Repairing a puncture

Just as I took out my bicycle to go on a short ride, on a Sunday morning, I realized that its front tyre had gone flat. I walked it to a nearby shop where the shopkeeper filled it with air for a cost of couple of rupees.  Just as he was filling it, he looked at it suspiciously, and asked me to wait for a few minutes before moving. As he seemed to have thought, the front tyre again went flat.

“Punctured?” I asked, a little annoyed at fate. He smiled and indicated that he would be able to fix it in five minutes once he has settled his tool-kit.

He asked me to put my bicycle next to his tool-kit and set on to his task to repair a puncture. At first he took out the tyre and checked the outer surface for any sharp object that might have caused the puncture in first place, quietly he ran through the entire tyre, looking sensitively for anything that needed to be removed. On not finding anything obvious, he wasn’t disappointed – he pushed the sides of the tyre a little and plucked the tube from within, slowly took out the entire inner tube out, a little by little. Once the tube was out, he filled it with air again and passed it through a bucket of water, small portion at a time, in order to check for bubbles to identify a possible puncture. After a while, he finally succeeded and found the puncture. After a little bit of scrubbing with rough glass paper, he put a solution and taped the punctured area well, blew some air in order to dry the solution. He then checked the remaining tube for any other punctures, and then put the tube again in the tyre, carefully plugged it in and refilled it with more air. And then finally put the tyre back, fixed the bolts and put my bicycle in front of me with a triumphant smile.

While seeing all this, a fascinating analogy ran through my mind as I was contemplating a journey. Just like the bicycle we also undertake so many journeys and roads are not always perfect. As our bicycle runs through the lanes of life it might get punctured once in a while, a thorn came, or a bad pot-hole, a careless run on a surface where broken pieces of glass were spread – or just plain depreciation by multitudes of runs and neglected care. All these things can cause punctures in our life, and in order to be quick, nimble and fully functional we must fix these occasional punctures too.

In the context of above thought, skills of puncture repairing seemed one of the most important life skills. How wonderful it would be if one were to be able to take out the entire inner side once in a while and check for possible punctures, and fix if any.

I am sure many of us possess this skill; the need is perhaps only to let the surface run through, inwards examined and repaired if needed!!

Bicycle is now up and running!!

2 saal ki darling

We were to meet in Bombay, on a sweet morning of November. I had taken leaves for two consecutive days from office, so that on the day of our meeting I could be well-prepared, fresh, not tired by usual run of life and full of promise for days to come. 

Needless to say, I wanted to impress you. I wanted you to think that I was, in all sense of word, Mr. Right and that there was no further looking.

Our conversation was brief and you gave no hints of your opinion, except for saying that you would call back if we could take it forward.

Weather in days to come was more pleasant, mixed with feeling of hope, dreams, and aspirations tinged with fear of rejection! You kept your part of promise and called back one afternoon to say that one word – “Yes!”

Everything around life has changed – friends, politicians, public, lifestyle, and even the Indian cricket team. However you remain a strong constant through all these changes. I feel awestruck numbness when I realize that in last two years I have spent more time with you than any other human being I am connected to!

My days start with you and you run them ahead until we part late at night, only to meet again the next morning and continue our long walk on a bank of this river called life. This continuous journey takes many forms and colours.

There have been many highs and lows on this journey. Highs come from the fact that being with you, I feel more aware of myself; I see my inefficiencies more glaringly than I would have ever seen. Ability to tackle pressure, demanding environment, ever increasing competition and work in a unit were hard to come by, but you trained me well it seems. Your small encouragements helped build my confidence, I responded with all that I had and stayed up many a nights when you needed me to put that extra bit of an effort, only to delight you.  Lows are typically marked by lack of trust for each other, your perception that I always don’t give my 100% and my opinion that you have no sense of gratitude for what I give and always take me for granted.  In month of March, during the annual exercise of appraisal, we almost become like enemies thirsty for each others’ blood!!!

Despite this thorn of mistrust, we continued to spend time together, in hope that eventually it will work out for both of us in best possible ways. By now we had known each other better; you knew my weaknesses and utilized them fully to get the work done. I also had developed a robust mechanism to deal with your demands in form of formula based spreadsheets, reusable templates, friendships with experts and last but not least ingenious subterfuges. Now the highs were not as high nor were lows so down, it seemed we got used to disappoint each other, occasional effort to reinvigorate the lost lustre from either sides was seen more with scepticism than with sympathy and sweetness.

We have changed a lot, since we first met. You have moved to become dominating despot from docile darling; I grew accustomed to being discounted and disregarded in important matters and started taking pride in smaller unimportant ones, like answering back an official email with an air of authority!!  

My friends often tell me of openings for jobs in other areas; however I don’t take them up with so much zest.  May be I have started to believe that a known devil is better than an unknown.  

There will be a day when we will part our ways, and in long run we will be a very insignificant part of each other, the one which you can’t recollect with any accuracy after a decade. However, I wish to acknowledge the fact that in ephemeral times like these when things change every minute, two years is a long time and I am thankful that our association lasted this long. J

Clean up

“You don’t know how much your surroundings impact your well-being, why don’t you keep it a little clean?” my friend told me with an irritation that sounded like my mother’s when I did not put my things properly back home during my childhood. I was sure that just like my mother became seasoned to my unkempt ways my friend too will eventually write me off and stop trying to reform me into an organized, clean and neat individual.

Dust had almost married to books lying on the sides of bed and became inseparable with their covers.  Our maid, apparently, never thought it proper to disturb their love affair and left them to their own devices. And like all couples – when left alone, they seemed to have procreated over time and grew their empire.

The corner where my huge backpack lay, gave me an impression of a corner of an open playground where a big banyan tree is situated. My backpack was just like that banyan tree, teeming with lot of small creatures, worn out by the load of sand, wind and thousand external things that pile up due to lack of attention for a long time. It had been complaining since long, but I could not hear perhaps due to my elitist taste for music.

Cupboards didn’t fare any better, a few months back when my mother had visited me they were arranged – for the first time. They appeared so orderly, neat and compact then. I wonder what had happened to them in a span of six months!  The contrast it created now made me realize what my mother told me throughout my childhood, I was not putting things back from where I had taken them in first place. Lower cases of cupboards were hugely discriminated against, and upper ones were being overloaded. There was no sense to the way things were put; they seemed completely random otherwise, how on earth a white formal shirt of Ralph Lauren lay next to a semi used door mat?  This was a bit too much; I thought to myself and set on a mission to put the house in order.

 It was time to be ruthless, ruthless to things that were causing chaos, ugliness and mess in the room.  It called for a careful assessment to identify things that needed to be exiled, packed out and sent to dustbin.  After dusting, sorting, cleaning, mopping for a couple of hours floor now looked clean as a white marble, books looked more attractive, clothes compiled properly and other sundry things now had their places. All the material waste had been packed in the polythene which I would later dump in garbage yard of our apartment. I cast one last look at that black polythene, and just when I was about to take it up and throw it away, I realized I had missed to pack something.

Just like dust, there were a few more useless things that had been forming a layer, one that grew in its weight and mass and dragged me down.  I could see that just like the dust gathered on books, meaningless negative memories can also have a crippling effect on an individual.

It can be anything, crumpled love letters, mushy photographs, dedicated diary, rejection letter from an interview at a coveted job, an unfavourably opinionated email which you printed, letters written in anger, an account of a hard fought but lost struggle etc. All of it has to go, for light, promise and inspiration to enter. I packed some of it that had been gathering and gave it neither loathing nor loving final look.

Then I lit lamp for this Diwali. !! J

May no meaningless thing ever drags you.

If only the key board had life

A stray dog had found his way to my house, not only he did not stay in the compound like other stray dogs, he made a direct entry into the veranda through front door as if it were his own.  From first day, he had certain princely manners – he just did not seem like another stray dogs.

I was never fond of a dog or of pets per se. But presence of this dog seemed innocuous to me. Nor did it give rise to any other complications I could object in its first few hours of stay in my veranda. All the dog demanded was a little bit of attention besides regular and modest meals. I made a small change in my routine, instead of working on computer and surfing internet at the end of the day, I started spending those 15-20 minutes at the end of the day with this new guest.  I would stroke it, nudge it and play with it just as young kids do with friends of their age. This routine continued and it worked quite well for both of us. Or at least it seemed to work well for both of us.

One particularly good thing it did to me was that it did not allow me to sit on my laptop after I come home in evening. Having worked whole day on computer, it was not probably most healthy thing to do again towards the end of the day. A lot of my friends had been suggesting spending time off-screen.  However, little did I have in terms of amenities and gadgets, so whenever I was not reading I would be on my computer fiddling with it, wasting time browsing social networks etc.

Dog also seemed to be enjoying our regular play time, gradually our friendship grew stronger, or so it seemed, at least to me. Before I could realize it became a routine for me to stroke the dog to sleep.  Seeing his rhythmic breathing was an amusing as well as satisfying end to a day.  

One day, upon my return in evening, I could not find the dog in the veranda.  I thought the dog must have gone out and would return to routine, as usual. A few hours passed but there was no trace of the dog. Just as his entry, his exit was also mysterious and sudden. To say the least, his absence did come across as an oddity, a break in well-scheduled routine to me.

After a few hours of thought, I finally assumed that just like other stray dogs, this one too would have gone off and there was nothing particularly unusual about it. I resumed to my erstwhile routine and opened up the laptop. In span of a few weeks, the keyboard of laptop had gathered some dust. I cleaned it and started off writing a review of a book I had just finished reading.

Feeling my hand’s movement on the key-board, I sub-consciously compared it with its movements while playing with dog. I contrasted these two experiences in my mind, old as my laptop was its key board was as familiar to me as the dog who had been my guest for a few weeks, if not more. Key board was also equally amenable to my touch – I realized. Some of the letters on it had been on verge of being erased due to frequent strokes I would have made on them over the years. Another strikingly brilliant feature of this keyboard was, it always responded to my touch with impeccable regularity, equal responsiveness and efficiency. The more I thought of key board, the more I realized how good and functionally effective it had been all these years.  I thought that its keys certainly, smoothened, worn out and loosened at times, but a careful fix always restored it to its regular efficiency.  My hands on it were no less than a play we had from several years, I might have been varying in precision, force and firmness but the key-board always adjusted itself accordingly like a more matured batsman in a great cricketing partnership!  Had this keyboard been in some piano instead of laptop, it would have made awesome music I thought.

After a while I realized, I still missed the dog, looking at my keyboard I realized it did not breathe like the dog. It had no rhythmic sound or movements that naturally happen with breathing of anything that has life. This was the only difference perhaps between the two touches; one had life the other one did not.

That night, however, I slept stroking key board of my laptop. 

Book Review- Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

It’s a story of a young Pakistani named Changez, who is torn between the two – his American and Pakistani selves. Eventually in his case, the latter won over the former. Entire book is in monologue but the freshness of phrases and juxtaposition of various themes keep the readers interested throughout the story. For example when he is speaking of the “Skin that his premier college showed to the corporate, once a year for placements” he says “I was a perfect breast, tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity- and I was confident of getting any job I wanted.”  

It is during the interview of the most coveted job on the campus that his veneer of external identity is broken as interviewer sees through him, spotting his discomfort in revealing his roots. It comes out in form of a pointed question the interviewer asked, “Do your friend here know, that your family could not afford to send you to Princeton without a scholarship?”

This aspect reveals the class consciousness of Changez; he conducted himself as a young prince at Princeton, but also took up odd jobs to strengthen his financial position. Eventually he got a job earning him 80000 dollars a month, from the by lanes alongside the economic highway he all of a sudden came on the main lane!! However, his sense of restraint and reservation did not change with the change in his monthly income. For example on his trip to Greece, he would feel uncomfortable to see his friends ordering about people twice of their age. He wondered what on earth made his friends behave with the world as if they were its ruling class.

Upstart nature of his American self and powerful immersion that happened due to his Wall Street job led him also, eventually, to behave in the same way as his American friends.  He soon, learned to say to people of his father’s age “I need it NOW.”  He also learned to answer, “New York” when asked to say where he was from.  He also confessed, these changes troubled him, but he gave no outwardly signs of these troubles. Until the 9/11, of course.

His revelation that he was at first remarkably pleased to see the twin tower going down is grotesque but eerily existential in nature. He justified it as a symbolism showing someone so visibly bringing America to her knees.

While all this is happening, there is a simultaneous progress of his relationship with a girl called Erica. Personal and political, micro and macro aspects are nicely interwoven by the author. Despite occasional and rare moments of intimacy and romance, this too becomes a source of increasing identity crisis for Changez; this reaches a pinnacle when he has to impersonate Erica’s dead ex-boyfriend in order to give her an orgasm.  His hopes even after Erica’s mysterious disappearance show his emotional side, one that’s very normal of any human being.

Among all internal struggles, there is an impending tension of war from India on Pakistan post the attacks on Indian Parliament. Changez visits his parents in Pakistan.  Part when her mother asked him to shave off his beard citing, “They have long beards” is extremely moving and casts a strong statement on stereotypes our world subjects on people without a single thought.

While returning from Pakistan, Changez found it ironic that being a young son; he was leaving home in war like situation whereas, in olden times it was elderly and children who were asked to relocate in times of war like situations. After returning from home he lost connect with his American side altogether.

He kept a beard, partly as a sign of protest, even despite the passive office protocols demanded he be clean shaven. He let his performance on the job, which he so loved in the beginning, flounder.  He grows increasingly tense within for due to conflict of identity and eventually gives in to the calling from home.  Before he finally makes this decision, comes a nice interlude of conversation he had with a man called Juan Baitista, he explained to him a concept of Janissaries. After that his resolve to go home only grew stronger, having been fired, he headed to Pakistan.

After returning to Pakistan, Changez takes up a post of a professor and instils among students what he calls a true understanding of the subject as well as the ways of the world. One of his students is held as a conspirator of assassination of a top US government officer for developmental aid. And it is only when he discussed this part with his listener do we realize that Changez is also being questioned in this conspiracy.

It is a matter of opinion whether stand Changez took was correct or incorrect. However, what this book so exceptionally does is to make us think in this regard. Even despite a few hard lines in thinking, behaviour and conduct, we don’t dislike Changez. After reading this book I had mixed feelings about the man, predominant of those was that for a friend who has lost his way.  Credit for this largely goes to Author.

Reading this book was a joy, I will soon try to catch up the movie too, as I am sure this story translates into a good film.

Well-written Letters

Recently I read a book called English August. I loved reading that book, after reading it, I browsed through it again to re-read the underlined paragraphs and remarkable pages. It was at this time, that I noticed how awesome the letters that characters of the book had written to each other were. Indeed I like well written letters and emails, and the ones I found in this book were just the perfect.

Most of these letters are just conversations between the protagonist, and his father, they clearly have the shades of being written by men standing at two different points of the time scale. There are couple of letters which are from Agastya’s friends also. The first letter in book appears as a reply from Agastya’s father, it starts with an apology for being late, but as he wrote, “He wanted time to compose his reply.”   He further writes that he had received a letter from Agastya on 4^th Afternoon. “I read it immediately and once again in the night. I am unhappy at your unhappiness. You have not mentioned it specifically but it is palpable in every line of your letter.”  This letter from his father ends, gently nudging Agastya to write regularly and assuring that he too, will try to be regular. A line in the book says Agastya read the letter, and once again with a half smile on his face as he pictured his father writing it.

In the letter that followed from Agastya he kept it brief, terse and clear. He accepted the impression his father had got about his being unhappy and requested him to call a family relative and ask him to offer another job. He also mentioned that during a holiday break, he will be going to Delhi instead of Calcutta, without citing any reason.

Another interesting letter, a little different than that of, Agastya’s and his father’s, is from a friend of Agastya called Dhrubo.  Here is a first line of the letter followed by its description in book, “Renu that Punjaban I was fucking, has gone to America. (So began the letter, without a date or a hello. But that was Dhrubo’s style, abrupt and ashamed of emotions)”  

The next letter is again from Agastya’s father, as he responds to Agastya’s request of putting him in touch with a family relative that can help him find another job. He expressed his surprise at Agastya’s decision, however has done as directed. One of the most powerful lines of this letter goes like this “Ogu (Agastya’s nickname), don’t choose the soft option just because it is the soft option, one cannot fulfil oneself by doing so. Yet it is also true that it is your life and decisions have to be yours.”

The last letter that book contains is again from Agastya’s friend, named Neera. She writes in opening lines that she had written to inform him that she lost her virginity. And asked how he liked her formal announcement.  Strongest lines from this letter are “My other feelings are very confused but I am unequivocally, relieved. I have taken a plunge, so to speak.”

All these letters are written in different context environ and mental makeup of these characters writing them, however one thing that cuts across all of them is an honesty of expression. I believe it is this honesty that makes an expression transcend from the sender to the receiver of the letter.

When was the last time you took time to compose a letter? What different tones your letters have had, request, plain bickering, care, concern, love, confession? When was the last time, you could read something more in a letter than plain content it carried?  Writing a letter is like putting a part of your mind and heart on paper and show it to your reader, it’s not just about an ink on white paper, it’s a lot more when done well.

** Italicized and emboldened lines are taken from a book "English August" by Upamanyu Chaterjee

If I met Rahul Dravid today

Would you still say that a captain is just as good as his team?  I would not, perhaps.  As a man at twilight of your career, is it harder for you than us mere fans to face this horrendous treachery of your team-mates?  Considering the fact that the ones, who cheated, were the ones on whom you had rested your faith, as a captain to win you games, does it hurt more? I am sure it would, it reflected in a statement you read at the press conference.

I am sure you remember the vicious bouncer he bowled to Kallis when we were in South Africa. From first slip, it would have been so fascinating seeing him bowl the way he does, sporadically. You would also, perhaps, recount back in 2006 when we visited West Indies under your captaincy, he had bowled so fabulously.

He was also a lucky mascot for Dhoni, or so it seemed to us fans – at least. T-20 World cup final against Pakistan and the catch he took, almost shakily. Only two games he played in World cup of 2011, the first and the last. The kind of cricket India played in both those competitions is still a source of pride, happiness and solace for us Indian cricket fans.

And of the other two young guys of your team, well what to say. Did you take their loyalty, spirit and passion for granted? Did you, any time, think that they will go so out of the aura of your presence as a captain? I hope your presence, besides instilling cricketing sense, inspires some moral sense too. In fact, the inspiration you provide for work ethic far supersedes the cricketing skills you inspire. You are my idol in work ethic.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to tell you that you are, in any way, responsible for this moral failure of your team-mates. In fact if there is anything that can save a team from going into complete mess it is a presence of a player like you. I know you are more than capable of putting this behind and play even better cricket, just to ensure that cricket wins over all these stupidities and absurdities.

What I wish to highlight Rahul, though, is the common thread that you now share with most of us. A thread of being cheated, back stabbed, weakened, defeated by those whom you considered as not only team mates, but also family members – as you stressed again in your conference.  

It hurts when those with whom you wish to win, defeat you, your purpose and presence.  Small and out of focus as we as common people are, it’s easy for us to develop our defence mechanism, and find a way out of any such mishap.  I believe it will be more difficult for you, as you need to pull an entire team out of it, and that too under the extra critical eyes of media on you all the time.

I wish you bat, next time, not with anger and sense of vengeance or to prove any point to anyone, you don’t need to do any of that. Just show us how to rise above all such treacheries, wrongdoings and immoral practices.

Show us how the cover drives still flow; the square cut still lacerates the ground, an on drive that bisects mid-wicket and mid on perfectly and a flick that’s as sweet to the ears as it is to the eyes. Show us that while there is corruption, deceit, treachery and much more that we wish never existed, there is a kind of people, a kind which rises above all of it, and lifts all, like us, who pin our hopes on you.

I know I am perhaps asking a lot, but you are the best wall I have ever known.