Have come back to books

I have regained my habit of reading, thanks to the hour long commute I make to Gurgaon everyday.

No sooner that I board the cab/bus, I unzip my bag and bring out the book. A few people do make faces (what a show-off) while some of them look amused (like today there was a boy who wanted eagerly to see which book I was reading or the other day when a girl tugged at my jacket and told that she found the book quite interesting).

Earlier I would wait until the weekend to hit the book, almost forgetting where I was last.

I have completed reading the three books that I received from Flipkart on my winning the Tadka Maar Ke blog competition.

Then I also read “The Namesake” and today I have started “Ji Pradhanmantri”.

The best part is books made my commute so less tiring. Stuck in a traffic jam, I am not ruing about being delayed to office. I am happy that I have got some extra time with the books.

Indiblogger’s all new Mystats

I love mails from Indiblogger that announce our Indirank. The rank is there in the subject line (Your new rank is 76) – but you will miss a lot if you don’t open the mail.

Because Indiblogger now gives you a complete analysis of your blog. Just take a look here. Agreed you could have the data from so many websites, but why complain if Indiblogger does it without me asking for the data and while disclosing the good news about your blog’s Indirank.

Only if they do this as a regular feature. Here’s a snapshot of the analysis that they have done for my blog.

The Taj Mahal experience

A strange incident happened with us last weekend at Agra.

Wiith Christmas giving us an extended weekend, we decided to visit Mathura and Agra. Agra was the last leg of our trip.

We took an autorickshaw to take us to Taj Mahal. It dropped us at a gate that we later learned was one of the busiest and would take us hours before we went inside the mausoleum. This piece of advice came from a man who offered to take us to the VIP gate, where there was less crowd. Might be a guide, we thought, and decided to hire him. He turned out to be a cycle-rickshawwallah.

At just Rs. 5  each (kaun kehta hai ki 5 me aaj kal kya milta hai), two rickshaws agreed to ferry us to the VIP gate. But there was a catch.

The rickshaw wallahs stopped near a small shop housing marble souvenirs of Taj Mahal. This was Meena Bazar and this was the catch. We had to go visit this shop, which will entitle the two men of the commission from the shop owder.

Had we not to catch our train back to Delhi, that too from Mathura, we would have loved to shop here. But not now.

But the rickshaw-wallahs were adamant…”don’t buy anything, just visit for a minute”.

We won’t. We were adamant too. They took their revenge by dropping us at South Gate. It took us more than an hour to enter Taj Mahal. There was a sea of people all over. On the benches where couples shoot with the Taj Mahal in the backdrop, there was a waiting line. We later saw in news channels that we were part of the 2 lakh people who were in Agra at that time to see the wonder of the world.

3 Idiots failed to please me

Finally watched 3 Idiots yesterday. Almost everyone was talking about the movie except me. But call it bad timing or what, I watched it the same evening when Chetan Bhagat decided to come out with his statement that the movie was based on his story Five Point Someone (Wasn’t it? I had read somewhere that a movie adaptation of the book was due to come and was eagerly waiting for 3 Idiots.). Ever since I was just drawing parallels between the two. My judgement – I would better re-read the book.

Amir Khan and group would try hard at convincing people that they have an all new story (that took them 3 years to complete), but the film is at best an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s novel, but a bad adaptation for sure.

The movie was just too filmy unlike the book, not even matching the standards of Dil Chahta Hai – story of three college friends who meet after a long time. Amir would have actually wanted to remake Dil Chahta Hai but needed a new story, so that’s how Five Point Someone would have come up.

But it was not acceptable to not give visible credits to the author. Anyone who has read the book will easily know that the basic skeleton was Chetan’s; don’t talk of the twists and turns  to the movie, which I think just added to the filmy factor.

I am no movie critic…and definitely not a good one at that (that’s why so less posts on movies). Overall the movie is okay but definitely not as good as the hype being created around it.

How my voice was stifled when I talked of secularism

Scratchmysoul.com yesterday organised a Bloggers Symposium in New Delhi to celebrate the freedom of speech that new media has offered; instead it went on to STIFLE my own voice.

There was a blog reading session and I decided to read a post from my blog – Indian Muslim is confused, worried and angry – the organisers had also approved of the topic beforehand.

But hardly had I started reading from the post that Mr. Raghav Chandra, one of the organisers and Principal Secretary in Urban Development Department, MP and author of Soul, Mind, Body – Mapping the global citizen, came up to the podium and objected.

This took me unawares. Was I not audible? I said I wrote this after the Batla house incident.

“No please don’t read anything of this nature. Read any other post of yours.”

It was then that it dawned upon me that he has problems with the nature of my post, about the Hindu-Muslim issue that I have taken up.  And that too because this MAY sound offending to some members on the dais. Javed Akhtar, the noted lyricist and poet, was the chief guest for the event.

But my post spoke against the ghettoization of Muslims. And Javed Akhtar too has voiced his opinion on these issues.

But the organisers seemed not to have much appetite beyond the first few lines. Had it not been for Javed Akhtar, who had the courage to hear criticism, I was already packed out of the podium. He asked me to continue. I explained that I am from the majority community but I am here to speak in favour of muslims; doesn’t that speak about my secular nature.

Anyways I read out the post, deleting some sentences that could have further pissed off the organisers. Now I didn’t have the appetite for any more controversies.

As I came back to my seat, I suddenly realised, how easy it is to be misconstrued on the web, how easy it is to be labelled as a Vikram Buddhi or Chyetanya Kunte.

But the blogosphere has never ever tried to stifle my voice. They agree or don’t agree and this builds up to a more rational thinking for all. Javed Akhtar responded with a similar answer when one of the audience posted a query regarding effectiveness of blogs. Debate he said was more healthier than keeping in ones heart and blogs are a great way to debate, referring to my blog post. But is the world beyond the blogosphere tolerant enough for debate. I got my answer yesterday.

My blog won at the Tadka Maar Ke Contest

One of my posts (Operation Eunuch and the Murphy’s Law at Work) was a winner at the Tadka Maar Ke contest, a blogging competition organised by Tempostand.com . Although the prize is modest (Rs. 500/- worth gift voucher), I love that it may be for buying books, since it is from Flipkart. Also I have seldom won prizes, so this one is special.

The results of the Tadka Maar Ke contest are available here:

Of the five entries that won, I will recommend  reading tHe DoWrY tHaT wEnT aWrY. I came across it around a few months back when monitoring mentions for HDFC. The HDFC here turned out to be “Hetal Dhiren Fabulous Couple” instead of the home loan lender. Also I loved reading The Bribe.

Aloo Gobhi Ki Subji – Ma Ke Hath Ka Khana

It has been a month since I posted something on my blog and I still don’t know what to write. No, nothing very serious. I know this from my experience with blogging for the last two years. It happens at times and then things start getting into place.

But I will write something today. Indiblogger decided to lower my rank, and I decided it was high time to get back to writing. Old memories come the easiest to me, so memories be it.

Now that winters have finally descended upon Delhi (despite the warmth warned by Global Warming experts), lemme tell you what I remember most about winters, in fact this is about food.

Before Gobhi (Cauliflower) began to be sold all through the year, we had to wait until the winters to relish this vegetable. I know everyone loves ma ke hath ka khana but my mother’s aloo gobhi ki sabji was really very tasty.

There is no particular recipe that I am going to share here. The ingredients too varied except for the aloo and gobhi. As tomatoes, peas and coriander leaves became cheaper, they too added in their small little ways, only to make the curry tastier.

As we were bent over our books minus interests, we waited for the 8:30 PM call for food. The aroma had already won us and father appeared as the monster wall between us and the tasty treat.

And then Ma called us. Father kept on cribbing about spoilt kids, but we had already assembled  near the chulha. At Dhanbad, coal was available in plenty; the chulha or coal stove was used for preparing food as well as to keep the house warm. On a cold wintry night, this was the best place to be. The first one to reach got the closest place near the chulha. Of course, this was not as simple as that. I remember fighting it out with my brother once for holding on to a place near the stove.

With the garma garam subji, there were siki hui rotiyan. The already prepared chapatis were put on open fire for a second and it was ready to eat.

Many winters have passed and I am miles away from Ma, the fiery hot chulha that spread warmth all over our home, the tasty Aloo Gobhi ki Subji, those small fights, but little did I know that the taste will continue to haunt me until now.

An advertisement that I dreaded

Back in the 90s, rising population was a hot topic. “The rate at which India’s population is growing, it will overtake China in the years to come”, experts said. Unfortunately India wasn’t happy with this achievement. This was much before India had discovered a way to utilize its plentiful population.

Doordarshan, in those days the sole entertainment channel, joined the Government’s drive to spread the message of population control. And so happened a host of advertisements featuring condoms. While most of the ads made viewing television with family uncomfortable, there was one ad that I had started to dread.

It goes on like this.

A police wallah sees a man hiding something in his pocket and gets suspicious. The man hesitates to produce the thing when the policewallah asks him to. This makes him more suspicious and he decides to use force. The man gives into his forced request and offers a short view of the thing in his pocket- it was a condom and the man was too shy to flaunt the thing.

And there started my troubles.

In those days Nani had come to our place. Nani used to sleep with me. The TV was placed in such a way that both we (Nani and I) and my parents were able to see it from the other room.

Nani wasn’t able to see clearly because of her poor sight, but she would follow all serials and also advertisements. Each time this condom ad appeared on TV,  she missed just that part where the man gives a short view of the condom. And she would instantly question me what was in the man’s pocket. I didn’t know what to answer and I would somehow escape the question with useless bantering.

But the questions didn’t cease. This happened almost everyday. Since there was no fixed timing for the ad to appear, I started missing TV altogether until Nani went back to village.

I looked for the advertisement on Youtube but couldn’t. Maybe you can send me the link. Talking of old Indian ads, I came across this blog that features a lot of them. http://ddnational.blogspot.com/. Go through this and bring back the old memories.

Ramayana Path

Hardly had the train left Dhanbad Station that it stopped on the outskirts of the city.  It was around seven in the morning and people were just starting their day. As if to prove this, a large number of people were lined on both sides of the railway tracks, reliving themselves. Unable to resist the scenery and the smell, I turned my head towards the book that I had bought on the platform that day. Uninteresting as it was, it wasn’t able to contain my attention for long.

But my ears picked up a conversation between a woman and her husband. As the train had stopped, even the soft talk of this couple was very audible. In fact, this was not soft talk. The woman was complaining to her husband about her in laws. As if home was not enough that this woman had dragged her in-laws even to the train.

I drew this from a cover of Chandamama

“If you cannot protect me, you have no right to ask me to stay here”, said the woman.

“Hmm”, the husband said meekly.

“And don’t come to take me until you have shifted to another house”.

“Okay I will talk to mother about this”, the husband said.

“Oh your mother! I am not one who has been taught to disrespect elders, but it is your mother who is after my life”. Tumko malum hai wo hampar shaque karti hai ki ham tumpar jadu-tona kar diye hain.

“Arre shaque to bitiya Sita maiya ne Lacchman ji jaise devar par bhi kiya tha“, said an old man who was sitting in the same compartment as the couple.

“Accha! ye kab hua tha baba“, this was the woman’s husband, but his voice was no longer meek as before. His voice evinced his interest. Or may be he saw this as an opportunity to escape the battle that his wife was throwing him into.

Yeh tabki bat hai beta when Ramji decided to leave Ayodhya and make a living in the jungle along with his wife Sita and brother Laxmana. Once when Surpanakha, the sister of the Rakshasa king Ravana, was flying through the sky, she happened to see Rama. She had never seen such a handsome man and instantly fell in love with him. Coming down, she asked Rama if he will marry her. He expressed his regret saying that he is already married. Why don’t you marry my brother Laxmana instead? He said while pointing towards the direction where Lakshmana was busy making arrows. A look at him and Surpanakha’s love for Rama vanished instantly. She moved towards Laxmana with the desire to marry him. But he was not a man of easy virtues. Out of anger, he cut Surpanakha’s nose.

Accha! Tab toh Surpanakha bahut gussa hui hogi.

Arre siraf Surpanakha nahi beta; even Ravana was very angry. He instantly decided to teach the kids a lesson.

And he reached their hut. But before that he did two things. First he dressed up as a Brahmin bhikshuk and second he asked his servant Marich to disguise as a golden deer. When the golden dear passed Sita’s hut, she was instantly taken away by its beauty. She asked Rama to fetch it for her and she knew no reason. “I want that golden dear”, Sita said. And Rama had to give in to his wishes.

“Dekho us jamane me bhi pati log apni patniyon ke agey har hi jatey the“, the man said this to lighten up the mood. But the wife took this as a remark on her. She gave a ugly look at her husband and then turned her head towards the window.

“Arre ham tumko thorey na kuch kahey“, the man rushed to calm his wife.

But the old baba was not a bit diverted by this. He continued with his story.

To hua ye ki Ramji to nikal gaye sone ki hiran khojne aur bahut der bhi ho gayi. Here Sita ji started to get tensed. Just then she head a scream from the direction in which Rama had ran. This was actually Marich who had taken the form of a deer. He cried like Rama so that Sitaji can send Laxmana too to the jungle. This way she would be all alone and Ravana can easily kidnap her.  Yes, this was Ravana’s way to punish Rama and Laxmana for the thing they had done to his sister.

Meanwhile the man had tried to calm his wife. When she didn’t respond, he too had become disinterested and was looking outside the train. Baba had lost a follower but he didn’t stop his story.

When Sita ji heard the scream of Ravana, she started panicking.

“Laxman bhaiya dekho na jakar…lagta hai tumhare bhaiya ko kuch ho gaya hai“.

“Arre nahi bhabhi, don’t you know how powerful your husband is?”

“Still, I am afraid. Please go and check”.

“No, I cannot go leaving you alone. I have strict orders from Bhaiya.”

“You have orders from your bhaiya or you just don’t want to go. So that you can have me after his death”.

Bas Sita ji ne dil ched kar rakh dene wala ban chor diya tha. Laxman ji wasn’t able to say anything but a drop of tear fell from his eyes. He had never in his life hoped to hear such a thing from a woman who he treated more than his mother.

“Toh dekha na bitiya is tarah se Sitaji ne Lacchman Ji par shaque kiya tha“.

Bitiya didn’t even turn to acknowledge her approval. Neither did beta. Both of them were staring outside.

But Ramayan Path had to go on. I heard it until the part where Rama agrees to help Sugriva regain his wife and kingdom after killing Bali. Then my eyes gave way and I passed into dreams.

When madness took over

In the week of Makar Sankranti, it was almost customary for the rain gods to wet the coalfields. As temperatures dropped, people further draped themselves in woolens. Since blowers were unheard of, it was the old coal stove (coal was available in plenty) that kept the house warm.

Some creatures missed out on the warmth though. What made things worse was that this was their first winter on earth.

Football, Hunter’s daughter and now his wife, had given birth to five handsome puppies around two weeks ago. Their eyes had opened and even though I had put a barricade around their small tent that I had constructed for them, they followed their mother outside in the cold.

They were growing up and little did I know that misfortune was coming their way.

A mad dog has entered the colony – Mumtaz Chacha had come with the news in the evening, and other dogs were attesting to its truth with their continuous barking.

Dogs, suffering from rabies, become outcastes in their tribe. The disease spreads if the affected dog bites another dog. Dogs protect their territory and themselves with their continuous barking. The young ones are more vulnerable. Normally it is the mothers who would stay with the puppies to ensure their safety.

Although I had books before me, I wasn’t able to concentrate on studies. My attention was diverted each time I heard the soft barking of puppies from our backyard.

Papa had strict instructions for me to not go outside. Mad dogs also attacked men and the treatment involved fourteen injections in the stomach.

Although I feared injections, I couldn’t stop myself from secretly opening the back door to see that the mother-son group was safe. Each time Football wagged her tail, as if telling that she is guarding the fort valiantly.

As night drew, the barking of dogs didn’t cease. So did my concern for the puppies.

“Shall we not bring the puppies inside”, I pleaded to Ma.

Although Ma had a soft heart for dogs, she was a pious Hindu woman as well. There was a drain close to the puppies’ tent and they often fell into it. Each time I pulled them out of the drain, Ma would have me bathe in the open. The puppies weren’t potty trained and so couldn’t be brought inside the house.

“They will need their mother’s milk”, she gave an excuse. She was my last hope. I had little hope from Papa who had become apathetic to dogs ever since Tiger passed away (He lived with us for his full 14 years and I saw Papa cry for the first time when Tiger died of Pneumonia).

I wasn’t able to sleep that night. The back door was locked now and the key was under father’s pillow. A wall stood between me and the backyard. I brought my ears close to the wall and tried to listen to any sound. Ensuring that I don’t wake father, I made a sound. I was relieved when one of the puppies reverted with a soft bark.

Although I had planned to keep vigil the entire night, my eyes closed in the wee hours of the morning.

When my eyes opened the next day, Ma was standing next to my bed and looked very guilty but nervous. I knew instantly that not everything was right. I jerked off the bed and ran for the backyard.

The tent had been razed. I had constructed a barricade of bricks. It had been brought down and bricks were lying around a foot away. It looked as if a fight had ensued here. I pulled the tarpaulin to check if any of the puppies was not caught inside. There was none but I saw some blood stains on the tarpaulin. They were still fresh and it appeared that the mad dog had attacked around 4 o’clock.

Just then Deepak came with the news. Around a few metres away, he had spotted something white in the drain and suspected it to be one of the puppies. I ran towards that direction. Mother followed me with a stick.

It was really one of them. The mad dog had had his prey. His head had been torn of his body.

I began to cry holding mother. Just then another soft bark attracted my attention.

Football was standing some distance away, along with her four children. She had spent the last night under a staircase. Oblivious to all that had happened a night ago, the puppies were busy sucking milk from their mother’s nipples.

A smile returned to my face and I ran to embrace them.