A day in the life of not-so-better-half..

Without doubt, managing to set-up a home and run it like a well-oiled machine is a mammoth task and the fact that women are much better at it than their male counterparts is a foregone conclusion. Not that I am not aware of this universal truth, just that it was re-emphasized on a day that I least expected.

I took over the reins of performing this role that my better-half does with élan, for a couple of days when my wife had to step out as a participant in a musical concert. Having managed the home front during my bachelor days and on a couple of occasions as a married bachelor, I presumed it would be pretty cool. In fact I hoped that it would bring back some nostalgic memories of the yester-years. Coming from a family of musicians and fine arts, singing comes naturally to my wife. And like all else, one needs a good coach and mentor to train and direct ones skills in the desired direction. She continues to train under the tutelage of an emerging Hindustani vocalist and Harmonium/Keyboard player. With a couple of years of training I can confidently announce that my wife is a pretty good amateur vocalist in the genre of Hindustani classical music.

When her teacher and coach decided to give an opportunity to perform to a select audience in a north Karnataka city known for having nurtured well known Hindustani classical musicians, we – my sons and I encouraged her to sign-on. That she performed well and was rewarded with a standing ovation isn’t the story that I wanted to relate. It so happened that while she performed well, I was goofing up in managing the home front.

Comical at times, it was also a revelation of sorts! I used to announce the dish I would prepare much in advance to my sons and create an expectation of sorts. Looking back in time, I should have heeded the warnings of a close friend of mine from Kolkata days, between 1983 and 92. He had an amazing sense of humor with his punch lines! Whenever he stayed back at my place for breakfast, lunch or dinner he would insist that I make the dish first and give it a name later. Quite aptly put, if I may take a dig at myself! The Upma I had prepared for breakfast turned out to be soggy with excess water and tasted more like Ganjji – a diet normally reserved for the very sick.

Not learning from past mistakes is a pretty common trait and quite contrary to what is explicitly told even in an organization. I would however, like to be a bit kind to myself and just say that ‘history has an uncanny habit of repeating’. As part of her preparations, my wife had given me clear instruction on which cooking powder was kept where and the ‘know-all’ guy that I thought myself to be, I did not pay much attention hoping that my sensitive olfactory system would guide me correctly if the need arose. And so, from the kitchen in ground floor I shouted about the proposed menu so that my sons could hear me at the first floor. I said that I would make mixed vegetable curry-rice not realizing the trap that I was laying for myself. However, to my good luck, both the boys were immersed in whatever they were doing on their respective laptops with Bose headphones covering their ears. Presumably, they wouldn’t have heard me at all.

Till the time the chopped and assorted vegetables were cooked, I was on the dot. I was making my first attempt at parallel processing. It is truly amazing how our wives can really juggle around with a cellphone held between the ear and a raised shoulder, one hand stirring , the other searching for a missing ingredient and all the while listening to music blaring from a favorite FM channel. The list of things they can handle simultaneously can go on and on. Granted that we can nowhere match this skill, I made a brave effort to see how close I could get. While the vegetables were cooking, I made arrangements to soak, wash, rinse rice and place it in the rice cooker. I was attempting to use the Just-in-Time concept by coordinating all the independent activities so that output from these would be ready ingredients for the final act!

Both boys love all kinds of curry rice and hence my wife prepares and stocks curry powder mix in a big Tupperware jar that normally lasts for a month. With the rice done in the rice-cooker, the final act was to sprinkle generous portions of curry powder on the cooked vegetables, add the cooked rice to it and after a thorough mix and a pinch of salt to taste…yahoo! The curry rice would be ready!! Both my boys like cucumber, tomato, onion raita along with curry rice. I pride myself in cutting vegetables to geometrically exact shapes - rectangular or square with a high degree of precision and good repeatability!! The job was to cut/chop/slice these vegetables to fine bits add freshly purchased Nandini curds to it and with a pinch of salt to taste the raita would be ready.

Like the proverb – ‘proof of the pudding is in eating,’ a couple of morsels later, I felt something was odd with the curry rice and I wasn’t able to put a finger on the flaw. I asked both boys and they put up an extremely brave face and said there was nothing wrong. Come to think of it, they were probably trying to be nice to their dad but the writing was on the wall. A substantial portion of the curry rice was untouched, it generally isn’t so and in fact it gets polished pretty soon the dish is placed on the table when my wife prepares. I kept racking my dumb brains to think what had gone wrong but wasn’t able to get a clue. While eating it myself, my taste buds sensed something strange…the lingering smell and taste of dalchini (cinnamon, in English) – I was dead sure that this ingredient does not form a part of south Indian curry powder! A perfectly measured quantity of dalchini gives it the typical north Indian garam-masala flavor, a bit in excess gives it a Pakistani touch and I know this from my short stint at Dubai. I however banished these stray thoughts from my mind hoping that these were figments of my wild imagination.

I was only able to crack the defect soon after my wife returned home! The powder that I had used so generously for making the typical south Indian variety of mixed vegetable curry rice was in fact pav-bhaji masala…my nose was honestly giving the right signals but I had ignored it and the result was indeed a disaster. As is typical, I got into an endless debate with my wife on the positioning of the Tupperware box with pav-bhaji masala…I kept insisting that she should not have mixed ingredients from North with South in the same cupboard…I had to finally let go, after all it is her territory and I was just a guest for a few days. Going back to what my Kolkata friend had told me years back was like a prophecy come true! I should have named it rice-bhaji, post cooking!! Honestly folks, don’t ever try it…rice and mixed vegetable with pav-bhaji masala substituted as curry powder is an awful combination. When my elder son softly suggested that we order for pizzas the following night, I sheepishly grinned and agreed. We had a very good meal the 2nd night and could sleep peacefully and well.

I now realize why the wife is usually referred to, as the ‘better-half’!!

How Corrupt is our Corrupt Society?

Born in 1940 before India attained independence from the British Raj and a former Indian Army soldier, Anna Hazare is known as a social activist who was instrumental in upgrading the ecology and economy of the village of Ralegan Siddhi located in the drought prone district of Ahmednagar in the state of Maharashtra. Now widely and wildly popular for having stirred the common man’s interest in his crusade against corruption and corrupt politicians, public figures occupying various government positions et al, Anna has become a household name.

Riding on this crest is 1965 born Baba Ramdev (nee Swami Ramdev) who has earlier gained popularity through his practice and teaching of yoga and pranayama not just in India but abroad as well. Associated with the 2011 anti-corruption movement and involved in the Jan Lokpal agitation, Baba Ramdev is going on an indefinite fast from today June 4th, 2011 to force the government to take effective steps to curb corruption.

Both these gentlemen have a large following from all walks of life. While their intentions are noble, one needs to understand how much the common man understands the implications of being clean and above board. It’s like an ‘I am Okay, you are not okay’ syndrome, but how much truth is there in it? It remains to be seen and felt. Thousands of mini scams go unnoticed every day involving officials and common persons. This country can call itself corruption free only when a customer does not ingratiate with the system to get a positive response to his requirements. One example that comes to mind where the common man ends up paying additional money is at the RTO when he or she goes through the rigmarole of obtaining a driving license. Even the most clean with all the data and documents in place have to pay up this convenience fee to sail through at the counter.

A point to dwell upon is the age at which we get an exposure to such dubious double standards! Parents now-a-days are willing to shell down huge sums of money to get their children into a private institution, all because the government run public schools perennially are in short supply of good educators, instructors and teachers besides the woefully pathetic infrastructure. During the late 50’s and early 60’s the difference between a government run school or college was not much when compared to a privately run institution, but not anymore.

This may sound comical: take a step back and look at the profit and loss arithmetic sum we all must have done in our early childhood: How much profit does a milkman make if a liter of pure milk costs Rs. 10 and he adds a liter of free water from the tap to every 9 liters of pure milk before selling to his unsuspecting customers? If there is a gain from being corrupt and this gets taught in the schools at a tender formative age, whom are we blaming? Rest is just an extension and the degree and decimal point varies.

With no resources at its disposal, the young government at the time of independence faced an ever yawning gap between demand and supply. Creating a socialist democratic republic by removing healthy competition (Nationalization of privately owned Industries and Establishments) and by controlling the daily needs of the common person, the then government thought they had everything under wraps and in control. It took the government a good 35 years to realize the harm their excessive control had brought in. By opening the market through free market economy the floodgates did eventually open up for investments and so did the income. Unfortunately the economy further polarized the population between the haves and the have nots. With the pay scales of the government employees being directly proportional to the tax collection, one can imagine the pressure on the government with just 35 million miniscule tax payers in a country of a billion. The law enforcers came under the less privileged class and thus for them to make two ends meet, they accepted convenience money. The section of people who earn sufficiently to make two ends meet comfortably, were also the persons who were evading taxes but quick to blame the government for corruption. It was like the pot calling the kettle black!

We have refused to stand in the ‘Q’ for a popular movie just released on a Friday and instead buy the tickets in black. We prefer to bribe the linesman to declare the energy consumption meter faulty and pay lesser amount to the Electricity Board. We tap raw power from transmission poles during festivals and deny income to the state run utility companies. Our hospitals demand extra money for providing sub-standard services to inpatients! Office of the registrar of births and deaths demand a huge ransom to issue an appropriate certificate, in spite of the documents being in order. It is as if they are doing us a favor by issuing a certificate!! The list is endless and this parasite called ‘corruption’ has spread its tentacles far too widely for it to be reined in. Where will these two gentlemen Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev commence? While the rich and the famous besides the politicians and the Government officers and offices are rightfully to be blamed, who will bring in the necessary controls amongst the larger public who are equally to be blamed, if not more?

It was a shock when we visited a temple in a famous south Indian city near Chennai where, we were first invited by the temple priest into the sanctum sanctorum and later forced to pay a tidy sum in order to exit. The creators of the idols are long dead and gone, their names not even carved on stone as a recognition of the years of efforts they put in to erect such ageless magnificent structures – the fruit of their labor is being enjoyed by a set of unscrupulous temple priests who in the name of God extort money from gullible public like you and me and we, willingly pay thinking that the Gods will be immensely pleased and bless us with gay abandon.

While it is nice and easy to point a finger at the others, it is time to realize that by doing so, three fingers point back at us. Are we listening to our inner conscience? It knows what is right from the wrong, one just needs the courage to travel on the right path. As Gandhiji said: Speak the truth! It is an immensely easy thing to do yet, it is a very tough task!

Anna and Baba: I hope you are listening…please ask each of your ardent followers to practice in their personal capacity to make India corruption free as well…only then will this campaign bear fruit and not otherwise!!

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy!!

While giving my car a nice early morning cold shower on Sunday, I heard the not-so-familiar sound of a ‘myna.’ It had perched itself firmly on my rooftop railing and was chortling with an apparent gay abandonment; something that is a rarity amongst us homosapiens living in a busy metropolis. It took me back in time – four decades and five years…us kids playing in the huge tracts of empty space between two housing rows left by the then British and Indian town planners in Durgapur. It was thankfully created for us kids, the birds and the trees. Lung space, as one would call them now in the concrete jungles of today. Amongst birds, the common sparrow, pigeon, myna, the occasional koel, parrot and the common Indian crow were a familiar sight those days. We would compete with the parrots and mynas to pluck the ripened guavas directly from the trees around for a snack between meals. The excitement would heighten if we had to steal ourselves into the neighbor’s fenced compound, climb the tree, pluck guavas and later scram for safety.

It beats me still, how the commonly used term ‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for letter and so on’ came to be associated with mynas, but then it did leave an indelible impression deep down, somewhere in a few of the 100 billion brain cells. The instant recall upon suddenly spotting the myna on Sunday morning speaks volumes of the way the brain cells are interconnected between the left side (logical & analytical) to the right side (feeling & meaning maker). It brought pleasant memories, when spotting twin mynas was considered to be a good omen but spotting a single one was considered bad or sorrowful. At that young and formative age one does not know what sorrow in its true form meant, but the occasional whack from dad or getting chided by the school teacher for not completing homework or getting singled out for scoring poorly in a ‘surprise’ test was perhaps the limit to which one could stretch our imagination. I strongly feel that the third one got added as we grew older and when a sibling had to move to a different city in pursuit of higher education. Spotting Myna’s in groups beyond three was considered a blessing for material gain and is probably not worth mentioning here. It had very little significance then and virtually none now!

It was such a nice sight to spot this beautiful dark brown myna with a yellow beak and head gear of the same hue. How spotting a single bird can bring in a sad thought of ‘sorrow’ is difficult to imagine; but if you look at this variety in the avian family, they are very social and gregarious and found mostly in southern and eastern Asia. A myna perched on a tree branch would probably look like a two-color dolphin and the similarity ends there. Three to four times the size of a sparrow, these dark and often brown winged birds have strong feet and flight. They thrive on fruits and insects and generally nest in holes. Some species are pretty well known for their imitative skills. A relatively unknown fact about mynas is their contribution towards pollination. They are known to be dispersers of seeds, especially the sandalwood and banyan. This may sound stranger than fiction; their stomach enzymes have the ability to quickly break alcohol when these birds consume over-ripened and fermented fruits. No wonder these birds do not get intoxicated as in their history of existence none seem to have crash landed and their 3-axis flight coordination remains intact with their tiny brain combining the interdependent motion between eyes, feet and wings with precision control.

Unbelievably, it was the twin leg winged dinosaur almost 150 million years ago that turned into an aerodynamic winged creature and birds were thus born. A huge variety of these winged creatures turned birds, came and went before evolving into some 9,000 present day variety of birds. While dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago during the ‘big bang’ when supposedly a meteor crashed onto earth and wiped out the entire family of dinosaurs, the family of smaller birds that evolved post this era have adapted themselves admirably well. The power of flight gave these an edge over other creatures and Sir Richard Attenborough believes that birds may be the most successful creatures on earth, more successful than even insects to have adapted and evolved. From the extremely cold sub-zero temperature in South Pole where emperor penguins have thrived to the extremely hot and dry climate in the South American deserts where grey gulls have survived, the sheer variety is absolutely amazing.

One noteworthy trait of the homing pigeon is its innate ability to return to its nest and to its own mate over long distances up to 1,800 kilometers. These birds cover distances at an average speed of 80 kilometers an hour. The Egyptians and Persians were the first to use these homing or carrier pigeons. Closer home, Tipu Sultan had a fleet of carrier pigeons at his headquarters in Srirangapatna, near Mysore. Closer to its nests, the homing pigeon depends on visual landmarks much like the way humans do while finding their bearings, but when released from distant lands, the pigeons trace back their path using spatial distribution of atmospheric odors also called olfactory navigation.

Birds are not known to attack human beings but the 1963 film by Alfred Hitchcock, ‘The Birds’ struck terror in the minds of people who ventured to see this horror film. This film portrayed ‘fear’ in its raw form and with no explanation of why the ordinary crow attacked anyone venturing out of their homes; the movie left people petrified. Such was an impression Hitchcock could create in his movies! Compare this negative portrayal to Richard Bach’s best selling fable, ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’ This is a story of a seagull; tired of the daily squabbles decides to push himself to improve on flying skills and to eventually attain perfection.

It is indeed a pity that the city bred generation ‘Y’ does not get to see these small wonders of God’s creations. I am told that the proliferating cell phones have driven the sparrows away. The explosion of electromagnetic waves in cities is causing the common house sparrows to quickly disappear. These waves are concentrated in the tower masts and with hundreds of them spread across the cities to cater to the ever increasing demand for cell phones; the day is not far when these winged friends will become extinct. How true are Ken Robinson’s words when he says in his book ‘The Element’, a NY Times best-seller and I quote: “The crises in the worlds of nature and of human resources are connected. Jonas Salk, the pioneering scientist who developed the Salk polio vaccine made a provocative observation. It’s interesting to reflect that if all insects were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all other forms of life would end. But if all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all other forms of life would flourish.”

We need to deeply introspect and remember that; ‘This planet does not rightfully belong to us! We have merely borrowed it from our children and other living beings. We need to take care and be a part of the eco-system, not plunder it!!