Spending is an Art or My Heroes 2020

There’s a difference between expenditure and waste. Wonderful words. I typed them on the screen and read them aloud and I was going to expand on them, when I could type no further, because Shri Husband peeked over my shoulder and made a nasty comment. Because he had nothing better to do. Because he is presently partially locked, and it doesn’t matter to him that all of us are. He scowls nevertheless, thinking he alone is being punished for something that is not his fault in any way. He is, therefore, in a permanently bad mood (since it’s a continuing condition, can’t really make out what the triggers are, honestly). When the government says ‘bhiu-pa chi garaz na’ and the doctor says, ‘take all precautions, mask-wash-distance, it’s a bad infection, this corona virus causes’, can’t blame him now, can I? They say, and I have read, that full un-locking (or should I say locking-up?) will take years if not months, vaccine or no vaccine, because the no-one’s sure how the virus will behave and mutate. So, bored in the interim period, he’s (Shri Husband, not the doctor) ready to pick on anyone. Mainly, me. I erased what I’d written. “You mean ‘deleted’,” said my personal, domestic interferon (what an apt word to use in these Covid Times, heh, heh, to describe Shri Husband). “Whatever,” I retorted, typing on, hoping my months-long-grown hair would block his vision. No such luck. “But it’s true,” he said, agreeing with me in a grudging kind of way, “Spending really is an art.” He must have heard this in childhood or read it on a car-sticker or something. Can’t believe he could come up with something so profound. “Means?” I said, hoping to shut him up. Usually, when I ask such questions, he gets up and walks away. He didn’t. Instead, he told me: “Spending, whether of time, energy or money, is a habit. A habit is an acquired behaviour pattern that is followed so regularly it’s almost involuntary. Examples of spending habits might include shopping for trivia on pay-day where money is concerned. Where time is concerned, getting up late in the morning and watching television at night and then panicking when the deadline for the column is very close.” He was getting into lecture-baazi mode, so I kept typing, bashing on regardless, ignoring him. That’s the best thing to do, I’ve learnt. In bygone years, I have known housewives who sorted out the husband’s salary (in those days wages were disbursed in cash even if the earner wore a white collar) and put fixed amounts in envelopes labelled ‘bread’, ‘eggs’, ‘butter’, ‘daal’, ‘soap’, ‘gas’, ‘milk’, ‘vegetables’, etc. Oh, and ‘matches’, for induction and micro-wave cooking didn’t exist even in fantasy stories. Nor did the internet. Or the mobile-phone. It was always a mystery to me what they did if they needed extra salt, sugar or oil in a particular month because the ants attacked a dabba or carelessness led to spillage. Shri Husband felt, still feels, that wives like me “would take out from one envelope some money and put it in another to neutralize a deficit in the latter and play musical envelopes till the end of the month”. Not true, but I don’t protest. I still know families who budget their EMIs, credit-card amounts, birthday-party gifts expenses, Netflix charges, petrol-bills, medical insurance and stuff. As an afterthought, they add school-fees: I should know, have been phone-chasing defaulters since the beginning of this academic year. But I stray… Smart people manage and manipulate their twenty-four hours. Shri Husband snorted: ‘Smart’. I knew he was thinking of, or referring through that snort to those like me, who need twelve hours sleep, some minutes snatched through the day and, steadfastly, many hours at a stretch at night. They also need to chew their food well and sit before, during and after meals/baths or returning from or before going to office/market. How to spend time calls for another column. Some are good at energy-conservation: they peel garlic while the milk is on the boil, run the mixer whilst the pressure-cooker whistles, sweep and mop whilst the washing-machine churns. Wise they are, for they accomplish much through the day. “And,” mumbled the man in my life, “some are otherwise.” Before I could react, he rectified that and said, “You do manage a lot of free time, I must admit. Teach me how to do it.” When he asks a favour like that, I go chup. He believes I’m a creative person. He also believes that lazy people are creative: they think of ways to get out of energy-expending situations. We both appreciate—and you know it’s rare for us to agree upon anything at all-- those who know what gives them pleasure: music, trekking, bird-watching, growing vegetables, collecting mouse-pads (or wrist-watches, which is my hobby, ahem), brewing wine, making jewellery, baking sour-dough bread, travelling, clicking photographs, etc. Those are the people who rule the money they earn. Money doesn’t dictate that it should be saved or splurged upon short-lived joys like buying shoes you will wear but once and then let the fungi and mould feast upon them. “The same,” said Shri Husband, indicating that I should take down what he’s saying, “is true about spending/wasting time or energy.” I have noticed that those who are careful with money are careful with time and energy. I saw Shri Husband nodding. In agreement. A never-to-be-forgotten moment. It was then that the Universe colluded: we both simultaneously heard the news that Mr. Ranjitsinh Disale had won the one million US dollar Global Teacher Prize for being an exceptional teacher who made an outstanding contribution to the profession. There were 12000 applications and nominations from 140 countries. The gentleman is from a Zilla Parishad Primary School in a place now prominently on the map: Paritewadi, Solapur, Maharashtra. That was impressive. We were delighted. More joy: Mr. Disale shared half his prize money with the other nine finalists. Which means half of more than seven crores in Indian rupees. Each of the other finalists will get, thanks to Mr. Disale’s generosity and consideration, fifty-five lakh of our currency. Whew. Shri Husband said, “He’s only thirty-two, and he knows how to spend correctly.” We’ve learnt a big lesson from someone half our age. I thought—Shri Husband all but forbids me from thinking, says it tires my brain, but I think anyway—that just as important was the fact that the person who constituted this award in 2014 was also an Indian, Mr. Sunny Varkey from Kerala, a businessman and long-time resident of the UAE. He heads the Varkey Foundation, which is a charitable organisation dedicated to changing lives through education. Imagine spending a million US dollars per year on a prize. Another man really knows to spend; for once, Shri Husband and I agreed yet again. In this Year that Changed the Planet, at the tail end of the year, I virtually met my heroes 2020. These two men, may their tribe increase, have shown how when time, energy and money are correctly utilized—‘spent, not wasted,’ Shri Husband reminded me--- magic happens.

The Corona Virus in Porvorim Goa

I was boarding a Mumbai-Goa flight. As always, I looked around to see if there was anyone I knew, who looked familiar, to chat with. This was at 0300 hours. Everyone around me was wearing masks. I didn’t know nose and mouth masks came in such variety. Plastic ones with punched holes, the usual porous green and white tissue ones, some resembled foxes’ noses in colour and shape and others were triangular-folded handkerchiefs knotted at the back of the head. At the main entrance, I wondered how the guard (masked himself) recognized who was entering with whose identity-card or ‘photo-proof’ as he called it, considering that all he could see was the eyes and forehead of the person presenting it. “Irregular protocol,” Shri Husband agreed. Cheers to the Corona-V, after four and more decades we agreed on something without arguing. The girl at the counter didn’t need to ask me questions more than once because she could hear me and read my lips. Because I was unmasked. The virus was a ‘maybe’ attacker, whilst any mask is sure suffocation for me. I took my own precautions by sitting next to masked persons so that I got filtered air to breathe. If they had germs to share, those germs would get right back into their own nostrils, I reasoned. (“Stupid logic,” remarked Shri Husband. Why he wanted to read over my shoulder what I typed I don’t know. Gave both of us a headache.) The others’ mouths could be made out through the masks. Whatever they spoke was indistinct and lots of guesswork, shouting and gesturing happened before the communication was complete. Sample question: ‘Sir, aisle or window seat?’ Answer: ‘Ju oo half a cee er da aafoo?’ After a couple of frustrating minutes, the mask was momentarily removed, exposing the to-be-dead-if-infected, near panic-stricken passenger to unfiltered air. Passenger quickly spat the words “Do you have a seat near the bathroom?” and before you could say ‘covid-19’, adjusted the mask and elastic to shut the mouth again. No one seemed to mind removing the mask-filters whilst consuming chai and samosas, though. Inside the aircraft, we were all zombies, having spent most of the night awake, a large majority of us ‘faceless’. Back in Porvorim, Goa, following the Centre’s advisory to take precautions against this micro-sized part-living part-inorganic creature that was killing planet earth’s most important biped, the CM announced on a Saturday evening, on television, that schools were to be shut till the end of March. I celebrated. Prematurely. No students to come to school, I read the soft-copy circular on Whatsapp, but exams would be held as scheduled. Confused, my colleagues and I waited ‘virtually’ for another circular from the God of Schools, the Department of Education, or the ADEI. (Aside: my colleagues say ‘Dipaamen’ when they refer to the former. Dropping the ‘r’ and both the ‘t’s, I have learnt, is the Goan thing to do. The long form of ADEI has been long forgotten. We all know that when a notice/ circular/ letter/ anything comes from the ADEI, we must jump and do whatever is ‘ordered’, unreasonably late though it may reach us. Now I find the same folk saying Coyona Viyus. Peculiar Goan thing.) Doctor friends sent scientific facts—I’m convinced by them-- to say:- • we were and have been for a long time more at risk of dying from multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis or plain old diarrhoea than this new pathogen that doesn’t survive at Goan summer temperatures, • that Corona was heavy enough by virus standards to, if exhaled in a sneeze or cough, drop to the ground and not bounce back into another nose, • that we needed to worry only if we were immuno-compromised, old and frail, or plain unlucky, • that hand-washing with soap and water before and after touching suspect surfaces (including other people’s hands) was not inferior to expensive and out-of-stock ‘sanitizers’. • that the collective immunity of the sub-continent was possibly better than that, say, of the Canadian population, as we were regularly exposed to garbage, sewage, pollution and mostly not in air-conditioned environments. Other friends sent other ‘facts’—I’m unconvinced by those—to say:- • cow urine would solve this health problem amongst others. My retort: bull-shit. Why it (cow-urine, not bull-shit) could never stop or cure small-pox, leprosy or diabetes amongst the old-fangled diseases, I don’t know. • that if I suddenly and permanently converted to veganism and additionally cut off onions and garlic from my diet, I’d be protected from harm. Here, there was some confusion on Facebook, because one party insisted that garlic was medicinal and another said it was not sattvic (pure) for human consumption. For some reason, that diet hadn’t saved anyone from renal or cardiac failure or any dreaded illness. Wondered why. • that this virus was created to teach the western world a lesson, etc. Um…we have some organisms that teach us lessons, like the amoebae, the Salmonella typhimurium, the vectors causing leptospirosis, malaria and dengue, etc. India is dealing with them on war-footing, too, but the media doesn’t give it credit for that because the western world might not be interested in those headlines. We, as responsible citizens, decided to self-isolate ourselves. Of course, the poder, the nustekar, the bai who got the bhaji from the fields, the linesmen from the electricity department and those digging our roads were at work. No one had told them they should restrict themselves to their huts. They couldn’t afford masks/ sanitizers anyway. I don’t know whether they used soap or had running water, but that was not the time to ask. The policemen were manning their posts. No shops were shut. Those highest at risk-- doctors, nurses, technicians, taxi-drivers, bus-conductors, were doing their duties diligently, not taking rest, not looking for glory. Whilst Twitter told me the number of deaths due to the C-V, I googled to find out how many died in rail/road accidents that very week, in India. I don’t worry about the planet or humankind. I don’t worry about the country or the state most times. My world is restricted to my home in Porvorim. When this self-confinement to contain a pandemic had to be tackled, my worry was spending twenty-four hours without respite, with Shri Husband and Bai Goanna at home. It was panic time for me. I carefully re-re-heard what the CM had said on television. School would be shut for students, but exams would be conducted. Teachers and the rest of the gang had to clock in. I had to go to school. I smiled. Shri Husband grunted. Amicably, I think.

Mumbai to Goa by Air.

They say experience teaches you much. In my case, I learn everything through making mistakes. I’m quite an expert at that, make new ones every day. Or so saidShri Husband and Bai Goanna once. I’m going off-track. Let me tell you about what happened recently. We were going to Bombay (sorry-sorry, Mumbai… just tells you how old I am) by aeroplane (I refuse to say ‘fly-by-air’ like some people do.)Shri Husband and Bai Goanna were discussing the nitty-gritties of how kitty (rememberlittle ‘Maows?’) was to be taken care of in our absence. Fish had to be bought, cleaned, sliced and frozen in meal-sized packages. Maows eats only fresh bangde, sans innards, heads, fins,tails. A packet of cat-biscuits (dry, stinky stuff that comes in sturdy plastic packets) was fetched from our friendly neighbourhood ‘supermarket’. The latter is neither ‘super’ nor quite a ‘market’, but keeps essentials. These days, pet food (for fish, dogs, cats but not cows/buffaloes/goats) is listed under essentials. We bought it just in case the bangdefell short (growing kitties have surprisingly big appetites). Introducing her to the insta-food was easy. Like humans, cats figure out that all things fresh and healthy aren’t as tasty as the made-from-scraps, full-of-vitamins, dehydrated-first and reconstituted-afterwards, well-advertised titbits. One sniff and Maows fell in love with the ‘niblets’. Sigh. Poor local ‘bangde’. Going by aeroplane is a big deal for me. I recall reading about pilots who bought their licences and were candidates for crash-adventures. My ears pain. I feel like vomiting. If I get a middle seat I have elbow-stabbers on either side. If I get a window, it’s either above the wing or on the sunny side. As for the aisle… either the trolley gets stuck just where I am or the others in my row have enlarged prostates/undersize-bladders. Or the flap of the luggage-bin above my head keeps snapping open, threatening to allow a heavy knapsack or five to descend upon my skull. (“What’s to fear?” Shri Husband wants to know, “When there is nil grey matter to spill? Nothing to lose.” Harrumph, I snort, but only in my mind.) I worry about picking up someone else’s bag from the carousal and (the consequence of seeing a mystery-movie in college) being the innocent victim of a murder. “Paranoia,” Shri Husband insists.“Without reason.” “Crazy,” Bai Goanna agrees. I say nothing. They won’t understand. No one understands. I let it go. Anyway, we didn’t get tickets on the same airlines, but the flight-timings were identical. Considering only one aircraft can take off at an instant from Dabolim… it didn’t take me long to figure out how they worked it. One flight took off on time, the other was delayed, naturally. Also, the timings indicated that the flight-duration was over an hour and a half. Goa-Mumbai, I read, takes, or should take, fifty-five minutes. So, even if the flight is late for technical snags, security reasons, VIP movement, quarrelling crew, when it lands, it’s mostly ‘punctual’ and gets some rating for the feat. Neat trick.(The next time Goa Today’s editor asks me how long it will take me to write a piece for him, I will say ‘six months’. Won’t he be impressed when I mail it in as many weeks? Ha, am I a good learner or am I a great learner.) FYI, Goa airport food outlets can compete with airlines’ meals, so bad is their fare. We didn’t suffer. Like good(read ‘kanjoos’)Goans, we carried with us water (drank it up before Security) and sandwiches (half were finishedon the way, well before we reached Vasco), wafers (same as ‘chips’) and curd (later mixed with aforesaid water and a packet of homemade masala to get instant buttermilk.) At the airport, as we moved towards our respective gates, our ‘cheerios’ turned to ‘oh-nos’ when we realized that although we were headed to Mumbai, one flight was landing at T-1, Santacruz, the other at T-2, Sahar, a distance of 30 mins. (In India, lest you be unaware, we measure distance in the time covered by taxi. We in Goa measure distance by fare; like, my home is twelve-hundred bucks from the airport, and it’ll shock you to know how little that is in kilometres.) Railway stations have no such complications. Tivim or Carmali stations may force you to ‘land’ on the tracks because the platform is shorter than the train (has happened!), but it’s not Mapusa at one end and Margao at the other. My village mind is imagination-deficit; when I heard this T-1-T-2 thing, I gave up wondering how big Mopa airport was likely to be. No connection, just my wandering mind a-wondering. Through the journey, we pondered what Maows might be doing. The moment we landed-- two on-time and one delayed by an hour-- and until we met again, yet another hour later, we phoned our neighbour to check on her (Maows, not the neighbour). Over the weekend that we were away, the ‘wado’ kept an eye not on our property (jungle, really) nor possessions (no self-respecting thief would covet them), but our cat. V, who had the key to the house and access to cat’s food, told me Maows wouldn’t touch a morsel unless she stood by. She had to wait until Maows’ meal was over. In spite of the fact that we had trained Maows to use a particular window to exit and enter, she made V’s life miserable by wanting to use the ‘human’s’ door. Cats have intelligence, don’t let any dog-lover dispute that. Mumbai has its charm. The Metro-digging is going on from Andheri-Seepz to beyond Churchgate, which means more than half the city is semi-paralyzed. The very-slow-moving traffic reminded me of the Mandovi-bridge jams over holiday weekends. But none was seen pouring beer-froth over another’s head in the middle of such a jam: tourists in Goa give us entertaining moments, don’t they? Back home now, with Maows on lap and laptop on table, I’m making a list of ‘lessons learnt in the first month of 2018’. 1. When you leave a cat at home, alone, keep out only those clothes you don’t want shred. 2. When you have forgotten to switch off a light or fan, keep aside extra money for the electricity-bill of the next month. 3. …(word limit up, more next time.)