Cornered heroines saved by the rakhi

Rakshabandan passed off peacefully for me this year. Er… actually it has been pretty peaceful for me for many, many years.
Whatte sad considering that a group of us girls used to unleash terror in the college campus with this one tiny chit of a rope called Rakhi. Boys used to duck or run and hide at our sight or do “mass absent” on the day of Rakshabandan, lest we made brothers out of these Romeos. Most boys found Rakshabandan day a public nuisance. This festival never did cut much edge with us south Indians because: i) It is the exact opposite of Valentine’s Day;
ii) Who wanted any more sisters than what they were already enduring at home? iii) There was this tofa to be given; iv) And this girdle on hand (and heart) meant a full stop to all lecherous activities vis-a-vis the one who tied the rakhi.
It was only the very good and very boring boys who came in flapping and flailing in full-arm shirts to proudly roll back their sleeves and flaunt rows and rows of glittering rakhis and their sisterly conquests. But for their pants one would have thought they were modelling for GRT’s “Bangle Mela”.
Frankly, we Dravidians never needed something as overt as a cord to show-and-tell the sibling bonding, for in our download of Tamil cinema tradition one just had to say “Anna” (elder brother) at room temperature for the man to melt and immediately adopt you as his sister. I don’t know about the rest, but this is how MGR, Sivaji, Jaishankar, Rajinikanth and T Rajendar obtained dozens and dozens of sisters for themselves and uniformly called them all “thangachchi”.
It is the weekly Hindi movies (telecast on Saturdays on DD) which introduced us to the necessity of a non-verbal signage (aka rakhi) to seal the brother-sister relationship.
“Main lawaris hoon (I am an orphan),” wept Amitabh Bachchan in a movie.
Immediately the blind girl in the hut tied a rakhi and said, “Tum ab mere bade bhai ho (now you are my elder brother)”. Same scene would have wound up with just one word “anna” down here in the south. But who’s listening? Considering that rakhis are here to stay, I just got an idea. Usually heroines in Tamil movies cringe and start walking backwards when the villain approaches them with a thali (mangalsutra), for if he managed to tie that cord around her neck, she would have to be his wife. I suggest the heroine get a rakhi and walk forward menacingly in the direction of the villain brandishing this weapon of hers, threatening to make him her brother. And whoever ties first will decide the nature of the relationship. If both tie it simultaneously, then well, it’s a tie, a bad pun and a typical K Balachandar movie situation. “If I am your sister and you my husband, then what are our children to you and me?”
My friend Geetha was notorious for her appropriation of rakhis. Every boy she knew was her rakhi brother. Alternately, if she wanted to get to know a boy, she would approach him with a rakhi. “Safe opening, safe closure,” she’d grin. Once her best friend was hitting on someone tall and attractive. “Who’s Keerthana talking to?” she asked. “Why don’t you take a rakhi to him, find out, and introduce your brother to me?” I asked. She burnt me to cinders with a contemptuous glance.
This year, two days after Rakshabandan I sent a bulk sms to all my male friends saying, “Sorry, I forgot to send you a rakhi the day before. You are welcome to send me the gifts.” Not one scoundrel bothered to reply to it, except one scallywag who said, “Then please receive this one thousand kisses I am sending you as a gift.”

Amidst a murder of crows

Just when the much awaited rose powder and the lipstick were brought close to my face, Priya’s mother intervened and said, “No need for make-up, she is only a crow.”
It was my school annual day and I was all of six years old, geared to be the black bird in the rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence". Priya was the maid whose nose I as a blackbird was meant to peck off. Any surprise that her mother laid revenge on me? With that one statement she dashed to ground weeks of fantasising of arriving home after the programme in an open cycle rickshaw and my cousins scampering out of the house to admire my rosy visage while the crow mask lay limp at my feet.
The make-up pangs eventually faded, but the statement “she is only a crow” simply stuck in my subconscious and I all but grew black wings on my dark body. I thereafter developed a special kinship for my winged sisters.
If grandmom placed rice on the sill for the crows, I stealthily topped it with curd to cool my friends plying the hot sky. If I was sent to the terrace to be a scarecrow, I woo-woo-wooed the crows to eat their fill of vadams, instead of shoo-shoo-shooing them off.
“Don’t be scared, I am only a crow,” I encouraged. If grandma offered vadais on
a plate, I would say, “wait” and run around the house to arrive just outside the kitchen
window and caw until grandma placed the vadai directly in my mouth through the grill. “Silly”, she would admonish even as I ran away flapping my hands, looking for a branch to perch and eat my treat in peace without intrusion from Fox.
In my later years I was told that my first 19 years of life were spent under the malefic gaze of Shani (Saturn). It pleased me that I had been under the observance of a deity discerning and dapper enough to choose a crow for his vehicle. Whoever saw my horoscope tch-tch-tched in sympathy saying my first 20 years of life would have been full of painful lessons. Maybe yes, maybe not.
The realisation that “I am only a crow” was cosmically meant to be painful but by loony logic it, instead, became a liberating factor for me in a society that perpetually favours fair, lissome and coy lasses. Whereas, as a crow, I was free to be bright, inquisitive and loud. At best I would be shooed away. So what?
The crows were back again in my late 20s with Lord Saturn on their back. This time they hovered around for seven-and-a-half years to deliver their remaining lessons. Their time of departure coincided with the release of my second novel Kabir the weaver poet. Guess my publisher Tulika’s logo? Heh-heh- a crow!!! "For it being an unassailable part of the sights and sounds of India, our logo is the common crow, a bright, busy, intelligent bird, with a great sense of family,” read the publisher's note on thier logo. Can anyone describe Jaya Madhavan better? (note the word “intelligent” — ha!)
My favourite colour is black and my favourite pastime crowing. I never send away a crow hungry from my kitchen sill. When I find half alive hit-and-run crows on the road, I rush them to Blue Cross or hold them till they die. I have parked a Rs 3.5 lakh toilet called Alto for them on the road. Above all, like the crows I too have gathered around me a formidable flock (of readers and friends) who love me even though ‘I am only a crow”. And do you know what a group of crows are called? Not just a horde, hover, mob, muster, parcel and parliament but also a “murder of crows”!!!

Shaddup, you blahdy fooh

In the thick of a very Tamil fight, Lal had said those three words that could shake the bedrock of any friendship. I had merely asked Lal why he must smear half a kilo of talcum powder on his face morning and evening — and look like a buffoon. To which he had demanded, “What bothers you?” He had asked that to me, one who had been friends with him for eight years out of the 10 years we had been alive!
What’s more, instead of the usual unakenna pochu? (What loss to you?) He had the temerity to ask “what bothers you?” in English, a language that was still alien in our street.
Adding insult to injury was his immediate exit for lunch and afternoon nap before I could formulate a clever repartee.
On second thoughts, his disappearance boded well as it gave me a two-hour window to craft a suitable reply to reply (badillukku-badil).
Albeit not enough for English retort, it would have to do.
I knew no English then (some would argue I still don’t). I urgently needed a three-worded retort that would put Lal in his place and reflect my English knowledge too, of which I had none.
Woe! Could fate be crueler? I cursed and ranted thus the entire first hour.
The only English words that came to my mind were “I love you” from the movies.
It had three words alright, but it was not apropos to the situation. Even at that age, I knew I didn’t want to say that to Lal. He used too much Gokul Santol Powder.
I could say “goodbye” to him but that was only one word (or was it two?) and too volatile a word to use. According to Tamil films, if one said “goodbye” along with salute gesture it meant, ‘it-is-over-between-us’. Hmmm, I was not sure about saying “goodbye” to Lal. But for his powder habit, he was a cool guy who did not mind climbing trees or stealing mangoes with me.
What about “bleddy fool”? I thought and practised saying “bleddy fool” a couple of times, before I cha­nged it to “blahdy fooh” which is how my matinee idol Kamal Haasan said it. I felt empowered by these two great words that Kamal Haasan himself deemed fit to mouth.
I hid behind a bush and waited for Lal to emerge from his beauty sleep and appear he did, powder-faced and heavier by half a kilo.
I sprang out suddenly. Encouraged by the shock on his face, I said aloud, “April fool” to which he collapsed with laughter. I fled, hair flying.
From behind our gate I could see him dancing with glee. My brain worked feverishly.
What did angry professors tell raucous college students in movies? Yes! Got it. I ran back with gusto and said, “Shaddup and gedout”, to which he laughed harder.
“Do you realise that you are standing inside my compound and asking me to get out? Now I tell you, you “shut up and get out”, he commanded. “Oho,” I replied and pondered on it briefly. Ah! Got it!
“Lal, can you please step into my house for a moment?” I asked brightly. “Ha! So that you can say ‘shut up and get out’ to me when I enter your gate, is it not?” He asked shrewdly and I lost my cool.
“You-you-you-you-you-you-you-you,” I began…in English (!!) and kept at it endlessly like an indignant heroine of my time.
Twenty minutes of ‘you-you-you’ later, Lal was at my feet, begging for mercy and declaring me the Queen of English, England and all its colonies. Ha! I became world famous in my street for constructing the loooooooooooooooongest sentence in English with just one word.

Satori in a jam with a nose-picking chauffeur

Spiritual tests don’t come in the form of power, riches or dainty damsels (or sensitive men, in my case) they come in the guise of traffic jams, to test your limits of patience and endurance. There is a certain Karmic indebtedness between people caught in the same traffic jam, a spiritual connectedness that ordains that we spend time together in this unique urban open prison for a stipulated period of time. I use traffic jams to formulate theories like the above mentioned, make character studies and collect a week’s worth of laughter.
I was in a jam recently. I turned off the engine and looked around. A husband and wife on a two-wheeler were snarling at each other. The husband was shouting facing west and the lady (sitting sideways owing to sari) was yelling facing south. The duo looked like two inimical navagraha planets, not facing each other, yet relating. I thought it a great idea to have your fights in a traffic jam and pour all your woes into the existing confluence of confusion and tension and leave the traffic signal fresh and rejuvenated, instead of quarrelling in your home and spoiling its good chi.
Two vehicles ahead, a motorcyclist and a bus driver were locking horns. The driver stopped short of spitting on the motorcyclist from his tall seat. After ample ‘enquiries’ about each other’s families (mothers in particular), both passed verdicts on each other. The driver cursed that the motorcyclist’s head be caught under a bus on his way home while the latter, a little more creative in his sentence retorted, “Your testicles are going to swell and explode today.”
To my right was a school van, bursting with children’s chatter. The driver uselessly honked every few seconds. Then I realised the honking was not for the road but for the kids inside. Each time he honked the children ceased their noise briefly. I was mulling over buying a similar “shut up” horn to use on my family, when the driver honked all too loudly and irritatingly. I stuck my head out and yelled, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Horn formation, Madam,” he proudly replied in English. You of course cannot be angry with anyone who comes up with an answer like that. Lightening my mood further was a lorry with multiple messages in its rear. “Smile OK please,” “Don’t kiss me,” etc. And amidst these messages was a mysterious black box that said “Main Valvu Boxu” in equally mysterious English.
To my left was a huge car with a lone chauffeur in no big hurry to go anywhere. He was picking his nose contentedly. I was desperate to know where he smeared his rich nose produce inside the Rs 25 lakh car. On the seat where his expensively dressed mistress sat? Or on the mat where the car owner’s kids might often drop a biscuit and pick it back to eat it? For a moment our eyes met and the chauffeur looked embarrassed. But as I pretended to turn away he
returned to his gold digging.
After few minutes of watching him, my facial orifices also began to itch. I wanted to pick something urgently. I couldn’t bear to pick my nose or teeth in public. My ears! But sadly like a mismatched adapter my little finger couldn’t penetrate my ears beyond a centimetre. My inner ears were begging to be prodded. On a sudden brainwave I removed the car key from the ignition and gently scratched my inner ears (eyes closed) with the key.
How can I describe that moment of satori to you? When I opened my eyes, the nose-picking driver was laughing at me. I smiled back sweetly. We had become kindred souls in a traffic jam.

Dare devilry on a fire spitting beast

Get your butt on that cycle,” I told myself. It was 9.30 in the night and I had just finished a lousy day of making lemonades, lemon pickles and even lime rice for life had only lemons to hand me for the day. I was cranky, tired and irritable. In short, it was the perfect time to be out on a cycle. I knew that within ten minutes of pumping those pedals, good mood would rush back to me as surely as the blood that gushes to my face when I cycle.
It all began when my husband and I found some exquisite cycling trails in Pondicherry. Apart from the sheer pleasure of cycling, we found that we had walked (well, cycled) side by side for more than sixty minutes and we had not quarrelled once.
“This is an incredible invention,” said my husband.

“The cycle has been around since the 19th century,” I said dryly.
“No, I mean the fact that we don’t quarrel when we cycle,” he said.
“That would be a discovery and not an invention, Palooka.” I said and a quarrel broke out promptly.
Yet once back neither of us could forget the immense joy cycling had given us. When you cycle, the landscape does not whiz past you in a blur as it does while in a car or a train. When you cycle, you become aware of those limbs of yours that you have long used and soaped unconsciously and never acknowledged. The dull joint aches and the pungent sweat of your armpit make you feel strangely present to yourself. Cycling slows down life and makes your own body visible to you.
“Have you wondered how crazy we are? We have two cars, two motorcycles and we want to buya cycle after all this?” my husband asked.
“Let me see, that makes it totally 12 wheels in our house and any surprise we look like their tyres?” I asked.
My exquisite logic and its expressi­on won the argument.
We bought a cycle, a unisex that both man and wife could use. My (okay our!) cycle is red in colour. It is done up in red and silver in fact. It is sporty, macho and its curious handlebars make it seem like a buffalo with huge horns. When I ride it I like to think I look like Lord Yama on his buffalo. Gives me a sense of power, a daredevilry and all those racy feelings that a motorcycle is so wont to give and a cycle is not.
Yet life is mostly lived in our imagination and so my cycle is indeed this powerful fire-spitting, smoke-exhaling beast that I tame each time I get on it.
After I finished my round on my buffalo, I egged my husband to take it to work.
“What?? Of all the….”
“You will set a good corporate example. This will emblematise your corporate cost cutting exercise. You will be a paradigm of survivorship in times of recession,” I perorated.
“Good idea. So can you drop me by cycle in car? Or should I cycle to work by car?” He asked. “You don’t understand anything that does not come via a PPT (powerpoint presentation) or your bluetooth, do you?” I asked.
“Recycle that. I mean come again?” he asked and I asked him to stop being a bull and doggedly argued until he chickened in fright and acceded to ride the buffalo to work.
As usual, my exquisite (animal) logic and its expression won the argument. My husband has been cycling to work at least three times a week ever since and he does no less than 45 km in a week.
He says all that pumping makes him mentally alert by the time he reaches office and when he returns home all his bad chi has already been worked off and there really is no need to start an argument or throw a fit to release tension. We really are quarrelling less these days.
That night, as I climbed on my bovine vahana, my son called out.
“Here, wear this orange hood jacket of mine. You will look sporty,” said my son.
“But it will conceal my attractiveness?” I complained.
“Er…yeah. Safer, don’t you think? Given the late hour, I mean,” added my husband.
So if you see a lady late in the night in an orange hood (to hide her attractiveness), sett­ing the roads on fire, exhibiting hitherto unmatched daredevilry on a bike that resembles a buffalo, know that it’s me.

Cow is so good it can give milk in packets

In a recent interaction with six-year-old children, I asked them to write a short description of any animal of their choice. I gave them a structure for the essay — namely the first line should describe their chosen animal in such specific manner that the readers should be left in no doubt, the second few lines should detail the use/danger of the animal to humans and the last line can be used to express their personal opinion of the animal.
I usually use this exercise to gauge how “schooled and boxed in” the children are and based on this I decide at what level I should begin my writing workshop with them. But it emerged that this particular group was full of poets. For the sake of my readers, I have remedied the children’s sentences and spellings a bit, but the import is intact. Read on:
A boy who chose to write on cow said in his first sentence (describing the animal in specific manner), “A cow is a cow. Not a goat.”  ”Going on to the second paragraph, he explained, “Many animals have milk, but a cow is so good that it can give milks even in packets” and his last line said it all, “I love a cow. It is so useful I know its spelling.”
Another child enthralled me with her version of the lion. Her first line read — “Lines are fat and hairy.” Second paragraph — “Lions run after non-veg items like chicken, egg, mutt­on, beef. We cannot be friends with lion as we are also non-veg item.” And finally, “Lions are useful to us in cinemas.
Then came the dog. “Do I like my dog or my sister? My sister fights with me. My dog only bites me. I bathe in Dettol, my dog also. My sister’s name is Minu. My dog’s name is Joker. I feel sad because they make fun of my dog. He is not joker, but my sister is mean. I hate my sister. I love my dog. He is useful. Sister is dangerous.”
Yet another child wrote about the owl. “Owl is living in villages or forests, inside a tree hole. They are so wise that crow, sparrow and everyone go to Owl for wisdom. An owl sleeps in the day. But I cannot. I come to school in the day. Also I live in city. So I don’t know anything about owl. So bye-bye.”
Next came the snake. “Ssssssssssssssssssssss­ssssss, a snake shouts like this. When we say ssssssssssssssssssssssssss it means keep quiet. Teachers shout like snake. Snakes dance very well. For annual day we did snake dance. A snake is useful in school programmes.”
There was one on Hippos too. “Hippo has large hips. They live in Discovery TV. I have a hippo soapbox. If hippo and elephant fight, who will win? I am very sorry; I don’t know any use of Hippo.”
And I particularly love the one on elephants. “Elephant is big, black and very strong. From far they look like black clouds. They wear bells to warn us. Their anklets are so big we use them as chains. Elephant is the national animal of the world.”
There were many other lovely entries about the rabbit, peacock, monkey and even fish. The children eventually created some beautiful
poetry with me which I shall share with my readers in another column.
The children employed such exquisite
expressions, boldness and revealed such
expanse of heart and mind that I regretted my adulthood, which seems to stand in my way of writing good poetry. What more can I say? I only hope that the children’s “schooling does not interfere with their education” and I can only hope that these children remain the poets they so easily are!

Wash if you are Indian. Wipe if you are not.

One of the easiest ways to heckle or ignite an NRI, I found was to ask in the midst of a genial conversation, “Wash or wipe?” The context is unmistakable and the question goes home immediately. We all know that paper or water in the toilet is no yardstick to measure degree of patriotism but it very well could be going by my NRI friends’ discomfiture.
Looks like the conversion to a western way of life, begins with the unruly Indian tongue massaging its “r”s into doughy “zh”s and ends with the bottom demanding paper over water. And between the tongue and the bottom, there lies a long drawn process of cultural adjustment and appropriation and between wash and wipe there hovers a great continental shift in world view. However to do our Indian brothers and sisters fair, let me put it on record that they indeed held on to the water by their bottoms as long as they could before they began to need more than the daily newspaper to accompany them into the bathroom. Their transition from wash to wipe school of thought (and action) had been anything but easy for them as the article will indicate.

Starting with better adjusted candidates- Vinu Warrier from Canada insisted that the “wash or wipe dilemma is the most under mentioned problem of Diaspora”. Living abroad for past two decades he proudly asserts his dual citizenship by first wiping with paper and later washing at his tub. (Thanks for telling. When I visit you I shan’t roll in your tub.) An uncle of mine admitted that he washes in India and wipes in America. (That must be one long journey for so poor a cause!). Sathya in Australia said he wets the paper with water and uses them as wet wipes (eligible candidate for dual citizenship).

Moving on to difficult customers who wouldn’t answer the question without first berating the Indian toilet - Raghavan s(h)itting pretty in Boston delivered a stinging monologue on the state of the Indian loos before he condescended to answer the question “Wash or wipe?”
Raghavan’s erudite electricity* (bottom’s name changed to protect identity) prefers paper over water and has arrived at the choice after smelly introspection. “With the western loo,” he boomed, “you have to deal with your own ass being a little less than squeaky clean after a trip. With the Indian style loo, you are frequently wondering what exactly you are stepping on when you enter. Sometimes you are left with no doubt, thanks to the clues on the floor left behind by the previous occupant. So, given the choice between having a little of my own produce on my ass and having other people's produce on my feet (and possibly hands), I choose the former, as any rational human being would. So that resolves it, right? I wipe now. I wipe. So what??” (The hysteria was moving, really).

Pavithra in London (here I mean the great city London and not the loo which many of us Indians still call ‘London’) discussed the “yuck factor” of Indian toilets before answering the question. “Despite all the new found economic prosperity of India, we seem quite reluctant to give up our rusty iron bucket in the loo that was bequeathed to us by our grandmothers. Sometimes the rusty bucket would spring a leak at the bottom, at which time, some bright guy in the household would come up with the idea of lining the old heirloom with a coat of cement at the bottom so that the bucket may survive another generation, not to mention that it now holds less water and weighs an extra kilogram. Also, you are sure that the previous visitor, after finishing his business picked up the bucket with his unwashed hands and put it back in place under the dripping tap. I hate Indian loos. Paper is definitely cleaner, drier and undeniably better.” She concluded.

Rumi who had in one of MTVs’ programs seen among other hot hangout spots in Asia, also pictures of the Asian loo, complete with arrows and drawings detailing how to squat and do business, was very excited on her first trip to India. Sufficiently briefed about Indian toilet practices, Rumi had just one Punjabi meal in an uppity restaurant before declaring, “I now know why Indians use water in their toilet.” When the fire in her tongue subsided she couldn’t stop raving about a new contraption she found in the bathroom, which apparently was not available when her parents were still Indians. “The mini shower hose is a riot. I heard it is a new addition to the toilet accessory to ensure dry bathroom floor.” She said before adding, “My aunt visiting from the village sort of missed the whole point. She dethroned from the western closet, squatted on the floor and got her aim wrong and ended up spraying her tummy or face before she finally figured it out. Paper is most definitely uncomplicated,” Rumi couldn’t stop laughing.
The question “Wash or wipe?” indeed seems a dipstick study on where the NRI stands vis-à-vis his country and its way of life. Among many things like cleaner environment, potable tap water and wider roads, what keeps our Indians comfortably abroad is….believe it or not is the state of the Indian loos. What our friends do in their bathrooms abroad is their business, but you know you have lost yet another wet Indian to the dry west when they start needing toilet paper even when they are visiting home. The toilet paper I am afraid is no ordinary tissue- it is the final cord that permanently binds our brethren to the alien land, a string that severes the umbilical cord with their homeland, a rope that draws our brothers out of the Indian amniotic waters. But be assured the Sons of Indian soil began to wipe their spoils only after sufficient turmoil! (Sorry about the melodrama-heh heh!)

Raghavan at Boston who briefly returned to his original semi-hysteric self wistfully shared his dreams of a toilet that would go beyond the narrow continental boundaries and address the true need of the customer. “The Japanese- these innovative people really have it all figured out - the spray and dryer are built into the loo and there is a panel of buttons on the side. So after you are done, you push button number one and lo and behold a spray of water comes up and cleans you even as you stay seated. And then one more button to blow dry it all out. Usually there are four buttons on the panel - I am not sure what the other two do, probably powder and pat. I really think the Japanese have it figured out - they are truly ahead of the pack in this technology, I think. Sometimes as I sit on my own humble loo with just a roll of paper on the side, I dream about a day when every loo will spray, dry, powder and fondly pat each ass that comes its way.”
Now we know what lies in the bottom of the Non Resident Indian’s heart or should we say in the heart of the Non Resident Indian’s bottom?

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* "Wash or wipe" is my very first article for Loony Life column in The New Indian Express