Divine vision

The year I remember correctly was 1998. I had accompanied my dad on a work-related trip he had to make to Delhi. With his meetings for the day done, both of us were strolling around the Connaught Place shopping area taking in the sights and sounds of the hub of the capital city. Delhi, setting aside for the moment its reputation for housing the not-so-rare irrationally or criminally ill-behaved citizen, happens to be the only Indian city truly deserving of being the capital of our nation thanks both to its historical importance and the imposing architecture & infrastructure of New Delhi. 

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So there I was, a small town boy wandering through the endless rows of alluring shops and restaurants, eyes peeled for all of the details, all of 13-14 in impressionable age. It's hard to say whether it caught my eyes first or my dad's but it can be said that we reacted simultaneously, hard core car enthusiasts that we were. A board over a newly opened showroom on CP said "Hindustan Motors-Mitsubishi" and both of us moved in its direction, mice uncontrollably drawn towards the cheese (if Tom & Jerry cartoons are to be believed)

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India was still a very bad place to buy modern cars or even spot them on the road back then, and cars like the Daewoo Cielo and the Ford Escort had just arrived to add some colour to the road traffic. The richest of the rich could still afford the 200% flat import duty on BMWs and Mercedes, which were visible on the streets of Bombay and Delhi but few and far between. For the common man, the only option for a modern car was the Maruti. Any new car launch was a breath of fresh air. Both my dad and me were extremely curious.

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Stepping inside the showroom, I took a sharp breath in and let out a wolf-whistle, instinctively and unashamedly. Ask any genuine car fanatic, and he (here I am discounting any similar lunacy in the opposite gender) will tell you that cars are not cars, they are people. Every car model has a story, a character and a reputation. What I saw there was a modern day legend. The room's interiors were purposefully poorly lit and in the centre on a slowly rotating dais under a perfectly sized spotlight, stood a red as blood Mitsubishi Lancer, gleaming with intent and begging to be raced away.

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Reigning World Rally Championship champion (in its Evo avatar), the Lancer was a car that every car magazine worth its salt devoted pages to praising. How it looked, how it drove, how it stirred the soul as it roared and skid through snow, sand, gravel and tarmac; through mountains, deserts, forests and cities was all what I had been reading about dreamily uptil now. Now that dream had been physically manifested right in front of me, out of the blue, on my home turf. I desperately wanted to possess it and I wanted it to possess me. It was as strange a sensation as could be. I was in love... with a car!

Jhamelaa

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First up, let me state this frankly and clearly. In the past, I have avoided helping road accident victims. Many times. Because of the supposed 'jhamelaa' (complications). The normal excuses that people give like "The police will instead harass you for bringing in the victims about what you were doing there!" or "The hospital won't admit the injured victims in and they will die in front of your eyes outside the hospital entrance." were good enough for me to not get involved in any rescue operations.

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What I never did and never will do though is to hang around the scene of an accident, especially one in which the victims look critically injured without any purpose. It is surprising how many people actually do that in our country where the ambulance always takes too long a time to show up (due to a million reasons not under the control of the ambulance service) and the best chance for saving lives is to get them to the hospital in time somehow through personal initiative. If I cannot be of help, I move on so that someone who actually wants to help can do his/her job.

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On Wednesday evening, the day for Saraswati Puja here in Bengal, as I was making my way back home after work, on the narrow Beliaghata bypass road bordering the canal, I saw what I hated to see once more. Two guys sprawled in the middle of the road, heads split open, blood spurting out of their major head injuries and a huge crowd gathered around them. My first reaction was to thread my motorcycle through the people and go ahead ignoring the commotion, but this looked like something which had happened half a minute ago. I pulled over on the side and I still don't know why because this wasn't how I had behaved in similar scenarios before.

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Enquiries revealed that a speeding Ambassador car had knocked down the pair from their motorcycle, and then the car had fled from the scene. Needless to say, neither the car nor the motorcycle were driving at civilized speeds and the youngsters aboard the bike were wilfully ignorant of the rule that a helmet should be worn at all times while riding. People were standing around passing judgements "Should've worn helmets!", "I shouted at them to go slow just 200 m before. Now look!" or "The first one will definitely not make it. Look at the blood he is losing right now. He's gone!"

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I asked if anyone had called the police or an ambulance yet. No one had. I called the police emergency helpline 100 from my cell. Guess what? It was busy! And so it remained for the next 10 attempts I made. I asked of the locals if there were any government hospitals with emergency wards in the vicinity. Private hospitals have a even worse reputation when it comes to acceptance of accident victims for treatment so government is the way to go. I got a name, the Neel Ratan Sarkar hospital next to Sealdah station but no one had their emergency number. I finally got through to the police and gave them the location of the incident via consultation with the locals, and they said that they were sending help right away.

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The minutes were passing by and there was no sign of the police or ambulance. The pool of blood around the prone bodies was horrifyingly large now. Some kind soul was splashing water on their faces but that was about it. People were angry in a directionless kind of way and were diverting traffic away from the narrow side street we were on. I once again asked the people milling around the victims, "Is there no doctor around? Is there any way we can get these people to the hospital ourselves?" Back came the aggressive reply "Don't you know how much trouble you can get into with the police in simple cases like this. Lots of trouble. Who will take the risk? Will you?"

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And I said yes. To their credit, within a minute or so they found a Tata Ace mini tempo whose driver volunteered to help get the injured to the hospital. Bear in mind, all private vehicles had made sharp U-turns when the same request to assist was made to them. The injured were placed in the cargo hold but no one, absolutely no one from the waiting crowd wanted to accompany me to the hospital. I was asked to sit beside the driver and we set off for the hospital, with two critically injured persons just lying in the open hold like transported goods. It wasn't the best way to proceed but our options were limited and it certainly didn't feel nice as we headed towards the Sealdah hospital on a bumpy road. Half way there, we came across a lumbering police van making its way towards the scene of the accident and they asked us to move on towards the hospital.

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I was really tense now as I madly waved a red rag out of the window, the universal signal for an emergency, so that traffic cops would let our vehicle pass. How crudely would the police and hospital react? So were the tempo driver and his assistant. The driver said, "I am a poor man who drives this vehicle for someone else. I hope I don't get into trouble for trying to help." As we drove into the premises of the hospital and reached the emergency ward, we were on tenterhooks. Then came the real anti-climax when I ran into the entrance and explained the situation. The police inside the emergency ward were prompt in their response and the hospital staff even more so. True, they were one stretcher attendant short at that point of time and I had to assist to get the more critically injured person to the Operation Theatre (OT), but the doctors were buzzing around and doing their best. The cops were not interfering in any way and waited till both the victims were wheeled into the OT before asking me the basic questions of where, when, and how.

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The cops asked me the questions in as polite a manner as I have ever heard anyone speak, thanked me for not giving in to stories about their corrupt & rude 'behaviour' and said I could leave if I wanted to. The victim's family was being contacted by personnel from the nearest police station, they told me. All those stories about how victims were refused treatment and how their rescuers were prosecuted may have some basis in truth, but we as a people are so bogged down by preconceived notions of 'jhamelaa'. This is the 'kalyug' (Dark age) some people say and so we must weigh all the possible 'jhamelaas' before we even think of doing what is right. 

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The injured persons were still conscious and moaning in pain when they went into the OT, something which surprised me considering the massive amounts of blood they both had lost. The human body is a resilient machine and it fights till the very last. I do not know if they lived to see the next day. God willing, their lives may have been saved but at least I think I did what I could to the best of my limited abilities to give them a chance. What I do know is that I ride a motorcycle to work everyday and I wouldn't want to bleed to death on a side street while a couple of hundred people stood watching the 'tamashaa' (spectacle), just because they want to avoid the 'jhamelaa'. 

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All said and done, India is a country with imperfect systems and we have very little or no faith in them. We blindly assume that since the systems are bad, the people in it must be equally rotten too. When we have faith, hope and the will to make things better and operate under the assumption that people are basically good, the first 999 times out of 1000, the experience is likely to turn out to be bitter. It is an almighty struggle to maintain that belief in most situations we find ourselves in, but nothing is more important. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" may sound like a ridiculous cliche which is all too frequently disproven, but it forms the primary basis of how we as a species have survived thus far. If you don't trust your fellow man to behave as you would and be helpful, you are basically stating that you don't trust yourself to able to be useful. And that is a very sad state to be in. 

Imagine

Imagine... that you are Sachin Tendulkar, with 20 years of international cricket experience with you walking in to bat. It's early on the windy first day of an India v/s South Africa Test match at the Newlands stadium in Cape Town, South Africa. Two quick Indian wickets have already gone down but the crowds have poured into the stadium for exactly the situation you find yourself in. You absorb the the noise, the atmosphere, the excitement and the expectations of the watching thousands plus the millions watching live on TV; gather a deep breath and take guard.

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Steaming in towards you, without the slightest hint of goodwill in his intentions, is the best fast bowler currently in business in international cricket, Dale Steyn. He can swing the cricket ball like it's on drugs; bowl at speeds that will shatter your stumps before you can blink and also crack your ribs if you are caught unawares by one of his mean short length deliveries. Accuracy and discipline is not something he can be faulted on, not to forget that this is Cape Town where the ball swings, bounces and bites anyway. Any other person in your place would have just raised his hands in surrender and walked away. But not you.

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Because you are Tendulkar. You've been in tight corners like this before. Where there is Steyn running in, there was once a Wasim Akram or an Allan Donald or a Glenn McGrath or a Shoaib Akhtar. If it's short and wide, cut it; if it's full outside off, cream a cover drive; if it's full and straight, punch it back past the bowler; if it's full on the pads, flick it away on the leg side; if it's short and heading towards your body, pull it; if it's really short, hook it or just weave away from it. You have an answer for almost anything. Almost. 20 years in the business of extraordinary batting still haven't helped you prepare for the "corridor". In fact, the thrill of the "corridor" might the only reason that you still revel in the challenge of playing cricket.

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Of all the expressions frequently used by cricket commentators, "Corridor of uncertainty" has to be the most evocative. The good length delivery in the narrow zone on or around the the off stump (the aforementioned corridor), poses multiple questions to the batsman in that brief half a second it takes to get to the batsman. Back foot or front foot? Play it or let it go? Thump it or stonewall it? So many questions, never a definite answer. Uncertainty as defined in the English dictionary assumes the form of a live snarling creature. Being Sachin and the bowler being Steyn, you half expect what's coming. There it is, the perfect good length delivery at blistering pace in that doubt breeding region around the off stump.

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There are three South African slip fielders and a wicketkeeper waiting for a nick which they will gratefully pouch. Your critics will then snigger behind your back ignorant of the reality of two decades of invaluable service to the team, "He is useless in critical situations." Maybe you should let this one go and wait for an easier one. But what if this comes back in towards the stumps? It'll be too late to react then! If you half play it, there is every chance of a thin edge so why not smack it? A crackling boundary to start with works wonders for your confidence. All difficult choices to be facing but the truth is that you love being there, at that position of potential. There may be glory to be hoped for or sheer disappointment to be coped with, but the real incentive is not knowing what will happen, until you make your move.

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Negotiating the bewildering path of life is so much like playing an infinite Test match as a batsman. You need patience and you need judgement; you need anticipation and you need self-belief. Opportunities come and go, like zippy Steyn deliveries. On a bad day, you grit your teeth and try to weather the storm. On a good day, you middle the ones that are clear-cut run making chances, the short balls and the full ones. Yet anything in the corridor of uncertainty is always a mystery, no matter how long you play. 

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That is when you need that rare combination of pluck and luck as you shape up to face the unknown. Rule number 1 is to accept that life is frequently unfair and you shouldn't be complaining about how life handed you a raw deal, especially since you are by far not the first person that something  ridiculously undeserved happened to. It is in the nature of life to slap you in the face for no reason at all, and all those years of hard work in the nets might amount to a big round zero on match day. There might also be wrong choices made, but it's pointless to rue them for long. Of course being dismissed hurts, but the only option you have in this life is to back yourself and live to fight another day. Then, there is the exciting possibility of things going right, of achieving a flow that keeps you at the crease for a long, fulfilling innings. People will say what they say anyway but at the end of the day, it's your life to live and your route to choose. Quoting Liam Thomas Ryder: 

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"Time sets the stage; fate writes the script; but only we may choose our character." 

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Imagine that you are Sachin Tendulkar.

Outing

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The little zero bulb above the wash-basin came on with an audible click casting ghostly yellow beams on my portion on the bed and my face. It was still dark outside but mom was already up to keep up with ours, the kids' schedule for the day. For a change, I did not mumble or grumble but sat straight up. It was the one school day of the year when waking up early was not a pain. Brushing my teeth, I could hear the pre-dawn trains blow their whistles many kilometres away from the Narmada bridge, a sound which would not make it to our housing society when the traffic grew heavy on the road in front later in the day. Though train travel was rarely a requirement on most of our school trips, the shrill calls of the incoming trains were symbolic of the restlessness and anticipation of the trip to come.

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Done with her duty of packing the snack-boxes for my sister and me, it was time for dad to step up for his role in the early morning ordeal. He was in charge of taking us to the forever fixed starting point for all school trips, the patch of land in front of Maharaja Hotel where the buses were waiting to take in the troops of school children and so were our other excited classmates/schoolmates with their equally tired looking parent escorts through the yet darkened roads of our small town. A quick visual scan done to check for the arrival of any members of our respective buddy groups and then the accompanying parent was suddenly as good as non-existent. As the official time to leave approached, the role calls began and though order was restored as far as the standing in neat rows was concerned, the noise levels were consistently on the rise. The teachers accompanying us on the trip would get an early taste of the headaches in store for them as kids who just about barely heeded them inside the classrooms were now expected to obey in this great long trip outside of school. The teacher shouted for silence, the children chattered on regardless, the teacher shouted again for silence, the children chattered on again regardless, the teacher gave up and sighed - was the usual pattern on display.

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All loaded into the bus, the buses would roll out onto the highway and the usual antics of unreasonably happy schoolkids would begin, spurred on by the mild chill that still hung in the air. Civilized debates transforming into bitter slanging-matches over which audio cassette to play, for example, a choice between "Taal" or "Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi" were a common feature. So was woefully out-of-tune and fearfully enthusiastic Antakshari singing with winks and nudges being passed around of the "He is actually singing for her"/"She is really singing for him" type. Then there were the paper ball throwing face-offs, plastic bottle duels and some random quote from a poor soul which tickled the humour of the entire bus (or at least the entire bus pretended so) which served as the basis for mindless maniacal laughter for the next few minutes. All of this cacophony would last till the sun went up full and strong. Afterwards there would be something of a lull till the destination for the picnic was reached.

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School day trips were mostly to nearby forest areas. The Sagai [wink wink :)] forest and Jambughoda forest trips are names I can recall but there was one every school year and I think I did them all. The destination was not of too much consequence as the behaviour of the trippers was always similarly bizarre. The students would pour out of the buses like busy insects and proceed to do exactly the opposite of everything that the teachers would tell them, behaving much like an ant hill on drugs. "Everyone will stay in a single group" they were instructed and within the first 15 minutes there were as almost as many groups as there were children. Some raced ahead to keep up with the guide, some trailed off into checking some alternate routes confident that the noise of the other hundred stampeding children would prevent them from getting lost and some just hung back to make the most of this golden chance to irritate and worry the teachers at the same time. "Remember... we will stay here only for 15 minutes" said the supervisor at the most wonderful spot of our day long walk with a wild, magnificent jungle waterfall to play around in and so immediately the students decided that 15 minutes meant 2 hours. Only when the PT teacher came down chasing everyone with a cane did the pool at the base of the waterfall rid itself of the splashing, thrashing school children. The impromptu cricket and football sessions were also a constant presence given the availability of any minimum amount of space and time.

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With the arrival of evening, the slow trooping back to the buses would be complete and the final role call before the return journey was the closing of the loop. It's a wonder given the consciously created disorderliness amongst the students that thankfully no one ever got left behind. Someone up above must be keeping an eye out for indisciplined school kids, I guess! The trip back home was a rather morose affair in the yellow lighted interior of the bus with even the most vocally capable of our troops being reduced to a mild murmur given the exertions of the day. Some gloomy soul (Me thinks it was the driver who was fed up with the constant wall of human noise behind him while he was driving around) would put on "So gayaa yeh jahaan, so gayaa aasmaan... [The world has fallen asleep, so has the sky]" in the music system, finally his choice of song, and if you were to raise your head to take a peek around inside the bus in that final leg of the return journey, you would find it tough to disagree. The immediate world around me was indeed asleep but only after revelling in an amount of happiness and fulfillment that'd be increasingly difficult to attain as time carried them forward into the complexities of their futures.

Auto-pilot

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Having spent year after childhood year wanting to learn never quite translated into action but January 14th was the day when I renewed my yearly oath of "This year I will coax one of my buddies into teaching me how to fly a kite... definitely most definitely!" By the time, the next Uttarayan/Makar Sakranti came around, there was I again holding on the 'charki' (spindle) while some friend or the other engaged in fierce battles with fellow fliers, my involvement being restricted to the level of a loud excited "Kaipochhe (Cut it)!" or to the menial response to the barked order of a defeated fighter of "Abbey lappett (Hey, wind the thread back)!"

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A few charitable souls did try to teach me a thing or two about the magical (at least to me) art of coaxing a glued patch of paper on a stick framework into the air but it wasn't very long before they discovered that they would need extra stocks of kites if I continued with my merry tug-when-the-head-pointing-downwards kite destroying ways. I still looked forward to the kite festival though. The long rows of sunny roofs unmindful of the winter breeze, filled with people, loudspeakers blaring out the latest Bollywood numbers and very liberal amounts of sweet groundnut 'chikki' being spread around offered a great environment to indulge in along with my troop of friends while eying all the girls on the neighbouring terraces (Murphy's Law dictated that there were to be none on the terrace we chose to be on).

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Above all, there was the faint promise of redemption, the chance that the hours of patient 'charki' handling would yield something tangible for however brief a period of time. For when in a freak space of time with the sky was clear of immediate competition, the friend who was flying the kite would feel bored by the inactivity and offer me a chance to be the man-in-command. I would jump at the opportunity, to feel the weight of the long line of string leading up to the messenger in the sky. It's wonderful to be in charge of something that distant, cruising the winds and swimming in the vastness that we as human beings will never have such unrestricted access to. The kite it would seem was living the dream and that very string which ran from its straining ribs to my hands carried to me indistinct whispers of all the wonderful things that it could see but could not fully describe. The few moments of blissful navigation lasted only till an aggressive neighbour started homing in on my aircraft. Then once again, the command would switch and I would rushed back to my critical but unglamourous position in the engine room. I didn't mind. Being a pilot or at least imagining myself to be one was always fun, so what if the plane was in Auto-Pilot mode all the time while I was in the pilot's seat. 

Readjusted estimates

Until as recently as 5 years ago, I was blessed with the gift of a no-trace-of-fat-or-muscle-retained stick thin figure despite an insatiable appetite especially at job treats, electric heater aided room cooking sessions and farewells that lay thick and fast across the duration of the third and final year calendars at engineering college. The most common question put to me tinged with a trace of shock then as the pile of chicken bones grew thick and fast around me (sometimes even the bones were not to be wasted) was "How can you eat so much? Where does it all go?"

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Then came the 4-5 years of lounging around in front of a computer screen at office and it was only on this Thursday that I understood the full social impact of my inactivity based physical transformation. A colleague was in his last week of work before his transfer to another location and he had taken us, his soon-to-be-ex team members out to lunch. I wasn't quite hungry and post college, my appetite had really gone down from an equivalent of 100 to 5 but as the future event will suggest, my appearance may be reflecting an opposite trend. Though it was a buffet, I opted for just a single helping of all the items on the tables. As I was winding up the meal with two scoopfuls of icecream and gulabjamuns, three different people at my table had exactly the same question for me. This question maintained the element of shock in it. Except for the fact that now the question was "Aapkaa ho gayaa?!! [Are you done?!!]". Darn it!

Foggy parathas

[Tonight is a cold night in Calcutta, cold by Calcutta standards that is, but just the right kind of cold if you ask me. The motorcycle ride back home through deserted late night roads is faster by 20 kmph as your shoulders stiffen up to brave the chill in the air. Your twitchy on-the-verge-of-sneezing nose & numb fingertips feel like they belong to somebody else. Your eyelids are cold, like they have just been dug out of snow. Just the right kind of cold that a man can take... and robustly enjoy! Makes me think back to the four winters spent in the heart of Haryana, last experienced only 4 years ago but already seems like 4 decades ago.]

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07:30 AM

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I have always been a creature of the light, never a creature of the night even through the routine murdering lifestyle of an engineering college hostel. When the sun is up, I have to be up too no matter how late I sleep or no matter how much of a biology v/s fermented liquids challenge last night's party was. So all too frequently on a winter's morning on a weekend, I would find myself blinking like a deer caught in the headlights and grumbling my way out of the sensational comforts of a thick blanket. It didn't matter that I would be taken down by another wave of extreme sleepiness at around 11:00 AM, but for the moment, I was hopelessly awake.

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A hostel bears an uncanny resemblance to a graveyard in those hours of the morning, so deathly quiet is the surroundings. Every party worth its salt has already ended in tearful emotional moments of the "You are a real friend!" nature and the chorus of puking heads out of the verandahs of decadence has long gone silent. It's a surreal world, especially in contrast to the mayhem and the noise and the loud music that inhabited the same space just a few hours ago. Then there's the all pervading morning fog rolling in from the sunflower fields in front of Hostel Number 5, almost looking responsible for putting all the party revellers to a much needed but vehemently-fought-against slumber.

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I lumber down the stairs after pulling on my worn-down-to-the-last thread blue jacket as the cold stings my ears. The few odd inmates (Yes, we have had some notices which referred to us as "Inmates of Hostel No. 5"!) who were also in wait for breakfast to begin also come shuffling down, a mini army of zombies staggering through the fog in search of the one thing they craved, the only thing that could justify being awake at that  - hot paranthas! Methi, aloo, gobi whatever may be the stuffing - all welcomed onto the cold steel of the railway catering style steel plates, topped off with a cube of butter and then another cube of butter to serve as the 'subzi' component of the meal. 

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The warmth of the first morsels of food awaken the other senses and I can hear the sound of the carrom board striker whacking into the sides. Somebody has already got down to business in the common room neighbouring the hostel mess and I am sure by the time I leave the table, none of the newspapers pinned to the boards would be free for a read. Nonetheless, I wander into the common room out of sheer habit and check out what's on TV. Wonders of wonders, it's not ETC with its endless stream of Bollywood movie trailers but a West Indies v/s Australia Test match live. Lara is hitting the hide off the Aussies and it seems that the word has got around already. A few familiar faces, cricket-fans as they are, rush in and take up the first row. I too find my nook, in the second row with an empty chair in front to prop my legs up on to half doze, half dream my way through the wizardry on display on TV. Another blissful day of anarchy thus progresses in REC Kurukshetra, in the land of foggy parathas.