United by Fear.

               “Bai Goanna’s a ‘bhitree bhagoobai’, a ‘darpok’, I said. “She’s the only one I know who’s afraid of butterflies. Stupid, no?”

“It’s sad,” Shri Husband said. “Must be traumatic childhood disorder.”

               Really? I wondered. Did her parents threaten her with caterpillars? Didn’t make sense to me, but I can’t argue with Shri Husband when he uses big words. Actually, can’t argue with Shri Husband, full stop. No such kind words go to his mind when I display a fear of something.

Example: the other day, I pointed to something lurking underneath the laptop. Its whiskers gave it away. Periplanata americana, or brown, shiny-winged cockroach, sly creature that sneakily hides in drawers and shelves, and scares me when I least expect it, the bane of my life. I’m told it will survive every other species on this planet, and is immune to nuclear blasts. I’m petrified by the mere mention of it. My instinctive reaction is to ask for help. Usually by informing somebody in the vicinity. With all the power my lungs and larynx can muster.

No matter what I do, it irritates Shri Husband and pointing to something that terrifies me isn’t any different. “It’s only an insect, get a chappal and thwack it dead,” he said impatiently.

“I can’t,” I said, voice trembling, nerves trembling, muscles trembling. “It’s looking at me menacingly.”

“You are bigger and stronger,” he coaxed, then mimicked a sports-shoe advertisement. “Just do it.” I wanted to tell him ‘you do it, you’re even bigger/stronger’, but (conditioning, you know) I obeyed.

I tripped my way across furniture to another room without once taking my eyes off it (the insect, not the furniture), got a pesticide in a can with a long straw attached to its lid so I could spray it from a distance. Finally the ‘roach died. So ahimsic, I thought  with quiet pride. But Shri Husband--- didn’t even smile, forget clap.  

               Forget me. Let’s get back to Bai Goanna and her irrational fears: the other day, one of our neighbourhood children was doing her homework. She (the child, not Bai Goanna) began chanting the alphabet: “A for arson, B for bans, C for Cashmir, D for Dadri…”

               Bai Goanna put her palms to her ears, shook her head from side to side and said, “my goodness”. Shri Husband raised one eyebrow. I thought they were appalled that Kashmir was being misspelt, but I was wrong. Something else seemed to be bothering them.

Child carried on: “…E for encounter, F for fatal, G for goons…” Shri Husband went to close the window whilst “… I for injuries” was going on, but the sing-song voice still came through: “…K for killing, L for lynching…, M for massacre…” Shri Husband raised second eyebrow, which meant his brain was ticking overtime.

               “What on earth is this child saying?” he snapped to himself.

               “…R for Raamsene, S for Shivasena, T for Taliban…V for violence, W for wounds…” I had joined the child’s rhythmic chant for I’d been hearing it for many days and knew it by heart.

               “I’m so afraid,” said Bai Goanna, a tremble in her voice.

“Of someone reciting the alphabet?” I asked.

Shri Husband seemed to nod slightly in agreement… it took me a moment to realize with Bai Goanna, not me. He’s usually allergic to anyone who’s in any way afraid. So this came as a big surprise.

“I’m so afraid,” said Bai Goanna again, now with a hint of liquid accumulation along her eyelashes.

“Didn’t I tell you she was a ‘bhitree bhagoobai’, a ‘darpok’ ?” I whispered to Shri Husband. His reaction came as a bit of a shock: “There’s reason to be afraid.”

I’m trained to detect trouble through the slightest inflection in his tone. I stayed quiet.

In the meantime, we heard the child’s mother, who possibly was on the same frequency as these two, give her child a couple of slaps and some loud advice: “… say it correctly, otherwise you won’t get good marks.” We heard her further shout to no one in particular, “this is what television is doing to our kids; they pick up these new-fangled lyrics instead of learning the traditional stuff.”

So the child began again: “A for apple, B for bat, C for cat, D for dog…” without the previous level of enthusiasm. I thought to myself: we’re still slaves of the goras. Where in Goa do we get apples? A minute later, the child was singing about pigment-challenged, wool-providing ovine and telling rain to go away when the fields in our villages are parched. This old-fashioned chant was inappropriate for contemporary India, I thought, but kept my opinion to myself. I do that often these days, getting older and wiser, must be.

For the third time in quarter of an hour Bai Goanna said, “I’m so afraid.”

This time, after too much of keeping quiet, I snapped: “Of what, yaar?”

“Of what this child has learned, is learning.”

In a rare display of silent camaraderie, Bai Goanna and Shri Husband were in agreement. Interesting, how fear unites people, no?

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The Tale of Bottled Water.

          Shri Husband, Bai Goanna and I rarely eat out. This week we decided to treat ourselves at a fancy restaurant in the by-lanes of Fontainhas. Great food. 

The kind of places we usually go to, both lower end and starred, offer un-bottled water on arrival, free and unlimited. Young men in loose uniforms hang around with jug, and cloth to wipe spills on tables. We are given a choice of buying bottled water if we’re unsure of the quality of the ‘plain’ liquid.

Here, we had to ask for the aqua when thirst beckoned. The bottle he put on the table was made of thick glass, not crackly plastic. Environment-friendly designer bottle, with parallel circles protruding along its length. The label indicated that the water was sourced from a lake between Mumbai and Pune. Nice.

Then I saw the price and yelled “a hundred bucks”.

SFW (Sad-Faced Waiter), in perfectly fitting attire, behaved like he was announcing bad news. His body language and facial expression gave his thoughts away. He echoed: “yes, ma’am, one hundred rupees”. Before I could ask him whether the bottle, once emptied, was then our property, Bai Goanna reacted: “Get us another brand, something common, don’t want far-off lake-water. Get something cheaper.”

          SFW owned up: “Don’t have any other brand.”

          I kindly instructed him to get plain water, preferably filtered. SFW now developed a smirk and some confidence: “Don’t have filter.”

          Shri Husband asked him what he (SFW, not Shri Husband) drank on duty. “Tap water,” he confessed.

          “Get us tap water,” the three of us chorused.

          “Not allowed.” So our arm-twisted choice was to either buy water at the price quoted or stay thirsty.

My year-end resolution is: I won’t sit in any restaurant, unless I’m comfortable with the water I’ll be provided/ buying.

(Like, I always check whether there’s Service Charge in the bill. If there is, no tip is the rule.)

I still don’t know whether, once paid for and seal broken, the fancy bottle belongs to the customer.

I’m surprised that tourist-friendly, tourism-dependent, waste-management aware Goans who are so vocal when it comes to taxi-fares, look the other way at the accumulation of plastic water-bottles clogging drains and ruining the look of neighbourhoods/ beaches/ temples. I’m equally surprised that voices raised against lack of parking-spaces don’t whimper about non-availability of treated, potable water.

Most times I carry water from home to live by the mantra of reduce-reuse-recycle. It’s also a habit carried over from the eras when bottled water on sale wasn’t even a figment in someone’s imagination. In those days, soft-drinks (for some reason called ‘cold’-drinks) were drunk by the elite, not the aam junta. Another reason I carry along ‘home-water’ is because I don’t trust what is sold in the plastic containers. Just because the liquid in them is transparent, doesn’t mean it’s free of pathogens. (Pathogens = disease-causing micro-organisms = bad bacteria/ viruses.)

This was my first experience of a commercial eating-place refusing to provide ordinary, un-bottled tap-water, filtered or otherwise. If SFW is to be believed, no one else has complained.

“He’s lying,” I presumed.

“Or perhaps you are mistaken,” Shri Husband said. “There are people who really don’t mind getting fleeced, whose logic is convoluted. Remember our old friend, YZ Prabhu?”

“What about him?” Bai Goanna asked.

“When Delhi’s air got unbearably polluted and the government decided to take steps, he was irked by the odd-even formula.”

“What’s an odd-even formula?” Bai Goanna is out of sync with what’s happening in the world/ country.

“Delhi-government said odd number-plates and even ones could ply the roads on alternate days to reduce the number of cars and therefore keep pollution levels at 50% of what they are.”

“What was YZ Prabhu’s take?”

“His solution was to own two air-conditioned cars, one with an odd and the other with an even number.”

“You mean he preferred to own two cars rather than breathe fresh, safe air?”

“Exactly. He values his cars more than his lungs.”

“Takes all kinds to make a world,” sighed Bai Goanna. “I guess the manufacturers of air-purifying gadgets are making a lot of money.”

“The bottled-water guys have been doing just that for some decades now,” said Shri Husband. “Who knows, in the near future we might carry along personal portable water-filters and germ-eliminators.”

“Or,” I added, “instant water-manufacturing machines.”

“That’s a bit far-fetched,” said Bai Goanna. “But possible. There is a chap who’s invented a water-making unit for Indian farmers. And air-water manufacturing factories have been around in Andhra since early this century. You know…”

Before she could complete her sentence, Shri Husband interrupted: “Perhaps we could spark a change by checking before entering restaurants what water they serve and avoid those that force you to buy something you don’t want.”

Thus he spoke before walking out of the room.

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Solving the Gas Problem.

          “I have a gas problem,” said Bai Goanna. In Konkanni it sounded like she was suffering from the after-effects of indigestion. “Maakaa gyasaa cho problem zaalaa.”

          Shri Husband and I quickly rattled off some home-remedies that might give her relief from her abdominal discomfort, and save our olfactory organs from stealthy stinks. “Eat ‘wonh-wonh’,” we recommended. “Do pawan-mukt-asana, drink soda.” Shri Husband added some extra advice: “Go outside, go home, just go. And avoid eating ‘channa’.”

          Bai Goanna said: “Nothing wrong with my insides, men. You’re misunderstanding. I’m talking about the cylinder-subsidy problem.” She showed us an sms on her phone. It said she should ‘help nation building to give up subsidy...sms give it up to....” Someone had fouled up the meaning of the message by not putting a full-stop after building.

          “The government is trying to get rid of subsidies. Affording people should pay full price,” said Shri Husband logically.

          His logic has never worked with Bai Goanna. She has her own: “When each and every MP and MLA and high-ranking official gives up her/his subsidy, I’ll give up mine.”

          Shri Husband, readying to confront: “You could lead, set an example, do what’s correct no matter what the MPs-MLAs do.”

          Bai Goanna, pouting stubbornly: “I’m not giving it up.”

          Shri Husband: “The news said they’re raising the price of the cylinder again.”

          The discussion darted in a different direction, towards how/whether the subsidy would affect global climate change, how expensive everything was getting, and whether more people using more fuel would mean shortages in future. After reading Mansoor Khan’s ‘The Third Curve’, Bai Goanna’s perpetually afraid that she’ll starve to death when the Earth runs out of cooking fuel. “In just a few decades,” she whimpers. “I’ll be extinct.” Extinct-- her word, not mine.

          “Buy,” quoth Shri Husband loftily, “a solar-cooker.”

          Bai Goanna raised her eyebrows questioningly at him.

          “Ask her,” guided Shri Husband pointing his chin towards me.

          He was allowing me to talk. I wasn’t giving up that chance.

          I said: “It’s a wooden, black, insulated square box in which fit four cooking vessels, with lids, made of aluminium.  The vessels and lids are also painted black on the outside.  The square box has two thick glass covers and there’s a mirror which reflects sunlight through them onto the vessels. Concentrates the rays.”

          “Did you own one?” she asked.

          Shri Husband interrupted: “She used it in Hindon, Avantipur, Jodhpur, Bareilly…”

          Bai Goanna wanted to know what I was “doing in those unheard-of places”.

          I confessed that I’d set up home(s) and kitchen(s) in remote corners of the country where gas was a luxury, sun abundant.

          “How do you cook in that?” she asked when I showed her a picture of a basic solar-cooker.

          “With water,” I said matter-of-factly. “I used to boil and bake in it. Give the ‘phodnni’ later.”

          “How long did it take?”

          “Depends on the sun’s heat, yaar, takes 3-4 hours, sometimes more,” Shri Husband has no patience. “And depends on the season. You can’t cook when it’s raining or cloudy.”

          “Then what do you do?”

          Shri Husband, with patience running thin: “Then you use the gas, with or without subsidy.”

          I could feel a squabble coming up, so I told her one amusing incident: “… monkey came one afternoon… saw the brinjal roasting inside… couldn’t get through the glass… got startled by and couldn’t touch the hot metal frame… stared for a while… left disappointed.”

          “You mean it was kept outside?” Only Bai Goanna can ask such stupid questions.

          “No,” said Shri Husband sarcastically. Only he can be mean and not give a proper answer. “Inside our wardrobe.”

          After a debate on the merits and otherwise of using solar-powered gadgets, we returned to the subject at hand: the subsidy-removal of our domestic LPG cylinders. We meandered and went on to discuss whether all subsidies harmed the country. Taxes for new industrial areas, railway fares, etc.

         

           

NaMo’s Monkey Bath.

          Ever since the PM started the Monkey Bath on All India Radio and the television channels, there’s been hungama in my house.

          Bai Goanna believes that everybody who knew her ancestors (may their erstwhile wagging tongues be resting in peace) vigorously discussed their Monkey Bath.

          Shri Husband feels he’s the one of many carrying on the legacy Amartya Sen mentioned in the ‘Argumentative Indian’, who gives his opinion loud and clear on each and every topic, whether or not it concerns him. Chai pe Charcha is something the PM can and may do, he (Shri Husband, not NaMo) says passionately, but the Monkey Bath can’t be copyrighted by him (this time NaMo, not Shri Husband).

          Come holiday morning dawn and the voices in my home drown out any edition of the PM’s Monkey Bath broadcast over the sub-continent. Bai Goanna and Shri Husband aren’t the only ones who talk here. We have friends, visitors, neighbours, relatives: noisy, the entire lot of them, each voicing his/her own Monkey Bath.

          One said, staring at a news photograph: “Look at the way the Raksha Mantri takes a Guard of Honour. Hands in pocket, crumpled clothes, sloppy posture. The same Parrikar, in Japan for a matching occasion is all spruced up. Appears as if he’s giving the Jap soldiers more respect than to his own.”

          Shri Husband, ever pragmatic, interrupted: “Maybe the image is photo-shopped.”

          Next one: “Did y’all see a video that went viral? MS Aiyer telling Pakistanis in Pakistan that they can’t have successful peace talks unless Modi goes?”

Shri Husband, trying to be reasonable: “Aiyer may have lapses in memory, poor chap. He didn’t remember perhaps that the people of India followed a democratic process to make NaMo PM. Aiyer’s now in the dessert-time of his life, forgive him.”

Talker number three in my home the same morning: “Can’t forgive. Because on that day, one Indian Army Colonel and four of his jawans were killed in Kupwara. We can’t have senior politicians talking the way Aiyer did. None of the politicians have a clue what the soldiers do. Our PM makes a visit to the glacier, gives motivating speeches, but how many helicopters and people had to work hard and overtime for that visit, does anyone know or care?”

At that our domestic Monkey Bath session came to a halt, each one contemplating on how difficult life is in Siachen, in the North-East, and how because of the job our soldiers do, we’re enjoying our freedom to curse the government, crib against politicians, live our lives in comfort. I silently wished this Siachen undeclared ‘war’ would be brought to an end. Too many productive young lives lost needlessly.

I wondered aloud: “Does the PM ever include the Siachen topic in his Monkey Bath?”

Shri Husband responded, as always at a tangent: “I heard him talk about building toilets for primary rural schools across the country, once. And almost always he talks about the Swatccha Bharat campaign.”

I had to agree that our little village school has new toilets suddenly built, with grey-black bricks, though I still don’t know whether they (the toilets, not the bricks) are functional and being used. Also had to agree that we have red, blue and green thick plastic trash-bins now located at every other corner, with the panchayat’s label painted on their (the bins’ not the corners’) sides. The trash still overflows, with Their Bovine Holinesses still traipsing through the mess munching thin polythene bags. Other than the trash-bin presence, nothing’s changed: garbage reigns supreme.

Bai Goanna, unusually quiet till now, piped up with her Monkey Bath: “Heard we have a cess to pay to keep the country clean. Fifty paisa over every hundred bucks that you spend at a restaurant.”

Shri Husband, carrying forth, ever cynical: “Do you think that money will help train us to segregate our domestic waste? Do you think we will suddenly decide to not spit on staircases or urinate wherever/whenever we find a compound wall? Do you think the roadside food-vendors will overnight find potable water to serve their customers?… that’ll reduce the plastic-bottle litter and the number of patients suffering from alimentary canal infections.”

Lecture baazi shuru, I thought; but that was my private Monkey Bath which I kept to myself. The others weren’t as civilized.

One NaMo fan piped up: “The PM’s making an effort. Come on, no government since 1947 has taken garbage-management seriously.”

A khadi-topi-wala retorted: “The way our population is growing… not a word on family planning these days. The fewer the people, the less the garbage, no?”

NaMo fan: “More hands, more work gets done.”

Khadi-topi-wala: “Useless hands don’t work.”

NaMo fan: “That’s why the government is building a skill-bank.”

Shri Husband, patience running out: “Enough. This kind of argument will outlast the weekend.”

I was furiously typing the above conversations for my column when Shri Husband peeked over the keyboard, grumpily pointed out “It’s not Monkey Bath, it’s mann ki baat” and walked away.

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Our Days Are Numbered.

          Ever since the Delhi government decided to allow even numbered cars on odd dates and vice-versa (ie odd number-plated ones on even dates), there have been deliberations in our house. There may be consideration/confusion in other minds, too, over such issues, but in our house, the quality and quantity (of confusion, not minds) is higher.

          “What about buses?” I wanted to know. “Would it be illegal to board an odd-numbered bus on an even date? What about taxis and ambulances?”

          “It isn’t a law, it’s a suggestion from the government. They’re working on ways to reduce pollution in Delhi. In any case, why,” Shri Husband asked in that what-did-he-do-to-deserve-me tone, “are you bothered about what’s happening thousands of kilometres away?” Shri Husband uses the metric system when he talks/writes. No miles/inches or other backwardness: he believes in moving with the times (nothing to do with any newspaper with that word in it, but the chronologic meaning).

          So I scanned the local papers for what was happening on Goan roads and saw one photo and write-up of someone blocking a car parked on a pavement in front of a shop. I read that article aloud: one senior-ranking member of a newish political party had sat to obstruct the car. He and his friends, amongst them a doctor and an architect, both well-known, actually complained about the car-owner-driver to the cops. The owner-driver’s guards had clearly told them (the politicos, not the cops) to leave. In spite of threats they (politicos, not guards) did this.

          “Good,” Shri Husband said.

          “What’s good?” I retorted. “Poor car-owner.”

          “Going by the size and make of the car, not poor,” claimed Shri Husband.

          “I didn’t mean literally,” I said. “She mightn’t have found a vacant parking slot. How much could she have driven around searching for one? Poor thing.”

          Staring at the photograph in the newspaper, he said, “Poor thing? If she drives, she’s possibly been to school and is from a privileged home. If she owns that car, she’s moneyed. If you’re saying ‘poor thing’ because she’s angles-challenged and therefore can’t park or ignorant of traffic rules or completely deprived of common-sense and courtesy towards others, then her licence should be revoked.”

          Harsh words, typical Shri Husband. Trying to soften his mood, I said, “We don’t know what tensions she had. Maybe she had an appointment to get her hair styled or a pedicure done. When she didn’t find a parking space, she had to put her car somewhere, na?”

          Shri Husband, unrelenting: “Emergency situation, hanh? What would she do if she didn’t get to park near her beauty-parlour?”

          Me, hastily interrupting, before he got into lecture-baazi mode: “I guess she’d just double-park and leave the car wherever convenient. People do that.”

          “Then the private guards, parking attendants and constables on duty will tell her to move.”

          Sometimes Shri Husband behaves like an ignoramus. I wondered: “Why would she bother about them?”

          “You mean she’ll bribe her way out of bad parking?”

          Bai Goanna, who wasn’t taking sides until now, butted in: “Not necessarily. If you treat people like dirt, if you’re indifferent to them, they listen, they obey. It’s better than bribing. We’re paying taxes, no, so we have a right to park on the road. If you have a loud voice, you should see what-all you can get away with.”

          Shri Husband stared at her like she’d arrived from outer space. Slowly, he said: “We don’t deserve our rights if we don’t take responsibility for the things we do. Everybody has a right to use the road, we have to use it judiciously. It’s not someone’s baap ka maal.”

          Bai Goanna and I rolled our eyes at each other. The things he says, so out of sync in today’s India.

          Bai Goanna said to him: “That’s why she must have parked on the pavement, no? She must not have got parking on the road.” I nodded in agreement. We were now the clear majority, two of us versus one of him; we’re a democratic country, majority wins. But Shri Husband doesn’t bother about such facts. (Conversely, such facts don’t bother him. He uses logic and other such nonsense when he talks.)

          “You two do understand that rules are made so that it makes life easier for the majority, right?”

          We nodded, cautiously, because such questions are usually a trap to get us to agree.

          “If everyone parks correctly in the marked slots, it’s easier for more cars to be accommodated. Correct?”

          Ok, sounded reasonable enough.

          “If people shared cars to go shopping, to work, to drop children to school, there’d be less traffic on the road, less headache for parking. Right?”

          Well… right.

          “If more people took public transport, there’d be even less cars on the road, less hassles for parking. See?”

          I didn’t ‘see’. If I wasn’t taking the car, the question of parking wouldn’t arise. Before I could say anything, Bai Goanna said: “The public transport’s pathetic, that’s why people avoid taking it.”

          “So that’s what we should be clamouring to get. Less cars on the road will mean faster transportation, less pollution.”

          “There’s not much pollution in Goa,” I interjected.

          “So far,” said Shri Husband. “We don’t want to be like Delhi, do we, where quality of air is concerned?”

          Bai Goanna shook our heads from side to side.

          “New development this is, with people are getting after bad drivers and parkers,” Bai Goanna whispered to me.

          I whispered right back: “Our days are numbered, no?”

          Shri Husband overheard that. “Odd or even?”  he asked before walking out.

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