Dr. Kalam is no more --- nation in tears

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam is no more. When I heard about his sudden demise – he collapsed and succumbed to a massive heart attack while addressing the IIM students Shillong, an end so happened as he wished – I felt like having lost one of my close family members. I could feel a sudden vacuum enveloping the country. That way Dr. Kalam had been connecting himself with every Indian and had created a niche for him in every Indian home. For he was humane and his demeanor and deportment were such that a common man from a remote village was able to identify himself with Kalam. He abhorred ostentation. He was never putting on airs though he had held prestigious positions during his lifetime. A man among men, he proved the epithet true through the way he lived and the cause he espoused for India.

Always a humble being – simplicity and honesty were his hallmarks -- he stood tall amidst his contemporaries. This was not because of his being a missile man; not because he was once the President of the country; and not because of his being the recipient of the Bharat Ratna and other awards, but because he was a simple human being, a simple man with high and fabulous ideals, a simple man who dreamed of India becoming a giant among nations. He wanted India to be strong because, as he said, ‘only strength respects strength.’ He inspired the nation, mostly the youngsters, with his mind stirring speeches and writing. A great teacher, he had students always swarmed him as they cherished to get connected with him. His efforts to shape the young and make them redefine the course of the country by imparting to them worthy tenets placed him in high pedestal in the heart of the nation.

His striking frankness, outspokenness and flair for calling a spade a spade, though remarkable traits, didn’t bring him any plum job after he demitted the presidential position in 2007. A man of integrity, Kalam found the political arena an albatross and the politicians as Machiavellians.  This was the reason why no political party sponsored him for the presidential election for 2^nd time. Of course, Kalam accepted what destiny offered him as he refused to be a slab of a dirty political meat.

Post presidency, Kalam didn’t tie himself up to a homely tether. He didn’t relax or recuperate as his counterparts did. Stirred by the call of a new duty, a new responsibility, he thought, he owed to the country’s youth, he was always on his legs. He traveled the length and breadth of the country, met youngsters, interacted with them, with a flourish, and imparted to them the fine values of life. He said: ‘we will be remembered if we give to our younger generations a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.’ Younger generation of the country enamored of the new inspiration they got from Kalam saw in him their new messiah.

Kalam was not an individual but an institution; a one man army that tried to reform the youth, and, through them, make India more assertive and strong. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to him to channelize the new energy and power he created among the youth. I thought, many times, Kalam, using the potent youth power, will start a movement on the lines of Jeyaprakash Narayan’s ‘Total Revolution’ sans politics. Such a movement would have fortified the nation and healed off its ugliness. For reasons best known to him, Kalam didn’t go for such an evolution. Instead, he cherished being a teacher. India, thus lost a momentum and I don’t know how long it has to wait for the happening of another one.

While a silent and shocked nation witnessed with tears, Kalam was laid to rest in Rameswaram, his home town, and ‘a punya bhoomi’ [sacred earth] that – according to Hindu Mythology -- got the footprints of Lord Ram imprinted on its soil. A real tribute our grateful nation could pay to Kalam is to live up to his teachings, which he taught with fervor and hope.

May his noble soul RIP.

I have dreams both beautiful and bizarre

“Dreams are not those which come while we are sleeping, but dreams are those when you don’t sleep before fulfilling them” – Abdul Kalam

I always love to flirt with dreams. And I don’t grade them big or small. My thoughts and perceptions about them go well with dictionaries that say ‘dreams are the manifestations of one’s pent up feelings, desires, images and sensations, occurring during sleep’. Hence, a dream is a thing relating to human mind and not body.’ A matter of mind’, I would say. Though a dream is a matter or vision you experience in an unconscious state of mind, it still piggybacks you the rest of your life, make you reshape it in such a fashion to get what you aspire for.

“I saw my mom in my dream the night before,” said my friend, one evening, when we were in a restaurant sipping degree coffee. ‘She didn’t seem to age. She was like the same when I last saw her in my teens”, added my friend, his eyes moved to tears. Not a worldly person, my friend was always impassive and flat – a big stone sans emotions. But, now his dream made him euphoric as the old sweet memories of his mom seemed overtake him. ‘That’s another dimension of dreams; they paint human lives with tasteful colors,’ I told my friend who nodded his head in the affirmative. A dream has the power of adding luster to a man’s life, if he is emotional or stoic, give him wings and make him fly to the land of his fantasies.

There are still persons who say, with pride, that they don’t get dreams. They even compliment them for not living in a make believe world. I only pity those rough-hewn, passionless minds. I would call them uncharged gizmos no matter how elegantly they look and work smartly. That the odds men face in lives give them only those skills necessary for living and shut all his dreams and fantasies cannot be accepted. For, dreams represent what people see, hear, experience and wish. No man can latch his mind to avoid getting dreams. We’d better remember that dreams aren’t our errand boys but masters.

Though, to a section of humanity, dreams are superficial things – a bundle of mysteries – they still become integral part of one’s life. They are significant as they aren’t biased. Both the rich and the poor, the king and the slave can catch up with their dreams and stretch them the way they like. A dream is like a movie where you, a decrepit citizen, watch yourself swapping position with a monarch. The only tool a dream needs is a mind: a mind capable of dreaming, a mind capable of sustaining a swirl of fantasies.

 So many are the hurdles of life that it always become impossible for you to get what you desire. You often begin to hunt an elephant, but end up trapping only a mouse. The wounds your psyche thus receive from life gets healed by dreams. They, for example, make a physical wreck become a world champion in a hurdle race; a decrepit writer, thus find himself getting a Noble Prize for his writings – though they’re pedestrian; and an adolescent boy, to his excitement, sees himself flirting with a dream girl of his choice. That’s the effects of the dreams, they metamorphose men and women what they aren’t in true life.

There were times man could not deduce reasons why he had dreams.  Long research, after much sweat, found REM [rapid eye moment] stage of sleep to be the cause of dreams. That’s right. But even assuming that you get your dreams during your REM, some dreams never allow you to sleep before you fulfill them. It happened to Napoleon and Gandhi. Moved by their dreams, both, one a warrior and the other a Karma Yogi, went sleepless until they made their visions come true. But, wait. If you want to have the hang of a dream, it needs to be a quality one -- worthy of pursuing.

People all over the world invest their best mettle and achieve something remarkable in many fields, but attribute the reasons for their feats to dreams. Pitifully, we still have persons in our midst who evince interest only in getting their dreams interpreted than working to make their visions come true. This happens because we lack courage; don’t have the fire to follow our dreams. People, with indomitable courage and grit, don’t let their dreams go past them or let anyone stop them from having them as goals. To them, dreams are treasure troves, and, to follow them and fulfill them, they would forgo food, sleep and all the comforts of life. Like the sun rotating with the earth, they rotate with their visions.

Since ‘dream is a wish your heart make’, believe it, work for it and make it come true. To honor your dreams that show you a rosy way, you could make them a ladder, climb it and reach out to the higher rungs of life.

Why the World Bedraggle India's Daughter?

The room is in dark with intriguing silence; the laptop is on, blinking and emitting snippets of light. We get our breath hard, blood chilled when my wife and I watch the monitor, languorously re-enacting scenes of a gruesome rape being perpetrated by a group of goons in a moving bus. The voice that shrieks for help belong to a teenage girl who gets raped because she is out of home after 9 pm; murdered because she resists the thugs’ attempts to get their cardinal desires quenched. The BBC documentary has many loose ends and overtly biased. Instead of condemning the heinous crime, it gives amplifiers to Mukesh Singh and his cohorts to justify their acts and the subsequent murder of a gullible girl. “What I’ve pulled out of her body, I threw it away,” the juvenile’s bizarre voice slaps my ears and make me recoil. My wife gets into her feet, races over to the sink and throws up. I still sit frozen, gazing helplessly at the ceiling mired in cobwebs and piles of paint peels.Mukesh Singh, one of the rapists, continues to drone. His grading of Indian girls – he says only 20% of them is good – coupled with his lawyers’ gibberish on Indian tradition vs Indian women make my wife feel nauseous again. ‘My god! Who made this video? Was it by Leslee Udwin or by those misogynists who had snuffed out a flower and thrown it in the gutter? For the documentary puts the victim in a poor light and shows how circumstances lead a group of guys become rapists’, I say to myself, suddenly remembering the ‘boys-are-boys’ statement I heard from a senior politician,  months back. ‘Is the world too, like our country, not kindly disposed to women? Does it treat them as chattels?’ my wife asks, her voice is in shards. I get a numbness. I’m in no mood to speak, leaves her questions hang on fire.  I take a peek into the FB. It looks saintly. No verbal explosion is let loose there because of the British documentary. Only a few gets agitated over the video and vent their injured expressions. As for others, they’re still in the comforts of their cocoons either writing eloquently about their upcoming books or displaying heartwarming quotes or presenting recipes for new stuff.’ Why people are what they’re?’ a question confront me. Now I hear someone or something begin to speak from inside me: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

RIP Nirbhaya.

Mango Chutney/’The Creation of Love’ by Deepti Menon

 I feel the promos/teasers triggered for the Chutney now seem to be much ado as the book tries to be a damp squib. Stories are not tasteful besides being soaked in rank mediocrity. Out of the 27 short fictions, only a few pieces make the grade; others have fallen in midway and failed in the race. I see the bulk of the stories has platitudes for plots. Authors of such unreadable stories – true, they’re a bunch of greenhorns – seem to be having no familiarity with the traditional formulae of how to write a short story and, pitifully, they lack the gift of writing flawless English. While some of the writers could not avoid maiming the Queen’s language, a handful of others crucified it rather unknowingly or, shall I say, with a know-all air. That’s the reason why the Chutney is spoilt and littered with much extraneous stuff like grammatical goofs and typographical errors.

Apart from ‘The Creation of Love’, the book takes in many interesting stories having appreciable interiors and exteriors. The fact that only such of those stories give the Mango Chutney its worth and make it stand out in the world of books need to be acknowledged. Ms. Menon weaves her story – The Creation of Love – with a distinctive plot and makes it a splendid read with her amazing writing skills – her style unique and the language breezy.

A budding playwright is the protagonist of this tale. He visualizes a perfect love story of an artist and a poor girl of exquisite beauty. He roams about in search of such a girl in real life. He, soon, meets one living in squalor. He quenches her hunger, makes her live decently and pampers her with gifts. When he finally decides to take her into his life, he finds a widening, inexplicable chasm between him and her.

A well-penned story, it adheres to the established principles of the craft. It has a distinct beginning, a buildup and a dramatic end – characteristics of a well-crafted short story. Budding writers may find this story more inspiring as it has a remarkable plot and displays how it can be flawlessly presented.

 I like the following lines just because of their literary beauty:

‘His breath came in a whistle, as he willed the chill to clear the cobwebs in his mind’

‘Would he have to throw away his passion to nurture this little, fluttering flame?’

‘He walked, a new spring in his step’.

‘She stood up, looked at him with her heart in his eyes’.

 [I would shortly write about my other favorite stories]

Three Cheers to Valiant Husbands

Yesterday was the day of agony for my wife. Our Washing Machine [WM], her favorite contraption, and with which she had spent most of her time than what she did with me, breathed its last after toiling for our family for a decade and a half. Months back, it did indicate that all was not well with it by not being able to rotate its washing system. But then, my better-half, a hard core optimist who would fly kites even in a hurricane, dismissed the machine’s warning gestures and told me that the WM would hold back its breath at least for a year or two. Assured by her extravagant statement, I put my laundry into the wash tub and turned the power on. Gosh! The bloody machine stopped with a big groan and a bang as soon as it started working.

 My attempts to Rev up the machine went waste – I shook it and slapped it on the sides many times. The contraption, having got its life snapped in a trice, was there in the service room, lying in state and giving a handle to my wife to pour on me her choicest allegations/blaming. “You only killed the machine. You novice, how long can I put up with your dilly-tallying with home gadgets and making them work erratic?” Wife sneered at me despite her knowing that the machine was already in coma.

Soon a mechanic came, examined the machine and declared it dead. My wife was a bit disappointed and asked him if the machine died naturally due to its own wear and tear or to the meddling of someone. She glanced at me sideways. The mechanic smirked and said, “Ma’am, how long would you like a WM to work for you. 15 years is quite a time.’’ ‘Hi, mechanic, my savior, I moaned, you’ve unwittingly saved me from a noose. Your help will soon be rewarded.’

Now, there came a swanky, smart and fully automatic machine, a brand new one in shimmering white color. Came along with it was a service man; he demonstrated the functions of the machine with a flourish but in flawed and pedestrian English. He then gave me the user-manual and told me I could refer to it in case of doubt.

But to his shock, I returned back the manual to him and said: “Please hand over this manual to ma’am. I don’t know English.”

[This skit is dedicated to all Valiant Husbands to whose tribe I belong to]

Monday Blues

Are you a perfect driver? Do you know the nuances of driving inside out? Are you a stickler for road rules? If your answers are in the affirmative, gosh, you are a misfit to be a driver in Chennai city [taro-city] where drivers on the road, mostly the atrocious auto ones, create chaos and anarchy not for them but for others.

So, it is good if you know driving by halves so that you could be a slanging match to those half-boiled drivers on their bizarre driving. For, they learn driving only though a half-a-day capsule driving class as their dying wish is to sit behind the wheels of a car and not to learn proper driving.

I met with a touch and go accident on a Monday morning while I was returning back home from Marina beach after a hectic jogging. The mishap occurred because I made a grave mistake: I observed the traffic rules. There were many occasions when other drivers on the road badmouthed me; calling me names coz I was driving normally observing the prescribed speed limit.

Even my family members always loathe traveling in my car. ‘Who would like a camel-ride on a metro road’, they would quip. Once a flippant little girl said to me sarcastically: ‘uncle, do you know there is a part called accelerator exist in every car.’

Coming to the accident, this was how it panned out. I was driving my Santro on the extreme left on the road, halted my vehicle when a schoolboy in front had difficulty negotiating a pot whole as big as a shrew’s mouth. But then, a biker from behind rammed into my car. She did as a normal drive would do in Chennai. Yes, bikers here won’t accomplish two things at one go: driving and at the same time observing traffic rules.

After slamming her vehicle into mine, she did what any reasonable person will do in the circumstance: varoomed off and disappeared in a split second. The young school boy too cycled away without noticing that he was the cause of the accident, a freak one at that.

When an accident occurs even in a remote place in Chennai, you’ll first see a crowd rushes to the spot from nowhere … like a flash in the pan. The arrival of the crowd has always been sudden and swift like a lightning. And then, somebody in the crowd, instead of offering first-aid, will start advising to whoever is in a state to listen. That means, to anyone who is technically not dead or dying.

Naturally, I too was at the receiving end. ‘You should have been more careful’, I heard a lady speaking from the throng. ‘I was careful and that’s why I stopped my car’ I bellowed hiding my usual thin, subdued voice. For, I know the crowd psychology… I know the way a throng would behave in such a situation. That’s way I shouted in a falsetto voice so that the people standing around me would think there was nothing wrong with my driving. The lady who shouted at me now looked at the other way.

‘Was she drunk’? Another scrawny man, seemed a peddler, shouted. ‘I don’t know.’ I spouted my lips. There was an awkward silence for a few seconds before someone chimed… a pesky intrusion. ‘You’re lucky. Last week a cyclist mowed down a motorist in the signal. The driver died on the spot, his skull was broken.’ This is an exaggerated morbid fetish … a hyperbole. The speaker must be a script writer though he did not let any such airs’, I thought amusingly. You will always have people like that, recounting gruesome accidents in the most ghastly ways to someone who is beginning to reconcile with the trauma he/she is involved.

Seeing the commotion, a beat constable came running over to us. When I started narrating what happened, he cut me short and asked: ‘Did you notice the register number of the bike?’

‘She sped off even before I could feel that someone hit my car’ I began slobbering.

‘Oh, there you’re. Educated people are like that. You aren’t alert, but blame the police for not booking the offenders,’ the beat constable shot back accusingly.

‘Can you at least tell me how she looked like?

I didn’t want to disappoint the cop this time. So, I happily started giving forth the facial features of the biker who rammed into my car:

‘The biker was a lady, sir. She was incognito, covering her face with duppatta. Her whole face and head was shrouded. She wore sunglasses. She had long gloves pulled up to well over her elbows.’

The policeman stood aghast, looking at me sternly.

The road was now getting busier with  heavy morning traffic. I started off my car hoping the police would net the lady soon.

Image courtesy: Google

Inputs source: NT                                         

Sentimental Chameleons—Part III

Another day blossomed in the Plant of the Universe. The sun was young; a cool guy—yet to become a tyrant. Sharma had left home for the station much earlier. On the way, he bought a sweet packet from a Sweet Meat stall. ‘Why, I couldn’t speak to the motorman so far? I must speak to him today by all means and hand him this packet as a token of my gratitude for what he has been doing to me and my family’, Sharma thought, grinning.

Stepping into the platform, Sharma went straight to the place where the motor cars of the unit trains would halt. He sat in one of the rugged cement benches and focused his eyes on the tracks.

A few seconds later, a unit train chugged into the station with its motor car halted at its usual place with a thud. Parking himself comfortably near the car, he looked through the window, holding the sweet packet tightly. Gosh! His man was not there. Instead, he saw a sturdy young man sitting behind the wheels. Sharma’s face went pale. Disappointed, he returned back to the bench, perked up his ears, waiting for the hooting of another train.

Two hours went by, but it seemed a decade. Sharma flitted about the station for some time, had seen many trains screeching to halt at the station and then chugging out of the station with screams. But, he couldn’t see his man … his benefactor’s face. He became restless; the agony of waiting got into his nerves. ‘May be, the motorman is on leave today’, he moaned not taking his eyes from the tracks. His eyes became heavy with fatigue; he felt something tugging at his heart. Finally, after some more waiting, he abandoned his ‘Operation Dharshan’ with great reluctance. His heart whined; he became nervous.

Dispirited, he began rambling on along the platform again. When he came near the SM’s cabin, he saw a big crowd milling around therein. An old woman was wailing inconsolably, her hair disheveled, eyes swelled. She was sitting on the floor, beating her chest with hands and crying endlessly. Lying in state near her on a bench was the body of an old man.

Sharma bent down and looked at the body. He shuddered, his heart collapsed. He couldn’t believe his eyes. To make sure what he saw was not an optical illusion, he looked again at the body. No doubt, it was the motorman. He could very well recognize the goatee trimmed haphazardly. The face, full of creases, wrinkles and scars, was familiar to him. Sharma turned his head away from the body in disgust.

‘I saw him yesterday. He looked fine. How come he died so suddenly today, sir?’ He asked the SM [he is Sharma’s long term acquaintance] when he came out of his cabin calling out the wailing old woman, the motorman’s wife.

‘He’s Daniel sir, one of my best friends,’ the SM spoke in a whisper, his voice broken. ‘Dany had his off today. He came to see me. We were talking about his daughter’s marriage. Suddenly, he complained of chest pain, started throwing up. We scurried a doctor from a nearby hospital. But before the arrival of the doctor, he collapsed and breathed his last. Life was not kind to him. His financial hiccups got better of him.’

Sharma stood transfixed for some time. The unexpected death of his favorite man began to oppress him badly. But, he stood strongly on his ground. It only took a few minutes for him to recover himself from the shock … to make up his mind. Having got rid of the sagging spirits, he walked out of the station hurriedly after throwing the sweet packet on the tracks. ‘I got to live, no matter how many skies are falling around me,’ he thought. When he got home, his mother knitted her brows in wonder and asked him: ‘Why, Sharma? Why did you come home so early? Are you alright?’

‘Aiyo, Amma, I saw a dead body in the station. An old man. He looked so decrepit and ugly’. Sharma spoke smugly, his face contorted. ‘I couldn’t bear the sight of his face. It’s disgusting. I felt like throwing up. The moment I saw the body, I felt as if some impurities had crept into my body. I want to get myself cleansed. I must take a bath now. That’s why I rushed home without going to the office.’ Sharma went to his room, took of his clothes and draped himself in a towel.

‘Did you see the motorman today? His mother asked. Her face was writ large with anxiety; thoughts were hovering over ‘Boomi Puja’.

‘No, Amma. I didn’t see him today, nor do I want to see him hereafter. After all he is a human being, not god. I heard a Sadhu from Kashi coming to our Hanuman temple tomorrow. We’ll go and have a Dharshan of him.’ Sharma said after stepping into the bathroom and slamming its door.

[Concluded]

Image courtesy: Google