Keeping the Score
posted on Unboxed Writers <www.unboxedwriters.com>
Loud noises in the house at seven in the morning, reminiscent of a cow being sick. I look around, irritated. It’s that horrible ringtone on Ankit’s mobile phone. The one he refuses to change despite all entreaties because it is so distinctive and cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. This time, however, the joke’s on him. He hasn’t a hope in hell that I won’t recognise the sound, or trace it to the pocket of his school uniform trousers.
I command, “Leave your phone at home!”
He entreats, “But mom…”
“No buts, Ankit! You only got the phone so that you could stay in touch with home when you’re out with friends or at tennis and music classes. And anyway, students aren’t allowed mobile phones at your school.”
“But mom … Have you forgotten that India is playing in the World Cup today?’ he asks incredulously and adds with immense patience, “How can I go without knowing the score all through the day?”
“And have you forgotten that you have your Math exam today?” I remind him with surpassing patience.
“No mom, I haven’t forgotten,” he grins. “I promise to switch off my phone when I enter the exam hall,” he assures me and edges towards the front door.
“Wait,” I persist, “It’s not about switching your phone off, it’s about breaking the school rules !”
“Grow up, mom!’ he expostulates, “Almost everybody’s carrying a mobile or an i-pad to keep track of the match scores. The teachers know it too, and turn a blind eye.”
“What?”
“Yeah … well, the alternative would be that they’d be pestered for scores all day long, because they, of course, have their phones with them. So …”
I roll my eyes heavenwards and he reacts, “I guess it’s hard for you to understand. There were no mobile phones when you were in school. You had no option. We do.” He pats my shoulder patronizingly, and leaves for school without noticing the wistful smile on my face. Little does he know that though technology changes, the typically Indian longing to know cricket scores, does not.
Flash back. 1987. Reliance Cup in India. I was in high school like Ankit and no, we didn’t have mobile phones or i-pads, but we did keep track of the match scores in school. We had mini-transistors. With earphones!
Ours was the ‘studious’, shareef section, neck deep into ED (Engineering Drawing)—not like the Arts and Commerce boys, who were almost ‘expected’ to do everything that was prohibited. The achchha bachchas in ED studied hard and abjured all outlawed pursuits. However, the lure of cricket score updates at the World Cup, especially on days when India was playing, proved too much of a temptation, even for us.
Five boys in the 50-strong class managed to get the mini-transistors flooding the market just then, along with the earphones. A lot of time was spent in practising poses. The little blue contraption would be tucked away secretively in the trouser pocket, the shirt would be worn sloppily, tails hanging out to conceal the earphone wire that was to crawl beneath the shirt and up the torso, to emerge above the collar, right next to the ear. The adventurous ones rehearsed sitting at their desks with their heads supported by their left hand (which effectively covered the earphone), while writing busily with their right hand and faking intense concentration!
All was going well and the five enterprising volunteers would write down updates on slips of paper and pass them around periodically. If the teachers knew what was going on (and how could they not?) they possibly had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and so were looking the other way. Also, it was noticeable that most teachers would vanish into the Principal’s office in their free time, and come out discussing the match in hushed tones.
And then came the fateful day when India played against New Zealand—a day that was to go down in the annals of cricketing history and become a red letter day for every Indian—a day that our class never forgot, albeit for slightly different reasons.
It was Math class and we were being tested on Differential Calculus (how sadistic can you get!). Anand sir, better known by the affectionate sobriquet of ‘Baby Elephant’, prowled the aisles between the desks with enormous majesty, casting critical glances at sundry notebooks, muttering at intervals: “not bad,” “good,” or “moron!”
It happened just as he was passing Aniket, one of the class toppers and his personal favourite.
“HAT TRICK!” yelled the model student, jumping up from his desk and punching the air euphorically.
“YAY!” roared the class, forgetting itself for an instant. Then followed, pin drop silence.
“Hat trick? Whose?” this from Anand sir. The class stared speechlessly at him.
“Tell me who made a hat trick!” he demanded. Some of the girls giggled.
“Chetan Sharma, sir,” answered his favourite hesitantly. The class held its breath, not knowing what was coming next. Anand sir suddenly remembered where he was.
“You good-for-nothing! Hand over that contraption at once, and get on with your test … and God help you if you perform badly!” The transistor was duly handed over to him. In a further effort to retrieve his lost dignity, he growled: “I’m letting you off because it’s your first offence. Do it again and you’ll end up in the Principal’s office.”
“And what could be better than that?” muttered a wise guy from the back of the class; “he’ll get to see the match live instead of just listening to the commentary!”
Aniket as it turned out was not so lucky. According to reliable sources however, Anand sir was later sighted in the staff room, with his ear glued to Aniket’s transistor!
**************************************************************************
Parantha Supreme
Published in Sunday Deccan Herald 9th August 2010
For lovers of Indian food, although Mughlai would be the actual equivalent of gourmet cuisine, the ubiquitous north Indian Parantha (stuffed flat bread), has a place second to none. And any mention of parantha naturally leads to the Paranthe Wali Gali or the ‘Parantha Lane’ in Old Delhi—home to the world’s most delicious, mouth-watering, perfectly browned paranthas!
Paranthe Wali Gali is perhaps the only lane in the world to be named after a food item, and the Parantha is perhaps the only food in the world to have an entire lane named after it. Paranthe Wali Gaali is infact a narrow lane off the road that runs parallel to the Chandni Chowk Metro and has been a popular culinary destination for nearly a century and a half, numbering among its clientele, many celebrities from various arenas, including politics, media, as well as the glitterati of Bollywood (being the birth place of cine idol Akshay Kumar).
At the mouth of the lane stands Kanwarji, the 100 year old sweet
shop whose delicacies like sohan halwa and dalbiji mixture are bywords in the homes of native Delhiites to this day. The gali itself, with its jostling crowds, bicycles, and narrow-fronted shops far below the road level, has the ambience of a period drama.
In the time of the Mughal emperors, the Gali was known as Dariba Kalan or ‘Mini Dariba’ and was a popular destination for clothes and jewellery shopping. It was only in 1911 when the lane, having become home to about 16 shops turning out the world’s most succulent paranthas, and attracting both commoners and celebrities from far and wide, was rechristened Paranthe Wali Gali.
The first impression of the Gali is still that of a bustling, narrow by-lane lined with shops selling sarees, jewellery and thousands of varieties of kinari—decorative traditional laces and piping for garments and traditional handicrafts. Penetrating deeper into the lane, however, one experiences an onslaught of mouth-watering aromas on one’s nostrils, as the soul-stirring sizzle of the world’s most sumptuous paranthas being fried in pure desi ghee in deep, curved griddles by some of the master chefs in Indian cuisine assails one’s senses.
The paranthas here are unlike any others. Lovingly prepared by chefs hailing from families with generations of culinary expertise in their genes, each parantha is a masterpiece in its own right. With the finest of ingredients and the choicest stuffings, and served with potato and cottage cheese gravy, pickle and sweet-and-sour pumpkin, these paranthas make for a sublime gastronomical experience.
No wonder then, that despite the original 16 shops having dwindled to four, the gali remains a popular hang-out in Old Delhi.
Apart from the tourists and celebrities it attracts, the Paranthe Wali Gali is also an everyday haunt of many of the residents of Old Delhi —a popular venue for working brunches and lunches, as well as a favourite dating place for youngsters. Many a deal has been finalised over these paranthas, and many a proposal accepted (or rejected, as the case may be!), as habitués continue to throng the parantha shops here.
“Our regular customers cannot bear to eat their breakfast anywhere else,” proudly claim the shop-owners here. The customers agree. “Tasting the paranthas here is like a tiger tasting human blood,” pronounces one, perhaps not very felicitously, sending all those present into fits of laughter. “I mean,” he smiles, “you get one taste, and you are compelled to come back for more …”
“It’s a swell place to bring your date,” confides a youngster who has been enjoying a plate of rabdi parantha with his girlfriend. “It has so much going for it: it’s world famous, so your girl is impressed; the food is out of this world; the prices are so reasonable—what more can a guy ask for?”
It all started in 1872, when Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan, scion of a family of royal chefs in Bhadawali, Madhya Pradesh, who had relocated to take up agriculture near Agra due to the dacoit menace in the area, was impelled by a hankering to revisit his culinary roots, to set up a parantha shop in this lane. And the rest, as they say, is history.
People whose families have lived in Chandni Chowk for generations now narrate how, six generations ago, Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan’s paranthas worked their magic on the palates of Old Delhi, making rapid inroads into the traditional poori-kachori territory. Soon his parantha joint had more business than he could possibly handle, and more and more of his family followed him into the greener pastures of Chandni Chowk, eventually creating a gastronomic empire of 16 parantha joints!
The food served by these shops is strictly vegetarian or ‘Vaishnav’, without even garlic or onions! The first shop started out in 1872 by serving four types of paranthas: potato, dal (cooked lentils), besan(gram flour) and methi(fenugreek leaves). Today these shops serve paranthas with 25 different types of stuffings, including exotic ones such as dry fruits and rabri, as well as improbable-sounding ones like tomato and karela (bitter gourd)—you name it, they have it!
Post-independence, the shops of the Gali were patronised by political bigwigs like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Behari Bajpayee. The oldest shop, started by Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan himself, proudly displays framed photographs of those golden days.
The 1980s witnessed a drop in the fortunes of the Gali, with a number of shops being either sold, or given over to other businesses such as dairy, sweets, or even fabrics.
Says Manish Sharma, the sixth generation descendant of Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan: “Families whose direct male lines became extinct gradually sold out their interests in the parantha business and moved out. Some others too wanted to do something else and left’.
He is, however, optimistic about the future: “At one point there were only three of the original shops left. But recently, another member from a branch of the family that had quit the parantha business has set up the fourth parantha shop in the Gali.”
Be that as it may, four shops or 16, the fame of Paranthe Wali Gali is an intrinsic part of India’s gastronomic lore and continues to tempt and to grow.
*********************************************************
The Joy of Many Selves
Published in Sunday Deccan Herald 24th October 2010
A senior, Indian executive working for a multi-national group in the US, and a highly sought after doctor in Delhi, dabble in creative and imaginative cooking over weekends to counter work stress. An actively working chartered accountant in his 60s loves the harmony created by crafts, and creates wall-hangings and crocheted table-covers for his drawing room. A retired engineer of robotics writes books on astrology. A young professional in a multinational telecom company paints and does Reiki healing in her spare time. A young doctor at Lady Harding Medical College is a highly accomplished Kathak dancer. A senior surgeon at Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, creates masterpieces in Origami. A successful business tycoon relaxes by doing riyaaz for Hindustani music. And a builder in my neighbourhood personally tends a flourishing kitchen garden on the terrace of his home.
Surprised? Surprise is a normal reaction under the circumstances, given most people’s predilection for categorising people into slots on the basis of preconceived ideas. For instance, a high-profile corporate professional is associated with serious pursuits—even her/his modes of relaxation or hobbies are somehow expected to be serious and earnest. Likewise, anyone perceived as ‘artistic’ or ‘creative’ by virtue of their everyday professional pursuits is expected to be creative in most areas, and somewhat lacking in a business sense.
The abundance of research about ‘right brained’ and ‘left brained’ people seems to support this school of thought. But is everybody really as unidimensional as research would have us believe? Let’s take a look at some prominent people who are living refutations of this.
Dancing to the beat of life
Currently a Member of the Planning Commission, Arun Maira, a widely acknowledged expert in leadership and organisation transformation, has a lively passion for dancing. A frequent speaker at international fora and a regular contributor to management and business journals, he is the author of several non-fiction books.
Maira has advised clients across a wide variety of industries and in many countries on issues of strategy and organisation. He has worked with clients in industries ranging from automobiles, steel, and oil, to pharmaceuticals. He has also advised governments and international agencies on leadership processes.
Dancing is however one of the greatest passions in the life of this highly esteemed technocrat. Says he, “I enjoy dancing very much. And I enjoy getting people to dance.” Relating a memorable incident that happened a few years ago, he says, “At the WEF Davos in 2004, when India was being celebrated, India was the host at the concluding dance-dinner. Several guests were there. We had Indian food, Indian stoles for the women, scarves for the men. And we had Shiamak Davar and his troupe to entertain the crowd. As they danced on stage, the President of CII, who knew my passion for dance, turned to me and said, “Arun, you have got to get the world to dance with India.” So, I asked a lady in a gown standing nearby, tapping her feet to the music, if she would like to dance. She did. Then I turned and asked another man and woman to join us, and then another, and soon the floor was alive with dancers swaying to Indian Bollywood rhythms. At which stage, Shiamak’s dancers came down from the stage to dance with the crowd. One of them wanted to dance with me. She said, “You should have been one of us!”
Even though dancing will never be his primary vocation, it will always be his primary passion and the reason behind the spring in his step as he goes through the business of life.
Passion for cinema
Apurv Nagpal, Managing Director Saregama, has gone beyond his corporate vocation to address his passion for cinema. An IIM-A graduate with an impressive list of former employers in the corporate world, Apurv writes reviews of Hindi films on his highly popular blog (www.apurvbollywood.blogspot.com) with its readership in 75 countries across six continents.
Asked what inspired him to take out time from his extremely demanding work schedule to write film reviews, he says, “I had always been a Bollywood fan, ever since childhood. But sometime around college days, I stopped watching Bollywood movies. I felt they had become too cheesy and formulaic. Then MBA happened and my work took me out of India and out of touch with Hindi movies. But when I returned to India after 11 years, I was pleasantly surprised to see a major change in Hindi movies—in terms of content, technology, music, everything, and I was hooked again. Plus, writing has always been something I am passionate about. So, for me writing film reviews became an ideal way to combine my passion for writing with my rediscovered passion for Bollywood.”
Asked about his current post as MD of Saregama, he says, “I have always been passionate about whatever work I have done, be it selling cigarettes, beer, soap, or whatever, but this time I am actually working with something I have always been passionate about.”
Poetic musings
Y S Rajan, distinguished professor at ISRO Headquarters, is the co-author of India 2020 along with former President of India, Dr Abdul Kalam. But within this scientist’s heart, pulses an abiding love for poetry.
Formerly Principal Advisor to CII, he has held a number of eminent positions including that of scientific advisor to Government of Punjab, Chairman of Board Council and Vice Chancellor of Punjab Technical University, Founder and Executive Director of TIFAC, etc. One of the foremost Indian experts on space science today, his contributions in shaping ISRO from its initial experimental phases into a major service delivery organisation have been remarkable.
While holding various positions of responsibility related to science and technology, he has shaped key policies and implemented several successful R&D projects but in addition to his achievements in science and technocracy, professor Rajan is also a highly acclaimed poet, with three published books of poetry in English and seven in Tamil.
Writing poetry for children is his special passion and he feels impelled to constantly spread his wings in as many directions as possible. “‘By the grace of God, I am able to foresee and perceive a lot of things and I like to make the best possible use of my talents apart from developing technologies for the betterment of all sections of society,” he says. His spirit of experimentation extends not only to his work with science, but also to his writing and his poetry. He shows with his life and work that dichotomies can co-exist and with a great deal of harmony.
Happy crafts
Kochi-based freelance writer and blogger, Resmi Jaimon loves to make soft toys in her spare time. “I made my first soft toy in April 2008,” she says and adds, “I am associated with Gurumahima, and was asked if I could come up with some craftwork. Since I had been for a while thinking about learning to making soft toys, I grabbed this opportunity. I got the idea of what materials to use from a book. Then, I worked on designs to create a soft toy. Fur being costly, I mostly use felt that helps in reducing the cost. I also make fancy pillows using felt and cotton dress material and make earrings and chains as well for many of Gurumahima’s shows.
Elaborating on the personal aspect of her hobby she says, “Making soft toys, helps me to be creative and take a break from the regular writing schedule. It also gives me the satisfaction of doing something for kids. I feel happy when I see their innocent faces brighten up at the sight of the colorful toys, I gift them.”
Aquamarine passions
Anand Iyer, a busy medical device scientist in Birmingham, Alabama finds bliss in creating beautiful aquariums. “I have put together about 10 to 12 aquariums of varying sizes and complexities, starting with a 10 gallon tank with plastic decorations to a 75 gallon tank with live plants, carbon dioxide infusion for the plants, etc,” he says and adds, “ I started my first aquarium in 1998 when I was single and in graduation school. I spend about two hours on it every two to three weeks, really minimal for a hobby that gives you fun literally round the clock. My kids love it, and it gets them interested in learning about eco-systems and responsibility of caring for pets in an easy way. I have also put together aquariums for friends and family members. I do the initial setup, and guide them to care for it. Anyone who has lounged at the end of a busy day in front of a peaceful aquarium can attest to the calming effects that only a school of peaceful colorful fish can bring,” he states.
So what is it that drives these people (and many, many others like them) to explore he myriad facets of their personalities? Is this diversification of pursuits a defense mechanism against what is called the ‘stress of modern life’? Or is it, finally, the liberation of the individual from the shackles of social typecasting?
“A bit of both, probably,” opines Upasana Pahwa, a chartered accountant who has now turned into a Vaastu practitioner. “I took a lot of flak, from both family and peers, when I started studying Vaastu, astrology, Reiki and other occult sciences 10 years ago. But now that I have a sound base of clients who swear by my advice, everyone has backed off. Of course, the trend in society too has changed in recent years, and more and more people are doing things that, some years ago, would have been considered strange.”
Nature has always been generous in endowing many talents but we choose to concentrate on just one facet, to the exclusion of all else. My own great grandfather, I am told, was considered ‘strange’ by the people around him because apart from being a successful legal practitioner in Lahore in the early 20th century, he also practiced healing through a combination of homeopathy and hypnotism.
Today, however, there is a definite shift in social consciousness, from specialisation to diversification and multifaceted people are unabashedly exploring various aspects of self-expression.
The Aquarian age of untrammeled individualism and self-realization has finally arrived.
**********************************************************************
At Random 