Happy Diwali.

In my jungle surroundings, Diwali means butterflies and birds. Under the post-monsoon October sun, plants have begun to display buds and blooms. We don’t see many of the latter survive the day. Reason: those butterflies and birds from the first sentence destroy them. Hairy baby butterflies (cute but prickly caterpillars actually) are crazily hungry all the time. Some hundreds of them get born on a single twig and spend all their waking hours chewing up every leaf in sight. I don’t know if they ever sleep. Bald or balding trees, a farmer/ 5-star hotel gardener’s nightmare, is a lepidopterist/ entomologist’s delight. Worms of all kinds are crawling everywhere. Birds, squirrels, civet cats and other sly creatures bite into every fruit they come across, rendering them non-eatable for us humans who have slogged through the year for them to grow. One member of the GoaGardeners group was wondering how to prevent porcupines from destroying her plants. Someone should tell our government that it isn’t just the wild boars, peacocks, nilgai and monkeys that are wreaking havoc with crops: we need to kill many other creatures, too, including prowling two-legged thieves. (That the big and real rogues sit in a/c’d offices and move around in red-light-topped white cars far removed from the poverty our petty robbers live in, is another story.) All’s fair in harvest and war. A friend described a crocodile snacking on a live bat, said it sounded like someone eating potato crisps. Nature is equally unfair to every living thing. In the fast-growing slum outside my gate, a Narkasur effigy is being built. (Just asking, are there legal slums anywhere in India?) Built by those who live in the rooms raised on Communidade land. No one razes what’s raised unless the Court says so... and even then, there’s always an appeal to depend on-- a Panch gave me this gyaan once. Before the Narkasur came, there was a pandal erected for Ma’am Devi; before her Mr Ganapati had festivities devoted to him. After Tulsi-lagna, the Christmas decorations will be up. Civilization has come to our jungle, jingling all the way. The paddy-crop has been cut. One tractor, one day. Hard, laborious field work avoided and over. Viva technology. Neighbourhood homes have been painted. Gates and compound walls have got spruced up. Strings of imported fairy-lights adorn coconut-tree trunks and mango/guava branches. Kitchens are still smelling of snacks being fried and sugar bubbling into syrup. Packets of over-the-counter bought mithai have been discarded over walls into uninhabited plots. The camouflage of creepers has thinned after the rains and the rubbish is tossed around by the breeze. Around Diwali, the breeze picks up, though it isn’t as strong as around Sankranth, and the litter gets evenly distributed in our wado, not discriminating between rich/poor, caste/community, Goan/bhailey. Nature moves in non-discriminating ways. Clay diyas with oil-dipped wicks add to the annual grease marks on floors and window-sills. ‘Rexine’ footwear, plastic buckets, cars and mobile-phones have changed many of our traditions (think Chinese food and chaat at weddings). Other customs get modified, like the preferred material for the akash-kandil is now plastic. Cheaper, easy to fold and store, reusable. Any housewife will tell you its benefits. A friend who is concerned about what’s happening in the world, the country, the mines in the state, the beaches in Goa says the killings in Uri/Quetta/Mao areas should make us feel guilty about lighting lamps, buying new things and enjoying ourselves. Quote: “So many families have been plunged into permanent darkness; this is no time for celebration.” Actually, every year, there’s some reason for gloom—if not earthquake, then flood or drought, if not train accidents, then actors running over pavement-dwellers; if not female foeticide, then paedophiles/murderers getting acquitted; if not dengue, then drug-resistant tb. What to do, celebrate Diwali or not, I want to ask. But I don’t, for life is confusing as it is, for the sensitive. The jungle, unpunctuated by Diwali/Holi, has its own seasonal mazaa. Through the confident branches of teak, the coconut fronds have struggled to make their way skywards. The mango-guava-chickoo threesome is in-between fruiting, the roots enjoying the moist comfort of the homemade saaro-compost that surrounds them. Kingfishers, orioles, bee-eaters, mynas, coppersmiths, koels, tits, sunbirds, baya-weavers and other small birds dart around through the leaves. We can barely get a quick glimpse their gaudy colours. They move fast, they are small, they are lively. Dashes of crimson, emerald, sapphire, sunflower yellow, shiny purple, that’s the only indication of a bird in flight. One morning, I saw a hornbill. Then another. And one more, all in the span of a few minutes. Priceless. The pulsating glow of the fireflies at night is superior to any crackers/sparklers/wheelies money can buy. At night, too, the jungle silence is eerie, its darkness scary, and the life in it utterly fascinating. The one thing Nature can’t provide is cooked food. Like biryani. Snacks and recipes devised and perfected over the centuries. Man-made chaklyo, phenoryo, neuryo, phene, khaje, phov, narlya-vadyo, even the delicious mutton-puri and fried fish which was/is traditionally made in some communities is what, to my mind, really makes a great Diwali. No substitute for good health and great food. Same with music. You may like the sounds of the insects, the song of the birds, the moos and grunts of the mammals, the rhythmic swoosh of the sea. But the taans of a raag, intricate and tuneful, the build-up of an alaap, the cheerful, rapid-fire notes of a taraanaa are man-made. Along with people whose company you enjoy, that makes the good life. Diwali is a label given to times like these, all man-made. Festivals can be fun for some, forced fun for others and no fun at all for the grieving and the ill. I send my wishes to …our jawans, whether at the border, undergoing training or languishing with dreadful injuries… municipal workers, cops, medical teams in government hospitals, kisans, firemen, teachers, postmen, bankers, readers… Happy Diwali all. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in.

Covering the Head

I was sitting in a corner, involuntarily hiccupping, all by myself. Suddenly, Shri Husband barked: “Qui-et!” He believes that if you startle a person, hiccups stop. My statistical personal records kept over the years prove they don’t. I tried really hard to shut up, to control myself, but Nature always wins. I was helpless. Shri Husband was helpless… and fuming at the periodical squeaks escaping my throat. To get rid of the mutual helplessness, we decided to go outside to watch birds. Clouds-and-Rain 2016 were already a memory and the flying and crawling insects were exposed, to be eaten by the winged predators. I wore a cap. Big mistake. If my getting hiccups is bad for Shri Husband’s nerves, my wearing any sort of headgear messes with his entire irritation system. At the first hiccup post exiting door, the cap fell down. There’s something wrong with my head. No cap sits on it firmly. On came the scowl on you-know-who’s face. So I quickly returned indoors and discarded the cap for a thin muslin dupatta. Bigger mistake. The dupatta got entangled in the door handle. After I undid it, it got stuck in the spoke of an umbrella that came in my way. That was the umbrella I’d forgotten to put away in spite of being told several times. Panic set in, and the hiccups got louder and more frequent. The scowl got bigger. We abandoned the bird-watching trip and sat down to discuss the role headgear has played in my life. It took our minds off The Goan Murders of the Week and BRICS. Born and raised on the west coast, I hadn’t seen heads being covered except in Hindi films (surreptitiously seen on DD in friends’ homes as they were a big no-no in my home); and diagrams of Indians from other states in Social Science textbooks. My grandparents, parents, family-doctor’s clan, neighbours, classmates, siblings all exposed their skulls to the sky/ceiling. So the first time I went to a temple in north India, I had a problem. My padar wouldn’t stay on my head and covering it was compulsory. An acquaintance kindly lent me some clips and pins and I got by. Later I was taught to tie knots at the four corners of a handkerchief to make it into a temporary cap that didn’t fall off. No one else had a problem, mine (hanky-cap, not problem) kept slipping off my head. Told you already, something’s wrong with my head. On subsequent visits to other holy places and homes where elders were present, when I had to cover my head, I felt like I was a part of a Pakeezah set, like Madhubala, very coy, very royal. Why covering of heads (especially for women) in the presence of elders is considered respectful I don’t know, but I follow the When in Rome rule. Apparently, in 1 Corinthians 11:11 it was/is written: …women "ought to have a symbol of authority on her head" so even today, in some cultures, many Christian women still wear head/hair coverings to show their devotion to their husbands and as a symbol of modesty. Amongst conservative elderly Parsis, both genders cover their heads. It’s ok with these folk to show the face. In the Middle-East, men wear the keffiyeh; in years gone by it may have been to keep out heat and sand, today it keeps the ears warm from over-cool central air-conditioning, and the designs/colours let you know who’s boss, who’s not. Fashion statement and social distinction more than sanitary requirements is what governs headgear these days. Why religions give it a stamp of approval, I don’t know either. Muslim women have a range of names for head-covers: burqa, chador, niqab and the Arabic hijab. At Dubai airport, I saw women-clerks wearing a V-shaped thing on their noses. Looked like a clip-on, but obviously wasn’t. It was attached to the head-scarf in some way. These accessories make me curious and I stare. If men did the same, they’d get into trouble. Until the Renaissance, some form of cover for the hair was regarded as appropriate for married women in most European cultures. Remember the ‘matron’s cap’? Unmarried women could display their hair to attract suitors. The social elite, especially royalty, generally did not feel bound by these customs, unless they were widows. Inside an RC church, until the 1960s, required all women to wear at least a veil (or a silk/lace mantilla) over their hair. Today, that happens only if a woman is formally meeting the Pope. Men can go bareheaded. Discrimination! Not fair, I thought, but said nothing. The hiccups were still on. “Wimple, hennin, circlet, kerchief, gable-hood, mob-caps, bonnets... so different they are from the ghungtaa, no?” I said to Shri Husband. He replied: “The ghungtaa is more than a head-cover, it’s a concept.” I chose to ignore anything that might lead to a side-argument. The hiccups hadn’t stopped. I read from Google: “Jew women wear tichels or snoods.” I uttered small sentences, between hiccups. “Wigs are also headgear, no?” Shri Husband: “Yes.” Me: “Berets, hats and golf-caps have been in-style for many years if you’re part of a certain social strata.” Now he was distracted and the mood was getting less edgy. “Our topis and turbans are so elegant,” I said. “Pity they’re worn only at weddings.” “What’s in fashion is women covering everything above their necks with dupattas wound around their heads,” Shri Husband suddenly remarked, going at a tangent. “Protects their skin from sun, wind and polluting fumes,” I said. “How about helmets to protect their brains from accidental injuries? How come they’re not in fashion?” “Some of them carry…” I couldn’t complete my sentence. Shri Husband had got into the lecture-baazi mode. “Are helmets to be carried in a dicky or lap or kept near the feet? Or buckled around the wrist or to the handle of the scooter?” I was going to answer… when I realized, my hiccups had stopped. Shri Husband? Still scowling. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in

Cops and Jams.

“Too bad,” Bai Goanna said as we were driving towards Panaji, “The jams we have these days.” Shri Husband, who always takes things literally and has the imagination/diplomacy of an ant when it comes to dealing with Bai Goanna said: “What’s bad about strawberry/mixed fruit? Red in colour, sweet to taste, packed neatly, loved by young and old, been there for years. What about it is too bad?” Bai Goanna rolled her eyes and rephrased what she’d said: “Really bad, the traffic jams we have these days, especially between Porvorim and Panaji.” Shri Husband’s twisted logic: “Would you be happier if they existed between Vasco and Margao or Pednem and Mapusa? Just asking.” “No,” Bai Goanna responded as gently as she could. “I don’t like traffic jams. Anywhere, anytime. Right here, there’s no space at all, between cars, in between lanes. See those ambulances? Must be transporting very ill patients, no? No one’s moving to the side to give them place to go.” “Where can any vehicle move?” Shri Husband uttered the truth. Then he said: “Both patients and vehicles are wailing in despair. Sad.” Bai Goanna took over: “Look at those taxies. They’re in such a hurry… maybe to make sure their passengers don’t miss flights or trains. And those women on the scooters, must be mothers racing to fetch their children from school. People must be heading for exams/interviews, worried about reaching on time.” “And,” Shri Husband interrupting her, looking at someone in the rear-view mirror, “people who can’t bear the thought that they’ll have to miss the first few minutes of a movie. They honk so much.” “Everybody honks,” Bai Goanna said, “out of frustration and irritation.” “Does it, will that make this traffic move?” Shri Husband can’t bear to hear anyone speak more than two sentences max, before he barges into any dialogue. “Look at those chaps coming from the back. They’re trying to overtake, adding to this chaos. They’re blocking the on-coming traffic as well, converting snarls to stand-stills.” Often, he’s says something that makes sense and Bai Goanna and I have to keep quiet. But Bai Goanna was in a spirited mood. She said: “It’s the fault of the cops, you know.” “I don’t see how,” said Shri Husband. “Tell me how it’s the fault of the cops.” “They don’t know how to handle traffic,” she said with an air of ‘I’m-going-to-win-this-round’, adding: “They’re not tough enough to handle so much traffic.” There was a drop in the conversation, something that happens periodically in any conversation. Amongst the three of us, conversations ascend from debates to arguments in very little time; the latter sound like quarrels in mere moments. Full blown fights never happen, have never happened. Regarding the future, our motto is que sera, sera. But the amount of noise we made inside our car and the gesturing we did whilst talking, worried the neighbours. Car-neighbours in that traffic jam, I mean. We had plenty of audience around, though with all the windows up, bless the a-cs, only expert lip-readers would have known what we were ‘discussing’. However, as I said, there was a lull in the conversation. At such times, Shri Husband seizes the opportunity to talk… not that he needs to be given a chance or encouragement. “We need fewer cars on the road, not wider roads,” he said. “Haan?” said Bai Goanna, her eyebrows hitting the top of her forehead in surprise. “How so?” “We need more parking space, we need to enter crowded towns. Bypasses have their advantages, but …we need less vehicles on the roads.” The firm tone was scary. Bai Goanna doesn’t get scared easily. “So-o, will you walk everywhere you go?” “We need to car-pool. We need buses, public or private, comfortable and reliable. See all these people stuck in their cars, one or two persons per car. If they had an option of travelling in a clean, maybe air-conditioned bus, they might take it; it’s much cheaper than taking one’s own car and one doesn’t have to do the first-gear-second-gear exercise, one can read/browse on the move.” “Who’s going to walk to the bus-stop?” Bai Goanna pointed out. “You have to walk to a bus-stop or have someone drop you there by car/scooter. Villages could have satellite/shuttle services at fixed/convenient times for short trips from waddo till main road.” The idealist Shri Husband versus the practical Bai Goanna. Sometimes they reverse roles, though, so it’s hard to predict at the beginning of a dialogue who will play which role for the day. She: “I wouldn’t mind walking to the bus-stop, will exercise my limbs, give me a chance to breathe in the outdoors and meet my friends enroute. But…” Always that qualifying ‘but’. She continuing: “…I can’t stand the garbage heaps that I have to pass. Inside a car, all ugliness gets shut out.” Shri Husband added: “Everyone thinks like you, so we get traffic jams.” She: “It’s the fault of the cops. They can’t handle the traffic. They should have diverted the vehicles some other way and avoided this.” He: “They may have considered it and had a reason that you don’t know anything about.” She: “I’m a tax-payer. I expect all government servants to do their jobs well.” He: “The government servants expect you to shoulder your responsibility, follow the rules of the road, obey traffic regulations...” She: “Cops have to make sure no one breaks rules.” Our in-car battle had warmed up. He: “You can’t have one cop per car, like you can’t have a municipal worker for every person who litters/spits.” That’s when we noticed the number-plates. Various scripts, different languages, fonts and sizes… some ‘arty’ ones we couldn’t read. If the cops were to challan them all, the traffic jam would have carried over to the next day. We discovered the causes for the jam: a broken down vehicle and crowds of long-weekend visitors. I’d sat through the dialogue without saying a word. I’m impressed with myself, I can stay quiet sometimes. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in

Fear of Exams

Bai Goanna checked with some book on English grammar called ‘Wren and Martin’ and let me know that a student took an examination and a teacher gave it. Always thought it was the other way around. I’m sometimes wrong. To distract her, I said, “These days, the full word ‘examination’ is used only in government and other out-dated communications.” Ignoring the distraction, she continued: “A doctor gives a patient an examination, a structural engineer gives a bridge an examination, an art-historian gives an antique statue an examination…” you get the idea, when Bai Goanna talks, she gives a full lecture. This topic came up because she was assuring me that I wasn’t the only one who got nightmares about being in an exam-centre staring at a printed question paper, making no sense of anything in/on it. She said her nightmares included running out of ink, not finding the pen/ruler/eraser, missing the bus and therefore reaching just as the papers were being collected and worst of all, getting a mathematics paper when she’d prepared for geography/English. Had to agree, her nightmares were worse than mine. Mine are restricted to not knowing the answers and fearing the red line on the report-card with an ‘F’ marked somewhere. I know people who get stomach upsets, loss of appetite, sweaty palms, dizzy heads, a craving to eat forbidden snacks/sweets or a sudden/illogical wish to see Radhika Apte (or Fawhad) hours before exams are due to begin. A few, a really small percentage, feel like meeting their teachers/tutors/principals to seek blessings and stuff. Rare breed. Those kinds regularly do their homework on time through the year, have ‘difficulties’ two evenings before every unit test and ‘last-minute’ notes to revise. I shudder to even imagine what their nightmares are like. For theirs is the tension, the (they and their parents believe) power and the glory, forever and ever, amen. Poor things. At least one can wake up from a nightmare and heave a sigh of relief. Before every paper I’ve ever taken, I’ve prayed to each god I had heard of, irrespective of religion. I’ve even prayed to ancestors of classmates to intervene on my behalf and make me magically know the answers to simple and trick questions. The mantra of students before exams, like the belief of visitors in ICUs and participants in Kaun Banega Karodpati, is: ignore no god however insignificant, offend none, please all. Who knew which one would/could benevolently provide easy questions/answers/marks? Before an exam, goes the rule, never take punga with Luck. Charms work, they say: small lockets dangled from the neck, marbles in pencil-boxes, frayed ‘blessed’ threads tied to wrists, photos of Mary/Saraswati tucked into pockets, ash/dried flowers from places of worship put into pencil-boxes, etc. In the tea-time of my life, I’ve got involved with exams again, this time from the other side of The Desk. Never had I imagined that I would be giving an exam. Never mind in what subject and which institution. I had to evaluate the very lot of students that I’d taught. Scary thought, that they might have taken everything I’d said seriously. I had to sift between Very Good, Good, Fair, Satisfactory and Fail. I had to set questions, give marks, calculate grades, ranks. Made me nervous. My regard for my old physics/chemistry teachers (may their souls be resting in The Great School in the Sky), spiked when I reckoned how much time/effort they spent trying to appraise what we’d learnt in their classes. Like me, they must have wondered, were my/their lesson plans clear? Methods effective? As students, my friends’ and my days were spent in a haze of clever jokes. We didn’t have sms/whatsapp; we had our own means of triggering giggles. Technology changes, human nature doesn’t. Daydreams were fantastic escapes from the tedium of formulae and theories. I wondered how much of what I had slogged over had been retained by the students. If it was >5%, I’d give myself a party. As a teacher, I think differently. I went through the syllabus prescribed as well as the syllabus I’d covered, delved through topics/chapters which I thought were important, to dig questions from. I rearranged words to make simple questions look complicated, to get the young minds a-creaking. Then I sat down to decide how many marks to allot to each question. I said to Bai Goanna: “This exercise of setting a paper is an exam of sorts for me. I don’t know what to include and what to leave out.” I’m not into CBTs (Closed Book Tests), but they’re essential. Everything can’t be copied/downloaded from the internet. Brains must be used sometimes. I threw in an essay. The topic: “Me, Five Years from Now”. Mean teachers give mean topics. In my class, the vocal ones chorused: “Give us hints. Tell us, tell us, Miss, ‘what will come’.” “No,” I said, my voice sounding unfamiliarly stern even to my own ears. “Everything is equally important.” Words imbibed in childhood stay in the memory, at the back of the mind, to be recalled in times like these. As the day of the examination approached, I got the jitters. What if the class didn’t turn up? What if it did but I couldn’t find my sheaf? What if a large number of students submitted nearly-blank sheets? What if the paper was so easy that everyone scored a hundred per cent marks? What if my grading wasn’t fair? What if there was a re-exam for whatever reason? What if… the nightmares continued, the perspective had changed. It’s ordained, in the field of education, that a taker of exams someday a giver shall become. These days, male teachers are rare. In my schooldays, there was equal gender distribution. Our female teachers wore skirts, even short and smart ones, or saris. The salwar-kameez was a no-no. “It’s the tension of giving an exam that has brought to your mind this irrelevant, unconnected, long forgotten ‘fact’,” Bai Goanna said. Maybe. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in