Horoscopy, Astrology, Palmistry, and My Life.

               I was told by someone who could ‘tell’ the future that I’d die aged 32 years. From my 31rst to 33^rd birthdays, I awoke 760 mornings wondering whether:

a)                      I was actually dead and only play-acting/dreaming at living on earth.

b)                      I was dead and this was heaven (didn’t then believe I’d go to hell; wise with age, now am unsure of my otherworldly destination).

c)                       this was my last sunrise on the planet. Entire days after days went in non-productive anticipation, lazily speculating how the end would come. Curiosity might have killed the cat, not me.

d)                      “Yeh bhi koi jeena hai.”

Haven’t met that person again to prove that something was either wrong with the

calculations in my horoscope or the lines on my palm or the evaluation of either. It’s been over twenty years since then and I’m still around.  Maybe s/he habitually played such jokes on gullible types.

               Another time, a ‘parrot-astrologer’ had to be led away because, after seeing my cards, the hysterical laughter that ensued resulted in a near collapse of his/her respiratory system. The parrot, I was subsequently informed, died of unknown causes, but with grin on its beak. Friends comforted me by saying that I’d earned ‘punya’, sending souls to their next birth in happy circumstances.   

Not one to learn from experience, and curious about matters mysterious, I recently wanted to get my horoscope cast and read.  I confessed the thoughts to Sri Husband (didn’t I tell you I wasn’t one to learn from experience?).

               The bellow “whatever for?” was followed by “At your age, the astrologer can read your ‘itihaas’, not ‘bhavishya’.”

               “Just..” I whimpered, “.. curious.”

               Sri Husband, in one of his rare, kind moods, accessed the www to find out what the future had in store for me. A zodiac signs ‘know-your-year’ site said I’d be hiccupping for a month because of a dinner eaten at a Goan shack that hadn’t seen a tourist since 2013.

Sri Husband’s aside: “… I can foretell the shack-owner’s bank-balance more accurately.”

An online Tarot-Madam said, if I’m a Hindu and if I have a baby or three, I could get included as a candidate in the next polls. Apparently, with that, my win at the next all-India election was a sure-sure thing. I didn’t know the future came with conditions and ‘ifs’. Sri Husband’s retort: “I’ve missed my vocation. I should wear a shiny turban, long crumpled kurta, cheap chappals, some cowdie shells around my neck, colourful stones in rings on every finger, not shave for many weeks and put up a selfie on a site like this. Not much investment, great returns, no tax to pay. I could keep a pet nandi-bayil maybe.” (Clarification: he wasn’t talking about the aforementioned three babies here, just tarot-card reading.)

Me: “There must be some truth in it.”

Sri Husband, mood still intact: “How come I’ve never read any forecast that says ‘those born under this sign are morons and will forever make stupid decisions’?”

“There must be some code of honour that only nice things can be told.”

“That would be hiding the truth, no? Or at least sugar-coated?”

 I put up a defence: “Our ancestors were no fools. They’d studied the solar system and its effect on us. Horoscopes have accurately predicted many things.”

“Like?” he asked, and added, “What about the inaccurate predictions? Or the blatant failures? Perhaps through the centuries those documentations have got destroyed. Someone must have audited the results. Our ancestors were smart, right?”

The benevolent mood had tapered; Sri Husband had gone into common-sense mode: “If they’d known about undiscovered planets, and the changes in some orbits, they’d have amended the charts and re-formulated the calculations.”

Wanting to bring back the cheer, I agreed: “Of course, of course. In fact, we Indians can and should prove to the world that we’re open to such changes. I have an idea…”

A look of horror came over Sri Husband’s face. Happens whenever I say those last four words. I paid no heed, just bashed on regardless. “…I can prove to you that horoscopes make sense. We should collect somehow, the times, dates and places of birth of all the passengers who perish in air/ train crashes. Or the Peshawar school-kids. The moment and cause of death should be the same, right?”

Sri Husband’s expression told me he was impressed. “You’ve started to think,” he remarked. “Don’t overdo it, might tire yourself out.”

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Court Rendezvous.

          Just because most things in India ‘take time’, especially in government offices, we assume nothing can or will happen on time. Or correctly. We’re pleasantly surprised when they do.

          I accompanied an advocate to Court one very rainy afternoon last month. I was as curious about the architecture of the building as the activities that went on within it, under its tile-clad partial-pyramid roof. Cataracts of rain-water veiled the open internal courtyard from us. Silent and unsmiling people glided to and fro, or stood against the walls or morosely shared sitting spaces on old wooden benches in the corridors. The penguin-inspired uniform of the legal fraternity was charmingly modified with frills, laces and embroidered stoles peeping out from underneath staid collars/well-cut jackets; expensive branded shoes gave away the likely incomes of the wearers. Everybody was carrying files. Frayed ones, plastic ones, some tied with red threads, others fastened with Velcro, nearly all bursting at the seams, even when housed in briefcases. Staplers and punches did the rounds, ignoring the dictum ‘never a lender or borrower be’. No different from the Railways reservation counters anywhere in India before which a million people per day, during working hours, repeat these two words endlessly: “Pen hai?”

          On my next trip, I had to co-ordinate with five persons whose signatures were required on a document, on the same date and time. Not sure whether the process would take two minutes or hours, I prepared them for four of the latter. “Between 1:30 and 5:30, be there,” I advised. Court matters are far easier to tackle than getting five busy people together on the same day, same time, from various places.

The first ‘witness’ was held up on the Pune-Mumbai highway because of the rolling-stones incident. She missed her flight to Goa. Worse, the repaired hip that she had very severely injured in last year’s accident couldn’t take any more travel, so she couldn’t come. Two years of co-ordination and Providence threw a lousy card, I thought. She had to be de-listed and replaced asap with someone else, with hours to spare. An application had to be typed and presented to the judge before a fresh oath was typed. So much running around; no one’s fault. The second had combined this official trip with a pleasure do with her friends. The third was suffering from temporary but severe digestion and was distressed to discover yet again that tax-payers’ money didn’t go into building clean toilets in public office buildings in spite of NaMo’s assurances of a Swatchha Bharat. The fourth was an elderly gent who had driven down from Kolhapur (seven hours of driving for three seconds of signing, then seven hours of driving back). The fifth was a kindly, respectable local who had taken off from his busy schedule. The replacement of the first ‘witness’ was a doctor who, proving the idiom if things can go wrong they will, had to tackle an emergency in the Operation Theatre at the very time we should have been wheeling towards the Court.

I sang a parody, “Get me to the Court on time”, as we ate cling-wrapped lunch and drank tetra-packed juices in the car.

As we approached the Court, we faced a nightmare: parking. Goans in Goa aren’t like Goans in Canada/the UK/Mumbai. We’re angles-challenged. The word ‘parallel’ is restricted to our maths’ classes and dictation tests. A person with OCD would get a nervous breakdown if s/he were to see vehicles placed hither, thither, a bit crooked, and sometimes jutting out so passing traffic curves to avoid hitting its bumper. The level of how civilized we are can be gauged by the fact that no one quarrels or honks over such untidiness. Maybe we’re conditioned to accept untidiness. We aimlessly cruised along, lane by narrow lane, until someone vacated a slot. We were worried we were late.

Our advocate assured us that it was good that we were late by over an hour, else we’d be waiting in Court instead of at home. Turned out all we had to walk to the clerk’s office and one at a time the witnesses who had taken so much trouble to come all the way had to sign on the document and in minutes the job was done. We’d barely introduced ourselves to the witnesses and the witnesses to each other, standing in the passage outside the clerk’s door, when we were told: ok, we could go.

It was all over in less than fifteen minutes. The years of finding out what had to be done, the months of getting convenient dates and times, the days of anticipation, the hours leading to the Court were over. Felt like the last final-exam paper or a formal music program or sports’ match had ended. Each went his/her own way. I felt bad for the Kolhapuri gentleman who did a family-duty, came a long, long way for a very brief Court rendezvous.

My only such experience, but am told there are people who spend a lifetime making trips like these. Phew, some stamina they must have.

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Death on the Table.

          I read to Shri Husband a disturbing item from a non-local newspaper. “A three-year-old girl died on a dentist’s chair.”

          Shri Husband wanted to know why/how she died. Inquisitiveness runs in his genes. Always asking why this, why not that.

          “How would I know?” I said. “The paper says she died for whilst undergoing a root-canal treatment. The girl-patient’s parents have filed an FIR and are demanding that the dentist’s licence be taken away.”

          “Children don’t just die for no reason at all. Filing an FIR is fine. Why take the licence away when the reason isn’t known?” (See, another why.) “Doing a post-mortem is the correct thing to do; it will clarify matters, tell us why the girl died. Maybe she was ill with something else, something undiagnosed. Maybe she had a condition no one knew about. The report that you’re reading is incomplete.”

          Shri Husband’s first eight words struck a chord. I remembered the death of a child in one of Goa’s malls about four years ago. The newspapers gave it headlines for a day or two, then the news just vanished. No follow up, no mention at all about the incident. No post-mortem report was brought to light, or whether one was done at all to find out the reason. Did the child have a severe asthmatic attack? Or a sudden unknown allergy? Did she fall and have a fatal head-injury? Did someone kill her by accident or intent? No one will know now. What was written as cause of death on her death certificate? Did the doctor who signed it guess the cause or did he know for sure? An unexpected, unusual death in a public place arouses curiosity. I was curious then as I was this morning, reading the article from the newspaper.

          I read aloud some more: “This was her third root-canal sitting. The first two times nothing happened. She felt a little giddy the paper says.”

          “It’s an incomplete report if they haven’t interviewed other, senior dentists and paediatricians to know what might have happened. Newspapers can’t or shouldn’t give opinions unless specified tests are done on the body and the findings revealed. These days media has become the judge for everything. How can one make an issue of an accidental death? Besides, doctors have a right to know what happened to their patients. A post-mortem is a must. That’s what the media must follow up.”

          How could one have an accidental death on a dentist’s chair, I wondered.

          As if reading my mind, Shri Husband growled: “One can swallow one’s tooth.” Some sense of humour, that. I didn’t laugh. Then he added: “Maybe she had a rare reaction to a pain-killer, who knows? The Press needs to educate itself, stick to reporting not passing judgements. You see what they do when there’s a plane crash… even before the black-box is found and the technical enquiries have started, they guess they know what’s happened and flash it as ‘news’. Or they pluck local ‘experts’ – same ones over and over again—to tell us what they want us to hear…”

          Shri Husband in lecture-baazi mood, I thought. I don’t talk much when that happens. Cancel the ‘much’: I don’t talk when that happens.

          “This wasn’t on television, but in the papers,” I ventured after a few minutes. There was a snort that sounded like ‘same thing’ and in the brief silence that followed, I remembered some instances during my hospital-job tenure.

A doctor in charge of intensive care (ICU) had to treat a patient whose heart had stopped just as the ambulance brought him into Casualty. The patient was put on a trolley. Through the glass pane of the Casualty window, the relatives saw him perform a Cardiac-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on the patient. What the doctor did: tried to get the heart to restart pumping by physically exerting pressure on the ribs/thorax, using a balloon-pump to force air in and out of his (patient’s, not doctor’s) windpipe. What the relatives thought they saw: doctor and nurses beating the patient hard on his chest, jumping around, choking him by covering his face with a strange black rubber thing, filling injections, making him convulse by giving him shocks. Later, one relative told me: “He was fine when he came. They killed him by all that beating.” If, I had gently asked, he was fine, for what reason was the ambulance summoned? It took a long time for them to accept that the doctor had been trying to save the patient’s life. And that patient had been without a pulse on the trolley even before the doctor had arrived.

Another instance: a child undergoing an MRI in the OPD collapsed and had a ‘heart-attack’. The anaesthetist present revived her (she’s now a grown woman, a mother) but refused to let her get discharged until she (the anaesthetist, not the patient) knew what had happened. Several tests later, it was discovered that she (patient, not anaesthetist) was born with a defective heart that caused her to almost not survive the sedation she was given.

          The bigger mysteries of Aarushi Talwar and Sunanda Pushkar don’t intrigue me. They’re over-discussed and there are several motives/angles involved. In this little girl-patient’s case, trial by media is stupid. But I’m curious. What might have happened? The reason for the curiosity is because 99.99 times things go ok. And that .01th time, it gives the doctor nightmares. No media covers those. My sympathies lie with as much with the doctors as with the bereaved families.

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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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