THE MAGICIANS

THE MAGICIANS

Welcome to the magic world of advertísing, the world of manipulation of minds. Welcome to a world where desire for a product can be artificially created, where the art of outlandishly clever salesmanship is practised - such as  'the art of selling a refrigirator to an eskimo'(Peter Drucker).

There was a time, not too far back, when the quality of a product determind its sale, nothing else. That was till the forties. You may recall brands with the stamp of quality that were constantly in demand - KIENZLE(Germany) CLOCKS. . . HERCULES (England) BICYCLES. . .Model-T Ford of USA . . . etc..

"If you make a better mousetrap", Ralph Emerson is said to have maintained, "the world will beat a path to your door".Those were the days when quality reigned supreme. People did beat a path to your door for the quality of your products. . . that was till the management boys materialised. . . !

The entry in the early fifties, of hordes of 'assembly line' MBAs, mass 'manufactured' in famous Institutes of learning, into the corporate world was a game changer. It changed the way people made their choice for purchases. With a dose of psychology they turned your wish-list upside down. Emerson's better mousetraps were lost in management's psychological war games, in crafty advertising wars!

The corporate world today is after the lucre. That's their Raison d'etre. It is  cut-throat competition all the way. It is a war - war against the competitors, war to conquer the minds of masses, war to make the corporate giants richer. The name of the game is maximisation of share holders' profit. And so the blue-eyed boys you hired for  mind-blowing sums tell you, for example, how many more words could be crammed into each page of a novel (to save on paper and thus increase profit) without losing readers - the dy/dx of the game of optimisation. And they tell you how to trick the target group into purchasing your products.

The trick is to make a man develop an intense desire to offer himself to the man-eating tiger on his own. They have a name for this Harakiri - 'Motivation'! And the modus operandi for this trick are taught in the management class rooms where the ideas of Abraham Maslow,
Frederick Herzberg's et al are drilled into you until they become your second nature. You develop 'models'  to control the way the public brains work.

You may have noticed that the good old common salt is back in the reckoning. A toothpaste man in a doctor's  white long-coat tells you in that TV visual  that his brand of toothpaste has salt in it. Great statement! But that was exactly what your grandfather had been doing in the past - cleaning his teeth with salt once in a while to make them extra white. And he got mocked at by these very same advertising blokes who offered the then 'scientific' (now reportedly harmful) fluoride in your toothpaste.

They have tools to develop in the target group a feeling of 'Inadequacy'. 'Target group' are those  sitting ducks who have the potential of being their next 'prey'.  "His shirt is whiter than my shirt because he washes it with DING DONG detergent." says the ad and your mind goes into a tailspin. Why not get DING DONG DETERGENT even though it is very costly.

Now you can see how they have succeded in planting the feeling of 'inadeqacy' in your mind - for a product you cannot afford.The problem of affordability is solved  by offering you credit. There is constant clamour for making loans cheaper - so that people  may buy the products they cannot afford and don't need in the first place. The corporate world is not interested in increase in the rates of interest on Government saving bonds which sustain the middle class and which the Government can use in development work !  They are interested in cheaper loans to customer to entice them to make non-essential purchases, to boost sales, to boost their profit, to boost SENSEX, NASDAQ, Dow Jones, and S&P ! This is a no-brainer to an educated person.

Thus people end up  taking an ego trip. Courtesy cheap loans they buy cars and clog the roads of world's cities, converting these roads into  2G internet lanes.

Advertising world has devised methods to overcome legal barricades. If law discourages the use of a product they device psychological advertisement to undo the damage. When statutary warnings first came to be written on cigarette packs on account of the DANGER of developing cancer, the format of ads changed.  They used celebrities who seemingly had the habit of scoffing at dangers and, incidentły, also smoked a particular brand of cigarette.

It is time there is some kind of ethics in advertising. It is overdue. When a celebrity endorses a product he should be made to take responsibility for making that endorsement and made an accomplice in public-disservice if the product's claim is false or the product is harmful. It should be deemed a case of cheating of the masses - punishable under the law as a crime.

The magic of a P.C.Sorkar or a  Houdini was of a different kind. It was harmless to the society. They entertained.

The magic of advertising may be entertaining. But it is not always innocuous. It can be an attempt at deception! It is time it is put under the microscope of legal scrutiny - in the interest of the society.

**

IN THE REVERSE GEAR (once upon a time in my student days)

IN THE REVERSE GEAR (once upon a time in my student days)

"MY heart aches, and a
drowsy numbness pains. . ."
That was John Keats.
(1795–1821) in
"Ode to a Nightingale".

My heart aches too when I go back in time as I do, time and again. That 'once upon a time' feeling ! That nostalgia !!

Life has been a long journey.The once familiar things are now missing. I still remember those long forgotten products. There was that pink G nib we put into the pen holder . . the ink well in the class-room desks. . . . the blotting
papers. The first fountain pen . . those iridium tipped nibs that lasted for ever . . .the HMV big black music-records and the old
gramaphone - we had to change the needle so often .. . . the Kolynos, gibbs and Macleans toothpastes which were threatening
to replace the nature's tooth
brush- the neem. . . .the Rexona soap of beautiful people . . . those heavy Duckback raincoats, . . the
Sola hats which kept the head cool in the tropical Sun . . . the "made in India" Afghan Snow face cream. . .that rectangular bottle of
PEPS throat lozenges . . . the Zalim Lotion ads . . . and those famous brands that everyone then used all
over the world - ZAM-BUK
ointment and KRUSCHEN SALT's yellow label bottles.. Household names once upon a time!

Memory comes in snapshots. You do not usually recall what happened before and after a
particular memory shot that you 'see'. It was Dr. Penfield who did groundbreaking research in the field of memory. He found that the
events of our life rest meticulously recorded in our brain for ever. A trigger in a particular cell is all you
need to resurrect the event
recorded in that cell and images come flooding back. The ability to recall depends on the intensity of that experience and the quality of the trigger.

There is no rationality in memory recall. Much as I would try, I cannot recall the name of that tall dark boy with chiselled features
and smiling eyes who always won prizes in my school debates! And yet I can recall that his father's
name was Ashtbhuja Prasad, that they lived in a house near the river, that they had a huge alsatian dog named Ringo!

Amongst the earliest of my
memories is a long tin-box
containing crisp biscuits neatly packed ! To keep it air tight this box came heavily plastered with
wax. They were possibly biscuits imported from Britain - the famous
"Huntley & Palmers" brand! And those big black-and-white-striped prism shaped peppermint drops are
no longer seen.

Bread ('dabal roti' in north India) then came unbranded, unsliced.
Freshly baked by bakers, it was sold in their own shops without any wrapper, any name. With a distinct pleasing aroma and taste
of yeast-fermented dough. A standard loaf of bread used to cost four annas (quarter of a rupee).

In my hostel days in Allahabad, a sauve Raza-Bakery man would come to the hostel early in the
morning, loaded with fresh bread, CDF butter, cakes and pastries. Afternoon treat was brought by a
rustic "bicycle man" carrying a steel trunk full of oven-fresh large soft buns, small plain cakes (scones) and fresh butter from the
nearby Bhatt-ji-ki bakery. He would deftly cut a bun across horizontally with a long bread- knife, toss in a blob of butter in between and hand it over for quarter of a rupee.

In the school days, there was that hawker who sold juicy sugarcane bits, the size and shape of the
carrom-board pieces, liberally sprinkled with real rose-water from a brass sprinkler. And a Cotton
candy man selling pink "Candy floss", his presence heralded by his ringing bell as he moved, a horde of kids yelling and following
in his trail - like the pied-Piper of Hamelin!! And then there was that biscope-man and his big round brass-box with several port-holes.
Kids would pay a nominal sum to peep through the port-hole while the bioscope-man rotated a handle to keep the visuals inside moving and gave a sing-song commentary!

As I dig into the past through the mist of time, I see a young naked man in just a loincloth scaling a
tall 'Taar' (toddy palm) tree inch- by-inch. He keeps shouting 'IDAHO, IDAHO' (whatever that may mean) to warn privacy-minded
folks in the neighbourhood of his presence up there overlooking their courtyards. He carried a large empty matka (earthen pot) on his back and with this he would replace the matka which he had
fixed there a day earlier which he would bring down. There were lots of toddy-drinkers in those days.
They would go to the "Tari-
khana" (toddy shop) in the early hours of the night, have their fill and come out blind-drunk. They staggered home to beat up their
wives if they protested! That was the story doing rounds in those days !

The first jet aeroplane of the
childhood days high up above in the sky, remained a mystery phenomenon for several weeks. That was late one evening in the
rainy season. The sky had cleared, the Sun was in the west, a little above the trees, washing the entire town in a brilliant orange glow. And there it came, high up in the
east, a tiny moving spec of white (that was the jet plane but even our science teacher did not know what it was) emitting clouds of
orange smoke as it travelled to the west. Next morning it was the talk of the town - a U.F.O.! Aliens from the planet Mars! H.G.Wells
resurrected!

But the most endearing memory is that of old one-eyed wily Molahoo, our escort to the children's park in the evening. We were small kids. As I and my sister ambled along to
the kids' park, he would tell us so many stories - of ghosts with their
toes pointing backwards and of that witch that lived in the great Peepal tree in our path to the park. That she sometimes came down at seven O'clock in the evening to terrorise people who came that way. We would hurry back home in
time to avoid running into that witch !! And Molahoo would be able to go home earlier, using the same
path, at times well after seven o'clock !

" Have you ever met the witch when you go home?" , I once enquired.

" Sure. But this amulet protects me !"

And he fished out an amulet he wore in a black twine around his neck !

"I flaunt this and up goes the witch !!"

*

MY CRICKETING YEARS

"MY  CRICKETING YEARS"

The title is somewhat misleading. I was a non-playing cricketer. My cricket career started with a first-ball wicket in my very first match against Govt.Jubilee school. That was also my last wicket  -there was no second wicket ever afterwards!  I faded away from active cricket like Deepak Shodhan, a forgotten IndianTest cricketer.

'My cricketing years' is more of a vicarious memory-clip. It underlines my love affair with Test matches, my addiction to the running commentary and  cricket records.

In my secondary school days someone once tuned in radio Australia in our Tesla radio-set in the unearthly hours one cold morning in january. That was when I first listened to a running commentry! And I got addicted.

Through early years there was more of agony than ecstacy in all those test matches. We were then in the habit of losing practically every match. And that too thoroughly. It was like a Dilip kumar film where the hero always lost the 'match' to the villain.

At Green Park Kanpur I was a mute witness to the doings of that west Indies serial killer called Wes Hall. With a red scarf around his neck he kept repeating his long and ominous run up to the wicket. He butchered all our players. And I sat there, helplessly watching the demolition work and munching roasted peanuts with salt. I could never see the balls leaving Wes Hall's hand. I only heard the sounds of his deliveries hitting the gloves of the wicket keeper (captain)Alexander! I suspect that our players also had the same problem with their eyes!

And a bigger humiliation came in (the then) calcutta where it looked like a match between "W.Indies  and school boys XI". Here is the score card of that Calcutta match:

West Indies 614 for 5 wickets declared.
India 1st innings
(all out) 124
2nd innings
(all out)154

West Indies won by an innings and 336 runs.

Next year I was reluctant to return to Kanpur for the 2nd test match against  Richie Benaud's Australia (19 December - 24 December 1959). That was the month when "Punja Maar", a psycopatïc serial killer was  "taking wickets" regularly in Lucknow and Kanpur. It was safer inside the house than in Punjamaar's working area!

But I eventually did go to Green Park Kanpur.  'Punja Maar' was caught. And so were Australians with their pants down as Jasu Patel returned an inning's magic spell of 9 wickets for 69, (and 14 wickets in the match) to turn the table on the kangaroos. The invincible Australians were beaten - skittled out at 105 runs!! That was in the days before Gavaskar and kapil Dev got us into the habit of  winning matches. and that impossibe wish-come-true put the whole nation on an LSD-high for a long time.

Talking about Gavasker of the early days is like talking about a maneater tiger let loose in a village. In his debut series in the West Indies he destroyed the home team. In Trinidad in the fifth Test he scored 124 and 220 and India had its first ever series victory over the West Indies - that too in their home terrain!. He was the second player in the world to score a century and double century in a test match and the first Indian to make four centuries in one Test series (his debut series at that!). He was the first Indian to aggregate more than 700 runs in a series, and this 774 runs at 154.80 remains, to this day, the most runs scored in a debut series by ANY batsman.

But the most  heart-stopping moment came much later, in 1990, in India vs.England at Lord’s. The date was July 30, 1990. India was in shambles requiring 24 runs to save the follow-on, with nine wickets down and that hopeless comic figure of Narendra Hirwani standing there to preside over the liquidation. Kapil Dev, at the batting end had just six balls. And he rose to the occasion in his inimitable style !  In those incredible few minutes he clubbed  Eddie Hemmings, dispatching the last four balls of that over to four successive glorious sixes and saved the follow-on! All the four red balls soared deep into the heavens, into the blue sky, four straight drives hit with the savage force of Kapil Dev's strong wrists, high over the head of the umpire. Lords had not seen this spectacle before, it may never see it again! As we say KAPIL . . DEV. .  KA. .  JAWAB. .  NAHI. .  (no one can be like Kapil Dev !!).

Times then changed. I lost interest in test matches after some cricketers spilled the beans about Match Fixing - that in a certain test match the players and the umpire joined hands with the betting syndicate and followed a written script  (just as film stars do in making films), and the whole match was totally pre-scripted for big money. What was the point in watching a pre-decided match? The element of 'glorious uncertainties' became a mockery.  I hung up my proverbial boots and started watching "Animal Planet".

I keep reminding myself that all the matches are not fixed, that Gavaskar stole the thunder on debut, that Tendulkar was as genuine as Bradman, and so was the record-breaking- sixteen-wicket  Hirwani. I tell myself that Kapil dev's four succesive sixes at lords were his own and not that of the betting-syndicate. But somehow it does not work. I have simply lost interest and got stuck in "Animal Planet".I don't watch test matches anymore. It is FINITO - in capital letters !!

                     **  

                   **
.,..

THE MAGIC MIRROR

THE MAGIC MIRROR

"Mirror mirror on the wall. who is the most beautiful of all?" asks the lady and pat comes the reply from the magic mirror,"you are, my dear lady".

Then one day SNOW WHITE spoils the fun and  usurps  that number one position. And the plot thickens!

That is, ofcourse, the evergreen tale of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS from your own childhood days.

The speaking-mirror is
everywhere. The desire for one-upmanship remains through life. It is in the nature of most people to  seek to be a cut above the rest. That explains the propensity to draw attention to such of your possessions as are out of reach for most others.

So there was the bizarre home refrigerator in (of all places!) the drawing room in early twentieth century crying to be noticed. So there was that huge radio in the forties in your drawing room noisily announcing its presence to your viditors and a crude but working T.V.  soon afterwards.. And lately there was, in late 1990s,  that small cellphone, always  in your hand !! 

The message was, " Look, I have got something you cannot afford".

Chetan Bhagat, a Punjabi, marries a Tambrahm and the earthshaking run up to their marriage is scripted in the book TWO STATES, a study of two cultures. Thus, as he maintains, a big house with shining marble floor is the dream of most Punjabi people and high scores in mathematics that of a Tambrahm. The wish-list varies from society to society. A big battle scar running across the face would be more of a status-symbol in people who place valour and honour above everything else. In many tribes even to this day it is so. And in some people it would just be a big shining gold tooth in the mouth!

Money, in our time, is a symbol of success and a manifestation of status. Riches, in whatever form, become a popular craze and an indicator of social success. In a lavish marriage that I attended a long time back, the groom's father exulted thus : "Very few can afford  lavishness of MY level".

So you get into a splurging spree if you have a surfeit of lucre. Second generation Indian diaspora in USA is doing exactly this by scripting bizarre events. Elephants have lately been in use in marriage procession there ! Deep-pocket diaspora has gone crazy! Read this:

"A few calls to the wedding planner and Minnie, a 3,175kg (7,000 pounds) grey Asian elephant, is on her way to Washington DC from Connecticut.

"Elephants are the latest
trend - and because there are not many around, the demand is always high,'' says Sonal Shah, who runs an event planning agency  'The Date'.

The cost of hiring an
elephant can go up to $
30,000 depending on
distance - but people still
seem to have the money to pay for it."
(BBC News.1 July 2008 ).

The ONE-UPMANSHIP cannot be done away.The magic mirror continues to be there. Only the context has changed. The question has been updated: "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the richest of us all" asks the  filthy-rich person to the mirror and the mirror drawls, "Its a pretty long list buddy. You continue to be still at number fortysix in the secret swiss bank accounts."

And then suddenly the mirror clouds up
even as the witches  gather around a bubbling cauldron underneath it, chanting, casting spells, conjuring visions of the future, and goading Men and women into 'foul'. And then the witches throw up their hands and scream in unison:

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and
filthy air."

The cauldron keeps bubbling even as Duncan turns in his grave. . . !

                 *******

                 

FOLLOW THE STAR

"FOLLOW THE STAR"

When he could not control the urge to smoke, he got up and proceeded to  the smoking compartment at the rear of the aeroplane. Lighting up a cigarette he inhaled deeply. . .!

Smoking could kill him. He was fighting to give it up He wanted to live. . . .

It was while he was brooding and smoking at the tail of the aircraft  that the plane went down and crashed. The tail broke away before the rest of the plane caught fire. He was the lone survivor !! Ironically everyone except the smoker died! Read this:

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-08-14/news/mn-2731_1_smoking-section

He was destined to live!

So you believe in destiny? If you do, you are trapped in superstitions. You are not progressive. To be called PROGRESSIVE you have to be in a constantly denying mode. Deny the existence of Destiny. Deny God. Anything that is not proven by science is wrong. If science says a thing does not exist, it does not exist. Plain and simple.

But there is a problem. Science is not infallible! Way back in 1904 when Yogi Ram Charak wrote in his "FOURTEEN LESSONS IN YOGI PHILOSOPHY"
( http://manybooks.net/titles/ramacharakayother06yogi.html )
( http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Ramacharaka%2C%20Yogi%2C%201862-1932 )
that human body had a magnetic field, SCIENCE was clueless about it. It has since been "discovered" that the human body does have its magnetic field!

Science has yet to discover the relationship between the human and the stars. It draws a blank here.  Science denies it and calls it a hoax. But Einstein had this to say :

“I do not know what I may
appear to the world, but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Einstein was not being modest. He was speaking the truth. Science has to cover lots of ground, miles to go. There are Truths beyond its comprehension - to be "discovered" later  as science evolves.

I do not know WHY the planets affect our lives.  But I  know that they do. There is definitely some connection between you and the heavenly bodies. Saturn in  your house number twelve can create a very bad spell when time comes. Full moon or jupiter in the fourth does the opposite. That is elementary Dr. Watson. Precision is difficult - what exactly will happen is  bit of a fine-tuning. Your horoscope in the hands of a REAL astrologer is your Time-Table on planet Earth. It is all there, pre-recorded. Whether you would be the CEO of a corporate entity or a lorry driver of a municipal corporation was already decided when you were born!

A horoscope (Vedic horoscope) is a frozen snapshot of the planets and constellations at the moment of your birth. It is time and place specific.  The making of such a horoscope is a simple excercise, the reading part is NOT. You cannot read a hororcope if your peneal gland is calcified ! That is where you connect with the divine.
( http://www.crystalinks.com/thirdeyepineal.html )

Almost everyone has a calcified Pineal gland by the time he/she is ten year old.And yet the world is full of commercial 'astrologers'.  These  dream-merchants claim that they can change your destiny, have your wish fulfilled. They are everywhere - you see them in magazines, Bill-boards, TV , internet. They are trying to earn a livelihood. It is pure business.  They are in a hurry to get rich.There is nothing divine there. So while the script of your life is available, you cannot find the real one who has a gift for prophecy, who is 'trikālajňa’. And when you find one, he is not inclined to tell you all. It is a catch-22 situation ! Your whole life-story, pre-recorded, is available, but  not available to you !

As recently as the middle of the twentieth century YOGA was ridiculed. It is now accepted as very scientific. The time is coming for astrology too. Astrology is going to be "discovered" by science. It will be then that it will be taken out of the hands of the carpetbaggers and placed in the hands of the 'scientists' - like the ones who created astrology in the first place - in the time before the biblical DELUGE, in the time of Mayan, Egyptian and ancient Indian civilizations.
                     *



DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

The mind is very fickle. You cannot just keep thoughts out of your mind. They keep appearing and disappearing. The older you are the more the onslaught of memories - the more the time-travel into the past. One moment you are a KG student occupying a tiny chair in the class room of the pretty miss Rachael in St. Mary's Convent school

and the next moment you recall your retirement party in the last office - garland and all. You have a group- photo too.

Many a time I have  found myself sitting in the verandah of my cousin's house in Allahabad. For whatever reason, the scene keeps coming back. He phoned me that his dad had come from Moradabad. I hopped into a cycle-rikshaw and came rushing to meet him. And there he was, sitting in the verandah with that relaxed reassurance, with that inimitable disarming smile.

He was a professor - knowledge, character,discipline,compassion and quite a few other attributes all rolled into one. Rare to find men of his calibre now. He was in England when Queen Elizabeth's coronation took place in early fifties and as a kid I had avidly read his letters to my father from England on pale blue onion paper. The handwriting reflected his character. My father maintained that nobody had a more beautiful handwriting and he was right. I am still to see a better one. Both the father and the son had removed the word FEAR from their dictionaries. Fearlessness and honesty make a dangerous cocktail. It invites trouble. And he had ample measures of it all his life.

And then the scene changes. A huge railway engine comes rushing noisily towards me

as I stand on platform no.1 holding my father's finger and it rattles me completely. But, then, I was only a kid - four year old.

Khalkhalji was not a kid !! He was twenty three when the railway engine drove daylight out of him. He had never seen a railway engine all his life up there in khantoli village in the kumaon hills and was for the first time ever on a railway platform.. And the irony is that he would find a job in the railways one week after that engine-fright.

The scene changes again. A stately elderly gentleman, our guest, is eating breakfast in our dining room. He has a  white towel tied to his neck covering his shirt-front and the lap. With each movement of his jaws a bit of water drips from somewhere under his chin - a  medical condition. He is A.D.P.  the cane commissioner - a master of riddles and playing-card tricks. He taught me to make stunning designs with a deck of playing cards with just some flicks of the wrists.

The kaledscope of memory flits to the FIRSTS - the first time I burnt a hole in a paper with a magnifying glass, the first time I had found continued balance while learning Cycling, the first time I made soap bubbles with the help of my mother, the first time I made a pinhole camera in the company of Teemal, our mali's(gardener's) son, the first time I made a matchbox telephone with fifty feet cord and talked to my sister.

And then I see the finality of it all - that last scene in the film ROMAN HOLIDAY where Gregory Peck is standing all alone in the empty Palace Hall , princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn) having gone back into the Palace after the press conference.

That more or less sums up life !!

                       *****

THOSE DAYS

'THOSE DAYS'

The world has changed. It was an altogether different world in those days!!

There was a time when you sent an ordinary telegram home from another city after a journey : "ARRIVED SAFELY". This would be delivered some twelve hours or even later at the cost of the then ONE rupee (over 100 rupees in today's value).

A long distance telephone call was called TRUNK CALL and had to be booked through the telephone exchange. These calls were very expensive, got connected after a long wait and there was so much noise over the telephone line that half the time was lost in high-pitched shouts of HELLO HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME!

Affluent people, then, kept huge radio sets prominently in their drawing rooms. The news at night was usually read by Melvill de Mello in his baritone voice after the time-beeps of nine O'clock. And there was that man with a golden voice, Ameen Sayani, who had just introduced the BINACA GEET MALA (the hit parade) in radio - at 8 pm every wednesday. People gathered round huge radio sets at 8 pm sharp and roads were deserted.

Radio, then, connected you to live cricket too as there was no TV. And Vizzi, the usual commentator, was more interested in his own stories and less in the ongoing match so after hearing loud background uproar when he indulged in his story-telling, you did not know what had happened out there on the cricket ground!

There were no inter-connected train compartments then. Each compartment was separate and there were four classes for a railway journey. The big First class coach had two cosy, wide, well cushioned lower berths and one upper. Other classes were Second, Inter and third classes. The third class was aweful and had not improved from what Mahatma Gandhi had found, much earlier. He had this to say:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24461/24461-h/24461-h.htm

Only the rich had cars and there were no scooters except in the film ROMAN HOLIDAY. Middle class people went about the town in a comfotable horse-drawn  TANGA and the poor in a bone-shaker EKKA. Kids always sat in the front side of the tanga as it was safe there but had to brave the horse's unending farts.

City roads were well made and lasted for long years without any pot holes. The one in front of our house was smooth and never needed repairs in my father's entire stay of eighteen years !

At four rupees a kilogram Ghee was the popular medium for cooking. Poor people generally used mustard oil for cooking in north India. DALDA had just arrived in its famous yellow tin. Pasturised butter was yet to come - fresh butter and tinned butter were available in Polson, kaventers brands but the most sought after fresh butter was Aligarh's C.D.F. (abbreviation of Government's Central Dairy Farm) butter.

A donkey with a load of clothes, followed by the washerman, was a common sight on the roads. Clothes were collected from homes for washing and delivered back, mercilessly washed and ironed, after a week.It was usual to find some buttons missing after each wash.Detergent powder and Lalita ji came later and washing machines later still. The most famous washing soap-cake for home-wash, in bright yellow wrapper, was SUNLIGHT SOAP at five annas for a big cake.

The (now ubiquitous) cooking-gas in red cylinders came much later and one had to choose between coal or firewood for cooking. Firewood was used in a home-made chulha made of bricks and clay. Every kitchen had a chimney on the roof to let out the bellowing smoke.

Khaki half pants with suspenders (called GALLICE then) were still there though not very common and in my childhood I had seen some decent visitors sitting in half pants and gallice in our drawing room. Suspenders (gallice) were used to hold trousers as well .

Those were the days when the world believed in the adage "spare the rod and spoil the child". All senior citizens reading this must have had their share of suffering at the hands of the master-sahebs (mas'sab in short). That was, then, a part of the growing up exercise.

There were other things too in THOSE DAYS such as the Blotting paper, copying pencils, holder pens with pure copper pink colour G nibs, manual ceiling fans, gramophones , candlestick telephones and so on.

That will be for another time !

                    *****

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

2.11.14  6 pm.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Long ago I was transferred from the mega-city Delhi to a smaller city Nagpur . My friends in Delhi maintained that I was going to a worse place where I would be miserable.  As it turned out, it was very enjoyable to live in Nagpur!

I discovered that small was beautiful!

To start with, for the same monthly rent that I had been paying for a  two rooms set in a multistorey building in Delhi, I had, in Nagpur, a single storey spacious accommodation with a backyard where I could do a bit of early morning gardening and grow some vegetables ! And the air was so clean and the surroundings so green that I started going on morning walks too!

Unless you are very rich, you will be far happier living in a small city.

While I lived in Delhi, there were emormous distances to cover and a  personalised transport was very expensive for me. I had  to travel by bus (there was no metro-rail in those days- even the metro is now getting too congested for comfort!). Regular use of a car or a taxi would mean heavy drain on personal budget. And what a bad experience it was to travel in a Delhi city bus!! It was not for nothing that the Delhi city bus service (named D.T.U in those days.- Delhi Transport Undertaking) was famously known as "Don't Trust Us" !! There were endless waits at the bus stops, unmanageable crowds in buses and unpredictable and unreliable bus timings.

In Nagpur the distances were short. One could save so much on time and petrol! And, besides, driving on uncongested Nagpur roads was enjoyable. In Delhi you had to drive through  mad traffic and heavy smog - which was sheer nightmare!

There was an efficent bus-service in Nagpur on a few routes. But more popular was a cycle-rikshaw - it was always there to take you anywhere and it was  cheap and pollution free. The city was full of big leafy trees, a variety of birds and butterflies! And the sky was real blue unlike the  smog-ridden pale sky of Delhi. On a cloudless dark night I could see the arc of the MILKY WAY stretching from the northern skies to the south. In Delhi you are not even aware that there is somethng called a "Milky Way" up there in the sky!!

We waste long hours in mega cities in travelling. When living in a small city we save this time and can utilise it for reading books, socialising and in indulging in a hobby! Yes one has so much more time in hand in a small city.Life there moves on leisurely - at a slow, relaxed pace. I became a member of a good public-library within days of arriving in Nagpur.

In those days Mr. Nayyar, the old silver-haired  proprietor, ran a popular south-indian restaurant near the Liberty cinema in Nagpur. He always greeted me with a radiant welcome smile as I entered the restaurant. I had made it a point to start the day by having a tall glass of  Nilgiri tea there before entering my office nearby. That was the only place where I could get high quality hot tea in those days. And his idli and Upama were also delicious !

I have always liked south indian restaurants. The stuff prepared there is wholesome, tasty and digestable. My favourite is steaming hot idli with an ample measure of coconut-greenchilli chutney.

A little later in Allahabad too I managed to discover a nice little south Indian cafe near the Lakshmi cinema in the university area. The manager was a lanky Tamil young man who seemed to like me. To reciprocate his warmth I bought a LEARN SPOKEN TAMIL primer and picked up a good deal of daily-use tamil sentences. It surprised him! How I enjoyed it!! Could I have done this in fast-paced impersonal Delhi ?

Smaller cities have family-run general stores (popularly known as mom-and-pop stores in USA). Unlike the super markets and mega stores, these small stores,not far from your house, have a relaxed personalised atmosphere . And they believe in good relationship with customers. Let me recount an interesting incident relating to one such store.

It so happened that once I  forgot my new scooter-helmet somewhere in the market. I could  not recollect where I had left it and had given up hope of finding it.  One day, as I walked down the main market road, a teenage boy came  running from behind and breathlessly said that a particular shopkeeper far back in the road was calling me. I was tired and reluctant to go back but he managed to take me back to a shop. When I reached there, the owner greeted me warmly and handed me over my helmet which I had left in his shop a long time back!

So that is the way you enjoy living in a small city. You have more time in hand, you do not keep wasting time in waiting for a bus or in endless travel. There are no traffic jams, no constant high-decible honking of horns, no traffic lights to beat ! And people care for you.

So small Is Beautiful indeed so far as  living in a city is concerned. If you want to live life King-size on a small budget you must opt for a small city. You have so much to gain there. And the only thing you leave behind is a TENSE, MAD, FAST-PACED, NOISY, POLLUTED WORLD  !!

THE BIG FISH SYNDROME

"THE BIG-FISH SYNDROME"

Somebody close to your house cares for your needs.

In that Mom And Pop Store (some call it General Store) in your town you get a lot of things you need. You have  just to cross the road, walk a little distance and there they are, the friendly people of a family, handing you over the things of your daily needs, for a reasonable price. And you get to meet other town-folks there and chat. It feels so convenient, comfortable and homely.

The other day I found a comment in the internet about the popularity of these mom-and-pop stores. Let me share it with you. (quote):

"I live in a tiny town,
and the mom and pop
store here has a little bit
of everything. It's really
nice not to have to drive
twenty miles to get gas, a
snack, or some over-the-
counter medicine.
The couple who owns the
store decided what to sell,
and they thought of
everything that people
might need urgently and
tried to keep it in stock.
It's awesome to be able to
walk down the street and
pick up some headache
medicine or a bag of flour,
and if I'm about to run out
of gas, it's great not to
have to run on fumes to
the nearest big station."
- kylee07drg

It was not always like this. And it will not always be like this.

You must have seen the cartoon where a #BigFish is about to eat a small
fish, but there is a still bigger fish about to eat both of them ! That is what modern retail marketing is. Big business houses are out there to swallow  up the small stores, changing the face of retail marketing.

If you look back you will realise that our ancestors toiled hard for even the basic needs of shelter,drinking water and food. They had to collect firewood from the forest to cook the food they collected. And they rubbed flint and iron to make a fire.They had also to make their own weapons, their own footwear, their own clothing, their own medicines! It was an awesome task , an unending toil.

And then came the age of marketing - at first it was quite simple, convenient and elementary. John made several extra pairs of footwears. Paul made  lots of hunting knives and Peter made  so many cooking pots. Each one made what he was good at. The extra products thus made by people became 'money' as they paid for the things of their need by giving these extras in exchange. This kind of marketing, known as the barter system, continued for a long time until standardised coins came into use.

Marketing then became more organised. And gradually more sophisticated. And as time rolled on  it  became more and more complicated until, as we see now, it has become extremely cut-throat and war-like.

There was a time, a hundred years back, when everyone knew the most trusted brands of products. And this was  without the help of the modern persistent aggressive advertising, Classic examples of products that needed little advertising were alarm clocks and radio-receivers sets of Germany, T-model ford of USA, the Harris tweeds and the Raleigh bicycles of Great Britain, the Swiss wrist-watches, the Sheffield knives - made in Sheffield , a city in
South Yorkshire , England.
And so on.

It was not without reason that Ralph Emerson had then famously said (quote):

"If you build a better mousetrap, the
world will beat a path to your door".

And they did beat a path to the manufacturers.

That was, as they say, in the good old days. It is not so any more.

I have an issue of the Readers Digest of the year 1949 from my father's collection and you will be surprised to know that it is without any advertisements - (Father Forgets, one of the most celebrated articles ever, appeared in Readers' Digest in that year).

And then in early fifties came the Business Management Schools and the army of MBAs And they turned the world upside down. Now the focus shifted to making as much money as possible at the cost of the society and maximization of the company's profit. They developed mathematical models - the dy/dx of manufacturing, to cut down costs and  they systematically brainwashed the consumer through advertising models based on the theories of Abraham Maslow,  Frederick Herzberg and others. They developed new tricks of marketing, they built new supermarkets and Huge Malls, giving a new definition to retail trade. And they drove daylight out of the friendly mom-and-pop stores.

The change is  welcome to the teenagers of today who are allured by the glitz of the malls but older people were more comfortable with, and are nostalgic about, their friendly neighborhood mom-and-pop stores.

The inevitable cannot ofcourse be stalled. As Lord Tennyson maintained, “The old order changeth yielding place to new " . Change is indeed the way of life.

Fifty year from now the teenagers of today will be old. They will then look back in nostalgia to the times of big Malls of the early 21st century. But a more fiercely competetive new order will then replace these malls with a different face of retail marketing for a yet another new generation ! The Shylocks of the world of marketing will grow stronger and stronger, richer and richer in the name of the so-called democracy which is a far cry from Jefferson's dream of power of the people !

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TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR

TWINKLE  TWINKLE  LITTLE  STAR !

Once upon a time our planet was far less polluted. The colour of the sky in my town was real sky blue.As I walked down a deserted dark street on a moonless night, I  could see the glistening ribbon of the road ahead in the faint glow of starlight! And as I walked  I had a great number of glow worms (I called them JUGNOO) keeping me company, moving along as the modern jet aeroplanes do now - intermittently emitting light ! That was an experience so totally denied by pollution nowadays.

Nobody then knew what  smog was except, may be, in a few big industrial cities in the west. In those days, on a cloudless moonless night, the clear black sky was densely studded with  countless twinkling stars against a pitch dark background. It was just like in the popular nursery rhyme.

In the summer months we used to sleep in the open at night. It was much cooler outside. Only the people who have slept under the stars can know what a blissful summer time experience it is! Through the night the breeze brings different pleasant smell as it keeps changing direction. And there is that almost imperceptible feeling that dew is cooling your bed sheets. You can sense the changes in the face of nature through the night. And you wake up to the call of the first cock as he crows to announce the arrival of the wee hours of a new dawn!

The towns, then, were not  crowded as today and most  houses had a good deal of open spaces around them. Most houses had a CHABUTARA in the open in the courtyard. It was a raised circular or rectangular platform of brick and cement, some two feet above the ground. It was usually large enough to accommodate a few cots for sleeping under the stars!

We had a fine Chabutara in our house too and we always sprinkled a few buckets of water on the chabutara which further cooled it. A table fan made it even more enjoyable to lie there.

When I go back on a journey into the past I find myself lying flat on my back in a cot in the 'Chabutara' in the summer months and gazing at the sky, at the countless twinkling stars. Above me in the sky a white band of starsdust stretched from the north to the south (see photo). We called this Akash Ganga (Milky Way). It is a nebulous white haze and is said to contain upto four billion stars including our own Sun within its fold. I wonder how many of today's kids have time or inclination to  gaze at the milky way or the constellations !

As I lay there I found most of the stars moving stealthily westward all through the night. But the polaris or North Star in the north (we called it DHRUVA) remained rock steady at one place throughout the night and the Great Bears (sapta rishi for us) revolved slowly around it.There is a mythological story connected with Dhruva star (north star). Let me recount it to you.

It is said that the child prince Dhruva, son of king Uttaanpaad was a great worshiper of lord Vishnu. As the story goes, the six year old Dhruva began intense meditation on lord VISHNU and the lord one day suddenly appeared before him in all splendour (see the famous painting by Raja Ravi Verma) and asked him to have his wish fulfilled. Dhruva would ask for nothing worldly. The lord then decreed that Dhruva would live a long and happy life. He further decreed that after his death Dhruva would become a  celestial body which would not  be touched even by the final cataclysm . And that celestial body, according to the hindu mythology, is the star Dhruva in the north (the north star).

To continue with the star gazing, in the sky in the south west there was that bright constellation called Orien Hunters and my father, who had a great interest in astronomy, would explain to me that the three bright equidistant shining stars in the middle of the constellation, were the Orien Hunter's belt. And cutting aross this belt at an angle, I could see a set of faint stars in a straight line making the hunter's dagger! And right above me, far far into the heavens, was a hazy small constellation known as The Kite.

Some of the twelve sun signs of the zodiac were there too and moved steadily through the night, amongst them the shining Saggitarius  peeping through the haze of the milky way. 

As time rolled on, the population and pollution in the towns steadily increased. Houses with big open compounds (with 'Chabutara') gave way to compact housing colonies, with houses close to each other. And the custom of sleeping in the open under the stars became obsolete for want of sufficient open spaces to cool the air.  The Chabutara also consequently disappeared. Otherwise too, with a constant blanket of haze over the towns, twinkling stars have become a thing of fairy tales only and there is nothing out there in the sky to see on a dark moonless night except a few very bright stars.

The time when TWINKLE  TWINKLE  LITTLE  STAR will lose its meaning altogether is fast closing on us!!
    
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THE OLD MAN AND HIS RIDDLES

THE OLD MAN AND HIS RIDDLES

A dozen children, some of them my school friends, were squatting in our lawn that summer evening facing the gentleman I will call ADP. He was sitting  in a comfortable  cane-chair puffing his cigar. He was visiting us from another town.

ADP was master of riddles and children loved him for that ! We looked forward to his visits.

He cleared his throat and began a new riddle . . .

"  . . . Jack used to keep all his socks, twenty black singles and twenty maroon singles - in all forty - in a small cardboard box near the shoe rack. . ."  ADP began. He looked at the kids. They were all very attentive.

" . . That night Jack was leaving for a party at his big boss's house. He was already late and the boss had phoned him. He picked up his shoes and as he was hurriedly opening the box of socks to pick up two socks of the same colour, total power failure occured. Darkness came."

ADP paused for effects, enjoying his cigar. The kids had inched closure in exitement, eyes wide open.

" . . . Jack needed two socks of the same colour urgently. He would put them on later when he reached the boss's house. Now the question is this : Jack cannot see the colour of the socks in total darkness. What is the minimum number of single socks that he  should pick up and rush to his car, along with his shoes? He has no time".

He did not have to wait. Answers came quickly

" He should carry the whole box" said Jaswant. He seemed to have missed the important requirement in the riddle - the MINIMUM.

" No ! ten will be the minimum " said Asha. She was a sweet seven year old neighbour.

And many more kids answered. . .  But they did not have the correct answer, none of them.

" Okay, I will tell you the answer in a while. But, first, here is another. . . . "

ADP was much older than my father. He was tall, with sharp features, sharp mind and a affable temperament. He had a booming voice which even Katwaroo, our cook, could hear in the far off kitchen.

Every visit of his made me richer by a few riddles or playing-card tricks. I still remember the trick of setting playing-cards for a magic card-game  which he had taught me in my childhood. It was done through  a secret rhymed phrase! Here it is :

"Eight kings threatened to save nine fair ladies for one sick knave". It helped me to set cards in this
order:   -8-K-3-10-2-7-9 -5 -Q-4- A-6-J .

"CHASED" was the memory code in which this arrangement was to be set by alternating Club Heart Spade and Diamond (Club Heart >A> Spade >E> Diamond = chased)!

For a long time through my childhood I baffled kids and adults alike by setting cards thus and, as they stole a card from the deck I would in a trice tell what card it was!

ADP had an infectious laughter and he would laugh and make us laugh after tricking us kids with riddles such as this :

"An electric train is running at 60 miles per hour  from Bombay (now Mumbai) heading south east toward Poona (now Pune). A wind is blowing from east to west at 30 mph. In what  direction will the smoke from the train's engine go?"

Why did ADP prefer the company of kids? Was he yearning to revisit his own childhood- a period of innocence, of hope and curiosity sans Cynicism? A child's life is so uncomplicated! And Children get pleasures out of small things of life!

Whatever may be the reason, the old gentleman enlivened the days of my own childhood, making them memorable even now - through the mist of the intevening decades !!

DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

The man who came to our house with the black two-piece candlestick telephone (see photo) rang up my father after installing it. Father was in in his office  and this guy told him that the phone was now installed.

In those days very few homes in the town had a telephone. This was our first phone.

I had noted that "Sahib salam" were his first  words spoken into the circular phone mouthpiece to my father.And then,before disconnecting  he said "please talk to your son now" and shoved the candlestick contraption close on my face and the receiver on my ear, asking me to speak to my father.

I was then a five year old boy and this unexpected  act of his made me very nervous.

I heard my father's voice in the ear-phone.  "Hello son. Are you there ? speak up." he had said.

"Sahib salaam", I said abruptly as I did not know what else to say and then, overawed, I ran out of the room !

Yes those were my first words on a phone. I heard my father laugh loudly in the earphone when I said this!

There used to be manually operated telephone exchanges in those days. Automatic dialling came later. " Number please ", a voice would say whenever I lifted the ear-phone off the hook and I would, in panic, replace the earphone hurriedly back on the hook.

After a few days of hesitation I learnt what to say. My school friend's number was 27 so I was told to just say "two . . seven" into the candlestick's mouthpiece. I did this and the next thing I heard was the voice of my school friend in the receiver. That was sheer magic! (Thank you Alexander Graham Bell).

We kids used to have our own tin-can telephones. It comprised of two (cigarette) tin-cans connected to each other by a very long  thin cord. One of us spoke into a can and the other kid, standing far away received the message by keeping the cord stretched and placing the other can  to the ear. But the real phone was some different. It enabled me to talk with ease and clarity to my friend who lived so far away!

Soon this "number please" guy got familiar with me  and sometimes found time to chat. I fondly called him Verma uncle.

Like any child  I kept asking too many questions about the working of the telephone and the whereabouts of this faceless "number please" chap so my parents ultimately decided to take me to the telephone  exchange.

As I entered the  heart of the telephone exchange building the first thing that caught my attention was the huge plug-board panel with innumerable plug-in cords and the blinking lights. And then I saw someone shifting plug-in cords and uttering "number please". This chap in his thirties turned out to be "uncle Verma" and was absolutely delighted to meet me. While talking to me he kept an eye on the plug-in  board. A tiny bulb would suddenly light up and he , after his patent "number please" act, would plug-in some cords to connect the two numbers and resume talking to me !

That was a long time back, in my childhood, and is now a mere memory snapshot. As time rolled on our phone instrument kept changing. First replacement was a black phone with the transmitter and receiver built into a single hand-set unit which was connected to the cradle-base unit by a wire and rested on top of it when not in use. Then came the rotary dialling phones (and the automatic exchanges). Later we got a beautiful olive coloured push- button phone with buttons bearing number zero to nine and much more (in place of the rotary dial).

And then finally came the wonder of wonders - the mobile wireless phones.

The rest, as they say , is history !!

THE THIRD REASON

"THE THIRD REASON"

The restaurant was expensive. And almost deserted on that afternoon. My friend had dragged me there for a cup of coffee.

I always avoided going to posh restaurants. There were three reasons for this. First, I did not like paying a ridiculously high price for a dish that I could get, same quality, at a fraction of that price in any other moderately priced good restaurant. Second, some of the waiters in such places had far more money in their pocket at the end of the month than me. You cannot fail to see that hint of a disdain in their eyes if they detected that you were not in the big league.

And I will tell you the third reason in a while but let me first finish what I started with.

Yes, as I was saying,we were in a posh restaurant. There were several tables and we had settled in one that was adjascent to a highly polished central pillor. I could clearly see a gentleman sitting close by, though a part of his table was obstructed from view by the pillor. He had a permanent scowl about his face. He appeared to be a hot-tempered super-rich man.

As I watched, the waiter placed some shining crockery before him on the table along with an assortment of cutlery and had barely turned when this gentleman looked at his plate and sharply called him back.

'Hey. Why can't you see that the plate is not clean?' he demanded.

From where I sat closeby, the plate looked quite clean.

The waiter was ruffled but remained courtious.

'Sorry sir ! I will just bring you another plate.'

'What do you mean by sorry.This should not have happened. And now don't just stand here.' The tone was offensive. ' Be quick', the gentleman waved his hand to dismiss the waiter.

The waiter was now clearly upset as he disappeared behind the pillor to re-emerge on our side.

I did not want him to know that I was a witness to his dressing down so I pretended to look in another direction but kept watching him from the corner of my eyes.

The waiter wiped his forehead with his white handkerchief and looked around to see if he was being watched. No, there was no one watching.Satisfied, he spitted on the plate and thoroughly polished the plate with the hankie. And then he reappeared before the gentleman, respectfully placing the plate before him.

'Now that's much better !", drawled the gentleman, ' I like this sort of cleanliness. You will always clean it like this in future. Okay ?'

' Yes sir. It will always be so' said the courteous waiter.

That was the third reasons why I avoided top-flight restaurants !