NO EDEN FOR ME

After winning against the Aussies, a picture that we all found on our Whatsapp messages was this:

So confident were we that not only did we dance but we made caricatures of Windies dancing and saying, Now we will lose to India…Oye Hoye!! But that fateful day, India lost. Here are some lessons we could have learnt from Sholay, a movie possibly every Indian including our cricketers have seen many times over.

1.       The Coin Matters: Jai had a coin which would always spin Heads and he always had his way. Jai was the thinking type, the calm one like our MSD but the only difference was Captain Cool forgot to get a coin with Head etched on both sides….Heads I Win, Tails You Lose as the saying goes did not happen that fateful day. All through the Championship, we were good at chasing or should I say Virat was good at it. We knew how much to score, plan it and then execute the chase clinically. Against the Windies, losing the toss and setting a target was our one big misfortune. Almost all the living Indians brilliantly said,…we should have scored at least 225 runs batting first on this pitch. Next time possibly we can ask our dashing Banking ka Boss, Raghuram Rajan to have some special coins minted to suit our cricketing champions.

2.       Goli & Kohli Matters: Although both Amitabh and Dharam Paaji were equal in stature and were both superstars, all our sympathies and devotion were to Jai. He died fighting till the last bullet. Possibly if he had more bullets as ammunition, he would have single-handedly vanquished the gang of dacoits who came from outside the village and plundered it often. Windies, similarly, came from half way across the globe, and may have lost had Kohli got more balls to play. Having scored 89 runs off 47 balls, think if our Virat had another 15-20 balls to play. We would have surely reached 225 runs and won the semis. While playing with Rahane who was playing well but maybe he could have rotated the strike to give the Number One Batsman more strike as could have Veeru ,who too was good at fighting, but ,maybe, he should have saved on his ammunition and given it to Jai.

3.       The Foot Matters: In the last scene of the magnum opus Sholay, Thakur was seen fighting Gabbar just with his feet. He even spurts out an immortal dialogue, “tere liye to mere paon hi kaafi hain.” In short, I can win against you just with my feet. Inspired by this movie, our cricketers forgot that in the Field of Wankhede, hands ought to have taken precedence over the feet. Look at the no balls bowled by Pandya. Not to be outdone our Spin Raja Ashwin also went over the line.  Forget the bowlers, our Sir Ravinder Jadeja while catching the ball on the boundary line touched the rope with his feet giving the West Indies a sixer and a life line. Our Captain Cool had shown during the Bangladesh match that he could out sprint the batsman Mustafizur Rahman even though he had a long bat in hand. Surely Dhoni would have also remarked, “tere liye to mere paon hi kaafi hain.”The learning from Sholay is, What worked then,Will not work now; what brought you into the semis will not take you to the finals.

4.       Gabbar Mattered Then & Now: Can you imagine Sholay without Gabbar….no way. He was bigger than the heroes and everyone else in the movie, even though he was a baddie. Ramesh Sippy tried achieving similar success by creating Shakaal in his next movie Shaan but the movie bombed. And so it was with our Indian Men in Blue. Shikhar Dhawan, who is also known as Gabbar, was dropped from the team. No doubt he too was playing a Baddie and like Gabbar was not scoring runs but you don’t change a winning combination. Had he played, possibly, he would have as usual got out early and Kohli would have walked out with his Excalibur and slaughtered the Windies with extra balls to play. Remember how many of us insisted on wearing the same set of clothes to the exams which were worn the day the exams went off well? Many a times we insisted on even wearing the same set of undergarments….Never change a winning combination.

5.       Everyone Can Be a Hero: Who knew Ramlal, Sambha and Kalia before Sholay became a hit…almost no one other than their parents and children. After the movie, they became heroes overnight. Touch your hearts and tell me for certain how many people can name the West Indies Team beyond Galye, Bravo and Sammy. Yet almost a good many will still remember the names of the all-conquering Windies of the 70s and 80s even today. But after that fateful day, Simmons, Russel, Badree, Braithwaite, Benn and others have all become big names. Hopefully we shall see them in many more movies in Indian Bollywood called IPL .The lesson learnt is one movie and one match can change fortunes.

6.       Russian Roulette is Dangerous: “Kitney aadmi thay?” remember how Gabbar questions the 3 men who came back empty handed after losing a fight to Jai and Veeru. “Sarkaar hamne aapka namak Khaya hai.””Ab goli khao!” Gabbar fires off three bullets in the air to ensure there are three bullets left in the pistol and then he rotates the magazine. “Ab hamey nahin pata kaunse khane mein goli hai aur kaun se mein nahin. Dekhen kiske hissey mein zindagi likhi hai aur kiskey mein maut.” With three bullets in the pistol Gabbar fires the first three shots all of which are blank and all three of the dacoits survive. They start laughing aloud that they have survived, they feel they have won the survival battle quite alike what the Indian Team felt after having survived Gayle and Samuels, the best batsmen in the West Indies team. But then they started celebrating and got complacent of the next minnows who were to follow. Although in Sholay, Gabbar was unfair to have fired after the first three shots had gone blank, the fact is that Russian Roulette is a dangerous game. The next 3 bullets West Indies fired were Simmons, Charles and Russel and it was enough for them to wrap up the match in style.

7.       You can Win Without Playing Actively: In the movie Sholay, Thakur is a smart chap. All he does is to hire two goons who beat the hell out of the Gabbar and his Gang. Did he fight anyone?No.  Did he run around anywhere?No. Darren Sammy has won five of his last six matches and if someone were to check what he did in the six matches is hardly worth mentioning. He has not scored more than 10 runs and taken wickets worth mentioning and yet he, like Thakur of old, won. The management lesson is that get yourself some good guys in your team and tell them, “Mujhe Gabbar Chahiye aur woh bhi zindda!” I am sure one day our famed institutions like IIMs will some day run a leadership course named Hakunamatata…Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Sammy.

To end, must write an ode for the billion die-hard Indians fans and our cricketing heroes.

I shall not go to Eden tomorrow

I shall burn my tickets tonight

Maybe give it to any beggar on the street

Give him my India shirt as well

Shall observe Earth Hours tomorrow

By shutting all lights and television sets

My heart will be with Dhoni and his boys

Lying in bed

Watching Sholay

singing...

Jab tak hai Jaan

Jaaney Jahan

Main Khelunga Main Khelunga….

SS

WOMAN IN RED

Recently, we took a flight to go Kolkata after long and even though the travel agency had, initially, booked us on the emergency exit, my better half with better sense made me change it to seats in front. With the backdrop of the unfortunate event that had taken place recently, I said a small prayer and kept looking out of the window to see the height at which the aircraft had reached after take off. After returning home safely, I registered myself on the IRCTC portal and also booked my next travel on Vande Bharat. This was a much more comfortable and tension free ride. Sharing with you a piece, written some time ago, post a scare in the air.

Woman in Red

Ever felt this way when your pilot had jumped out with his chute? Here’s what happened to me a week ago.

“Beware the Ides of March”, said the soothsayer to Julius Caesar, as he walked towards the Senate on that fateful day when he was assassinated, ending with, “Et tu, Brute”. Me no Caesar, yet my mother always told me, “Stay away from pretty looking girls, they bring more trouble than you can imagine.” "Et tu Momma”, I said, and moved on in life. As luck would have it, all my train, bus and air journeys till date had been uneventful as my co-passengers were  65 years old or more. But then five days after the Ides of March, on a Saturday morning, I decided to add ‘Spice’ to my life.

I was well in time at the airport for my 7.30 am flight and no sooner had they announced boarding that I made good use of my speedy steps to be among the first to enter the plane and two very pretty Caucasians in red jackets and skirts greeted me with broad smiles. I took another look at my boarding pass to reconfirm I was on the correct flight….indeed I was. Not bad at all. Texted my wife, “On board, all fine”.  You bet, it was better than ‘all fine’ as I quickly asked for water……please don’t get me wrong, I was truly thirsty, but, of course, the close encounter with the Woman in Red was most welcome.

As if this was not exciting enough, came a pretty damsel, in a fitting jeans and a black top, searching for her seat and as luck would have it she came and sat next to me…? I again took out my boarding pass to confirm my seat…mmm…10F…I was at the right place all right. Next, with the newspaper spread in my hands, I pushed my neck back, turned my eyes to my left to get a closer look at my neighbour…..B-e-a-u-t-y is the word that came to mind but spoken exactly the way the hotel front desk person at Ratlaam described Kareena in ‘Jab We Met’. I was truly flying Spice Jet now.

The two air hostesses now started speaking what appeared to be English after a while. They were giving the safety instructions, which I could make out from their hand gestures rather than the spoken words, which, I believe, no one in the plane understood. Normally, I never bother to see or hear the safety procedures but today was different. With my eyes glued, I saw her take out the life jacket, the air mask and show where the emergency exits were...you’re never too old to learn, especially when the teacher is attractive. No wonder my education did not prosper seeing all those Irish Brothers in their white tunics with canes in hand. A mother’s advice to the son was soon lost in translation.

The plane slowly made its way to the runway and while dragging itself to the take off point, I could feel a heavy vibration coming from underneath. Since no one else reacted, I felt it must be quite normal. Having got up very early to catch the flight, I decided to take a nap before they served the in-flight meal. For once the nap was really good and, surely, I must have been dreaming of life in paradise surrounded by beautiful women living above the clouds. Suddenly, I was woken up with some frantic action happening in the plane which, at first, I thought was the food trolley coming to serve. No it wasn’t….the Woman in Red started announcing in her Russian English, “We have an emergency situation. Please fasten your seat belts and remain seated.”

With MH370 and the German Air incidents not long ago, I peeped out of the window and saw, what I presumed was, the hilly terrain of the Aravallis.  The next announcement from the Lady in Red was, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency situation. The aircraft has a technical problem and we are turning back to Mumbai. Listen to the safety instructions carefully”. She repeated the easy ones first about the exits in the plane and then went on to demonstrate again how to wear the life jacket, how to wear the oxygen mask… “We will be making an emergency landing. When landing, cross your hands over your forehead and put your head down… if we land in water, wear the life jacket and inflate it…”  No sooner had she uttered the words ‘wear it’, that everyone started pulling out the vests from underneath the seats, wearing them and inflating them with a loud pop sound….  “No, no, not now”, cried the poor Damsel in Distress. “Listen to the instructions carefully and please do not inflate the vests now”.

I realized we were still over the mountains and wouldn’t need life jackets. The girl next to me tried peeping out of the window and asked, “How high are we?” To which I replied, “Not too high, but high enough…”to which she smiled, but I could make out she was putting up a brave face. I could see her hands trembling in fear and water soaked eyes.

By this time, a few children had started howling as the parents were asked to hold them tight. Everyone started asking the air hostesses as to what the problem was…how serious was the crisis to which the ladies just gave a blank look. We could feel the aircraft go completely slow and then commence its descent. By now there was utter chaos inside the aircraft with the old and the young shouting and venting out their fears. The air hostesses were running up and down the aisle going to one passenger after another and repeatedly asking people not to panic. By now almost all including me had worn their life jackets. In exasperation, the stewardess shouted No life jackets and the people thought she was saying Now lifejackets. Then you could hear many pops going off one after another. A majority of people had started inflating their life jackets. Her accent and intonation were adding to the chaos.

Why don’t they have SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) Convention which among other things insists that the crew of an ocean going vessel must know English to understand safety instructions in case of emergencies. Here they should have had a mandatory rule for the captain and the stewardesses to know the local language adequately…maybe someday we will have Safety of Life in Air.

While watching the chaotic scenes and shrieks, some bit of worry came over me as well. I took out my wallet, pulled out the passport size pictures of my wife and daughter and locked my lips tight, smiled and then put them in my shirt pocket from where I took out my business card. Wrote down a mobile number and name and gave it to the girl next to me, “Just in case you need to call someone for me, this is my wife, D’s number. You too give me a number to call in case of an emergency.” She gave me her father’s number…she was a student at Mumbai and hailed from Dehradun.

By now we could see Mumbai from the window and the plane coming down on a sea of blue….sorry it wasn’t the Arabian Sea near Juhu but the blue tarpaulins you see over Dharavi….the plane slowly but steadily taxied down and spontaneously the passengers started clapping and shouting Sat Sri Akaal…Bharat Mata ki Jai….how fear of death reaffirms your faith in God was fine but outburst of nationalistic feeling was a bit too much to digest.

We all had survived a scare of our life and all that mattered was that we, like James Bond, shall Die Another Day. Now I could see the Woman in Red genuinely smiling. It was then that I realized, she too must have been worried, her life too was as precious as mine, she too may have someone waiting at home for her to return to….a young daughter, an old ailing mother, a man she loved….

By now tension gave way to happiness and the phones immediately went into overdrive with everyone narrating the scary story to someone on the other side of the phone.  I quickly took a selfie with the life jacket and sent it to the two most beautiful women in my life…..immediately my phone started ringing-it was my wife. I could hear her sobbing by the time I finished my story. No sooner had this call got over than I got my daughter’s call who had frantically rushed out of the operation theatre…that’s love, that’s life, that’s family.

I was carrying home- cooked fish curry, palak paneer, tomato chutney, meat balls and cup-cakes for my daughter, so I quickly checked with my travel agent for some other flight to Delhi the same day. The agent informed that Vistara was available for 10k but by the time he tried to log in and book the ticket, price had shot up to Rs 35k….scavengers, I tell you!  Anyway, I finally got another flight at a reasonable price in the evening.

PS. I once presented my wife with a scarlet red warm Kashmiri jacket and that’s possibly the only gift she never wore, maybe that’s why we’ve been together for over 26 years now. Women in Red were not for me for sure.

SS

AS I STAND AND WAIT

Recently Kolkata was rocked with protests over a dastardly act on a young doctor working late at night at a government hospital. What the mother of the unfortunate girl would have experienced on that fateful night was the same that I went through every night when my little one was in Delhi....staying awake, praying for her safety as she meandered through the tough life of long working hours while braving the cold, scary wintery nights. Nothing seems to have changed in these eight years when this piece was written. 

I demand Justice. I demand Safety.

As I Stand and Wait

As I wait for the phone to ring

As I wait for the SMS alert

As I wait for the WhatsApp beep

As I wait for the doorbell to ring

Just a “Hi”

Perhaps a “Hello”

Or maybe “I am fine”

Or even a “Reached”

Aches increase

The loneliness stings

All the dreads come back.

Night falls

Television sets are switched off

Peace regains

A few more pages to finish

Before I turn in for the night

Do students read ‘Doctor Zhivago’ anymore?

I wonder

Careless thoughts

Fears multiply

The nightmares return.

It’s 2 a.m.

And she is still at work

Has she eaten?

She must be tired

Let me go to sleep

Will someone help me sleep?

It’s 3 in the morning

Will the wait end?

It’s a new day

With tea and newspaper

Same old news

Same old stories

Same old cartoons

Same old routine

Another day of waiting

Endless

Relentless.

The Facebook throws up

Friends in thousands

Same old faces in new profiles

A few updates

Hypocrisy abounds

Heartaches and heartthrobs

Hearts bleed too

For Rohiths and Kanhaiyas

The bashing continues

For Modi and Trump.

For two weeks

Read the columns

Heard the discourses

A new God is in sight

A beacon of hope

Harbinger of Azaadi

They say he has found a new definition

The intolerant talk of tolerance

The tolerant turn to intolerance

So let us wait for the deliverance.

Age shows its ugly side

Have to live with it

The body weakens

Memory fails

Trapped inside a Beautiful Mind

They have to await

Their turn

And so must we.

A walk on concrete

As buildings collide

Roller skates whizzing by

The breeze stops

Waiting

Wondering

To blow or not to blow

Beads of sweat appear

For company I find

Endless shapes

Broken bodies

Twisted legs

Unsteady steps

Foggy minds

Words without voices

Greetings exchanged

I walk on.

The baby

Has left his pram

Walks now and

Prattles on

As the dog rises to greet him

Hope returns

As I walk back home.

DS

FATHER OF THE BRIDE

She was born, “precisely twenty eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah’s other offspring, Pakistan.”  She was Dina Jinnah, born 15^th August, 1919 in London and was raised as a Muslim. Her relationship with her father became strained when she expressed her desire to marry a Parsi, Neville Wadia. Jinnah told Dina that there were a million Muslim boys and she could choose from any one of them. The daughter was adamant and did not budge from her stance on a husband of her choice. She reminded her father that he too had married a non-Muslim, Rattanbai, who was coincidentally a Parsi. Quaid-e-Azam was left a most disappointed man.

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins in the book, Freedom at Midnight wrote,”Jinnah had been 41, seemingly a confirmed bachelor, when he fell madly in love with Ruttie, the 17 year old daughter of one of his close friends in Darjeeling. Ruttie had been equally mesmerized by Jinnah. Her furious father had obtained a court order forbidding his ex-friend to see his daughter, but on her eighteenth birthday, with only the sari she was wearing and a pet dog under each arm, a defiant Ruttie stalked out of her millionaire father’s mansion and went off to marry Jinnah.”

On 15^th of August 1947, Jinnah celebrated the day by assuming full powers for his ceremonial office without the comforting presence of his closest relative: 500 miles from Karachi, on the balcony of a flat in South Bombay, a young woman had decorated her balcony with two flags, one for India and one for Pakistan. They symbolized the terrible dilemma Independence Day had posed for her and so many others. Dina, the only child of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had been unable to decide to which country she wished to belong, the land of her birth or the Islamic nation created by her father.

During the early years of struggle for independence, another Parsi was born in Bombay, Feroze Jehangir Ghandy (later changed to Gandhi). In the 1930, Vanar Sena, a wing of Congress Freedom Fighters was formed where Feroze joined the movement and met Kamala Nehru and her daughter Indira. In 1933, Feroze proposed to Indira but she and her mother rejected it.  He grew close to the Nehru family, especially Kamala Nehru, and was beside her till the very end in 1936. In the following years, Indira and Feroze grew close to each other while in England. Indira’s father Jawaharlal Nehru opposed her marriage and even approached Mahatma Gandhi to dissuade the young couple. Mahatma Gandhi, however, did not support Jawahar and also wrote to the other people who were against this marriage in a public statement which included a request, “I invite the writers of abusive letters to shed your wrath and bless the forthcoming marriage.” Feroze and Indira finally got married in March 1942 despite an upset Jawaharlal Nehru.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Parsi Millionaire or Quaid-e-Azzam or Pandit Nehru, fathers will be fathers and it was then that I could truly appreciate Steve Martin’s lines in the final wedding scene in the movie Father of the Bride. “I realized at that moment that I was never going home again and see Annie (his daughter) at the top of the stairs, that I’d never see her again at our breakfast table in her nightgown and socks. I suddenly realized what was happening: Annie was all grownup and leaving us. Something inside began to hurt”.

Dedicated to all fathers of the brides- you're in great company.

SS

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Two gentlemen, separated by nearly a century at birth, come together at the Maha Kumbh of this page where we shall trace some experiments with truth and untruth in their lives. One went on to become the Father of the Nation and the other remains just a Father of a Lovely Daughter.

Episode One:  A young Gandhi, on his return to India, was waiting at a platform for the train to arrive. In those days, if the driver did not see a white man at the station, the driver would just slow down the train expecting the Indian to scramble on to the running train. As Gandhi managed to board the running train, one of his slippers fell off. Gandhi immediately took off his other pair and threw it to a bewildered onlooker. Gandhi remarked later, “Ah, well if someone is to find one of my shoes, hopefully he’ll find the other one too and thus have a fine new pair for himself.”

In the book on leadership, where I found this story, the learned author goes on to say, “What a Man. In this age of scams and greed and never ending wants, it strikes me that we can all take a leaf out of the Mahatma’s book.”

The story shifts to 1982, Ambedkar Stadium, New Delhi where East Bengal was playing Incheon University, South Korea in the DCM Cup Finals. The boy, who never missed any of these matches starting from the Quarter Finals onwards for years, along with his friends, was there to witness the epic match hoping his team in red and gold would win the prestigious cup. It definitely was not his day and the Koreans won the tournament. No sooner had the match got over, than the boy and his friends ran outside for a glimpse of their favourite footballers like Mona da, Bhaskar Ganguly and others. The losers came and quickly climbed onto their waiting bus and drove away without even waving their hands…what a disappointment. The attention then shifted to the Korean team which by now had settled in their luxury coach. The boy, like many others, started screaming for the Tshirts and shoes from the winners. One of the Koreans threw one shoe and the boy fought off a hungry tide of mad soccer fans to grab it…Yes..he had won the shoe. The Korean player now threw down the second pair and the boy made a desperate attempt at snatching the same but failed despite his best attempt.

The person who had the second pair asked the boy to give him the other shoe since it was of no use to him anyway. The boy thought, not having read the memoirs of the Mahatma, that it was true.  “What am I to do with one shoe?”  and he threw his prized ‘Golden Boot’ to the other fellow. This definitely was not a sign of any Gandhian leadership but sheer foolishness. While on his way home he thought, “I too could have asked the other fellow the same question and maybe I would have been taking home a fine pair of football boots with plastic studs.” And so the story goes that the boy was left playing football for another couple of years with ordinary Indian make shoes with leather studs fixed with nails, which would often pierce his foot and cause him pain as much as the story of the missed chance which haunted him for a long time.

Episode 2: While in England, Gandhiji took to the habit of walking to the court and other places in order to save on fares. He would walk up to eight to ten miles a day and he goes on to say that , “It was mainly this habit of long walks that kept me practically free from illness throughout my stay in England and gave me a fairly strong body.” And then who can forget his numerous Walks for Freedom including the Dandi March which was a 24 day and 240 miles long walk from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi to produce salt without paying tax.  For those who have seen the pictures of Gandhiji walking will vouch for his speed which his followers found it hard to match.

The boy when fairly young took to the habit of long and fast walks. The reasons for this habit was simple.  One, the options of conveyance were limited, and even more limited was the currency in his pocket. So the more he walked, the more the coins remained in his pockets to spend on other luxuries of marbles, cricket ball and cream rolls. While walking he developed another strange instinct of trying to overtake the person ahead…and then the next and next till he discovered at least in some activity he could beat a host of people. This habit held the boy in good stead later in life.

In 1998 on his maiden visit to Paris for two days, the boy who by then had turned a man found it very irritable to talk to the French in English and figuring out the metro there. He took to walking in Paris and he walked and walked and walked for 2 days for almost 16 to 18 hours a day. By the time he would retire to his hotel room, his legs would be shaking and he would try relaxing in the bath tub but failed as the stopcock in the tub was not working properly and the hot water would quickly drain away. But one thing was for certain, no place in Paris was left untouched….from climbing the two allowable levels of Tour de Mars, to Arc‘d Triumph, Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs Elysee, museums, cemeteries, bridges….everything , walking through the streets of the historical city. He would have almost covered the entire Dandi route of Mahatma in just two days flat!

It was 6^th December 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished. The boy was enjoying a movie at night on the video with his friends at Salt Lake City while his wife and ten month old daughter were at his in-law’s place at Barasat on the outskirts of Kolkata. On the morning of 7^th when he woke up he wanted to see his kid desperately but unfortunately everything in Kolkata was shut…with a couple of incidences of communal violence springing up, curfew had been declared and only fools and goons would dare to venture out in the streets of Kolkata. A Capri by birth and Capri by character, the mountain goat was determined to reach his daughter 18 kilometres away and so began his long walk in a pair of slippers. Stopped at a couple of points by people wanting to cause trouble, the boy slowly but steadily made his way to his daughter who was so overjoyed seeing him that all his pain melted away seeing the kiddo smile and giggle as she jumped into his outstretched arms. The blisters in the feet never mattered at that point when she started playing with him. Love cures.

Finally the year was 2015. Our man, who had by then suffered severe bouts of spondylitis, entered his name in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon. The doctor had asked him to stay away from running…he told his wife and daughter who was by now a fine lady and a doctor…”I will walk the 21 kms and promise not to run! He walked and walked pretty fast and completed the half marathon in 2 hours and 42 minutes beating many a runner. It is another matter that after this great run, he was laid to bed for nearly 2 months but that did not prevent the Johnny Walker from completing the half marathon yet again the following year…with a slightly slower timing of course.

Episode 3: The boy’s wife and daughter would complain about his snoring. They said it was nothing short of animalistic noises of all hues.  When the daughter was a kid, one night she started crying and when the mother asked her what had happened, the kid said, “Ma Hambaaa”…she called a cow Hambaaa which meant she feared there was a cow in our room. My wife stepped out of the mosquito net and showed her there was no cow and put her back to sleep. Surely my wife must have given the stare of her life to the cow that was snoring away to glory next to her.

Gandhiji in his autobiography narrates a story of how he once ate meat along with a friend of his.  “I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible nightmare haunted me. Every time I dropped off to sleep, it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me and I would jump up in full remorse.”

Our protagonist never had any remorse to all the meat he would have on a daily basis, at times thrice a day. It is quite possible the bleating of the goats, the clucking of the chickens, the chirr of the pigs and the moo of the cows would peep out of his inside to the outside world as he slept soundly, oblivious of the cacophony he made.

Post Script: In the end let me admit, while not staking any claim to the Great Soul’s legacy, my complete admiration for the man and no words can describe him better than those of Albert Einstein who said, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” Truly a Mahatma.

SS

INNER STRENGTH

What makes ordinary men become extraordinary is a question I have often debated but never truly found an answer. Dreams we all have but how many of us go out chasing them. So often we blame about lack of money, opportunity, support and finally ‘one size that fits all’ answer of Man proposes, God disposes….God does not want me to do it.  We never say that I am afraid that I will fail; we never accept that people may mock us for our audacious dream and finally if we were to even start acting, we give up too soon, maybe at the first sight of failure. Today I shall narrate the tale of one woman who lived her dreams and that too with absolutely nothing in her kitty except grit, desire, perseverance and most importantly as Shifu in Kungfu Panda says ‘inner peace’ and what she calls ‘inner strength’.

Subhashini Mistry was born to poor parents on the outskirts of Kolkata. She was married to an agricultural worker at the age of 12 and had 4 children. In 1971, her husband fell ill and was taken to a government hospital in Kolkata but the man died because the doctors refused to attend to him as he was penniless. With four hungry children to feed, poor and illiterate Subhashini started working as a maid servant in five houses doing almost every work you could think of from cooking, washing and to gardening.

But in this gravest hour of grief she took one oath that no one should meet her fate. The poor and needy should get the basic medical facility. She vowed that she would build a hospital for the poor. And yet her earning at that time was just Rs 100 per month.

She sent her eldest son, Ajoy, to an orphanage in Kolkata while the other three children helped her in her work. She soon discovered that picking vegetables and selling them was better than house work. She started selling vegetables and gradually set up a stall in Park Circus area. Her earnings grew to Rs 500 a month and she started saving a little of it in her post office account. She did this for 20 long years. She spent not a penny on herself except for the education of Ajoy. Saving bit by bit, with just one dream of building a hospital one day, she carried on silently.

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

In 1992 she bought one acre of land in her husband’s village of Hanspukur. She gathered the villagers and told them of her plans. The villagers pooled in all their monies and collected Rs 926. But they got together bamboos, ropes, leaves and earth and built a 20 by 20 feet thatched dispensary in 1993. An auto rickshaw went around the area asking medical professionals for help. Soon 5 doctors volunteered to give two to four hours of their time for free treatment to patients. On Day One of the dispensary, 252 patients were treated. Shubhashini aptly named the dispensary Humanity Hospital.

So far so good but when monsoon came in full fury, it was impossible to work in the make shift temporary dispensary. They needed more money to make a concrete roof and better amenities. Ajoy and his mother took the help of local politicians and gradually some more purse strings were loosened by other donors. It took time and the work went on till a formal foundation stone for a hospital was laid. And guess who came to inaugurate the Humanity Hospital…no lesser man than the Governor of West Bengal… which makes you wonder that the Lord God helps those who seek help in right earnest. With the Governor came press, and with the press came the interest of people and donations and help started pouring in.

नन्हीं चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है,
चढ़ती दीवारों पर, सौ बार फिसलती है।
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है,
चढ़कर गिरना, गिरकर चढ़ना न अखरता है।
आख़िर उसकी मेहनत बेकार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

Meanwhile, Ajoy completed his graduation from medical college and joined the running of the Humanity Hospital. Eminent citizens including doctors and bureaucrats became trustees and started expanding the hospital which now has 3 acres of land, 9000 sq feet of area and is now spread over two floors. Throughout this growth, Subhashini never forgot her main objective of opening the hospital that is to serve the poor. The poor were to still get free treatment and those slightly better off were to now pay Rs 10 per consultation. This money was to ensure that the hospital gradually became self sufficient and not survived solely on donations.

With Ajoy in control of the situation at the hospital, Subhashini went back to selling vegetables. Her son, after much persuasion, asked her to stay back at home as she has grown very old. She however goes around the beds tending to patients. One of her son and one daughters still sell vegetables where mother once used to. The youngest daughter has become a nurse at the Humanity Hospital.

When asked how she achieved all this, she says, “Inner Strength. God in his infinite grace gave me a vision at the darkest moment in life. From then on my life had a purpose. I used whatever strength God gave me to make sure other poor people did not lose their loved ones for lack of medical attention.” She is still not done with her mission. She says until the day the hospital becomes a 24 hour full- fledged hospital, I cannot die in peace.

In the end, I am reminded of the movie Bucket List where two terminally ill patients went out enjoying what they wanted to do before dying. Standing near the pyramids, Morgan Freeman asks Jack Nicholson, “Do you know what ancient Egyptians' Gods asked of the dead at the entrance to heaven? They asked them two questions, answers to which decided their entry."

Have you found joy in your life? 

Has your life brought joy to others?

 Subhashini Mistry will be able to answer both the questions. What about you and me?

SS

THE SURVIVORS

Insurance companies are often blamed for showing the fine print and finding reasons not to pay claims but sometimes it is they who wish to pay but don’t know who to pay and how to pay. Two short stories from our world, names changed for obvious reasons.

HABEAS CORPUS

They were the quietest couple. Living next door to the Srinivasan’s was very different and at times difficult. It wasn’t always like this. Since the last two years the silence was almost all pervasive and the front door shut was a frozen frame. All you could hear early morning was the Gayatri Mantra being chanted, the puja bells ringing softly with the aroma of incense sticks seeping softly out .In the evening  it was usually MS Subbalakshmi’s bhajans playing on the record player. The milkman would drop the milk packets every morning at the door step, the flower man came slightly before  and hung the plastic packet in the grill on the door, then came the fruitwala and the the subziwala. They had even stopped the newspaper and done away with the cable connection.

Veenu Uncle and Lata Aunty were hardly seen outside their home but for those one off visit to Dr. Anitha’s Clinic nearby. We would wait for those days just to get a glimpse of them. I tried at times to stand near the staircase to talk to them but all I could manage was an occasional smile and they would simply walk by as if no one was around. Having lived my childhood in a government colony where you had neighbours coming in asking for sugar, as they had guests in their house, and angry mothers walking across to the brute’s house to complain to his mother how badly he had beaten up her little Sonu. This indeed was different….never knew silence can be so deafening.

In all these two years, I had heard Uncle Veenu shout twice…just twice. Both the times the lines were the same….once to the police and second time it was with someone who had come from an insurance company.  The shouting was so loud and full throated that I had rushed out of my house to make sure all was fine with the couple.

“Stop lying to us. Leave us in peace. Do you have any proof? Show me if you have any. Why do you people keep troubling us? Next time you come, I will thrash you, lying scoundrels. Show me the proof or else get out. Never come back here.”

Uncle Veenu would shove the men towards the staircase. The visitors never protested and meekly backed away. As soon as they went out of sight, the door went…Bang! Shut again till no one knew when.

Two years ago, Shankar, the only son of their couple had gone out to Kanyakumari for a picnic with his colleagues from his company. Shankar was a bright boy and people told me about him having scored well in all his board exams and how he got recruited from the engineering campus by a large IT company. Shankar, along with his two friends, had been walking on the beach with water till their knees when suddenly a huge wave struck. Two friends were rescued by the lifeguards nearby but Shankar could not be found. They searched for him everywhere but couldn’t find his body. He was declared dead. The police closed their file after some time.

More often than not it is the insurance company who asks for documents and proof before settling claims but here was a strange case where the beneficiary was asking for proof to convince him that the insured man was no more.

Dead End

On 8th March 2014, Malyasian Airlines MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for Beijing, China.  Among the 227 passengers were the middle aged couple of Mr. and Mrs Kamble from Mumbai who loved travelling but never had the means to do it till Mr. Kamble retired and they were off on a holiday to Singapore, Malaysia and China. Their son, Devendra, had helped them get their passports and planned the trip meticulously from hotels to stay, airport transfers and places to visit.

One hour into the flight, the aircraft deviated from its planned flight path and crossed Malay Peninsula and then left the range of the radars. A multinational search operation was launched all over the Indian Ocean from Gulf of Thailand to Andaman Islands and this was then extended to Australia on the other side. Every inch of the vast ocean was scanned by ships, submarines and choppers, every satellite picture was examined in this massive search but nothing was found anywhere…no wreckage, no body, no picture…simply nothing. After months of search, the Malaysian authorities declared that the aircraft had been lost and there were no survivors.

The insurance company got the list of all passengers on board and identified the ones insured by them…..one..two…three..four and five. Five travel insurance death claims in one go is otherwise a large outgo but for once the company went out of its way to process the claims based on factual information…no claim had been filed, no document given…just press releases and news confirmation was deemed enough. Files signed and cheques were prepared quickly after all this was tragedy beyond ordinary. Three beneficiaries informed and were given the claim cheques. But two cheques lay unclaimed with the insurers for they could not find Devendra, the lone son of Kamble’s. Letters were sent to the address given in the policy but they would get returned undelivered. Some good samaritans also went to the society where the Kambles lived to find out about Devendra who had vanished. It seemed like a dead end.

The police started a search for Devendra and finally after six months of search, they found him living with a friend of his in a chawl in Dharavi. Aah..the insurers gave a sigh of relief and issued fresh cheques and asked Devendra to come and collect the same after signing the discharge. They waited and waited but Devendra never came. They went to his friend’s house again but he had left by then and no one knows where. The cheques remain uncashed till date.

We often cry for people who die but forget how many more die living in their memory. We tell all that insurance is important as we ‘indemnify’ or make good the loss. It helps you get back in life but no money can compensate for those who are no more; those left behind don’t understand money. Losses as these can never be made good. Is this the real devaluation of the rupee?

SS