Between the Head and the Lines.

          Every morning, Shri Husband and I share the newspaper. Amicably, with minimum squabbling. Because what one chooses to read in it doesn’t match what the other is interested in.

He reads about how NaMo is stretching his promise, taking his own sweet time deciding about the One Rank One Pension (google OROP if you want to know more), why Clinton of Monica fame and Hillary, his missus, haven’t retired from politics, who’s buying Pakistan’s nuclear knowledge and which IPL team earns how much.

I, on the other hand, avoid boring political and sports headlines and check when/whether our village will have a power shut-down, whether the three-legged calf born in the veterinary hospital survived a complex surgery and what the cost of a sea-plane ride on the Mandovi will be. Besides, I read about who’s recently died/had a baby, the latest supermarkets opening on the main road near our house, etc. (No longer do people call them shops/stores. We even have mini-super-markets.)

         But there are times when our interests overlap. It must happen with all long-suffering spouses: shared irritations result in similar dislikes. In our case, silly television serials are one such. Don’t get me wrong, we share likes, too: silent non-communication, for instance, through long summer evenings.

We have another common interest: when it comes to sharing news or reading snippets from paragraphs, we like hunting for grammatical slip-ups. Sadly, there are so many of them (slip-ups, not common interests) these days that we’ve reached a stage where we scout for grammatically correct usage instead. For example, the other day, some sub actually knew the difference between hung (a picture on a wall) and hanged (by the neck until dead). We thought we should write to the editor to compliment the sub, until we realized that the editor might be clueless her/himself.

Occasionally, we read about the same topic beyond the headlines. It happened twice this week.

First: for over a hundred years, since 1914, no one had seen a blue whale off the Sindhudurg coast, and a group of scientists saw a mother and calf last week. I quote from a news report: “… whales were spotted recently between March and May. The researchers (of the Konkan Cetacean Research Team) also spotted four Bryde's whales during the period. The cetacean population study team has been deployed … for the past six months under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project on Mainstreaming Coastal and Marine Biodiversity. It also sighted 687 dolphins, of which 153 individual dolphins were identified because of distinct features such as their fins.”Top of Form

“Blue whales are the largest mammals in the world,” Shri Husband said. As if I didn’t know.  

I read on: “According to N Vasudevan, Chief Conservator of Forests, Mangrove Cell, they were seen near Kunkeshwar, 2.7 km offshore at a depth of 16 m. ...calls for immediate study as to why such a large species is moving close to land…regular whale-watching activities are going to be initiated across the Sindhudurg coast without disturbing the habitat of the whales. These spots can become a tourist attraction if such mammals are spotted often.”

He (Shri Husband, not Vasudevan) couldn’t help interrupting: “Tourists? Poor endangered creatures.”  I told you, we sometimes agree. (The ‘poor endangered creatures’ was in reference to the whales, not the tourists, though in Goa that might happen if we don’t tackle the garbage/public transport issues).

         “So close to Goa,” I continued. “There are fewer than 10,000 blue whales on this planet and a live sighting — that too a mother and calf — that’s rare.”

         We both nodded our heads agreeably at each other for a couple of seconds before we realized how abnormal they (the moments of agreement, not our heads) were.

         The second report came to us orally, didn’t really make it to the newspapers we read, but was worthy of discussion between us. Opposite the fire-brigade ground in Panaji, tucked inside a non-descript government residential colony is Hamara School for street children. It’s not really a school. Run by a bunch of passionate and dedicated women for the last almost two decades, this institution feeds, shelters and educates offspring of very poor labourers. Volunteer driven, its funds come from kind hearts. A part of those funds are used for paying the fees of some of the brighter children, who have been admitted into regular schools. This year, five ‘inmates’ appeared for the tenth boards. All five passed. That’s remarkable, considering that they have none of the benefits that even lower-lower middle-class children do, often not even parental affection. One of the five, a girl, scored 84%.

“Not bad, not bad at all, eh?” quipped Shri Husband looking at me. From his expression I knew he was recalling my marks of yore. I had once hidden my old report-cards in a suitcase. Stupid of me, because Shri Husband found them, read their contents: they have provided him with mirth (and me with gross annoyance) ever since.

Please note, Shri Husband’s ‘not bad’ is actually equal to ‘very good’. He understates.   

         We both agreed, though, that the ones with the lesser marks, who most likely would join vocational/technical courses, were the ones to help out with fees/ facilities. We do agree at times, like I said.

         Our eyes may be attracted to different headlines, but in between our heads and the lines we read, sometimes our interests match.

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Well Done, Cinnamon Teal.

          When Cinnamon Teal was born, Leonard and Queenie Fernandes were inexperienced but confident parents. They’d learnt valuable lessons whilst raising their first baby, Dogears Etc., which wasn’t in good health at the time.

When I met them about five years ago, what struck me first was that they’d returned home when they’d had a chance to earn in dollars; second that they were pioneers in their field, chasing their dream in Goa, not Mumbai/ Bangalore/ Delhi; third, they responded to every email I sent them within hours, sometimes minutes.

For their efforts at raising Cinnamon Teal, in 2010, Leonard received the British Council’s Young Creative Entrepreneur (Publisher) Award.

(Did I miss mentioning something in the introduction? Dogears Etc. was/is an online used-books store. Cinnamon Teal provides publishing services to authors and trade publishers in India. Engineer-MBA Leonard studied at the Goa Engineering College and the Ohio State University; he has worked in Tata Infotech Solutions, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, CarrefourSA, and Bank One (later JP Morgan Chase) across the USA, Turkey and India.)

After he won that British Council award, he and Queenie discovered that there was no platform for publishers/printers/ writers/readers to share knowledge and experiences. That’s how Publishing Next was born, destined to give them the maximum sleepless nights.

Every year, the couple slogs through sun-sets and –rises, after working hours, during working hours, stealing working hours from leisure time, to bring value to ‘the next chapter in publishing’. For the last five years publishers, printers, marketers, writers, have been flocking to Goa when this conference is held.

I attended last weekend’s edition.

I read out to Shri Husband the concept printed on a hand-out: “…paradigm shifts occur with alarming regularity…  rules of… creation, development, production, distribution and marketing of books, are constantly being rewritten as the industry witnesses unprecedented disruption, often from players outside the traditional world of publishing.”

Shri Husband’s interruption: “Did you understand anything?”

I admitted: “When I registered for ‘Publishing Next’, it was out of curiosity rather than interest.” Then added: “I stepped into the Central State Library on 11/9 at 0900 hrs. The moment after I registered and had chai-samosas (whose source I need to know, they were crisp and yum), I attended sessions without a break, learning about software that read fonts of different Indian language scripts, contracts, copyrights, legalities, podcasting techniques, using social media tools, book-factories, translation problems, library structures, nuts and bolts of self-publishing ...”

I slyly checked. Shri Husband was giving me that sideways look of reluctant respect. He commented: “You really did learn something, then.”

          I bashed on, encouraged: “You know, publishers scurry around to make sense of the changes happening in the industry without taking their foot off the pedal and risking business becoming obsolete.”

          I told him about Arunachali author Mamang Dai’s keynote address. She spoke on the journey of a writer.

At Daily Hunt’s workshop on Digitizing the Backlist, I learnt of how difficult it was to transfer fonts from print to a digital form, how easy to transmit news via cell-phones.

The fact that mobile phones were/are the reading tools of the present/future was news to me.

In Podcasting for Publishers, the kind lady from SynTalk showed us how her not-for-profit experiment was attracting listeners from across the globe.

“If I read my work and podcast it, will people across the world enjoy it?” I asked Shri Husband. He snorted.

          Tamil and Hindi represented the Indian languages on-stage. Their readers were greedy for the printed word to reach them, but couldn’t afford the prices the English readers could. Behind me, off-stage, a group of Marathi-speaking delegates discussed their issues.

          “Sometimes,” Shri Husband sagely said, “the off-stage stuff is quite educative.”

          “Should I have taken notes of what they said?” I innocently asked. He snorted again. Unpredictable he is.

          But I spoke on: “Ramu Ramanathan’s The A-Z of Book Printing was one of my favourite sessions; he showed us various printing processes and book-factories. Theatre-chap that he is, he put a lot of drama in his presentation.”

“Another favourite session was The Case for a Translation Body. (An aside: I had once applied to an organisation for translation work because I’d done some Marathi-English literary stuff myself. What I got were offers to translate shampoo-labels and information consent forms from pharmaceutical companies. My luck!)

One speaker said: Indian language authors will never be known outside the country unless their work is translated into English first.

Shri Husband commented: “Indian language translators are so poorly paid. Who would do such work except out of passion? And that’s rare.”

I nodded. We agree sometimes.

“I best liked the session on the Nuts and Bolts of Self-Publishing.  I’m going to make an e-book,” I said.

Silence. Could mean encouragement, could mean Shri Husband hadn’t paid attention, couldn’t make out.

I broke the silence: “The traditional publishers presented Growing the Publishing Business: Strategies, Technologies, Skills.”

That seemed to catch his interest. He stretched his hand, took the notes and tried to read them. “What language is this?” he asked, pointing to some words. 

“My own personal shorthand,” I confessed. He handed the note-book back to me.  

          I spoke on: “It wasn’t just the content and speakers that impressed me; the sticking to the schedule and also the food. Wholesome meals, served hot and fresh, tasty too, provided just the right atmosphere for networking.”

          “Go,” said Shri Husband “Every year. It’ll give your grey cells an annual massage.”

          “You’ll come?” I asked.

Third snort, an indication of ‘maybe’. I know he’ll join me next year. He recognizes a good thing.

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Where There’s a Will, There’s a Complicated Way.

          I told Bai Goanna, “We want to make our wills, Shri Husband and I.”

          “Don’t talk like that, haanh,” she said.

          “Don’t talk like how,” I asked.

          “Wills and all, like, it’s inauspicious to make you know, like you’ll die and all if you do that,” she said in Konklish, a language I can understand but not speak. “Why invite trouble, no? They say haanh, I’ve heard.”

          Shri Husband “bah’d” his way into the conversation, starting with “utter rubbish” and ending with “superstitious nonsense”. He made his first will at 21 years of age because it was compulsory where he was employed and has been updating it from time to time. More out of habit than thought, I guessed in my mind; he read it.

          “It’s a practical thing to do,” he growled at Bai Goanna and me. “The next of kin won’t have to waste time running around clerical desks in dusty government offices. Or at least the running around will be less if there’s a will. Easier to handle the paperwork.”

          I sat at the keyboard.

          Bai Goanna said: “What’re you doing?”

          I said: “Typing out mine.”

          She said: “You’ll need a lawyer.”

          I said: “Why? I can write out what I own and what I want to give to whom in my own simple language, can’t I?”

          “Better check what the system really is,” butted in Shri Husband. “Formats, exact vocabulary, know the system before you rush into things.”

          Off I trotted to my kind, gentle lawyer friend, T. She said, “In Goa, you need to make a draft and submit it to the sub-registrar’s office. Someone in that office will write it out by hand and give you an appointment. On that date, you will have to go with three witnesses, pay for the stamps, the fees, and that’s when and how you’ll get your will registered.”

          I thought, I later said to Shri Husband, we’d have to type out our wishes maybe on stamp/legal paper and give it to a notary who will check with witnesses that we’re in our right senses and then take it to the sub-registrar’s office.

          Why, grumbled he, do you think? Find out and do.

          So off I went to find out more. Another lawyer, this time one more interested in getting fees than giving advice.  A young intern sitting in the foyer of his office confirmed what dear T had said and added: “It will cost you ten to fifteen thousand.” That’s a big fraction of what I’ll be leaving behind, I mumbled, stumbling out of that office.

          I bussed-ferried-walked to the sub-registrar’s office to find out from the horses’ mouth(s) what registering a will was about. No one in the front office either knew the answers to my questions or was willing (pun unintended) to help.

          One gent pointed to another to a third before I was guided to a desk whose occupant suffered from Restless Knee Syndrome. I tried to count how many times per second he shook his leg, but gave up because that sort of multi-tasking needs a higher IQ than mine.

          “I want to make a will, to register my will,” I said these phrases in various ways, a couple of times, in English, Konkanni and Marathi before he figured.

          “You get birth certificate, photo id, go to advocate,” he said. “All property papers, your death certificate, everything.”

          I explained, “I’m not dead, nor am I getting estate, I want to make my will for my things to go to next of kin.”

          He looked blank. I described my need in three languages.

          “You got draft?” he asked, finally comprehending.

          “No, I just want to know what to do.” 

          “First you get draft, then I’ll tell.”

“After I give you a draft what will happen? What am I supposed to do after I give you the draft?” He stared at me, at someone else, out of the door, at his shaking foot. Said nothing.

I asked again. Then I said: “Show me a sample, a format.”

Mr Adamant should be made a minister. He has the qualities for the job. He said: “I can’t tell you that now. You get draft.”

A couple of such questions/answers later, he fought with a drawer on his table and won. From inside it he dragged out a shocking pink file with a bundle of carefully tied papers. He showed me someone’s will. It was handwritten.

I don’t know why I expected pearls of cursive letters dropped on parallel lines that would make a kindergarten teacher proud. This writing was the envy of a busy doctor. One could make out the words in context, not really read them. Out of work or retired pharmacia owners could be employed to decipher the script. Maybe they are.

Mr Adamant melted a little and whispered some secrets to me: “I’ll tell you how long the appointment will take only after I’ve seen the draft, haanh, and if you’re married, no, you will have to take your husband’s consent.” Seriously? To make a will of that which I’ve earned not inherited? And more: “Get with you your proof of identity, proof of identity of the beneficiary, and one thousand rupees fees.”

As a goodbye he said: “One of the three witnesses has to be an advocate.”

I hurried home to tell Shri Husband of my discovery: that in the year 2015, when Goa’s aiming to attract high-tech industries and education, we’re still preserving/conserving antique techniques for documentation in some government departments.

As for making wills, we all know, where there’s a will, there’s a way… perhaps to neighbouring states.

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Winter In Goa.

          My New Year memories are of thick woollen coats, prickly inner garments, warm shawls, and painful toes and fingers. I have lived much of my adult life in North India, where temperatures hover in single digits at this time of the year.  I couldn’t have survived without the tent-like ‘pherans’ in Kashmir, inside which I hugged both son and ‘kangdi’ together. The latter is a ‘matka’ housed in a cane basket. Inside the ‘kandgi’ are kept live, glowing coals, quite dangerous to hold against skin and kid, can and do cause blisters, fires and cancer (I’m told, when used over long years). But for me, ignorance was bliss. The heat it generated was more bliss.

Words like ‘razai’ and ‘bukhari’ make no sense in Goa. The former my aunt used as a mattress. The latter I’d left behind for the next tenant in the house I lived in. Sri Husband’s nomadic job made us set up home in several remote corners of India. Our weekly ration of an approximately 20 kg chunk of coal was dragged over the quarter kilometre ‘kacchaa’ lane that led to our house from the main road. By candle-light (the voltage, whenever we had ‘current’, hovered around 40 watts), we hammered it into manageable pieces to feed the ‘bukhari’. Sometimes we injured our fingers.

Winter thoughts: our soldiers at the border live (and sometimes die) in extreme discomfort so we can enjoy our parties, crib about the government, do our own thing.

          Winter memories: carts loaded with juicy crimson carrots, fresh peas, cauliflowers the size of my head, so much home-grown spinach that neighbours who grew it in their yards gifted away big bunches to passers-by. Mounds of tomatoes. Cracked heels, cracked lips, steaming adrak-ki-chai, women clerks in offices speedily knitting something instead of putting fingers to keyboard. Fog.

Goan winter: one neighbour politely wishes me good morning through chattering teeth, head covered by an acrylic-wool shawl, upper limbs enveloped in two layers of husband’s long-sleeved shirts, brand new canvas shoes, ‘socked’ (accurate Goan term) feet. Fingers tucked into folded elbow.

“Bai,” she says, “Cold, no?”

          I nod, whilst I untangle a kink out of a stiff plastic pipe.

The poder comes along, ‘monkey-cap’ on head.

Neighbour reflects a second “Cold, no?” towards me.

          I stupidly decide to educate her about the temperatures in the Himalayas, Kashmir, the North-East, even neighbouring Belgaum.        

Blank stare.

          I tell her about snow. She has her aha moment. Her cousin from Canada had come via New York once, bought her a transparent globe with a ‘Statue of Liberty’ inside it, floating in clear fluid. When shaken, a white substance floated to the statue’s head, and slowly floated to its feet. “Snow,” proclaims this true-blue Goan. “I have it in my show-case.”

          I tell her about the extreme conditions our soldiers live in, in Siachen.

She tells me her arthritis improves with a ‘khare udak’  dip in the Baga waters in late February. “Our ‘bhangrachey’ soil and the cold-cold waters of the sea at this time of the year make miracles, haan.”

          I don’t give up: “The Himalaya is so cold that the soft snow on the ground hardens into ice.”

I know, her eyes tell me; she says: “Ice? Lots in my freezer. We don’t use it because of sore-throat-problem.” Then adds: “But you won’t fall sick, this early morning oxygen is good for health.” Her yoga teacher said so.

I try again: “There are places colder than Goa.” (What is wrong with me?) She quickly gets and triumphantly waves a newspaper at me. A headline says something about ‘coldest night’ hereabouts. I shut up.

          I recall bygone debates about non-use of geysers in bathrooms and wearing (artificial) leather jackets on motorcycles so that you didn’t get the sniffles, joint pain, headaches, fever, the runs, etc. Another trick: Hot milk with sugar and haldi consumed first thing in the morning, last thing at night. I guess the nausea it gives rise to makes you forget all discomfort below 3 degrees Celsius.

          I shut the windows at bed-time and wrap myself at bedtime. I remember I own a pair of woollen, ankle-length and leather-soled ‘Santa-shoes’, with white bobs at the ends of the laces. I wear them. My south-west-coast blood is warm. Any temperature in the teens reminds me ‘it’s winter’.

          Whichever part of the world you belong to: the cold northern hemisphere or the sunny southern one, Happy 2015 everybody. Belated doesn’t matter, does it?

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A Real Life Adventure Through Facebook.

          I met a young man five years ago on Facebook. It took me that long to hear his voice and see him in flesh. This is the unusual story of a friendship that didn’t concern him, of which he was a conduit at one stage. Complicated? Let me start at the beginning.

          About fifty years ago, I had a penfriend, Asha. We wrote each other letters that travelled across the sub-continent, sharing girlie secrets. As a teenager, she did para-jumping through the NCC and I did mountaineering/rock-climbing and we shared legible, cursive hand-written notes on ‘inlands’, via the Indian Posts and Telegraphs. Each letter took about ten days to reach its destination. We wrote each other at least two letters per month through our school and college years. Other penfriends petered out of my life, but this one remained steady and close for decades.

I grew up in Mumbai, Asha in Orissa. Both of us had a female and a male sibling.

          In all these years, we’d met just once, for a couple of minutes, in Delhi, where our husbands’ transferable jobs had taken us. We raised our children and ran our homes in several corners of India. And we continued, when time permitted, to write to each other, updating what was happening where, when, in our lives. The frequency of our letters had reduced, but the bond remained.

          Came the mobile phone and the internet, and instead of communication getting better, we got disconnected. Our husbands retired, our children flew the coop, we took up jobs and we didn’t know where the other was.

          Five years ago, whilst recovering from a bout of illness, I tried to track her on Facebook by typing in her post-marriage name. No luck. I then typed in her brother’s name. I knew he’d joined the Army. The search threw up one identical name. The person I tracked was also in the Defence Forces, but much, much younger. That young man belonged to the same small community as hers. He didn’t know her, but he and I became friends in the virtual world.

          “Tell me her family name and my parents will track her down immediately,” he promised. The one thing I didn’t know about her was her family name. For she had used her father’s name before marriage and her husband’s after, never a surname suffixed to her own.

          So the young man and I got ‘involved’ on Facebook, reading posts, liking them, seeing photos, sharing them, exchanging greetings and congratulations on special days, chatting through messages when we wanted to keep the conversation un-public (unless you’re on Facebook, you won’t understand this word).

From time to time I’d nudge him to ask his parents whether they’d come across Asha. His response was always in the negative. He was busy in his profession, taking exams, doing courses, working hard. I was enjoying a retired life, travelling, gossiping online, doing ‘time-pass’. In the process, I even made friends with the fellow’s mother on Facebook, making me a virtual aunt of sorts to him.

          The aforementioned five years flew by and one day he told me he was getting married, traditionally, in his ‘native place’ (we don’t use this phrase any longer now, do we?

Shri Husband and I decided to attend his wedding. We drove to a hilly district in South India to witness a most unusual ceremony. The small community my Facebook friend belonged to – Asha’s community—doesn’t have a priest conducting the marriage ceremony. Elders of the community bless the couple, garlands/rings are exchanged and that’s that. The feast and dancing continued for three days.

I’d always seen him in photographs, in jeans and t-shirts. It was a treat to see him for the first time in flesh and blood, dressed as a groom. Recognition was instant.

Like us, there were others who had travelled long distances to attend. I mingled with the guests, asking randomly if anyone knew Asha. Nyet, nope, nil.

Then, on the last day, almost in filmi style, one stranger asked me some questions: Was Asha’s father working at such-and-such job? An old memory stirred in my head. Yes! Was her brother’s pet-name so-and-so? Another cell churned in my brain. Yes, yes. Did her sister marry a coffee-plantation manager? My cerebral neurons did a creaky tandav-nritya: yes, yes, yes. He told me a likely way of tracking Asha’s brother. He had known of his whereabouts till 2014.

Back home in Goa, Shri Husband and I did a quick search, sought and found the brother’s email, sent off a message to him through the internet and within hours located Asha.

We talked like excited school-girls over the phone, filling up gaps of what had happened in our lives now, then, in between. Laughter and giggles travelled through wireless channels. We saved numbers, id’s, addresses again.

When I sent a message to my Facebook friend, now on his honeymoon, his response was immediate and smacked of astonishment: “You found her! This is destiny.”

Nope, I thought, not destiny, the wonders of modern technology, in this case Facebook, that linked so many lives.

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Buying Gifts for the NRI.

          The NRI is a unique creature. Ever heard of a non-resident Norwegian? NRO from Ozzie-land, NRC from China or an NR-Eskimo? The non-resident Indian, whether a citizen of America/UK/New Zealand remains, to we who have the Ashok Chakra stamped on our passports/PAN-cards/licences, one of ‘us’. It doesn’t matter what the citizenship is, nor where the person was born, an NRI is more than just of Indian origin. S/he is, as I said before, one of ‘us’. One of our cultural peculiarities: once one of ‘us’, always one of ‘us’, even when five generations were born/resident in another continent. Our concepts, our logic, our culture, only we can understand, no?

          A visit from an NRI relative/friend can throw a clan/neighbourhood into a tizzy. Water has to be boiled no matter how recently acquired the RO/filter. New linen has to be bought, the air-conditioner cleaned and serviced, cupboards aired and pest-controlled, servants (the tribe that makes us in-resident-Indians envied) cajoled/bribed to not bunk, etc. And, ever-defensive, we avoid topics like uncleared garbage.

          Some things have changed. We no longer eagerly/curiously inspect gifts brought from ‘foreign’. Once upon a time, ball-point pens, cameras, fancy-shaped or liquor-filled chocolates and tissue-paper-napkin packets were enjoyed by only those who had close relatives abroad or in the airlines/merchant navy. Synthetic, uncrushable, long-lasting fabric used as saris or converted into dresses were the envy of those who didn’t own it. That fabric, quite indestructible, was carefully preserved and talked about for decades. After-use recycling included converting it into curtains. The upping of India’s handicraft and synthetic yarn industries short-changed the NRI’s gifts’ value.

          With the arrival of cable television and the internet, times changed even more. Now, as we plan our holidays with siblings’ families who’ve settled in the lands of dreams and dollars, we struggle with the what-gifts-to-buy syndrome. If one goes on a group tour, one is spared that trouble.

          “Take ‘sukke-baangde’,” Bai Goanna suggested. “You don’t get those outside India except in the UAE where the Malayalis have thronged. All coastal people, no, they like dried fish, hanh. When it’s raining-raining, it tastes ‘besht’.”

          Shri Husband’s dirty look bounced off her and landed on me. “Smelly.” One word that meant “not taking, don’t even think about it”.

          “Pickles, masalas, papads, every Indian grocery store stocks those,” he said aloud.

          “But,” I was going to argue, “It’s so different getting Indian stuff from India.” I kept quiet because people I know buy authentic foreign-made liquors and liqueurs right here. And they tell me they get better tandoori and sambar powders in the land of the ‘goras’ than in the land of their (the masalas’, not the white-skins’) origin.

“Homemade mango jam. Guava jelly. Neuros. Chaklyo. Doodh-phene,” Bai Goanna went on and on.

Silence. Bai Goanna figured food items weren’t ok. She isn’t the type to give up either. She suggested: “Take silk stoles.”  

          “There are garages full of those flimsy dupattas,” Shri Husband is more than a match for her. He doesn’t understand the concept of matching accessories, that more can’t be enough. Thus we struck off hand-made paper, paper-crafted lampshades, Kolhapuri chappals, north-Indian razais, south-Indian brass lamps, Bengali/Gujerati embroideries, weaves from various states, wines (oh yes, that now goes from hither Nashik to thither New York, legally), and more.

          “You get better cheeses in India,” a well-jetted friend said. No one believed her.

          “Take jewellery,” another piped up. That was shot down with cries of “fashions vary”, “ours is too ornate for western tastes”, and “too expensive, unless you’re planning to carry fakes”. Those last couple of words helped changed the topic completely.

          Saris?  No one wears them any longer. Linen? Theirs is more absorbable. Music? You-tube and various downloads are preferred sources. Art? You mean original? Too expensive and hard to lug around. T-shirts with prints? No-oo, they’ll be misused, they won’t even know what they’re worth.

          We struggled with ideas for weeks. None of our well-wishers knew what a perfect gift might be. Indian tea? Most people drink coffee. Coffee, then? From here…you must be joking.

          Interestingly, we found that several local mementoes that were/are sold to tourists were not made in India at all. We took a look at the magnets (gifted by other travellers to us) on our fridge; they were made in Thailand/ Korea/ China. A trouser bought at an expensive store in America was made in Bangla Desh. Whoever said the world had shrunk spoke the truth.

          A seldom met acquaintance with many NRI relatives said it’s best to carry along an empty suitcase. Smart people have done homework on what people really want and stocked Duty Free with those: overpriced so the recipient is happy, and tax-free, so the buyer doesn’t feel cheated. Nothing that we won’t get elsewhere, like cigarettes, after-shaves, nicely-packed nail-clippers, shiny mobile-phone-cases, biscuit-filled tins that have real-looking pictures of the attractions closest to one’s destination. Duty-free at an airport means we can stuff it into our empty suitcase, not wheel it very far… everyone’s happy.

          “Just imagine,” Shri Husband thought he was going to have the last word. “What NRI relatives/friends go through when they visit us here. They have to choose little mementoes for everyone.”

          I had mine instead. I said: “The truth you speak.”

          He had to hold his tongue, for we’d agreed on something after a very long time.

         

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