Removing Chappals and Other Traditions

Shri Husband doesn’t wear chappals. ‘Will you change that sentence? It sounds odd, somehow, like I walk around with naked feet,’ he growled as he read what I was typing, over my shoulder. He cannot not interfere with my column. ‘Old habits die hard,’ I mumbled. Bai Goanna piped up: ‘Don’t say ‘old habits’. Habits are formed over a period of time, how can one have a new habit? All habits are old.’ Together, they broke the thread of my thoughts; I typed that. ‘Train of thought,’ both chorused, ‘or series of thoughts. You say thread if you’re talking about emails.’ I wish they would leave me alone when I’m writing. Anyway, if you read the first sentence, that Sri Husband doesn’t wear chappals, let me tell you, he doesn’t wear sandals either. You might imagine that he goes around like MF Hussain. No, his footwear comprises shoes with laces. No Velcro, no clips or elastic to hold them in place, he wears the polishing kind. They are good for the fit. ‘You mean good for the physically fit?’—Shri Husband, goading me. Me, patiently: ‘No. By ‘fit’ I don’t mean physically fit as with a good pulse-rate, flat abdomen and no illness, I mean they are comfortable for the toes, heels and ankles.’ For Shri Husband, buying shoes means giving the salesperson a fit (of the seizure kind). He turns them around to check the soles’ grip, the stitching at the edges, the inside, the back of the heel height, the evenness of the exterior. He asks the salesman when/where the shoes were manufactured, when/how delivered to the store, how long kept out of packing, in the open, on the shelves. I suspect in the billing software, they have a column that alerts the counter staff who in turn alerts the sales team that Shri Husband is a customer to be handled with enormous patience. Most of the time, he is attended to by a senior (means potbellied, greying and normally sitting on a stood, telling others what to do) person, who is armed with answers to the random questions tossed by Shri Husband: ‘Do people buy real leather anymore? Is this real leather? Real? Really? How to tell, it looks and feels like faux leather. Phone your manager and ask him whether it’s real leather or something else. Or (the ultimate threat), I’ll check online.’ Shri Husband wears shoes the old-fashioned way, with socks. Cotton, rarely manufactured therefore hard to find, hand-washed, shade-dried, no-allergy garments. ‘Can socks be called garments? Try using the word ‘hosiery’.’—Bai Goanna’s attempt to distract me. ‘Socks can be called under-garments,’ Shri Husband clarified. The issue is, whenever we visit relatives, temples, hospitals and air-conditioned shops, these days, we are told to remove our chappals. There are no rules for shoes, but it is implied that those also have to be taken off and added to the higgledy-piggledy pile near the entrance. Shri Husband grumbles as he has two layers to shed. Why not just use rubber flip-flops, I wonder; I don’t voice my thoughts, you know that. ‘There are racks and shelves,’ Bai Goanna has told him many times, ‘to keep them on.’ Shri Husband has retorted, ‘They are for show. No one touches their own footwear to put them up on a shelf.’ He is correct, as always. People shuffle their feet out of their footwear and leave the latter wherever they lie. Hence, in many places, the shelves are empty and there’s a pile of chappals, etc. next to the stand, mixed like chivda ingredients. In places where tokens are given and footwear is stashed in pigeon-holes, the chappal-owners do their best to not touch them. The pairs are slid or thrown on the floor by the token-handler, adjusted into place by the chappal-owners with their toes, worn by a wormlike, crawling motion of the feet. Shri Husband does a visual check of public places where footwear is prohibited, from the door. If the floor inside is clean, socks are removed, if dirty, he waits outside. His logic: ‘Shoes are kept outside to keep the inside clean; if the inside is dirty, what’s the point in keeping the shoes outside?’ Bai Goanna’s logic: ‘If you’ve gone somewhere, what’s the point waiting outside?’ Tradition based on common sense made the shoes-outside rule a universal one in the eastern world. Now, many westerners have adopted it for their homes (we, the superior, civilized humans of India transfer so much gyaan to them and yet get no credit). But in offices, hospitals, shops, they are allowed. Oddly, we buy shoes from air-conditioned shops, and vegetables from gutter-lined pavements. Another tradition of almost touching something with one’s fingers and then drawing those fingers to one’s heart or forehead, endures. If my foot touches someone else’s, I do that gesture as an apology. But if someone else’s foot touches me, I still do it. ‘Weird, no?’ Bai Goanna says. Employees touch the outside stairs when they walk into office buildings, then touch their chest with the same fingers, supposedly in gratitude for having a job. Of course, whether one is earning one’s salary has nothing to do with how many times stairs and chests are touched, six days a week, so many weeks per month/year, for a lifetime, especially if you work in a large corporate or the government. Mechanical rituals are a must; work ethics are optional. ‘Cynical you are,’ said Shri Husband. ‘As if everyone is a kaam chor.’ (Look whose being sarcastic about cynicism. Whatever did he eat for breakfast today?). Take burping, slurping, rubbing palm over exposed, rotund belly (only for men). In most places outside India, if done in public, these acts, done deliberately, individually or combined would be considered rude or worthy of psychiatric evaluation. But, our ancestors knew the scientific reasons behind them (including taking pride in a planet-shaped abdomen with a blackhole-navel). If we collected the gas from all the burps and other gaseous expulsions, a million, million male Indians could together harvest a fair amount of fuel to overcome the price rise. ‘Are you serious?’ Shri Husband asked, reading this paragraph. ‘Why would she not be?’ asked Bai Goanna, for once taking my side, sort of. Think Swatchh Bharat. Great concept. Government gave money to build toilets; many of us got funds through the panchayats. Small sheds were built. We use them… for storing coconuts, rusted cycles, wooden planks, cracked buckets, broken chairs; we still ‘water’ our plants when full bladders protest. Tradition is tradition. Our ancestors ‘watered’ plants thus, science has proved that plants get nitrogen/phosphorus/natrium/potassium/minerals/vitamins/hormones/TLC by this method. We should not blindly follow the West and ignore the gyaan that our forefathers followed for thousands of years. ‘Thousands?’ Bai Goanna asked. ‘We’re just in 2022.’ Shri Husband said: ‘She’s including the years Before Christ, way back till the cave years.’ I cannot make out when he’s serious, when not. And then he reminded me of one embarrassing incident. On a billboard was a photograph of a young couple with their two children, and beside the man was written in English: A clean Bharat is a healthy Bharat. I (innocently) asked, ‘That’s Bharat? I thought that was ….. (name of famous model).’ When the guffaw subsided, I realised it wasn’t the name of the man. It was written in the way a second standard textbook is written: ‘When Bablu is clean, Bablu is healthy.’ I mean, in English one writes ‘India’, no? Or at least that’s what I had learnt in school and followed until recently. Just saying. For me that is tradition, saying ‘India’ when speaking/reading/writing in English. Or Konkani, for that matter. Talking of tradition, next time I’ll write about the art of accurate nose-blowing and spitting. Namaste.

LOCKED UP

. Bai Goanna’s only business is to see what I’m doing and report it to Sri Husband. It doesn’t matter that TMC’s flowers are blooming on posters stuck on school boards and public signages, that AAP candidates’ banners are on every lamppost on Chogm Road, that the BJP and Congress are in the same frenzy-competition as Goa Forward and others in the fray, that sewage enriched seawater has made kalwaahn (oysters) less readily available and less tasty, nor that a third tsunami of Covid is imminent. One thing that interests Bai Goanna and Sri Husband is to spy on what I’m writing. The conversation on the above matters went something like this: Bai Goanna, naively: ‘What happens to the election posters afterwards? Are they torn and thrown in the dustbin or left as they are, to uglify the neighbourhood? Or do they use the other, blank side? Or will they be hot-mixed into tar and concrete to resurface Chogm Road after the next monsoon?’ Sri Husband, cynically: ‘Who knows? Who cares? Nothing will change whether or not you ask questions, especially questions with no answers. Or questions whose answers are obvious.’ Me, not voicing my thoughts: ‘Good that they’re arguing between themselves. Now I can concentrate on my writing, bhivpachi garaz na that I will be disturbed.’ The invasion of my privacy is their focus on any given day, so this intra-quarreling with no involvement from me is a pleasant change from the regular routine when they gang up and pick on me. Talking of my regular routine, I get some well-earned solitude when I drive to and from work. No colleagues, no family, just ‘me time’. Which is why I like traffic jams. First gear driving for an hour gives privacy, with plenty of scope to practice ancient Indian meditation techniques. Breathe in, out; stomach in, out; leg stretched, change gear, change foot from pedal to pedal, accelerator to brake; chew steering-wheel to rid the soul of negative vibes. Collectively, a hundred drivers of four- and two-wheelers turn necks from side to side, sharing compulsory relaxation/stretching exercises whilst Patience rules supreme. Some find it stressful, but what the heck, we’re all in Goa ‘for susegaad’*, correct? Whether on vacation or work? (* ‘for susegaad’ is a term I learnt from a visitor, a second-home Goemkar, not a tourist. Like ‘Goanese’ and ‘Cal-ung-youtay’, this is a newbie in my lexicon.) What should take ten minutes from Sangolda to Delfino’s via Chogm Road sometimes takes an hour plus even in the afternoon, at an unsteady 10-20 kmph. It’s good practice for slowness enthusiasts, because the speed limit on Atal Setu is 30 kmph. I have learnt to stick to 29 kmph, to the irritation of other drivers, even though no one is forcing me, and I know that the cameras that I cross are for show. I’m law-abiding—trained by Sri Husband, you know that-- and speed-limits are not to be broken. Even the two-wheeling honeymooners that race alongside on that same bridge, maybe drunk, maybe not, laugh into my windscreen as they pass. But, just as I don’t mind broken beer bottles on Baga beach or the hordes that make sure the Drishti guards are justifying what they earn, I no longer mind people not wearing masks and coughing into my face. Was born and raised in this country, have lived in Goa for decades, so am perfectly aware that rules cannot be enforced or followed except by a low-IQ minority like self and family. Why get stressed when one day everyone must die, no? Whether or not you wear a mask/helmet you will die, no? Whether you dash across the road in between speeding cars opposite the mall at Porvorim or you plunge into the Arabian Sea at low tide when the guards are telling you not to, you know you’re doing it because it’s kismet, not regulations, that will decide when you will exit the planet, right? Same-same about vaxines. Sorry, vackseens. No, wagsinations. Auto-correct is blocked, oof! Sri Husband puts his fingers on the keys: v-a-c-c-i-n-e-s. ‘There,’ he sniggers. ‘Write on.’ I do. Why rules are made is a matter for debate. Example: schools have been shut. The guard at our gate gets chided if he allows anyone inside without permission and screening and a louder yelling if that anyone isn’t following ‘protocol’. So, he makes sure he does his job. Says Sri Husband: ‘If nostrils and lips are covered, you’re happy; cloth mask, paper mask, mosquito-net mask, even socks will do if not a hanky or dupatta. You don’t allow covering the mouth with the palm, though, only because the Rule says, ‘wear mask’.’ I tell him with quiet confidence: ‘We follow rules. We also make sure hands are rinsed with a sanitizer.’ Quips Sri Husband again: ‘The manufacture of the dispenser, the stand for the dispensing bottle, the liquid inside the bottle are new and profitable businesses. You don’t do your own quality control, you buy the cheapest sanitizer available, in bulk. Every shop-owner and auto-rickshaw driver does the same thing.’ I agree with Bai Goanna when she says: ‘Whether the liquid, for some reason blue in colour, disinfects anything I don’t know.’ We recommend all those who enter school to carry along their own soaps/sanitizers/napkins in case ours aren’t up to the mark. We don’t have the stamina to respond to people who ask a million questions whose answers we don’t have: ‘When will school reopen’ ‘When will classes start?’ ‘How long will this virus last?’ ‘When will the government allow us to send our children to school?’ ‘Will the exams be online or offline?’ Different voices, different languages, similar words. ‘When will Lockdown finish?’ the words inadvertently escape my lips as I stretch halfway through my typing. I regret it the very next instant, because a raging debate follows on whether we’ve been locked up or down, inside the house or outside the office, or are we locked at all (considering we’re in touch with the world via the internet). Bai Goanna says, ‘Other than the first time, when we made so without milk, sugar, fish, fruit and cooked what we could pluck off the plants in our compound, we really weren’t locked, were we?’ Sri Husband agrees with her: ‘Even through the first few weeks of Lockdown 2020, people walked towards their villages far, far away. The lockdown or lockup was for the mildly privileged. The very privileged were in and out of Goa, the not so privileged were journeying by foot to remote areas and we, the sandwiched sections of society paid for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and allied pastimes.’ Some put YouTube to good use, learnt baking/chess. Some painted/wrote. Those who were WFH (working from home. If you’re not familiar with this, that means you’re doing something differently valuable, like cooking, raising a child, taking care of a parent or have a valuable life-skill like plumbing, carpentry, sewing) realized that life is about upgrading skills. What we learnt forty years ago may hold good for some. Only for some. Those who feel ‘quality of life’ is gauged by smelling flowers, watching and filming sunsets, rearranging the furniture according to vaastu/feng shui, and posting old photos on Facebook are the privileged ones. Just one percent of our population can do that. If you are reading this, you’re in that top one percent. Even as I typed on, Sri Husband mumbled: ‘Those with the real issues of lack of incomes, serious squabbles on the domestic front, illnesses not connected with these mutating viruses that couldn’t be dealt with as they should, whose children have lost two valuable years of learning, they are ones locked up in their karma, Covid or no Covid.’ Grudgingly, I admit: ‘True, that.’