Four wrongs & a right - an exercise in diplomacy

The hole in the wall barbershop that I patronize is owned by an old guy who runs a kind of assembly line of hair dresser aspirants from the interiors of UP. These young, fellow Muslim, wannabe Jawed Habib's join him in the city, cut their teeth & the hair of customers for a while before eventually moving on to bigger & better salons with ACs where they get to work with "Old Spice" rather than "Gold Spice" shaving cream.  

While waiting for my turn I once had occasion to witness a fascinating interplay that only India can provide. The shop is one among a collection that would be at home in any neighborhood. The guy from the adjoining Kirana store breathlessly rushed in carrying a box of sweets. He announced that he had just bought a bike & offered "Prasad" from the Puja. The reactions of the barbershop owner & his 2 acolytes were a study in contrasts. The old man recoiled, mumbling incoherently as if he had been bitten , one of the young apprentices very transparently lied about suffering from some kind of an allergy & the other guy took the offered sweet & set it aside saying that he would have it after he was done with the customer he was attending to at the time. It became apparent that even he did not really intend to eat it only once the proud bike owner had left the shop.  

Sitting there with nothing to occupy my mind I indulged myself by applying my own value judgement to their actions. 

1. The bike guy could perhaps have been more considerate - it's possible that if he had offered sweets calling them a token of his happiness rather than as a symbol of a religious ceremony he may have spared his neighbors the moral dilemma & himself the hurt feelings.

2. The shop owner, especially given his greater years should definitely have been better prepared to deal with such occasions & would be better served with large dose of pragmatism.

3. The first apprentice betrayed his inexperience but maybe that's just a part of growing up & he may well be better equipped to deal with morally ambiguous situations in the days to come.

4. To my mind the other apprentice was the hero of the situation. Even though he lied he did so to protect his own conscience while still considering the other guy's feelings. A white lie if there ever was one.

There is so much instructional value to such a scene - so many things to learn about interpersonal relationships, conflict resolution & diplomacy. Anyway - that's my opinion - what's yours ?     

All Men are like that & all women too - A review.

Priya & I caught a play over the weekend - given that I have been working evenings for the last 8 or so years & that I've been lazy and / or culturally challenged for all my life before that it's been a while since we did that. The play was "Salt & Pepper" - written & directed by Vikranth Pawar & starred Darshan Jariwala, Mandira Bedi. Kuki Grewal & Vikram Kocchar. It was set up as 9 - 10 episodes of 10 minutes each revolving around conversations between a guy & a girl at different stages of their life or relationship. I thought I would give a shot at reviewing the play - my own personal viewpoint of-course.

The last 2 occasions I went to the theater involved big, over the top musical productions with incredible production values & big name movie tie-ins - Singing In the Rain & The Producers. This was about as far away from that as you can get - the sets were simple but extremely well designed & very flexible given that they had to be subtly altered between each episode. They lighting also played an important role - highlighting the characters rather than the background & in some cases switching from character to character with the ebb & flow of the dialogue. The music was minimal - only as interludes as the episodes switched over but it was fun to mouth the half forgotten lyrics of old Beatles & Elvis songs.

The episodes themselves had a distinctly urban bias with a strong tilt towards modern relationship questions. I also detected a subtle positive thread running through the episodes - only 1 of them, the episode of the old man & woman arguing with each other entirely in their minds, ended on a slightly downbeat note. The opening episode was of a lonely urban woman contemplating suicide & her conversation with a previously unknown neighbour who tries to talk her out of it - the acting by Mandira Bedi & Darshan Jariwala was quite strong & set the right note. The episode itself was perhaps slightly predictable but the crisp dialogues kept the interest alive. In fact the dialogues were a highlight of the whole play - very witty & flowing but real at all times. The succeeding episodes were successful in keeping up the interest level & touched on different aspects of modern relationships - a young couple fighting with each other during a meeting with a marriage counseller & finding the solution to their woes themselves while doing so, a middle aged man wondering what might have been if he had taken up with his college girlfriend while talking to her in his imagination, a past secret being hilariously revealed when a couple goes through a Cosmo quiz together, a lonely middle aged man & a lonely woman getting stuck on the top of a giant wheel & the suspense as they eventually find each other, the inner compatibility of a superficially incompatible young man & woman getting revealed as they go through a series of conversations at a speed dating event before they finally meet each other & so on. The play ended on a high note with an outstanding episode featuring Mandira Bedi & Darshan Jariwala as a couple wondering if each other's "hard coded" gender quirks meant that they are fundamentally incompatible & discovering along the way that life together gave many reasons to look past these quirks & perhaps even to celebrate them. This episode had some wonderful "laugh out loud" moments - I am adding "blackbelt in conversational judo" to my vocabulary right now. 

The interesting thing was how the issues & irritants the couples were dealing with seemed so familiar - I guess it really is true that all men are alike but it seems clear that so are all women ! We were left wanting for more when it ended - always a sign that the production worked.

All in all a Saturday evening well spent - I would happily recommend it to anyone that does get the chance to watch it. On a side note - I aim to take advantage of my newly liberated evenings & that may mean more such reviews so keep watching this space !

(More details at : Salt-&-Pepper-(English))

   

The Clock is Ticking - again.

It's been a while since I was last here but in my defence time did stand still since then. Admittedly this was because the cuckoo clock in our living room stopped (again) - but it's Swiss made so that's got to count for something !

I freely but sheepishly admit to a personal superstition about clocks - I don't like having stopped clocks in house. That's not to say I prefer them scampering around the house like Cogsworth from Beauty & the Beast - just showing the time, all the time even if in-accurately. If a clock stops I immediately rush out to get new batteries - the ones at home invariably turn invisible till just after I get back from the store. If the batteries don't do the trick (or the tick if you prefer) then it's time to bid goodbye to the clock. Think of it as a kind of non-ticking time-less bomb in my mind that has to go. This rule has been uniformly applied since time immemorial (see what I did there - "time" immemorial) except to the aforementioned cuckoo clock. I'm crazy about that thing - cuckoo about it you could say.

I am fascinated with cuckoo clocks & had always wanted one. The opportunity to do so presented itself a few years ago when Priya had occasion to break journey in Switzerland on a business trip. She let herself be swayed by the cuckoo clock cause & made the side trip to Lucerne to acquire a beautiful, traditional Swiss Chalet style piece. After an arduous but uneventful journey through Israel & then back to India the clock suffered the indignity of staying packed for 6 months till our house was ready for us to move into & only then took up it's rightful place on the drawing room wall. It's been chiming in hour on hour ever since - except for when it doesn't that is.

Unfortunately it's one of those particularly finicky tourists who good intentions aside doesn't really have the constitution to take on the heat, dust, humidity & the noise. The clock soldiers on (ticks on ?) until the accumulated aches & pains throw it off it's stride & time stands still again. The drill for this particular occasion is different. No batteries needed as it's mechanical so the clock gets packed & a visit to a carefully chosen watch repair shop is in order. This usually does not happen immediately as the shop is on "the road less traveled" as far as our daily routine goes & sometimes months pass before the trip. Over the last 5 years it's probably spent a year & a half off the wall or at the shop - they probably think of it as their clock that they rent to us for extended durations of time ! 

The most recent surgical procedure went like clock-work, the watch maker ticked all the boxes so to say & we can now watch it ticking away. I would describe the chimes & the notes but it's just struck me that it's time to go - after-all time stops for no one.   

The Fat's in the fire.

There are times I feel that I am pushing hard in an sisyphean uphill struggle without moving forward an inch. Each succeeding step is an almighty effort & surviving the ordeal itself represents progress. It's probably unfair to complain though since treadmills are supposed to work that way.

One among many sick cosmic jokes is that not too long ago I used to eat 2-3 times as much & used to weigh about 2/3rd of what I do now. I can only surmise that all that I ate then took the guerrilla option of hiding out till a day the most damage could be inflicted on my system & evidently the decision has been reached that the time is now. Every day I grow as a person - unfortunately most of it is sideways. The mirror does not lie but I wish it would be a tad more diplomatic & it's hard to escape the conclusion that it's time for some downsizing. Its apparent that the only way left is up - all the way to the society gym on the 8th floor.

My affair with regular exercise is now just over a year old & it's seen more ups than down. This is a matter of some slight concern as the objective was for the reverse to be true as far as my weight was concerned. Three days a week a trainer coaxes & cajoles me through a series of muscle wrenching contortions involving lifting, pushing & pulling weights of various shapes & sizes attached to machines, bars & all by themselves. Despite the obviously enervating nature of the effort this is ironically called "Strength training". The theory being that this builds muscle which in turn does away with fat. I am inclined to believe that the muscle building part of this is working as evidenced by the aches & pains I feel in muscles that I clearly did not posses before. As far as I can see the fat seems to have found a way to peacefully co-exist with the muscle though. This may mean that I need to rejig my thrice weekly leisurely stroll around the area while taking in the early morning sights or what I call "Cardio". I have tried this on the treadmill but somehow I seem to prefer the scenery moving when I do.

In the end though what seems to be most difficult to do & yet the most effective is controlling the food intake. Over time I have wound my way through many of the fad diets of the day General Motors, Modified Atkins, South Beach & the like & most seem to work for me. This is obviously a tragedy for someone who loves to eat out as much as I do. Things have come to such a pass that I dread the moment when I will see an item in the menu & my brain will supply the amount of exercise I will need to do to work that off (a single 50 gm samosa = approx. 120 cals = 15 mins on the treadmill).

The options, thus, are either eat less or exercise more. In either case the outlook is bleak. Obviously the fat's in the fire but it's not burning.

The Cup that Cheers.

One battle in our marriage was conceded by me even before the hostilities were opened. Growing up in Gujarat I had become used to drinking tea. Those that have tasted the concoction identified as such in the not so wild west will testify to the uniqueness of that brew. The process of it's creation lends itself easily enough to serving as a metaphor for the birth of life itself. Witness the primordial stew with all the constituent elements bubbling away for an eternity in a roiling, steaming, noisome brew & the almost miraculous end result.

These long years of being a "Tea"totaller came to naught though once we got married. Priya's TamBrahm conditioning brought with it an aromatic assault by Filter Kaapi that swept all before it & I became a Coffee drinker before I knew it. The toughest part of this lifestyle change is of-course finding the appropriate coffee. We have ranged far & wide in search of the right place to buy our coffee from including places as far afield as Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kerala & perhaps most exotic of all Cafe Coffee Day. That being accomplished the rest of the process is simple enough as long as the right instruments like the filter, miniature french press & the like are available. Things have now reached such a pass that I cannot fully awaken until that first cup of coffee homes into my insides.

I wanted to talk about a little ritual involving the drink that has come to mean a lot to me. Every day about an hour or so after my first cup I ask Priya to make a cup of coffee for me. Every day I have a different excuse - the first cup was too weak, or too milky, or too strong or failing that Pleeeeease .. She sets about making it & hands it to me & I proceed to consume it, usually in silence while watching Smriti leave for school or Ani shrugging himself into wakefulness. It's been a while since I started doing this & honestly the coffee is now somewhat incidental to the occasion - this is all about the interaction. Through all that both of us are busy with over the day there aren't too many opportunities for us to do anything specifically for each other. This one thing is my own little attempt to include something in her daily schedule that is just for me. I try to reciprocate by doing small things for her unasked but through a combination of her greater self sufficiency & my own relative ineptitude there are not that many things that I can do to tip the scales back.

So here's to Filter Kaapi. For me that second cup of the day is the cup that sets the day up for me - the cup that cheers !

Knock Knock, Ring Ring.

Of late like an aging fisherman my thoughts have been turning to the ones that got away. Opportunity comes to most of us & I guess what defines us is our response.

I was a solid but unspectacular football player on the fringes of a very good class team. I remember an epic clash in a semifinal of the school tournament where the winner was overwhelmingly tipped to become the champ. As a defender I was assigned to man-mark one of the opposition stars & spent the game harrying him from end to end (get between him & the ball or between the ball & the goal). Suddenly I found myself at the end of a loose ball with their goal in sight & my brain froze. "I am not a star & no way I should be the one scoring" - I made a feeble pass to one of our forwards in a much worse position than I was & long story short we ended up losing the game on penalties. Some opportunities are like that - we don't grab them because we may not believe that we deserve that chance.

Forward a few years - I was accosting unsuspecting foreigners at a well known Handicrafts emporium in Bangalore for a tourism related summer project when I met an opportunity in disguise. A guy walked out with hands full of bags - I introduced myself as an MBA student on a survey mission & offered to help him with his bags as long as he answered my survey. He agreed & we talked on the way to his car. He then asked me about my background & interests & we talked for a fair while. I learnt that he was looking to start a chain of country clubs in India & wholly unexpectedly he then asked me if I would like to join him as one of his first people in India ? I did what I thought was the smart thing & rebuffed him saying that I had to complete my MBA & was not ready to start working yet. A few months later I saw a piece in a business magazine identifying him as the scion of a Hong Kong tycoon & talking of his grand plans for India. Clearly recognizing an opportunity for what it is calls for skill that I perhaps lacked at the time !

Around the time I completed my MBA in the early days of the internet I was among a couple of people from the class offered a chance to get on board a very small company that had visions of making it very big. At the time I had just snared one of the higher paying jobs on campus & this offer of a significantly smaller salary boosted by the promise of "ownership" did not seem to measure up. I was just starting out in life & had visions of my own - all of them with Re spends associated with them & I convinced myself that what I needed was cash in hand then & not at some indeterminate time in the future. Needless to say that company went on to become the definitive success story among Indian internet based businesses & I sometimes do wonder "what if ?". This is not necessarily regret - I accept that there are times when one is just unable to make that leap of faith !

I am hoping that instances like these have taught me to recognize opportunity when it knocks (or rings) & to open up. Oh wait, looks like someone's at the door...

Life's a beach (or maybe a hill station).

It's that time of the year again ! The time to look ahead with good intentions & high expectations - Holiday Season Planning season. Unfortunately it's also often the time those expectations run afoul of practical considerations like availability of leave, funds etc. & half-hearted compromises have to be grudgingly accepted with face saving rationalizations tied to those acceptances.

My sincere advice to all is to rush through your holidays before you have kids & definitely before you have a second kid. Don't get me wrong - we love travelling with our kids & enjoy every minute (well almost every minute) but paying for only 2 tickets is twice as good as having to pay for 4 tickets ! We have painted ourselves into a bit of a corner anyway by not traveling by train when the kids were younger - Ani's first train ride was the TGV between Paris & Nice when he was 5 years old. Now we are somewhat afraid of offending their delicate sensibilities with the sights & sounds of a train journey so costly flights seem like the only option when we have to go someplace. Obviously this does not help the budget.

As someone who has traveled a bit it amazes me that for the rate one would pay for a good hotel room in India one could get 2 rooms in a similar hotel in many countries. Admittedly the service here is much better - for instance a welcome drink here is a uniformed guy with a frosted glass on a tray bearing a freshly plucked orchid & one in the US is a dismissive wave towards the vending machine in the lobby. The swings & roundabouts of holiday budgeting mean that the cheaper flights take you to more expensive places & vice versa.

The other big Q is where to go ? My bucket list is already big enough for a bathtub & if I add Priya's then we probably need a swimming pool. Obviously one more issue taking the kids along throws up is that they have to be entertained. As a case in point our Paris trip included only 4 hours at the Louvre but 2 days at Euro Disney. This does narrow the options a bit.

All things considered we now tend to look for trips where we can save on the travel, either drive or use miles, but be prepared to spend on the hotel - ideally a nice resort with a kids activity center, a pool & most importantly a good buffet. To round things off throw in a beach (or maybe a hill station).

Time Please !

As we stand on the threshold of a midweek holiday I realize that I now prefer these to the weekend extenders. Diminishing marginal utility kicking in for the 3rd day of the weekend - perhaps !

On slightly deeper reflection it seems that this may be to do with the way I am wired. I am apparently not built for speed - maybe for durability & clearly the way life is racing past makes me long for that midweek speed breaker. I had barely recovered from the 2011 New Year party when the 2012 NY was upon us & this year seems to be whizzing past at an even more accelerated rate - Jan end looms already ! The slower I get the faster everything else seems to be moving.

Obviously some of this has to do with work - by design this involves us doing more or less the same set of things again & again day in & day out. While this makes perfect sense it's hardly the best recipe for renewal or engagement. Apparently the guy who won the "Best Job in the World" - a paid position to live in luxury on an Australian Tropical island paradise quit after a while because he was bored. That workplace sage Dilbert says that left to themselves no one would want to do their jobs - if they did then one wouldn't have to pay them to do it ! This sameness of most work days tends to accentuate the sense of the days rushing past while I am standing still.

That can't be all though - obviously there's some role played by the way I over organize life. I have heard exhortations to stop & smell the roses. For me this would involve a Google search to find the nearest place where roses abound followed by a Google Maps search for the best route there. This would then be followed with a quick scan of my friends for anyone who has smelt them & their opinion of the value of the experience. If all this checks out then a weekend plan would follow to leave in the morning, not too early so it doesn't mess with the kids' karate classes, pack a bunch of snacks, carry water & dress appropriately (we may have to walk in the sun or it may be cold..). The moments before the departure as always would be tense - getting the kids ready & into the car on time is usually an effort (never stopped to think that the roses would still be there even if we delay a bit) & then the departure. Who has the time & the patience for all that - wouldn't it be better to watch a show on roses on The Discovery Channel ?

I get the feeling that it may be time to take a stand & what better way to stand than to stop running ? I heard someone asking for the world to be stopped so he could get off - while I am perfectly happy to stay on for the rest of the ride I do want to halt the game for a while. While we were kids the accepted method to do this was to say "Time Please" - I'm saying that now.

A Year of Living Pantless.

These last few months have shown me what being a member of a misunderstood minority means. I know now that this is because we are "not quite like them". I can sense that people secretly envy us the freedoms our situation grants us, quietly speculate on what arcane rituals make up our daily lives & openly belittle our efforts & contribution to society. Despite this I am not ashamed to admit that for the last year & a bit I have been a telecommuter - while that may sound like I am a time traveler who happened to catch a really slow train it actually means that I work from home for a living.

Clearly this has it's charms. Every time the fuel price goes up I have a not so quiet laugh to myself. It seems like the world situation & our Govt. are conspiring to keep me laughing - maybe not all the way to the bank but definitely away from the petrol pump. Also - I work in the evenings & the daytime TV schedules give me an unique opportunity to catch up on movies that may have slipped by unnoticed when they were originally released. Unfortunately, while I do hit the occasional jackpot with a giant helicopter chomping crocodile or a made in Ooty Mithunda potboiler in most of the cases it soon becomes apparent that these movies deserved to sink without a trace at the box-office. To add to that I have never had to take a day off for illness !

On the flip side - did I mention that I never get to take a day off for illness ? The assumption being that since I am at home I can hammer out a proposal in between bouts of coughing or take a call as the pain killer for my migraine kicks in. Luckily I don't fall sick that often but if that got me a day off from work maybe I would like to ! While every office has it's share of annoying people my appreciation for the people I have worked with has gone up several notches over the last year. This is thanks to the 2 maids who work at my house. Each is innocuous enough alone but their daily collision creates a toxic nerve numbing environment that even the super resilient cockroaches that survive nuclear wars would struggle to last a minute in. At times like this I yearn for a 3 hour team building meeting in an ill-ventilated conference room sitting next to a guy with unwashed socks - anything as long as it's far away.

The moral of the story is that while the grass may indeed be greener on the other side - it's still grass & who needs that unless you are Boris Becker ? Although I have to admit that spending all day almost every day in shorts or tracks & a T-shirt sure beats having to wear formals & shoes so here's celebrating a year (& a bit) of being pantless !

Dye Hard.

Yes I'm back. I guess the first thing to do is to confess my surprise & express my gratitude for all the comments & notes in response to my first effort - all of them were motivating. Well all except the 1 comment that asked me to shut up & not pollute the airwaves but I'm used to hearing that from Priya.

Anyone who has seen me will know what I'm talking about when I say that I am grey. UFOlogists apply that description to small, wrinkly, strange looking alien visitors & while most of that description could apply to me as well I am actually talking about my crowning glory - my hair. The salt started joining the pepper on my head very early on & I have spent a large portion of my life explaining it away as "premature greying" - at 43 that no longer holds water. To make matters worse it's not the stylish sequential greying that starts at the temples & works it's way inland like a well organised invading army but rather a random sprinkling that at just the right angle looks like sunlight reflecting off. Unfortunately there are no longer many of those angles left to hide behind.

At most times my condition is easy for me to ignore but it's brought home to me emphatically every time I visit my neighborhood hole in the wall barber shop. The routine is always the same. Looking at my head after the haircut could give people the impression that the person who took the shears to it had a special brief to address only the black hairs & that this discrimination caused the white hairs to stand up for their right to be seen. On seeing this the barber (how can you call someone who takes things off the hair rather than dress them up a hairdresser ?) invariably feels compelled to ask me if he should colour my hair ? I always refuse. He then tries to entice me with the various colour options available. I refuse again - in this at least I prefer black & white to coloured. He looks at me with a mix of pity & bewilderment & leaves it at that until the next time.

Somehow I've never wanted to hide the grey - never even considered it in fact. I guess the reason is that maybe in my mind I don't consider myself any older than I was while I was in college - despite everything that my body & slowing metabolism may scream to me. Somewhere I'm probably thinking that this is still premature greying - if I don't feel old then even if I look old it should not matter - right ? The grey in my hair is probably why I get a salary too - what else signifies my experience at the job that I do ?God knows that sometimes my actions do not show that !

So in the end analysis my leaving the grey in my hair undisturbed is my own little expression of freedom from some preconceived notions of what is "age appropriate" for me. Live Free or Dye Hard !

Getting Started

"When was the last time you did something for the first time ?" an ad tagline asks - good Question. Sometimes the routine takes over life so completely that days roll into each other in an indistinguishable mass & it's hard to think that anything beyond that exists. As 2012 kicks off I promised myself that I would try to move out of my comfort zone & test the boundaries. I am conscious though that my good intentions often race away leaving me eating dust in their wake to contemplate what could have been - I aim to make this time different so let's see how that goes.

I was confronted with a Q while setting this up about the subject that I want to blog about - well anything that pops into my head of-course. Fair warning though - Priya, my best friend, wife, most honest critic..., says that my head is a store house of useless information (phrase under trademark) so this could be a wild ride for those that tag along ! There's no end of interesting things out there - some of them happening to me too so it's more likely that I will run out of patience before I run out of subjects.

It's somewhat strange that there are people out there that have a better opinion of my writing abilities than I myself do (looking at you The Nikhil) so this may turn into a exercise in getting them to shut up as much as in expressing what I feel. On the other hand my father & my brother are both published authors so who knows this may even be readable after-all stranger things have happened.

So a big hello to all those that want to join this trip to see an old dog learn some new tricks !