At the Airport

The woman squawked out ‘last and final call for Mr Ram Verma’. I craned my neck to see who was delaying the flight. The others in the queue seemed not so flustered. Minutes went by. Next announcement: ‘last and final call for Mr Ram Verma, Shrimati Sita Verma, Master Lav Verma, Miss Lavina Verma’. Hainh? I thought, an entire family is late now? When for the fifteenth time that same staff called ‘a last and final call’ for the same lot of names, I went and asked her whether she knew the meaning of ‘last and final’. She was flummoxed; then she said, if I don’t make this call three dozen times, the passengers will say ‘you didn’t tell us’ or ‘you told us only once’. Apparently, if a single ‘last and final’ announcement is made, that’s insufficient. That’s not the only thing that makes Indian airports special. Last weekend, whilst waiting for a flight, I discovered that when a flight is delayed, after the initial message of ‘by two hours’, it’s delayed by ten minutes at a time, sometimes for another hour or more. The truth is hidden behind accents no one follows. The twenty-something lipstick-wearing girl handling her boyfriend-via-mobile and irate customer simultaneously hadn’t a clue why the morning fog in Thane, Mumbai, was causing a problem at Kempa Gowda, Bangalore, after sixteen hours. Another thing: a flight which must take fifty minutes to a destination, on the ticket shows sixty minutes as flying time. So, when it does reach in fifty, wind conditions being kind and all, the pilot proudly announces how his airlines is always before time, pre-punctual, so to say, a new addition to the Indlish lexicon. Who’s to tell him that that’s rubbish? Most of us don’t even wish the pilots, nor they us, what with the cabin crew forming a protective namaste barrier between flier and flown. If I thought the ground staff spoke in a strange accent, I have to admit that the flying employees talk in stranger accents. Even a normal ‘hullo’ to answer a phone call is a ‘hellyo’ for them. Someone in that industry should explain that to me. These days, old timers say, there’s no charm in flying. All sorts of riff-raff occupy hard steel benches and eat (God forbid!) samosas with cholay. Seats have to be alongside courier boys and unshaven IT types. And humour columnists. Gross. It has interesting moments, though. I once entered the ladies’ loo-cubicle and found a handbag on the ledge above the flush. Immediately, I alerted those outside, who were washing hands, adjusting straps or trying to make sense of the hot-air drier. Everyone had a dazed look in their eyes: no one speaks to strangers at airports, right? When they do, they make friends, exchange phone numbers, offer jobs, insurance policies, and more. So, I made my announcement again: there’s a purse in here, someone’s left a purse here, who’s purse is this, etc. One woman sweetly, unexpectedly and very stupidly asked, ‘are you sure it’s not yours?’ I love Indians from India, I tell you, especially those we meet at airports. It’s a breed you don’t find at railway stations any longer. As for bus depots, no one has the time to spend in chit-chat there. Bus-stands are no longer addas for non-destitutes. The real fun in watching human behaviour is at airports these days. And in aircraft. As in trains, so in aircraft, everyone switches seats to sit with old acquaintances met at the airport or new one’s made there. Drives the cabin-crew crazy, trying to figure out who’s in which seat and whom to give which pre-sold meal to. We’re Indians, no? In spite of the fact that our mobile phones occupy forty-nine percent of our waking hours exchanging news like what we had for the last two meals, and the digestive episodes that followed, we still love live company. Seating arrangements and systems be damned. If one can get a free wheelchair and someone to roll us around in comfort, we book one; do our shopping, see the pretty sights inside these glamourous new airports and—oh, yes—break queues legitimately. The queue; a topic I could write a tome on: we know we have to stand in one, just not sure which end to join. Those yellow lines behind which we must wait make no sense to us. One woman behind me at security asked me whether she could go before me. She was on my flight. I let her. Did she know that whether or not she went first, the flight would not leave without either of us? I don’t know. I think she just wanted to be ‘first’. ‘Main first aa gayee’ carries a lot of weight, doesn’t it? A feel-good factor, seen at buffet meals and, of course, at airports. One woman who thought I looked familiar (I have such a common face, everywhere I go people say they know someone who looks just like me. I say to them, in my mind, ‘damn, not again’) stared at me, smiled, asked if I was Y Z. When I shook my head to say ‘no’, she said, ‘sorry, but what’s your name’. I mean, why did I have to tell her? I did. Conditioning. I’m Indian. I also asked her what her name was. Within minutes we talked about our childhood illnesses, in-laws’ problems, the consequences of voting for a certain party and how to cook without onions and tomatoes. Tomaatoes. Tomaytos. Tamaatars. Tambaaters. Indians at airports speak in several Indlishes; Marathindlish, Hindlish, Assamglish… and therefore, various pronunciations are heard and spoken, repeated, echoed so the other person comprehends… in ‘silent’ airports it’s great fun, uninterrupted by the growl and squeak of the (very) loud-speaker. Best of all, was landing and exiting at Goa. Even Allahabad and Gauhati airports aren’t as good. We have carpeted ramps with little ripples that engage our sense of balance, tripping us at intervals, ensuring we never get old with all that jumping to avoid the bumps under our feet. Dragging trolley-bags over a surface with resistance helps us strengthen shoulders and wrists. The fungus and mould that flourish in the tropical temperatures and humidity build up the immune system. There’s more, but I’m running out of words. Best of all, this is a military airport. No photos, say the signs. But they who own and will and must use all features of their mobile phones don’t know that or can’t read or aren’t bothered. As it is, in this age of satellite pictures tracking where we live and where we go, does it matter if we take a selfie with a loved one with the backdrop of runway lights? Apparently, in our airports, it does.

Customer Service.

What’s customer service? I asked this question to friends. We Goans are so involved in the tourism industry that we hear these two words quite often, so I wanted to know just what they meant and what they meant to people. One said: “Standing around wearing some make-up and a smart uniform, greeting with hands folded and smiling all the time at everyone.” You mean like in airlines? I asked. Yes, was the answer. Another said: “Getting mobile phones or televisions or fridges or computers repaired, or the technicians who repair those.” Yet another said: “Call-centre agents who sit phoning customers.” An online definition says ‘Customer Service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, Customer Service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. I asked my friends whether they considered lawyers’ clients and doctors’ patients as customers. They looked shocked. But, since the client/patient is paying for a service, s/he is a customer, no? No, was the firm reply, given with no explanations, no reasons. To add to my friends’ consternation, I explained that it was illogical that a doctor and a hair-dresser (the word barber is no longer used in polite society) should charge the same amount of money for giving 30 minutes of advice or activity. It takes a doctor takes years of training, skill and experience to know which tests to prescribe and declare a customer normal after seeing the results. The hair-dresser takes three months, take or give a couple of weeks, to learn to expertly cut, curl, straighten, wash, rinse, dry, plait, bun, roll and style hair. Yet, people are willing to pay more for the latter because they sit in a comfort zone, not in a waiting area, get pampered without experiencing pain/nausea/breathlessness. How strange is that. I’d imagine that one would want to pay more for being in good health. But the fact that people happily pay for a meal in a hotel many times the amount they’d pay to get their dental problems resolved proves me wrong. Back to Customer Service; it is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". The more complicated the components, the more innovative the product and the higher the price, the better the Customer Service is the thumb rule. In a tourism-dependent place like Goa, hotels, shops, cops, taxi-drivers (sigh, we have to rope them in everywhere) must be trained pro-actively not only to say ‘hullo’ and ‘good-time-of-day’ nicely, but in their jobs, too. The old technicians in the Central Laboratory at Porvorim don’t pain or injure my 88-year-old relative when they draw blood from her veins to check for sugar: they don’t need to smile politely and say pleasantries. The proficiency gives the customer satisfaction. Taxi-drivers who help with luggage, receptionists who freely share information on cheap shopping-centres, postmen who fill in forms for illiterate peasants are all doing Customer Service of a fair without anyone writing about them. A good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization. A tourist who has enjoyed his hotel stay will return. Or will tell his friends to visit the place. A telephone operator who speaks clearly, accurately and patiently wins over customers as much as a slick marketing executive. If you’re in business, make sure your telephone operators are well trained. Professionalism works. Customer Service includes taped messages that tell me to press a number for English and another for technical problems and yet another for complaints and a fourth to speak to a human being. I prefer directly speaking to a proper voice and giving instant feedback. Recently we bought a computer. When we tried to load a very basic, home-use software on it, an error message informed us that the disc didn’t have enough space. The company, when contacted said, that’s how the product is made, if I wanted the software, I’d have to either be constantly online to use the free online software or buy an addition to attach to the computer. No one from the company could tell me why such a user-unfriendly product was being sold at all in the market. Make in India promoters must make note of such examples of poor customer experiences. Make in India need not be shabby or sub-standard. Make in India can well be superior to or at least equal to the best in the world. Read about Kiran Muzumdar-Shaw’s work and you’ll know it’s possible. Criticism keeps quality high. Customer Service was born out of criticism. If one wants to improve, one ASKS FOR criticism and takes it to heart. Customer Service assists customers in making cost effective decisions, buying suitable products (like they do in shoe-shops) and using that product correctly. See the stall-walas at ‘exhibitions’ showing the public the various uses of peelers. Customer Service includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble-shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. Plumbers, carpenters and electricians are the ones to be trained in these points. Architects, and garbage disposal experts, too. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. technical support Automated customer service[edit] Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means[citation needed]. Examples of automated means are Internet sites. An advantage with automated means is an increased ability to provide service 24-hours a day, which can, at least, be a complement to customer service by persons.[5] Another example of automated customer service is by touch-tone phone, which usually involves a main menu, and the use of the keypad as options (i.e. "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish", etc.) However, in the Internet era, a challenge has been to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena."[6] An automated online assistant with avatar providing automated customer service on a web page. Examples of customer service by artificial means are automated online assistants that can be seen as avatars on websites.[5] It can avail for enterprises to reduce their operating and training cost.[5] These are driven by chatterbots, and a major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing.[5] Metrics and measuring customer service results[edit] The two main ways of gathering feedback are: customer surveys and Net Promoter Score measurement, used for calculating the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer.[citation needed] Customer service metrics that are followed by companies depend on the tool used for customer service. Most popular metrics include: • first response time, • average response time, • total handle time, • customer satisfaction score (CSAT).[citation needed] Instant feedback[edit] Recently[when?], many organizations have implemented feedback loops that allow them to capture feedback at the point of experience. For example, National Express in the UK has invited passengers to send text messages whilst riding the bus. This has been shown to be useful, as it allows companies to improve their customer service before the customer defects, thus making it far more likely that the customer will return next time.[7] Technology has made it increasingly easier for companies to obtain feedback from their customers. Community blogs and forums give customers the ability to give detailed explanations of both negative as well as positive experiences with a company/organization. Standardization[edit] There are few standards on this topic. ISO and The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) have published the following ones: • ISO 9004:2000, on performance improvement • ISO 10001:2007, on customer service conduct • ISO 10002:2004, on quality management in handling customer complaints • ISO 10003:2007, on dispute resolution • ISO 10004:2012, on monitoring and measuring • The International Customer Service Standard (TICSS) • CCQA Customer Care Standard (Care Quality Alliance) www.CCQA.org.uk There is also an Information Technology service management standard: ISO/IEC 20000:2005. Its first part concerns specifications and its second part the code of practice Some have argued [8] that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy. To address this argument, many organizations have employed a variety of methods to improve their customer satisfaction levels, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).[citation needed] • Demand chain • Institute of Customer Service (UK) • Interactive voice response • Live support software • Privacy policy • Professional services automation • Public Services • Sales • Sales process engineering • Sales territory • Service climate • Service system • Social skills • Support automation • Technical support • Help desk software References[edit] 1. Jump up ^ Buchanan, Leigh (1 March 2011). "A Customer Service Mak

Never Mind the Floods

“Whatta month,” exclaimed Bai Goanna on the last day of August. “Floods, rain, more rain. And then the government does away with Article 370, BJP’s stalwarts dying, a Major General dismissed for sexual harassment, fish still being injected with formalin, taxi-mafia being tamed by the CM, so many things happening.” “Do you,” said Shri Husband, “have any idea what Article 370 is about?” To my, and definitely to Shri Husband’s, surprise, Bai Goanna could tell us the pluses, minuses and in-betweens of whatever has happened in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, what is likely to happen and the pros and cons of the Parliament’s most controversial recent decision regarding that region/ State/Union Territory. Before we could react, she explained that she’d been watching a lot of television lately and hence her knowledge of current events. Ah, technology, keeps everybody informed, stupid or intelligent, illiterate or schooled… What would we do without television crews sitting in Army boats? Does it occur to anyone that the Press guys might actually be hampering work? I remember, during the tsunami rescue operations in Tamil Nadu, reporters had to be given shelter, food, whatnot by the public servants (cops, municipality workers): they were coming the way of the real rescue teams. Also, spiritual-messengers from modern ashrams teaching the distraught to de-stress when what the ‘victims’ needed was drinking water, food, dry clothes, preventive (allopathic) medicines and sanitary napkins. …Bai Goanna was quoting leaders, writers, politicians, historians… pat! Shri Husband and I almost simultaneously vocally agreed on one thing: “We have to thank the electricity department of Goa and Saligao-Porvorim in particular, for keeping the facility going come storm or blocked drain-water.” Shri Husband took the first breath and asked me: “What does blocked-drain-water mean?” He’s the only one in India who’d ask such a question. And my grammar-Miss in school. Then, having successfully irritated me, he said: “I’m joking, re. Really, the light-men and the water-men did a fantastic job, hanh. So, also, the fire-men and the poder.” Truly, our village, marooned by the Guirim flood and the Porvorim traffic, was not much inconvenienced thanks to the utility men. Except for the one day when the government of Goa declared a holiday, come hell or high water, our teachers and students made their way to school for exams, sometimes wet, but always smiling. The scowls were more on the faces of habitual cribbers, more to do with in-house politics, less with Nature’s fury. In cities, the municipality workers who are the world’s greatest shirkers, according to some, rose to the occasion to clean up whatever mess they could. A question of too little too late, perhaps, but they did it. In our village, the postman and the gas-delivery chaps did their work with a sense of duty-is-duty. Valor, guys. No vegetables bothered my wado as, a rarity in Goa, it’s a vegetarian wado. Please note, I do not use the juvenile word, veggie; always the full forms, vegetables and vegetarian. The nustekar, too, unfailingly made his rounds to supply ‘fish-food’, as English-speaking Goans say, to us ‘fishies’ (like ‘veggies’). Formalin-laced or not, it’s a treat to eat tisrya-ek-shipi with hot rice and bhindi-solan kodi when it’s pouring. Available only in people’s homes. The fungus, the cobwebs, the damp clothes, the sunless days, we smile through them all, we Indians. Now, with Facebook connecting us, we smile into our mobile phones and then share the pics with the world, for those who know us even vaguely, to say ‘awesome’. I often wonder how many of those from non-affected areas contribute to the rehabilitation of losers of limb, life or property. Even those who claim they support the Indian Armed Forces and are proud of them, seldom give jobs or pay for the tuitions of the dependents of the soldiers/airmen/sailors in times of need. We’re still into the mode ‘government must do it’. I dislike this question that reporters ask: ‘what has the government done for you?’ We citizens love cutting down trees, using tons of plastic, refusing to segregate our waste, showing off our bullying talents, and we expect our elected representatives to be responsible. Ha. Strangely, whilst our national media was crying itself hoarse defending or attacking the government’s way of dealing with the removal of Article 370, an important national event, our school teachers were worried about seating arrangements, supervision, answer-sheet collections and marking. Truly, the lives of the migrant junta and we who deal with the daily living of their children, our students, is far removed from what’s happening in Parliament, Delhi. When the new Education Policy comes to us, we’ll wake up. Until then, it’s chalta-hai. By the time this goes into print, Ganapati would have visited and gone. The rains, too. A large number of us, unfazed by natural calamities and other such silly words, would have bought and discarded un-dissolvable statues of the beloved Lord. The traffic snarls and cars that need unnecessary trips to workshops are mere nuisances in times of heavy rains and floods. We in Goa take those in our stride. Tillari and other faraway places are, well, too far for us to worry about. Ditto with forests. We urban folk are happily detached from reality. I wasn’t surprised when a modern, well-informed mother told me there are no Dalits in Goa; her daughter had heard about the floods, saw them on television, also, but her world begins in Porvorim and ends in Panaji, so watching them on screen was no different from watching a movie in Inox. They faced the problem of not being able to celebrate a birthday properly because favourite restaurants weren’t getting the correct ingredients for the items on the menu. In my school, in contrast, the parents are worried about their next meal. The women who make the midday meal made do with green grams for a couple of days; but they did their duty well, cooking it in different ways, making sure it was freshly cooked and served hot. Teachers managed with leaking ceilings and sniffles. Never mind the floods, was the attitude, we’re there to make the school run, we’ll do it. Floods? said an acquaintance, it’s a temporary thing. Life goes on, true. Without safe drinking water, with destroyed homes, dead pets, it takes time, but life goes on. Right? What worries some is the fact that the auto-industry has a slowdown happening.

Carpe Diem—short story

My mother died when I was one, and today, I’m meeting her identical twin, my Maushi, whom I don’t remember much. I’d met her a few times, mostly at Diwali when I was very young, nearly thirty odd years ago, but not since. All that I can remember of her was that she had an infectious laugh, and she was always doing something: chopping, tidying or frying. Each time, before we left our home to go to her house, there was always this routine conversation between my stepmother, Mummyji, and Pa. That I recall quite clearly. ‘Have the sweets and savouries been packed properly?’ he’d ask. ‘Yes.’ Mummyji didn’t bother to camouflage the curtness. ‘And the sari?’ ‘Yes,’ she’d snap. ‘For the fourth time, yes.’ My two ‘real’ brothers were already in senior school when Pa remarried; they were brought up by my maternal grandmother and my link with them got diluted over the years for we didn’t meet much. We still don’t. I think they haven’t quite forgiven Pa for ‘replacing’ Ma, our mother. Can’t say. We’ve never talked about it. I’m closer to my stepbrother, Kim. Quite often, I forget that Kim and I don’t share the entire set of genes that I do with my older siblings. Coming back to today’s meeting. Nothing has prepared me for it; it’s like opening up Facebook, not knowing who has written on my wall. I’m doing this out of latent, suppressed curiosity. I want to know what my real mother might have been like had she been alive. I don’t look like Pa, and in the past, many have told me I resembled her, I want to know more about her. How many of her traits have I inherited? When I called up Maushi’s son, my cousin, two weeks ago, he said, ‘Come on Sunday morning, join us for breakfast. All of us will be at home, too. It’ll be nice seeing you again.’ It’ll be hard, I told myself. Maushi and my mother were once a single zygote. Experiences may change, environs may change, but the basic nature, temperament, reactions, attitudes… this aunt is a copy-paste of my mother’s genetic file, her identical twin. I’m going to see something of my own self in her. I stand before the building my cousin lives in. It is right on the main road and the entrance is from behind. In front, there are many shops. It’s a crowded, bustling locality. I climb to the second floor. There’s a mild odour of urine. Decaying garbage is strewn everywhere. It’s a far cry from our home in the US. Pa migrated with us long years ago, leaving behind his world, my roots. The inhabitants of the apartments, the workers cleaning the corridor, the children prancing around… all stare in open curiosity, wondering who I’m visiting. The walls haven’t been painted for decades, and there are patches of peeled paint revealing raw brick, stains of paan and spit at every landing and corner, and dried splashes of perhaps tea or some other beverage on the scratched floor tiles. Several papers declaring themselves to be ‘notices’ are pasted crookedly at intervals, on top of older notices, on a cobweb laced wooden frame, on the right side of the staircase. On the first floor, the only window on the landing has a cracked pane, and it stands askew on the sill. From the angle where I turn up to the next storey, I get the first glimpse of the nameplate: Mrs C Bakla. The C stands for Charu, her name. The flat is in her name. My mother was Niru. I wonder, what was my maternal grandmother’s home like? We are Gujaratis. My father’s family has settled in Mumbai for five generations. We – they – know no other home; I’m told, we have no village to return to. Before we left for the US, didn’t live in a building like this. It was a clean, posh, shiny, happy place. In fact, my paternal grandparents’ home is still well kept. I went there the last time I was in India. About my mother’s side of the family, I know little. Whenever they’re spoken of, they are referred to as ‘her mother’s people’; they have no other identity. Mummyji once told me: ‘Your mother’s family is well off, but your Maushi’s husband lost a lot of money and they had to struggle for many years.’ Had my mother been alive, would she have bailed out her twin, helped her through the bad spells? I try and recall Maushi’s face, and her voice. They are virtually non-existent in my memory. Once Kim arrived, our visits to her house diminished, then halted, and it was Mummyji’s family that I was… still am… more connected with. I look for the bell. There is a little Ganapati idol tucked into a niche beside the door. It’s not been dusted, is covered with grime, yet there are fresh flowers beside it, and a small bulb (possibly battery-operated, because I don’t see any wires), shines in a diya by its feet. A toran is stretched above the door, dried, grey and gnarled. A tattered kandil hangs untidily on one side. Quite obviously, these decorations have been here since Diwali, three months ago. Why don’t people remove and discard them once festivities are over? I don’t understand this. Never did. But it’s none of my business. I’m apprehensive and nervous. I’m going to face a woman who is closest to me genetically. My father and my brothers are males. What is she going to think of me? Will she cry? Will I cry? I know I will. Do twins remain ‘in touch’ if one of them dies? After all, their souls were once, one. Is there a soul at all or is it only a figment of human imagination? We will all find out soon enough: this was no time to contemplate such things. I have a yellowish photograph of my mother with me, one that I found in Baba’s old address-book one day. She and my father, on their wedding day. All adorned with flowers and jewels, but I can clearly make out her features. I’ve kept that photo with me through school, through college, and now it lies nestled amongst my finance folders, unlaminated, unframed. I’ve got it scanned and preserved on a CD, too. For some reason, though, I haven’t shown it to anyone at all. I don’t know whether Baba has missed it. It won’t matter to any one else. My brothers… they’re not as sentimental as I am. Occasionally, I give it a brief glance and wonder whether my life would have been any different had she been alive. Does it bother me? Nope, just curiosity. At family gatherings relatives have remarked that I have got her dimples. It seems my voice, gestures and expressions are all hers. My brothers look like my father. My stepbrother, three years younger than I, also looks like him. I’m the only nishaani of my real mother, they say. Or used to say. Now so many years have passed and no one recalls her at all. She exists only through her genes, through my brothers and me…and our children. She died of kidney failure. Her twin’s kidney would have been a perfect tissue match. Why was it not done? The technology existed then. It would have saved her life. No one, but no one, has spoken much about it, for there are social and familial restrictions involved. Is kidney failure inherited? I don’t want to know. Are there tests that can detect faulty genes? I don’t want to know. Que sera, sera, what will be, will be. Both my children have inherited those same dimples. So have my brothers’ children. That little bit of her genome has remained steadfast. I press the bell. A hundred sparrows or crickets raise a cacophony together. Not a soothing sound like ding-dong or trrrinng. Perhaps it’s meant to startle and prod somebody to open the door. The keyhole darkens as an eye on the other side rests against it; tantalizing shadows are glimpsed through the gap below the door, the security chain rattles…. A moment, and then, the door opens wide. Behind the two smiling faces that welcomingly chorus ‘Aaoh, aaoh, come in, come in,’ stretches a rectangular room. There’s a sofa-set of three pieces, a dining table with four chairs, a television, a glass-fronted cupboard stuffed with dolls and curios, and two children stare at me wide-eyed, fingers stuffed into their mouths, legs apart… ‘Aaoh, come in,’ the adults repeat. I remove my shoes, balance against the wall whilst I undo the straps, kick them aside to join other strewn footwear companions, and gingerly step inside. Sit, they order, sit, we’ll call Baa. She’s been waiting for me, they say: later I discover what a lie that is, spoken as a mere formality. The cousin stays with me, his wife vanishes behind the cut-sari or translucent curtain that probably leads into a bedroom or kitchen like most flats in Bombay. ‘So,’ says the cousin. ‘All is well? Seeing you after nearly, thirty years, when I was….perhaps two years old. I don’t remember. You must be tired. We will have breakfast… my wife, Aditi, she’s made poha. Even the sweet moongdalhalwa is homemade.’ No mention about why I’m here. I notice, he doesn’t have the dimples, but his children do. I don’t know why he keeps saying I must be tired and hungry. He’s wasting time. I just want to see Maushi. That’s all. I subdue the eagerness in my voice when I ask about her. ‘Where’s she?’ ‘She’ll be out in two minutes,’ I’m told. I’ve been told the same thing ten minutes ago. I wonder, is she shy, hesitant or afraid to face me? Is she still mourning for her dead twin? Why this odd, uncomfortable delay? I want to ask. Is something the matter? But I don’t. I just clench my toes, cross my knees, first this way, then that, waiting for that special moment that will help me link with the mother I never knew. When she does come out, I stare. I instinctively compare her with the photograph I have: she is the same item, different size, shop soiled. I can see that those eyes, those brows and that nose are all the same. I’ve studied those features for years. I have them etched in my mind. Her daughter-in-law coaxes her to see me, talk to me. She stares blankly, but kindly. ‘Is your mother well?’ she asks. ‘Why didn’t you get her along?’ ‘I, I…,’ I stutter, ‘I’m Niru’s daughter.’ Her son shouts into her ear: ‘Niru’s daughter, Baa, Nirumaushi. Your sister, Niru.’ ‘How nice,’ she says evenly. ‘Good you came. Stay for lunch.’ I’m confused and shocked. I reach out to hold her hand. My mother’s hand would have been like this. Frail, wrinkled, unsteady. She’s all wrapped up in a crisp, well-ironed cotton sari. Tiny prints on a cream background, woven border, large pallav. ‘How nice,’ she says. ‘How nice, how nice, how nice.’ And then, she flashes those dimples at me. My dimples, my inheritance. She’s one of the owners. Her daughter-in-law reprimands her: ‘Baa, your sister Niru’s daughter. You remember Niru?’ There’s a pause. ‘Yes. I remember Niru,’ she says. She looks straight into my eyes, but I feel she sees nothing. Her eyes are hazy, there’s a hint of cataract in them. I can’t make out whether she’s able to figure out anything of what’s happening. Her expression is benign, but blank. She gazes at my face, touching my cheeks, my chin with her fingers. There is no recognition. ‘Niru,’ she repeats. I will never find out whether there was a bit of lucidity or whether she just echoed what she’d heard. ‘She has Alzheimer’s,’ my cousin whispers loudly from behind me. ‘She has Alzheimer’s.’ Why didn’t anyone warn me? I don’t know what to do. Mechanically, I dig into my bag, take out the gifts I got for them all and hand them out. I give Maushi the CD with my mother’s picture on it. ‘Maushi,’ I try prodding her gently, ‘Niru, your sister, Niru. Charu-Niru, your twin sister. Do you remember?’ It’s so sad; she just repeats what I say: ‘Niru, Charu-Niru. I remember.’ My cousin, his wife, their children, and the servant are all far more interested in feeding me the breakfast that they’ve laid out than in what is happening. I’m not hungry. I don’t care whether they’re giving me tea with or without sugar. I don’t want another helping of the dhokla no matter how fluffy it is. I want to reach out and talk to my mother’s twin. I’m desperate. But once the flight’s taken off, no matter how long you wait at the airport, it won’t come back for you. You have to buy another ticket. Here, there’s no second chance. I’ve waited years for this day. I want to know: if both were born at the same time, in the same place, to the same parents, they must have the same horoscope-chart. How then could their lives have been so different? When people perish together in an air-crash, I want to know whether all their horoscopes indicate the same time and mode of death. Surely they all have different birthdays, birth-times and different planetary conjunctions? I have so many questions saved up: maybe she would have answered them, modified them or deleted them. Now she won’t. She can’t. Her hard disc has crashed and it’s irreparable, irreplaceable. Charumaushi is sitting still, alive but lifeless, at the table. She sits and stares, sometimes at me, at other times into space or at her plate. She eats sloppily, but then carefully gathers the crumbs into her palm. My heart is bursting with unasked questions: how did you feel when my mother died, how close were you as teenagers, how much did you miss her through these years, did you miss her at all…? My stepmother had taken her twin’s place, married my father; but because of the bad spells that Maushi’s family had to go through, the two seldom met. Maushi was busy trying to make ends meet, raising her brood… and the years went by. My stepmother didn’t deem it necessary for me to meet her. Indeed, she must have figured, it was best to keep me away, lest I get emotionally scarred or something. And I nurtured my secret desire of meeting Maushi someday. For years, craving to know more about the woman who’d given me birth and Maushi was the only one who could do that. I touch Maushi. My mother’s skin would have been like this. Papery.The blood vessels bulging below the fingers on the back of the hand, networking around the bony skeleton. She reaches out, too, and touches my face again. Still expressionless. The smile is hollow. Alzheimer’s, eh? She has no memory, I’m told. She has no vocabulary, no feelings, just a body with no mind. A computer, a CPU with a keyboard and a monitor, without any software. Is Alzheimer’s hereditary? Have I got that gene? Has my cousin? I turn to him: ‘Did she ever talk about my mother?’ He’s uncomfortable at the question. He shuffles, looks away, slaps one of the children for misbehaving, orders the servant to get more tea, hot this time, and says: ‘I don’t remember.’ He’s lying. I can’t force him to say any more. What a disappointment. I try again: ‘Look, you and I, we’re products of twins. We share something no one else does. Tell me anything at all that she may have said about my mother, yourNirumaushi. I want to know.’ That uncomfortable silence again. I’m weeping inside. The pictures on the wall with quotes from the Gita, from Sai Baba, from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, all seem so empty, so silly and irrelevant. I didn’t know why anyone would display a large-lettered poster that says Forgive in one’s drawing room. If someone raped my daughter, I wouldn’t forgive. I wouldn’t say she deserved it because of something she did in her last life. I’m getting upset. My mind is wavering, getting agitated, and I am beginning to regret this visit to my aunt. There is a sense of panic, a sense of not wanting to be here. I sigh involuntarily. I can’t rewind anything. I have to just get out of this place. Suddenly the cousin says: ‘I once overheard them say that when your mother needed a kidney, my mother was not allowed to give hers. My father feared for her health, he wanted more children and didn’t know whether donating a kidney would hamper her having more babies. We have never talked about this. I’ve not spoken about this ever before.’ How could anyone deny a sister… a twin sister? Had she protested? Or was she too scared? Did Maushi regret the fact that she couldn’t help her twin? Regret can do terrible things to you. Did she ever think about me, us? I’ll never know. I leave the house despondent, sadder than ever before, and take a taxi to the hotel. I don’t recall going downstairs. I remember just Maushi’s face, innocent of all pleasures, sorrows, devoid of all feelings. I can’t get it out of my mind. There’s so much I want to tell, to share, to confide, but I don’t know where to begin, whose shoulder to cry on. The kids and husband have already returned to the hotel from their fun outing, and they don’t know what I’ve been through. I can’t get myself to answer the excited ‘Tell, tell us what happened.’ ‘She didn’t recognize me,’ is all I say. ‘She’s got Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t recognize anybody.’ ‘So-o,’ says my elder one. ‘You’re showing the symptoms already. Can give you a trillion examples of what you forget, Ma.’ The young one follows suit, jesting cruelly. My husband puts an arm around me. I had wanted to go alone, be alone for this meeting. But he knows something hasn’t gone right. Years of togetherness prompts this instinctive response. Through my sorrow, I feel wanted, secure, and calmer. Tears brim and flow. I can’t, I don’t want to stop them. I cry softly. My children think I’m emotional because of the meeting, they still don’t know why I’m upset. They joke, laugh and tease me. Somewhere along, I realize that I have no control over my genes, my ‘inheritance’, the flow of my life. I must live in the here and now; savour all the good that I have – my children, my husband, my health. Tomorrow should something go wrong, so be it. If something goes right, so be it. I take a deep breath and my Maushi’s face comes to mind. That face is my mother’s. She isn’t even around. Hasn’t been for so many years. Would she have had Alzheimer’s had she been around? Would I have been a caregiver? All I know is that I have got half my personality from her, if Nature is superior to Nurture. I know that I have her will to win, her ability to laugh at everything Life brings my way. I don’t see it in Pa, so that half is hers for sure. She continues to live… I see my dimples… her gift to me… in both my children. I watch them squeal as they tease each other, smiling, laughing…proclaiming her presence in the little depressions in their cheeks. I feel better already.

BACK TO SCHOOL: The Power of a Teacher.

A phone-call to say a school needed an Administrator, would I be interested? Ten minutes to make a decision. A government-aided school (and a small non-aided one sticking to it), not a fancy salary, but it’s not far from my home. I will be able to make a small difference in the life of some little ones. I say ‘yes’. Since that day in mid-June, my world has changed. I have to get up and out of the house just after dawn. The clouds and rain don’t allow me to guess the time, so I keep looking at my phone (my collection of winding and batter-run watches rest in a wooden box, regularly serviced and gloated over, but now seldom used on the wrist). I carry a bag with a tiffin, a water-bottle and a napkin. Pens, pencils, erasures nestle alongside the notes and coins in my purse. My house-key has a companion: the office-cupboard key. I see things differently already. The flooded roads remind me that three-year-olds can easily be sucked into drains and drowned. One morning, as I take a left turn at a signal—very, very slowly, because it’s pouring heavily and visibility is poor-- a scooter-driver wanting to overtake from the wrong side bangs hard into my vehicle and falls head over heels on the road. I get out, to find that her young son has also fallen down. I help her park her scooter and take both to the hospital. She tells me she was rushing because she was late. I tell her she’s fortunate to have got away with minor injuries. I phone her husband to fetch her. Driving back, drenched, I make a mental note to tell ‘my’ teachers and students to follow traffic rules and be careful. It’s only later that I remember ‘insurance’. Like I said, I see things differently already. The girls’ toilets bother me. They are at the back of the building, the way to them camouflaged by grass in which I know reside snakes and other crawlies. They are tiled and the plumbing is in order, but the method of cleaning leaves them slippery. The woman who cleans them believes that water and phenyl must be poured and swept off with a coconut-stem broom. Scouring and scrubbing are unknown. Keeping the floor dry is an alien concept. The boys’ toilets are no better. I have a long way to go, I sigh to myself. The stores are places of mystery. Mould-covered white-ribbed cricket-leg-pads embrace hollow, faceless tablas. Crumpled still-glittering ribbons, frayed plastic festoons, a discarded sink, an unused gas-stove, a jerry-can filled with foul-smelling liquid and hundreds of bundles of unlabelled papers have been pushed into closed cupboards and open shelves. Untidy, grimy, slimy, ugh. There’s one store behind one toilet, another opposite a teacher’s office, yet another behind the same office. A clerk tells me the story of each piece of scrap as I go along, sniffing dust and mites, and fungi-spores, breaking cobwebs and tradition. None has ventured into this hallowed space for a long, long time. I touch the corner of a mossy wall and get a mild shock. There’s a crisp plastic near it. I move it aside and find the water-pump. It’s new, works well. I touch the wall again, no shock. Did I imagine it? Will try again with a tester, I decide. Work is worship, I remember these words from somewhere. I dress and talk formally, so unlike me, to remind myself that I will not take the smallest thing casually. I go through files, manuals, speak to students and the security guard to familiarize myself with the environment. I’ve never been a teacher, and my school journey ended forty-five years ago, before 10+2 started. We wrote with fountain-pens and hadn’t heard of traffic-jams. One ‘difficult’ student is talked about. Some teachers tell me they’ve taught his father in this same school. The student lost his mother early in life, the father married her sister and she, too, died in childbirth. How are the teachers going to deal with his misbehavior? In our times, our teachers were soft-spoken and kind; but our Head-master was allowed to use the cane and he believed that sparing the rod would spoil us. In these times of no corporal punishment but roughness in tone and choice of words, I guess disciplining young ones is a challenge. A far greater challenge, the teachers tell me, is that all students, irrespective of ability, effort or talent—or the lack of any—have to be promoted from class I to VIII. In class IX, therefore, it comes as a shock to some parents and their wards, that they’ve learnt almost nothing after attending six hours of school nearly two hundred days a year, for eight years. I had (still have) friends who were bright and friends who were duffers, friends thin and fat, tall and short, cheerful and whiny, failures and successes. I agree with the teachers. One day, a snake visited my office. Mr Krishna, sent by the Forest Department in response to my call, arrived in fifteen minutes. “It’s a boa,” he said, picking it up and offering it to me, “non-poisonous, harmless.” I decide to introduce it to the students. I carry it, to set an example of overcoming fear, to the classes and ask the children to touch it with a finger. Some are bold, others back away. But in every class, I notice, every child turned to the teacher to see her reaction. If she was calm, they were calm. If she squealed, they squealed. When I invited them to come closer, they looked at Madam for approval. When I explained to them that the creature was harmless, they turned to her to check whether that was true. They trusted their teacher. Only her. We were strangers, we were outsiders. She was part of their world, she moulded them. Whatever a teacher does or says echoes in eternity. I am here, writing, or working as Administrator, because long years ago, some teachers did a sincere job. I bow in thanks to them, and to my parents for leading me to their capable hands. So my new adventure has begun. I go to school every morning with humility in my heart and a prayer on my lips… and skip of joy in my heart for the chance to make a difference to young lives. Wish me luck, dear readers.

Admissions.

Reservations, percentages, submissions of forms into multiple colleges, grumbles against The System beat any other topic of conversation these days. Even the upcoming elections, Bhai Parrikar’s condition, rains (too much) and the electricity (lack of) don’t overtake it. Last night, at a friend’s house for an impromptu dinner, a pet choked over something. Once the howling of dog in pain, yowling of mistress in panic, hurling of accusations (“how could you feed her a fishbone?”) by master and sense of emergency diminished, all present returned to what’s bad with education—and a zillion other things-- in India today. Present were a nuclear-physicist turned educator, an electrical-engineer turned educator, a nutritionist turned educator, an architect turned educator and me. I was the only listener, an intelligence-challenged housewife. Not involved with kindergarten, primary, secondary or college related problems, I sat for over two hours with a this-is-exciting expression on my face. My mind was on the yet to be served homemade apple-crumble dessert. Shri Husband regularly veered the conversation towards some ultra-cerebral stuff-- is homeschooling better than sending children to institutions-- drawing into further debate the already agitated congregation. For some reason, sending someone to an institution sounds horrid. The word institution seems to denote rehabilitation centres, prisons, old-age homes, de-addiction places. But, schools and hospitals, like families, are institutions, no? Shri Husband, sneakily reading what I was typing, denied that any members of his domestic and extended family felt there was anything wrong with the word. Does there exist a magic lamp that renders husbands temporarily non-intrusive whilst wives are writing columns? Bai Goanna suggests I should write to the PMO’s office to tell an Indian scientist to make a device like that… researched and manufactured in India and marketed to benefit wives beyond our borders. So much money to be made, she said. I digress. Admissions. Am told, there are parents these days who have the idea that there are other ways of earning a living than becoming doctor-engineer-taxi-chalak. They are those parents, mostly, who have the means to pay their offspring’s rent/grocery bills whilst they (adult-kids, not Mummy-Puppa) go scuba-diving, practicing classical guitar or tracking exotic fungi in the Sahyadris. Such parents don’t have to worry about entrance exams and capitation fees or local guardians should their ward be sent out of Goa to complete a course. Goans are ok to send their children abroad, on cruise-liners, but not to, say, Barielly, to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute. That’s reasonable, they discuss amongst themselves, because our bovine-porcine cuisine aficionados would not like the food served in north-Indian ‘dhabhas’: black dal, cauliflower sabzi, tandoori chicken (this last one’s acceptable). North-Indian fish is fresh-water and the gravies are made without coconut. Oh no, the Goan parent moans, our ‘poot’ can’t survive on that. The good part is, Goan parents don’t discriminate between daughters and sons, they deny out-of-state opportunities to both. When someone actually ventures ‘out’, it makes local news: Ms Y Z Prabhu got her Ph D from Panchpakwan University on the theme: “Why the scales of the black pomfret aren’t edible”. In the photo accompanying the press-release stands an MLA by her side. And her parents. Aunts and Uncles. Sometimes it’s just a mug-shot. Now she needs to get admitted into a government job is the message her eldest uncle tells the world. Back to admissions: for colleges, the first choice is Goa. Or the USA/NZ/Oz if they’re rich parents. Then, Belgaum-Bangalore-Bombay, depending on where one has relatives one gets along with. Besides fees, boarding and lodging, there is money to be spent on sweaters and blankets, new towels presently acceptable clothing styles and mobile-phone bills. Admissions are about budgeting, not just getting good marks. Interest in the subject and aptitude? Naa-naa. Getting admitted into coaching-classes is equally stressful. Like reputed schools, colleges and kindergartens, coaching-classes are carefully selected. There are advertisements to flip through: which class had how many toppers in which entrance exam. (The Indian Entrance Exam is a phenomenon by itself, a pre-cursor to many kinds of admission, of that in another article.) There are coaching-class ex-students to connect with to find out how much attention is personal and how much one-eightieth: fraction depends on class-strength, could go to one-hundred-and-eightieth also. Parents of such students have to be spoken to, to know whether the air-conditioned classes keep their temperatures at ‘cool’: why all such classes are air-conditioned to begin with is beyond my comprehension, but I’m logic-challenged as well, Bai Goanna patiently and repeatedly tells me. The grandparents of a toddler in my neighbourhood have been very frequently visiting a certain temple to check whether the goddess-deity they worship is going to allow the little one to be a student of the school they have chosen. The school is far away and expensive, but, says the grandfather, it’s for networking. Like the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of Eton, so also, corporate-India is apparently ruled by Montessori-mates, I was told this by the grandfather. I repeated it to Shri Husband. His snort was undecipherable: a mixture of contempt, ridicule, disbelief and pure laughter. Besides, he added, he didn’t understand what role the goddess played in admissions anyway. A couple that has moved to our village from another state have been running around trying to admit their child. Domicile, language, syllabus all matter. New friends, weather, food matter. But none cares about all those things: it’s admission and admission alone, that brings on the headache. Admission of file into Minister’s office, admission of person wanting to meet Minister, these cause headaches, too. Of those, another time.