On the verge of shifting base and getting mentally unhinged

Two days from now, we are throwing our reasonably organised lives into a gargantuan mess by moving to a partially complete and scarcely livable house. 

At this point, let me do it the "filmy" way by going for a flashback to update you on the recent events of my otherwise uninteresting life. This is probably unnecessary for the selected few who follow my life-cycle with considerable interest but since the head-count of these "selected few" is in single digit, it makes more sense to give a general update.

Three months back, on a cold winter morning, while sipping super-heated masala tea, we  suddenly came to the conclusion that we should buy a flat in Gurgaon. I don't recollect the exact rationale, if any, behind this decision but I do remember that it was taken in our usual Quick-Gun-Murugan style - decided before you could say Jack Robinson!! Subsequently, this proved to be a wise decision, as our landlord is coming back to Gurgaon and we anyway would have been forced to move to another flat. 

The next steps were, of course, somewhat more long drawn as it involved finding a suitable flat in Gurgaon, selling our Navi Mumbai flat, applying for loan, applying for NOC from the society and various other mundane stuffs. Arranging the finance was not easy and neither was completing these formalities which usually involves filling long complicated forms where they ask intimate questions like my grandmother's maiden name, colour of my first pet and the measurement of my left thigh. 

We finished these formalities with about 10 days to spare i.e ten days before our landlord is going to arrive and take possession of his lawful abode. The next step is, of course, shifting to  our new house. 

This house that we have bought is not a locked up "Khandahar" of some well meaning gentleman. It is a well lived in flat and people were actually staying there till last month. Theoretically, it is possible to move into this flat without any renovation. We, in the eternal folly that has hounded mankind ever since they started building houses, chose to do "a few things" before we move in. And this single step was the beginning of a nerve-wrecking Odyssey that is likely to hound us for another month or so.

 

"A few things", we soon came to realize, is a large basket of ideas and can put even the Buckingham palace to shame. After many hours of contemplation, most of it consisting of looking at our bank balances and feeling miserable about it, we decided that we will get the flat painted, put new tiles on the floors and the sanitary fittings replaced. Simple and basic, isn’t it ? Not quite. 

To replace the sanitary fittings, we had to break a few tiles of the bathroom. And by a deep rooted conspiracy of the tile manufacturers, any design of tile is available at best for 2 years. This automatically means, we have to replace the entire set of bathroom tiles. From there, the next logical step is also to replace the embedded pipes of the bathroom and then, of course, the electrical fittings also need to be changed and...you get the drift. 

Long and short of it is that we now have the following set of people working simultaneously in our house :

- a plumber 

- a masonry fellow (who also does the tile job)

- an electrician

- a carpenter 

- a painter

- a welder 

What made matters worse is the fact that all these aforementioned gentlemen have some peculiar characteristics which, under the present time-critical situation, is quite a hindrance in completing the project on time. A quick summary of these characteristics are as below :

a) Mr. Rajkumar, the painter is a loner who cannot work when other people are in the same room as he is. He also has difficulty in communicating what he wants and expects that you will, somehow, read into his sub-conscious psychological abyss and extract the relevant information. He also refuses to give his own opinion and prefers to take the stand "Jaise aap kahiyega (As you wish, sir"). This, occasionally, can push you to a stage when you would wish that you had a loaded Kalashnikov or Uzi sub-machine gun handy. 

b) Mr. Nandan, the masonry worker feels that his work is not being appreciated and he is not getting the due respect for his job. For example, he resented bitterly when one of his precious tiles showed a slight scratch (less than 6 inch long). He complained in the most vociferous manner that this has happened due to the dastardly behavior of the carpenter, who, apparently is the miscreant. Other workers like the electrician et al tried to pacify him by stating that this sore spot will disappear if rubbed vigorously was met with contempt and disdain and fortified his belief that nobody appreciates his job. Left to himself, he would have broken up every tile of the floor and relaid them but alas, in these troubled times, nobody appreciates a true artist.

c) Mr. Prakash, the plumber, believes that it is his duty to forgive the follies of his fellow human beings in the true Christian spirit of "they know not what they do". This sentiment, unfortunately extends towards his employers as well and it is almost impossible to instruct him about how a job should be done. Forceful statements and high decibels does not work with him and the only way is to tentatively give a suggestion and then tip-toe around it in a delicate manner to craftily guide it towards the desired result. This is a time consuming process and also tests your diplomatic skills to their limits. 

d) Mr. Baidyanath, the electrician, does not believe in schedules, dates and deadlines. Time, in his opinion, is just an instantaneous point in the infinite space-time continuum of the universe and it is therefore stupid to argue about why something, which was to be done yesterday, is still pending. He dons has a beatific smile when he fails to meet a commitment (a situation which occurs with an alarming regularity) and remains unperturbed by any verbal missile that you might throw at him. 

So the D-day is alarmingly near and the progress is not what it should have been. For the past week, every dawn had been bringing in new hope for me and the dusk had been bringing back the broken fragments of this hope.  I suspect that our entry into the house will be almost an archeological expedition where we have to wade our way through broken pieces of tiles, marbles and conduits, empty and partially full paint cans and a team of workmen recruited from the mad hatter’s tea party who have no intention of leaving us ever. 

How I wish that I had the powers to say “Off with their heads” like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland!!

Yesterday, no more !!

There are bad days and there are bad days. And there are those days when everything goes wrong. Yesterday seemed to be one of those.
It began with an ominous sign. Involuntarily, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday. It was not provoked by one of those "some people laze around while I have to toil till my bones get pickled" stuff from my wife or my daughter deciding that my reclining enormous body mass is a good for practicing rock climbing. I woke up without any external stimulus and was in a pensive mood, not being able to figure out what was wring with me. 

I made some tea (was a disaster as I was in a contemplative mood and therefore the timing had gone for a toss), roamed listlessly and then tried to make some breakfast (boiled the living daylights out of the instant porridge for my daughter) without any spectacular success. 

I decided to spend some "quality" time with my daughter (for the less-informed ones : it is now considered fashionably metro-sexual to play some "kiddish" games with your daughter as long as you package it with some pithy advises like "your only competition is with yourself; keep trying" or "understand the hidden morality while you apply the crayons on your Barbie"). After several moments of careful pondering, I decided that golf would be a good bet. 

Let me explain this a bit, lest you start imagining that I stay in one of those sprawling bungalow with an attached mini-golf course. Sprawling bungalow, forsooth !! Golf, for me and my daughter, is played in our 12' X 8' drawing room with a plastic golf club which, in reality, is a container for selling jelly beans. The ball is a tennis ball which had appeared on our balcony courtesy some wannabe Sachin Tendulkar trying to hit a sixer. An empty blue can, which, at some point of time, housed an "Indigo" USB stick acts as the golf hole. This is, in fact, the only part of the Indigo USB stick package which is serving any purpose; the USB stick itself had decided to die a happy death within 72 hrs of purchasing the same from a lissome air hostess of Indigo airlines with a brilliant smile (Life's lesson # 32 : Never buy a USB memory stick just because the air hostess has a lovely pair of legs. The sex appeal of the air hostess has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the device in question). 

Coming back to the game of golf; my daughter beat me to it. There are several reasons to it like 
a) She plays in a unique style wherein she uses the golf club like a hockey stick and drags the ball with it till it is about 10 cm from the hole (or Indigo can, if you want to be technical about it).
b) The plastic golf club swaggers like swagging walking sticks which the Hollywood villains of 1940s used to flaunt
c) Playing golf forces you to bend down, a process which causes excruciating pain in the lumbar region. Also the substantial layers of near-permanent fat around the midriff also causes some trouble in breathing. 
After getting beaten thrice in a row, I decided to give it up. This "quality time" was getting on to my nerves and I decided that a return to the traditional tough father was in order. I decided that it is now study time for the kiddo.
Nowadays, there is something called EVS in their curriculum. The full form of EVS has been carefully concealed but from what I could gather, it is designed to teach general knowledge to children. I started with "sense organs" and tried to explain to my daughter that nose is for smell. She promptly pointed out that it is for making noises - the kind I make while I am sleeping. I let it pass, though made a careful note of it for taking up with the missus ("Where is she learning all these stuffs? No respect for parents...blah blah blah). Next were the eyes, wherein she commented that I keep them closed whenever I am at home as I am usually sleeping. She also masqueraded my alleged use of eyes and nose with an astonishing degree of accuracy. 
She seemed to have a more than necessary grip on "sense organs", I decided to switch to "My family". Here I explained her "Father", "Mother", "Parents" etc and the progress was generally peaceful till we reached "siblings". Things started hot at this stage as incisive questions like why she does not have any siblings, how are children born, why we cannot get a sibling next day morning etc were asked. Things really started getting out of hand when she started asking whether the "guard" is a "brother" of the "maid" and why they always hold hands and wink at each other. Enough education for the day, I concluded. Let the "idiot-box nanny" with her unending series of Tom and Jerry take over. 
It was nearing lunch time and nothing to eat in the house. I decided to drive down to a newly opened eatery and check it out. It is a joint called Big Mouth and has some very fancy stuffs like "Chammak Challo" (Lachcha Parantha with dal, curd, pickle), " Kuddi Panjaab Di" (Chawal with Rajma) and similar stuffs. The key offering seemed to be a dish called "Murgi Phansi Jaal Me" (which, simply put, is chicken curry and rice). I decided to play safe and bought a couple of kathi rolls. These were the weirdest rolls I had ever consumed - a thin semi-cooked roti wrapping mashed Chinese style non-veg stuffs and capsicums by the dozen. 
In the evening, I tried another round of golf with the daughter - this time with a hockey stick and in the garage. The results were not dramatically different except that since I was outdoor, I felt as parched as a blotting paper. A dash to the refrigerator revealed that we are in the midst of a severe urban crisis, namely, lack of soft drink / beer / fruit juice in the house. Oh darn! 
I was brave enough (and optimist enough) to think that I can salvage the situation by cooking dinner myself. I sometimes cook on holidays and I always find it to be relaxing. Today being today, I chose a safe dish - Pasta, something which I cook rather well on my normal days. Today, however, things were not quite the same. Despite adding mushrooms in copious quantities, spring onions, capsicum, origano, cheese, more cheese, more origano, can of tuna, boiled eggs, the result was a huge bowl of white bland tasty-as-cardboard pasta!! The dinner was as cheerful as a funeral dinner with daughter giving strange expressions while pushing the stuff down her esophagus and wife munching the stuff with a moody silence. I tried to make light of the situation with a great deal of small talk but this valiant effort on my side was met with Al Capone-ish looks from the feminine side of the family. 
Finally, the night quietly flowed it. The daughter dozed off to a deep slumber, the wife was still  busy on the net and I was feeling drained of all energy and wanted to have a quiet death. Just when I was closing my eyes, my wife spoke with a spine-chilling surety in her voice :
"Hope you have not used too many utensils and have not made the kitchen very dirty!! The maid might not come tomorrow". 
I rolled over to the other side, hiding my face from my wife and trying not to think what her reaction would be when she enters the kitchen the next day morning. Amen!!

Delhi and Mumbai : a tale of two cities (2)

To continue my earlier blog on the same subject...

The traffic of the two cities are also quite different. In fact, both the cities have left hand drive is just about the only thing that seem to be common. 

Mumbai (or Bombay; I still prefer the old name) has a highly organised and disciplined traffic. At least it honestly tries to be. It has a strict lane discipline imposed on it and over the years, the same has largely been internalized by the drivers. Cutting a lane, is, therefore, considered a greater sin that cutting a throat (in certain parts of the city, the latter is likely to win you kudos and cheers). While this is quite an appreciable achievement, the effectiveness of this is often subdued by lack of adequate street signs and directions. One is, thus, often stuck in the right most lane and is forced to take a right turn despite it being the wrong turn (right is sometimes wrong, you see). It is impossible for someone to guess where the correct right turn is from a distance unless one has spent good part of his formative years munching "vada-pav" in that particular area.  

Delhi has been wrongly accused of having no traffic rules or sense. This is, of course, purposefully maligning the city which has developed a completely unique traffic sense. Best is to list them down :

1) The bigger car has the right of the way.

2) Left is the overtaking lane and is also the fastest lane.

3) Right is definitely the slowest lane. 

4) Being on a lane does not mean you have to follow it all the time.

5) It is a perfectly acceptable practice to drive between two lanes. In certain parts of the city, this is the only way.

6) If you need to cut the lane, do so boldly and blindly. Close your eyes, take your favorite god's name and just do it!! You would momentarily feel like passing through hyper space or like the Star-Trek opening lines "...to boldly go where no man has gone before"

7) You can commit the gravest of the mistakes and then smile sweetly and get away by saying "Kindly adjust ("adjust" to be pronounced as "edjust") . If you can prefix the same with an "Oye Paaji", you have really done it. Balle balle to you and whoever is in the car with you.

As you would realize, this peculiar school of driving can only succeed if people possess a certain outlook towards life. You need a kind of benign forgiveness and a smiling pool of complacency to take this in your stride. No wonder people of Delhi are generally more happy-go-lucky and likely to crack some inane jokes at the first instance. If you constantly live in a world which seems like a Govinda movie, you tend to push yourself into a rarefied stratosphere where commonplace things like a dent on the right fender or a scratch on the left rear wheelcap has little or no significance.   

This brings up another aspect of life - humour. Mumbai, in general, is a humourless city. People are non-interfering and detached and usually maintain a self-complete (or should I call it self-sufficient) cheerfulness within them. It is not unusual to find people walking the malls, completely alone but not feeling lonely at all. Compared to this, Delhi has an all-embracing sense of humour, which, in its all putrid form, is forced upon you. It is impossible to ignore this, impossible to appreciate this and yet impossible to get angry with these simplistic people who belt out such mawkish jokes at the drop of a hat. 

To give you an example :

I went to a small general purpose shop looking for a bottle of jam for my daughter. This shop was devoid of this. The shopkeeper, instead of saying that he doesn't have it, quipped "Jam nehi hay sahab, lekin Jams hay" (Jams - in case you are still wondering, refers to the Cadbury Gems which is popular amongst children).  In case you are wondering - no I didn't reach for my Kalashnikov and make a clean job of the shop keeper. I just smiled and moved on.

So, most of the bollywood humours are, in fact, more suitable in Delhi than Mumbai and so are the bollywood dialogs. Thus, the "Virar ka chokra" brand of humour is more a "Janakpuri Ishtyle" than a Bombaiya brand. It also tends to grow on you and after a while, you start enjoying the utter ridiculousness and the existentialistic absurdity of the same. 

All Izzz Well for the time being. And yours truly shall be back with another round of introspection after a while. Till then, Sionara!!

Statutory Warning about the movie "Born Free"

Statutory Warning : It is dangerous to allow children below 8 years to watch the legendary movie “Born Free”. Watching this movie causes certain behavioural changes in the child which could be stressful to the parents, especially for the father. A synopsis of the same is attached below:

Symptom 1 : Roaming around the house with the tongue hanging out and panting continuously. This creates an illusion of having a 4 legged beast in the house which, unless one is really brave and couldn’t-care-less kind of a guy, is rather un-nerving. It also leads to your neighbour avoiding you fearing that your child suffers from hydro-phobia (this, in retrospect, is not such a bad thing sometimes).

Symptom 2 : Occasionally pouncing on the unsuspecting parent (usually the father) with a catlike flexibility and ferocity. The suddenness causes the parent spring into an active position from a reclining posture and consequently leads to excruciating pains in the lumber region and/or lower spine. Possibilities of a cardiac arrest or a near-permanent damage to the spinal column or both cannot be entirely ruled out.

Symptom 3 : Having achieved the desired result with Symptom 2, the child also might lick your face – something, which is definitely bad for the child’s alimentary system and disastrous for the parent’s mental framework. Especially if the father had just tried a new after shave and is feeling particularly nice about it.

Symptom 4 : Instead of Symptom 3, the child might also follow up symptom 2 with a long hysterical guffaw with associated hand gestures which are, to put it mildly, extremely insulting and infuriating. This can force the lifelong pacifist father to reach out for a hard and blunt instrument – an act which, in the court of law, would be ruled as child abuse due to the ignorance of the judges about the ill effects of this movie.

Symptom 5 : Will insist on clutching to his/her “lion soft toy” (which was neglected all these years) all the time. Normally this is bearable except when the child insists on feeding this contraption with dust-laden mare and complains that his/her ‘Elsa’ is refusing to eat. Pretending to act deaf will not yield the desired result as the child also develops a compulsive mental dis-order and will not let you go till you have also tried feeding ‘Elsa’.

Symptom 6 : Will threaten his/her mother that he/she will go away and then “mama” will cry. To make matters worse, she will also threaten that she will come back with three kids like Elsa did. At this point of time, you will be kicked out of your leisurely reverie and will be rendered speechless.

The above is, by no means, a complete analysis as the period of study/ evaluation was in-sufficient. Added to this is the fact that the observer, who also is the father, could not maintain the mandatory clinical detachment necessary for a scientific study. Not only were the aforementioned symptoms nerve-wrecking, it was compounded by the firm assertion by the mother of the child that things have gone so far due to indulgent treatment of the observer/ parent. Such blatantly unjust and malicious allegations also might cause the father to brood, sulk or generally become regressively philosophical about life.

Please spread this link to as many parents as possible. Let them not suffer like I have. I am trying to tie up with FB/ Twitter that for every 100 clicks, they will donate 1 $ which will be used to burn all prints of the blasted movie and make the world a better place for all parents.

Cheerio.

Delhi and Mumbai : A tale of two cities (1)

Now that I have spent 8 months in Delhi and have actually started liking the place, it might no longer be such a major crime to draw parallels with my erstwhile home Mumbai, the city where I had spent the past eight years of my life.

Mumbai is a vibrant city with a strong sense of detachment. In a way, it is truly metropolitan as this detachment allows it to give similar treatment to it's own “Marathi Manoos” as well as the outsiders. It is, thus, a city in Maharashtra yet not a Maharashtrian city - just like Paris is an aberration to the traditional French culture. There is little that Mumbai can boast as “truly Maharashtrian” – even the “Pao Bhaji” and “Vada Pao”, the signature street food of Mumbai are not quite Maharashtrian.

Added to this, Mumbai has a strong “process orientation” about following a set of standard rules. Something like "the rules of the game" I am not talking only about the legal rules but also of certain commonly used practices. Quite like the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles – a set of universal accounting principles which are followed by most of the farms world-wide), Mumbai seem to have its own unwritten GALP (Generally Accepted Livelyhood Practices) which everybody seem to follow. Thus the apparently maddening Mumbai locals also have some set rules and codes (including codes about how you should board the train at which station; the technique followed at Andheri Station will be vastly different from the technique followed at Virar Station). Once a person masters this GALP, he is as comfortable in Mumbai as any seasoned Mumbaikar.

The main principle of Mumbai is “live and let live” – a clinical isolation from ones surroundings. One lives truly like an island, with boats and bridges built strictly according to ones own rules. Added to this is a sense of urgency in one’s thought and action, a constant throbbing of pulse, rapid heart beat about getting the things done “asap” and getting over with it!! Mumbaikars like to work hard and play harder. They would work till 8 in office - then travel for an hour to attend a party lasting till the midnight and yet be in office at 8 am in the morning. It really makes you burn the candle at both ends but it certainly gives a lovely light and thus Mumbai, for most outsiders, is a “love at first sight”.

Delhi, in contrast, is a city which will not show its face to you on the first glance. A “Wham, bam, thank you, Mam” approach is not for Delhi – you need to court this old lady with rose petals,fragrances and poetries (or is it "shayeri"?) and all the tools of the trade. And then you would realizethe “pull” this city seem to exert on you and its vast and intricate web of connectivity.

Delhi is essentially “result oriented” and therefore somewhat dis-organised. When you approach a Delhi-ite to get a job done, you will be well advised to explain the person why you want this job to be done in excruciating details. Instructions / hierarchy / SOP have no relevance to a Delhi-ite. The focus is strictly on “why this should be done” instead of “how this should be done”. To give you an example, if you ask a banker in Delhi, how much cash can be withdrawn in a single transaction, you will usually get a counter-question “How much do you want?”. If you answer this question openly instead of considering it to be a personal affront, most of the times you will get what you want. If you approach this in a typical Mumbaikar way and insist that you want to know the “rule” and “how much am I entitled to” and “why should I tell you how much I want”, you will face a virtual stonewall stronger than the real one in China.

Another tradition of Delhi is it’s absolute adherence to the traditional Indian way of “Satyam Badet, Priyam Badet..” Even under the worst emergency, a Delhi-ite will invariably greet you politely, ask about your health, your wife's toothache, daughter's education and the wellbeing of the society in general before actually getting down to business. A lot of things will be left to “thik hai, dekh lenge” till the very end. Trying to put this into a highly organised structure is sheer foolishness as it will be going against the grain of the people. Added to this, Delhi also follows the principle of “still water runs deep”. Activities under crisis also would appear very normal at the superficial level. The code of civility will be maintained, the pace would appear to be the same and it is virtually impossible to push things externally. Yet the job will invariably “somehow” get done within the strictest deadline. You may imagine that this is a one-off case but when you see that this is happening in every time, you will have to appreciate that they seem to have an entirely different way of handling things.

Delhi is inherently laid back and encourages you to take life a little easily. It encourages a better quality of life where people can pursue their other interests. No wonder Delhi has a far greater number of book shops, fantastically stocked DVD shops, regular art exhibitions and other performing arts compared to Mumbai. And please, let us not even talk about the much revered “Kala Ghoda festival” of Mumbai compared to what one gets to see in Delhi. This, probably allows people to have better connectivity with each other. This strict code of civility and bonhomie forces a community feeling to be inbred amongst a Delhi-ite. It is practically impossible to maintain a stoic detachment from your surroundings, the outside society in general will invade into your life at a much deeper level than it would in Mumbai.

To conclude, Mumbai focuses on "being alive and staying alive" while Delhi emphasizes on the subtle difference between living and staying alive. It is not for me to give a fatwa about which is a better way and in any case, there cannot be any last word when we are comparing two parallel cultures. I, however, intend to put in some more observation on this subject (thus the mysterious 1 within the parenthesis in the title) in my forthcoming blogs. So quits for today and will be back soon (hopefully). Till then, cheerio!!

Ashoke Sen, my uncle

My uncle, Mr. Ashoke Sen died on the 19^th of December 2010, in his home at Kolkata.

Ashoke Sen was a scholar in English Literature who graduated from the Bristol University, UK. On returning from UK, he hop-skip-jumped between several lucrative jobs in prestigious organizations, but couldn’t adjust himself to the disciplined regimentation of any of them. He even worked briefly as the editor of a magazine called Point Counter-Point, but this also seemed too much of a routine job for him. He finally quit working within the boundaries of an office administration, and started freelancing which suited his style of working. He wrote for the two well known newspapers, Telegraph and Statesman, initially book reviews, and later graduated to more expansive literary sphere.

During his initial years, uncle interviewed many well known personalities from the literary world, and published these interviews either directly or wrote articles based on these interviews. His interviews were refreshingly different from the usual run-of-the-mill interviews taken by professional journalists with their set of stereotyped questionnaires. Uncles interviews were conducted after immense preparations and had a lot of background information . What, however, gave his interviews their unique flavour was that these interviews were actually an exchange of literary thoughts between two academicians on an equal footing. They were radically different from mere documentation of the conversation between a celebrity and an eager-to-please journalist. I still remember the immensely readable interviews of Stephen Splendor and Lila Mazumdar.

Subsequently, he became a known name quite well known for his English and Bengali essay writings amongst the scholarly circles in Kolkata, and got involved in editing several Bengali anthologies. He had the natural advantage of being an incredibly avid reader with a phenomenal memory. His forte was his knowledge on old Bengali literature – especially Children’s literature. He was loosely attached to Shishu Sahitya Sansad – the agency responsible for promoting children’s literature in Bengali. He was a leading authority on Buddhadev Bose and his literature, a fact acknowledged by none other than Pratibha Bose (wife of Buddhadev Bose). He can truly be described as a Kolkata intellectual with a wide knowledge on films, theatres, music (Bengali as well as Western) and books but not the usual stereotype leftist-existentialist intellectual (the kind who swears by Kafka-Satre- Camus- Marx etc).

My uncle had a habit of reading anything and everything under the sun. He was not one who would accept someone else’s judgement about anything and would prefer to form his own judgement about everything. I recall one incident, when I, a the then smart-alec teenager, tried to impress him with my fledging knowledge on Existentialism and Albert Camus. It came as a rude shock when he started taking out books on these subjects including the legendary book of Kaufmann called “Existentialism”. Subsequently I rummaged through his library to discover that though he was not a great fan of Camus, he had at least 3-4 books of Camus. Likewise, my ramblings on Satre led to me getting a book on the development of Philosophy from Socrates and Satre, and then having to sit with him for a session on philosophical studies.

Uncle had an encyclopaedic knowledge on Bengali children’s literature. He could recall with ease, as to which the year a particular novel or a short story was published and in which particular edition of a “Puja Barshiki” – a capability which was exploited time and again by the various publishing houses. His favourite children’s authors were Shibram Chakrabarty, Hemendra Kumar Ray, Premendra Mitra, Buddhadev Bose and Kamakshiprasad. What was interesting was the fact that he did not like the conventional popular stories written by these authors but preferred some lesser known well written stories. For example, my uncle did not like “Harshavardhan and Govardhan” series written by Shibram Chakraborti– citing them as coarse low class humour which, according to him, Shibram had written for the masses. Uncle preferred a more subtle, sophisticated form of humour which was expressed better in Shibram’s lesser known stories like “Onko o Shahityer Jogphole (Fusion of Mathematics and Literature)”, “Kalantok Lal Phita (The Deadly Red Tapism)”, “Bibhutibhushon-er Shilalipi (The Stonehenge of Bibhutibhushan)” and “Patale Bochor Paanchek (Five years or so in Hell)”. Likewise, he preferred the Hemen Ray stories / novels like “Pretatyar protishodh”, “Bishalgarh-er Dushwashan”, and "Mrs Kumudini Chowdhury" over the more popular Jayanta-Manik or Bimal-Kumar series. In fact, he thoroughly disliked Jayanta-Manik whom he considered to be a poor copy of Sherlock Holmes series including the bumbling detective Sundarbabu (as Indian version of Lestrade). He advised me to read an obscure series of Hemen Ray – namely Hemanta – Robin, another detective duo, who had featured only in four books (Andhakarer Bondhu, Ratrir Jatri, Mukh aar Mukhosh and Bibhishoner Jagoron). On his advise. I also read and fell in love with the “Mamababu” series of Premendra Mitra (how many people remember that Premendra Mitra also wrote a detective series ?) and the “Chanchal” series of Buddhadev Bose (also a detective series). Other than the famous ones, Uncle also made me read some obscure novels or series of novels by authors who are now forgotten. I read “Sundarbane Saat Bachchar”, "Makorsha" (by Rajat Sen), "Chitragreeb" and "Juthapoti", the war series of Dhirendralal Dhar (Saroj-David series – remember), “Ajaykumar” of Monindralal Bose and "Durgom Pother Jatri".

His influence led me to extensive reading of children’s literature of the yesteryears including the Kanchenjangha and Prahelika series and we spent many a happy afternoon discussing merits and demerits of these children’s stories. In retrospect, I find it rather amusing that a Bristol educated literary personality, who was a leading intellectual in Kolkata, managed to have meaningful discussions with his class 6 nephew, about 30 years his junior on equal footing. This trait in him continued till the very end and consequently most of his friends were far younger than him.

Uncle had a passion for thoroughness and continuity. He seldom used to give any judgment on any author or film maker based on only one book or movie. I recall that he had to write a piece on Graham Greene, a usual run-of-the-mill article, and he bought the complete Graham Greene series just to prepare for this! Likewise he re-read all the Leela Majumdar novels before he took her interview (and me too – along with him; and in the process discovered a wonderful novel called “Tong Ling”, which, surprisingly, does not feature amongst her more famous works). He took me to the British Council for a film festival of Hitchcock but not before I had read “Hitch”, the landmark analysis of Hitchcock and the famous book written by Truffaunt on Hitchcock. I also recall a particular incident when he had discovered a factual mistake on Thakurbari in a magazine called “Sobjanta-Mojaru”. He made me correct it but before that, he made me read the books of Rani Chanda, Mohanlal Gangopadhyay and Abanindranath himself on this subject. Such exposure during the formative years has left a deep and indelible impression on me which probably accounts for my present day love for literature and films.

This thoroughness, of course, had some pitfalls. Quite often, he used to miss his deadlines - a trait which couldn't have made him popular with his editors. Also, when his analysis did not match the opinions expressed by other celebrities, he felt no qualms about ripping that person apart. I recall him criticizing Chidananda Dasgupta, (a legendary figure in film circle who was personally known to my uncle) for trying to put Ray’s Sakha Prasakha on the same pedestal as Charulata. He had no compulsion or inclination to be “politically correct,” and even his closest friends, from time to time were at the receiving end of his acerbic pen.

Uncle also had a remarkable ability of finding co-relations between stories and/or movies, possibly a sign of a good critic. It was refreshing to compare “Batashbari” of Leela Mazumdar and “the Enchanted Forest” of Enid Blyton; Jane Eyre and Rebecca with “Pakhi” by Leela Mazumdar (wonder how many people have read this novel); the multiple narrative style of “Ghare Baire” by Tagore with “Raat Bhore Brishti” of Buddhadev Bose (I also recollect him reminding me that there is a superficial similarity between the plots of “Ghare Baire” and “Raat Bhare Brishti” which is not of much significance). He also could spot the cross discipline similarities and co-relations – about how Dickens has influenced Bergman in “Fanny and Alexander” and how Buddhadev Bose’s “Bipanna Bishmay” is in fact an existential treatment of Jibananda’s legendary poetry “Aat Bachor Ager Ek Din”. He once pointed out to me that when Jibananda had written “Banolata Sen”, Bengali Poetry had also reached its 1000^th year – a fact which led me to rethink about the first line of this popular poem (“Hazar Bachhor ami poth hatitechi prithibir pothe”) and wonder whether this was indeed a romantic poem after all.

I am indebted to him for introducing me to one of the greatest authors of the post Tagore era – namely Buddhadev Bose. I was introduced to his writings through his short stories, some of which are possibly the best children’s short stories written in Bengali. “Meenu’r notun juto”, “Prothom Dukkho”, “Hridayranjan-er Sharbanash”, “Haran Jyatha o Sujitda”, “Baba”, are probably the finest examples of children’s short stories in the world, and it is indeed sad that the world will never get to read or even know about the existence of these great stories. Likewise, for adult novels, he made me read “Golap Keno Kaalo” – an incredibly stylized Bengali novel. As per his usual style, he did not push Buddhadev Bose’s hugely popular “Tithidore” onto me (though he acknowledged that it is a great novel) but made me read “Patal Theke Alaap”, “Jedin Phutlo Kamol”, “Bipanna Bishmay” and “Moulinath”. Then came the articles and analysises of Buddhadev – “An Acre of Green Grass”, “Hothat Alor Jholkani”, “Kobi Rabindranath”, “Sanga Nishshangata Rabindranath” and last but not the least “Mahabharat-er Kotha”. Uncle was a great fan of Buddhadev, and was personally very close to him and his family. Yet he never tried to influence me, or force me into loving this author. He, in the strictest sense, brought the horse near the water, leaving him to drink when thirsty.

How was Ashoke Sen as a person? On first glance, he was not a nice person to know. Withdrawn, non-communicative and somewhat serious, he was not an easy person to talk to initially. He lacked normal social skills and would insist in mixing only with people whom he considered to be intellectually at par with him. If, however, one took the effort to break his shell of apparent impregnability, he was a nice person to talk to. He would then come down from his high horse of intellectual superiority, and become a regular guy. He was, in fact, quite a gossip-monger, a fact which he always denied vehemently (of course, gossip being so ‘non-intellectual’ and cheap) and enjoyed sharing the juicy gossips about the le-creme-de-la-creme in the perfect British manner.

I always felt that he never really came out of his teens – an eternal enfant terrible at large. His being the eldest son of a prosperous family (and therefore pampered) and not having an immediate family (and therefore no direct responsibilities) also reinforced this attitude. Thus he had the mood swings, hyper-sensitivity as well as the self-centered, self-indulgent nature of a teenager. This, to many, was difficult to handle - an intellectual giant with the emotional quotient of a child. This led him to become rather lonely during the last phase of his life, when he craved for a normal conversation with the normal people around him but alas, it was probably too late by then.

At the end of the day, one cannot help but feel sorry him. His Peter-Pan psychology coupled with his self created barriers made him lonesome. Despite his immense talents, my uncle somehow could never find the right direction, and thus could never put his abilities to their fullest use. Like “Kach” of Mahabharata, he seemed to possess the knowledge, but besieged by some unbreakable curse which prevented him from putting his knowledge to use. His last journey to the frontier was therefore a lonely one, mourned by his family and friends, not only about who he was but also about what he could have been, had it been otherwise.

David and Goliath : WikiLeak and the aftermath

"Endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The above line and the first amendment (freedom of speech) has been the cornerstone of liberal thinking for most of us. Though the policies of the United States have often not been fair (to put it extremely mildly), at least “open speech” and “communication” were areas, where even their worst critics didn’t have much to say. So we indeed had a country which allowed people to say anything – send hate mails, abusing religions of the minorities and say various "offensive" things.

Not any more.

The recent WikiLeak revelations about the Apache helicopters, the Iraq war logs, the Afganisthan war logs and the US government’s knee-jerk reaction made it apparent how fragile the US concept of “freedom of speech” really is. Sarah Palin, who is heavily tipped to be the next presidential candidate suggests that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be “hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda”. Assange had to practically go into hiding and finally was arrested in London for alleged sexual offences conducted in Sweden. At the very least, he will face an extremely long drawn extradition fight that would drag on for months.

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall…

The people accustomed to power games are rather good at disposing of fancy garments like ethics and morality. In the present case, they decided to do a “full monty” – and that too at a lightening pace. Those fancy axioms of “innocent till you are proven guilty” and “equal and fair treatment towards one and all” were summarily dumped with a vengeance. There were some rather quiet, strictly verbal “understanding” with some organizations like PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Amazon etc which ensured that WikiLeak, and by extension Julian Assange had practically no access to their assets. Their bank accounts were frozen, revenue inflow and/or donations blocked and all other financial transactions blocked. Parallelly, at the sub-surface level, a silent “whispering” campaign was started with the target of socially ostracizing WikiLeak. Messages were sent to major schools including Boston University's School of Law, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs through their alumni cautioning students against commenting on or posting links to the WikiLeak documents on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. So not only was WikiLeak to be financially paralyzed, they were also to be made an outcast!!

In the process, the actual pertinent question about ethical journalism got covered under several layers of ashes and dust.

The way WikiLeak has exposed things throws up the all important question about finding the right balance in journalism. Who has a right to what? It we try to argue that we have a right to know everything the state is doing on our behalf, then the reverse will also become true and it will become rather difficult to argue about the right to privacy for the individual. This is the crux of the matter and should have been argued and finally the judiciary, in some form or the other, should have been brought into the game to draw the line. The government officials, however, decided to draw the line themselves and take actions on their own.

Quite often there are objectionable things published on the net - like criminal activities, fraud sites, child pornography, copyright offences etc, when the government has to do a very legitimate "notice and takedown" or a straightforward takedown. Incase of information which tend to compromise the national security of the country, there is an absence of a clear judicial process. This, however, should not become an excuse for the government to act in any way they please, thereby making a farce of the constitution and fundamental human rights. By not respecting the law, by not respecting the ethics and by trying to violate the first amendment, they have opened the door for others also to act in an irresponsible manner.

Violence begets violence. In this case, the violence was bloodless, strictly digital and happened in cyber space!

The strike back was led by a group of hacktivists (hackers cum activists) who call themselves “Anonymous” or “Anons” (short for Anonymous). They have came up with their own “manifesto” in an open letter: "We are not a terrorist organization as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. At this time Anonymous is a consciousness focused on campaigning peacefully for Freedom of Speech. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own,"

Within a span of two days, Anonymous has attacked, in sequence, the Swiss bank PostFinance (the bank holding Assange’s bank account and had stopped all transactions in this account), Online payment service provider Paypal (who had refused to accept payments to WikiLeak) and the credit card majors, Mastercard as well as Visa (credit card companies who have refused to accept or allow donations made to WikiLeaks). All these companies have experienced a kind of digital Armageddon of requests which has blocked their servers and causing a slowdown or complete stoppage. The Anonymous have also declared their next target – the online book retailer major Amazon.com (who did not allow WikiLeak to store their documents in the Amazon servers but is selling WikiLeak’s top secret United States diplomatic cables online).

What the Anons are doing is technically called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The DDoS uses the social networking sites to gather a substantial following and then provide these followers with small software programs which are designed to repeatedly send messages to the target site. If a large group of people do this simultaneously, and the attacks are carefully timed for maximum effect, the computer servers that host the websites are bound to crash for a period of time. This technique had been used by the Zapatista rebels of Mexico way back in 1994 with the help of a software company called Electronic Disturbance Theatre. The same company launched the first DDoS software called FloodNet in 1998 and today, this is the biggest artillery in the hands of the hacktivists worldwide.

How would people have reacted to such acts under normal circumstances? I believe most would have categorized such acts as cyber crimes or extremely immature irresponsible acts. In the present context, however, these acts have become protests against the totalitarian establishment. There is a certain romanticism which has also got attached to this ; a bunch of unorganized young computer geeks who have decided to stand up against the big bad wolf – a modern day tale of David and Goliath. This war is now a fight for the freedom of speech, a modern day saga of a freedom struggle where new phrases like “net neutrality” and “information is free” are its slogans and banners.

What the coming days would reveal is that it is far more difficult to contain the Djinni once it has come out of the bottle. These computer geeks, who are usually recluse and socially inept mavericks are experiencing their first taste of power. And nothing corrupts people more than unchecked power. We would have to wait and see whether these hacktivists limit themselves only to this or similar causes or start using their newly gained power to become the next terror on the net.

We are in the midst of the first Cyber world war which is going on between the establishment and the free spirited netizens. As a strong believer of freedom of speech, an ardent netizen and a romantic at heart myself, my sympathies are naturally with these techno-nerds who have taken the American bull by its horn. But what will happen after the twilight?

Only time will tell.

The shifting face of emotions

Amongst all the changes that we encounter in our journey through life, the most difficult one to handle is the emotional changes that we have to undergo. More specifically, we tend to find it difficult to accept that our relations with someone close to our heart - be it colleague, a friend, a relative or someone more intimate has changed with time and this person has moved on.

What we sometimes fail to realise that human relationships, quite like the human beings themselves, also change with time. The emotions felt today, however deep and long lasting, is still transient and will change with time. This does not make these emotions any less valuable – just like the fleeting nature of the sunset does not rob away its glory. Even when the relationship has changed, the wondrous moments it had given us in our memory amongst many other magical moments - a walk on the wet grass on a summer morning, the smell of freshly baked cake that we tasted on a holiday or the single dew drop on a near perfect rose in our balcony.

Take for example, the relation between a mother and a daughter child. As time passes by, the initial closeness between the mother and the daughter tends to wane as the daughter develops into a separate individual. This, quite often, is shattering for the mother who keeps longing for the old closeness that they once shared. She cannot fathom why her daughter, who used to come home every day from school and tell her what happened at school in excruciating details , seem so withdrawn now. Why the daughter prefers to interact with her countless friends for hours together on the mobile but refuses to share her cries and whispers with the mother. The books that they read together suddenly seem "childish" to the daughter, the movies she saw with her mother while growing up are too "mushy" or "preachy", even the private jokes that they shared also seem stale and hackneyed. Most of the mothers find it difficult to handle this phase and often fail to maintain an emotionally satisfying relationship with their daughter in the later part of their lives.

Similar emotional upheavals are experienced by every person at some point in their lives. Usually people find it more difficult to handle when they are approaching their middle age and are deprived of the all pervading inner panacea called youth to help them out.

In our youth, we tend to be more in touch with our softer self. We believe in the magic of "raindrops on roses" and "whiskers in kittens" and the "bright copper kettles" at home which make the most amazing tea in the world. A good book leaves as breathless, a nice romantic movie leaves us weak in the knees and the entire world with its sunlit days and cheerful breeze tends to spread happiness all around. In this phase, we also make plenty of new friends even with the most unlikely person and often these casual friendships blossom into a heartfelt emotional bonding which both the parties cherish. As we grow old, we somehow lose this joie de vivre, this automatic ability to connect with people and life in general. It becomes difficult to find new friends to have meaningful conversations, to share our fears and uncertainties or just to have a casual banter over silly things to de-stress ourselves. We sometimes try to connect with our old friends and discover that the old magic is somehow missing. This usually leaves us grumpy, dissatisfied and generally peeved with life or forces us to become cynical hard-headed realists who refuse to see anything good in life.

How does one handle change in the middle age in that case? I don’t think there is any sure-shot formulae for it but I think if we accept the transcendental nature of life as well as our emotions and do not try to hold on to them, we can handle it better. Just like we cannot keep our beloveds alive for ever, however much we may wish to , our relationship with the world and its inhabitants cannot remain stagnant. Instead of mourning what we have lost, we should try to find happiness in what we have; and try to explore the new things that come into our lives. For this, perhaps, we have to be break the shell of our comfortable existance and be in touch with our inner self to discover what we really like. Much to our surprise, we will probably discover that the inner core also has changed and has found new sources of joy which we have been depriving it from. We have to discover the child within us and allow it to explore the world around and find out what really excites us today.

We will find that the rainbow still has enough shades to brighten our lives and the wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings will still steal a smile of two from our weather-torn shell-hardened cynical self.

Gurgaon Diaries - 2

Gurgaon, I was told, is completely devoid of public transport system. The government is probably proud of it as well. Being from Navi Mumbai (Kharghar), I can well imagine this. My initial days at Kharghar, when I did not have a car, involved plenty of walking, wooing and cajoling auto-rickshaws to go my way and showing that famous horizontal thumb gesture indiscriminately to any passing vehicle. Gurgaon promised to transport me back in time to those days!!

As a first step, I asked for the nearest market place and was told that there exists a “well established” market called the “Hudda Market” about a km away. I walked down to this market and found it to be a dingy little place with a bunch of shops set up in a distinctly claustrophobic manner. It has only one proper eating joint inside and five medicine shops around it which seemed to cast some suspicion on the quality of food being dished out by this place. Other than this, this market also has an abnormally high number of Unisex saloons which also makes you doubt about their true purpose of existence. This market also has the only liquor shop of this area (which was surprisingly well stocked; the guy had Carlberg / Budweiser/ Tuborg/ Foster beers along with the usual Indian fare) very strategically located at the extremely corner of the market – immediately beside a small kabab-wala. A subsequent visit in the evening revealed that the kabab-wala sets up plastic chairs & tables in the small stretch beside the booze shop and serves kabab and booze over there. The kabab-wala has a decent choice of offerings with those typical glass-single-window-thela and multi-coloured kababs (I could find red, orange, yellow, brown, green colours) hanging on sheeks – ready to be served at a moment’s notice. One also has the comfort of sitting in open air, very close to the boundary wall of the market so that any sudden visit of the authorities in khaki can be handled by quickly jumping over the boundary wall and running cross country across the dark grounds surrounding the market. There would, of course, be a certain amount of danger of breaking your leg or getting bitten by the innumerable dogs that seem to infest the surroundings of this market but one must accept it as a part of the charm and excitement of visiting this place.

Though the official opening time is ten, it is only by eleven when you can see some activity in the shops. The shop keeper would come by that time, yawning away to glory and if you dare to question him about the reason for this delay, you would be given a long lecture which will start with “aise bhi kya jaldi hain..” and then move on to sentiments like how we do not have time to stand and stare any more. To be fair, these shops stay open till about 10:30 or 11:00 pm (the booze shop and his kabab partner till 1:00 am in the night) and one has to give some leeway on account of this.

Another interesting this about this market is the complete diversification the shop keepers seem to have achieved. There is a milk booth which also doubles up as a Xerox shop, an internet café (the only one in this area) which also functions as ladies tailor, a duplicate VCD shop which also sells stationeries and one of those unisex saloons also sell mobile handsets. The most unique one will have to be the shop which sells ladies undergarments and towels (and which happens to be the only shop selling both the items in this market). I had a rather embarrassing moment when I had to enter this shop to buy a towel (I had forgotten to pack one) and had to wade through a sea of women of different sizes and shapes who gave me very dirty looks.

Just when I was about to give up on this market, I discovered that there is a better version of this market available just behind this market. This was more of the present generation market – which has three supermarkets including the Aditya Birla group “More”, the “Grahneez” (a popular local supermarket chain) and “Mandi” – an exclusive fruits and vegetable market. These are the new generation air-conditioned shops with bar-coded materials on well lit displays and English speaking staffs – shops to which we have now got used to. I also discovered that there is a shop which sells an amazing range of frozen foods including Japanese foods, pork and beef cold cuts and diet ice -creams. And this new market also has a Pizza Hut and several small food joints – all of whom are ready to deliver at home.

One could easily notice that Gurgaon is like a small island amongst the traditional Haryana lifestyle; an island with wide roads, plush cars, educated executives and call-centre crowd maintaining an air of exclusivity within it. It is an upwardly mobile place with a somewhat cosmopolitan culture and expensive lifestyle. I expect that this probably would have created a rift with the local people, as I had seen in Kharghar. It is too early to comment – one needs to observe more.

Till then, let me feel at home – now that I have discovered that I have a Pizza Hut less than 1 km away!

Gurgaon Diaries - 1

I landed up in Gurgaon on 2^nd June 2010, after an eight-year stay at my adopted hometown Mumbai. The welcome was not altogether pleasant as it was hot (37 deg C at 8:30 pm in the evening!!), my luggage was the last on the conveyor and I was tired. The tiredness was probably more mental than physical – caused by the psychological effort of moving out of my comfort zone, both in terms of location as well as job.

The hotel, a simple and unpretentious one in Gurgaon called “Bax” (god knows who chose the name), fortunately could provide me a room immediately and also promised that food will be available incase I wish to partake the same. The room was perfect except one near-fatal defect – namely, the air conditioning does not work. To be fair, it switches on, makes a great deal of noise, its flaps move when I press the appropriate switch on the remote and even it displays the temperature. It only refuses to cool down the room temperature!! I suppose some undemanding gentleman would accept this rather than be a terrible bother but at 37 deg C, I couldn’t care less. A quick visit to the reception and a brief eye-to-eye no-nonsense conversation with the receptionist ensured that I was immediately shifted to a different room with an ambiguous assurance that this new room has a “Split AC”. I was too tired to explain that I have no moral objection to window ACs, especially so since I happen to have two of them at my place; my requirement – and this I am rather tiresomely firm about - is that the AC should function. When I say function, I mean there should be a perceptible drop in room temperature once it is switched on. This new room with the “Split AC” which was so highly spoken about, unfortunately did not quite fulfill this demand of mine. For sure, it was better than the previous one but the improvement cannot really be described as substantial. On the other hand, this room had a television whose remote required strong fingers and a very purposeful mind as every button had to be pressed with extremely hard and that too several times. The effect was also somewhat unpredictable as often the channels changed on their own – some sort of a delayed effect of the remote being pressed 15 minutes back.

Having explored all possibilities with the AC and the TV, I picked up the menu card. A call to the room service revealed that only about 5% of the menu is actually available and that too would probably have a waiting period of at least an hour. I chose to have only plain curd – which seemed to be the safest bet amongst the available 5% menu and was promised that this would be delivered in less than an hour. This proved to be true excepting the fact that when the plain curd was delivered, they also delivered two plain parathas with it as "complimentary" . I had a long and desultory conversation with the room service and subsequently with the manager wherein I insisted that I wanted plain curd and just the curd – without any accompaniment of parathas, however tempting they might be; the room service chap maintaining that it is against their policies to serve “just a plain curd” to any of their guests. It seems that it is impossible for an honest and innocent man to have "just plain curd" in this hotel without severely offending the delicate sense of hospitality of the staff.

After this ratherbeventful night, I moved into my new flat on the next day. This part went through like a clock-work. The watchman, a friendly bloke called Mithilesh proved to be one of the most well organized gentlemen I have ever met. Within 5 minutes of me entering the flat, the newspaper-wala was fixed up, housemaid was arranged for, a plumber was sent to check whether there is any leakage and the telephone number of the nearest grocery store was handed over. The aforementioned gentleman, very helpfully, informed me that the grocery store does home delivery and also promised me to introduce to the nearest restaurant who also delivers food at home within a reasonable time. I was seriously contemplating on whether to offer him a job in my previous organization as the facility management head and finally decided not to do as it lead to his losing his entrepreneur spirit and eventually becoming another of those rule-abiding, moss-laden dimwitted nincompoops which only a large conservative organization can produce.

Thus ended my first day in Gurgaon; non-functioning AC, weirdly hospitable waiters and a quick-gun watchman. Let's see what the next days reveal.

To Sir With Love

I recently read the classic novel "To Sir With Love". I had read it when I was in the 12th standard. I remember loving it for the language as well as the structure of the book. After many a summer, I felt like revisiting the book.

My original copy was nowhere to be found in the house, so I picked up a new copy. I managed to finish it in 3-4 sittings. And I was disappointed!

It is really strange how an old favorite book or novel does not seem to stir the same emotions within you at a later date. I recollect vividly the heart-wrenching feeling and overwhelming emotions after watching "The Roman Holiday" when I was 14. I watched the same movie again around 2 years back. Though I yet felt it to be a nice movie, it did not quite overwhelm me to that extent and I, somehow, felt sad and betrayed by myself. This book seemed to have the same feeling in me.

The language was still fascinating - lucid and free flowing. It was a typical British English - the classical "Queen's language" with the occasional tongue-in-cheek humor. One reads with a smile and occasionally has to nod ones head in silent appreciation of the expressions. The book, however, did not move beyond this.

The sentiments and emotions in the books seemed 'slightly' sterile, the philosophy 'slightly" simplistic and the overall approach 'slightly' copybook. Something did not quite ring true - or rather seemed quite naive. The hero seemed too much of a 'good guy' with the honesty of an exaggerated simpleton. It seemed to lack a real depth of understanding - an actual feeling of the pulse of the fellow human beings.

One is inclined to compare it with "To Kill a Mocking Bird" - which is also on similar themes. "To Kill a Mocking Bird", even after so many years still unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It is written through the eyes of a 10 year old girl and the author has been able to bring out the most profound thoughts about life in rather simple words and actions.

With the passage of time, we indeed tend to become more casual and unfeeling. This is our natural defense against the real world and in some degree or the other, all of us experience this. Only the books or movies which are able break the shell of our self-chosen cocoon merits to be called a "Classic".

"To Sir With Love" could not break this shell. It did not make me cry this time.