Brother in a Bengali school.......................

My cousin, Shontu is a bit of a genius. Apart from being a rich and successful media professional, the otherwise shy Shontu is also a language expert. He is a proven pundit of not one, not two but four different languages.

Shontu can walk, talk and rock in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese with equal élan. Of course, he also claims to be an exponent of the Mishing, Hmar and Tangkhul languages, but I would rather like to believe in his mastery over the first four more recognisable ones, because geniuses often have the bad habit of exaggerating.

There is a very interesting anecdote about my French bearded brother’s meteoric rise as a language genius. The seeds of his talent were sown right in his childhood, but he was then blissfully oblivious of his enviable calibre.

As enamoured by the glory of English education as anyone else, Shontu’s parents also put him a convent school. The bespectacled genius of course didn’t take much time to adjust himself to the missionary surroundings. In only four years of English medium schooling, he mastered the Queen’s language and went head and shoulders above his peers.

He was now a perfect English kid, spitting English quotes and proverbs all the time, even when not needed. But one day, Shontu took his English expertise way too far. Back he came from his school and gleefully shouted, “Hey Mom , hey Dad, what’s up?”.

That was blasphemy in an educated Bengali middle class family, where English education was important, but values and maintenance of traditions were paramount. A kid who had been taught to address his parents as the good old “Maa and Baba” and touch their feet every morning, was now an expert of English slangs!

Shibu Kaku (as I called Shontu’s father), decided that was the end of my cousin’s English odyssey. He was admitted in a Bengali medium school the next very day. Poor Shontu was back to “Maa and Baba” in a bang. But that step did him wonders, he picked up his mother tongue like fish to water. The change made him more matured and made him aware about the importance of learning more languages. And, so, he keenly learnt Hindi, the national language and Assamese, the state’s language with great interest.

Even today, he shudders when I remind him of “Hey Mom, hey Dad.......” and swears that he would strictly make his kids stick to “Maa and Baba”.......come what may.

But wasn’t Shibu Kaku a bigger genius himself? Had he not taken that seemingly drastic step that day, Shontu would have remained a one language freak like me and many others of our generation. The story also has a message for all the English education aficionados that, there is an urgent need to rebuild our education system, otherwise many rich Indian languages might die untimely deaths.

Spitting to glory..................

The average Indian asks an interesting question to himself everyday - What would a few micromilligrams of human saliva do to spoil the health and hygiene of his city, town or village? Invariably, he finds that that his ‘little showers of blessings’ could do no harm to the hygienic condition, and so he goes on a spitting spree.
He spits right, he spits left, he spits centre, he spits at the road, he spits on the wall, he spits on the bus, he spits on the trains, he spits everywhere he can. This spitting habit of ours is actually an integral part of our illoustrous culture and heritage. We have been spitting in public places since time immemorial. We find opportunities to spit in almost all reasons and seasons.
Our ancestors hold the distinction of bringing colour to the spitting spree by inventing the betel leaf or paan, which changes the colour of the spitted discharge to a wonderful red, once chewed. So, our walls often have awesome designs which are the contribution of the paan chewing gentlemen of the country.
Remember, the great Amitabh Bachchan spitting to glory in the song ‘Khaike Paan Banaras Wala’ in the blockbuster ‘Don’? The sequence was such a hit with the masses that Shahrukh Khan repeated the sequence with more energy and vigour in Farhan Akhtar’s remake of the same film. There is a difference of almost 25 years between the two Dons, there are a lot of dissimilarities between the two as well, but spitting hasn’t gone out of fashion even today, has it? Spitting is also a way of upholding one’s prestige, in Desi lingua ‘Izzat’. Innumerable heroes have rejected the fortune offered by their lover’s father by saying – “Main thukta hoon tumhari daulat par” (I spit on your wealth). I wonder why the west don’t learn from us.
The other day, a blue line bus driver heaped at least a litre of litter on me from his mouth while driving his mean machine. Me, poor fellow, riding a rickety two wheeler did not have the courage to hit back at him.
After all, if a blue line bus driver lets you off by simply spitting at you, its not a bad deal at all, I thought. Having killed more than 100 people this year in Delhi, they are surely capable of doing much more damage. So, i quietly rushed back to my house and took an unwilling bath facing the winter chill.
Bad habits die hard, and mass bad habits such as this actually never die, so long live the spitting republic........................

A march back to history

The great German playwright Goethe had once famously said, “He who moves not forward, goes backward”. The legendary litterateur’s observation is even more apt for the present era, because if we don’t move forward with the times and remain stationary, the fast moving world will leave us way behind. So, the word 'rat race’ has been coined, wherein we all are running to remain in the fray not knowing where our destination lies.

India as a whole, along with her states and cities, is also not untouched from this phenomenon. As ministers make a beeline for investors to bring business to their constituencies, they are also finally looking at improving infrastructure to ensure rapid growth. Contrast to this, our once lovely town Silchar is still far removed from these modern day developments.

We are still caught in an ever continuing time wrap. Everything seems to be moving in super slow motion. While roads take ages to repair, the darkness that envelopes the town in the evenings often reminds one of the haunted and spooky alleys shown in Hollywood horror flicks.

The state of infrastructure is so pathetic that the Americans might some day qualify the town as a specimen of the prehistoric world. The roads can be a perfect example of how the narrow lanes of the prehistoric days looked like when there was no blacktopping technology, the monsoon floods would give an idea about the sufferings of the common man in the absence of proper drainage and the candle lit houses would be a superb specimen to show how people spent their evenings before the invention of electricity.

We have lost touch with the modern era long back. We have also moved back from history to pre history. Now the town is working hard to move from pre history to ancient history. We have all read fairy tales of how people would travel for days through mountains and rivers facing innumerable challenges to reach their villages in the ancient times. Those of you who have walked kilometres facing constant landslides at Sonapur and then taken a boat to reach a flood hit Silchar from Guwahati would agree that our travels back home are not far removed from those fantasy tales.

While other parts of the country fight because SEZs and multinational industries are taking away farming land, our farmers don’t even know the meaning of an SEZ. Forget an SEZ, at least give us a factory where hundreds can get employment, but even that is an impossibility. Whatever little we have (read Cachar Paper Mill) is also on the brink of closure. MPs become ministers, ministers become cabinet ministers and municipal chairpersons graduate to become MLAs, but the town continues to remain in a morass of hopelessness and gloom.

So how can we make a difference? Democracy doesn’t inspire much confidence. Whether ‘Ram’ wins or ‘Rahim’, nothing is going to change, nothing has changed over decades. But, unfortunately democracy still remains our best bet, because if we decide to get rid of our democratic ethos, guns and bombs would be the last resort.

Let us all unite and make democracy meaningful. Let us tell ourselves that, leaders without accountability would not be entertained anymore, let us be vigilant to ensure that the right people get to fight for the post of our leader. Most importantly, let us have the guts to ask questions and add a price tag to our votes.

Red Monday................

Monday morning is not quite blue today,
For its been all red since Saturday.
Human faith is in complete tatters,
To live, and not explode, is all that matters.

As khaki covers the cityscape,
I just don’t have a way to escape.
I must work, I must live
I must create a world – make believe,
Where the city shows great spirit,
To hell with the spirit, its our new habit.

Everytime a bomb goes off,
We engage in this grand show off.
Where we dare to live our lives again,
Claim ‘their’ efforts have gone in vain.

But do we have a second path?
How do we stop this bloodbath?
We are none but helpless creeps,
We carry on as our heart weeps.

We have survived another day,
But what when the next one comes our way?
We might escape yet again,
But with such a life, what do we gain?

Violence breeds in angry minds,
Another victim terror finds.
We must end this vicious turn,
And never let this nation burn.

But an end to it is not in sight,
Just waiting for the holy light.
Till comes the next dance of death,
Lets hold our lives with abated breath.

The Ghost is back

Who is a ghost? I asked mama,
A devil who’s never seen, she said.
What does he do? I asked her again,
He kills and is very mean, she said.

As years flied by, I never saw the ghost,
I gradually forgot his story,
The devil of my childhood, i feared the most,
Was now distant memory.

Now i was young, healthy and hale
Looking to win the world,
I was scripting a successful tale,
A new age was to herald.

But one fine day, as the clock hit six
Hundreds were blown away,
Bombs and guns, in a deadly mix,
Had done the work, they say.

Who has done it, was the question asked,
As we helped one another,
Get hold of him – the devil masked,
We all shouted together.

God came down to my dreams that night
And slowly whispered to me,
The Ghost is back, with all his might,
For all of you to see.

What did you do? I yelled at him,
Why didn’t you save?
I don’t know, you created him,
So its your turn to be brave.

I made man, nature and birds,
You created boundaries,
I taught truth, peace and good words,
You created worries.

You fought hard, and spoiled the world,
Now you all must pay,
Get united and save the world,
As the ghost holds his sway.

A nation full of billionaires

So, another western conspiracy is out in the open. All the tall claims by Uncle Sam that things are horribly awry in Mugabe's Zimbabwe have proved to be as false as his constant ranting about the presence of WMDs in Saddam's Iraq.

Zimbabwe is infact the only country in the world where almost each and every citizen is a billionaire. The citizens there are so blessed with riches that their messiah president Robert Mugabe issues Fifty Billion Dollar notes for circulation in the market.

Only if all this was true. Well, unfortunately this time it seems that the US of America and its western brethern have got it right. Robert Mugabe has lost it completely and has pushed his country to the brink of one of the most disastrous economic breakdowns ever witnessed in history.

Hyperinflation unofficially stands at four million percent today in the African nation. The government is issuing 50 million dollar notes as this apparently princely sum adds up to only a single US dollar.

While, 50 gm toilet soaps are cut into 10 pieces by shopkeepers and sold in exorbitant rates, 'Herald', the state owned English newspaper costs a whopping 15 billion Zimbabwe dollars.

It is probably the only country in the world where it does not pay to be a billionaire anymore .

Bringing an Indian connection to the situation in Zimbabwe, an unidentified NRI settled in Zimbabwe once deposited a billion dollar cheque in a Madhya Pradesh temple. The temple management, over the monn, thinking that it was sitting on a pile of wealth, promptly handed over the cheque to a local bank for encashment.

To the utter dismay of the priests there, the bank informed that the cheque would translate into a mere Two Rupees in Indian currency and that the processing fee for getting the international cheque encashed would be much more than that.

As would be the case with most Indians, my concerns about Zimbabwe emanate from its rapid decline as a cricketing nation. Zimbabwe's constant improvement as a cricket team always excited me in the early nineties.

The Flowers, the Goodwins and Johnsons created a realistic hope that the ten nation weak world of cricket would get a new powerhouse and the ICC's efforts to popularise the game globally would get an impetus. But a turbulent political regime has already scripted a sudden death for the gentlemen's game in Zimbabwe.

The country's main commercial activity, farming has taken a beating due to Mugabe's controversial land reforms. Things has reached such a pass that the official mint does not have adequate paper to print notes.

The world could afford the death of a cricket team but if Mugabe's mayhem continues, we might well see the death of an entire nation this time.

Brother in the Brothel

All you guys (if at all somebody is reading it) must be wondering as to why I should dedicate my first ever blog entry to something as blasphemous as brothels. Well, actually the seemingly dark and dangerous world of prostitution can also throw up hilarious experiences, just as a distant cousin of mine recently found out.

One rainy night, Ravi (name changed on request) moved out of his house with plans of a lusty sexual rendezvous. After all, 25 long years of unwanted and irritating virginity had taken its toll on him. So, here was our man out to explore a new world, a world that would take the real man out of him.

Braving the hostile albeit seductive weather, the Chemistry graduate reached the dark alleys of Shakerpara, the sex trade hotspot of the city. As he entered the lane with rickety concrete shacks on both sides, the braveheart in him suddenly deserted him leaving him absolutely stonemouthed to tackle the onslaught of the the hundreds of pimps and dalals who were all offering him the 'best deal'.

Stammering and sweating profusely as if he was writing an exam, Ravi followed a middle aged woman who somehow (inexplicably though) looked a bit more reasonable than others. He was led into a dark and stinking room with 'two tier' facility. Yeah, the two tiers are very similar to the sleeping arrangement in our railway coaches. Two couples were busy in the act on both the tiers producing sounds Ravi had only heard in porno films.

Though already repenting his decision to come here, Ravi nevertheless tried to put up a brave face and nervously babbled to the pimp to give him a single tier facility and the best girl in store. The woman, in her late forties, who was called 'Mausi' by everyone around stared at him for a few seconds and then started laughing loudly enough to irritate those busy in the 'tiers'.

My cousin was now scared wondering what Mausi was upto. Ruffling his hair gently, the otherwise stern lady told him, "Go son, you are too good for this place. Go home and drink milk".

Not able to hide his embarrassment, Ravi tried to regain his composure and said "No no, I am very capable. I am sure I will be good enough" as if he was putting his CV forward to a prospective employer.

The answer that he got in return was enough for him to swear that he wouldnt visit a brothel again in his life. "Jata hai ya main apne ladko ko bulaun" shouted the Mausi in her shrill voice. Ravi ran for his life cursing himself for the misadventure.

Its been two years since that fateful night and Ravi continues to be a virgin. Almost everyday he tells me , "Even the prostitutes rejected me. Where do I go now".