Duty is Duty

I admire my dance teacher for many things - her enthusiasm for life, the excitement she is still capable of feeling when she buys a dress, a piece of jewellery, discovers an eatery or watches a good movie. Of course, she dances with the energy of a teenager and works out to keep in shape.

But this morning, when I was in class, something else struck me as admirable. She has a 90 year old mother who is bed ridden. My dance teacher is single and nearing 70 herself. She rushes around her various responsibilities and travels for programs.

At no point has she thought of leaving her mother in an old age home though that will be one less responsibility for her already rushed life. She has a full time attendant, and anybody who has dealt with them will know what a headache that can be. She travels for programs, and is worried about leaving her mother alone with the attender. She did try arranging a home once for a short while when she was going abroad. But decided against it in the last minute and cut her trip short. This time too she has to leave in a few days. But she says she doesn't have the heart to go.

I think that, beyond everything else she does, makes her an excellent human being.

Careless Whispers

Words once uttered cannot be taken back. Like an arrow, it can find its mark and hurt. One can only hope at times that it misses its mark and is impotent.

Words spoken in confidence, spoken in anger, spoken in genuine concern - they can all misfire and come back in a form that is surprising and twisted out of context. It poisons the air for the person who said them, the person who heard them and the person about whom it was. And yet, though we may experience the consequences of our indiscretion - intended or not - the one lock for which there is no key is the mouth and we continue to exercise it as if our weight loss depends on it!

Recently on hearing Wham's Careless Whispers, I couldn't help recollecting the zillions of times I said something and it was misconstrued, causing heartache.

In all humility, I think if we learn not to mind the words but take in the essence, there will be less pain in the world. If someone has said something, to see if one can learn from what they intend saying rather than what they actually said. Not to take it back to them and fight about it, but be polite and keep one's distance, and try not to repeat the mistake. For there is a learning in every situation. And maybe in being bitched about too!

And...not to carry tale from one to another. If A bitches about B, not to think it our duty to immediately convey to B what was said by A. Maybe A said it in a context, and only to unburden, not for B to hear it. By being an unwitting conduit, we can only worsen the situation.

But the mouth, the loose mouth, the eager mouth...sigh! To control it is more difficult than a tsunami that visits only once in a whil.

Don't Judge in Haste

A blogpost by a friend of mine on decency reminded me of this incident.

This was the year I shifted to Chennai (Madras back then) from Kolkata (Calcutta) - 1990, was all of 17 or 18 max. I was staying at my aunt's place in West Chennai and my dance class was at the other end of the city, near the beach on the easter side. A good one hour by bus, the only means of transport on those days.

I had to go for rehearsal at 11 or something on a Sunday, and that Monday there was to be a bandh. On Sundays, as it is only 40% of the buses would ply on the road.

By the time I got a bus and reached my class, it was 1. I finished in a couple of hours and returned to the bus stop. Knowing it was no use waiting for the direct bus, I decided to get into whichever bus came, and change at the next point. I got into a bus where the number looked unfamiliar, but the route written on the side suggested that I would cover half the distance. Since students were issued passes, I didn't need to tell the conductor my stop name. Ironically, I saw the direct bus right behind this, but didn't attempt to take that.

To my surprise, the bus started moving north. I could still have got off at  a point from where I would have got another bus. But assuming it was taking a circuitous route I waited, and landed up in North Madras, in a place that I didn't recognise.

Panicking, I finally asked the conductor, who had realised that I was lost but was hesitant to approach. The driver was taking the bus out to park it in the depot and offered to drop me at the main road. As I was getting off, the conductor offered me money. I refused, standing on my pride. They advised me to take an auto.

Autos were a scary thought those days. But realising I was very late, I caught one, only to land up with one where the driver had a companion. It was almost 7 by now - and for me, a completely scary experience. We took a route that I was not familiar with, and all gods must have been called to protect me that day.

They did an overtime job and I reached my aunt's house safely. The driver and his companion had been as scared as me when we lost the way in one of the neighbourhoods.

I realised that we underrate our human fellows, most of whom are incapable of thinking up harm to others. A handful of those who do spoil our image of our fellow human beings.

Frustrating Escapism

Well, my aversion to romances is that such men - and, ok, ok, such women - don't exist.

But what frustrates me more are movies like The Wednesday and Payanam. Both deal with an issue closest to every individual's heart. They show a dream that can never be.

While most movies show heroes bashing up villains that can never be, in these two movies (and many like this), they deal with the issue of terrorists and terrorism, how it affects common man and a solution. The Wednesday, the Hindi movie, has an amazing twist after a gripping plot. And one wishes somewhere, someone would do it.

Payanam, a recent Tamil movie, is yet another wishful thinking. A hijack, the very realistic delay in taking a decision, and finally the moment when the decision has to be taken. Nature intervenes, and people are able to communicate a momentous decision despite the suspicious terrorists...but despite such loopholes, it leaves one wishing such things happened in real life.

Well, one can definitely dream on... and maybe we should be happy that movies and books give us that escape into the world of make believe at least for a while.

Growing Up

In 2008, my then six-year-old daughter struggled to comprehend the joke the 10-year-old boy told her. Suddenly in the previous five days, I noticed how much she had grown!

She was given a berth of her own in the train. Onwards, she slept in the lower berth, but while returning, we had to risk sending her to the middle one.

At the resort we stayed, she independently made friends with uncles and aunties and didn’t cling to me as was her wont. If any known adult passed her without noticing, she made it a point to shyly call them and say hi!

But the return was the cutest part. She found out the boy’s name, sat with him as he played on his father’s cellphone. He was sweet enough to include her in the game. Then the two of them lay on the two middle berths in our coupe, while I was on side upper with my younger son. My girl and the boy continued to chat, and I could hear him asking her questions, telling her jokes and patiently waiting for her to comprehend them. I wanted to rush to her and explain, I wanted her to stop talking and sleep. The one sensible thing I did was to resist the urge. I think she was managing fairly well and it did her self-esteem good to be having an “adult” conversation on her own. The two shut up on their own, and went off to sleep without any help from us grown ups.

And, now, she wants to have light skin!

Where do they pick up such ideas! How does their minds expand to understand complex details and life skills?

When do they cease needing us?

When do we start wanting them around us more?

A Framework for Children

Should be academically capable
Should be socially well-behaved
Should be Good at some extra curricular
Should conform to rules

Then we will accept him in school.

All non-conformers, please queue up at the counsellor's.

Parents, beget perfect all-rounders, prim and proper and well-behaved all the time? Go figure

The Brute Question

Once at an interview with Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala at IIT-M, I asked him why India lagged behind China in development. Everyone I knew at that time was visiting that country and raving about Shanghai and Beijing, the flyovers, the smooth traffic, the works...

He said in reply (not verbatim) - I don't know... The way they work, the government simply assigns lands and if your property happens to be there, then too bad. Whereas in India, that can't happen. Would we want someone to take away our lands without our consent even for development?

The answer for most of us would be a big, resounding NO! Even if it is not "my" land, I don't like my neighbouring haven for birds and animals being taken away for the metro. But a court case on that matter has been dismissed. Which is fine - at least we have the freedom to register our protest. The outcome is never in our hands, in any case.

An addendum to the matter on China, last night a neighbour said that apparently, in Shanghai, as part of plans to expand the roads, multistoried apartments have been marked yellow. Those with the mark have to be demolished by the owners, who are to relocate 80 km away in designated land. If they don't, then the government will demolish at the owner's cost.

India, please remain a democracy.