Post-Pathankot Chit-Chat in My House.

               Ever since I saw the attack on the airbase at Pathankot on television, I’ve been thinking.

               Whenever I think, I remember Shri Husband’s words: “Thinking tires you. Go and do something worthwhile instead.”

So I do my thinking secretly.

               First thought: I wonder how many of my village neighbours know where Pathankot is. Or Punjab, for that matter. Never mind them, they’re bumpkins; even some of my college-attended acquaintances won’t be able to point it out on a map. Fewer will know which Indian states share an international border with another country. Honestly, even I have difficulty in naming all our states, but I can do it (without googling), after some stumbling. Trouble is, Bai Goanna says, my mind is filled with names of the latest restaurants around, how to make money by selling plots/homes to those with cash to spare, which bike/car to buy with the money thus ‘earned’ and whether broken beer-bottles chucked along the road indicate prosperous tourism. Strangely enough, one or two persons I met were able to tell me the air-fares to and from Pathankot. Where interests go, to each his/her own, I say.  

               Second thought: after watching senior television-reporters hyper-ventilating questions beginning with ‘why’, people might believe that dealing with hidden terrorists’ bullets is like playing table-tennis. ‘Ping’ – that was my bullet, ‘pong’ that was yours, my turn now, and so on. In the absence of referees and rules, ethics and luck, death happens. Makes attractive headlines. Debilitating injuries, quite often a fate far worse than death both for survivors and their families, are never mentioned.

Third: how the infiltration into a military ‘camp’ happened was figured out by tweet-comments. The dissection and de-briefing was done through ‘the media’ (as we call our television network) and the government and public told who did what, when, where, why etc. Think of any family-murder covered by private national television-channels, and you’ll know what I mean. Culprits are interrogated, investigations made, loopholes found and judgements passed by tv-channel-staff, before cameras. (In between advertisements, of course, which sell insurance, toothpastes and packaged holidays.)The police, the courts and the elected representatives… all learn from The Screen what’s happening around them and in their midst. That’s how they find out what the nation wants to know.

I made the mistake of saying this aloud.

Shri Husband started off his lecture-baazi. His immediate reaction was: “I wonder whether any news-channel discusses neuro-surgeries through telephonic feedback and tells the medical team inside the operation theatre just what to do to the patient whilst s/he is under the scalpel, all anaesthetized. Or at least keep discussing her/his condition while the procedure is being done.” 

A moment punctured by inhaling a breath, and he carried on: “Reporters seem to learn in fifteen minutes what professionals take decades to get expertise in. Remarkable.”

Couldn’t make out whether he was serious. I’m obtuse at times.

Following his words, I tried to recall what I see/  hear on the news-channels. Or what I don’t. For instance, I haven’t heard anyone yell into a lapel-mike ‘the nation wants to know why Indians are using so much plastic and choking whatever sewage-disposal systems we have’ or ‘…why our students prefer to raise funds for building places of worship instead of demanding better schools/colleges’. Actually, I’ve never heard any channel ask the citizens of India what they do responsibly. Can you imagine the government saying that it wants to know how you’ve supported your local primary health centre or dealt with wastage of water? Can you imagine any television channel asking anyone at all ‘how did you help yourself’ instead of asking ‘what did the government do for you’?

I digress.

Closer home, I figured security is an important concern. I don’t want to die violently at the hands of a criminal. The guards at our malls/ shopping-centres/ supermarkets/ theatres/ banks are trained to open doors and help with heavy luggage. They even double-up as peons. (A peon is a professional no office can do without. Always male, this multi-purpose human being is keeper of secrets, carrier of files/ pen-drives, bearer of chai-nashta… more about him some other time.) Where was I? Ah, the security guards: they have uniforms and, sometimes, beepers. They let you in after asking you whether you’re carrying a water-bottle or anything to eat. If you say ‘yes’, they request you to keep the stuff on the table/floor near the door. After the program or your work is over, you can collect it. Remarkably, you will get your stuff back. I have. Always. The women-guards don’t touch you. If they do, like at the airports, it tickles.

Another word for a security guard, especially in gated communities, is ‘watchman’. Again, always male (feminists please note), always multi-tasking as gate-opener, message-keeper and deliveries receiver.

Shri Husband progressed to phase-2 of lecture-baazi: “Security also includes inoculations against tuberculosis, prevention of diseases like rabies, tackling fire-hazards like loose electricity wires above cotton-cloth wedding pandals, learning skills that will get one a job…”

Bai Goanna, brave woman, interrupted him mid-sentence with a loud ‘Abba!! Enough!’.

“We were talking about Pathankot and national security,” she said, bringing the conversation on-track.

Shri Husband hates to have the second last word. He re-interrupted: “Those guys at the border, in those horrid wintry conditions, at deadly altitudes, surviving cruel winds are facing bullets so we can sit here comfortably to crib about and analyse what we see on television.” And out he walked.

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usband H

 

              

Resolutions Past and Present

         Everyone I know has made, at least once in their lives, the resolution ‘I will study regularly/hard/sincerely’. Multiple times, more likely. Could be on one’s birthday or at New Year’s or when one makes a promise to God (‘please let me pass this time and next time I’ll study hard, I promise you’).

         When the medical professionals proclaimed ‘fat is bad’, young teenage girls, plump young mothers and men with abdominal flab included in their resolutions ‘I must eat less, exercise more’ and ‘…flatten those abs’. My weight-loss battle continues, with the adipose ever-winning. Resolutions like ‘I’ll eat less, only salad’ have failed. Repeatedly. The only way I could comfort myself for the misery generated by such disappointment was by eating a crisp, fried snack or syrupy sweet.

         “That,” Shri Husband once told me. “Will load you with heaps of useless calories.”

         I retorted: “Wafers and bebinca slices are difficult to digest. The more I eat the heavy stuff, the more energy I need to digest it. For every 50 such calories that I eat, I need 70 calories to digest it. So the more heavy food I eat, the thinner I will get.” When confronted with logic, Shri Husband falls silent. Ha.

         Housework challenged persons like me have a million times broken resolutions to properly dust corners, crevices, under and behind tables, chairs and cupboards. To keep a resolution, one has to choose it carefully, nurture it day and night. No point getting influenced by impulsive random thoughts like ‘I will keep my surroundings spic and span from tomorrow until eternity’. If all of us thought like that and actually worked towards it sincerely, our country might get garbage free. Which means the Swatch Bharat campaign might be successful. Means we would participate and contribute to a government plan without protests and cribs. (Shudder), won’t that destroy our national character? What next, display better driving manners? Obey the law? If all of us made and kept resolutions like those, we’ll turn into America/ Germany/ Japan, yaar. It would definitely destroy our Indianness.

         But I know people who keep resolutions. Villagers in my part of Goa decide collectively that (unless they drive taxis) they won’t venture out on NY’s eve. The annual Chogm-Road Traffic Jam helps.

         For the year 2016, I’ve decided to make easy-to-keep resolutions. I will be on the internet not less than six hours a day. Might have to change my sleeping pattern to accommodate that. Then, I’ve decided to meet people mainly on Facebook: simpler than burning petrol and adding to above Jam. Only two.

         “Your,” Shri Husband recalled an anonymous quote and applying it to me said, “New Year’s resolutions are something that go in one year and out the other.” Very funny.

But that’s not true. One year I’d committed to never doing vigorous exercise. I’ve stuck to the commitment. Another time, I decided to be sensible and buy myself new footwear before it wore out/broke. No more crises-oriented shopping, I’d declared. Stuck to that, too. Yet another was to watch Arnav Goswami’s rants on television daily. One dose of that cacophony teaches patience, tolerance, stuff that the meditation-gurus charge to teach spiritual weaklings. Sometimes I feel the urban wildlife on the television channels is more jungli than my forested village surroundings in tropical Goa.

         Never mind my resolutions. People I know have made some weird resolutions. Some friends have promised themselves that they’ll finish reading the books they’ve bought and shelved. Won’t happen; by the time they finish dusting what’s accumulated on them (the books, not the friends), they’ll be tired and in bed. It’s good that people still buy books, though, feeds authors and looks nice in show-cases.

One guy has sworn to buy only big fish, at whatever price. (There’s a history to this. Since the hoteliers buy the larger versions of the tasty fish, eg: visvonn, white pomfrets, chonnak, our local fish-vendor gets tiny, bony vellyo, bangdulay, mannka, leppo, etc. This irritates my friend (and many others), who feels that he’s not getting what’s rightfully his to eat. “Why,” he asks, “should traditional non-fish-eaters come holidaying here to chomp something that we so-o love.” My trying to reason with him that fish isn’t chomped doesn’t help.)

Another has vowed to only receive calls on her mobile phone. Considering the bills she’s run up, it’s a practical decision. Will help settle her vocal cords, too. She’s the same one who had once resolved to get herself a groom within 12 months. She’s still single. Happily so.

         Up in Delhi, I hope Kejriwal has resolved to continue to create controversies, they’re good entertainment; and NaMo might decide to go easy on the travelling and wield the whip within the country instead. May our neighbouring states decide to share water/ electricity/ manual labour/ vegetables with us. Simultaneously, may we Goans resolve to harvest rain-water and start wielding our brooms/ koytay ourselves lest the neighbours not oblige.

Here, in my house, Bai Goanna has borrowed Joey Adams’ quote to wish everybody. She’s going around telling friends/ relatives/ acquaintances: “may all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions”. She can’t say that to me because I’ve chosen my resolutions carefully; as mentioned above, mine for 2016 are hard to break and will last a long, long time.

Just to let you know, this is my hundredth piece of ‘Bhiknna Bhajoon Kha’.

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Virgin? No, Crude.

          The first time I heard a friend use the term ‘virgin’ whilst referring to a cooking medium, I didn’t know what had or hadn’t been done to the liquid for it to have earned that status. Then came ‘extra virgin’ to further confuse my generally-muddled brain.

I asked Shri Husband what it meant and received a “don’t be silly” in return. The term (‘extra virgin’, not ‘don’t be silly’) was parked in a corner of my memory until one day Bai Goanna said virgin olive oil was good for the health.

Me: “Oh?”

She said she’d read about it in a magazine or twenty. For the last many years, she’s been concerned about her well-being. She drinks warm water with lemon and honey in the morning, followed by oats/cornflakes with fruit-platter, eats garlic all the time, bananas with tea, dry-roasted puffed-rice if she feels snacky, just two rotis or a measured amount of rice with lentil and vegetable soup, a single portion of steamed chicken/fish as a treat twice a week. Only multiple-grain breads, thank you. Slimy green drinks are her favourites, and extractions of yeast and other smelly fungi keep her immune system strong. She runs pre-dawn full-marathons for fun, and solves maths puzzles to keep the grey-cells agile. So when she pronounced ‘good for the health’ I knew she knew what she was talking about.

“Virgin oil,” she gravely said, “is the first extraction from crushed olives. Cold-pressed, strained.”

She said she drizzled it on salads and rubbed it on elbows and heels to prevent chaffing.  She asked which oil I used.

“Whatever is available at the vanni’s,” I confessed.

“Always check the label for the nutrition,” she said.

I check it only for the price; but didn’t admit it right then. Mine’s a sambar-guzzling, xeet-kodhi family. We eat what we pluck from our compound (not garden, definitely not garden) during the monsoons. Wild stuff that our locals say we must eat: ‘alloo’ leaves, for example, and drumstick flowers. (BTW, these drumsticks aren’t chicken legs nor musical-instrument attendants; they’re ‘muska-sango’). But they’re so-o not fashionable. I don’t find those ingredients in any cookery classes/programs.

In fact, none of the things we eat at home are ever seen on television: phow with grated coconut and jaggery, bhakryo made with nachnnya pittho, and eaten with tisryaa-ek-shippi. Ever since someone told me shell-fish is good for cholesterol and cholesterol is bad for us, I’ve stopped eating it. No, actually, I’ve stopped telling people that we eat it. When I do (tell people, I mean, not the eating part), I’m armed with references and links that say actually-actually shell-fish are good when cooked in the traditional way, with organic ingredients. Somehow when the words traditional and organic are thrown in, everyone’s convinced about the goodness of the dish.   

I hesitatingly admitted to Bai Goanna: “I bought coconut-oil the other day. Cold-pressed, unrefined.” Hesitatingly because the last time I said such a thing, my audience of two burst out laughing thinking it was a joke. “Hair oil in food? Haha-hoho,” they chortled. “It’s good for a massage, though.” (At the time, I was reminded of an aunt who, when told that people in north and east India used mustard oil as a medium for cooking said, “That’s why their intellect is dense and their speech not sweet”. Had she been alive today, she’d have been labelled an ignorant, generalizing racist.)

To my surprise, Bai Goanna told me: “That’s good. It’s one of the best oils going around.” Really? I was puzzled. I mean until the other day it was only extra-virgin olive oil. What changed?

“New research,” she clarified. “You must avoid palm-oil. Some extracts are fine, of sunflower-seed, safflower-seed, sesame-seeds…”

I got into the groove and sang along: “Cornseed, rapeseed, canola, jatropa, rice-bran, jojoba, grape-seed, kapop, soya-bean, castor-oil,  biodiesel…”

“That’s enough.” Two words from Shri Husband and the larynx goes chup.

Bai Goanna isn’t intimidated by Shri Husband. She carried on with her gyaan: “Crude vegetable oil is the unrefined, unprocessed oil produced from vegetables - in the natural vegetable oil state when it is first extracted.  It undergoes further processing and to take it from its crude form to a refined state. Crude to refined makes it useable and safe for human consumption.” She threw in words like non-glyceride, trace metals, oxidation and contaminants. Fascinating tongue-twisters.

The same evening we met a nice young man who said he worked in the oil industry. He said he specialized in ‘crude-oil’.

“Virgin?” asked Bai Goanna, still enthused by our oil-talk.

Shri Husband interrupted: “Crude. Crude oil. Petroleum.”

The young man helpfully added: “I work in a refinery. It makes naphtha, gasoline, kerosene, the liquid petroleum gas you use in your kitchen. High-tech.”

“Extra virgin then?” Bai Goanna clarified.

“Crude,” both screamed at her.

I’ve no idea why, but an inexplicable awkwardness seemed to stall that conversation and Shri Husband is still angry with my best friend.

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The IAS and the Military.

         Bai Goanna said “one of you should have joined the IAS”, rolling her eyes at Shri Husband, but addressing me. “Then instead of budgeting and bussing to places, you’d be buying homes in Palampur/Manipur/Coorg, maybe even employing a pilot so that you don’t have to take the trouble to fly your own aircraft.”

         Shri Husband: “Don’t be silly, those officers are salaried employees of the Government, no different from many others.”

         “Naïve,” said Bai Goanna. “Very. Had you been a babu, and posted in Chennai at this time, you’d have earned multiple times what all your ancestors put together have over generations.”

         “We come from honest stock,” declared Shri Husband.

         “Nothing to be proud of,” believed Bai Goanna. “Misfits you are.”

         I brought the topic back on-track: “Why Chennai?”

         Bai Goanna: “Remember the Uttarakhand-Kedarnath floods? Thousands died. Rs 5 biscuit packets were sold at Rs 200 and bottles of water at Rs 100 each. Saddened at the apathy and greed of the locals trying the best to make most of the tragedy, the bureaucrats comforted themselves at Narayankoti, a few kilometres away from Guptkashi, with butter chicken and rasgulla. The Rudraprayag district administration shelled out Rs 25.19 lakh for towards their food and accommodation.”

         “How,” asked Shri Husband suspiciously, “do you know this?”

         Bai Goanna read from a file of cuttings she’d carried along: “… revealed from a reply to an RTI query filed by Dehradun-based activist Bhupendra Kumar.” 

She added, “While the Army- Air Force rescue operations were going on, the babus were happy to play routine roles.”

Shri Husband contemplated: “Any heads rolled?”

Bai Goanna: “No bureaucratic head rolls because s/he gave bribed permission to build in low-lying areas, flouting all sense of town-planning and ecologically correct rules. Won’t happen in Chennai also. Lots of money-making opportunity there now.”

Shri Husband, being fair: “Some babus do brilliant jobs.”

Bai Goanna: “Exceptions prove the rule. The clever ones master the art of misuse of disaster-funds. One Uttarakhand official submitted a bill of Rs 194 for half-a-litre of milk. In Chamoli, diesel bills were submitted for use of four-wheelers. The vehicle-numbers mentioned in the bill were petrol-run two-wheelers.” 

Shri Husband shook his head.

Bai Goanna carried on: “In Gopeshwar, from a particular shop, some officials bought 1,800 raincoats per day, for three consecutive days. How did a shop stock so many? Who collected/distributed them?”  

Shri Husband remarked, “The Defence guys do their jobs irrespective of payments/irregularities.”

“There are Defence guys who line their pockets, too,” said Bai Goanna.

“Exceptions prove the rule,” retorted Shri Husband, mimicking her. “The stranded and rescued believe the Indian Armed Forces are gods in uniform.  Not without reason; they win battles in spite of the substandard equipment supplied to them, rescue children who fall into unsafe wells, control crowds in NaMo’s own state when the cops and paramilitaries can’t. There are IAS chaps who lead from the front, though rarely.”

Bai Goanna commented: “Not surprised that the Army-Navy-Air Force was called out in Chennai. No bureaucrat will be held responsible for anything at all.”

I granted: “The babus live well on the commissions they get. Rarely heard of a Court punishing them for wrong-doing. Remember the chaos in Srinagar last year? Result of another babu-neta-thekedar nexus?”

          Shri Husband said: “Global warming makes floods happen.”

Bai Goanna interjected: “Global warming isn’t responsible for the chaotic condition of city planning. The IAS would control the weather if it could get money to do so. It – the IAS, not the weather---needs to be held accountable/responsible.”

         I thought to myself: “Why do these soldiers do these rescues when the government is treating them so shabbily over the One Rank One Pension?”
         As if reading my mind, Shri Husband said: “They have a sense of izzat, a sense of duty, money be damned. But there will come a time – and soon-- when they may do just what is told to them and not go out of their way as they’re doing now. They might ask questions like why aren’t those who are paid to do disaster relief and handle law and order situations doing their jobs. The world agrees that our faujis are the best in the world. And we ourselves can confidently vote our babudom the worst.”
         I read in a newspaper that the Raksha Mantri had said “Let the veterans prove that their agitation is not political,” whilst talking about the OROP.  

“If he’s really said that,” Bai Goanna said, “the one institution that so far hasn’t bothered about the religion/region/political affiliation of those it serves/saves, of which India is justifiably proud, will no longer be the same. They’ve waited for four decades for this right to be granted. Now they’re told that the Government “is losing patience” with their agitation. Shame. Politicians come and go. It’s the bureaucracy that holds the reins permanently.”

“True,” I said, “true. They say the IAS is the steel framework of our government.”

“Rusty, cracked and pitted,” said Shri Husband pithily. “Needs to be transfused with lots of clean, fresh blood for it to recover from decades of sloth and corruption.”

“Told you,” said Bai Goanna thinking she’d have the last word this time. “One of you should have joined the IAS.”

“Can’t,” said Shri Husband as usual having his say before walking out. “We’re overage.”

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Swatccha Bharat. Punctual Bharat?

               A co-passenger on the Mandovi Express told me why last week the same train had been delayed. A woman’s foot slipped in the toilet, into the hole it went, and because her calf was muscular and big, got stuck in a yucky place above the tracks. The rest of her was still in the toilet-cubicle. She yelled, no one heard. Finding her long absence unusual, her husband went in search of her, heard her cries for help, fetched the train superintendent and halted the train. They couldn’t open the door easily, but when they did, they still couldn’t get her (leg) out. So they detached the compartment, the other passengers from it adjusted themselves wherever they could find seats and the rest of the train went on its way. The train reached its destination three hours late. It made history. Not because it was three hours late, but because of the unusual accident it had to deal with. BTW, the woman was uninjured, separated from her ‘metallic ordeal’ by a welder/cutter.

               (The co-passenger’s son was from Switzerland. He showed off: there if a train/bus/plane was three hours late, it would make headlines in big, bold fonts in size 70. We comforted him: ‘there must be other stuff that happens there, no? Otherwise your newspapers could buy exciting news from us, about catching people stashing black money in banks.’)

               Thing is, we expect our trains to be late-arrivals, even without unusual incidents. Even when they start on time, we are certain they will not reach their destination on time, unless they are Shatabdis/Rajdhanis. Flights are weather-dependent, true, but quite often, unsuspecting, unquestioning passengers fall for the ‘technical snag’ excuse. If there are frequent such snags in a particular airline, I’d be wary of the safety of those planes. As for buses, poor things, traffic conditions are more unreliable to predict than storms/earthquakes.

               Unpunctuality comes in many forms. My newspaper vendor told me that almost no one pays him on time. When he visits his customers in the afternoons, the only time he’s free, to collect the money owed to him, he’s told: “Why have you come when we’re having lunch/sleeping? Come tomorrow.” He isn’t the only one to be paid late. A small businessman who rents crockery told me an office-party organizer forced him to make multiple trips to collect his dues. Grocers, mechanics, doctors, builders and freelance writers have the same complaints. Even when cheques are ready, you have to wait. Maybe the person concerned isn’t in his/her chair, maybe the cheque isn’t signed, maybe something or the other.

Our ancestors invented the muhoort, which meant they understood the concept of promptness. Along the centuries, we lost that discipline. Blame must lie with the British/Portuguese who eroded our culture, no? Stranger still, they took that bit of our ‘parampara’ with them, leaving us bereft of it. Perhaps NaMo and his team can have muhoorts for clearing licences, delivering judgements in court, penalizing rule-breakers, etc. He must know that, unlike in a clean-up exercise, a Punctual Bharat campaign can’t be kick-started by levying a 0.5% cess. But then, in Parliament, even making laws on time is so difficult.

               Actually, we were happy with our disorderliness regarding time until the mobile phone came to India. No longer can we lie and say ‘line is dead’ or ‘couldn’t get through’. Not as easily as in bygone days, my generation knows that. Ah, nostalgia. There’s another disadvantage to these phones: parents now know exactly where their children are and can deduce what they’re up to. Privacy lost, paradise lost, what with every minute being accounted for. Worst of all, the cellular revolution has changed our habits and speech. The other day I went to someone’s house and the host/ess promised to make tea in ‘one second’. Even with the most efficient micro-wave-fuelled gadget I wondered how that was possible. Realized too late that it was the usual lie of doing something ‘phataphat’.  We say we can do everything ‘phataphat’ except when it comes to winning sports medals. The mobile-phone might have changed our ‘parampara’ forever, but it’s going to be hard to get rid of it (the phone, not the ‘parampara’).

               Those who do believe in punctuality, silly people like that still exist, must change their attitudes in hurry. Shri Husband hasn’t still learnt his lesson, follows the time on the invitation card to attend functions. If it says 8:30 pm for dinner, he’s at the venue, dressed and hungry, a minute before. Other guests trickle in an hour later, smug smiles on their faces. The Indian Army says it’s proactive and prompt; so unpatriotic, no, to display such an unnational trait? After the OROP debacle, it should give the enemy/child fallen into well/flood victim a couple of hours lead time before it (the Army, not the enemy, etc) makes up its mind.

               Those of us who are standing by our PM, waiting for the Acchey Din to arrive, believe that deadlines are sacrosanct, that bullet trains might bring about change, that sooner, rather than later, Punctual Bharat might happen. Whether or not Swatccha Bharat will, is anyone’s guess.

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The Tale of Bottled Water.

          Shri Husband, Bai Goanna and I rarely eat out. This week we decided to treat ourselves at a fancy restaurant in the by-lanes of Fontainhas. Great food. 

The kind of places we usually go to, both lower end and starred, offer un-bottled water on arrival, free and unlimited. Young men in loose uniforms hang around with jug, and cloth to wipe spills on tables. We are given a choice of buying bottled water if we’re unsure of the quality of the ‘plain’ liquid.

Here, we had to ask for the aqua when thirst beckoned. The bottle he put on the table was made of thick glass, not crackly plastic. Environment-friendly designer bottle, with parallel circles protruding along its length. The label indicated that the water was sourced from a lake between Mumbai and Pune. Nice.

Then I saw the price and yelled “a hundred bucks”.

SFW (Sad-Faced Waiter), in perfectly fitting attire, behaved like he was announcing bad news. His body language and facial expression gave his thoughts away. He echoed: “yes, ma’am, one hundred rupees”. Before I could ask him whether the bottle, once emptied, was then our property, Bai Goanna reacted: “Get us another brand, something common, don’t want far-off lake-water. Get something cheaper.”

          SFW owned up: “Don’t have any other brand.”

          I kindly instructed him to get plain water, preferably filtered. SFW now developed a smirk and some confidence: “Don’t have filter.”

          Shri Husband asked him what he (SFW, not Shri Husband) drank on duty. “Tap water,” he confessed.

          “Get us tap water,” the three of us chorused.

          “Not allowed.” So our arm-twisted choice was to either buy water at the price quoted or stay thirsty.

My year-end resolution is: I won’t sit in any restaurant, unless I’m comfortable with the water I’ll be provided/ buying.

(Like, I always check whether there’s Service Charge in the bill. If there is, no tip is the rule.)

I still don’t know whether, once paid for and seal broken, the fancy bottle belongs to the customer.

I’m surprised that tourist-friendly, tourism-dependent, waste-management aware Goans who are so vocal when it comes to taxi-fares, look the other way at the accumulation of plastic water-bottles clogging drains and ruining the look of neighbourhoods/ beaches/ temples. I’m equally surprised that voices raised against lack of parking-spaces don’t whimper about non-availability of treated, potable water.

Most times I carry water from home to live by the mantra of reduce-reuse-recycle. It’s also a habit carried over from the eras when bottled water on sale wasn’t even a figment in someone’s imagination. In those days, soft-drinks (for some reason called ‘cold’-drinks) were drunk by the elite, not the aam junta. Another reason I carry along ‘home-water’ is because I don’t trust what is sold in the plastic containers. Just because the liquid in them is transparent, doesn’t mean it’s free of pathogens. (Pathogens = disease-causing micro-organisms = bad bacteria/ viruses.)

This was my first experience of a commercial eating-place refusing to provide ordinary, un-bottled tap-water, filtered or otherwise. If SFW is to be believed, no one else has complained.

“He’s lying,” I presumed.

“Or perhaps you are mistaken,” Shri Husband said. “There are people who really don’t mind getting fleeced, whose logic is convoluted. Remember our old friend, YZ Prabhu?”

“What about him?” Bai Goanna asked.

“When Delhi’s air got unbearably polluted and the government decided to take steps, he was irked by the odd-even formula.”

“What’s an odd-even formula?” Bai Goanna is out of sync with what’s happening in the world/ country.

“Delhi-government said odd number-plates and even ones could ply the roads on alternate days to reduce the number of cars and therefore keep pollution levels at 50% of what they are.”

“What was YZ Prabhu’s take?”

“His solution was to own two air-conditioned cars, one with an odd and the other with an even number.”

“You mean he preferred to own two cars rather than breathe fresh, safe air?”

“Exactly. He values his cars more than his lungs.”

“Takes all kinds to make a world,” sighed Bai Goanna. “I guess the manufacturers of air-purifying gadgets are making a lot of money.”

“The bottled-water guys have been doing just that for some decades now,” said Shri Husband. “Who knows, in the near future we might carry along personal portable water-filters and germ-eliminators.”

“Or,” I added, “instant water-manufacturing machines.”

“That’s a bit far-fetched,” said Bai Goanna. “But possible. There is a chap who’s invented a water-making unit for Indian farmers. And air-water manufacturing factories have been around in Andhra since early this century. You know…”

Before she could complete her sentence, Shri Husband interrupted: “Perhaps we could spark a change by checking before entering restaurants what water they serve and avoid those that force you to buy something you don’t want.”

Thus he spoke before walking out of the room.

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