After hearing a lot of stories/ rumors and legends for years I got an opportunity to visit Abhujmaar; considered one of the most primitive tribal settlements that still exist in Bastar. Chattisgarh has various tribal ideologies and sects and a majority of them are concentrated in Bastar. Some of the major tribal sects are (a) Muria (b) Madiya (3) Gond and a few sub sects like Abhujmaria Muria, Madiya Gond etc. A visit to Abhujmaar is considered risky due to various reasons and the tribals here avoid outsider’s presence in between them. So to be invited in their village took years of trust building exercise and a complete understanding of their socio-economic and cultural heritage. Government documents suggest that Abhujmaar is atleast 100 years behind in terms of the modern societies and their practices; but what I saw and learned in Abhujmaar and their social structure was shocking to say the least. I couldn’t think of a better expression for what I felt. When I researched on the net I found that there are a couple of people who have done the same kind of research and have considerable data on the lives of these primitive tribals. One person in particular whom I would like to mention is Mr. Verrier Elwin. Elwin was a Christian missionary who abandoned his job as a clergy to dedicate his life to work with the tribals of central India. He worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi and later converted to Hinduism, He married a Gond girl to become a ‘participant observer’ as he states in one of his books, but later divorced the girl with two children and married a tribal girl from the north-east part of India when his research took him there coining the same idea of ‘participant observer’ {quite a participative fellow; I must admit}, leaving his first wife and two children to die in poverty, however the point here is not to have a look at Elwin’s personal life but to admire his work and recording on the tribals of Bastar.
A day in the life of an Abhujmaria is same as of other tribal settlements which includes farming and picking forest produce, a majority of them also do wood carving and bamboo works, the shocking part is the equality among males and females. The boys are called chilaks and the girls are called motiyaris, both have long hairs and believe in decorating themselves with junk jewellery, combs made from wood, tusks of boar and colorful feathers. The motiyaris will have mirrors, paper fans and even balloons as decorative items.They have a robust social structure for generations and much of the credit goes to the must talked about Ghotuls way of education and social teachings that are prevalent here. So I decided to enter a territory which is banned for outsiders but the goodwill created by years of association and reference by a couple of tribal friends did the trick
GHOTULS- The primitive lounge bar
Most of the things that I had read and heard about Ghotuls revolved around the rumors prevalent in the city, but the actual experience of visiting one opened my eyes and gave me a never before experience of understanding the practicality of these tribal practices and for the first time in my life I felt that I was a primitive fellow looking at the most modern way of life. Ghotuls are kind of a community centre away from the village, generally a large hut made of bamboo and mud where anyone above the age of six is automatically a member. They are taught farming, wood carving, and other skills along with community living under the Ghotuls system. It’s like a university with no books or texts, every one is a student and every one is a teacher here. The leader of the motiyaris is called ‘Belosa’ and the leader of chilaks is called ‘Siredar’. An important point to note here is that only bachelors are allowed in Ghotuls, married people are barred from visiting Ghotuls and the intervention of the elders is bare minimal. So every evening the youth assemble here in the Ghotuls; the beginning of Ghotul is marked with beating of the drums, which immediately entices loud shrills from children {never saw children so excited to go to school}the motiyaris start teasing the chilaks and the chilaks go to each motiyaris house to accompany them to the Ghotul. In front of the Ghotul music is played using drums and flutes and the motiyaris start dancing in circles, after a while it does gets boring to watch the same steps again and again, tobacco and local toddy is distributed among all and its wonderful to watch people smoking, drinking, singing and dancing together. This is followed by the checking of home work by the elder chilaks given to younger ones on making bamboo combs, leaf stitching etc. The good ones are appreciated and the bad ones are punished {just like school}. The dancing goes on till late in night coupled with tribal style antakshari, puzzles and poetry. The motiyaris flirt with the chilaks who in turn make effort to win the motiyaris, no motiyaris or chilaks is allowed to give special attention to only one boy or girl and are punished if found doing so. The motiyaris steals the comb of the chilaks which is an indication that she likes him.
We are still debating as to when to start sex education for our children, but here in the Ghotul it’s learned through experience and respecting each other. There is not even a slight hint of pervert thoughts or intentions and the entire process of physical intimacy is looked at like a scared process and the respect for each others physical difference and anatomies is of utmost importance. The equality can be understood even better if I tell you that it’s perfectly alright or rather normal for unmarried males and females in Abhujmaar to swim together in the river with no clothing, something our so called modern society might growl at. The entire process is allowed to develop on its own, the males and females sleep together in the Ghotul from their childhood like brothers and sisters and once their genes develop they go further. The Ghotul tradition of the Muria tribals points to the equality and unisexuality of primitive humans. In the tribe, young men and women “date” from the age of ten onwards. The advocates of free sex and safe sex should study this system of natural sex education at the Ghotuls. Since the Ghotuls do not have formal teachers, the students never develop the attitude that the teachers are of a different generation. As a result, children learn about love at an early age, by watching others. They imitate what they see. Mothers typically teach their daughters about the extent to which they can go at the Ghotuls. Should any problems occur, the Motiyari tells the elders and they collectively sort out the problem. Nobody feels embarrassed by this, nor is anybody despised. When grown-up Chilaks (boy students at the Ghotul) are on duty protecting the fields or are away on other work, the younger Chilaks get the chance to spend the time with the Motiyaris. This is how the young ones get educated. There are strict rules of confidentiality regarding the happenings at the Ghotuls.
Since partners are continuously rotated, every pair gets a chance sooner or later. If a Motiyari singles out a boy to treats him specially, she's punished by the other boys. Because of their sexual freedom, at the time of marriage neither is the bride a virgin, nor is the groom inexperienced. Even after so much free sex chilaks and motiyaris are expected to practice monogamy in their married life. If they stray they are punished severely sometimes even with death. It’s the duty of the Ghotul students to provide entertainment on all occasions. They sing and dance all night to provide entertainment to their villagers. They smoke and drink and have fun. The lessons of cleanliness, and the skills learnt in Ghotuls stay with them all their lives. Living for hundreds of years amidst various diseases, wild animals and now Maoists, Ghotuls provide them with the much needed window of entertainment and relaxation.
I was told that earlier outsiders were allowed to come and watch the proceedings of the Ghotuls but then these officers and police men started exploiting the girls, so it was stopped and now the tribals do not allow anybody to see the Ghotul proceedings. I really felt privileged and couldn’t thank my tribal friends enough to have allowed me to watch the Ghotuls and learn the amazing system of education and social norms in the tribal society. For a city dweller in Bangalore Iam sure the description of Ghotul would sound as if Iam describing a new lounge bar. After looking at Ghotuls atleast I believe that the government assumptions are wrong; Abhujmaar is not 100 years behind but 100 years ahead of the so called modern society of ours.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
In the eye of the storm !!!!
Long back in the year 1979 I had my (then) tiny feet touch the soil of the land of a nondescript town called Jagdalpur. Many hadn’t heard about it till 2008-2009, a majority confusing it with Jabalpur the marble rich historic city in Madhya Pradesh, a tiny spot on the map of India which made me proud every time I spotted it on any map and sad when I couldn’t find its mention in even the basic government diaries which used to have pin codes against names of cities mentioned in the first few pages. I grew up surrounded by the small town charm, green surroundings where spotting a deer, bison, leopard or even a tiger once in a while was only a few kilometers away. I grew up on regular instances of tigers wandering into the town outskirts and how people named them on mythological characters, so we had a tigress named Ganga accompanied with three cubs that were named Shiv, Ganesh and Laxmi on one occasion. The life was simple yet exiting, covered with trees, rivers, gardens, waterfalls and tiger reserves; pollution, traffic jams, job stress, recession etc were big foreign words limited to the oxford dictionary we compulsorily needed to have as part of our books to school. I studied in a convent run by nuns; strict yet gentle, speaking in English was compulsory for us as we belonged to the only English medium school in the town and were treated like kings/queens at social gatherings. One of the few indications of a man’s status in the town was wether his son/daughter studies in Nirmal Vidhyalaya. People used to turn and give a look of appreciation on hearing one speaking in English, so depending on what your personality was you either felt the centre of attraction/ embarrassed / alien to your surroundings. The first group of students who went to Pune/ Nagpur/ Hyderabad/ Delhi or the most favorite spot Bangalore was looked at the same way America looked at Obama when he championed the term change. I joined the latest fad of going to Bangalore to study and have been in Bangalore ever since, 1997 to be precise, but something in me always missed Jagdalpur, though its not my birth place {I was born in godhra (Gujarat)}, I still consider Jagdalpur my birth place and take the same or even more pride in calling myself a Bastaria rather than a malayali which Iam by the basis of mother tongue.
Today every news channel, NGO, Speakers, Social Worker, Writer, citizen of India knows Bastar as the bad land where Maoists are playing havoc with security personnel, in discussions when they talk about Bastar one feels like he is being taken back into the history where people used to narrate stories about chambal and its dacoits and the complete lawlessness prevailing there. Today who so ever feels like takes the responsibility on his/her shoulders to explain to the world the cause of Maoism, or the ways to eradicate it in Bastar, ironically these are the same people who a few years back didn’t even know ‘Dantewada’ existed on the map of India. Dantewada for me is the shrine of Maa Danteswari the local deity of Bastar, where every navratri people used to walk bare footed from Jagdalpur 87 kilometers to seek her blessings irrespective of the religion or caste they belong too, it is the biggest symbol of religious harmony in Bastar which has turned today into a battle ground between Maoists and government forces. Hardly the kind of image I wanted Bastar or Chattisgarh to have.
The history of Bastar is vast and of historical and mythological importance. Chitrakoot in Chattisgarh is considered the place where Lord Ram spent some years of his exile from Ayodhya. The large former princely state of Bastar offers an instructive example of the combining of elements of Rajput, orthodox Hindu and tribal Gond tradition. Modern scholarship claims a date of 1323 for Annam Deo, founder of the Bastar dynasty, to have fled Warangal in Telengana (Andhra) following the collapse of Kakatiya rule after the invasion of the Tughlaq of Delhi sultanate. Oral tradition had suggested that the advent of the Bahmani sultanate in the Deccan had precipitated his flight a hundred years later, in about 1425, and there is evidence that small Rajput kingdoms did survive the first Muslim invasions of the south.Annam Deo is said to have taken the family goddess Sri Danteshwari Mai with him into Bastar, creating a temple for her at Dantewada. As personal goddess of the ruling family, this aspect of ferocious Kali/Durga has long taken centre stage in the affairs of Bastar, which in previous centuries had been ruled by scions of the Nagvansh line. The new Bastar rajas, with a fully fledged Rajput heritage of the Chandra (Moon) line, ruled a forest population of different religious traditions, who, while acknowledged the raja as their ruler. To embellish their spiritual status, the Bastar family over the centuries introduced many other purely Hindu and Brahmanical elements, especially from neighboring Orissa. The major festival and tourist attraction of the Bastar calendar, Dashehra, owes nothing to the northern tradition associated with events of the Ramayan. Here, giant chariots are built and pulled by the tribals with the local deity astride is borrowed from the Jagannath tradition of Puri, and devotion that had more in common with the Durga Puja of Bengal, the festival became a reaffirmation of the ruler's position and the temporal fidelity of his subjects. The last ruler in direct descent from the Kakatiya line, Prafulla Kumari Devi, passed away in 1936. She had married into the Bhanj Deo house of Mayurbhanj in Orissa and her son and heir, Pravir Chandra, last ruling Maharaja of Bastar, perished in a police firing in the Jagdalpur Palace in 1966, championing to the end, the rights of Bastar's tribal people to their lands and forests, Ironic isn’t it ??
There is nothing far from truth on the way channels today are painting Bastar with. The tribals of Bastar were self sufficient and happy with their simple lives and limited aspirations. They were easily cheated by the traders who bought their produce on much lower rates than the market rates. The main source of income came through farming and tendu leaves (leaf used for rolling beedis) and the tribal walking into banks with notes concealed in bamboos were a common sight. Bastar shares its borders with Andhra Pradesh and Orissa in the south. Maoists came into Bastar from Andhra Pradesh using the dense forest as a cover to cross border. Once they were in Bastar they realized it’s the best place they can be, the simple tribal of Bastar doesn’t even know what exploitation means and the rich mineral deposits would ensure that the govt in Delhi would take them seriously, add to this the popularity provided by the PR of NGO’s and social thinkers this place would be a gold mine, so the means of livelihood was taken away from the tribal by forcing them out of farming and complete ban on tendu leaves plucking and the blame for the same was put on the government, the tribal with no other means to live picked up the gun and thus the balance so beautifully maintained for hundreds of years was disturbed, the Maoists started by raising the native versus outsider issue which couldn’t take off as the much respected ruler Raja Pravir Chandra was himself responsible for inviting people from all over India to come and settle down in Bastar. My father still recalls the crowd of tribals in front of Sardar Pola Singh’s house as he was the first Sardar a tribal had ever seen in Bastar. So the issue of native and outsider died its natural death. So suddenly one started hearing on how the tribal was worried about the effect on the environment and biodiversity of the jungle being disturbed if minerals were extracted, mind you these are the same tribals who as part of their yearly festival ‘aakhet’ went hunting in the jungle and killed hundreds of deers, leopards, tigers or which ever animal they sighted on a single day. So how did this transformation happen or did somebody knowingly fed them with false stories on how the govt was their biggest enemy. The govt of MP and the central govt ignored the initial signals as Bastar was too small a place for them to be concerned and with only 3 Vidhan Sabha and one Lok sabha seat it was not something to waste time and effort on. The bureaucrats were frustrated playing hosts to ministers and their families on vacation in Bastar.
The focus came back the moment the state Chattisgarh was carved out of MP in November 2001 as Bastar became strategic from the election point of view. Suddenly the govt in charge realized it had a big problem in hand, by then the Maoists had extended their reach to the deepest parts of Bastar and the local politicians had started using them to win elections in Bastar. The change in regime brought with it the idea to do something different from the previous govt so Mahendra Karma a local Congress MLA came up with an idea of ‘salwa judum’ a local militia to fight Maoists, actually the idea itself came because certain sections of tribals were frustrated by the whole Maoist exploitation, Vanvasi ashrams had turned into places for sexual exploitation of tribal girls, NGO’s centers for converting black money into white of the rich and famous but the idea failed miserably because the state had no means to arm and train the hundreds of tribals and there was no guarantee of the same militia turning their guns on the govt.
Today the Bastaria in me empathizes with the situation my tribal brothers are in, they have no where to go, either the Maoists will kill them or the police will kill them. I have heard hours and hours of intellectual debate and seen days of prime time discussions on Bastar, but ironically no body understands Bastar leave alone coming up with a solution. The Bastaria finds himself in the same shoes that his beloved King was when he was executed by the Government of India. To understand Bastar and Bastaria should be the first step towards eradicating the naxal menace, we give two hoots to people like Arundhati Roy for claiming the exploitation led to Maoism, she came to Bastar only after it acquired prime time space on national television its actually the opposite the exploitation came after the Maoists came.
I always wished that Bastar became famous so that I don’t have to explain everybody I meet on exactly where Iam from, but I never wished that Bastar be known as the bad land where Maoists play havoc, instead I wished Bastar to be known as a prime tourist destination where a normal city dweller can still experience tribal way of living and experience the nature at its best. Please leave Bastar alone we have been dealing with our problems for hundreds of years and Iam sure will still manage to do it better than its been done.
Today every news channel, NGO, Speakers, Social Worker, Writer, citizen of India knows Bastar as the bad land where Maoists are playing havoc with security personnel, in discussions when they talk about Bastar one feels like he is being taken back into the history where people used to narrate stories about chambal and its dacoits and the complete lawlessness prevailing there. Today who so ever feels like takes the responsibility on his/her shoulders to explain to the world the cause of Maoism, or the ways to eradicate it in Bastar, ironically these are the same people who a few years back didn’t even know ‘Dantewada’ existed on the map of India. Dantewada for me is the shrine of Maa Danteswari the local deity of Bastar, where every navratri people used to walk bare footed from Jagdalpur 87 kilometers to seek her blessings irrespective of the religion or caste they belong too, it is the biggest symbol of religious harmony in Bastar which has turned today into a battle ground between Maoists and government forces. Hardly the kind of image I wanted Bastar or Chattisgarh to have.
The history of Bastar is vast and of historical and mythological importance. Chitrakoot in Chattisgarh is considered the place where Lord Ram spent some years of his exile from Ayodhya. The large former princely state of Bastar offers an instructive example of the combining of elements of Rajput, orthodox Hindu and tribal Gond tradition. Modern scholarship claims a date of 1323 for Annam Deo, founder of the Bastar dynasty, to have fled Warangal in Telengana (Andhra) following the collapse of Kakatiya rule after the invasion of the Tughlaq of Delhi sultanate. Oral tradition had suggested that the advent of the Bahmani sultanate in the Deccan had precipitated his flight a hundred years later, in about 1425, and there is evidence that small Rajput kingdoms did survive the first Muslim invasions of the south.Annam Deo is said to have taken the family goddess Sri Danteshwari Mai with him into Bastar, creating a temple for her at Dantewada. As personal goddess of the ruling family, this aspect of ferocious Kali/Durga has long taken centre stage in the affairs of Bastar, which in previous centuries had been ruled by scions of the Nagvansh line. The new Bastar rajas, with a fully fledged Rajput heritage of the Chandra (Moon) line, ruled a forest population of different religious traditions, who, while acknowledged the raja as their ruler. To embellish their spiritual status, the Bastar family over the centuries introduced many other purely Hindu and Brahmanical elements, especially from neighboring Orissa. The major festival and tourist attraction of the Bastar calendar, Dashehra, owes nothing to the northern tradition associated with events of the Ramayan. Here, giant chariots are built and pulled by the tribals with the local deity astride is borrowed from the Jagannath tradition of Puri, and devotion that had more in common with the Durga Puja of Bengal, the festival became a reaffirmation of the ruler's position and the temporal fidelity of his subjects. The last ruler in direct descent from the Kakatiya line, Prafulla Kumari Devi, passed away in 1936. She had married into the Bhanj Deo house of Mayurbhanj in Orissa and her son and heir, Pravir Chandra, last ruling Maharaja of Bastar, perished in a police firing in the Jagdalpur Palace in 1966, championing to the end, the rights of Bastar's tribal people to their lands and forests, Ironic isn’t it ??
There is nothing far from truth on the way channels today are painting Bastar with. The tribals of Bastar were self sufficient and happy with their simple lives and limited aspirations. They were easily cheated by the traders who bought their produce on much lower rates than the market rates. The main source of income came through farming and tendu leaves (leaf used for rolling beedis) and the tribal walking into banks with notes concealed in bamboos were a common sight. Bastar shares its borders with Andhra Pradesh and Orissa in the south. Maoists came into Bastar from Andhra Pradesh using the dense forest as a cover to cross border. Once they were in Bastar they realized it’s the best place they can be, the simple tribal of Bastar doesn’t even know what exploitation means and the rich mineral deposits would ensure that the govt in Delhi would take them seriously, add to this the popularity provided by the PR of NGO’s and social thinkers this place would be a gold mine, so the means of livelihood was taken away from the tribal by forcing them out of farming and complete ban on tendu leaves plucking and the blame for the same was put on the government, the tribal with no other means to live picked up the gun and thus the balance so beautifully maintained for hundreds of years was disturbed, the Maoists started by raising the native versus outsider issue which couldn’t take off as the much respected ruler Raja Pravir Chandra was himself responsible for inviting people from all over India to come and settle down in Bastar. My father still recalls the crowd of tribals in front of Sardar Pola Singh’s house as he was the first Sardar a tribal had ever seen in Bastar. So the issue of native and outsider died its natural death. So suddenly one started hearing on how the tribal was worried about the effect on the environment and biodiversity of the jungle being disturbed if minerals were extracted, mind you these are the same tribals who as part of their yearly festival ‘aakhet’ went hunting in the jungle and killed hundreds of deers, leopards, tigers or which ever animal they sighted on a single day. So how did this transformation happen or did somebody knowingly fed them with false stories on how the govt was their biggest enemy. The govt of MP and the central govt ignored the initial signals as Bastar was too small a place for them to be concerned and with only 3 Vidhan Sabha and one Lok sabha seat it was not something to waste time and effort on. The bureaucrats were frustrated playing hosts to ministers and their families on vacation in Bastar.
The focus came back the moment the state Chattisgarh was carved out of MP in November 2001 as Bastar became strategic from the election point of view. Suddenly the govt in charge realized it had a big problem in hand, by then the Maoists had extended their reach to the deepest parts of Bastar and the local politicians had started using them to win elections in Bastar. The change in regime brought with it the idea to do something different from the previous govt so Mahendra Karma a local Congress MLA came up with an idea of ‘salwa judum’ a local militia to fight Maoists, actually the idea itself came because certain sections of tribals were frustrated by the whole Maoist exploitation, Vanvasi ashrams had turned into places for sexual exploitation of tribal girls, NGO’s centers for converting black money into white of the rich and famous but the idea failed miserably because the state had no means to arm and train the hundreds of tribals and there was no guarantee of the same militia turning their guns on the govt.
Today the Bastaria in me empathizes with the situation my tribal brothers are in, they have no where to go, either the Maoists will kill them or the police will kill them. I have heard hours and hours of intellectual debate and seen days of prime time discussions on Bastar, but ironically no body understands Bastar leave alone coming up with a solution. The Bastaria finds himself in the same shoes that his beloved King was when he was executed by the Government of India. To understand Bastar and Bastaria should be the first step towards eradicating the naxal menace, we give two hoots to people like Arundhati Roy for claiming the exploitation led to Maoism, she came to Bastar only after it acquired prime time space on national television its actually the opposite the exploitation came after the Maoists came.
I always wished that Bastar became famous so that I don’t have to explain everybody I meet on exactly where Iam from, but I never wished that Bastar be known as the bad land where Maoists play havoc, instead I wished Bastar to be known as a prime tourist destination where a normal city dweller can still experience tribal way of living and experience the nature at its best. Please leave Bastar alone we have been dealing with our problems for hundreds of years and Iam sure will still manage to do it better than its been done.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Indian Pulp Fiction
Being married makes you familiar with TV channels you never knew existed courtesy off course your wife. There are many channels which interests my wife, but the channel which has managed to grab her eye balls for the longest time {good job to the marketing guys} happens to be colors, while surviving the various scheming saas-bahus I came across a small teaser ad for an upcoming serial “Keshav Pandit” the name sounded familiar Infact very familiar but I let it pass, the next day while proof-reading rediff.com’s pages {Iam way above the ‘reading’ types}I got to know that the serial was based on a character from Ved prakash sharma’s novel that explained the familiarity. I grew up on Ved prakash Sharma’s novels.
Ved Prakash Sharma is prominent names in the Hindi belt / norths India for his James headly chase style novels in Hindi. According to Hindi novel trade pundits his novel is sold in millions of copies in single edition and even publishers don’t know how many editions have been taken. He has 156 novels to his credit accord to himself. He is highly popular for Vijay-Vikas series. All the characters are larger than life persona. His most famous characters areVijay,Alfanse,Vikas,Watan,Tumbaktu,Singhai,Jackson,Nusrat-Tughlak,Bagharof,Harry and Keshav Pandit,Vibha Zindal etc.
His character Keshav Pandit is also very famous story of a normal guy who had to go through many hardships and had been sentenced to jail. After getting released he vows to fight for people who are not aware of the Indian Judicial process; interesting isn’t it?? There are various characters and characterizations that Ved Prakash has successfully created for years.
Surendra Mohan Pathak is what a Ruskin Bond is to English books. Pathak is an author of Hindi-language crime fiction with nearly 300 novels to his credit. His writing career, along with his full time job in Indian Telephone Industries, Delhi, began in the early 1960s with his brilliant Hindi translations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and the works of James Hadley Chase. He also wrote his own James Bond series.
His first short story, 57 saal puraana aadmi (The Man aged 57), was published by in 1959, and his first full length novel, Operation Budapest, came out in 1969.
His major work began with what is called the "Sunil" series, which consists of at least 115 novels. Sunil, a debonair and upright investigative journalist for the fictional daily newspaper Blast, lives in the fictional city of Raj nagar. Sunil has a quixotic nature when it comes to damsels in distress, which happens too often and in pursuit of justice, mostly with help of his best friend Ramakanth Malhotra, a dipsomaniac and owner of a bar called Youth Club. Sunil often ends up on the wrong side of the law and has to face Inspector Prabhudayal, the exceptionally strict and incorruptible officer in charge of the homicide division.
The "philosopher" detective Sudhir Kumar Kohli is another series character of Pathak. This series is totally reciprocal likewise Sunil as in this dilli ka khaas kism ka haraami is the hero and likewise Inspector Devender Kumar Yadav who can easily be persuaded to do something dishonest.
However the best-known series of novels of Pathak is Vimal, a.k.a. Sardar Surender Singh Sohal. another dozen names he uses to camouflage his identity in the Mumbai underworld. He has taken up arms against gangsters like Rajbahadur Bakhia, and after killing him, his next avatar Iqbal Singh and then Vyaas Shankar Gajre. The Sardar has associates like Tukaram and his henchmen, like Wagle and Irfan, etc. Vimal is not a private detective or police inspector but a criminal wanted in seven states.
If we look down south in Tamil Nadu, novelist Rajesh Kumar is more fertile than scriptwriters could imagine. In forty years Kumar has written and published over 1250 novels and over 2000 short stories.
So why are these people still limited to certain areas or belts as some people would call it despite having sales figures which would put the majority of the books on the shelves of landmark to shame. On doing a little fact-finding what I found was that the publishers of these novels don’t have decided volumes, its depending on the feedback, the other fact is that priced at Rs 20 to Rs 50 these books hardly provide the margins a landmark would like to have. On the internet I have found several requests from people looking for these novels which as of now are restricted to news agencies and railway station hawkers for now. The market is huge and the volumes are higher restricted to a certain area or belt and these regular writers who have regular jobs to support their families don’t seem to find it odd that within the country people have not even heard of them. These are the stories which are fulfilling the reading needs of the masses providing them with a larger than life hero jumping out of the badly printed cheap paper books that flush them with action, emotion, sex and crime. Iam sure the auto driver in Delhi or Chennai wouldn’t complain.
As India today is swarmed with writers with people leaving high paying jobs to get into writing example Chetan Bhagat, I feel its people like Ved Prakash Sharma and Surendra Mohan Pathak who are the real heroes who have survived and did well for themselves taking writing as their part time hobby and still surviving an unfriendly terrain called literature or pulp fiction as its called by pundits. With Keshav Pandit turning into a serial and couple of Pathak’s novel being translated into English I feel the time has come that due credit is given to these little known masters of the craft.
Ved Prakash Sharma is prominent names in the Hindi belt / norths India for his James headly chase style novels in Hindi. According to Hindi novel trade pundits his novel is sold in millions of copies in single edition and even publishers don’t know how many editions have been taken. He has 156 novels to his credit accord to himself. He is highly popular for Vijay-Vikas series. All the characters are larger than life persona. His most famous characters areVijay,Alfanse,Vikas,Watan,Tumbaktu,Singhai,Jackson,Nusrat-Tughlak,Bagharof,Harry and Keshav Pandit,Vibha Zindal etc.
His character Keshav Pandit is also very famous story of a normal guy who had to go through many hardships and had been sentenced to jail. After getting released he vows to fight for people who are not aware of the Indian Judicial process; interesting isn’t it?? There are various characters and characterizations that Ved Prakash has successfully created for years.
Surendra Mohan Pathak is what a Ruskin Bond is to English books. Pathak is an author of Hindi-language crime fiction with nearly 300 novels to his credit. His writing career, along with his full time job in Indian Telephone Industries, Delhi, began in the early 1960s with his brilliant Hindi translations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and the works of James Hadley Chase. He also wrote his own James Bond series.
His first short story, 57 saal puraana aadmi (The Man aged 57), was published by in 1959, and his first full length novel, Operation Budapest, came out in 1969.
His major work began with what is called the "Sunil" series, which consists of at least 115 novels. Sunil, a debonair and upright investigative journalist for the fictional daily newspaper Blast, lives in the fictional city of Raj nagar. Sunil has a quixotic nature when it comes to damsels in distress, which happens too often and in pursuit of justice, mostly with help of his best friend Ramakanth Malhotra, a dipsomaniac and owner of a bar called Youth Club. Sunil often ends up on the wrong side of the law and has to face Inspector Prabhudayal, the exceptionally strict and incorruptible officer in charge of the homicide division.
The "philosopher" detective Sudhir Kumar Kohli is another series character of Pathak. This series is totally reciprocal likewise Sunil as in this dilli ka khaas kism ka haraami is the hero and likewise Inspector Devender Kumar Yadav who can easily be persuaded to do something dishonest.
However the best-known series of novels of Pathak is Vimal, a.k.a. Sardar Surender Singh Sohal. another dozen names he uses to camouflage his identity in the Mumbai underworld. He has taken up arms against gangsters like Rajbahadur Bakhia, and after killing him, his next avatar Iqbal Singh and then Vyaas Shankar Gajre. The Sardar has associates like Tukaram and his henchmen, like Wagle and Irfan, etc. Vimal is not a private detective or police inspector but a criminal wanted in seven states.
If we look down south in Tamil Nadu, novelist Rajesh Kumar is more fertile than scriptwriters could imagine. In forty years Kumar has written and published over 1250 novels and over 2000 short stories.
So why are these people still limited to certain areas or belts as some people would call it despite having sales figures which would put the majority of the books on the shelves of landmark to shame. On doing a little fact-finding what I found was that the publishers of these novels don’t have decided volumes, its depending on the feedback, the other fact is that priced at Rs 20 to Rs 50 these books hardly provide the margins a landmark would like to have. On the internet I have found several requests from people looking for these novels which as of now are restricted to news agencies and railway station hawkers for now. The market is huge and the volumes are higher restricted to a certain area or belt and these regular writers who have regular jobs to support their families don’t seem to find it odd that within the country people have not even heard of them. These are the stories which are fulfilling the reading needs of the masses providing them with a larger than life hero jumping out of the badly printed cheap paper books that flush them with action, emotion, sex and crime. Iam sure the auto driver in Delhi or Chennai wouldn’t complain.
As India today is swarmed with writers with people leaving high paying jobs to get into writing example Chetan Bhagat, I feel its people like Ved Prakash Sharma and Surendra Mohan Pathak who are the real heroes who have survived and did well for themselves taking writing as their part time hobby and still surviving an unfriendly terrain called literature or pulp fiction as its called by pundits. With Keshav Pandit turning into a serial and couple of Pathak’s novel being translated into English I feel the time has come that due credit is given to these little known masters of the craft.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
15 MINUTES OF FAME
In 1968 Andy Warhol said “In future every body will be world famous for 15 minutes”.
I don’t like starting the blog with a “saying” but this one I feel has had the maximum impact and relativity. In 2010 I look at the last decade on television and can recall at least 10 people whom I have personally known to have appeared on TV for some or the other reason. Suddenly there is a wave of people on television. R K Narayanan’s humble common man has jumped out of news papers and is all over the satellite television space.
So we see exclusive only on your channel reports, almost all the reality shows shamelessly copied from US, UK, and various other countries by a channel and then shamelessly copied by other channels by tweaking the format a little. Gone are the days when 11.30 Doordarshan snubbed you by a one liner “next transmission at 5.30 am” and followed it up with a loud shrill forcing you to shut the idiot box. The explosion of cable television coupled with the buying power of the common man has changed the equation. But the point in discussion is not this.
All of a sudden rags to riches stories are everywhere or so we are made to believe. The stories once related to people running away from homes to become movie stars have taken a u-turn; we now have parents training their kids to participate and win in numerous television reality shows to get instant fame, and more important moolah.So there are shows for kids, teenagers, adults, and even older folk, so we have shows right from parenting, cooking, dancing, riding, dating, modeling, singing, stand-up comedies, to even marriage. Its become rather difficult to criticize the loud shrills of your neighbour anymore since you never know the same can become voice of India/ state/district/ colony, apartment, floor and what not and trigger a war of words between the est music directors/singers of India. But the point I want to discuss is not even this.
The point I want to discuss here is what happens to these instant heros after the dust settles, I have personally made an attempt to track one of the contestants journey before the show( since I know her personally) to stardom followed by the decline; the chances of going into oblivion and then reaching a plateau where she could have been easily without having to go through all this. For the respect I have towards her family lets not reveal her name and instead call her Ms Wannabe. Now Wannabe was an average looking girl next door in school, average looking in the sense that we certainly never felt she was Barbie doll as she was nick named later by some very known personalities. Anyways so Ms Wannabe was a regular singer at the school shows rendering some famous songs on the stage and her claim to fame was a few smitten guys who whistled from the back rows or wrote love letters to her on pink papers. A local theatre group approached Ms Wannabe to sing their songs during the various plays done by them which was refused by Ms Wannabe as below her standards and family values.
The moment Wannabe was 18 years old the parents promptly decided that their daughter had it in her to fill the vaccum created by the retirement of Lata Mangeshkar, this was the time every channel worth their salt was contemplating a musical reality show, so started the visits to various auditions for Ms Wannabe, so getting a chance here is almost guaranteed if you have been rejected by a rival channel, So Ms Wannabe got through as one of the contestants for the show. The mentor provided to Ms Wannabe was a famous music director known for his gold ornaments more than his music; So several tears jerking TRPs and public spats between judges and the repeated profiling by some B-grade Hindi channels our Ms Wannabe was nick named ‘Britney spears’ ‘Barbie Doll’ and many more.
Now what is the best way of making people watch your show? The answer is simple we love rags to riches stories so the channel made elaborate arrangements for Ms Wannabe to visit her home town, the roads were lined by people thronging to get a glimpse, suddenly the teachers who used to chide her for her absence started giving the “I knew she would be a big star” interviews. The back row whistling romeos graduated to doing homa’s and puja’s for Ms Wannabe’s success but alas………the channel bosses found another guy who can generate more TRP’s than Ms Wannabe, so Miss Wannabe was dropped as a hot potato out of the contest. The world came crashing down for Ms Wannabe and after half an hour of crying on stage and consolation from judges who promised her work in their next movies Ms Wannabe started the difficult journey back embarrassed about facing the people more than her loss. People welcomed Ms Wannabe with both arms, she was felicitated by almost every citizen of the city all under one assumption that the judges have promised her movies. She was the only topic in schools, colleges, tea-shops, bus-stops, office gossips anywhere and every where for almost 6- months, people used to mob her where ever she went and she already had those big black celebrity glasses to ward off prying eyes. But slowly the discussions died out and so did Ms Wannabe’s popularity, now the time came when Ms Wannabe had to work to put food on the table, having missed her most important years chasing dreams doled out by cable tv Ms Wannabe had little choice in terms of a career. So after trying to get an opportunity in some other reality show or regional channel shows Ms Wannabe had no other go but to join a lowly orchestra group which performs in marriages and during ganesh festival and other public functions. It was a mutual beneficial relationship where the orchestra ensured the food on the table for Ms Wannabe and Ms Wannabe provided the much needed ‘was once a star’ brand equity to it. It saddens me to see the same Ms Wannae who said no to a well known theatre group because she thought it was below her standards was suddenly forced to sing in marriages and small club shows.
I don’t want to dwell into what did you learn from this post kind of mode, neither was my intention to tell a sad story to my readers. My point is much bigger than all this its about what happens to a regular guy who is instantly exposed to stardom and then next moment thrown into oblivion. Luckily with Ms Wannabe due to the family support she had she didn’t go down the dark alleys of drugs, sex and suicide like hundreds like her do when thrown into oblivion. All I want my readers to do is read and just for a second think if its worth all the drama and retribution that one has to go through when you know its not going to last.Just sit back and see millions of Indians crossing all limits to come on camera. Everybody might not be famous for 15 minutes but a few would be and the race to get there makes some interesting food for thought.
I don’t like starting the blog with a “saying” but this one I feel has had the maximum impact and relativity. In 2010 I look at the last decade on television and can recall at least 10 people whom I have personally known to have appeared on TV for some or the other reason. Suddenly there is a wave of people on television. R K Narayanan’s humble common man has jumped out of news papers and is all over the satellite television space.
So we see exclusive only on your channel reports, almost all the reality shows shamelessly copied from US, UK, and various other countries by a channel and then shamelessly copied by other channels by tweaking the format a little. Gone are the days when 11.30 Doordarshan snubbed you by a one liner “next transmission at 5.30 am” and followed it up with a loud shrill forcing you to shut the idiot box. The explosion of cable television coupled with the buying power of the common man has changed the equation. But the point in discussion is not this.
All of a sudden rags to riches stories are everywhere or so we are made to believe. The stories once related to people running away from homes to become movie stars have taken a u-turn; we now have parents training their kids to participate and win in numerous television reality shows to get instant fame, and more important moolah.So there are shows for kids, teenagers, adults, and even older folk, so we have shows right from parenting, cooking, dancing, riding, dating, modeling, singing, stand-up comedies, to even marriage. Its become rather difficult to criticize the loud shrills of your neighbour anymore since you never know the same can become voice of India/ state/district/ colony, apartment, floor and what not and trigger a war of words between the est music directors/singers of India. But the point I want to discuss is not even this.
The point I want to discuss here is what happens to these instant heros after the dust settles, I have personally made an attempt to track one of the contestants journey before the show( since I know her personally) to stardom followed by the decline; the chances of going into oblivion and then reaching a plateau where she could have been easily without having to go through all this. For the respect I have towards her family lets not reveal her name and instead call her Ms Wannabe. Now Wannabe was an average looking girl next door in school, average looking in the sense that we certainly never felt she was Barbie doll as she was nick named later by some very known personalities. Anyways so Ms Wannabe was a regular singer at the school shows rendering some famous songs on the stage and her claim to fame was a few smitten guys who whistled from the back rows or wrote love letters to her on pink papers. A local theatre group approached Ms Wannabe to sing their songs during the various plays done by them which was refused by Ms Wannabe as below her standards and family values.
The moment Wannabe was 18 years old the parents promptly decided that their daughter had it in her to fill the vaccum created by the retirement of Lata Mangeshkar, this was the time every channel worth their salt was contemplating a musical reality show, so started the visits to various auditions for Ms Wannabe, so getting a chance here is almost guaranteed if you have been rejected by a rival channel, So Ms Wannabe got through as one of the contestants for the show. The mentor provided to Ms Wannabe was a famous music director known for his gold ornaments more than his music; So several tears jerking TRPs and public spats between judges and the repeated profiling by some B-grade Hindi channels our Ms Wannabe was nick named ‘Britney spears’ ‘Barbie Doll’ and many more.
Now what is the best way of making people watch your show? The answer is simple we love rags to riches stories so the channel made elaborate arrangements for Ms Wannabe to visit her home town, the roads were lined by people thronging to get a glimpse, suddenly the teachers who used to chide her for her absence started giving the “I knew she would be a big star” interviews. The back row whistling romeos graduated to doing homa’s and puja’s for Ms Wannabe’s success but alas………the channel bosses found another guy who can generate more TRP’s than Ms Wannabe, so Miss Wannabe was dropped as a hot potato out of the contest. The world came crashing down for Ms Wannabe and after half an hour of crying on stage and consolation from judges who promised her work in their next movies Ms Wannabe started the difficult journey back embarrassed about facing the people more than her loss. People welcomed Ms Wannabe with both arms, she was felicitated by almost every citizen of the city all under one assumption that the judges have promised her movies. She was the only topic in schools, colleges, tea-shops, bus-stops, office gossips anywhere and every where for almost 6- months, people used to mob her where ever she went and she already had those big black celebrity glasses to ward off prying eyes. But slowly the discussions died out and so did Ms Wannabe’s popularity, now the time came when Ms Wannabe had to work to put food on the table, having missed her most important years chasing dreams doled out by cable tv Ms Wannabe had little choice in terms of a career. So after trying to get an opportunity in some other reality show or regional channel shows Ms Wannabe had no other go but to join a lowly orchestra group which performs in marriages and during ganesh festival and other public functions. It was a mutual beneficial relationship where the orchestra ensured the food on the table for Ms Wannabe and Ms Wannabe provided the much needed ‘was once a star’ brand equity to it. It saddens me to see the same Ms Wannae who said no to a well known theatre group because she thought it was below her standards was suddenly forced to sing in marriages and small club shows.
I don’t want to dwell into what did you learn from this post kind of mode, neither was my intention to tell a sad story to my readers. My point is much bigger than all this its about what happens to a regular guy who is instantly exposed to stardom and then next moment thrown into oblivion. Luckily with Ms Wannabe due to the family support she had she didn’t go down the dark alleys of drugs, sex and suicide like hundreds like her do when thrown into oblivion. All I want my readers to do is read and just for a second think if its worth all the drama and retribution that one has to go through when you know its not going to last.Just sit back and see millions of Indians crossing all limits to come on camera. Everybody might not be famous for 15 minutes but a few would be and the race to get there makes some interesting food for thought.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Save the Tiger!!! How???
I still remember the day I saw the “save the tiger initiative by aircel” advertisement first time on television; my heart went out for the little cub or stripey as he is referred to in the ad. I felt sad for the cub which was taken over by anger over the fools who decide to kill such beautiful creatures* (although I realize that on close encounter with stripey’s mother beauty would be the last thing that would come to one’s mind) which was overtaken by a zeal to do something for the national animal, so like a true emotional follower I logged on to the website which asked me to ROAR!!! I wondered what good that would do to any potential tiger a minimum of 100-200 kms from where I stay in Bangalore. Anyhow hopes still high I started digging deep into the website to find out how I could help. Being a forest officer’s son and being brought up very close to national parks I felt that belongingness and that emotional connect which further pushed me to contribute towards any help that I could offer only to find ROAR!! ROAR!! & some more ROAR!! on the website with my only favorite Indian footballer Bhai Chung Bhutia. So the website asks you to blog, write (read ROAR) on social networking sites, donate (the money to be used to distribute better equipments to forest guards) and nothing else.
A few days later it was all over internet with people pleading (including me) with each other to save the tigers, the only thing missing here was to suggest how?? You could hear the ROAR from every where, a couple of friends from Russia wanted to ROAR badly whom I had to stop thinking it would make the Siberian cousins of our tigers confused about their future. In a confused state of mind I decided to look at the ad more carefully and do a little dissection with my limited knowledge. Mahindra Singh Dhoni and a host of other celebrities claim there are only 1411 tigers left in India. There is no basis to validate this figure as:-
(1) 70% of the tiger belt in India is infected by Maoists.
(2) There are only two methods of Tiger counting
(a) Clay mould method where pug marks are molded in white cement and counted.
(b) Camera method where cameras are installed and counting done on spotting tigers.
Both these methods are not accurate enough to calculate the number of tigers and due to the Maoists people don’t venture into forests even if it is for counting tigers; so how did a US based WWF arrive at this figure unless off course they took a roll call and the tigers promptly replied “present sir”
I totally support the cause but have serious questions about the effect or reach of such initiatives other than providing a good brand association to a regional player with national dreams “Aircel”. ROARING is not going to help our stripey because unfortunately he would never be able to see it on face book or any other networking site, the only thing that would help stripey is stricter laws which are already in place and even stricter implementation of these laws against poachers, our law system which takes 15-20 years to sentence a criminal accused of killing humans would take a life time to punish someone whoz killed a tiger, as no body from the tiger’s family can hold a candle and protest neither would Arnab Goswami invite them on frankly speaking. The two fastest ways to get justice now-a day.
I think I got a bit heavy and emotional in the paragraph above..can’t help gave u guys a warning about my emotional connect with anything and everything related to jungles, so going ahead don’t you think India has suddenly transformed itself into a superman/ superwomen country ?? no Iam not going off topic just think every other day we are asked to save some thing I could hardly get over the stripey saving emotional outburst when I saw a few more celebrities asking us to save “Indian Hockey” another of my weak points. So as in retrospect when I now decide about how I could help Indian Hockey I still wonder if stripey’s mother came back?? Or would aircel send her a sms to get back!!!!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Meet the De-sarkars (my in-laws)
In my last post I had written about the arrival of my in-laws to Bangalore first time after marriage; now I would like to share the eventful week I spent with them. Actually being a love marriage I hardly got time to know my in-laws closely as (luckily) we (me & my wife) didn’t have the convincing part to be done before marriage; both our parents were cool about the idea and they literary rushed through the marriage as if they wanted to get it done before they could live peacefully ever after.
So on all the occasions (read three) that I met my in-laws it was in a very formal environment where you are surrounded by relatives who are placed strategically as per their relation ship status (close relative, distant relative etc etc) and one is so conscious about the strange looks the either side give you that you actually forget or fail to notice minute things about your would be in-laws. So this was the only opportunity that I was getting to spend “quality” time with them and couldn’t help but notice the behavioral patterns.
So let’s meet the de-sarkars:-
The day starts early for de-sarkars as they are up at 5.00 am; a tad too early for the lazy bum that Iam who still believes that it’s the sun which should be allowed to rise first and not the humans and by rising before the sun you commit a violation of the rules of nature, however I have no ill feelings about people who commit this violation as long as they don’t disturb or try to recruit me into their gang. But for de-sarkars every awake second is a celebration* (not the one which Mr. Vijay Mallya makes) and the first among the group to get up puts on the television at the highest decibel level your poor ears could handle. So your’s truly who was once used to wake up hearing Pink Floyd strumming “shine on you crazy diamond” now is shaken awake by a few hundred kemon achhos and bhalo acchis belted out by heavily made up women on nondescript channels. Iam sure I have noticed my television say “its gonna be a long and Bengali day Rahul” I mean think about my poor television guys, I run out of my home at 8.30 for work and I go back at 8.30 pm but the poor guy cant even protest he belts out serial after serial in Bengali right from 5.15 am to 1.00 am, I wouldn’t be shocked if the next time he greets me in Bengali rather than the customary English and occasional Hindi. Its been 10 days since I saw Arnab Goswami and I kind of miss him, my poor television so used to discovery, national geographic, MTV and Times now has had to make friends with zee bangla, star jholsha* (its jalsa but is pronounced jholsha, so I thought I would as well change the spelling) Sony aanth and a few more which are too miniscule to even mention.
I usually don’t get an opportunity much on weekdays it’s the weekends which suddenly have become longer, lets experience the weekend that I spend with them:-
Breakfast:-
The breakfast hour is at 11.00 am and in between anything and everything related to food is greeted with a loud cheering and some compliments. The entire clan gets together for breakfast and some how has to speak on the top of their voices while the food is still in their mouths which makes me concentrate hard to avoid any stray food flying off their mouth than to eat my breakfast. I was brought up with a lot of stress on table manners and this certainly is off my limits. However post breakfast is when the clan automatically divides itself into two groups:-
(1) Watch Television
(2) Watch a movie on the computer
Both the groups have a couple of scores to settle with each other as they try to outdo each other by increasing their volumes it went to crazy levels till the Einstein in me prompted the importance of the invention of head phones to the group watching a movies which was again not a very good advice since headphones are not designed to be used by two curious people (read:-de-sarkars) at the same time.
The communication between the group is robust and loud enough for my security guard to understand four floors below despite the distance between the groups being only 10 meters; My neighbors Iam sure can recall most of the conversations if asked to, In the midst of this mayhem one of the clan members can break into an impromptu song sequence which sounds familiar to non-Bengali ears and then you are reminded that the great large jewellery wearing Bappi da lives in Bengal and would have copied all the Hindi tunes. While watching television with the de-sarkars I could suddenly see the women folk go up in air with joy and the man of the family giving jealous smile which I realized a bit later was to the man on the screen heartthrob of millions of Bengali girls “proshonjeet”* (*actually prasanjeet pronounced proshonjeet) had made his appearance dressed in colours which would put our Govinda to shame dancing on the road on a popular bangla gaan.
Lunch:-
Lunch is at 4.00. I stared helplessly at the five different mini mountains of vegetables and fishes at my plate. The great bangla food festival had started while the clan decided to cheer every spoonful that was added to their plates I quietly said hello to five kinds of pumpkins, three kinds of fish and a daal soup (which I was later told was actually the daal) the entire clan dissected the fish to its mere bones while I was still getting introduced to the mixed vegetable and luchis (puris) If ever I have felt that regional discrimination exists its only when I got the looks from the clan on my inability to eat fish; I scrapped through the lunch for which I was to be reprimanded by my wife later for not appreciating my mom-in-law’s cooking (a non-pardonable sin I must add).
After the lunch the entire clan decides to take an afternoon nap (the quietest 2 hours in my house) after which the clan is back together doing what they are best at singing, dancing and talking to each other in the loudest possible voice.
Dinner:-
Dinner was at 12.30 am and all the characters which played on my plate had decided to change costumes and re-appear it was like watching a bad play with a low budget play group where same set of actors appear and re-appear in different roles to save on the cost of having more actors. After which I was subjected to the customary after dinner “gulpo” (family talk where u discuss all useless things) and the subject of discussion was the summary of all the serials and movies watched during the day and the critical feedback (read rape) on everything right from the women’s make-up to the dialogue delivery and the camera angles used. Art & Movies runs in the Bengali blood and you better not mess with it, so before sleep could engulf me into the waiting Sunday my sister-in-law broke into a Lata Mangeshkar Hindi number in Bengali accent which asks the boatman to flow with the flow of the river; not sure about the boatman in Bangalore but my sleep did take the song seriously and flew away from me and I ended up staring at the ceiling waiting for the weekend to get over….
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Week That Wasn't!!!
It was one of those Monday mornings when you get up and curse yourself for the Sunday night’s drink, I fail to understand wether it’s the drink or the thought of the work week lying ahead that makes the hangover worse especially on Monday mornings….so going back to the hangover of mine I was greeted with the breaking news of the day by my wife..” MAA BAA AASCHE, ANNIVERSARY JONNU”; my wife when excited chooses to forget that Bengali is not on my resume as one of the languages known; well first it seemed like part of my dream, but little later when I looked at my wife carefully with her eyes popped out behind her specs and ear to ear grin I realized this was true well that partly explained the loud shrills which broke my sleep in the first place, it was my excited wife speaking on the phone to my in-laws. A couple of splashes of water on the face and I got the English subtitles saying my in-laws would be here for my first marriage anniversary; for the record:-“I LOVE MY IN-LAWS” they are one of the coolest in-laws to have* {*-conditions apply} but there was a hitch the only problem I have with their presence is the cuisine and the atmosphere, they are tad too loud for peace loving your’s truly and the cuisine is one of the most talked about in food circles but somehow I have not been able to make peace with it, probably my limited taste buds and some pre-determined notions about what to eat and what not to eat were to blame. So along with the joy of spending quality time with them came the fear of food.
Well I showed enough joy to make sure my wife doesn’t feel otherwise and started counting days, I wasted a week of quality time buying stuff for the home which would make my in-laws feel Iam “settled”* {*-polite way of investigating wether the useless fellow you married your daughter to is good enough to take care of your daughter}
So after me trying to make maximum out of my only left weekend, the big arrival happened on 10th February when after a hard days work I headed to the airport to receive them with a bouquet in hand like a good son-in-law. After meeting at the airport and a few hundred kisses and Bengali compliments later {I still believe they are compliments even though I some times don’t understand what the words actually mean, so I take it on face value since it’s coupled with a smile}we headed towards the taxi bay, well there is some good news awaiting; the cabs in Bangalore have not been designed to accommodate the luggage of a happy Bengali couple coming to meet to their daughter’s house first time after marriage… so that means a few of the bags had to kept in the front seat of the cab so that meant I was to travel sand witched between my pa-in-law and ma-in-law in the cab, well the cab left airport and 5 kms later my in-laws decided to have their customary argument about something in…..u guessed it right Bengali or bangla as I was enlightened later by my wife and I acted like watching a tennis match looking at alternatively at who ever was talking and trying to look as if I completely understood their plights.
We entered our peace loving apartment at around 11.30 and the loud shrieks and kemon aacho’s did make a few neighbors turn in their beds. And now its time to wake up early to go receive my sister-in-law in who would e arriving in the morning. Looking forward to my first marriage anniversary which Iam sure would be eventful………
Well I showed enough joy to make sure my wife doesn’t feel otherwise and started counting days, I wasted a week of quality time buying stuff for the home which would make my in-laws feel Iam “settled”* {*-polite way of investigating wether the useless fellow you married your daughter to is good enough to take care of your daughter}
So after me trying to make maximum out of my only left weekend, the big arrival happened on 10th February when after a hard days work I headed to the airport to receive them with a bouquet in hand like a good son-in-law. After meeting at the airport and a few hundred kisses and Bengali compliments later {I still believe they are compliments even though I some times don’t understand what the words actually mean, so I take it on face value since it’s coupled with a smile}we headed towards the taxi bay, well there is some good news awaiting; the cabs in Bangalore have not been designed to accommodate the luggage of a happy Bengali couple coming to meet to their daughter’s house first time after marriage… so that means a few of the bags had to kept in the front seat of the cab so that meant I was to travel sand witched between my pa-in-law and ma-in-law in the cab, well the cab left airport and 5 kms later my in-laws decided to have their customary argument about something in…..u guessed it right Bengali or bangla as I was enlightened later by my wife and I acted like watching a tennis match looking at alternatively at who ever was talking and trying to look as if I completely understood their plights.
We entered our peace loving apartment at around 11.30 and the loud shrieks and kemon aacho’s did make a few neighbors turn in their beds. And now its time to wake up early to go receive my sister-in-law in who would e arriving in the morning. Looking forward to my first marriage anniversary which Iam sure would be eventful………
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