Relationships

The other day I had tagged along with my mother on her way to mourn a far off family acquaintance in a town further up from our place of residence. The personal association stems more because he (the departed soul) and my late father were joint upholders of the right to know our roots and forefathers and discover the various branches of a common inherited family line.  It was therefore appropriate that my mother and I pay our last respects to the departed soul.

It is discourteous to visit such a family, glimpse at the coffin with the departed soul lying peacefully and do an about turn. What stems naturally from this would be to park yourself comfortably on one of the chairs lined up and reflect deeply on the person who had departed your company. Since I had tagged along and honestly did not have much to do with the departed gentleman, my eyes wandered on the line of people making it to the mourning while clinging on to the melodious mourning songs that filled the air.

Rarely do people come as a single representation, they normally come as a husband and wife team; that is the ones who are still alive and kicking as a team. Others like my mom chose to drag me along- reluctantly albeit. What I observed during my short time in supposed mourning is what I recount hereunder.

Teams of couple came along, some with wreaths others with their hands slinging from side to side. However I do not recollect having seen any young folks. It seemed the old people were the ones who took the brunt of the mourning on themselves envisaging a similar ending or having common cause with the departed soul. The young ones were probably busy working towards this very ending.

Sometimes the wife did a brisk walk with the husband loosely following behind. Both of them shriveled with the years under the sun but the relationship between husband and wife was very evident. The wife was the lead runner and the husband had to play catch up. The poor husband could hardly fall into a double behind his dotting wife but the eagerness to follow her was quite apparent.

He seemed to be holding on to this last piece of solace that has been allotted to him during his twilight years and he wouldn’t stake it for the world. Obedient as a student – I reflected on the times as students when we were shunted into deep obedience and reverence for our teachers. Though this was because the teacher was more knowledgeable and imparting some sense into us and our culture suited best to this role.

However here, the wife seemed to be the leader in the team, the more knowledgeable and the last nursing post for the husband. It probably was an extension of their unwritten rule never to cross swords, the unwritten rule that came into being naturally, during their initial years of courtship. The poor man had to tag along as if there was no other option. I was reminded of the similarity with a funny story that suddenly sprang to mind.

A husband and wife were trekking the mountains during their honeymoon when the wife insisted on mounting a pony as the climb exhausted her. As a young and newly married husband the man wanting to impress, volunteered to walk besides the pony that his wife was now mounted on.

At a distance the pony stumbled the wife shouted ‘that’s one’. Further up the slope the poor pony stumbled a second time, the wife shouted ‘that’s two’. After a while the pony stumbled a third time, the wife shouted ‘that’s three’ pulled out a revolver from her purse and shot the pony dead.

The husband was aghast at what happened and protested vehemently at his wife’s behavior. The wife shouted ‘that’s one’. Thereafter the relationship worked wonders and thus the unwritten rule came into force.

This second couple that I saw was entirely different, the wife hanging on to her husband as if for dear life. She wouldn’t leave here husbands hand for a second even while climbing down a flight of steps. She would gladly hold on to him as in a three legged race even if it meant stumbling. The poor husband did not have a chance to shake his dear wife off even for a minute for to quote a nursery rhyme “everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go”.

The third pair that I saw was a more common sight in the old days, the husband almost reaching the finishing point while the poor wife struggled to stay afloat, nevertheless finishing the race and reaching the tape even though panting and out of breath. Here the man considers himself to be manly and overwhelmed with his male status shooting off without so much of a thought about the wife who follows him. It would be unmanly to stop and stoop to let his wife catch up. It was as if the wife was destined to always do the catching up in life.

Another pair I noticed marched together as in a marching contingent during a Republic Day parade. They were probably equals and had by now accustomed to the fact that neither would lead from the front. All decisions would stem out of common talk and signatures had to be put jointly. They came in together offered their condolences as in a perfect fit and mingled with the known people in the crowd all like a synchronized team during the swimming pool exercise. It made me wonder whether they even had a pre nuptial agreement in place.

Now let me come to the best of them all, this peculiarity in behavior has to be gouged out of the ordinary happenings around us. It is never quite apparent, but nevertheless available to the trained eye. The couple walks together as if having their thoughts in unison. During mingling with the common friends or members in the crowd, the wife wore her natural demeanor but the husband would always glance sideways for approval. It was clear that though the race was being run jointly the performance of the husband mattered and must be vetted by the wife.

The only thing that gave them away was the side glance from the husband seeking approval. How funny to see such behavior in people. But all this has been firmed up through hard years of adjustments in married life. Those who couldn’t adjust went for adjudication and subsequent termination of bonds.

I realized how much fun it was to catch people unawares and decode them for an article. No money involved and no effort except a little bit of perseverance and keen observation. How we walk in as a couple dictates the story line for potential observers in our places of interaction, so watch out, for someone else may be deciphering our relationships however natural we may seem.

The case of the flamboyant pariah

The case of the flamboyant pariah

They say he vanished overnight, got the notice for look against him changed from ‘detain’ to ‘inform’ at the immigration and flew out with his over sized bags and his girlfriend in a hurry to his second home London. They say he is an absconding borrower who owes crores to the Banking system in India and the Government of India. They say he borrowed merrily to finance his business and keep alive his lifestyle. They even say he laundered money and is guilty of fleecing the system.

The accounting regulators have even said he is guilty of wrong accounting practices including transfers from his profit making Flagship Company to ailing Kingfisher and other subsidiary companies. His assets were put up for auction including by now the ridiculously valued Kingfisher airline brand which was once valued at nearly Rs.4000 crores.

Today he is fighting his extradition against a formidable vicious consortium of Indian Banks and a politically charged Indian Government turning the once flamboyant businessman into a pariah.

On the question of fugitives there are worse offenders holed up in their safe confines in England enjoying governmental patronage and clinging on to the textbooks of English law, making extradition almost impossible. Turning Vijay Mallya into another of them is disrespecting the man for his contribution to the economy and the labour force of the country.

What is the man’s crime? They say he is absconding with money borrowed from the Banking system in India and refuses to repay it even when he is worth it. They say he owes the banking system an enormous Rs.9000 crores, though the borrowed amount is only Rs.4000 crores and the total amount includes interest and interest on interest.

Ask any banker worth his salt and he will vouchsafe for the fact that the amount in contention can easily be settled. Mr. Mallya had initially offered to a one time settlement (OTS) of Rs.4000 crores which was rightly turned down by the consortium of banks. However what followed belies all imagination and judicious thinking. Instead of coaxing him into a settlement the consortium of banks and the Government of India jointly forced him to flee.

Consider the fact that this is the man who took over the reins of business at a young age of 28 when his father suddenly passed away. From there on he expanded and provided employment to generations of Indians. Employment with the UB Group was considered as secure as a government job. Salaries were fixed to match inflationary pressures and the necessity for savings in a normal household. Seniors were considered for their long association and increments the norm though the HR metrics were always in play.

When he was in charge no one feared losing their job under normal circumstances, and a job was considered as a social obligation of business, not a valve that could be turned off or on at the pleasure of the management. He was an old style businessman who valued association with his employees and encouraged a large brood of satisfied employees.

However he made a cardinal business judgmental error by insisting with Kingfisher even when it was draining him off his resources. Today the employees wish Mr. Mallya could come back and take charge, for he created a satisfied employee and rode his brands like a true ‘King of good times’.

What prevents the Government and the consortium of banks to go for a negotiated settlement instead of hounding him in London courts? Why are other major defaulters not being hounded in the same manner? Why is a man who provided growth to the economy and raised the social standard of his employees made to eat humble pie?

Why are the politicians who ran Air India not being hounded for accumulating losses of Rs.52000 crores and why was Spicejet given a lease of life even when it could not afford to clear its oil bills amidst cancelled flights? Why are the largest defaulters in the Banking system given new contracts and their insolvency and inability to pay not being publicized?

Mr. Mallya still has the potential to repay his dues in a settled manner and make a comeback; the question is will he? After all the humiliation and more, does the government of the day fear this? As far as the employees of the erstwhile UB Group are concerned he will always remain their king of good times.

7^th December 2017

NB:

(This article lay in cold storage for almost 2 years due to personal reasons- However the facts do not change much even as of today)

It ain't over till the fat lady sings

What a roller coaster ride the ruling dispensation had in Indian politics for the last five years or so. Brashness and arrogance got redefined while humility was almost contempt. Prime ministerial body language and actions were heralded as the much needed fill up for the economy and for the country’s foreign relations.

Every day we were told to interpret words and meanings differently, and those who thought they knew better were made to grind the dust. New words were coined such as Urban Maoist. Anyone who even had a single vein in support was vilified and shredded beyond one’s own imagination.

Rights got stomped and stamped over and over again. Ideas that were alien were embraced quicker and more fondly by the new generation, and everyone found that added new vigor in their lives. Every step seemed bouncier and dominating- nay intimidating.

Lies were repeated in a manner so profound that truth ran for cover. Many of us lapped these lies as universal and gospel truth and in a manner a cat would her milk, so much so that we started to sing halleluiahs in support. Defiance and boldness were things of the past. Now the new India was domineering and everything that lay in its past was kicked aside with gay abandon.

Important institutions and people fell over each other to proclaim support to views that were stunningly pre historic and lacked scientific credence. Why even science was mocked and booed into submission. People started telling us how we were once a great civilization where plastic surgery, rockets, missiles, etc. were prevalent, manufactured and used in abundance for the world to learn from us and gain progress.

Rockets that we sent could never fail, it had to land on all four though in a tilted position. This fact we learned from the head of our space mission, a man we cling to for every word of our space progress. It is another thing that this Lander in a tilted version has since not been seen by the orbiter or by NASA’s roving eye on the moon.

Rapists and looters would be anointed clean and holy once they joined a particular political front. Our only inhibition was with a particular religious community and a neighbouring country. Everything that kept us back and hindered our progress was because of these two hunches. The mess we are in is because our founding forefathers could not thing right, why even the constitution was a document that is flawed and needs correction very soon.

The amount of money spent on foreign visits and the numerous instances of foreign travel by the head of government cries out for attention. Funny then, that some people have termed our Prime Minster as the first NRI Prime Minister the country has ever had since he is seen less in our country than overseas. The little occasions he is seen in our country he is busy campaigning for his political outfit as if he is the head of his party and not that of the country.

We are now more prone to speaking our thoughts rather than listening to people’s pulses. It has been established that he conquers wherever he goes and whatever he sets his sight on, is his for the asking. Utterances overseas are drafted to discredit the opposition. He does not like the word opposition; to ideas, to his thinking; his words, or even as a political outfit that is deemed as a necessary democratic tool.

Anyone who does not adhere to this fixed line deserves to be annihilated from history books. Even history books need to be rewritten- rewritten from MY perspective not OURS. It is necessary for history to be rewritten because then only the young will be patriotic. History has to be rewritten so that we are hailed as the greatest nation that every lived on this planet, even though we may have lost our soul as a nation in the process.

Farmers can tear their hair since they do not constitute much to the growth of this country. Any growth had to be shepherded by the big guns in the industry for whom the red carpet is brushed and kept ready every day. Their misdemeanors are pardoned and their sins wiped clean off the slate. Figures that were in the red turn black almost instantly overnight at the stroke of a dictate.

Unemployment is something that we can do without only if the youth looked at so many alternative avenues for employment. Watching your father cut hair in a saloon is also employment since you are employed in a time consuming manner. The monitoring authorities have got their figures wrong so they should not be published. Imagine the country’s misfortune at having had these morons for the last seventy years.

Employment relates to time spent not gainful occupation. If you are able to spend your time while daylight prevails you are employed doesn’t matter if you have been fiddling with the keys on your smart phone or whether you gain anything out of this venture or even if the gain translates to nothing. And why does everyone talk about money?

Wasn’t money demonetized to make way for our overall progress? What is two basis points fall in GDP so long as it caters to ones flawed thinking. Insistence on this thinking may get us into a corner, but that’s all right we have waited for seventy years to put this thinking into practice; now is our time and please do not fret, what is all this hullabaloo, even China is facing tough times.

We will win the world not by mathematics, not by plotting facts and figures but by sheer nationalism. Hard work and working the facts is a distant second to jingoism. We shall brook no interference to this methodology. We will insist on putting people behind bars and working the courts to ensure that they remain there as long as possible, because we don’t like opposition. This way we are able to put the fear of being singled out, into the opposition.

We have won elections over and over again; in fact we have taken the dumb population for granted. It is not the population who decides but our strategy and policies with a touch of manipulative practices for the betterment of the people. If people were to decide for themselves why are we there? What are we trying to achieve? Anything the population wants must stem out of our ideas, they cannot have theirs because they are not as accomplished as we are, as our thinking.

But hey what is this? What has become of our election machinery? Our apt thinking, our well oiled electioneering mechanisms, our pointed quotes our brazenness, our brashness rolled into a magic balm for the populace. Why have we fared below expectations, what has become of our targets?

Has the people awakened from their slumber, are they contesting our decisions and our inheritance? Our outstanding provocations- all because they are not finding jobs, not being able to sustain, but isn’t that the price we must pay to achieve a five trillion economy?

Has the opposition slowly started to get up on their feet, have they been able to withstand the onslaught of our talent, haven’t we been able to stamp out every shoot of the mighty Congress party as promised?

Well, hold your horses for it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

Pangs of love

Pangs of love

Kerala is flush with news of the Koodathai serial murders where a lady is accused of murdering six of her own family members and that of her extended family. Amidst boos and catcalls the lady is taken out to gather evidence. Reporters have dug deep into the sequence of events and one aspect that stands out is the reluctance of immediate family members to allow a post mortem on the dead.

I can understand creating obstacles where one fears the truth will come out but what do we say to the mother of the child who had died and even upon insistence by authorities she was reluctant to let go of the dead body and wanted the whole body without a post mortem to moan. Later events teach us that had she allowed a post mortem she herself and others would have lived as the truth would have been out earlier.

Why did the mother act the way she did? Because she could not bear to see her child being torn up and stitched together. But would she have witnessed this act of post mortem- Possibly not. Then why was she worried about the baby being incised during post mortem - pangs of love?

Now let us cut across from the story and the mother in the above incident and reflect on our own lives. How many of us are willing to sign up for organ donation? I can see a few hands creeping up but even they are forcibly pulled down by well meaning loved ones. This is the predicament we face today. Most of us are not willing to be donors after death. Remember our organs can be successfully harvested within a time frame after death.

We all die and have ourselves planted six feet underground or burned in crematoriums with all our organs intact. The miserly attitude shows even as we destroy the body along with the organs that could have been easily transplanted to people who are waiting to die for want of organs. Imagine the number of blind people we meet and come across in our daily lives. We will most honorably escort a blind person to cross the road or walk them clear of obstacles but we would not be willing to sign to donate our cornea to this very same person after death.

To be able to donate organs you must be able to get rid of the love pangs that keep throbbing inside you and think of a wonderful tomorrow when one’s own organs or that of your relatives will be instilling life in other people’s lives and homes. It is not only the beneficiary who benefits but a large number of relatives and friends who surge around this person.

You may not be able to see it yourself but your organs will experience it during this life time. You are living a second life even after you are gone. It is the same with any person who dies with healthy body organs. But more often than not we religiously follow the rituals and dispose of the dead without thinking of the living people that you dispose of along with the dead.

Some people may not be able to see a body without  eyes but in death the eyes are shut and no one will know if the cornea is removed or not. The same goes for other organs in the body. Every dead is fully clothed or draped from neck to toe as prescribed by religion or rituals and what one gets to see is only the face. Why then are we reluctant to extract life out of the dead?

Once we all pledge to donate our organs, hands that had crept up will never be pulled down, post mortem on future bodies will be done willfully and lives can be saved, people will experience the joy of living long after they are gone and this world will be more beautiful with the addition of former handicapped people turning whole through your act of charity. Let’s move in that direction and dispel the pangs of love to create a joyful existence to the otherwise doomed.

"Lin-ching"

“Lin-Ching”

The other day an important functionary in the present government – (I purposefully say functionary in the present government because this gentleman and the association he represents have a bear grip in the functioning of the present government in India)- To carry forward the intent of this write up, and as I was referring to the important functionary in his customary address to his followers on Vijay Dashmi day declared that “Lin-Ching” was a western concept and unknown to Indians though Indians have been associated with it for ages in the history of this great Indian Republic.

I was confused and therefore looked up Google to verify this claim and indeed I found out that the Ching surname originated in the Cantonese region present day China. Therefore to say that Lin Ching was foreign does not seem far from the truth.

First with what I found out of its Chinese descent on Google- “As a surname, Ching may refer to Ching. A Cantonese Romanization of the Chinese surname Cheng. Ching, chng or ch’ng, a Minnan Romanization of the Chinese surname Zhuang. Ching an English surname originating from Devon and Cornwall.”

Now to its English origins - Ching is also a twisted version of the English word chine and here I am quoting Google information – “The name Ching comes from when the family lived near a crevice, chasm, or canyon. Further research revealed that the name is derived from the Old English word chine, that comes from the Old English word "cinu," meaning fissure, or chasm. The surname meant "dweller by the ravine."

So there is no doubt that Ching is not “desi” in character but a foreign element injected into our system by all those scheming and corrupt men who ruled over us and painstakingly robbed us of our character and thereby our greatness.

Now about Lin- remember Ching rhymes only with the prefix- Lin, therefore it is used as a first name in the same way that we would use a Mohammed before an Ahlaq, or a Junaid and a Pehlu before another surname or a Tabrez before Ansari or the like.

Now therefore to get justice for Ahlaq, Pehlu, Junaid or Tabrez and many more we will have to take the Chinese or the English to the International court of justice because the act though perpetrated in our country, the origins lie elsewhere outside and in foreign lands. We are reluctant participants in the greater scheme of things originated by and from across the oceans.

No wonder then the courts and witnesses do a full shakeup almost like a belly dancer the moment the matter reaches its doorsteps. Rules and surmises are turned and twisted to extract the required outcomes. The result being that the conclusions of heinous crimes are written in law journals only in a manner that reflects our flawed judicial network.

Next time you want justice remember to park yourself before the International court of justice because anything that is self critical cannot be in our grain and anything that is wrong within us must obviously be a corruption of foreign bodies that infest our wholly sanctified and religious self.

We have been the purest, perfect and the most potent beings that ever traversed on the surface of this earth and that in a way reflects in the statement made by this great functionary.

Long live that race and that rashtra-

10th October 2019

Does he remember?

Today he turns 59 on the narrow lane to being a cherished senior citizen. As he stands in that queue of reluctant folks he is reminded of the path ahead. At the end of the path he will be falling off the edge of a cliff deep into a never ending gorge, into the depths where he will be enveloped by an empty space from where the eyes cannot see, nor the ears hear, nor the nose smell or when the arms and legs cannot force themselves out of their stupor.

He peeps ahead and finds the line of people ahead disciplined, well rehearsed as if they are there by compulsion and would love to get out and away from this queue. But the narrow lane does not allow an exit, its side walls so tall that it will be impossible to even attempt an escape. They are all glued to their places, reluctant to move ahead, the movement in the line is also slow as if taking a cue from the reluctant folks queued up for their fate.

Having nothing much to do, he tries to turn his mind away from the future into the past a past which may allow him to smile or grimace depending on what memories throw up at the moment. He tries to remember his childhood, when he was an infant, crawling the floor and the dirt paths in front of his abode. With darkened knees and running nose he was a spectacle to behold, someone who didn’t mind the flow from the nose or the dirt that has stuck to his tender feet and knees. He does not rue the fact that he is all unkempt, dirt strewn all over him. He still had the innocence to receive a kiss from a neighbourhood auntie or an elderly kid.

His attention is diverted by a mosquito that had just had a taste of its ‘red wine’; he musters a weak swipe missing it by yards. He shakes his head and remembers the days when his throw was accurate as a champion. He used to come home, marbles filled his pockets and the sides of the pocket wore a dirty look like a child who would have highlighted the edges of his contours in school to make his maps stand out. Those were the days when the now famous detergents were at its laboratory stages, the poor mother having to sit and rub and scrub to clean it all up. He didn’t feel for his mother because that was her job wasn’t it or was it? How would he care? The lure of winning a few more marbles the next day kept him on his toes.

Ah! The person ahead in the line has moved one place; he steps onto where someone else was standing not long ago. That reminded him of the headlines in the newspapers of manual scavenging being declared a crime. In his younger days he would often meet men and women with human faeces collected in a tin storage bin being carried on their heads for disposal. He would cross paths with them but never considered them to be lowly or unclean. It was a job that they did without any recourse else how would our places stay clean? He wondered if any one of them was in his queue. Why after all this discrimination had we all to stand in this same queue. This is injustice, why can’t we have reservations here; maybe they could go ahead at a faster pace?

Looking out onto the highway he finds children with their parents’ queuing up for the school bus. He was reminded of his own when he had missed his bus because he was a little late. Had wanted to ask the driver uncle why he couldn’t stay put until he had arrived. Maybe driver uncle would have given him a lecture on the virtues of time management and decision making. He would have simply told him that he had to make a choice between waiting for him and getting all the others late for classes inviting his superior’s wrath.

He remembers the time when in order to catch the waiting bus and fearing that the driver was about to take off he ran and tripped over his tiny legs strewing mama’s lunch and his tiny books, slate, rubber (eraser is a modern terminology), and sharpened pencil onto the road. His brother has to turn back and help him get everything back, though not in perfect order but thank god the Lunch box has refused to budge open, probably a sign of mama’s love that went beyond his tiny imagination.

At school he remembers throwing in his lot into an English essay class and being surprised by the praise he received from the teacher, early signs that he could coin some satisfying lines. In games he would always be at the threshold of selection but never actually getting into the team. At times when he got the rare occasion he would excel in flashes enough memories to last a lifetime and help make up the satisfaction levels.

With girls it was the same always shy to make the first move, wondering why seemingly inferior guys would always take away your intended interests. They probably had some tricks that he couldn’t fathom. Later in life they would tell him in selling classes that persuasion was the key. Gosh! Why hadn’t those lucky ones told him about this secret weapon? Why didn’t they teach selling skills in school? Then they probably didn’t have to teach those in later years. Now he is too old to unleash, the charm fading and the shrivelled crumbling lines clearly visible to all, counting the years just like the rings on a cut trunk of a tree.

In office he would always push the envelope, what did he gain except a few words in praise at farewells? Diplomacy they say would have gone beyond the present, the outcome would have been more visible.  But he was never one to mix emotions, to mince words, he would spell that out which was lingering in the heart. He didn’t care about what others thought as long as he could answer the call within. Now that he was queued up and had time on hand he could reflect on the days gone by and outcome of those actions that had satisfied a few and antagonized maybe many.

Suddenly the queue seems to hasten looks like a few fellow travellers have fallen off the edge of the cliff all together; he has to hurry his steps to keep pace with the flow of life. He now has enough time to weigh the past using the future expanse that opened up so suddenly before him.