Cry my beloved country

Well Ive mustered up enough juice to write another blog.Feel much better after my operation in March.The chest isnt hurting much and Ive regained most of my strength.Im walking and exercising regularly (a little carefully) and it seems that my new valve is functioning well.
Its been raining this year,thank God,and the lakes are filling up.Would have been disasterous if the rains played truant again.What has been increasingly bothering me is the mess that seems to be swirling around us what with daily scams involving 1000s of crores,revelations of state sponsered murders and cynical politics with lousy governance.Im so sick of reading about language and border disputes between states,as if we are not all part of the same country.Im disgusted at the manner in which the local language is sought to be thrust down peoples throats with threats in the name of local pride,and every sleazy politico is happily jumping on the bandwagon.Im nauseated at the total abdication of all political parties from any semblance of real governance.Decisions are being taken only if there are pecuniary or electoral benefits,not for the good of the state or country.The few good men and true are being drowned in a tidal wave of venal,corrupt,self serving representatives of the people who think nothing of torturing,killing,wheeling,dealing,lying or stuffing wads of currency notes in their bloated nether regions.How can we pretend to be a nation to be reckoned with if we cant even ensure the safety of its citizens and provide basic essentials.When the stink of corruption is so pervasive it is naive to expect anything to function normally.Those caught with their hands in the till get chest pains and eventually return with a vengeance to loot and plunder.The enthusiasm with which honor killings and female foeticide is being carried out without any real consequences, makes me ashamed and I cringe at the thought of it.The faces we see every day on TV spouting cliches about parliament,decorum and democracy while doing the the exact opposite on the floor of the house which has now become worse than a fish market.What sanctity of the House are they talking about? So I ask myself ...do we deserve democracy? was Winston Churchill so right that he uncannily predicted that with Independence, India would be governed by crooks and charlatans who would line their own pockets and sell the interests of the nation.Are we decending to these awful depths in every aspect of our life? I despair and sometimes feel a sense of depression.Maybe I should stop reading and listening as many have learnt to do.Shut out the bizarre and macabre and pay no attention to the raddled,venal faces which would do justice to a rogues gallery.I guess I could but then I would need to turn into a zombie and remain in a catatonic state for the next 100 years.Maybe if I wake up after that things will be different.More on this later....

Long break

Its just about 10 months since I wrote my last blog.I guess too much happened for me to sit down and write.However I shall return soon......as soon as this pain in my chest gets better!!!!!

Its raining..finally

We have had the first real rain today.Bombay is flooded,traffic disrupted,trains cancelled but Im happy.Thank God for the respite from the heat and TG for rain on the lakes supplying water to the city.I love the rain,but dont like to get stuck somewhere awkward.So let it pour let it pour....

Truant monsoons

Finally its raining a bit and theres much needed relief from the heat and humidity.But we need it to pour all over to avoid serious problems for the rest of the year.This dependence on the monsoons sucks and is like a lottery at times.Good monsoons means a happy year,a bad one spells misery.Somehow I wish we could get out of this dependence,but then that would need a long term perspective from our rulers and our people..The fact is that in spite of an abundance of water we have failed miserably in providing enough for our needs without the help of the monsoon rains.We have not invested in rain harvesting and small bunds in villages.We allow massive wastages and theft and the increase in crops that need huge amounts of water.We build bigger and bigger dams as monuments to our egos but which finally have not delivered the much needed relief to the parched areas on a sustained basis..A country as arid as Israel is able to produce fruits and vegetables and has turned the desert green though hydroponics and the judicious use of water.We on the other hand believe in turning forests into desert and green areas into wasteland.There is no national conciousness that water is a finite resource and needs to be harvested and coaxed and encouraged to regenerate.Somehow it gives me a hopeless feeling as in all else that is not right in this country of ours...

The rains a pain

Its mid-june and no sign of rain yet.The cloying humidity slows down everything including updating blogs.Wonder how much worse it can get.I was trying a small exercise the other day and thinking as far back as I could like they do in the movies with pages of a calendar flapping in the breeze.I have a robust memory of the time I was 3,4 and 5 years old and recall many of the incidents from way back then.I remember how hot Benares(now Varanasi) was.The house we lived in on the main road in Bhelu Pura.And in the heat the road being retarred.The smell of turpentine and bitumen was overwhelming and I would stand at the gate watching the road roller with facination.I remember my eyes falling on a perfect, shiny black ball of tar near the gate which glistered in the hot afternoon sun.Inevitably I opened the iron gate and edged towards it and then hunkered over the treasure wondering what it could be.I remember giving it a gentle, tentative poke and was amazed to see the surface dimple and then regain its smoothness.Again and again my little fingers tested the resilience of the magic ball until one poke too many broke the surface tension of the tar and my fingers slipped in.I recall the panic and the desperate attempts to get the goo off.The more I tried the more I spread the black stuff all over my face and hair.The unequal battle ended with me looking like the tar baby and pandemonium in the house.Paraffin and cold creams were used to remove the clinging tar and suitably chastised I was put under "Attock"(sitting silently with face to wall) for 2 hours.
The house had a flat roof where I would often go when cool to watch the world go by,and next to the house was a playing field where apart from the occassional football matches,RSS parades were held every weekend.I used to crouch on the roof and watch this display of martial enthusiasm where young men in khaki shorts and white shirts would march up and down with sticks.I waited for the final moments where all would stand at attention,put their right palms vertically on their chest and recite the RSS credo.In fact I learnt the whole recitation and would chant along with them from my loft.The only thing was that my version was meaningless gibberish,sounds picked up by a kid which mean nothing.But it sounded exactly like the original if you didnt listen too closely to the words.To this day my aunty Karuna remembers parts of my version(as I do) and remembers how seriously I used to recite it.When I sometimes now see RSS and BJP leaders on TV at similar parades, chanting, it all comes flooding back...but its still meaningless gibberish!!!
I MUST talk about how I ran away with a girlfriend in Benares...but Ill save that for another hot day.

Miracle

My aunty underwent the DnC procedure at the begining of May.It was uneventful and she didnt even feel it at any time.After a nights stay at the hospital,where her daughter Indrani stayed with her,she came home not much worse for wear.The intention of the DnC was to confirm the stage 3 cancer found in her MRI report,and also the quality and likely prognosis.Earlier the doctor had given her about a year to live.It was a tense and stressful time and Im afraid I blew my top more than once.Indrani got a tongue lashing from me which she deserved and her younger daughter in USA Nandini got some too.The 3 days waiting for the biopsy report was bad.Finally last week the report was collected and amazingly it revealed she was cancer free!!!!!! No malignancy.I broke down when I read the report.I wonder why I love this old woman so much.Perhaps she is the last link I have with my childhood,but more because she was so much a part of my life growing up.
There was of course a frantic change of plans by her daughters and she has been whisked off to Calcutta to stay in her old flat again.She didnt want to go but her daughters have this strange conviction that she must stay in Calcutta.Im not in agreement.I have told her that if shes not comfortable there to just come back here.She lost a lot of weight here and consequently was able to move around .Her blood pressure is down and she feels better.I wouldnt want her sliding back again just to please her daughters.I suspect theres some resentment involved too.They want to do the right thing even if it kills her.I wont allow that.I have told her to tell all concerned to go to hell and just come back.More later.......

Storyteller

After a few years being coddled by Catholic Irish nuns in Ranchi,I was thrown like a lamb in the rough and tumble of public school life at Bishops in Poona at the age of 12.I still remember my first day there.I arrived in new white uniform and maroon striped tie with my aunty Karuna in a autorickshaw.I had never seen so many raucous boys before,being used to a gentler kinder environment of silent, pink nuns , pretty girls in uniform and flowers, where boys were tolerated at best. The few that studied in Loretos were a tightly knit well behaved band.
So here I was and the first guy I met was a thin,weedy Sindhi chap called Lacchu Vasandani, a cross between the artful dodger and Reggie,who briefed me about the class and teachers and what was expected.During the day I met some of the characters who would have an impact on me over the next few years.Desmond Tomlinson was a large, friendly good looking guy with light eyes and a Kirk Douglas dimple on his chin.He was facinating because he had these endless stories of cowboys and Indians which we listened to with rapt attention during the 10 minute stretch break and after lunch.The stories were so good especially because of 2 reasons.First because Desmond would intersperse his tales with the appropriate action sounds such as gunshots,horses hooves,arrows flying through the air and the crack of the bullwhip..kapowww,zippp,ktchakkkk,pinggg and so on.The second reason was that Desmond assured us that he was actually on close talking terms with cowpokes like Tom Mix,Roy (Rogers) and Lash Larue,apart from the stars that played Cochise and Geronimo.And he enslaved us by saying that maybe,just maybe he would introduce us to them on their next visit to Poona and actually let us ride one of the cow ponys.One of the most stunning revelations he made was that Lash(Larue) on his last visit had actually placed a silver dollar on Desmonds tongue and from a distance of 30 feet had flicked it off with his trusty bullwhip with a sound like gunshot.He was a master storyteller whose descriptions of Shanes fast draw , the Colt 45 and the Bowie knife would leave us asking for more.Im sure if he had been trained,Desmond would have turned out to be a master novelist.The fact is that he left school about a year after I joined, and migrated to the UK with his sister and mother.We never heard from him again,and the last anyone saw of him was as an usher in a cinema theater in London.Maybe that was the job he really wanted.