Wahe Guru and the Emmy Awards..

Ever since Puja married into a Sikh household, the sardarji joke has taken a bit of a backseat in the family. But this one, narrated by a sardar (like all good sardarji jokes), bears repeating.

A teacher asks her class how lizards could possibly walk `upside down’, ie how did they manage to scamper across ceilings without ever falling off. She asked them to find out the answer, and come up with it the next day.

This sardar kid goes home, and asks his dad. “Daarji, chipkali ulta kis trah chaldi ae?”

Papa sardar thinks long and hard. Then shakes his head ruefully.

“Puttar, ae ta Wahe Guru di mehar ae!”

By the will or the `blessings’ of the Wahe Guru! Indeed!!

Much the same sentiment washed over me as I watched the 66^th Emmy Awards show this morning. I had skipped my morning Sub Area routine to watch this, since we (Puja and me) follow most of the shows in contention.

What an utter waste of time! I might as well have seen last year’s show. Or the year before that. Or even the year before that. The same faces, carrying away the same awards. 

Consider.

For the fourth year in a row, I kid you not, Jim Parsons wins the `Best Actor in a Comedy’  Award for playing the nerd Sheldon Cooper in `Big Bang Theory’. Four consecutive years, are you serious? In a scathing indictment of the system, British Comedian and fellow nominee Ricky Gervais, went on to read out his own acceptance speech as well!

`Modern Family’, a moderately funny sitcom, wins the Best Comedy series for the third year running, leaving the entire cast of `Orange is the New Black’ flatfooted.   

The drama category is no better. While `Breaking Bad’ was excellent, it cannot be the best in all categories endlessly. Bryan Cranston at the cost of Mathew McConaughey or Woody Harrelson or Kevin Spacey? Paul Aaron at the cost of Peter Dinklage or Jon Voight? Anna Gunn yet again, and no Maggie Smith??

While I faithfully watch American soaps as they are aired, thanks to Torrentz, I have never ceased to be amazed at the brazenness (read sheer stupidty) of the American creative mind. 

Consider.

A simpleton called Peter Parker is bitten by a `radioactive’ spider (seriously?) and lo and behold, he can now scale vertical walls, and phweet phweet, in a jiffy toss out webbing from his palm, on which he can then swing from skyscraper to skyscraper in, where else, New York City!

A distant planet Krypton is all set to explode, so its ruler, the majestic Jor-El (played by Marlon Brando, no less) sends his toddler in a space capsule to planet Earth, where, hey presto, the kid finds he has super powers, while what’s left of Krypton is packed into a bottle!

Bruce Banner, a socially withdrawn and emotionally reserved physicist, physically transforms into a large green humanoid that possesses near limitless superhuman strength and great invulnerability, attributes that grow more potent the angrier he becomes! I kid you not!

Watch `The Avengers', which has these `super heroes' along with a guy who wields a huge hammer, and the delectable Scarlet Johanson as something or the other. Or the `Fantastic Four' which was ludicrous save for the eye candy that Jessica Alba provides.

Or take the `Wolverine' series. Mutants, seriously? And Hugh Jackman, what on earth were you thinking??

I’m not even going into the zombies, werewolf’s and vampires domain – The Walking Dead made me want to puke in the first episode itself! So I ask, in all humbleness, and with nary a trace of snark – Are all Americans developmentally challenged?

Back to the Emmys. Sid, if you ask me why the pathetic `Veep’ won Julia Louis-Dreyfuss her third consecutive Emmy over Edie Falcao or Melissa McCarthy or Taylor Schilling, I will only be able to say

“Puttar, ae ta Wahe Gure di mehar ae!”

Goddamn You, Robin Williams!

In an eerily prescient scene from the movie `The Angriest Man in Brooklyn’, a dying Robin Williams informs his son that his tombstone would read 1951-2014. “Forget the years”, he tells him, “they’re just numbers. What matters is that dash in between – that was my life!”

So ok, Robin, let’s focus on that dash. Your life. You were born on 21^st July, 1951. Just 18 days before me.

In the 70’s, when I was slogging away as a young Army officer, you were well on your way to riches and fame. `Mork and Mindy’, as forgettable a sitcom as ever graced the airwaves, made you a household name as that dorky man from outer space.

Maybe there’s a jinx to playing an alien in your first major role. Remember your classmate from New York City’s Julliard School, who also did that in 1978 (the same year you played Mork)? How he too, met with a tragic end? His name? Christopher Reeve, and the character he played was that alien from Krypton, we all know as Superman!

Fame in Hollywood is almost always accompanied by alcohol and drugs. So while I sipped Rum and coke in Army messes, you were snorting cocaine, and guzzling alcohol like there was no tomorrow. But OD deaths from substance abuse have an expiry date that is somewhere in the late 20’s. So once you passed 27, that famous fatal end-point for suicidal rock idols, there should have been a sense of achievement. Like reaching the next level of a video game. Sadly, that didn't happen in your case..

For all the zany characters you played, it was the serious roles that got you real acclaim. Three Best Actor Nominations – the eccentric DJ in `Good Morning, Vietnam’ (1987), the iconoclastic English teacher in `Dead Poets’ Society’ (1989) and another DJ nearly driven to suicide in `The Fisher King’ (1991). You finally got the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1997 for the teacher who played mentor to Matt Damon in `Good Will Hunting’.

You had it all. Fame, fortune, family. You reportedly adored Susan Schneider, your (third) wife. Your two sons and one daughter worshipped you. Movie goers around the world, while they detected the ache in your comic panache and the sad sweetness at your core, simply adored you! Didn’t you know that? And was that never going to be enough?  At what precise moment in your life did you decide to put that belt around your neck even as Susan slept in the next room?

Have you been able to read your daughter Zelda’s tribute to you? “My family”, she says “has always been private about our time spent together. It was our way of keeping one thing that was ours, with a man we shared with the entire world. But now that’s gone, and I feel stripped bare..”

Is that the legacy you wanted to leave behind? Heartbroken children who will forever bear both the stigma of your suicide, as well as the colossal guilt complex they will always carry - that perhaps they failed you somehow, perhaps they should have been there..

Goddamn you, Robin Williams – none of them, none of us who loved you so much deserved this!

  

63, Going On 18...

Another year of `borrowed time’ slips by.

Sid is off, honeymooning in Ladakh. Puja, as only she can, is doing her masti in San Francisco. So the 63^rd is bound to be low key. A few hits, some misses. C’est la vie!

Last year's cake from Marriot

Last year it was a cheesecake from Marriot. This time around, a much more modest walnut cake from the Maitri store next to the Command Canteen gets top billing. An aside to the kids - see that much is the difference you guys make to my life! Message in there somewhere? GOOD!!

Of course we’re closer to the end of the journey than the beginning, but new discoveries continue to be made. New people continue to enter your life, to enrich it.

The measure of one’s success in life is not the wealth or real estate one accumulates, but the number of lives one touches.  Take a bow, `Mitti Pao’! When I started this blog three years back, I thought I’d have a captive audience of just Puja and Siddharth. Maybe their spouses too, out of deference. But it has pleasantly surprised me.

Not only has it managed to renew old friendships, it has also made me some delightful new ones. As we grow older, we need to cherish the old and embrace the new, inhibitions be damned! What is life apart from a crateful of memories?

All in all, the fact that `Mitti Pao!’ has reached out to so many is heartwarming. When someone say they actually look forward to the next post, I must be doing something right!

At 62, last year..

The kids have lives of their own. The fact that one has given them wings is satisfaction enough. That they soar the skies is enough to warm the cockles of the heart, even if the empty nest rankles.

Be grateful for the relatively good health you enjoy. Mortality is ok, accepted in its inevitability, but what scares the daylights out of me is morbidity!

Minor hiccups are, of course, part and parcel of life. Was getting a double root canal done on the eve of my birthday. Ouch! The aim is to fit yet another bridge to span a missing molar. I have more bridges on my teeth than there are across the Hudson River in New York. My autobiography could well be titled `A Bridge Too Far’. 

I try to talk the dentist out of it. No value for money, I tell him, how long will it last? A lifetime guarantee, he assures me. True, I sigh in resignation, but just how much life is left, my friend?

In the end, one must try and live by William Ernest Henley’s motivating `Invictus’ code..

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Mens Sana...

The alarm goes off at precisely 5:05 am. I swing my legs out of bed, head downstairs to brew the morning cuppa. Sip it while flipping through the news channels. It’s the same old story. Another horrendous rape in UP, another Malaysian Airlines flight gone off the radar, another student caned at school, and yet another outrageous statement from Justice Katju. Ho hum, God continues to be in Heaven and all is well with the earth!

I reach the Sub Area ground at 6. One hour to the body, two hours to the mind. Everyday. As Father Rebello, who taught Latin at St Vincents, used to say `Mens Sana in Corpore Sano’ – a sound mind in a sound body. We can but try.

The Sub Area grounds are lush green, the walking/jogging/cycling tracks washed spotless by the rains. One round walking briskly, another 14 rounds cycling. The Nike App duly tracks the distance covered, speed attained and calories burned. Try to cover 12 Km everyday Touched 2,870 Km yesterday. Not bad.

The faint drizzle hits the face in a fine mist, courtsey Pune’s famed morning breeze, the `baad-e-saba’. Rafi warbles through my Shure in-ear earphones. The iPhone playlists have been laboriously downloaded through Songs.Pk. I huff and I puff. Maybe retirement isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Back home, bathed and breakfasted, the `two hours for the mind’ begins. The iPad, the Mac and the iPhone are called into play. Attend an Online class on iPhoto (know the difference between Events and Albums?) or the iTunes (Albums versus Playlists, anyone?). I call this catching up with my ignorance, there’s so much to learn..

An hour of watching some serials I’ve downloaded from Torrents (God bless you, Puja Dugal!). Have 2 terabytes of stuff, including the latest American soaps/dramas and some mind blowing documentaries, so one is always in a state of trying to catch up!

Newsstand on the iPad

The post lunch nap is a luxury the Army has got us addicted to, something the three years at Army HQ, and ten years in the Corporate world haven’t managed to shake off!

Come eventide, it’s me, my iPad and the terrace. The cool breeze is an added attraction, a Pune special. God bless my dad who decided to move here, or else it would have been me, my tractor and my kheti-baadi, accompanied by the sweltering hot wind, inexplicably called a `loo’ of Shahkot in Punjab..

I subscribe to 4 print and 12 digital magazines, In addition, I also  read at least 6 newspapers on the net. I just can’t keep up, hence the chase to `catch up with my ignorance’ is a losing battle. Still, one persists. Anyway.

Bonus Digital Content TIME

A bit of advice. Subscribe to TIME magazine, Read it from cover to cover. Every week. Then check out the bonus digital content on the digital version – it is simply awesome, especially on the Retina display of the iPad!

On to my state-of-the-art home theatre once it gets too dark at the terrace. Watch an episode of `Chasing Life’ or `Gang Related’ while sipping the mandatory `chota peg’.

Second bit of advice. Install a home theatre, it’s such awesome value for money! Am available as a consult, at a very modest fee of a small single malt. Or two.

There’s a downside too. My once famous razor sharp memory is fast losing its keen edge. While I can still recall with precise clarity each World Cup winner since 1966, last week’s happenings are a trifle hazy.

So life goes on. Most course mates are already grand parents. Think I’ll have to revisit my avowed policy of not flirting with grandmothers. Or else, the fine art I’ve cultivated over the ages, like my memory, threatens to lose its edge as well.

Phir kya hoga…??

Hindi Hain Hum..

Circa 1974. I was a subaltern, with barely a few months unit service, posted at Delhi Cantt. The Defence Minister was to visit a few station units, and a `Coordinating Conference’ had been called at Area HQ. About a dozen or so officers sat around the Conference Table, freshly sharpened pencils poised over scratch pads, looking appropriately solemn.

Being a subaltern and, therefore, to be only seen and not heard, I tried to slink into my chair and appear invisible. Two years at the IMA had made me a self confessed expert at appearing raptly attentive, even while flitting in and out of a day dreaming haze.

Mentally, I was already at `The Cellar’ disco at Connaught Place (how many of you Delhi-ites remember the joint?), jiving away the collective blues of a subaltern posted to the nation’s capital.

Suddenly, I felt a jab in my midriff. Apparently, I had been caught napping. Years of experience had taught me that the best way to get out of such a fix was to stand up confidently and ask a question, thereby implying that one was very much `with it’.

The problem was that I hadn’t the faintest idea of what the current discussion was about. Having vaguely heard the acronym `RM’ being bandied about, I decided I was on firm ground. RM, I knew stood for Radio Mechanic, and since that was a Signals trade, it was right up my alley.

“Sir,” I began expansively, “About this RM. Am I required to depute him from my unit, or will Delhi Area Signal Company handle it?”

There was pin drop silence. Apparently, the RM they had been referring to was `Raksha Mantri’ or Defence Minister! The silence was broken by loud guffaws. Among the twenty seven thousand six hundred and seventy three times (give or take) that I’ve made an ass of myself in life, this one rates pretty high!

Luckily for me, General Eustace D’Souza of the Maratha Light Infantry, the then GOC Delhi Area, was endowed with a keen sense of humour, so I got off with little apart from the egg on my face.

“Why the @&*$ would anyone say `Raksha Mantri’ and not `Defence Minister’ when talking in Queen’s English?” I muttered under my breath.

An aside here. Another encounter I had with Gen D’Souza bears recounting .

I received a mail from Area HQ, asking me to explain the circumstances under which one of my Signalmen had contacted malaria. I was flummoxed. Everyone knows how one contacts malaria, I reasoned, so why on earth was I being asked to explain the etiology of the disease to Area HQ?

Of course I learned later that the Army considers the contacting of malaria a cognizable offence. The logic being that malaria could be prevented through the simple expedient of rolling down one’s sleeves at sundown, and/or dowsing the oneself with a smelly and foul concoction called`DMP Oil’. So if you got malaria, you hadn’t taken due care, ergo you were to blame!

That wisdom, of course, came much later. My reply to the Area HQ was a terse `The exact circumstances under which No so-and-so Signalman Deepa contacted malaria cannot be ascertained. However, it is presumed he was bitten by a female anopheles mosquito!’ There, I told myself, that should show them!

It was only Gen D’Souza’s sense of humour and amiable nature that let me get away with that one!

But back to my language problem. Somebody the other day said he was impressed at the Rashtrapati’s address to the joint houses of Parliament. To my mind, this – like the `Raksha Mantri’ of 1974, was not only incorrect syntax, but sounded extremely silly!

It was Shobhaa De who started this obnoxious practice at Stardust by giving stars vernacular sobriquets – Yogita Bali, I remember, was called `asli ghee’, and so on.

Prime Minister Modi has now stirred a hornet’s nest by asking his ministers and bureaucrats to tweet in Hindi. That is fine with me. One can either say `Rashtrapati ka desh ke naam sandesh’ or `President’s address to the nation’ – but, like the East and the West, the twain shouldn’t  ever meet!

No idea what we are in for, lingo wise. Meanwhile, I’m brushing up my Hindi, and should the Thackeray’s star be on the rise, improving one’s Marathi may not be such a bad idea too!

Achche din aa gaye hain, janaab!

Father's Day - The Flip Side...

Last Father’s Day, I had written a sentimental, rather meandering `letter’ to my kids under the title `Father’s Day Musings’. Of all my posts, this received the largest feedback – mostly from my friends and course mates, people like me, in the same boat, who empathized deeply. Been there, done that..

People whom I didn’t even know wrote in, one saying that it had moved him and his wife to tears as they read it together. For those who missed it, or would like to give it a re-visit (as I just did), it is available at

http://hbpuri.blogspot.in/2013/06/fathers-day-musings.html

This post is a bit different. It’s not about kids, but about us dads, on the wrong side of sixty, old, grumpy and cantankerous. That ring a bell somewhere?

Vinita Dawra Nangia’s blog (`How Not To Become An Old Grumpy’) in last Sunday’s `Times of India’ talks of the IMS, `Irritable Male Syndrome’, that afflicts every man once he crosses 60.

Men naturally become grumpy, Vinita contends, because it’s in their DNA! Quoting the American psychotherapist Jed Diamond, she assures us that IMS is as prevalent, and actually much deadlier than the female PMS!

To me, it was a double whammy. Being a Puri, and therefore already a hopeless case of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), to now be saddled with IMS in addition was scary, to say the least.

I decided to check. Who better to ask than my first born.

“Do you think,” I asked Puja, “that I’ve become grumpy as I’ve grown older?” I emphasized the word in as nasty an intone I could manage, while trying to sound noncommittal.

“Not at all, Pa” she assured me sweetly, and before my Cheshire Cat grin could spread any wider, she added “You’ve always been grumpy!”

Vinita’s reasoning is simple. When working, men are, or think they are, in control. Once they retire into ignominy, that sense of control is lost. Ergo, they become grumpy. Bristling hedgehogs, radiating irritability and impossible to handle as they grow older!

And how do your kids deal with the new you? Not a problem in my case, as Puja so delicately brought out. Or wait - how did we deal with our fathers?

Take the case of course mate Pramod Kulkarni and his better half Ashvini. They had both their fathers living with them for, I kid you not, almost 25 years. Well past their eighties, the `oldies’ must have made the proverbial `odd couple’, and, one would have thought, driven Pramod and Ashvini up the wall! 25 years, phew!

“We played good cop, bad cop” Pramod explained. “While Ashvini pampered them, I was the strict disciplinarian!”

Both passed away in quick succession recently, and Pramod and Ashvini were devastated.

“Is there no sense of freedom, or relief?” I asked Ashvini tentatively.

 “Not at all, it was so lovely!” she gushed, “It was just like raising children all over again!”

I don’t know much about paap-punya, but I’m sure Pramod and Ashvini have earned enough punya to assure them a great place in the hereafter.

Puja lives half way across the world. We miss her bubbly presence. She talks to us daily using Face Time (Thank you, Steve Jobs!). Her American friends are appalled. They barely speak to their parents, if at all.

Thank God for Indian tradition!

Waiting for Aarti….

The Corps of Signals is nothing if not tradition bound. And the oldest Signals tradition, of course, is daughters – plenty of them! My first born, sure enough, was a girl, and it was during our Degree Course at Mhow that we decided to provide her a sibling.

Now since I was a true blue Signaller, and since the `due date’ was 15<sup>th</sup> Feb, which was also the Signals `Corps day’, it was a no brainer that the sibling could only be a sister!

So the planning started early. We had named the first one Puja – though all my friends and course mates knew, and continue to know her as 2T/Tootie/Tooty (take your pick). Her sibling, long before she appeared, had already been named Aarti.

MH Mhow was no Apollo Hospital, but in those days it had on its staff Major Kandoth, who was arguably the most outstanding OB-GYN in the Army. I kid you not – student officers in Mhow actually planned their wife’s pregnancies only after first consulting Major Kandoth’s Leave Plan!

So we patiently waited for Aarti. Well not exactly patiently, because even as close as a month before her arrival, we went on a trip to Mandu - on scooters! The ghosts of Baaz Bahadur and Rani Roopmati (`Aa laut ke aa ja meray meet’, remember?) seemed kindly disposed towards us, as the trip went off without any `surprises’. Aarti handled the bumpy road like a true fauji!

On 28^th January (1981 it was), the wife complained of a severe back ache, and asked to be taken to Major Kandoth. Now I was firmly of the `Iodex maliye, kaam pe chaliye’ school of thought as far as back aches go, but she was insistent. So off we drove (on a scooter, what else?) to the MH.

The hospital, however, was having their Annual Administrative Inspection that day, and the good doctor Major Kandoth was standing outside the Family Ward at ramrod-stiff attention, Sam Browne belt and peak cap in place, boots glistening like mirrors!

But seeing us in obvious distress, he quickly remembered the Hippocratic Oath, whipped off his peak cap, and summoned her into the examination room. He marched out a few minutes later, and informed me that he had administered some drugs to induce labour. “If nothing happens in 30 minutes, we’ll do a C-Section!”

I was flabbergasted! 15^th Feb was a good 20 days away. But Aarti seemed to be in a hurry to make her appearance. So 30 minutes later on the dot, the wife was wheeled into the OT for a C-Section.

Pacing up n down here

I did the customary pacing up and down in the corridor outside. I practiced my welcome speech to Aarti, mentally drafted the telegram I would send my folks `BLESSED WITH DAUGHTER STOP BOTH FINE STOP’. And I waited. For Aarti.

A nurse rushed out of the OT looking harassed. “Anything wrong?” I asked her. She hadn’t noticed me till then. “No, all well” she replied curtly – apparently not one of the `hail-fellow-well-met’ types. And she turned around and swiftly marched off, clickety-click, as only an Army nurse can.

At the door she paused, and turned around. “Oh, by the way” she added, almost as an after thought, “it’s a boy!”

Again, I was flabbergasted! Ten minutes later, she brought the proverbial `bundle of joy’ out of the OT, and walked towards me. My flabbergasted, incredulous expression was still frozen in place. 

“It’s a boy” she repeated, “here, look!” and promptly unravelled the lower part of the bundle, to show me his weenie. “I believe you, sister” I assured her “now can I please also see his face?”

Of course, all my plans went for a six. I quickly had to come up with a name. My favourite pen in those days was a Japanese roller tip (in 1981, mind you!) called Tiku – so the nickname almost suggested itself. It was later corrupted to Tiki, but that was fine.

 

So Puja did get her sibling, only it wasn’t Aarti, but Siddharth. Maybe he in turn may give us an Aarti, who knows?

The wait, in any case, was a joy in itself!