All along the watchtower – 1

Bubba dragged his legs along as he walked back home from school. He hated school. The teachers always looked at him as if he was going to hit them. He sighed. At eight, he knew what his village stood for.

Sadpur, near Muzzafarnagar, had always attracted that reaction from anybody. It was famous for illegal arms trade and gang warfare. And Bubba’s family was one of the foremost arms dealers in the area.

It was obviously a very unsafe area. But Bubba had nothing to fear. His Abba’s men were forever around, looking out for him. He rarely ever saw Abba, though. His Ammi, on the other hand, was always home. Always. He had never seen her leave the house even once. He’d heard her speak of the town she was from.

“When I was your age, we used to play all evening after school. Shahpur is much bigger than his place. A city, almost,” she would say. And after she said so, she cried. Bubba never understood why girls cried. Allah must have made them wrong. That’s why they cried so easily.

Bubba never cried. He was the leader of the children at school. They all listened to him and did what he said. If there were any new children, they were either forced to submit to his authority or they’d have to leave the school. But, he didn’t get any satisfaction from that. He’d heard his father’s men say that the truest followers came by themselves. He was not sure what it meant, but he knew that he was doing something wrong.

He wiped the dust from his sleeve and rubbed his face on his arm. It was a hot, dusty day and he was trailing behind two other boys. Malik and Ajay were his best friends, even though they walked much faster than he did.

Malik turned around and yelled, “Oy Bubba! What’re you doing? Move fast, will you? It will get dark very soon, and I don’t want my Ammi looking for me.”

Malik’s Ammi came out of the house. He didn’t have an Abba. She worked in some company and always brought sweets for Bubba. Abba didn’t like Malik’s Ammi. He said she was too independent. Bubba did not know the meaning of that word, but he knew that she was doing something wrong and that she would never be forgiven.

Ajay was a quieter boy. He was the pujari’s son, and  he helped his father out in the evenings. Bubba liked Ajay more than Malik. Malik was too loudmouthed for his taste, Bubba’d decided.

As he kept walking he could see the two outposts of the village. Unlike other villages, his had outposts or watchtowers as that government man had called it. There was a man on either one with a big gun. They looked around all day. Bubba never knew whom they were waiting for with such big guns, but they always scared him. The meanest of men were put up there.

One of them nodded at Bubba and waved him away. He ran. Ran till his legs could. Ran till he couldn’t breathe. Ran till he fell on his doorstep. He felt intense pain.

All that happened after was a blur. Someone opened the door, picked him up and took him inside. His Ammi came with something in her hand and rubbed it on his leg. He was put to bed after that.

To be continued

Won’t get fooled again

Ravi loved his taxi. It was the only thing that made him want to live. But he never allowed just anybody to get in. Working in Mumbai as a taxi driver meant that he had to use his sense of discerning very well. He only took well-dressed, decent people. Ever since the bomb blasts started happening in taxis, he made sure that he was as careful as possible.

Today was a good day. He had already earned Rs 300 and now two men were signaling him to stop. Well-dressed, in their mid thirties, they looked like those bankers in the 70s. Ravi stopped, got out and held the door open for them. Before getting in they said that they had to go the hospital. Only then did he notice that one of them was ill and holding his head. Ravi thought for a moment and said, “I’ll take you for free, sir.”

They stared at him in astonishment and immediately got into the taxi. Ravi started the taxi and they were on their way. Throughout the journey, he could hear his passengers whispering in English. Ravi had never bothered with English. To him, it was always a foreign language.

***

Neetu sat outside her house in Dharavi. The chawl was the only place she called home. At 15, she’d run away from the chawl twice fearing that her father would kill her mother and she would not be able to do anything about it.

A week back her father had come to get her from the roadside stall where she always sought refuge. He’d said, “I promise never to drink again. And this is the first time I’m promising you like this. So believe me. Please come home.”

She trusted him, went back home. He didn’t touch alcohol for that week. She was happy. Her father had gone back to being the doting parent that he was when she was younger. Things were good. He’d left early this morning. Her father, Ravi, drove a taxi in Andheri. She was waiting for him to come back.

She fidgeted with her new kameez, a pretty blue one with mirrors on it. Her mother had stitched that for her. She wanted to show it to her father and then he’d told her he would take her to a nearby temple, where she would pray for all of this to remain the way it was.

***

Ravi was idly waiting in the hospital compound when an old couple came up to him. “Will you take us to the station?”, the old man asked.

Ravi nodded and opened the back door for them. He helped them get in and shut the door. The station was not very far off. Normally, he would’ve said no for such a short distance, but they were old and he didn’t want to trouble them.

He dropped them off at the station and took the money. He prayed to the picture of Ram in his taxi and put the money in his pocket. He started to drive away from the station. In the rearview mirror, he noticed something on the backseat. He stopped the  car, got off, opened the back door and took the package out. It was something wrapped in cloth. He’d made sure that the old couple didn’t leave anything. “Those two men must’ve left this”, he muttered under his breath.

He was afraid to open it. He’d heard so many stories about taxi drivers doing exactly this – finding a strange package, opening it and dying painfully. He put the package back and drove towards the nearby police station. Fear gripped him now. Something told him that he was not alright.

Then, he saw a blinding light, followed by a huge sound. There was a lot of blood. The last thing he knew was the pain.

***

It was dark. Neetu was still waiting for her father to come home. There was something at the back of her mind which told her that her father was not going to come today.

She saw her mother running out of the house. Some lady had come and asked for her mother. “She must’ve gotten a phone call”, thought Neetu. A phone were about a kilometre away. She ran behind her mother and they got to the phone booth. She saw her mother pick up the phone and listen to someone speak on the other end.

Her mother’s face went dull as the unknown person kept speaking. The receiver then fell from her hands and the other woman held her up. She came towards Neetu. “Neetu…”

A love story Part 4

Part 3 is here.

Recap: A bus journey transforms into a storytelling session as a young scriptwriter going through a difficult period meets an old man on the bus who tells him a love story.

We were sitting on the beach now. It was hot and I could feel the heat everywhere. The beach was a bad idea on a May afternoon.  Narasimhan picked up the sand every few minutes and let it fall through his fingers. His face was turned away from me. For a moment, I thought he was crying. I gently touched his shoulder. He turned around and heaved a sigh.

“See, I do feel quite bad about all of that”, he said. “But nothing can be done about it now.”

“Anyway, let’s continue. Where did I stop? Oh yes, yes. Now what happened after I came back is of no consequence. And it’s quite boring to talk about. In fact, I thought that by now, you would have fallen asleep standing up. Not bored?”

I shook my head in response. I did not want to say anything that would stop his flow. But I had to. “Please, continue”.

“OK. I’m going to jump a few years now. You know like how they do it in some soaps. Like that only.”

“Saro was possibly the only woman I know who looked beautiful even as she aged. Nowadays and all, they are saying that Hema Malini still looks good. But that’s artificial. Not like my Saro.”

“And we became better friends than spouses as we grew older. We still fought everyday, but we agreed at the end of every fight that one person was right. I think it was always her. Of course, I never agreed with all that. But marriage is like that, you know. Vaijja had now finished her schooling. Then it was a 10+1 and PUC system. She’d gotten into JIPMER. You’ve heard of it? Oh yes, of course you have. Very popular, no?”

“But I was dead against it. How could I send my daughter to a place so far away all alone? See Pondicherry was considerd far away then. And that was the first time, Saro stood up to me. She fought for Vaijja and made me agree, reluctantly though, to let her go. Now she’s a doctor.”

“Jaggu was now in college studying B Sc. And Lakshmi was studying law. Soon their education got over and they all got married in a while. Both my daughters had love marriages, but that is a story for another day. My son, on the other hand was married for a while and then he passed away.”

“They had children, who grew up away from us. But they made it a point to visit us every week. Saro started to join all these sloka classes, music classes and some such other thing to keep herself occupied. I began feeling very lonely at this point of time. Everyone had some work or the other to do, and I had none.”

“When our grandchildren were in their pre-teens, all our children moved back in with us. Jaggu’s wife also came. I still don’t understand why they did that, but they must have sensed that something was wrong. My time was occupied again and I began ignoring Saro.”

“Then, one day, Lakshmi came to the hall. I have this easy chair at home, where only I would sit. I was sitting on it when she came to speak to me.”

“She said, “Appa, there’s something you must know. Amma has not been feeling well for the past few days. And we need to take her to the doctor.” I looked at Lakshmi and asked, “Why? What is it?” Lakshmi looked downcast. “I don’t know, but she’s complaining of acute pain.”

“We all dropped everything and rushed her to the nearby hospital. She was referred to an oncologist. A knot of dread formed in my stomach. Somehow, I knew it. We visited the oncologist, who asked her to take some tests. A few days later, it was confirmed. They wanted to do a surgery on her.”

“They did so, but, later the tumor had spread to the rest of her body. They gave her a maximum of a year to live. I never understood how she withstood so much pain. Do you know, even after the first surgery, she went into the kitchen everyday to work? She could not just sit around in one place doing nothing. I don’t know how my grandchildren do it, these days.”

“She never cried, event hough she was in pain. In the nights, she told me, “See, when I’m not here, make sure you don’t spend too much money on the house. Sometimes, you’re too extravagant.” Every night, like that, she gave me practical advice on running the household. She had come to terms with the fact that she was dying, and she wanted to make sure that everything was in order when she did.”

“During the last months, she lost the capacity to speak. And she could not withstand the pain anymore. She cried out to God every now and then, to take her away. The pain must have been unbearable. I wondered how she took it all.”

“It was a summer afternoon. Pretty much like this one. Vaijja was sleeping on Saro’s palm. A while later she woke up, took one look at her mother and knew. She called out to us and our neighbour, a doctor who held her wrist. The moment he let go of Saro’s hand, it hit us hard. I felt like I was being crushed.”

“All around me people were making phone calls, and running around to inform everyone else. I could not move from where I was standing. I was looking at Saro’s face for the longest time. You know, the moment she died, all the pain left her face. She seemed so calm and happy. Like, it was exactly what she wanted. I then realised that she wasn’t in anymore pain now.”

“I left that room immediately and took over from Jaggu, who was making all those phone calls. I started calling people and telling them.”

He went silent for a moment. And he picked up from where he left, “The pain of the loss slowly faded away. but we all still missed her.”

“I miss her. But I cannot say it in front of my children.”

We both sat quietly, watching the waves, not minding the heat. I turned to see him getting up. He motioned for me to get up. “See, I miss her alright. No one makes potato curry like she did. In fact, no one I know now cooks like she did. And she was the most wonderful thing to ever happen to my life. That might sound like a very melodramatic thing to say, but it is the truth.”

“And you see, this is what it is. No songs and dances. No fight sequences. A simple love story, is what it is.”

Saying that, he started walking away from him. I didn’t know what to say to the man who had spent the past couple of hours telling me, a complete stranger, his life story.

I took the bus back home and turned on my laptop the moment I got there. I usually never begin my scripts with a dedication, but this time I had to.

“To Narasimhan, wherever you are. And to your inspiration, Saroja.”

the end

A love story Part 3

Part 2 is here.

Recap: A bus journey transforms into a storytelling session as a young scriptwriter going through a difficult period meets an old man on the bus who tells him a love story.

Now:

“It was 1968. Summer, I think. That was when Vaijja went missing. We had gone to this new park that opened then, in Anna Nagar. They were showing films and all throughout the day. We were all quite excited. But Vaijja hated crowds. Saro held her hand all the way and kept Vaijja close to her.”

“About half an hour after we entered the park, Saro looked behind only to find our daughter missing.  She was overwrought. She looked back at me guiltily. I asked to her to stay with the other children and went looking for Vaijja. I’d done an entire round of the park, but I couldn’t find her. I came back to Saro. She had tears in her eyes.”

“She said, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’ll go look for her now”. She didn’t even wait for my reply as she ran from the spot. I sat there waiting, thinking how it must be for her, losing a child. I held the children close to me. Lakshmi did not understand what was wrong. She just kept asking me where Amma and Akka were. I did not know what to tell her. Jaggu, on the other hand, told me more than once that him being the man in the family, he should go and look for his sister.”

“At this point, Lakshmi looked up at me and asked, “What if Amma also does not come back?” I was pained that a nine year old could actually think about not seeing her mother again. I was also shaken realizing that the possibility actually existed. I started frantically searching the crowd for Saro, thinking she might have gone missing too.”

“A few minutes later, Saro reappeared with Vaijja in tow. It was quite evident that she had been crying. Lakshmi ran to her mother and hugged her, while Jaggu kept muttering something under his breath about women and sentiment. I was beginning to wonder if Jaggu was becoming like my father. Saro had already admonished Vaijja for slipping away like that.”

“We all quietly walked out of the park, took a taxi and went back home. Saro was quiet throughout the journey. I did not want to ask her what it was that she was still worried about in front of the children. Once we got home I went to the kitchen to see Saro. I asked her, “What are you still thinking about?”, to which she answered, “I was wondering what if she had actually gotten lost. If we never saw her again what would we do. I know it’s not like in those films we see, where the son or daughter is always reunited with the parents. We could have seen her for the last time today.”

“I did not know what to tell her. She went on, “At a point of time, I really thought we had lost her. When I was looking for her, I decided that if I couldn’t find her, I would just turn back and go somewhere. I could not have faced you and the other children without her. I sat down and started crying. That’s when she found me. She found me. I did not find her.”

“I was seething with anger by this time. I asked her, “So you thought you would just leave us like that. If you lose one child, you would leave the other two and a husband behind and go off? Stupid woman.” I turned away from her and walked out of the kitchen, muttering under my breath. I realized that I was becoming like my father.”

“It was about half an hour later that she came to the hall with a cup of coffee for me. She just kept it there. I thought I would not drink it, but I needed the coffee. The moment the cup touched my lips, she smiled and walked out of the room. Oh those days, you see, we didn’t go and apologize like you people do. You all are too vocal. Saro and I and a code. After a fight, she would give me coffee. If I drank it, it meant we were back to normal. Come to think of it there was never a time when I didn’t drink it.”

“In the 1970s, we stared going for music concerts together. We would listen to almost anyone. Oh everyone was good back then. There were no exceptions. Life was quite smooth for the children. But for me and Saro, it was not going so well. We started fighting everyday. Usually I would buy vegetables for the house. See, I didn’t know whether they were good or bad. Saro would then yell at me for bringing rotten vegetables and I would yell back at her. The vegetables were a small reason, actually, but we kept fighting anyway. It was quite painful living at home.”

“I then did something I can never stop regretting. I applied for transfer. Saro did not know why. She kept asking me why I asked for transfer. I replied, “So that I can be away from this place.” She looked at me for an entire second and walked away slowly. I didn’t know that I had hurt her by saying that.”

“I left for Hyderabad that Saturday. Saro and the children came to the railway station to see me off. Something was wrong with Saro that day. I didn’t know what though. I was more worried about how they’ll get back home safely. I said goodbye to the children and turned to Saro. She said, “Stay, please. I will not fight with you anymore.” I stood there staring at her without moving. The train started to move. I ran towards the train and boarded it just in time. I didn’t look back at my family. If I did, I know now that I’d have jumped off that train and gone back to them.”

“We all make bad decisions at least once in life. Mine was that idiotic transfer. Of course, a week after I reached Hyderabad, I got fidgety and restless. I was missing my home. I got back to Madras within a month. But Saro was never the same again.”

To be continued a.k.a Thodarum…

Part 4 is here.

A love story Part 2

Part 1 is here

Recap: A bus journey transforms into a storytelling session as a young scriptwriter going through a difficult period meets an old man on the bus who tells him a love story.

Now:

“Ah all that lovely food she made”, Narasimhan smiled wistfully, probably remembering how the food tasted.

“Let me tell you, she had no clue how to cook anything until she came to my house. Anyway, I moved to the Railways and got transferred to Hyderabad. My father refused to let her come with me. He said it was bad enough that he had to send away one child, me. He didn’t want to send another child too. His reasoning was that we were too young to be let out alone.”

“He also decided that she had to complete her school education at least. College was out of question, of course. So, she did her +1 and PUC while I slaved away at Hyderabad. I would come to visit once every year – travelling was quite expensive back then, you see. I was amazed to see a sort of transformation in Saro, yes, that’s what we all called her.”

“She had turned from the shy, demure girl to a woman capable of handling herself and the household which as much elan as a king would rule over his subjects. You, know, now when I look back, I think that was the moment I fell in love with her. Of course, I didn’t tell her. We didn’t go about telling these things and all. I was away for five years and she grew up so quickly in that time. I had to move back to Madras. We lived in Mylapore then.”

I then realised that we had gotten off the bus and were wandering aimlessly around Besant Nagar as he kept speaking. I did not know what to do. I tried excusing myself but that didn’t really work. The old man wouldn’t stop ranting.

“We had a child that year. A girl. We named her Vaijayanti. A very nice, quiet girl. She didn’t cry too loudly or anything. Saro always knew when to bathe her, change her and feed her. I never really understood how she just knew. She knew even before Vaijja cried out to her. She just knew.”

“We had twins after that. A boy and a girl. We named them Jagannathan and Lakshmi. God only knows how Saro managed them all. They were quite a handful you see. We didn’t have any more kids. Taking care of them was too much work. And Saro also started sleeping with the children. We had an old house. my father and mother had passed away by then. So all the women and the children would sleep in the open courtyard, while we men would sleep on cots with mattresses.”

“Saro did most of the housework. Whenever I came home there would always be hot coffee ready and she would have made tiffin as well. I liked wheat rava upma a lot and she would make it twice a week. I later learnt that my children never liked it, but they ate it just the same. Jaggu and Lakshmi were a lot like me, but Vaijja was the one who took after her – quiet, sweet and responsible.”

To be continued a.k.a Thodarum…

Part 3 is here.

A love story Part 1

It was a hot summer afternoon. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back as I walked to the bus stop. I was late. I didn’t enjoy the walk on that day. “Idiot!”, I muttered to myself. The man walking beside me gave a startled glance and walked away. I felt guilty and stupid.

The bus was on time, crowded as hell. It was a surprise how I got in and out everyday without breaking a single bone. 29C was easily the most crowded bus in the city. The footboard was brimming with people. The bus eerily resembled an overflowing milk can, only with humans. The older schoolboys on the footboard stepped down a moment before the bus came to a stop and ran along with it until it did. A good number of people got down as well.

I always had an unreasonable fear that once the people got off the bus, the driver would not wait for the rest of us to climb aboard. I usually run to the footboard and climb onto the bus like my life depends on it. Until now, I never thought of what that would’ve looked like to another person.

An old lady was getting up just as I got in and I scrambled to catch her seat. A few moments later, and a few shoves, I sat. A rare thing indeed. And breathed in the putrid hot air like it was fresh oxygen. Well it was. Technically. An old man was sitting next to me. I’ve seen him everyday on the bus. We nod and smile at each other before looking away. This was the closest I’d been to him. We nodded and smiled and looked away.

He then turned to me and asked, “So what is it that you do that you’re in such mad rush to take this bus everyday?” I didn’t know what to tell him. I just sat there, dumbfounded. Two things – he had spoken to me as if he had known me all his life, or rather, all my life. And I never realised the fact that my daily trip was indeed a mad rush. I was staring at him like a deer at headlights.

“You know, you keep your mouth open long enough, a big snake can go in”, he said, chuckling. I immediately shut my mouth and turned away, embarassed. Realising my stupid behaviour, I turned back to him. “I’m sorry. I was just tired from the walk, that’s all. I’m writing a script. For a movie”, I stated.

“Oh”, he said. He was silent for about five minutes before asking, “What kind of a movie is it?”

“What?”

“You know, horror, romance, thriller, comedy or one of those commercial-entertainers-with-no-plot?”

“Oh. Actually I’m going to make a never-before-seen picture. In fact you can’t really fit it into a genre.”

“That’s what they all say”, he shook his head disapprovingly.

“Yeah I know”, I replied and sunk low into my seat. To tell the truth, I was suffering from writer’s block. I hadn’t written a word in over a month. All I had been doing was take the bus, wander about and take it back home.

“You should write a love story”, he said, suddenly, sitting up straight in his seat. He looked like what Archimedes would’ve looked like before he did, well, what he did.

“A love story?” I asked him incredulously. “Isn’t that overdone?”

“Of course not. If it were, people would’ve stopped making love stories years ago. Everyone wants a good love story with a happy ending. The single people watch it to feel better. The couples watch it to bring back the spark in their relationship and the older ones watch it just for, let’s call it, old times sake”, he said, with an air of finality.

I was gaping again. It was a full fifteen seconds before I shut my mouth, collected my thoughts and asked him, “But, don’t I need inspiration for a love story?”

“You need inspiration for any story.”

“But…”

“Ok, probably a little more inspiration. But you surely have something to draw from, don’t you?”

Silence.

“Ah I see! Lonely, are we? Tell you what, what do you do after getting off this bus?”

“Wander about”, I answered hesitantly. For a moment, this man was becoming intimidating.

“Good. Then I shall tell you a very nice love story.” I had no choice but to listen.

“It was the 1950s. About 1955 to be exact. Nehru was around then. I was working with ICF back then. Government job and all. Supposed to be quite good you know. Now, you all went running towards those IT companies and see what happened. Anyway, I was supposed to be married in a month. I hadn’t met the girl. I remember seeing a photo of her in a school play or something. She was standing next to a girl dressed as a queen. She was 15 years old. Now it might seem like it was very young, but back then it was a very normal age for girls to get married. Saroja was her name. Oh my name is Narasimhan, by the by.”

“The marriage happened as planned by both sets of families. But we didn’t speak for a whole month. I had never been around a woman who wasn’t my sister. She had been in the company of girls all along. She didn’t even have any brothers. The first few weeks were quite awkward. I would come back home from office and she would wash my feet and sit me down as the table as she served me tiffen. She had learnt to make very good coffee. My mother taught her. Of course, my mother’s coffee was a lot better. But she learnt very quickly.”

“My mother was very disturbed that we did not talk to each other. “Go and talk to her”, she would goad me. Then the speaking began. It wasn’t like young lovers or newlyweds these days. What is it that you call them.. ah, sweet nothings. Yes, yes. No. Nothing of that sort. I just asked her to make potato curry for me. Yes that was the first thing I said to her.”

“She nodded meekly and asked me, “Do you like it spicy or not?”. Her voice wasn’t anything exceptional. I’d heard during the wedding that she sang a bit. But I never bothered listening. “Spicy”, I replied. From that day onwards she made potato curry once a week, smiling shyly, each time as she served it.”

To be continued a.k.a Thodarum…

Part 2 is here.

Sightings

These are strange times. Strange things happen to people on strange days.

Anna Nagar to Taramani is quite a distance to cover on a daily basis. Yours truly does to diligently. Everyday (Insert obvious expletive about college being so far away etc.). Today during the commute, I saw:

1. Four Sethji boys on two Honda Activas (grey) wearing pink shirts with embroidery on them. With blue jeans. They weren’t identical. Enough said. Here’s to brave Sethji boys with coloured hair (burgundy, brown and reddish blonde).

2. Ten autos with flags stuck on either side. I have been through Ayudha Pooja and many political party meetings before but it was them flags this time. They had a red and yellow base with the Mercedes logo in blue on top. Not kidding.

3. An Alto with the hood of its boot (don’t know what it’s called) on its backseat. I’m still wondering how they got it in there.

4. An advertisement on the back of the bus for a reality show on Raj TV called Top Jodi. I could not identify the judges or the anchors. (I would like to state here that I have watched all possible Tamil movies, obscure ones too.) I have a feeling the male judge was one of those who acted in Visu padams like Samsaram adhu Minsaram, Penn Aval Mann, Vidiyal Nalla Aviyal etc.

I also wanted to include class getting cancelled, but I would rather attribute that to sheer good luck!

Come on and take a free ride

At 70, nothing seems to faze Mohan Raj. He has a smile and a nod for everyone passing by. If he were in England in the 1920s he would’ve even taken his hat off for the ladies.

Mohan Raj works as a taxi driver in New York. While this may seem normal to anyone, Mohan Raj, in truth, has had quite an interesting life. He ran away from his village when he was 14 to come to Chennai and act in films. It is not always that luck favours everyone, and Mohan was hence, restricted to doing odd jobs in studios.

“That was a turning point in my life”, recalled Mohan wistfully. “I met many great actors – Sivaji Ganesan was one of them.”

Finding the studios not as exciting as he’d imagined them to be, Mohan took to taxi driving. He claims his taxi was quite popular in Madras, as it was called then, an easily believable claim, given his cultured and courteous demeanor. He was in his late twenties then, and had to take care of a large num ber of dependents in his family. He managed to educate his siblings and find them good jobs, largely through the wide network of friends he had built through his taxi driving.

At one point, Mohan started driving for Shanta and V. P. Dhananjayan on a regular basis. The dancer-couple treated him as a member of the family and it is a friendship that has lasted all of four decades or more. It was with the help of the husband of a singer in the Dhananjayans’ troupe that he found employment in the American Consulate.

“They (The Dhananjayans) still treat me as a part of the family”, said Mohan, with a smile. “When I came back from the US this December, I met them and offered to drive for them. They flatly refused saying that I was family and they couldn’t employ me”.

Mohan worked for more than fifteen years at the Consulate where he earned a reputation for devotion to duty and services rendered beyond the call of duty. The egalitarian atmosphere of the workplace helped him blossom as a personality in his own right. Over the years, he developed a keen interest in contemporary Tamil literature and American bestsellers and became a devout reader of the Kamba Ramayanam. Through his association with the Dhananjayans, he also became a keen follower of classical dance and music.

Mohan comes back to India every year for about three months during the December “season” to listen to Carnatic concerts and watch dance recitals. “I did not know much about music until I started driving”, claimed Mohan. “When I worked for the Dhananjayans, I would take them to all the concerts they wanted to attend. They would buy a ticket for me as well and I learned all that I know about music from these concerts.”

Through his friends across social barriers and spanning a variety of professions and occupations, Mohan has been able to help many people find jobs, some of them senior positions in the private and public sectors, and quite a few in the American Consulate. “People would not believe it when I said I could get them very good jobs”, stated Mohan, chuckling. “I would then go about asking my friends for jobs and when these non-believers actually got job offers, they would be astounded.”

Mohan is also a cricket fanatic. His favourite cricket memory was listening to the Prudential World Cup finals in 1983 on a transistor radio. “We’d go to the Woodlands Drive-in opposite the Consulate during breaks so we could listen to the commentary in peace. I was ecstastic that day.” When he lived in Chennai, he has never missed a single match that has taken place here.

Mohan’s years of sincere work in the Consulate won him the “Sustained Superior Service Award” there, and paved the way for him to get a green card. After much agonising over the decision to transplant himself from familiar surroundings to an alien environment, Mohan finally took the plunge after his retirement a few years ago, to seek greener pastures in the US, where he now lives.

He started off in the US doing odd jobs again, and finally took to taxi driving. “I drive because it simply makes me happy”, said Mohan firmly. “There’s nothing else I would rather do.”

After initial doubts and misgivings, he has settled down happily there, working in the service industry with dignity and financial security. Home on a holiday, he could be seen everywhere during the December music and dance festival. Soon he should be on his way back to his new home abroad, a happy man who watched every ball of every Chennai Test from the pavilion terrace enclosure.

The times they are a’same

I read a couple of chic-lit (No. Not M & B) books a week or so back and figured out that it was not too difficult to write.

The main character is a woman in her early to mid-twenties with a boyfriend and a crappy job. Or rather a job at which she should be promoted but doesn’t get it because of a snotty colleague (usually another woman). She thinks her boyfriend is perfect until the super-guy comes along. This guy’s either her boss (oh this office relationship works out just perfectly), or he would be her inspiration (don’t know why I put that in there).

After a customary fight with the super-guy, she realizes that her boyfriend is not good enough for her and hence dumps him, only to go back to the super-guy, whom she’s loved all along (yawn).

There, I’m done writing chic-lit.

I now have only a book report, a profile and an analysis left. Jest 2500 words. Thats all. Child’s play.

PS: I really do like “Can you keep a secret?”

Korrrect

I was randomly watching videos on Youtube, when I came across this.

And hence was born the idea for this post. Political Korrrectness. (Note how I cleverly used the “k” and the triple “r” just to justify the title.)

I was having a conversation with a friend about how we call orange saamandi (chrysanthemum) tuluk saamandi. (Or that’s what my flower seller calls it!)

Tuluk um... Differently abled Saamandi

Henceforth it shall be called differently abled saamandi in Tamil. I can visualise the shock on my pookaaramma’s face when I say this. (No I don’t think she’ll get it either!)

PS:This is to prove that I’m a politically korrrect person too (I did it again). Oh and if you are wondering, korrrect is pronounced this way:

In Open Page, The Hindu ishtyle:

The “o” is pronounced as in office and coffee and numerous other such words, Mallu style. The triple “r”… well.. let’s not go there.

PPS: If you are a hot guy driving a Thunderbird (which almost never happens), and you end up saying “korrrect”, your chances of getting laid are zilch. Don’t get it? Let me spell it out for you now…