Hello Coffee, my old friend!

I recently bought a coffeemaker. 

If you are already smiling, you are not my friend. Get the hell out of here. As I do not have a lot of money, nor any reliable lawyer (oxymoron?) to defend me against these mighty corporates, I shall not mention the brand here. My wife had that resigned look on her face whenever I decided to buy a new gadget/appliance. She tried to visualize if there was any space left in that cellar of ours, the designated cemetery where all my previous, impulsive purchases have ended. The last time she tried to open it (the door opens inwards) she could not crack the door open beyond a few inches. I myself have not been farther in, in recent times. I would not be surprised, should I ever decide to clean it up, if on cleaning, a family of bears in hibernation should emerge. Or the Department of Atomic Energy should arrive with Geiger counters and hazmat suits and declare the whole residential area unfit for human occupation for the next three hundred years. 

Back to the coffeemaker.

The Styrofoam inside the outer casing must have been inserted by an extraterrestrial. I tried to slip my finger in between the Styrofoam and the outer carton to slide it easily out. It has zero sense to do it. The most efficient way is to tear the carton away or destroy the Styrofoam to get to the coffee maker. But, I have this strange obsession (is there a natural obsession?) when it comes to unwrapping. Give me a book wrapped as a gift, and I would spend an inordinately a long time with special instruments to cut the almost invisible scotch tapes that would put a surgeon’s table to shame, make sure that no part of the original wrapping paper is damaged in the process and look at the book ONLY after the wrapping paper is neatly smoothened and folded and all the bits of scotch tapes deposited into the yellow recycling box. I have a cupboard full of neatly folded wrapping papers, next to the cupboard that has all the gift bags (big ones on top shelf and the wine bottle ones on the lower shelf), next to the small chest that holds all the ribbons and decorations. After chipping my nails, drawing blood on the skin around my right index finger nail, I managed to insert a finger and coerce the Styrofoam mammoth gently out. 

I do not know how many are you familiar with the indescribable devious means of packaging. It is an industry by itself, conceived by crackpots, and implemented meticulously by psychopaths. If you were expecting a complete box of Styrofoam to slide out of the outer carton, you have not unboxed anything in your life. Only the top part, not necessarily half, slides out leaving the coffeemaker visible to you, encased in transparent plastic. Any uninformed novice would discard the top part of the Styrofoam and proceed to (attempt to) extract the main purchase. Do that, and you may never be able to use your coffeemaker. Ever. The packaging industry Einsteins deviously include a small pin, an adaptor, a cable, a filter, an infinitesimally microscopic plastic tube, all of them, or a combination of them, or none of them, inside that Styrofoam. The last mentioned, while theoretically possible, has never been recorded to have occurred. A seasoned veteran like yours truly would never make any such mistake. It is essential to mention an obvious fact here. You plan your unboxing area with a lot of consideration. You usually need an area of 25 square meter, preferably as a square; do not get into fancy mathematical minds and select an area 8m X 3m. You should also have at hand, many trays, bowls, plates, and boxes to store bits and pieces that would emerge during the process of unboxing. 

I removed an adaptor, a cable, a tube out of this part and stored them in the meticulous manner befitting a NASA employee carrying out his checklist before the shuttle is ready for lift off.

I now made some incisions on the thick plastic sheet; it is impossible to lift it out by gripping the plastic, even a third grader would tell you that plastic is slippery. You insert your fingers, grab the robust part of the coffeemaker body and lift.

Nothing happens.

You lift again and then you realize that at the bottom of the box sits the Siamese twin of the Styrofoam that you removed from the top. Here you need no finesse. You just need enough force and lift the coffeemaker along with the Styrofoam. There is one catch however. Your extraction must be absolutely vertical. If you err by a few minutes (a sub-part of a degree is minutes), that is if you are lifting it up at 89 deg 50 minutes, you are stuck. It has to be a perfect 90 deg. The second part of the extraction proceeds smoothly. Only 14 minutes have elapsed since the unboxing started. A good progress by any metric.

If your method is tear everything open, break whatever can be broken, it can be faster. But you are the sort of the person who will be on all fours and crawling under all spaces, with torchlight searching for that small pin or tube without which the coffeemaker would never function.

The bottom Siamese twin normally holds no secret components needed for the successful assembly or functioning of the coffeemaker. The catchword is “normally”. If you are normal, you would not be in packaging industry churning out products that drive a sane person to cut his wrists and slip inside a bathtub. So, you free the coffeemaker from the lower part of the Styrofoam and carry out a thorough inspection befitting an army soldier checking his rifle and the ammunition before he sets out on a hostile landscape in search of a stranger to kill.

This is the main coffeemaker. Something like a V8 engine. Now you proceed to build your Porsche around it. The second (and a third) box yielded the additional components needed to complete the assembly of this masterpiece. I did not skip the ordeals involved in the additional boxes. Usually, the elaborate encasing is reserved only for the main component. The additional components came out without any of the precise engineering skills needed to unbox. Neatly labelled in clear transparent plastic pouches.

If in your excitement, should you discard the original box and proceed with assembly, even Waaqa (the supreme sky god of Oromo tribesman who found coffee) would not be able to help you. For cleverly left at the bottom of the second Styrofoam box and lying unobtrusively is the user’s manual. You will not need it for starting the machine, these days most of the household appliances are plug-in and ready to start with an online user interface (or so you think, much of it later) but for the times when the machine will suddenly stop functioning, like when you want to make a coffee to impress your friend, or when you want a fresh cuppa first thing in the morning – for this manual contains (cleverly hidden somewhere inside its covers) a mind numbing chapter called Troubleshooting. Literature aficionados claim that these manuals are far more complex and capable of driving you to a point where you walk to the nearest bridge and hurl yourself into the river below. These are said to be more exasperating than Ulysses. Now that should make it clear.

The process of sliding the water canister, the chamber to collect the ground coffee cakes, the lid on top to cover the coffee bean chamber, the small receptacle with a lattice on top to collect water and last drops of the dripping coffee all go in smoothly. You are now left with a rectangular container and a tube to assemble to complete the phase I as per the pictures shown in the quick start guide. The rectangular container is available and the tube was part of the treasures collected from the top half of the Styrofoam that you have kept safely away. So safely away that you can’t find it now. As your search area is confined to 25 m2, you end up finding the blasted piece and complete the assembly of Porsche!

Switching it on is not as simple as merely plugging it in. A lot of research has gone into designing the length of the power cord and it is designed to ensure that the cable would fall just short of reaching the socket when the machine is kept on a platform in your kitchen. You can slide a hardcover or two paperbacks underneath  and the cable will reach the socket, but that will be an equivalent of parking your Porsche on the road in front of your house. You spend the next 15 minutes searching for a wooden plank or any other suitable base that will not look out of place in the kitchen and voila, the machine is connected.

The screen glows to life. Coffeemakers today come with a dashboard similar to a top end vehicle. No buttons, or knobs. Just a simple screen awash with icons and instructions. The screen displays a script that you are unfamiliar with. This is not the end of the world. Intuitively, for there is no clear instruction, you figure out which sequence of illegible buttons to press to change the language to English. Before you can get to the menu on display, you personalize the machine. You are asked to enter the serial number of the machine to ensure online access to help / troubleshoot in the future, should the need arise. You know very well the need WILL arise. Now the only problem is the serial number is somewhere on the machine and the screen will not tell you where is it. The treasure hunt starts. Finding it is not that difficult; after all you have spent the better part of your life locating these devious labels in the most unexpected inaccessible places with countless previous purchases. Deciphering it is the impossible task. You take a picture, without flash, and then magnify it. A typical serial number is something like FN754&%0000000006743lkt2578!*15. Now the main problems you face while entering this on a screen are

1. Counting the number of zeros is almost impossible, you lose track.

2. You are not sure if the character after 743 is small L or Capital I

And why such a complicated serial number. There are approximately 8 billion people in this world. A simple numeral of 10 digits with no string of more than two zeros in succession would be sufficient if you look at it mathematically. 

You enter that number hoping the assumption you made is correct. The next screen asks you to connect to the Wi-Fi network. The third screen advises you to choose the interacting voice assistant – will it be John or Julie? Apparently I am expected to have a little chat in the morning when my coffee is brewed. The next screen allows me to enter the time. The fourth screen (is it the 4th , I have already lost track) asks my name, surname, short name, passport number, social security number, insurance number, name of my spouse, name of my pets, my address, my life savings, in which currency……

It is almost evening now and the much awaited screen with the menu comes to life. A screen with multiple pages, with three types of coffee per page that you can slide left or right. I read names of coffee that I have never heard before. Fortunately the Espresso, Black and Cappuccino are on the first page. The firm belief that the entire user interface is designed by a sadist fades away. 

You fill the chamber on top with your favorite coffee beans. Set the miniscule dial, that is by now buried under the beans, to a setting that decides the degree of coarseness to which the beans are going to be ground, fill the water up to the mark shown on the transparent compartment that slides with a satisfactory click when it reaches the position, slide the chamber in to collect the discarded cake after the coffee is made “ click”, place the receptacle to collect liquid effluents “click”, place the cup, aligned to a micron perfection and press on the icon that says “ Espresso” . I drink my coffee black so I do not bother with the left hand side of the machine that is dedicated to milk. I wait with a visible excitement, rubbing hands in glee, listening to the various mechanical sounds and grinding sounds and…………….

NOTHING.

My cup remains empty and the machine remains adamant by refusing to discharge the caffeine nectar that I have been looking forward to. 

The screen above flashes an isometric view in engineering drawing fashion in which one or more compartments is shown in a red outline, indicating that some component is not properly slotted. I try to take out the water tank and it does not come out. The manual says “ switch off the appliance before you try to remove any of the compartments or trays”. I switch off the coffeemaker and remove all its trays and compartments and slam them in forcefully. This is not necessary. Forcefully slamming it in is not going to give me a more satisfying click nor is it going to ensure better locking. But we are what we are!

I switch on the machine again. 

“ Hello Krish. Good afternoon!” said a jaunty British male voice and startled the daylights out of me. A weaker person would have had a heart failure. This was John, my machine interface that I chose while personalizing the machine. 

Making sure that every part is slotted where it is supposed to be, I pressed on the beautiful  “ Espresso” again. And waited. 

Nothing.

The screen flashed a disturbing red and displayed the same inexplicable engineering drawing again.

I filled the milk. Who knows what this machine wants? Maybe it feels incomplete on its left hand side. Checked the bean chamber again. Raked it once. Slammed all the compartments in once again.

“ Hello Krish. Good afternoon!” said John.

I pressed Black this time, maybe the machine has an in-built superstition program that would NEVER dispense an Espresso as its first drink!

Nothing.

I started losing my sanity. The subsequent tweaks and adjustments I made carried no logical sense. I emptied the beans and filled the chamber with ethically sourced beans (who knows the hidden capabilities of this machine to parse an ethically sourced bean from an exploited one), changed the milk from cow’s milk to oat milk, replaced cold water with tap water and then boiled water, changed the cup from a small cup to a big cup to a tea mug, chose an Espresso, a black, a Cappuccino, a Latte, a flat white, started to cry, started to beg and plead, John in the meantime started to say “ Hello Krish. Good evening”, I changed John to Julie, ……………

The only constant was the isometric machine design with an everchanging red outline. 

The kitchen top resembles a battlefield. I am exhausted and defeated. My persistent efforts are no match to the obstinacy of this machine. I needed fresh air. I stepped out, walked to the end of the street, had a croissant, ordered a take away of my regular double espresso, and walked back home.

Fortified by the coffee, I decided to have one last go. 

I started the machine once again.

“Hello Krish. Good night” said John.

Or was it Julie?

Who cares.

PC: Google Images.

Goodbye, Rafa!

 Sing to the tune of Goodbye my friend by Linda Ronstadt

Oh we never know where sport will take us

I know it won’t always be cool

And we never know when someone will leave us

And I know I will feel like a fool.

So farewell dear Rafa

I know I’ll never see you again

But the memories and the vast archive

Will help us survive

It’s NOT OK but still

Farewell dear Rafa

I knew this day was coming around

And I still held my ground

I could have switched to Nole or Carlos

Well, maybe…

But it won’t be the same you know

So farewell dear Rafa

I know I’ll never see you again

        But the memories and the vast archive

Will help us survive

Hence it is really a

Farewell dear Rafa

Sport is pure and Tennis is sublime

Wanting you forever is not a crime

We watch the impostors thrive

And we understand why

It’s really NOT OK

Still farewell dear Rafa

We can’t go on now

Still farewell dear Rafa.

The Devil Wears Prada

He can kill with a nod

He can wound with his words

And he can ruin your life with his hired spies

And he wears all those dresses that he wants you to see

His acts are childish

He’s always a devil to me.

 

He can lead you to hate

He can make you or break you

He will destroy the world

And will unsheathe the sword

He’ll take what is yours

And give it to his cronies.

Yeah, he acts like an angel

He’s always a devil to me.

 

He takes care of his friends

Then discard them once done

He cares only for him.

Oh, he stops wars in other lands

Won’t do that in his home

He just changes his stand.

 

…. And he’ll paint you a picture that is so bright

Then he’ll destroy you and all that you sought

But he’ll bring out the worst beast you can be

Blame it on yourself

Cause you made him the devil that’s he

 

mmm-mmm. mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm

…

He takes care of his friends

Then discard them once done

He cares only for him.

Oh, he stops wars in other lands

Won’t do that in his home

He just changes his stand.

 

…. He is all the time sleazy and suddenly cozy

He thought he could do it forever

But the people are no fools

He can be convicted

Once he is evicted

And in the meanwhile

He will do his best with his guile

And he’s always THE devil to me

 

 Thanks to Billy Joel!

The Book Thieves

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

— Jeanette Winterson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Book Thieves

 

Vidya kept the bag on the table, the opening facing her.

Nuts and I knew what would happen next, but the suspense of the very first time the same scene played out was still as strong.

We waited. And Vidya is a tease. She started talking about the elections, the possibility of the unmentionable getting elected again, she almost broke the teacup when she slammed it down. Then she was wondering if we should go to Furiosa over the weekend.

I have had enough. Of the three, I am known for being impatient. I blurted out “OK, show us. What is it this time?”

Vidya was only waiting for this moment. “I thought you would never ask” she smiled. She kept her cup down a second time, brought the bag closer to her and opened the zip, and stuck her hand inside.

“Ta-da”

Perfectly timing her “ta-da” with a grand flourish, she brought out a copy of

“Point Counter Point” By Aldous Huxley!

It was ancient, to say the least. The pages had not just yellowed, they had turned almost brown. They were actually brittle. It was one of those older copies where the owner had it bound in such a way that the book cover was not seen. It had a generic red pattern cardboard bound look.

A reader who pays attention to detail must have noticed that the owner of the book was mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Well done.

Because the book belonged to none of us.

Till now!

Now it is our property. Like so many books before this.

It started innocuously. The three of us had many things in common but none stronger than our love for books. We devoured them. We could never have enough books. Each one of us individually had a huge collection. Put together, the whole collection can put a local library to shame. We grew up together. And at some point in our adult life, we had reached an agreement by which we ended up not buying what the other had bought or intended to buy. As our statistics professor used to say our collections soon became mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

Money was not a problem. We could buy all the books we wanted. We wanted excitement and thus started our habit of stealing books.

“You covet what you see,” said Hannibal Lecter to Agent Starling. Thus our acquaintances became our victims. It was actually simple. We just needed to be sure that we could be in someone’s living room for a brief period, unobserved.

And we needed a bag.

It started with picking what was available. Then our tastes improved. We started looking for specific books. Then specific editions. Then rare ones.

We never stole from bookshops! We have our own principles.

Relieving a wealthy individual of a single book (or few books, as some of our victims were repeat clients – it was their fault - possessing so many books and leaving them about so carelessly) was not seen as a crime.

At least not in our books!

Wow! That was clever, right?

The rest of the chai session was spent discussing the details. How it transpired? What exactly happened? Were there any close calls? Did her i-watch send an alert “unusual heart rate”?

Every Friday we met for this session at our usual joint. Not any chains that dished out undrinkable concoctions camouflaged as coffee and tea. This old joint run by an ageing Parsi couple served some of the best bun maska and tea.

Inspired by Richard Osman, we christened ourselves The Friday Book Club.

Over cups of tea, we targeted our next adventure and chose the victim from a list of probable. We increased the stake by narrowing down the genre, the author, or even down to a specific book by name.

Stealing a Ulysses was never fun; be frank, the owner is not even going to realize it was gone. Or actually, be thankful as he/she can now live without the guilt every time they finish one book and must choose another.

On the other hand, grabbing popular books was risky. Anyone will notice a missing TinTin, Asterix, or a Phantom.

It is also not possible to escape from those one-book authors like Harper Lee (I know I know – you will all say she wrote a second book; which she should not have. So, for us at TFBC, she is a one-book author) or James Agee.

It is in the established order of things that a good thing does not last long. As a matter of fact, they can, provided greed does not overcome common sense. But greed is greed, because, over centuries it has encouraged sensible people to act insensibly. We should have stayed with one book a week per person and enjoyed the general sense of adrenalin rush that accompanied every snatch. Instead of aiming for the most obvious.

Henri moved into our neighborhood; on a Friday! He arrived on a sunny Friday, unaccompanied by any family. He arrived first and a truck arrived the next day. Nuts could watch the arrival of the truck and the unloading from her third-floor window. What caught her eye was the unmistakable cartons that could only be books. She took a picture on her phone and enlarged it to see the labels; and any doubts she had, vanished.

The cartons themselves may not have been conclusive but the labels were dead giveaways.

“Classics”, “Hardbound”, and “Rare” – these were enough.

“We have a new fish” a message arrived on our group chat.

“Elaborate,” said I.

A photo landed.

A whistle emoji arrived from Vidya.

I hearted the photograph.

That afternoon when I presented my recent acquisition, a dog-eared copy of “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, the usual excitement and the urge to push for details went missing. The new entrant and the unspeakable riches that he potentially owes distracted us from basking on any quotidian achievements. The entire afternoon was dedicated to this new man ( Henri – as we would soon learn) and his treasures.

Nuts moved in quickly, as she usually does. She befriended Henri. All she needed to do was to seat herself on one of the benches along the walking track with a copy of Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-Yong. If that would not pique the interest of a stranger none of us know what else could. Henri paused on his walk and introduced himself

“Hi. I am Henri. I moved in recently. I gather that you want to introduce yourself to me in that subtle way and here I am conceding that I have noticed what you wanted me to notice”

It is not often one finds Nuts struggling with what to say. This was one such moment. To her full credit, she did recover quickly (quicker than either Vidya or I would have) and replied

“Thank heavens! I was getting worried if I was too subtle”

This quick exchange was a decent start. After a few more such “chance” encounters, it did not take long for them to visit each other and discuss books and their favorite authors and movies. Introverts are often misunderstood. People expect them to be reticent all the time. You can’t see a more social person than an introvert in the right company.

“He has the “Les Diners De Gala”. What a gorgeous copy! It has a golden cover and the pages are fine quality paper and the illustrations are as good as we expect them to be” exclaimed Nuts when we met a few weeks later. Our weekly meetings continued, but all we could discuss was the progress or lack thereof in reference to Henri.

Les Diners De Gala is a clear example of how irrationally an obsessed mind works. There is nothing we could do with that book. There is not one recipe that will work. Forget a recipe working, we will not even be able to source all the ingredients. It will be at best a trophy book. And the way we have been acquiring books recently, it would be impossible to display what we have. Still, we needed it. Even though his collection was exquisite as well as enormous, Nuts concluded that if we were going to take possession of one book from his collection, this would be it. I opened Google in the meantime and keyed in “Images from Les Diners De Gala”. What came up was a series of images that looked as if we were looking at the table spread of Hannibal Lecter.

But the inimitable talent of Dali was visible. It can be more of a Dali book than a cookbook by Dali.

Henri fitted the introvert book lover description perfectly. We had no idea where he worked, or what he did for a living. He was single. But a good dog parent. Nuts often ran into him on the morning walks when he was walking Rocky. If Henri was the perfect introvert, then Rocky was the exact opposite. He soon became the children’s favorite (Rocky, not Henri). In his small closed world, there were few friends and fewer still who could visit his home. Nuts broke that barrier thanks to their common interest in books, music, and movies.

Each week we met, Nuts had more information about the books in Henri’s possession. We were often tempted to change our target as more interesting books cropped up. There was a first edition of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, an autographed copy of “The Blue Umbrella”, a picture book of “The Sapiens” in two volumes but we resisted all our temptations and stayed focused on our one prize catch. Unfortunately, it was a heavy tome. Not something that you can slip into your bag and walk away. And Nuts made sure that she never showed any interest in that particular book.

Single-minded obsession makes you less efficient in your other activities. Nuts stopped contributing to our “special collection”. Vidya and I continued to chip in with what we could “lay our hands on”. Our collection became richer with a “Black and White Asterix”, a German Graphic Novel of “The Moby Dick” among other less notable additions.

None of us can read German.

When you want something really bad, the universe conspires to make it happen. Right?

Henri called Nuts on a Thursday evening and asked if she could come to Lilavati Hospital. Henri was getting down from the BEST bus and a rash two-wheeler driver (is there another kind?) rode past him, actually whizzed past him, and knocked him hard on his elbow. The pain was excruciating. Henri lost his balance and fell on the side of the bus, which had started to move. This knocked him back onto the pavement causing him an ugly bump on his head. The last things that Henri noticed from his prone position were part of the license plate and that he/she was wearing a helmet! The driver did not care for the pedestrians but took the safety of self seriously. The CT scan for the bump on the head did not reveal anything to worry about but the elbow was sore. The doctor put him in a cast and decided to keep him under observation for 24 hours. Henri called Nuts as he needed someone to take Rocky out for a walk. Rocky needed to be taken care of for a few days; Henri said a few days as he was certain that the doctors would not discharge him with a weekend coming up and he was getting resigned to accepting the fact that he would be an in-patient over the weekend.

This was not a problem. Nuts loved dogs more than people, as a rule. Taking care of Rocky for a day or a few days was not a problem at all. Henri did not have to spend the weekend at the hospital as he feared. He was discharged on that Friday afternoon. Nuts offered to walk Rocky even after he returned but Henri refused. Henri recovered well even though the hand was stiff for a week even after the cast was removed. Rocky hardly registered the change of his caretaker for 24 hours. Nuts was already a familiar face.

It was one of those rare Fridays that we did not meet. Nuts called in to say that she would not be able to make it and we did not meet.

The Friday after that, we assembled as usual and Nuts brought an unusually big bag. The whole Henri episode was not known to us as Nuts wanted to preserve it for her big moment.

“Aylaaaaaaaa” exclaimed the usually quiet Vidya.

“You can’t be serious” I mumbled and placed the tea cup on the table as it was evident that I was about to spill the tea from all the excitement.

There on the table was “Les Diners de Gala” glowing almost like an ingot of gold in the bright sunshine. Nuts sat back, arms crossed with a smug expression of satisfaction on her face. This was the most prized possession of ours, without a trace of doubt. We peaked. We could stop our activities immediately. Nothing in the coming days can ever match or exceed this task. The book was everything we expected it to be; and more. For the first time, we felt a slight remorse for the original owner of this book. It was brief and we were soon involved in marveling at the book. The drawings were of a kind that only Dali could have conceived. Even Dali must have been as high as a kite to have created something like this. It was stunning. It was brilliant.

Henri must have noticed the missing volume. A book like this must be a prized possession in anyone’s collection. He never mentioned it to Nuts.

It appeared as if Henri came to our town to only ensure that we ended up with this book. Just before what would have been his first anniversary in the new town, he left. All his stuff was packed again and Nuts met him on the day he was leaving.

“I will miss Rocky,” said Nuts.

Henri smiled at the honesty the utterance carried. Nuts gave him the gift that she gave to all the people she cared for. An illustrated tabletop version of The Little Prince. Henri was moved.

“It is a crime to have less than 3 copies of The Little Prince” smiled Nuts.

Thus Henri left the town. Bruised by a typical two-wheeler rider and poorer by a book.

 

It takes a lot to depress Nuts. It was hence strange for Vidya and I to see a sad-faced Nuts when we assembled for our usual meeting of TFBC.

“Why such a long face?”

In reply, Nuts took a small box and left it on the table.

“This was delivered this morning,” said Nuts through gritted teeth.

Inside the box were two bottles. The transparent preservative liquid made the contents clearly visible.

Snails and Frog Legs.

There was a handwritten note that said

"Recipe #56 and #57 - Page 146"

 

 

 

HELP

  

  

 

“Helping others is the way we help ourselves”

Oprah Winfrey

  

 

HELP

 

Velayudham entered the small kitchen-cum-dining room and saw what he had always seen. The tables with 4 seats were all taken up. He went to an unoccupied table and sat down for his lunch. No one invited him to join. No one made an attempt to pull the table and chair to expand the table to house 6 instead of 4. No one took a peek into what was in his lunch box, nor did they offer what they had brought in their lunch boxes. The ostracization was never blatant. There were the usual “hi”s and the acknowledgments through a nod or a simple eye contact. Velayudham was used to this cold treatment by now. Familiarity by itself does not reduce the hurt. His place of employment can be loosely labeled as “IT industry”. It is a small firm. Highly successful, driven by the relentless energy and the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, Sarangapani, the CEO. It has eleven employees, including the CEO; Ten men, and one woman. All of them brahmins. Velayudham is the only employee who belongs to the Scheduled Tribe, a member of the Irular community, hailing from a village whose name would not even register  with most people.

It was the same in his school. He sat alone or among his tribe. It was unwritten but understood by all. Solitude became his constant companion, and he had grown accustomed to it. Most rules he followed in his village were never written down but were clear. There was a temple that he was never allowed to visit. Not that he ever wanted to. Poverty and social injustice make you an atheist faster than books and discussions. On the rare occasions a friend invited him home, he spent the time on the “Dhinnai” ( a space outside every home, under a slanting extended roof, but outside the main door); either playing with him or studying together. The grandmother never thought it insensitive to splash the dhinnai with a bucketful of water even before he left the premises. Early on in his life, Velayudham learned the lesson that knowledge gained through acquaintance was Teflon coated to stay immune to caste pollution.

Sarangapani never came to the common dining area and did not know about the discrimination that was blatantly being followed in his firm. Velayudham is now used to eating alone. Either the rest distributed themselves with no space for him to join, or someone came in, had a look, and suddenly remembered that they had something else to finish and went back when they saw that they would need to go to another table and sit alone or share the table with Velayudham. Left alone at your dining table is the smallest of the insults that Velayudham was exposed to all his life. Discrimination followed him like a faithful shadow throughout his conscious life. When he was young, he foolishly believed that money would solve all his problems. He did not know that the amount of money needed to make it happen would be at Bill Gates and Jeff Bozos level. True, money came and made his life easy. But the recognition and acceptance that he expected to follow from society never happened. He was always the “paraiyan” (a derogatory Tamil word that encompassed all untouchables into a single term) who made it.

“We are the new SC and ST,” said his friends who belonged to the upper caste when he entered the engineering college. Centuries of oppression, and years of privileges in the past were all irrelevant to these boys who believed in a distorted version of history that suited them. “You and your clan can get into the engineering stream with only 65% while “our people” are left out even after scoring 85%” was one grandiose statement used regularly. A few attempts to explain the background, the logic of empowerment, years of oppression, equality, the need for upliftment, and the requirement for seamless integration were all meaningless. “You can lecture all this and more. After all, you have access to gain these insights, thanks to the education that you gain now, at the expense of a more deserving Brahmin boy who sacrificed his future for you.” Some rabid ones made it even more gruesome with a flair for imagery. “At some point in your life, you will look back on the road you traveled. The bloodstains you will notice are from the Brahmin boys who bled so that you could walk”. The victim game was played out endlessly in various disguises. One thing was certain. There was not a single day when he was not reminded that he was enjoying a privilege that was not rightfully his: but plucked from a more deserving candidate. “You hit the birth lottery” was one unkindest cut of them all. He was so stunned that he did not even know how to react to everything so wrong in such a short statement. Solitude that was a shadow became a lover in these years.

It was his birthday. His wife Shanthi made some sweets (Mysorepak) at home and made individual packs for his colleagues. He never got to meet his boss regularly. There was not much need for it and also Sarangapani was a frequent traveler. That day, however, he was in office. Velayudham distributed the packs that his wife had sent with him for his colleagues, who all wished him heartily with a casual handshake or a friendly pat on his back, never a hug. Then he ventured into Sarangapani’s office. Sarangapani stood up, came around the table clasped his hands firmly, and asked him to sit down. He went back to his seat only after Velayudham was seated. Velayudham extended the small pack to him and sheepishly said “This is homemade. My wife made it last night. Today is my birthday”

Sarangapani’s face broke into a wide grin. He stood up so briskly, that he almost toppled his chair back. He rushed around the table, grasped his hand, pulled him up, and gave him a hug. Velayudham had no recollection of when someone outside his family hugged him. Still standing and talking he picked up the box from the table

“May I?” he asked.

“Of course, SP (that is how everyone addressed him in the office). It is for you “ stammered Velayudham.

“Wow! Mysorepak! My favorite. There is one thing I can never resist and that is sweets” saying this SP took a piece and tasted it. His face broke into a wider grin

“This is bliss. The last time I had a Mysorepak like this was when my grandmother made one when I was in school. Alas, my mother never got the exact skill needed to make like her. I have been consigned to readymade ones from the shops that are more useful as bricks in a building. Tell your wife that I am jealous. And also let me call HR and I will instruct them to include “Deliver one box of Mysorepak to SP each month” into your job description”

If SP was ecstatic with the sweet Velayudham was delirious with joy. He came back to his seat with a stupid grin and the grin never left his face throughout the rest of the day.

Not even when he spotted the watchman eating from one of the boxes when he left the office. So, what if he had forgotten the watchman. One of his colleagues (probably more than one) has corrected that oversight by dropping theirs with him.

It was one of the first shocks after he moved into a city. He expected a metropolis to be more inclusive and mature. The city did not take long to smash his misgivings. The neighbors who opened the doors wide for them when they went to introduce themselves failed to control their body language when the name was mentioned. The face revealed what their minds were thinking. The quick mind equated a name to a caste and to a strata of society and immediately arranged the social pyramid in which they sat above their new neighbors. After all, almost anyone will sit above an Irular community. Invitations for dinners were politely refused and in the regular gatherings in the society, the position of Velayudham and Shanthi was made clear without spelling it outright. The security guard who stood up and saluted every passing vehicle soon learned that the car that brought in Velayudham could be easily ignored. Should he go and challenge him? What would that achieve? Society has developed enough mechanisms to manage such situations. How do you fight a ghost? No one will confront you. No one will tell it openly. They will outright deny any of your allegations. Converting the victim to an unreasonable imaginative aggressor and the instigator to a victim of reverse casteism. If, how do you fight is a complexity too complex to unravel, then how long can you fight is already a lost battle even before it starts. It did not take them long to realize that solitude could also be experienced by a pair. The strange mathematics demonstrated that the solitude expressed by two individuals did not add up but multiplied in intensity. Isn’t this how this malady keeps growing. It is never in the open; always subtle and always vague, left to multiple interpretations. After all the upper caste has been practicing this art form for centuries.

“If you are free this Sunday, could you join us for lunch at my place?” asked Sarangapani when Velayudham and he were going down in the elevator at the end of the week, on a Friday.

“By you, I mean you and your wife”, he added. The mirrors on the three walls of the elevator reflected the surprise on Velayudham’s face.

“Certainly SP, any occasions? “

“None whatsoever. It just occurred to me that our families never met each other. Do I take that as yes for an answer” inquired Sarangapani with an impish smile.

“Any allergies? Any restrictions?”

“None SP”

“See you then on Sunday”

Velayudham and Shanthi were not used to being invited for lunch to a place that was not one of their relatives or one of their people. They had no idea what to bring along. They finally settled on a simple flower vase and a bouquet of lilies and orchids.

“Where is my Mysorepak?” screamed Malathi as she gave a bear hug to Shanthi. The flowers were immediately arranged in the vase and left on the table. Shanthi kept apologizing for not bringing the sweets. She had no idea that Velayudham had given it to Sarangapani or that the latter liked it or even took it home.

The couple made Velayudham and Shanthi feel at home without doing anything outwardly superficial or unnatural. Their living room was simple and beautiful. The main color theme was white and gray with dashes of bright red dotting unobtrusively. There was a huge floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that covered an entire wall. There was one section entirely devoted to Hannah Arendt and another to Walter Isaacson. There was a huge collection of Tamil writers – Jayakanthan, Sujatha, Perumal Murugan……

“I am a member of the Music Academy and SP never accompanies me to those concerts. He finds them boring. It would be lovely if you can accompany me. That is assuming you like Carnatic music”, said Malathi to Shanthi.

“I would love to. I have the same issue at home. My husband listens only to Jazz and it gives me a great headache”, smiled Shanthi.

Sarangapani’s eyes lit up. “Did you say, Jazz?!!, how lovely”

He stood up and selected a record of Herbie Mann and placed it on his Rega turntable.

Before switching it on, he sought the permission of Shanthi, who blushed with embarrassment and nodded.

“Let us go see our garden,” said Malathi as both the women escaped Memphis Underground while the men were already in a trance.

“There are still decent people left in this world,” said Shanthi to Velayudham that night before they went to sleep. Some people are so disillusioned that a mere act of normalcy amounts to a great act of benevolence.

A reciprocal invitation was accepted. Shanthi had a new friend and enjoyed those musical evenings. Professionally, nothing differed. Sarangapani never mixed personal relations with work. Velayudham was smart to keep it the same.

Books were exchanged. A few vinyls were gifted.

“I am often reminded of the similarities between our lives and a mythological one. Karna was the same. Shunned by society, never acknowledged; did not even possess the “entrance ticket” to arenas where he could show that he was no less than others. A Duryodhan came along and gave him the priceless gift of friendship. Treated him as his equal. For that Karna was loyal to him all his life, even dismissing a chance to join the Pandavas. He could have become the king of Hastinapur as the eldest Pandav child if he had shifted his loyalty. I wish I could do something like that to you. But what can I offer you other than my friendship” said Velayudham to Sarangapani one evening when the wives were away at the Music Academy.

Miles Davis was playing in the background.

“Well, you can” said the epitome of decency and a pillar of equality

“Shanthi”. 

One Ordinary Day, Please.........

Sunday, 12^th April, 1987.

Four in the afternoon is not a nice time to be waiting outside Matunga railway station on a Sunday. But, Murali and I had no choice. This was our weekly rendezvous that normally culminated with boarding the last local from VT station, the last local actually leaving, officially, on Monday morning. We were waiting for Mohanan (called Anna by all, probably even by his parents) and Sapkal (called Chotu by all, including his parents). Anna was a stickler for punctuality and he would arrive soon; we were early. Chotu would arrive about an hour beyond the agreed time and would believe as if nothing amiss had transpired. This stop in Matunga was a ritual. We visited RamAshray for their divine Vada and Dosa and the nectar-laced filter coffee. Waiting outside Matunga station was a pain in the ass. The pavement bookstalls were near the King Circle, a 10-minute walk away. Go there and we will miss Chotu. The street (actually it was more of a lane) outside the station had only some fruit shops and juice centers. Only a moron would spend money on fruit juice when RamAshray was just 3-minute away. We were doing the full-page jumbo crossword in the Afternoon Dispatch & Courier till Anna joined us.

“Optical illusion,” Murali said for 2 down – the clue was “unpolitical soil presenting something that was not, maybe”.

The crossword gave way to tentative plans for the evening when the duo became the trio. We did the same thing every week, but still, the future managers in us liked to plan things. Chotu surprised us by turning up just 32 minutes after the agreed time. We were past the period where lame excuses were made anymore. We proceeded to RamAshray and the place was packed with people waiting outside. The day could be wasted, but evenings and nights were precious to us. Chotu led us to the family section and occupied a table. The waiter strode confidently to us and declared

“Sir, this is the family section. Only families are allowed”

Chotu replied

“We are family, we four are brothers”

In spirit yes.

There was not one feature that we could agree was in common, other than the fact that we were all clearly males.

The waiter’s training had not factored in the wily ways of Chotu and his likes. He faced a question or a statement that was out of his syllabus.

“Er..  Hmm.. but Sir, there is no woman” he blurted out with a certainty of Lord Subramanya who circumnavigated the world and returned to collect the sacred fruit and was equally disappointed when Chotu replied with all the pseudo-indignation he could muster

“A woman could make us complete and the assembly of four brothers is not enough for you! Call the manager”

The waiter was by now not only out of syllabus but  out of his depth too. He swallowed his pride and set about serving us. For the three of us, it was an exceptional victory but for Chotu, it was just another day in office.

The distance from the VT station to the Café Royal (there is a new swanky one in the same location today, visited by billionaires before 40, Obama, and the likes – but in our time it was a simple adda – chosen for the singular reason that they served alcohol by quarter and not by pegs) should not take more than 30 minutes when your legs were young and the evening still fresh with last traces of dying daylight. We never traveled like an arrow.

We meandered like Brahmaputra.

Checking the films being shown (Excelsior / Sterling), bargaining for tees with AC/DC or Pink Floyd on them, stopping at the footpath book collection near Flora Fountain, where the shopkeeper was well versed in anonymous as well as Satre!

The routine once we were seated in Café Royal was always the same. Order as much alcohol as you can consume in the time available. It must be the Indian genes that make you drink as if to quench your hunger instead of nursing a drink.

Billy Joel could have sung “Makin love to his tonic and gin”, but we were usually violating! This was never the time to sip, savor, swirl in your mouth, slip into bliss kind of a thing. It was always a competition between how quickly you could drink and how fast the waiter could serve your table.

Two hours and an obscene amount of alcohol later, Anna could not hold his bladder any longer. The toilet at the back lived up to the levels of sanitation you could expect from such a joint. Once drunk, your sensibilities could be heightened. You could not demean yourself by relieving yourself in such a filthy squalor. Anna stood up and went left. There was a poetic equivalent of the first class passengers turning left while economy mortals turned right on an airplane. Not for Anna the ill-lit, reeking of stench, filthy assembly of pissoirs. He was looking forward to the cacophony of Bombay traffic horns, the bustle of the never-ending movement of humans, and the caressing breeze of the zephyr coming off the Gateway Of India on his sweat-drenched back as he would unload his bladder, which was ready to burst. His crab-like movements, influenced by nearly 600 ml of alcohol, took him to a wall with iron railings, just off the footpath across the road. He unzipped his fly and heaved a sigh of relief as a steady stream hit the wall and slid down to the pavement. He needed to widen his legs to avoid the stream soiling his slippers. He may have been drunk, but his senses were still sharp. All was well. Well, almost…..

Murali was the first one to raise the alarm when Anna had not returned, even after allocating additional time in perambulation to reach his First Class piss pot! Chotu was a rare specimen! Nothing made him nervous. His first reaction was “he will come”. That was his only reaction. I was easily excited and this trigger from Murali was enough to push my state from a slightly worried to an absolute paranoia. We both stepped out, just in time to see a police constable escorting (actually pushing him ahead with a firm grip on his neck) Anna away from Café Royal!

This time they turned right!

Chotu reacted to our description as if every person who left a café for an open-air piss jaunt usually ended up with a police escort.

Chotu was always practical. An excited duo like us would have deserted our table still laden with unfinished drinks (and free on-the-house peanuts)  and bolted in the general direction of where we last saw Anna. Chotu’s mind could evaluate all combinations and arrive at possible conclusions like Bobby Fisher fashioning his checkmate after Karpov moved his pawn to Q4.

As the two of us waited nervously, imagining Anna being tied and hung upside down, with lathi-wielding burly policemen hitting the soles of his feet (no specific reason – just the image that came to our fertile imagination), Chotu kept his calm. He finished the rest of what was on the table, including the last unfinished drink of Anna. If we had not acted in time, he would have finished ours too.

With a certainty that bordered on the supernatural, he led us to the Colaba Police Station which was about half a km away. How the gears and the cogs whirled inside his cranium and spat out the right answer is beyond the understanding of lesser mortals.

There we saw an indignant Anna slouched on a wooden bench, with his trademark smirk of disapproval, surveying the surroundings with complete disdain. He physically distanced himself from the other undesirables who occupied the same bench alongside him. Pimps, pickpockets, peddlers and drug addicts.

The sub-inspector, P.Patankar, was seated on his throne, the seat did not deserve the name throne but can only be described thus the way he occupied it, with his legs stretched out, half his ass hanging outside the edge of the seat, further descent arrested by his belly encountering the desk, seriously exploring his nostril with his right thumb inserted deep inside while his index finger held on to the area of interest from without.

Only Chotu could have the courage to interrupt such a deep meditative exercise and he did

“Saheb, To amcha manus ahe! Tyala jau de”

Mr. Patankar was not happy that he was interrupted from his nasal excavation and that too without any decorum.

 He looked over at the bench that Chotu’s arm indicated and quickly made out Anna as the topic of interest from among the various suspects. He had not become a sub-inspector for nothing!

“Do you know what he did? IPC 115 is the charge against him. Not only did the royal highness pee on the compound wall of the Maha Nagar Palika, he asked the constable to wait till he finished.”

Anna made a face that said, “How can one stop mid-pee?”

To see Chotu working a hot-headed stubborn and insulted sub-inspector into a meek understanding smiling comrade is to watch a work of art. The exchange of money was unnoticeable even though the transaction happened in plain sight.

After the highlight of IPC 115, the rest of the evening did not have many surprises. The pitcher of beer at Café Mondegar, while marveling at Mario’s murals and listening to “The End” by Doors on their jukebox was the next ritual that was maintained. Here the restroom met with the approval of Anna and there was no subsequent threat of yet another visit to the Colaba Police Station.

We made our way to Bade Miyan for our last stop for the usual diet of juicy kebabs and

Monday, 13th April, 1987

chicken legs.  The last local to home was eventless too. Murali and I went to bed at 2.30 in the morning hours.

We were woken up by our neighbor at 4 in the morning

“Your roommate Ganesh called. He wants you to come to the VT railway police station. He wants you to bring some money to pay for the penalty”

We looked at each other to make sure that it was not a collective illusion. Our neighbor had no more information. Ganesh was on the afternoon shift on Sunday and must have returned home by 1 in the morning. We were too drunk to realize his absence when we returned.

What is it with the police and us? We wondered.

First Anna and now Ganesh.

For the second time in less than 12 hours, we made our way back to VT station. Ganesh was in a lock-up. Real deal. No pathetic benches for him. In fits of anger and frustration, he narrated how he ended up in the VT station lock-up instead of in his bed.

The afternoon shift was exhausting. The Sunday shifts were maintenance shifts. We called them graveyard shifts. Every possible machine that could break, broke. And then some. A hydraulic hose came off its fitting and he was drenched in oil. By the time he scrubbed himself clean, he knew he was running late to catch the 23:34 train. Miss that and the next one would not be around for another 40 minutes. He entered the station as the train left and he jumped into the first compartment that he could get into and was surprised to find it almost empty. He did not mind it and rested for the first time in the preceding nine hours. His rest did not last long as two constables rounded him up in the next station and took him all the way to VT railway station and then to the lovely cell that he was presently standing in narrating to us.

His crime: He was in a ladies-only compartment!

Zeus must have been in a foul mood that night. What are the odds, else, of law enforcement agencies targeting two of our small group of friends, booking for acts that we had seen a countless number of times before?

The constable on duty, fresh from a night’s sleep, waiting for his reliever to come, told us

“He will be taken to the court at 11.00, where the judge will let him go with a fine. You pay the fine and take him”

There was nothing else to do but wait.

At 11.00 Ganesh was taken to court and we waited along with other people who came to bail out their friends.

11.00 became 12.00 and 12.00 became 12.45 and we were getting restless. At this rate, none of us would make it back to work in time for the afternoon shift.

As the judge concluded his 7^th case that morning, and when the bailiff called the 8^th one as “People of Maharashtra vs Prashant Bhosle” instead of the anticipated “People of Maharashtra vs Ganesh Krishnasamy” we exhaled a resigned sigh and started thinking about lunch.

Ganesh felt the cumulative amount of injustices against him had crossed a threshold and decided to act. Indian cinema has taught us what to do in similar situations, we have seen countless protagonists represent themselves in courts of law, where a considerate judge often listened and steered the wayward path of straying injustice towards the correct path of righteousness and restored the balance in the world.

Before the said Prashant Bhosle could take the stand, Ganesh Jumped the queue, occupied the witness stand, raised his right hand, as if calling out his childhood chum across the sands of Chowpatty beach, and hollered

“Your Honor! The charge against me is unfair. Mine was an act of omission, not one intentionally committed. The enervation was the sole cause of my ingress into the incorrect compartment and not out of any malicious or puerile intent. I am willing to…”

He could not complete it because the judge banged his gavel and told the constable to take him away on “contempt of court”

The judge’s decision came because of many reasons. He was running late for his lunch. He never liked Hindi Cinema. He did not know the meaning of the words “enervation”, “ingress”, “malicious”, or “puerile”. The words that he did not understand would have been more significant if he had allowed Ganesh to continue. Ganesh was (and still is) our resident Shakespeare with an awesome vocabulary.

One moment we were all looking at a quick lunch and back to work. The next, we were left wondering what in the hell just happened while Ganesh was escorted back to his cell.

His turn eventually came at 3 in the afternoon. We skipped our lunch not knowing if we had enough cash to bail him out. We were talking about multiple charges now.

A tired trio walked back to the VT station, relieved ourselves in the designated restrooms, and boarded a compartment that was not “ladies only”, not “First class”.

A vendor came along displaying an unbreakable, flexible plastic comb which broke into two when he demonstrated its flexibility leaving him red-faced.

A second vendor came with sliced mangoes, a third with plastic pouches for passports, ID cards, and season tickets; the stream of vendors on a Bombay local is endless but all we wanted was just an ordinary day with no more adventures.