History doesn’t repeat itself

The nurse came with this tiny ugly thing in her hand. Purnima looked up and saw the smile on the nurse’s face. ‘Its a girl’ she said to Purnima and gave her the baby.

Purnima was not sure whether she will be able to hold her baby properly. She was weak and a mother by mistake. But to her own amazement, she held her baby perfectly. Just like they show in the movies. “So its natural for us girls” thought Purnima. She looked at her baby with scanning eyes. The baby is as dark as she. ‘Oh! it has such small hands’. Purnima started to cry. She cried for the mistakes she had made, and she cried for the uncertainties of the future. How she wished Kartik was with her, like the man he always promised to be.

It started with a short bus trip. Purnima took a bus from Andheri to Borivali. It was the seat selection that would change everything. She sat next to this serious looking guy. He was reading a book. The bus got stuck in a traffic jam. Purnima was sweating and was not feeling very well. She saw a bottle of water with the guy. She said ‘Can I have a sip of water?’. A simple line that would roll into motion so many things. Purnima will come to know the commuter as Kartik and she will come to know so much about him.

They started talking about things. They started seeing each other. Before long they couldn’t live without each other. One day Kartik came over to her rented appartment. They did everything that they shouldn’t have. It was love of the most intimate sort.

In love you want to give everything you have, and so Purnima gave all of her to Kartik. And in return she got a part of kartik. It came un-invited. It came after 9 months. They were the longest 9 months of Purnima’s life. The months when Kartik will stop talking to her. Will not return her call and finally, will move out of reach.

Purnima wiped her tears and saw the baby again. How can she not have her? Why did she even think of abortion? She smiled. She was smiling because she has received someone who will always be with her. She kept looking at her till she fell asleep due to weakness.

She could hear someone crying at her feet! She woke up with a shock. Who was crying? She looked and saw a man’s hear on her feet. The hair that she knew so well. The shoulders she had felt so relieved. It was Kartik.

He looked up and saw her directly. His eyes were read. And he said

‘A man I don’t know did this to my mother! Left her with me. I cannot do this to you. I can’t repeat mistakes of the past. History will not repeat itself. Purnima, will you let me be a part of you and our daughter? Will you not just let me be a man in our daughter’s life? Will you let me be your husband and her father?’

Ramlila

RamlilaI have realised now that I am not be an Oscar class actor, there I have said it! Guess now you guys are happy. Take this as my apology and my confession. I am sorry if you guys suffered due to my on stage performance.

I have to confess that in my teens I use to consider myself a brilliant thespian. I think I must have been above average because my services were called for in all the plays arranged in our school. I think part of it was because I had lower than average level of stage fright.

School’s annual function is one of the main events in a budding school actor’s career. If you are studying in an army school, annual function is all the more glamorous as your parents and all the top brass of local army regiments are present.

I always selected for the most talked about play of our annual function. It had become one of the things I was proud of. I use to walk like a movie star for months after the annual function was over. As you may have guessed, something must have gone wrong in this rosy, glamorous acting career of mine that has compelled me to write this log. Yes, things did go wrong.

I had just completed my 8th standard. I was looking forward to the annual function and my summer holidays. The talked about show in that year’s annual function was Ramlila. I was keeping an eye on the notice board, and the day came when our Arts and Crafts teacher posted the notice for the play auditions. I walked into the audition with an air of a movie superstar. I looked at the other hopefuls with a look that said ‘Take a bow junior, the man is here’.

When my turn for the audition came, I went confidently on stage with a piece of paper with some dialogs written on it. I got my first blow when I looked at the dialogs. The dialogs were for a foot soldier in Ram’s Vaner Sena!! Ok now picture this, here I am a matured superstar actor, thinking that I will be given Ram’s or at worst Lakshman’s part but I get dialogs of a soldier monkey! I looked at the judges and said ‘Madam, there must have been some mistake. These dialogs are wrong’. Saritamadam, our Arts and Crafts teacher, looked at me with an unemotional face and said ‘Anirban, you don’t fit into any other character’. I can tell you, I felt my blood rushing to my head! I, the superstar don’t fit into any other character? The character fits on to me! So what do you mean, I fit into a soldier monkey’s character? Are you calling me a monkey? I sparked back ‘I dont want to do this part!’ and walked off the stage.

Weeks went by, the Ramlila practise was going on. I never even went close to the school wing where those ‘lesser actors’ were practising what I thought will be the greatest disaster humanity has seen. Then the evening came, the evening for which everyone was waiting, the evening of our annual function. The school was decorated, all the blacklisted students were given forced leaves, classes were arranged properly, strict dress code was enforced, all in all a complete war drill. The stage, oh the  magnificent stage, was decorated beautifully. I hated it thought, for the simple reason because I couldnt get on it! I just hated the sight of it.

I was roaming around like a lost soul when Saritamadam caught me. She was carring a bag of flowers ‘ganday kay fool’. Now let me describe this ganday ka fool. This flower is a compact flower but you can separate its petals. These separated petals are used in all Hindu ceremonies. If you don’t remove the petals and keep the flower intact, its a bit heavy and can be thrown to a distance with good accuracy. Sarita madam, completely unaware of these facts about this flower and my state of mind said ‘Anirban, take these flowers and sit in the front row with some of your friends. When they give the final pose of Ramlila, the pose when Ram, Sita and Lakshman stand in this majestic pose, shower these flowers on them. It will look wonderful’.

I always use to have very good friends. All my friends were like me, we were a bunch of hooligans. So I called on to my brothers in arms, and told them about the situation. We planned for a grand ending. We decided that when they cast that pose we will hit them with these compact ganday kay fools. One of my good friends suggest that we dip these flowers in ink water (its a solution of 30% ink and 70% water, usually used during pre-holischool days). We all argeed that this friend of mine (name withheld due to security reasons) was a brilliant man and his idea is a proof of that.

So there we were, five of us sitting in the first row with ink dipped ganday kay fools in our hands. The way we were smiling, everyone thought we were these religious good boys who had travelled a great distance to see this Ramlila.

Let me describe the gathering. We were sitting in this big assembly ground in the first row with the whole school sitting behind us. After that, there was a row hosting all the top army brass, behind that all the proud and happy faced parents. Yes my parents were there too. They were a bit sad that I was not one of the participants. Alas! if only they knew about my engagement that day.

So the Ramlila started, I have to say, Sita was looking good. Guess in school if a girl wears sari, you think she is looking good. They did perform pretty good and people were clapping. That gave me more fuel, more strength, more hatred. By the time the last pose was caste, I was fuming. Now imagine this, here are some 5 people on the stage, with all those costumes standing in this totally religious pose. At this very pristine moment we started hitting them with these ink dipped ganday kay fools. Man! I will tell you, the happiness it gave me was priceless. They were getting hit by these compact flowers, splashed with ink and water but the only thing they could do was to keep the pose till the curtains went down. Oh yes, they had to give this divine smile as well. More satisfaction on my side. The best past was after the curtains came down, they had to come from behind the curtains to take the bow, oh it was perfect. 5 mythological characters taking a bow with ink marks all over them.

I never did understand my teachers. They never saw the fun part in all this. They were not amused even a bit, in-fact they were furious. The summer holidays were starting from the very next day. So there was no way we 5 were going to get punished within 1 month. We knew after a month all the ink strains will be gone, we will be in a new class. We will have new teachers, new books and a new class room. That’s exactly what happened. We joined school after the summer holidays and we only found some angry faces looking at us. Pleasure and satisfaction they gave me. The only sad part is, I never got invited for another play till the time I was there in that school. But what the heck! I loved every moment of it.

If you were one of those unfortunate 5 actors, take my apologies. Atleast we never used pure ink! Hope that incident didn’t harm your acting career.

Father’s walking stick

MHOW, 1986: I was 5 years old. You haven’t seen my photograph (good thing) but I can tell you that I had a physic resembling a 4′5″ burned out wooden plank. The term short dark and planksome could have been applied to me perfectly. I was a kid who had this immense capability of generating ideas that definitely  didnot help society. There was a talk on whether I should be allowed in this civilized world. Anyways, enough praise about myself, to get on with the story…

Our national sport , no! it’s not cricket!, its hockey. This game has given legends to Indian sports. It has also given us frustration, disappointments and other warm feelings. We were once the world champions in Hockey. No I am not joking, and no we were not the only country playing hockey at that time! Being the sport of legends, it was a sport of choice in army cantonments. Hockey is a simple game with simple requirements. All you need is a patch of land, some sticks with a little nook at one end, a ball and some happy stick swinging people. The rules are easy, you have to score goals, preferably for your own team. You have to hit the ball with the sticks, again preferably. If you end up hitting your opponents, well what the heck! the ball is very small anyways.

As you might have guessed it by now, I like to play hockey. There was just one simple problem, I didn’t have a hockey stick. At that age, all kids are possessive about their stuff. So the option of getting a hockey stick from someone else was also not there. Hence it was pretty much up to me to find a hockey stick.

I am a sort of person who likes to improvise. So I started looking out for sticks that can be approximated as a hockey stick. It was then that I saw my father’s walking stick! My father had this dress code for going on walks. Kurta-pajamas and a walking stick. The walking stick was his prized possession. He use to tender it with groundnut oil. He use to polish it at regular intervals. It had a beautiful hooked shape handle and the handle had embroideries on it. All-in-all a posh walking stick. Now if you see it through my eyes, its not a walking stick, its just an inverted hockey stick.

Army offices have half day on Wednesdays and Saturdays. My father use to come home at 3:00 PM on half days, and at 6:00 PM on normal days. My playing time were from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, daily. Now you can understand my brilliant scheme. The plan was simple and effective; I will take the walking stick, sorry, the inverted hockey stick (hence called IHS) to play at 4:00 PM and return it back at 5:30 PM. Will clean it before putting it back. On my dad’s halfdays, I will play football. Perfect isnt it? Yes! it was for 3 weeks but then tragedy stroke.

It so happened that my father came back home early on a normal day. Exceptional situation, something I didn’t plan for. He must have been proud to see his charcoal plankdribbling past opponents, proud till he saw his walking stick being an IHS in the hands of Dhyanchand. People told me later that he parked his scooter and started running towards me. I saw him a bit late. I saw him and my IHS transformed into a red hot iron rod. Dad was almost at an arms length when I saw him. I did the only thing I could do, threw his walking stick towards him. I have no idea why I did that, maybe to live a few more milliseconds. My bad luck was in full force. The walking stick hit him on his right shoulder. At that point I started running like crazy. I can bet that I would have broken the 100 mts world record. I turned around and saw my father rubbing his right shoulder. He had is walking stick in one hand.

I was in hiding for rest of the day. My mother took me back home after giving me assurances that the sliced Bipul (Bipul – yours truly) was not on the dinner menu. It was next morning when I came face to face with my Dad. He just said ‘If you touch that stick again, the stick will touch your back’.

Now my father is 67 years old. God has made him so strong that he doesn’t require a walking stick. Maybe I did take my father’s walking stick, forever.

United we fall, divided we live….

In a 5 years study, Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam has proved that multi-cultured societies harbor a greater amount of mis-trust than homogeneous societies. Taking as an example the Mexican society, he states with examples that Mexicans trust no one outside their own immediate family. Mexican society is divided into three distinct sects – The elite whites, who run most of the industries and are in govt., the middle class browns and the destitute blacks. One group blames the other for its state and the society never progresses beyond a certain extent.

Are problems in India also due to the same reason? Is the common place corruption, over populaton and under-achivement also due to the prevalent mis-trust among us? Politicians and nationalists have gives us slogans painting a picture of unified India, the land of ’unity in diversity’! Are we actually that? How many of us Hindus trust Muslims? How many Muslims trust Hindus? Even in Hindu communities there are marked divides on trust factor. In Bengal, we dont trust the Biharies or the Marwaries as they will supposedly rob an honest, hard working Bengali.

Maybe the corruption in the govt. corridors is due to the fact that the people in govt. do not trust the judgement of their voters. Maybe they have deceived the voters while contesting for the position. Deceived someone because they do not trust him/her with their carrier.

The mistrust among the society is very painfully visible during evil things like religious riots. Normal trustworthy people are slaughter based on a set stereotype, hence inducing more mis-trust among them.

India has a diversified society. The only thing that we seem to agree upon is the universal love of cricket! Excluding that we have no commonality. Each of the different communities has different outlook on things. In south, elections are driven by political orientations of Movie stars; in east, its driven by muscle power and totalitarian parties. South Indians have build in image of a North Indian as being a corrupt, incompetent person; while harboring a superior view of themselfs. North Indians have also cultivated a mental picture of South Indians as Anti-nationalist people who will stay in their own group, eat their own peculiar food and will take the first flight out of this country.

Is there a way we can start improving our trust quota? Can we start turning all the wheels of Indian society in a coherent manner? Presently no Indian political party can come up with an overall national manifesto. Each of the political parties has to write different manifestos for different regions and communities. Can we outgrow this mis-trust amoung ourselfs? Can we stand-up and say to the world:

“Look at us, we have ‘unity in diversity’”

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