Grace under fire

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Dec 1, 2013, DHNS:

In the mad rush to win the race of life, courtesy and politeness are given the short shrift. Getting ahead by any means has become more important than acting with grace. Shefali Tripathi Mehta holds a mirror up to our society where refinement, elegance, thoughtfulness and kindness have lost their value.

Every evening, a bunch of kids — boys aged seven to nine — come to play near my window. It is the hour of the day I dread. It’s not the noise — the happy chatter of kids is quite mood-elevating and nostalgia-evoking. It’s the nature of the noise. The children are abusive and expletives that many adults will cringe from using slide off their tongues with such ease that I am stunned. The other thing I notice is that they don’t appear happy playing together. Each one is primarily concerned with wrangling control over others. The timid ones are alienated and bear the brunt of the offensive behaviour.

A new TV and print advertisement has a prominent toothpaste brand run down another popular brand, brazenly displaying the product and its name. Advertising wars are not uncommon, but such unveiled attacks were rare till recently.

Karan Thapar and his television show, the Devil’s Advocate, known for aggressive attacks on guests on the show, used to be an exception, and most people unaware that the format was its chief differentiator, were appalled by his rudeness. Today, every news debate borders on the offensive. No principle or social compunction stops politicians, celebrities, leaders, lawyers — the pillars of our society — from maligning, bad-mouthing, casting aspersions on others to win the war of words.

This aggressive behaviour that we see in our daily dealings slowly corrodes our sensibilities and sensitivity and leads us to a point where crassness does not only stops bothering us, but even seems legit for ends we wish to achieve. The line between being strong and compelling and being abusive and derisive has certainly blurred. Today we don’t raise eyebrows when people are rude and irreverent because it is commonplace. Courtesy and politeness are given the short shrift. In the mad race to stay ahead, we compromise on refinement, elegance, thoughtfulness, courtesy and kindness.

You can read the full article here. 

Next door to nobody

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Sep 22, 2013, DHNS:

Not too long ago, neighbours were extended family; people we could count on, at any time of the day or night. Sadly, it’s a changed scenario now when we do not even know who our next door neighbours are, rues Shefali Tripathi Mehta

There are no proverbial heppige mosaru or sugar-asking, bowl-in-hand neighbours anymore. And no one’s ruing the absence, yet. The word ‘neighbour’ has a typical connotation. A neighbour is neither a friend nor a relative. A fuzzy relation. When you introduce someone as your neighbour, people smile understandingly.

A neighbour is supposed to know you not from what you tell them about yourself, but from what they observe and overhear — how you conduct yourself in your daily dealings with people — house-help, courier guys, postman, presswala, driver; how you treat the space just outside your home — if you think of it as an extension of your house and encroach upon common space with shoe racks, children’s bicycles, discarded items or beautify it with rangolis, urns and urlis; how much you respect others’ privacy — not lurking at the windows to catch raised voices, not peeping in when their doors are left ajar; how much consideration you show by keeping noise low, inquiring when unwell; how you celebrate and how you fight. As G K Chesterton puts it, “Your next-door neighbour is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.”

You can read the complete article here. 

A woman has no escape ~ Daphne du Maurier

My Boss was very cross. Cross with me for no reason at all. It was my first job – a sub-editor with a daily. Straight out of college and still under the protection of parents, whose evening tea would wait for me to return home from work. I worked the afternoon shift 12 to 5 for the inside page – National –relatively less significant. 

If you didn’t know, a newspaper office is like a large classroom – only more noisy and disorderly. We sat on both sides of large tables – groups together, editing what the various news agencies sent. Every once in a bit, the Boss would point a finger at one of us and say, ‘You go’ and obediently, mid-sentence, making then-than, it’s- it is, the pointed-at would get up and go into the Printer Room to gather the spool of paper the machine was constantly  dispensing – quite like a toilet paper roll running on the floor. Each news item was then torn and randomly handed to us by the Boss. I got the boringest, the least important, the ones that were fillers and at the end of the day would have to be discarded or I would have to go around to snooty men on Business or Sports desks and ask if they had any use of it – like selling news was my job too.  I didn’t mind.

We sat and ‘subbed’ – copy edited with pencil – each news item, then gave it a headline and presented it to the Boss. The Boss looked at our work disdainfully, made some random corrections wearing an annoyed expression, letting off some sighs and uffs. I didn’t mind.

The Boss made me sit across the table from the rest, facing the large sunlit windows that stung my eyes. I didn’t mind.

On the Boss’ particularly bad days, at five when I would be about to leave, I would be told, ‘You!’ ‘Stay back and get the pasting done. No mistakes!’ I stayed behind waiting for the paan-chewing Paster uncle to make an appearance. Slowly, like the chewing of his paan, he pasted headline after headline, news items under headlines. That done, one had to accompany Paster Uncle to the Chief Editor for approval. It would be past tea and close to dinner time when I reached home. I didn’t mind.

I didn’t mind nothing because I was doing what I wanted to; Papa looked at the paper each morning and his face beamed with pride when I pointed out the headlines I had written; and the Chief Editor encouraged me to write short pieces, by-line and all, and soon I had a column. I did not mind anything because one day he had called me inside his cabin and in front of his visitors, said, ‘Your piece on Coleridge was brilliant!’

Did I tell you my Boss was a woman? As women bosses go, women have a tough time dealing with them. Kind of teenage romances these are – dealing with quicksilver, irrational moods, unfounded jealousy that is not professional alone.

The Boss became cross-er when the Chief Editor’s praise wafted out of his cabin, when he started to walk up to thump me on the back right at our National table that sat my Boss, a bearded, kurta-ed young man who had lost his fingers in an accident in the press and was sent to the news desk, some floating people like the whimsical, college girl who came for five days a month including the payday and poor me who sat wiping her sunshine tears all day.

Papa said I needed to give her more respect. Call her ‘ma’am’, he was categorical.

Unwillingly, I ‘ma’am-ed’ her and we became close in a problem-sharing way. The Boss had married an already married man and was facing hell from his family and the man, her husband lived off her earnings. I, poor little lapin, growing up secure in a close-knit family, knowing nothing of the wild, bad ways of the world, asked my Boss, dear lady, to go back to her home in Bombay to be with her parents and siblings, the protectors from all things evil. That is when I heard the most heartbreaking thing ever. My Boss, the cross, ignoring-me lady, said with more disdain than she had for me, ‘Do you think the exploitation there is less?’ 

*Picture from the Internet. 

The Flying Chair

These days the course I’m writing is for very small children – classes I to V – teaching and practicing English language and grammar through simple stories and rhymes in a fun, interactive way. I couldn’t help sharing the story I loved as a kid, my Papa’s story of the flying chair, the उड़ने वाली कुर्सी.

The memory takes me back to the room where it was spun – each night, a new adventure.

In his book and paper smelling first floor room that opened into a small balcony over our lush garden, along the window, sat the big mez with three typewriters – two bulky ones, one of those Hindi and the sleek portable, Remington which he mostly used. The big table was strewn with big, open books and papers and under those lay wonderful childhood attractions – the paperweights, the hourglass in-cased in glass along with a sea horse and shells, a stopwatch, a small handheld slide magnifier, seals and boxes of photo slides. 

Papa's chair looked a lot like this.

Office chairs had not invaded homes (nor offices) – no swivel, no recliners. Ergonomics?  The word wasn’t invented. Straight-backed, no nonsense, good lumber support, if you slouched, it hurt so if you were stiff from sitting, you got up and walked some. The chair in question was a carved armchair with a cane-woven back and seat. A cushion on the seat, and two when I sat on it. I can still feel the smoothness of its arms when in make believe, I sat on it typing important imaginary things on the typewriter.

There was a single cot in the room and at night I would climb into it next to Papa (mornings, I magically woke up in my own bed), under the ubiquitous mosquito net. Then the story would begin. The story of the flying chair. The magical chair. I imagined the one in the room spouting wings and taking Papa over Kamla Park and the Bada Talaab, the lake. He would describe the chair covered in red velvet and I would feel its softness and mossy texture. When he sat on it and asked the chair to fly, I felt the lightness in the head like on being airborne when a Ferris wheel takes off the ground. Papa-on-the-flying-chair would do good deeds like saving people from robbers and helping those in need but he would do a lot of naughty and fun things too like whisking off ice-cream from someone’s hand; chance meetings with my friends and school tormentors who seemed comic in the situations he created. 

May every childhood be blessed with such wonderment and memories to last a lifetime...