Why I No Longer Eat My Lunch Near Miramar Beach

          Shri husband wants to know why twice a week I don’t have lunch at home.

“Can’t,” I say, avoiding the ‘why’. Like all men, Shri husband doesn’t take ‘because’ for an answer.

“Why not?” he asks. Pester-master, that’s what he is.

“You don’t understand,” I say patiently.

“Try explaining,” he says. Bully.

I try: on those fixed days (that he’s talking about), I go somewhere near Dona Paula to teach young adults how to speak and write stuff that’s acceptable to ‘industry’. On my return, the shortest route home takes me on the road parallel to the sea-shore. Pretty Arabian sea to my left, expensive abodes to my right. After crossing the Science Centre, it takes me about an hour to reach Miramar Circle, some hundred odd metres away. That’s when I feel hungry, where I have my tiffin. 

“Why should it take you an hour?” Shri husband probes.

I good-naturedly continue: the timing coincides with a school in the vicinity getting over. Children, mothers, drivers, teachers, amble around. Goodbyes are waved, homework-not-done discussed, birthday party invitations given and accepted, absent guardians gossiped about. Lots happens.

“What’s the connection between them and your delay in coming home?”

Cars come to pick them, I say, road gets blocked.

They would be parked at one side, he says.

I concur. Cars are (double-)parked at one side of the road, some protruding at peculiar angles. Solid geometry and calculus could be taught outdoors as places like these. No need to imagine the impossible: the Dept of Tourism can sell tickets to anyone interested in witnessing tangible chaos.

“Isn’t there a cop? Aren’t there school-buses? Don’t people car-pool? Don’t they use the skywalk?” at times I suspect Shri husband’s IQ’s lower than mine.

“Of course, of course,” I reply, countering him point by point: “There is a cop. He’s permanently on the verge of breaking down nervously. Once one parent told him to tell another to move her/his car. He passed on the message. The second parent turned around and told the complainant to go forth and have children or words to that effect.”

“Oh,” says Shri husband, flummoxed.

“There are school-buses as well, parked diffidently near the gate. Anyone exiting or entering them has a complex that s/he isn’t commuting in a fancy ride. And that s/he has parents with an unmentionable quality: civic sense.”

“Ah,” says he, comprehending somewhat. Slow is his motto, sometimes steady.

“Using a car-pool is like dreaming about a famous wink-eyed yoga teacher. Gross. But there are citizens who don’t mind the demeaning, belittling aspects of sharing four wheels.” 

Shri husband’s eyes moisten at the thought of such dutiful young parents. “India’s got hope,” he mutters.

I carry on, encouraged by his emotions: “The skywalk’s one wasted project. The little ones, bogged down by those heavy bags… how did the government even think that they could climb those stairs? I mean, just think of their little legs...”

Sri husband becomes his mean persona once more: “What’s wrong with their legs? Haven’t they two of their own? Can’t they walk? Can’t mother-darlings or driver-uncles or they themselves carry the bags? Surely the older students/siblings can help out sometimes?”

“You’re detached from reality,” I counter. “Walking is so passé. Children these days may waddle if they must, like whilst going from television to toilet.”

“What if…” when Sri husband’s in this mood, there’s no knowing what he’ll ask. “… it’s made compulsory for school-students to travel by school-buses?”

What if my grandfather gets the Bharat Ratna, I think. Aloud I say: “There’ll be dharnas and protests right till Delhi. It’s every snob-child’s birth right to move around on wheels.”

“We walked, our son walked,” Sri husband is stuck in a time-warp. Convincing him is a waste of breath.

“If you can’t do anything about the blocked road, take a detour,” he concludes in his sternest I-must-get-my-way voice.

So that’s how I now take the inner road that passes through Tonca. The consequences of the school traffic are felt there, too, though less. But there’s no pretty place nor longish halt where I can eat my tiffin. I miss the frolic of the obnoxious few showing off the misdemeanours of their untameable bhurgee. I miss the spirit of a school that proclaims to the world that its stakeholders are irredeemable. Most of all, I miss having my tiffin in the car, near the beach. I’m home for lunch.

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Twelve Hours of Daytime Travel.

 

I was journeying on the Konkan Kanya’s day-twin, the Mandovi Express. Holidaymakers returning from ‘bhangrachey Goem’ made small talk about words not found outside the Goan lexicon, like ‘tourist-belt’, ‘the season’ and ‘take-a-pilot’, jargon that confounds both Raj-leftovers and Indlish-speakers.

          Both trains have menus for meals and freshly cooked food is available through waking hours. Over ‘bhel’, ‘methi-bhajjee’, ‘sikken-lollipop’ (batter-fried chicken-mince-ball stuck over bone), and chisanwich (cheese sandwich), I got acquainted with fellow-passengers.

          There was a woman due to deliver a baby within the fortnight, who had the topmost berth and a very concerned husband whose request to exchange it for a lowermost one got three immediate ‘yesses’. She moaned whenever the train stopped. The clackety-clack movement on the tracks seemed to soothe her discomfort. Does a baby born on a train later write ‘place of birth’ in forms as ‘train’?

          From the time we boarded, strains of melancholy ‘Robindro-shongeet’ crawled through the bogey. Music affects the mood. Glumness spread laterally and longitudinally. After four stations, one gent appealed to the owner of the mobile from which the strains came, to lower the volume. Relief was short-lived. The monotonous ‘samarth-jai-jai-samarth-jai-jai-swami-samartha-a-a’ took over before another voice requested that phone-owner-bhakt to restrict his chants to his own ears.

          The couple right next to me was an example of India Shining. He was from a small Bihari town; she from someplace near Hyderabad. Their parents had struggled through a humdrum lower-middle-class existence. The groom, knowing almost nil English, burned with ambition to make it in the land of its birth, the UK. He took a student loan after earning a professional, technical degree and slogged it out for four years abroad, repaying his dues within half the allotted time, and learning the language that would make him a world-citizen. The bride was a nurse. Unhappy with a salary disproportionate to her ability and skill, she quit the country for greener pastures and was now earning 800 times more. Like a true-blue Indian, she added, “…more respect, also.”

They wondered why they couldn’t get Goan vegetarian cuisine easily; they’d done their homework and read about ‘moonga gaathi, khatkhatey’, etc. They had travelled to various tourist destinations, spent in pounds/ riyals/ dirhams, and not felt under-valued-for-money as they’d felt in Goa. They confessed they had learned from their white-skinned hotel-room neighbours to use local buses and to share/avoid autos/ taxis. 

They were in their early twenties, humble, focused, had dreams and a chart to achieve them. They intended to extend a helping hand to their younger siblings. “And,” both said almost in chorus, “When we’ve earned enough, we want to return to India.” Impressed. My warm wishes will stay with them and their tribe, always.

The other couple near me represented India-tarnished. I learned over twelve hours that, to celebrate their honeymoon, they had poured beer over each other and another couple they’d befriended. Harmless enough, I thought. Who’m I to say whether it’s more fun than drinking it? Further learned that they had drunk it, too, instead of morning tea, before and with breakfast/ lunch. Around dinner-time they tried other kinds of ‘daroo’. The lifeguards wouldn’t let them go deep into the water, the newly-wed man grumbled. He had had several fights with the guards who’d told him he (the newly-wed, not the guard) might drown. Which would have been a good thing, said his brand-new and very vocal wife, because then he would not have been ogling at the other bride and the ‘goree’ women. All those details came out over quarrels that started from whilst we were all waiting for the train to arrive at the station till they got off. Apparently, on the night before the journey, she had discovered an sms that he’d sent the other bride and that was reason enough for her to threaten ‘divorce’ till they alighted. They were still dependent on their parents for food-clothing-shelter and their own money was used for having a good time. They had dreams and goals, too, mainly short-term, like involving cousins and friends to sort out this problem on reaching home. Everyone treated their bickering like entertainment. Only once, when the young man slapped her on her cheek did an older passenger tell him to stop and her to shut up.

A single-ticket Goan widower told me how he was coping with his unmarried children and broken tiles, loans taken for late wife’s treatment and the poor coconut crop in one breath.

Between all the above and the child who offered everyone soggy biscuits, I didn’t know when/ how the hours sped by.

I will cover, by and by in this column, past journeys across the sub-continent, over many days and sharp temperature differences, of enjoying food, music, clothes and languages across states, in days before bottled water, television and mobile phones have changed our lives drastically. And how human nature hasn’t.

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When Kautook is (Not) Warranted.

            I was eight or nine years old when a poem of mine won a prize in an ‘Aunty Wendy’s’ competition in the Illustrated Weekly of India, a defunct magazine. I pointed out my name amongst the winners to my family. Reaction from aunts and others: ‘good, good, have you finished your homework/ had your lunch/ washed your hands?’ In families like ours, praise and compliments, like sugar and oil, were (still are, amongst health-conscious cousins) rationed.

If someone amongst us did exceptionally well (how rare that was) at academics, the news was drily passed on to neighbours and relatives whose response (“Aanand zhaala” or “abhinandan”) was equally brief and momentary. That was my environment. Since I didn’t fall amongst the praiseworthy few, I’m saying this from recall of my observations. If some child did well, in kabbadi or singing or doing cartwheels, anything extra-curricular, nice words were even more scarce.

If someone called a child clever or even gave a mild ‘shabash’ to a juvenile within our home, a vigilant elder sibling would promptly, publicly disclose a couple of embarrassing traits to tether the child’s ego down to terra firma. This trait spilled over to school. Our teachers complimented only the brightest. Duffers and dunderheads were told ‘(your) parents aren’t paying fees for (you) to warm (your) seats’. Straight talk was in.

Praise, like the rod, was used, but sparingly.

The only indication that the adults were pleased about something was that some favourite food was cooked: like fried white-pomfret slices in my case.

Families like mine encouraged not with words. They paid fees, they walked or bussed you to examination venues, stayed up nights when you had to complete projects, sacrificed goodies if cash was needed for the same aforesaid project, chewed their nails to their knuckles on result days.

When I first began to write, two decades before computers saved shelf space, I asked Sri Husband for a ‘scrap’-book to paste and store my precious cuttings in. Coming from an equally ‘kautook-kanjoos’ clan, his reaction was: ‘Just because some magazine couldn’t find anyone else’s stories to publish, you want a scrap-book for the stuff printed with your name in it? One big envelope, that’s all you’ll get.’

But quietly, the scrapbooks were bought.

He dug into his meagre savings to buy me a camera. And any book I needed. Encouragement came, but not through words.

Since we were brought up to down the positives, in adulthood, I and others of my ilk find it difficult to utter a simple ‘thank you’ when complimented. The response to ‘nice shoes’ or ‘pretty purse’ is “it’s nothing”. Even when congratulated for getting a job, some people I know say: ‘It’s nothing.’ The meaningless utterance is because of conditioning, quite an Indian trait.

If someone is asked before an exam whether s/he is prepared for it, the usual reply is: “not really” or “hope so”. A confident ‘yes’ is seldom blurted out.

If one is asked how one has fared after an exam, if one has done well, one says: ‘ok’. If you say you’ve done brilliantly and expect to score very high marks, you will invite strange looks. Even marketing professionals of the old school, who were capable of selling sand in Rajasthan, were shy of circulating their own biodata. Self-praise was whispered to friends. It was friends who blew the trumpet.

Once, for an NRI relative, I cooked something that he liked. He said it was good and I said: ‘Am glad you liked it. It doesn’t always turn out this way. Next time it might not be like this.’ Or words to that effect. He asked me whether I wanted to say that I was usually better, that this time wasn’t good enough, or whether it was an accident that it had turned out well and that usually my dishes didn’t turn out well. I had no answer. I had parroted something that most of us say -- ‘I’m not that good’ -- even when we are feeling good from inside.

The exception to this rule of ‘kautook’-hold-back seems to be in the arranged-marriage arena where the scene is the opposite: one has to invent, highlight and project all the good points of the girl/ boy to be ‘shown’ and hide the negatives. The ‘candidate’ is fairer, better at work, has fantastic prospects, and is more talented than competitors. Am beginning to wonder whether marriage, therefore, is the only arena where ‘kautook’ plays a bigger role than merit.

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Weddings in Goa and Goan Weddings

          Good Goan Hindus get married in temples (or five-star hotels) and good Goan Catholics get married in their village churches. At Goan weddings priests are VIPs. Neighbours, relatives – even cousins four times removed – are considered family. As are acquaintances of parents, colleagues from work, classmates from school, the grocer who has supplied your home with food items since the day you were born, friends old and new. Invitations are standard, unless a member of the family is into ‘designing’ (in which case the bride’s blouse/ gown is also thoda hatke). The decorations are variations of Chinese fairy-light strings, thermacole cut-outs of the bride and groom’s names sprinkled lavishly with shiny powder and garnished with angels or diyas as the case may be. Flowers: marigold with mango-leaves for Hindus, tube-roses (or lilies) for Christians, orchids and ferns for the nouveau-rich. A bunch of gangly youngsters in loose-fitting formal-wear welcomes invitees at an obvious ‘entrance’ with a red ‘carpet’ leading to and from it. The menu includes traditional items like moonga-shaak, alsande tonnak or sorpotel and roast tongue even if chow-mien, bhel and pizzas sometimes get pride of place.

Saris show fold-creases indicating non-use over a long period of time. Breaths are held in so the abdomens won’t burst suit-buttons… well, at least until dinner is served.

          The ceremony is followed by a reception, usually a dinner, in a nearby hall. Friends, local bands (or cds) sing and entertain. Guests stand in queues to meet the couple, have photos clicked, hand over an envelope or wrapped packet, sit with familiar faces on comfortable plastic chairs and gossip a bit before calling it a night. Subsequently, they may see the photographs on Facebook/ Flickr. Traditional, predictable and (in spite of the lagnacho-bowaall), smooth.

“I love Goan traditional weddings,” I said to Sri Husband. “They have an elegant, gentle charm.”

          Weddings in Goa (WiGs), on the other hand, are organized from Bombay/ Delhi/ wherever, via emails/ Skype/ telephones/ agents. E-invites and sms-es help record dates, times, venues. Meticulous homework is done regarding flight timings, pick-ups and drops, room-reservations, diabetic breakfasts, tipping taxi-drivers, mehndi-appliers, matching bangles and ideas to blend European and ethnic tastes, to be different. Creativity reigns; blended with confusion, they are vibrant events, great tourism-brochure material.

          At one WiG, I met people I hadn’t been in touch with for over twenty-five years. Whilst the bride kept baraat and Brahmin waiting for an hour, I discovered whose husband had retired, whose children had chosen which career and exchanged contact details. After the long wait (gods these days pardon non-observance of muhurta), the puja happened. The mangalashtaka began without the bride. The chorus-chant of ‘Shubha-muhurta-saavadhaan’ was repeated a couple of times. Conditioned, my hand kept going up at that cue, to throw rice. Those around me were amused, because I didn’t have any grains in my palm and was raising fist and fingers in a comic robotic movement… for fifteen minutes, before the bride was dramatically escorted in by her brother/ cousins/ friends. (At another wedding some years ago, a bride I know was late because she decided to visit her gynaec for an IUD insertion after the beautician had dolled her up. Talk of priorities! And the nerve to share this ‘secret’.)

          Back to the aforesaid WiG: instead of listening to shehnais and some happy raag, young and old shook limbs energetically to more modern sounds and simple beats. I ate Greek and French food, exotic mushrooms and cheeses and wore comfortable casuals instead of formal silks. Enjoyed it, too. A far cry from traditional Goa.

“I love WiGs,” I said to Sri Husband, explaining the term. “All that novelty.” Later adding: “Goa has unnoticeably become a wedding-destination. I don’t have statistics, but wedding-tourism must be a big deal. We’ve just attended one WiG, and one pukka Goan wedding and another WiG is going to happen in a couple of months.”

Going through memories of our own wedding, I said: “We had a tea-party, twenty-five people from each side including the two of us. Was a bit too simple, you think?”

“Each wedding is unique and enjoyable in its own way,” said Sri Husband with a wise expression and tone.

“True.”

We were both in a rare agreeable mood. Quite abnormal; I needed to change that.

“I’m going to learn the Punjabi ‘gidda’ for S’s wedding,” I said. “I’m doing homework on sarson-ka-saag and makke-ki-rotis.”

“Control the drooling,” Sri Husband said. “Or carry enough hankies.”

“Will paper-napkins do?” I asked mischievously.

He walked out grumpily. Normalcy reigns once more.

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Watching ‘Mary Kom’

          Sri Husband believes in watching a film if:

 a) it has been reviewed/approved by someone whose opinion/judgement he trusts,

b) he doesn’t have to stand in a queue to enter (he must have been a goro-paklo in his last life, always punctual, hence can’t avoid the jostle at the door),

c) he’s conned into it,

d) there’s nothing better to do.

Can’t blame him for such antiquated ideas. When/where he  grew up, teachers thought f-i-l-m was another unmentionable four-letter word, never to be uttered in good company. Unfortunately, Sri Husband’s married to a woman who enjoys watching anything that converses/prances on screen/stage, and considers a classroom as good as any theatre to ‘do the needful’ as we Indians say.

          The bunch of twenty-six students I was teaching for a term said they wanted to see ‘Mary Kom’ as a last-lecture treat. I didn’t see how it would improve the soft skills or personalities I was paid to develop in them, but I’m always game to try unconventional methods.  

          Marks-challenged youngsters who do off-the-beaten-track BBA courses believe that talking/behaving politely isn’t going to get them anywhere. I explain that hard skills (certificates) will get them the interview but soft skills will get them the job. Puzzlingly, at the other end of the spectrum, those who successfully clear state-of-the-edge competitive-exams and emerge from respected professional institutes share the same attitude. I think freshly (post-)graduated doctors need the same gyaan: degrees might get them conferences, but bedside manners attract patients.

          I was surprised at the interest ‘Mary Kom’ generated. This FY batch actually displayed as much enthusiasm for it as when they race for lunch after my class gets over. It wasn’t just the on-screen heroine’s well-toned shoulders that did the trick. (And this was a no-hero-no-romance film). Lanky lads who suffer from restless-leg and sliding-bottom syndromes whilst sitting in class were well-informed about the Boxing Queen and her awards. Their praises were warm. In a previous role-playing exercise, they’d been amused at how little I knew about sports (as well as operating the computer/projector, but that’s another story). Even shy Sneha who blushes if I as much as glance at her piped up to say ‘commitment’ and ‘focus’ when I asked what the takeaway lesson of the film was.

          As in all parts of India except wealthy urban pockets, this young audience instinctively empathised with Kom’s poverty and struggle. Not once in 2 hours and 20 minutes did I need to say ‘quiet please’ or ‘silence’. A record. Another record: no one yawned. Or giggled. I was watching. The wriggling was there, though less. The age forbids sitting still. Been there, done that.

          When Kom won an international medal and the strains of the jana gana mana were heard, conditioning made those present stand, or at least sit straight in their chairs. When Kom cried, some eyes moistened. When Kom was angry at injustice meted out, fists were stealthily clenched, expressions encouraging her to do bash on regardless. When she objected to being discriminated against at being a Manipuri, I hoped they recalled where the state is: we had once done a quiz on Indian states with international borders, answers accessed from the internet. The hospitality industry and football have narrowed the gap between north east India and Goa. “They eat little fish and no coconut” was one comment I got when I’d asked my class what it knew about the people who lived there. “But they eat rice,” was said to show the commonality.

          On the ride home, baryaa moodaath I told Sri Husband another thing the students pointed out to me: from the film they gauged that parents could sometimes be wrong. If Mary Kom had listened to her father, she’d have raised her twins and cooked for her man in anonymity. It helps to break the rules, I agreed.

“Not all who break the rules become Mary Kom,” Sri Husband snapped back. “Not all matric-pass become Dhirubhai. Not all school dropouts become Tendulkar.” Sri Husband has this knack for spoiling moods.

Maybe he felt bad about it (occasionally he shows a human side), because he added, “But the zidd, that works.” Strange he should say that, because when he talks about that quality in me, the tone isn’t kind. Of course, whenever he speaks kindly, I get worried, it’s out of character.

After the compulsory bout of silence, I wondered whether I should have learned boxing. Rules of grammar don’t help to vent annoyance.

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Visa Woes

          I spent weeks filling up online forms. Each time I waited to check a date/spelling, the site would time-out and I had to re-do the exercise.  In the pre-dawn visa queue outside a Developed Country’s consulate, there were others before me, equipped with tiffin to last the day, umbrellas to provide shade, water-bottles, thin cotton panchas to wipe the nervous sweat with and newspapers to spread on the ground to sit on. Precious files with true-copies and originals of necessary documents were clutched to bosoms.

Thanks to Sri Husband’s training, I carried an entire briefcase of yellow, fragile papers and their multiple photo-copies.

“Take your parents’ marriage certificate,” was one advice. “It will include your mother’s maiden and married names.”

 “And passport-sized photos of yourself.”

 I even carried my primary-school report cards. My teachers (may they RIP) had detected no spark, inferring that no Developed Country would want me close to their shores at any future time. Which meant there was no harm in granting me a visa. Bad report cards are useful, see?

My salary slips were included: giggle-inducers, they put the counter-staff in a good mood.

I carried many proofs: of birth, use of electricity, water, banks, gas (uh, the cooking-fuel kind). A letter from a kind neighbour to say he believed I wasn’t a criminal, that I would definitely return and from a boss who secretly wished I wouldn’t. The woman at the counter handed me back my Housing Society Rangoli Competition Award saying it wasn’t required. I’d taken it along ‘… just in case.’ Like I carried my son’s photograph. If I had taken Sri Husband’s they might have, in sympathy, offered me citizenship.  Not that I would have taken it, I love my desh. I just wanted a three-week visit permit. 

Something worked. Like the others, I yelled, ‘I got my visa’, accompanied by a hoop of delight and two fingers held up indicating ‘victory’. My passport was no longer blank.

Next experience, an Eastern-European consulate housed in a large flat in a crowded, up-market Mumbai neighbourhood. The door opened automatically when I pressed the bell and silently closed after I stepped in. There wasn’t anyone inside. I discovered a face in an internal window. The jaw moved purposefully when I greeted it. “Pazzport plizz,” it said. The face-owner took the passport and refused to give me an acknowledgment/ receipt for it because, he claimed, he had “never made a mistake in his life”. I couldn’t snatch it back through that tiny hole-in-the-wall and escape through that remote-controlled door. I used my Goan takli to counter his argument and won. I refused to leave the premises. Just sat there. Got my visa, too, after making some phone calls.

For visas on arrival, the host country has to be informed in advance of one’s entry, exit and stay details. Friend M spent a weekend at an airport because of no visa-on-arrival. Quarrelling and crying didn’t help. She returned forlorn.

Whilst getting the eyes clicked for identification, I worry. What if the machine mixes up my iris image with someone else’s and I’m stopped? “Doesn’t happen,” Sri Husband says. “Always a first time,” I figure.

A fellow-traveller was stranded at an American airport because he didn’t have a transit visa. “Aisaa bhi hota hai?” I thought. I’d heard of student/ business/ diplomatic visas, but to have one to spend time watching people through droopy eyelids between flights was a bit much.

A colleague said he was once stranded for hours because the printers weren’t working or the server was down. Manual record-keeping is extinct. Equipment failure, no visa.  

Here’s a recent experience. We were on a travel-agent-planned Istanbul-Athens trip. At Mumbai airport, waiting to collect the boarding-passes, discussing which coffee would keep us awake, our friends were told their printout-visa was invalid.

“Say again?” said the friend, wondering which nightmare he’d wandered into.

The printout said ‘subject to a valid shengen visa’. The entry into Istanbul was on the 3^rd, the entry into Europe was on the 7^th. The visa should have said ‘from 3^rd onwards’. It said from 7^th onwards. Of ten, two had this problem, although the documents had been submitted together. Travel agent’s fault? The European government’s for not have read the submitted documents correctly? Reasoning, explaining didn’t help. We were consolingly told that on a previous day, thirty passengers had been sent back.

“The Devil,” Sri Husband’s refrain echoes in my head. “Lies in the details.” Visa vie visas, that’s true.

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Two-Wheeler Meets Tanker

16 Feb ‘14

         All motorized two-wheelers in Goa are called bikes. Irrespective of make, engine capacity, condition of road, or driver’s ability, they are driven as fast as their unserviced condition allows them to be driven. Since they can be manipulated through the four-wheelers, there’s an unwritten but popularly followed rule that they can overtake from the left, right, centre, through dividers and via pavements. When they come out from by lanes, the rushing main-road traffic must beware and brake if required. If you thought the main road traffic had right of way, you have another think coming.

         When a ‘biker’ sees a way to overtake a vehicle, something in his brain tells him he must take it. This is true about tourists who rent the bikes and Goan owners, too. Must be something in our tambdi maati. In the event there’s a bigger vehicle coming the other way, the adrenalin encourages him/her to race passionately towards it in fourth gear. Quite often, our ‘biker’ gets his/her way, broadly or narrowly missing obstacles like on-coming trucks/tankers. The thrill of having ‘achieved success’ is exhilarating. Chances are that the biker will do it again. Been there, done that, stupid years ago. Won’t let anyone do it, ever, if I can help it. Metal fenders kissing anything at high speed is the kiss of death. I was lucky. It has taken life or limb of people; the chance isn’t worth taking.   

         The 15-year-old (may her soul RIP) who recently died of crushed injuries to her crushed organs was at fault. She couldn’t have had a licence. Nor the sense to follow road-safety rules. A day later, on Mandovi Bridge, the car in front of us ran over a helmet that had tumbled its way. The car wasn’t going fast. The helmet was broken to pieces, its thermocole insides split, advertising its poor quality. Thankfully, the biker’s head wasn’t in it. Because he hadn’t strapped it on. Many bikers use straps to connect their helmets to their wrists or bike handles.

         To change this culture, to prevent gory loss of valuable young lives, we need to involve students of class VI to IX. Children at this age are capable of handling the responsibility of guiding traffic outside their institutions before and after school-timings. The Road Safety Patrol (RSP) in Mumbai used to (perhaps still does) do a brilliant job of sorting out the mess their parents and other adults made. The students can wear clearly seen and identifiable lapels/badges/cords, red and green flags for signalling and whistles.  A brief course in traffic handling will pay its dividends immediately. It will take the load off the cops. Better, in the years to come, these students will be responsible drivers.

Regarding protective head-gear. Who gives the licences to manufacture poor quality stuff? Helmets, like plastic bags and bottles and medical equipment, must be only of good quality.

         There is a connection between bad road behaviour and physical activity. If children, young ‘uns and adults, too, have a means of expending energy elsewhere, they are less likely to be aggressive on roads. So walk, cycle, take the stairs, work out the cardio-vascular or meditate and dissipate that energy. (This is my belief, if anyone thinks otherwise, sue me.)

         Those who complain in my presence about parking woes and traffic snarls get my dose of questions and responses: why do you use your car/bike? Take a bus. Are the buses uncomfortable? The autos/taxis expensive? Make a noise, hold a morcha/dharna, crib to the ministers, throw tantrums, get public transport workable, have more village level shuttles… or shut up. Most people I know, when I begin this rant, change the topic. Which means they really don’t want a change. Which means it doesn’t matter if the traffic is bad and drivers worse. Which means a 15-year-old’s death is just another headline, not a big deal. Except to the tanker/truck driver who is beaten by villagers, taken into custody and interrogated by the State. He is at the other end of the spectrum who, along with his bus-driving brethren, believes the road is their baapaalo.   Since we can’t have an RSP along highways inhabited by large gaadyo, we could perhaps have a VRSP (Village RSP) in Goa? Employ retirees. Let the rumour spread that irresponsible driving won’t be tolerated in our pot-holed, speed-breaker punctuated road.

         Else GMC must get ready with an efficient cadaver organ-transplant program. Would make an effective statement in a medical tourism brochure. And an extremely sad one.