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 !!

The Advertising Game

A Menace : The World Of  present day advertising. . . . . . . .

. . . . . 

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 nineteen 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. . . 

And then  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 choices 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 - it is war against the competitors, it is a war to conquer the minds of masses, a 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 keep telling 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. 

NThey 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 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 was back in reckoning. A toothpaste man in a doctor's  white long-coat told you in that TV visual  that his brand of toothpaste had 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 any 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. He should be 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 also be entertaining. But it is not always innocuous. It can be an attempt at deception and criminal misconduct ! 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 SPEAKING MIRROR

THE SPEAKING MIRROR

"Mirror mirror on the wall. who is the most beautiful of all?" asks the lady and pat comes the reply from the speaking 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 very small cellphone, always  in your hand !! 

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

Chetan Bhagat's hero , a Punjabi, marries a Tamil brahman girl and the earthshaking run up to their marriage is scripted in the book TWO STATES, an interesting study of two vastly different 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 Tamilian. The wish-list varies from society to society. A big battle scar running across the face would be more of a status-symbol in tribal 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". There was a great emphasis on the word MY.

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 with. The speaking mirror continues to be there. Only the context has changed in the twentyfirst century The question has been updated : "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the richest of us all" asks a filthy-rich person to the mirror and the mirror drawls, "Its a pretty long list buddy. Musk continues to top it and you are far far down. You continue to be still at number fortysix ."

And then suddenly the mirror clouds up
and the witches are seen  gathering around a bubbling cauldron, chanting, casting spells across the globe, conjuring visions of the future, and goading Men and women to be 'filthy rich' at the cost of humanity. 

Then the witches throw up their hands towards the sky and scream in unison:

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

And the cauldron keeps bubbling  !

                 *******

                 

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 !

                    *****