the usually unruffled offices of Sweatshop yesterday..
Unruffled by global issues that is...

A stranger stopped young Champagne on the street with some startling information...

Are you coming from the ATM of XYZ Bank????.. he asked...
Did you know......
It is not possible to get money out of any of their ATMS on Anna Salai????..he added..

Was he a helpful good Samaritan-type person??..
Or just a perverse rumor-monger?????...
Out to create a run on the bank???....

Anyway....it was enough to rattle her...
XYZ Bank? I have all my money there...she wailed... to us...

Colleagues quickly buzzed their husbands..
Ordered them to pull out money...
Emotional pandemonium prevailed..
Then the news wires put out some reassuring news..
The moment passed....

Our little microcosm..
Was only reflecting the larger macrocosm...
Out there...
In the world outside......

The sub-prime crisis in the USA may have touched off the meltdown.....
But it is the interconnected nature of the global financial system that helped spread the contagion...
To touch even us here.....
On Anna Salai.......
Our very own Main Street..

Is globalization such a wonderful thing after all????.....one wonders...
Given the domino effect at work on markets..
And seeing that gloom seems to beget more and more and more gloom.....in a cycle ....

Even Chennai has not been spared...
Our quota of bad news has come trickling in...

Only a day earlier, we had the horrible murder-suicide news of an IIT-Madras 1985 alum in LA.. on the front pages of Chennai newspapers...
He killed his wife, his mother in law and his three children before turning the gun on himself..
His life's savings gone in the Wall Street Crash..
The prospect of a trailer park existence stared him in the face...
And something snapped...

Long faces are the norm these days...as pessimists rule the roost......with their terrible predictions...and it seems like anyone and everyone in the city is a pundit......especially on matters economic...

Indeed George Bush and I are the only optimists around....
Fellow citizens: we can solve this crisis and we will.. he is supposed to have said..
Anxiety is feeding the meltdown..he added....
For once in his life he is right..
But who listens to him????...

Not the bulls surely......frisky sensitive animals......given to herd mentality...
Especially when the news flowing in is negative...
The coverage and slant to it even more so...

A zillion panic buttons sparked off.........
Leading to the stampede out of stock markets ..the world over..
The bears have been hammering away at prices....pushing indices below ground zero levels...

Conservative money management could have averted disaster.....

Years ago, a former executive director of the Madras Stock Exchange..now gone to the Other World...had sound advice for investors... large and small...

Spread your risk... was his message....
Put a third of your money in securities like government bonds or in fixed deposits in public sector banks..
A third in blue chip company deposits or debentures.....
And the last third in the equity of companies you can hedge your bets on...and..
The investor...whether an individual or a mutual fund...has to do his homework.... he held...
So true...

It does not take an MBA from the Wharton School of Business to manage funds effectively..
A prudent housewife with a large dose of commonsense can do the job equally well...

As with individuals so too with corporates...and all the other big guys....
The greed for more and more and more...the search for higher yields.... risk taking...investing the entire corpus on doubtful schemes...shady investments....
This is their undoing....always....

Anyway, what comes down must go up..eventually.....that is the law of the markets....and it will happen sooner or later...

And what goes up must come down..... Right????....Right!!!!
Yea, except petrol and diesel prices...

International crude oil prices may tumble to below 80 dollars per barrel...but petrol prices are fixed firmly at the Rs 50 per liter mark....
Amazing how a rise in crude prices is factored in instantaneously..
But a drop of more than 20 dollars is just ignored...
This is partly why tomato prices are reigning at Rs 35 per kilo....
And hey, if the middleman realizes that the common man has the capacity to pay Rs 35 per kg.....he will make that the price till Kingdom Come!!

Either an end will come to all this..
Or we will live to forever BORE coming generations to tears..
With tales of the way things were..
Back in good old 2008....or thereabouts..

As for me..
All things considered......
I am a Bull...
I am in it for the long haul...
I'll just wait it out....
Until the next big bull run....

Hrrmph!!....

A Mahatma among us

In Olde Madras..
Long before Gandhian Studies became a fashionable subject..
Among research scholars...ambitious writers...and such like..
Before politically correct publishing houses put him on their publishing lists.....
I discovered my first book on the Mahatma...

Frequent transfers were part of the deal for bankers back then..and so it was that a certain Mr Mundkur left two whole crates of books with Father's friend, before setting off to introduce banking in some remote corner of darkest Africa...
Father's friend got transferred and in turn bequeathed the crates to Father..
Who left them under the staircase in HIS father's family house...

Where as a child I liked to poke around...looking for treasure......
And found this treasure chest of books...
Enid Blyton, the Brothers Grimm, Richmal Crompton, Jim Corbett, Kenneth Anderson, Louisa May Alcott, children's magazines imported from the United Kingdom, stories from the Soviet Union....and many other cherished books....all of which proclaimed their owner to be Anand S Mundkur...

Mr Mundkur's son I presume?..
The books remain unclaimed to this day...

So much to read on languid summer days...over several long drawn summers....
Lying on the bed..
The fan whirring on...

A children's book on Gandhi was part of this collection..a slim one filled with fine sketches......
It started with scenes from Gandhiji's funeral..took me back to his birth and early life.....through the high points that followed ...and ended with his assassination...

I was all of seven years old...no one had told me about Gandhi until then.....
The book..it made me cry....
He was a hero...
I wished I had been Gandhi...
Driven the white man out...
Set us all free....

Years later...
Kid brother No:2 told me:
"You, you like to be Gandhi!!"
But he said it with a sneer...as in "You, you killjoy you..."

Not at all like I was a hero or something..
More like "You are the worst pain in the a--- in the whole wide world.."

Especially when I trotted out my "we should do the right thing" dialogue.....
Why can't we just pay the damned bribe?...Or pay the damned donation? ...Or do what it damn well takes to get a move on?...was his view of things...
Let's be practical here...... is probably what he wanted to say..
Just pack up your idealism and your airy-fairy notions of life....he probably wanted to add...

Yea, but then...
I have always been a fan of the Mahatma...
Even Attenborough's Gandhi (who called himself Gandy to rhyme with Candy..)
Made the hair at the back of my neck stand up......
Especially in the Champaran scenes...
"I am an Indian, traveling in my own country..what law could I be breaking???" or some such lines to the British officer trying to shoo him away....

He was the touchstone
And several generations of Indians measured themselves against him...
It made them opt for the straight and narrow...
We may not be materially rich..but then it is more important to be morally rich-kind of people...
True, even I don't find many of this tribe around..they are dying out...the fascination for the Mahatma and his idealism may have ended with my own generation....


So ended....
That I could not even buy the "Story of My Experiments with Truth" at the bookshop closest to me in Chennai......that belongs to a publishing house..which also has a publishing list on Gandhian Studies...which it likes to trot out with great pride....
"That one was written by MK Gandhi no Madam?..Sorry Madam...No demand..we'll have to order that one...I'll let you know as soon as I get it Madam", the salesperson told me...so sweetly....two years ago..

Yet...studies abound..
Delving into.....
His sexual experiments...
His political deviousness.....
His bania cunning...
His treatment of Kasturba...sorta thumbs down there until they discover the Kasturba Diaries..if ever..
His kids...kinda.. sorta... ditto there they give him...
He was so human..as if that is a fault....what do they expect???? A halo???
He had a soft spot for a Bengali beauty.....
Freedom would have come anyway..sooner or later....
He was not perfect........not 100% pure as guaranteed...maybe only 98.99%...or 98% ...or maybe just about 95.02% pure..so...
Pull him down from the pedestal.....

His own grandsons have jumped on the bandwagon to write some of these, often forgettable memoirs....
And no one tries to dispel the confusion that prevails among the masses...by the other Gandhi name holders... of India's premier political family....

He was human but also very different from other human beings.....
Not an easy act to follow.....
To live a principled life..
To be true to thine own self...
Hey, that's no easy ride...
And ultimately, we see what we want to see...

I realized the value of having a Mahatma among us during my own sojourn in the Land of Sawadee and Smiles.......
For all their bravado, I sensed a yearning among the people there for direction...
Someone to look up to in moral terms...
But there is no one....
No one they can measure themselves up against...
Other than monks and holy men..
Their closest equivalent to a Gandhi may be a former central banker known for his honesty....or a leader of the Opposition who heads the vegetarian movement in that country..
Gandhi was all that and so SO much MUCH more

So, a certain moral vacuum and dithering prevails in these lands...
Materially rich but morally bereft...

Gandhi made me feel strong...
No other country in the whole wide world has anyone to equal him...in moral stature...
We are so strong..in the eyes of the world and in our own..because of him...
Because of Gandhi
We can hold our heads up among the peoples of the World...
We should be so proud...

Today...on his birthday
And always..