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In the Park
For the past year, under the neem tree in the park
He sits from early morning to after dark.
This monsoon he turned all of twelve years old;
At first, a little scared, but now growing bold;
Minding his two year old baby brother
All day as his young, widowed mother
Cleans and scrubs in others’ homes for their food;
Eking out a precarious livelihood.
For, if they want the family roof over their head,
They need to go out and earn their bread
While his three little sisters slave and sweat
At home to be part of the family set.
All of them taken out of school:
Their sharp brains slowly turning to wool.
***********
His mother says, Ramu is his name:
Called after Lord Rama of stupendous fame.
Day after day in the neem’s cool shade,
Making friends with all the household servants and maids,
He’s learning to lash out, defend and abuse;
To pilfer and bully, to give a glib excuse.
For the past year Life’s been teaching him
A set of lessons both sharp and grim:
That there’s no one near or dear enough
Who’ll pull with you when the going gets tough;
That it’s each for himself: let the most aggressive win,
And softness or weakness is the deadliest sin;
That rules are for fools when Life is so fraught,
And a deed becomes a crime only if one is caught.
******************
He’s now a public menace, to his mother’s grief and shock;
Fresh offences each day, while the baby runs amok.
Today he’s under the neem again, with dislocated jaw,
Covered with welts and bruises, as they all beat him raw.
For the once-shy Ramu has learnt lessons untold;
And today he tried to molest a seven year-old.
She screamed loud and long: they all rallied around
And in their outrage, began to kick and pound.
He sits there glowering, glaring resentfully through his pain
As his mother is warned: this shouldn’t happen again.
She tries to bring home the enormity of his crime:
He says he’ll jolly well make sure he isn’t caught next time.
The Ramus in their millions, might be underage in name,
But grow fangs before time and are serpents all the same …
******************
The Super Salesman
Whenever I have to open the door to a salesperson or answer a telecall in the middle of a busy schedule, I try to remember grandma’s words: “They are doing a job most people avoid. Try not to be rude as a gesture of thanks for being able to earn money doing something you enjoy.” And so, I do my best to suppress irritation and decline the proffered treats, if not cordially, at least without being brusque.
And then, one sweltering June afternoon, the Super-Salesman happened!
He stood there on the doormat as I opened the door: a young boy in his late teens or early twenties with a thousand megawatt smile plastered to his sweat-soaked face, obviously fresh out of one of the sales institutes that have mushroomed all over the country over the last decade and a half.
“Good afternoon Ma’am. I’ve come from XYZ Bank — about the women’s card.”
“What ‘women’s card’?” I ask, all at sea.
“The one our telecaller told you about. She told you I’d be coming over today to get your application form filled!” he says reproachfully.
I motion him into a garden chair and switch on the fan. I remember the phonecall he’s alluding to, and remember, equally clearly, informing the telecaller that I was not interested in the offer.
“I told your telecaller not to send anyone over because I do not want a women’s card.”
“How can that be, Madam?” he demands aggressively. “She told me you had asked her to send me over. And I’ve travelled right across Delhi in this scorching heat! It’s taken me an hour and a half to get here!”
“I sympathise with you for your wasted trip,” I tell him kindly, “but your telecaller made a mistake. I told her clearly that I do not want your product and that she should NOT send anyone over.”
“That is not possible!” he blusters at me. “You are lying!”
“Excuse me?” I suppress my irritation and ask glacially.
“Don’t take that hi-fi tone with me … Ma’am!” he says with awful emphasis. “You people sit in your air-conditioned houses and think it’s a joke to make us go around all over the city in this heat at your whims. I’m telling you, this will not work with me. You HAVE to take this women’s card!”
I stare at him in disbelief for a moment, and then summon to my aid all the authority of my experience with college kids in my workshops.
“Listen bachche (kid),” I put him in his place. “Trying to browbeat me isn’t going to get you anywhere. And since you are so stuck on Truth and lies, ask your telecaller to play for you the recording of her conversation with me from yesterday … I believe ‘all your calls are recorded for internal audit and training purposes’, as they keep telling us?”
He looks deflated. I take pity on him and tell him to sit while I get him some cold water to drink. I come back with the water, to find him talking busily on his phone—presumably to the telecaller who sent him here on this wild goose chase. I recall a friend who is usually brusque with salespersons and telecallers. I can just hear her saying: “See, that’s what comes of being polite where politeness is uncalled for. When everyone else is downright rude to them, they think anyone who is polite is a soft touch and can be bullied into falling in with them. That telecaller would never have tried to pull this on you if you hadn’t been so polite”.
The young man turns around and accepts the water with a grateful smile. His whole personality seems to have changed completely. He thanks me politely and apologizes for the misunderstanding.
“Er… Ma’am,” he says hesitantly. “I have a small request …”
“I do NOT want you women’s card …”
“No, no! I understand that. It’s just that since I’ve come all this way in such weather, could you at least respond to one of our surveys, so that I have something to show for this trip?”
“Of course,” I assure him. “Give me the form and I’ll fill it.”
“Oh no, Ma’am. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll ask the questions and write your answers,” he says.
“All right,” I agree, and he proceeds to ask me a number of questions. They seem to be a little strange and unlike any survey I have ever come across, but I let that pass. When I refuse to answer personal questions, he does not press me. This done, he holds out the form to me and indicates a box at the bottom where I need to sign.
I’m perplexed. What kind of a survey form is this, that requires the signature of the respondent? I twitch the form from his reluctant hand and discover, to my wrath, that it is an application form for his damn women’s card!
“Just give me a minute while I call the police,” I tell him coldly.
He looks blank.
“You have filled out this application form on my behalf under false pretences and were trying to get it signed fraudulently. I don’t know what the exact penalty for this kind of fraud is, but let’s find out!”
“Hey Ma’am!” he calls out, alarmed, as I turn towards the house. “We have to do all this to sell our products. Otherwise how will we make a living?”
“By cheating and fraud?”
“Oh! What’s the use? You rich people can’t understand. What is one card more or less to you? But for me, it’s another commission. Just forget it!”
And snatching the form from my hand, he walks away as fast as his legs can carry him!
The Courier
The doorbell has rung seven times as I cross the expanse of fifty feet from my room to the front door. Does the idiot with the buzzer-happy finger think I have wings? Or a flunkey exclusively to answer the doorbell in a matter of seconds?
“I’m coming,” I snap as the chimes sound for the eighth time.
”What relation are you to XYZ?” calls out an impatient young voice from the gate, even as I open the front door.
“What?”
“I’m asking what relation you are to XYZ,” repeats the young man on the bicycle, his tone that of one addressing a mental retard.
“Wife,” I reply, affronted.
He scribbles something on a piece of paper, and as I reach the gate, hands me a couriered package addressed to hubby.
“Hold on!” I check him as he turns his bicycle to leave. “Aren’t you supposed to get the acknowledgement document signed when you deliver a package?”
“I’ve done it,” he waves the paper at me and starts to cycle away.
And all of it suddenly falls into place—the fifty thousand rupee cheque found under the construction debris when the drawing room flooring was being replaced, which my client claimed (in response to indignant questioning), had been sent by courier; the sodden fixed deposit receipt (we’d been away and it had rained), for which hubby had hauled the bank officials over the coals; a neighbour’s legal documents carelessly thrown into our backyard—it all made complete sense now. And here was a member of the fraternity of devious delivery boys, getting away right under my nose.
“Stop right there!” I yell with at least ten years worth of frustration over misdelivered documents in my voice.
The miscreant freezes in his tracks, and turns around, eyeing me as he would a sabre-toothed tiger, albeit with a touch of ‘what now?’
“How dare you sign my name on the acknowledgement document?”
“Well, you were taking a long time coming …” he starts.
“Don’t be ridiculous! People can’t fly on wings to answer the doorbell. You’re supposed to wait for a reasonable amount of time after ringing the bell.”
“Well, ma’am, people can take a long time to answer the doorbell,” he explains. “They might be doing something they can’t stop at once: they might be cooking, or in the loo, or taking a bath, or putting a baby to sleep. Or they might be old and need a long, long time to answer the bell. You can’t expect us to wait around all day at each house.”
“And that makes it all right for you to sign their names and throw their couriered packages into their yards and go away?”
He simply stares at me. He can’t understand what I’m trying to say.
“You either need to wait for the doorbell to be answered and get the acknowledgement document signed by the receiver, or go away without delivering the package,” I explain to him. “Signing someone else’s name is a punishable offense; you could even go to jail for it,” I add for good measure.
He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “But then they’ll send us again to deliver the package another day!” he protests. “Besides, most courier guys do it. In fact, people tell us to do it because it is such a bother answering doorbells all the time, and most courier packages contain advertisements and other such nonsense anyway. This way, everyone is happy. You get your stuff without botheration and we don’t have to wait. And who cares about the signatures anyway?”
I’m reminded of Chekov’s ‘The Malefactor’ that we read as part of our course curriculum in Standard Nine. The boy, just like the protagonist of the story, is unable to make the switch from his reality to mine. I try again, in terms that he might be able to understand:
“Why do you think people send stuff by courier and not by normal post?”
“Oh! That’s because they want to show how rich they are. Sending stuff by post is cheap”.
Madness at Midnight!
I wake up sweating and swatting (mosquitoes) in the middle of the night. Hubby is swearing under his breath, mindful of the 11 year-old making irritated noises from her bed at the other end of the room.
A power cut on a sweltering July night. I’d been sleeping like the dead after an especially exhausting day, but to judge by the vibes of irritation eddying about in the pitch dark, and from my own drenched and mosquito-bitten condition, the power must have been out for some time.
“About one hour,” growls hubby.
“What do they say at NDPL?”
“No idea … haven’t called!”
“Why not?” I’m indignant. “Am I the only one who can call up and lodge a power cut complaint in this house?”
“Yes, because the number is saved in your phone and I didn’t fancy groping all over the house in the dark for it,” he says unanswerably.
“And whatever happened to the inverter?” I shrill. “At least the fans and light bulbs should be working!’
“The batteries dried up, remember? And you were out every day this week, so there was no one to get them serviced,” he reminds me.
Oh! So now it’s my fault! Typical!
“My night’s rest is ruined!” wails kiddo. “How will I ever wake up in time for school tomorrow?”
“Don’t even start!” I snub her. “You cannot stay home from school tomorrow.”
“Oh, but …”
“No buts … you are old enough to be able to do with a little less sleep for one day.”
As she subsides, muttering, I grumpily retrieve my phone from its nightly resting place under my pillow (for the morning alarm, as hubby should very well have known) and ring up NDPL.
“Good-Evening- NDPL- ‘XYZ’-here-How-may-I-help-you?” rattles off the voice at the other end, without break and without expression.
“I need to lodge a power cut complaint for ABC Colony, PQR Zone, New Delhi, India.” The process is outsourced now, so the call center guy needs to know the precise geographical location. And although I was told that the call center is at the other end of the city, it is better to play safe and provide complete information.
“Which part of ABC Colony are you calling from?”
Suppressing the urge to say, “the part between its ears”, I hold on to my patience and reply, “I’m calling from house no. 123, the residence of Mr. Goyal.”
“What is your exact location?” comes the next question and patience flies out of the window.
“Talk sense!” I snap. “I’ve told you the number of the house, the name of its owner, the colony, zone, city and country. What more do you want to know—the location of the room I’m calling from?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience, Ma’am,” the BPO operator reverts to the standard fallback.
“May I know your K number?” comes the next query.
“My WHAT?”
“K number—the 10 digit number on the top left corner of your electricity bill …”
“Why in heaven’s name do you need the K number?” I ask, amazed.
“Our system can track you and lodge your complaint only by your K number,” comes the deadpan reply.
I’m speechless.
“Then why were you badgering me about the minutae of my location?”
“What’s the problem?” asks hubby.
“They want our K number to lodge our complaint!”
Hubby takes the phone from my hand and says with awful patience: “Listen mister, it’s past midnight and pitch dark. The 10 digit K number is not something you remember off-hand. You have our name, address and phone number. Surely your system can register our complaint on the basis of these details?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience, Sir,” parrots the operator. “Your complaint cannot be lodged without your K number.”
Hubby disconnects the phone in dudgeon, muttering, “Go to hell!”
Half an hour elapses. The heat, humidity and mosquitos are getting more and more unbearable by the minute. I get up, cursing, switch on the flashlight in the phone, stumble over to the chest of drawers and scrabble around for an electricity bill. Call up NDPL again.
“Good-Evening- NDPL- ‘XYZ’-here- How-may-I-help-you?”
“I’m calling from house no. 123, Mr. Goyal’s residence in ABC Colony, PQR Zone, New Delhi, India. I need to lodge a power cut complaint and our K number is ———-,” I say triumphantly.
“How long has the power been out at your place?”
“More than an hour and a half!”
But if I thought I had cracked the NDPL complaint system, I had another think coming.
“Is it just your place, or the whole colony?”
“Now, how the hell am I supposed to know that in the middle of the night?” I ask in exasperation. “Conduct a door-to-door survey?”
“NOW what do they want to know?” asks hubby resignedly.
“Whether the power is out at just our place or in the whole colony!”
Hubby takes over the phone.
“Mister, you have been provided all the details you need to lodge a power cut complaint, including the K number. Now please register our complaint and let us know the complaint serial number,” he instructs in his Senior MNC Manager voice. It apparently cuts no ice with the programmed automaton on the other end of the line.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, Sir, but …”
“DON’T KEEP APOLOGIZING,” bellows hubby, past patience now. “JUST REGISTER THE COMPLAINT SO THAT SOMEONE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”
The instruction to ‘DO SOMEHTING’ is clearly not part of the automaton’s programming. It gets confused and promptly disconnects the line! We try again … and again … but the receiver is off the hook!
Paradise on the Pavement
Kitaab Bazaar or the Patri (pavement) Book Market in Darya Ganj, in the walled city of Old Delhi, is an institution in its own right. The pavements of this oldest commercial hub of the Capital, which bustles with activity from Monday to Saturday, continue to be the venue of one of the largest known markets for used books every Sunday for the past 50 years and more. The market stretches along the pavements of the spine of Darya Ganj, Netaji Subhash Marg, for more than a kilometer, from Delhi Gate to the Iron Bridge. It houses more than 200 bookstalls every Sunday and attracts about 25,000 devotees on a normal business day, and is as much a part of the city’s identity as Paranthe Wali Gali, Kinari Bazaar, or indeed, India Gate, Red Fort, Parliament House or the Rashtrapati Bhawan.For the Capital’s bibliophiles—indeed, bibliomaniacs—who haunt the hallowed pavements of Darya Ganj compulsively every week, missing their ‘Sunday’ is a major catastrophe, and there abound tales of domestic strife and family feuds that have arisen around their obduracy over it. The tales seem exaggerated, as they did to me before I became a part of it, but what happened on that first Sunday beguiled me into the cult of the Kitaab Bazaar fanatics, which I remain to this day.
My first impression of Kitaab Bazaar was that of an infinite ocean of books as far as the eye could see. I was first lured there at the age of 19 by the prospect of being able to indulge in my passion for buying books at prices that would not strain my college allowance. Regulars to the bazaar proudly declare that one may find any book in the English or Hindi language that has ever been published in any part of the world. And indeed, the place seemed like heaven to me on that first Sunday when I was initiated into the fellowship of Delhi’s book lovers.
Having been told that, (a) the place was the Mecca of book lovers, and (b) that it was advisable to reach there in the early hours before the hordes rushed in, one winter Sunday in my 20th year found me confronting the vacant pavements of Netaji Subhash Marg at 8.15 in the morning, waiting for the appearance of a bazaar that officially opens at 9 am and goes on till 9 pm.
I had not long to wait, for by 8.30 am, the bookseller with their stacks and stacks of books started arriving and unpacking their wares, and proceeded before my fascinated eyes, to transform that bare stretch of pavement into my notion of paradise!
Finding myself almost the only customer at that hour, I prepared to browse to my heart’s content, and soon realized that the claim of being able to find there any book in English or Hindi that has been published anywhere in the world was no idle boast! The sheer number and volumes of books of every shape, colour, size and subject was overwhelming, to say the least.
Forgotten friends would turn up in different clothes (covers), and just as I would reach out for them delightedly, some tantalizing newcomer would beckon invitingly. And very soon I was in the grip of a bibliomanic frenzy—much like an alcoholic running amok in a well-stocked cellar!
Grabbing greedily at Agatha Christie whodunits; browsing reverentially through Tolstoy’s unabridged War and Peace (and then, looking incredulously at the unbelievable price, hastily buying and stowing away the hefty volume in a polybag); augmenting Dad’s collection of Wodehouse humour back home with four well-chosen gems; even finding some items that had been missing from my childhood collection of Enid Blyton series—I was soon staggering around, weighed down by the unbelievable finds at unbelievable prices.
My saner self told me that it was sheer idiocy to go further down the market carrying a donkey-load of books, when I could very well do this another Sunday—actually, every Sunday, if I so desired (and I have been doing it most Sundays that I can manage). Common sense told me that I was already chin deep in trouble, as I now had the task of getting this load of more than 20 books back home, which was a round 20 kilometers away, and that too by DTC bus—the alternative was to blow up on the fare of an auto rickshaw all that I had saved on the books!
However, insanity, my guiding light for the day, egged me on to a final bookstall, and there the miracle happened! Browsing as usual, I suddenly saw a very familiar and popular book on childcare, the sight of which made my heart skip a beat. This was a used copy of an out-of-print book that had been my mother’s parenting bible.
I had lent the book two years ago to a friend whose sister had been expecting her first baby and was desperate for ‘some good literature’ on the subject. The friend had left Delhi with her family about six months after the incident, without bothering to return the book, and I had been dreading the day when Mom would inevitably miss the book amidst the hundreds of books in the bookshelves at home.
Now was my chance to replace the book without her noticing … after all, she was hardly ever likely to want to open it again, since all three of us were grown up. I rested the bulging bags of my purchases on the ground and reached out for the book. It felt absurdly familiar in my hands. And opening it at the cover page I found Mom’s name scrawled across the top in her own handwriting! Madam’s family had obviously ‘disposed of’ unwanted items before moving and Mom’s book had found its way back home via the Kitaab Bazaar.
So, now I am a firm adherent of the bazaar, and never again will I doubt that one can, indeed find here ANY book in English or Hindi published anywhere in the world!
At Random 