The Hope Eternal

 Our species is a strange one. It likes to believe that all will be well in the long run. As the sun flies through the universe with its tiny little blue planet, the even tinier us like to believe that we are invincible, that we are not a happenstance but part of a larger design and a larger plan.

 

Even our most outrageous stories which dare to explore the concept of chaos, end up bringing the world to an order. Look at our popular culture icons over the last couple of decades. For every Joker, we find our batman, every time an Evil-Lyn embraces chaos and wants to let it loose, a Teela rises up to being order. Even our games call chaos Magic and asks mages and witchers to control them.

 

In our worldview order is good. Order gets things done. Ordre is the natural form of life and hence when cataclysmic events completely turn our worlds upside down, we get afraid of Armageddon. The Hindu pantheon calls upon Vishnu to preserve after Shiva’s Tandava destroys everything.

 

If you have managed to read through some of the older posts, you might see that the questions that troubled Siddhartha troubles me as well. He however became The Buddha and I just read about his journey and his teachings. The three biggest sources of suffering illness, old age, death starts taking new meaning in a world that we live in today. With everything up in the air, mortality has come closer to home. Age crept up while we masked up and illnesses became many with treatments becoming more and more expensive.

 

2020 was the year of survival. 2021 was the year of reassessment. How 2022 will turn out is anyone’s guess but as we have seen over and over again throughout our history, hope is eternal.

 

And as Bollywood puts it beautifully, “If the ending is not happy, it just means the film is not over yet.”

 

So there it is – another year goes by and when we look back fondly many years from now, we will remember how we survived on hope and prayers.

 

Because all will be well in the end.

Nalin Sarkar Street

This year has been the year of losses and they seem to keep piling up with heart wrenching regularity. Around a month back Choddidima, my grandmom’s younger sister passed away. I was in office when the news came and it just did not make sense. Slowly ties to my past were weakening and growing up was seeming a lot tougher than I had assumed it would be.

Choddidima was an outstanding lady. I still remember I was in college and I had called up. After enquiring after my health, her first question was had I heard of this young writer called Chetan Bhagat. I hadn’t. She had. And within a few years all of India had heard about him. She lived to learn. There was not a single news item in our daily newspaper that missed her hawk eyes. And she loved to get to the bottom of things. Like most people in my grandma’s generation, she could quote Tagore at will and there would be always the right song that she would burst out singing and it was difficult to keep up with her.

She was one of those who supported wholeheartedly my decision to head out of Calcutta for college. She was way ahead of her times and yet when it came down to checking the right ways to conduct a religious function at anyone’s house, she was the ultimate authority. I have heard so many of my uncles and aunts just pick up the phone and call choddidima before they performed any form of worship, lest they offend the Gods. It was always safer to call her and be sure.

My favourite memories of her however were through the movies. We discussed movies over the phone and when I used to come home for vacations, we would go together and watch movies of Shah Rukh Khan, her favourite young actor. I remember watching Swades with her, skipping a college reunion. It just seemed the more fun thing to do.

As I grew up and started working outside Calcutta, our meetings became infrequent. Telephone calls would have to do. However, I did try to meet her every time I landed in Calcutta at her house in Nalin Sarkar Street because of her stories. Her stories were a connection to our family’s past. India has a long tradition of oral history. She was my historian.

Like all good Bengali boys, I have numerous nicknames given to me at various stages of life by the large joint family I come from. She called me Ganguram. And after today, no one will. I guess that’s how life is. One less person to pamper you when you head home.

Will miss you loads

Yours Ganguram

The Life Well Lived

Today morning Didi called up at around 6 am. She’s the elder and the more mature one in the family. And the favourite. So she was told first. Dadu, my grandpa was no more. 3 days of illness and he was gone. Poof. Never to be seen, never to be heard.

He was 92. And as the call from Didi slowly sunk in, I realized I was not in pain. I was sad, yes definitely but I was definitely not melancholic. Dadu you see was a superhero in our eyes. He was driving all around Calcutta even when he was well above 80. When he was 70, he took my cousin’s bicycle and went for a trip around our locality while Mom kept pacing up and down, angry with her Dad for behaving like a child. But I know for a fact that secretly she was super proud. I mean who wouldn’t be proud after having a cool dad like that.

He was from a different generation of Bengalis. Probably the last of our Golden Generation. True he was born in a colonized India, yet to gain independence. But he was the generation that saw a new country being born. And probably that made him different from all the rest of people I know.

I surprisingly have none of the qualities that made him an amazing superhero. But from him I have learnt how to live life to the fullest. I have learnt how to be the most devoted husband and a doting father and a loving patriarch to a gaggle of grandkids. Whether I will be one I do not know. I hope I do.

We Bengalis are no longer known to be very entrepreneurial. He was one. Tried, failed, picked himself up, figured out what else he should be doing and did it. He could have tried again and succeeded but he chose family. I remember as we were growing up, on a Sunday morning we would suddenly hear a car honking on the road outside our house and it would be Dadu having driven over because he was missing his daughter. And he got us the potato fritters we so loved. So Didi and I attacked the fritters while mom behaved like a kid seeing her dad.

One of my cousins had married and moved to the US and she had this strange love of Mutton Samosas, (very Calcuttan I know!) So when she came back for the first time Dadu had ensured that the Mutton Samosas were waiting for her when she landed. Every. Single. Time.

My mom was his favourite. She tells me how they would play with their dogs together. How she would wait till Daddy came home so that she would no longer have to study and how on a moment’s notice they would just take the car and head down to the Maidan on an evening trip out with family.  Because for Dadu it was all about living in the moment.

In between he ensured he and his wife (with or without the kids in tow) travelled everywhere. Last few years they have not been able to travel; but in their 70 years of marriage they have travelled all across India. Grandma keeps reciting one of the ancient hymns of the Vedic texts which the ancients believed made the water in their palms represent the holy rivers of India

Gangge Ca Yamune Caiva Godaavari Sarasvati |

Narmade Sindhu Kaaveri Jalesmin Sannidhim Kuru ||

Anyway, her sense of pride was that together they had seen all the sacred rivers of India. They always felt bad about missing out on visiting Indus (now in Pakistan). I hope Dadu wherever you are you can see all the rivers from up above.

He loved Grandma. Actually, I am sure he still loves her from above. Their love is what makes me believe in life, family and love itself. I have seen the silent admiration for her in his eyes so many times. In fact, I think the sense of admiration for his wife never left him. She’s a poetess, can break into a Tagore poem anytime. She’s written so much, it’s probably hard to ever replicate. And he preferred to stay in the shadows. But as we grew up we realized what a powerhouse of talent he was.

Have you ever seen the BBC production of Merchant of Venice? I think Dadu could have done a better Portia or Shylock than any of the accomplished actors. When he recited “Quality of Mercy” we listened, in stunned silence travelling from his house in North Calcutta to the court in Venice.

One of Tagore’s best work is his version of the dialogue between 2 mythical characters Kach and Debjani. And when Dadu and Didima performed it, you could sense the power, passion and love. They completed each other like few I have known.

I met him last in December. His food intake had been controlled and my o my, was he unhappy about that!!! Poor grandma and aunt of mine had to be strict. But he wouldn’t listen. How could he! Like all true Bengalis he ensured that he never scrounged on finding the best quality of food. I sometimes believe if he was born in today’s age, he would have been a food critic, albeit a benevolent one. I blame him a lot for my love of Mishti, he made my taste buds that way.

So I came to office today and am here still reading my research reports, giving my POVs on packaging because I guessed that’s what he would have liked me to do. Live life as if there’s no tomorrow. Do what you love doing. 

There’s a quote by Pope Paul VI (I guess) Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

I think Dadu could have very well written it. Love you Maharaj!

The Long and Short of It

More than 18 months back, in a quiet seaside beach on the Western fringes of India, I had sat down and wished hard for miracles to happen. But first I needed to know that there exists magic in this world. Because sometimes for miracles, you first need to believe in magic. Magic demands pain, Magic needs patience but more than anything else Magic requires sacrifice.

This Blog stopped after talking about the western sentinel. The pain started. The harsh sun beat down on everything beneath it. Mirages sprung up and vanished into thin air and yet there was the belief in Magic.

Sometimes Magic can work in wonderful ways. We do not comprehend fully how it works. At times it has form, at other times it is just a thought. Sometimes it comes from the North East and is called Ishaan.

Sometimes Magic makes a person disappear. The third leg of a tripod gets broken. The other two wait for its return. And in a world of 24X7 social media a person just vanishes. Miss you Bro. Find your peace.

The Magic from North East is all powerful. It drains away sorrow, bitterness and pain with toothless babbles. And yet it can give me the most excruciating pain, never experienced before. It demands attention, more importantly it demands what’s most precious – Time.

2017 was the year when Time became the most valued commodity. Time even for ‘us’ was hard to come by. But then when the tired traveller finds his pillar of strength, he knows that Magic continues to weave its wonders.

When pressed into a corner, the mind works in wonderous ways. For a brief period it went back years, nay decades when sarcasm was considered the high priestess of wit. But then sense and sensibility took over. But the joy, oh the joy of sarcastic wit!

Magic also makes you strong, showing you what you are capable of, making you push your boundaries. Sometimes there’s a battle for your soul and then you win. It’s majestic. It’s grand.

As the year passes on to the next, John Updike tell me, “Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”

Punch in the Gut

When we were in school, a lot of lessons were learnt during the lunch break in the large playground of Don Bosco. Fighting for honour was common, so was fighting with honour. You never fought to break anyone’s bones but you fought to prove a point. Today after so many years, what we fought on is lost in the shadows of memory, what remains are the lessons learnt from them. We were an all-boys school so the lessons seem from another day and age where chivalry, honour and loyalty were all that mattered.

There was rarely a hit to face. The marks were the most visible and definitely the ones which would get the opponent at the receiving end into trouble when he goes back home. You also never hit the groins. The pain is unbearable and everyone knew it. That’s the first thing you learn when you play cricket and mistime a shot. The kick to the shin was acceptable and I do not know why because now that I am saner I know how scary that can be. But then now of us had the speed of the Premier League Players. We desperately wanted to play rugby but given that no one knew the rules and there was a lack of equipment, it never really took off. But what we managed was the shoulder shove, a highly effective manoeuvre that can come to use in both football and basketball. In the basketball games, it was brutal because of the hard surface. In the football matches, it was terrifying as the green grass left the signs for all (read moms) to see.

But the favourite by far was the punch in the gut. Never utilized on the games field, it was reserved for the one on ones that rarely happened, but if they did, they were always scheduled after school hours. It was the equivalent of a duel with a loaded pistol. Both shoot, but the one with the more accurate aim is bound to win. The punch in the gut was just that. Everyone knew that the one who could connect first would be the winner. It made one see the stars and the pain was only fractionally lower than a kick in the groins. The one who threw the punch always won, at least that bout. And then he helped the fallen man stand up on his feet. There was honour.

But the man who had fallen also learnt a mighty lesson. He learnt to take on whatever the world threw at him, embrace the pain, maybe double over if required but then find his own feet and get up. The punch in the gut made him stronger, over and over again till one day his own punch would land exactly where it was meant to be.

And as long as he had learnt how to pick himself up and become stronger, there was not a thing in this world that could keep him down.

The Goodbye

Long Long ago, in the Summer of 2007 to be precise, four little mice had boarded a ship. The docks were silent, the night was still and the moon played hide and seek behind the clouds. The ship set sail into the unknown and before one knew, the stars above realigned and the four little mice saw each other. Each different from the rest but they soon realized they were all the same in being different from the rest of the animals on the ship. But that is a story everyone knows!

The mice charted different courses within the ship till one day one of them set sail, then another and finally even the third. The last remaining mouse looked on as their boats sailed further and further away.

The airwaves carried their squeaks to him, faint and yet conveying the different emotions that swept over them. Trepidation, anger, joy, love, hatred, frustration, fear, ecstasy and sometimes even indifference. The world was unforgiving, sometimes all it let the mice have were memories of a life less complicated.

The last mouse remains. And he hopes and prays for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to be true. Let the mice indeed be the most intelligent species on Earth. For each have made their choices and some day each will need to say goodbye.

Despise the Bully

When I was in school, I had been taught “Hate the sin, not the sinner.” Years of studying the Bible taught me never to throw stones at others, as none of us could claim to have not sinned. When you grow up reading religious texts, mythologies and a spattering philosophical discourses, you realize the world is grey and not a simple tapestry of black and white.

But since the day I had stepped into school, I knew one thing instinctively in my heart, when you see a bully, “TAKE NO PRISONERS.” Two things helped. First, relative size was an automatic deterrent. Second, being the teacher’s pet, class monitor and the first boy ensured that I had a voice. And when you have a voice, you exercise it. It’s a duty.

The problem with duty is that other factors come into play making the choices really really difficult. Morality, friendship all get entangled into a mishmash of right and wrong. And you start making the choices. I have been incredibly lucky to have teachers who accepted my choices and taught me to live with them and face their consequences. It also helped that mom knew everything. But more about that, some other day.

In school handling bullies became easier as I grew up. It took guts to stand up to the boys in the Senior School but once you do that, there’s no stopping back. Once you take a stand, it’s final and maybe lose a few friends in the process. But the fact, that you have the gumption to take a stand slowly steels you to your very core.

When I went to college, bullying had reached new levels. For the first time I saw class distinctions being used to bully. Supposed Intellectual superiority (based on things as flimsy as knowing the name of a particular author) was used to bully. Regional Majority came through as group bullying. That’s the reason why I have always been sceptical of ragging. Ragging forces discipline through hierarchy, ragging forces social bonding through conformity and therefore ragging is no better than bullying. And it pained when later I heard juniors who had been saved from bullies, turn into the very same monsters.

Bullies are cowards, bullies are weak, bullies suffer from an inferiority complex. And the funniest part? Bullies NEVER have the gall to punch above their weight. I have never seen a self-assured individual ever resort to bullying those under him or her. It has always been someone who feels that a point has to be made, someone who knows his/her inferiority in relation to others.

All through my life, whenever I have faced bullies, I have taken a stance against them, all but one. And every time I remember the incident, I know how that moment of indecision had failed to stop further instances. I was scared. I had been bullied. And then I had made a commitment – never again.

The reason I feel compelled to write this is because I see so many profiles of proud parents with their kids on my social media page. My nephews and nieces are growing up and have faced bullies as early as in kindergarten.

All I want to say is that we have choices – not to be bullied and neither become one.

Hate is a strong emotion. I know I am not capable of something as strong. But if you can, every single time you meet one, despise the bully.

The Light in Darkness - 2012

2012 has been the strangest year of my life till date. And the way it ended promised that 2013 might just be as surprising as well.

I turned 30 and for the first time felt like an adult in 2012. You know not the kind of adulthood I had expected to find. Yes, I could make decisions about the family, but the responsibility was always better handled by dad and mom. Yes, I could stay up late into the night without waiting for permission, but no longer did that seem to be a good idea given that there was a 9:00 am meeting the next day. Work was still fun but the stakes keep getting higher every time.

Hospital visits were common during the year and I saw the ugly side of the once noble profession. I was away from my country, which erupted in protest again and again on various issues. The outlook was grim around the world, jobs were not available and relationships between friends were going sour. Tragedy struck at will and we realized that the complete irreverence of our youth was misplaced. We were not above failure.

2012 was the year when hope was needed most of all. It was a year when we needed to believe more and more that in the end, all will be well. It was a year when we refused to learn humility and were humbled again and again.

Heroes came in – unknown voices across the world demanding change and then they went away as the greater part of us did not wish to be the change ourselves. Slowly the world accepted that life would go on as usual. But beyond everyone’s notice, we might be nearing a cure for AIDS, we might be closer to understanding the God Particle but we probably have gone further away from God than ever.

And during all this, surprisingly only one thing kept me going - A steady presence by my side, a firm support and an unswerving faith in us. Thank you S, for making 2012 a lot better than it actually was. Where had you been all these years?

Now that the world has not ended, here’s to 2013 and beyond!

Right Here Waiting

When I used to fly Jet Airways during my travels around India, during those long waits at the tarmac while we hoped for a queue number that is in single digits, the crew automatically would play a piano version of “Right Here Waiting”.

And then it was just another tune, a melody without a meaning. I would travel to all odd corners of India, work Saturdays and Sundays and then head straight to the office on the first flight on a Monday morning.

Tomorrow is a Saturday and I am still working but when I was leaving my home before the sun was up and I looked back a silhouette against the window in the wee hours of morning, Gold 90 FM in my cab started playing “Right here Waiting.”

In any story, it could not get more apocryphal but then life always is strange and gives you these little signs that times are changing. The song suddenly has a more meaning than what a 25 year old, working like a maniac could ever have imagined.

Today, the travels on Saturdays, working on weekends continue being a reality, (and a pleasant one at that as I really love what I do for a living and what gets me on these odd flights at strange hours) I seem to have found a new reason for wanting to come back home at the end if it all.

As I have always believed, the biggest changes in this world are always subtle.

Timelines

May is going to be an interesting month this year. Quite a few milestones are coming my way. I will complete 5 years working with SNDU. If you have forgotten I work with this chota sa nanha sa company called Sabun Nakhun and Datun Unlimited. We sell soaps, nail polish and tooth brushes. When I started out, this was a milestone we never even thought would come along. And the fact remains that still on Monday mornings, I look forward to going to work and sell some more soaps or soups, whatever the case might be.

There are distinct changes in behaviour that have crept in over the last few years. Brand preferences and dislikes are stronger than ever. The World of Brands seems more and more like an “Us and Them” situation. Imagine what wouldn’t you give to know if you truly are a Nikon loyalist or is it you truly are a canon buff but have been coaxed into the Nikon fold. “us and them” Always :)

Today in the super market I went all around to find a bottle of ketchup that I love. It had to be that one and nothing else would make the omelette taste as good and I made her wait. And you don’t dare do that when we are already getting late.The more I see around me, the more I realize how Brands become a part of our daily inertia and if are not in the consideration set, or in the subconscious, then you are not in the shopping basket. Sigh.

Coming back to the second milestone, I complete 9 months in a new city outside India. 9 months is an important time frame. It’s the time required for a new birth. And it seems the same for me. Singapore is no longer a new city. Singapore has helped me blend in a lot easier than I thought possible. But I miss the simple joys of life. Most importantly my second source of income has dried down significantly. Let me explain.

In Mumbai, we used to get 3 newspapers, TOI, Mumbai Mirror and Eco Times. Now whether we read them or not, at the end of the month there were always newspapers which needed to be sold. Add to that the ketchup bottles and other paraphernalia that typically gets collected in a house. Now we always had our “kabadiwala” come at a specified date with the gossip about our more famous neighbours and we would know the rates a famous bollywood actress’ gatekeeper charged for the newspapers. So by selling them the stuff, not only would I earn about Rs. 100 every month but also get the latest news even before it appeared on Page 3. And the joy of buying veggies that day with the 100 bucks? Priceless.

But in The First World Nation of Singapore, there is no Kabadiwala and there is no additional income and there’s no gossip.

And there’s 100 days! Last known it was this awesome thriller where Jackie Shroff was the villain who was actually not a true blue villain (In pre Darr days, before SRK changed the game, we never had anti heroes) and Madhuri had supernatural powers and there was Moon Moon Sen in what could have been the equivalent of Hitchcock’s psycho’s famous death scene. However, my 100 days are happy ones. Of having someone to come back to, of looking forward to peeling potatoes and pumpkins, of buying soupy noodles through people coming in from India, of buying more apples than wafers while shopping for groceries and actually learning to be more responsible.

Phew! May is a tough one :)

Theories That You Pick Up

There are theories you pick up as you work. And a few days back someone asked me, after spending 4 years with India’s foremost marketing company what are the new theories that I had picked up. As I looked back at the time spent in SNDU, I realized that the theories closest to my heart had nothing to do with marketing – they were more about how to live one’s life. And like most life theories these are my interpretations of the same.

The first was Chipkali Syndrome. Told to me by the Mother of The All Knowing Little Girl, Chipkali (Lizard) syndrome is all about giving oneself more importance than is necessary. Sensing me working one Sunday, she lost it and on Monday blasted me away. Her point was that the Lizard hanging on to the roof feels that it is holding on to the roof and if it moves away the entire roof might fall on the room below.

We often tend to be chipkalis, imagining that we are so important to the business that the work will stop without us. If one is a junior, she doesn’t know how to let go and allow the decision to flow down. If it’s a senior, she never knows how to trust her subordinates to take the call and move on.

Tagore of course knew it, having never worked in an organization though – “You don’t hold the fate of the world in your hands. There’s a boatman manning the stern, who will see you through” 

The second was about Pal Money – told to me by a Mallu Salesman in Mumbai sitting on the Carter Road promenade. Wherever you work, you will always be unsatisfied with what salary you get as there will be someone who will be earning more than you. This remains to this day, the major cause of dissatisfaction in a human life. Often we do not take into account that probably to earn this extra money, the other person has probably a tougher life than us and works thrice as hard as us. Pal Money Theory accepts the fact that one will always continue to make this comparison.

But what it says that because of the money you earn less, you gain moments in life or Pal. And a Pal spent well is worth every bit of the money you don’t make. For example, on a Sunday evening, without bothering about the next presentation, I am actually blogging about Pal Money. The worth of this moment to me is almost 100 SGD. (The theory insists that you put a monetary value to it) And I am happy that I have this moment for myself, speaking to through this blog to you.

The last theory is about The Man. Almost everyone thought in college that they were going to cure cancer, save the world, eradicate poverty – in effect do something worthwhile with their lives. Everyone wanted to change the system and make the world a better place. Most of us are not doing anything half as noble. And yet in the late nights when the world seems to have made old men and women out of us, we really want to shout our hearts out. It’s like this silent monster that gnaws at you and you know you can’t let your cries be heard.

At that moment you need an object to direct your frustration and Give it to THE MAN. You know really make him pay for all that’s not right with your life, for it’s never you that is at fault! It’s always the system! So once you have found The Man, you boss or your doodhwala, you just give it to him but then once it’s out of your system you need to sit down and take stock of your life as you see it. And then probably you’ll realize that you are not a chipkali, you can always manage some time and you have the right to earn some Pal Money.

What’s more, next weekend you might find yourself teaching a few kids for free at the nearby school and really feeling good about it. At the end of the day, it’s about being happy without causing hurt to others.

Life’s really that simple.