Waiting for Godot

I was informed of my mother’s death on a cold winter dawn in Delhi. She had died in her sleep on 21st January 2006 late at night. I rushed out of my home into the dark, foggy and biting cold, tears streaming down my eyes, trying to hail a taxi/ auto rickshaw. I had an open ticket to Kochi- taken as a precaution; a premonition of impending bad news. The flight to Kochi had left. The Airline staff was kind enough to change it to Bangalore. I reached my home in Palghat by evening. For a son, a mother’s death marks an end of many things. As the saying goes, the richest guy is one whose mother is alive. (translated from a Pakistani saying… Duniya ke sab se bada Daulatwala woh hain, jiska Maa Zinda hai). I felt incredibly lost. I wished I could nurse her in her old age, talk about old times, and gain strength from her as she fades gently into the sunset.
I just lost my father too. Which explains the long absence from this blog. He had a fall resulting in a compression fracture in his vertebrae. He was in pain for two months: but was bed ridden for about 12 days. I was with him during the last six days of his life. He gave me the opportunities that my mother denied me. I experienced the vagaries and the sheer indignity of old age. Every time I felt reluctant to handle the unpleasant aspects of a bedridden old man, I tried to remember the times when he held me in his arms, when I was a small boy. I sensed self-loathing in his eyes. And those eyes never left me. Castigating me when I took him to the hospital, reproaching when I took him to various tests: He told me several times that he wanted to die. I whispered in his ear that he might have given up hope of living. But I can’t give up on him yet- Just as he wouldn’t give up on me during my worst times. He apologized many times for having inconvenienced me in the midst of my busy life. (Yeah, he thinks I am a big guy. I never tried to disabuse him of the notion. In Delhi’s bureaucratic caste system I fall somewhere between night soil carriers and gypsies. Some truths are better left unsaid; especially if they cause discomfort to a dying father). He told me that he was very proud of me when, as a child, I would read three books at a time and narrate the stories. I thought that was an overstatement. Yes I am in the habit of reading three books at once. I sort of reached my peak in reading at the age of 13. (It has been a downhill ride ever since). Nice to know that someone out there is proud of me: especially when I am low on self-esteem…
I sit in the sands on the banks of Nila river near my home - A beautiful river, denuded by the sand mafia. My three elder brothers who have come from abroad and my younger sister sit in wet clothes. The “Inangan” gets us going through the rituals of passage ( a strange Nair custom in which a member of the community carries out the rituals facilitating the departed soul’s ascension to the nether world.) It is daybreak. We had dipped ourselves several times in the river. My eldest brother who had come from England wore the white cloth that signifies the rights of the eldest son. We take water from a jar, splay it on the rice, coconut, weeds and other stuff. Prayers are chanted.
After 11 days, we got back to our respective lives, our parents only a memory. I have heard of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” which is about two strangers waiting for Godot; neither knows how he looks or why are they waiting for him. They indulge in a long conversation. Critics have called it an allusion to life. A meaningless dialogue while waiting for death without really knowing what it signifies.
My father was a serious guy. He belonged to a family in Palghat, (Methil House, which produced many artistes, teachers, corporate honchos, stenographers and writers) which took pride in their aristocracy. Being anti-caste, I paid no heed to such origins. They were light-skinned, soft-spoken and had sharp features. Our old family friends swear that none of us, his sons, have inherited his good looks when he was young. As we rapidly lose hair on our pates, some have affirmed that we have started to look like him. As a chief clerk in a plantation company in Malaysia, he afforded us the lifestyle (by honest means), which we can’t afford to our children today. In spite of his international exposure, he was a deeply conservative man. He ate little, spoke little, had a couple of drinks every night and generally maintained good health. He lived a good life- With wonderfully solicitous neighbours/relatives and a reasonably good state of physical & financial health.
I held many things against him, Settling in a village and closing our opportunities, leaving my mother with five children to fend for herself for six long years… very important growing up years for me. For many years we maintained a superficial acquaintance. I made up for all that in 6 short days. On the 27th night, the doctors told me that his chances of recovery are bleak. He might survive for a day or even for a year. The other option is to let him undergo a high-risk surgery, which may be a more compassionate way of bringing things to an end. I consulted my siblings and my sister (who was with me and nursed him in a way that all the money in this world cannot buy) and decided to take him, ready for the long haul: waiting for Godot. I rang up the Missus and said I am leaving Delhi, going back to my Dept, take two months leave to nurse him. I planned to get a posting in South India and be near him. I hung on for a day just to say goodbye to the Doctor who saw him first. He breathed his last the same night. An ominous end to all the inconveniences he had imagined he would cause me.

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Awards and rewards

On the last count there are two and a half people reading the senseless drivel appearing on this blog. I can afford to be candid and forthright about things without fear of being downsized, reengineered, redeployed or just given the pink slip. The two people reading it regularly are not bureaucrats, but I suspect are strongly inclined to self-torture. (Why would they subject themselves to this?) The half person is not exactly a growth stunted midget but someone who can be called an infrequent reader who takes a fleeting look at the blog and goes back to watching Karan Johar shows which reek artificiality and makes one believe that the India is full of handsome guys who buss cheeks of beautiful women. I am more likely to be assaulted by friends than being pink slipped.
News is that the Babus are given a pay hike by our kind and generous nation. I have been flooded with calls from old friends congratulating our good fortune. My views on the subject are extremely unpopular. If known to other Babus, they would wish me death by a slow fire hanging upside down.- Or by slow mutilation of various body parts and leaving the rest to the increasing population of stray dogs in Delhi. At grave risk to my life let me set this to my blog- now competing for honours as the least read one this side of Suez.
Yeah…the Indian civil service is a strange thing. A few marks here and there in a strangely devised examination can turn you into a glamorous diplomat or a non-entity for the rest of your life. The Missus, also a public servant always had better privileges. She always had Govt transportation at her disposal. And me, with just a few marks less in the same examination had to always fend for myself with self driven Bike/ car and several trips in the Chennai local trains along with flower sellers, milkmen, chicken and goats. I always felt that it gave me better insight into Indian reality and also a severe slide down the greasy self- respect pole while exchanging notes with other Babus.
I advised my nephew to learn Persian and Chinese Literature seriously if he wanted to become a hot shot Indian bureaucrat- Subjects which will not fetch you a living in China and ahem… Iraq. But you could do that in India and these subjects are, I am told, easier to score in the Civil Service examination. So you have this civil service where economists are diplomats, historians are accountants, civil engineers are health specialists and Chinese language experts are in Water supply. Once they enter service, at the Centre, they are fitted into the most divergent kinds of assignments in a scheme known as Central Staffing Scheme- a scheme under which yours truly is working at the centre. So you have professionals with multidimensional skills handling specialist tasks like Defence, Science & Technology, Steel, Chemicals, and Telecom. Imagine sanitation experts in Defence, you could have someone who believes that the enemies can be just flushed away by pulling the chain. (An exaggeration, of course. I am sure Defence can learn a lot from sanitation: Sure a lot of scope for flushing here….). And on top of that there is a strange hierarchy at work in Delhi. One mentions one’s year of recruitment and service one belongs to. A few microchips start whirring, lights blink and you are fitted into a slot in the bureaucratic caste system. The hierarchy being dependent on the number of marks scored in an exam twenty years ago, number of years taken in our service to become a joint Secretary and such other factors presently not under your control. Yours truly being slotted somewhere at the bottom of the rigid compartmentalized steel frame. One has a surreal feeling that a different caste system is back in India with a vengeance…
The Indian bureaucracy doesn’t believe in grooming officers to take on specific roles. Except for the Foreign service and a couple of other services, the top most post, also known as the Secretary to the Govt of India is occupied by a person whose eclectic experience would put Lord Krishna to shame in terms of number of avatars. So basically, we have a bunch of generalists (under the politicians, who in any case are generalists) running the country. After 61 years no one seems to be in a hurry to change things.
Politicians, I believe, are incidentally a better breed. Look at Nehru’s first cabinet. He insisted on Ministers from various political hues and walks of life to occupy important positions, TT Krishnamachari, John Mathai etc who were not politicians. Nehru thought them good enough to become Ministers, just as Narasimha Rao thought it fit to make Manmohan Singh as FM. In Kerala when the first Communist Ministry came to power in 1957, it had even a Doctor (Dr A R Nair) as Health Minster- an erstwhile Congressman who was supposedly lured with promises of ideological neutrality in Health matters. It also had luminaries like Prof Joseph Mundassery and VR Krishna Iyer in charge of Education and Law Affairs respectively. EMS, the Chief Minister is said to have written to the centre, seeking massive reforms of bureaucracy, inter alia stating that the bureaucracy in India is fit to govern a colonial state. Also that in the light of modern realities of independent India, massive changes to the bureaucratic structure is called for. I don’t know what changes he had in mind- I hope it wasn’t the appointment of party apparatchiks to public posts.
One could even go along with elected offices to important development activities at the local level, as they happen in some other developed countries. Today we have Panchayat Members, MLAs and MPs twiddling their thumbs, while bureaucrats don’t show up for work. They have stood many hours in the sun, given fiery speeches and won elections. Why can’t they be trusted with local administration? I am sure it will surely evolve into a major managerial reform in local governance. My friend, a Doctor in Palghat was telling me that the recently introduced oversight by Panchayats in public health centers is irritating. It burdens educated doctors with control in the hands of uneducated Panchayat Members. I tried to explain to her that probably it is the best development model. With passage of time, it would evolve into an effective mechanism to at least ensure attendance of Govt doctors in PHCs and teachers in Government schools. Who knows, we might get Doctors and Educationists as Panchayat members one day. They might transform these institutions at grass roots level.
There are many fine professionals among Babus. But as a class, it is slowly losing its’ relevance. It is primarily due to a general lack of accountability, lack of domain knowledge / specialization and absence of grooming for designated roles. I can’t think of solutions. The experience with Central Govt bureaucracy suggests that we need a lot of lateral entrants with specialized skills for policy making with a few generalists who have an all round perspective. The specialists should then be groomed by rotating them in the same or related fields until they are ready for the top posts. Today the Central Govt imposes an upper limit on the number of years one can serve at the Centre. Most senior Officials are picked from the states where governance is a different, more challenging ball game. Centre needs some skills and domain knowledge. (Check out the bureaucracies of France, US and UK) So the system itself is designed not to develop specialized skills in anyone- rather it exposes a few guys to various departments and add value to them. They learn their job in each assignment for short intervals at grave cost to the nation.
We have hordes of well-paid drivers, peons, and clerks- Persons with skills that come cheaply in this country. And you have ill paid generalist officers as decision makers who are not equipped for these onerous responsibilities. We are happy with the pay hike- it is still less than what a newly appointed BPO employee with marginal skills take home- But then he/ she is groomed for that role and his efforts. And a company would not pay that person so much if it were not worth it….
In Delhi, Babus amble towards their work place more than an hour late for work. Why can’t we at least ensure discipline? Why can’t we have biometric cards that clocks in time of entry and exit? In Malaysia and Singapore, the Prime Minister punches his ID card when he reports for work. There are several senior Babus who come late and sit late. It would be an abomination in Delhi’s feudal society to even suggest that senior babus to punch their cards. It would not jell with the general body language of a senior Babu to carry his bag or lunchbox to office. So here we are, an extremely short sighted and self-centred class of people. Give all the pay hike you want.

I have said my piece…Now throw all the chappals you want…
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I read an interesting article on gated communities in the “Outlook” magazine. It was full of descriptions of how urban oases are being created across the country. Giving a lifestyle comparable to the best in the west- Swimming pools, Gyms, club with steam bath, Health centre, Mini Golf course and the works. Gives a great feel good factor and makes retired life look like a breeze.
I confess to having been for a moment enticed by one of these ads. The flats being advertised were about 35 Kms from Delhi. It had pictures of an elderly guy in T- shirt playing golf, an attractive woman in the Gym and a young handsome couple strolling in the park with a kid in a pram. Looked like a nice idyllic life style. I rang up the phone number given in the ad. Some one picked up. I told him about my interest and asked him the cost of the apartments. When I heard the amount, I had to clutch on to something for support. Three successive generation will not be able to pay off the debt to buy such a house. I quickly said thanks and hung up. I hadn’t since been brave enough to make calls for membership to gated communities.
I did try, on behalf of my sis-in law, to buy a flat in Dwarka in the outskirts of Delhi, now a booming metropolis by itself. Anita, a diplomat has a reasonably better lifestyle, since she earns allowances in Dollars. I gave a call to some Wing Commander (Retd) who was now a property broker after having toiled for the Defence of the country. Haanji, he said, how can I help you? I specified my requirement. Yeah, my sis in law needs a flat in Dwarka, preferably with three bedrooms. (Anita, a spinster needs two bedrooms to fill her books in and one in which to read, eat, sleep, drink, smoke and live)He cited several obscenely high figures. Also added that some proportion will have to be paid in Black and some in white. What white? What black? I asked. He said Black Money sirrrr. I said we have only white money and that too not enough of it.
When I related this experience to someone, he told me that the last honest Babu bought his flat in Delhi 15-17 years back. If at all an honest Babu buys a flat now, he has either got a fat inheritance or he has won a lottery. So forget about living in gated communities in cities. Either go back to your village or lease a Jhuggi in Delhi’s slums from the land mafia, pay hafta to the cops and stand in line for drinking water. Not a very pleasant thought… *******************

Oh Calcutta-II

It is early morning. It is a sweaty Calcutta day in 2003. My son Vasudev Nayar aka Chathu is running high fever. I had been awake through the night, trying to keep the temperature down by continually pressing on his forehead, a cloth dipped in ice-cold water. At daybreak, I set out looking for a Doctor. I walk around Bhowanipore area near the multistoried Nizam Place Building where we lived- A small one room apartment till we get a regular allotment. I realize that none of the doctors are open for business before 1130 hours. Standard opening time for Bengalis- In my office, men arrive around 11 AM after buying fish and vegetables in the market, getting it cooked and having a good meal. I asked a security guard about availability of doctors and explained in my poor Bengali that my 8-year-old son was sick. I could see worry lines furrowed in his face. He insisted on accompanying me to show a Doctor’s house where I could show him in an emergency…. Forgetting his duties. That’s Calcutta at its best.
I had asked for a posting in Calcutta and landed there as a bureaucrat in 2003. Creative Dimensions was no more. I lost touch with Himanshu Lathia and Abhijit Banerji after I left Calcutta in September of 1983. The wooden staircase to the old office In New Market were creaky. But some Computer Company had set up office where it stood once. The security guard asked what is my business there. I swiftly beat a retreat. Prince Henry tobacco was no more available (Kompany bandh Ache, the cigarette seller told me that the Tobacco company had closed business as it happens to many companies in Calcutta.) There were no power cuts this time- my friend told me with a wink that the State hasn’t exactly increased supply much but has tackled the problem from the demand side. Many companies have closed down and hence the demand was much less. Linton Street was unrecognizable as I tried to find out House No 41A. The street barbers were still plying their trade and the customers, mostly rickshaw pullers looked more majestic as they were shaved and given a hair cut with a free head massage thrown in. People were still having open-air bath near the public water line. Nizam’s in New Market has closed down and the striking employees were selling rolls on the roadside. And these days they put Maggi tomato sauce inside the Kathi roll…. What an abomination.
Free School Street is now known as Mirza Ghalib Street, an Indianisation that one couldn’t disagree with. The hedonist poet Azadullah Khan Ghalib would have loved to have a street full of prostitutes, sellers of second hand books and exquisite music in a city beyond his cozy confines in Delhi named after him. The music sellers are not knowledgeable as before. For instance, you could see a blinking uncomprehending eye or two as you ask for “Slow train coming” by Bob Dylan or “Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking” by Clapton and Dylan. That was the kind of rare stuff that one could always find 20 years back.
Eating out is still cheaper than other cities in India. Kathi Rolls are now good at Kusum Rolls in Park Street and also Sher e Punjab in Theatre Road. There is nothing Punjabi about Sher-e- Punjab. The best Mee Foon and Kathi rolls are available there- It became a permanent fixture for our requirements of home delivery. The Zen in Park Hotel is probably the best Chinese I had in India. Mainland China’s Calcutta branch is also good. In two years we had done the entire round of the restaurant scene in Calcutta. The missus’ cousin, Ram, a journalist in Telegraph was a tenant of the Chef in Oh Calcutta- the new age restaurant chain by Anjan Chatterjee- Ram says the Chef has an ear for the music of the “Grateful dead”. I went there several times- Checking out the Raj menu in their restaurant in Forum Mall and eating crabmeat, Railway Mutton Curry and Goan Prawn curry. A chef with an ear for Grateful Dead must have great culinary skills, methinks. Can’t help it, my standards are so shallow.
The Bong wedding is a celebration of food. You can skip the part where the groom wears a headgear and is led to the venue with hands around the shoulders of strong males and hanging on to them. This is to ensure that the groom’s feet don’t touch the ground. Caterers and the bride’s father see the wedding as an occasion to demonstrate their finely honed tastes and generosity. Once you are seated, the menu comes. It is just a list showing the order in which items are pushed into your plate. Guys like me with predictable tastes would wait for item no 16 (Prawn curry, Rossogolla or Fish) or 18 (Sandesh, Mutton curry) and generally skip all foodstuffs that come in between. The order is also strange I must say. Sweet chutney comes right after a heavy dose of Pulao at No 5 or even heavier items come at No 21 when your stomach is about to burst and you need to go out, take some air and do twenty five pushups to work up an appetite.
Ask for directions in Calcutta and you shall get very detailed ones: short of accompanying you in a bus or rickshaw. There is that earnestness in explaining so as to be sure that you, a stranger to the city, don’t get lost. Try the same in Delhi…you know what I mean. The Bengali women look great & sexy. Many admit to a general weakness for them (including yours truly). With big eyes and expressive gestures as they talk in their sing song tones. I could see some young mothers hanging around Chathu’s school for the whole day. Motherhood is an involved process in Calcutta. Bengali mothers spend the whole day in School waiting for their offspring to finish classes- gossiping with other mothers, dissecting the little one’s performance, teachers etc. The average Bengali male still stands by the street sipping tea from a mutka…. wearing thick glasses, loose pajamas and a vest. He is busy smoking endless cigarettes, discussing football, Nicaragua and Cuba passionately. He is tied too closely to the women in his life, mother wife, and sister. The relationship of a Bengali male and his mother is almost Biblical. The mother thinks the son is God who walked on earth. The son in turn thinks the Mother is Virgin Mary who carried him in her womb without the usual messy biological processes. (I heard this from a Bengali Male, so forgive me Lord for trashing thy name)
Once my son walked all the way from school (about 4 kms) due to problems with the school bus. I virtually went crazy trying to track him down. He reached home safe all right with a little help from strangers. I still believe I got him back only because it was Calcutta. I can name cities where a lost child would end up as body parts with mercenary organ traders. My staff at Calcutta is the most attached to me even today. Calling me up on every festival, dropping in at my Office at Delhi to see me.
My heart still beats for the city of Joy. Oh Calcutta, proof that the redemption of human soul lies amidst great poverty, the milk of human kindness isn’t extinct…. city of great contrasts, city of my dreams: I would go back there given half a chance. I have seen the world, the efficiency of Singapore, the romance of Paris, the beauty of Madrid, and the cosmopolitanism of New York. I have breathed the air of Nice in France, the top holiday destination in the world. I have enjoyed the grassy knolls in green green England. I have walked the streets of Seoul and Bangkok and marveled at the way cities of the world are administered. Calcutta cannot be judged by any known standards. There was a time when Calcutta and Singapore were touted as the Athens of the east. Singapore sold its’ soul to development, efficiency and prosperity. Calcutta remains vibrant, throbbing with life and its’ glorious uncertainties.

Dark Knight

How things have changed!! There were times when we would queue up before Hrudaya Theatre in Palghat to see the Hollywood movies that have been released in India a good five years after their opening in the west. We would sit in the Rs 2 ticket, which is second cheapest- (slightly better than sitting on the floor also called “Tara ticket”, a term used to signify one’s ancestral lineage, state of penury, tightfistedness and a host of other things). The Rs 2 ticket in Hriduya Theatre is a great leveler in Palghat. Even the kids of big business men studying with us are not permitted anything better than that. They would be ridiculed, derided and lampooned for the rest of their lives if they as much as attempted to take a higher priced ticket. I still remember Anand, the owner of Lakshmi Vilas (in those days a big hotel in Palghat) thoroughly embarrassed since several of his employees were sitting in the balcony and were amused to see their master and owner lolling around with a bunch of good-for-nothing friends in the Rs 2 ticket. A trip to Hriduya for night show and eating Idlis in the only all-night hotel (catering primarily to Truck drivers on the Coimbatore highway) was an essential feature of night life in Victoria College Hostel. Wearing Lungis and all.
And we all left college one day. There ensued a long break, when there was no first-day first-show syndrome. Never had the urge to rejoice in the latest exploits of Amitabh Bachan/ Shah Rukh Khan/ Mohan Lal movies as soon as they are released in theatres. Never jostled for ticket, paid a margin and purchased a ticket in black. DVDs had become common, and there are plenty of movies on HBO, Star Movies and other movie channels. Today I line up for first day first show: only for kid movies. I have seen the entire Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, Harry Potter movies early on as they are released in India. Else you suffer the wrath of Vasudev Nayar aka Chathu, my son. Every day after release of the said movie in India, is spent in restless anticipation, often turning into opportunities for blackmail for him. Do your homework Vasu, the Missus screams, but you haven’t shown me the latest Spider man, yells Vasu back. Hence the young man is whisked away to multiplexes where these shows run, when the ticket prices are at their highest (Saturdays and Sundays) and there are hidden costs involved (petrol, parking, the essential plate of nachos, popcorn, chips and coke- and the precious time). And there is the wait at the ticket counter, often returning without tickets. The place is packed with mostly junior citizens accompanied by oldies who are under similar threat of blackmail.
To my credit, I must say that this time around I resisted for a very long time. Dark Knight (Batman series) has been released almost a month ago and I hadn’t succumbed to threats and blackmail. You are thirteen now… I said: old enough to go for a movie alone. I will drop you there and wait outside to pick you up; spare me the torture. You can take some of your friends also along…. I said. It was finally the Missus who succumbed. So we went yesterday.
As the name signifies, it is a dark movie. With plenty of violence that it doesn’t merit classification as a “Bache wali” (Kids) movie. The essence of the movie can be summed up as follows.
1. The world is full of violent people.
2. No one can be trusted
3. Everyone is a potential criminal/ terrorist
4. Some do it for money, others just like to watch the world burn (I think I know where the jokers who set up blasts in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Jaipur get their inspiration from- certainly not from a benevolent god; more likely from the monsters shown in such movies)
5. Vigilantes like Batman are more equipped than the Police Department. (Cry beloved country…. with no Batman to rescue us from and indifferent and inefficient intelligence setup)
6. A city can be run much in the fashion of grown up members of famous five or secret seven stories
Vasu tells me that Heath Ledger (acting as Joker) has died of a drug overdose and Christian Bale (acting as Batman) has been arrested for domestic violence. Some penance…. for shoving this movie down on a whole generation of innocent kids. Aaron Eckhart (acting as Harvey Dent the young handsome District Attorney who teams up with Batman to combat crime in Gotham city) appears in the second half of the movie with one half of his face gruesomely burnt. It is really I sight no one would like to see. Only butler Alfred (kindly and genial Michael Caine) seems like a tolerable character. Hospitals are burnt, city is evacuated, even evacuated people are threatened with annihilation. There is death and destruction all around….
I came out of the theatre in a daze. Feeling awfully miserable. Even the end of the movie is not redeeming. Good hasn’t triumphed and evil hasn’t been destroyed. You come out with the feeling that the world is not a good place for your kids to grow up in. I hugged Chathu closely to myself and swore to myself that we are not coming for any more kiddy movies first day first show……

Oh Calcutta

It is a Broadway show, a movie with plenty sexual innuendos, it is a new age restaurant by Anjan Chatterjee, home to Mother Teresa, and it is the city of joy, a state of mind… Oh Calcutta. 25 years back after my graduation exams got over I boarded a train to Calcutta. I left behind a deep passion for music, a degree that was not going to be worth the paper it is written on, many friends in Palghat and a lonely adolescence filled with books which were of such eclectic choice it made no sense. On the train I had a last small paper folded neatly containing the magical weed (marijuana) which I claimed gave me a better perspective to life (What bumkum!!!) and also made Pink Floyd sound much more heart wrenching. When I got down at Howrah, the smell hit me. I don’t know how to describe this. It is like dirty water with iron content. The smell followed me through my three months stay.
This was my first step to life in a big bad city and I saw a very bleak future ahead. My brother was then employed in Calcutta, living with his bachelor friends in a house in Linton Street near Park circus. He bought a small cot for me to shack in. I shared the room with his friend Achu, Manager to Anand Shankar, the Musician. Achu was a great aficionado of Bob Dylan, Salman Rushdie, John Steinbeck and beer. On weekends I went to my friend Satish’s house. My Victorian class mate who failed to make good in life and was living off his father- a senior Official in Garden Reach Shipbuilders- a company with which I was to associate later. The story of Satish is worth telling. He messed up many opportunities in life. When he made it, he really made it big time. Now a big shot in the media business, Satish’s story is an inspirational one I like to relate to friends. We would smoke grass and ogle at Bengali women, our amorous attention centered on women who were at least ten years older than us. One day Satish received an acknowledgement letter from the girl across the balcony that we ogled at. I still don’t remember the exact contents; but something to the effect that Satish’s father, Cdr Mukundan (Indian Navy retd) is a far more handsome guy than the oafs ogling at her from across the balcony. That broke our hearts. We swore to grow up and have sweet vengeance…. Satish had been slowly polishing off the whisky bottle which his father had received as a gift from someone. The unsuspecting teetotaler father never knew this. Satish was smart enough to keep the level in the bottle constant by mixing it with golden coloured tea mix. Until one day the generous Commander offered the concoction to visiting guests. All hell broke loose.
I started working in a small ad agency called Creative Dimensions in New market. Officially it was my first job- although it didn’t pay enough for coffee, cigarettes and bus fare. It was July and the heat was oppressive and sweaty. I would spend hours walking the streets, eating Kathi rolls at Nizam’s at New Market, raiding used-book shops and music shops in Free School street. Also watching the fallen women eking out a living soliciting sex in dirty cubicles on the side streets.
We smoked Charms cigarettes, which pretty much summed up our life. Charms is the spirit of freedom: Charms is the way you are… the slogan said with the picture of a well-worn pair of jeans in the ads. Maggi noodles were recently introduced in India. We ate Rossogollas from the nearby halwai. We watched the late night show in Globe theatre. We would have a shot of brandy in the bar attached to the theatre. Have you seen that anywhere else in India? I mean a bar attached theatre? The streets had homes close to each other. Tall vertical structures with dirty unpainted exteriors and dank interiors where life throbbed. Outside there is a boisterous neighbourhood with children playing cricket on the roads. Hundred-year-old homes from where Rabindra Sangeet would waft out in the early morning hours. Then came the rains.
I was used to the Kerala village rain. The prelude to a rain was always ominous. The sky is dark. Leaves rustle and a whistling wind blows. It is much cooler. And the aroma of cool large droplets of rain on warm earth titillates your nostrils. And then it starts raining and it goes on raining and raining. In the nights you press your head to a cool pillow and listen to the pitter-patter outside. In a few hours the river grows wider, richer, carrying twigs and tales from upstream. The Calcutta rain was different. The skyline turns dark. There are rumblings in the sky. And suddenly it pours without warning. It is still sweaty. The streets are not distinguishable from big broad streams. Brownish water containing drain water, excrement and all that mess sloshes around the streets. In the nights one could hear huge splashes in the water. You peer out and realize that water has filled the streets and is almost on the verge of flooding your warm abode. A rickshaw puller is wading through all that water and trying to make it somewhere. The rains do not bring respite from the heat. It is still muggy and sweaty outside. A city that was meant to accommodate 200000 inhabitants is home close to 17 million today. As expected the drainage system is dysfunctional. There are still vestiges of colonial practices- that of washing the streets with water every morning.
One could see dark bare bodied slum dwellers taking a bath on public water pipes. My favourite hobby was watching the roadside barber plying his trade. A chair is placed on the street side with photos of gods with adorned by flower garlands on the branch of a nearby tree or a wall with the knife, shaving brush and other tools. Rickshaw pullers and construction workers and other lesser human beings are primary customers. Of particular interest is to watch the expression on the face of the person being thus serviced. He has that look on his face, on top of the world, being taken care of……. A rare moment in a life spent taking care of the needs of others and being treated like servants.
I loved munching on the barbecued raw corn from the stalk (Butta in Hindi) sold on the street side. I recollect a very talented musician called Bertie D’Silva who would hold shows in Gyan Mandir at Shakespeare Sarani. Bertie is a one-man band with an acoustic guitar and several mouth harps. I marveled at his talent and felt good that I am no more playing music, lest I should be exposed for what I am: just a pretender musician. Another friend of Achu, Cyrus Tata, and a Parsi businessman in the film distribution business would join in after the break and make the concert richer with Electric guitar. I remember Bertie singing, ”Send me the pillow that you sleep on”- it still rings in my ears.
Work was just a pastime. The owner of the Ad agency, Mr Chandra a bald man from UP speaks fluent Bengali. He was very unlike archetypal Advertising professionals. His clients were primarily shops in New Market. I had to write copy for ads and sometimes, even go and collect payments. Mr Chandra’s whole life saving was the lease on the Office in New Market. I had two young friends, Abhijit Banerji and Himanshu Lathia who did the marketing. For once my NRI Mallu sensibilities were shaken at how everyone did a nice spoof of South Indian English. Yell… Yemm, Yenn… it went on and giggles followed with sympathetic looks thrown in at me. Here I was thinking that I am from the English speaking Elite of Kerala and everyone was laughing at me in spite of my perhaps more refined (than today and than others’) pronunciation. Eshtanding Eshpeaking Undereeshtanding etc were graded as Queen’s English in North Of Vindhyas. The Bengali V and B were always pronounced interchangeably and I would strain to make sense out of it. I would stand outside during lunch break and eat Singara or Channa Batura from the small eating joints. I also developed a taste for a tobacco called Prince Henry, a pipe tobacco with a rich aroma. I would buy cigarette paper and roll it in them before smoking. Smoking a pipe, I thought was too uhm… upper class and loudly demonstrative for my quiet plebeian tastes. Also rolling paper made the task of occasional weekend weed smoking easier.
And then India won the World cup. I watched the match in a relative’s house till late night. When we came out there was celebration all around. And it went on for weeks together. That was Calcutta, celebrating life and its small victories on the streets, dancing, bursting crackers and playing loud music. In the evenings I would attempt to take a tram to Park circus. It was always crowded. Running silently through the boisterous Calcutta streets with an occasional tinkle of the bell to disperse the crowds lazing in the middle of the road. More often than not, I would settle for a mini bus- we called them spondylitis chambers. Six footers have to stand bent through the journey. Not a very comfortable ride. But the aggressive soliciting by the cleaner always wins over lazy customers like me who can’t wait too long for the tram or a less crowded bus. The cleaner would shout “Beck Bagan, Beck bagan, beckgan, beckgan…. in a loud musical rendition, reaching a crescendo and falling rapidly, tapping the metal door vigorously as the bus maneuvers dangerously and screeches to a halt. When successive buses are crowded, I would walk into KC Doss & sons in Esplanade for a plate of Rossogollas. Then there were frequent power cuts. The city was dug all over to build the Metro. In those days, very few people believed Metro would really be operational one day.
I attended a job interview with the Hare Krishna organization. They wanted me to act as a marketing man for their books and ideas. A Caucasian gentleman interviewed me. Bald, tall and well built guy with an exotic Indian name. He gave me an insight into the Hare Krishna movement. Among other things, he told me that they didn’t believe that man set foot on the moon and the whole drama was a western conspiracy. That did the trick; I wasn’t going to work for a loony religious sect that refused to believe that the great step for mankind ever happened.
It was September. The nights grew pleasant and there is a nip in the air. Park Street started wearing a festive look. Durga Puja was around the corner. Soon the Paras(Mohallas or neighbourhoods) will start putting up pandals. Young men in the Puja committee had begun collecting money to make the event a big hit. My results had come. I had done not too badly. I took a call on the future. I decided to go back and pursue studies. A stupid decision, when I see the whole situation in retrospect. I took the train back home one day. I have a great future in advertising- that was Mr. Chandra’s prognosis when I said good-bye to him. It felt good to hear that, although I didn’t believe it. Since bald sweaty Mr Chandra who speaks English with a thick UP accent wasn’t exactly my idea of Advertising professional. But the old man gave me a break, after all. I never knew that I would go back to Calcutta again twenty years later……

To be continued