The Highstander Effect

One of my blogger friends recently did a post on something that happened in her city and mentioned what is called the Bystander Effect. 

Away from all the psychological sociological nomenclature that defines this inability of bystanders to intervene in an emergency situation,  I sometimes feel that we , in the big cities like Mumbai , are Champion Bystanders. 

Of course, our attitudes are often colored by what we have been subject to in our growing up years.  In a society that is becoming increasingly nuclear and imbibing all properties of "I" as opposed to "we" , it is instructive to see how we change.

When I was a child, we lived in what was then the outskirts of Pune, in an area  through which many daily wage earners of the city passed , on their way home to the villages outside Pune. Prohibition existed then, and it was not unusual to hear and see warring couples heading home to their villages,  the man usually drunk, the woman berating him for throwing money, denying their kids a meal, and the drunk fellow shouting and beating his wife as they walked home. I would rush to watch from the balcony, and was once surprised to see my mother outside, shouting at the man to behave, and  protecting the angry lady who took refuge behind her. Seeing my mother telling off the guy, some folks on the road also joined in, restrained the drunk guy, threatened to call the police, and so on. The fellow was subdued,  and they went home after some time, the woman guiding the drunk guy.

Times change.  People actually don't.

Almost 25 years later , I was living along a lakefront in a wooded area. There was a narrow road that skirted the lake and passed in front of our building. It was not unknown for the household working maids to collect twigs,branches etc for firewood on their way home, since kerosene was not easily available, and in short supply.  Home for lunch from work, and we suddenly heard threatening voices. Since we were on the ground floor, we saw a security man talk to a young girl with firewood , shouting and threatening her as firewood collection was not allowed.  Then he raised his hand , and slapped her.  He was immediately shouted at from our house, and asked to refrain from this or face an official complaint to his superiors. In the quiet of the afternoon, he had thought no one had observed.  But someone had. And acted. And the fellow was intimidated by all this.  The woman felt someone looked out for her. We didn't know either of them but sometimes things work out ...

 This ability to rush and act sometimes is the fastest lesson in trauma psychology you can get.

We lived then , more than 30 years ago ,amidst many other couples in a hostel for staff, and one of my friends  accidentally had the stove fall on her as she made tea after coming home from work. By the time I reached, she was in the outside corridor burnt,  and in huge pain , crying out , and I saw this huge semicircle of ladies (and kids) with expressions of shock and horror, simply standing and looking at her. Some of us ran to comfort her, try and help with the stuck fabrics and apply something to her skin, and maybe even just hold her hand; she  could see still, and I was aghast that so many just stood around and she saw their faces reflecting what had happened to her and how bad. We accompanied her to the hospital , but sadly she did not live.

Sometimes, one ends up being the person who is stared at. While folks stand around.

In my more active days, I was once running errands in the monsoon and was on a two wheeler going to the next suburb to collect a pathological report for my father-in-law.  I got late collecting some garam masala(2 kg) which I had to collect from a place that pounded it for you. And possibly, I  didn't see the road surface well. Because all of a sudden, the two wheeler skidded, the wheel simply whirred in the air, i was thrown up and fell down, cracking a tooth, cutting the lip and some places near the eye. First, people ran. Then they stood around and stared at me, since I must have been a vision in a saree, in all that blood on my face, sitting on the ground, holding my head, and still inexplicably pointing to the masala box , which was unaffected. A couple of rickshaws stopped, thought their seat covers didn't need any blood dripping there and quickly accelerated away. Lots of mumbling and staring but no one offered a solution. Some traffic got held up.  Finally a cab came , and asked where i stayed. Maybe the guy had a daughter back home, my age.  That guy drove me home and then to our hospital.   But yes, that feeling of helplessness has to be experienced.        

Today, one still tries not to be a bystander when one sees something bad happening to someone.

The road crossing outside our gate is a very difficult one. Too many degrees of freedom for wheeled traffic and very little time and concern for bipeds. We were waiting to cross, waiting for the traffic light to change, when a motorcycle in a hurry zoomed past, throwing an old lady carrying vegetables, off balance, and she fell. The driver was forced to stop, and after helping the lady up, and seeing that she was OK, I went up to the guy to ask what was the big hurry, didn't he see the traffic light and did he not care for those he hurt with such careless driving.

I was almost on the point of waiving to a traffic cop and calling him, when this guy slowly removes his helmet, shakes his head, puts his helmet on again, starts his bike and says ," Yeh raasta  kya aapke  baap ka hai ? (~ Does this road belong to your father?)  ..." !

(I've often answered in the affirmative and mentioned paying of taxes, but this guy zoomed off)

I wonder what the social psychologists have to say about this.

The Highstander Effect ?

At whose cost ......

I first became aware of dicey use of public/taxpayers' money in the early 70's.

We lived in a colony of two multi storeyed buildings, constructed for government employees, meant for those who were in the IAS, IPS and Judiciary(as Judges), with a bunch of ministers thrown in , who resided in the two topmost flats in each building. While there was nothing surprising in the retinue of cars, staff, beacon lights, and security staff for ministers, what would amaze me totally, was that folks in the police service were just a notch below as far as such facilities were concerned.  Chauffeur driven official cars (with official petrol) , one police constable sitting in front , one standing outside the house to run errands for the lady of the house, children being driven to school et al.

This was amidst judicial types who even took the bus sometimes, or car pooled every week.  Or some like my father who drove his own ambassador to work every day, paid for his own petrol.  My mother ran her own errands, bought her own vegetables, was often plagued with getting good household help.  And  given a choice between helping in the kitchen and washing the car, I always chose the latter, once prompting alarming phone calls from some of my mothers acquaintances in the next building, because girls of marriageable age didn't have to be seen washing cars in the garage and feeling good about it .  On the odd occasion that my work timings coincided with my fathers, I got off where he did, and walked rest of the way.  I don't ever remember being "driven" to work/college etc.

Sometime later , I noticed that every time a government worthy was accused of wrongdoing, and an investigation initiated, he would complain about chest pain and get admitted to a government hospital ICU.  He would be there for days and days, occupying , at government cost , a bed that could have been used to help a really sick individual, who would even pay for it.  Chest pain was a smart choice of malady. It could be due to anything, and it was your word against the doctor's.  MRI's were not yet there, ECG's happened, but chest pain was chest pain, rest was advised, and crooks lived in ICU's at government cost, with all kinds of security personnel guarding them , instead of society being saved from such folks.

With some modification this still continues.

 Now with the addition of several categories of security due to what is called threat perception.   At one time there were 34 constables, several police jeeps,  a few police inspectors  and so on assigned to the security of one individual in Mumbai. It went without saying that his/her  family members  also moved around with security . I mean , could anything be bigger than attending a kitty party with security, or kids attending school with assigned security ?   Every time these folks moved around, a cavalcade of 7-8 cars, sirens, beacons would accompany them. To this day , this kind of security remains a status symbol. We must be the only country where actors, MP's move around with visible security provided by the state. 

So I am not surprised to see that everyone now cribs about the crores spent on the security of the lone captured terrorist of 26/11 , late Ajmal Kasab, the specially built court premises in the jail, the security of the judge, the prosecutor and so on. Today's Indian Express shows Rs 41.81 crores (see this link)  as the total cost of looking after Ajmal Kasab, the biggest expense being the special security, and built infrastructure and fees of  specially appointed officers. Clothes, food and medicines are a very minor second.

But then some folks get ideas from this kind of stuff.

Six years ago, I had a substitute household help called Changuna for a few weeks, who lived in the same neighbourhood as my normal household help S.  This is a locality where, there are very few houses with a male head of household, simply because some are dead after a life of alcoholic excess, and some have abandoned their wives and disappeared.

Few women like S, are lucky to have a united household, where the children have gone to school and are now gainfully employed.  Changuna had 2 sons, One was a trained tailor, married with 2 kids, and a wisp of a wife who he beat in regular alcoholic stupors . He hardly worked. The other son, started off as a local goon, got arrested, sent to jail, and Changunabai would go one afternoon a week and see him along with some lawyer type.  She was finding it difficult to make ends meet with such sons and just her household work earnings in several houses.

One fine day the older fellow was released from jail, and came home.  He started throwing his weight around, and causing trouble. Did not work, and became demanding and drunk.  The resident son couldn't help  in any way, and it was just the women and children of the house versus these two fellows.

Finally, Changuna went to the police. Complained about the elder son who had been to prison.  He was arrested, and sent to jail again. I don't know under what crime .

Changuna came the next day for work, and told me about this latest arrest. She didn't seem to be upset; but rather relieved about it.

"He does no work, picks fights; one son doing nothing, I can manage. Both of them are good-for-nothing chaps.  So many mouths to feed, and so much money demanded for drinking . The children have to go to school, and they see all this.  I thought this guy was better off in jail. His meals and housing is taken care off.  I don't have to worry, or scrounge more more money.  Who knows what scrapes he will get into here, and I will have to rush and handle things. Tell me, how many earning and how many eating ? "

I had no answers.

No z+ security, no chest pain, no ICU, no nothing; but she had learned, from the biggies, how to make the government take care of you, for free.....  

FDI in Minds

At the cost of being ridiculed, laughed at, or whatever, I must announce that I have come to the conclusion that beauty, per se, is  a state of mind.

 What changes  through the ages, is a society that slowly becomes gutless in the face of what passes for globalization, and what I call FDI (Foreign Direct Interference)  in an individual.

For various reasons, in the sort of society in which I grew up, people were not obsessed with the confirming to some declared beauty standards.  There was a lot of emphasis on clean skin, using natural ingredients during bath times. No-nonsense oiling of hair, traumatic removing of knots, and two tight plaits turned up and tied with bows behind your ears, was the norm.  Hair was left open, only when you washed it and went about in the Sun so that it dried. Girls who went around flipping back unruly hair from their foreheads and eyes, and looking up at people from under bangs,  were frowned upon. There was no fashion  as such in clothes, because of a lot of what we wore was either school uniforms, sports requirements , casual home wear like skirts/blouses, and traditional wear like ghagras and stuff.  You never really aspired to look like an actress in films, with the possible exception of the actress Sadhana . Insecure types, were inspired to cut their hair in fringes on their forehead after huge disagreements at home.


My mother had a box full of a mixture of ambehaldi, and various ayurvedic powders which were mixed with besan and milk, sometimes fresh cream skimmed off the top of the boiled and cooled milk, and this paste was used instead of soap during bath. You never locked yourself in bathrooms doing surreptitious beauty treatments, because there was one bathroom and folks were waiting to have baths and go to work, schools etc. 

Sometime , approaching our twenties , eyebrows threading got approved,as a worthwhile effort of improving upon a tangled original. Though I still have friends who revel in intersecting eyebrows and are doing quite well , thank you .  It was about being yourself, revelling in your own confidence,  loving your own hair, nose, or whatever, and realizing there was so much more to life.

For some reason, time spent in beautifying/maintaining oneself  was not an obsessive amount, and being a beautician was not a choice profession. Although many folks then treated it like being an air hostess,  where they ignored the glamour and always thought it was about rushing with bags to folks who threw up in aeroplanes.

Cut to today, with commercial television reminding you about your fading beauty, whitening hair, dark complexion, and underweight constitution, not to mention teeth with cavities and yellow tinges.  Your hair has to be strong enough to pull a truck from a pothole, and smooth enough to give a slip to a kabaddi player trying to stop you by pulling your hair.  While the ability of the Sun to warm and tan you has not changed in decades, today you are stupid if you step out without slathering on sunscreen lotions.    

Combs gave way to brushes, brushes bow before curling and straightening irons,  and instead of curling up with a great book after work, or say, doing some minor fixing of a dress or putting a "fall" on a saree , the young ones now sit plugged in, with hair caught between two flat plates, constantly moving them, all this in the interests of straight hair.  The same young girls throng beauty parlours to get facials and bleaches, pedicures and manicures, and wear black nail polish a la Dracula , simply because someone famous in some magazine does that, Everyone aspires to flat straight hair,  skinny jeans, short tops, occasionally jackets and heeled footwear that traumatise your quadriceps, and make the leaning tower of Pisa jealous.

While our traditional textiles, get rarer and more expensive for common citizenry due to diminishing support, their art is exploited by the fashion designers, who barring a few, have completely bizarre, over priced exposure oriented design sensibilities, more suitable for the overseas market.     

For someone who grew up  believing that hard work and a sincere attitude blessed you with a job,  the already stunned eyes have opened wider on learning that applying Fair and Lovely for seven days, has the employer pleading with you to return back on the job. It has also been a revelation to learn that choosing black as your choice in a game of chess, is a guaranteed way to lose, thanks to some white beauty face wash, and to hell with watching and listening to Vishwanathan Anand.

So many multinationals, stuffing commercial time on television in India, with ads that might have been banned abroad , like whitening creams that have been banned in the US due to harmful ingredients.  So many multinationals that probably think they can advertise what they want how they want, given that liquor is advertised as cassettes and CD's, hard liquor is advertised by a winking man as Soda, energy foods supposedly make you grow twice as fast according to some vague fictitious lab, and there is no one that tries to stop this, obsessed as they are with discussing if folks in films should be shown smoking. 

If you don't believe this have a look at    Ministry of Information and Broadcasting   Content Regulation on Private TV Channels    Click on the first 5 links that pertain to advisories for advertising on private channels , warnings to those found in violation etc, and you will see that the URL does not exist.   

It is intriguing that this emphasis on physical appearance and falling in line with some vague pre set norms  , all followed in excess , has also resulted in a lot of insecurities in young people.  So many parents are ignorant of what their child is up to, because things are done secretively.  There are stresses when individuals and stories do not follow predictable paths like in commercials . You have young distracted people, giving up , and some uncontrollable types , being violent, as parents both work, to provide for the expenses demanded by the new lifestyles, sometimes  with undesirable results in their absences.

Is this the new world, where someone else tells us what beauty is ?  Is this the new world where people are tunneled on to a path with stars in their eyes, misguided money in their pockets, and insecurity in their minds?   Were we stupid in our time, because we never stamped our foot down and demanded something like our own personal hairdryer , when an old one was shared by the kids already?  Was it the height of stupidity and ignorance that we continued to live with that little black spot  and slightly non symmetric nose, and refused to get plastic surgery done ?  What is it that makes insecure women hanker after HRT  despite reports doubting its benefits ?  And is it the height of madness to insist on letting your hair grow a magnificent gray as opposed to a shining dyed darkest brown ?

Has this age of commercials, television, and globalization, actually done a plastic surgery of our minds ?   

Divali learnings.....

We live in a huge colony belonging to our employer, where premises are provided to most employees for the duration of their service.  Naturally, there are several gates, and the associated security.   Regardless of the high tech level of work, or sophisticated research conducted,  residential families, means household help coming to work daily from outside, and so there is a system of entry passes, that are periodically renewed.

My household help "S" ,  also has one, and every so many months, she asks for a letter from me, which confirms that she works at my house. The security folks then renew her pass, and she often shows it to me to find out the next date when she must repeat the procedure.  I have been noticing that there is a blank where it says "signature of pass holder".

She and her entire family were supposed to make a trip to her native place in the first week of November, and she had told me in advance that she would be away for twelve days. As is customary, I gave her an extra months salary for Divali with her October remuneration thinking it would find use on this trip, bid her a good trip, and mentally geared myself up to being run of my feet in the ensuing days.  A viral bout which sapped energy didn't help. But this kind of stuff has happened before and one has learned to manage.

A couple of days later, I get a call and it's "S".  She calls to say that she herself fell sick the evening before the trip,  and the family had now gone ahead and she had not. She was feeling better now and would be coming after all . From the next day !

To me, this was like Divali. 

You see , she need not have called. She was to be away for 12 days,  it would not be affecting her monthly remuneration, , and I would never know whether she was away or at home. She could have had a much needed rest without the usual family chores.
 
To her that was simply not an option.  She called. And came the next day. 

She came in carrying her entry pass which needed to be renewed, and as usual took my letter and signature to the security office. Came back and showed me the pass.

This time there was something else. In the place where it said "Employees signature", there was this shaky looking set of letters in marathi, spelling out her full name. 

I was absolutely amazed.

"S", who never went to school,  and slogged  all her life , singly, to ensure her children completed XIIth, and her grandchildren went to school, had finally learned to sign her own name ! 

I know it must not have been easy.  To concentrate and practice in a one room house with 4 small extremely playful grand kids, and 3 married sons so very busy with their jobs and lives, with "S" herself working houses and managing her own house.  

She is excited. She will no longer give thumbprints in the bank, when she goes to check her savings and withdraw.  She wanted to know how to tell the bank that now onwards she will sign !   A visit to the bank is planned.

In the meanwhile,  some Divali goodies are being put together at my place, as Guru Dakshina, to the little Gurus in class 2 and 3, who insisted that their grandma learn to write her own name, and actually inspired her.

May this Divali be as exciting for everyone as it was for "S" with her new learning !

Happy Divali !

Review of "The Bankster" by Ravi Subramanian....

I received this book from Blogadda under their Book Reviews Program.

Published by Rupa , and 358 pages in length, it was an unexpected delight to get an author autographed copy of Bankster.  The cover calls the author, Ravi Subramanian, the John Grisham of banking.

As a person who actually had a bank account at 10 tears of age, when withdrawing Rs 10 was considered excessive, I have always been skeptical of the banking industry ever since  some parts of it decided to become posh. 50 years of banking has taught me, that we remember best those who give excellent service as a bank, everything else be damned.  This is the story of a bank, the Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2), and the functioning and work ethos therein.

It is linked  in some way, with blood diamonds in Angola, an NGO  involved in a nuclear protest in Kerala, unscrupulous politicians (sigh),  puzzling killing of bank employees in places as diverse as  the Eastern Express Highway in Mumbai the old Vashi Thane Creek Bridge in Mumbai, and a street in Vienna, Austria.

A simple switch of an account by a client from another bank to GB2,  so many bending over backwards to service the account  given the large balances, rewards for those who fall in line. A lovely depiction of the sort pf personalities one often encounters in a bank,  old style, staid, sticklers for rules, easily swayable types, folks who have no qualms  about committing crimes, be they commercial or moral, folks who hanker after the good life at all costs.  The story also indicates the vigilance section in banks, and how their work is conducted.

The Kerala  NGO agitation against the nuclear power plant, the tenuous links with dyed-in-the-evil-wool politicians playing double games, international compulsions, all these actually depict what is happening today.

Personalities and episodes described in Vienna  remind you a bit about an  Hercule Poirotean  ethos, and the general efficiency and pride taken in such work there.

The author has described his characters very well.  I have almost met all such types in my more than 50 years of tangling with banks.

I have met the dedicated Raymond, the sincere organized Harshita,  the page 3 style Zinaida ,  the I-have-all-the-answers-nothing-is-impossible Tanuja,  the super efficient Jacqueline,  the lady Chairperson Indrani, who is where she is because she has a fine understanding of who must investigate what, and the silent minority that simply gets on with the work, thinking everything their superiors are doing is ethically correct.

I've heard of sincere rural folk like Krishna, politicians and their relatives  who give NGO's a bad name, tentacles spread across the country dipping into various tills. 

The author weaves it all in, as if it all belongs.  He even throws in IT technology.  Buying of arms from countries, and despotic African rulers controlling diamond mines, and buying arms.

You nod your head in satisfaction, or shake your head in disapproval, smirk mentally to say "I told you so" , and  delight yourself to bits,  as the story emerges, every now and then, accelerating  on a fast expressway, after taking a few diversions.

The conclusion is stunning.    And deftly introduced.

You would have never imagined, that,  that could be the case 

The story is very tightly woven,  no rambling, or suddenly going into history.  The suspense is maintained just enough, for you to rub that sleep out of your eyes, and continue with the remaining pages.     

This is a wonderful book and I would give it a rating of 4/5. Go read it .  

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com . Participate now to get free books!

Introducing , "T." .......

A post inspired after reading this ....

My household help "S.", (who I have extensively blogged about for the last few years), is kind of getting on in years, and it was decided to find someone else to do some of her more strenuous duties like sweeping etc. She herself suggested someone, who we shall call "T.".

T., unlike S. comes from the coastal Konkan area of Maharashtra. She was married off to a guy, a widower,  from the village, working in Mumbai. This guy's first  wife had  given birth to a child, and died in childbirth, leaving behind, , in addition to the new born, an older girl of 7-8 years.  They came to Mumbai, and within a year there was another kid, her own. The difference between the son's ages  was less than a year and she  cared for the daughter and two sons  as if they were her own.  The husband, as it usually happens, habitually drank, and one fine day ,  he succumbed, and she was left with 3 kids to look after.

A brother living elsewhere in Mumbai, helped her find a place in what is now a huge slum on the hills. She consults this brother on all important events in her family. She started doing housework in our area, and has been going to the same households for several years, because her honesty, and work ethic is greatly valued.

She has looked after the children , got the daughter married to someone who earns a living driving a rickshaw, and her two sons stay with her.  Drinking water is a huge problem , and she often has to queue up at 3 am and 4 am  at the community tap. There are goonda elements, queue crashers, trouble makers,  but she has learnt to manage despite them with her no nonsense attitude. The two sons did not know for years together that they had different mothers.  I came to know all this when she needed some help with the junior college fees for the boys.

She obviously has some good folks advising her. The boys did an ITI technical training course during the day, and attended night school to complete their class X.  This year the appeared for their XII exams, again, while continuing their ITI course. They help their mother fill water early mornings,  , then leave , and return back almost at 11 pm  . There are work assignments and studies to be done.

She says one of the reasons this is good , is that the company of boys in her area is terrible, most being vagabond, jobless, druggy types, aspiring to be dadas, and she sees many young folks whiling away time with such types. Her sons are away  almost 16 hours of the day.

Once a year, she travels to her late husband's native place, where the old home still stands, over which she is aware she and her sons have a right since it is ancestral. Does the necessary maintenance stuff, whatever repairs and so on, fully aware , that there are folks within the family, who think she has no share and may simply create trouble for her.

The boys both appeared for class XII boards, one cleared it all, and the other must clear one subject yet. The older fellow now has a job in a factory, and the younger one, in his own way, tries to support the family, amidst school/training/studies etc, with a job at a place where he wraps chocolates and gets paid by the kilo.

By pure coincidence, I heard about all this from  T. , during a week when I also came across a post , on my friend's blog,  that was all about a lady, who had everything life could give her;  a wonderful childhood full of opportunities, a degree in the US, marriage to someone in the US , an Indian, as qualified as her, and a child.

The lady in question,  was writing to vent her worries about having to return to India and the likelihood of having to stay  with the in laws, or they staying with her, and how she was absolutely against it. The issue was independence, and her husband's inability to stand up to his parents.  There appeared to be no earning-a-living issues. But there appeared to be many issues having to do with  adjusting to a "people"/in law  environment back in India, strangely, after having grown up earlier in a standard family  environment in India.

And then I wondered about the problem solving abilities of both T and this lady. 

About who was happier. Who was more stressed.    Who was more capable of facing up to challenges. Who could look a problem in the face, prioritize , and decide, even if it was in the short term .  Who had a huge amount of resources to tap, and who had almost nothing to tap.

Also, how formal education, had actually managed to slot attitudes into compartments. "This" was progress, "this" was an interference, "that" was guaranteed to stagnate your career because you put it on the back burner,  "something else" was a direct attack on your way of thinking.

Progress  has to be of several kinds.  It is never the type that can be graphed as an oblique line, rising away from the origin, way up into infinity, at an angle of 45 degrees to the horizontal.

The best kind of progress , is often  a bunch of points on a graph , scattered  around a general pattern, which emerges after there are sufficient points.  There are some points that play truant and even go out of range.  Some fall acceptably close to the emerging style.   

Management types will call this a trend.  

It is actually "learning from experience".

 To me, T had generated a wealth of such experience points, some close to each other, some far away.  Her uneducated, but observant mind absorbed, the trends, and learnt from them,  generating what I would call, a new "informed " point.

Both T and the lady in question above, have things that irk them.   T, with her limited resources, has often hosted relatives visiting Mumbai, and managed somehow with her meagre space and economic resources. Some of these folks have an eye on her ancestral small place back in the village, and she is aware of it. Tangling with them at this point, is not going to help.  She keeps such thoughts to herself, and concentrates on ensuring that the sons are well settled into some jobs.  T has learnt to prioritize, and she doesn't plan anything for, say, even 5 years down the line.

The lady in question on the blog, appears to be planning her entire life in one shot. How, where, when, and with whom.  Forcing the points on the graph .  She has reasons for publicly  verbalizing her problem, and she hopes to hear from folks who have been through similar stages of life, and she feels she will get some unbiased solutions this way.

I don't know who is right or wrong.

Ten years down the line, I cannot say who will be happier.  But somehow , it seems to make sense to have short term goals, work towards them, learn from them, and live life, rather than live rigidly with a unchangeable grand life philosophy......

But the contrast between the two,  here, was  too glaring. 

It's just that , sometimes, I feel, experience teaches a huge lot more about problem solving than any degree can.   

The Last Show

 It was an honor. The honor to be the sole caretaker of someone in their last days. In the family. Again and again .

 Sometimes these days stretched out over seasons, and sometimes, they hurried into hours, rushing somewhere,  like a single minded traveller hurriedly stepping to go home, in the evening gloom,  through rain,hail, and a blowing wind.

I have always wondered what goes on in a mind just prior to sensing a shutting down of physical systems in our bodies. 

She was someone very much involved mentally in her family. As many mothers are. You could be miles away beyond a sea and she could sense from an inflexion in your voice, and a certain word usage or tone, that you were troubled. She lost sleep worrying about you. She went to great lengths to ensure that you got the best even when she was away from you.  Your friends were her friends, and they enjoyed visiting her even in your absence.  So it went without saying that she also got upset easily at you and never hid it, as she struggled with it.  A natural manager , she might have been an excellent faculty somewhere, if she hadn't got caught up in family life. She wouldn't have had it any other way.

He was  what young folks today, define, as "chilled".  Not very interactive in family matters, he was interested in the course of his working life in a wide variety of people-useful projects.  Enjoyed quiet yoga, meditation, literary pursuits, and a possible lack of excessive professional ambition, which was great for his stress levels. Fairly impractical and unwilling to accept  it, he often left planning to folks at home and enjoyed the fruits , and no one grudged him that, because that was him. Often in a world of his own,  and a good teacher, he confounded  an entire set of doctors by doing the opposite of what they said, and recovering. He used to say its willpower, people called it luck.

 She passed away in what  felt like a wild tornado that suddenly struck her body.  Six years later, he passed away,  like a flower, slowly drying and withering away, petals slowly falling to the ground, and becoming one with the soil.

What was intriguing was  their momentary actions when the mind comprehended that perhaps the end was near.

Rescued from a sudden collapse, she recovered , all systems go, in the ICU, for a full day. Even in that one day, she worried about her daughter, why her son had rushed to her from the US, leaving his very young kids, and had he had lunch now that he was there . When her children sat quietly whispering , she bid them go home to their families.  Somewhere , around  midnight, she sensed  it was time. She looked at the children, steeled herself, and for someone, who barely had energy to lift her head, she amazingly managed to  turn on her side. Away from her children. Never answered when they called out to her. Kept talking to herself about consequences of a life lived the way she had, God's will, and was in her own world, till a sharp intake of breath ended it all. For someone who was so involved with family all her life, she had purposefully cut everyone off just prior to the moment of departure.

He, six years later,  was bedridden over several months, nursed by many dedicated folks.  He raged inwardly at his immobility and the mind imagined that he was visiting many places. He would talk about having walked two kilometres to visit someone. He would forget that he had had a meal and berate someone for being late with it. He forgot so many people, but realized that he couldn't recognize them as others thought he should, and so would playact, exclaiming in some standard phrases and smiles. He would occasionally talk about some very old acquaintances with his daughter, unaware or forgetting that they were no more. By and large he kept to himself.  Towards the end, he only recognized his caretaking folks including his daughter.

One unusual rainy night in November, he refused a serving of soup being fed to him, held his hand up .  He relaxed and  enjoyed a shuteye. Sometime later , he lifted his hand as if to search for someone. They heard him mouth somebody's name weakly, and signaled quietly to the daughter sitting nearby, who went to him, called out his name  and held his hand. He may not have heard.  His eyes, normally wide and hazel eyed (which she had inherited), were now slits , through which he could possibly see only a glimmer of light.  Unable to energize his eyelids,  he disengaged his hand from hers, then amazingly,  with unknown energy,  lifted it , grasping at her shoulders and neck till he reached her face. Touched her face, then held her chin between thumb and forefinger, as he would for a small child, and imperceptibly shook it. Lips moved a bit, and then all went  quiet as his hand slid down.        

What made the two be so uncharacteristic in the end ?  Did she not feel, at the end,  like being with those who she worried about so much and involved herself in throughout her life ? Did it hurt her to be so suddenly stoic in the end ?  For him, never as involved as she was, was it a sudden throwback to the days when his daughter was a very small child , and a remembrance of those days, as he struggled to see her before the end ?

Is there a mind separate from your brain that continues to consciously fully live  and reason even when things are shutting down ?  Do people hark back to the childhoods and old days, when they reach the end of their own days ?   What goes on in a mind, when realization finally dawns  that the end is near ?  Are we in error when we perceive people to be a particular way ?  Or does it have something do with with analytical minds and artistic minds ?

I don't know.  I think there is much more to be learnt.  Possibly, it will be very difficult to comprehend.
 
 George Washington University  researchers and doctors at Medical Faculty Associates recorded brain activity of people close to death. Turns out that, moments before death, the patients experienced a burst in brain wave activity, with the spikes occurring at the same time before death and at comparable intensity and duration.  Oxygen deprivation of brain neurons is said to force the neurons to all discharge together, creating a surge.  They say a  cutoff of oxygen would trigger a similar but recoverable event that becomes seared into memory.
 

It's very fashionable today to debate creation, and how the human design happened.  I find it difficult to believe that the human being as existing today, happened simply by chance , after some protein strings here and there evolved  by mistake in the correct manner.  There are too many smart checks and balances, decision making centres and processes happening in our bodies.

For those who think computers are the closest things, it would do well to remember that computer repair involves a shutdown and coldstart, and our amazing bodies mostly do it continuously online. Yes, restarts happen, sometimes, but for humans, a cold start is generally a cold shutdown.

 In the meanwhile, I must wildly and for a long time, applaud the Designer of this human system, whoever it maybe......   

Walls

You know. Things were different.

For one thing , before I was born , my folks went to the US to do graduate school in the very late 1940's, because the then Bombay government granted a scholarship. (And no , back then you didn't need an uncle in positions of power, just good academics.)  Which resulted in the acquisition (on return) then of a decent camera, and an 8 mm movie camera and what was then touted as a wire recorder.

Needless to say, we subsequently had several albums full of small prints showing us children in various stages of growth, posing in gardens (houses had them in those days), next to flowers, even pumpkin plants displaying our size relative to a super large pumpkin. I remember some kind of overexposed moving film showing me walking soon after becoming a biped, sometimes with a parent behind me, and a sibling kind of running across . Strangely these films had no sound. The wire recorder recorded such immortal things like lisping answers to questions, laughs and cries .  All these things were kept away in shelves and drawers to be displayed amidst visiting relatives and so on.

And the real photos that graced our walls were two large framed photos of my two late grandfathers, at an angle to the vertical, so that you always got the impression they were checking on you. Post her everyday morning puja, my mother would climb on a stool kept on a bed, and wipe the photographs clean, with her just washed and dried puja saree palloo; on special occasions there would be wonderful garlands for the grandpas, and we children  did our pranams to the photos at the onset of any wonderful venture, whether at school or home.

We had several sepia style photos with assorted serious types standing in gowns and holding scrolls, as well as some old photos with a senior citizen person sitting surrounded by folks in turbans/gandhi topis, and ladies in nine yards , holding kids . There was always some kid in a velvet embroiderd jacket sitting on a table top, and the table always had these curved legs. All these photos were hard mounted and covered with tissue paper and they remained in the cupboard recesses and never appeared on the wall.

Somewhere in college, folks started bringing cameras to picnics, wedding photography evolved, it became fashionable to click photos of folks being  felicitated for things, or standing next to eminent folks. People started displaying photos on walls , of themselves and family with folks of national eminence.   Families started travelling around the country, and photos in front of Tajmahal, various temples, waterfalls, native places and so on graced the various album pages , but yet , all in cupboards and drawers. 

By now, it was clear that you didn't have to die to have your photo on a wall. From an analogue version of a interconnected complete family, folks were moving places, setting up establishments and the digitisation, per se, of the family had begun.  Graduation pictures,  Wedding pictures and so on started gracing tabletops and walls.  Some grandparents proudly displayed photos of their grandkids in a frame next to the telephone on the table.  Very soon, wedding photography evolved and people specialised in maintaining entire albums .

Instamatic cameras , the precursors of the point-and-shoot cameras, soon flooded the market. Film cartridges happened.  When I went for grad school in the US in the early 70's, I returned with many photographs of various places I travelled to and visited, graduation,  my house, my friends and so on.  Even then , stuff remained in albums.  For example, a photograph of me drinking tea, was not sufficient  for a wall appearance and completely unacceptable.

A short period in which cameras got really complicated and the age of the digital camera dawned, parallel with the entry of the personal computer.  The absence of a physically loadable film was the biggest relief.

The digitisation of society was complete. People started carrying cameras in bags and purses. Folks graduating started carrying cameras themselves to convocations.  Cameras came and captured kids  barely a couple of hours old . Prices of hardware    
tumbled. Cameras started recording video.  Family events got captured in all their moving glory; tears could be seen falling, bangles tinkled, kids bawled, real applause got recorded with action and expressions.

Earlier it was about the message. Now it became about the medium.  Capturing something well became more important than what you captured.  Technology was making society adapt to it  rather that itself evolving for the society.

And then, inexplicably Facebook happened. You didn't need sepia photos in drawers, small black and white prints in thick albums, with photo corners.  Not only did people put photos of family events, complete with labels and comments, they also put photos of what they cooked for lunch, dinner, what they ate at someone's house, what they saw on some tree in their garden, what their dog ate. Also included were photos of some thing they made, constructed ,gifted or received,  sometimes even photos of their vehicles, all  washed and polished. The ordinary became special.

Sometimes something special became a bit less so, because of excessive appearance. 

Walls didn't exist solely in houses. Facebook itself had a wall, on which you put photos and people expressed their opinions.  If you didn't like something, you removed the photo. You even put up photos of others to tease someone.  You could control who could see whose photos. A single family had many individual walls. In more ways than one.

Not just the digitisation , but the discretization of a flowing old life was complete.

Today, along with photos of my late parents and late in laws on the wall, that look down at me as I sit typing away at this desktop,  I also have across the room , family photos of us with eminent folks we met, an unusual gathering of family several years ago. These conservative types mix seamlessly with photos of kids with milk moustaches , clicked as they finished up the hated glass of milk, photos of kids holding cricket bats, standing in half pants, dripping in the rain,  young cousins meeting after a long time, and the portrait of a young woman in a dressy saree in a permanent breathe-in posture  as she tries to manage a massive traditional  Maharashtrian nose ring  adorning her not so sharp nose.

The same young woman, lugs a DSLR everywhere, talks lenses, clicks insects  and bugs on walls and gardens, the insides of flowers, and outsides of monuments, jewellery, food, sunsets, sunrises, and flowing waters.

Sometimes we visit my old maternal house where the portraits of my late grandfathers still hang on a proper , now ancient wall.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I imagine a hint of a smile on their faces, as they see a young great grandchild, seriously fiddling with some settings, clicking and then with some alacrity uploading stuff , on what she thinks, is a wall of her own.  

A nice kind of crazy .....

 It was the spring on 1979.  There was a new grandchild in the house, I was at my maternal home post delivery, and it so happened that my mother would be completing 60 years a month later. She never liked a formal fuss, did not enjoy grand expenditures and show, my parents dietary habits ruled out wild food indulgences, and since I was their only child resident in the country, I racked my brain incessantly on what was the best gift I could give.

Once the baby and feeding routines had settled down predictably, and the general fuss about massages and stuff for the new mother had subsided,  I would occasionally manage to go out for an  hour or a bit more with friends and relatives, and my folks were only too thrilled to be with their grandson  during that time.

That's when the craziness began....

Intense discussions with friends, consulting with close relatives, and I concluded that a surprise party and something new for the house would be the best gift. Those were days when having a color TV was a luxury, there were no such things as home theatres; you either stayed home or went to the theatre to see a play. My father thought the car was a white elephant guzzling gas,  commercials were the worst things to have happened to TV, watches were to be eternally preserved  from the time you got them till you were 80 or something, and my mother had some really ancient sarees that stayed as good as new. It wasn't so much about personal gifts.  There was a lot of space in the house, and we thought a new carpet would be ideal (although they would immediately say the old one was perfect , why a new one  etc and so on......:-).

Several secret trips with a cousin, friends, even some of my mother's friends. Whispered phone calls,  the minute my parents stepped out of the house for something. Lists of various types , and visits to invite some of her special old friends for a surprise party ensued. All done surreptitiously.  The carpet was shopped for, loaded on top of the Fiat car carrier, and we drove straight to my Mom's friend's house, hoping no one had seen us zipping by with the overhead load . A pale gold large carpet, ideal for use when having ladies haldikumkums and stuff.  The folks in that house were aghast to see me walking in supporting one edge of the carpet; they probably thought I should be barely bending my back, after a Cesarean delivery, and rushed to help out. Everyone was sworn to secrecy, the son of the house was asked to shove it under the bed (lest my Mom visited them ) .  The menu was planned, everyone offered to bring a dish,  various folks were bidden to appear that day, come what may, at the appointed time.  I would cook the meal and so we had one of my mother's best friends come to spend the day, so both could simply attend to my son and enjoy !  My husband would come at the last moment, pick up the carpet and bring it home with the help of our neighbor's son. It was not possible for a single person to move stuff around.

The day dawned, I wished my Mom, did pranams, and told her that folks would be coming . Then she complicated things by saying she knew people would bear gifts and I should actually go out and get return gifts for everyone .

All this gifting stuff was getting complicated. She didn't know about the carpet yet. She thought some travel bags would be great to give everyone. So I hot footed it to the city main shopping area, and an hour or more later drove back with 25 blue small square  carryon suitcases , studded all around me and above me in the small Fiat. They used to be known as Air India bags then, and greatly admired (because some said you got them free if you flew AI.)

While my Mom was delighted to see so many of her old friends landing up, she was a bit aghast to see her son-in-law lugging a huge rolled carpet 2 floors up with the aid of the neighbors son. We did Aarti,  ladies did haldikumkum, everyone got  jasmine gajras, flowers, sprinklings of rosewater. The carpet was inaugurated.  One of her closest friends did an  amazing mimicry program  and songs. The ladies oohed and aahed over the grandson, I was run off my feet going up and down with the food and mattresess and cushions  and stuff, and the ladies suitably expressed their displeasure at these capers of a woman one month after her delivery. I wasn't about to listen to anyone, and had been planning this thing for so long !   Yes it was a lot to do, but then so many chipped in with their own kind of help.   The pot luck food dishes were shared by all.

Looking back, I often wonder how it would have been if I could order stuff to be delivered. I mean I could have shopped on line, chosen, had the stuff either delivered to the neighbors, or specified the delivery date . (I know. I wouldn't have trusted the latter).   No one would have looked on suspiciously at the hitherto  whispered phone calls, the sudden silences, and the quick one hour trips, driving with friends, where, supposedly nothing exciting happened.

But orderly as it would have been in an online world (which didn't really exist then), there would have not been the secrecy, the rushing around, the pretending, the hiding, and the general craziness that was the hallmark of this event.

It isn't so much  what you gift. It is all about how you gift.

And it's all about your own special gift later, where you got a sore back with all that running around, you lay down  , and  the birthday woman sat down by your side, ,  reminisced about the evening, while slowly rubbing and massaging your back .....

This post is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with Badhai.in

Ancient Crushes

I was spring-cleaning  through my various blogs. Including one called Reghotya where I post a lot of imaginary posts with really bad art work, , with a lot of intense glossal movement in the mala or bucca. Which is a very fancy word for tongue-in-cheek. (I just made it up. but it's scientific- check it).......

I came upon a post which I wrote for a competition titled  "My first Crush" organized by the folks at Blogadda.   Back then in 2010.  I have no clue why I posted it there, as there is nothing tongue-in-cheek about it, where as it should have actually been posted in this blog, Gappa.   

I think it is in the fitness of things, that  I repost it here. The world needs to know about The First Crush, more than 50 years down the line. Besides, its just ideal for this debilitating October heat....   

P. S. It won a prize :-)

********************************************
My First Crush !
 

The summer of 1957. I was eight.

Saturday evening at dusk. It was on one of Pune's then main thoroughfares. A very ordinary looking three storey structure, with a name written with a grand flourish across a background of cement flowers, cracking at the edges.

We were in a special area on the first floor, with nicer tables and chairs, than say the ground floor, where flinging a towel on your shoulder, and shouting out the order in convoluted complex English, was the style of the day. We had folks who sedately moved around asking what your order was, kind of whispered it to the next important functionary, and the four of us sat at one of the hexagonal tables, that seemed to have an imposing huge stone as a table top, terribly at variance with the folding metal chairs.

The two of us were so excited. In those days, such trips were rare. Going out, per se, was not the done thing. But this was special. A celebration. I forget the reason. It was enough that we were there.

We watched the folks at the other tables. Not too many mothers there. Every now and then we would watch waiters coming with full trays, hoping they would stop at our table. The elderly waiter would smile at us, seeing our desperation.

Finally, the waiting ended. It had arrived. My first crush . Alphonso Hapoos Mango pieces crushingly slathered in hand churned mango ice cream, presented in a boat shaped false silver plate, with two spoons; one flat and the other , normal.


There was a new light in my eyes. The waiting was all worth it. I could keep on looking at it, but the latitude and longitude of Pune ensured, that the crush would lose its solidity, if I followed that path.

I followed his eyes, now focused on the crush in front of him. Did he get more ice cream than I did ? Were his mango pieces larger ? Was I jealous ? Was he jealous ?

We started picking at the ice cream, enjoying the flavour as it tingled the tongue and built up a sensation of wanting more. There was a technique we followed , on such occasions, which were not frequent at all. The idea was to keep eating small amounts, so that after an unbearably long time, the other person's ice cream got over, and you still had a half plate of the crush in front of you.

The trouble was he had the same idea. And so you have the story of my first crush, redolent of Alphonso mango fruit, and completely blanketed by mango ice cream so to speak, now trying to lie at the side of the fruit pieces, in puddles, probably disgusted at the stubborn behaviour of the imbibers.

My father looked at his watch. he had promised to bring us home by 7 pm. It was getting late, and my brother and I, out on this special treat with him, were making things difficult trying to win, as to who came last.

"OK. You both have 5 minutes. I want everything lapped up, no wasting stuff. If you can't eat it, then slurp it or drink it. We need to leave......"... the referee had spoken.

This was the best part, and we dug in, ecstatically drizzling the melted ice cream over the orange pieces, and literally wolfing it down, and you could see the extra large servings sliding down our throats as the food pipe , in peristalsis, appeared to shiver delightedly from the cold, as it directed the now mushy crush down into the innards, amidst sensations, that cannot be described adequately in words. A cooling feeling at the bottom of the stomach, and before it got over, there would be another mouthful , the mango and the ice cream once again delighting all the senses. We'd sniff the cold spoonful before we ate it, and revel in the aroma of hapoos, cream and saffron.

There would be a sound of a chair scraping, and we knew we were running late. The last semi solid, nectarish mash of hapoos and cream would be drunk straight from the boat shaped plate, paying scant attention to the milk moustache that made its appearance.

My father would offer his handkerchief. We would use it only after licking up the moustache stuff first.

We would emerge, as the street lights came on. Not too much traffic on the road, and crossing was easy.

I have been around . Crossed the world . I have seen the advent of cones and sundaes, and ice cream available in packs in shops. I have seen the 32 flavours. I have seen what is called a softie. I have also see ice creams where the shape of the glass is more important than what is inside, as ice cream. I've seen it thrown into glasses of Coca Cola, and sold at ridiculous prices, and called ridiculous names.

But. What remains, etched , for eternity, in my heart, is the memory of this first crush.

Melting moments , of the icy Alphonso type....