It pays to increase your word power!

There is a fascinating feature in every issue of Reader's Digest which is titled "It Pays To Increase Your Word Power".I do not know whether you follow it, but I do. In fact, I have been doing so ever since I took to reading the magazine in my school days.
Well, it is not my intention to comment on the feature. I merely recall the title as it has been playing on my mind since early morning. It ocurred to me that this particular title, no doubt patented in some form by RD, is so very relevant to our politicians, across the board!

Some time ago, Hon. Sashi Tharoor likened economy class travel on international flights to "cattle class" travel. There was an all mighty uproar in Parliament at this because people (read our learned legislators from some parties) felt slighted, humiliated, minimised, outraged, exploited and God knows what else, because of the reference to cattle, the holy plural of the holy cow. Apparently, Mr. Tharoor's remark was an affront to all Hindus as it allegedly denigrated the holy symbol of Hinduism, the cow. This remark was also perceived to be seen, in some quarters, as a reference to female air passengers as cows. If only the slighted gentry had the benefit of word power in their repertoire of personal attainments, then the derivation of "cattle class" from the old system of herding cattle in tightly packed freight cars with only standing room for the purpose of moving them across the country, would have been eminently obvious to them. There would not have been any cause for heartburns, religious or otherwise. Mr. Tharoor's remarks would have been accepted as a mere humourous allusion to the discomforts of long-distance air travel by economy class. As indeed, millions of people, like us for instance, actually do in everyday life!

Today, a news has emerged that an Hon. Chief Minister of one of our States, has taken umbrage at being told that, in matters of any state's law and order, "the buck stops there", i.e. the Chief Minister's desk. We are given to understand that the expression is a slang and derogatory in nature...that it is not the appropriate language in describing a high public office. If the expression "passing the buck" can be used in profusion in both public and private life, I do not see the logic in objecting to "the buck stops here", unless, of course, it is again the lack of mastery over word power! If the reference is indeed humiliating, then spare a thought for the generations of U.S.Presidents who have inflicted self-humiliation on themselves over the centuries by having a plaque bearing the words "The Buck Stops Here" placed on the Executive desk of The Oval Office! Is the office of the President of the USA, a high enough public office?

There is a limit to sensitivity. The over-the-top reactions are no different from a wide range of people who take immense offence at being called (albeit wrongly) "nonsense" for some reason or the other! The word "nosense", for some mysterious reason, acts as a red rag in front of a raging bull. Plenty of really colourful adjectives do not evoke or provoke such extreme reactions as the innocuous "nonsense" does. You must have come across this many a time. I wonder if the great Sukumar Roy would have felt slighted if he had come across the descriptions of his works as "Nonsense poems". Somehow, I do not think so. After all, Sukumar Roy had word power at his disposal.

Memories on fire!

Fire! Again fire! It feels as though the fires of 26/11 are still raging and nothing that the mind can conjure up by way of distraction, can douse those flames completely. Or so I thought. Little did I realise that it would take another fire, another memory to be set aflame, for the first one to die down. Mr. Arathoon Stephen's soul must be in acute distress at the fate that has befallen his handiwork, the iconic Stephen Court of Kolkata.

Why must all our memories literally go up in flames?

Stephen Court is a building that I used to walk past twice a day, five days a week for years together! This British age building on the one hand and the school and college that I attended on the other, happen to be located, to this day, on the same famous road of Kolkata, viz. Park Street.

This corner edifice was always a landmark for us aspiring Romeos. It stands at the junction of Middleton Row and Park Street which, to us, meant a stone's throw from the YWCA, a short distance from El Morrocco ( there was no Peter Cat in those days) and, of course, just up the street from Loreto House where the hearts of most Xaverians belonged and resided! On the other hand if one progressed along Park Street without turning into Middleton Row, the road led us surely to Mags (our abbreviation for Magnolia), which was, invariably, the first port of call for shared cups of coffee with the current Loreto friend. And not to forget the cigarette shop at the gate of Stephen Court! The owner of this shop was a discerning entrepreneur indeed to have set up shop in such a prime location. For, hardly a college student walked past without fortifying himself with a much needed puff, either to muster courage before meeting the girl friend, or to seek its company before boarding a bus at Chowringhee. And what about the tension filled minutes spent at the junction, trying to look innocuous by glassily staring at meaningless magazines (hung from the grilled fence of Stephen Court by some enterprising book-seller), while waiting with racing hearts and clammy hands to meet Miss Perfect to arrive from LH or from some bus stop? Stephen Court (or just outside it) was the proverbial journey's end where faint hearts and fair ladies rendezvoused to try and avoid myriad people like prying nuns and priests, assorted drivers or inquisitive classmates, or even an occasional parent!

Stephen Court! Many things to many people. Over the decades the building became the hub of many businesses with a honeycomb of offices operating out of it. As a result, today, the day population of the building has assumed considerable proportions. Lots of people, young and old, men and women, boys and girls throng Stephen Court every day, to earn their living. They come from all over the city as well as the suburbs. In fact, my nephew Saurav, runs his outfit from there and is one of those lucky ones to have escaped unhurt while the fire raged in all its fury just above his head on the floor above!

Stephen Court is not all offices, though. Lots of old companies, the British ones in particular, provided very handsome living quarters to their officers. My classmate from school Amit, better known as Mota, lived there for some years. Needless to say the four of us (Chatterjees) had spent a wonderful holiday with them back in 1984. The rooms were so large that the four children of the two families would play their ball games quite comfortably within them. Lofty ceilings, huge rooms were at times positively disconcerting when the four of us (the grown-ups!) would sit down to have a drink and a quiet chat of an evening. We were all so far away from one another! And the resonance of our voices were amazing to say the least! But the extreme comfort offered by the well-appointed flats more than made up for any minor inconvenience like the sheer vastness!

Furthermore , how can I forget to mention Flury's. The wide frontage on Park Street with its huge glass windows was definitely a showpiece of Stephen Court. Strong-willed was the pedestrian who, while walking along the pavement, could resist looking in through these windows to mentally savour the wares on display.

I was introduced to this sweet-toothed gourmet's paradise by my father way back in the '50s. Since then, as far as I can remember, all our confectioneries were bought from this place. Despite its having changed hands several times from the days that a Swiss/Italian gentleman called Mr. Flury set up shop long before independence, Flury's has managed to maintain the standards pretty well, although it may have lost the tag of the best confectioner in India, which it certainly was for a long time. However,the memories of Flury's cakes, pastries, patties and other confected delights are abiding. Perhaps the biggest tribute to the attractions of Flury's was paid by the outstation air travellers who invariably made a pit-stop at this holiest of holies to pick up a box or two of goodies en route to the airport and home, in distant Delhi or Madras or Bombay of the 6os and 70s!

Flury's was also the only restaurant of repute which served breakfast - a famously delicious one, by the way - from early in the morning. When our children were small, a holiday in Kolkata always included a trip to the zoo at 6.00 in the morning followed by breakfast at Flury's. What memories! I can still remember the taste of eggs and bacon, ham sandwiches,chicken patties, the ubiquitous baked beans on toast. And the heady, rich aroma of fresh coffee!

In more recent times, Music World has become a regular stop for me every time I visit Kolkata. This is definitely the new attraction of Stephen Court where people of all ages come in search of the latest music (or films) and the young come in droves for deliciously clandestine trysts with their romantic destinies! Let me assure you readers that my visits to Music World are purely for the pleasures of music and films!

For several decades, Peter Cat restaurant has also been a major attraction of Stephen Court. In fact, together with Flury's and the Silver Grill, Peter Cat forms a trinity of restaurants which Stephen Court alone offers on Kolkata's Food Street. I am not sure but one or two more eateries may have opened in this building by now!

So, it is quite easy to understand how Stephen Court has been for many years, and still is, woven into the fabric of a Kolkatan's life. I certainly hope that it continues to remain so for years to come. I hope that greedy commercialism does not endanger its enviable position in a citizen's heart. The recent devastating fire which reduced the top three floors to rubble, is not only a reminder of how things go wrong at the behest of a few unscrupulous profiteers who care nothing about people's lives in pursuit of filthy lucre, it is also a wake up call for the residents and the authorities to their responsibility towards protection of life and property in the future.

Above all it must be the responsibility of someone , somewhere to ensure that a wonderful part of a Kolkatan's life, as presented by the multiple attractions of Stephen Court, is not taken away by such callousness.

As the period of Lent slowly comes to an end, I sincerely hope that Flury's will once again fill the hearts and minds of the people with their offerings of the famous hot-cross buns and Easter eggs. I am sure the Kolkatan will, as usual, throng Park Street, Stephen Court and Flury's for their share of this annual fare! Happy Easter, dear reader.

Live to work?

The other day, it so happened, we were comfortably ensconced (strictly by invitation to a wedding!) in a 5-star hotel in Goa. It was morning and we were at breakfast in the hotel's coffee shop. All of a sudden a bit of someone else's conversation hit my ears and the piece of egg-on-toast-with-bacon halted in mid-air en route my eagerly expectant mouth. What the person in question quipped was that the whole ambience of that moment, including the ritual of breakfast, fondly reminded him of his working days.

It was quite an innocuous staement by itself. However, to me it seemed absurd that the sylvan surroundings, coupled with the company of friends and merry makers, should remind one of work days of the past. Of course I realised what the person had meant. In his corporate days he used to travel around the country and would put up at 5-star hotels. He was obviously reminded of that. Still, this bit of an offering set me thinking and reinforced my theory that this friend of mine (he shall remain un-named), like so many others in his position had perhaps, sacrificed a lot in life at the altar of career promotion. I used to travel a lot also. I definitely enjoyed the stays in some beautiful hotels. But I cannot say that I enjoyed the good things in life because they reminded me of my working days!

Perhaps, this is what plagues a lot of us in the corporate world. Trite as it may sound, a dangerously large number of people are more and more "living to work rather than working to live." What I mean is that people are increasingly considering their work and its appendages to be their badges of identity. We brand people ( just as much as we brand ourselves) according to their calling and station instead of discovering their intrinsic worth as human beings; as persons. We describe people as "doing well" if he can present an impressive corporate identity - does not matter how he has acquired it! Woebetide a person who is unfortunate enough to be a proficient musician, sportsperson, a performing artiste, an academic, a literateur, unless of course he is in the rarefied atmosphere of the Rehmans, Tendulkars, SRKs, Sens and Seths.

So, when corporate grandeur is the lodestar of one's life, it is but natural that everything outside the environs of the office assumes secondary importance. People often think work, live work, dream work and even socialise only for work. And let me tell you, the majority of these people would point a finger at me and ridicule me for airing my "typically" irreverent view of work culture. The question is - why does this happen? Is it peer pressure? Is it the unimaginable importance of the job? Is it over work? Is it sheer incompetence? Is it a fashion statement to appear very busy at all times? Is it living up to the dubious "ideals" set by the media through that brainless yet overused expression - "work hard, party hard"? Or is it that typically human (read Indian!) habit of sycophancy? The answer, perhaps, lies in a combination of these factors for I have actually encountered, on a regular basis, all of them in the course of my corporate years.

This obssession with work, at times, is bizarre and ridiculous. As a junior manager in the Accounts Department, fresh from completing my 120 weeks of management training, I was in the company of the departmental manager and his two assistants from the middle management cadre. (In fact, one of them was the topic of one of my earlier posts about Canada and Czechoslovakia - remember?) The work-day used to begin at 7.00am and end officially at 5.30pm. To me this was long enough a period to complete the day's allocated work, although one will be hard-pressed to find a more tedious and boring job than Accounts! Anyway, I could leave office latest by 5.45pm. the extra 15 mins being an allowance to enable the stampede of homeward-bound workmen to finish as I had no desire to be caught running out with them!

My senior colleagues saw things differently. My practice of leaving by 5.45pm was viewed as a sign of a callous attitude towards work and, apparently, it reflected a total absence of seriousness on my part. However, that is not the story in this post. It is a story of the three venerable colleagues who displayed their "habit of hard work", their "commitment to the job", their "loyalty to the organization", blah blah, blah blah, by leaving for the canteen (not home!) at 5.45pm and refreshing themselves with tea/coffee and snacks for half an hour or so.. They would then head back to their desks and call it a day earliest by 10.00pm! This routine would be folowed de riguour every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, which were holidays! However, they would relent a bit on Sundays and go home by 2.00pm, at times! Also, they would permit themselves the luxury of relaxing a bit over the weekends by going to office at 8.00am instead of 7.00am! Yes, reader, this is absolutely true.

"The 3 _ _ _ _ _ s" did this year after year. They had no family life and, of course, no social life.So much so, many like me never got to meet their wives or children, although we all lived in the company's estate for managers. I often wondered as to what were they trying to achieve in life. In fact, one of them, most tragically, died the day after his retirement. He had no time for the family during his working life and he certainly did not have it post-retirement. His world, like those of his other two cohorts, comprised the office, the company, the reconciliation of bank statements, totting up the company's credits & debits, maintenance of various inventories, etc., etc., etc.

Years later, when I was in the company's Marketing Division, I had the misfortune to work with several bosses who would warm their office seats till around 10.00pm every day, including Saturdays! In fact, Saturdays became party time for this select band of sycophants. There was absolutely no work. The time was spent in partying, fraternising and politicking! The cascading effect of this "show of importance" was typical. Everybody, barring me, also stayed back late not because each one of them was perpetually inundated with work, but because their action would look good to the big boss and they would be classified as "hard-working". Needless to say, their shameless sycophancy took away every meningful thing from their family lives. One fallout of this was that a sizeable number of them would start affairs in office or with associates. In this instance too, the office and all it represented, became the raison d'etre of these "busy" corporate creatures.

In fact, I had researched deeply and come out with some astounding stats about the cost of needlessly keeping the office operational on Saturdays. After considering the expenses on electricity (generation and use), lunch and evening snacks, the morning and evening runs of the two pick-up vehicles, security, overtime payments, etc etc., the amount we spent worked out to lakhs of rupees per year which could easily be saved. I put all this in a report and placed it for implementation. I only managed to draw ridicule and accusation of corrupting the serious work culture of the office!

I have seen senior managers so caught up in the office rat race that they would regularly shun parties thrown by their friends in order to honour invitations from motley work associates whom the spouses had never even met! In single-mindedly promoting their own career these people lose the support of their family and friends and become lonely in the later years. They spend a lot of time with people who they would never come across again or who matter little in their lives but have no time for near and dear ones. For them they are always very busy, martyrs to the cause of self-grandeur and self importance. Pay-back is never far off. People have long memories and they wean themselves away from such self proclaimed CIPs sooner or later.

What I mean to say is that I wonder what is it that makes people so work-oriented or corporate-glory oriented that they miss out on the joys that life has to offer everyday? Is it because they are Johnny-come-lately people who get mesmerised by the razzmatazz of corporate lives? Or is it that they have no home lives worth the mention and ,therefore, immerse themselves in the murky waters of office life? Or is it purely and simply to impress the boss? Just look at the alarmingly large number of people who do not take their annual leave in order not to displease the boss!

Have you ever noticed that some folks are chronic late comers to parties? These people would consider it a compromise of their corporate importance if they arrived at any time before say 10.00pm! These unfortunate souls fear that early arrival would take away sustantially from their image of hot corporate honchos and would be a come-down in the eyes of their friends. To them it is prudent to be always "fashionably" late at such get-togethers. I know of people who deliberately come home late from office in order to protect their trumped up images of indispensable and hard-pressed hot-shot executives.

Whatever be the reason for letting one's office consume the quality hours, days, weeks, months and years of one's short life, it turns out quite counter-productive, in the end. As I had mentioned earlier we should work to live; work diligently to earn money in order to have a good life with our families and friends. Once we convert our search for money into our reason for living, we are in deep waters. After all, we must have the time and the occasion to spend the money we have earned so single-mindedly. Remember the stories of Mahmud of Ghazni?

I have never felt the need for extended working hours during the course of my career in the corporate world. And no one can say, not even "The 3 _ _ _ _ _s" that my work remained pending or behind hand for 38 years!! Of course, there were special occasions or emergencies when I have had to stay overnight in office. But those were emergencies, not routine days.

At the end of the day, people should be able to relax and treat the job as exactly what it is....a job. We all know and teach our children the adage "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". If that is so, then why the hell do we turn ourselves into "dull boys?" Who are we impressing or pleasing? How much happiness are we dispensing?

Finally, I cannot help but end as a lotos-eater and recall the immortal words of Lord Tennyson "......if death is the end of all, why should life all labour be?"

From Al's Diary....Is Canada In Europe?

Of late, for some reason or the other Canada has been central in our discussions at home.What we have been discussing is not relevant to this post. However, what they did is to bring Canada back to sharp focus in my mind, for all the wrong reasons!!

Long years ago (do I sound like Nehru?), Canada had featured in a piece of conversation between a fellow manager in our company and I. I realise that, after reading about it, you will refuse to believe what I have written and dismiss me as an old gas bag! Please be assured that this anecdote is just another gem from my collection of many hilarious experiences gathered in the course of my 31 years of association with Bata India Limited. By the way, I solemnly affirm the authenticity of the story.

It was a rainy day in 1975. The car park in front of the factory leading on to the reception area, was already under ankle-deep water. My concern was that the time was a few minutes short of 12 noon, at which hour the siren would sound and we would have to leave for lunch by wading through the water. The top-management team was also worried, although for different reasons. At any moment His Excellency, the Canadian High Commissioner to India, would arrive. In fact, because of the widespread rain, his mini-motorcade had already got hopelessly delayed. To add to the woes the factory had got completely inundated. A VVIP visit in those conditions was not the easiest thing to manage!

At about 5mins to noon, there was a warning call from the Gate Office to say that the High Commissioner's car was about to enter the factory. In those days I used to work in the Accounts Department of the company which was lodged in the Administrative Block occupying the entire frontage of the building. As the VVIP entered the premises, we, quite naturally, jostled for vantage positions near the windows to satisfy our zoological interest in him. Our Pay-roll Manager was next to me as we all tried to catch a glimpse of the Diplomat. It was this lucky configuration of peering individuals that gave rise to this gem of an experience I want to share with you.

The Pay-roll Manager was one of the veterans of the organization. He had worked himself up the ladder from the employee ranks and had finished up in the managerial grade through sheer hard work. Although he had mastered the art of pay-roll preparation, he, like his many other colleagues, was not the possessor of formal college degrees. As a result of this he and his ilk grudgingly considered us - the management trainee types - to be a little better informed than them, which was not very far from the truth, in any case.

And so it happened that on this rainy mid-day in Faridabad Mr. Pay-roll quietly asked me in Hindi as to which country this visiting " minister" belonged to. With an effort at maintaining a straight face I informed him that the visiting gentleman was not a minister but was in fact the High Commissioner for Canada to India. At this he wondered what could possibly be the latter's interest in a shoe factory. I commented that perhaps due to the fact that ours was a Canadian company he may have evinced some interest in seeing our operations and familiarising himself with Canadian business interests in India, especially since Mr. Thomas J. Bata, Chairman of the Board of the global Bata Shoe Organization, himself was the Chairman of the Canada India Business Convention also.

Mr. Pay-roll was puzzled. He had learnt from his predecessors that the founding father of our organization Mr. Thomas Bata had started operations in Zlin in Czechoslovakia back in 1894. He also knew that many of the original expatriate managers of Bata India had been Czechs. Besides this, he was also familiar with certain Czech words that are used till this day in the official company jargon. However, during his extended tenure with the company one fact that seemed to have by-passed him was that Mr. Thomas J. Bata had shifted operations of the global organization to Toronto at the onset of the Second World War after severing all ties with nations behind the "iron curtain", and that, as a result, ours was very much a Canadian organization!

To a simple mind, unnecessary complications are highly unwelcome. Mr. Pay-roll had grown with the organization knowing that it was Czechoslovakian in origin. and Czechoslovakian it had to stay.That was sacrosanct. All the talk of Canada - pronounced Kenarha - was so much bilge. Still, the introduction of this new "Canada" theme needed to be thought out. One realisation did strike him forcefully. That is why he turned towards me and wondered aloud - in Hindi - "So Canada is in Czrchoslovakia?"

Slow march to anarchy?

My cousin Ashoke Chatterjee (Ashokeda to us) was the Director of the National School of Design in Ahmedabad for a good many years. It was from him that I first heard of this premier institute, a long time ago. Since then, over the years, I have had the chance to meet a few ex-students of N.I.D. As only to be expected from its alumni, I find them to be highly talented people, committed towards value-addition to the community and society.

Hence, I wonder what made Utsav Sharma, a product of this august institute, take it upon himself to physically attack the ex-DGP Rathore of the notorious Ruchika molestation case? The point is, Utsav is neither a relative nor a friend of Ruchika or the Girotra family! SPS Rathore may have got away with a six-month jail sentence for his various offences of molestation, intimidation, abetment to suicide, abuse of official police powers to ruin a family, etc. - and that too after two decades- but the people have not been satisfied by the delay in justice and quantum of punishment meted out to this villain. Utsav Sharma happens to be a part of this outraged population, albeit more proactive with his views and beliefs than the others. Obviously, he took it upon himself to strike a blow for justice, where no justice was perceived to have been delivered!

It is not my intention to hold a brief for Utsav. Not at all. But this whole incident does fan the fear in me....are we headed for anarchy? Looking around, one has to merely take stock of the state of governance in the much vaunted democracy called India, to realise that governance exists more by accident than design. Hence my fears of the age of vigilantism and eventual anarchy.

Governments do not or cannot seem to prevent crime and violence. The warnings of our intelligence services about terrorists and terrorist threats, if at all forthcoming, are casually dealt with. Meaningful information on potential threats appear to come from foreign powers. The process of dispensation of justice for the common man is so effete, corruption-ridden and slow that it ceases to hold any meaning in the common man's life.

In this context I recall the immortal words of Edmund Burke, "for evil to flourish, good people have to do nothing and evil shall flourish!" Our courts and the legal system do not act when they should. Our administration does not administer when it should. Our police forces follow their own agenda without a thought for the grievances of the public. Our politicians are too busy trying to garner votes and seize seats of power to douse the flames of rebellion amongst the masses. Look at the outcome of the crimes against people like the Babri Masjid, the '84 anti-Sikh riots,the Gujrat riots, the rise and rise of the so called Maoists who have brought so many administrations to their knees! Yet, we get a lot of words and no action. Look at the justice system. Look at Nithari, the Aarushi case and now the Rathore case. It comes through quite clearly that the rot in our systems places influential people above the law. It also comes through very clearly that in this much tom-tommed democracy politics is more important than law and order. For, it is politics that prevents the administration from nipping the viciousness of the Sena and MNS in the bud in Mumbai.

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. Similarly, governance also abhors a vacuum. Where the administration abdicades its right to govern and dispense justice, for whatever reason, people will sooner or later assume the roles of the administrators.One does not have to go far. One look at the traffic management in Delhi should be suficient to drive home this point. Motorists themselves are handing out justice more and more with their fists, feet, knives and guns while the police remain helpless to come to the aid of the wronged party. The vacuum in policing has brought about such a situation, which, to say the least, has assumed alarming proportions.

So when SPS Rathore is let off practically scot-free for his heinous crimes it is not surprising that an individual decides to fill the void left by the system. This is truly alarming. When will the administrators wake up? Will it be when the maoists rule the roost in a good part of the country or will it be when the MNS and the Sena drive away sane and good people from Mumbai. Will their be someone or some institution to ensure that criminals are caught and punished? Or will we see thousands of Utsavs all over the country taking the law into their own hands in the interest of perceived justice? In other words, are we slowly, but surely, headed for utter lawlessness and anarchy?

This is my fear. I earnestly hope I am wrong.

2010 A.D.

The first relationship of 2010 I establish with my blog is only in the month of February! Imagine! If you ask me for a genuine reason for this lapse, I will be "genuinely" hard pressed to find one. Was it because of the unprecedented bad weather during the whole of January which numbed my senses into a state of stupor? Was it due to a singular lack of things to "reflect" upon? Was it because of a sudden rush of lecture notes and presentations to prepare? Or was it a plain and simple case of laziness? Although I would be inclined to put my money on the last one, fairness demands that I plump for the possibility of a mixture of all these reasons (and more) that was responsible for my absence.
So, having done with the excuses, what do I have to say now....for 2010? May everybody's life (read my own!) be full of happiness, joy and prosperity? Trite! Very trite! But Yesssss! I could certainly do with a great deal of prosperity! But then, I had wished for it for the last 50 years! And look where I am! So, big deal!
So, what does it leave me with? Firstly, I do wish mental and physical "shanti" for all those dear to me including my whole family and the entire circle of friends, wherever in the world they may be.
Apart from that, I do wish that those bally extremists come to their senses and allow the world to go on without subjecting it to a perpetual barrage of big-bangs!
I wish that our planet would shrink unbelievably to enable me to visit and see the whole world without taxing the body, mind or the pocket!
I also wish that the peculiar phenomenon called consumer price index ( also known as prices to the lesser mortals like me) abandons its dogged defiance of the Newtonian theory of gravity and decides to come down , for a change!
And lastly, dare I wish that we the mere citizens of this mighty nation - the world's largest democracy - for once get at least a semblance of governance and political leadership?
It is your turn 2010 A.D.!

Time marches on!

" The hands of fate just won't wait as time marches on"! Thus go the words of an old song.
Well, 2009 has slid to an end and in retrospect,what do I remember the most from the happenings of the year?

Uppermost on my mind , of course, is the passing over of my sister in October. This was undeniably, the cruellest blow to me, quite devastating. However, since I have written about her earlier, let me move on. After all, time also marches on.

I had the opportunity to undergo the truly magnificent experience of a wedding on the beach during sunset in Goa. My school pal Amit's son decided to hitch his wagon to his star in this memorable way. As the bride and groom, dressesd in their resplendent wedding fineries, exchanged vows, the sun dipped low over the Arabian Sea to provide a perfect backdrop to a most romantic scenario. The soft breeze, the rhythmic chants of the priests, the fragrance of the twilight hours.........all seemed to mingle with one another to create an enchanting ambience. It was beautiful! The whole ceremony is firmly implanted in my mind. But trust me to mess up in some way! I forgot to carry my camera! Imagine! So, the only picture of that unforgettable experience is the one in my mind!

Another wonderful experience of 2009 was our holiday in Kasol. Of late, I had been carping about the fact that I had not been to the hills for a very long time. Well, here we were accompanying the Chaudhuris of Kolkata to this pristine pure hamlet nestled in the Parvati river valley in Himachal Pradesh. At an altitude of about 5000 ft Kasol was splendidly cool and a welcome escape from the muggy September days of Delhi.
The resort that we stayed in was built on a sort of promontory which overlooked a sheer drop to the gushing river down below. The living quarters were quite a bit set back from the edge, and therefore, they left a large open space for people to lounge in with only the hills and the constant roar of the river to keep them company.

It was on this open space that we had formed our favourite perch. Indeed, as I reflect on those days, we spent practically all the waking hours sitting on this deck and losing ourselves amidst the imposing, lofty green hills, the majestic snow-capped peaks, the songs of myriad birds frolicking in the woods and the constant soporfic call of the Parvati. We ate there al fresco, we drank there, we read books there and we regularly dozed there as well!
It really was a blissful hassle-free week that we spent. The only regeret is that the holiday could not be longer.Alas , how the good things in life are in perpetual short supply!

2009 was also the year when we lost a friend, a sister, a colleague's wife in Uma, Gautam Mitra's wife. To us, she was always Chhotu, never Uma. Kumi and I vividly remember the day when we were at a lunch hosted by Chhhordi at her East of Kailash house in the early eighties. It was during this lunch that the snap decision for Gautam to meet Chhotu was mooted. And it was from this lunch that the protagonists of this romantic liasion drove to my in-laws' house (they were firmly recognised as the real marriage brokers!) where Chhotu had been brought over to be "presented", so to say! So, that was where Swapan, Gautam's able deputy, stamped his seal of approval on the proposed wedding and, as they say, the rest is history!

Ironically, both Chhordi and Chhotu left this world in 2009! Over the years, the Mitras and us became really close friends which took us through almost 3 decades , including the carefree and eventful years in Faridabad between 1979 and 1986.

So, 2009 was really an year of mixed experiences for me. Naturally, at this juncture, I am hoping for a 2010 which will be loaded more in favour of the fortunate and less in favour of the unfortunate! But as the cliched phrase goes, man proposes and God disposes. So, I await my life's future experiences with open arms and an open mind. After all, que sera sera! Happy new Year!