FYI, dilli!

I ping Dilli: i got a heatstroke, da :-( 
Dilli: heatstroke in b’lore, la?
Me: it’s unbearably tawa-HOT, pa!

Silence. I know he’s googling. He’s always googling to set his record straight and mine askew.

Dilli: OMG!! it’s 32 degrees!

Me: Po da! (go away!)

Dilli: Po di!

The one thing I can’t drill into his dilli-mind is that la/pa/da = yaar and you can’t say ‘po di’ just as you won't call a woman ‘yaari’ !!

Me: green bile rising.

Dilli: is it any other colour down south?

Me: offo!

He’s getting away with very little empathy.

Me: been up all night.

Dilli: :-( :-(

Duh!

The only reason I tell him everything is because he’s a man of principles. Just like he does not take work home, he doesn’t take me out of the chat window, ever. Window closed, me out of his slightly-bald head.

The closing line is usually mine: Go die!
If I linger, I see his: Hahahahaha!
Me (un-priding myself): Ravan! Don’t you do any other impersonations? 

Perhaps, I’m being uncharitable here about his not caring. For if I’m not online for 2 days, he does text: whatup? Or if I come online on day 3 and after turning on my light green and waiting for an hour, I say a ‘hi’ (cold, exclaimationless), he says, doodie!! (all exclamation like he’s been counting seconds of my absence). 

Me: dude, you know like, kind of, 10 years from now...

Dilli: you mean when you’re dead? Sorry to disappoint, 10 years from now and for a long time after that till you lose your head to dementia at 90, you’d still be punching swear words at me.

He knows Hamlet by heart but remembers nothing about me till I remind. I’m thankful he knows my birthday falls sometime in March. Maybe also, sometime March end. So I can expect his call on any of the 3 days preceding it, with all the enthu of a cutlet: doodie! 

We have met only twice in 15 years since I left Delhi - an after-lunch walk around my sister’s house after I’d had too much wine; and once when I was going from Delhi to Manesar on a May afternoon when the heavens were entertaining us being fire-throwers, I texted him. Let’s meet, he replied. Okay! But he can’t help being himself, can he? Let’s meet at the toll naka!! Dilli takes precisely 15 minutes off work, 5 to walk up to toll-naka, 5 back. So we have a picture of us in an awkward half-embrace, the towering toll gate forming a very avoidable backdrop, everything around us melting in the sun, including the cabbie who takes the out-of-focus picture, hazed over by vehicle fumes.

I ping him later.

Me: hey, you’ve not turned as bald and paunchy as you said.

Dilli: and you’re developing a sense of humour in your old age.

Me: GO DIE!

But seriously, I had a heatstroke. And was advised to stay indoors, drink fluids, a concoction of roast jeera, eat methi leaves – practically turn into a pre-historic specimen – those that did not get heat stroke from sleeping naked on sun-baked stones under the sun.

Day 3 of heatstroke was Labour Day holiday and I made the yummiest coconut chutney for breakfast (on good days we have something to go with it). The bulging pack of dosa batter sat on the kitchen counter waiting release. But I got the chills. Big chills that had me flipping off the bed like a hot dosa. The husband and girl sat holding me down rubbing my palms and feet and imploring me to let them take me to hospital. They didn’t say ‘this is serious’ because it simply does not cut ice with me. When the chills subsided, I had dosas in bed. The girl kept calling out to the help, ‘Aunty, one more for mummy’. And as she carried the third to me, the look on the help’s face was mix of empathy, worry and a warning she was dying to mouth.  

Eated, I was ready to be rushed to emergency. It was so hot, I worried that the sweat would blotch the minute black S the receptionist had drawn on her forehead. The dandy paediatrician was leaving and said to her, ‘You also go home, Gayatri’. Eh, like I, the patient should be left to die because it was a Labour Day Holiday? Gayatri blushed and even gave me a smile. 

The doctors said I had a massive infection. Blood and other fluids were drawn and antibiotics, painkillers and paracetamol pumped in. Thus endorsed, I contentedly turned into a moaning patient. Like lights in a discotheque, my body turned hot and cold. I held the husband and child in each hand swearing if they leave me for a second, I would die. 

The quickest shut-eye and I see the girl disappeared and the husband snoring beside me. I tell him I’m burning, could he sponge?  He sponges delicately, like nothing he’s ever done. So I snatch the towels from him and do it myself. The girl comes in groggily, ‘What’s happening?’ ‘I have never ever been sponged with water without cologne before,’ I wail and she runs to get the cologne. But of course, they don’t know where cologne is. How difficult is it to guess? Dresser? The tallest blue bottle? I decide to complain to my sisters. At least they will send me shiny new bottles of cologne. 

By night, I’m worried for the morning. You two are not going to work tomorrow, I declare. I don’t want to die in an empty house. Don’t worry, no one’s going anywhere. And most importantly, you’ve just got a viral infection and no one died of it. Just! That’s what they say to dying people. 

I’ve been tucked into bed for no longer than 2 seconds and the whisper in the hall becomes the daughter’s sweet voice, ‘Tomorrow, I will stay back with you. Papa can go. Then, Saturday, Papa will stay with you because I absolutely have to go.’ They stuck a deal over my fever-thrashed body!

I wake up moaning when there’s no light outside and husband is already dabbing aftershave, his yoga mat rolled under his arm. Yoga or me, decide now! Yoga, he wants to say but aware of the consequences that mean a definite yoga-miss, he says, ‘Did you sleep well? Let’s take your temperature’. Sticking the thermometer into my mouth, he makes good his escape.

I’m sitting here quinine-mouthed, my tummy feeling like a cardboard has been tied around it, my body creaking with every breath. Hukka-bar is playing loudly on the radio in the lobby between our rooms. The girl’s in hers, calling out at precisely-timed intervals (she must have put reminders on her phone) ‘Mamma, you okay?’

Dilli hasn’t asked. Let him read this. I’m not coming online in 10 days! :P

Remember lemon drops. Above all.

          Photo credit: Shibani Mehta. More by her, here. 

My claim to the experience is by virtue of having cut myself twice. Cuts that required sewing. Many have been through worse bloodshed, but for more gallant reasons than pottering about the house. From this, arises my notoriety, the singularity of purpose that makes people ask ‘how did you manage?’ before they say ‘aww…’. Nah, the second time round no one says ‘aww…’, they say ‘but seriously!’ all the while trying not to laugh so much that they begin to hurt. So here’s my ten rupeeworth. 

• Cut yourself when you’re properly dressed. Both times, I've been in bed clothes and the changing even into hospital-going ones was a bloody mess. Bad blood!

• Don't tell the husband to quickly get a towel. He doesn't know where towels are. And you are not in a position to say no if he dashes to the spare room farthest away and gets the cleanest, whitest ones you've saved for guests, so well hidden. Until then. 

• The car door will slam on the hurt palm that feels nothing as easily as the palm bangs into random, solid, heavy, hurtful things. 

• Even though you wrap it in bath towel, it will soon be soaked as all nearby hospitals refuse to look at it and then the blood will flow down your elbow into your clothes and when some hospital finally takes you in and asks you to lie down, you are going to feel really cold. 

• Those that refuse you do not do so immediately but take you into their OT, placing a basin under your cut to catch your blood and then you are temporarily amputated from the situation as five heads, treaters and onlookers thick as blood brothers, bend over it and take their time marveling at how amazingly the blood is spouting non-stop. They will wrap it back into fresh towels you are carrying and hand you back your injury, saying ta-ta.

• Don’t worry that the nurse who finally 'takes a look' when you are placed on the hospital bed is almost fainting at the sight of blood. Offer her lemon drops. 

• Lemon drops are important. Always keep them handy. Start popping them in as soon as you’re done with the changing of clothes. After that you are required to do nothing more than hold up your bloodied arm to let the traffic part for you. Feels very Moses. 

• You will need the lemon-drop energy to help the sweating-blood doctor in the OT who will ask you to hold the tread he’s sewing you with or the scissors, and with the sewing job topmost on his mind, he is bound to forget to check your BP or give you a tet vac... you will have to do all the remembering. You will need to keep your eyes open. Remember lemon drops. Above all, lemon drops.

What women want!

“Come, let’s go,” said Papa one afternoon and I, nine-ish or littler, tagged along, like I always did. The grave air about him told me we were going for something not very pleasant but I didn’t ask, like I never did. Papa was more ‘show’ than ‘tell’. 

We stopped near the Polytechnic College boy’s hostel. It was on the way to our home atop Shyamala Hills.  There were tea shacks at the crossroads. We waited a little distance away. Suddenly, Papa asking me to ‘stay’ there, rushed to the tea shacks. My elder sister who used to get down from bus there on her way back from college had also materialized on the scene. Next, I saw Papa holding a boy’s hand. There was some action, some words spoken, some onlookers and then Papa and sister came back to collect me and we all went home.

A matter of (eve) teasing, ched-chad was thus settled.

Growing up in a small town, we girls, kind of knew how to ‘deal’ with boys. With silence. Ignore, keep a low profile, don’t go to crowded places, don’t go to secluded places, don’t draw attention to you, don’t wear what fellow Bhopalies wouldn’t…

Predators came as the afternoon uncle to push the swing and by and by had you sit on his lap; the grey-haired gentleman who floored you with his impeccable English, his world tours, then stooped down; the men servants who could be trusted with the house keys but not with the girls of the house.

We wore skirts that had to be four-inches above the knee in the girls’ school but as soon as we joined a co-educational college, were required to cover up -- wear a salwar-kameez-dupatta. I was stepping out in a pair of jeans one evening, when Papa quietly said that he was no longer strong enough to go out and fight people. I went back in and changed.

Like most other girls in the city, I rode a two-wheeler to college. One evening, returning after dark from my French class, a group of men in a car waylaid me. Quick thinking and a quicker bike saved me but before I could say sacré bleu a question mark attached itself next to my French classes till a male classmate offered to accompany me back home every day -- he on his bike, I on mine. Every time he bunked class, I had to too. In it together, like conjoined twins.

Next stop -- Delhi. Danger stared dangerously, daringly on Dilli dil walon ki roads. On the way to work one morning, I was waiting for an auto. One stopped and I got in. When I told him where I wanted to go, he said, “I’m not going there. I just picked you because I like you.” Too scared to react, I let him take me where he left me and then told my friend. “Didn’t you slap him?” he asked angrily. Less angry, he asked, “Have you no sense? What stopped you from getting down?”

Fear? Embarrassment? What?

Red Line buses were a different planet – a free for all, groping, pinching, touching neighbourhood where desperate men let their wild fantasies loose. The details are too graphic for this space. Reckless driving was a minor crime. Reporting it did not, as a rule, call attention to the complainant. But it did. A few days after I reported a Red Line bus, registration number et all, for reckless driving in a letter to editor, it made headline news. The Police arrested the driver and were at my door to take my statement and proceed with the case.

Suddenly, I became the perpetrator of the misdeed, the villain of the piece, peace-pincher, trouble architect, the disrupter of life’s steady goings on.

What was the need? Why couldn't I keep my big mouth shut? Did I not know what the driver-kind can do?  Had I thought of my little girl? What if they kidnap her? Someone could just  throw acid on my face and disappear and everything would be OVER.

Now I knew real fear. I withdrew. The Police was angry with me. I was angry with me too. But I was a woman first. Anger I could live with. A small price to pay for not being violated. A woman, so like a traffic law.

So what has changed in four decades for me? Little. On the way back from the airport, alone in a cab (the Airport Taxi at that), I was again a petrified, little girl not knowing what to do when mid way (the 60-km stretch takes one and a half hours) the cabbie first seemed to lean back and relax, then lifted his pants to his knees and above. He stretched himself, rubbed his ankles, patted his thighs. Terrifyingly intimidated, I told myself, dirty is in the eyes of the beholder; that my fear was unfounded and he innocent, only uncouth.

I muttered a weak, “Why don’t you drive properly?” Everyone knows what cabbies say to that. I called husband and code-worded my fear. He asked me to get off. Get off? In the middle of nowhere? Stand on the highway with my bags and beg some auto to go my way? And what to tell this guy? How to not create a scene, feel helpless and mouth the dirty? I sat put.

Women are a broad spectrum group. I’m neither among those that’ll be happy with women’s day free manicures, show window’s amazing ingenuity in reflecting pink through next-to-nothing clothing or hassling men to make anniversaries/women’s day/valentine’s day special; nor among the coin-size bindi-ed, handloom sari-ed, Arnab Goswami-silencing ones. I am not a woman of extraordinary courage and I’m in majority. We’re the ones that are walking through life on an Alert mode forever.

So I welcome the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2013 passed in the Lok Sabha earlier in March. It makes acid throwing, stalking, trafficking, employing a trafficked person, voyeurism (making videos) punishable offences. A policeman who does not take a rape complaint also faces jail now.

The 24x7 news channels hyperventilated and singularly dismissed the new bill on the only two issues it did not address.

I don’t understand marital rape. It plain amounts to domestic violence, sexual abuse. It is explained as women forced to have sex by their husband, ex-husbands, partners. The latter two are categories of ‘marital’? Preeti Jain crying ‘rape’? Secondly, we cannot make laws on statistics alone. Tomorrow, in a more equal society, will there be husband-rape? Or will a man have to suffer in silence because of his macho image? Spousal rape makes little sense because one doesn't just keep living with a rapist.  

The lowering of age of consensual sex… I was ‘hmm…’ about this till I read this, “a 17 year old who is a victim of sexual offense committed by another 17 year old will be treated as an adult victim/witness while the perpetrator will be tried as a child under the Juvenile Justice Act.” (Tulir - Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse). And of course, it has been pointed out that victims of rape in this 16-18 age-group would be coerced to admit it was consensual.

Protesting sisters and (their) bhai-logs in armbands, please take a rest and READ the amendment. Do not trust the Shankar Breathless Mahadevanesque newschannels to give you everything on a pink platter. If you then need a new cause, here’s one I found, Wiki tells: “In Taiwan, International Women's Day is marked by the annual release of a government survey on women's waist sizes, accompanied by warnings that weight gain can pose a hazard to women's health.”  Don’t you smell political conspiracy, hidden agenda, and vote-bank politics behind our government’s blatant disregard of this crucial step towards women’s safety?  

Diamond comics

The British PM, David Cameron came and saw the Golden Temple, made chappatis, lauded the contribution of the Sikh community back home in the UK, went on to express surprise, joy, and other such, appropriate to the office he represents. Phew!

But our bechara dil which does not stop mange-ing more, which says, if you give us roti, give us jam to eat with it too, said, ‘Go apologize’!

The man politely wrote of the Jallianwala massacre: "This was a deeply shameful act in British history. One that Winston Churchill rightly described at that time as monstrous..."

“What!” we said. “The cheek of him! The British! Is this why we have to take money under the table to send our kids to international schools so they can go to university in your country? And, it is not just money, it is the essays they have to write! How much we have to beg the best writers to halp. You know, just after twinkle-twinkle, our kids by-heart Byron, Keats and Shelley ? And for your kind information, we also know Shelley ji is a man. And the cold in your country? Do you consider how our kids, used to studying day and night in 40 plus degrees manage? Then we take our LTC and go to see your London. So much expensive everything, even the giant wheel we have in every mela! And everyone wants to click a picture with the red box, which is not functioning only and we’re again reminded of our watan. The younger ones insist on seeing the statues and we tell them we can see real, flesh and blood Salman and Aishwariya for no money at all and no use of spending on putlas. But we come to your country. And we keep to ourselves. Our brothers only, the Pakistanis and the Afghans. They never charge us for food or ride. And you, Whiteman! Apologize!”

“I wasn’t even born then!” PMji insisted.

“Nothing doing! Your forefathers have our blood …our forefathers’ blood on their hands.”

“What is this they are saying about your 'stiff' upper lip?" You got Botox?” 

Like tantrummy kids who must get something on an outing, we google and gaggle and come upon a diamond mine. Mine, ours, we say. Return! We demand.

"I certainly don't believe in 'returnism', as it were. I don't think that's sensible." PMji clarified.

“What’s sense got to do with it, ji? We’re fine with return gifts. We do it all the time. Someone give us, we give someone else, in the end the saree we bought on the 50% discount and wouldn’t be caught cutting into pieces to give to the carwash boy, comes back to us. Perfectly fine. We believe in destiny. Ram Bharose? That which runs our country? Everything. But we are very particular about our jewellery. You have kept it in the Tower of London, that is wrong. Keep it in a bank locker. No need to show everyone.”

“We had not forgotten. It’s because it is 5,000 years old that we had to google and learn that this reduced from 186 carats to 108.93 carats ‘Mountain of Light’, the Koh-i-noor, has passed many hands – from Babur, to the Raja of Gwalior, to the Peacock Throne of the Mughals. Aurangazeb took it to the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore from where it was robbed by Nadir Shah who took it to Persia in 1739. It came back to the Punjab in 1813 when Shuja Shah Durrani, the deposed ruler of Afghanistan, exchanged it for help in winning back the Afghan throne. It was passed on to the British when they conquered the Punjab in 1849, and Queen Victoria got it in 1851.”

“Chalo bahut hua, be good now and give it back.”

“No? Okay, never mind. Enjoy the chikkan tikka masala. It isn’t like we’re really wanting you to give back but we’ll bring this up from time to time, you know how it is, you are a seasoned politician, no?”

Waste people

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald articulations » Waste people

Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Dec 23, 2012
Humour

Mother Earth refused to take our dump. Landfills filled full and mountains of garbage threatened to flood back to drown us in our own muck.

Then Bangalore sat up and groaning under its load, implemented waste se-gre-gat-ion. Bangalore piles up 3500 tonnes of garbage each day. The farmers around the landfills took up scythes and a desperate administration implemented desperate measures.

But inside homes rubbish happened. On my floor alone there is a garbage thug that leaves it out in the common area each day, and has never been caught litter-handed. Can Houdini’s blood brother/sister be expected to comply as long as they can get away with trashing like this?

And here I am with a pile of garbage before disposal bins that are labelled Wet, Dry, Kitchen waste, Biodegradable and not-that. Not-that is further split into – Recyclable, Toxic, Soiled. Where does my milk packet – its inside milk-licked go? Why the sanitary pad that the ad says always dry, not so? The food foil, the toffee wrapper goes into Dry but is not recyclable. I never messed with such, I swear. 

The house-help finding her position threatened, assumes authority and informs me that it is simply ‘kitchen waste’ and ‘all else’! So garden leaves, she says is not kitchen waste but ‘all else’. If the discarded palak leaf is ‘kitchen waste’, how dare she discriminate against the fern! She challenges, ‘Eat and show?’ So I stuff the fern leaf – no, not in mouth but into another big bag I call Moot!

Kleenex and noses! How the muck did we land up with so much garbage!

Two decades ago, when foreign-returned talked of the pile up of junk in foreign and said in foreign they don’t repair, just ‘dispose off’ – cars and refrigerators of all things, everyone listened wide-eyed.

We had an army of grime-collared and amazingly efficient men who mended, oiled and painted to ‘brand new’ everything they could lay their dirty nails on. There were drycleaners who darned and dyed, repair guys that mended mixers, geysers, coolers, fans, even flasks; the sofaman squashed back jutting out sofa springs; tailors and mothers came together to turn old sarees into jholas and cushion covers, faded sheets into mattress covers, which by the way, weren’t foam or poly-fill but cotton that was beaten and fluffed out and added to when flattened out. Ditto with razais and pillows. Nothing had to be thrown away, shoe boxes were amassed for craft projects; fused bulbs carefully tipped out to grow money plants. 

There were cows in the aangan or the neighbour’s aangan to be fed the leftovers. The kitchen did not generate waste that could not be dumped in the garden to turn into compost. Frugality wasn’t frowned upon because nothing was two-minute. No snip of scissors produced ready-to-cook or to eat rice, curry, paste or puree in tetra or plastic packs. When bitter gourd was served for dinner, we knew what was coming for lunch the next day - its skin. Milk came in glass bottles that had to be washed and exchanged for more. So did soft drink. If you broke one, you repented. 

Birthday and unbirthday parties had people borrowing plates, spoons and glasses from neighbours. Wash and use was the mantra. One person was engaged to wash all evening for a continuous water-dripping stream of plates and spoons. It did not matter that some people had to wait because patience was not in short-supply.

 If the Sunday morning breakfast was to be got from the bazaar, steel tiffin carriers and dabbas were taken along, no eatery offered take-away plastic dabbas even for the price of Rs 2 and 5 we pay now. Atta was stored in Postman oil cans and dal in Sixer biscuit tins. Pearlpets, Tupperwares shelved those out. Cling foils, bubble sheets, zip pouches—how much plastic, polythene...we cannot do without! Even our soap, shampoo and ointment look delectable in shiny plastic containers on supermarket shelves. 

Waste people, all of us have become! Wait till treating someone like dirt becomes a term of reverence.

The Illicit Happiness of Other People

I have been harboring a half-suspicion about this for close to a decade - the ‘Chennai peoples’' inexplicable desire, pursuit and impetuous display of academic excellence. Now that Manu Joseph, who is ‘one of them’ has spewed it, I feel validated and relieved of my burden of impression.

The newspaper version of his Hindu interview, last week, has been purged of the ‘beeped’ words so one kind of loses the tone and emotion of the speaker. 

Strip away everything and it’s just boredom. And especially when you’re young and growing up in Madras: you can’t touch girls, you can’t go out with girls, it’s a s**t city; all the f****rs are doing entrance exams… Still, I did briefly lose my nerve when I was 20; I wrote some of those MBA entrance exams, went for the XLRI interview. I remember they asked me: what is the difference between “basilica” and “cathedral”? But fortunately, circumstances ensured I would come back to journalism.

Hahaha! Good sense prevailed.

My first neighbors in Bangalore were very nice, temple-going Chennai peoples. Two things wafted out of their home at all times. One, the delicious smell of sambar, and two, …I’ll come to that. 

Now, husband, mine, was at once baptised by the ‘Tamil’ sambar. He of few words but never short of praise for food had himself eating out of Mrs V’s hands - the end of her ladle that had become the extension of her hand. I was suitable ignored for confessing some knowledge of their cuisine, and was rude enough to learn to cook some too, while he at every meeting expressed spanking-new astonishment that ‘Pongal is a dish?’

Many mornings, Mrs V came with a dosa balanced on her dosa flipper and totally dismissing me as a claimant, asked smiling if ‘he’ was there. Now my ‘he’ was hers along with her own. He-Man was made to eat with both of us watching like his eating was our collectively responsibility and source of joy. Her face shone with sweat and excitement when He-Man extolled the finer points of her cooking, while I prayed that he would hurry, lest her face explode.

The second thing her home emanated was her talk with her 5-year old son. Not Tamil, not English, they spoke in numbers. Always. This was what we heard day and night, ‘Putta, 22 plus 31?’ The kid had to respond before the mother’s question mark was intoned. I have a suspicion they left their doors and windows open to let out their glee. 

Another young mother, Ms K, nose-in-the-air was telling us how no classical dance school in Bangalore was good enough for her two-year old. I stood hearing her lament till she left because ‘he’ will be home, na. Immediately, my Bangalore born and raised neighbor, stung and stung, remarked, ‘These Chennai people!’

More recently, on the train back from Chennai to Bangalore, I spotted a little girl, 3ish, with thick silver anklets looking about eagerly to make new friends. After a prolonged peek-a-boo with an older girl, she went up to her seat, her tongue hanging out with ‘shy’. 

The moment she ‘told’ her name, the mother’s ears perked up long distance and out came a sweet-sounding, cajoling but firm instruction, ‘Devika, tell the spalling of your name!’ !!

How early can one start! Non-Chennai peoples need reservation!

Leave of absence

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald articulations » Leave of absence
Shefali Tripathi Mehta, July 1, 2012

The days I bunked school, I waited for it to get over, for friends to return home and after quickly having whatever it was that had to be had — lunch, mother’s scolding — call to ask, “Why didn’t you come to school today?”

That one sentence made life seem worth all the loving, missing and true friendship quotes that are set in loopy font over blue-skied pictures of hand-holding and hearts. Anyone who did not bother to ask, I remembered to ignore when they missed school next.

These mild to severe attention-seeking shenanigans of childhood led me to pull out of Facebook one day. Pleased as mango panha, I lay waiting to be missed and longed to see my friends say so on Facebook.

Someone had just to say, “Watup?” and others would follow, like they do a hot cause, to appear cool and not wanting to be left behind in their concern for the ‘sweetheart’ who they last ignored at the mall five days ago, or the one they remembered vaguely from school before someone else enlightened them, “that this was the scum who rode the same school bus and wiped her nose with the back of her hand,” 30 years ago.

So I waited. After school, this was the first real ‘test of absence’. I fixed this ‘miss me’ campaign for five days. Miss me or be unfriended, I sent out a telepathic warning to all my Facebook friends.Meanwhile, calm as a storm, I read their posts. Day one, I smashed four dinner plates to counter the emotional build-up from desisting to comment.

Day two, I managed not ‘liking’ 43 statuses, forwent the urge to tap in 11 emoticons, including three ROFLs that I wanted to, badly. Then, I almost buckled under the strain of finding no way to ignore the tedious, preachy bores! I read that people rode a tonga, wanted to keep someone’s goat. Bouncing off walls, I watched the world lose sight of me. People were drinking tomato tea, sighting sparrows, burping babies, suing their exes and clicking celebrities. I spied unguarded hints of love, jealousy and animosity. Unable to indulge in spicy ‘closed group’ gossip, I made 35 trips to the fridge to binge on chocolate.

On the third day, I dreamt of a record number of ‘where are yous’ and ‘missing yous’ — all in shouty caps and appended with three question marks. Expecting even my ‘friends of friends’ to notice my absence and ask them, “Hey, watup with your friend?” After all, everyone is candid on Facebook, friends of friends, especially. They ‘loyally’ like your every comment on the common friend’s wall, directly address you, comment on your comments, and send you requests and messages unknown to the mutual friend.

Let them not call or email, god. Let them write on my Facebook wall, I prayed. I imagined a wave of concern not different from the flood of obligatory birthday wishes. But for all its smartness, Facebook doesn’t have an app yet that would detect a user’s absence and send out an alert, “Your friend hasn’t shown up on FB for 19 hours, raise an alarm.” A little red SOS icon flashing next to it.

Finally, my friend of 20 years called and talked about family, fuel, fat, film, never once mentioning Facebook. In a desperate effort before she could hang up, I summoned up all the sadness that I was truly feeling now, and let drop, “I haven’t felt like Facebooking too.”

It was meant to elicit, “Are you okay?” Instead, like she’d discovered a mela-snatched sister, she sang, “Same here!” and was gone. On the fourth day, someone I don’t know from Shahrukh Khan (also because he has SRK for his profile picture), wrote on my wall, “looong tym, no c.” You spell trouble, you know, dood?

My break was supposed to free me, give me time for that which I had none. Earlier, I checked Facebook notifications every half-hour, now I was doing it every two seconds. People carried on with watering their plants and planting their feet, someone cooked up a storm, others stormed their party, someone’s tee said “pick me up” and another told her to “drop dead,” someone had to “eat crow” and someone else was “throwing up at both ends.” With one more day to go from this self-imposed exile, I could do nothing but twiddle my thumbs and worse, not even put that up as my status!

Loo Injustice

Pan to age 2, school nursery, story time, sitting on a durrie and... Ajaz pooped in his pants. The first tummy-tickling joke of my life that I told and retold at home for centuries. Potty jokes flowed easily but answering nature’s call as we grew out of our cotton bloomers was pissing off. Every time I stepped out of the house, the ‘did you go?’ came before the ta-ta. And if you lied and left, you could bring such shame! From having to enter a perfect stranger’s home to ask if you could ‘do bathroom’, to finding a really leafy bush next to a wall and heartbreaking stuff like forfeiting that Coca Cola for which you came in the first place. Shopping trips, outings had to be timed according to the weakest (leakiest?) link’s bladder control. One ‘I have to go’ meant end of trip.

Then came Sulabh. It worked at the psychological level alone. As long as there was a Sulabh toilet somewhere one didn’t have pinkie problems. Soon Malls toad-stool-ed and solved forever the problem of where to dump the apple juice.  

If you’re among the vast majority who on checking into a new hotel must first check out the bathroom, that is, standing precisely as far as it allows you to stand and tip-toe to super stretch your arm so it can lightly touch the ‘shower panel’ and gently tap visible and invisible buttons, knobs, bulges and bumps all the time fearing the onslaught of a sudden scalding hot or melted icicle deluge, you will understand her predicament. 

The uniformed attendant’s antennae caught her on sight. This past-middle age woman entering the washroom at BIAL (Bengaluru International Airport Ltd.) wearing a traditional ghagra, choli, her head covered with an odhini. ‘Sit on the seat,’ the attendant hollered from the other end, above heads crowding the limited space. The woman said she only needed to pee. ‘SIT on the seat!’ the attendant was firm. In her anxiety, the woman left the door ajar. She lifted her voluminous skirt, faced the seat, and wondered, then she turned, her back to the seat, and wondered, finally, totally at sea about how to do it ‘sitting on it’, she left without relieving herself. Pee in your pants all!

Are the Eastern style squat toilets that the whole country used not so long ago suddenly so uncool that they cannot be installed in a couple of cubicles at public ‘conveniences’? Is it better to allow a major part of the population such humiliation, distress and watch them make puddles on the roadsides? We’re modernizing, opening up -  people still walk up on escalators going down, women in sarees frolic in swimming pools, international pizza chains serve peet-ja do pyaza nicely ‘hand-eled’ by their local staff. So even though many a with-it women think it is a crap idea, some mirror polished malls in the city have graphical illustrations inside the facilities on how a commode should be used by women. And then, when we’ve got them all to learn how to sit on it to pee, we will begin the next lesson of how women must not sit-sit on a public toilet seat.

The NY Times tells us that apparently, the Right to Pee movement in Mumbai has activists demanding “that the local government stop charging women to urinate, build more toilets, keep them clean, provide sanitary napkins and a trash can, and hire female attendants.”

In case, you didn’t know already, a large population don’t have toilets in their homes and they use the great Indian outdoors or public toilets on a regular, that is, daily basis. 

This movement seems like such a dream, really. I go back to BIAL because it is such a bladder-bursting distance away from town. It showcases its features ‘runways, taxiways, apron, , fuel farm, airport fire service, aircraft maintenance facilities, access roads, car parking...’ Where’s Number 1? I’m asking, da. I need to pee. Where’s the washroom? Restroom...toilet, bathroom...? Mujhe bathroom karna hai! swalpa guide maadi, dhanyawaadagalu,... I pour out all my Kannada.

Once you find the place, you’re confronted with the Rs 2/- and Re 1/- trade. The latter for the short business. But now who will time you? How can they be sure that you have not deceived them? Shit happens. So don’t mess, just pay up Rs 2 and do whatever. The loo-mafia ‘manning’ the place ensures that you don’t do it anyway - there is no running water, soap, toilet paper and they keep the better part of the loo cordoned off so they don’t have to maintain it. This happens at the country’s top international airport. 

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go! So one needs to know how to ask for the small room. That was my single-pronged objective in learning Kannada. 

Every day we were promised that we’d be taught everyday, useful phases. What can be more ‘everyday’ or ‘useful’ than taking a leak, tell me? From namma, nannu we jumped straight to ‘I have appendicitis problem’. Ondu, yerudu, mooru,... I could manage the figures with my fingers but how to tell with gestures, expression or mime that I needed to go?  I waited each day for them to tell me just this, how to ask in Kannada, where the bathroom is. But they discussed, ‘Today the water pressure in the tap is low’. I waited for other pressures. Then one day we almost came to it, ‘How much distance to go - Yestu doora hoghabheku?’ But their destination wasn’t the pit stop. On the twenty ninth day, while discussing root words – snan, dayamadi, namaskara, swalpa... I could hold it no longer and burst out ‘shauchalaya!’ Whatta relief!

Mother India Fuming!

I’ll push, I’m posh! The new mantra has been unleashed on us. The south Delhi madams who are eager to let drop, ‘Kal ghar main raid padi thi,’ so you know, have a new status symbol to flaunt. ‘I pushed, you know?’ they declare, touching the baby's chin lightly when it is brought in by the ayah, bathed and perfumed for the daily darshan of the Mamma before Mamma leaves for the spa. She’s so stressed, you see. The nurse says she got no sleep last night. The nurse.

The masses are completely taken by surprise at this sudden issue reversal. They’ve been let down by their idols. Just when they upgraded their vocab to include the cease – re – an and began to boast of the eye-widening , ‘Cease –re – an, bade opreshan se hua hai!’ This woman and her father-in-law came and completely overturned the snob-value ladder!

The Big B family otherwise known to guard their personal lives intensely suddenly went public with details of the delivery. At the press conference AB snapped at a very ritualistic question by a journalist, “Why do you want to know the weight!” I’m sure the journalist had not meant Aishwarya’s weight. But Father-in-law dwelt over the pain she bore for a long time without painkillers, the labour, the NORMAL delivery. Now when you say Taj Mahal, I do visualize Taj Mahal as the domed, white structure and not the crying, desperate love in the hearts of Shahjahan and his beloved. Likewise, when the Father-in-law draws his drawl longer in, ‘Aishwarya kept trying...’ my own body stiffens in sympathy and you know how I...visualize her. And everyone else does too – all the men who grew up dreaming of her making boiled tea in their kitchens.

Women facebookers, bloggers and tweeters are falling over one another (including me, of course) in their censure of this newest self-back-patting by the Bachchans. The misplaced sense of self-righteousness, the glorification of pain has Mother India fuming. Caesarean, normal, painkilled, induced, pushed, they say, is as personal a choice as Huggies or Pampers! Did we tell you sir that our grandfathers sported their bald pates with pride? Just a matter of personal choice, sir.

‘It’s an issue, goddamit!’ Big B fumes right back. Really? Is it so easy to forget that in this country hundreds of women try hard to hold their babies till they can reach the nearest hospital which may be 200 kilometers away? Hold on with fortitude to intense labour waiting outside hospitals begging for admission, for help. And so many of them and their newborns just die unattended. Issue that?

Ask the doctors, how many babies and their mothers have been saved because of the C Section? There is nothing wrong in requiring or preferring a caesarean section delivery. Let not these false notions of womanhood shake your pride in your independence, freedom of choice. Remember, when a glass of water is brought to you on a tray held by sanitised, gloved hands and you pick it and drink, no one lauds your effort, real woman.

I know we haven’t heard the last of this, even as columnists are busy tapping their keyboards right now. Sixteen to eighteen years hence, I’m afraid, Missy Bachchan in her Filmfare award acceptance will part her gooey lips to tell us that she owes it all to her beautiful mom who decided to push her. The hall will break into a thunderous applause and made-up, beautiful eyes will spout copious tears. Nah! Keep your tissues to yourself!

La La Land - The Reading Hour (Sept-Oct 2011 Issue)

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

I caught the whiff of the topic even as I joined the conversation late. The girls were chattering excitedly about Victoria’s secret. I slumped into CCD’s bucket chair and in an effort to quickly be-with-it, chipped in, I too had read about her Muslim cook. Half of them fell off their buckets laughing. The other half decided they would ignore me for the rest of their lives.

Thus chastised, I sat all night in my full-sleeved, toe-tipping white flannel nightie planning how to bridge the gap. Enormous it was. Time was when a man accompanying a woman to a lingerie shop lingered outside. The shop sold other things – egg, hairpin, gajak, raincoat. But it had a small hidden corner for the ladies and didn’t have to proclaim that business on the name board outside. Selling rat poison and toilet cleaner was totally respectable. Not so knickers. In that cloistered corner, women attended women. They gave what you asked for and never checked you out to advise, “I think you need the next size”! If you said you wanted one with blue flowers but only yellow were available, you didn’t insist. It was indelicate. Almost a decade ago, I overheard two male colleagues hotly discussing whether it was lin-g-ri or lau-je-ree and wondered why they would need to use it. The word, that is.

Sanitary napkins were asked for in hushed tones. In fact, the hush itself was enough. You just walked into a store with a somber expression and the person behind the counter automatically reached out for the packs in the lowest or the topmost shelves where they were stacked out of sight. A wrong brand and you shook your head very slightly or raised a finger in another direction. If it wasn’t understood, you took the name of the color of the pack. Green one. It was then handed over discreetly wrapped in brown paper. Much later, in black garbage disposal bags. All this discretion came to naught the moment you walked out of the store with the pack that did not look like a loaf of bread or a cushion.

The pacing-thinking night was rewarded with an ad in the morning newspaper for a SALE of women’s itsy-bitsies. A sale that would ‘change your life’. Close-necked and full-sleeved, I arrived at the venue. Outside, a mammoth panel had stringy two pieces drawing-pinned to it. Was my sleep-deficient mind breathing life into pictures from the tattered salon Cosmopolitan? Was inner wear, outer? I mean, where would those that wanted to stick these on to themselves, do it? Since our swim pools and beaches still have soaked-to-the-skin and revealing every tyre, salwar-suited and sareed beauties that bystanding men in underwear cannot have enough of, getting into shape for these little triangles would seem so completely pointless, no?

I stepped into a hallful of frenzied women of all variety – tender zeros and abundant others; covered in shapeless tents and uncovered in low rise jeans; noodle strapped, nude strapped and unstrapped. The chatter was distinct. Sassy guffaws, muffled giggles, restraining grins of 32 As and loud proclamations of 36 Ds.

Some wide-eyed, bushy-tailed male escorts followed their ladies carrying their heap of fantasies, pretending duty; imagining every shapely woman in sight in red lace or yellow sheer; now and then nodding slightly at something held out for approval or pointing discreetly at something some other woman was holding to herself.

Two demure looking kurta-dupatta-ed girls ahead of me rummaged through a carton marked ‘Passion’ in uneven capitals. One pulled out a barely-there and held it out to the other, ‘Here, this!’ ‘Chee!’ The other exclaimed mortified at the public exposé of her private fantasies and buried her head into another carton to hide her flush. ‘What chee? Didn’t we come here for this?’ The spunky first quickly shoved the coveted piece into her own bag. With the number of eyes popping out, I wondered if at such sales they should also sell something to hold the eyes firmly in place.

Keep it simple, silly

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By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

A sampling of celebrity cooking: Recipe of Thai green curry. Ingredients: One packet of Thai green curry paste... Aow! Darlings, I’m Master Chef Australia! I can prepare vegemite. Preparation time: two hours.

Just pick one medium-sized jar of vegemite from the supermarket shelf. Brand not important. Every brand of axle grease tastes the same. NB: Check expiry date. Axle grease spoils too. Why the preparation time, you ask? That’s how long it may take for you to get to the supermarket and back. Accounting also for the time you’ll need to pick the 13 other things that you have been meaning to for the last 13 days.

So, on to writing cooks and cookery show hosts. Who is their target? I lap up all cookery shows and know my Aditya Bals from my Gordon Ramsays. Have graduated from the moustachioed Sanjeev Kapoor to the one without, who makes desperate attempts at humour and cooks less, to the take-home, keep-home Curtis Stone who can have me believe that the sand at Bondi beach drizzled with some olive oil and vanilla extract served super jiffy is ambrosia. I have returned to chiding auntie Tarla Dalal with a paid subscription website of recipes, which are available free on 143 other websites after sampling the fare favoured by Kunal Foodie Vijaykar whose mouth is in a perpetual whistling position. I have tried a fair bit(e) of Antony Bourdain’s street food to the well-licked desserts of Nigella. Yet, I cannot decide what to make of Padma Lakshmi’s Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. Is it a cookbook or an autobiography?

Cookery writing has a broad-spectrum target, assuming that everyone who eats may need/want to cook sometime. The two broad target groups would be, the amateurs or Maggi-5-minute cookers and the pros, the standing-soufflé cookers.

Both have the same demands of your recipe. Both will need to know just how many grains of jeera go into the heated oil. While amateurs may get into a tizzy worrying if one spoonful of chilli powder is one teaspoon, tablespoon, or serving spoon; amateurs will wonder if it is a level or a heaped teaspoon (dear alarmed amateurs, a level spoon is just the heap of the heaped spoon flicked off it). While pros may not need to know what a spatula is, amateurs may confuse it with a spittoon that was.

Cooking food raises many questions and you must answer them all. Why ginger juliennes are not the same as ginger chopped fine, why grating onion is not the same as running it into a blender, why a paste is a paste and not batter or puree. It demands that one know that paring potatoes is not putting potatoes into pairs as Google images may mistakenly show you, but merely peeling.

Eventually, amateurs must learn that ‘frying to a pink’ must be taken with a pinch of salt. No food turns that colour, only cooks know. By and by they must learn that a dish does not ‘begin to leave the bottom’. A dish that sticks to the bottom, never leaves it. The ‘serve crisp’ remains crisp till just before serving and the roughly chopped tomatoes for the salsa have a tendency to look like spat-out tomatoes. But a cookery writer must stoop to conquer. If you described a recipe in extreme detail, specifying the 10 centimetres diameter copper bottom, one millimetre thick pan and the brand of salt but have forgotten to add ‘turn the flame on’, be ready for hate mail by a thousand and maybe a courier or two of that uncooked mishmash you wrote about. But, if some wait for the ‘season with salt and pepper’ to come so they may serve, it’s really not your fault.

Tech will tell!

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald Articulations » Tech will tell!
By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

An international food giant is launching a face scanner that will tell us what we’d like to eat! Soon they might put a beeper on tables/ plates/ cutlery/ wall that would go twice if you liked your food and buzz hysterically if you thought it was gruel.

My worry is that, I won’t be able to tell Mrs Patel that her stone-hard dahiwadas are delicious and I’m really not drinking so much water to swallow them but to create place for her stone-hard idlis that are to follow.

The viper software does not bite; it catches plagiarised content like a boa constrictor. A new software will let publishers know how many copies of your book got sold. So think before claiming three reprints. They know it was 97 copies.

As a nine-year-old, I confessed all my crimes — cutting the tablecloth with Papa’s shaving blade, polishing off the last four laddos, sneaking out into the garden during Mummy’s siesta. All because the writing on the wall filled me with dread. Satyug aane wala hai, I read during every train journey.

It was written in big, sure, red letters on walls all along the railway tracks. Satyug will come and Kalyug, into which we are born and are living, will be annihilated. But the burden of the honest life got a bit much. I surrendered to the good times of Kalyug. Till the writing emerged fresh again, now. I have no visions of any avatars descending among us. But, fast catching up on the trail of dishonest, deceitful living is technology (tech).

Technology is steadily putting the fear of the expose into us. Either tech will tell or tech-enabled sting will! Those who are caught and shamed would be our striking examples. We will be forcefully upright and before we can say holy corruption, Satyug will be upon us. The kaanta lagaa that is stinging nepotism, bribery, lies, and hypocrisy of people in high places today, and allowing us to hear and know the decibel of the sneeze of a country’s premier, and watch another’s shoe ducking expertise, will bring ‘upliftment’ when it percolates to the mango man’s life.

‘Anti-privacy’ activists wearing cellophane would demand total transparency in private life. It would be mandatory for each person to declare what they earned, colour of their socks, their dye/agarbhatti brand, if they picked their nose in public, as ‘info’ on their social networking page.

Kids who have their breakfast outside, presumably waiting for the school bus but actually feeding the bournvita-fied milk and unidentifiable shreds of omelette to plants in the garden would be forced to eat as tech-fitted plants will protest against the force feeding.

Now it’s just close-circuit cameras in convenience stores that catch shoplifters and spyware on phones by suspecting couples. Soon, if someone plucked a flower from a public garden, his hands would turn red with the help of a spy-camera-enabled-remote-dye-sprayer. Time was when if you bunked office to watch a cricket match, the chance of being caught was only if the boss was doing the same. If caught on TV camera, because your tri-colour wig was too conspicuous to be missed, you could still say it wasn’t you.

But soon you might be compelled to take a lie detector test that you agreed to on joining. Deny that? They have the clip! Watching a movie at work? Chances are that the boss has your screen replicated on his own comp and he’s quiet only because he likes your choice in films.

Jump a queue and alarms will go off. Pinch a library book and the next time you enter the library, the gates will beep ‘thief, thief!’ Sneak out without paying the bill at a restaurant and a laser will print ‘I owe Indian Coffee House Rs 53‘ at the back of your shirt.

So, unless being shamed in public becomes a status symbol like an IT raid, Satyug is upon us.

The Mystery’s in the Mail!

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

Everything eventually gets IT-jacked, including your friendly neighborhood advise-auntie. The one who visited at three in the afternoon and headed straight to the bedroom to sit cross-legged on the bed with her pallu in her lap to tell you that mustard oil for bhindi and saliva for pimples work best. W3 nudged her out. Wiki, Google this and that were all a screen away. I never again rang her bell to ask exactly how many milliliters of water my indoor plant could do without.

When the doctor prescribed a treatment without sharing the diagnosis, I promptly told him that I knew it wasn't an ordinary zit but a KELOID and that though he wasn't telling me I knew already that there was no treatment for it and whatever he may try, I was doomed to live with a KELOID all life. Googled? he smiled first, Try black magic, he mocked. Very tentatively, reluctantly, I let go of googling everything that whizzed in and out of my mind. But the prompts lurking in the sidelines of the mailbox continue to tempt and tease, offering their unsolicited advice as readily as auntie. The moment I receive a new mail I look sideways at them to give me some clue about its contents. They are all but bells and whistles. It’s a game more stimulating than a migraine aura or a cryptogram.

Some are barefaced, easy to read. Like when I see ‘Free Jokes, Funny Photos, Laugh-while-you-can,’ wink and blink in the wings, I know the mail must contains words like laugh, funny, enjoy. Though it can also be from someone in the ICU moaning that though he could not note the number of the car that hit him, he would recognize the driver’s smile anywhere. If a sender as much as mentions 'author' or 'book', even if it’s in the context of 'book a case' or 'completely authored' the links beckon me to ‘First-day-five-thousand-copies-sold Publisher’ and ‘Rowling or Roy – Help with Idiom’.

If the sender writes, I’m sleepy now, ‘Top insomnia treatment’ lurks in the margins and if, I didn't get much sleep – ‘Sleep Apnea Symptoms, Sleep Devices Inc’. When someone complains that the new boss is a pain in wherever appropriate, it tells me to ‘Try Dr B….for aches and pains’! As soon as the Bank statement email comes, I am sucked into virtual tours of cruises on the Nile offering caviar foot packs and diamond under-tail clips for my pet. They may spy my mails but have problems counting the zeros.

But it’s not often that I see conclusions stretch to incongruous limits such as when after a tiff with a friend I was directed to Hindi Bhajans and Hanuman Chaalisa! The exchange had been peppered with words such as sad and angry but it wasn't a Mahabharat kind of fight, so imagine my surprise when I spied one link, though last, like an afterthought, but just in case…of Packers and Movers!! For definitely fighters must be people living under the same roof! What if one of us was contemplating moving out? No business opp should be missed. One’s world may be falling apart but logistic help is always at hand.

Then there are those that hint at the bizarre. I’m cleaning windows, I write and am promptly, in highlighted font, advised that ‘Denims may guard against rattlesnake bites’. I love Curtis Stone, I confess and in all caps it warns ‘Recipe for disaster!’ Someone was late for work, I barely read when the margin glows with ‘Govt employees rejoice’. Those two sure go together! A friend shared his anxiety about visitors at an upcoming event ‘It could be a flood or a trickle,’ he wrote and I told him to organize boats because I was being directed to ‘flood warning’. A short note on this and that and nothing much led me to ‘Are You a Fresher? Let Companies Discover Your Talent’. I sifted and strained but words it wasn't. The sender had used green font.

The friend’s mail is all bold and unread. I’m looking more at the right, trying to figure out what it may contain. Curiouser and curiouser, I click. Atta, dal, kids, maid and the husband late from work. In big bold letters the offer displays itself ‘Exp:0-5yrs, Sal: 25-100K Submit Resume’. But of course! Someone working late must need a job change.

Everything that I ever want or do not want to know at my fingertips. Smug, I log in to check my mail. ‘No new mail’ it proclaims and promptly leads me to ‘Hysterectomy Via Keyhole Surgery is Less Complicated: Study’. Auntiji!

This piece was published in The Deccan Herald, Sunday, December 5, 2010 in a horribly mutilated form.  In the name of EDITING, they BUTCHERED and knocked the punch out of it! It doesn’t even read okay! Check out: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/117995/ineffectual-cyber-wisdom.html