PHIR KYA HUA? (What happened next?)

The place was Bhopal. The year was 1966. It was  a very pleasant evening and I had just come out of a picture hall after watching a movie in the afternoon show.

I was on a short visit to Bhopal. A  Bengali friend  had accompanied me to Bhopal and to this movie. Having spent all the time since birth inside Bengal,  he then knew very little of hindi but was in the process of picking up phrases .

"So! " I smiled at my bengali friend, raising my eyebrows, as we sat across in a restaurant for a cup of tea after coming out of the theatre.

" Phir kya hau? " he shot back, as he lowered the cup of tea from his lips and chuckled.

" But do you know the meaning of PHIR KYA HUA ?" I asked.

" Ofcourse I know! It means 'what happened next' ", he replied, "That  dancing girl was telling a story in the song and a funny looking villager had asked this question since the girl had paused while singing" he said.

That was exactly so. The film was "MERA SAYA", the song was "phir jhumka gira re Bareili ke bazaar me" and the dancer was the talented star of the sixties, film star Sadhana.

On twenty fifth december 2015 Sadhna Shivdasani went the way of all flesh, never to come back, leaving behind memories and so many wonderful films.

 It was a non-event for most of the national newspapers. She had been forgotten.

"Mera Saya" was a milestone in the history of bollywood. It became a superhit. The acting of Sadhna and, that most under-rated of vastly talented actors, Sunil Dutt, were incredibly perfect. It was the golden age of Cinema both in Bollywood. So many high quality films with great acting, great music directors, great singers and great lyricists. It was the best of times for Bollywood.

Unfortunately the last days of Sadhna make a painful statement about the reality of life and the consequences of not planning one's life properly. In the last years of her life sadhna was all alone, her husband having died of chest infections long time back. she had no children of her own. Bollywood had deserted her completely - except for a few friends like Helen, Nanda, Waheeda Rahman and Asha Parekh.And a most surprising thing was that Sadhna was without a house of her own even after a long money-minting career and was living in a portion of a bungalow owned by another film celebrity. During her last years she had been fighting a debilitating illness and a string of  court cases with the property owner and other tenants.

That recalls the advice Ashok Kumar had given to one of the character actors of his salad days. This character actor, inebrieted with success, was squandering money. "Don't squander the money that you are making now." Ashok kumar had reportedly said, "Your first priority should be to save for a house in Bombay as you don't know how long your film career would last". Golden advice! And the immensely successful Sadhna and her husband failed to take this basic step for future security. In this respect shyama, a successful star of 1950s, was very wise and practical and had invested money in property and other securities with the result that she had a very comfortable life beyond her acting years .

Nevertheless Sadhana left behind footprints in the sands of time. She was one of  the greatest natural actors and in the company of other great natural actors she gave us unforgettable films. One such film was  "PARAKH". There where so many more Too.

THE YEARS OF CONTRADICTION

THE YEARS OF CONTRADICTIONS

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom . . .  "

That was Charles Dickens of course, a long time back into history - the opening lines in the novel 'A tale of two cities'.

And yet that was so in early years after India's Independence too!!

Yes, those were the best of times! Those were the days, in the fifties, when pure ghee, cooking oils and butter did not require Agmark certificates of purity. . . When loaves of bread were well baked and had no preservatives or chemicals added to them . . . . when all crops were natural and Organic. . .  when there were no pesticides in food or drink or in river waters . . .when pure journalists like Durga Das, Chalpati Rao needed no certificates for their classic honest journalism . . . when the  politicians were not surrounded by gun-totting black cats nor were there any traffic holdups on account of movement of VIP politicians . . .  when the sounds of jackals' howling came from the nearby forests and not from the sirens of VIP cars rushing down the roads across red traffic signals . . . . when there were no such things as black money  Swiss bank accounts so far as India was concerned. . . . when there were no mass hysterical fan clubs for any sport persons or other celebrities . . .  when sportsmen were not disdainfully rolling in mountains of money . . . . when unassuming famous people like Gama Pahalwan and Dhyan Chand were  household names. . . when the likes of Vinoo Mankad and Polly Umriger were  simple down-to-earth lovable celebrities. . . . when the likes of Dilip Kumar were not minting money by  selling hair oil or junk food or soft drinks  . . . when the  motivated, TRP obsessed, media was altogether missing. . . . . when entertainment meant going for a picnic in open air or a visit to a circus or an exhibition. . .  when there were lots of open fields  and a circus or an 'exhibition' were an annual feature of  town life.

Yes we loved open air, sunshine, starry skies, long walks on neat and clean traffic less roads with an occasional vehicle slowly approaching, blaring horn.

The town where I spent my childhood was quite small in those days. There was no underground sewer line system and therefore no cokroaches. We did not know what a cohroach looked like !  We only read about them in enlish novels - they were supposed to be in cities like New York and we never saw one !

Yes, that was indeed  the best of times. . . . !

And yet those were the worst of times too . . ! With heavy import restrictions shaving blades had suddenly disappeared . . . safety razors too.. Unless you were prepared to spend a fortune on smuggled  foreign-make blades and safety razors, you had just one brand of blades- BHARAT blades - and no safety razors worth any use. And those Bharat blades were just slightly better than a new kitchen knife. They drew blood. Therefore two thing, now no longer seen, were in every man's shaving kit - a slab of alum ('phitkiri' in hindi) to rub on the numerous daily morning cuts . . and a translucent blade-sharpner made of pale green glass!

And so was with other things too. Imported tinned food such as Quaker oats and craft cheese had been substituted with substandard brands. Timepieces became too expensive. Since we had very few good Indian products  other than woollens, butter and shoes, suddenly there was scarcity of many items (we had world class shoes by FLEX, world class butter of POLSONS brand and world class LAL IMLI MILLS
-Legends in the field of worsted and woollen Products-
but they steadily languished). A sudden crisis of sorts was created due to import restrictions. Under the "socialistic pattern", there was initially little interest in import or manufacturing of  essential every day consumer products like safety razors, blades, pen nibs, pencils . . . . It was.a licence permit raj. Private sector was supposed to be anti-people.

It took twenty years for independent India to give us the first decent shaving blades. I still remember the day in 1967 when Erasmic silk edge blades hit the market. And what a rush there was to buy them !  About the same time came the first wrist watches - HMT brand public sector watches. They were few and we had to stand in long queues to buy one. And so with scooters and cars. You had to book one and then patiently wait for many years to get it.

Much later, the demise of Soviet Union was a game changer. Suddenly the world became unipolar. There were no takers for "socialistic pattern". And then came Narsimha Rao, the now forgotten Prime Minister of India. And, as they say, rest was history !!

***

GONE WITH THE WIND

GONE WITH THE WIND

It is amazing how popular items of everyday use disappear over  the lifetime of a person.

There was a time when almost every household kept a small bottle of tincture-iodine or spirit. If you hurt yourself while playing or in house-work - a minor cut or abrasion with a bit of bleeding- it was this stuff that you dabbed with cotton wool on the bruise as an antiseptic. And as it gave you hell of a burning sensation, you danced for a while with a musical yelp after it touched the wound. Even some films had that dancing yelping scene (Saira banoo in film JUNGLEE for instance!). Tincture iodine has disappeared.

Doctors, in the days gone by, did not send you for diagnostic 'tests' as a matter of routine.

Our Dr. Sinha from my childhood days had  his 'Modern Clinic'  close to our house. Whenever my father took me to his clinic, I would climb a  stool, which appeared a bit high, and he would sit across and examine me  -  my pulse,  nails, tongue,  eyes, the lower eye lids. He would examine my throat in torch light and would tap below my knee caps to see knee-jerk reaction.

I would then lie down on the leather coach and pull my shirt up. He would tap the entire chest with  'knuckles and fingers'. He would also probe the liver region with his fingers. It hurt sometimes!

I do not see such examination now a days.

He wrote his prescription with a blue holder-pen, picking it up from a transparent glass ink-stand and dipping it in the blue ink-well. He passed this paper to the compounder in the adjascent room through a cute little  semi-circular 'window'. I would usually get one small bottle of a 'mixture' with doses marked with a vertical white strip of paper. There were paper wrapped individual small doses of some powders too.

Antibiotics and a horde of patent medicines, and an army of 'medical representatives', came later and they knocked the blessed compounders out of their jobs!

Now a days  there are hardly any General Practioners seen. Everyone has become a specialist and is mainly concerned with his part of human body. You are usually referred to other specialists for other parts - a sort of continuous medical musical-chair!

There were no ball-point pens in those days. Good fountain pens were unbelievably smooth. These 'silky' writing instruments  were expensive.  Dr sinha too had a gold cap Waterman's pen in his shirt pocket but used ordinary holder-pens for writing prescriptions.

Blotting papers, another item not seen now,  were in use in those days for absorbing extra ink that did not quickly dry. There were all sorts of beautiful blotter  cards. These postcard-size blotter cards had  a glossy nice picture on one side and the blotting paper on the otherside. Every doctor got a good stock of them from leading pharma companies as part of brand-promotion and we would get them free for use in our school. We always wrote with holder-pens using pink colour copper G- nibs and we constantly used blotters. There was a brass ink-well on the upper right corner of each desk in the school.

Fountain pens were, then, very expensive , an ordinary pen costing over Rs 500/- in today's value. The cheapest of the good pen, like Sheaffers, Parker or Waterman's, were well over Rs 8000/- in todays value!

Tincture iodine, fountain pens, ink-wells, holder-pens and blotter cards are not the only things which have passed into history.

Senior citizens would recall a very common item of stationery in use then -  the COPYING PENCIL. This pencil, which made water purple when the tip was wet,  had a very hard and strong lead (graphite) stick. The lead tip would not break even when writing over a number of sheets, with carbon paper in between. Yes it was used for manually making carbon copies of letters and must have come into use  before cheaper typewriter became available.. They were in the market, and in use in offices, till the sixties.

Table clocks  (The winding ones) have also disappeared. Westclox was cheaper and popular but the better ones were German clocks. Wrist watches were  Swiss-made and a standard one used to cost over twenty thousand in today's rupees. Unlike the highly accurate but inexpensive quartz watches of today, the clocks and watches lost or gained time over a month  and had to be time-set once in a while. People used to set the time with the time-beeps before the All India Radio news or the gongs of Big Ben before the BBC news. We had to 'wind' the wrist watches and clocks everyday before going to sleep.

If you visit any old houses in north India you will notice that most of them had a fireplace in the drawing room with an ornamental cornice above it. And these houses had two chimneys - one on the drawing room roof and the other on the roof above the kitchen. These chimneys, which were for smoke from burning coal or wood to escape into the sky, are not seen now. Firewood has passed into history with the popularity of cooking gas and electricity. The once popular PETROMAX COOKING-STOVES have also disapoeared!

And, finally, consigned to the dustbin of history is the once popular TELEGRAPHIC 'quick' message service of post offices. Any message that was to be urgently communicated was sent by a telegram. You paid according to the number of words  used and it was pretty expensive. Telegraphic service started more than a hundred years back with the Morse code (gutt - gutt - gurr - gurr) and, later,  the telex printers. As nobody sends a telegram now due to the instant messaging internet services, this service has also gone with the wind  into the dustbin of history! Memories remain!

*****

****

"The Exact Time"

"MEASURING TIME"

We all like DEFINITENESS. If someone asks me to name the highest mountain I know that there is a definite answer even if I may not know it. So it  is for the number of days in a year, number of hours in a day, the circumference of the earth and so on. You can find it all in a standard general knowledge book.

But in the world of  science there are at times no final answers.

I asked myself a question : "what is the tiniest thing in nature ?".

Once, (in the ancient times of the recorded history), a grain of sand was considered the smallest of all.

Then the atom was discovered.  It was thought smallest and indivisible. But, as I had  observed above there are no final answers in  nano science. The atom was soon split to reveal protons, neutrons and electrons inside. These seemed like fundamental particles, the final answers. But that was  before scientists discovered that protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each. I think there the matter rests at present.

There is a lot of truth hidden in the ancient scriptures. As swani Vivekanand had put it these books contain great truths camouflaged in lot of chaff. We need intelligent translations of such books. Western scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth century translated many books of Sanskrit. There is need for much more.

Do you know the smallest measure of time ? The details given in vedas are mindblowing. Here is an example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time

" हम ठहरे " (In a lighter vain)

"हम ठहरे" 

दाज्यू तुम तो हो देसी पहाड़ी
दाज्यू असली पहाड़ी  हम ठहरे।।

देखा क्या तुमनें कभी है शीशूँणा
छूओगे तो भाँगड़ा तुम करने वाले ढहरे.

तुम तो इजा को कहते  हो मम्मी
पर हम पक्के इजा बौज्यू वाले ठहरे ||

तुम कुरसी और मेज में खाते हो खाना
हम तो अटाली में खाना खाने वाले ठहरे ।।

क्वीड़ पाथना  कोई हमसे तो सीखे
हम जो पहाड़ो में रहने वाले  ठहरे ।।

मडुवे की रोटी हैं खाते घी गुड़ से
तुम तो मैगी और पीज्जा वाले ठहरे ।।

सभी को खिलाते हैं खाना हम दाज्यू
काले कउआ तक को खिलाने वाले ठहरे|

हम दही बूंदी का नकली रायता नहीं  खाते
राई खीरे हल्दी का रायता खाने  वाले ठहरे।।

१७ जुलाई हरियाला में आऔ घर दाज्यू
सींगल पुआ आलू गुटुक खिलाने वाले ठहरे||

राजधानी गैरसैड़ँ में अब बनाने से रहे हम
हम देहरादून का कचरा निकालने वाले ठहरे||

(रचयिता: गिरिजा नंदन जोशी)

कोई लौटा दे मेरे बीते हुए दिन

"कोई लौटा दे मेरे  बीते  हुए  दिन ....  "

वोह पुराने हजरतगंज की रौनक भरी शाम, benbows के पास की पान की दूकान

वोह केशव fruits में रक्खे दशहरी आम,
और  kopoors में छलकते नशीले  जाम.

वो lovers lane में  लड़कियों की भरमार,
लड़के हो जाते थे गलतफहमी के शिकार !

वो सिंह electrcals के बिजली के toaster, Mayfair  में छलकते सोफिया लोरेन के पोस्टर.

वोह लालबाग की गली में शर्मा चाट की दूकान,
जहाँ २५ पैसे मे मिलता था गज़ब का सामान.

वोह नरही का पांडे का मलाई रबड़ी का स्टाल,
Indian coffee house का लम्बा सा hall.

वो king of चाट का रथ जैसा ठेला,
जहाँ  लगता हर शाम रईसों को मेला.

क्या हो गया है  यह वख्त  का सितम,.
न गंज वैसा रह गया और न रहे वैसे हम!

THE DELHI TORNADO

THE DELHI TORNADO

The date was march 17,1978. The place was India's capital Delhi. The time was about 6pm. It had been  a normal eventless day so far.

The all-yellow local train was already pulling out of Minto bridge station when I arrived. This mini-station was at the back of the super bazaar in connaught place in New Delhi.

I had arrived from the office a bit late and now I had to run along the platform to catch this moving inter-city to Faridabad. I was, in local parlance, a daily passenger, a MST (monthly season ticket) holder. No need to waste time at the ticket window for each trip.

That day it had been cool, cloudy and windy here in New Delhi. I entered a compartment and found a place near a window on the opposite side. Throwing open the window shutter I settled down to read the Arthur Hailey book I was carrying. It would be a one hour journey. As I peeped out of the window, I noticed, far into the north horizon an odd shaped cloud formation that was hanging low. I knew that it was the general direction of the university of Delhi area.

What I saw was a mass of ominously dark clouds at the middle of which was a long narrow shaft of dark clouds that had descended to the ground. I had never before seen such a formation in my life. I dismissed the idea that it could be a tornado. It was totally unthinkable. Delhi was not in USA ! India had only cyclonic storms and that too in coastal areas.There had never been a tornado in Delhi as far as I knew. But I did not like that cloud formation. There was definitely something evil about it.

Back in Faridabad, after a bit of essential shopping in the neighbourhood market and a refreshing bath, I was looking forwards to a sumptuous dinner. I switched on my Bush transistor radio and tuned in the nine pm All India Radio news. That was a daily routine to catch up with late news.

And there it was in the nine O'clock news - the news about those ominous clouds. A tornado had struck north Delhi and had cut a path 3 miles long and 50 yards wide and everything that fell in the  long narrow path of the funnel of the tornado had been totally devastated by its vicious force. There were many deaths, and  hundreds of injured people.

I read this in horrid detail in next morning's newspapers.

Right at the moment when my train was racing towards Tilak bridge, the next stop,  a group of Miranda House girls were sitting in the new library reading room, reading books and magazines. Suddenly the outer wall of the library gave way to the demonic suction of the tornado's funnel and bricks flew up into the belly of the tornado, followed by a huge number of books which were suddenly swept out into the sky. Since I don't remember anything now about the girls in that reading- hall, I believe there were no casualties.

Seven years later Navtej Sarna recalled the events :

"......suddenly a furious sound
burst upon us. Flames sprouted from an electricity pole at the Maurice Nagar crossing and we began to sprint for shelter
as the transformation from cool and lovely to cool and deadly became complete. ....". and again  ". .... it came hurtling down with a flash from Shakti Nagar towards Maurice Nagar. Then, it attacked the body as it began to suck up everything in its way into its gigantic self. And, finally, it sped
off losing its force gradually and emptying its bowls along the way....."

Some tornadoes make a considerable amount of noise while others make very little. It depends on the objects a tornado might hit or carry. A tornado moving along an open plain may make very little noise.

Much later vikramjeet too recollected thus:

" . . . . A tornado hit Northern parts of  Delhi in the year 1978. It took its route though Delhi university (Daulat Ram college I still remember, as parapet walls were totally blown and seen
by me in the university campus), it moved from university to Kingsway camp side, MukerjeeNagar and Transmission Lines coming on its route were teared down totally in the Radio Colony. . . . ."

The funnel of the tornado had chosen to move, for a greater part, over a road and as it swept along this road full of grand old trees,  every tree on the road was uprooted, Walls collapsed and many bricks were sucked up. A huge, fully loaded, DTC bus that was  moving on this road was lifted up a few feet, turned 180 degrees by the spinning funnel of the tornado and deposited back on the road, facing the wrong direction and injuring passengers. There were reports of a bus overturning and some consequent deaths. An auto-rickshaw was sucked up high and deposited on the roof of  khalsa college building.

This macabre dance of nature lasted barely a few minutes  but the havoc it caused, the destruction it brought, was mindblowing.

I read the details from as many papers as I could lay hands on next day and one thought came up in my mind -  What would have happened had the funnel of the tornado chosen the railway track from New Delhi railway station to Tilak bridge and beyond? The yellow local  train was packed with hundreds of passengers. Trains do fall in rhe path of a tornado. In 1931 a tornado in Mississippi lifted an 83 ton train and tossed it 80 feet from the track!

That was the year 1978, thirty seven years back - in another time. Delhi has undergone a metamorphosis since 1978. And yet I can even today 'see' that same old, makeshift and quiet, Minto bridge station, that sleek yellow inter-city train, that window facing the north where I was sitting and, far away in the general direction of Delhi University that long dark narrow funnel hanging downwards from those ominous black clouds, devastating whatever fell in its path.

Very few would now believe that a tornado struck Delhi in march 1978!!

                        **********

दो और कवितायेँ

" दो  कविताएँ"

१)
विज्ञापन की मार से पब्लिक परेशान,
टूथपेस्ट में नमक है, कहता पहलवान।

ललिताजी ने बेच दिए थे ढेरों साबुन  के  पाउडर,
रैपिडेक्स में कपिलदेव ने दिखलाया था अंग्रेजी  डर।

अब है बिकता औरत को पतला करने का सामान,
औरत तो मोटी ही रही उद्योगपति हुआ धनवान।

सेलेब्रिटी बटोर रहे गिरिजा मोटा विज्ञापन का धन,
पब्लिक नाहक उठा रही इन विज्ञापनों का वजन।

2)

कल अचानक रास्ते में दिख गया शेर
बन्दुक दाग दी और वो हो गया ढेर

फिर पास आया जब साफ़ हुआ धुआ
देखा तो बहुत ही अफसोस  हुआ

हाय मैंने क्या कर डाला ये गज़ब
नायाब शेर था बिलकुल ही  अजब

गिरिजा   ये तूने क्या अनर्थ कर डाला ं
शेर तो प्यारा था मिर्जा ग़ालिब वाला !

                 ***

दो कविताएं

दो कविताएं

१)
आम आदमी आम नहीं खा पा रहा है
और आमआदमी पार्टी से कतरा रहा है

वोट की राजनीति में खो गया जनतंत्र
पैसे का खेल है जोड़ तोड़ का मंत्र

गरीबी एक मानसिकता है कहे एक नेता
किसानो की मौत पर रोते नव अभिनेता

कहे कवि गिरिजा बढ़ी भ्रष्टों की फौज
आम आदमी भूखा है अरबपति की मौज

२)
जिसको जो मिला उसी पर बैठ गया
लक्ष्मी जी को पा कर उल्लू ऐंठ गया

शिवजी को मिला बैल नंदी
शेर पर जा बैठी भवानी चंडी

मेरे हाथ आया लोहे का स्कूटर
जिस पर बीट दे रहे हैं अब कबूतर

कहे कवि गिरिजा सब भाग्य का खेल
गनेशजी ने निकाला चूहे का तेल!

                 ******
े

CHILDHOOD TIMES

"CHILDHOOD  TIMES"

Early in the morning a young newspaper-man used to cycle into our house. Covering the long arch of the red gravel driveway he would drop a rolled up newspaper in the verandah. In the stillness of dawn I would be waiting to hear the  'clang' of the heavy iron gate as it was thrown open and the crunching of gravel under his bicycle tyres as he sailed over the driveway. The moment the newspaper hit the verandah floor I would be out there to grab ít and read the last page comic strip of Mandrake the magician. If I missed the chance I would not get the paper until the afternoon on return from school !

The old newspapers came to us kids, handy for making paper boats, aeroplanes, football etc. Newspapers were then priced at two annas or even less.

Rupee had great purchasing power. One rupee would get you over 200grams of fresh CDF, Polson or Keventers butter, or four standard size loaves of bread (dabal roti), or a kilo of good quality rice. Best quality sweets were rupees four a kilo. So was the best quality pure ghee - no issues with cholesterol then. Ghee was THE tonic, a must for sound health.

Magazines were four annas to eight anna apiece (a rupee was equal to sixteen annas). Readers' Digest cost one rupee, had a lot more pages and brilliant articles and without advertisements !

Most of the houses had large compounds and very few security concerns. More often than not, upper half of the doors had glass panes and the rooms had skylights ('roshandan' in hindi). So nobody needed electric light during day time.

Our house had a walled courtyard in the back with a big chabutara. A "Chabutara" is a  raised  circular brick-and-cement platform in the open. At the peak of summer when the walls in the rooms radiated heat we  slept on chabutara in Light 'niwar-cots' under  mosquitto nets. If there was suddenly  a thunderstorm at night we would, bleary-eyed, rush to the verandah with our bed rolls!

It became cool outside as the night progressed. The small hours of morning were divine out there with birds chirping, fragrant breeze and melting darkness !

To us kids, adults seemed to be having a roaring time. They were not required to go to school or do any homework. There were no examinations to face. They could see any film, eat anything, go anywhere they pleased - no permission required for that! We envied their life ! We wanted to grow up fast!

Schools always reopened, after summer vacation, early in july. That was the time for new text books. I loved the fresh strong smell of my new books ! The school desks had inbuilt brass ink-wells at the upper right corner. Very few school boys had fountain pens .

'Snakes-and- ladder', 'Ludo' and 'Carrom were popular indoor games with children. We were normally outdoors in the afternoon playing games.
One of the popular games during my childhood days was "marbles" - boys would play marbles a lot under the trees in the heat. Spinning tops were also pôpular, in various shapes, sizes and colours. Hoop rolling was also popular among children. A large hoop (usual a bicycle tyre or rim) is rolled along the ground, generally by means of a stick wielded by the player. Most of us owned a Catapult too (sling shot - GULEL in North India)

THINGS HAVE CHANGED !!