Of This and That

Crackle,Tackle, Swish and Whoosh

2007-07-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

I have worked now for 14 months with my present organization. It is a small office in Banglaore with just four of us. I sit with this colleague (B) in a tiny little cabin facing each other. Observing her has given a whole new meaning to human behaviour in motion and splitting hairs.

I have now become an expert at judging her moods by watching her brush her hair and the sounds created by this brushing creates. B believes in the old adage of a hundred strokes to keep your hair healthy and thus we have hair brushing sessions every half hour. This not too long hair suffers all her strokes in silent acceptance, burdened as it is by its attachments.

If she has not had a quarrel with her husband, auto driver, maid, security person and office boy then the day has begun well for the hair. It receives gentle strokes which make a soothing sound in our little cabin. Swish, whoosh means peace will reign and she will not crabbily ask me for updates, unecessary documents and most importantly the office boy(K) breaths easy.

Hang on this need not last, remember the hundred and one stoke, in the next half hour session you need to listen carefully to the sounds, sometimes it crackles, now that is ok if she does not beat the brush on the desk, that means mild annoyance but nothing she wants explode at. If she bangs the brush on the table and goes at the hair with a vigour i have seen only at the dobhighaat then the cyclone is sure to hit.

I have learnt to keep as quiet as a mouse, and avoid eye contact definitely, i do not fancy being in the middle of a storm. Disaster is when she gets off her chair and starts brushing that poor hair and the sounds escalate to almost orchestral level. I know it is time to leave the room on one pretext or the other. Oh there are good times too, when the hair is stroked gently and there is music in the air. She get up then too, but to dance and sway to the music. Then there are the quiet long strokes when she is thinking through a problem, it ends inevitably with the brush being thrown into the corner triumphantly.

I have learnt one thing in all this, never underestimate the power of the brush and hair. Static electricity you aint seen nothing yet.

Mangalore and Memory lanes

2007-07-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

I was in Mangalore this weekend. It was the first time after a long gap of 7 years that i went to Mangalore with all my sisters. The occassion was my aunt's fiftieth wedding anniversary. How she is related to us is another story that can take two pages to explain. Suffice it to say that she is my mother's elder sister and my father's younger sister(go figure)

I decided to combine work with fun and since the party to celebrate this event was in the evening post 8PM i called a cousin of mine to set up meetings for me with group advisors of various institutions and the movers and shakers of the Mangalore business world (such as it is)

We took the morning flight and reached Mangalore at 10AM,an hour later than scheduled. The minute i walked out of the aircraft and switched on my mobile i got a call from one of my various cousins. He was calling to inquire if i had reached and whether i knew how to get to my 11 AM meeting. Excuse me but how did he know. It turns out that he knew my itenarary for the entire day and so did all my relatives and they had handed over the organization of transport for me to this cousin. Stunned does not explain how i felt. What busybodies this clan has.

It was touching(and a tad distrubing) to receive calls through the day offering to pick me, drop me and enquiring about the meetings. To top it all everyone gav eme background and tips on how to handle all the chappies that i was meeting(Business intelligence at its best eh?)

When we were younger we used to be sent to Mangalore every summer for two months. While we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, as we grew older we resented these holidays. They became increasingly intrusive, one could not do,say or even breathe without thirty people knowing about it immediately. We were so used to being free birds in Bangalore and could not understand the concept of escorts and not stepping out after 5 Pm in the evening, when in Mangalore. We sisters gradually refused to go there for our holidays and our trips became infrequent.

We now visited mangalore for weddings, events, birthings and pooja's. This particular trip made us realise how much we are loved and i could finally see the intrusiveness for what it really was, concern and a sincere need to see all of us to Suceed in whatever we do. But i cannot still get over the fact that all of them treated us like kids who needed escorts lest we get lost. And that too in a town which has only three main roads :-)

Three Revolutions and Women

2007-07-13T01:35:00.000-07:00

I read three books in the last 15 days and i was amazed at how similar they were in thought. The three books were:

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar

Unknowingly i had picked these books which talk about three different revolutions, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Libya. The only difference is that they are not a political commentary nor written as social history. All three are stories of women and children caught in the web of promises, of freedom, liberation, and dreams coming true. There is a parallel between aspirations of the country and these women and children

Khaled Hosseini delivers like he did with his first novel"The Kite Runner" In his second novel we experience the country that we are so used to dismissing as a "terrorist sticken" place through the trials of two women and their lives. The ordinariness of their customs and rituals juxtopositioned against the revolutions makes it all the more interesting. The tale is told through two women, both so as different but who find themselves in similar circumstances. For the first time i related to the country and its residents as "REAL". The plight of the protagonists made me realise how lucky i was to be born in a country which in most parts is truly respectful of women and their rights.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a yellow sun was more involved and had layers that peeled off to show something new as the book progressed. Again the protagonists are two women and their relationships set against the background of the Biafran war. What i loved about the story was that there was no blame, no resentment, no anger just a quiet telling of how things were. It also is a celebration of the human spirit in all its glory. There were shades of everything we as women and human beings had experienced and told in such a matter of fact way without drama. It reminded me of the writing of a great author Chinua Achebe.

The third novel set against the Libyan revolution has a yound boy as it s protagonist, and the story revolves around the family and its experiences during those trying times. What captured my imagination and had me wanting more is the potrayal of the mother. The mental breakdown, the secret alcholism and the escapism makes it all so real. The need to understand that drives the boy to find out about the secrets that his parents keep from him, moves the story along in a fast paced manner. While the entire world was cosying up to Gadaffi, here is what happened internally in that small country. There is blood and gore, pain and passion but there is no anger and resentment. Again like "Half of a Yellow Sun" it s a telling of a story like it is, with no bias.

All the three books deal with human beings, their greed for power whether it be over a nation or other human beings. They attempt not to teach or educate but to make us understand the emotional wreckages that a war leaves in its wake.

Retelling an Epic -- Ashok Banker's Ramayana

2007-06-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have never liked the Ramayana, ever i snce i was a young girl and heard the epics at the knees of my grandmother. She told the ramayana with such devotion and fear for bad deeds that it made me squirm. I did not want to be sermoned yet again through a story that too.

I loved the Mahabarata though, and got the entire gang(consisting of all the sisters, brothers, relatives of all shapes and sizes) to request for those stories. Not too much protest there, everyone liked the Mahabarata. It was such fun, and real, and most importantly you could enact it the next day. I made copious mental notes and organised the entire troop the next day in the woods to either create the chakravuyvha, or rode into battle with Krishna as Arjuna to defy the arimies of Kauravas. There were nuances that you could incorporate, ideas that you could improve upon and you could actually be mean, nasty and all the rest without being reprimanded by some "maryada purushotam"

30 years later my son then 12 years old was so engrossed in a book that he blackmailed me to do all his chores for the weekend. Suprise! that was book written by Ashok Banker, on the very epic that i had no liking for; The Ramayana. I read all the seven books in the series subseqeuntly.

Banker makes Rama, Sita and the other characters all seem so real , human and so fallible. I loved the fact that they too suffer from self doubts, from pressures of making decisions, and not necessarily being right all the time. Having them think like human beings rather than Devas was interesting and definitely enjoyable. Yes they did have super powers and it was bestowed upon them for doing all the right things. But it was more like a reward for good work than their birthright.

The tale is told in the best traditions of storytelling,making no pauses or stops to tell the reader about Rama the AVatar. (Thank the Lord) The first six books engaged me with its story of a fairly simple tale of a man and his trials.I waited with bated breath for the seventh book and finally got my hands on it the moment it arrived ont he stands.

It is a good read, engaging and interesting but Banker resorts to what other authors have done before him. Deified Rama. What saves this book is the way the characters of Ravana, Surpanakha and others have been potrayed. The Anti Hero is so machivellian that he invokes admiration inspite of his destructive intentions. Banker's, Ravana is unabashedly ambitious, intelligent and uses all means that he has and some more to WIN. A war is a war is a war.

I am glad that banker has resisted the temptation to write about the Uttarakhand and has ended his epic retelling of the Ramayana with the winning of Lanka.