Jawan

As a kid, ambulances always fascinated me. I surmise that was because of the lights and siren sounds they had, the way they were treated when on the road where other vehicles would make way for its passage. I caught on the fascination at an age where I was too little to think of why ambulances had those lights and sirens, why they got priority on the road. I probably came to know that at a later age. But the fascination stuck, even though I assimilated the purpose of the urgency. My mother used to tell me that whenever they took me to a toy shop, ambulance fire engine toy replicas were inevitably my first choice. Strange things to like when I look back. But you have to understand, back then not everything was wrapped around societal etiquette. When you are that age, you can love anything and hate anything, neither of which would seem logical. That is the way it is.

I had wanted to sit in the back of the ambulance as it began its somber sojourn from the airport. But it wasn’t possible, I was to show them the way.

Me and Jai were of the same age. We had studies in the same school till plus two. I wouldn’t categorize us as best buddies. Yes, I was friends with Jai but we didn’t belong in the same circle. While both of us did not bring home any academic laurels in our periodic report cards, I was a notorious member of the village naughty children gangs while Jai was someone who was more of a silent type. I was considered by the elder folk as somewhat of a headache, my presence in most cases was a precursor of some mischievous activity in the near future. On the other hand, Jai was a different breed. He was silent and pleasant and was generally friends with most children in the area. There were circumstances when he had come to our rescue. Like in the case when five of us stole toddy from Chandran’s toddy shop and were caught in the act of consuming it, Jai pleaded with Chandran to let us off the hook, vouching for us that we would never steal from anyone. Or when I gave a love letter to carpenter Raman’s daughter when we were in tenth grade and it unsurprisingly came in the know of Raman, Jai talked to Raman to cool things down. And so on went the stories.

As I mentioned, Jai and I were friends, not the thickest of buddies but friends nonetheless. Things took a turn for the better when we were in plus two. Both of us did not know what to do for future. Our academic records did not hold much promise that we could get an admission for any professional degree course and we had started thinking about what to do next. It was Jai who broached the idea of joining the army. The more he talked about it, the more I was convinced that army was a good prospect. There were no army men from our village, so it would help get an image makeover, to get us respected in the village. An additional incentive at least for me was the booze on offer. Army, I had heard, was quite generous in serving up booze to its rank and file and that certainly was a swing factor in my decision. Not to mention all the pluses and perks of a government job.

And so, a handful of us prepared for the Army recruitment. Three of us managed to clear the physicals and get offers from the army when they came for recruitment in the state. As luck would have it, me and Jai got posted to the same battalion. It was certainly good to have a known face to bank upon - the training period was tough and sapping and we depended a lot on each other to get through that. And that it when the bond of friendship between me and Jai was strengthened. Being of the same battalion, we got our postings together. We were posted in different parts of the country and the two eggheads from a remote corner of India got to see the soul and essence of the length and breadth of India. We also developed a pattern when taking our annual vacations - we tried to space them up so that one of us would be home every half year or so. That way, even though we went home only once every 12 to 18 months, from our village perspective, any one of us would be home every 6 to 8 months.

Time passed, as it always does. Both of us married, had kids. When I would go home for my vacations, along with all the luggage for me and my family, it was an unwritten rule to carry one box full of stuff for Jai’s wife and daughter. And vice versa when he went home for his vacations. And when everything was going well, came the war. Historians of futurity may judge it with a different set of views but for us as soldiers, we were taught to obey orders coming from higher up, not question them. Our regiment, as was the case with a lot of regiments, was sent to the international border. Our battalion was posted at the front-line - we were the first line of defence for India. When you are in a war, your psyche is very different from what you experience during peacetime. The adrenaline levels are pumped up and you need that to cope up with the death and destruction you see happening in front of you. You know that you and your colleagues are responsible for creating that havoc directly or indirectly and you need to convince yourself that you are doing the right thing.

And that is when it happened. The eighteenth day of our deployment on the international border. That is when a shell fired from the enemy forces hit one of our front-line command posts manned by Jai and another colleague. Death was instant, I later came to know. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the news. Yes, we are soldiers and we are “used to” seeing a colleague waving hello at us one day and coming back inside a body bag the next. No matter how trained you are, no matter how much of the army psyche you have assimilated, you cannot quite get “used to” some things. 

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The body of Jai lie wrapped in a white cloth in the back compartment of the ambulance. As I directed the driver to make the final turn into the road which led to Jai’s house, I could see the crowd afar that had gathered around the compound of Jai’s house.

The Bitter Coffee

This corner side cafe occupied a special place in my life. I discovered it when I moved to the city to start my professional career. This was on the way to my workplace. One quick skip and hop to get a coffee once in a while. As time passed, this gradually developed into a routine. Somewhere over the course of the first year in this locality, I developed a personal bond with this café.

She joined my office a year after me. And as someone who was of almost same age as her but had a year or so experience in the group, I was assigned to mentor and on-board her. The frequent interactions initially were professional. And as it invariably happens in a lot of such situations, somewhere the professional barriers got breached and we encroached into each other’s personal spaces. It was during one of our initial interactions in office that I suggested to head out for a coffee at this café and she came along. Slowly, as our relationship blossomed, the café and its corner table became a very usual setting.  We shared out thoughts, aspirations and dreams over countless cups of coffee. We dreamt about a dream wedding, an unforgettable honeymoon and a happy married life sitting under the roof of this coffee shop delightfully savoring lattes and cappuccinos.

Somewhere along, the world of idealism gave way to the pragmatism of real life scenarios. There were wedges between us, the clashes became one too often. And at last, yesterday, the Sunday before Christmas, at the entrance of this very café, this very location that had become a part of us and our relationship, she said goodbye and good luck to me one final time. Around us, as the melodious Christmas carnival drumbeats echoed, she walked away from me and from us, the final time.

Yesterday is over, and I know I won’t get over it anytime soon. I came up to the cashier as usual today morning and ordered a cup, tall and black. This cuppa, this Joe in my hand, is my last from this café. The coffee today tastes particularly bitter, and the reason is not the sugar I failed to add. Too many memories clog my veins, too much nostalgia lingers enclosed within these walls. Goodbye, dear café. Maybe our paths might cross someday in future. I, for one, wouldn’t bet on it though.

Sinner

The smell of gunpowder was nauseating. As her pace got her closer to the gates of the ammunition manufacturing unit, the stench seemed to magnify manifold. Her husband never seemed to have an issue with the smell. The very thought of her husband caused her already not-so-promising outlook towards the day meander southward.

Peace and tranquility were two feelings she had given up on the day they were married. She and her five-year-old son was most often on the receiving end of his fury on many nights. The problems were so intense that she used to put her five-year-old to sleep by seven in the evening so that he is spared from the volcanic fury of his father. He was an alcoholic but he never came around to admitting that. Her pleas and cries would often be drowned in his incoherent and outrageous remarks of his alter-ego in his semi-permanent inebriated state. He used to come home seldom before ten. After his shift at the company, he and his friends would head to one of their usual joints and drink themselves to senselessness, following which he’d head home. Logic didn’t often go well with an intoxicated state of mind and he invariably used to pick a fight with her for even the most trivial of reasons. And then, he’d fall to bed, and sleep off immediately. She’d often stay back in the living room for a while, cursing her bad luck, her husband’s alcohol addiction and contemplating her and her son’s bleak future. Her tear glands were almost paralyzed, it did seem she had used up an entire lifetime of tears’ supply in the eight years after their marriage.

Things would attain a completely different hue in the morning. He would wake up sober and they would talk sensibly, like a husband and wife are supposed to. He’d occasionally help her in making breakfast and he’d be all eager to please her. “Leave the job here. Your job involves gun manufacturing, it is a sinful task. Let us find a job elsewhere, let us not work at a place where they profit when men kill each other.” Her suggestion would be brushed aside, she knew. “Yes yes, it is something we should think of. The company is doing well now, they will handout our bonuses in the next month. Manager saab was telling that this time they’ve made record profits and we employees should expect hefty bonuses. I’ll work till they pay out the bonuses for this quarter and then once that is done, I’ll start searching for another job,” he’d say, a lot of warmth and affection exuding from his eyes. And then the conversation would taper off.

She sighed. All these conversations, all these seemed to have happened eons ago. He had died six weeks ago, of lung cancer. By the time he was diagnosed, the cancer was at an advanced stage. The doctor opined that it is most likely caused by all the chemicals that were involved in pellet manufacturing since his job involved continuous and careless contacts with all those carcinogenic substances. In those few weeks since the tragedy, she had thought of multiple ways to start earning and knocked on various doors. But none of her efforts panned out. So here she was, making her way towards the gate of the factory as his replacement at his job. During the walk, she contemplated the sins that she was about to heap upon herself. The sons and fathers of men who would die from a gun that she would help manufacture. The wives and daughters of men who might stay alive if she were not going to work at this place. True, all this was real but equally real was her son’s school fees she had to pay. The grocer and vegetable vendor who had given her provisions for the past month but would stop free lines of credit sometime soon. She had no other option. A tear escaped her eyes as she crossed the gate.

“A month or two,” she thought to herself. “I’ll probably work here enough to pay off existing bills and then I shall look for another job.” She mentally cleansed her feelings of guilt that were washing ashore in her mind and made her way to the interiors of the factory complex.

Another Day in Paradise

Christmas time is one of happiness and joy, one of smiles and celebrations. And one of cold snowy winter as well. Three days to go before Christmas, the city was in a festive and joyous mood. That snowy night, I found myself walking on the pavement draped in all sorts of winter wear I could lay my hands on. I was missing my wife quite a bit, she had to go out of town for a conference and would be back only on New Year’s Eve. The late-night walks and a midnight coffee with her would’ve been just what the doctor ordered, if you ask me.

Yet there I was alone among a sea of humanity, with an all-professional visage in a surrounding filled with holiday cheer and festivities. Somewhere afar, I heard the hum of a cathedral bell chime ten. Even at this hour, there were a lot of people outside, quite a sizeable chunk of them with children, throwing snowballs at each other. I was immune to the celebrations around me, as I watched the setting dispassionately.

I slowly made my way across the street to a café. Like all other shops in the vicinity, the café too was decorated with Christmas trees and decorations hanging from the walls. There was a decent sized crowd in the café, most of them clutching their cups of piping lattes and hot chocolates taking in the vacation spirit and engaged in lively conversations. Just as I was about to push open the door, my eyes darted to the side. And there, I found him, yet another homeless man in this city of dreams. He had a blanket which he had draped across his body, and a tattered pair of shoes which, I wondered, did much to protect his feet from the wintry chill. He was not much different from the thousands of others whom I’ve seen on the streets over the course of years, but I shouldn’t generalize or trivialize this human being. This was not a number I could add up if I were counting the number of such individuals I had come across on the streets, this was a human being with life and blood.

Even he seemed to embrace the mood of the occasion. He was smiling, or more accurately, that’s what I read from the spread-out lips with hardly anything resembling teeth inside his mouth. Despite the cold, it seemed, he was bent on giving his life the few hours of joy and liveliness he rarely could afford. As I pushed open the door and stepped into the café, his face and his smile, somehow, had affected me. Something all of the life and energy around me in the past few hours could not do, a look at his face for a few seconds did for me. For the first time that evening, I found myself smiling.

I was still sporting my smile when I went up to the very cheerful barista at the counter.

“I’ll take a tall latte” I said.

As she was about to bill my latte, I corrected myself.

“Actually, make that two lattes. And I’ll add a couple of scones to that order as well.”

A few minutes later, I exited the café sipping my latte and holding the other latte and scones in my free hand. And I bent down in front of the man in front of the café and put down the latte in front of him and handed him the scones.

“Merry Christmas to you my dear man,” I said.

“You too, sir. Oh, thank you so very much for these. May God bless you!”

I smiled and stood up. As I slowly started to walk away in the direction of my apartment, I heard him say, “You’ve fed a hungry soul sir. That’s another day for you in paradise.”

The title is inspired by a song of the same name by Phil Collins. You can watch the song here and the lyrics can be found here.

Hey Me, Grow Up!

Life was a few orders of magnitude less carefree back in the days when your age could be counted in fingers of your hand. Though the realization dawned a lot late, I can think of no other stage in life when you have a zero responsibility policy to yourself and to everyone else around you. More often than not, you command the attention of all the grown ups around you, you have the license to be silly and cross those invisible and complex lines of civility (within some reasonable threshold, of course!), you can demand (and in many cases, get) stuff of your choice without bothering about any monetary aspects…. Aah I can’t put a full stop here. To summarize, you were a kid, no one expected you to show maturity and no one would chide you if you did not do something which was expected to be done in some particular way.

Fast forward to the me in college. A decade and a half after the period of life mentioned above. Dear God, so many responsibilities, commitments and obligations. That was the stage of life with the worst of two worlds. If you did something that fell into the societal definition of unpleasantness, everyone would crowd around you and remark that you’re grown up and it is time you got rid of “childishness”. On the other hand, if you were to heed to that opinion and do something which you consider correct all by yourself, the same set of people would wield the broom the other way. “Just because you are in college means you can now think you know everything? That you are smart and capable of doing everything yourself?” Well, wasn’t I? Didn’t you people mention just the other day about me being grown up, me needing to shoulder responsibilities and me shedding my childishness, huh?

But even in those days, there was quite a number of things that were like black box to me. The biggest example that comes to my mind is related to banking. I had absolutely no idea about any banking related service. I studied to become an engineer at an institution quite far away from home but if someone were to ask me to deposit money into an account or to get a demand draft, I would simply stare blankly. Truthfully, I did not know. Mercifully, to my credit, I did not need to know. Crediting money into a bank account was a phone call transaction, “Dad, I’m on zero balance.” And the reply would be, “Alright, I’ll put some money in over the weekend,” or something likewise.

I passed my post-graduation and found myself employed. Well, that is the motive of life, isn’t it? Study well in school, get into a good college. Then study well in college, get into a good job. Is it a government job? Aah priceless. Nothing more to attain in life. If not, well, there is no job security, so you should try to get into a sarkaari department or PSU. Phew! I found myself in a private company. So far, so good. Now, you move from the life of an all-taken-care-of-once-fee-paid hosteler in college, to someone who has to stay in a rented home or apartment at your city of work. You think that you have finally transitioned into an adult who can stand independently on his feet. You have that special glee when you receive your first paycheck. That tendency to splurge on that bike or dress or piece of jewelry you’ve always yearned to own. But alas, trouble is never far away. You are suddenly thrown into a different turmoil of sorts.

At home, everything was taken care of. You knew there was running electricity, running water, cooking. All these and much more, and you didn’t know anything one layer below. At hostel, you paid the hostel and mess fees and you didn’t care after that. Now? You have to set up the internet connection. You have to pay the electricity bill. You have to buy groceries. And no food if you don’t cook…! That’s unfair. I thought all the problems were behind me, weren’t they? Cooking is well and truly an art, and I’m nowhere proud to say that I’ll take a century or two to actually learn something about that. My mother was awesome, whenever I attempted to help her with in the kitchen, I used to make such a mess of things that she had banned me from entering the kitchen. So much for maternal love, I guess God decided it is time for a little payback! In a few years, I’ll probably be married. Not trying to sound masochist, but I am so thankful I am not a girl. I can’t imagine if I were a girl, my in-laws would be shell shocked to discover that the only thing their sweet little boy were to get from me by means of my culinary expertise would be bread-butter, oats or cornflakes. So much for gender insensitivity.

I am hardly about confident of replacing a light bulb when one blows out. I have no idea what to do when a fuse trips. Or when my bike or car doesn’t start. I might have a decent idea of the state of political affairs in the country and India Pakistan bilateral ties and sports, but ask me the price of a kilo or rice or a dozen onions, I promise I’ll give you the sweetest smile you have ever seen from a dumb face. I don’t know what detergent to use to wash what particular fabrics of clothes. When is starch used. How to sew back a button that has jumped out from my shirt. Hell, I’ll stop embarrassing myself, I’m drawing a blank.

I did my graduate studies, followed by post graduate studies. I am employed at a multinational company writing software for “millions of customers”. I just pray and hope my manager or the persons who interviewed me, do not see this part of me. Maybe, the optimist in me might find out a way to learn one or more of these things as time passes and I encounter this world with gusto every passing day from sunrise to sunset and sometimes beyond. Brace myself.

The Anatomy of a Code Review

This is the musing of a software developer. If you are or have not been in the profession, some of these might appear jargon to you. I have tried to write it in as simple a language as I can, but still you ought to be thankful to God Almighty for your absence of knowledge on some/all of these issues. Believe me, you are much better off NOT knowing all these than those unlucky ones like me who see lines of code floating around in dreams…..

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, long before the sun has risen over the horizon, in the dark alleys of a software company, an unfortunate soul sits away staring at his computer monitor, his hands deftly navigating the contours of a keyboard attached. That harangued soul, I wish, were my worst enemy, but unfortunately happens to be me. Myself.

The clacking of the keys is the only noise in the entire hallway, which is deserted sans a solitary me. I peck away at the keyboard incessantly, unaware of my surroundings. Completely focused on what I do. And finally, a few hours later, the beginnings of a smile begin to creep up on my face. At last, my code is working. An almost surreal feeling. Priceless, exactly the kind that my MasterCard cannot pay with. And finally, double checking everything, I send off my piece of code for reviewing by my peers. Also known in colloquial terminology as code review. That done, I head to the parking garage to pick up my car and head home. On the way down to garage, I try to remember whether I did have my dinner, or whether the last meal I had in the day was a piece of toast for breakfast.

Sometime after I reach home, I fall asleep on my sofa. And long after the sun has risen and the world around me is busy with its morning activities, my alarm chirps me to life. I brush my teeth, finish with my morning ablutions before I head to office. My first task - to check peer feedback on my code review. As I grab my morning coffee and head to my desk and open my computer hoping to see that my code has gotten the requisite sign offs. Or at least a few comments so that I have something to work on in the morning.

But alas, that is not to be. Indeed, I should have known. The very revered peers of mine were busily ensconced in their respective worlds, my request for reviewing of my code was nothing but a mere distraction. And so there I was, after toiling way past midnight, now at the mercy of my colleagues and seniors. If only they could give me some feedback. But fear not, it is not the first time that yours truly is facing this situation. With nothing better to do, I turn on the web browser. Social and anti-social media are the buzzwords as I delve into the pleasantries of life with friends and family from up close and afar. Cameth the lunch hour and I, having all the lavish time in the world, decide to skip the office cafeteria and entertain myself to a fabulous lunch outside in some restaurant.

I come back after a very sumptuous lunch and open my system. My mind is delving into the multiple possibilities of how to creatively spend my time in the afternoon in the office while appearing to my manager and the rest of the pack that I am, like a loyal servant, hard at work. No sooner has the computer opened up, I see my code review all lit up like the lights on a Christmas tree.

And there, after addressing the plethora of comments that flew in from left, right and center making me appear more of an idiot and less of a software developer, I finally manage to commit my code to the system. Feeling triumphant, like a warrior after a successful battle, I head to the kitchenette to celebrate my success with a cup of coffee. I stand near the machine while it splutters and cranks out the coffee I believe I so richly deserve. The mobile phone in my pocket vibrates. It is a new email, my change has caused a build break. Muttering all the expletives which I imbibed as a part of my collegiate education, I rush back to my office. The vicious cycle begins all over again…..

Those Wasted Moments

I still lag behind “Generation X” and its likes when it comes to something basic – accessing internet. At least once or twice a month, I make an effort to actually sit down and do something random surfing the internet. When small sceen phones, phablets and tablets have captured the imagination of the world, I still prefer my laptop to keep me company on those occasions when I deliberately choose to shut off from the mundane world and tread into a nomadic sojourn. Oh by nomadic sojourn, I do not at all mean the footsteps of those very erudite world travelers like Huan Tsang or Ibn Battuta, my sojourns are leaned back in the sofa in my living room, feet atop the coffee table (with a coffee, according to the time of the day and my gastric conditions) and staring in the laptop screen.

At a time when normally we’d talk of an increasing speed or swiftness associated with most things, it is simply one way of me pressing the pause button on myself. I have become so much of a multi-tasker – I listen to music when I work, I watch TV when I eat, I read when I walk, and so on. So much of multi-tasking around me that I often forget that I, like, everyone else, started off as learning to do one task at a time with diligence. Those days when I used to sit down with a text book and notes with pens and papers and no laptop or desktop monitor in front, those days when having dinner meant sitting around the dining table with family and talking was the only thing apart from eating, those power cuts which meant a degree of social activity in and around the neighborhood. Those days. This is what I try to simulate when I sit accompanied by my solitude, with my laptop connected to the internet.

Internet is one big web. The kind of web where you latch onto one cog, and before you know it, you are somewhere deep inside with or without realization. I end up watching some of my favorite childhood videos, songs or advertisements. Sometimes it feels like bliss to sit and simply listen to Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, that Doordarshan song does to me something still inexplicable. More than twenty years since I watched that song, after probably watching it for close to a thousand times, I can still watch it that one more time. The Doordarshan Samachar theme song, which seems to remain embedded. My parents, as was the case with my teachers at school believed watching English news at Doordarshan would help improve spoken English and as a consequence I used to watch Doordarshan news fairly regularly. The ten year old me can’t remember a lot of news items or events covered on TV in those days but I certainly remember gawking at the anchors and thinking about them as legends who could “memorize” half an hour’s worth of news and recite it flawlessly without stuttering or stammering (Oh, I came to know about the concept of teleprompters much later in life). People like Sukanya Balakrishnan, Tejeshwar Singh, Neethi Ravindran, Suneet Tandon and Rini Khanna(among the names associated with faces I distinctly recollect) were truly charmers. I don’t know the role it played in impacting my English language or vocabulary, it likely would have, but it certainly inculcate the news junkie in me. Plus, the inexplicable feeling of nostalgia on hearing the theme at the start of the news bulletin. Something which remains, and inexplicably so. The other element of my nostalgia associated with Doordarshan are the advertisements. Nirma (“Washing powder Nirma”), Nataraj Sharpener (“Khoob cheele bina thode”), Cadbury Dairy Milk (“Asli swad zindagi ka”), Titan are among some of the advertisements I watch sporting a smile on my face. I guess before sporting icons and movie stars monopolized the advertisements, these advertisements had their simple yet unique charm.

One of the things I “progressed to” with the advent of cable television at home was BBC News. I remember watching the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center during dinner time from the cozy confines of my house, not fully comprehending the impact of that day but still knowing all was not well. Probably the most distinct “visual landmark” that I keep with me of my “BBC days” would be the iconic Countdown to BBC News. Sometime in the first decade of the new century, the television scene in India exploded with an astounding speed. I was absorbed into that metamorphosis where specialized channels came up for 24 * 7 news, movies and entertainment domains, as opposed to one channel (Doordarshan) for everything. Looking back, I can parallel that happening with my transformation from childhood to adolescence, probably one reason why I rather remember so much more fondly of those days with a single channel and limited programs.

Those frozen moments in time, idling and reminiscing of the time in front of laptops watching those videos, which are starting to become few and farther between, bring out the child in me. The use of internet, I realize, might not be all as is propounded and generally agreed upon. It could as well be a priceless source of reminiscence, of nostalgia. Indirectly, of some missing cogs in what forms the me of today.

Jacob Uncle

As instructed by wife over phone a while ago, when I got down at the bus stop, I crossed the road and made my way to Gopal’s Milma booth to buy a packet of milk. As I approached the booth, I saw an entry under the “Obituary” section of the public board erected by the Gram Panchayat. Curious, I moved in closer to see the person who passed away. Mine was a small village, which, in spite of the urbanization phenomena engulfing the entire country, had retained its village charm to a commendable degree. Everyone was everyone’s acquaintance some way or the other and with that, it made it highly likely that the person who passed away would be someone I knew.

On the board, below the text, there was a black and white photo pasted as well. Human mind has a general affinity to pictorial information over textual information and thus my eyes made their way to the photograph before the short text that preceded it. There was no doubt - the photo was of Jacob uncle. The photo was definitely not contemporary, it was in no way an accurate representation of how Jacob uncle looked over the last few years. Probably the photo was taken from his electoral ID card or something. It showed the Jacob uncle at least a decade and half younger. But there was no mistaking that it was Jacob uncle indeed. The text above mentioned that the death occurred late yesterday night.

I have been seeing Jacob uncle from my childhood. I remember vaguely a young and handsome form of Jacob uncle during my childhood. During those days of bell bottomed pants and hippie culture, Jacob uncle used to was the village hippie. I have heard my mother say that he was the first person to wear a pant in our village. Probably inspired by Amitabh Bachchan and Jayan movies, he used to have a distinctive angry young man flair. Those were the days when the whole village was without any fences. Houses continued one after the other, without being interrupted and gridlocked by fences and no one needed to ask permission to pass through when they were moving from point A to point B in between which were always situated, a few houses.

Jacob uncle lived a few houses down from ours and used to pass through our home en route to the marketplace in the village which was where the bus stop was. If my mother was sitting in the portico, they would greet each other and gossip for a few minutes. I could remember days when I would be woken up from sleep hearing the incessant (what appeared to me to be nonsensical) banter ongoing between these two people who were great talke chatter could range from a variety of topics, almost all of them centered on the universe called my village. Both of them liked each other’s company and there were instances when Jacob uncle ended up missing many a bus because he would squat on our verandah and talk with my mother for hours on, oblivious of the fact that he was just passing through my house and was supposed to be somewhere else by that time.

My mother once told me an incident from Jacob uncle’s childhood where Jacob uncle was with his father who was a lineman with the state electricity board. Once when Jacob uncle’s father was atop a post for repairs, someone accidentally turned the line on and his father was seriously injured by electrocution due to coming in contact with the high voltage line for an instant and fell off the post. Even though he fell on top of a pile of hay which absorbed most of the impact of the fall, the injuries caused by electrocution was extremely severe. Seeing that no one was around, and out of options, Jacob uncle, who was in high school at that time, carried his father to the nearest junction over a kilometer away from where he got a taxi to take him to the hospital. Eventually his father survived and the legend of the son stayed on.

If one were to see Jacob uncle in contemporary times, one would have found it really hard to believe such a story. Over the past half decade or so, the deterioration in his health was unbelievable, to say the least. Especially to someone like me, who had seen uncle when he was at his healthy best from the time when he was in his late twenties onwards. The fact that up until that point a few years ago, he was healthy and active and the sudden deterioration of someone who would be considered much healthy for his age around eight years ago was shockingly painful.

During my school years, it seemed everyone had a role to play in my life. Essentially, my life could never be viewed in isolation, it was a reflection of the life of the village. Like the newspaper guy Pathrose chettan, who used to occasionally give me unsold comics without taking any money. Or the village coconut climber Madhu chettan (so appropriately named because he was also the official drunkard of the village, and, by greatest of coincidences, alcohol is a synonym of the word Madhu in Malayalam) who gave me the first taste of toddy. He used to regularly ask me when I was in school, “Son, are you studying well? If you have to get a good job and live in a big city, you have to study well, only then you will get a good job.” On the day I got my job offer, after informing my parents, he was the first person I broke the news. He beamed with happiness and had wished me luck in my new job. Whenever I came home on leave from work, he used to prepare me a big bottle of fish pickle for me to take back to town. He was not a rich person, in fact he bordered on either side of meeting both ends meet and fluctuated too often than he would have liked. On my own volition, I had set up a job for Jacob uncle’s son Jibin at a workshop near my office as a mechanic. But the grime and dust of vehicular maintenance, couple with his asthmatic conditions meant he ended up quitting the job in town in a little over six months and went back to our village. Jibin did well after going back to or village, he finished a carpentry course from a nearby training institute and quickly became a well sought after carpenter in the vicinity. Jacob uncle was extremely disappointed that Jibin could not hang on to a more stable job in the city but I knew what Jibin had gone through and used to side with Jibin in his decisions. He looked up to me as his elder brother whenever he had to take some important decision and I was only happy to oblige Jibin because I felt I owed Jacob uncle after all these years he cared for me.

Meanwhile, my life was undergoing transformations as well. I married a lovely girl who continues to be my wife, had kids. As my familiar responsibilities moved from my parents towards my wife and kids, my visits to the village reduced in frequency and duration. What used to happen regularly every month and quite frequently more than that, was reduced to quarterly and semi annually. And without realizing, I was also losing touch with my village and the other people around whom my life used to revolve once upon a time, including Jacob uncle. My village changed as well. There were fences separating houses and boards against trespassing appeared. Small kachcha roads, over course of multiple election campaigns and promises, became pukka roads. Not everyone knew everyone else. The fabric was transformed, even if the changes were a reflection of what was happening elsewhere in the state and the country as well.

As my visits to my village became few and farther apart, so proportionately did my encounters with Jacob uncle. Since there was a pukka road from his home to the village square, Jacob uncle never really came to our house as often as he once used to. But still, whenever I met Jacob uncle, there was a lot of warmth and affection. He always used to be keenly interested in my professional and personal lives, and by association, with the lives of my wife and children. I had grown up in the strata to what is called by contemporary socialists as the middle class, but Jacob uncle and his family, weren’t quite there yet. They were still on the fringes. He knew that I was well off but he never asked me money, directly or indirectly. There were occasions when I felt I should help, but I backed away due to the fear that it would affect his pride, and subsequently, the rapport between us.

Someday, during the local pooram at the temple, during a casual conversation, one of my neighbors said to me, “Do you know that Onamkaleikal Jacob? He’s the father of the carpenter Jibin.”

“Of course, I know him quite well.”

“The other day, they diaganozed him with cancer. In his mouth.”

I stood there, shell shocked, unable to respond. He used to chew paan, much like everyone else in the village. If I were to throw a dart in any direction from the middle of my village, in any direction, I can tell you that the probability that it would hit someone who does not chew paan will be minimal. Paan was abundantly prevalent and popular in my village and everyone, men and women included, were regular users of paan. The cancer was probably as a consequence of chewing paan for over half a decade even though no one I knew had got oral cancer prior in my village. Sadly, this could probably be the first time.

The next day I went to Jacob uncle’s house. The house was almost exactly as I remembered from a few years ago. There were changes, the kind you expect with the passage of time, but the feel and essence remained. Jacob uncle wasn’t there, neither was Jibin. Jibin’s wife, a cheerful young woman whom I had known for years was surprised to see me. She told me that Jibin had taken his father to a hospital in the nearby town and weren’t expected before sundown. I had to return that day afternoon so as to start in office from tomorrow. Reluctantly I left, making a note to myself to come back in a couple of weeks and meet Jacob uncle. I missed that deadline, as I procrastinated. It was two months after the pooram in the village temple, the first time I learnt of Jacob uncle’s illness that I was able to visit my village again.

As I got down from the bus, I made my way to Kumaran’s tea stall, the focal point of the village news and gossips, just adjacent to Gopal’s Milma booth. There among a lot of familiar faces, I saw a lean figure, with a white towel over his head, sipping tea in a style that reminded me of someone. I took a careful look. It was Jacob uncle. Suffice to say that fter all these years of knowing him, I had to look astutely to actually make out that it was indeed Jacob uncle I was looking at. As if understanding my predicament, he smiled weakly. With the oral cancer inflicting a heavy toll on him, the smile was not pretty, but it was heart warming. “Coming from town?”, he asked me. I replied yes. Both of us took our teas in the hand and stepped outside. I was standing muted near this person, who was only a scant part of himself. “How are you?” I managed to ask. He didn’t reply.

I reached into my pocket and took out a wad of notes which were there. It was a spontaneous reaction, I hadn’t planned on that. I didn’t know how much cash was there. There were a few twenties and fifties and a small number of hundred rupee notes. I didn’t count, I didn’t bother to. In that frame of mind, etiquette was not even close in consideration. I turned around to make sure no one was watching and I tucked the notes in to the pocket of the shirt that hung loosely on Jacob uncle’s shirt. He tried to resist, but his protests were feeble, I was not going to heed to that. It took great effort on Jacob uncle’s part to speak a few words. In due respect, I didn’t talk anything. As we stood there, long after our teas were finished, we heard the sound of an approaching auto rickshaw. Jibin’s wife was coming in that. While we helped Jacob uncle to get into the auto, Jibin’s wife explained to me, “He wanted to come to the the junction and have a tea at Kumaran’s. It had been a long while since he had got out of the house so I told him to go ahead, I said I will come with an auto rickshaw to pick him up after some time. Jibin ettan hasn’t come back from work yet. Do you want to come home?”

“No, not right now. I’ll try to come by sometime later.”

I smiled at Jacob uncle, who was by now inside the auto. He said with his usual warmth, “Do come by if you have time.” I said I will.

I stood there without moving as the auto rickshaw carrying Jacob uncle and his daughter-in-law sped away and disappeared around a curve.

A lot of philosophical questions rushed through my mind. Why had God done this to this person, such a noble soul who lived an honest life and hurt no one, almost verbatim as the Bible preaches, I said to no one.

A few days later, I came to know of an incident. There was an NGO working amongst cancer patients in the nearby town. The oncologist Jacob uncle was undergoing treatment under was a part of their network and as a result, they contacted Jacob uncle and Jibin offering Rs. 10,000 towards funding for Jacob uncle’s treatment. Jacob uncle was weak and tired of repeated treatments, and by contemporary standards had lived a long life. He was in such a state that his doctor was not much hopeful even though he didn’t say as much. But his mind was sound and his thoughts were very much rational. When they approached him with the offer to give a cheque for Rs. 10,000 he politely but sternly refused to take it from them. They pressed Jibin but Jibin said he would abide by whatever decision his father takes without question because it was for his treatment and it was his prerogative to make a decision, not Jibin’s. I got in touch with one of the representatives of the NGO who had visited Jacob uncle who told what Jacob uncle had told them, “It is not right for me to take this money considering the fact that I have gone past the curable stage. I have enough money saved over my life to see me and my treatment through till I breathe my last. My son is doing quite well in his job and can comfortably support his family with his job. Please take this as a request from a dying man - give that money to someone who needs it more to come out of cancer.” In this day and age, where you occasionally hear of people and organizations fudging records to inappropriately claim governmental and non-governmental organizational benefits, that statement from Jacob uncle was indeed an eye opener.

I was woken up from my reverie by a hand which came over my shoulder. Matthew, one of my neighbors. “He was a good man”, Matthew said with a deep sigh. I nodded.

“The burial is in half an hour at the church. I am going there now. Coming along?”

I can buy the milk later. For now, I want to touch Jacob uncle’s feet one last time. To pay my homage to a great individual who lived and walked in this village till yesterday. With a heavy heart, I followed Matthew as he led the way in the direction of the village church.

Ye shall know the truth and truth shall set you free

“Your husband is evil, he is poisoning your body and mind”, her mother told her. She listened to her go on and on, ranting about all the evil things he did to her daughter. Her silence seemed to implore her mother to carry on, as if she gave her mother the permission to do this by not speaking.

Her mother’s words resonated with her. Late that night, she opened her diary, the solitary thing that had earned her trust in the recent past. Writing an entry in the diary was like salvation for her – it gave her silence a voice, her thoughtlessness a thought and her monochromaticity a hue. Of late, an entry in the diary for her was the equivalent of a child wailing his throat off out of frustration, it was as much a relieving force as an exercise in futility. All the memories came rushing to her mind like a flood, the pain he caused in her life, the feeling of being used and the belated realization that marrying her was only a way for him in his quest for professional glory in her father’s company where he worked. As her pen moved from one line to the next, she was wiping off the tears that streamed down from her eyes in a constant torrent. Every part of her body was shaking, and the tears was a way for her body to physically discharge the negative energy bundled up within her as much as the diary writing provided the same for her aggrieved mind.

She wished she had a chance to rewind the clock and start over again. To undo the mistakes in life that she committed when she was blinded in her devotion to her husband. To ease the pain she caused her mother when she decided to spend her life with him. And a ton of other things. Travelling back in time was not an option, the only way in front of her was to face it shoulders up and move forward.

She closed her diary, opened the drawer and tucked it in. Then, her eyes went to the sheaf of papers on the table that were fluttering in the light wind coming in through the window in her bedroom. She didn’t need to read them anymore, she could recite verbatim the contents of that bundle of papers that came in as a registered post to her home a little over two weeks ago. With a sigh, she pushed the sheaf of papers closed to her, flipped to the last page and signed under where her name was indicated.

She closed her pen, switched off the night lamp. And it is when the darkness that surrounded her, she felt to open the Bible on her desk and read a bit. She turned the night lamp back on, got her Bible. And randomly opened a page. And she read aloud what she saw, “And ye shall know the truth and truth shall set you free.”

English Lessons!

There often come instances in life when you end up doing an intentional childish prank, or your do (or forget to do) something out of sheer absent mindedness which ends up making you feel like you rewound the clock of time all the way back to your childhood. I can bet it happens to you as much as it happens to me, just that the frequency and impact of such occurrences might differ from one person to another.

It was one such incident which happened to me recently which made me think of one of the earliest “lessons” (literally..!) I learnt in my life. I would rather not make you endure the torture of what happened to me, but the incident reminded me of a character who was present in my English text book in primary school – Kutchu. Kutchu and his family occupied a good portion of my English textbook in my primary classes. I think his wife’s name was Kamala, I can’t be sure about it. I very distinctly remember his son Ramu and his daughter Sita. One of the more popular and humorous lessons was Kutchu’s glasses which I believe, was in the syllabus for Class Two. The story was about Kutchu searching for his glasses, and eventually he “discovers” them on his nose when he looks in the mirror.

There was another one “Shake Well” which also has a Kutchu exploit in it. I only  have a vague recollection of that one but it involved Kutchu shaking his mother (or was it his grandmother?? Scratch, scratch….!.) after she had some medicine because it was written “Shake well” on the medicine label. Those stories seem innocuous now but I am truly impressed by their impact that I remember a lot of it even now, more than two decades after I first (and last) read them.

Allow me to ramble along a bit more. I have peppered my nostalgic part of my senses and it is not going to go away soon, not at least till I put a final full stop on this piece for sure.

English was a subject I really liked at school. I’m not quite sure what made English take the crown for me, maybe it could be attributed to my English teachers, maybe it was the language I felt closest to (since my school, a Kendriya Vidyalaya had a policy of not teaching the mother tongue), maybe it was the quality of the course syllabus. Whatever it was, English remained one of my favorite subjects at school and as a result I do recollect (and reminisce) a lot of what I learnt in my English textbooks at school.

There are a lot of stories that I remember bits and pieces of but importantly they introduced me to a varied number of authors and the differences in presentation styles. I remember reading Nadine Gordimer (Ultimate Safari), Satyajit Ray (Barin Bhowmik’s Ailment), Anton Checkhov (The Beggar), Sarojini Naidu (Coromandel Fishers), Robert Frost (TheRoad Not Taken)….. these are but a handful of what I recollect.

Thank you NCERT. Thank you Central Board of Secondary Education. And thank you, Government of India. 

Beerly Tales

Oh lord, forgive my soul. For I have sinned, for I have caused the greatest dishonor that can befall a family.

I have been taught that thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow. My family has always believed in that axiom and have always tried to follow it to the core as much as possible. Somewhere in the process of evolution, the great great great grandfather of my great great great grandfather’s great great great grandfather, Mr. Mattatuveetil Geeverghese Philipose Abraham George Punnoose Kuriachan Thomas or Thomachan as he was more commonly known in the mundane parlance added a rider to thee holy thought. He proclaimed that the future generations shall not only have bread from the sweat of thy brow but also beer. Earned from the sweat of thy brow. I’m still not a hundred percent on whether the process of brewing beer had been invented in those days. Going by the average age of the males in my family, I have strong reasons to surmise that brewing of beer might not have happened in those days and I would love to get a patent for the first use of the term beer. I have researched records available with Archeological Survey of India but they did not have any records regarding the origin of beer, they had only held records of the history of Indian-made Foreign Liquor. I even attempted to get access to the Papal library in the Vatican but it was denied citing the reason that they do not support research into the origin and history of beer. Wine was okay they said, not beer. That’s that.

But the point I was trying to make is not that. So this gentleman Mr. M. G. P. A. G. P. K. Thomas (oh hell, Thomachan it is! Sorry great….great….great….grandfather), he started this age old family tradition of having a bottle of beer on Sunday evening. Err, if you, as a reader have a doubt as to whether they had concept of selling beer in bottle in those days, don’t think too much. Just read this and go about your business! So yea, Sunday evening. Beer. That tradition has been carried on for ever since. Oh, there has been a couple of documented aberrations. The earliest known break in tradition came on a rainy June Sunday evening. Family records that I’ve had access to show that the place our tharavaadu (ancestral home) was, was inundated with flooding courtesy of incessant monsoon rains that season. The archives go on to say that Thomachan was actually able to get on a rescue boat, which was intended to evacuate the flood survivors from the area and direct it to the nearest beer selling outlet but the outlet had been closed. The records go on to say that Thomachan was heavily disappointed with this incident and continued to lament his misfortune till his death a few years later.

The second break in tradition occurred to my great grandfather who was serving as a sepoy in the British army and deputed to fight for the allied powers in World War Two. Mr. Mattathuveetil Alexander Jacob Paulose Sunnykutty Matthew or Mathaichan to his peers, was the first from our family to cross the ocean and to see a land outside of our country of birth but he also had the dubious distinction of being the second in line to cause a rupture in a centuries old tradition. In his case too, it was not him to blame it was more of circumstance that caused the accident. He was fighting for the Allied forces as a part of the British Army somewhere in Egypt when on a summer Sunday (Sunday of all days!), when he went to collect his “quota”, he was informed that they had run out of beer. He went ballistic and he is said to have search the camp from fence to fence, chain link to chain link, looking for at least a partially empty beer bottle so that he could keep the family tradition. Alas, as fate would have it, there was none to be found. He has even claimed in his memoir that he defied his commanding officer’s orders and walked to the German army camp a couple of miles away to check if he could borrow a bottle of beer for this one time. He was thrown out from there saying that German’s don’t drink beer, as Hitler hated beer, Hitler sanctioned only heavy liquor for his troops stationed outside Germany. (I highly doubt if this story is completely right. But hey, who am I to cross words with my great grandfather?) So there was the  second incident, more than half a century ago.

The tradition has carried on ever since. Following the footsteps of my great grandfather and my grandfather, my father has kept up this tradition. He has been such a stickler for tradition that the day my parents were married, which happened to be a Sunday, my father came back from the church after the marriage and popped open a bottle of beer first thing after entering the house that day. And that man, in the name of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, had to endure the ignominy of the third in line to break the family tradition - the first one in over half a century to do so. And that, because of me, me the stupid brainless son.

This whole series of events shaped up yesterday (Sunday) evening. There was one full bottle of Kingfisher in its most pristine form, sitting inside our refrigerator. It was late in the night that me and appachan (father) came back to our house after a party at a neighbor’s place. There was no beer there, only whiskey, gin and tonic cocktail. Huh, as if beer is beneath his dignity! Why couldn’t he have stocked up some beer?! Appachan was mindful of the fact that he had to have a glass of beer after we get back home so he went easy on the liquor. But me, being as youthfully brash as ever, did tip over my regular capacity by a peg or two of neat whiskey shots. We came home and appachan asked me to get the bottle from the refrigerator.

The dutiful son I was, off I went and emerged victorious pulling out the beer from the fridge. With due reverence to the king of spirits, I placed it on the coffee table across appachan and plopped my holy figure onto the adjacent chair. No sooner had I got two glasses from the kitchen that appachan’s phone rang. Aww man, isn’t it too late to call? But call was a call and a friend was a friend so off went the brawny man with his phone and beefy guffaws. Now there is me, there is a beer bottle in front and two glasses. And a young gentleman, no scratch that, I wasn’t showing too much of the gentlemanly features with all that (free!!) alcohol inside me. So yeah, you get the picture.

The dutiful son pours two beer into the two large glasses. He waits for appachan to get back to start the ritual. Tick tock tick tock. No sign of appachan. So he decides to take a sip from a glass to taste. Argh, the beer this time is strong. Appachan doesn’t like it strong, hence off I go and retrieve some Sprite from the refridgerator to dilute the concoction. Now here yours truly is faced with an engineering problem - how to add Sprite on top of a glass of beer that is filled to the brim. The pedantic part of me comes up with an idea. I take two gulps each from either of the glasses and now I have room to add the Sprite. What I don’t realize is that I’m now for all legal and official purposes drunk. And thus, after taking those gulps from the beer glasses to make some room for Sprite, I swear I saw there were four glasses on the table. And the pedantic part of me further applied his engineering brain to the problem and decided to pour out some beer from the existing glasses so as to load balance. Load balancing, aah what a wonderful concept. Muttering thanks to all those known and unknown gurus of engineering, I set about my task. Needless to say, after an inexplicable series of actions based purportedly on logical solutions to scientific problems, after a few minutes my appachan walks in to find two near empty glasses and four-fifth of beer spilled on the floor and a terrified logical problem solver in rapt attention. Hic.

Monday morning. The regrettable night has passed and the sun has shown up this Monday morning on the eastern horizon. I haven’t stepped out of my room yet. I’m dreading the moment I step out of the room today and encounter my distraught appachan sitting in the verandah. Oh Lord, forgive my soul. For I have sinned.