Ha Ha Therapy - Dr. G. Lakshmipathi

It was late 2007 or early 2008 when I attended a humour-laughter workshop in Coimbatore. One of the sessions was by Dr. Lakshmipathi. After the show, as I came out I saw the gentleman outside the hall, with some of his published works and I bought 3 of them. This one, ‘Ha Ha Therapy’ was hilarious.

There are 26 chapters, one for each alphabet. Every chapter begins with quotes on the subject of the chapter by all sorts of luminaries.
The situational humour is there of course. But the humour brought out by rhyming words, phrases and lines was really good.

This is not a book review, but some of the lines that I noted. There were many others, but I could not type more than this...

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Man knows how to cry from birth, but you need to learn to laugh.

It’s amazing the little harm that they do, when the little harm that they do, when you consider the opportunities they have – Mark Twain

Please do not throw cigarette butts on the floor, the cockroaches are getting cancer.

Daydreams are the gaseous decomposition of true purpose – Henry Haskins

ACUPUNCTURE

There must be something to acupuncture after all! How many sick hedgehogs and porcupines have you seen in your life? Or a sickly cactus for that matter? – Dr. Omaguchi, Ecobiologist

Acupuncture – some points have as many as 17 names and some names are just pointless.

Chinese yellow emperor wrote a treatise on the subject – found today in great libraries of the world, mellowed and yellowed with time.

BACKACHE

Inside every fat man there is a lean man rearing to get out. And inside every ft woman, there is a lean man wanting to get in

She spent more time on her bed, halving her work, doubling her nutrition, ending up a repository of cellulite with overall consistency of a waterbed. She would move at the speed of continental drift and settle on the examination table looking like a capsized hippopotamus.

His was a lifetime of conflict between invoice and inner voice with the former stifling the latter.

CONSTIPATION

Too much commotion about motion...

It is a pity that today in urban India, ‘attached families with detached bathrooms have been replaced by detached families with attached bathrooms...

DYING

In death, one should cause minimum disruption to the lives of family and friends. Dying in places far removed from his usual habitat, or disintegrating into unwholesome bits on a highway, or dying of unnatural causes with symptoms off murder will reflect a selfish inconsiderate attitude and should be discouraged.

Death should be sudden.
Dropping dead cuts down costs dramatically 9versus prolonged illness). The body looks fresh and more attractive, and there are more genuinely sorry people at the funeral. A long and patient wait for a man’s demise gradually erodes the emotions and promotes a dry funeral.
Suicide has its advantages but the mess made by a large number who attempt this and fail miserably is alarming. Wrong choice of poison, under-dosage, poor quality rope, abysmal marksmanship, poor judgment of water depth, and proximity to good critical care facilities. At the end of all that fuss, you may end up in an ICU, with dribbling tubes, wailing relatives and trailing police.

Accident prone guy
Raju. When his mother was rushing to the maternity hospital in labour in an auto, the vehicle had collided against the hospital ambulance ...He was born premature and a power failure in the neonatal unit had nearly cost him his life...At school, as he was training in first aid, he had lost two toes of his right foot when a heavy first aid box fell on it...an instructor in the first aid course had broken Raju’s nose with over-enthusiastic demonstration of mouth to mouth resuscitation. After his electrical engineering course, during which he had suffered seven electrical burns, he went to work in Arabia as an electrician but had to return disabled when a camel fell on him. He remained client to a variety of medical specialists including a dermatologist when he developed allergy to an anti-allergy cream. He even consulted a gynaecologist when he consumed his wife’s hormone tablets for two months by mistake and suffered hot flushes on stopping the tablets. He fell off a stool when trying to hang a medicine chest on the bathroom wall injuring a thigh. When he applied a hot water bottle to it, the bottle ruptured and he ended with a scalded thigh. He decided to end it all and lay down on a railway track. But alas, engine drivers had gone on a strike and train never arrived.

You can always get some quick post death fame by carefully choosing your last words, ‘Marylyn Monroe, here I come’ could lead a variety of reactions at the funeral from frank derision to utter jealousy; ‘Goodbye Latha, I love you’ could be especially remarkable, if your wife’s name is Sujatha. ‘I have left the 70 sovereigns in...pfft...pfft haaa...’ could lead to a thorough cleaning of the entire household including the attic, something you had been asking them to do since two years.

ESSENTIAL OILS AND AROMA THERAPY

As opposed to humans, Gods are most happy when incensed. They cease to fret when fumed.

FOODS, HAZARDS FROM

To eat is human, to digest divine

These hints are only for visitors to India from countries west of Bulgaria and east of Alaska and a handful from Minsk. They are not for visitors from countries with names ending in ‘stan’. The latter are a hardy race whose food habits are fundamentally like ours (many of them are fundamentalists) and have antibodies to local germs and most of their neighbours.

Tips for foreigners visiting India
Insist on bottled water freely available in containers of very thin plastic looking like elephant condoms.
Avoid chutneys, pickles, rasams,..any item with green chilly...a few sips will make you feel like an internal combustion engine and can make your abdomen luminescent in the dark. Especially beware of a dish called Gongura popular in Andhra; made from spinach and radioactive waste, it can take a bit of your enamel with it.
Dhokla in Gujarat looks like sponge, has the consistency of sponge, tastes like a tongue depressor, leftovers may be used to clean the sink and as a diaper in an emergency.
Naan – tenacious bread that needs vigorous chewing before it will stop chewing back and surrender.
Food on Indian Railways – made of menopausal vegetables – petrified potatoes, dessicated tomatoes and ossified onions.

HOMEOPATHY

Many learn homeopathy by reading books. Learning medicine from books is like making love by post. Can be most frustrating unless licking a stamp titillates you.

Questions a homeo doc will put to you – do you like winter or summer? Do you like sweets or savouries? Are you afraid of the dark? Do you like mornings or evenings?

There will be no physical tickling or poking. He will charge you very little and sometimes nothing at all. That you addressed him as ‘doctor’ is more than anything money can buy.

ICU

Abandon hope. You will feel much better.

There are machines and gadgets to breathe for him, pace his heart, empty his bladder, evacuate his bowels, masticate and digest his food, move his muscles and do everything short of deciding which organs to donate.

There are a large number of hazards inherent in procedures like punctured stomachs, ruptured spleens, fractured ribs, deflated egos, inflated bills. All these are part of the game and nobody complains except insurance companies.

Ours was a love marriage. I thought I had married a personality. I ended up living with a character.

Gossip was her gospel and giggling was her Gita. She would make extra marital affairs sound like grave international news and inter marital tiffs sound like a sports item. She was the president of the local ladies association, a sort of clearing house for the town’s gossip.

Do you know anything more exasperating in life than waiting for a bedpan?
Yes. Waiting for someone to take it away after use.

---drugs are added, diagnosis gets multiplied, opinions are divided, patient’s bank balance gets subtracted...

Institutions are said to have a defibrillator near the cash counter to resuscitate collapsing relatives (that will be a separate bill please)

...It will be much cheaper for me to expire than to inspire...

...he had a surgery for an obstructing prostrate and that had been a great drain on his liquidity...

...he refused to eat baby corn because he felt he was committing infanticide...

JUVENILE JOYS

It is the highest creatures that take longest to mature and are the most helpless enduring their immaturity – George Bernard Shaw

In Denmark, when I was a boy my father came home and found me in front of a roaring fire. That made my father very mad because we did not have a fireplace –Victor Barge

In spite of everything that we do for our children, most of them grow up normally and end up as agreeable adults...

Breakfast like a king, lunch like a commoner and dine like a beggar...
A cosmetic error of cosmic proportions... instead of moisturiser applying piles cream on her face

A guy stroking the statue of a female nude in a museum...attempted statutory rape

We paid for his movie ticket on the condition that he would tell us about what he did in the cinema with his girlfriend – his own experience acting as a stepping stone to our sexes...

KAMA SUTRA

What men call gallantry and Gods calls adultery is more common where the climate is sultry – Lord Byron

Vatsyayana – there are remarkable things about this author that should raise an eyebrow or two if nothing else...he wrote the book when he was old man when making water takes precedence over making love ...he lived in holy Benares where most visitors came to spend their last night not first night...public enthusiasm was more focused on cremation than creation...

Khajuraho – the only town in India where the youth go to the temple with genuine fervour.

Widows were encouraged to remarry. This turned out to be a wrong move and ‘Sati’ had to be introduced a little later basically to prevent large scale murder of husbands.

In Madras, sexually explicit behaviour was discouraged to the point where sexual instinct almost became extinct.

LUMINARIES, MEDICAL

A specialist is someone brought in at the last minute to share the blame.

The secret of success is to be like a duck. Smooth and unruffled on top, but paddling furiously underneath.

It is the responsibility of the media to look at the President with a microscope but they go too far when they use a proctoscope.

He generally operates with the dispassion of an airhostess demonstrating safety equipment.

Life is short, art long and opportunity fleeting – Hippocrates

An admirer of a specialist – ‘my piles bleed for you sir’. After successful surgery, she had gratefully hung his portrait on her toilet wall.

The chauffer was so well groomed – the driver had a driver to drive his own car

In the lecture hall, this great surgeon came down to becoming an anaesthetist. He was so boring, during anatomy classes, even corpses yawned.

He was active in surgeons associations, like a dietary fibre. Difficult to digest but essential for moving a motion.

Surgeons bore me because surgeons are boring.

He excelled in communication by body language besides six Indian tongues. His waiting room was filled with rich women patients who had functional disorders with no organic basis, women who felt their ‘heart beat in their teeth’, ‘pains in their hairs’, ‘palpitations in their buttocks’.

He had seen very old movies in which Victor Mature was called Victor Immature.

Specialist in neonatology – a lifetime devoted to babes and boobs.

Reason to diet – your longevity is inverse proportion to your width.

A woman bedecked with diamonds and pearls looking like an inverted chandelier.

He would prescribe drugs as available as Penguin milk.

He was of a shy disposition and chose to become an Obstetrician. This meant not having to meet the patients face to face!

He had trained in England and was a master of the understatement. About a patient brought in almost exsanguinated with a hemorrhage he would say, “she doesn’t look too good, does she?” it was like saying Sahara desert is ‘a little gritty’.

Conditions in a hospital – some of the bandages had seen service as towels with Rommel’s army in the desert in World War II. Wiping your hands on these towels after work abraded one’s hands, and we called it the ‘Irritable Towel Syndrome’!

New eating place...over decorated dim place...food is mediocre, very expensive...you have to read the menu card from right to left so that you will be forewarned on what it is going to cost you...

Jealousies abond...cut throat competition among ENT surgeons, have spinologists stabbing colleagues in the back, pulmonologists breathing down their bosses’ neck, ophthalmologists scratching each other’s eyes out and diabetologists feeling very bitter...

MUSIC THERAPY

He who sings, frightens away ills –Bernard Shaw

Music is the vapour of art. It is to poetry, what reverie is to thought, fluid is to liquid, and what is ocean of clouds to ocean of waves... Victor Hugo, 1840

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and more often than that in the presence of music without music – Mark Twain

Human beings are all innately musical...if the majority does not express this talent by breaking into song, it is not due to any ecological considerations, but only to avoid physical injury from those around... singing in the bath is an unrestrained expression of an instinct, as behind locked doors the singer feels safer...
Even the mentally retarded are known to respond to music, and MTV watchers will agree that some of the mentally retarded can actually produce music and often land a grammy award...
Singing a lullaby to quieten a cantankerous kid or frighten it into submission...
Music therapy has been shown to improve gait in stroke victims (at least to walk briskly to switch off the TV)...

Everest Calling - Gorakshep to Kala Patthar

At 4:30 in the morning or so, I woke up with abdominal cramps. If it was any other, time and place and situation, I would have stayed in bed. But not that day. I would scale the hill until I saw Everest and some more.

Half way up, as the panoramic view became beautiful, the pain became unbearable. I wished, oh how I wished, that I could simply lie down there.

It was cold. As I took out the half full bottle of water from my pocket, I realized it was turning into ice, and the liquid I managed to gulp was very cold.

I trudged on, one step at a time, like a soldier who had been shot, turning back nevertheless to look at the beautiful surreal blanket of clouds that had covered the valley below, to look at Everest that was now rising into our field of view from between its two neighbouring peaks, to look again and again at a ray of sunlight that snapped into two at the summit of Everest.

Nandu’s Ibuprofane (Brufin) saved my life that day. Nandu and Ravi deposited me on a rock and moved on, exacting word from me that I wouldn’t move. I sat crouched, talking to Krishna (my then favourite God), pleading with him to let me go, let me climb higher, please. He heard me. After 20 minutes of resting, I got up feeling much better and climbed up.

The unrelenting Nandu was up above, hands folded before him, looking down at me like an angry schoolmaster, and delivered his speech of admonishment as he saw that I hadn’t kept my word.

He asked me in all seriousness to make a commitment to him that I would not move from my station. Too weak to protest, I said yes. After that I had to walk slowly ahead like a spy trying his best to follow someone without arousing suspicion.

Its amazing how hot it became as the sun rose higher and higher. The light was blinding and I could feel the heat scalding my skin.

I climbed higher. By this time, several people, now on their way down from the summit, confirmed that beyond a certain point, the view was not to change.

For those of us who had chosen to climb Kala Patthar, the day ahead was going to be longer than for the rest. So I decided after much dilemma, to stop climbing. Half of us or more had chosen to stay back and not climb Kala Pathhar.

I turned around and stood facing Everest. The mountain just behind us, Pumori, diametrically opposite to Everest, I saw was more beautiful.

In fact, of all the peaks in the panorama, Everest was the least beautiful. How ironical, I thought.

But then, that one before me, beautiful or no, was the tallest on earth and I was standing before it, beholding it; being one among the very few people in this world who get to do that.

We were told that we were lucky. Those who had climbed Kala Patthar a day before us, two and three days too, had only see a veil of clouds where Everest should have been and waited for the veil to part, in vain.
Yes. The bunch of us were lucky. Not everyone who reaches base camp chooses to climb Kala Patthar and not everyone who climbs it gets to see Everest.

The mission had been accomplished.

But I wished then as I wish now I had been able to summit Kala Patthar. But then, there was a writ. And it had to be honoured.

The last one is a panorama I have created with much difficulty, by stitching together using MS Paint, separate pictures I took with much care, turning on my heels, from right to left, trying to keep the camera at one level.

Pumori...

Thats Everest in the centre, coming into view...

Everest...look what its doing to light...deflection...

Peach coloured Pumori. I heard this one is actually more difficult to climb than Everest.

These black stones, rocks are why Kala Patthar is called so...

Kumbhu Glacier...incredible geological formations...

Wow...looks like a loving hand smeared its face with cream...

Here is the my panorama...do click on it...

A Good Night's Sleep is Essential for the Upholding of Constitution

Among other messages that I have kept in my ‘sent items’ in my cell phone, (in spite of 95% memory full), like my address, my email id, my blog url that I need to share with people now and then, there is one message of a peculiar nature that I also keep.
“Could you please talk softly and lower your TV volume? I am unable to sleep”.

This message I send on alternate days (worst case) or twice a week (best case) between 1 AM and 3 AM in the night to these bachelors who live on the floor above me.

Before these guys arrived, there was another group of bachelors living there and I never had this problem with them. Only once, the very first time, I was disturbed in the night by their Television volume. I went to them and told them so. After that day, they never gave me a chance to complain.
But of course, they were South Indian bachelors. And that means a lot.

The guys occupying the place now are North Indian bachelors. UP, Bihar, I don’t know what...
The first time, I told one of the guys that I could hear them. He said ‘ok, we will be careful’.
The second time, the guy says, ‘we don’t have TV, we watch movies on a laptop and since there are many of us, we can’t use headphones. We have to use speaker phones.”
“Could you keep the volume low? Or close your windows please? I can’t sleep”, say I.
“Ok yaar we will try”

The third time, I talk to the guy, he is annoyed, “We do it in our house right, not in yours? If you can’t sleep, what can we do?”
I am amazed.
“You do it in your house, but its falling into my ears”, I am pleading this time.
‘Ok, ok....’

The fourth time, I don’t talk to the guy personally, because its 1:30 in the night and I am in my bed; I message them stating that I can hear their loud voices.
And I receive a response. “You are too much yaar...You have a problem with our talking also...this is too much really ok’

Really? I am too much! Indeed!

And then, the next day, I heard their talk, laughter... arre yaar, ye yaar....woh yaar... tub hi saala.... and then some woman inside laptop yelling at the villain... I found myself messaging again. This time, I did not delete the sent message. I thought I might need it again. And I was not mistaken at all.

What a plight! I have no boyfriend, no husband to engage in messaging activity with, so late in the night but I need to message a bunch a boors so that I may get some sleep.

Sometimes the laughing and talking continue even after my messaging. They have probably decided to defy me. These days I go to bed with a pair of earplugs by my side. When it becomes too much, I insert them. They are uncomfortable, but then...

At times, when I am just about to drift to sleep, I wake up with a start, doze again, start again, doze again, start again...and then reach for the mobile phone and message, if that doesn’t help, reach for the ear plugs.

Have these guys never lived in a decent neighbourhood before and haven’t their parents brought them up with the learning one should not cause disturbance to one’s neighbours in any way – talking loudly, singing, TV watching, dancing?

What sort of guys are these? North Indians: UP, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab... half of them...if not all of them...(I have had many Hindi speaking friends in my circle, who are really decent)

But also...

If you see a waiter in a restaurant being bullied, you can be 80 percent sure the bully is a North Indian.
If you see a guy brazenly flirting with a woman at work who was just introduced to him minutes ago, you can be 80 percent sure he is a North Indian.
The less said about aggression on road, rash driving, honking, the better.

And in Maharashtra, when people have a problem with boors from UP and Bihar, what do people say? Constitutional rights? To go wherever they want? Do whatever they please? And make a nuisance of themselves?
Useless preachers. The ones who have to put up with these uncultured guys know. Anyone can preach.
May be some politician is using the issue to create a vote bank. Do what you need to stop him.
But are these immigrants blameless?

Why should I, for instance, care to uphold the constitutional rights of these inconsiderate guys living above me who don’t let me sleep peacefully, day after day?

What is to be achieved by harping about constitutional rights? Everything remains as before. Does anything change?
Instead of harping about constitution, why can’t states like UP and Bihar take heed of the cries of polite-people-invaded-by-boors and educate their lot, imbibe some culture in them, teach them some basic manners, include what is needed in the school/college curriculum to make their rustics a little more civilized, before letting them loose on cultured societies like us who are too polite most of the time to even show our displeasure and simply go through silent suffering?
Seriously. These states and their people should know by now, what others think of them and try to be a little less disgusting.

Judge me not. The above does not define my general approach towards outsiders to the state. This is in fact a Hindi-loving, North-India-touring, salwar-wearing, Punjabi-Gujarati-Marwadi-food-relishing, any-day-preferring-Bhangra-to-Tappanguchi, devoted-to-old-Hindi-film-songs woman, lashing out at her persecutors in a sleep deprived state of mind.
The Kannada people are the most tolerant, accommodative people in all of India. Yes, they are. They are the only South Indian people who understand as well as speak Hindi reasonably well – better than south Indians from all the other states.

But until these outside guys stop behaving like cattle, learn some public sense, until they stop shouting into their mobile phones, until they learn the code of conduct for living in a neighbourhood, I would wish someone would chase them all out of my state.

Meanwhile, constitution can go fuck itself.

Walking The Talk. Petty Shops. Momentous Pipes

Gajanana Juice Centre. Sangam Circle, Jayanagar.
That’s the fruit juice shop I have been a regular customer of for the last 3 years or so. And what does one mean by regular? Different things. What I mean is, once a day almost every day.

Living all by myself in a small (but nice) place without an equipped kitchen does not inspire me to cook. And I do not believe it advisable to eat outside everyday – stale oil, soda, adulteration... Also since I want to use my time judiciously and pinch every waking minute possible to devote to reading and writing, I don’t want to spend time on exercising.

All these concerns make me gravitate to Gajanana Juice Centre, among other healthy food places in my vicinity.
My specifications are one hundred in number. Not that many literally, but them must seem to be so.
…No mixing fruit with milk, only with water - when there is pulp like apple, papaya.., and no water in case of orange, watermelon… no ice… and no sugar, never…
Yes, I am a customer who knows what I want. More importantly I am a customer who knows the difference between ‘what I want’ and ‘what is good for me’.

That doesn’t mean the boys there don’t like me. They are used to my regular visits and if I don’t turn up for a few days and visit them after a gap, they ask, ‘Where were you madam? You went to Mysore?’
Yes, I did, say I.

When I asked them (small boys in their teens, by the way), where they were from, where they lived and didn’t they go to school, they asked me too, where I was from. And I told them, Mysore. That’s why they like me. I talk to them.
In this super city, like all superstructures, characterized by estrangement and alienation, no one talks to them, no one asks them anything.
I talk to them. I question them. I scold them even. Why do you need fan in this weather, use dettol instead to keep flies away instead of fan,… what do they do with fruit waste – pulp, peel, seed, mash, oh a van comes every day to carry it to a cowshed and pays us for it, good… when the water melon is sweet during season, please don’t add sugar at all, for all customers… please buy good quality sweet oranges and hike the price by a rupee instead of buying those lemon sized fruit and adding half a jar of sugar to hide their sour truth…

And I know how to do my talking with small fellows without losing dignity. I only do my bit of educating and of course, asking them how they are and where they are from. No laughing, joking, over-familiarity nonsense.

When I first put the straw in my mouth – this was 2 or more years ago, it tasted bitter and then when I started drinking, the sweetness of the fruit prevailed upon the bitter taste of the straw.
When it happened again, I told him about it. He didn’t seem to heed me.

The next time I made a face, he opened a new packet of straws and gave me one. It was alright.

But of course I could not expect him to open a new straw packet every time I visited him.
Perhaps the straw packet that was open and exposed, gathered dust and hence tasted bitter. So I told him to buy a plastic jar and keep the straw inside the jar and close the lid.

But when I went next, the straws were lying exposed, as before.

I tried for a few days to drink from the cup directly without using straw.

One day I noticed how badly stained the boys’ hands were – perhaps it was the stain of pomegranate or black grapes or other fruit or a blend of them all. I pointed out to the boy who was handing the juice to customers as well as straw with the same hands. The boy somewhat embarrassed, said, it wasn’t dirt, just stain and it would not go.

Understandable.
But the boy giving out straw with the same hand with which he had just wiped the counter with a dirty looking rag? Not understandable. I asked him, he didn’t know what to say.

When he next reached for the straw packet, to offer me a straw, I stopped him with a gesture and asked me to hand me the packet, I would pick my straw myself. They smiled at one another. And each time they gave me the packet, they smiled. Perhaps, they think, ‘too much’.

What I saw next really exasperated me. The dirty rag was lying on the packet of straw, with one end of all straws covered by the rag, which had been carelessly thrown over the packet, after cleaning.

What is this, I asked him. He removed the rag at once and gave a new packet of straws.
I repeated. Please buy a plastic jar and keep the straw inside the jar and close the lid. Will you?

No. he wouldn’t. He just scratched his hair and smiled.

On my next visit, I took the packet, usually having only one corner torn open, reached for the straw that was unexposed, beneath the corner that was intact. And drank. But the straw did taste bitter.
I took another similar straw and looked inside the hollow. There were black particles; grit? mud? Perhaps soot from the vehicles on the main road…

So on the following visits, I would not just pick any unexposed straw but would pull aside a bunch of straws (without removing them from the packet), peep into the bunch, and pull out one straw that had minimum black dots inside it.

It would improve my immune system; one should not be so delicate…I consoled myself in many ways.

But last week, when I peeped through the straws, I saw all of them had gathered soot - all had blemishes on them and not one was innocent. That was the last straw, literally and idiomatically!
I complained to him aloud, asked him why he could not get a plastic box/jar and keep the straws inside. There happened to be other customers watching and just so that I would not be judged fussy or quirky in their eyes, I showed the straw packet to a woman standing beside and said, “How to drink juice from these straws?” in what must have been an exasperated tone.

The boy behind the counter said ‘ok mam’, but I knew nothing would change. Perhaps I should get myself a straw packet and carry one to the shop each time.
I was sick of the same problem at the cane juice shop. His shop was not as exposed to the main road as the fruit juice shop, and it was bit more sophisticated, just a bit.
There was a glass front and the straws were kept in a tumbler. But when I put them in my mouth, they tasted bitter too, although there was no grit inside, when I peeped in.

Once, in the cane juice shop too, I was about to begin...”Could you keep these inside a closed jar….’, but stopped myself. Enough…
I had already earned the title of ‘school teacher’ in my X office, for correcting people ‘s English grammatical mistakes… so forget it.

Then came a day. 11 October 2012.
I walked to the Gajanana fruit juice shop after a movie or something, hoping it would be open. It was open. There were a few customers.
And, there was a plastic jar. On the counter. With pink, green, blue, yellow straws in it.
I looked at the boy. He was already smiling. I smiled too. An approving, content, congratulatory smile. There was no need to say anything. What was going on in our minds, was understood. There was no need for words. We only smiled some more. God, I make it sound romantic!

Two days have passed now. And the plastic jar is no big deal. We take it for granted. I, other customers, the boys in the shop themselves…
But the small change will be important to the shop; a step ahead.
Other shops too, hopefully, will be inspired to follow the ‘best practice’.

To me, who is usually considered ‘fussy’, ‘fastidious’, ‘quirky’, ‘teacher-like’ etc., by other people having the ‘chalega’, ‘adjust maadi’ ‘you can’t do anything’ attitude, this a small victory.

If hundreds of people, after this day, for generations to come, will get to drink fruit juice at this shop from clean, grit free, soot free, dust free straws, it will be thanks to the unrelenting persuasion of a woman who did not shy away from onlookers and who believed that she could, and (more importantly) SHE OUGHT to change what needed to be changed in our surroundings : )

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This post is a part of a series that I started sometime ago and forgot for a while. You may want to read the earlier posts in this series.

1. Walking The Talk
2. Walking The Talk. Take Law Into Your Hands

Keep It Up Bollywood

The last few weeks have been a season of movie watching for me. And I am surprised. I haven’t been disappointed with a single movie. None of them was typical boy girl romance. All the themes were fresh and proved that a movie can do well even if it does not have sex and violence.

Looks like Bollywood is doing a good job. Keep it up.

BURFI

Burfi was sweet : )

There is a bit of drawl but perhaps it is inevitable when the central characters are deaf, mute and autistic.

Ranbir has acted really well.

Ileana. There isn’t much to her acting. The one expression of ‘oh-cho-chweeeeeet-I-feel-like crying’ is recurring in several frames.
At least her pretty face would have fit in nicely. But even that was not to be.
I have seen her before and I thought she was gorgeous. But now, with all the weight she has lost, she looks anorexic and needing hospitalization. Some of the frames in which she is exposing her collar bones, oh! She looks like a Somalian woman, no exaggeration at all.

Priyanka is perfect for the role. I think she is one heroine who hasn’t aged at all. At all.
In this movie too, there aren’t traces of much makeup but she looks like a school kid. She has acted well too, though I sometimes think, it’s easy to perform in the roles of an autistic and a lunatic person. Rani Mukherjee, in comparison, had a lot more to do in Black.

It is relieving that the movie does not overemphasize the sorry-difficult plight of the physically mentally challenged and comes to the point, avoiding the tragic mood thereby. Why, the deaf mute Ranbir far from being tragic, is funny, cute and at times, endearing.
It is interesting that the script includes some mystery and thrill – kidnapping and bank robbery... but sensibly, lightweight mystery and thrill that blends with the mood of the rest of the movie.

The misty and green small town setting that is yesterday’s Darjeeling definitely adds a charm to the movie which would not have been the same if it were set in urban Bombay or Delhi of today.
A movie maker can seldom go wrong with setting a story in the past, for past has a nostalgic charm, inherent in all pasts, and it takes good care of at least 50 percent of the overall effect.

But there was no need to have the story narrated from the present time through it’s various characters, now old and sad looking, going back at what happened 50 years ago. The movie could have dwelt completely in the time of the story, without there being ‘a present time’, as in Parineeta, for instance. Temporal shifts could have been avoided.
That way the viewer could have been completely transported to a past and without jerking them back to the present now and then.

Also the story could have ended with the marriage of Barfi and Jhillmill. How they lived afterwards could have been left to the viewer’s imagination. There was no need to go all the way to their old age, and show them together in their deathbed as well.

Going overboard, is surely one thing moviemakers should beware of.

HEROINE

I loved the movie. There is a good story here, packed with interesting turns throughout. I can’t remember a single frame that’s wasted. No unnecessary lingering, dilly dallying...
What also makes it rich (if I may say so) is the variety of roles included in the movie. Each role is so distinct.
The problem with any book, movie, script is never really ‘too many characters’, as long as they all have distinct and meaty roles. It’s when multiple characters perform in similar roles, or when there characters that are not necessary, that there is a problem and the viewer feels there are ‘too many characters...’

It brings home very well the message that ‘those in the glamour world, in their chase after success and glory don’t realize what they are losing’.
The story does not help to make a generalization however, because the central character in the movie, Maahi, is shown, not as a typical Bollywood heroine having typical situations to deal with, but a special case of an impatient, impulsive, vulnerable woman, not bitchy, good at heart, subject to anxiety, needs help at times and reckless at other times.

If the movie attempted to reveal the plight of the true lives of Bollywood heroines, it would have to make generalizations and therefore would need a different character sketching of its heroine.

And I am glad that Aishwarya did not get to do the movie. Kareena is definitely better suited to the role, though I don’t like her. She has acted well. Good job really.
And what more, the movie ratifies the utter contempt and pity I have for the glamour world and its people.

ENGLISH VINGLISH

No love story. No violence. No thrill. Just a good story for family viewing. That’s what I call maturity. It’s amazing that these fellows in Bollywood, as they talk about sex becoming rampant and accepted these days, defend it saying ‘Indian audiences have matured!”

Anyway, a lovely movie, I thought.

And I liked the fact that they haven’t gone overboard as they show the embarrassment of the family - husband and children – at the woman’s inability to speak English.
It is kept subtle and real and therefore avoids a typical Bollywood folly, which usually is a compulsion for stressing every damn point.

In dealing with such a theme, most of the movies go overboard and overemphasize the unhappy position of a central character – over victimization and making other characters seem like villains who are shown oppressing and persecuting the main one (to the exasperation of the audience) – something which is impossible to relate to because people are never so villainous in reality, may be insensitive in varying degrees, that’s all.

The husband and children are shown to be loving her generally but occasionally embarrassed at her not knowing English and taking her for granted (without realizing it) as housewives usually are taken for granted.

The attraction between Shashi and the French guy, a classmate from English tuition classes, is also kept very brief and very subtle. If they had gone any further, they would have unnecessarily brought in a contradiction in the character of Shashi.

Although the title gives a general impression that the movie attempts to question the importance attached to the English language, the central character in the movie, Shashi, initially mocked at and a cause of embarrassment because of her not knowing English, eventually gains ‘respect, love and acceptance’ not by proving that she is more capable/intelligent/wise than others despite her not knowing English, but by proving that she could learn to speak English too! But that’s just a minor point.
A well made movie, on the whole.

One point though. High time Sridevi learnt the proper Hindi accent! It’s so South Indian at times.
But a good job of sari draping. It’s something you cant miss.

OH MY GOD

It’s an experiment in script writing.

A man, Kanji, not religious and denied insurance settlement for the collapse of his shop in an earthquake(an act of God not covered by the insurance company), sends a court notice to God as well as the insurance company.

There is a battle in court between Kanji, religious heads and the insurance company; Krishna himself descends to protect him from the wrath of priests, guides Kanji, who mocks at religion and who sent a court notice to God(Himself) !!! and the Kanji wins in the end.

It is entertaining, it is a fresh theme, its humorous and it’s riveting too.

But it has alas, made some typical Bollywood blunders.
It has gone overboard. In trying to deliver a ‘message’, instead of keeping it a total comedy.
In overemphasizing the issue of blind faith.

Making priests look like scheming underworld dons was totally unnecessary.
All the snarling, thundering that they make those saffron robe clad men do, only a fool would take.

The message, if any intended, in the rhetoric ‘dont go to a temple after today, dont visit any ashram, don’t contribute a rupee to the boxes kept in temples, Godmen are demons...’ is an example of the age old blunder of trying to uproot a tree as a cure for a few decaying leaves.

The movie should have completely avoided ‘the message for the society’ and remained a lightweight comedy, packing in some more wit and humour and showing more of ‘matching of wits’.

Parts of the movie giving a ‘message’ are a digression.

Casting Akshay Kumar as Krishna was cool. It’s done so well, it seemed perfectly possible and acceptable. Didn’t seem like a joke/parody at all, as I would have thought, had someone narrated the story to me. Akshay has done a good job too. He has taken his role really seriously.

Tisca Chopra is simply gorgeous! What a nice red sari and a red bindi to go with.

An Amazing Conspiracy

When there were weeks left to my travel to Everest Base Camp of 2011, when I was still in Bangalore, I became careful about my movements to avoid any small or big accident. As the weeks turned into days, I began to take extra care while crossing the roads. I would cross one half of the road carefully, and while standing at the centre, waiting to cross the other half, I would be conscious of my precarious position, in spite of the road divider being solid mortar and I would to hope to get to the other end safely.
Even when I was crossing a one way, I would look to my left as well as my right.

Days later, as I walked the last 100 meters to the base camp, limbs trembling after days of continuous plodding, on a trail that was in certain places just two feet across, and made, not of solid earth but loose sand, pebbles, tiny pieces of rock and big wobbling stones, I was amazed at how much more precarious that situation was than all others I had been wary of while in the city and yet, how little precaution I took as I walked in abandon, unable to hold back, even as the stones crunched beneath my feet.

All it took was a loose stone. To slip beneath my feet. One stone among millions of stones.
But nothing happened.
All it took, to make me slip, stumble, and sprain my ankle or tear a muscle or bruise myself, to stop me dead, was one pebble among countless of them.
But nothing happened.
Every stone played its part well. Every grain of sand cooperated. Every wobbling rock took the responsibility to support my feet. Because it was in my destiny to get there.
It had been written before. And the writ would be honoured. By every stone and every pebble, every icicle and every snowflake.

To think, how every one of them, stone, sand, rock, pebble and ice, lying in heaps of loose soil, sliding day and night at the touch of whimsical wind, conspired to take position, as if by collective understanding, as if by a decree from the universe, and against all laws of probability, in order to take me where I was destined to go, it’s amazing!