Rendezvous with Indrani

‘Indrani wake up!’ A feeble voice mumbled in the mechanical silence of J J Hospital. Eyelids accustomed to heavy eye shadow looked aged and naked. She opened her clouded eyes and saw a beautiful heavily made up face with fake eye lashes beside her. Her muddled memory ran haphazard. Who is she?

‘Don’t just sleep like that!,’ the beautiful face warned.

‘Who are you?’, Indrani looked at her with disbelief. ‘And how did you get here? The police guarding the ICU let you in?’

‘You think I need a pass to come here. I am dead for some time now. Don’t you know me. I was all over the media almost a year back?’

‘Tunanda Kushkar!’, Indrani almost came out of her unconscious state that soared the TRPs of national channels.

‘Don’t get hyper. You might just alert the nurse and the whole media crew waiting outside the hospital since you got drugged’

‘I didn’t get drugged,’ Indrani objected.

‘I know honey. Do I look like someone with an appetite for polonium?’

Indrani looked away. She seemed to be lost.

‘Sweetie, let me tell you this. I didn’t get an interim stay at a hospital. It all happened so quickly in that damn hotel room while the twitter world was entertained with my barb with that silly Pakistani journo,’ Tunanda took a deep breath and coughed as the polonium still troubled her. Indrani listened to her predecessor and didn’t want to pack her bags so quickly. After all she had planned her life meticulously.

‘So my point is don’t believe the men around you. You get confused with the ways of business in modern India and remember its blasphemy to let the flood gates open,’ said Tunanda remembering the sweat equity she was fooled with.

‘I didn’t let the flood gates open,’ Indrani fumed.

‘Ave Maria!’ Tunanda sympathised to that innocent rant.

‘Don’t remind me of that name – Maria! He has done enough damage in the name of investigation!’ Indrani felt her BP was returning to normal and surging ahead.

‘Our lives are so similar. We had three husbands and it turned out that our last catch was a steal. But unlike me you were very fertile! We mingled with the best in town and life seemed like a tabloid. But then tabloids don’t last long,’ Tunanda sighed.

‘But let me warn you! If you make it to the trial stage, don’t ever…I repeat don’t ever go anywhere near Karnab Joswami and his studio! Hell is quieter!’, Tunanda signed off and a whiff of smoke clouded Indrani’s eyes; she slipped back to sleep.

Who took my beef?

It was a long weekend some years from now. Airline tickets were crazy as usual. The airline counters at Bombay airport snaked around in circles like a satellite image of a threatening cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. It’s been more than an hour and passengers were getting impatient.
     ‘Which city?’, the bald guy ahead of me asked. 
     ‘Cochin,’ I replied rather disinterested to start a conversation. 
     ‘Dying to eat beef, right?,’ he said with a broad smile. I was not surprised at his guess; it was rather an easy guess though. It was common knowledge that Beef was available only in Kerala and banned all over India.

     ‘I am off to Calcutta. Fish is still not banned there’, he revealed his plan. 
     ‘In fact there was an offer from Orissa State Tourism on special packages for unmarried couples to spend weekends in the state without the fear of arrest,’ he said and pulled out a few pamphlets.

     ‘Karnataka Tourism board’s offer tops all others. They target Keralites with liquor coupons and all roads and rail/airport stations are witnessing long queues every weekend,’ he said. 
     By then I had reached the airline counter. The airline staff asked me to sign an undertaking that I was not carrying any liquor or pork to the state. Brochures on restricted items to each state were displayed. Beef, Pork, Liquor, Knee length dress, Unmarried couples – the list was growing every week. 

The Prime Minister continued not to acknowledge any of this in his Radio shows which was now persuasively forced into mobile phones through MKB App. His office has now even started to tweet in Swahili and Aramaic. He continued his Madison Square show in more remote corners of the globe and had by now over taken Aishwarya Rai’s record of consecutive annual appearance at Cannes. 
Life is more complicated these days. I buy genetically modified beef that smells like paneer when cooked, so that my neighbours don’t lynch me to death. 
     ‘Sir, here is your boarding pass. Since you have not preferred your seat based on caste preference, I have tried my best to offer you a seat next to an atheist,’ she smiled and folded her hands.

My phone beeped. It was a tweet. Lalit Modi’s 13006th tweet on the IPL scandal from UK. Life continued for him and others. Swiss banks continued to be gate keepers.

Changing Map of Humanity

The borders of war torn Middle East will force every shopkeeper around the globe to stock new updated maps.  Whether the nations will recoup the lost forts and cities from ISIS is uncertain as the night boat ride across the Aegean sea. But the recent exodus of refugees to the fenceless borders of Europe proves once again that at the end of the day what every hapless family value is freedom from tyranny, war and bloodshed, whether its in the name of power or religion. The world media is worried at the slowness of Europe’s response to the issue at hand. Media is also slowly waking up to the deadpan silence from the Muslim world, be it in Asia or Middle East.

Every country needs to have its act together before accepting a population who had a life lived in a far away country so different than theirs. The host country thereafter has to share all their resources and opportunities they have planned for their own population forever. Given the worlds experience with religion and its share of confrontation more than peaceful co existence, its natural that Europe feels threatened with a mass exodus they are witnessing now. Europe no longer marries and procreates as they used to. So the worry of a diminishing tribe of David is certain. Also Europe does not have a successful tale of assimilating migrants and asylum seekers over the last many decades. Parts of Europe are already reeling under that pressure and some streets of Europe no longer look like Europe. Natives, signboards, street food have all made way to an embolden migrant narrative.

Borders get redrawn time over and civilisations sometimes get routed forever. More than ever before, we need to allow humanity to lock faith and beliefs within the walls of a place of worship to save the freshly baked bread that welcomes the world every morning.

Tips - the tipping question

Last night after dinner at a restaurant, we were at the same cross roads again. Unsure what would be appropriate?

The Americans demand it! The Japanese find it undignified to accept it. As the Europeans don’t agree on most of the charters of the EU, they don’t take a specific stance on this too. Indians are a clumsy lot, not sure how to handle it; how much to leave behind – TIPS! 

Well, just like most of the cultural flash points started off by the colonial British, this too seems to have stemmed from the gentry trappings of English dining etiquettes. What started of as a gesture by aristocrats to leave behind small change known as ‘vails’ to their host’s servants, the practice soon caught on to coffee shops and restaurants. Seems like the British took it wherever they went and left behind among many other things when they finally left.

So do we really have to pay TIPS? Because someone somewhere interpreted it as, ‘To Insure Prompt Service’, does it really mean we have to leave behind not just some change but a percentage of the bill, irrespective of whether we were satisfied with the service or not? Or are we supposed to just pay for the food and service promised by restaurants and not really bound to bear their staff cost? I find a stronger case with the fuel station attendants and the courier guys who are out in these humid hot days. They deserve it more.

The restaurants serving liquor in UAE are allowed to charge 10% service charge. So we didn’t have to bother much and fiddle with the bill. The restaurant manager had the last laugh!

Mahabali - not just Malayali!

Onam for some reason so much resonates with Malayalis, while Mahabali the king whose legend is the backbone of this festival has a lineage and empire that spreads far beyond the paddy fields of Kerala. He was the grandson of Prahlada whose father Hiranyakashyap (clearly not Malayalis) was killed by Vishnu in his Narasimha Avatar. When Vishnu’s another avatar Vamana decides to stop Mahabali from his Ashwameda Yagna on the banks of the Narmada river (in Madhya Pradesh), we now know this is no more an exclusive Malayali event.

 

So my non-malayali friends, just because the final step that Vamana took happened in Thrikkakkara (in kerala), where Mahablai was sent down to the ‘heaven like underworld’, Mahabali was assumed to be a Malayali king and the traditions that layered around Onam for centuries stamped him with a birth certificate and a pot belly that’s very much part of the Malayali culinary and rangoli ethos. So if you do not know how to wrap a thin porous mundu around your not-so-rounded waist and hate rice, still join the celebrations. After all he was not just a Malayali king! Happy Onam!

Hampi - Ruins that follow you...

Dramatic boulders playing a dexterous balancing act, on wayside hills welcomed us to the magical ruins of Hampi. It was the last day of the shoot of Lailaa O Lailaa in Bellary and we were on our way to Bangalore with a detour to Hampi. The early morning drive from Bellary to Hampi was going to be a memorable one; not only for the experience that Hampi would offer, but we were accompanying the legend and hero of our movie, Mohanlal.  The moment we stepped barefoot on the cold, stone-laid pathway that led to the Virupaksha temple, Mohanlal was heard whispering ‘déjà vu’; later he mentioned that the landscape and architecture resembled Amba Samudram where he had shot for Raja Shilpi.

The ruins are just too vast, magnificent and tragic. We followed him as he walked down the neatly manicured stone lanes of the ruins, sometimes deeply engrossed in the architecture and sometimes cracking a joke while being his usual self.

Walking amidst the ruins, one cannot but feel the glorious Krishnadevraya kingdom brimming to life all around you; you vainly hope thousands of defaced Hindu Gods and Goddesses on the walls of the numerous temples regaining the perfect posture and mudra the artists then etched, and the golden Gopuras transforming to their grandeur that once shown above the Vijayanagara Empire with the Tungabhadra river cutting through it.

The sheer majesty and grandeur of the ruins is as overwhelming as the determination and effort the invaders took, a few hundred years ago, to chop the limbs off numerous deities, to hammer down temples and to uproot a civilisation. While leaving the premise Mohanlal seemed to be affected by the sheer violence that the ruins bore. Hampi, a celebrated UNESCO site is also a harsh reminder of the ruins in the making, across the globe that could challenge Hampi in its epic tragedy.

The Incredible Ban!

The ban on 'India's Daughter' has fanned the documentary across social media with an urgency that otherwise would have taken time or found lesser viewership. But thanks to the government, that seems to have additional baggage of guarding Indian culture along with a few bigots whose interpretation of our culture would offer Taliban stiff competition. Closing ones eyes and listening to the lawyers and the convict, one would mistake the documentary for one on Taliban diktats for women.

There is no need for an international conspiracy to defame Indian culture as the home minister worries. There are enough elements in our society that are capable of doing it and have been doing it for centuries. And when did teaching women a lesson, became the responsibility of men, for being out in the night with a friend in the cities or while defecating in the open in villages?. Obviously these are not stunning visuals of the ‘Incredible India’ campaign that the government would want to be aired on BBC, but definitely an expose on the mindset of rapists roaming our unsafe streets, practicing in our courts and live in our neighbourhood with the noble intention to safeguard Indian Culture.

We are fortunately not bound by any ancient scriptures to live our lives. The constitution is more than enough to govern us and there is place for women in that; we don’t need an annual ‘Women's Day’ to remind us just that. Let the Government first ban the lawyer from the precincts of any courts in India – if banning is such a noble act as in the case of eating beef!.