Priceless

The main line in large capital fonts went "DISTANCE CREATES LOVE". I spotted it on the rear bumper of a mini-bus running through the busy bazaar roads of Beliaghata in Kolkata on the way to office today. A statement sufficient in itself and something which would be sacrilegious to further explain.

Before I could completely absorb the deepest implications of that bit of philosophical advice, just below it, I saw that in a significantly smaller font of running handwriting, for those who had missed the finer message of the first line and still had come really close to the bus, the rear bumper repeated "Obey traffic rules". Priceless, just priceless!

Been there, done that

This Friday as I walked into a school in session for the first time in 8 years, I was swept over by 'deja vu'. The school in question was Kendriya Vidyalaya - I in Salt Lake, Kolkata and I was there to collect some papers from the tenant in my grandmom's flat who is a primary school teacher at that particular KV. To meet her at her classroom, I had to take "Principal sir's" permission, the watchmen instructed and as I stood behind the fluttering curtain which separated the Principal's office from the cool, dark passage outside, time rewinded itself at incredible speed.

Outside the Principal's office was where we frequently found ourselves in our school days, though in our case it was a stern looking Sister who would take us to task rather than the stern Mr. Mohanty who was the one I approached with totally unnecessary timidity on Friday. Mr. Mohanty asked me a few Principal like questions like:

"What do you want?" [Permission to go inside the school, sir!],

"How long will you take?" [Less than half a minute, sir!],

"Why do you ride a motorcycle?" [??!!, sir?],

"Leave your helmet in my office" [Yes sir!].

Maybe behind the servile respect shown was my previous experience as students at the Principal's office when Sister would put questions to us like:

"Who made Basu Miss cry?" [Collective guilty silence],

"Who broke the blackboard?" [It was really all of us engaging in on-the-spot WWF tournaments on the teacher's stage in between two classes so again 'Collective silence'],

"Who snipped the wire of the intercom in your classroom?" [We all knew who it was but frankly we were all tired of the never ending irrelevant announcements so this time 'Collective gleeful silence'],

"Who was playing cricket inside the classroom?" [The real question here was who wasn't :) so again 'Collective gleeful silence']

We knew that most questions like these were to be smartly not answered and the ones that we were compelled to respond to would have the most diplomatic and innocuous answers. In most cases a session with the Principal ended with Frank Sir, our PT and Sports teacher asking all of us to line up and stand with our right palms outstretched where a sharp slap with a blackboard duster would ensure even punishment for all concerned, irrespective of the level of involvement in the offence. One of the pitfalls of being in the most notorious class in school was that in between all the days of mindless enjoyment there had to be days when we all had to take the occasional fall... together.

I walked out of the Principal's office this Friday, my throat slightly dry but still smiling at the memories and made my way to class III-C of which our tenant was the class teacher. Along the way, I was amused to see all those typical things again. The harried looking teacher being encircled by 3-4 kids around her desk, the rest of the class engaged in total mayhem & noise as only kids can and yet the teacher focussed on the last bench "You... you on the last bench, sit down! I am telling you, sit down!" all in vain. Walking through the corridor I could distinctly hear a buzz in all the classrooms simultaneously, a bomb of excitement waiting for the right signal to explode. I could have predicted what was coming even if I were asleep! "Trrrriiiiiiingggg" went the long bell. Recess!!!

Kids came tumbling out of every classroom, in dozens and in my hyperactive imagination even hundreds! Some floated out in a happy daze wearing a smile of inner peace and some came out racing ready to bounce off the walls and hit the ceiling if need be, so thrilled were they at finally escaping the confines of their classrooms! Recess was a time like that throughout our school years. We had rapidly identified whose every-day tiffin was the most delicious and an unspoken signal brought us all together around him. A few seconds later with a grumpy look on his face, he'd be packing his empty tiffin box into his bag as the rest of us wore triumphant, satisfied smiles before hitting the school grounds.

I always think of our school grounds being unending, infinitely large. In that time it seriously felt like it. The steel roller on which we took the occasional joyride and sometimes served as makeshift stumps; the far end of the ground where the occasional six in that direction condemned the outfielder to traverse and fetch the ball from; the boundary wall that we jumped in our rush to get to the grounds even before the gates were opened; everything about spending the glorious recess time on that barren ground no matter how hot or cold it was outside - all occupy a prominent place in our most cheerful memories. If later on in the day, a "Free" period could be converted into a "Games" period by our continuous begging (Which happened a lot of times because every teacher was terrified of what we would end up doing if left alone for an entire period inside a classroom), that would be the icing on the cake, but the cake... we ate it everyday. Not to mention the continuous action inside the classroom with aping a teacher's mannerisms, Oscar winning performances at asking forgiveness on being caught, biscuit eating while the class was in progress, making the class monitor's life hell, inside jokes and what not! A never ending fun trip it had seemed like but like all things good or bad, that time just came and flew away!

The kids rushed past me and out into their grounds screaming and laughing. I got the piece of paper that I had come for but the real thrill was seeing that nothing, absolutely nothing had changed about school life and its wonderful atmosphere whether the school be in Bharuch or Calcutta or anywhere in the world. I got onto my motorcycle wearing a silly grin and was riding past the boundary walls when a miniature volleyball came jumping out over the barb-wire topped boundary wall. I pulled over and picked up the ball. A mischievous beaming little smile straining to look over the wall appeared and said "Kaku, please ek baar ball taa dao!" [Bengali for "Uncle, please throw the ball in once!]

It cut like a knife to be called a Kaku instead of a Dada [Bengali for "Bhaiyaa"] but considering the age difference of 13-14 years I'd be rather pleasantly surprised at being called Dada by such a young kid! If I were 11-12 years old again and was looking at some 25 year old outside my school boundary, I daresay I'd do the same and secretly laugh at the ridiculous set of self imposed rules that his life was now bound by considering that he was all grown-up and supposedly 'free' to live his life. So all I did was toss the ball back in and I heard the shouted out "Thank you" as the little guy raced away not wanting to waste another second. All I could've told him was this "It's OK, kid! Been there, done that! :)"

Bird-hit

It's an unusually hot April in Calcutta and I have even more than usual reason to complain. My motorcycle, the Pulsar in all its electric blue glory is demanding an unfair share of my attention every weekend. It's parked inside my low roofed garage typical to houses in Central Calcutta and the constricted dimensions of the garage make it the inside of a pressure cooker on summer days like today. I like spending time with my bike but only when I am riding it. As of now I spend a lot of time cleaning it. And it is all thanks to some as yet unseen birds (very likely to be crows) which have developed a taste for bombarding my ride with well aimed discharges of a disgusting nature.

Normally aeroplanes are the only form of motorized transports which need to be wary of birds as one of their feathered co-flyers could easily bring a plane down if the plane was at flying speed. But of late, my Pulsar seems to be the target of airdrops from the feathered air forces that patrol Calcutta's skies. Even though 99% of the time my bike stays inside my garage or inside my office parking lot, in the remaining 1% of the time when say I am inside an ATM, or inside a roadside shop, some avian miscreant in a perfectly timed fly-past manages to make a mess on my mobike's seat or right on the front wheel guard where the 'white' on blue really stands out. I never really saw the event with my own eyes (Luckily yet for me because that might lead to more laundry for me apart from the chore of cleaning up my bike) but whenever I come back to the vehicle, sure enough on one occasion every week, the crime is already committed and the perpetrator has literally flown the coop. Consequently, every weekend I find myself sweating, huffing and puffing in the confines of my garage wiping away the traces of another undeserved, discriminatory attack. Now if only my motorcycle could carry an umbrella!

As clear as glass

This one came as a real shocker for me especially since this came under the rule of a lady who specializes in building multi-crore monuments to herself, hosting multi-crore birthday parties for herself and wearing multi-crore garlands made of 1000 buck notes, all the while waving her "Dalit ki beti (A Dalit's daughter)" card and blaming everything under the sun on "manowaadi tatwa (Rogue capitalist elements)" conspiracies. The BSP government in Uttar Pradesh headed by Mayawati fired 18000 policemen hired during the previous regime of Mulayam Singh Yadav on charges that there was something fishy in the way the written exam was conducted and selections were made. So... I thought now they'll be replaced by 18000 policemen who toe Mayawati's line then.

Surprisingly and gladly enough, I was totally off target. The written exam was re-conducted for close to 26000 candidates this year and the answers were on an OMR (Those black circly exam sheets that never caught my fancy) sheet. One copy of the answer sheet was submitted and one duplicate was taken home by the candidate. The results were then published online with a scanned copy of the examinee's mark sheet and a sheet with all the correct answers. In the physical tests for police entry, there is a 10 km run for men and 5 km run for women, for which biochips were placed on the candidates to accurately note performances and prevent to a very large degree, bias towards a particular person and manipulation of figures.

Whoever was in charge of doing this in the administration (IAS/IPS etc) must be a miracle worker! Sure, it's not a foolproof method of police selection and I doubt that there will ever be one but none can deny this is a massive massive jump towards transparency and fairness. Most importantly, it's a finger stabbed into the cynical eyes who say that nothing of merit is ever possible in this country, spoilt to the core by the worms of corruption and nepotism. Like it or not, India is moving up the ladder. It might not be the surge that jingoistic political leaders who promise to turn Mumbai into Shanghai fib about but someone somewhere is working their magic in small but significant ways. Through a small clear section of the otherwise muddy glass, we are getting glimpses of the wonderful world that lies beyond!

It snows in Amman...

There are days when everything runs to your patterns and expectations, and then there are days when facts shatter your pre-conceived notions acting like the proverbial bull in a china shop. On Saturday, I caught up with a school friend after nearly a decade that being one of the few useful side-effects gained out of literally spending days on Orkut and Facebook. This friend works on a project for Zain, a Kuwaiti telecom company and has had to make frequent 3 month trips to Amman, the capital of Jordan. Now there's an interesting on-site opportunity, away from the oft beaten paths leading to the US and UK, to an interesting and exotic place. Another one of my seniors is working for a client out in Papua New Guinea! That is an incredible story for another day.

Oh, Amman in Jordan, I thought. A Gulf country then, a hot and dry desert with sheikhs dressed in flowing white robes, instant capital punishment and camels, is what comes to mind first. Imagine the shock when I learn over lunch that the most enjoyable part about Amman is its incredibly good weather. Winter temperatures go down to -2- -3 degree centigrade in this Arabic speaking nation and it actually snows there in the winter time... regularly. Go, figure! The king of Jordan and his only wife Queen Rania are very liberal in their attitudes and the king being a direct descendant of Prophet Mohammad, no other extremist 'maulvi' holds any authority above him. The 'burqa' is reasonably rarely seen, and a number of women do dress in skirts and suits like any other non-Muslim nation. Alcohol though not officially encouraged is available for sale legally. Just to keep those looking for the typical image of a Gulf country happy though, there is a desert portion of the country where the magnificent rock cut Roman buildings of Petra are to be found, now part of the new seven wonders of the world!

Such a huge, undiscovered world out there and it is remarkable how much ignorance we steep ourselves in by taking some things for granted without bothering to explore and understand. It makes me all tingly toed again to pick up my rucksack and just head out of the door to wherever the path may lead. One of my favourite travel quotes springs to mind, incidentally by Prophet Mohammad himself "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled."

Kite

Surfer of winds, teaser of clouds, the city far below as you raced around,

Battles of wit, battles of might, victories from your past no longer surround, 

What remains of the freedom now... just ripped paper and twirling head, 

Where lies the sky sailor now... with steel wire and entwined thread.

Such is the end, is it, of all adventure in life then?
Good enough reason for stagnating in our home-pen?
The kite was a fool, some say, for wishing to fly with the eagles,
Greater fools are they for their dreams never leave the stables.

[BTW this is post number 300 on my blog since it came into existence on June 17th, 2007. Roughly one follower added for every 10 posts then! The progress should have been better of course but then could've been much much worse too. Thanks to all for the occasional comment that has kept me going on this favoured side-project of mine.]

Anthem

It was my very first guitar class in February this year and my teacher walked in, dazzled us with a couple of minutes of freestyling on the fretboard and got going with the compulsory "To start off, tell me why you want to learn the guitar" session. My answer was a rather unimaginative and plain Jane "I love the sound of the guitar!" (Straight out of the 'Cliched Answer 101') but the guy who sat next to me and who now is much more higher on the guitar learning curve (It figures...) came up with "I want to perfectly play the slow lead section of Led Zep's 'Stairway to Heaven' at least once in my life!" My teacher was suitably impressed with his focus and so was I, and I got thinking.

What would be the one song that I'd learn to play if there were only that one song that I could learn? After much soul searching, leaving the divine creations of the likes of U2, Dire Straits and other classic rock favourites behind, I settled for what on the face seems to be an extremely crude song - "BC Sutta" by the Pakistani band Zeest. There were a lot of college band-ish songs which followed that classic, using coarser swear words, more intellectual lyrics, finer musical arrangements etc and gained immense popularity on the hostel MP3 lists but to me they were horrible, just playing on the sensationalism gained by an overdose of swear words yet somehow lacking in depth and class if I may say so.

The strums of "BC Sutta" have that essential rawness that is in complete sync with its bare-to-bones perfect lyrics, perfect because the lyricist knew exactly where the intensity of the song picked up and where exactly the swear words needed to be used & where not. The heart and soul of the song are right where a rock song's should be, in a very rough and tough place. A few girls from my college recorded a version of the very same song, a version which got frequent play on some boy's hostel PCs who were moronic enough to be taken aback by the fact that girls can swear too. What next? Surprise at the fact that girls breathe too? Some of us guys need to grow up or at least wake up to find that is the 21st century... really!

But that said, girls singing that song sounded so pathetic that it became even more evident why this was really a guy's song. A fair counterpoint to girls singing "BC Sutta" would be to imagine (Oh dear Devil, forgive me for this blasphemy) Metallica singing Shania Twain's "That don't be impress me much". Ha! Now you get the idea! True, that women can do everything that men can but just like some men who find dressing like a drag queen irresistible and are deservedly laughed at, so too should we laugh at women who try something ridiculous and unnecessary like this. Women's lib hopefully has bigger battles to fight than to beat men at their evolution enhanced crudeness, which is something they eventually may be able to but to what end?

The need and craving for a cigarette at the moment when it is most inaccessible, the relief when the first drag hits home, the sense of brotherhood that prevails as smoke fills the hostel room while the lone ciggie does the rounds and the essential ruggedness of being a member of the male species - all put together in 4 minutes 18 seconds in this gem of a song. Ideal scenario - a single room maybe 10 years down the line at Boy's Hostel No. 5 (Chatrawaas No. 5) of REC(NIT??) Kurukshetra, the mattress folded over so as to avoid the Royal Stag spilling onto it, all buddies resting on whatever little real estate they can find in between strewn clothes, fluttering newspapers and similar clutter, guitar in my hands, cigarettes in our lips, smoke clouding the roof of the room and everyone going "Doston mein baithaa, main sutta pi rahaa..." Ah yes! Heaven!