The Withered Cord

Oh Ma! I’m confused –
That tunnel of the Past
That I emerged from
I don’t want to explore.
Dark demons lurk in crannies –
Memories of being penned in – grounded,
Beaten for dropping bricks,
While my brother gloated over my predicament!
Do you know – forty-five years later – I still drop bricks?
Oh! I hate you when I think of the injustice.
I never ever understood what I did so wrong!
I never understood why I was a pawn
In your fights with Appa.
Is that why you had me?
In my teens I was obedient, silent.
But in my rebellious heart
You were no less than Lady Macbeth,
Until – in my twenties –
Life almost broke my heart
Dropping a little blue fighter,
Helpless as a tadpole, into my aanchal.
—-And you helped me pick up the pieces;
Fight my little one’s fight to breathe on her own.
Oh! that beautiful baby – but imperfect, not whole.
I’ve walked on, Ma, I’ve walked on,
Filling out the spaces in the jigsaw of my complicated life.
Now you want to draw me back
With your feeble hands – pluck out that one piece in my life’s jigsaw – ME!
To live life your way, follow your script,
With you as the tragedienne, the forsaken heroine.
Well, you can’t reshape ME to fit into your outdated world again!
I’ve no use for your faded colonial world, your “peons”, and your chauffeur-driven cars.
No more feudalism here –
The plate I eat from in the restaurant may have been used by an auto-man, a dhobi.
Who cares in this democratic world?
If I have ingested their molecules, I have also breathed in Shakespeare’s,
Kalidas’s, and Abraham Lincoln’s.
I have eaten Gandhiji’s salt recycled into the earth.
Where are your feudal servants now?
You are surprised – Thandavarayan’s son is an engineer.
Poongavanam’s daughter has a Master’s in Hindi Literature.
Their intellects work for them now, not their hands.
We all have to use our own hands – like “blue-collar” workers.
Your clinging, sticky hands refuse to help you now – although they can –
To stand on your own two strong feet again.
Your hands are not crippled, Ma, it’s your spirit.
Your nostalgia and self-pity are worthless coins now.
Where’s the spirit of never-say-die that you taught me and my little blue atom?
Let me go at least now!
I’m a woman, a mother too,
Leading her young daughter to the confident pathway
That can fulfill her dreams.
She’s my magnum opus – and yours too –
Perfect, with the right number of imperfections
In mind and body.
I’ll let her go like the little golden snitch
To fly where her heart takes her
Watch her proudly, benignly,
No clinging hands, no tentacles, no criticisms
Directed against that purloiner – no doubt, a most callow fellow –
Destined to grab her heart and ride away.
I’ll throw an old shoe after her for luck.
Then I’ll walk on, on, onward
Towards my Destiny (of which you and she are only parts, incidental parts)
And never ——EVER —– look back!
Because that’s all it is, Ma,
Our souls were never joined.
Never will be – even in a single life time – except by a tenuous cord that is severed
The very moment that we are born…

Lead, Kindly Light!

She was most certainly NOT a kindly light!

You could call her a kind of crude torch, like those carried by cavemen, apt to singe anyone who came too close! One kept a healthy, terrified distance from her.

The old battleaxe was my Maths-cum-Class Teacher through the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th standards. Year after year, I'd look forward to having a new teacher and, year after year, to my dismay, she would get "promoted" with me. I had my Pythagoras Theorem pat by the time I was 11 years old. Algebra offered another way of looking at the same puzzles. The Arithmetic assignment of 20 sums was like a Su-Do-Ku dessert after lunch.

Yet, who got the highest in Maths, pray? A large serious girl about 2 feet taller than I. I would get 98%, while she bagged the "centum", ostensibly because I did not draw two red lines at the top of each foolscap sheet. "Mrs. Ambujam  A-Jam*", thought I, "this is unmitigated partiality!" I hated her!  I H-A-T-E-D her! I absolutely D-E-T-E-S-T-E-D her! Caricatures appeared in my rough book of a monstrous lady with bullish nostrils, angry "V" eyebrows, mean little eyes, and lots of pockmarks. Mentally I'd chant

"Mrs A-Jam

Ate a pot of jam

And grew F-F-A-A-T-T!

Worse, she also took Moral Science for us. I – the shortest and youngest in class – was doomed to sit under those nostrils forever! Well, the Bishop sauntered into our Morals class one morning. The blessed text book spouted some nonsense about "protecting your sex". One girl asked, "Does it mean celibacy?" "No", said the Bishop. I could think laterally in English and Maths, but, otherwise, I was a late bloomer. "What's celibacy?" I piped up. - - - - - Stunned silence! "Stop acting as if you don't know!" growled A-Jam. "Don't act smart!" hissed my classmates. I sat down, perplexed, almost in tears.

Transfers came; systems of education changed drastically (SSLC to Senior Cambridge). Mercifully, in all the entrance test in all the schools, I cleared the Maths effortlessly. My mother thought that traces of my brothers' super intelligence had at last rubbed off on me. My new classmates ascribed my Maths ability to my humongous forehead! This raillery continued through College, where Statistics was my favourite subject.

Twenty years later, my child learnt Maths from four different teachers in as many years. Not one of them picked up where her predecessor left off. The lateral connections, insight learning did not take place. This same child had fought a desperate battle for life in her first three years. At that time, I remembered A-Jam's Moral Science inspirational story about her daughter surviving brain fever because of her own faith in God.

Now I wondered – Could it be because of A-Jam that Maths had always seemed so simple?

I heard of her a few years ago. Her daughter, then 25, had the mental age of a 5-year-old child. But her mother cared - - - - - long after her husband and son despaired.

The old pilgrim plods on over the thorny walks of life.

And I plod on in her wake!

[ I wrote this as Teacher's Day falls on September 5th, i.e., next week.

I have also been a teacher for almost 15 years, mostly in college.

And I can guarantee that teachers are a much-maligned, misunderstood lot!

*The name has been changed!]

Harishchandra's MVK

PVKs! Every organization has them! I mean Raja Harishchandra’s “Pakkathu Veetu Kaaris” (padosan or neighbor lady). You know about the 110% honest Raja Harishchandra, right? He would do anything to keep his word, while his nemesis, Nakshatrak, persecuted him with ever-increasing demands. Well …PVKs are one up on the Raja himself! They started the training school where the Raja was educated on the finer nuances of integrity. No wonder they preen themselves with their virtuous, holier-than-thou attitudes!
First, there was Mrs. Goody-Two-Shoes. She not only imparted education to the chemically challenged first-generation PCMBs, but also chauffeured the illustrious Principal in her car, for “college” work, without any whisper of petrol reimbursement! This meant driving him to Sapna’s, Gangaram’s, and the like. What a wonderful example of selfless service! We lesser mortals had a thing or two to learn! Loyalty of this sort cannot go unrewarded now, can it?
Take Mrs Selfless Service at the other place. You could not have met a nobler soul. She toiled for her flock; proofread their projects; and got the papers printed and bound at her own shop. The students had to pay her only the cost price – about 20% higher than the market price.
PVK III was a dainty, elegant lady – efficient, totally in charge! “If you’re interested,” she whispered sweetly, “my husband is directing a play. I can give you all tickets.” Oh! We were interested! But, of course! How sweet of her to invite us – the new recruits to her department – at just Rs 150 each, on a weekday, to this play at the other end of town! We badly needed this stress-buster alright, what with the deadline for entering the Mocks paper being 4:00 pm the next day.
Ms. Politically Correct was the biggest PVK of all. How did she manage to crowd so many supposed-tos and not-supposed-tos into her head? One was supposed to teach about “inflation” – not “hyper inflation”. One had to talk of “market failure” but not its “social costs”. This was sheer tight-rope walking. “Hmmm,” said I, suitably chastised, “I shall eulogize about Keynes and Macroeconomics today”.
“You’re not supposed to use such words! What is this word, “Eulogize”? Speak normal English!” was the riposte.
My mind played a staccato beat:

Right! Wrong! Right! Wrong! Right! Right! Wrong!
March to the beat of this rhythmic song.
Wake up early; don’t sleep late;
Eat regularly; don’t change Fate.
Perfect posture; do not slump.
You will grow up handsome. Mind that hump!
Left, right, left, right, left, right, left –
Life consists of warp and weft.

March only in those squares, no stamping lines, remember your hopscotch days?
Develop a conscious OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Those lines are “Lakshman Rekhas” Beware of crossing them!

The pecking order shall prevail, like a top-heavy totem pole. If little Chicken Licken should think out of his little box at the bottom, what happens? Why, the sky will crash on his head – PVKs, totem pole, and all!

I think I have got the hang of the PVK technique. Keynes was right. One needs a holistic, bird’s-eye view. Indeed I can observe from my new vantage point, to which I have moved. You see I am Harishchandra’s MVK (Ma

Jaimon's Mynah

We all sit in a dark corner on the third floor – the six of us from the Content Team. Jaimon sits at the foot of this squiggly table, with his back to the window, in the darkest corner. Jaimon is from Kerala. He has a cheeky grin that stretches from ear to ear. It is nice to see his cheerful face early in the morning. He has just returned after spending a beautiful Easter at Kerala. We demanded Easter eggs, or at the very least, banana chips. “My father sends you his best wishes”, he said. What about the chips? “My neighbours also send you their best wishes”, he said. We digested this in lieu of chips.

The deadlines were drawing near. It is the season of spring. Everything in nature multiplies – “kutti-pottufies”, as we succinctly express in Tamil (I’m sorry to say, at times, English is not half so pithy or expressive as our Indian languages and their special idioms. More’s the pity!) Anyway the whole world was kutty-pottufying. We, in our floor, were surrounded by new fathers and mothers, who seemed fresh even after new babies’ tendencies to bawl and fret all night. Hence, we had our spring blossoms (which looked fresh, dewy, and lovely in their respective parents’ mobile phones, and which all had pink, scrunched-up faces, like little rose blossoms!) and the attendant sweets. Anyway, in the true kutty-pottufying spirit of spring, our daily targets also kutty-pottufied. First, we were told that we should “complete 25 slides per day”. We were just trying to digest this humongous allocation of work, when Harish very kindly informed me that, as a senior ID, I am supposed to “deliver” (in short, kutty-pottufy) 40 slides a day. Over the weekend, the number of slides proliferated (you are right, kutty-pottufied) and became 76 slides to be delivered all clean, new, shiny, scrubbed, and packaged in their baby things. I know babies are cute, adorable, and so on. But so many? Overnight? But you know how it is in corporate circles – the lowly ones cannot argue; they must obey:

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die,

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Tennyson must have been talking about us. The six of us! Of course, we were trying to ride into the valley of Entrepreneurship, not the valley of Death! Besides, from this dark, secluded corner on the third floor, we were disseminating the light of knowledge to unenlightened, earnest, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed, nascent entrepreneurs. I mean, it’s a noble thing to do, right?

Anyway, we weren’t reasoning why. We were trying to package the 76 kuttis into various listener-friendly e-packages. The job demands intense concentration. We were all frowning in concentration, when suddenly cacophony broke out! No, it wasn’t one of the kuttis howling at the idea of being cut, pasted, edited, styled, bulleted, and dressed up. Our poor little kuttis submitted to all these indignities, although Prantika and her team conducted DNA tests, to determine their paternity! This DNA test is called “Plagy Check”. This also requires intense concentration and focus.

Anyway, there was this blighter who went “trrr----keee, trrr----keee, trrr----keee”, continuously, maddeningly. Here we were battling with obdurate slides, and there this fellow trilled merrily without a care in the world! All of us tried to shut our ears; said, “Shut up! Allow us to concentrate!” But the minstrel of spring went on, even more loudly and insistently. He seemed to have perched himself on the window behind Jaimon.

Jaimon gingerly opened the blind. The fellow looked at him. He had a new, shiny, brown coat, with white detailing near the coat-tails! His eyes gleamed out of an orange pirate’s patch. “Trrr----keee’, he said to jaimon, very politely bowing as he did so. “Oh! A crow!” said someone. “No, it’s a mynah, and a very noisy one at that”, someone else said.

This mynah was fascinated by Jaimon. Jaimon was equally fascinated by him. “Yes? What do you want?” he asked the mynah. The mynah looked at him through the implacable glass barrier. He seemed to think that our dark corner held some soft materials with which he could line his nest. His wife must have kutty-pottufied and sent him to scrounge for soft materials. So there he was, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed importuning Jaimon to share of our plenty.

“Go away”, said Jaimon. “We’re working! Don’t disturb!” “Trrr----keee”, said the mynah in a puzzled manner. “What to do with him?” said Jaimon, “He is not going at all”. Now Jaimon is great at making chicken curry. He is a connoisseur of food – particularly, non-veg food. “Shall I make you into Tandoori Mynah?” Jaimon addressed the mynah. “Or, maybe, Mynah Biriyani?” he continued relentlessly. Tarun rudely interpolated, “Thoo Mynah Soup kyon nai banaatha, bey?” But the mynah was determined to think Jaimon was some kind of benign Santa Claus. Finding the window-glass an impediment, he presently flew off muttering imprecations against Jaimon. If Santa should deny a kutty a goodie, that’s how it will shout at Santa.

One day, Jaimon was not at his seat. “Trrr----keee”, said a familiar loud voice. We opened Jaimon’s window blind. There he was, shining like a bright, new, copper penny! “Trrr----keee”, he said, “where is Jaimon?” He looked through the glass with his pirate patch and bright beady eyes. No Jaimon. He peered to the right and peered to the left. No signs of the big, carnivorous, benign Jaimon materialising.

“Trrr----keee”, he said and flew off.

I saw him from the cafeteria. He was busy with his wife and kids on top of a sunshade below an overhead tank. . “Trrr----keee”, he chirped to them very happily, “spring is in the air! Never mind Jaimon. He is a big bully anyway”. His wife cocked her head coyly and repeated his call to him.

The kuttis joined in with their teeny-weeny chirps.

His little world was complete!