Going Bong-kers

'Tui ki ghoti?' she asked me.

(Are you a ghoti?)

'Huh?' I responded brightly, while my mind cartwheeled over thoughts of ghoti (a metallic container for water), baati (bowl) and other such utensils.

'I mean, are you from West Bengal or East Bengal?' she explained patiently, treating me with the upturned-nose tolerance a fish-hating, probashi Bengali deserves from a blue-blooded Calcuttan.

The brass, steel and aluminium vessels making towers in my mind came crashing down as I thought for a second before replying.

This was Delhi 1999 and I had never been asked this question before. When I came home and related this conversation to my grandmother, who had left Calcutta at the age of 20 and refused to learn Hindi or what gender a car was when you referred to it, hooted with laughter (if you can imagine a 70-year old lady doing so).

As a probashi Bengali (one raised outside of Bengal), Kolkata as a concept, as a city, as a living breathing entity has always been just outside my reach. My parents were hopeless - hailing from UP and Delhi, they ensured that I spoke Hindi as a child. Ostensibly because it helped me communicate with everyone, but in reality because it helped them use Bangla as a code, against me. When I caught on (at the tender age of 5), I tenaciously tried speaking Bangla, though even today I translate from Hindi and all my true-blue Bong friends/relatives/in-laws laugh uproariously/smile tolerantly/smile indulgently respectively.

Eta shotti hocchhe.

Is what I say, which translates from wrong Bengali into wrong English as 'It is being true.' For that's what I'd say when I translate 'Yeh sach hai' into Bangla.

As you can see, my ignorance of all things Calcuttan and many things Bengali did not work well for me when I got married. After all, I chose to marry a Bengali, from Kolkata, who loves fish, who gets all mushy at the thought of Durga Pujo and can spend it nowhere but Kolkata, whose idea of keeping in touch with his roots (in extreme circumstances) often includes checking vegetable rates at the para market on some obscure website while he sits in the Middle East, whose mother mastered Bangla literature, who grew up reading fantastic, homegrown, children's Bangla literature where they eat monda-mithai rather than the unknown and unknowable scones Enid Blyton told me about, who reads and writes Bangla like a natural while I labour over the joint letters and must read out loud.


On a serious note, the one thing I regret in all this is that the beauty of Bangla literature, to me, is like outer space. I know it exists, but I have not experienced it first-hand. I want to remedy that, because my probashi father, Premchand-reading and shaayri-reciting, educated himself in Bangla and can now hold his own in a conversation on Bangla prose and poetry. So I have no excuse. I read Bengali bloggers and they are all steeped in knowledge of their literature as well as the world's, and I feel ashamed to know only Shakespeare.

In the one year since I got married, I have had several occasions to realise how little Bengali-ness pervaded my growing-up years. Sure, Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandma's Bag of Tales) was read out to me and my brother at bedtime, but so were Russian fairy tales and Noddy. Durga Pujo meant new clothes, but the thrill of Bijoya Dashami and the bhashaan (immersion of the idol) went unfelt as I watched the Ravana effigy at the local Ramlila park explode while a tape-recorder played the giant's raucous laughter and people shouted 'Siya pati Ramchandra ki Jai'.


I think I am a bad Bengali. No, I know I am. My sweet tooth may have been a saving grace, but brownies and besan laddoos win over rosogollas every time. About fish, the less said the better. I dislike shukto, faint at the thought of shinni. I feel no regional affiliation at all. I don't scan admission lists or colleagues' names to see how many other names are Bengali ones. I don't go insane with joy if Sourav Ganguly scores a century. Nor do I allege regional bias when he is kept off the team. And, my goodness, I don't ooze horror like my Dida used to at the new breed of 'shekshy' (sexy) Bengali sirens 'Ghenna' (disgust), she would say, and stomp off when Bips pouted on screen.

Which means that when I am roaming the pandals of Kolkata next week in my notun-bou avatar in my first ever Kolkata Durga Pujo, I will need to lie low. Kolkata's going nuts about, and because of, Pujo as it probably does every year. But this time I watch in alarm the building tide of enthusiasm as seen on Bangla TV, because I'm going to be there. And, since I do love mishti doi, rolls and phuchkas, I will be part of the traffic jams and the serpentine queues, of the crowds at Kalpana Mishthanna Bhandar, at Samrat's Hot Rolls, at Annapurna Mishthanna Bhandar, at Bedouin's Biryani outlets, at Madhukshara Mishthanna Bhandar, at Dolly's Tea House, at Maa Durga Shooeets, and, eventually, I will be trying to cut the line at Maa Kali Chemists, asking for Pudin Hara.

In Memoriam

He knelt at her grave, remembering her face as it had been when he had first seen it, radiant in the moonlight, white marble with a touch of human pink. He had inhaled sharply at the beauty of his wife. She had lowered her eyes and the submission that followed would last throughout their married life.



Fourteen children. He was a busy man, and she had been quiet, uncomplaining, silently supportive if not always understanding what his life was like. Affairs of state kept him from her. And though he could not confide in her about taxation issues and political upheavals, though she would not understand the burden of what it meant to be him, he still waited eagerly for time he could spend with her, coming away soothed, calmed and enclosed in unconditional love.



The son she gave birth to was the bane of his existence. How was it, that the thing that tied them together also destroyed all that they had stood for?



Dead, cold, gone.



He would remember her. He would make sure the world remembered her. Cloistered in his gilded cage, a stooped man with failing eyesight, he would squint into a convex mirror that allowed him to see her grave. And the shimmering white mausoleum built over and around it.



The world would come to pay homage. To her. To him. To art. To beauty. But for him, it was just his beloved's grave.

TagTime

I've been tagged. Okay, make that very, very past tense.



First, Choxbox tagged me to list 5 eccentric things about myself. Now, that's hard to do, because however weird I may be, I am of course completely normal in my own head. So let me just list things that people think are weird about me (oh, you judgemental people - you're all going to hell!):

• I hate mixing up food on my plate. Everything is cooked separately, right? So it should be eaten separately too, right? Mixing it up (other than with rice) is disrespect to the cook, right? So my plate always has clearly demarcated areas and runny foods MUST go into a bowl. (It may now be superfluous to inform my readers that I have never lived in a hostel.) This means that if someone is serving me a helping of something , I point frantically to the unused spot of my plate where it should go. Which my loving mother ignores, always dumping, say, daal where sabzi used to be, or making my roti all soggy with a misplaced helping of gravy :(


• I think I use up several people's quota of Dettol soap. I wash my hands before I brush my teeth, after using the broom, after touching (even with just two fingers) the kitchen-counter mop, after putting away newly-bought vegetables, after bringing out packets of frozen meat to thaw, so what if the block of icy meat cannot possibly ooze unmentionable stuff on me.


• I CANNOT walk barefoot in the house, even my own. I carry slippers even if I go somewhere for a single night. There was once a fire scare in our next-door building and we had to evacuate the house at 4 am. I rushed to grab my slippers before heading out, even as smoke billowed out of the next building. I am a very unhappy person if I don't have my slippers on. Yet, if it is a guaranteed clean floor, or grass, I love the feeling of a fresh, cold surface under my feet.


• I am afraid of ghosts. The moment I am alone in the house at night, every horror scene from any scary movie I have ever watched will float back into my mind and often cause me to stay up at insane hours of the night. As a child I used to sleep with my head covered even in the summer, thinking (ah, innocence) that a ghost couldn't get past the white sheet. Hah! Ghosts invented the white sheet!
  
  

Ok, I'm sorry Choxbox, but I'll stop here. I cannot think of any more eccentricities!

For this, I tag: Suki, Eve's Lungs, Orange Jammies, Sandeepa, Candy.

********************

Now for Suki's tag. I'm being lazy and pasting the rules straight from her page.




Rule 1: Without changing the first word, after each letter of the alphabet, write a sentence that captures you/your essence.

Rule 2: Tag as many people as you want, but do tag at least one. This is an eye opening experience and can express to those who read it, things about you that they did not really understand before.

Rule 3: List who you are tagging.



*A* Accept blame for your mistakes and learn from them.



*B* Break stereotypes.



*C* Create happiness.



*D* Decide never to look back.



*E* Explore the reasons behind other people's actions, especially when they are too nice or too mean to you.



*F*Forgive only when you are certain you no longer hold a grudge against the person who wronged you.



G* Grow closer to your loved ones, not away.



*H* Hope that at the end of your life, you are surrounded by people who love you unconditionally.



*I* Ignore snobs and hypocrites.



*J* Journey into people's minds to see what they are like. And treat them accordingly.



*K* Know your priorities in life.



*L* Love unconditionally.



*M*Manage time. (Sorry Suki, ripped this one off!)



*N*Notice the small things people do for you. And reciprocate.



*O* Open yourself to suggestions.



*P* Play games that make you laugh and/or sweat.



*Q* Question assumptions.



*R* Relax with people who bring you peace.



*S* Share time.



*T* Try to avoid sarcasm.



U* Use all your muscles, but your heart and brain the most.



*V* Value the time you have with people you love.



W* Work to live, don't live to work.



X* X-ray your mind to analyse the real reasons behind your actions.



*Y *- Yield to wisdom, to love, to puppies, to hugs.



*Z* Zoom into the past and dig for happy memories whenever you are down in the dumps!

I tag... Choxbox, Mad Momma, Tharini,

Change

While I talked and smiled, hugged and listened, slept and breathed...

Delhi decided she'd had enough of summer and slipped quietly into a fledgling winter.

The cold waits for me, around early-morning-hazy-foggy roads, in blurry monuments rising out of a suddenly-dark 6 a.m., in the bathroom under the shower, on the balconies late at night, outside the rolled-down car windows, in the slight sniffles from wearing sleeveless on a Novemberish September evening, on the blades of the fan that I rarely use now, in the welcome heat spiral over my cup of coffee.

Winter comes in. Cold and warm, chilly and friendly, distant and near, grey and bright, frosty and sunny.

I wait. And hope that spring is far behind.

Cricket is Just a Game...

...is not something you'd have believed last evening as howls of shock or joy erupted from houses across India during the nail-biting-at-every-step Twenty 20 World Cup final match between, who else but, India and Pakistan.

The thrill was tremendous, the finish was close, and the adrenalin was all over the place. But one thing spoilt it all.

As the Pakistan captain, Shoaib Malik came up to speak to Ravi Shastri, his first words were (and I paraphrase somewhat because I wasn't expecting memorable words), 'I'd like to thank Pakistan and Muslims all over the world for their support.'

WHAT??? This is a man the world was listening to. Who captained an able, strong side to the finals in a world-class tournament. Who (supposedly) plays for his country and not a religion.

We've all heard people make derogatory comments about the hush in Indian Muslim neighbourhoods if Pakistan loses a match to India. It is often said that there are celebrations in Muslim-majority areas in Indian cities if India loses to Pakistan. These are rumours that are used as facts in any communally tense situation. But to have a man give them the backing of truth by speaking those words into a microphone was upsetting, chilling, and took away from the rush we'd been experiencing ever since Sreesanth caught out that last Pakistani wicket.

If he believes that Muslims around the world were rooting for Pakistan, where does that leave Irfan Pathan (the best bowler on the Indian side yesterday) and other Muslim players on the Indian team? With that awful statement Malik placed a giant question mark on the patriotism of Muslims around the world.

I believe that the orthodox members of any community can damage their own people with far greater ease than any other, rival group can ever do. Malik proved that yesterday. And I wonder how many anti-Muslim people were listening and have now added this to their ammunition against a community that really doesn't need more bad PR.

The Last Laugh

She watched them cry and mourn. Oh they would miss her. She'd miss them too.

But she was better off here. Finally, she had the peace her name had promised her for 78 years. No doctors. No tubes. No needles. No ugly hospital gowns. No numbers and data telling people how well (or not) she was doing.

If only she could tell them how glad she was that one crazy life was over. Heaven had a lot of parties and boy, was she going to live it up for a change.

5th September

It's Teacher's Day today. And I thought I'd write up one memory I have of a strict teacher who taught me one of the earliest lessons of my life.

It was April of 1988. I was new to the school. Our home room teacher was a lady called Abha Banerjee. A very strict teacher, who apparently glowered at girls whose skirts were too short, who was known for cutting boys' hair if they weren't properly groomed, and who we all were very, very scared of.

I forget what class we had but the teacher hadn't shown up. Like all 9-10 year-olds tend to do, we were making quite a racket. Groups of kids were playing in the corridor, some were scribbling on the blackboard, there was a game of Cluedo going on in one corner, and suddenly in the middle of it all, someone let out a Tarzan-like yell. That put us on to another decibel level altogether! The staff room was near enough that someone would have heard, and would make it their business to punish us. In the hush that followed, we all looked at each other and waited for retribution to arrive.

It did, promptly, in the form of Banerjee Ma'am.

We all stared at our desks as she gave us a piece of our mind without once raising her voice. And then she said, "Who shouted like that?" When there was silence, she repeated her question, adding that the whole class would be punished. There was no way she could have guessed who had done it. She could have asked all day and been none the wiser.

In the continuing, pindrop silence, suddenly a boy at the back raised his hand. There were murmurs. Oh he'll definitely have to go to the Principal. Do you think they'll call his parents? Our childhood imaginations ran riot, visualising the things they could do to him.

Harsh Chadrath (I don't know if I'm spelling his last name correctly) was an average kid in our class. Not a rank-holder, but not someone who flunked either. Just your regular school-going kid who, at the age of 10, wasn't hugely interested in acquiring an education. He stood up slowly and said "Ma'am, I did it. Sorry Ma'am."

Banerjee Ma'am stared at him, said "Really? It was you? Come here."

Head bowed, Harsh walked to the front of the class and stood before all of us. We waited.

And then, Banerjee Ma'am raised his arm like they do for the winning boxer in the ring and announced:
"Harsh Chadrath, the hero of our class. He can take responsibility for his actions."

Harsh got a stern glare and that was that. I don't think the implications of it all hit him at the moment as he walked back to his seat with a goofy smile. But that moment, that decision of our teacher's, all of these have stayed with me even nearly 20 years on.

It was brave of Harsh to do what he did. And Banerjee Ma'am could have punished him. In which case he would never have told the truth again.

Instead, she took the chance to teach us all a lesson for life: If you do something, you take responsibility for it. And you don't drag your team down with you.

Totter Potter, "ala" Govinda!

There's been a current in the air. I can hear far-off drum beats since morning. Any Indian knows that means a festival and definite excitement. Occasionally, loud, rowdy cheers waft in through my window although I cannot see the young boys (for that is what they sound like) who are so happy! Since noon, people have been going to their balconies and windows and peering down to see what's going on. A while back, some young boys and girls and uncle-auntys began to line the lane behind our house. I could tell something was about to happen.

This is Bombay, and today is Janmashtami. Need I say more by way of explanation?

Finally, a bunch of young men arrived in the lane and began chanting Goouuuuvindaaaa, Goouuupaaaalaaa, Goouuuuvindaaaa, Goouuupaaaalaaa. Then they began demanding water in this novel fashion:"V for water, V for water!"

Hmmm....anyway, this post isn't about the alphabet.

I had heard that the real show happens in more crowded, typically Maharashtrian areas. The boys who do the climbing and breaking are absolute pros, and I believe they are sometimes even insured against a fall resulting from a shaky human pyramid!

Still, I was rather excited to notice a pot strung up on a rope that went across the lane behind our house. So there was going to be action in that sleepy by-lane!!!

I wanted to see it all, properly. But I didn't want to run downstairs and risk missing the event. So I climbed shakily on to the kitchen counter for a better view as the youths assembled.

I needn't have worried. Since they were not pros, it took them a considerable while to get organised and manage the feat. Enough time for me to fetch my camera, even! Several permutations and combinations were attempted, and several falls were broken, just about.

As a thin group of spectators watched, a nimble-footed guy, who reminded me of Mowgli from The Jungle Book, darted up, using the others' elbows, thighs and shoulders as footrests, and in a swift move had reached the handi or pot suspended above him. He hung on to it for sometime, and then smashed it.

Bright red gulal came down in powdery gusts and streaked the team with scarlet. There were loud cheers, much clapping and everyone went home.

My little group of amateurs will certainly not make it to the news or to images of Mumbai on Janmashtami that will be splashed on newspapers tomorrow. I don't know if they got any money as a reward for their participation, as is the usual custom. But they seemed to enjoy themselves. And it is the spirit that counts. They lived Janmashtami for those few moments, and I got a window-seat to view it all from!

Whhhoooshhh!

She blew out the candles as another year began. Her friends cheered. Her parents' faces shone with pride and affection. The balloons swayed in the sea breeze on their balcony as she turned a year older.

Her shining black hair ruffled by all the hugs she'd received. Her eyes were slightly moist from all the goodwill in the air. Her new saree, to mark her adulthood, swished around her legs and made her feel feminine, pretty, irresistible.

18. She was here. College began in a month. Psychology to study. New friends to make. Finally, co-education and boys! Debating championships to win. Class trips out of town. In a few months, a license and her own car.

Closing her eyes, she made a wish.

Please let the tumour be benign.

All in a Day's Work

They are born to be used. Dressed up to look their best, they are sold for money. Rudely taken from their homes, they huddle close to others of their kind until someone uproots them a second time, bundles them together with strangers, and hands them to an unknown entity.


They will never return. Having water to drink will not ensure their survival, and they will start dying.


Before the day is over, some of them will apologise. Some will express undying love. Some will form beautiful, but inadequate, expressions of sympathy. Some will just look good. Some will smell good too.

People will be drawn to their natural beauty. But no one will care to look deeper. To see beyond the obvious to what remains unspoken as the wilting flowers are thrown away after they have outlived their utility.

Happy birthday.

Congratulations.

I love you.

Marry me.

My sympathies.

Get well soon.

Missing you.

Those are the things we make flowers say for us. What would flowers say if they could speak for themselves?