Himesh of Hyderabad

I met a person last week in Hyderabad… the person who drove the car that came to pick me up at the airport – was with me till late night when he dropped me off at the hotel.

I don’t remember his name, but let me call him Himesh – he had a stubble, tight jeans, tight t-shirt, open jacket and a cap pulled down over his forehead. All that he didn’t do compared to his more famous likeness was go “oooooo” when he missed traffic lights…And hence Himesh.

Himesh was a man with attitude. Spoke halting, heavily accented English but insisted on listening to a radio station that has the RJs speaking predominantly English and plays English songs. At the airport he held the name board fairly apologetically and as inconspicuously as possible. He drove like he was Haikkonen Himesh. At the hotel he got into a fracas with the doorman who apparently referred to him disrespectfully and asked him not to stop in front of the main door. Of course, he took the tip that I proffered, but with such a supercilious air that I felt fairly apologetic about the quantum of the tip (which was quite substantial if I may add)…

Why was he Himesh? Why the attitude? Why the permanent disgruntlement? And he seemed fairly typical of the new generation of Hyderabadis (going by the few people I met). From my previous experiences with Hyderabadis, dating to about a few years back, they have always been very courteous, very at peace with themselves…

Drawing a rough parallel, this change is fairly evident in native Bangaloris (or is it Bengaloorians) too over the last few years. The one common change in these two cities over the last few years is the huge growth in the IT/ITES segments in them. And the consequent increase in salary levels among a largely expatriate work force with largely foreign skill sets. Is this the reason? Possibly it is. There seems to be a distinct class divide now among the Have-a-BPO/IT-jobs and Have-not-a-BPO/IT-jobs. The majority of the former, are typically from outside the city, have high proficiency in English, high salaries and conspicuously extravagant spending habits. The latter meanwhile can only look and envy. (Almost like the metros of yore where the divide was with respect to having a secure Government/Bank job…)

This theory seems to be borne out of the rising crime rates in these cities (crimes committed not for survival, but for spending money) and the increasing linguistic xenophobia (look at any movie and more often than not there is the mandatory comedy track deriding the linguistic foreigner – Indian or otherwise).

I believe, unless we address the cantankerous Himesh-es along with infrastructure and the like, while on the path to development, we will have unrest and chaos which may soon become unmanageable.

Is it reservation that is the answer? I don’t think so – it will only perpetuate this like the hydra-headed caste system being propagated in reality by the system of caste-based reservation. Is it low-cost quality education? Maybe it is, but it is too late for this generation of job-seekers. Maybe it is generation of entrepreneurial opportunities for today’s Himeshes… I don’t know. I bet most of us don’t. But we better find out fast… The first step to that is to not get blinded by the splendor of the non-Himeshes’ success stories and accept the existence of the Himeshes.

Till then, Himesh will continue to exist in a state of growing discontent dreaming Walter Mitty’s dreams I’m sure… I sure as hell hope that he doesn’t stop dreaming and get into action-mode… but I guess he will at some point.

Ramblings on rumblings and noise cancellations

Have you heard the old limerick about rumblings written by i-dont-remember-who? Well it goes like this:

I sat next to a duchess at tea
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply phenomenal
And everyone thought it was me.

I was sitting in a train from Mysore to Chennai. Early morning, sipping tepid, extra sweet tea and everyone intently gazing out of the window pretending to take in the scenery - the reality being that no one wanted to talk.

Next to me was a stylish-denim-and-red-T-shirt-clad middle aged French-bearded gentleman with a distinctively Bengali accent when talking on the phone… Even the sound he made while sipping tea screamed Bengali.

Of course, many-a-times you would also have been in similar situations with the Indian countryside, desultory conversation, boring magazines and oily snacks whizzing by... You may well ask 'so what's special'. What's special is that this gent was rumbling abdominally with a vengeance.

(Did I hear you say ‘disgusting’? Well, you asked me ‘What’s special’ didn’t you?)

All this with look of nonchalance on his face and beatific contentment that would flit across his beefy countenance for a split second after each hell-raiser broke loose. The contentment was understandable, but the nonchalance must have come from a supreme belief that the noisy train sounds would cancel out the rumbles. He may have been hard of hearing also...

Anyway, I got a few reproachful looks from fellow passengers. Unshaven me in old track pants and baggy T-shirt may have looked the type who would do this - definitely not a middle-aged dapper Goshto Pal-look-alike. So I hunched my head into my shoulders and busied myself typing this on my mobile... (and remembered a dear friend of mine who often spouts the irresistable hindi-belt ode "thain thuin madhyama... thuskari maha hathyari")

But that’s not the point…

The point is, Hey, isn't this what we all do? Spitting on roads, rioting, eve teasing, scratching graffiti on public toilet walls, advertising our latest loves on walls of historical monuments… believing no one will notice us - the comfort of invisibility in a crowd. The belief that the rumbles will be lost in the deafening din of humanity passing by.

And hence would it be right to posit that as long as there is a crowd, the best in us can't surface. There is too much comfort in collective failure and wrong-doing. If so, then loneliness is the route to individual brilliance.

Individual work dazzles - teamwork is a means of sharing it and hiding collective weaknesses. Brilliance must perforce be compromised since the brilliance of the team is the brilliance of the weakest link...

So then, is teamwork fit only for a group that is equally mediocre? Of course then, the mediocre can survive in a world illuminated by flashes of individual brilliance only if they stick together and work in teams.

Maybe that is why the tiger hunts alone... And the wild dog hunts in packs... I wonder...

By the way, I had a chance to view the tiger, wild dog, elephant in the wild - was in the Mudumalai forest last weekend. I will write about it in a couple of days...

The Ocean in Each of Us

"Our life, it probably began inside of the ocean. About four thousand million years before now. Probably near hot places, like volcanoes, under the sea. And for almost all of that long time, all the living beings were water things, living inside the sea. Then, a few hundred million years ago, maybe a little more - just a little while, really, in the big history of the Earth - the living beings began living on the land, as well.

But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. The water in her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty.

We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and in our sweat. And we are crying the ocean, in our tears."

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Read this bit in this book I'm reading now - Shantaram.

Spawned a sea of thoughts... The inexorable pull of the sea when one stands on the shore long enough… the sheer wildness of the beauty of the sea… the comfort of the waves enveloping you when you goes far enough out to sea for the waves to overpower and throw you off-balance… of course till the panic button for survival is pressed and you rapidly get back to shore…

I had read somewhere that the ‘samudra manthanam’ of Hindu mythology is really symbolic of us churning the vast oceanic depths of knowledge that is present within the self… taking help from both the good forces (Devas) within us and the evil forces (Asuras)… using the mountain (Mandara) of self will tied up by the serpent (Vasuki) of cooperation and conflict…

Various items kept coming out of the depths – prominent among them being the deadly poison (Halahala) symbolic of the fear of death (this was consumed by Shiva the God of destruction in the myth)… and finally the nectar of immortality (Amrit) – the non-fear of death so to say.

However, that’s not the end – the good forces and evil forces have equal rights to it since as the self gains from the churning, so does good and evil (the self being bipolar always). It requires Vishnu (the Absolute) to protect the self by denying the evil forces the nectar… (In the myth the Devas and Asuras fight over the Amrit and Vishnu comes in as Mohini to deny the Asuras and give the Amrit to the Devas)

The symbolism hit me… Left me in the throes of introspection… Have I churned myself enough... Have I not been lax with myself? Just a wee bit?

Guess many before me would have been hit by this… And many after me...

The Old man and the 'If Only'

Met an old man today. I knew him, had seen him earlier. But I MET him only today...

A man who devoted his life to his children. He was from a small village in Kerala. As was usual with young men of that generation in Kerala, he had to leave and search for employment elsewhere. He chose Calcutta - a room, a mess for food, a job as a secretary in a typewriter company, no interest in books, no music, and himself... He was the quintessential Haripada of the old Anjan Dutt Bangla song...

In due course he brought his nephew, his nephew's friend and a few other youngsters from his village to Calcutta and ensured they had shelter till they found jobs and enrolled in college...His need then came to obviate loneliness... Marriage followed - to a teacher. The wife stayed in Kerala with her job... Remember this was the age of no telephones, no email and only snail mail... And 3 days to travel by train one way. Life as before, with a one month holiday for him in Kerala with wife and a one month holiday for the wife in Calcutta. Kids followed - 2 boys, both stayed and studied in kerala. The man continued in his Haripada way. Then the wife died. The kids stayed in Kerala - both between 5 and 7 years. With the man's sister.

On a trip when he came down, he was saddened by the state of the kids. He took them to Calcutta with him. Became difficult managing... He married again. A lady from Kerala who probably wouldn't get married given her circumstance... With an agreement that she wouldn't want kids beyond the 2 sons. A life devoted to the sons. Huge performance pressure on them.

One became a doctor and one a chartered accountant. But he wanted more. He wanted them to go to the Mecca of the middle class then - the USA. Both went - one to the US and one to canada. By then they were married - to girls from very rich families. The sons drew apart from the parents- the social standing was very different. The grandchildren are americans - no relationship with the grandparents. The old man felt his responsibilities were over and came back... Back to his village in Kerala. Built a house with great effort and love. He finished when he was 76. What more could a man want, he must have thought... Successful kids, retired, back home, house built... The perfect ending to the well-worked hardly-lived life. A self made man. Realisation of the typical middle class dream...A few trips to the US and Canada...

Disenchantment... Back to the village... Issues with the wife who was blaming him for not having kids, and concern over her future. Now death staring at him in the face. Due to age, not illness. No children. A wife who blames him for her fate. No diversions like a reading habit etc to divert his mind from self deprecation... Yearning to turn back time... Bitterness... Guilt... Anger... Fear... Ambiguity... Loneliness... Is this the end?

The 'if only' phase of life characterised by "If only I had..." or "if only they had..." Or "if only fate had..." Or "if only I could turn time back" or "if only..."

Ramblings on my mobile through a late night train journey

Quiet small-town station. Very late night... Stationary trains. Sleepy passengers waiting. Waiting for the white cliffs of Dover where they are going. Waiting with a single-minded aim of getting into the train - the first step to Dover. A ghostly voice shrieking out names of hot beverages fills the station.

Wee Willie Winkie walks down the station...

Are all the children now in bed, for now it is 3 AM...

Mosquitoes, coffee, train announcements, bedraggled people, drowsy faces, a million reasons for going, a million reasons not to go, a million hopes, a million worries, a million white cliffs of Dover. Me a part of the whole... Waiting for my own Dover. Me a microcosm representative of the macrocosm. Here comes my train. Here I come…

The white cliffs of Dover - a scrap of memory wedged between gusts of life, refusing to be blown away.

Somerset Maugham is where I read it many moons ago when I was in school. That creation of hope and longing and wishful thinking for a desired object that cannot be attained – an object imbued with all the aspirational qualities mostly imagined. Maugham used it with reference to the British expatriate in South-East Asia yearning for retirement and seeing the white cliffs of Dover before reaching the mainland.

A doomed yearning, for the place would not be as imagined and yearned for, the people wouldn't be the same, the customs neither... And most of all, the person returning wouldn't be the same. He went out as a wide-eyed man eagerly anticipating adventure and change. He returns a much changed man, pockmarked by experiences and the death of idealism. Thus he is fated to live his life out, in the midst of his ruined cliffs. The less resilient succumb to bitterness and despair. The survivors build other white cliffs of Dover, this time around the place left behind – haven’t we all met retired career army-men and the like who love to recount tales from the barracks?

Dark night. Trees, water, interspersed with dark shapes of houses, some unlit, some lit by a bulb outside, streetlights at places, through it all the train hurtling through, cutting the fabric of the night with a shrieking clattering... Constant wind in my face, a bite in the wind, hand gripping a clammy metal bar, the smell of metal in the hand, thoughts of countless houses, people in them sleeping, myriad dreams being dreamt... What might they be dreaming of? Dover tomorrow?Each one's life tomorrow will be different, thoughts different, priorities different...

Unknown to them, there is one commonality to their lives - I have passed through all of them while they slept...

Trishanku in Cargopants

Now who is Trishanku?

Trishanku is a character straight out of Hindu mythology. He was apparently a king who wanted to go to heaven in his mortal body (can’t figure out for the life of me why though...). So he toodled up to his Guru Vashishtha and requested him for help in achieving this. Vashishtha declined since it would upset the natural order of things. So he went to a rival of Sage Vashishtha and requested him to for help – this was Sage Vishwamitra. He promptly agreed, given the rivalry… Of course, when Trishanku began ascending to heaven in his mortal form, the Gods got quite nervous. Indra, who was quite parochial from the looks of it, used his powers to push our friend back to earth. Trishanku again prayed to Vishwamitra - an angry Vishwamitra stopped the fall and decided to use his powers to create a parallel universe with a heaven for Trishanku.

A high-power delegation of alarmed Gods flew down to the Sage and explained the situation to him upon which he acquiesced and backtracked, but didn’t know how to handle our pal Trishanku who was hanging around mid-air, with nothing to do. So he arrived at a compromise with the Gods that Trishanku would be allowed to stay in his heaven – the only proviso (to ensure that he wouldn’t be able to take Indra’s position) being that he would reside in his heaven upside down!

This is the story of Trishanku who belonged to Earth but desired Heaven on his own terms and hence was doomed to live suspended between both – a make-believe world where he had neither... Quite a tragic fate, what say? Sounds familiar?

All that is fine, but who is the Trishanku in me?

Well, methinks, the Trishanku in us is a creature formed out of social conditioning we have been subjected to since childhood…

From the time a child is born there is pressure – pressure to get into the best schools, pressure to be the first among our peers, pressure to top be it in sports or in academics, pressure to have the most friends of the opposite sex, pressure to be seen going around with the most sought after girl/boy (or at least someone), pressure to get into the best professional courses, pressure to land the best and highest paying jobs, pressure to marry the best girl, pressure to stay ahead of the batch in terms of job/designation/salary, pressure to have the best kids… and thus the pressure on the new generation… and the cycle continues.

So, we all follow the dictum that one should never rest on one’s laurels… the effort is to keep striving for more. When one landmark is achieved, don’t pause – fix the next landmark and move… Blokes like Alexander the Great are the role models – keep pushing the frontier. Wonder what young Alex would have done if he had actually conquered all of Earth and still been alive… Add to all this a dash of sayings like ‘Aim for the stars and you’ll at least get the sky’ and what you get is a race that will never be happy with what they have. The urge is to constantly strive for more…

A kind of shifting heaven that we keep striving for – ‘if only I had xyz, I would be really happy’ and when xyz is achieved, the finishing line shifts to elsewhere. And our heaven keeps moving further away as we move closer. And thus I believe we all live in a kind of ‘Trishanku Lokam’… A kind of suspension between where we are and where we desire to be.

Is this worth it? Is Trishanku-like striving worth the effort if the end result is suspended animation? Isn’t Heaven where we are? Can’t we make the present into a Heaven? Can’t we find bliss in what we have? Do we have to pawn the present, at the altar of social conditioning for ambition, in order to try and achieve a possibly-illusory ever-changing future heaven?

But will cessation of this constant race defeat ambition? Will it retard movement? Shouldn’t the river keep moving? Wouldn’t it flood and destroy whatever is on its banks (the very lives on the banks that are dependent on the river) if it ever stopped moving? Or is the concept of movement in our heads all wrong? Should we be moving and growing mentally rather than materially?

I don’t know the answers to these questions… Am struggling with them over the last few weeks ever since I have been forced to confront the illness of someone very close to me… someone with whom I haven’t spent the kind of time I would have liked to, because of this mad ceaseless movement...

Journey down the not-so-straight and not-so-narrow

This is a chronicle of a trip I took to Hardwar, Rishikesh and further down to a camp at Jayalgarh – it was the quintessential lazy stag holiday. 3 men, music, books, no agenda (spiritual or otherwise) and 3 days.

First stop – Hardwar (or is it Haridwar? Apparently there is a huge controversy on the name between the Shaivites and Vaishnavites… with each claiming it for their own)

The most enjoyable moments spent were 1. sipping sugary hot tea watching the crowds milling by in a tea shop just outside the station 2. a dip in the Ganga holding on to the chains by the banks to keep from being swept away while clutching on to modesty in the form of a towel with the other hand. A leisurely afternoon at Har ki Pauri and loads of puris and lassi later, we started off for Rishikesh.

After haggling with a clutch of jeep and taxi drivers, we decided to take the bus. A rickety ride on a hot summer afternoon worsened the mood of one of us – he decided to stay grouchy through the ride… very reminiscent of Groucho Marx minus the humor Of course besides me, the other member of the team was a Twice-born (with delusions of being an alpha male) who took it all in his stride

Next stop Rishikesh after a short bus ride.

Rishikesh is almost like a small town amazingly commercialized – very disappointing at first sight. I guess the fault was mine – I had romanticized the place in my imagination to be a sparsely populated place where one could wander around in peace. The reality is that wandering around in Rishikesh is like wandering around in a Bombay local train – except that here most people have teekas on their foreheads…

It’s only when you walk to the outskirts that the famed serenity hits you giving a glimpse of how it would have been once upon a time… Anyway, it was a quick adieu to Rishikesh for us since we had to get to a river-side camp in a place called Jayalgarh, further up. This time we acceded to the grouchiness of not-so-young Groucho and took a cab (cost us a fortune). En route was one of the best experiences of the trip – a stop at a dhaba in the middle of nowhere (actually somewhere). Owned by this amazingly cordial villager who insisted on cooking fresh for us (since he was in the process of shutting when we popped in). And guess what – our driver joined in to help the gent cook! 3 stunned and very impressed city slickers awed by the cordiality and helpfulness of the locals sat on a bench by the road-side in the dark night and enjoyed a fabulous meal – roti, dal, sliced onions served with dollops of friendliness.

Next stop – Camp at Jayalgarh

Pitch black is the first impression of the camp; gurgling waters the only sound. And then the mind forms the first question – where the hell is the camp? Well, 2 young men with lanterns suddenly materialize from the shrubs by the road and take us through the trees and down a fairly steep slope – which would have been an ordeal with sunlight especially in the Hawaii slippers that I had thoughtfully worn. In the light of a lantern, it seemed like a stroll in the park. Of course Groucho had a tough time – he is as blind as a bat at night…

There was no electricity at the camp though the Ganga gurgling very near made up for it. The tents are right on the banks of the Ganga! What a place! A tent for sleeping and another smaller tent outside for your ablutions…

Yours truly and the Twice-born decided to partake of some liquid refreshment, while Groucho fell into the bed and went off like a light. The dark night, the sounds of the river, the darkness, the pool of light made by the lantern, the promise of the sights waiting for us in the morning and the peaceful sounds of Groucho snoring demurely lulled us into sleep…

Nothing could have prepared us for the beauty of the morning… There we were outside a striped tent bang on the banks of the meandering Ganga which looked at this point like a small placid stream. The placidness was just an impression as we soon realized when we quickly hopped over the rocks to the banks.

Well, I will not attempt to describe the beauty of the place – I know I will fail miserably in the attempt… The day dawned extremely hot and unbearable. A long day spent with books under the shade of trees and music for Groucho. By now of course Groucho was in his elements and we had a game of cricket in the hot Sun at his insistence. The Twice-born had to leave for attending to some of his amorous pursuits back in Delhi - Groucho and I stayed back.

We were joined soon by a bunch of young people out on a company ‘bonding’ trip. This night was hence spent to the strains of Punjabi songs, Bhangra, the latest Bollywood hits and wild dancing by a bunch of inebriated youngsters… around a campfire (in the heat of May - can you beat that?). Groucho got Grouchier and even yours truly started hoping for a temporary loss of hearing and sight…

The morning dawned as usual like something out of a picture postcard… This time we were prepared for the surprise that we knew would be sprung on us by the heat of the afternoon – we beat it to a place called Deoprayag. This is the place where the Bhagirathi and Mandakini rivers meet to form the Ganga as we know it in the plains… Another sleepy small town with a temple at the meeting point of the two rivers (Prayag-sthan). Again absolutely breathtaking… Again no words to describe… Spent a long time in this place just staring at the river… Groucho decided to have a hair-cut in a small shack. And even convinced me to have a head massage done by the barber… A few well aimed blows at my head and shoulders later, I managed to escape… To a long conversation with an old priest of the Badrinath temple who gave us a download on the myths and lore surrounding Deoprayag.

By evening we took the bus back to the camp and thankfully no campfire and naach-gaana. More hours spent by the river the next day and then back to Rishikesh, Hardwar and Delhi.

All in all, a great holiday – no schedules, no rafting, no trekking, no nothing… just good old fashioned sitting alone by the river reading, listening or staring at the water and mountains. And of course the best part of it all was lots of talking with the locals – a fruit seller who described his business and its economics, a rafting guide who described his life and its course, an out-of-work priest (he works only when the Badrinath temple is open in winter), a dhaba-owner, a boisterous one-liner spewing bus-conductor who unfortunately one could not interact with much… the simplicity of thought and life, the minimal needs, the happiness shining through and the total acceptance of life and circumstance is what struck one in all of them…

And of course in stark contrast, one encountered a chest-thumping travel agent from Delhi guiding a group of Americans and a bunch of young girls from Delhi in the Shatabdi on the way back who chattered incessantly about boys, their conquests and ways to conquer… As Groucho, quoted from a recent Akshay Kumar film ‘Socha milega mashooqa di dupatta… mil gaya piyu da lungi’…

Hey by the way, in all this staring at the river and soaking in the people, realized one great truth – Life is like the Ganga… One has to keep going on without knowing the purpose. Fast and furious in the initial stages of life, slower and rambling as one proceeds… All the while drawing inexorably closer to the end – the union with the sea. The movement is to that one goal – the union with the ultimate. The path is strewn with smooth and rocky terrains both – all one needs to do is focus on the one certainty which is movement towards the ultimate. And that is the essence of the simplicity of the lives of the mountain people – ‘nishkaama karmam’… I wish I could be like them…

Now why "xxl cargopants" of all things as a name?

Dunno about you, but thats the question uppermost in my mind... Now you may not want to know why, but since you are anyway reading this, you don't have a choice - kind of captive audience...

Well, actually i don't really know why, but these could be 2 reasons for the name:

1. I do a lot of things with my time... and dont have fun with most of it. I intend to write about the stuff that i have had fun with... and these are as diverse as they come - books (on fiction, philosophy, comics, spiritual, etc), travel to various places (more often than not off-beat), thoughts on random topics or just plain people watching... And all these in one place is like the cargo pants i own - i carry everything in them when i travel - toothbrush, book, water, money, items of inebriation, phone... hence the name.
2. I actually wanted cargopants as the name, but unfortunately only xxl cargopants was available... so i took it. with the benefit of hindsight, i thought it leant a nice touch to the cargopants concept - if cargopants can carry a lot of diverse stuff, then xxl cargopants can carry much more - what say?

Well, stay tuned to this space... if you are not tuned off already that is... ;-)