Poles Apart

Meera was trying to send a mail to her team…just the team roster for the upcoming week. But the internet was acting up and she was caught in the same preview page for 25 minutes. She silently cursed her luck and wished that she had sent it out last night. But last night was Friday and Meera had spent the evening watching the reruns of Big Bang Theory along with her husband, Vicky. Plus they were drinking and making repetitive lewd jokes about what Big Bang Theory should actually be about. So although she knew that she had one task pending she had decided to postpone it for Saturday. Meera had once sent out a garbled official email under the influence of alcohol and she intended to never repeat the same.

“It would just take a minute to send out the mail.” Meera had thought as she happily melted into the arms of Vicky.

And today Meera woke up with a bad hangover. A half asleep Vicky suggested that she should drink herself out of the hangover, an idea that infuriated Meera to a great extent. Meera was already feeling nauseated and wanted to stay in bed but they had to attend a friend’s pre wedding ceremony in a few hours and she reluctantly got up. She started her laptop meaning to send out her mail but the internet refused to be with her. She helplessly looked at Vicky who was still in bed; eyes closed and enjoying the slow unhurried pace of a Saturday morning. How she wished that he would get up and make a cup of coffee for her. But she knew that Vicky’s cooking skills were non-existent and he did not seem too bothered by her plight at the moment.

Meera sighed and popped two painkillers to get the headache in control. She flopped back on the bed meaning to rest herself for the next 15 fifteen minutes but got up after 5. She tried to send out her mail again. Luckily this time it went through.

“Eat something or else it would get worse,” Vicky murmured to her as he rolled over. Meera somehow felt a seething burst of anger towards him and her headache was suddenly doubled. It was his idea to drink so much. She still dragged herself to the kitchen and forced a few biscuits down her throat and then she fell back on the bed. Soon she was fast asleep again.

Suddenly Meera got up and saw that Vicky was sitting on the edge of the bed reading the day’s news. He was all dressed up and ready for the party. Meera looked at the clock and got a shock. A lot of time has passed and they had to start for the friend’s party soon. She quickly got up and rushed to take a bath.

“Take your time,” Vicky said without looking up.

Meera did not have the time to drape a sari and decided to put on an anarkali suit instead. She then started to put make up on her face when Vicky remarked, “Great! You are ready as well. See…I told you you’ll feel good soon. I’ll go and get the car out. Lock the doors properly.”

Vicky went out and before leaving he turned off the AC and the lights. The idea of the AC and the lights running in an empty room bothered him to no end and he just could not trust Meera to turn them off.

Meera did the rest of her face in the sweltering heat of the closed room and rushed after her husband.

Vicky was already in the car and Meera quickly settled herself beside him.

“It’s too hot.” Meera felt like she was getting baked.

“I’ve started the AC…give it sometime,” Vicky coolly said and started the car. A few minutes into the road and Meera started to feel giddy. She desperately tried to take her thoughts away from puking but the more she tried to think of other things, the more she needed to puke.

To make matters worse Meera had the problem of motion sickness since childhood. Buses, cars, trams, trains, almost every moving vehicle managed to get her nauseated. As a matter of fact that is how her love story with Vicky had started in the first place. Both of them were posted at Pune and one day they had to travel in the same cab to the office picnic. Meera had puked out of the window exactly after 7 minutes of the ride and instead of being annoyed Vicky had graciously stepped up and helped her to get clean and to feel better. And that sweet little gesture had led to a series of dates which eventually culminated into a marriage.

But that was a long time ago when the thrill of newness made everything seem perfect.

“Please stop for a while Vicky. I need to get some fresh air. I feel so sick.”

“We are already late. Why do feel sick all the time?”

Vicky kept driving, visibly annoyed with Meera.

Meera closed her eyes and tried to rest her head against the seat. She felt horrible. She did not know if it was her physical discomfort or Vicky’s insensitive behavior that made her so unhappy.

As tears welled up in her eyes, she had fond memories of her father rushing through her mind. She remembered how many times her parents had landed in a tough spot due to her motion sickness. And every time her father had treated her with love. In fact whenever Meera was in some sort of discomfort her father felt quite mad at everyone and everything around him till her health was restored. At one time she had puked in her father’s new car and he had kicked the new car because it made his daughter sick.

Meera has seen streaks of such single minded affection in Vicky in their dating days but things changed a lot post marriage. She glanced at the cold person beside her and wanted to cry.

But she shouted instead.

“You know why I am ill today? Because of you!”

“You suggested drinks night and I was stupid enough to follow your lead. I never drank before marriage.”

Vicky was startled by the outburst but he came back quickly with attacking retorts.

“I didn’t force you. You were boring and I taught you to have fun. And you know that you had this stupid problem much before marriage.”

“So what? You knew it and pretended to care for me just to woo me. Double standards!”

Vicky gave her a raging look and muttered something under his breath. He never took a fight to ugly levels. Instead he stopped communication till peace was restored. Today also he did the same and diverted his attention to the dashboard.

The car halted at a traffic jam and Vicky started to shuffle noisily through the random papers in the dashboard.

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Outside another car came to a stop by their side. A Caucasian woman in her mid thirties was seated at the window while her boyfriend was in the driver’s seat.

She was Ramona Smith who had come to India with her boyfriend Justin for 2 weeks. This was their idea of a perfect exotic vacation. No one had told them about the severity of Indian summers and they had somehow assumed that it would be just shades hotter than their balmy summers.

But the scorching heat is not the only thing that was going through Ramona’s mind today. She had been with her boyfriend for 6 long years and when he brought up the idea of a long vacation in India she was sure that he had planned to propose to her there.

A moonlit night in front of the Taj Mahal and Justin going down on his knees with a pristine ring in his hand…perfect proposal! Ramona had tried hard to not visualize the scene but her mind kept on doing the same over and over again till the point of time when she began to believe that it was a surety.

And then reality happened. Justin and Ramona both felt kind of roasted in the summer heat. The vacation was not even close to the rosy images that they had imagined. Today was the last day of their vacation and Justin had not proposed or even shown any inclination towards marrying her. No, he was not unpleasant to her. He simply talked to her about the routine stuff and how they should come back again in the winters. Not the kind of prelude that you would expect to the proposal.

A gloomy Ramona looked at the car next to theirs and saw the heavily decked up Meera. The Indian woman is obviously married. She usually found heavy make-up and golden jewellery quite tacky but today she was not judging. She just kept on staring at the married couple wistfully. They seemed so secure with their marital status. And then she looked at Justin and sighed. At that very moment he was looking at her with a fairly stupid smile that irritated Ramona to the core. She knew what it meant. They were stuck in a traffic jam and Justin had heard that kissing in public is banned in India. With a police officer in sight Justin meant to see if it’s true or not. He leaned in. The kind of thing that Ramona had fallen for in the beginning but had secretly hoped would go away with time. It did not happen; Justin did not grow up. He was pouting very eagerly. Ramona did not want to be rude and kissed him back.

At the same moment Meera looked in their direction and saw the couple kissing. Foreigners. How secure and happy they looked in love. It was a hot day in an unknown country and yet they did not care. The only thing that mattered to them was the passion that they had for each other. Meera stared at their uninhibited expression. Meera turned her head towards her grumpy Vicky and sighed.

After the kiss was over Ramona looked out again. And  this time their eyes met. Meera’s and Ramona’s. And in a split second they identified the grief they saw in each other’s eyes. They both felt confused.

But the signal had turned to green and the cars sped off in different directions.

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Was she not happy? Why? She was married to the man! Ramona was perplexed. May be she was the typical down trodden Indian wife who was being humiliated over dowry. Or maybe she was being forced to abort her unborn girl. Ramona’s mind was racing when she heard Justin saying something.

“Hey, my mom was suggesting that we get married in the small church where she ran away with my dad to get married. I know it’s a little run-down but they are emotional about it. What do you say?” Justin was casual. Ramona opened her mouth and quickly closed it.

This was the proposal. No poetry, no gloss of sugary sweet romance, not even a ring. But it still was what Ramona was waiting for…the marriage proposal.

She smiled a bit and nodded in affirmation.

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In the other car as Vicky drove ahead Meera was trying to figure out why the Caucasian woman was looking so forlorn with her lover. He seemed to be the perfect romantic lover.

“Here, take this”, said Vicky. Meera looked at him and saw that he was holding out a small pouch of ajwain towards her. “It will help to subside your vomit attacks…I kept a few in the dashboard last time you fell ill.” There was no trace of emotion in his voice.

Meera smiled a bit and thanked him. It was not all that she was looking for but it was something.

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Meera and Ramona stared into path ahead of them. They were not happy…nor were they unhappy. They felt a strong sense of dismay. Both of them silently resolved to never introduce fairy tales to their future daughters. Perhaps the root of all evils lay in unrealistic expectations.

Illegitimate Child

Sheila Roy was having a cup of tea and observing the birds chirping in her terrace. The shy birds had gotten used to her steady glance. The old lady had been doing this every morning for the last five years and her quiet presence did not bother the birds any more. Sheila was an elegant lady and despite her age it was still possible to see her classical beauty. In her youth she used to be an emotional and feisty woman. With age she had calmed down a lot and she now took pleasure in observing the world develop around her. She was exceptional in the sense that she felt that the modern era was much better than the olden days. She would never voice disregard for the current generation and never did she feel any inclination to glorify her own times.

Whenever she found a youth shrugging and complaining about the rushed pace of life and robotic ways of people, she would secretly smile to herself. She remembered her youth when she was raising her kids Mahima, Ronen and Nitin. Sometimes their father, Dinesh Roy had to go out of town for work and there was only the telegram that allowed contact between them. Sheila often suffered from anxiety attacks when she did not hear from him for prolonged periods. She had been orphaned in her teenage and the sudden loss of her parents had made her extremely insecure about the safety of her family. She remembered that she wished every day for a device that could connect families across geographical boundaries.

And now, 2 more generations later her wish had been granted. In the next room her daughter Mahima was talking to her son over Skype. People said that technology is increasingly disconnecting people. She brushed it off as the usual rant of the human race. A certain degree of self absorption was present in all generations, she felt. In her times people gathered to sit together and chat. And now people connected more over the internet. But the motive has always been the same, to win approval of others about your own existence.

Suddenly a waft of raised voices came floating into the terrace. Mahima was arguing with her son again. Sheila got up intending to intervene. The birds suddenly took notice and flew off in a hurry. “Bird brained indeed”, she muttered to herself as she trudged to her daughter’s room.

“Hey Dida!!!”,  Shom looked happy to see her face in his laptop. His dida has always been a staunch supporter of him and even now her entry into the room seemed to assure him across the seas.

“What is it that you two are fighting about? Are you pressing him for leaves?”, Sheila asked.

“Ask your grandson. No mother in her right mind would be able to control her temper after what he said to me,” Mahima huffed.

“Ma…come on. It’s nothing dida.” Shom’s face seemed red.

“If you are so ashamed of it, then why are you still doing it?” Mahima screamed.

“What is it? Is it about his live in relationship? Is that it?”, Sheila asked.

“You know about it? ”

Both Mahima and Shom were shocked.

“If you two intended to keep it a secret why did you have to fight over Skype so loudly every day.”, Sheila smiled.

“I’ve known for a long time but I saw that you preferred to keep it a secret so I was content knowing Melissa as your girlfriend. At least you had introduced me to my granddaughter-in-law.”

“She is not your granddaughter-in-law officially and that’s not my only problem”, Mahima fumed.

“Ma I gotta go…” Shom started.

“ I’m about to become a grandmom…to an illegitimate child.” Mahima broke down inconsolably.

“We never got the time to marry. Plus it does not matter to us…why do we have to seek validation from anyone else about our relationship?” Shom weakly protested.

“I’ve never been a typical mom. I gave Shom all the freedom in the world. I never intervened in his personal life and never told him who he should sleep with. I’ve even accepted their live-in relationship. They promised me to get married before having a child….and now they say that there is no time.”

“Why ma why? ”, Mahima was howling now.

Sheila was shaken by the piece of information she just received. She had lived a complex life and time had taught her to hide her reactions. She wanted to tell her daughter a lot of things to console her…but no words came out.

“Ma and dida, I have to go…Melissa is throwing up again.” Shom quickly disconnected the call. It was not possible to know if the excuse was real or made up.

“Mahima, I have a story for you,” Sheila said quietly.

“Please ma…I’m well past the age for your stories and morals. I cannot be this flexible. They are playing with their unborn child’s future.”

“Calm down, Moni. I want to tell you a real story. I have lived in pre partition times. I had to face life threatening situations…those experiences have taught me to value life more. ”

Mahima was quiet suddenly…she had grown up listening to excerpts of her parents’ life and every time they fascinated her deeply.

“I had just gotten married to a man 15 years elder to me. It was a typical arranged marriage. The groom came from a Kulin family and was a lawyer by profession. Yes, he was good looking too. So your grandparents and my parents never felt the need to take my opinion of him. To them I was too young to decide for myself. In the days following my marriage, wide spread riots had broken out. In those days we lived in East Bengal and it was still a part of India. My new husband told me that he is secretly making a plan to move to Calcutta in the coming few months. I did not know that he would not get the chance to complete his plan. That night an angry mob had attacked the house of my in-laws. My husband did all that he could to save lives. He helped the women and children to escape first. I remember him smearing kajal all over my face. “You have to hide your beauty till the situation is back to normal.” He pushed a bundle of notes into a nonchalant little bag and put it in my hands. “Keep it with yourself and run…I’ve to go back and help others to safety.”

As I looked back I saw his house; the house where he had grown up was up in flames. I was only 16 years old. I ran along with his 2 sisters in the darkness with almost no hope to live. Soon Mira, my youngest sister-in-law took a right turn and forced us into a small hut. It was a muslim household. Mira used to play with the children of the house. They readily gave us shelter from the riots. Her presence of mind and forbidden friends had saved us that night."

Mahima had grown calm…she was listening to her ma. It was a story that she had heard several times in her life. Whenever she felt ill equipped to deal with her struggles her mother used to share the first hand atrocities that she had to face in her youth. And every time the story worked like magic on her.

Mahima felt a lump forming in her throat. Soon her mother would reach to the portion where she would reach the safety of Calcutta only to hear about the death of her own parents. Barely days after her marriage, Sheila had been orphaned. It was indeed very difficult to settle down in a new place amidst new people but she fought with the situation no matter what.

Sheila sighed and paused. It was still difficult to revisit the memories of her family’s sudden death.

“And then you grew close to baba in the still-unfamiliar lanes of Calcutta? Suddenly your stranger husband became the only one for you in the whole world?”, Mahima said to fill in the heavy silence. 

“Your arranged marriage has more love than any love marriage of any era, Ma.”

Sheila was silent.

“This man who I was married to and who saved my life is not your father.”

Mahima zapped her head towards her mother in absolute shock. She had heard the story over and over again. Not for once had her mother hinted towards such a thing earlier. Mahima’s father had passed away only a few years earlier and he had always loved and cared for his children. Till his last breath he had been quite the ideal father. Mahima did not want the perfect memories to be spoilt by the introduction of a new biological father. Who was her real father then? Her mother’s secret lover? Or was she raped?

A thousand ugly thoughts crossed her mind and she felt an insane rage towards the new person about to enter the picture.

“I don’t want to know,” Mahima  lowered her eyes. “Dinesh Roy was my father and will always be my father.”

Sheila smiled.

“He was and is your father. I mean he is your legal as well as biological father.”

“But you just said that…”

“I said my deceased husband is not your father...”

“When I came to Calcutta, along with the news of your grandparents’ death I also got to know that my husband had been killed too.  I was a widow and an orphan, in a new city when I met your father, Dinesh. He too was a migrant. Young and strong, he was doing all that he could to organize us, the refugees into a community. He was there working 24/7 like a messiah giving new hope of new life to one and all.”

“He saw the grief in my eyes and did not want to intrude into my personal space. Instead he simply extended his hand and asked for help “Will you help me to rehabilitate the refugees?” Those words of iron, not tinged with a shred of pity gave me courage. And I fought alongside him. I thought of what I had lost and vowed to treat every stranger as my own.”

“Those days were very difficult but things changed slowly. Dinesh had managed to find a good job eventually and he decided to send me to college. We had the option to part ways then. But we both knew that we were hopelessly in love. So we decided to start a family together. Then you and your two brothers were born and we had finally found our happiness amidst grief and anarchy.”

 Mahima was sitting with an open mouth.

“Your first husband…he died that night too? You met my father after migrating to West Bengal?”

“Judge me if you wish. But this is the true story...maybe I was wrong in keeping the truth from you for so long. ”

“I’m sorry ma…did I hurt your feelings? I’m not judging. I’m just overwhelmed. You always made it seem that baba was the man who saved your life in East Bengal. I didn’t know that you married him later.”

“I did not. Your father and I had never married.”

Mahima stared at her mother is disbelief.

“Everyone knew us as a married couple already. To marry again would have been ridiculous. You see, we never got the time to marry. Plus it did not matter to us…we never felt the need to seek validation from anyone else about our relationship.”

“So think before you feel sorry for your unborn grandchild, Moni. Technically you too are an illegitimate child.”

Closure

Priyadarshini was bored. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and there was absolutely nothing that she had on her mind. She turned on her laptop in search of some entertainment and logged into her Bharat Matrimony profile. She looked at the saved settings and made a few random refinements to narrow down the search before finally proceeding to look for the matches.

This was her usual routine for the past 5 months. The refinements were always made in the department of looks. A requirement for a certain height, a certain type of build, a certain type of complexion, etc were updated… Priyadarshini never applied any bar to the other categories. Community, caste, religion, money did not matter much to her…she never screened the prospective grooms on these criteria.

Yes, Priyadarshini was a girl who was simply obsessed with beauty. She had attained the marriageable age and although she had two semi relationships and one serious relationship in the past, she had no one in her life currently. When I say no one, I mean no one good looking enough to work for Priyadarshini in the long term. So when her parents asked her if she would like some help from them to find a suitable match she readily agreed. Her parents were relieved and taken aback at the same time. They had prepared a rather long speech on the advantages of marriage and on why it was the correct time for her to get married and all that seemed to be a wasted effort now.

According to Priyadarshini she had the right to look for a handsome guy. She herself had almond shaped eyes, high cheekbones and a smile with the right amount of cheek in it. She had a tall and slender figure to match her alluring face. In a word men found her simply enchanting! And she felt that she too deserved to be enchanted by a man who had the right kind of looks. For 5 months she unsuccessfully searched for a probable mate on the Bharat Matrimony portal.

But for the past few weeks, something had changed. There was this one guy Rahul on Bharat Matrimony whose smouldering looks had her enamoured. There would be days when she would login and just stalk his profile. She had almost read every clause the guy had penned down and she seemed to fit his requirement perfectly. Yet, this Rahul guy refused to send her any message or even express interest in her.

You would be thinking why she did not take the first step ahead but you see Priyadarshini had to be wooed into a relationship. That was another non negotiable part of the deal. She looked Rahul up on Facebook. A profile showed up where pretty much every piece of information and every single picture was locked. She fumed and cursed at him through the screen, “Who are you, a girl?”

Priyadarshini modified her profile a bit more to match Rahul’s criteria perfectly and logged in regularly to the portal to increase her visibility. She even talked to a few customer care agents from Bharat Matrimony to ensure that her profile was active. One of the agents kind of guessed her apprehension and suggested that the guy in question might be a free member with limited privileges so it would probably be better if she took the first step.

Priyadarshini’s heart started to beat much faster. That must be it. In fact every day Rahul and she logged in to the portal almost at the same time with amazing regularity. In 2 seconds Priyadarshini had figured it out. There was a pattern. Rahul was also logging in like her to get himself noticed. Beyond the virtual portal the two people were already talking in the same language.

Priyadarshini got too excited to be able to think properly. She went out for a walk and when she came back home after an hour she had the perfect plan in her head.

 She created a new profile in her name. This time she uploaded conservative pictures and gave limited details about herself. She lied in the portal and wrote that her parents were initiators of the request and launched the new profile. Soon after, she sent a message to Rahul. Only thing is that she pretended to be her dad. You see, she taking the first step was not cool but her parents helping out their would-be son-in-law to sweep Priyadarshini off her feet was totally in line with her pre set norms.

Her scheme worked. Rahul did accept the request and he did send across his parents’ contact details. And things then seemed to go exactly like a choreographed dance recital! Rahul came to visit Priyadarshini with his parents. Everybody showed their best sides and things looked too perfect to be true.

Since the parents were in complete agreement with the match, the bride and the groom were given a month’s time to interact and take the final decision.

Priyadarshini’s days changed overnight. She no longer had lazy afternoons nor the wish to look for better looking guys. She was beside herself with joy to know that Rahul did want to woo her, to know that Rahul’s personality was a charming complement to his good looks, to know that she was totally able to control her future husband’s life…

They talked mush, they talked serious…but whatever they did seemed to happen with remarkable ease. Rahul was the last thought she had on her mind when she went to bed and he was the first thought she had on her mind when she woke up.

Things happened just as in a fairy tale for 2 weeks. Then all of a sudden Priyadarshini felt a distinct change in Rahul’s attitude. The messages became a little less frequent. The calls got a little stiffer. The dates got postponed for some reason. She brushed it off at first thinking that it could be work related stress or Rahul might simply be ill. ( Yes, Rahul being ill was a much safer proposition than Rahul losing interest. ) But then things worsened further to the point that Priyadarshini felt that she was forcing him to love her. She became the initiator of all conversations and he messaged only to reply to her messages.

When she asked him about the change, he avoided the topic. Her alarm bells were screeching at this point but she prayed for the creases to get ironed out soon. But Rahul suddenly became completely unavailable for any call or message. Priyadarshini tried to call him and left him several messages but Rahul simply did not take her calls nor did he send her any message. She did not give up and kept on sending her routine care and concern texts to him. But there was absolutely no response from Rahul.

Then suddenly one morning she woke up to find a long message from Rahul.

 “Priyadarshini, hope you will forgive me for doing this. I have patched up with my long term girlfriend and have decided to marry her. I’m sorry if I hurt you. But you and I had been together for just 2 weeks so may be it would not be too hard for you to forget me. Sorry again, wish you find a way better guy than I ever can be. My sincere apologies and best wishes for your future. ”

Priyadarshini was shivering. She was actually getting rejected by this one guy whom she had imagined to be her knight.

She had thought so many times about trying to cook for him and messing it up...and how Rahul would step up and save the situation.

She had thought so many times about the time when she would almost pass out while giving birth to their future kid...and how Rahul would give her the strength to go on.

She had thought so many times about the retirement days when her memory would be feeble with age...and how Rahul would help her to recreate the good old times.

Every time in her thoughts she was the damsel in distress and he the knight in shining armour.

She had their whole lives planned out and now he was saying it is not going to happen. Her knight was abandoning her...

For days Priyadarshini felt numb and could not face the pain. Then the tears came…and when they came they refused to stop for weeks. She could not figure out if it was the suddenness of the end or if it was the rejection that hurt her the most.

Rahul’s parents called to apologise. They said that they were not aware of the secret affair of their son and that they were deeply embarrassed about the entire episode. They shared their apologies but to Priyadarshini’s parents the words sounded like condolences.

They tried to console their daughter but it enraged her further. It just meant that they knew how much deeply she had felt for Rahul and how deeply he had managed to hurt her. She detached herself from the world and deactivated her FB account. She tried her best to counsel herself out of the situation but nothing seemed to work. She tried to login and look for new guys at Bharat Matrimony but all of them seemed to be strangers she had no interest in. And that one guy who had definitely become a stranger continued to feel like her life partner.

Then one day after months Priyadarshini decided to reactivate her Facebook account. On an impulse she typed his name into the search bar. There, on his cover picture was a girl standing beside Rahul wearing mehendi, hot pants and wedding bangles. Priyadarshini finally smiled a smile of relief. The girl looked quite average. Even the maddening happiness of her honeymoon could not make her look prettier than Priyadarshini...Priyadarshini was the clear winner.

That day she realised that it was the implicit suggestion of her being inferior that had her hurt her the most. That day Priyadarshini got her closure.

I Am At Your Feet

Yes, I am talking about our tradition of paying respect to an elder by touching the feet. We have given our feet the lowest status among the visible parts of the human body and to confer a lower status on ourselves than the respected person we need to touch their feet.

There are so many rules regarding the feet! You cannot enter certain holy places with your shoes on. In other sacred places they ask to cover your unholy feet before entering. If you point your feet at someone, you are supposedly insulting that person. And if your feet accidentally touch an elder, or a book, or a deity, or money, or … (the list of revered beings) you are supposed to feel sorry and touch their feet. (to cancel out the insult I guess)

This culture of pronaam (yes, I am a bengali and I pronounce pranam as pronaam) is not only limited to the instances when you have accidentally insulted someone by touching them with your feet. You also need to touch the feet of your elders whenever you wish to seek their blessings. So to show someone your respect for them you do not do something to make them feel special. You do something to show yourself as a minion.

My son, who is still not influenced by the idiosyncrasies of the society he has been born into, loves to stand on his books. He also often lies on my lap and caresses my cheek with his feet. And I have never felt a greater happiness in my heart. 

Honestly, as long as the feet are clean and minty fresh I do not see any reason for them to be treated any differently from our hands. Respect or disrespect lies in our hearts and if our hearts are clean does anything else matter really?

But yet, I have to teach him that there are rules created by funny people and you have to at least pretend to abide by them. Else, you need to make Mars habitable like Matt Damon and that’s just too much of an effort.

The Woman : Part 2

She raced to the Lord with all her might,

She was a non believer but not tonight.

Tonight she had to pray for a happy future,

Not for herself but for the life within her.

“Send me a girl whom I can raise to be a worthy Woman,

A person who would go on to be no lesser than any Man.”

A person, who can live a life that is free,

A person, who can be the one I had wanted to be.

An independent one following the words of the heart,

Who would follow no rule and live by logic from the start.

A fearless one who should never be looked at askance,

Nor should anyone force my child into compliance.

A multi tasker and a nurturer my child does not have to be.

A brave heart with a kind soul is all I want my child to be.

A leader whom everyone would look up to.

The most daunting tasks my child shouldn’t be afraid to do.

Bemused the Lord decided to have some fun.

“All your wishes will be granted except for one.”

She found it reasonable and readily agreed.

And thanked the Lord and left feeling relieved.

She went home with her heart full of joy,

And 9 months later she gave birth to a boy!

Egalitarian Society

Subhash and Kush are sitting side by side on a bench. Both are wearing crisp white shirts. Both are feeling equally fidgety and are cracking knuckles to ease the tension. Both are awaiting the result of their job interview for the post of a driver with an agency.

Yet, the very observant eye would note that Subhash was wearing a cheap polyester shirt, washed and ironed carefully to look perfect while Kush’s shirt bore the label of Manzini.

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Kush was born in the family of a millionaire. A rich dad with killer looks and shitty values. A beautiful mom who came with lots of dowry and a warped sense of morality. Kush was never given the chance of becoming normal. From the moment he was born he was told in every way that the rest of the world existed to serve and pamper him. When Kush’s teacher gave him a note for destroying school property his dad sent back a cheque paying 10 times the value of the apparatus.

Next time Kush had punched a boy in the eye resulting in partial loss of vision. This time the principal expelled Kush from the school. But this was still not a problem. His dad poured in more money to get him admitted to an even better school. Kush’s father told his son, “Remember son, always hold your head high…no one from our family should ever have to bow his head.” Kush’s mother secretly felt very proud that her husband never allowed the world to make her son feel guilty.

So Kush grew up like that. A rich kid with plush degrees but zero education. Kush’s dad thought that it would not matter because he had plans to train him personally to handle the family business soon after his fake MBA was done. But people like Kush’s dad usually make many enemies and one day he died in what looked like an accident.

Then came the bad times. Suddenly within a single year, all the wealth of the family got wiped out in front of Kush and his mother. Instead of taking charge of the situation, his mother watched the series of events unfold with helpless eyes. It is at such moments that people realize why it is a grave sin to raise a girl with Sita like values. But Kush’s grandparents were long gone and no one actually stepped up to help them keep bankruptcy at bay.

And that’s how it happened, a little boy who was never given a scope to fend for himself suddenly found himself penniless after his father’s demise.

As Kush’s last car was towed away, (to pay for a loan that he never knew to exist) he stared at the scene vacantly. Their chauffeur who just lost his job chose to look past his personal tragedy. He came up to Kush and offered him some insight. Life has to go on…and Kush needed to find work as soon as possible. Kush father’s enemies had flooded the market with enough rumors to prevent him from bagging a job. It was his idea to set Kush up for a cabbie’s job. It was not the ideal situation but he hoped that the job could buy Kush some time to look for a job befitting his social status.

So that is how Kush came looking for a job at the driving agency.

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Subhash was born in a below poverty line family. When his father lost his life to an expensive ailment his illiterate mother took charge of the family. She toiled day after day to support her son and herself. She would not have needed to work half as hard had she not planned to give Subhash the gift of education. But whenever she saw her employers leaving for work wearing tailored suits in air conditioned cars, she could not resist the temptation of offering her son the ticket to that world.

Subhash was a good son who helped his mother to run the household. He was in fact very willing to work as fuchka peddler from an early age to assist his mother monetarily. But his mother insisted that he should study. His mother never really understood that Subhash found studies to be incredibly dull. When Subhash got stuck with Geometry he ran to his mother for help. She hung her head in shame and decided to arrange for a tutor.

There was no way that she could afford to pay for a tutor but she decided to skip one meal every day and arranged for the money. Despite her best efforts Subhash could manage to study till Higher Secondary which he barely passed with a third division. Subhash never could make himself fall in love with studies. He was a good guy but he just had a preference for manual work.

His mother asked him to go to college but this time Subhash put his foot down. He felt like an idiot who was wasting his mother’s hard earned money. He wished to learn something exciting and useful. Learning that the combination of sodium and chloride ions gives us common salt did not make sense to him. There was no way that Subhash could use that piece of fancy information to earn some money. It was time, he decided, to learn something useful. He enrolled in a driving class.

His mother agreed. She was getting old and her frail body could not support the weight of her big dreams any more. She thought maybe her son was right; maybe she could be happy to see her son settled with any job that paid a decent salary.

After a few months of training, Subhash applied for the job of a driver at the agency.

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Well, Subhash and Kush both got the job.

Subhash cried a few muffled tears of joy and ran home to tell his mother that she can finally retire from work.

Kush went home quietly and took few big swigs of whiskey and hanged himself.

PS: Up in the sky, the Creator sighed. His project of Egalitarian Society has been stuck in the testing phase from 1902. Ever since angel Biley proposed the model of Egalitarian Society He has tried numerous test cases. But the experiment seemed to fail every time.

Equality probably cannot ensure happiness for everyone in this complex world.

Sick Leave

Mitali was in a big soup. Her domestic help Nalini had not turned up. The whole house was in a mess, there was nothing edible in the fridge and she had to leave for office in another half an hour. Her husband would reach home at least after an hour after completing his night shift and somehow he had forgotten to take the extra key. Mitali was counting on Nalini to hand him the keys. Ordinarily Mitali does not mind spending 1 or 2 hours to clean the house and she was kind of an expert in rustling up a quick and tasty meal. But this was no ordinary day. Mitali had an important meeting to attend plus the biggest issue at hand was her being 2.5 months pregnant. She was in that phase when she fell sick all the time and got to learn that morning sickness can occur at any time of the day.

Now before we proceed to what happens next, let us spend a moment in knowing Mitali and her husband.

Mitali has been happily married to Sanjay for the last 5 years. There was nothing extraordinary in their love story. Just two ordinary people who happened to be working for an IT company…who somehow by some stroke of luck managed to travel onsite for their respective projects. It was a magical time for both Mitali and Sanjay. First their career took off with an assignment in Europe (which every IT employee in their imagination considers to be a paid vacation) and then they found love in each other! 

They got married as soon as feasible. They worked hard and it paid off with repeated extensions in their stay abroad (much to the dismay of the long queue waiting back in India). Mitali and Sanjay were much thrilled though. Honeymoon abroad for 4 continuous years! That meant a penthouse in India and two high end cars.

Then suddenly one day Mitali and Sanjay saw a couple playing in the park with two tiny toddlers. And suddenly they realized that they would both turn 35 in a month (And anyone brought up in India is taught the basic GK that a woman needs to become a mother before 35 in order to deliver a healthy baby.)

Mitali and Sanjay decided together to try for a baby. They were in a good place in life and though they would not admit it to each other or to anybody else, some sort of boredom had started to creep into their marital life. Plus a baby born abroad meant a lot to most Indians. It is like gifting your child the right to snobbery for the rest of the life.

But as it happened, their stint abroad was not extended any further by their manager. Mitali and Sanjay took the change quite bravely and decided to try harder to conceive. They counted on the baby to cheer them up because clearly adjusting back to their life in India was extremely depressing.

Then the big day came. The day when the Prega news strip showed two bright red parallel lines. Oh, how they celebrated! They were going to be parents! They were both secretly relieved to find out that they were not too late. But the challenge came after that.

Mitali was placed into a very hectic project that required extended hours. Ordinarily, Mitali would have embraced this happily but the pregnancy brought in unanticipated changes in her body. She felt giddy…all the time. She felt out of breath…all the time. She puked at the delicious aroma of her favorite food…all the time.

Mitali and Sanjay rushed to the doctor who brushed the symptoms as “very normal” and recommended a book about motherhood in order to prepare her better for the fight. Well, he did not say “fight”…he said “journey” but it sounded more like “fight”.

So at this juncture, when her employer counted on Mitali to save a sinking project, she felt severely weakened by pregnancy. She needed sick leaves and work from home benefits like never before but that invited a lot of flak from her peers. Sick leaves almost became a taboo topic at office. Mitali’s manager was a lady with a 4 year old so she had hoped to get some support and sympathy from her. But after the day when her manager discussed loudly how she had worked till the day she went into labor and how she cannot respect women who use their unborn babies to shirk work, she stopped expecting.

When Mitali told the incident at home, Sanjay was seething with rage.

“Resign now!”, he said. “Don’t let them bully you like this.” Sanjay was a good guy who loved his wife and wanted to be her knight in shining armor. But Mitali did not want to be rescued from the current situation. She knew she had to fight through it. And she had a solution.

You see India does have one big benefit. You can get a maid at a reasonable cost. No minimum wage protection translated to affordable comforts for the upper middle class. So Mitali hired a super efficient maid who cooked and cleaned for her. She even prepared different meals for Mitali and Sanjay. And she took care to cook meals that would soothe Mitali’s nausea attacks to a great extent.

Mitali was genuinely grateful to her domestic help, Nalini and was very liberal with the perks. A new sari, a box of chocolates, an old television set and many more stuff were given away to Nalini. Mitali’s secret plea was, “Please don’t quit!” Nalini took 2 Saturdays off every month and on these days Sanjay happily took charge of the household.

So far things were not quite perfect but they were within control…till today when Nalini decided to take an unapproved sick leave. This was Monday and Sanjay would not be home before another hour. And Mitali was starting to feel another bout of nausea sweep over her. She needed to be in bed…she had to leave for office.

Reluctantly, Mitali dialed her manager’s number.

“I’m not feeling well and my domestic help has also not turned up so I was wondering if I could take the day off or at least reach office in the second half…”, Mitali mumbled on the phone. Mitali was one of those people who felt guilty about being sick and never let their illness reflect in their voice. Her manager took that for insincerity.

“Mitali, I’ve been through this stage. Motherhood is a natural phase of life…you cannot let motherhood affect your work life. And we have a meeting with the client. I hope you know…”

Mitali did not hear anything else…she promised that she would try to find a solution and hung up.

She thought for a while and dialed Nalini’s number.

“Can you please, please come over?”, Mitali begged.

Nalini was suffering from a bad fever…and an abusive husband.

“No,”  she snapped back. “How can you be so lazy? You can’t do your own work one day?”

Nalini never got a taste of education and she did not know anything about misdirected anger. She thought that it was quite ok to vent out her frustration with her personal life on her employer.

Mitali was now the doubly snubbed woman. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. Before she could cry out the sadness, nausea got better of her and she vomited on the floor. She needed help. Maybe Sanjay was right, maybe she should quit. But wait, this wasn’t her fault. This was totally Nalini’s fault. After all the perks and benefits that she had been enjoying she did not have the right to fall ill. And that tone! How could she talk back at that tone? She was the root of her misery. And she would have to pay for it. You see, misdirected anger and blame game affects educated people too.

Mitali called up Nalini.

“You’re fired.” She said and felt a little better immediately.

But domestic helps do not appreciate the brevity of sentences. Nalini immediately prolonged it into a melee of conniving words.

Mitali did not have energy for this. She hung up and lied down for a while. Her high priority meeting was about to start in 10 minutes, she had fired her maid and she was increasingly feeling giddy. There was no way to save the situation.

Suddenly, her phone beeped. She reached out very slowly to read the text.

“Sick leave approved.” A single line from her manager.

Mitali was shocked by the kindness of her manager. This meant she could wait for her husband to come back and help her. This meant she could rest her body and build idle dreams about her unborn baby. This meant her manager probably did have a heart. This meant…really a lot to her.

Mitali decided to pass on the good turn. She called up Nalini and approved her sick leave too. She got up and cleaned herself and smilingly waited for her husband to get back when they could share some quality time over two cups of hot tea. Endless small talk with your spouse on a Monday is always a big thing in the life of a corporate employee.

PS: Mitali’s manager never had a change of heart. The client had fallen ill and had requested Mitali’s manager for a reschedule.