Blind Sight

A man passed by me close, I asked my way; he said

`Come follow me, my friend` - I followed where he led.

He rapped the stones in front, `Trust me,` he said, `and come`

I followed like a child - A blind man led me home – William H Davies

I was feeling marginalised at home. I was feeling marginalised at work. It’s horrid to be marginalised as a woman (that’s a serious disability – the worst “caste” you can belong to, because you are counted as being lower than the meanest, most “loser”ish, and most misogynistic man!). It’s awful to be considered an “over-the-hill” woman, who has lost the elasticity of youth.

My mind is very elastic (thank you) and is always mulling on new ideas and helps me to get new insights and skills, I think rebelliously. In fact many youngsters are rigid in their ideas, on their way to becoming excellent bureaucrats who worship rules more than the rationales that give rise to those rules! They are just a bunch of constipated stuffed frogs, I fume. Talk of the fence eating the crop!

Back to the scene his morning – I got off the bus at Sony signal, as it was turning off towards Viveknagar. An adolescent boy nonchalantly occupied a “ladies” seat. The conductor refused to ask him to give me the seat. “Misandry, thy name is PDK”, thought I, as righteous anger and contempt at that mean, miserable worm flooded my disgruntled mind. There was one more of that misdirected species, standing there at the stop. He wanted to know if the bus would go on to Domlur. It would, said the conductor, but in a roundabout way. Misandrous thoughts notwithstanding, I decided to enlighten this much-mistaken man!

“Excuse me”, I tapped him on the shoulder, “But the most direct route to Domlur is from the stop across the road, opposite Oasis mall”.

“Where is it?” asked the man – and turned his sightless eyes on me. This was no loser! He had a briefcase and was obviously on his way to work at the early hour of 8:00 AM. I led him to where I wanted to catch my own bus. I chided myself for my earlier disgruntlement, “There, but for the grace of God, go I!”

My new friend said he was getting late and would prefer to go by auto. I hailed him one and saw him into it safely, when he suggested that I should get a drop too. My office was en route to his destination – ISRO, where (I learnt) he was a techie. He phoned his colleague correctly to inform him that he would be a few minutes late. When the auto stopped for gas, he correctly and confidently counted out the fifty-rupee change that the auto-man wanted to borrow.

Soon we came to the Domlur flyover and I wanted to pay my share of the fare. “No”, said the gentleman, “You showed me the way. You took time off for it. This is the least I can do for you! ‘Bye”. The auto sped off.

A blind man led me to my office; cleaned the cobwebs of my brain; and filled me with positivity.

Naale Baa

“Don’t put off till tomorrow what is better done today”. Sister’s admonition is fresh in my memory. Procrastination meant, in the 60s, an hour’s detention after school, copying out “Business first, pleasure after” 500 times.
“CHILL Ma’am!” shouts a young man in my IB class when I remind him of the deadline for the Extended Essay. It’s a different century, and this is a hedonistic generation. Funnily enough, my gray-haired husband echoes the same view: “Be laid back!” That unmitigated bureaucrat! I rather suspect he wrote out “They also serve who only stand and wait” 500 times in school.
Yet the deadlines continued      for me. Finish the portions! Dispatch the manuscripts! Or else finish your work at home! Phew! Did my day have 48 hours in it or something? And that bureaucrat – when some colleague dropped in – “Is there any tea to be had?” Cool! He just has to be laid back, since there is a genie at his beck and call with 48 hours in her day! I have often felt like the poor princess in Rumpelstiltskin, who was told, “By dawn tomorrow, before the cock crows thrice, all this straw should be spun into gold!”
I often wondered why she did not strangle the cock instead.
A few years ago, a most interesting ghost visited Bangalore. It would politely knock on doors before entering. After it visited several households, the incorrigible Kannadigas found an effective way of dealing with it. They wrote “Naale Baa” (come tomorrow) on their doors. The ghost would knock and politely go away, only to be confronted with the same message day after day.
I get the same answer whichever door I knock upon. “Knock and it shall open” said Jesus Christ but He was being unduly optimistic. In a hospital where every heart surgeon performs three or four operations each day, a simple blood test is not ready. Anxious parents wait at the “Reports” counter at 3:00 pm. “Why?” – “Type maadtha idharey. Naale Baa.” After a collective agitation, the lady got off her mobile phone and on with her typing.
In the RTO’s office, they told my son, “We will pass you next Saturday.” After a week of Saturdays he got his DL, considering that he knew the ins and outs of driving before he was even 14!
At school I was struck by Macbeth’s extremely insightful philosophical soliloquy:
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
Till the last syllable of recorded Time …”
He was right! It does creep and merge into gray, misty, foggy blur, rather like the British rain. Yet something in me does not want that sameness. I like my moments to be tight little self-contained drops, separate and discrete, each holding its own defined events or adventures. The syllable need not resonate with the ocean. It is just a note in a birdsong, unforgettable in its utter sweetness!
If they “naale baa” my little gem of wisdom, its echoes will probably fill the “vale profound” with a plaintive disjointed wail, like the Solitary Reaper’s, until it falls to earth somewhere, some day!

Rattus! Rattus!

Rattus! Rattus!

“Eek! Mummy! There’s a rat in the kitchen!” – so started the saga of “Rattus Rattus”. My little one looked at him with awed fascination. He was tiny – about the size of a quail’s egg – peering at us with beady black eyes before bounding out of reach into a nook. He was clever and very agile. We’d uncovered his droppings behind the broom closet. Quick darts and getaways attested to his presence. The four of us opened all the outlets and tried to shoo him to the verandah, only to find him peering at us from behind the musty volumes in the library. “Mum, he’ll eat up the computer’s wires!” wailed my son. Soon I started uncovering half-eaten Maggi packets, and my Gandhian husband had to agree to a trap.

But we underestimated Rattus Rattus. We placed coconuts and bajjis in the trap. Chappie knew how to get the goodies off the hook without getting caught. We’d find the trap wide open and the goodies gone … and yes – more droppings, not to mention a half-bitten packet of instant coffee. We continued setting the trap. When we heard it snap, we all rushed to view the prisoner. Sure, he was there, merrily looking at us with his bright eyes. My admiring family positively cooed and billed at him – “Annimunni Paapu, Chweety-pie” and so on. When I demanded that he should be banished without ceremony, they all behaved as tho’ I was Hitler or someone and – most reluctantly – deposited him in the bin across the road.

That night he was back! A half-bitten file titled “Conduct Rules for Govt. Officers” marked his return. So the trap was set again and Rattus Rattus suffered himself to be caught again. This time the redoubtable Gandhians gave him a joy-ride in our Maruti van and released him among some bushes near Sankey Lake.

The destruction continued! My kids hoped it would be Rattus Rattus. It must have been his wife, for we found a pocket edition of RR – the size of a baby’s thumb – behind the fridge. Mrs RR was caught and deposited in the Sankey Lake bushes. But three tiny ones were scampering around. One tried to climb out of the kitchen sink. We held the trap there. Master RR walked in obligingly, but out again thro’ the bars before we could reach Sankey Lake. We hunted all over. I expect he got back home with us because the tally was still “3”.

Finally, I caught two of them in the trap. They were too big to escape. I took them to the Sankey Lake bushes thro’ the short-cut behind our quarters. There was a Forest Dept maalin there.

“Hey! What‘re you doin’?” she called.

“I’m releasing two rats”.

“We’ll see about that!”

“Howdhaa ….? Well, you can check with CCF Sayabru. He wants the rats released here”. And I released them and walked off!

Still one to go ….if he hadn’t started a family! Not to mention a malevolent maalin, children who were adept at doing “galattey”, and my husband on tour! Upstairs Mami advised me – ”Stuff paper under all the outside doors”.

Simple! Nonviolent! RR II got the message, “The natives are unfriendly”. Hey presto! – No more Rattus Rattus! Hah! I’d seen the last of him. But that was not the last I heard of him, for my incorrigible little ten-year-old daughter said, “Mummy, I miss Rattus Rattus, don’t you?”