मन का रेडियो बजने दे ज़रा...

Recently, I heard C’s friend hum one of my current favorites: aaogey jab tum o saajna…but her next line made me fall off the chair laughing, ab na phool khilenge! When you come beloved, the flowers shall never bloom!! Whoa!

Funny thing is they now have a google that just swabs off your query to come up with all possible answers that you are looking or not looking for. So in a few seconds you have the lyrics nicely decorating your screen and you can play the song as many times as you like to ‘by heart’ it.

The radio gen did not have it this easy. Our big rectangular box sat on a wooden rack in a corner of the drawing room. It had two big knobs – one for volume and the other that had to be touched ever so lightly to set that frequency which blared into a loud crackle even if touched by a flying bird’s dropping feather.

All the four girls in the house were fond of singing. Now catching the lyrics on such a sound system wasn’t easy and most of us then had notebooks with our favorite songs painstakingly handwritten. My notebook was divided into filmy, non-filmy and ghazals - neat triangles of folded pages segregating the three genres I understood. So we had to stand really close to the radio and hear really intently and write very fast. The constant ‘shut up’ by this one and that trying to hear, punctuated all house chatter. I had a brilliant knack for blurting excitedly during such and ‘shut up’ meant get lost.

Small wonder then that Vandu was caught singing ‘kaho Mati Chand kidhar chale?’ for ‘tohmatey chand dil pe dhar chale’!! and ‘thandi hawa ke jhonke chalten hain halke-halke, aise mein dil na todo, baatein karo na tan ke…’ for ‘asie mein dil na todo wade karo na kal ke…’!!!

Now my  munchkins sing ‘hal ghadi badal rahi hai…jo hai samaan kal ho na ho!’ really it’s all stuff, isn’t it? Kal ho na ho! So as long as the heart sings, sing along…flowers will bloom. 

My earliest radio-memory is of the whole family joining in when ‘Badan pe sitaare lapete hue…’ played and everyone smiled at me for it was considered my song. Massi Aunty and Mummy got me a short black shift dress with silver sequins so I could imagine myself wrapped in stars. Yes C, mum wore an LBD back then :)

More on radio days, my Hindu piece on fifty years of Vividh Bharti.

ना तुम हमें जानो , न हम तुम्हे जाने...

I’m known for such goof-ups – yeah, all of you who remember and want to recount can, leave the really embarrassing ones out of the public domain please (what would that leave us with though). And don’t hold your head like this, Mr Slightly Bald.

Today is Jash’s birthday. I have never met him. He will be seven or eight today. He does not know me. But before he was born I saw him vividly in my dream and told his father that it would be a boy. I came to Jash through Sunil and to Sunil through Papa. Bangalore, new job, new home, new friends, I was emailing Papa about all that every day. One day I got a mail from one Sunil Tripathi gently telling me that some of my mails to my ‘Mummy and Papa’ were going to him instead. Papa was tripathisn@...and he was sntripathi@... Mortified, I apologized. Sunil discerned my embarrassment and wrote back that it was perfectly okay. He may have read me and I saw the gentleman in him. So we continued writing – to each other. It’s almost ten years now. We have never met. But he’s been with me through a lot – my new jobs, friends, travels, writings and very importantly Papa’s illness and his going away. During these years he married, had a son. In 10 years we’ve never forgotten to call each other on birthdays and other days. Both of us agree that Papa meant us to stay in touch. And we will.

But the hilarious ones far outnumber. Topmost – Chotu and I traveling from Delhi to Bhopal by the night train. In those days it was common for the train to stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere like the dacoitful Chambal. The power failed. It was hot and dark. Chotu was on the berth above me. Now he was sitting across the berth from me and we started to talk about how hot it was and how sleep was impossible. Then casually looking up, in the darkness I saw Chotu leaning out from the top berth shocked to find me chatting up a complete stranger!

Bangalored!

It seemed like a good time to move out of Delhi. We won’t stay for more than two years, husband was categorical. So Bangalore it was, exactly 10 years ago on November 18, 1999. Three days later, walking alone on Old Airport Road at 10 night, I called friends in Delhi to tell them this! It was amazing that I could walk that stretch without anyone gawking at me during the day even. What a respite!

There were things I couldn’t get used to in a hurry and then there were the rest…

EVERYONE called me 'Amma'! Aiyyo why? I clearly remember the day I graduated from ‘baby’ when I travelled alone, the train attendant called me ‘madam’ and I was quite shocked. But Amma? The maid, I did not mind. But the doc called me Amma, the autowala, the school teacher, everyone.

At around 4 in the evening lovely hunger-whetting aromas arose all around. Bhajjis! Ah! fiery peppers and crunchy capsicums, mangalore and maddhur wadas. Totally addictive. But the carrot was ‘ello’ (when I first corrected C for using that she told me if she said ‘yellO’ no one would understand!) and ‘jamoon’ did not easily evoke the taste of gulab jamoon but remained the succulent purple-tainting fruit. ‘Bhaiya’ could not be used to soften the heart of plumber/ electrician/ security. Everyone spoke in a sing-song kinglish and a sentence became a question by just elongating the last word. The all signifying ‘aa’ made all the difference ‘going out aa (!!)’, ‘going out aa (?), ‘going out aa (.), going out (~) ’ Similarly ‘pa’ ‘da’ ‘la’ – good fun!!

Nor was the ‘one dosa parcel’ easy 'cause parcels came in post and not at food take-away counters. The trucks and buses ‘sounded horns’ and never horn pleased. The traffic cops wore bowler hats. Women wore flowers in hair to work – not one or two, entire bushfuls even with trousers. They rode bicycles in sarees. There were lady bus conductors, petrol pump…nah 'bunk' attendants and postwomen too! The cows had elongated and very pointed horns. Red light se right lena, bhaiya was not understood. 'Signal' it was. ‘Where is your native?’ was hello. And ‘tell me’ after hello wasn’t meant to sound as rude as it did.

Now we look forward to 'meals' not thalis and eat soft mounds of fluffy rice slobbered over with spoonfuls of gee (just as g becomes gh, as in 'gar' meaning home, gh become g, and same interchange for 't' and 'th') as spice induced tears of sheer pleasure stream out of our eyes. We break into the impromptu 'jinke marina' at balle balle moments. I 'remove my phone' from my pocket to talk into it. And use Amma, Ma liberally for aunty, neighbor, kid, store attendants, loo keepers… When at indecisive shopping moments, I place my hand on five silk sarees and tell them I want only one, the exasperated shop attendant points to one and says, 'chennagidya', which I now know is not 'go to hell', she’s helped me select.

Why I’m writing all this? Chumma!

PS: All you scandalized north log, 'chumma' in not the jumma ka chumma but simbly JLT !! yeah, that took a while getting used to!

न दस्तक ज़रूरी, ना आवाज़ देना...

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Neighbor.
Catch you on Facebook?

What’s the world coming to? Or again, am I getting old and hankering after old-world niceties? Okay, latter. But here’s talking of an exception.

When I see the packers and movers truck parked under my bedroom window, I try and figure out who’s moving out from my neighborhood or who’s moving in. Because before I know it, it will be too late. Last week when I bumped into a neighbor in a store 10 km from our place and commented on her new hairstyle, C politely interrupted to lead me to the far end to look at pickles because she was afraid I would say something to reveal that I had no clue they had moved out of our complex months ago.

But being what I am I still look forward to new neighbors introducing themselves and the moving out ones, ringing the bell just to say, they’re leaving. Yeah, that’s all. No need to leave your new address. On good days I make plans for visiting friends next year.

My relationship with neighbors on the left starts on the wrong foot. Some Vaastu problem, I’m sure. But it always gets better. Good Vaastu. I would be terribly miserable if I did not get along with immediate neighbors. So I was really pleasantly taken aback when the couple who bought the flat on the left appeared at my door. Never mind it was 3 on a Sunday afternoon. I’ll take good manners over the snooze any day. To compound matters, they were very young, too young to be nice and well-mannered.

Now what brought them to me was me. Sundays are no tolerance days as far as ‘bang-bang’ goes in our apartment complex. We try not to drill tunnels, chop down unused cabinets, solder new grill designs on Sundays. So when the bang-bang next door began, my fluish mind, a little hurt with the former neighbors leaving without a word of farewell - I had no intention of holding on to their legs crying, mujhe chood ke mat jao, started heating up. As the noise continued, I called the Manager who called them and quietude was restored. Apparently, they were not aware of the unwritten rule.

They came to introduce themselves and apologize, OMG! What’s the world coming to? I’m better off romanticizing my good old days and sighing.

One of my favorite Robert Frost poems:

A TIME TO TALK
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.