Just another day in paradise.

Chain of thoughts on the 18th of December 2014. 

The temperature dipped today. 

My driver to the railway station explained to me why he sits with a straight back and how using the complete back rest makes him sleepy and he can't afford to be sleepy when he drives 300 to 400 km or even 500 km or 10 km and how he sleeps on a TAKHAT and not a Charpai. 

Have not been reading the newspapers for quite some time despite knowing the perils of it.  

So reading the newspaper today taught me how fragile life is and no matter what you do to protect it, there is a maniac out there who does not even know you exist and who will end it in the blink of an eye.  

To quote someone.  "All that I have lived for, has gone and now I wait to follow. "

Could not read or absorb Prasoon Joshi's rhyme of poignance.  Well how does one think in rhythm in times like this.  Hats off to you man.  

There was Anupam Kher who wrote that he was reduced to a dead man walking and how he had died everyday all these years by the acts of terrorism.  His words did not captivate me or hold me hostage to read to the end. 

I really don't know what ever he meant by what ever he did write exclusively for Hindustan Times.  

Times like these also carry a tag, people write EXCLUSIVELY.  

Spice jet grounded, travellers and their dream destination on cheap air fares don't take off.  But my heart goes out to the 5300 odd people employed in the organisation. 

Recall the days of 2006 when we piloted funding the education of kids dreaming to become a commercial pilot, going to the U.S. and coming back to a guaranteed job with Spice.  The bank took no guarantee on those loans, just a promissory note that repayment would happen.  

Even in those days, it was a far fetched dream.  Well I guess it would have flown for a few years atleast.  

Read a Hillary Clinton quote of 2011 that keeping snakes in your backyard to bite your neighbours does not mean it will not bite you.   To think of it what does the bitch think she was talking about.   The snakes had flown to the U.S. and bit them a decade ago.  To think that the US is what has funded the Taliban indirectly in the Afgan war.  A decade of war inflicted in Afghanistan. 1 trillion dollars and 3400 NATO troops dead and 13 years  later The US begins evacuation.  

What are we talking about.  GREEN ZONE 

Investigations show that coal imported from Indonesia to India was invoiced as twice the value of the actual price.  That's 29000 crores. Cost of electricity would have reduced by Rs 1 per unit.   You and I pay for it.  

MBBS and MD seats sold at Rs 3 crores each.   Why would the doctor not cheat the patients even if the patient was not helpless.  He has to recover the money in his lifetime and pay off his dad, that is if he cares enough for his dad else his dad can also fend for himself. How did dad get the Rs 3 crores remains unanswered.  

Hero Honda sells 500 motorcycles online in 8 hours through Snap deal. 

Online retailing is the new buzz.  Everyone is raising funds.  For every one successful venture 10 have closed down.   Some have booked losses more than what they sold.  Amazing.  Deep discounting.   Flipkart, Amazon and snapdeal  all survive thanks to the global funding.   The future is out there even if the combined losses aggregate 1000 crores in a year.  That's a lot of loss and we are still funding.  Latest to enter is QIA the guys who own Harrods.  Wow. Brick and mortar funds online.  Hope of making more money drives the entire world. 

If I were to tell you that this boom will not last and the dot com bubble and the airline bubble and that  eretailing is also a bubble, it is mind blowing. How funds keep investing into losses. 

Which brought me to an article on trust.   You have no clue who is driving you at uber, and how the London black  taxi cab is 20% more expensive than any other but you know that you can trust them.  Well ok so be it.  I would not trust no one with my life I don't know.  The girl made a mistake.  It could have been a boy and he could have got killed and it would not have made the headlines it did. But stop. Rape makes it sensational.  And oh my god after so many days of it being in the news I read that its "alleged rape". And the author closes the article with "Go girl sue uber for the  moon and the stars and the milkyway", which is basically saying "babe go and make money out of the situation if not anything else. 

Oh by the way I read that the Nirbhay episode is now 2 years old.  Mind blowing, I did not recall this.  What I did recall was that she was flown to Singapore for treatment. It's not funny what kind of a paradoxical life we lead ourself into. Human life and human abuse is gender biased.  

Radio cabbies work the hard way and the application on your phone works the smart way.  Oh by the way it even talks about the Sydney hostage drama on how the pricing of the cabs to evacuate the area went up.   It's called surge pricing.   Wow. 

The world is about making more money out of the given situation.  FROM YOU AND YOUR SMART PHONE. 

The rouble falls.  I did not read further   There are some 1500 odd medical students in Russia who are insulated because they pay in USD. 

Ferrari did not win a single pole position in 2014, for the first time since 1993.  Now that's big news.  The engineer pays the price, he was asked to leave. 

It's good to read the conclusion that Pakistan will still not change after this incident, it was scary to read further that it could lunge further deep into its neighbours which includes India. 

The picture of the day was police commandos outside Delhi public school.  Which proves what I had written that schools would become military establishments in the near future.  You simply can't protect the future.  You can't be everywhere.  

Oh yes the world has changed and yet it has not changed.   President of America is black and he has been taken for a valet and a server and the First Lady is just another lady is her experience. Racism still exists but not to the degree it was before and even the president of the United States is worried about the safety of his children if they were alone and black and without the secret service.  That's something. 

I foresee Delhi and the country turning into a fort during his visit as the chief guest to the Republic day parade. Meaning : Traffic SNARLS.

Traffic advisory to reach office during Republic day preparation is what I will read the newspaper for next.  Till then let Jack Ma also invest in India.  

Oh yes I almost missed the real news.  USA and Cuba resume ties 😊 after 53 years.  Had I not read the newspaper I would have missed it.  

And we talk about children and their future and Michael Jackson sang for the world with the rest of his fraternity "We are the world"  and then sang, "Man in the Mirror ", and where did he end up ?  Accused of child abuse, which brings me to the next question, who is the worst of the enemy the terrorist who kills your child or the friend or unknown person who abuses your child and sends him back home to live with it for the rest of his or her life. 

If only prayers could heal.

 

If only prayers could heal. 

 

I really don't pray.  

Though I still have a simple prayer that I mouth silently every time I visit the temple with or without the family, every time I step out of home with or without folding my hands in front of "THE GOD". 

 

"Thank you God for everything that I have and everything that I don't."

 

There is something that I read somewhere long time back, which has stuck to me for life.  

"Sometimes thank God for unanswered prayers." 

 

In hindsight once you arrive in the future you may actually realise that all the things that you prayed for at that point of time in history are not really the things that you now want actually, when you arrive in the future, which is now the present.    

Which is still not to say that, "LOVE" is not blind and that only fools rush in where even angels fear to tread.  

 

That's not to say I have not prayed ever and that my prayers have never been answered or been answered and that in times of helplessness or when there is nothing more constructive to do, I have turned to God in whom I don't believe in and those prayers have actually never been answered.  

God has always failed in those Big Crunch moments of my asking something from him because there was no human that I could turn to ask the same from.   

( for those of you who do believe in God and his powers would surely say that my prayers were not answered because I dont believe in God ), but that’s just a view Point. 

 

All the times that my prayers have not been answered, it has not strengthened my belief in “my disbelief in the powers of God”, it has only strengthened my belief that if and if there is God he does not interfere in our daily lives at all, in any possible way.  If he does not answer our call in times when we turn to him for our existential problems, why on earth would he actually participate in our non consequential problems and activities on earth.  

 

As a small kid of less than five I knew the chanting of OMNAMAH SHIVAYA, I knew the Gayatri mantra by heart. I used to chant it silently with my father with a rosary in between the fingers turning one bead at a time till the culmination of the circle.

( In the good old days the mantra were not to be spoken out loud. ) 

Obviously my father was faster but he never let me realise that he had finished his piece while I finished mine.  That was "meditation" for me at age 5, being "oblivious of one's surroundings." 

My father tried to further graduate me on to the “Hanuman chalisa”, to date I only remember half of it for the simple reason that I never could memorise it completely at that point of time and age, or ever after and that's where it stands to date, and is fading by the day. However even today in my weak moments I sometimes recite it till where ever I can in front of Hanuman ji’s idol In a temple, or simply lying down at home,  not because I know God will solve my life but because of my belief in my dad's belief that Hanuman ji solved his problems in life when he was a kid and ensured that he passed his class XII, and that is “Panki's” claim to fame.  Dad passed his class XII, that dad cleared engineering college entrance and DMET and stood 7th in merit does not matter in life.  What matters is that Hanuman ji ensured that dad passed his class XII after failing once, and is what he was eternally grateful for.  

Dad had this unflinching belief in Hanuman ji, because his father in turn had told him to pray to Hanuman ji if ever he felt lonely in life in boarding school. 

I guess it gave dad a helping hand and crutch to lean on, a superpower to look upto cos his father soon passed away and Hanuman ji was the man who changed his life positively cos he ensured that the mountain of life, the gateway to the future of life and doorway to heaven on earth in India was opened. After all -- Class XII is considered to the doorway to life in India.

He passed class XII, all thanks to Hanuman ji. 

 

It really does not solve anything or may be it does I really don't know and I really don't care. What matters is that I do it.  Imagine just saying half a prayer, without bothering to take time out to comprehend the meaning of the prayer even. Its Bloody foolish but so is Faith for a Non Believer. 

For someone who was the son of a man who prayed and always held his belief despite all the adversities that life threw at him unfailingly, his quest for God and being one with God was as unflinching as my disbelief in God and how life had been unfair to him and how obviously there was no God, so much so that I refused to fold my hands in front of God or enter a temple with my father, at one point of time. As I grew, I learnt how to avoid the stupid conversations that my actions and belief would bring up by simply folding my hands and politely doing the needful in family prayer meetings, on festivals and havan and the likes , to being the perfect child who conducted himself properly as worthy of being Jai Shanker's son.  But behind the facade I was screaming to my self. "God what stupidity man." I still do the same to a large extent because I don’t want to create any double standards of line of thought in my son’s mind as he grows up emulating my wife and me to a large extent.  I want him to have his own line of thought, as simple as that, and when the time comes for him to ask the questions, he can do so on his own, and find the answers on his own. 

 

Which brings me to a bigger question What is a prayer ? 

You can look it up in the dictionary and you can look around you and inside you and ask your parents about what is a prayer. Or may be you have your own meaning of the word “prayer”.  I am sure all of us do. 

 

For kids who go to school... The day begins with the morning assembly prayer, for kids who have studied in a convent, the day probably began with the morning spent in the chappel,time which is spent voluntarily of their own free will even before the morning assembly, kneeled down on the pew and praying for better marks in class 3,4,5….. Some kids can't do without it, irrespective of the religion that they belong to. God actually does not have a religion and neither do children, Adults do. Some parents can't do without that one teaspoon of curd for the child before he leaves for school on exam day, to that chandan ka tikka or the red Roli ka tikka , and that folded hands and the bowed head so that he or she does well.  

I really don’t know what  children ask at that point – God let me remember all that I have learnt and allow me to vomit it out on the Answer sheet in the written form successfully or God somehow transmit the answers to questions that I have no clue about or even better and simpler - God let the questions be only those that I know the answers to. 

I was always the type who prayed that "Bhagwan iss saal paas kara de, agle saal padhai kar loonga." Translated it simply means "please pass me this year, next year I will study. "

Well God endured and ensured that I passed year after year but then I guess he gave up because my next year I will study never came.   

So much so that when I did study and put my heart and soul along with sweat and blood and burnt the midnight oil along with the morning sun.  It all amounted to a big Naught. 

I guess God stopped riding with me on my academic train. I guess God ran out of pages for me in his good Red book. All that remained for me was the Big black book when it came to academics.  

In fact he stopped riding with me everywhere, because I have crashed each of the three cars I have owned big time, big as In BIG. 

To look at it differently may be GOD does ride with me everytime because No one ever got hurt other than the metal and plastic and glass and the mangled set of wires.   But not a scratch to any human skin.  

Yes, to that extent, "God always rides with me." 

 

We all wish and we all pray for all our wishes to be fulfilled. 

But I guess we all pray the most and the hardest and with complete sense of purity and selflessness when people you are close to are ill and not well, and we all pray the hardest when the inevitable is feared. 

I am sure all of us have lost people close to us,  people who have succumbed to their illness with or without a fight with the bacteria or the virus or that own mutant ninja cell activated for internal self destruction or whatever.  

Every time I have prayed for people's lives to be spared, even offering  my own as an exchange as the mythological Hindu stories have shown as the ultimate exchange offer, all in my stupid sense of naivety. Well truth be told, It has never worked for me, or should I say, it has never worked for the person I have prayed for. 

Every time  I pray, it bloody well does not work. 

So strong is that belief in my faith of the lack of strength in the honesty of my prayers that I simply don’t pray.  I simply mouth my Thank You quietly to God. 

 

That’s not to say that I don’t believe in the power of Prayers. I only believe when the time for the inevitable comes there is no prayer that can heal you, and if the time for the inevitable has not come, every prayer will heal. 

So since we don’t know anything about the future, Its always good to pray for safe measures, and who knows who is on the Good Books of God and GOD actually answers his or her prayer.   Every One deserves a second chance – even GOD. 

 

 

 

ABC of English and a Run backwards in time with myself and the language.

My love hate relationship struggle with English :

I still think in Hindi but I express my thoughts better in English. 

Why that is so ? I have no answer.

My recollection of the emphasis on English and its celebration of learning  goes back to the times I was a small child in kinder garden, my cousin who was a year elder to me learnt to say "YA" instead of a Simple "YES" and his mom was ecstatic about it.     "Ya" had arrived in life.

Education was of importance in childhood till the umbrella of my mother lasted and my father had this permanent expression that he had never gone to school. Oh yes ! I believed him for many many years. I guess it was his way of not participating in the activity.  

Time flew by, mother passed away, education was about going to school and coming back and going to play, for years together at an end. I don't remember my father ever asking me about homework or class work.  I don't remember much of the years that went by from class 2 to 7.

But what I do remember is the ignominy of the ridicule of an English teacher. Some teachers do have a way with words and  this particular English teacher did have a caustic tongue.  You never really know or understand the sarcasm or the intent of what they mean in those tender years.   But you do understand that it's not a word of praise. 

What changed my life was one simple expression by her :  

"If William Wordsworth could hear you speak, he would turn in his grave."

You may choose to correct my English in the previous sentence by stating that a sentence should not begin with a "BUT"  and make it the Butt of a joke for a future reference point but I have freed my mind of such rules of but and because cos there are no marks to be received.

That Wordsworth was a horrid man was something I was clear about because he wrote stuff that we were supposed to memorise and then recite in front of the class.  I was bad at both things - memorising was difficult but that I was bad at reciting is an understatement.  How bad was I ? Well it evoked the expression about Wordsworth turning in his grave. I guess it does not get worse than that.

Today I know for sure that Wordsworth did not turn in his grave, but at that point of time I imagined he would, because my teacher said he would, and I was responsible for his discomfort in his grave. (a child's imagination)

My non existent love for poetry and prose ended then and there,  so much so that even Shakespeare could not evoke any Interest in me even at the age of 16 when we had the coolest English teacher alive. 

Between this phase of my hate for poetry and dreading English class and the English teacher everyday, I found a new love. "Reading" reading English in particular cos Hindi was difficult to read and Munshi Premchand did not really write stuff for children to say the least. 

What started it ?  Library classes. 

Enid Blyton found her way into my life.  What started at reading a book a week became too less for me. I was soon exchanging rather borrowing books from other class mates who did not mind cos they probably never read at all, well definitely not one book a day.

So picture this  : I had read all the books in 4 years that could be read Famous Five,  Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Agatha Cristie and Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes  what ever there was to read including lots of Dickens and Twain and even stuff which I did not care about.

For that matter the mission was to get to the end of the book. There was an urgency, an urge for no reason at all, I had this small dictionary at my side all the time cos I never had an elder to ask the meaning. 

Dad used to come home late evening. I was one book down by then.

 

In 1987, Dad put me in a school which was closer to home. All of a sudden from cycling 36 km to attend school, I was 1 km away so that meant more reading time. The school library was small, I had difficulty in finding unread books.  Made a new friend, Gorky. He read books, his mom read books his brother read books. God ! His entire family read books.  His home was full of books. At least twice a year a carton full of books used to arrive at his house from the USA from his uncle.  Well, so I graduated to reading stuff not meant for my age.  Jeffrey Archer happened, Alistair McLean happened Wilbur Smith happened, Earl Stanley happened, Ian Flemming happened. I really did not care what I was reading so long as it took me into a world away from the one I was living in and the subject matter interested me.  Then Dad opened another window to the world of books. "Booklib" the lending library of Universal Book Sellers in Lucknow Hazratganj.  So there I was on my cycle visiting a lending library every now and then. Now, Gorky used to visit the British Council Library too, with or without his mother. Dad got a membership to that too for me. But the organised quiet structure of a real library with the cards and the indexing kind of overwhelmed me. Buklib was better,  it had Tintin and Asterix readily available too. Shakespeare was not part of the list. 

Wren & Martin also did not make their mark in my life.

Verbs adverbs adjectives nouns pronouns were just words I knew, their meaning and definition always escaped my mind. At the age of 39, a class 2 student can strike me with a lightning bolt and leave be dumbfound and speechless by saying "please tell me sentences and I will identify the verb in each one of them." 

So in the end I was an average joe in English when it came to marks. I really did not care cos no one at home cared or made me care for marks, so long as I kept passing. Julius Caesar made his forced entry in 1989 and I escaped the imprisonment in 1990.

The ides of March and U2 Brutus is all that remains today, and the memory of Mrs Browne telling me that she expected me to be in the 90s which ended in 76 on the mark sheet of class X when all my friends made it to the 90s by the dozen because they could memorise the Man. I don’t think I came across anyone who did not hit the 90s back then.  Well I never lived up to expectations ( the word Expectations rings the Bell on "Great expectations" too ) or my potential, but in hindsight today,  it feels nice to know there was a teacher who believed in me.

One fine day at the age of 33 I went on to buy the complete works of Shakespeare @ 80 % discount. It was a steal. A premium author at a discount and that is why it is called Pulp and then Pulp Fiction and that’s a book I have still not read though it was made into a major Hollywood movie.   

Shakespeare remains unopened in the hope that my son, Arjun would one day more than just flip through it and every page would encounter some sort of light and enlighten the young tender unbiased mind.

As I write this he has found the love for reading at the age of 6, unlike me its not to escape from reality. 

All he wants to read are Geronimo Stilton's and he prefers Hard Bounds to paper backs, and he wants the entire collection, so I guess he is on the right path..

My English remains the way it is and I have no answers and no contribution to make when Pooja and Arjun are debating about the choice of "prepositions"................  By the way between the start and end of penning down this journey  I discovered I do not know about "articles" too.

This note to myself was penned in the month end of March 2014

   

Loving and longing for the dead.

1982 or 1983 I don't recall the exact year my mom passed away on the hospital bed in kgmc.  Leave aside the month or the date.   

What I do recall are the few visits made at a few days gaps to see her late in the night cos dad used to work during the days and visit her during the evenings so sometimes I got to visit her.  I really don't recall how many days she was in the hospital.  What I do recall was that mom used to tell dad to treat me to an ice cream back on my way back home.  What I do remember is being bought a pair of North Star shoes on one of the trips back from the hospital.  And I remember that she never came back home.  

As I look back I realise how difficult it must have been for dad just to come back from work to home and pick me up and take me all the way to the hospital to meet mom. No wonder it was not an everyday routine for me.  Dad went everyday to see her directly from work.   Now i realise how difficult it must have been for him to leave her with an external help lady and the non existant nursing help.   I am glad I don't recall most of it.    Years later too  I recall going with dad  to the hospital dept. where mom passed away  spend a few minutes there and come back home quietly without a spoken word exchanged between us.  It was kind of a ritual visit like the once a month that my dad used to take me for dinner to Clarks avadh  and just watch me eat  as I look back now it was always a chow  and he used to only finish what my small tummy could not accommodate.  

Because I had done those visits to the last spot with my father, I know why my sister and her husband still visit the place where they buried their few year old child, every time they visit Lucknow.    The pull, the need, the desire, the want, the urge to be there where you feel your loved ones are still there physically.   That's the tug of the heart that cant be resisted.     

Strangely Somewhere I feel I never have the urge and if there is an urge I don't have the physical need to be there ever at that place.