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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United by Fear.

               “Bai Goanna’s a ‘bhitree bhagoobai’, a ‘darpok’, I said. “She’s the only one I know who’s afraid of butterflies. Stupid, no?”

“It’s sad,” Shri Husband said. “Must be traumatic childhood disorder.”

               Really? I wondered. Did her parents threaten her with caterpillars? Didn’t make sense to me, but I can’t argue with Shri Husband when he uses big words. Actually, can’t argue with Shri Husband, full stop. No such kind words go to his mind when I display a fear of something.

Example: the other day, I pointed to something lurking underneath the laptop. Its whiskers gave it away. Periplanata americana, or brown, shiny-winged cockroach, sly creature that sneakily hides in drawers and shelves, and scares me when I least expect it, the bane of my life. I’m told it will survive every other species on this planet, and is immune to nuclear blasts. I’m petrified by the mere mention of it. My instinctive reaction is to ask for help. Usually by informing somebody in the vicinity. With all the power my lungs and larynx can muster.

No matter what I do, it irritates Shri Husband and pointing to something that terrifies me isn’t any different. “It’s only an insect, get a chappal and thwack it dead,” he said impatiently.

“I can’t,” I said, voice trembling, nerves trembling, muscles trembling. “It’s looking at me menacingly.”

“You are bigger and stronger,” he coaxed, then mimicked a sports-shoe advertisement. “Just do it.” I wanted to tell him ‘you do it, you’re even bigger/stronger’, but (conditioning, you know) I obeyed.

I tripped my way across furniture to another room without once taking my eyes off it (the insect, not the furniture), got a pesticide in a can with a long straw attached to its lid so I could spray it from a distance. Finally the ‘roach died. So ahimsic, I thought  with quiet pride. But Shri Husband--- didn’t even smile, forget clap.  

               Forget me. Let’s get back to Bai Goanna and her irrational fears: the other day, one of our neighbourhood children was doing her homework. She (the child, not Bai Goanna) began chanting the alphabet: “A for arson, B for bans, C for Cashmir, D for Dadri…”

               Bai Goanna put her palms to her ears, shook her head from side to side and said, “my goodness”. Shri Husband raised one eyebrow. I thought they were appalled that Kashmir was being misspelt, but I was wrong. Something else seemed to be bothering them.

Child carried on: “…E for encounter, F for fatal, G for goons…” Shri Husband went to close the window whilst “… I for injuries” was going on, but the sing-song voice still came through: “…K for killing, L for lynching…, M for massacre…” Shri Husband raised second eyebrow, which meant his brain was ticking overtime.

               “What on earth is this child saying?” he snapped to himself.

               “…R for Raamsene, S for Shivasena, T for Taliban…V for violence, W for wounds…” I had joined the child’s rhythmic chant for I’d been hearing it for many days and knew it by heart.

               “I’m so afraid,” said Bai Goanna, a tremble in her voice.

“Of someone reciting the alphabet?” I asked.

Shri Husband seemed to nod slightly in agreement… it took me a moment to realize with Bai Goanna, not me. He’s usually allergic to anyone who’s in any way afraid. So this came as a big surprise.

“I’m so afraid,” said Bai Goanna again, now with a hint of liquid accumulation along her eyelashes.

“Didn’t I tell you she was a ‘bhitree bhagoobai’, a ‘darpok’ ?” I whispered to Shri Husband. His reaction came as a bit of a shock: “There’s reason to be afraid.”

I’m trained to detect trouble through the slightest inflection in his tone. I stayed quiet.

In the meantime, we heard the child’s mother, who possibly was on the same frequency as these two, give her child a couple of slaps and some loud advice: “… say it correctly, otherwise you won’t get good marks.” We heard her further shout to no one in particular, “this is what television is doing to our kids; they pick up these new-fangled lyrics instead of learning the traditional stuff.”

So the child began again: “A for apple, B for bat, C for cat, D for dog…” without the previous level of enthusiasm. I thought to myself: we’re still slaves of the goras. Where in Goa do we get apples? A minute later, the child was singing about pigment-challenged, wool-providing ovine and telling rain to go away when the fields in our villages are parched. This old-fashioned chant was inappropriate for contemporary India, I thought, but kept my opinion to myself. I do that often these days, getting older and wiser, must be.

For the third time in quarter of an hour Bai Goanna said, “I’m so afraid.”

This time, after too much of keeping quiet, I snapped: “Of what, yaar?”

“Of what this child has learned, is learning.”

In a rare display of silent camaraderie, Bai Goanna and Shri Husband were in agreement. Interesting, how fear unites people, no?

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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.

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in