The Unknown (told to me by a friend)

(17 Apr ’11)

            Other than his name, I knew nothing about him. Even that I overheard, no one told me what it was. Indeed, throughout my wedding ceremony, it was as if I didn’t exist, like someone else was going through the experience.

 Our priest had told my parents that his family was looking for a ‘match’. He was described as ‘skinny, very intelligent, no temper (what a lie!), well dressed, ok-looking and wheat-complexioned’. I was witness when my mother repeated this to a neighbour. No one told me anything, leave alone ask. My father didn’t believe in talking to the family, but I didn’t find that unusual for none of the fathers I knew talked to their children in those days. It was the norm. I wanted to know, though, and the more they hid from me, the more fiercely curious I became. It was my marriage that was being discussed in whispers: ‘The boy is in the Air Force.’ ‘He lives in Assam, but the quarters and the salary is good.’ ‘He comes home for deepavali every year.’ ‘No vices? Yes, he drinks liquor, it seems, but nowadays these boys…’ ‘A wife like Tara will do him good. Our Tara will make sure he won’t drink.’ ‘They want a wife who will follow traditions.’ ‘Our Tara knows all the pujas, shlokas, rituals. They will have no problem.’ ‘She’s been looking after the house since she was a teenager.’ I hung around, eavesdropping as much as I could. For the ceremony, I guessed, I would have to wear a nice sari, lots of ornaments, as I’d seen my cousins do. Classmates used to giggle about the first night, I smiled with them, ignorant and innocent of what it meant. 

            The engagement was a brief, fleeting event where I didn’t get a chance to even register his features. I was busy serving, flitting in and out of the kitchen, helping Amma with the chores, clearing the table, answering silly questions: “How much sugar would you use if you had to make payasam for ten people?” “How much washing powder would you need if you had to wash three saris?” The general talk was about booking the hall, visiting the ancestral village on so-and-so convenient date, checking out the auspicious muhurtam, deciding upon the caterer (menus were fixed), booking tickets for the journeys, etc. No one really cared whether the groom or bride felt or thought anything at all. I threw a glance at my ‘to-be’, found him staring at me and I fled from the room in embarrassment. I was literally pushed back into the room when ‘those people’ were to leave… and I had to touch everyone’s toes.

            He had to do the same to my family elders and that was when first our eyes met and held intimate, unshared moments of togetherness. Naturally, my pilot memories of him are of and from silly angles.

            The weeks that followed were hectic. Tailors and jewelers had to be visited. Banks, too. No idea where so many relatives turned up from, the house was so crowded, the bathrooms forever occupied, the kitchen full of smoke and smells and me… I was bombarded with tons of advice: “Make sure you look after your mother-in-law well.” “Behave like a cow for five years, then reign like a queen.” “Don’t even think of wearing those new-fangled clothes. They will think we haven’t brought you up properly.” “Brown is a decent colour. All your blouses should be brown, grey or black. They go with everything and you are not so fair that you can wear pink or green.” Indeed, my gorgeous silks with brocade borders were worn with white petticoats with frills at the bottom and those hideous, ill-fitting blouses.

            When I grumbled about how mismatched they were, one aunt teased: “Who’s going to see them? It’ll be so dark.”

 Muffled laughter.

“What-what-what?” I asked, a bit boldly. I was getting pampered with oil baths and flowers and yummy food and attention. It had done wonders to my confidence, for sure.

 “What-what-what?” I asked again.

 My mother shushed me up and said something I have remembered for many nights, something long decades away, I can still recall with crystal clarity: “No matter what he does to you, don’t scream.” Everyone looked away, some seriously, some shyly, some stifling laughter. But no one contested that advice, nor added to it.

Those words had shaken me up considerably. Conditioning demanded that I don’t question anything.

Through the ceremonies, the sticky, humid activities, the hunger, the tiredness… through all the stroking of my head by elders and holding of hands by my cousins, I had just one thought jogging through my mind: whatever he did to me, I wasn’t to scream.

The first few nights, there were too many relatives for us to be together. Indeed, I didn’t even know we were supposed to be together. So naïve was I. Sigh. Finally, the excitement settled down and we were given a room to share. The fact that I’d have to change in front of him unsettled me terribly. I was too shy to say anything to my mother-in-law or even my sisters-in-law, so I decided not to change into another sari. Those were pre-nighty times. He didn’t bother, just took off his trousers and shirt (horrification!! I didn’t know where to look) and wore his pyjamas. Then he looked quizzically at me, indicated that I should sleep next to him and waited for me. I took a lo-ong time, and crept onto the mattress only when he was asleep and I was drop-dead tired.

It was a couple of days later that we touched. Held hands. Came closer. Every morning, the rest of the family gave us strange looks. I hadn’t screamed. I hadn’t had any reason to. It was many days before he did that something and when he did, I didn’t want to scream.  

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Appearing For the IAS

               “I want to appear for the IAS,” I told Shri Husband.

“Why?” Shri Husband asked loudly, then said in his most convincing tone. “You’re too old for it.”

               “The government shouldn’t discriminate by age,” I retorted. “What’s age got to do with talent? So many more people can be given a chance if they remove that age clause. Think of all our experience. All the mistakes we’ve made, let the Executive benefit from them. What do the young know? IAS can mean India’s Aging Superwomen.” “Or men,” I added generously.

               “What has suddenly put this idea into your head?” Shri Husband will never give up. Old (pun not intended) habit, asking question upon question.

               “Now people are taking the exam in Hindi. In a few years’ time, they’ll allow it in all the Indian languages, Konkani also,” I said, reasonably. “So I’m going to start preparing already.”

               “You and I will be off the planet by the time any decision on this gets taken. We already have thirty-plus official languages, and in those same few years, there’ll be another ten added,” said Shri Husband, negative man. Then followed the trademark questions: “You think they’ll have question papers in all the languages? All?”

I deflected that one, “Someday they’ll agree to having entrance exams in Konkani for engineering, medicine, toothbrush-repair, management, everything. In addition to English, and they’ll be lenient with the age limit for women at least.” Shri Husband is jealous because my school-fees were waived off and I got a free bicycle from the government and also some money when I turned eighteen. Of course, he was compulsory-pass till class eight, good for him.

               “What makes you think you’ll get through?” another question followed by a snide: “There are only three chances.”

I wasn’t going to let him know I didn’t know that, so I lagoed: “That’s another request the protestors must ask for, that the candidates should appear as many times as they wish to. Representation is what democracy is all about, the will of the majority. The protestors will…”

“Which protestors?” Some people talk in riddles, Shri Husband talks in questions.

“Those who are asking for changing the UPSC system. IAS-IFS-IPS-IRS aspirants,” I told him; I’m a patient person.

“Are you talking about what they showed on tv?” Shri Husband will never make it to the IAS, but he could become a part of the UPSC paper-setting team, with his question-manufacturing talent.

“Yes.”

               “Do you know it’s an intellectually and emotionally demanding exam?”

               “Stop using words that the aam junta can’t understand.”

               “You have no aptitude for administration.”

               “Exactly. That’s what the protestors were saying. Stop this aptitude business. Very elite and urban.  Not for the saadhee manshan.”

               “I give up.” Shri Husband says this often to me. He will never make it to any Service. I told him I was going to bash on regardless.

               “Suppose I get through,” I said, “You’ll be proud of me, won’t you?”

               First, he threw a sentence at me: “If you get posted to Arunachal or Andhra, you will need to learn their language.” Then the question: “Will you?”

Second round: “If you get posted to Somalia or Uzbeckistan, you’ll have to learn their languages.” Followed by: “Will you?” I suspect Shri Husband sometimes thinks I’m stupid. Then I sit quietly until he gets out of that mood.

He babbled on: “IAS people have to read balance sheets of companies, do valuation for pubic sector privatisation, analyse large amounts of data, do profitability analyses.” I let him babble.

“… you need an analytical and logical mind…”

Not once did I interrupt, adarsh Bharatiya naree that I am, until he ran out of breath.

I read somewhere that in parts of India, they’re planning to introduce Sanskrit seriously. I said, “Maybe they’ll allow me to take the exam in Sanskrit. If there’s quota, there’ll be very little competition for me.”

“Why would they have entrance papers in Sanskrit?” Shri Husband again.

“Mother of our languages, the root of our heritage, software compatible,” I can also impress with big-big words when I want to. I’d heard this on television, sounded impressive.

“Go ahead,” he said, stumped. “Convince the powers-that-be that the IAS entrance exam should be in the ancientest Indian language. Suggest Tamil or Pali.” Shri Husband ideas are sometimes good. “And tell them that you’re nearly superannuated.”

“So, finally you agree I’m super, eh, annuated or not,” I smirked.

Shri Husband’s complaining of a headache. Gotta go.

              

Why Do We Fear Post Mortems?

(3 Apr ’11)

            After the death of the four year old girl at the Caculo Mall some days back, a few acquaintances and I were talking about the accident. “What happened?” we all wondered. “Was there a post mortem?” we asked each other. That’s the only way one could be sure, we agreed, unless there was a known history of a dreaded illness, why a child would suddenly die.          

 The discussion led to why people fear or avoid post mortems. “Why make the patient/person suffer even more” is one of the reasons. Now, post mortems are carried out when the cause of death is unknown or unnatural. Either ways, the dead body can’t suffer or feel pain. It’s going to be stuffed into a coffin and smothered with mud six feet under or burnt to cinders or flung for the vultures to pick to the bones. “Will it get the person back?” is another question. Not at all. But that’s not why post mortems are done.

The procedure is meant to find out the cause of death so that the ‘what happened’ doesn’t linger: most times one can get a definite answer. Post mortems definitely add to the knowledge of the medical fraternity. And their reports can save many a legal battle, too. They can differentiate between murders and suicides, they can tell whether a burnt-to-death person was killed before being burned or died of the burns or gases. They can tell whether a person died of injuries inflicted by another before hanging the corpse to appear like a suicide or whether the hanging was truly not a murder. They can detect poisoning, the kind of poison. They can tell you whether the death was due to a bleed, due to medicines taken over a period of time, and much more.

Why, I used to wonder, are railway accident cases subjected to post mortems. I discovered, once, when I was working in a hospital, that a person had suffered a heart attack whilst standing by the door. It was that attack which had killed him. His body had subsequently slid onto the tracks. It wasn’t the fall that caused the damage. 

Some people say that if a post mortem is done, then in the next life, the person is born deformed: one has to have a funeral with an ‘intact’ body. So, tell me, how is it we remove our teeth, appendixes, uteri, … in fact we even cut our teeth and hair… does the rule not apply then?

A major lot of population will say that they don’t want the hassles of dealing with the cops and that the staff in mortuaries are corrupt and don’t lift the body until they are paid money. Well, if people got together and friends and family could manage to lift it themselves, that might sort the problem out, but perhaps I’m that’s an unusual suggestion from me. I don’t know how practical that is. This bribing business is beyond the scope of this column.

            My take on the topic is that we Indians avoid any open conversations about death and dying. It’s a hush-hush, secretive, never to be mentioned thing. That’s the reason why we don’t make wills and we don’t discuss organ transplants (I’m talking about cadaver donors, not live ones). Like sex, we believe that if we don’t talk about it, it won’t or doesn’t happen.

            Like there are talks on diabetes, heart related ailments, osteoporosis, teeth care, etc, we need to have open debates with psychiatrists, swamis, patients with limited life spans as well as with the lay public. A mature society wouldn’t shirk that.

            One person told me this was too morbid a topic to write on: ‘readers won’t like it,’ she said. So readers, I’m prepared for your feedback on this one.

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Shopping in Goa.

(20 Mar 11)

            I’m shopping challenged. I do crises oriented buying: chappal strap breaks, take a taxi to the nearest Bata shop and buy whatever fits comfortably. Since I don’t indulge in shopping adventures, it goes without saying that I’m a very loyal customer to chosen shops. I stick to the familiar and the known. Wastes little time and energy.

            Shopping in Goa has always been a pleasure because the shops are few, one knows exactly what is available where, one isn’t overwhelmed by choice, and the choice is actually good. I’ve always preferred shopping here to shopping anywhere else. I also believed that shopkeepers and salespersons and other staff here were more honest than elsewhere. I’ve changed my opinion.

            A few days back, a mall was inaugurated in Panaji. There were advertisements, posters, balloons, musicians, all inviting passersby to take a look. Free chocolates, too, we overheard someone saying. My sister, who loves to spend (specially if it’s my money), encouraged me to buy new clothes for myself. Husband withdrew from this month’s savings and off I went, very happy that I was beginning a new life in my home state with new things from a new shopping place. A rare event in my life, in more ways than one.

            Several branded shops, an escalator, my-my, we said to ourselves, this is like going abroad. An American food chain had made its presence there, too. At one shop, we were asked to keep our purses (not shopping bags, just big purses, the kind you carry your powder, glasses, mobiles, keys, tissues, etc) at a security cabin. The fine print did warn us not to leave any valuables inside which, we learnt subsequently to our dismay, absolves the owners from taking any responsibility for security or staff behaviour.

            Well, we were asked to leave our purses at the cabin, which as rule-abiding middle-aged women, we did without questioning. Our upbringing has taught us to follow what is right … and in these days of constant checking of bags and frisking, leaving the bags behind was the right thing to do. My mistake, I didn’t take out every rupee in it. I just took out my wallet which had some money, leaving behind five thousand in the only zipped pocked inside the bag.

            We browsed through the shelves, and finally decided that we wanted to buy something. I went to get the money… no money where it was meant to be. I felt so bad. Am still seething even as I write this. We complained to the manager and the mall-owner’s wife. They went through the motions of checking the staff’s pockets. I wish we weren’t decent. I wish we’d thrown a tantrum and called the cops in. For there was nothing to protect us: no cctv. In fact, we were looked at accusingly, as if to say: “Who’s to prove that you had any money in the purse at all?” I won’t go that mall again, nor encourage anyone else to.   

            I may be shopping challenged, the rest of my clan isn’t. My colleagues, friends, cousins tell me that although one certainly has to be careful about what one keeps in a purse left at Security, the honesty of the staff is the responsibility of the shop. One acquaintance from right here in Panaji rather strongly told me that I should have filed an FIR and dragged the owners there for being so callous.

            The reason I see in retrospect. If customers allow them to get away with this, they’ll get away with more. They won’t take security and honesty seriously. The attitude in Goa in any case is lax about both, don’t we know that. I hope the guard there has lost her job. She can’t/shouldn’t be given a second chance. But what about the owners? They’ve got away right? That’s what rankles.

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Ceilings are Boring

(6 Feb ’11)

            My first tryst with the ceiling was about three months ago when my slipped disc or herniated disc first presented its symptoms: back pain and more back pain. There must have been a spot just above my tail bone, called L-4 or something by the doctors, weakened by years of abuse: picking up a cycle with a flat tyre, buckets of water when the taps ran dry, pushing suitcases and trunks in and out of narrow train doors, dragging furniture and fridges to clean corners of floors, sitting long hours with books on lap, running to catch buses, typing articles to not miss deadlines, and more. The last straw (would the present generation know what a real straw is? Most will know it’s something to drink from) was when I tried helping someone get up after a surgery. Snap. I felt it. Like someone stabbing me in the back, so sharp, so sudden, so shocking was the pain. It will go away, I told myself. It didn’t. I could bear it, brave me, I thought. One day, two days later, whilst crossing the road, the sharp pain returned. I managed to dodge the traffic, but had got a fright. Promptly, I visited the doctor, who said, “I want you in bed.” Off I was packed, with a sick-leave chit in hand, home. Alone at the time, I couldn’t get up to answer the ringing phone…. Blessed are mobiles, they’re at hand.  23 hours of bed rest meant I was allowed to use the loo and feed myself. Rest of the time, I was sleeping. As in lying down, not as in fast asleep. That’s when I noticed how poor the workmanship was: the walls were full of bumps and depressions. Plastering is so important to the looks of a room. The lights were high up on the wall, no scope for reading.   I could hear the traffic below and kept guessing what might be happening down on the road. Friends pitched in with food. Love my friends.

            A week later, better already, I joined work. It was too early. The body didn’t like it at all. Another muscular spasm, more pain, and back I was on the mattress. This time, I made sure I wasn’t brave at all. The putta on my abdomen stayed on until way after the doctor said No Need.

            Still, two months down the line, I’d ignored the hints of pain in my knee and hip on one side. It wasn’t much and there was no point fussing over something that wasn’t hampering my work. So I carried on at a frenzied pace. There was an audit, an inspection coming up, it was important, so I was on my feet, doing this, that and the other. One day, late evening, as I walked home, I couldn’t take the steps, so painful was the leg. By the time I reached home…. Just a couple of minutes it took, the pain was unbearable even whilst I rested. So painful, it felt cold,  and I was shivering. This was not normal, and I dragged myself out and to the hospital where the doc on duty said: I want you in bed. This inappropriate sentence has no romantic hints in it, I’d learnt. It  means: you’re in medical trouble.

            For the second time in three months, I was back inside an MRI, pumped with strong painkillers that gave me the false impression that I was perfectly all right. The Spine Doc told me: nothing works like a bed rest: 23 hrs flat on back into 22 days. Back I went to my good friend, the ceiling. Family, friends, neighbours, facebookers have pitched in with advice. We’re Indians, no, we have to give advice: sleep on a wooden plank, sleep on a soft mattress, take a pillow, throw that pillow away, use reiki, pranic healing helps, herbal tea a must, those pain—killers work like magic, don’t touch allopathic pills, pray, even God can’t help you through this, lie down still, get up and get going, wear a belt, belts are mere reminders of your condition nothing more. About whiling away those hours: pray (seems to be  a fave pastime with those who need to while away time, meditate (another fave with the praying types), think of nice things, think of how to take revenge on enemies, this is a good opportunity to cook up crazy ideas, plan your future…. Too old for that? Then dwell on the past. So on and so forth. I can’t watch tv because of the angle involved. Can’t read books because neck and eyes hurt. Can’t listen to music because it irritates others at home. Can’t use the headphones because ears get tired…. Yes, they do. It’s taught me one lesson, though. We can empathize with those who can’t walk or see because we can mimic that disability by restricting our movements or tying a cloth to our eyes. But we can’t ever know what a deaf person feels like because we can’t, as try we might, feel what s/he feels. Truly, it’s a disability that is difficult to comprehend.

            The boring ceiling has taught me that one great lesson. And also, that health indeed is wealth, that I’m blessed to be privileged to  enjoy a climate of freedom so many people don’t… that food, an appetite and a good digestion contributes so much to well being, that we need care-givers other than doctors to help us back to health. Even jokers who say: repeat so and so’s name a zillion times and  all will be well contribute to wellness in some way. They mean well. And that’s what a patient clings to when boring ceilings are to be encountered. @@@@@