Everyone experiences certain incidents in their lives, that change them permanently one way or the other. One incident that I remember changed me and affects me to this day.
I was probably 9 when this incident occurred, but I may be off by a year or so. The sight of the boy is clear as day in my memory, despite all this time having passed. He was probably a couple of years older than me, tall, lean as a stick, bones sticking out; especially evident because he was completely naked. He was shivering from head to toe. I don't know how he came to our door that afternoon. My mom first saw him through the window and she ran to the door to find out what was happening. The boy managed to extend his hand and indicate that he was hungry. I saw tears well up in my mom's eyes as she dashed to the kitchen to get some food for the boy. I just stood there at the door, trying to understand what was happening. I had never encountered an incident like this in my protected life. What was going on here ? Why was the boy without clothes, why was he shivering ?
My mom returned with some food in a disposable plate and gave it to the kid. He sat on our front porch and gobbled up the food so quickly that I still shudder when I think about how hungry he must have been. While he was eating my mom went back into the house and got him some of my used clothes. The rest of my memory is quite faded and I don't know what happened next. But one thing is sure, that day changed a certain part of me. The fact that I remember that incident to this day tells me that I was pretty much shaken up after coming face to face with some stark realities of life for so many kids; poverty, hunger, abandonment. I was blessed enough to be shielded from those realities all that while and when I was forced into such a situation, I could not fathom how something like that could exist.
Did I ask my mom after the boy had left ? What did I ask her ? Did she explain to me... that I think she did if I remember correctly. Did I understand ? I am pretty sure I did, though I am not sure if it lasted for more than a couple of days because a kid is easily overpowered with newer memories being formed, especially joyful ones.
I don't know what triggered my mind to think about this incident, but I tear up every time I think about it. Fast forward to the 21st century and what has changed ? Living in a developed nation, I don't ever see anything like that at least in front of my eyes. But inner cities in America, rural areas in India and China, and almost every city in Africa is probably witness to such incidents daily. A kid somewhere is woken up from a slumber that he was in. Faced with seeing a brethren of his stark naked, hungry and clutching to dear life. How can we proudly call ourselves human beings ? All the religions of the world and the holy men who profess to be messengers of their respective Gods, should be ashamed that we are still living in a world where we cannot care for our own children. All the leaders of the world should hang their head in shame, because we cannot feed our own children. And all the people of the world who have a meal at their table, should hang their head in shame because charity is unknown to them. Shame on us people. We can be better than this.
I have some links that I care about, read and see if it moves your heart.
One.org
Freedom from Hunger
Bread
Its been a bleak weekend so far, been drizzling since morning. Bit nippy for this time of May actually. Amidst such weather, a hair cut is what my restless mind has been focused on for the past week or so and so to put that nagging to rest, I decided that I should have a hair cut, weather not withstanding. Drove to the strip mall in my community, remembering that a new stylist had opened shop in the neighborhood. This was a nice opportunity to check them out. Walked up to the counter, a lady greeted me
"Hello"
"Hi !, I'd like a Haircut and Shampoo please"
"Sure, whatz your name ?"
"Be El Ay Hech"
Tap, tap, tappity tap...beep.
"Thanks, follow me please."
Followed the lady, plopped in her chair and I waited for her next question...absolutely certain of what it will be.
"What kind of a hair cut would you like ?"
"Blah , Blah , Blah, Blahhhh blaaaahh blah. Not spikey please !"
Small grin... and out comes the comb and the trimmer, and she gets to work on my hair.
I leaned back in the chair and my flash back switch immediately turned on. When I was growing up, precisely on the last Sunday of every month my dad would schedule a visit by the hair stylist (ahem, barber in cruder 20Th century parlance !!). The hair stylist would come home, with his kit, complete with scissors and comb, oily gel(that stank to high heavens actually) and all sorts of paraphernalia. The mystique was in figuring out what the next contraption would be used for. There was this little device with two handles that looked like a lawn mower, only smaller, as if shrunk in some scientific experiment. It went "Clippety clippety clop" when he used it to trim the sides. It was an old world equivalent of today's electric trimmers. A hand mirror positioned at an appropriate angle provided me the necessary view of the locks being discarded. A razor that was sharpened on a barber's stone, was the mechanism to trim of excess hair on the nape of the neck. Invariably that resulted in a cut on my nape and I hated that pain the most.
The most interesting part of the entire hair cut though, was the conversation. I would be asked everything that one could possibly ask a person. Right from what grade I was currently studying in, what were the subjects that I liked, to what I wanted to be when I grew up. I actually did not enjoy this invasion of privacy even then. (Talk of someone being far ahead of his times..ahem ahem ;) ). Anyway I put up with it because this person was an old barber that my dad considered to be good and good barbers were very far and few. So the 'Asian-guilt-and-duty' charm worked its way into me and I could never get myself to say anything against this person. All said and done, the task would take at least an hour. There was no rush. The world waited for the barber and so did we.
Years passed by and the barber retired, his son took over his reins and the son continued his dad's legacy. He watched me grow out of school, into college and beyond. But the conversation would always be very personal, I knew everything about his family and his home and he knew everything about my family and my life. Well almost everything. He still doesn't know about the dash of honey I would pour into the ant hill below the badam tree. You see I would love to see the ants signal each other and create a frenzy when they discovered food right at their doorstep..but then I digress and that is a topic for some other day.
After I moved out of home, I never got to hear about this barber. But sometimes on occasions such as this, I tend to remember those conversations.
"You like it ?"
The voice suddenly woke me up from my day dream.
The lady was smiling and looking at me expectantly. I noticed that she was finished with the hair cut and had even trimmed the sides.
"Yup, that looks perfect" I said.
She led me to the shampoo station and a couple of minutes later, I was standing at the front desk writing her a tip and bidding her good bye.
I checked the clock as I walked out and it was 20 minutes since I had come into the salon. I know the ladies are amazed at this, but a guy's hair cut does only take that long, if at all. I have had stylists finish it up in 10 minutes flat. I loved the chance to dream when my hair was being trimmed, something that I would long for growing up. This new stylist had let me be to myself and hadn't bothered me. My earlier stylist was a nice lady, but chatty like my old barber. When I moved from that place, I missed the conversations that I would have with her. We would exchange stories of our respective countries, our childhoods and our current life. The location was different but the conversations had a similar ring, something very personal. The fact that I am thinking about the conversations tells me that even though I had crossed over to the greener side with this new stylist, I had not liked the lack of conversations. The cliched grass is not greener on the other side, isn't it ? But I had to discover it for myself.
We've had a relatively mild winter this year. But things have suddenly changed for the worse in February. Tonight as I tap out these words, the mercury is hovering in the single digits outside. Its pretty warm and cozy inside, thanks to the central air conditioning. Yeah when I talk about single digits, I mean temperature measured in degrees Fahrenheit, so that would be about -20 degrees Celsius. Brrr.... ain't that cold ? Its snowing lightly too and the cold air is gonna make it stick and skid prone in the morning. Winter in North America, well at least the parts that really do have a winter, unlike the lucky folks living down in Hawaii or Florida for that matter, is not really a time to find the best of cheer. The streets empty out at sunset, which at this time of the year occurs between 4 and 5 pm. All our tropical plants have now been lugged indoors and are being kept alive by the heat of the central air. The lack of humidity does take a toll on the poor beings, especially the Jasmine and the curry plant, but we do compensate for the lack of moisture with an extra helping of mist and water for the roots. But one can tell that they are not in the best of their health, nor pleased with the cross they are made to bear.
Its not as if their human counterparts are any better off either. Especially the ones that were raised in tropical or temperate climes. I have a theory about these things. It proves itself over and over again, whenever I see a person in early fall wearing a thick fur coat, way too thick for his/her size and bulked up with all the padding inside. I think to myself...aha, this person is definitely new to a North American winter ! The reason is this. Once you get used to living in such climes, you rather quickly learn that the secret of staying warm in such weather is not in wearing the thickest coat that you can buy at the mall, but rather in the number of layers you wear. The more the number of layers inside, the warmer you feel. You see if I were to go on a tangent here and try to rationalize why that is the case, you would hear me explaining about the way heat is conducted in insulating mediums, and how every layer of insulation adds up, and also perhaps point to the science behind the thermos flask. In simple lay man terms, it is easier to explain that each layer of clothing, followed by air trapped between the layers, creates an insulating medium which in turn traps your own body heat and voila you have invented the worlds best space heater. I digress again.
Coming back to the original intent of this post itself, I can already see tomorrow's events unfolding. It shall begin with a snow shoveling exercise to clear the driveway, an unavoidable part of winter. Especially if you want to avoid the fine and a reprimand from the home owners association, not to mention being sued by your neighbor because his cat slipped on the sliver of ice in your driveway while attempting to take a crap under the dried out pot of tropical fern. Then comes the scraping of snow now turned to ice, from the wind shield of the car parked outside the garage. A slow drive to work, making sure that not to slam the brakes too hard, careful with the gas on the inclines so as not to swerve and go skidding into the opposite lane and crashing into oncoming traffic. A regular winter's morning!
The reason I mention all this is because as it turns out, the coldest day growing up was when I would have to wake up at 5 AM in the morning to study for my exams. The only reason I did that was to please my mom, who along with millions of other contemporaries of her time, strongly believes that the eerie dawn hours are the best time for the brain to soak up information. I vehemently challenge that theory, if not for anything else, at least because according to MY brain, that is the best time when a person needs to get a little more snuggly into their pillows and snooze, curled up inside a cozy blanket or comforter. If the above mentioned paraphernalia aside, this also includes another warm body that would be an added bonus. Anyways I digress again. I would wake up, cover myself with a blanket, like a maharishi sitting for a penance, book on the bed and start to read. Couple of paragraphs into my reading, I would adjust the pillow ever so slightly so as to be able to lean in and still keep reading. The next paragraph would go a little bit slower. Soon the pillow would be on my chest, I would be upside down on my belly, the book in front of me, my legs up in the air and the next sentence would start to feel like a paragraph. A few minutes later, my head on the book, the blanket over my shoulders, a snore would be barely distinguishable. Alas, the eerie cold dawn had gotten its victim yet again. The temperature outside of course would be a balmy 20 degrees centigrade ! Talk of changed perspectives in life.
This weekend, we were watching a DVD rented from NetFlix called "Malgudi Days". Yes ! Yes ! the same Malgudi days... remember the Shankar Nag directed saga that derived its inspiration and stories from R. K. Narayan's collection of writings about a fictional town in Karnataka called 'Malgudi'. It frankly brought back some very fond memories of childhood. I would be riveted to the screen watching episodes of this series as they aired once a week. I don't remember the exact day of the week on which they aired, but Swami and his friends were a real thing those days.... its amazing how the human mind tries to find comparisons to its own real life surroundings when a good story is read or narrated. I would imagine myself with my buddies as we practised cricket in the open yard of my neigbour's home. The two neem trees in their courtyard were as scary as the banyan tree in front of swami's house. Girish karnad who in later episodes went on to portray Swami's dad was the epitome of strictness around school talk circles.
The real drive to watch all this came from a class that my mom took one day when I was in 7th or 8th grade. It was a lesson from our English text book and it was a short story excerpted from R. K. Narayan's book. It was called 'Swami and his friends' . The story was about how swami's dad chastises him for just playing cricket the whole of the summer without opening a single text book. He makes him clean the dust caked books and the story goes on about swami grumbling about all that...I forget the whole story, but that was so close to reality..because come on let's be real here...how many of us have really opened any text book during our summer vacation. I would open books...but they would be strictly limited to novels and short stories, if not comics. So the story couldn't be any more closer to home.
Anyways, I sincerely believe that this series by Shankar Nag was one of the most important milestones in the history of Indian television. It probably can be equated to some milestones like MASH airing on American television. The theme song is probably ingrained in the mind of every person of my generation. Even after so many years they bring back goose bumps when I watch it.
That's my two cents for the weekend.
Citations:
Its winter, so the hikes are down to a bare minimum. In spring, summer and fall, we make it a point to hike more frequently. The woods in this part of the country are amazing for trekkies. Although devoid of exotic creatures that might scare say someone trekking in the amazon jungles, they do make up for that with enough bugs that seem to have a particular penchant for my blood. No amount of deet seems to make any difference, while my wife hikes along, blissfully untouched by the nasty bugs. I console myself thinking, it must be the sweetness of my blood.. ahem.
This trek fever is nothing new. I remember the time when devoid of the internet, summer holidays were filled with loads of free time and nothing much to do. One such day in the summer of 88 found me hatching a plan for a biking trek with my buddies from school. Actually both of them were juniors of mine in school, but they usually ended up hanging out at my place (supposedly to study) in the evenings. The destination planned was a shrub and eucalyptus grove that doubled as a wild life sanctuary on the outskirts of town. In fact it was a conserved wild life sanctuary that was home to two rare species, the 'Black Buck' and the 'Great Indian Bustard'.
Fuelled by the dream of emulating heroes from child hood novels like the Hardy boys or one of the characters in Enid Blyton's novels 'The Famous Five' or 'The Secret Seven', we were three dudes on rickety bikes(The pedalled variety) with a mission. In very Don Quixotic style, our mission was to spot the rare black buck or even rarer bustard on a day trip that would take us deep into the forest and back.
Our moms packed us a picnic spread, the contents of which I forget. We biked some 5 km before we reached the outskirts of the forest. It was dry, featureless, dusty and completely devoid of any signs of life. The little spots of asphalt that existed underneath us till then quickly disappeared as we went deeper into the forest. We struggled to pedal on the gravel as it wreaked havoc on the flimsy tires. Remember this was not the fancy 'All Terrain Bike' that is so common these days. It was a bike from the days when the concept of gears was unheard of(At least in the town that I grew up in). While pedalling up an incline, one is going at it alone, with no help from the gears.
After maybe half an hour or so of biking we decided to leave the wide road and enter the forest at a trail head. How we decided to do that is quite scary, now that I think about it. We had no map whatsoever of the forest, and none of us had been there before, so the first trail head we saw prompted us to make a quick choice. And for those of you who have hiked in US forests, a trail head might sound very appealing. This was no such trail head. It had no markings, no indicators. The only reason we discovered that it was a trail head was because of the slight depression in the ground from all the foot falls.
A form of shrub called the 'Lantana' is a common feature in the deccan plateau. The thorns are long pointed needles that can cut a toe or finger and probably even sever it. The reason I mention it is because the trails are usually littered with fallen thorns like these. In most cases much of the path is fenced on both sides with this wild shrub. The last thing you want is to be biking straight into such a welcoming arm. But that is exactly what we did, as we biked along the trail's curved and meandering route, practically oblivious to the danger.
Hardly five minutes down the path and we heard a loud 'splat' and a hiss. It was our friend 'Lantana' piercing through my friend's bike tires. So after a few helpless glances at each other, our biking expedition turned into a bike pushing expedition.
An hour or so deep into the forest, we found a clearing to have our first break, spread out our munchables and tried to admire the dusty beauty or lack thereof of the surrouding thickets. The eucalyptus trees added a medicinal fragrance to the surrounding air, especially during the flowering season. Other than the patchy shade from these trees and the occasional twirp from an unknown bird, we were in absolute wilderness country. As dry as Sub Saharan Africa. Our hopes of seeing deer, and the bustard were already on the wane.
Dragging ourselves and the bikes from the spot, we went on deeper, came up to a fork in the trail, not knowing which one to take, just randomly picked one and went trotting along. Another hour, a couple of bottles of water later, we were still aimlessly wandering around with no animals or anything green in sight. Very soon the trail seemed to breakup into many forks and then merge and then break up again. After a while we had no clue about how we would trace our way back. We did not have bread crumbs either to leave a track, like Hansel and Gretel.
We soon came upon an artificial watering hole meant for the animals. It was bone dry with cracks in its clay bed. We had our lunch and soon started again on our trail, not wanting to think about retracing our path back. We even talked about the worst case scenarios if we could'nt get back to town before sun down. Would they send a search party ? Would we be able to survive on the rations we had ? The thrill of being lost and the dangers of it was hitting us at the same time. We didn't know if we had to be excited or panic about it.
Shoe laces undone, dust covered, we soon came upon a hillock and decided to climb atop to get a better view of the surroundings. What we saw was probably one of the best sights of the day. The hillock sloped down and opened out into vast farm land. And out there beyond the fields we saw a narrow asphalted road and beyond that a hamlet with smoke stacks sticking out. We had no idea what the village was called nor if we had walked into another dimension of space. We were just overjoyed to have found fellow humanity.
When we reached the hamlet we asked around and realized that it was a cobbler's village on the outskirts of our town, on the same road that we had taken just that morning. In fact, all the while we thought we were "lost" in the forest, we were just walking back towards town, except that it was through the forest trail instead of the road. We got our flat tire repaired and rode back home, feeling elated that we had averted a major disaster. The fact that we did not even see a sparrow, made no difference to us. The fact of the matter was we had come out of an adventure however trivial it might sound now. At that point, we were pretty embarrased to talk about it amongst ourselves. The topic was never mentioned among friends and no one heard us rattling out the adventure the way I am blogging about it now. But in retrospect, I realized that we tend to associate more value to the destination than the journey. Maybe this was another of life's lesson, to tell us we should'nt.
Driving down the road towards our home, we are engulfed on both sides by brightly lit bushes, trees, snowmen, santa, the occasional train model, even a wierd looking cartoonish blob that remotely resembles a christmas tree. The edges of the homes are covered in dainty little yellow lights, mixed with blinking purples and red and green. The couple of snow falls that we have had since early december, add the final touch to the Christmas feel as romanticized in the children's books that we all grew up reading. Turn on the radio and almost every FM station you tune into has a rock, jazz, country or classical version of the christmas carols blaring. Yes, it definitely feels like Christmas. In fact, by the time its the 26th of December, you are thankful that this overload of cheer is finally done with.
I write this as we are busy preparing a plum cake (baked at home, indian style) for our Christmas party. As I was mixing the dough, I was reminded of christmases long gone by. Christmas was definitely a unique experience growing up, because in a town comprising of 3 christian families, the neighbours definitely were very curious about this wierd celebration during the cold winter months. The church from a nearby town would send down its choir for the Carol singing and the kids from the neighbourhood gathered to hear the orchestra on the move. I would be practically terrified of the attention this yearly display brought onto our family. My parents cherished it because it probably reminded them of their childhood growing up amidst church and carol singing. No such luck for me as I dreaded the questions my friends in the neigbourhood would ask me the next day. "So who was the fat guy in the funny suit ?" "Is he related to you guys ?"
Two things that I eagerly waited for during this season was the baking of the cake and the Christmas tree. I would be the errand guy, buttering the pan, grinding up the spices, getting the zest out of the orange rind, cleaning and drying out the raisins. Then of course after the cake mix was poured, I would have the honor of cleaning out the mixing bowl with my fingers. Today in hindsight, that would have been considered a health hazard because of the raw eggs in the mix, but then when you are a kid, its "Bacterium - Step aside - Big daddy is coming over."
Decorating the Christmas tree was a saga of its own. Consider this; In the middle of a temperate deccan plateau, a fir, pine or spruce was almost unheard of. So what does one do ? The alternative, a conifer that is grown as a hedge tree in homes and parks. The first evergreen conifer that we used as a Christmas tree was literally stolen from a park. (I was not involved in the actual stealing by the way..nor were anyone from my direct family. Somehow the tree was found lying in our backyard, probably left there by Santa's elves... wink wink.) After that christmas we planted our own evergreen conifer in the yard to use as a live christmas tree. Ok, now that we had solved the problem of finding a tree, what about the decorations ? Unlike our current Christmas tree in front of the bay window, which we decorated by buying a truck load of buntings and lights from Home Depot, my childhood trees were decorated with improvised glitter. We made do with sparkly streamers and little string lights. Painted cubes of thermocol made up the gifts hanging from the branches. The brightly colored eggs were missing and little balloons took their place. Kids and adults from the entire neighbourhood would come home to take a peek at the christmas tree. No one had seen such a tree other than in movies or in books.
As tonight's cake bakes, the aroma is definitely kicking up some old memories. Hot cake fresh from the oven is something to die for even without memories attached to them.
Before signing off for the long weekend, may this be a merry Christmas for everyone. May there be peace on earth. May the coming New Year be a pivotal year in everyone's lives, may all our dreams turn into reality, may there be less suffering and misery in the world and above everything else, may we all strive to be better human beings. God bless.
- Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Dec 2005.
ASEAN Summit.
The year was 1990. A crisp new decade. I had just finished my 10th grade and was moving on to a different school in a nearby town for my 11th and 12th grade. Television in India was exemplified by a Goliath called Doordarshan which broadcast one channel to a billion people. The 22 minutes of singles picked from Bollywood musicals and showcased as 'Chithrahaar' was the prime time show of the week. The 9 pm news usually featured Rini Simon who would read out a government sponsored baritone of the days events. A turbaned man surfaced from the depths of anonymity to become the new finance minister in a fledgling congress government. A government propped up by truck loads of money and horse trading. The prime minister of the day, Narasimha Rao seemed to place a great deal of confidence in him and when I heard that this guy was a Doctor in Economics and yet had managed to become the Finance minister of the country, I was shocked. It was an unheard of event. In my experience the only educated people that I could remember having ever occupied political office were a few of the presidents. Other than that, everyone else was the usual "son of the soil" "wolf in sheep's clothing" kind of muck. As a kid, I had written essays on the population problems that India faced, the illiteracy that was endemic across the poorer parts of the nation and myriad other subjects. Ironically I do not recollect writing any essays on improving the economy or the money making potential of the country and its country men. The next two years of school were tumultuous because of the gut wrenching competition to get into a professional degree program at a good University. Amidst all this personal chaos, I began noticing that we had more television channels beamed into our homes via private satellites, news was no longer served in baritones, MASH was the coolest show on TV and 'Bold and the Beautiful' was the king of Soaps. I even got to see my first computer and during fall of that year I programmed my first bouncing ball game in GWBasic.
During this period the debate in the country was intense. The doom Sayers and the eternal optimists both waxed eloquent about their end of the story. The doom Sayers cribbed about how the country was going to be relegated to the imperialistic pits of the 21st century and the eternal optimists harped on how the country would turn into a Singapore wonderland overnight. After I got into an engineering program, the debates and the essay competitions at the University too suddenly changed tone and tenor. Everything was about 'Liberalisation'. It was natural, because engineers are usually one of the first beneficiaries of a liberalized economy. 'Competition success review' a geek digest that catered to the fanatical Indian wanting to appear in any competitive exam was strewn from cover to cover with analysis and statistics on the new liberalisation policy and how things were getting better with the economy.
I ended up taking the side of the liberals in all my writings and debates. This was not necessarily because of a firm ideological belief, but rather one driven by reality as my middle class parents were evidently one of the beneficiaries of the new policy. I was living a life metaphorically far away from the real poverty of India and hence I never had an opportunity to better appreciate the negative sides of the changes. My mind had been converted towards a policy of liberalisation and I lapped up every word written or spoken about it.
Things were definitely getting better for the middle class as the years progressed and I got into the job market around the time that the IT bandwagon hit town. The winter of 2005, finds me in the US, reading the online edition of the Indian Express and I saw this quote attributed to Manmohan Singh, the same turbaned guy of the early 90s, who is now India's prime minister. I couldn't help but think, how true this statement was. Liberalization indeed is a struggle for the minds of the people. I converted early on because the conditions of real life aided me towards such a position. Would that have been the case if my family had suffered job losses, lower wages or I had trouble getting into a decent school or find a decent job ? Life is too complicated for every incident to be attributable to a hand full of causes, but nevertheless we always need a handful of causes as the scape goats. Liberalisation is one such scape goat. Today I can proudly say that Liberalisation has my ideological support, but the journey towards that ideological position was fuelled entirely by the realities of every day life. I just happened to be lucky to see it from the good side. Are we even close to providing that realistic foothold to every Indian living so that he can climb onto this bandwagon and call it his own ? I am not sure. But achieving that goal, I believe is going to be the struggle for the country as a whole. A struggle for the minds of our people.
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