music and miscellania

Hope and industry: An evening in Dadar...

2013-04-10T19:31:00.001+09:30

The young well-built lad swung his bat ferociously making an unmistakable connect with the swinging white ball, which traveled up in the air some 15 meters and crashed into a window pane of a third floor apartment. Miraculously, the glass did not shatter. Instead, the ball bounced off the window pane and floated down to the ground sluggishly where 3 able bodied fielders vied with each other to catch it. They laughed and screamed, jostled and pushed each other for a vantage position. It was as though they were making space for themselves in a crowded Mumbai local train by digging into the ribs of the person next to them. All of them had their hands cupped to receive the ball, as though they were about to receive offerings at a temple. All of them wanted to be the catcher that had dismissed the burly batsman. The ball, though, had other ideas. It popped out of their collective hands and landed on the ground making a tinnish sound; the sound a table tennis ball would make.

The batsman received a reprieve.

This was a match that took place under lights on Tulsi Pipe Road in Dadar, Mumbai in a paved courtyard, about 15m wide and 30m in length. This floodlit cricket ‘ground’ was enclosed on one side by a tin industrial shed and on two sides by tall apartment blocks. The cricketers played with a special, light ball which ensured that windows would not get broken. The lighter ball swung much more than a normal cricket ball would.

The batsmen played with immense skill and strength and thrilled the large, wild audience that watched and cheered as they played. The boys, all from nearby dwellings, cried, shouted, laughed and thumped each other on their backs as they sweated their way through this sticky Sunday evening. We stood there for a while, appreciated and applauded the fun as well as the skill that was on display.

To me, this was the Mumbai I had known and loved as a young boy who had spent many of his summer holidays here. A Mumbai of people from Dadar, Byculla and Matunga, the Mumbaikars who make the place what it is; the sort of people that do not venture much into the Bandra and Worli sea-face locations of Bombay that is inhabited by Bombayites. The Mumbai I knew and liked contains stories from Byculla, Matunga and Dadar and does not include fancy lights, nightclubs, fashion shows, bling and Bollywood. The Mumbai I feel, smell and appreciate is a hub of dizzy activity where people get by, survive and maybe – just maybe – get ahead.

It is this Mumbai that I wanted to feel and experience when I went to Dadar a few weeks ago with my wife and a few friends. We had no particular objective or destination in mind. We just wanted to walk, smell and feel the Mumbai we all loved. We started our exploration at 6pm on a Sunday afternoon from Tulsi Pipe Road at the cricket ‘ground’, walked up to Shivaji Park and back.

We crossed a permanent makeshift – yes take that paradox and cope with it as I do, everyday – market under a flyover on Tulsi Pipe Road. A police van stood by the side of this dimly lit market to ensure that the improvised temporary stalls were appropriately lasting. There was a surreal sense to the irony and I could only smile as I walked through this under-the-flyover market. Smile I did until something harshly corrosive in the air made me simultaneously rub my eyes and clutch my throat. The acid in the air may have been released by the constant trampling of vegetable leaves (probably radish), marigold stems and green chilies. The air was pungent, yet the vendors shouted out loudly, announced their wares and advertised their prices. The pungent air did not trouble them at all. Each hawker sold the freshest produce at least price. Around them, people walked busily and briskly towards an unknown destination.

There, an old man slept peacefully in a bed made up of two slabs of stone, his head rested on one stone and his feet on the other; his torso, suspended in between. He slept, completely oblivious to the strong, sharp air and the frenzied chaos around him. He didn’t even move as a motor bike honked its way through this crowded market, missing him by just a few feet. ‘How did this bike even get there, leave alone maneuver through it,’I thought.

We exited from this hyperactive and busy market and spilled into the main Dadar market to see a sea of humanity in front of us. From where I stood – a slightly elevated part of the road – all I could see was a sea of heads. 'Surely the people were stationary while the ground moved underneath them,' I thought. How else could we get through this human mass? We did, occasionally receiving a nudge in the ribs. Mumbaikars are adept at moving in small spaces; they dodge and weave lithely through even the tiniest of gaps.

Sometimes I would exchange a glance and a nod with other people, but mostly everyone was focused on their individual destinations. I could not ascertain if people were happy, content, sad, tired, busy or dejected. It appeared as though all of them had a job that had to be accomplished and what I felt was intense industry in whatever people were doing.

This sense of industriousness included Ram Chand, a vegetable vendor, who smoothened his mustache proudly as he announced his produce and shouted out the price of his merchandise. He said to one of his prospective buyers that he would not entertain any bargaining and twirled his mustache flamboyantly as he said so.

We walked up through the markets and walked around Shivaji Park and saw people – many people – walking, laughing, talking and relaxing.

Out in the maidan itself, we saw kids play cricket and soccer in fading light. All these kids had proper cricket kits and played with cricket balls that thudded against well oiled bats. A few of the netted cricket pitches were floodlit as young bowlers charged in – in whites – to bowl to well-protected young batsmen. “Get behind the ball. It is all about technique,” a coach shouted in Hindi at the recognized nursery of Mumbai’s cricket. That was exactly what the lads were already doing at the Tulsi Pipe Road ground against a lighter ball that swung maniacally and unpredictably in the air.

It was close to 10pm when we returned to where we had parked our car after dinner at Prakash Hotel. The market was still a hive of activity. The police van still stood there. The men inside it cast a protective eye on all the temporary stalls. The acid hung around in the still air; it would perhaps stay in the air until the trampled and crushed leaves could be gathered and taken away. Vendors still shouted their prices. Ram Chand continued to twirl his ostentatious mustache The cricket match continued in the paved courtyard on Tulsi Pipe Road.

The sleeping old man was gone though. In his place were two young girls, one each on the two stones that had propped up the old man. They were probably ten years old. In poor dim light, as their parents sold vegetables or food nearby, they read from an English text book. Their heads bobbed up and down as they tried to learn their lessons, probably for their school exams the following day. I stood there, mesmerized, as they recited their lesson. I could not make out what it was they were memorizing. Perhaps it was a poem. Perhaps it was a story, an essay. I did not want to pry, so my friends and I smiled in appreciation and turned away slowly. I do not know why, but I was filled with hope...

The cricket players on Tulsi Pipe Road shouted one last time. It wasn’t clear who won. But everyone was happy and amidst much back slapping and mirth, the flood lights were turned off. Elsewhere, in an apartment, another light came on in this city of industry: home to several million hopes.

--Mohan (@mohank)

If only we cared...

2013-04-06T22:29:00.001+10:30

I stood unsteady on the balcony of our 18th floor apartment and held the rails tight because of the mild vertigo I suffer from. My wife was baking an inventive dessert our guests that evening wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Having given up desserts just over four weeks ago, the thought of a violent clash of the cherries, chocolate and coffee was enough to drive me into paroxysms of desire. I desperately needed something between me and this dessert preparation.

The balcony looks out west into a vast green expanse – somewhat of a luxury in Mumbai – and down onto a man made lake created when developers emptied a quarry that existed there. All around me, I could see a glimpse of life in the other apartments. The foul, pungent stench of stagnant water, heat, acrid dust, open drains, sweat and shit -- human and animal -- was strong enough to overpower any smell, including the beautifully mutinous fragrance coming from within the house. The outside smells formed a perfect antidote to my craving, and was a ready example of the paradox that life in Mumbai represents.

Like the dust and smoke, there was nowhere for the smells to go. They hung around uninvited, creating a haze: a confused cohort awaiting instructions from an unknown someone. In less than two minutes, I was also sweating profusely and my t-shirt clung to me. The haze reminded me of the pub I used to frequent in South Kensington in Londonin the days when customers could still smoke in pubs; and it seemed everyone smoked. The dense pall would represent a smoke-mixture: from the open fireplace, cigarettes, cigars and pipes. It would lift to eye level, hang around my face and sting it repeatedly.

If I looked around, all the balconies like mine offered to me the stories they contained, encouraging the casual voyeur in me, fueling my understanding of life and people around me.

The smell of cigarette smoke made me turn in the direction it wafted from. I looked to see a young couple smoking on their balcony. The young man wore dark-rimmed, thick glasses that rested uncomfortably on a very large, bulbous nose. The woman puffed on her cigarette lazily and appeared to relish her experience while the man appeared to be hurried. Soon the reason became obvious as the man lit another cigarette even though the present one was still only two-thirds complete. 'Isn't there enough in the air we breathe to additionally introduce tar into our lungs especially on a sweltering day like today,' I thought. I would have asked the same question of myself if I had been the one smoking. And when the couple were done, they turned inwards and without even looking back, casually flicked the stubs outward; the cigarette ends spiraled pitifully to the road below.

Elsewhere, a woman watered plants. Pointlessly. Wastefully. She must have just had a shower, for a thin towel covered her hair. Did she have curly hair? Straight? I did not know and the towel wouldn't let me in on those secrets. ‘Did she know the plants would retain as much water as a sieve in this afternoon heat?’ I wanted to ask.

There I could see a pot-bellied man in his vest. He stretched lazily. Perhaps he had just had his lunch. He had in his hands a small packet. His gold ring glimmered as the sun’s rays bounced off it. He tore open the packet and emptied its contents into his palm, briskly slapped his palms to his face and hurled its contents into his mouth. He then flung the empty packet out his balcony and rubbed his palms, satiated. The piece of plastic sailed lifelessly and rested on the pavement below. The man returned to the comfort of his air-conditioned living room, perhaps happy that it was still neat, well-accessorized and completely devoid of plastic wrappers.

Somewhere else, a maid hung out the washing with quiet care, picking up a piece of clothing from a clothes basket, untangling it, shaking it vigorously to straighten it, and finally straining to reach the clothes line. Sweat poured from her face. Occasionally, she would catch her back as she strained it. It was clear she had a sore back. Just as clear as the fact that these clothes were hung on a balcony that faced the road, for the world see. Yellowed, crinkled, sometimes bright white fabric stories forced into the vision of those who happened to look up. I was sure they had another option to this balcony and wondered why they didn't use it. This relentless sun would surely reach an inward-facing balcony too? The maid, though, was too focused on her immediate task to worry about and look at anything else other than the clothes basket below and the clothes line above.

As my arms got wetter with my sweat, I watch everyone disappear indoors, gradually. The heat my body gave out must have smelt of blood because a mosquito landed on my arm and I idly wonder how it got to the 18th floor. I admire its resilience and strength; instead of swatting it, as a reward, I offer the mosquito use of my hand for a full minute before blowing its drunken, swollen body away. The lack of wind may have helped its flight up 18 floors. Or perhaps the mosquito had arrived in one of the three lifts in our building, two of which may not be used by "workers and maids."

By now, I find myself begging for some air to cool the sweat off. One part of me is also playing a game, to see how long I can hold out in this quiet heat that is made oppressive with so many stories. Ahead, I see the green of the lake and think it would be lovely if it had a fountain in the middle; a fountain to circulate the water so it didn't stagnate. What I see, though, is still water that could be beautiful if only someone cared: If the maid that hung the clothes despite a sprain in her back stopped to stare. If the person who flicked that cigarette butts cared. If the person that watered plants on a hot day cared. If the man who flung the plastic wrapper onto the road cared.

And if I cared...

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Conquering Heart Break Hill

2013-03-25T21:44:00.001+10:30

Running hills is a necessary part of endurance training. You just have to run hills if you want to run long distances. And like a lot of things in the activity itself, running hills is much more of a mental exercise. A runner has to instruct their body to propel themselves up a hill. I had read all the material on ‘attacking hills’. There is enough literature to suggest that a hill runner must look ahead 50 metres at least, that they must try and shorten their stride, manage their centre of gravity, activate their core muscles and lean into the hill. A friend of mine who loves running hills told me to continuously say to myself ‘I love you hill’ rather than moaning or saying ‘Damn you hill, this is hard work’ as I ran. I knew the theory, but failed in putting all of this into practice. As with most of my running itself, I learned this lesson the hard way on Heart Break Hill.

Running has been my religion for a long time, and nothing could stop me from engaging in it every day. Not the heat, dust, stench, the pain or my own inabilities; I just have to run. Every morning.

I am normally up every day at 4.45am – even on Sundays – and am out pounding the pavements soon after. I hate treadmills these days. I used to run on them almost always when I lived overseas, where I began my love affair with running. Not anymore, since my move to Mumbai. Counter intuitive, if you actually thought about it. First, the air quality is significantly worse in Mumbai than almost any other city in the world I have run in. Moreover, there are few pavements in Mumbai to run on; pavements are to runners what water is to swimmers. Most Mumbai roads come with potholes and debris, which is not at all good for runners. And if all of this wasn’t enough to make life hell for a runner, there are the smoke-billowing vehicles that vie with the other two hazards on Mumbai roads. Yet, I love running the roads of Mumbai.

After my move to Mumbai, I identified and carefully mapped out several tracks around my home. I can be quite boringly meticulous. ‘You are definitely a four-letter word contained in analytical,’ my friends often tease me. I mapped out a three-km route, a five-km route, a six-km route, a seven-km route and a 10km route. Sometimes, especially on a Sunday, I would run the same route twice or add a few of the routes together to make up a longer run. Many of these routes would take in the smoke, the dust, the stench and the exciting life of Mumbai, a city that is interesting even at 5am. Occasionally, I would run past a park with the fresh morning wind blowing in my face. And sometimes I would run past pavement dwellers too. Many of them would be fitfully asleep, completely oblivious to the sound of traffic around them. Most had a simple, thin cloth protecting them from the dust, cold, rain and vehicle smoke. Some of them would be stirring and a few would just look and smile at the walkers and joggers who walked or ran past. Those who were up would often be laughing and joking amongst themselves as they ushered in a new day.

I often ran with either Neha or Kapil, sometimes both of them. We are a good running group. I have always believed in running at a talking pace; not that the three of us talked a lot. For us, running was a time for either introspection or meditation, for focusing on the self, and for reflection.

As I ran, I would often reflect on the unresolved arguments I had left behind me (or run away from) or the challenges ahead of me. I would often ask myself difficult questions about my behaviours and responses. Was it right to be that intense? Should I have let go? Should I have argued as passionately as I did? Was I being too selfish? Did I understand fully at all? Did I understand enough? Should I be more accepting of people? Should I be less judgemental ? The questions swirled around. I did not have an agenda or a list of questions; they just arrived in my head as I ran and I confronted them without fear and mostly, with honesty. Or so, I thought. And although I ran with Neha and Kapil, this was exclusively my time.

Each of us would have only one ear plugged for music. The other ear was open to the occasional question or comment from the other two. Every now and then, one of us would say something and the others would contribute to a quick conversation. But mostly, we focused, introspected, listened to each other’s breathing and ran in silence.

Most of our conversations, when we did talk, revolved around pain. I had accepted pain as a way of life and loved the challenge of overcoming this pain. To my fellow running mates, I understand pain. Running has taught me that. Ten years ago, I would barely run 100 metres before collapsing in a heap from pain in my shins, or my calf muscles or in my lower back; sometimes, all three. On those days, I thought I would never be able to run again. I always wanted to. Badly.

I have gazed at runners with a mix of awe and respect. I loved and simultaneously envied the way runners could effortlessly glide across running tracks and cut through hard pavements. I loved to hear the sound of running shoe scratching bitumen. I loved the grace and the gait of a runner. But mostly, I enjoyed seeing runners tell the story of their running through their repeated and, perhaps, monotonous motion. Back in the day, when I could not run, I looked for that story in every runner. The story of the runner coping with their fatigue, or pain; of focusing on the process and not the destination; of the runner spraying water all over themselves to cope with heat; of the runner plugging away despite the exhaustion, or simply enjoying their run. I wanted to embrace the trail. To me, this was an unrealized dream. So I taught myself to accept and, slowly, overcome the pain of running. And slowly, I taught myself to run. Small distances at first, and then the longer distances invited me. Even today, I am not free from pain. My pain would always start in my shins in the first kilometre of my daily run and this pain would soon travel up to my glutes by the time I had clocked three kilometres. And that pain would often remain with me right through my run. I would merely block it.

Paddy, a running mentor of mine had once told me about the mind-body-intellect framework and I used that framework to overcome and block out my everyday pain. The physical pain is transmitted by the body, the vehicle. The mind would feel the pain immediately. But I had been taught to work on my rational intellect – in this mind-body-intellect nexus – and had taught it to be independent of the mind. I had conditioned the intellect to quietly observe, moderate, regulate and counsel the mind. The intellect won... mostly.

I woke up that particular morning; getting up was always the tough part. That day, it was made tougher because the previous day was a bad one for me. I had had a few unpleasant, hurtful, testy and unhelpfully fractious arguments. I felt the need to introspect deeply. I had to learn more about myself, my reactions, insecurities, discomfort, judgemental behaviours and my own needs. I was in a dark and somewhat uncomfortably unfamiliar space. And as I stretched in preparation for the run, I knew I had to run hard that morning. I knew that this would not be like any of my other runs.

I secretly hoped that Neha and Kapil would not run that day. Although they ran ‘alone’ even when we ran together, I wanted to be totally on my own that day. As if by magic, Neha and Kapil had both informed the watchman that they would not be running; one had a dodgy knee and the other had a cold. ‘This is perfect,’ I thought to myself as I stepped out into the cool morning.

I decided I would run 10 kilometres that morning and would also set off at a faster pace. I discarded all my carefully mapped out routes and, instead, ran towards the hill. The hill formed a picturesque backdrop to our apartment complex, dwarfing the tall, majestic buildings, giving them a sense of their own fragility. A few months earlier, I had driven towards the hill and mapped out a course on this reconnaissance drive. I wanted to accept the challenges the hill posed. But the path that I mapped out during my earlier reconnaissance was discarded by my running group. But things were different this particular morning. I was on my own.

So, this particular morning, I ran towards the hill at pace. I did not know what it was called. So, I named it Heart Break Hill. The Boston Marathon has a Heart Break Hill, a rise of approximately 30 metres over a 600 metre stretch; a gradient of about 5%. I had run ‘The Tan’ (short for Botanical Gardens) in Melbourne regularly. This track includes a killer stretch along Anderson Street; an incline of 27 metres over a 75 metre stretch. My own Heart Break Hill was an incline of 120m over a one and a half kilometre stretch; a gradient of about 8%. It was reasonably hard and I hadn’t run that hill before. That day, I was presented with the perfect opportunity.

As I had different playlists for different days and different moods, I selected a playlist that included Springsteen, Sting, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads and U2. The lyrics did not matter. The rhythm did; all of the songs had to be at 80-85 beats per minute. I strapped on my heart rate monitor, pressed the start button on my Garmin and set off purposefully. I had to conquer that hill this morning.

It was three kilometres by the time I reached the bottom of Heart Break Hill. By then, my shin pain had already set in; it struck me a bit earlier on in the run that morning. I tried to block it out, but it was hard. My mind wasn’t entirely under my control that day. I reflected and tortured myself as I ran. I thought of my BMI guru: ‘the intellect always has to be independent’ was the voice that kept ringing in my ears. But the intellect was a slave to the mind that day; a mind that was focused totally on deep introspection in a dark and unfamiliar space. The intellect was no longer independent; it was hardly even present. The mind had taken over, felt the pain and the course and all of this coalesced with the confusions that emanated from an unfamiliar space. To make matters worse, just as I reached the bottom of the hill, my breathing shortened – an indication that my asthma was kicking in. Asthma is something I have been dealing with since I was five years old. I was so terribly unfocussed that morning that I had forgotten to puff on my Ventolin inhaler prior to my run. But I could not throw my hands up in the air and head back home. I focused immediately on regulating my breathing; three short exhalations and one long inhale. This was already tough work, even before I reached the hill that I was determined to conquer.

My breathing was short and raspy. My pain had intensified. Freddie Mercury sang ‘I want to break free’. Ironic. ‘Break free from what,’ I thought to myself. I continued to attack the hill mercilessly. One step at a time; one breath at a time. The stride shortened as did my breathing and I slowed down to a painful seven kmph. Half way up the hill I did encourage thoughts of giving up, although giving up was not why I ran. I did not know howto give up. I could not handle failures or disappointments through lack of trying and I had never run away from a battle. I had to know that I gave it my all; that I had tried my hardest to conquer, to understand, to comprehend. It mattered to me that I fought myself and warded off my own demons and limitations in a bid to understand myself better. The hill had to be defeated; it had to be conquered this morning.

The phrase ‘conquer’ rang in my mind constantly as I ran. I was three quarters of the way up the hill when cramps set in – in my calf-muscle. I had slowed down to 6.5 kmph and my heart rate monitor beeped alarmingly. My heart was going at a crazy 182 beats per minute, a good seven points above my suggested/theoretical max heart rate. I had never seen the dial reach 182 beats per min in all my years of running. I considered stopping and walking up the rest of the hill to the peak. But then I wasn’t about to give up. The hill just had to be conquered that morning.

Then, with 250m to go to the peak of that hill I suddenly remembered what Raju Martolia had said. Raju is this incredibly calm, very collected, supremely able and wonderfully fit Garhwali guide who had accompanied us on all of our Himalayan treks and climbing expeditions. Every day, after our trek had concluded, our trekking group would talk, mostly about other trekking and climbing experiences. One day after our day’s trek, as we relaxed around a camp fire, I asked Raju to tell us about the toughest mountain he had ever conquered. Raju’s face immediately registered a mix of shock and hurt. He was taken aback and said, “Sir, we Garhwali people do not conquer mountains. The mountain is a goddess for us. We take her permission to use her for our own benefit. I have never ever conquered any mountain.” He went on to explain this was why Garhwali guides would never place a flag at the very peak. A flag at the peak would suggest that the expedition had ‘conquered’ the mountain. “We always place the flag a few metres short of the peak. If we think we have conquered the mountain, our goddess has a way of teaching us unpleasant lessons on the way back,” he said.

I remembered those very words as I tried my own very unsuccessful hill conquer expedition.

As soon as I recollected Raju’s words, I realized I was doing it all wrong. I slowed down and sought permission from Heart Break Hill instead. I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t confused anymore. My rational intellect was suddenly freed. I had nothing to prove. I wasn’t fighting myself anymore. I could give up if I wanted to. I could let go. This wasn’t a fight to a facile victory. This was me trying to understand myself more, be accepting of my own limitations, boundaries and shortcomings. I knew what I was; who I was and I was comfortable with that. Suddenly, I wasn’t attacking the hill anymore. All of this meant that I immediately felt more relaxed and observed a change in my stride. It was now easier and smoother. Even the breathing appeared more regulated. The asthma vanished too and with it, the pain. Or maybe the pain and the laboured breathing were both made irrelevant. Suddenly, there was clarity too. I cruised up the remainder of Heart Break Hill and reached the top. I hadn’t conquered the hill. Instead, I felt that Heart Break Hill had taught me an important lesson that morning.

And as I ran down the other side of the hill, I looked back at where I had run from. Heart Break Hill still stood where she always was. She wasn’t moving. She wasn't going to move either. But she appeared to bid me good bye benignly and compassionately. She hadn’t been conquered. Forget conquered; I wasn’t close to even understanding the mystery she was. That morning, she had merely provided me with permission to run and enabled me to overcome my own insecurities, anxieties, inadequacies and irrational fears...

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Mumbai Marathon: A few suggestions

2013-01-21T21:53:00.001+10:30

There is something unique and wonderful about running the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM). The event has grown in size steadily over the last 10 years to become a premier event in the world running calendar. The large numbers of people that line up the streets do make it an expressive carnival that Mumbaikars take immense pride in. And the event has grown in terms of the numbers of participants that run the various races that make up the SCMM. These are only a part of what makes the event a riot of colour, noise, participation and an expression of togetherness.

Since the addition of the Bandra-Worli Sealink the course is also quite wonderful. The many extended flat segments, the 4km Sealink, the run along Queen's Necklace and the gentle inclines make it quite a nice course to run without being either too difficult or too challenging. The good parts more than make up for the stench that a runner is hit with along a few segments of the run. The entire course is closed to traffic and that is a definite plus. The volunteers and organizers are extremely polite and highly focused.

Although it is a serious run for many people, there is much fun to be had. It is definitely one of the better organised races in India; perhaps even the best. I wrote a blogpost on my own experiences running the SCMM2013 earlier today.

Yet, I do believe that the event must be better organised. Here are a few suggestions I have for the organisers and runners.

Portaloos at the start point:

Five portable toilets (portaloos) for men and five for women at the starting point is just not enough please. There were a few more portaloos along the course as soon as we started the half marathon run, but most runners gather at the start point at least half an hour in advance and do not want to hold their stuff in them for longer than is necessary. The loo queue was way too long in my view. I hate writing this and I'd hate to be the reader of what I am about to write, but after waiting in queue for 15 minutes, the loo I went in to was filled with unpleasant stuff. Why? Because there was no water for the guy(s) that had used the loo before me. So the lack of enough portaloos and the lack of water makes it a massive double fail in my books. Why can't we get this aspect of hygiene right? Ever?

Water station at the start point:

Runners spend nearly half an hour in the holding bay at the start. Few runners got water with them. A water station at the holding bay will not go awry. Runners preparing to move towards the start line need to hydrate properly.

Mark the water stations please:

The Mumbai marathon has plenty of water stations and this is a big plus. However, as a runner I do not know when the next one is going to come up. It should not be too much of a hassle to mark our the water stations clearly with a banner that makes it easily recognisable from at least 100m out. A blue dot that sticks out (say) 3m high will mark the water station out distinctly. Depending on which side of the road the banner is, runners who need the water can then line themselves up to either on the right or the left side of the road as they approach the station. The last thing you want to see is runners cutting across your path from right to left (or the other way) the moment they realise they may just be about to cross a water station.

Crowd management at the finish line:

The finish line has always been chaos central in the SCMM and this keeps getting more and more chaotic with each passing year; simply because the numbers keep increasing. It would be great to see better organisation and better crowd dispersion management controls at the finish line. The absence of portaloos at the finish line was a source of severe disappointment. After having consumed copious amounts of liquid -- a mixture of water and isotonic drinks -- I was hopping around after my finish -- not from pain but from a distinct desire to not have an embarrassing accident.

Telephone capacity:

This is less to do with the organisers and more to do with the telephone carriers. All runners were desperately trying to contact their family or friends to let them know they were fine; that they had completed. Many of them may have wanted to organise their ride home. Few phones worked. The fact that the telephone companies could not organise additional capacity on the day was a major fail in my books.

Runner etiquette:

Apart from the BO index (especially near the start line) being insanely high, the main problem I had with my fellow runners was that they'd drop their water bottles in the middle of the road after finishing with it. If you can't find a bin, do fling the bottle to the side of the road and against the pavement. Two reasons mainly. Firstly, this makes it easier for the cleanup operation. But more importantly, it makes for a clearer path for the the slower runners and the elite marathoners who would trod the track later. However, I found many a half-finished water bottle, a half finished orange or assorted rubbish on the road. This was somewhat disappointing behaviour from a cohort that was generally excellently aware, organised and prepared.

Overall, the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2013 was excellently organised. I will certainly run more SCMMs in the future. If a few jagged edges are ironed out, I am sure SCMM will be a much better event than it already is.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Run Mumbai Run

2013-01-21T18:54:00.001+10:30

I saw the 18k mark approach me. And yes, that's exactly how it was for me from the 15k mark onwards. I wasn't running; the course ran towards me.

Just as the 18k mark reached me, I glanced to my right to see a man in crutches walk his way along the course. He struggled to place one foot ahead of the other; each step, accompanied by a grimace. Yet he braved the course and trudged along. Occasionally, he would smile at someone in the crowd. But he was largely focused on his own progress, his own work. I am not sure what distance he ran; but, if I were in his shoes and crutches, 100m would have been hard. But this remarkabe man wasn't interested in giving up. He was't there to give up; he was there to complete. He grimaced and smiled his way with extreme determination. I know. I stopped as soon as I saw him, partly in admiration and partly to support him. And I walked alongside him for a while. After a while, I realised that he did not need the support. I did! I acknowledged the presence of a lump in my throat, saluted him and looked ahead at the work I had to do. I had another 3km to go. The course came towards me once again.

At the 19km mark I was once again stunned. I spotted a man with one good leg. From his knee down, his other leg was a graphite rod. He ran along the course in a determined manner. He looked ahead, his gaze fixed on a point some 10m ahead of him. He ran proud; each stride measured, purposeful and filled with determination. I felt privileged to run along with him for about 100m or so at the end of which I saluted this man too, and once again allowed the course to flow towards me.

People like these two remarkable men reaffirm my hope in human endeavour. They stretch the limits of human achievement. They brave pain and achieve their goals through the force of their intense determination.

I was underprepared for the Mumbai Half marathon this year. Among other things, extraordinary work pressures hindered my preparations through much of November and December. But I did compete. Thanks to these two wonderful men, my own battles with my sense of underpreparedness and with the course were rendered hopelessly insignificant in comparison. I was carried to the finish line by these two and by the lovely people of Mumbai.

"Run Mumbai Run". That was what I heard many spectators, including an old woman, shout as I ran my third Mumbai (half) marathon today. At the 17km mark, I spotted this old lady seated in a plastic chair by the side of the road. She clapped enthusiastically, just as many other Mumbaikars had, to cheer the runners. The old lady must have been about 80 years old; barely able to stand. Yet she braved the chill January air, her family stood around her, and applauded the runners along Peddar Road. And it is people like her that make the Mumbai marathon one of the very best in the world. I have run a few organised long runs. I have never seen such heartfelt participation as I have seen in Mumbai.

Plenty of kids, youngsters, old men and women lined the streets. Some held trays of biscuits, some a candy tray, others offered peeled oranges. Many just clapped and provided words of encouragement. Along Worli Seaface one man had set up an ad-hoc pain-relief-spray camp. He would spray the weary legs of runners who wanted the relief. When I ran past, there were at least 10 discarded cans of spray around him and his army of helpers. Another man had set up a pain-relief station with ice cubes wrapped in plastic sachets. He applied these instant ice packs on several weary calf muscles.

And then there were the banner holders. I remember one banner held aloft that said, "Have fun on your run. For this is your day in the sun." And there was another one near Peddar Road that cracked me up. A young girl held aloft a poster that read: "Run fast like you have stolen something." Posters like these deflect the attention of amateur runners from their tired legs! The many DJ stations that pumped out music, their words of encouragement and the Navy Band along Queen's Necklace helped too.

The constant applauding, the shouts of encouragement ("keep running there's not far to go") and the chants provided a constant fillip to exhausted legs; they add to the atmosphere and relieve the pain of running. That said, I'm not sure "Fire on the mountain run run run" was an entirely appropriate chant. My backside and legs were already on fire. The last thing I wanted was to run away from an imaginary fire on an imaginary mountain! Every now and then, one of the runners would shout “Ganapathi Bappa” and the few tired runners around him would dredge out a “moriya” in response.

These lovely people combined to add at least 4km to my weary and underprepared legs. It was a perfect day for running, but it was also a cold day for those that weren't running. But the gorgeous spectators were all there to make the Mumbai Marathon special in the running calendar.

I ran for a worthy cause: Vidya. They do some committed and fantastic work, and provide access to education to the underprivileged. If you are able to, please visit their website and give generously.

Oh, I did complete the half marathon. The finish time was unimportant. On a lovely and a perfect day for running, when many runners scored their personal best times, I scored my personal worst half marathon time of approximately 2 hours and 36 minutes (the official finish times will be released in a fortnight). However, for me, like those two wonderfully committed men, what was important was that I took part. Like those two wonderfully courageous men, it was all about "Run Mumbai Run”.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

A square peg in a round hole

2012-12-13T22:15:00.001+10:30

...of clichés and weasel words

My bank manager has been a very unhappy man for a long time. Yes, the same guy who has ‘I am not at my desk’ on his mobile phone voice mail. He has now become a good friend of mine because I empathize with him. I listen to him and I try to offer solutions to his (many) problems. He has often told me that he feels he is from a different generation. Much to my chagrin though, he insists on saying that he is from my generation. “Saar, I am from your generation,” he says in a desperate bid to find solace even though he is a good 10 years older than me.

His current problem is that he doesn’t quite fit in with the young and modern crowd at the bank. The young people at his bank are all fresh out of management schools – known as B-schools in these parts. When I hear that term I always ask: “Arre, I don’t care about those. Where the A-schools?”

I once went to the bank to meet with him and was stunned to see a sea of young faces all around. These young folk looked like Emraan Hashmi, Ranbir Kapoor and Virat Kohli in suit and tie. The poor fellow looked completely out of place in an office full of young people with gel-laden hair, tattoos and eyebrow-piercings. They were fresh, enthusiastic and young people: "dudes" apparently. The bank manager was told recently by one of these young dudes, “You are very old school dude,” to which the manager could only muster, “Arre, what are you talking? I did not go to school only. I worked my way up through the ranks. First you learn your facts and then talk.”

The kids laughed at him.

That was when he called me. He could not understand the language these kids spoke. “They do not speak English. The other day one of them wanted to kick a few tires. I have no idea why they want to do that,” he said and asked me for help.

So I attended a meeting at the bank to assess the extent of his problems. The manager introduced me as an external reviewer of a project that an Emraan Hashmi lookalike and Virat Kohli lookalike were working on.

After the introductions were over, Hashmi and Kohli launched into a speech on a new consumer product the bank was about to launch. I asked them to describe what the new idea was, what it was all about, what made it unique and different and what it would do for the Bank. Four simple questions, one would have thought. No?

Hashmi started off first. He said “We had lots of ideas but we needed to socialize them and workshop this holistically. We started with a blank slate and put in the hard yards. We needed to first chew the fat a bit. All ecosystem synergies were looked at synergistically before we decided that this one idea had legs.”

At this point, Kohli jumped in with his own verbiage: “This is a win-win proposition. If we can foster key relationships, we can create a paradigm shift and score goals. But for that we need to wrap our heads around this and be on the same page. However, we first needed to be proactive and blue sky this, for it won’t be a walk in the park for us. But this idea will certainly separate the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff as long as we walk the talk. Because, unless we aim for the skies, we will shoot ourselves in the foot.”

I was already exhausted by then. So I put my hand up, stopped them and said I had not understood any of what they had said.

Hashmi said, “I see where you are coming from,” to which our bank manager jumped out of his seat and thundered, “Arre, how do you know where he is put up and why does it mater? Anyhow, he comes from Powai only.”

Clearly, we had a problem.

But Kohli ignored the interjection and carried on, “Look, all we need is to pick the low hanging fruit. For that we need to get a few runs on the board, push past first base and look at benchmarking this gig. We will be happy to loop you in and keep you engaged.”

I still had no idea what they were talking about and so asked for clarification. “Could you tell me what exactly this product is and what it will do?”

Kohli continued, “Oh that’s easy. We are starting with a clean slate on this one. All we need is a few quick wins under our belt. From then on, all we need is to burn the candle at both ends, live it, breathe it 24-7-365 and get past first base. There are a few issues to iron out but we will certainly attempt to close the loop in a key manner.”

“Oh yes I do understand all of that,” I said, at which point my bank manager immediately fell at my feet and asked, “You really do?”

I smiled at him, looked at Hashmi and Kohli and asked for clarifications on what they were talking about. I said “I know you guys are talking about something important but I do not know whatit is.” Then, in a bid to join them, I asked, “Can you give me a thirty five thousand feet view of what this idea is all about?”

Hashmi said, “Oh that is easy. We have been underperforming as a unit. We decided to right-size our operations, wear out our shoe leathers and step up to the plate. At the end of the day, when rubber hit road, we decided that we did not have the bandwidth to do anything other than to stick to our knitting. We stuck to our core-competencies while we thought out of the box. We had to tear down our silos, and harvest fresh ideas. We developed a go-forward strategy, managed expectations and developed an open-door approach to synergise thoughts. We leveraged all talents and brought all minds to the plate. We had put many ideas to the basement and we left many others in the parking lot. But we put a stake in the ground with a winner. It has a wonderful value proposition.”

I was getting highly exasperated with this excruciatingly painful diarrhea of weaselwords. These two boys were extremely well spoken and well dressed (and well paid too). But they also appeared to be good at saying a lot without saying anything at all. By now, I was beginning to develop new respect my bank manager. “Yes, all that is fine, but I didn’t ask how. I asked what?” I shouted, and for good measure I added with a smile, “This is the third time I am asking whatis it that you are attempting to do... and as you know from your B-school notes, generally, three strikes and you are out.”

Kohli jumped in at this point, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white, neatly-ironed Pierre Cardin shirt and said, “See, as we said, we needed to address the elephant in the room. We were not right sized. We needed to level-set expectations for we had far too many chiefs and not too many Indians. We hired a change-agent and made him the go-to guy to run with this gig. We empowered him fully and convinced ourselves that he would not drop the ball. We had a hot potato in our hands. So we carefully looked at benchmarks and best practice methodologies to ballpark this. We also carried out due diligence and applied the 80-20 rule to many other ideas that struck us from left-field. We then decided to home run this one. We have built in redundancies for we don’t want to be thrown under a bus and be caught on the hop.”

I had had enough. I said to Kohli and Hashmi, “I don’t think you have compared apples with apples on this product. This idea has to be moth-balled. There, I have declared all my cards. Let's touch base later. We may need to take the rest of this offline guys,” and got up suddenly.

I looked at the bank manager and told him that he was, unfortunately, a ‘square peg in a round hole’ and left.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Motivation cycles and rhythms...

2012-12-11T01:58:00.000+10:30

I do not like intensely motivated people who get up every day at 5am to go for a jog or a gym session. These are the sorts of people who use the phrase “24x7x365” a lot in everyday conversations even with their drivers. You know what this kind of person would do that is most irritating? At a critical juncture in a work meeting they’d stretch their calf muscles and squeeze their face in agony. One of the people around the table would inevitably ask, “Everything all right?” to which the calf stretcher would often say: “Oh, nothing much, really. I overdid my run today,” pretend as though everyone else in the room wanted to hear the rest of the story and continue, “I should have stopped at the 33 kilometre mark, but continued on to complete 35 kilometres. That probably did it for me.”

That sort of intensely motivated person... The world is full of these types of people.

This sort of person brings such supreme levels of motivation, drive, determination, energy, commitment and focus to everything they do, whether it is running, gymming, work, studies or even the organisation of the office football competition. They give the anal in analytical a new meaning. This sort of person scares me more than Himesh Reshamaiyya. This sort of person appears to have no imperfections at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a bit of a runner and a gym fiend too. I too get up at 5am and there are work meetings when I get severe cramps in my calf muscles. But I go through cycles of intensity in everything I do. There are phases when I am intensely focussed on an outcome and will work incredibly hard to get there. For example, November (2012) was a tough month for me from a work perspective. It was also a month when there was much non-work nonsense that was swirling around too.

However, what I did first in November was to cut out much of the obvious distractions (Twitter and Facebook, for example). We live in an age of monumental distractions; each with its own customizable alert tone or vibration. If an incoming email doesn’t compel you to reply immediately, even as you run on the treadmill, your Facebook will let you know, through yet another unique alert tone, that someone liked the silly picture you put up just a few seconds before you hit the gym. Most of us are almost always on the losing side of the distraction battle that today’s electronic media has with us and imposes on us.

In November, I defined my purpose and goal rather clearly and succinctly. More importantly, I was able to rid myself of debilitating negativities that tend to make the ‘calf stretcher’ look better than they actually are. For me, at times like these, I also work on shortening the list of things I do rather than lengthening; which is a temptation because there is just so much to do. I prioritize my goals rather brutally. Being productive is not about doing everything. It is about doing a few things really well. I write these down as a reminder and only focus on these.

All of this delivered the focus that enabled me to get through that work-month... and more. I was productive even though I put in many 3-hour sleep nights and 15-hour work days. My gym work and my running suffered. I had no sore calf muscles to draw attention to at work meetings. And I did not organize any office football competition. But I got through the month even though it was an imperfect month when seen through the lens of my personal fitness.

Now this is an imperfection that the intensely motivated person perhaps does not have. They focus on a few things and do them really well; they drive these to within an inch of perfection.

I am not like that. I exist in what I call ‘motivation cycles’. I like that rhythm, that imperfection and that lack of continuous focus to everything I do; and I do have many interests that ebb and flow over time.

I go through periods of lethargy. A very good friend of mine refers to this by asking me whether I am in the ‘fit or fat’ part of my fitness motivation cycle. I go through similar cycles in all other pursuits of mine; professional and otherwise.

I do normally get up at 5am and, after sending out a few work emails, I am either out on a run or I hit the gym for at least an hour and a half before I head out to work. However, when there are other priorities – such as my work-intense November – I am able to switch priorities quite easily. I easily slip into the trough-phase of my fitness regimen. I remember there were days in November when I would get up at 5am – having only slept at 2am – with the intention of going for a run. I would wash my face, don my running clothes and stealthily climb back into bed without even a semblance of guilt; I soaked it.

Even after my intense November work-phase concluded, I just could not bring myself to get into that gym routine for a week. Perhaps it was the mental exhaustion caused by work. Or perhaps I had reached a burn-out point. I just had to get out of the trough; the valley of the Sine curve I existed in. I knew I would. I had done that before too.

At times like these I rarely beat myself up with a wet towel; I build resolve. I accept, embrace, understand and cope with the resultant guilt. I do not deny the sloth. I grow determination instead.

I then monitor the return carefully until the endorphins slowly take over again. There is a process to this. I maintain records in this period; records of how much I run each day, or how far I cycled, or what weight I pressed on the bench press. I am most cautious and deliberate at times like these without beating myself up; I try and identify the reason for the sloth (usually mental exhaustion or other work personal priorities). And I am more honestly observant of myself at these points in time than at any other point in time on the motivation curve. The most important step in this journey is monitoring the return process honestly, deliberately and slowly. It works. Always.

Especially if you are not one of those intensely motivated people who like to complain about their insanely taut calf muscles at meetings...

--Mohan (@mohank)

The ruffian and the gentleman: a long short story

2012-11-29T23:55:00.000+10:30

As we drove from Karnataka into the newly carved state of Madipur, I noticed immediately the colours, texture and function of the land had changed significantly since I had left the place.We drove from the lovely and expansive Bengaluru Airport along the new expressway, which ran through Malgudi before cutting through the new state of Madipur. The lazy countryside gave way to concrete, glass and steel. There was a markedly different tone and rhythm to Madipur City, the capital of Madipur state.

The Madipur City I grew up in was lethargic. Today, it was the hub of knowledge outsourcing. Most of the world’s largest companies had moved their research and development centers to Madipur. This new state had much to offer: an abundance of talent, natural resources, lovely weather, institutes of science and technology, proximity to the Bengaluru International Airport, and much more.

In exactly one hour and fifteen minutes, I had reached the Madipur Vidhan Sabha. 'It would take me that long to get from the Bengaluru Airport to Indiranagar,' I thought, as I got out of the car that had ferried me to the new legislative assembly building of Madipur. The exhaustively interconnected metro that was promised for Bengaluru was 20 years in the making and still incomplete. In direct contrast, Madipur had a fully interconnected metro network and a lovely system of roads. As we drove in to Madipur City, a large sign welcomed us: ‘Visit the State with no scams and traffic jams’.

The Vidhan Sabha of Madipur was an impressive building. Imagine the Vidhan Soudha in Bengaluru. Multiply its expanse by an order of magnitude and give it a coat of dark red paint. That was the Vidhan Sabha. Indeed, Madipur represented exactly what Bengaluru would have been but for the latter’s governance void, trust deficit and distinct lack of visionary leadership. In the beginning, constructing a new state adjoining Karnataka would have been hard. There was always the possibility the vibrant Bengaluru, with its greenery, its lively bars, strong educational institutions and young people would overshadow Madipur. However, within a short period, the young and the old had slowly moved out of Bengaluru to settle down in Madipur, “a happening place which is simultaneously a pensioner’s paradise, a hipster’s heaven, a dreamer’s delight and a teenager’s thrill location,” Poly Narayana Reddy, Madipur’s chief minister would say to me later that day. He clearly loved his alliterations.

He loved other things too, like food. But more importantly for Madipur, he had extraordinary vision and drove towards it with the energy of a man possessed. When he was elected to power as Madipur’s first chief minister, he declared he would make it the ‘cleanest and most progressive state in India’. In just 10 years, he was ready for the next big goal, having already satisfied his stated goal when he first took over as chief minister. “People talk about ‘single window’ government operations. In Madipur, we do not believe in either windows or doors. We believe in open plan offices,” he once said in an interview. Since he became chief minister, things he said were constantly quoted in business magazines; nearly 40 journal articles and case studies had been written on him and his style of open governance.

And I was here, in Madipur, to meet with him.

He had met me in New York the previous month where he was due to give a keynote address at a large management junket – sorry, conference! I was a part of the panel discussion that immediately followed his keynote address. He spotted me in the audience during his talk and waved. After his talk he came up to me, embraced me and said, “How are you Siddharth? We do not have much time to talk now, but you must come to Madipur. I need you there,” and quickly departed. I was amazed he remembered me. We weren't friends when we had grown up together in Madipur City. We went to the same college. However, we had had only a few dealings in my time there. I also thought he would forget our meeting in New York. However, two weeks later, I got a call from his office. The chief secretary to the Madipur state called me and asked if I would visit the city as a guest of the chief minister, Poly Narayana Reddy.

I stood outside his office wing and said, “My name is Siddharth Rao and I...” and before I could finish my sentence, Poly Reddy’s PA said, “Sure, we are expecting you. Please walk with me sir” and whisked me into the chief minister’s wing. It was called ‘The People’s Wing’ of the building.

Colourful modern paintings adorned the walls, which were all painted in solid colours and included sharp, clean corners. The furniture has sleek and, like the walls, had sharp corners. A few large plants in large earthen pots decorated the floor and helped accent the visual appeal just appropriately. Much like the people that worked in it, the place had a welcoming yet businesslike feel to it. I stood in the waiting are for exactly two minutes before I was asked to go into the chief minister’s office.

He was a big impressive man, with a thick mustache He wore spectacles these days. He had a rather neat and cuddly tummy. That part hadn't changed. Indeed, when I was in college in Madipur, I would often wonder why he was known as Poly Reddy or Poly Narayana. Initially, I thought this was because of his cute little paunch, shaped like the ghatam, the percussive instrument often used in Carnatic music concerts. I thought his girth, the ghatam and his roly-poly appearance gave him his nickname. He would always rest his folded hands at the top of his pot, much like a ghatam player would. Sometimes when he was unhappy, his palms would rest face up at the top of the pot. That was when you knew you were in trouble; and with Poly Narayana ‘trouble’ meant losing your knee cap at the very least. It was only later that I found out that ‘poly’ had nothing to do with his roly-poly appearance. It actually translated to ‘nasty fellow’ in Kannada; that was where he had inherited his moniker from.

His office had a wall of books on a range of subjects. There were several management and self-help books. Books by Christensen and Gladwell appeared to have been read many timesover. But the shelves also had Krylov, Pushkin, Gorky, Nabokov, Havel, Garcia-Marquez, Miller, Mahfouz and more. These weren't mere show pieces either. Through the day, he would quote from Nabakov or Mahfouz. He had actually read these books and recalled passages from them. This was a guy that hardly spoke English when we were at college together.

Poly Reddy wore a dark blue Armani suit and, as always, wore Hermes cologne. Even in his college days, when he walked you felt he ruled the world. He didn't believe in slouching, nor did he drag his feet. His was a walk of a confident, arrogant man. “The word humility does not exist in my dictionary,” he told me once while we were at college together nearly 20 years ago and, on seeing my raised eyebrows, continued, “...and although I could get a new dictionary, I prefer this one that I have.” I had one look at the way he went through his work that morning and was convinced that Poly Reddy had not yet procured that new dictionary. He did not need it.

He signed many papers that morning as I waited. It was fascinating to see the man in operation. He would sign papers with a flourish that represented poise and self-belief.

He looked at me briefly, peered through the papers he was signing, and said “Two more minutes Sid. I will be done here and then I am all yours,” and, as he took off his sun glasses, he paused and added, “...for the rest of the day.” I immediately wondered why he wore sunglasses inside his office. But I didn't linger on that thought for too long. I was, instead, concentrating on what Poly Reddy had just said. I had just heard him say “...I am all yours, for the rest of the day”; this was simultaneously worrying and comforting. How would I engage with him for the rest of the day? What would we talk about? Even if he brought it up, I was certainly not going to talk about our largely murky past. Even though I remained worried and strangely comforted, I was confident of what I could and did not want to talk about. And that was one major difference this time: I was no longer in awe of the man.

I was in awe of the man when we were at college together. I was always the studious guy and would never interact with Poly Reddy, who was already developing a reputation as a deadly ruffian. I was studying Maths and he, law. So we really did not have much interaction. I would see him from a distance every now and then. For some reason, he had taken a huge liking to me and would always nod or smile at me. I would be simultaneously worried and comforted. But I was also in awe of his swagger, his confidence, his walk, his very being.

However, I stayed clear of him because he worried me. Yet, my past interactions with Poly Reddy were not orchestrated by me though. It involved a girl called Malini.

I thought about Malini and how I had fallen in love with her. I was 17 and in the first year of my two-year pre-university course (year 11). Malini was warm, bubbly, extroverted and incredibly loquacious. She was also exactly what the testosterone of some 30 boys in our class needed at that time. Of the 20 girls in the group, she was the one that everyone wanted to talk to and be with. For over a month I plotted strategy after failed strategy, on how I might approach her and ask her out for a coffee when, one day, she made the first move. As our Chemistry lecturer was spotted walking down the corridor, I sat down in the chair in front of her. I leaned back to rest my back on her writing desk when she pulled the desk towards her. In a matter of seconds, I lost my balance and my head was, instead, on her knee. I looked up at her face and saw her smile in a benign and inviting manner. I fell in love immediately. The connection was thus made. The rest of the class was more electricity and biology than chemistry!

At the end of that hour, I actually didn't need to ask Malini out to coffee. We just ended up at the coffee shop. We didn't talk much. We didn't need to. Indeed, we rarely did. We just sat and stared at each other as 17 year old kids tend to do. This would soon become our regular routine at the end of our day. There were no posh coffee shops in those days. This was in the pre-CCD era. So Malini and I would go to the nearby coffee shop, which we fondly used to refer to as ‘Cholera Bhavan’,and stare into each other’s eyes as we sipped our coffees from a glass. After our post-college coffee, I would drop her home, which was one suburb away from my own home. I would drop her at the end of the street her house was on; her parents could not see us together. Not yet anyway. Occasionally, we would go to a slightly posh restaurant. Even there, we would mostly look into each other’s eyes. From time to time we would talk about Arun or Amit or Lalita or Swaroopini and laugh at their immense immaturity, their tendency to gossip or their inability to spend money on their friends. Every fortnight, we would go to a Hindi movie. Neither of us understood Hindi, but that was hardly the point of going to the movies. We walked in the park, we held hands and wanted the world to know that we were an ‘item’. We didn't care what people said. There was a song that released around that time that became the catch cry for us lover types. The words ‘khullam khullapyar karenge hum dono’ from that song became our refrain.

Life was good.

That was until Soma Prasad paid a visit to the park bench near my home one day and asked for me. When I wasn’t with Malini, my friends and I would gather at this park bench to either play or talk about cricket. On that particular day, when Soma came calling, I was with Malini at the movies. He apparently asked for me by name.

Everyone knew Soma as the local goon. He walked around with a knife hanging down the front of his trousers. He was always dressed in a tight yellow T-shirt and had a thick gold chain hanging down the front of it. The chain had a Volkswagen emblem at the end of it. I was never quite sure why this was the case, but that was what he always wore. Soon though, one gold chain grew into two and then 10; so much so that we used to sometimes refer to him as Chotta Bappi, for while he had the chains, he was only a quarter the size of the legendary gold-chain-loving musician of that era. Soma was a thug and he wore his gangster tag with immense pride. No one from our locality crossed Soma’s path. Of course, I was oblivious to Soma’s existence. I was either lost in my books or on Malini those days.

The next day, Soma came visiting again. He came over and warned me to not go out with Malini ever again, “aa Malini nann area hudigi, bit-bidu siva illandre ninage yen agaththe gothilla...” he said in Kannada. (“That Malini is from my area. Drop her otherwise I don’t know what will happen to you...”)

I told him I didn't speak Kannada but, nevertheless, understood what he was saying. I also told him, “Can’t do. Sorry.” and went on to describe the history of property and possession of property. I talked about possession as enshrined in law from the times of Renaissance Europe and of how human beings were deliberately and pointedly excluded from such ownership laws. I told him that Malini wasn't anybody’s property: not mine or his. I was incredibly angry at that stage, but also incredibly stupid, for Soma was less than impressed with the law lecture and was beginning to lose his shape.

He showed me a knife and told me that if I did not stop seeing Malini, he would have to use it. I walked away, but I was determined that I would not allow a goon to dictate what I did in my life.

By then, I was having second thoughts about Malini. I wasn't really in love with her. We had gone past the ‘who can stare the longest into the other person's eyes and still show immense love’ stage. I needed exciting conversation more than I needed the eye exercise. I was convinced that Malini was not the one for me and was contemplating how to end that relationship. However, I was doubly convinced that I would not end the relationship on a thug’s say so. So Malini and I continued the hand holding and the eye exercises for another week.

Soma came calling again. This time, he came with two other people, who stood behind him, arms folded while Soma talked. Well, he didn't really talk as much as barked. He asked me why I hadn't stopped seeing Malini yet. I started talking about the origins of European Law once again when he lifted his right elbow and crashed it into my jaw. The speed of that one simple movement was enough for my jaw to crack. I felt my teeth rattle so hard, I thought they had all dislodged from their sockets. I could barely feel my jaw and doubled over. As I doubled over, he brought his knee up slightly. My forehead thudded into his knee. Everything happened so quickly. In just under five seconds, I was bruised and defeated. Soma and his two hooligan friends left saying he would not like to visit again the following week.

I was jolted back into the present by the strong smell of Hermes. Poly Reddy was hugging me.

While I was lost in my recall of the Malini-Soma episode, Poly Reddy had said to his PA that he had had enough for the day. He had asked everyone to leave his office. He had taken his Oakley sunglasses off and sat them on top of his head. He smiled as he hugged me; it wasn't merely a hug. His was a violent embrace.

The glasses were off and remained off for the rest of the day. I could see his eyes. They were fierce and determined; they were also the eyes of a tired man.

Poly Reddy and I talked continuously that day. We talked a lot about the Madipur that he had fought for, about his vision for his state. We talked about his passion for good governance and about how he wanted to show to the world that we could, in India, build a model city and state that the entire world could aspire to. He said, “I want the young people of my state to have career options and prosperity that people like you thought you could only secure by leaving the country.” He showed me that day that he had reinvented himself into a wonderful gentleman; a man with a large heart that had passion, pride and a place in it for everyone.

The ruffian had given way to a gentleman.

He was certainly a very different man from the Poly Narayana Reddy I knew in college. We talked of that man he was in college. We talked about how we first interacted with each other immediately after my needless interface with Soma.

The day after my close interaction with Soma’s elbow and knee, I was badly bruised and my face sported deep purple blobs the size of baby mushrooms. I told my parents that I had fallen down the stairs at college. I don’t think they bought that at all. My father, Srinivas Rao, looked at me, shook his head despairingly, and walked away; we communicated mainly through a series of grunts those days. I did go to college that day even though I was bruised. Although, to be honest, I think my ego was bruised more than my face was. However, I was convinced that I would need to go through another meeting with Soma. And another. And another. I wasn't going to give up on my right to a choice.

Quite by accident, I met Poly Reddy at the college entrance that day. I really did not know why Poly Reddy needed a college education. He wasn't interested in studies. He would turn up every day for a few hours, talk to a few girls, eat some tiffin and head back home. He was the son of a wealthy businessman and land owner in Madipur. He drove to college in a chauffeur driven BMW car -- these were times when CEOs of large companies could barely afford an Ambassador car. The previous year, he saw me act in Macbeth as Mark Anthony. We played 10 nights in the college auditorium and he was there every night. He would stand up and applaud after the ‘Friends Romans and Countrymen’ speech. Every night. And he couldn't speak one full sentence of English. Yet, he would attend every play I acted in. There was a connection between us that was as baffling as it was deep. I couldn't quite understand the connection.

He wanted me to teach him English. “Teach me to talk like you,” he said one day. He knew I wanted to go overseas and study some more. He used to say he was proud to know a guy like me who spoke “such perfect English”. He wanted to speak English like me and wanted to be a lawyer. He told me once in Kannada, “I know you will become a big shot in the US. Me, I only want to wear suits and cooling glasses and work as a lawyer somewhere in India itself.”

Poly Reddy met me at the college gates that morning. He took one look at my bruised face and raised an eyebrow. That was his style. He wouldn't ask directly. He would gesture with his eyes, his hands or his face. I said the bruises were nothing much and tried to move away. But he would have none of that. He stopped me in my tracks and asked, “Who beat you up? I don’t even want to know why? Just say who?”

There was concern, empathy and anger in his voice. I had no idea why he sought me out. We never talked at college, but he would seek me out always. We would say a hello or raise eyebrows and that would be all. But he would always look out for me those days.And today, there was anger too. I tried to avoid the issue. But he pressed and demanded an answer. He saw through the ‘fell down the stairs’ attempt and said,“Just tell me who.”

So, I told him what had happened and immediately sensed his anger and consternation. I told him that this was something that I would go through, on my own.

That night, he called me and said, “Come to the Narayanapura grounds at 11am tomorrow. Sharp,” and hung up. I did not know what to make of it. I knew it wasn't to play cricket. Poly did not play any sport, as evidenced by his immense size. I went to the grounds at ‘11am sharp’ as I was instructed. My worst fears were confirmed when I spotted Soma on the cricket pitch. I saw a crowd of 10 people standing next to the cricket pitch. Soma had been summoned at '10.30am sharp'. Apparently Soma had arrived there and for half hour Poly Reddy and he had been talking about the state of local politics. The moment Poly Reddy spotted my approach towards the cricket pitch he pointed out to me and asked Soma if he knew his ‘very good, beloved and most lovable friend Siddharth’. As Poly said this he rested his palms on his belly, face up. Soma immediately fell to Poly Reddy’s feet and asked for forgiveness, “nanigge gothilla guru, bitt-bidu nann-na,” he said (“Leave me alone boss. I did not know at all”). But Poly did not stop there. He did not let Soma get away. He held the knife that one of his henchmen handed to him and marked Soma’s thigh with deep gash. As Soma yelled in pain and anguish, Poly said that that gash should serve as a reminder to Soma to never mess around with a good friend of his.

He then turned to me and said,“Now continue your romance without fear.”

My teeth clattered uncontrollably at the sight of blood, the knife, the sound of pain and the brutal aggression I had just witnessed. Without my knowledge, I stuttered and spluttered my way through a lecture on the principle of property as enshrined in European Law. Poly Reddy waved me away and asked me to go home.

The next day I met Poly and told him that I was not impressed with what had happened. I told him that I was not interested in the staring exercises I had been indulging in lately. I told him that I was also not impressed with him defending my rights and my principles, especially in the manner he had and especially when I had not requested such help. I told him that he had no right to protect me or defend me or make me an accomplice to thuggery. I protested vehemently and told him that it was my problem to solve and confront. Not his.

He said, “Principle or love, your choice. To defend you or not, my choice. Now go.”

There was something unsettling about it though. I wondered if that choice he had made came with a price tag.

It did.

“Here have some coffee,” he said as we walked around the lawns of Madipur’s Vidhan Sabha, thereby jolting me out of the Soma episode. He would tell me later that Soma worked for him these days as his principal private secretary.

The Vidhan Sabha in Madipur was an impressive building. There were no security machines, no gun-toting policemen, no barricades. People could walk in and out of the building when they wanted to. “It is, after all,theirs. We are merely temporary residents of this building, occupying it with the people’s permission,” Poly Reddy told me.

The facade of the Sabha was like the Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore. However, behind the facade was a large lawn that covered the rest of the building. The assembly hall was buried under this lawn. Madipur’s people were invited to sit, eat and play on the lawn above. He would tell me later, “Like the parliament house in Canberra, I wanted the people to be able to sit and walk on top of the assembly area as a constant reminder to us legislators that we are only here for one purpose: to serve the people who stand above us.”

He took me on a tour of the property later on. And as we walked on the lawns I noticed a sign out of the corner of my eye. It read: “Please walk on the grass”. I had seen that sign before. It was in the botanical gardens in Sydney. The sign spoke of confidence and courage; it spoke of humility and it spoke of sharing.

As we walked around the lawn he told me of his political career and his future ambitions. It was impossible not to be swayed by his energy, his dynamism, and his animated and expansive style. He looked me in the eye and said he wanted me there. He said he had followed my career as a scientist and then as a science policy maker in Washington. He seemed to know every single project I had worked on; every single paper I had written; every single publicly available policy document I had authored. He said that he admired my own energy and drive and said that he wanted me in Madipur to help him make his beloved state an even better place. He talked about how he had completed his law degree, practiced law and moved into politics; a move that was as natural as it was necessary.

He then said, “None of this would have been possible without you.”

I didn't quite see it that way, maybe because that reminder embarrassed me thoroughly. It left a sour taste in my mouth and the only way of me coping with the discomfiture was for me to push it to the dark recesses of my mind. I was in denial. I shuddered every time I remembered what I had done as 'payback'.

Yes, there was ‘payback’ for his defense of me against the wrath of Soma.

A few months after the Soma-leg-marking incident, Poly came home. He had never been to my home up until then. He said he needed a favour. “I need a big favour from you,” he said, and the moment he said that I knew I was in trouble. He was a proud man. He seldom asked people for favours. He said it was his lifelong ambition to become a lawyer. He said he had attempted three papers twice already and had failed in all attempts. He had one more attempt at passing “property law”, “advanced English” and “interpretation of statues”. I had to remind him first that it was statutes and not statues that needed to be interpreted. I then told him that I would be happy to tutor him on these courses even though I wasn't an expert in these topics. I was already thinking ahead at the work I had to do myself to score well in my own final exams when he said, “No I do not want to be tutored. I want you to write these exams for me!”

I could not believe what I was hearing. I said I had no familiarity with the content and had my own exams to pass. Moreover, I told him that I wasn't a cheat and did not want to get apprehended for being one. I told him that it was blatantly wrong to be an imposter in an examination. “It is totally against the law,” I said, pointing to the subtle irony that these were law exams we were talking about.

I protested. But my protests were ineffective. He assured me that the invigilators in the exam hall would turn a blind eye. They had all been paid off. He said he was confident I could study the courses and pass them for him. All my protests were useless. He said he had had other people write the previous two attempts too, “All useless,” he said. In the end, he said, “You have no choice guru. You have to write these exams for me. No one in my village has a law degree. No one in my family knows what a degree is. I want it. And you have to help me get it,”and placed his palms on his tummy, face up as he said this.

And so I studied ‘interpretation of statutes’ and ‘property law’. The irony did not escape me, for after all it was my allusion to ‘property law’ that got me into trouble with Soma in the first place. I studied for my own exams too. All the invigilators in the law school exams knew I was a petty imposter. I felt horrible and irrelevant. In my own eyes, I was worse than a common thief. Even though I did not seem to have a choice in the matter, I was angry, bitter, repulsed and nauseated. This was wrong at so many levels. But the exam invigilators turned away as I wrote the three papers furiously. In each case, I walked out of the exam hall in two hours in three-hour exams.

Poly Reddy passed. Indeed, he had scored the highest marks in the college in these three papers. He came home when the results were announced and told me he had secured a ‘first class’ in these three examinations. He hugged me and said I had no idea what this ‘achievement’ did to him. He told me that I could ask him for anything I wanted. I reminded him that this wasn't his achievement. I told him that the only thing I wanted was to never be reminded of this horrible offence I had committed. He agreed to this and as he left, I said I had another request, “Never make contact again. Ever.”

My awe had given way to anger. Slowly, that anger dissolved and was replaced with indifference. I was also in denial of my own wrongdoing.

That was then.

Today, Poly Reddy talked to me from across the table. He was the chief minister and wanted me to work with him. He said to me, “I have followed your career with great interest. I know you talked to Malini saying you wanted to end it the very next day after our little event in that cricket ground. I know you went to Harvard to complete your PhD in computational chemistry and then become a professor. I know that even though you stopped publishing science papers 2 years ago, you still have an h-index of 42. I know you specialize now in Science policy.” He said he needed my help in Madipur. He wanted the best companies to come to Madipur and set up their R&D facilities there. He wanted the best colleges and universities to come to Madipur and develop talent there. He said,“You need to work with me to achieve this vision. You need to give back to the place that made you.”

I got up slowly and placed my palms on my own tiny belly. Face up.

I told him I had lived with the examination blot on my conscience for way too long. Despite the remarkable progress he had made for Madipur, this was not what I wanted as a constant reminder. And despite his own progress as a human being, and regardless of his immense energy, vision and passion, I told him that he wasn't a person I wanted to work with. I told him, "You are an impressive gentleman today. But I cannot forget the ruffian that forced me to be a cheat."

His hand too rested on his ghatam; his palms, face up.

His shoulders tightened. I feared that he would force me to do something I did not want to, again. But then, after what seemed like an eternity, his shoulders drooped. He then jumped up from his chair, rushed forward and hugged me. He thanked me for my honesty and said ruefully, “...Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” He was even quoting Shakespeare now! He then said, “Go in peace Siddharth. I understand. Some blots are indelible and are impossible to remove from the copybook.”

He waved me goodbye at the end of the day and as I drove away, I noticed his folded hands. His palm rested atop his ghatam, face down...

- Mohan (@mohank)

The 34k Mark

2012-10-30T02:48:00.000+10:30

I've learned the most when I've been pushed to the edge, cornered.

I was reminded of this the other day when Arathi (@miffalicious) said on Twitter: "Your true strength is identified when you soldier through immense difficulties despite how vulnerable you feel."

I don’t quite know why, but that statement immediately reminded me of the first full marathon that I attempted; The Melbourne Marathon. This was several years ago. I had trained intensely for this race. In the lead up, I had read every single online ‘marathon training for beginners’ guide and built my own specialized program. I don’t know what I was trying to prove and to whom. However, I knew I always wanted to run, but couldn't. I would only be able to run 100m before collapsing in a heap due to acute shin splints. Yet, I never lost the desire to run.

So I learned how to run. I learned to blot out pain. I strengthened my shins. I sought the advice of experts. I visited and started a relationship of utter trust and dependence with Jane, my physiotherapist. And then I started to run long distances. At first, I didn't care about distances. I would run songs. I’d run one song, then two, then three, then four. Soon, I was running 10 songs. I needed to fill my iPod shuffle with more and more songs. The songs had to all be between 80 and 85 beats per minute. I could not run to any other beat. The rhythm was more important than the melody. The songs were as much a drug as the endorphins produced in long distance runners that gave me the 'runner's high'.

A few years later, I was able to run 25 songs and I completed several half marathons.

But that wasn't enough. I wanted to run 50 songs. I wanted to run the Melbourne Marathon. I signed up for it, and devised a training program for myself. I got a colleague, a veteran marathoner, to look at the program I had devised. I commenced my training only after he gave it the seal of approval. I had all my gear ready right at the start: the shoes I’d train in; the shoes I’d ‘wear in’ a few weeks before race day; a new heart-rate monitor; a new watch; 'skins' for recovery; energy gels; magnesium tablets; and more. I was prepared. I then embarked on a substantially rigorous 16-week training program.

I was meticulous in my training and did everything possible to ensure that I was in the best shape I could be to attempt this goal. I don’t remember missing even a day’s training due to lack of motivation or lethargy. If I missed a day’s training it was only because I was unwell. Even when I traveled inter-state for work in those 16 weeks, I would carry out the training that was scheduled for the day.

It was grueling, but fun. I always undertook my long runs on Sundays with my running buddies. I remember some incredibly tough and unpleasant long runs that I undertook and some of the more pleasant ones too. A week before the race, when we were meant to complete a 38 kilometre run – my longest ever run up until then – we encountered terrible weather. It was windy, gusty and presently it started to rain as well. We were two kilometers into the start of our training when we stood at a traffic light, hopping from one leg to the other in order to keep ourselves warm. We waited to cross the road on to Beach Road in Melbourne. That day, were to run along the Esplanade and then along Beach Road for 12 kilometers before turning back. A cyclist had stopped by our side and asked, “Long way to go?” We had just started our long run for the day. I said, “Yeah, 38 today, 36 left,” to which he asked, “Minutes?” I replied: “No kilometers!” The expression on his face is one I will never forget. He mumbled, “In this weather? You guys are mad,” and cycled off at great speed. But we completed our training that day and tapered off for the rest of the week before the big day.

On race day, I was completely focused and felt I was really well prepared. As we walked up to the start point just outside the MCG and as we were flagged off, I was confident this would be a good day for me. As we ran along Lakeside Drive, where the Melbourne Formula 1 race is conducted every year, I was humming; perhaps even 'motoring' along quite nicely! I remained confident and collected for much of that part of the run. I remembered the simple tips I had picked up in the preceding months: ‘Do not go out too fast’, ‘Hydrate regularly’, 'Expel bad air from the lungs regularly'. I was doing just fine. At the half-marathon mark, I had achieved my personal best time for a half-marathon. At that point, I even had dreams of a sub-four-hour full marathon finish time, which would have been just great.

And then the weather turned nasty as we ran back up Beach Road, after the half way point. The previous weeks’ training run along this road was a walk in the park in comparison. On the day, it was hot, windy and dusty. At one point, I had dust in my mouth and occasionally, a leaf would slap me in the face with a force that simultaneously stung and woke me up.

‘But all that training that I had put in will come good,’ I said to myself as I maintained my pace as we headed along the lovely Beach Road. I had the choppy blue ocean on my left and the lovely, expensive $1m houses of Beach Road lining the road on my right. But I had eyes only for the road ahead. The scenery could wait. The rich folk who stood on their glass-edged balconies and waved the runners along as they sipped their morning coffees could also wait.

Around the 34k mark, just as I had run up Fitzroy Street, I turned left onto St Kilda Road. I remember telling myself ‘All I need to do now is plod along this lovely tree-lined street for a few kilometers, head off right down Birrarung Marr and into the grounds of the MCG before completing the marathon with a lap inside the MCG.’

You see, the Melbourne Marathon concludes inside the MCG. It concludes with a lap of The ‘G’. For a cricket tragic like me, there can be no better joy than the completion of a long and exhausting run inside what must rank as the finest sporting Colosseum in the world. The grass had played host to the shoes and the soles of heroes of mine from the cricketing world like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Mark Taylor, Sunil Gavaskar, Alan Border, Steve Waugh, David Gower, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Saurav Ganguly, The West Indies Team from the 1970s and more. I would have an opportunity to run on that turf too.

In a bit. In a bit.

But that wasn’t on my mind as I trudged up the nasty Fitzroy Street incline, and reached the 34k mark in the race. Mind you, the incline is not really 'nasty'. But after having run nearly 33km in hot, dusty and terribly windy conditions, even a gradual and kind 10-meter gain over the one kilometre that Fitzroy Street represents can be quite an experience.

As I turned right from Beach Road the coffee and breakfast smells of the cafes the lined Fitzroy Street hit me. The chairs that decorated the pavement were filled with people who applauded the marathoners that ran, or walked, or trudged or labored up the gentle incline. Some of the morning breakfast-goers clapped. Some of them offered a word of encouragement. All of them sipped coffee or bit into their wholemeal fruit bread toast on this Sunday morning.

I was hurting. I could barely feel my feet. My thighs were burning. I think I had a rash of sorts under my left armpit. My back hurt. My calf muscles twitched. I was in pain and was digging deep to try and blot it all out.

And that is when I told myself for the first time, “Why am I doing this really?”

For me, that was immediately a sign of trouble. All through my training, I had never questioned the goal. I just accepted it, embraced it and did everything I needed to do in order to ensure success. And here I was, laboring up Fitzroy Street, questioning why I was putting myself through what I was doing. It is then that I knew I had to dig deep. The months of training would have to pay off. I had to find that inner strength that would enable me to "soldier through immense difficulties despite how vulnerable" I felt.

At the top of Fitzroy Street, I remember fondly that I was passed by ‘Digger’. Now, Bruce ‘Digger’ Hargreaves is one of the Spartan Legends of the Melbourne Marathon; an exclusive club of marathoners who have completed over 10 Melbourne Marathons. Digger is also a part of the '100 Marathon Club', a collection of runners who have clocked more than 100 marathons around the world. On that day Digger crossed me as part of the 4 hr 30 min ‘pacing bus’. In fact, he was the pacing bus.

Clearly, my pace had slipped considerably. I was now being crossed by the 4:30 pacing bus. From entertaining thoughts, however briefly, of a sub-four-hour completion, I was now looking at a completion time of at least 4 hours and 30 mins, if not more. I looked up at the sign that Digger carried on his back (to indicate his pacing bus) in a somewhat forlorn manner. I felt myself disintegrating at that point. Perhaps Digger sensed this too, for as he turned into St Kilda Road, he looked back at me and said, “Keep going, mate. I have run several marathons. And these are the very worst conditions I have encountered. You complete it today, all right?” I nodded and touched his extended hand. It was a hand of encouragement; a hand that talked to kindness and empathy. And I had touched and felt a running legend.

I told myself as I looked at the looming 34k marker that I would make it to the finish line. I convinced myself that my questioning of the ‘goal’ was a momentary lapse of reason. I was determined to finish. I convinced myself that I would complete that lap around the MCG. I had to take my shoes off at the finish line and feel the grass that Tendulkar, Dravid, Taylor, Border, Waugh, Gower, Dev, Khan, Viv, Hadlee, Ganguly and others had walked on. I had to savor the feel of that grass under my feet, however bruised they were.

And then I then blanked out.

I remember nothing much of the race along the lovely, tree-lined St Kilda Road. The trees that used to once offer shelter from sun and rain to passers-by, now shed leaves, unable to withstand the force of the winds that morning. The breeze swirled around. Leaves dislodged from branches and flew around. There was much dust in the air. It was a horrible day for walking; but a whole lot of us were running towards the MCG.

Apparently, Girija was there although I do not remember seeing her as I ran. She said later she was concerned at the pain I was going through; pain that marked my face. My face was already white with streaks of dried sweat salt. She told me later that she would see me, jog along with me for a few meters, hop on a tram to the next stop along St Kilda Road and wait for me to catch up. She said she did this till I reached Birrarung Marr, where I was told I was met by a few of my friends who were there to encourage me on to the finish line. Apparently one of them ran along with me from the top of Birrarung Marr to the ‘G’.

I came to my own as I entered The ‘G’ and came to my senses again. I did not know how I got there. Then again, when Girija told me, later, that she was there on St Kilda Road from the 35k mark onwards, I was able to recall it. When my friends told me, later, that they had waited for me at the corner of Birrarung Marr, which marked the 40k mark in the race, I seemed to remember it. Although I have no recollection of nearly 8 kilometres of the run, I was able to piece it all together later on.

Maybe I had hit the ‘wall’ at the 34k mark. And maybe from that point on, in the remaining seven kilometres, I was able to cut out many other thoughts from my mind. The ‘wall’ is something many long-distance runners experience. Dick Beardsley, one of USA’s best marathoners, said this of the ‘wall’ he encountered in the second marathon he ever ran: "It felt like an elephant had jumped out of a tree onto my shoulders and was making me carry it the rest of the way in.” He overcame that, learned from it and went on to run several more marathons. He made history by finishing two seconds behind Alberto Salazar in the 1982 Boston Marathon.

When I hit my own ‘wall’, I was focused merely on my own processes. Left leg. Right leg. Left. Right. It was as though I had blotted everything out of my mind and wanted to train all my mental thought processes just on completing the race.

In that sense, I had always compared my long distance running with a research scholar going through a PhD degree. It is a thoroughly lonely process. You sometimes do ask yourself, “Why am I doing this really?" You need to train really hard and ensure that your background, preparation and methodology are just right. But, your training, background and ability can only take you that far. In the end, when we hit a ‘wall’ (or a dead-end in your work), what one needs is intense focus, will-power and determination. Focus is as much cutting out needless things as it is training your mind on the very thing(s) that needs to be accomplished.

And so I focused hard and completed the race that day. And as I ran through the welcoming corridor and into the 'G', I saw myself on the big screen. I waved. The big screen waved back at me. I was on it for a full eight seconds! And then I ran a lap inside the ‘G’. It was my own lap of honor. After completing the run, and as my legs gave way, I slumped to the turf. I felt and kissed the grass that many of my cricketing heroes had played in.

Today, whenever I hit a difficult phase in my own life I say to myself that as long as the preparation has been good, and as long as the processes in the lead-up have been honest and sound, this is nothing but the 34k mark in a tough race...

-- Mohan (@mohank)

A terrific tragedy

2012-10-16T02:24:00.003+10:30

The other day an uncle of mine said to me, "I hear you have no issues." Now I am a fellow that always has plenty of issues. I have issues with anything and everything. I battle issues on a daily basis. So I said, “No uncle. You are wrong,” to which he pressed on “No, I mean you have no issues, no?”I said, “Believe me, I do; lots of them!” He looked a bit distressed and said, “Arre, I mean, you are issueless no? You do not have any issues that have resulted in good newses for your parents right?” Then it struck me.

But ‘good newses’? Really?

By the by. Myself Mohan.

The topic of “Indianisms” like the one above has been the generous subject of many a blog and newspaper column. Indeed from ‘years back’ many ‘kind authors’ have felt the need to ‘discuss about’ Indianisms and have been ‘doing the needful’. Without 'eating their brains' they have all ‘reverted’ and ‘preponed’ their ‘updations’ of these articles. Examples of such articles are here, here and here. (It was a few hours after the current article was published that I was alerted to this rather delightful post too.)

I would often read these and get upset. What is this compelling need to mock Indian English? Why do these authors attempt to ‘nose cut’ us? Are they our ‘uncles or nephews’ to take so much interest in us and our way of communicating? Why make fun of it all the time?

Speaking of which, I have no idea why people use ‘ish’ when they talk about time in India. It is not "9.45 ish"; it is either 9.30am or 10am. But I suppose because we are famed for our punctuality in India it can mean anytime around 9.45 and it is used a lot. I sometimes feel that IST, the Indian Standard Time should have been renamed ISH.

I once told my friend’s 12 year-old son I would meet him at 11am to go with him to a book store. The poor kid looked stunned. He was expecting an “ish”. He got a precise time instead. He replied, “Give me a call when you leave home, no?” so that he could be ready when I got to his place. I said, “No. I will be at your gate at 11am”and requested him to be ready at that time. He said, “Come downstairs and give me a ‘missed call’ no?” I said, “No. I will be there at 11am.”The poor kid was confused, all because he could not respond to a time that did not contain an ISH in it.

But that is the way we are.

Is it ok for English folk to say “tata” when they actually want to say bye? Do they not know that TATA is a proud Indian company and brand name? Why can’t they say “Chrysler” or “Leyland” when they want to say goodbye. Instead of that they ‘take the name’ of an Indian company. Do we laugh at them?

Talking of byes, have you noticed that we seldom end phone conversations with a ‘bye’ or a or a ‘ciao’. It is always “humph” or “ok” or “haan”. I never know when a conversation has ended unless I look at my phone which confirms ended conversations with a red ‘Disconnected’ symbol. This rude form of disengagement is particularly harsh when you talk to people who offer you a service that has gone horribly wrong; say a bank officer, an insurance claims officer, or some such. My neighbour told me of one such incident. He said, “These phone agents act too ‘pricey’. The fellow ‘put the phone’ down rudely and ‘cut the call’. He was acting so funny I wanted to give him a ‘tight slap’.”

Talking of phones, why is it that few Indians have voice mail or a message service on their mobile phones? It is just not done, is it? A colleague thinks that it is 'dicey' to have a phone message, so I do not have one either.

A few weeks ago, I came across one bank manager who had a strange message on his mobile phone: “I am not at my desk. Leave your good name and your number behind and I will revert forthwith.” I do not wish to delve into references to ‘good name’, ‘revert’ and ‘forthwith’. I do, however, worry about the use of ‘behind’ in a message. The use of ‘not at my desk’ on a mobile phone message seemed to go against the very reason for having a mobile phone!

Now this bank manager is a typical ‘big shot' in the ‘hurry-burry’ that represents the world of banking today. His was a ‘rags to riches’ story. Legend has it that for a long time he was also ‘under the scanner’ of the headquarters for a few ‘underhand dealings’. The Tax department tried hard to ‘hunt him down’ but still, ‘heads did not roll’ because he did not quite ‘run amok’ nor did he ‘run roughshod’ over procedures and processes. But it was common knowledge that he ‘swindled’ lots of money.

Anyway, after leaving a message on the bank manager’s mobile, I called the deputy manager who informed me that his boss was ‘not at his desk’ because he ‘used his connections’ and ‘greased many palms’ to go ‘out of station’. The manager’s grandfather had ‘kicked the bucket’ recently. So he and his children had to ‘leave in a huff’ by the ‘shortest cut’ to Sholapur, which also happened to be his ‘native place’. The kids were the ‘worst hit’. One of them was ‘mugging’ for his ‘class twelve and IIT Entrance’. Note that if the phrases ‘class twelve’ and ‘IIT Entrance’ are not used in unison, it means your kids are doing some ‘useless’ commerce or arts or worse, home-science course that will do nothing for their careers. Anyway, as the bank manager was unable to ‘join duty’ for another week, I had no option other than ‘leaving my good name and number behind’. I did. I wasn't expecting to hear from the manager for a while.

I was, therefore, surprised when the bank manager returned my call just five minutes after I had left my number behind. “I am on my way to Sholapur sir. I got tickets with a lot of pull. But on my way to the train station, my car was met with an accident,” he said, as I choked on my lunch. The manager did not meet with an accident; his car did not meet with an accident. But the car was met with an accident. How quaint, I thought.

He then said, “You know, everything was going spic and span. Even my son, Sriram’s class-12 exam got over yesterday. As a max person you will be very happy to know that his best subject is max. But he will not get centum. His max paper was out of portions, but that was also ok. At least I am glad he will be passing out as a proper convent educated now. He never bunked school. You know he got into this school without any pull. His IIT entrance, next week. Full pressure. Suddenly grandfather was off. I don’t know what happened. He was always in tip-top condition. But he became suddenly off. So we have to leave immediate to Sholapur. I have enough leaves. So that is ok. But everyone was hither thither. But I was calm. We have large joint-family. The whole jing-bang wanted to go to Sholapur. ‘No fierce’ I said. But everyone said this-that-all-that. They wanted to go to pay respects. All logistics were in place. I wanted to make a bus, but my family made me take the Sholapur passenger train instead. The car was to ply us to the station. My car was reported at sharp 10am. And then we left. Suddenly, bang. My car was met with an accident. Now everything has gone for a toss. Try and understand my position. I need your kind help. Everything has gone for a six now. But I must ignore this accident hocus-pocus and I must make a move now. Can you send me your vehicle for a few hours? I can send someone to pick it up also. Where are you put up?”

Every line was a gem. The son had got into a good non-government convent school without the need to exploit the father’s networks and connection (commonly referred to as 'pull'). His son would not max ('centum') his maths ('max') paper since some of the questions were out of syllabus ('out of portions’). The son had no need to make the maths paper a portion of a meal, although he may well have 'passed out' had he done that. Quite like the sons’ great grandfather who was recently “off” – or, in other words, had recently passed away. The manager wasn’t a tree that grew shoots and leaves. He was talking there about the number of holidays he had accrued ('leaves'). Nor was the manager also an automobile assembly line production manager to physically 'make a bus'. He implied that he had gathered enough family members to hire a bus. Moreover, the manager’s car wasn’t 'reported' like a petty thief. The car turned up at the appointed time.

But rather than admire and decode his English, I had a more pressing problem. I had to respond immediately to the managers’ request. I muttered, “Sir, I am sorry I 'cannot able to help you' especially when you are facing 'commute-shammute conveyance difficulty'. Also what a 'terrific tragedy' you are facing right now. I am going to 'hill station' myself. The time is 10am already and 'my car hasn’t reported' yet although my driver said he will be here 9.30-ISH.”

-- Mohan (@mohank)

One has to protest...

2012-10-07T03:52:00.001+10:30

I like obsessions; I have a few of my own. Some are even healthy. And most are acceptable. But what is with this polite obsession with the word "one"? I have tried, and then tried again. It all sounds very formal and all but why, exactly?

The other day, this fellow jumped up even as the plane touched down in Mumbai after a long flight. As he jumped up from his seat, he grabbed hold of the overhead locker as though if he didn't, it would fly off on its own. He then pulled his carry-on bag out of the compartment in under 3 seconds and beamed at everyone as though he had achieved a personal best time in "time lapse between touch down and bag recovery". Unfortunately, the plane braked hard as it touched down. The man flew and along with his recently reacquired bag, crashed into me, all arms and legs and bag! I thought to myself, "What an utter pillock" but smiled at him. I don't do anger at these things. I am now used to utter pillocks.

He recovered, turned to me and said: "One is very sorry."

That's it. I lost my temper like anything.

"Arre! Are you sorry or are you not? Why hide behind the proud number one? Be a man. Say I am sorry, no? What is this ONE is sorry?"

So, I wasn't upset that he had acquired a PB that no one cared about other than he. I wasn't upset that he had flown across three rows of seats to crash into me. I wasn't upset that I was, by then, bleeding profusely from a gash in my eye; he had eye-gouged me in a manner a professional Rugby player would have been proud. I wasn't upset that my newly procured shirt shirt was now torn; the bag handle had made that contribution. But I was upset by his use of the word ONE. What was wrong with, "I am sorry"?

I am angry these days because we have acquired an unhealthy obsession for an inappropriate overuse of the word 'one'. This abuse is because of what I call political politeness. I think social scientists should start writing scholarly papers on political politeness (PP) as they did on that other insidious monster, political correctness (PC). PP is a deadly evil, I tell you. PP will make PC look like how a dictionary makes Shahid Kapoor's spelling look.

This use of 'one' enables us to escape from personal responsibility for things that we may have done wrongly. Like this "bags and arms and legs" fellow. He wasn't sorry; one was!

The other day I attended a wedding in Chennai. A board outside declared, "Welcome to one and all". What does that even mean? See what we Indians did? We took some usage of 'one' from the British and, much like democracy and the Westminster style of governance itself, we have mangled it, abused it and invented our own inappropriate use cases for that word.

The other day, a fellow said to me: “What time is one expected to be present?” I was stunned. And yes. Again, I got angry. I started shouting at that fellow like anything: "What is this? If you want to ask what time you have to be there then just ask that right? And why pick on the number one? It is a solitary fellow. A singular number. Not plural. It signifies one person, usually you. Also, why hide behind a number? It is a simple number. The Indians did not invent it. Indians only invented zero. Why abuse other numbers? If you want to abuse a number, abuse zero. It is yours!"

As a mathematician, I protest at this inappropriate abuse of a number. I have a right to protect the number from constant torture.

It is not as if there are no other pronouns available to us. There is a very convenient I, a perfectly polite you and a wonderful we. Use those no?

What time is one expected to be present it seems. What if you and your friend wanted to present yourselves? Will you then ask, “So, what time will two have to be present?” No, no? That would be rather silly. So, use the direct pronoun next time. Please.

Do not make me angry again. See what I did there. Did I say "Do not make one angry again?" No. Everyone needs to learn like that only: to use pronouns properly.

There are some uses that are correct. One can be used in non-specific, general, and non-direct advice. For example, the use of one in, "I don't believe one should disrespect elders" is appropriate. Try saying that as, "I don't believe I should disrespect elders". That doesn't sound right, does it? Firstly, the general advice is lost. Secondly, the statement, as altered, gives the impression that I am currently disrespectful of elders.

Can you ever imagine Krishnamachari Srikkanth indulge in this political politeness nonsense? I mean, can you imagine the same guy who said “Boss, you just shut up ok?” saying “Ok tell me, what time should one be there to shut you up”? I greatly doubt it and if you can imagine it, you have a far more forgiving and fertile imagination than I do.

Speaking of strange fellows, another strange fellow who is part of a volunteer team I run asked me the other day: “What does one have to do now on this project?” How was I supposed to reply to that? I knew, for instance, 10 people were supposed to be working on that project. The first thing that popped into my head was to ask him, “Oh, suddenly only one person is working on the project?” I also found myself wondering why this strange fellow was selfishly concerned only about one member from that group of ten. What will the rest do? 'Which one of the ten people was actually working?' I thought. See? The kinds of doubts that arise from this terribly inappropriate usage of the number one.

I am all for people who are self deprecating in their language. I cannot stand pompous people (and yes, I do not look at the mirror often either). I like people who do not sound self-obsessed and self-centred in their communication, but this is taking a bit too far, no?

It is a little more acceptable if you are talking on behalf of a whole bunch of people. The ‘one’ in your sentence could actually stand for many and this could well be a plural pronoun. But my question is simple. Why? Can you not just say, “What time should we get to the show” instead of “What time should one get to the show”? What do people have against direct speech? It is the least of very big evils, certainly lesser than the atrocity inflicted on us by Himesh Reshamiyya's music.

The other day I was talking to one fellow... See? This is correct usage of the word one. Not the others. Yes, you can thank me later. Anyway, this fellow went on and on about how he kept failing in life. He then asked if I could mentor him. Till that point in the conversation, I was bored. But then, suddenly, I was bursting with unbounded joy. I had finally found a person to mentor. Earlier that year, I was beginning to beg people if I could mentor them. And true to my dislike of polite politeness, I did not go around asking, “Can one be your mentor”. I asked, "Can I please be your mentor? Please?" Till that point, everyone had said, “get lost”. One is used to getting snubbed routinely. (Got you there, didn’t I?) Okay, okay, I meant I am used to getting snubbed routinely.

Anyhow, that evening, I was ecstatic at being asked to be this boring fellow's mentor. Before he had an opportunity to rethink, I cheerfully and shamelessly said, “Of course, I can mentor you”. I immediately grabbed his hand and said, “Yes. When can I start? How much should I pay you?” I had almost signed him up as a ‘person to be mentored’ when he got on yet another soapbox and waxed eloquent about King Bruce and his Sisyphus-ian spider. I listened to it wondering, “Am I the mentor or is he”. In other words, “Is one the mentor or is the other one”. Then he presented me with the deal breaker. He said, “The moral of the story is that if one fails, then one must try harder next time.”

I left him with a comment and a couple of questions, as is a mentor’s wont. “Who failed? I am sorry about being harsh but you failed. ONE did not fail. The number one, if you haven't noticed, has been a success all it’s life and it is about time you realized that.”

-- Mohan

Ps: The 'person to be mentored' ran away at that point. It has been a few years since that conversation with my potential 'person to be mentored'. Do you think I am wasting my time refreshing my email waiting to hear from him?

Ps (10-Oct-2012):

Subsequent to writing the piece, @yaavanoObba sent me the following (quite relevant) YouTube link.

Clarity at 5850m: Our attempt to climb Stok Kangri...

2012-08-16T22:52:00.000+09:30

View of Stok Kangri (from the South West side): Photo Credit: http://www.summitpost.org

At 8pm on 6 August 2012 our plans to leave for the Stok Kangri climb the following morning suddenly got altered.

We had first arrived in Leh on 26 July 2012. After an initial 3-day acclimatization spell in Leh and after a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit mildly-exhausting, 9-day trek of Markha Valley, all of us in the group had relaxed in Leh for the day on 6 August. Some of us got some washing done. Some of us got additional camera storage organized. Some of us got a full body massage. For some, a hot shower -- after a no shower status in the previous 9 days -- was itself a major luxury. Most of us, though, did not know what day of the week it was; and that is always a good sign of a Blackberry-free break.

By 7pm that evening, we were all really looking forward to a well-planned and well-executed Stok Kangri climb. So we did not take to this news of a late alteration too well.

Our guide rushed in to say that, since the next day was the Dalai Lama's last day in Leh, we would need to leave the hotel earlier than planned. He asked us to prepare to leave the hotel at 6am itself the following day -- as opposed to the 8am we had originally planned. He wanted us to beat the last minute darshan rush and head out to Stok village at the crack of dawn.

We realized that it wasn't really a big issue after all and trudged back to our rooms.

The Dalai Lama had been in town since the day we had first landed in Leh, some 12 days ago. Indeed, on the 27th of August, we even attended a public meeting that he held at a school near the hotel we were staying in.

The Dalai Lama presiding over a presentation by school kids in Leh

We returned to our individual rooms, re-packed one last time, reset our alarm clocks to accommodate the new departure time and proceeded to lay head on a firm pillow. We all needed a good nights' rest. After all, we would follow the tent, mattress, sleeping-bag routine for the next four days; much of which would be spent at heights that few of us -- barring our guide -- had been to.

Ours was a totally anal group of nine people. We called ourselves navagraha (after discarding Leh Jayenge, Leh Jayenge), a moniker that was created on day-1 of our trip -- if you wanted evidence that lack of oxygen does have an effect creativity, this is a clear example! Given our anal nature, it wasn't entirely surprising that we were all ready to leave the hotel at 5.45am itself. And this was one of the facets of navagraha that Raju, our tour leader and guide, liked about us. We were always ready well before the agreed and appointed time. He doesn't normally work with Indian groups. But we had been with him on our earlier trek too. And on-time-departure was one of the aspects of our group that made him sign up with us again.

Stok village to Changma

We beat the Dalai Lama darshan rush -- or so we thought -- and reached Stok Village at 7.30am. This is where our expedition started. The first camp was meant to be at Monkyarmo (commonly called Manokarma) camp -- a gain from 3414m to 4305m over a 14km track that included a few steep climbs at an approx. 20% gradient, a few sharp descents and a few interesting river crossings. We made good time through this phase of the trek, again surprising Raju quite a bit.

Up until then, we had reset Raju's expectations (downwards) on our ability to handle pace. Speed wasn't our forte; nor was our ability to handle the desert heat or dust or cold. Indeed, a week after the conclusion of our trip, we are still trying to figure out what our forte exactly is -- apart from being ready on time, that is! But then I lie. We were good with Diamox too.

We were up on the Diamox stakes. Up until then, despite the increasing height, none of us had really taken much Diamox (acetazolamide), which helps fight altitude-related acute mountain sickness (AMS). It works by increasing the alkali (bicarbonate) excreted in the urine, thereby altering the acidity in the blood; this drives the (hyper) ventilation that is required to metabolize more oxygen.

None of us had really felt the need to get onto the Diamox habit. Most trekkers/climbers would proactively pop a Diamox within hours of landing in Leh. We held off until we felt we absolutely needed it. Perhaps this was a pointer to our acclimatization. Perhaps this was a pointer to our levels of fitness. I do not know. But I am counting that as a positive for our group anyway.

The earlier morning start may have contributed to the upbeat mood in our group. The views were stunning as we walked. As we climbed more, we looked back to see where we had climbed from; it was always rewarding to look back and see where you'd come from.

The mountain edges were stark and sharp; it was like a sculptor had chiseled the edges of the mountain in order to form large serrated sections (one such section is in the picture alongside).

Color was the other surprise. I had expected to see nothing more than dull brown everywhere in this magnificent mountain desert. But I was wrong. Of course brown dominated the landscape. However, there were unexpected shades of brown mixed in with blue, grey, black, deep red and ochre. This mountain desert threw plenty of surprises our way.

We were all feeling really good that day when we reached an interim camp called Changma (I think). Originally this was supposed to be our lunch break. We had a further 4km (and 300m in height) to cross before we reached Manokarma.

But that is where Raju delivered the first bad news of our Stok Kangri expedition.

The Dalai Lama darshan brigade included our horsemen who had refused to go on a trip when their religious leader was in town.

So there we were: nine of us along with Raju and another guide, at an altitude of about 4000m, nearly 7km away from Stok village -- which is where all our bags and 3 other helpers were along with the other stuff that is required for an expedition of this sort: tents, sleeping bags, kitchen equipment, cooking/eating supplies, etc. We hadn't really escaped the Dalai Lama visit.

Anger gave way to frustration gave way to confusion.

But difficult situations bring out the best in tough leaders. These are situations in which Raju, in our view, shines as the Rahul Dravid of the mountains. He is a leader who dissipates panic and oozes calm where calm is needed. He always works with Zen-like clarity. He asked us to spend the rest of the evening at Changma. It was close to noon when he and his co-guide decided to charge back to Stok village. He asked us not to worry and, instead, focus on enjoying Changma for a few hours.

So, we played cards. We heard Paddy, one of our team mates, give us a discourse on the interplay between mind, intellect and body; this was going to be particularly relevant as we prepared ourselves mentally for the Stok Kangri climb. Some of us read. Some of us walked. Some of us took photographs. We killed time.

Meanwhile, Raju had at least four different plans up his sleeve for ensuring that our tents and bags reached Changma. He charged all the way back to Stok village, rang around many horsemen and ensured that one of them would come to our aid. At 8pm, he returned with a new horseman, a reduced set of horses, our tents, our bags, kitchen items and all his helpers. Raju and his wonderful team set up camp at Changma in record time. We had a quick rice-dal meal and were ready to sleep by 9.30pm.

And then it started to rain.

This was quite unusual since this area does not see too much rain at all. But rain, it did; badly. Of course, we were not quite bothered by the rain at Changma. We were immediately worried about the effects that this rain would have at Stok Kangri itself.

Changma to Stok Kangri Base Camp
The following day, we set off at 6.30am, a bit earlier than usual (again). We crossed Manokarma and climbed on to the Stok Kangri Base Camp. It rained all the way along the 8km trek that took us from a height of 4300m to 4980m. This wasn't good news at all. We didn't mind walking in the rain; indeed, some of us (me included) love walking in the rain. But, as we walked, we were more worried about our Stok Kangri climb and the effects this rain would have on the climb. We reached base camp at noon, tired, wet and grumpy.

After lunch at the Base Camp, we had to make important an decision: Do we attempt the climb to Stok Kangri? Or do we wait another day to see if the weather improves?

We had an additional day up our sleeve and could have used it at Base Camp to see if the weather improved. However, most of us were tired of the Base Camp within a half hour of setting foot in it. We were perhaps keen to conclude the climb and descend to Stok village (and Leh).

Holding a Stepathlon Pedometer

The Stok Kangri Base Camp, which is at 4980m, is not the prettiest camp we have been to. One of our team members immediately called it more of a "refugee camp" (not that we have been in one) than a trekking camp. It is dry and arid, but then that can be said about much of the climb too. It is set in a rather impressive valley and is surrounded by some stunning snow-clad peaks. It has a small stream that runs along its edge. So, it does have the trappings of what could be a nice camp site. However, perhaps as a result of excessive traffic or neglect, it does resemble a busy railway station. Not that I am complaining, mind you. It has everything a base camp needs. But it could be much more than just that! It also offers an opportunity for climbers/trekkers to mingle with other trekkers from around the world. I thought there were at least 300 people at Base Camp; from England, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada and Australia. We also met one other group from India (this is a topic for another blog post, another day)!

In reality, the Stok Kangri Base Camp is nothing more than a brief stop while (mostly) amateur climbers focus on the impending climb of one of the more readily accessible, non-technical 6000m+ mountains in the world.

At Base Camp

Any climb over 6000m is inevitably going to be hard. However, prior to the trip, we read that the Stok Kangri climb was not technically demanding. On good-weather days, it mainly involves (1) going sharply up a very steep rocky scree slope, (2) walking along a ridge to the advanced base camp, (3) crossing a short moraine section, (4) negotiating a fascinating and somewhat challenging permanent glacier, (5) walking up the rocky south face of the Stok Kangri mountain, (6) walking over sharp rocky ridge to reach the snowy summit.

Most sites have divided up the ascent to the Stok Kangri summit from the Base Camp into four or five stages. However, I have divided this into the above six stages for a specific reason, which will become obvious later.

Most of the snow on the mountain melts away by late-July or early-August. So this was a perfect time for us to attempt Stok Kangri. It makes it easy for amateur climbers to attempt the summit; crampons, ice-axes and ropes are not really necessary for late-July, early-August attempts.

That is, if the weather is good, of course.

The continuous rains over the previous two days meant that we were set to attempt a climb of Stok Kangri without crampons and without ice-axes. Perhaps not the best idea, given the context.

Yet, we had reached 4980m by that stage; a non-trivial effort especially as it was the first significant trek/climb for several of our team members. None of us had taken Diamox. And despite (a) the rain, (b) Dalai Lama's visit playing havoc with the availability of our horsemen, (c) the arduous trek to a somewhat strange Base Camp, (d) the cold, and (e) the height, we were all in somewhat good spirits. However, perhaps because of the ordinariness of the Base Camp, most of us wanted to attempt the Stok Kangri climb immediately. None of us wanted to use the additional (bad weather) day to wait a further 36 hours before attempting the summit climb.

So at 4pm that day, our team decided that we would attempt the summit that night itself. Raju declared that we would leave at 1am and asked all of us to get prepared; physically and mentally. We would be woken up at midnight. We would have exactly one hour to get ourselves together before departing for the summit at 1am.

We knew we did not have crampons or ice-axes. Still, we needed to get the rest of our gear together. Each of us decided how many layers of clothing we would each need. I decided on the six layers that I would wear. I wore 4 of those layers that evening itself and slept in these. All I needed was to get up, don the additional two-layered jacket, wear my head gear, my head lamp, my gloves, shoes and gaiters and be off.

Along with Raju, we also decided that we would have Raju, a co-guide and 2 helpers for the nine of us. This was certainly good to hear. This way, if some of us were unable to carry on at any point in time, we could always return without breaking the aspirations of the entire group.

Dinner was at 6pm. And that's when I asked Raju what we would eat/drink before heading out and what we would take with us on the climb by way of eats: "Nothing, apart from tea and a few rusks", was not what I wanted to hear. That was what I heard though. I ought to have said something at that time. However, I was more distracted by learning how to tie the gaiters -- and ensure it stayed tied -- to realize that lack of fuel/food was about join bad weather, our lack of crampons and the absence of ice-axes as another one in the growing list of factors that stood between team navagraha and success.

After dinner, I got into my tent along with my tent partner, NP (the names of all team members have been withheld till they provide me with express permission). We got ourselves organized for the next day. The water bottles were set aside. So also the head lamp, the beanie, the two layers of socks. After much deliberation, I decided to wear my 'skins' too. We then packed our backpacks for the day. Mine had 4.5l of hydration (2.5l water and 2l electrolyte), three zip-locked packets of scroggins/trail-mix (almonds, walnuts, raisins, dried apricots) for the team, sun-lotion, a few first-aid elements and spare batteries for the head lamp -- luckily, for my head lamp gave up on me barely a kilometer into the trek!

We went to bed at 8pm hoping to get 4 hours of shut-eye before our climb. However, adrenalin and altitude have a strange way of playing with one's sleep; I tossed around restlessly, unable to sleep. Each time I'd turn, NP would ask "neend nahin aa raha hai kya?" ("you too can't sleep, huh?"). I even counted from 1 to 6123 -- the elevation of Stok Kangri. Nothing seemed to help.

Perhaps it was the height; 4980m was the highest altitude I had ever slept in up until that point. The previous highest sleeping camp was at Nimaling, which we were at less than a week ago while we undertook the Markha Valley trek (and that is a lovely, picturesque camp at 4700m). Inability to sleep is a common AMS-related symptom. I had faced sleep-difficulty during the Markha Valley trek too. On those occasions, I would listen to either Hindustani music (do not ask me why) or Carnatic violin. I would sleep within 10 minutes of plugging my ears. However, on this night, even that did not help. Although I was tired, and although I tried hard, I believe I was just way too excited to sleep. In the end, NP and I talked about the mind-intellect-body axes. At 11.30pm, we drifted off to sleep, only to be woken up at midnight.

I had had just half hour of sleep prior to attempting the biggest and toughest endurance test of my life; tougher than the marathons I had attempted.

Off we go

I emerged from the tent to an strange quietness. There was a serenity in the camp that seemed surreal. Although there was activity, it was all hush-hush. It was as though we did not wish to alert the mountain to our plans. Many of the tents had headlamps in them. The owners of these headlamps quietly went about their preparation; respectfully, perhaps. It seemed like a quiet diwali. Everyone was preparing in their own simple way for their own special day. I looked at the skies and said a quiet thank you for the good news I perceived: it wasn't raining and I could see stars, which meant clear skies.

After getting myself and my backpack together, I emerged from my tent and asked Raju for a bowl of hot water to brush my teeth. He said, "what is the need?" I am still not sure if he meant 'what is the need to brush your teeth' or 'what is the need for hot water'. I shrugged and decided not to brush my teeth. I grabbed some hot tea, nursed it and focused on the task ahead. I had two pieces of rusk too; and that was all I would have until 6am, while we walked some 5km and gained over 800m in altitude. Big mistake!

We wore our gaiters right away -- it would be too cold at 5400m to muck around with tying our gaiters at that height -- where we really needed it. Our fingers would perhaps be too inflexible from the cold at that height to work the gaiters properly. So we tied our gaiters at Base Camp itself before setting out.

At five minutes to 1am, we are all ready to leave. Six or seven groups had already left by then. We could see their head lamps create a sequence of lights on the mountain track ahead of us. It was like the mountain had some 75 or more lit windows in it. Windows that swayed and moved slowly as the owner of the head lamp trudged up the viciously steep mountain face.

Paddy and Rohan Sridhar got us all together in a circle. Raju gave us a few last minute instructions. PP called for a group hug and Rohan said something that resembled an Aussie Rules Football (AFL) war cry of sorts.

And with that, we were off...

(1) Up the steep rocky scree slope

Our team struck a good pace right away which is a good way to battle the cold weather and the icy wind. Alas! That was too good to last. We soon reverted to our normal (read: slow) pace after a while. But at least we were moving, even if it was slowly. There was much talking, much geeing-up and much support for other team members. As the going got tougher, unfortunately, so did the frequent stops too. And this is exactly what you do not want on a night summit climb. The last thing we wanted was for people to stop; the last thing we wanted was for people standing in the cold, waiting for someone to continue or move.

But we got up to the pass in about 30 minutes; not a bad time at all. We greeted this achievement with much cheering, hand-slapping, back-slapping and hi-fiving.

View of the Base Camp from the Pass (on the way back to Base Camp)

From the pass, we could see the night lights of Leh; a truly spectacular view. Leh seemed like a distant memory to me. We were at about 5200m at that point (17,000ft). It was almost as though we were looking down on Leh from a helicopter that was preparing to land.

At that point, my headlamp suddenly decided to give up on me. I had used the headlamp sparingly on the Markha Valley leg and on the previous days of this climb -- mainly to guide me at night from my tent to the toilet tent and back. But cold weather does tend to drain batteries rather quickly. Luckily, the spare batteries came in handy -- I took on my chin the "you anal fellow" banter from the rest of my largely anal group. I changed batteries and we were off again on stage-2 of the climb.

(2) Walking along a ridge to the advanced base camp

This phase is one of the easiest parts of the summit climb. It is a one hour walk which includes a few gradients and a few tricky ridges. I have included this as a specific segment of the trek because this was when two realizations hit us: (a) some of us were quite low on energy/fuel, and more importantly, (b) the rain over the previous 2 days had caused a rather alarming collection of black ice along the track.

In this section, Rohan suddenly complained of a weak tummy and giddiness. I was convinced it was energy related. However, we immediately gave him the one tried and tested mountain formula: Diamox! Indeed, his was the first (and only) Diamox that our group took in the climb. We hoped that in 20 minutes after taking his Diamox, he would be back to his chirpy self. However sadly, despite the presence of his testosterone fueled male ego and the needless bravado that goes with it, Rohan wasn't quite able to regain his chirpiness after that. But, despite his obvious pain and difficulties, he braved the elements and the mountains and soldiered on. Absolutely smashing fellow, this Rohan.

The real danger bell rang, however, when one of us tried crossing a short ridge just prior to the advanced base camp (which is at 5300m). The feet just gave way and within a second, the bottom of this person had an unexpected meeting with the ridge. We were immediately aware of the black ice danger. Awareness of an impending danger plays havoc with the mind.

People write and talk about mental endurance and even research it, but much of the knowledge appears to be work-in-progress still. All of us in our team had all been working on aspects of physical endurance in the months prior to the trek/climb. We were able to sharpen this facet of our preparation during the previous trek of Markha Valley too. Many of us had been working on sharpening our mental endurance too... on a daily basis.

We had all recognized that mental strength meant a call to an inner strength that would enable each of us to deal effectively with all the challenges that the climb (and, by extension, life) posed. After all, this adventure was only partially -- if at all -- about 'peak bagging'. For me, this was, as my friend Paddy said, about identifying 'how far the envelope could be stretched without tearing it'. This was, for me, the toughest 'mind+intellect over body' exercise that I had been a part of. For me, this was finally about willpower, self-discipline, and perseverance enveloped in an air of pragmatic reality. And I was enjoying it thoroughly.

However, while all of us were trying to focus with fierce intent on what we were doing, it was difficult to restrain the mind from getting distracted by the perils of black ice; especially after one of our team members had an unexpected and sudden meeting between his backside and the ridge! It was hard to reign in the mind which sensed dangers and felt fear.

In a mind-intellect game, I found that the best way from then on was to look at a few severely short-term goals; nothing more than 200m at a time. This helped me tremendously. I was no longer looking at the summit as my goal. I was looking at crossing the next 200m. I had to will myself to believe in a much-abhorred cricketing cliche: I focused on the next ball that is about to be bowled, and nothing more (one ball at a time please).

And I told myself that I would not quit. I heard young Rohan say "I am not a quitter; I am not quitting" a few times too! The mind perceived pain and danger. The body was always willing to quit. The rational intellect knew that I had faced similar situations before. This, along with people around me kept me going.

Small steps towards small/achievable goals.

(3) Crossing a short moraine section

A moraine is a mass of rocks, boulder, stones and other assorted debris deposited by a glacier at its edge. We walked on the moraine that runs parallel to the Stok Kangri (permanent) glacier for about a kilometer or so. This is normally a somewhat easy segment of the climb. This was yet another difficult section for us on the day; once again, due to black ice that had formed in between the loose rocks/boulder. Progress was slow. We could not just place a foot forward and hope that the core muscles will take care of stability and balance. We had to constantly ensure that there was no black ice accumulation that would take our legs away. It wasn't as though this segment was hard; weather conditions over the previous few days meant that progress had to be measured.

We weren't the fastest group on the climb. We weren't the slowest either. As we negotiated the moraine section, I could see clumps of headlamps representing climbers ahead of us. The headlamps created eerie patterns in the night sky. I could see the white of the glacier. But beyond that, it was all quite dark; except for the distant headlamps that swayed like kerosene fueled lanterns on a windy night in an Indian village.

Some of the climbers were already on the glacier. Some were already on the face of Stok Kangri. I thought I saw two climbers on the upper ridge too. "Fit fellows, them buggers" I thought to myself.

But then, I curbed myself from thinking too far ahead. I had to focus on the next ball: Watch the hand, watch the release, play the ball on its merit.

It was just before this segment that we lost the first two members of our team. MR and BR decided to leave us at this point. MR had "just had enough". Both MR and BR were fit. They had shown no signs of deterioration or fatigue. So it did surprise me that they turned back. But then, that's what mountain climbs do. Suddenly MR had "just had enough". One of the helpers went back to Base Camp with MR and BR.

From 9 members of the team, 2 guides and 2 helpers, we were down to 7 members (sapta swaras, perhaps?) 2 guides and 1 helper.

(4) Negotiating the permanent glacier

I have negotiated a temperate glacier before (Franz Josef in New Zealand). I believe other members of our (now) seven-member team had negotiated glaciers in the past. This one was different. It was a bit loose and could be negotiated without crampons. The looseness, however, made it that much more difficult on the legs.

The Stok Kangri Gllacier (photo taken on the way back to Base Camp)

One had to kick into the glacier to get a grip before attempting to move the next foot forward. It was hard work, but it did feel great to walk on the glacier. This glacier had one or two large crevices and a number of melt streams which brought water to the valleys we had crossed on days 1 and 2 of this climb. It was still dark as we crossed the glacier.

But, as we crossed the glacier and hit another short moraine section (this time on the mountain side of the glacier), the mood in the group lifted immensely; we sensed the first break of dawn. Suddenly we could see the Stok Kangri peak clearly. We saw the challenge that was ahead of us. Darkness lifted and our spirits immediately lifted with it; only to be dowsed immediately when we noticed that there were indeed 2 climbers on the ridge who were barely half hour away from the summit.

But that was a needless distraction.

Short goals: Focus on the next ball.

We crossed the glacier and sat down at the moraine on the mountain edge of the glacier. We took our first really long break. Up until then, the need to keep moving meant that we did mostly that: kept moving, slowly. Now, with dawn breaking, we feared the cold less and focused more on our flagging energies.

It was 5.30am now and we were at approximately 5500m. I switched off my headlamp at this stage and looked for things to eat. I was certainly low on energy and I sensed Rohan and DS were on reserve fuel too. There wasn't much apart from the scroggins I had packed and a few chocolate bars. Raju unearthed a packet of extremely salty churmure from his backpack. I thought to myself, 'Really? Churmure at 5.30am?' But the salt fix was exactly the performance enhancing boost we all needed. We were all drained of energy by then. It wasn't a great feeling. Rohan was drained and so was DS. It appeared as though NP was on his last legs too.

And then came the body blow. Paddy and Padma announced that they had had enough! This came as a major surprise to all of us. I looked up to Padma and Paddy as two of the (physically and mentally) stronger people in the group. In a shock announcement, they declared that they were heading back.

So, from an initial 9-member team, with 2 guides and 2 helpers, we were down to 5 members (pancha pandavas, perhaps?) and 2 guides. We could ill-afford any further team losses.

(5) Walking up the 'rocky' south face of the Stok Kangri

Despite the departure of Padma and Paddy, the rest of us in the team retained our upbeat mood, which soared along with day-break and the salty churmure that we had consumed. The chocolate bars had frozen by then. I would take small bites of it as we continued. Just as we were about to move on from the edge of the glacier, where we had taken a 10-minute break, we also noticed, quite depressingly, that the face of Stok Kangri -- normally a rock/scree face that is somewhat easy to climb, was now all snow. This meant that what would have normally been a half hour walk (or a one hour walk for a slow group) was now transformed into a 2.5 hour walk in thick snow. It seemed as though everything was stacked up against us.

However, we pressed on. We had no choice. Watch the hand. Watch the next ball...

We had to walk up this snow-filled face up to a point (approximately 5850m) take a sharp turn (left) towards the ridge and then climb the ridge of Stok Kangri to the summit. That was the plan.

However, given we did not have crampons and considering the thick snow fall over the previous few days, we could not walk straight up the snow face. We had to slowly and painfully zig-zag our way up this slope. The fresh snow also meant that one had to dig/kick into the snow to get a grip with one leg before moving the next one forward. It was hard work.

Within 20 minutes of walking on the moraine just prior to the start of this snow-filled section/face of the climb, we 'lost' our next member. NP decided he had enough and decided to turn back. He went with one of the guides. And so, we only had Raju (our main guide) left for the four remaining members: Rohan, DS, GN and myself.

We continued on; slowly and painfully. Each step was a project: Hack laterally into the side of the mountain. Get a grip. Extract the trailing leg. Move it forward. Ensure proper grip. Take the leg with the firm grip out of the snow. Breathe. Hack laterally into the side of the mountain. Rinse. Repeat.

But we sang. We played word games. We did not look at the summit. Each of us had our own mind-over-body games that we played. Raju kept insisting that this would be a successful group. "I will not allow you to fail," he kept repeating. This was still all too easy for him. He had done this may times over; he was supremely fit. He encouraged us and goaded us not to give up; he assured us we could do it.

Meanwhile, I was just focused on the next ball.

I was feeling good. I felt in control. I set myself short/small goals: two zig-zag paths and then a water swig, three zig-zag paths and then a chocolate-bite, four zig-zag paths and then an electrolyte swig, five zig-zag paths and hyperventilate. That was my simple pattern and simplistic existence; it was working for me. I wasn't thinking about the summit. I wasn't thinking about flags. I wasn't getting too far ahead of myself. And I knew that that was the best way to deal with it.

My heart-rate was perfectly under control too; at least my Garmin thought it was! Moreover, although my breathing was a bit laboured and although I stopped every now and then to hyperventilate, I felt somewhat in control of myself. I had no headache or shortness of breath. I was hydrating well and felt under control. I did, however, feel a bit weak from lack of food. But then I had been in that space before on my first marathon run and knew I could draw on that experience somewhat to overcome this.

Every now and then, I would look across at Rohan, DS and GN to egg them on. GN did not need much support. He seemed perfectly fit and completely in control of his situation. Rohan and DS needed words of encouragement every now and then. Both GN and I would offer encouragement to them. We had to look after each other.

We ensured that we got to the point where we had to turn left to head towards the ridge. We had done the hard work. I thought we looked strong enough to do it. We had reached a height of approximately 5850m.

I looked up at the summit and, perhaps for the first time in the entire climb, thought to myself: "Ah! Won't it be exhilerating to get there after all of this?" I even pictured myself in a summit photo momentarily.

Ironic.

Within seconds of that thought DS sat down with a thud and declared: "That's it. I am exhausted. I have had enough".

The mountain has a way of dealing with people who get too far ahead of themselves. The mountain demands a sharp focus on the here-and-now. It does not tolerate dreamers. I had allowed myself to dream about the century when I ought to have focused on the next ball.

All of us encouraged DS to hang in there. Meanwhile, my mind was working overtime. As the oldest member remaining in the group, I felt a sense of responsibility towards young DS. We had one guide and if DS wanted to head back, I was convinced of my responsibility lines.

DS did hang in there. For another 5 minutes; perhaps a zig and a zag. And then, for the second time, she sat down with a thud and said, "Not a step more. I am finished."

And she looked finished too.

This caused a team debate on what ought to happen. At that point, Raju made the call that young Rohan was too unsteady and wasn't quite fit enough to mount a summit challenge either. Rohan protested, but that fell on deaf ears. He had no choice but to join DS in returning to Base Camp.

My mind was made. I decided to return to Base Camp with Rohan and DS. One was exhausted and the other was declared as "too unsteady". They couldn't head back on their own. I had a clear sense of right about it. I was completely cogent, fluent and clear about my thought process. I knew exactly what I had to do and had no regrets about the call from the moment I made it: Clarity at 5850m!

Would I have made the summit? I don't know and at one level, I do not care either. Raju felt I would have made it all the way. But then, at the glacier, he thought DS would have made the summit too. So, one can never really say what might happen on a mountain. All I know is that, at that point in time, there was a Bellman's principle that operated: the decision I took (for me and for the team) was the best decision I could have made given what had happened in the past few hours.

The time was 8.15am. Some 7 hours after we had started from Base Camp, Rohan, DS and I turned back. We reached Base Camp at 10.30am. The way down is clearly faster.

(6) Walking over sharp rocky ridge to reach the snowy summit

So GN and Raju continued on to the summit. It wasn't as though it was easy. But at about 10.45am, some 2 and a half hours after we had bid goodbye to them, and some 10 hours after they commenced the climb, GN made it to the Stok Kangri summit along with a lot of help from Raju, our guide.

GN (left) and Raju (from Grand Adventures) at the Stok Kangri summit.

I hope GN will blog separately about his own experiences from 5850m to the summit. But I am glad he made it; the whole team was glad that one of us made it to the top. It would have been great if more people had made it to the top. But that is what mountain climbing is all about. We set out on what was a somewhat 'easy' and 'accessible' climb; made much more harder by the elements. Some of us might have a second crack at it. But then, all of us have learned a lot from the experience; about ourselves, about the elements, about respect, about the limits of our own abilities and much much more.

-- Mohan

[Credits:] Lots of people to thank, but in the main I would like to thank the navagraha team and Raju. I'd also like to thank the people who took the lovely photos I included in the post. I did not take a single photo. I am not a camera sort of a person. So, I sincerely appreciate the pics that others took.

PS-1: The following day, we left Base Camp and walked straight back to Stok Village (and Leh). We set off at 7am and reached Leh by 3pm.
PS-2: This is not an advertisement for Raju and Grand Adventures. None of us in our team have any commercial relationships with either Raju or Grand Adventures. We just find them extremely professional to deal with and would recommend them highly to you.
PS-3: Other members of our team might have slightly different accounts of the climb. This is just my account of the climb. I will link other reports to this section as they appear.
PS-4: The Garmin 405 that I had struggled most days to get things right in terms of speed/distance. But it seemed to get elevation data mostly right. Here is a link to data on the first days' trek from Stok to Changma.

Life is a slow dance

2012-06-12T23:15:00.002+09:30

She walked. Every morning.

She was frail; that is the first I noticed about her. It was as if her body was fighting a losing battle with gravity, one that was determined to push her down with each passing day. I could time my clock according to her arrival at the park where I jogged every morning. She would be there at 6am. Every day. She was almost bent double when I first saw her over two years ago. She had abundant, flowing grey hair. It was as though a thousand spiders had conspired to weave a web of silver magic on her head. When the gentle rays of the rising sun bounced off her bent head, it was almost as if she walked with a halo.

And she walked without a stick although I suspect she needed one.

I observed her this keenly because she was one of three people who walked anti-clockwise in the park near our home in Powai. Although, she did not actually walk. She hobbled, painfully. Her left leg was the one that would not cooperate; as though she had to ensure that it didn't get left behind as the bolder and more able right leg propelled her forward. Each wincing step was a small, painful journey for her. Each foot forward, a mini-project. I watched the folds of skin on her face, swelling and flattening like a restless ocean, wave after wave. Her skin would crease and furrow as she dragged her left leg, only to ease into comforting smoothness when the right leg dragged her forward. Ebb and flow. Pain and comfort. Left and right. But she walked every morning.

She must have been beautiful in her youth, I thought. She still was. In fact, I was sure she was a dancer because even as she hobbled along, there was a grace to her walk. The left leg she dragged behind her made a circular movement in much the same way a mohiniattam dancer might. This lady, she danced every morning. Her movement wasn't an ugly yank; far from it, to my eyes, it seemed elegant and graceful. And she had commitment. She could have chosen to sit at home, but no, she was out here in the park, every single day. At 6 a.m. She walked.

Or maybe she danced. -- who can tell -- every morning.

This park has a small 300m walking track; not a big track for someone like me who jogs about six km most days of the week. But it is much better than dodging dog (or human) poo on the main roads of Powai, or jogging with a nose-clamp through the methane-laden smells of Aarey Milk Colony. Of course, I still do my long runs on weekends in Aarey Milk Colony but my daily jogging is still in this park near our home; the park where my silver-haired mohiniattam dancer walked every morning. Anti-clockwise.

In all these days that I had observed her during my morning runs, I had not seen her look at anyone, or smile at anyone. She would struggle through her walk with quiet fortitude and lonely grit. I watched her and grew to appreciate her resolve. She would look at me occasionally and her eyes would signal recognition; however brief. But she had more important things to do. Her left leg would require her concentration. She would look away and prepare for her next step; either a graceful dance movement or a painful wrench.

One day, completely breaking the fabric of quiet familiarity between us, within sight of me, she waved out to someone. Most walkers in our park tend to listen to their personal music systems or talk to their walking partners. Often, one of the walkers or joggers might wave a hello to another. I hadn't noticed the old lady wave to anyone before. But that morning, she did. It wasn’t actually a wave in the true sense of the word. It was half-wave, half-reprimand. She looked up from her hunched position as she approached me and made that movement with her hand. At first I thought she had waved at me. I then looked back to see a most unusual old man, just behind me. I hadn't noticed him before today. I was so immediately fascinated by this man that I stopped by the side of the track and pretended to stretch my hamstring. I was mesmerized as much by him as I was by his strange run. As the old lady hobbled towards us, she too smiled at the old man in an encouraging and knowing manner.

I do not know why I paused that day. But something told me I had to stop to look at the man. Maybe it was the old woman’s half-wave. Maybe it was to see what bond these two old people had. Maybe it was to see this captivatingly eccentric run. Maybe I was just being needlessly nosy. But mostly, it was his eyes.

His eyes weren’t the first thing that struck me about the man though; it was his run. While sprinters mostly look straight ahead, most joggers tend to look at a spot on the ground about four to six meters in front of them. Not this old man. He ran with his eyes fixed straight ahead. It was a very unusual style. He did not run fast, but certainly strangely. His legs would bounce up and down and with them, his hands too. His left hand would reach up to his eyes as his left leg came up. His right hand would reach up to his eyes as his right leg bounced up. Now, most joggers would move their left hand forward, or even upwards, when their right leg thrust forward and right hand forward when left leg moved. But not this man. It was as if his hands were constantly running away from his leg. Sometimes it felt as though he was spot-jogging. But somehow he found the momentum to carry himself forward. I'd often run behind him and observe this quite unique style. Later, one day, I did find out why he ran this way.

But he ran, or rather, spot-jogged; every day.

And that first day, as I overtook him, I also noticed his taut, wrinkle-free face. It was as though he had ironed his face that morning. He did not just have prominent cheek-bones. He seemed to have no face other than cheek bones that cried to be freed from his taut skin. His large, black-rimmed glasses sat uncomfortably on those bones. He had a head full of thick, lovely salt-and-pepper hair; the hair was busy, but always well groomed. It seemed as though, for him, the run was like a prayer; an uncompromising and divine routine that required well-oiled and supremely-honed preparation. His shorts were ironed. His T-shirt, like his face, was ironed too. There wasn't a wrinkle anywhere. Every drop of sweat was meticulously cleaned away with the help of a crisp wrist band that smelled of fragrant washing liquid. Here was a retired army major, I thought to myself. I wasn't wrong. I later found out that he was a retired navy commander. He loved his routine.

And so he marched and ran, his right leg trying to constantly catch his right hand, each time in vain.

His eyes, they were simultaneously severe and kind; deep and simple; firm and yielding; serious and mischievous; exacting and benevolent. On the first day I noticed him, as I paused to pretend-tie my shoe lace and as I stretched my hamstring, apart from his peculiar run, what caught my attention were those eyes. On that day, I looked back involuntarily because I could feel his eyes on my neck. I felt his eyes follow me. And when I looked back, he smiled. It was a caring, benign smile. His eyes encouraged me to run farther away from him. His eyes gleamed in the morning sun and spoke of extreme intelligence, as a complement to it, a wicked playfulness. But mostly, his eyes spoke of a willing reinforcement. He willed me to push myself. Behind these eyes, I could sense experience, contentedness, kindness and some melancholy. I did not know why, but I felt drawn to this man immediately. I continued ahead that day.

This happened every day. I would look at him and he would smile encouragingly at me. I would marvel at his strange jog, his crisp appearance, his immediate smile and his eyes. I would then run ahead.

But he march-ran and his wife half-waved at him and smiled as she crossed him in her anti-clockwise walk. Every morning.

They would dance-walk and march-run every morning for at least 45 minutes. They would do some stretches in the central area of the park and be gone before I completed my run. But one day, I finished early; partly because I was tired and partly because I wanted to talk to these two lovely people. I was thoroughly fascinated by this old couple. I was intrigued by their commitment to a healthy life. I was curious to explore the melancholy in his eyes. I was drawn by the old lady’s encouragement of the old man; or was it admonishment? I also wanted to understand his encouragement of me.

The dancer did not speak. She kept a distance although she did smile regularly at me. But the march-jogger talked. And he talked. He was certainly one of the most loquacious people I have ever come across. In that very first meeting, he told me the various ships he had captained, the fleets he had commanded and much more. In 10 minutes, as he and I stretched, I knew everything about his professional career. I knew all the various towns he had lived in; he loved Bangalore and Vishakapattnam the most. I knew that he lived in Mumbai, “not far from here”and that he did not enjoy retired life. He did not like to read. He did not like computers. “I like to work with my hands and I like to make things,”he said. But he was upset this world had no place for old people.

He appeared edgy and furtive. Even as he spoke, he glanced around him impatiently. It seemed as if the world moved too slowly. He talked quickly and rapidly. It was almost as though the idea that he had would escape from his mind before he spat it out in the form of words. And that is how he spoke: he spat his words out. Not venomously, but with a tangled and intense urgency.

That is when the dance-walker waved her peculiar wave at him.The march-jogger laughed immediately when his wife gestured at him thus. It was a laugh that shook his sprightly frame. It was as though the laugh had to reach every single bone of his body. And that was the first time the park had heard him laugh. The laughter club members who had congregated in one corner of the park turned in unison in our direction to see where this laughter came from. His laughter could easily drown out the combined sound produced by the 10-member-strong laughter club whose sole purpose was to laugh uncontrollably and hysterically each morning. But this lively, nimble, lanky and somewhat emaciated march-jogger was able to laugh out the laughter club! I too was quite taken aback at the roaring bellow and was surprised that his bones held together; he shook so much that I thought his bones might fall off his body. The laugh deserved an explanation and so I wanted one; I raised my eyebrows, waiting, asking.

He said that his wife of 65 years was not a fan of his “nervous energy, his frenetic disposition and his severe intensity” and wanted him to slow down. He was 89 and she was 87 years old. She had been teaching him to slow down and enjoy everything around them. As he continued to laugh and as it tapered off, he continued, “Don’t think she is waving to me with love and kindness every morning. Of course, she is the kindest person I have ever known. But she is not being kind when she waves to me. She is rebuking me and reprimanding me for jogging fast.” She nodded wisely as he spoke to me.

I would talk to him most days after my run and after their jog-march and dance-walk. In that time, I learned that he was a keen long-distance runner in his younger days and had run several marathons; he had a full marathon best time of three hours and two minutes. He had tried really hard to break the 3 hour barrier but was just unable to do it. All of that was before he retired. After retirement, the dancer had put an end to his running. She wanted him to stop being intense and hyperactive. She wanted him to slow down and look at the leaves, the birds, the children and the sunshine. And she would do it by gesturing at him.

I did not learn anything about her. I did not ask. I did not know their names nor did I know where they lived. All I knew was that they lived “not far from here”. I wasn’t curious to know. Moreover, I knew that this garrulous and voluble man would tell me his story anyway; without prompting or provocation. Each day as we stretched, he would tell me a bit more about his life – and never anything about the dance-walker. She would not talk either. Every now and then she would wave-admonish.

Slowly, they became my motivation to run. On some mornings, I would feel unwell or if my muscles ached for a rest, the knowledge that these two people would be out there in the park would be enough to spur me on. I needed that inspiration, that encouragement. Soon, they became the reason I ran. “If they can, I should,” became my stimulus. I never told them that but I think he knew; he was wily,a sly old imp. He asked me one day as I struggled with my post-run stretches, “You were struggling there today. I could see. But for the two of us you would have pulled a sickie today, right? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!”

I nodded while she wave-admonished.

They did not talk to anyone else. Indeed, she did not talk at all. One day I plucked courage and asked her if she had had a good walk. She nodded. When I asked her again she made an incoherent sound. Realization dawned. It wasn’t as though she didn’t talk. She couldn’t. The colour drained from my face.

March-jogger must have sensed my discomfort. He pulled me to one side and started lecturing me about my running. He told me that I did not observe anything around me while I run. He told me to listen to the birds, not your iPod; to listen to the leaves and not the traffic sounds; to smell the rain, not the foul odours from the open drain that ran alongside the park. He asked me to slow down. “You need to enjoy life around you, my friend. You need to look at the world around you and not run through it”. He said he did not see me enjoying my run. “It has become a chore for you, man”, he said. He added that that was exactly what his wife had been trying to teach him all along and it was only now he was allowing it to percolate.

That day, he told me his wife had taught him to slow down. He jogged the way he did because that was the only way he could slow down. His wife had taught him to appreciate the world around him. He told me that she would say to him every day that life is a slow dance. And so as she crossed him every day in her dance-walk around the park, she did not wave at him, but gestured to him, asking him to slow down and appreciate the world around him, to listen to the children, the birds and the rain.

And as he left that day, for the first time, I noticed something other than radiant positive energy in his eyes and his voice. His eyes averted mine and his voice trembled as he spoke, with a tinge of melancholy, “I do not know if you will see much more of us. But as long as I am here, I will remind you to enjoy your morning ritual. Commit to it, but enjoy it.” And with that, he waved goodbye and they were gone.

The very next day, I came out for a run as usual. They weren’t there. And the next, and the next day.

Just as suddenly as they had disappeared, I saw him as soon as he entered the park one day, two months later. Immediately I noticed a decisive difference. The dance-walker was not with him. He was alone. My heart sank. And then as he stumbled into the park, I noticed the rest.

The erect frame was gone; he was frail. He was almost bent in half. It was as if his body was fighting a losing battle with gravity, one that was determined to push him down with each passing day. His hair was still thick and abundant; but it was now unkempt. The black strands had disappeared. The pepper-grey had transformed into silver-grey. It was as though a thousand spiders had conspired to weave a web of silver magic on his head. When the gentle rays of the rising sun bounced off his bent head, it was almost as though he walked with a halo. He wore clothes that were wrinkled. And as he entered the park, I realized that he did not march-jog anymore either. He walked instead. Interestingly, he chose to walk anti-clockwise, like his wife had. But then this wasn’t a walk either. He hobbled, painfully. His left leg was the one that would not cooperate. It was as though he had to ensure that it didn't get left behind as the bolder, more able right leg propelled him forward. Each step was a small, painful journey. I observed him wincing. Each step a mini-project. The once-taut skin had collapsed into many folds. I watched these folds on his face, swelling and flattening like a restless ocean, wave after wave. His skin would crease and furrow when he dragged his left leg, only to ease into comforting smoothness when the right leg dragged him forward. Ebb and flow. Pain and comfort. Left and right.

And so, he now dance-walked. Every morning. And every time I crossed him, he would wave to me. But it wasn’t a wave. It was half wave, half admonishment. He was asking me to slow down; to listen to the birds, the children and the rain.

Aspirins and music opinions...

2012-06-08T22:41:00.000+09:30

On Twitter, I recently noticed off one of the people that I follow say, "Pink Floyd is over-rated."

We then put off one terrific argument. Somewhere and all it went. Here, there and everywhere. Meandering only it was. What and all was said, I don't even know. Mattroffact, I don't even remember half the things I said. But what a jolly good fun I had off aa? I said one thing. The other person twisted it and threw it back at me like 'thoo take it'. I then took something they said, twisted it better and put off 'thooo take this now'. The bigger the thooo, the better the argument. Whatay jolly it was.

In the end, even though we argued and argued like anything, no new knowledge was conveyed. But then, what to do, this Twitter is a really silly medium for arguments and learning no? It is for idle chat about weather, recipes, cooking, putting "aaaaw" over kids photos, or putting "aawwww" over a Junior Master Chef contestant, talking about shoes, and cricket scores and for retweeting an article you have never read. Oh! And also about why IPL is a waste of everyone's time.

After that argument and all was over, after going home, I thought about it little bit more. Then I thought off: 'This argument that I had today about Pink Floyd being over-rated is not really different from the opinions that are put during the Chennai music season in December every year.

'Same to same this is, I thought.'

Opinion after opinion you will hear without substantiation. If you push the opinion-giver little bit they just run off.

Many times you will hear from one of the maamis: "X is chumma over-rated only. Why she is getting so much crowd, I only don't know!" The large maami sitting next to her would then often add to this growing body of opinion, "Ya ya. I agree. They only come to see her clothes and her jewels to take off copy of the latest trend. Does anyone in this audience even know music like you and me? And what gaudy clothes this X is wearing anyway? Too jazzy. Tcha. Will refined people even wear these? Her music is as gaudy as her clothes taste no? But what do do? Her fate and neram is good. Anyhow, I think our Mythili has a much better voice."

I would lean forward and ask the thin fellow sitting next to large maami (presumably the underfed and malnourished husband): "Who is this Mythili? Which sabha is she performing in? Do you have her schedule?" hoping to catch a concert or two of a new, hitherto unknown talent. Often this would be met with, "Saar just now only she has reached varnam stage. But what my wife is saying is that Mythili has too much potential. Her potential is like anything only. The peoples in these sabhas have to giu chance no? Full politics saar in this place. Too full. Looks like you are overseas based because you are carrying ruck-sack, putting shorts and carry water bottle. You giu chance for her no in the abroad? Here take. Here is my card. Giu yours no?" I would often just run away from there.

Everyone has an opinion on something or the other during the music season.

This concert in Shastri Hall I still remember from a few years back. Full mosquitoes were fighting with each other to take me with them to the roof where they will not be pushed down by fan-air. Suddenly one bad breath leaned across and said to me: "Youngsters these days are all fed on instant coffee. That's why they are like this. See this fellow singing today? His tempo (kalapramanam) is all too fast. Most places taalam doesn't stand only."

If he did not have such terrible bad breath I may have pointed out to him that the artiste was singing "bala kanaka maya" in atana in the slowest kalapramanam I had heard anyone sing up until that concert. But I kept to myself and thought, 'Why and how do people acquire such incredibly bad breath?' Anyhow, how to argue in the middle of a concert with bad breath while at the same time fighting this mosquito army? I kept quiet only. It is not that this fellow's taalam was any good or something. And he was putting gyaan on taalam of the musician! He was putting taalam along with the song, but like he was in an exam or something, one eye was on my taalam. I can't cover my taalam with a towel to put no? So I put taalam and allowed him to copy. Suddenly lights went off. In Shatri Hall this is a common occurrence. Concert continued. What could this man do? Nothing. No taalam and no pat-pat-pat on his thigh. Lost he was. When the generator went "vrooom" and lights came off, this man's taalam also started off like that only after both eyes and head were near my thigh to see what I was putting.

Some people couch their opinion with somewhat of an apology. One fellow said to me once: "Saar I do not know too much technikel aspects of music and all, but this musician no... I have some advice for him. If you know him, tell him no? His uchcharippu ... you know, pronunciation ... is not good at all." I did not know the musician at all, but I wanted to know more about this "uchcharippu" business. On further questioning he said, "Saar, I don't know about ragas and all. That and all too technikel for me. For me mohanam and bhairavi are all same to same. But Sanskrit is difficult to sing. I know. No one can sing Sanskrit like MS Amma. All these fellows must listen to tapes of MS Amma singing and then go to Sanskrit college and then only come here to sing. In Sanskrit, the initial consonant should be properly aspirated." I felt I needed an aspirin too. I wanted to tell Sanskrit man, 'Dei. Listen to the music no? If you want to hear a Sanskrit lecture, listen to a Krishna Premi devotional lecture or something like that. Why come to a carnatic music concert and complain you did not have much aspirin that morning.'

What raa? Where do we find such people?

And then there are a bunch of people who might know a little bit more and are able to venture an opinion with a little bit more substance. In one concert, one fellow sitting behind me said to his friend, "This musician fellow has such a poor voice. How did he come to such a level. He must be well-connected. Must be influence based no? Whatay poor sruthi shuddam this is. Range-e illai saar. And what a meek voice also no?"

This went on for a while. So I turned around and said, "Saar, clearly you do not have a meek voice. First listen to the concert no? Then you may be able to hear a stronger voice." When he started saying that he had also paid for the ticket, I quietly changed my seat to another place. How to argue against a fellow who says that his payment gave him the right to talk over anything that is being sung and complain that the artiste had a weak voice?

Then there was this fellow who sat next to me in a concert of a young musician. It was an afternoon concert where the young musician launched into a wonderful bhairavi raga. This fellow sat next to me and within a few lines of the raga, started saying that the bhairavi that was being sung was more like maanji. "What is this nonsense? These young fellows must be properly trained and then only sing. This is maanji only" he said. These are rare arguments, but sometimes you do come across precise opinion like this. And this is easy to argue against because you can refute this with observation and fact. This was argument-gold -- a rare opportunity. And so, I immediately pointed to the presence of sgrg phrases, the absence of an elongated dhaivatam in the sndp phrases or the absence (haha, yes, an "eschewing") of the pmpgrs too. I pointed all of this out to this bhairavi-maanji man and said, quite proudly "Saar, so this is bhairavi only."

But this fellow was adamant, "I don't know this-that-all-that. But I know I am right. This is maanji only. To my ear this sounds wrong." I simply said, "Saar, how can I argue with your ear?" and changed seats again.

But as I said, opinion is very cheap during season time. And even outside season time, chumma people will have some opinion or the other. I ask for substantiation of such opinion. But most times I have to argue with the ear of someone. How? People will just put off opinion like "I don't like this person, too much body shake happening". Arre, close your eyes and listen no?

One fellow pronounced a definitive verdict once about a popular musician, "This fellow needs to take a two year break,". A full fight only started off when I said, "Why? You take a two year break from him no? Not possible aa?"

Only last year, during the season, one fellow said to me as we were exiting the venue after a concert: "This fellow's repertoire has been exactly same same for many years now. Same songs again and again he is singing" I said cheekily, "Everyone sings the same mangalam only no Saar?" He got very angry at that point, "You impertinent fellow, you are teasing me aa? I am talking of his entire repertoire. Same songs again and again for two years." I did not think so at all. Indeed, I knew it too. The singer had changed completely from a Kannada based repertoire to an entirely Sanskrit repertoire with lots of aspirin. But I said, "Saar, you must know that the word you used is not pronounced reper-tear," and ran away from there.

But the worst kind of opinion that I generally stay right away from is that which starts with "Back in my days music was..."

That is when I know I really need an aspirin...

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Ps: This piece is quite influenced by @localteaparty who wrote a hilarious piece on "looking good". The above piece started off in a different tone, but the tone was changed somewhat after reading the "Good looks. And then?" piece.

A life-long Ohrwurm...

2012-05-29T21:29:00.000+09:30

My grandfather was an incredibly wise man. I do not remember him doing much but that was because he had retired from whatever he did for a living by the time I could remember details about my life. I do not remember anyone talking to me about what he did for a living either. So perhaps he did nothing at all throughout his adult life. Perhaps he was a man of leisure; a person with incredible wealth and social position who merely followed his hobbies, passions and interests. Then again, he appeared to have very few hobbies or expensive tastes and precious few personal friends. He had very few compulsive habits and only a passing interest in sport and radio. Nor was he wealthy.

But that was somewhat irrelevant to me as he was my hero when I was growing up.

I remember that he smelt of vibhoothi all the time. He would plaster it across his forehead, his arms and chest three times a day. It was a ritual that he followed. He chided me in the most kind manner when I purchased my first bottle of deodorant; he asked me to use vibhoothi instead. "This vibhhothi is natural no," he would say immediately, and add with a naughty smile, "and besides it is at one-fiftieth of the price too!"

He spent a lot of time in the pooja (prayer) room of our house, doing his stuff; it was his refuge. On most days he would spend at least 4 hours every morning and 2 hours every evening in the prayer room. Perhaps this was his escape from the world.

I didn't quite understand what he did in the pooja room, but he would often spend hours on end, chanting. I am not convinced he focused much on his prayers. First, he wasn't really a pious sort of a person. He was a good man, a very good man, but not God-fearing and pious. Second, every time someone gossiped in the living room about a vagrant neighbor or an irritant uncle or the raucously painful laugh of a distant aunt, he would be the first to offer a mild opinion from the inside of the prayer room, "He is not really that bad no, what makes you think he is as terrible as you say he is" he would ask, with an air of absolute innocence, in a subtle attempt to keep the gossip fire burning. Or he would say, "The laugh could be grating, I agree. But poor thing maybe no one has told her yet no" he might offer as sympathy, only to stoke the burning frustration of the people participating in a discussion on that topic.

Whatever the topic, Mr Ramasubramoni (or Ramsups as we called him) would have a view. One that would be mostly expressed from the confines of the prayer room. And it would always be expressed in soft tones. I do not believe I have ever heard him raise his voice or get angry.

But, as I said, it seemed to me that he spent way too much time in the pooja room even though he was not what I might call a very religious man and even though he participated in all family discussions. I think it was just his way of escaping the acid tongue of his wife, my grandmother.

My grandma, Ponnammal (referred to by all of us as Kopaks -- don't ask me why, for it is a long story) was a loving person too. But she would never step back from a fight. She would call a spade a garbage truck, this lady. People who define "political correctness" should enshrine her words and phrases as litmus test.

I remember this occasion when our maid was sweeping the floor in a somewhat hurried manner. My grandma pulled up the maid, pointed to a corner of the house and told her, "Last time I checked, this corner was also part of our house only. It does not belong to a neighbour!" ("yevati, indha moolai-um namma veedu thaan" she said in Tamil).

Another time, a visiting cousin of ours was acting rather too friendly with his heavily pregnant wife who playfully pushed him away. Kopaks, who was in the middle of her own prayer, snapped, "idhulla nee pannaradelllam panniyaachu, ippo porum nirutthu." ("you have participated in this child birth process to the extent you need to, now stop your amorous behavior and get lost").

A cousin of ours had just been to the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala. On his way back, he stopped at our home before heading to his own home in Kolkata. He had not had a bath for the near 20 days of his religious expedition. As a result, he was rather unkempt. It is a custom for an elderly person to pour the first bucket of water on a person returning from this religious expedition. So there we were, all bunched together in a small shower cubicle, watching Kannan, our cousin receive his first post-expedition bucket of water. Kopaks stood on a wooden stool, with a bucket full of water. Kannan raised his folded hands above his shoulder, exposing his underarms. I must declare I was shocked at seeing the growth in Kannan's armpits. I gasped, but kept my respectful counsel. Not Kopaks. Instead of participating in what was essentially an intense religious ritual, she dropped the bucket of hot water, pointed to the raised under-arm and yelled, "Dei Kanna. Ennadu daa idhu. Indha anyayatha pinni vittudalaam pol-irukke!" ("What is this under-growth Kanna? It is so bad, you could even plait the darned thing!")

Little wonder then that Ramsups spent nearly 5 hours on a pooja that ought to have taken him an hour! It was his escape from the brutality of Kopaks!

I enjoyed the equability and poise with which Ramsups handled most things. I often wondered if I would ever acquire that Zen-like state he seemed to exist in. Perpetually. Nothing would ruffle him. He took on every task with a smile. He took every rebuke on the chin.

He could never get shopping right. He would get a kilogram of cherry tomatoes. Kopaks would yell, "Who do you think will chop these many? The neighbor?" The next day, he would get large tomatoes and he would get told off, because the large tomatoes, "tasted like cement, did he not know."

I would often go to South Indian classical (Carnatic) music concerts with him although, more often than not, I had no idea what the artistes were singing. I remember vividly asking him why we were listening to an old man with a kudimi (tuft of hair tied at the back of the head) sing. This was Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Ramasups' favorite singer. I remember being scared listening to another old man, also with a tuft, and a frightening squint! We were in the first few rows. I remember screaming because this singer frightened me with his on-sage contortions. This was M. D. Ramanathan. Ramasups had to run out of the venue with me and we heard the rest of the concert from behind a convenient pillar in the auditorium. But Ramasups did not chide me for my unacceptable behavior. He understood and held my hand. We listened from afar.

I had no idea if Ramasups understood what these artistes sang. At that age, I did not. But I would look with much respect at Ramasups. He nodded his head in appreciation and much knowledge. But I am not totally convinced he knew what they were singing. I am convinced he went to the concerts to escape his wife's continuous rebukes! For, if he understood what these musicians were singing, he might have hummed a line or two or even sing a song every now and then.

But no.

The only musical phrase he ever hummed was a short phrase in raga bhairavi. For the 30 years I knew him, he had no other variant on that one phrase! Perhaps he did not believe in improvisation. Perhaps he did not know how to improvise. Perhaps he felt that his life was complicated enough with that one refrain. He must have played that line in his head over a trillion times. I would have heard that line a million times myself.

It was simple: “sa sa sa ri ni da pa” was all he ever sang. All his life.

According to Kopaks, he only sang that one phrase for over 60 years. Of course, that phrase is not quite definitive enough to pin it as raga bhairavi. But that is what he thought it was and that was good enough for me. His life was simple. His life was uncomplicated. I never asked him, but I don’t believe his life was ever boring.

A earworm is the calquing of the German phrase "Ohrwurm" that is used to suggest a portion of a song or a tune that repeats in one mind over and over again. It is used to suggest music that is stuck in one's head. I have had earworms every now and then, as I am sure you have. I even had full earworm days. I have known people to have been afflicted by the earworm, "I just can't get this song out of my head," is a commonly heard plaint.

But I am yet to come across anyone with a life-long Ohrwurm.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Satyamev Jayate: Opportunistic or Responsible?

2012-05-08T21:41:00.000+09:30

Satyamev Jayate: Opportunistic or Responsible?

Time will tell...

Opinion is cheap. And there is plenty of that going around after the first episode of Satyamev Jayate aired, Sunday 6 May 2012. The show's producers may harvest all of these to construct the show differently. Or, they may not.

I have many people to thank for many things. For now, I will start with thanking Aamir Khan for my re-introduction to Bollywood cinema. I saw precious little commercial cinema that came out of India for over 13 years. One day, I stumbled upon "Dil Chahta Hai". I was hooked. Khan, the lead in that cult movie yanked me back into Bollywood. I reconnected with the genre and saw many a movie subsequently. However, I soon found out that the movie was as much an accident in this complex genre as my accidental encounter with it was! Bollywood, perpetually in search of a formula had merely found another one to exploit.

It is therefore, not surprising that Indian commercial TV follows the same idiom that Bollywood uses. The template reads: Continual and perpetual search for the next "formula". Serve flop after flop. Hit the jackpot with the formula of the year/decade. Milk it for all it is worth. Rinse. Repeat.

The TV 'formula' that seems to be working now is the reality show hosted by a major Bollywood personality. Have pretty face or stunning six/eight/twelve-pack? Fans stand outside your home in Bandra for hours on a hot Sunday afternoon to see you wave from your balcony? Come in. What? You haven't cooked a single meal in your life? You do not do extreme sport? You think an electrolyte is actually a new form of electricity? Do not worry. We will sand-paper the rough edges. We just need your face and body, not so much your intellect.

And so, I sat down to watch "Satyamev Jayate" with a healthy dose of cynicism. I admit. I was (potentially) just about to subject myself to another Bollywood actor telling me things he knew absolutely nothing about in an utterly convincing manner. After all, Priyanka Chopra had attempted to teach me about extreme endurance sport. Amitabh Bachchan had showered on me his expansive knowledge on all topics. Arjun Ramphal had taught me conflict resolution skills. Akshaye Kumar had taught me how to cook.

But I watched it because of Aamir Khan. I also watched it because I had been assaulted by the pre-show publicity. Even people living under a large immovable rock couldn't have missed news about the show. Social media was full of references to it, so were the papers. Although, as Harini Calamur (@calamur) records here, not many in the industry knew what it was going to be about. She says:

"I was curious about Satyameva Jayate, especially given that industry at large was scratching its collective head at both the timing (11 am on a Sunday Morning) and the content (serious, chat show, with no embellishment. Real people, real clothes, little make up – a show that puts the real back in reality). Many I spoke to, some as late as yesterday evening, were not sure if the show will be accepted by the audience."

The reach and canvass was broad. It was simulcast on 10 different TV channels and in 7 or 8 different languages. The Karnataka Government did not allow a Kannada dubbing of the show to be aired, ostensibly because it is against dubbed TV, although dubbed porn being viewed inside its Parliament building appears acceptable or even encouraged. The show was aired via community TV in many villages across India.

This, then, is a massive show. It has a popular figure asking tough questions. Each episode focused on one elephant in the room. The show will never run out of elephants or rooms. India is replete with elephants in search of a room; which is why I believe the producers are onto a gold mine here. I have no idea why no one has thought of this concept or the frame earlier.

And there is another bold move that sets this show apart. It is aired at Ramayan-time. A bold move. From my limited knowledge of the way Indian TV works -- assuming it does, that is -- apart from Star Wars, Mahabharata and Ramayan, not many other shows made it big in that Sunday-morning slot. The 11am time is family time in India. To show grotesque images of disfigured and badly punched up faces on a Sunday morning at 11am was as courageous as it was experimental. I would not have shown such graphic images. I may have issued a warning so that young unsuspecting kids did not accidentally see the gory and bloodied images that were shown. But then, perhaps the show did not want to air brush the truth. The images told the story of the victims. This was bold TV at family time.

But then Aamir Khan has always been bold.

After a monologue at the start, the show hit you. It took you on; played with your sensibilities. At one point in time, Aamir Khan had a tear in his eye. There were some irreverent and gratuitously pernicious suggestions on Twitter and other social media that the tear may have been made-for-TV drama. I refuse to accept that they were false tears. The stories were too raw and too hurtful. Any person with feeling and emotion would be affected by it -- even a brilliantly successful method actor. I had a tear too. And I act as well as I write. It was impossible not to feel hurt or anger at the stories that we heard. They were depressing. They were compelling. They weren't new. But they made you simultaneously angry and sad.

The show was well made. Harini Calamur has talked about it in her review. It had indeed put 'real' back into 'reality'. The victims spoke. It was their story. Aamir Khan did not tell us what we had to do. The show questioned us, our morality, our values, our silence and our tolerance of a continuing atrocity: female foeticide. And there are many more such societal ills that will follow. As I said, there are many elephants in search of a room.

But it wasn't as though we were seeing something we did not know already. Then again, did we really know it? Do we, as a society, need Khan to tell us we have a problem? And we do. Let us not stick our collective heads in the sand. And as G. Khamba says in another multi-layered review of 'Satyamev Jayate':

"The intention is noble, and props to him for even trying something like this on Indian television. He’s using his star power to “raise awareness”, and while personally I will always skeptical of that ... I hope some good will come of it. What and how? I don’t know, and I don’t even think anyone cares. People are just happy that Aamir Khan is “doing something”! And we as a people seem so starved of role models and hope that even “doing something” is enough..."

But there lies the problem too. A society that needs Khan and his star power to highlight these substantial ills needs some serious introspection. We need Amitabh Bachchan to ask us to think about eradicating polio. Until that time, we will not care about it.

The Government throws its hands in the air. The problem is just too hard. "Where do we even start?" it asks. The poor people throw their hands up in the air. "This problem is not ours," they say collectively. They just want their daily bread on the floor.

The lower middle class just wants to escape the lower middle class and become just-right-of-center middle class. For them, just putting bread on the table (yes a small hand-me-down table re-surfaced last year with a polished formica finish, but covered with now-dirty lace cloth) is hard enough.

The just-right-of-center middle class is tired of being just-right-of-center middle class for decades and wants to get to being upper-middle class. "Just getting to work and back is a problem already."

The upper middle class just wants to escape being the upper middle class. "Sending our kids to the best schools is expensive enough. Don't distract us from the JEE exams and UPSC exams please. We are all studying for it. Yes. As I said, all of us are studying for these exams."

And the upper class just drive around in their expensive cars dissing the poor class for all the filth on the streets and the chaos at their airports.

Simply put, we have all, collectively, stopped caring for anything other than that which we need to worry about in our own lives. So yes, we do need Aamir Khan to tell us that we must care. We do need Aamir Khan to tell us that we need fundamental education in this regard. Such education on fundamental values ought to be provided in our homes and in our schools. However, are we enlightening our kids at home and school to think critically and in an ethically correct way or merely training them to get into good jobs that pay well? I am convinced it is the latter.

So the fact that we need Aamir Khan to "do this to us" is a much larger worry than the amount he is getting paid.

Ah yes. Khan's payment-per-episode. We focused on the amount he is getting paid first, as is our wont. For, if we do not like the message, why not shoot the messenger? In other words, every message has a bakra messenger. We collectively train our focus on the messenger as a mechanism to conveniently deny the very existence of the inconvenient message.

So, in the tried and tested manner that we have all become familiar with, Khan was severely criticized for charging Rs 3 Crore per episode. As G. Khamba said in his review: "I know for a fact that some of my friends who have been working their assess off on the ground for a pittance will be irked at so much attention being showered on issues they’ve been crying hoarse about for years and years purely because Aamir Khan has said it – but that’s just how we’ve become."

My irrational fear, however, is that we -- all of us -- will think that watching the show is our monumental and singular contribution to rectifying the ills that a show like this might highlight. After all, no one took notice when our Prime Minister called female foeticide (wait for it) a "national shame".

We are like this only. Even such derision has lost meaning.

My fear is that the show will be forgotten. The daily ride to work and back and constant quarrels with the auto-driver will completely occupy our 'bandwidth' and make us impervious to the ills around us. The truant maid will test our patience enough to distract us from the real ills that surround us. The re-surfacing of the formica table-top will occupy us so completely and thoroughly that all we have energy for is a commitment to watching the show at 11am every Sunday.

The show does play a role. It may remind us and fill us with guilt... Until the maid, auto-driver, metro journey assault us with their realities. But for that one hour on a Sunday and perhaps for a few hours after that, the show must occupy our minds. Perhaps a few people will get affected and decide to do something about these elephants and the rooms they reside in. The show is, therefore, good in my view.

But I do have one substantial problem with the show. And it worried me tremendously.

To the best of my knowledge, the show did not interview or showcase the work of a single NGO in the area that was under the microscope: female foeticide. And there are many NGOs and individuals that are doing substantially good work in this space already. Organisations like Jagruti, or Population First, for example. Or indeed, the work that Aamir Khan's colleague, Gul Panag has been doing in this space.

In that sense, by not standing on the shoulders of people and organisations that had preceded it, the show had a "messiah" feel to it. It ought to have acknowledged, more powerfully and more directly, the scale of the problem despite the work that is already being carried out by other people/NGOs. And instead of being a mere promotional tool to increase "fan following" the show ought to use its online presence, social-media presence and online brand, as well as its strong brand in the non-Internet-enabled rural India to point to the wealth of resources that already exists.

The show has garnered interest from all walks of society. Of that I have no doubt. The show has two choices now: (a) It can remain a mere 'highlighter' of issues and reside in our collective conscience for a few hours before we get assaulted by practical realities of life, (b) It can also become a vehicle that points to useful resources that already exist, measure its impact and become a vehicle for real change.

We have many people who care enough in an "all care, no responsibility" mode of operation. We do not need another such entity. If the show chooses the former path, it should not cry foul if it is seen as an opportunistic commercial enterprise that made money through a society's collective misery, its ills, its warts and its pimples. The more responsible path would be the latter. It is a real choice that faces the producers. Now.

I am willing to give 'Satyamev Jayate' time to see if it indeed goes down the more responsible, latter path. I am not a cynic... not yet!

-- Mohan

PS:
9-May-2012: There have been shows like this in the past on TV. Shows like Visu's "Arattai Arangam" (on Sun TV) and Lakshmi's "Kadhaiyalla Nijam" have attempted such people-focused, socially-relevant issues in a "regional" context and setting. "Satyamev Jayate" is perhaps the first attempt to tackle social issues of national relevance, prevalence and importance and take it to a national audience.

Confront that surrealistically familiar stranger...

2011-11-12T22:40:00.001+10:30

In an article written a few weeks back, Mr Sumedh Mungee wrote a piece on why he left India (again). His article received a fair bit of attention on blogs and the Interwebs. The article had over 400 comments on the NY Times site. Each of these comments had several "Recommends" too. Many of the comments spoke, sadly, to a "Good riddance, please do not come back" theme.

The reaction to a frank and honest article was along expected lines.

But I was struck by Mr Mungee's conclusion:

"I know India will rule the future. It’s just that I’ve realized—I’ve resigned myself to the fact—that I won’t be a part of that future."

It is easy to dismiss that sentiment, like several of the respondents have, and say that it is Mr Mungee's loss and India's gain! That would be lazy. That would be egregious.

I would like to request, instead, that Mr Mungee considers a return to India in the near future.

After making several trips over the last 4 years or so, we decided to relocate to India last year. It wasn't an easy decision. There were many unknowns. However, we were clear about one thing. Just one thing. We were clear that we would come back with our eyes completely open and with clearly set/accepted/understood expectations. Expectations of others. Expectations of ourselves too.

At the time of writing this, we have now been in India for 18 months. It has been a crazy ride. It has been thoroughly confusing at times. It has been deflating and unrewarding at times. The paradoxes are too many to list although a healthy dose of humour helps (see this and this for examples).

But then "eyes open" and "clear expectations" are weasel words.

What exactly do these mean?

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Mr Mungee gives the impression in his introductory comments that he left USA to return to India not to "fix India's problems".

There is an implicitly hidden neat assumption in there that (a) there are indeed problems, (b) that these need "fixing", and (c) these are easily fixed by returning NRIs.

Yes. It is entirely likely that there are problems that may be fixed (only) by returning NRIs.

But let us ignore that for a minute. Mr Mungee says that he wanted to leave the USA to "go back to Shri Thomas Friedman's India: an India that offered global companies, continental food, international schools and domestic help; an India that offered freedom from outsourcing and George W. Bush."

So it is clear that Mr Mungee did not want to come to India, but to an India that Shri (how nice) Thomas Friedman sketched for him. He did not wish to return to Manmohan Singh's India or Abdul Kalam's India or to the India that he would discover for himself. He wanted to return to an imagery and expectation of an India that had been conveniently -- and perhaps even erroneously -- sketched for him by Shriman Friedman.

And how did the lovely Sarvadhikari Shriman Thomas Friedman arrive at his sketch of India? As Sarah Leonard (@srl2126) noted on Twitter with a tinge of sarcasm, "Tom Friedman visits a country of 1 billion people this week, immerses himself in the great sea of humanity, meeting CEO after CEO after CEO."

And therein, potentially, lies Mr Mungee's own first problem that he might wish to spend some time fixing before embarking on fixing India's myriad problems. Mr Mungee probably built for himself an image of an India that was drawn for him by Shri Thomas Friendman. He wanted to return to Shriman Friedman's India and not the real India. They are different.

Shriman Friendman's India is a bustling, thriving, lively crush of humanity that cannot crush India's confident march out of poverty, because there are cellphone towers, engineering schools and biotechnology schools at every street corner. It has billboards that advertise physics degrees, for heaven's sake!

It is a nice picture. It is a romantic picture. It is not a clear picture. Indeed, it may even be a wrong picture. But all of that is moot. The real issue here is that there is no Friedman's India. There isn't even a Kalam's India or a Chetan Bhagat's India or Nehru's India.

India is what you make it out to be. India is what you experience it to be. India is.

And that is what I would use as my argument in attempting to convince Mr Mungee to return to India. Do not come back to Friedman's India or an India that needs fixing.

We came back to India, instead, because we needed fixing.

And that is precisely where this "expectation setting" begins. This does not ignore the existence of India's many problems nor does it talk to the possibility (however remote) that we might contribute to alleviating these problems. That may well be the case. However, that is not the reason we returned. We returned because we needed fixing and India provided us with an opportunity to do so!

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Mr Mungee does state in the initial few paragraphs that he came prepared to experience an India that was "visually familiar but viscerally alien".

That is, once again, off the mark in my view. India can not be about either familiarity or instinct. It is about experience. And it talks to individual, personal experience.

Mr Mungee's expectations of his experience were wrong, in my view. He proceeded to set up home in upper middle-class, suburban Bengaluru. His daughter went to the best schools. Even his home was "American-friendly".

A friend of mine once went to Kenya for a holiday, stayed in an upmarket hotel and did not step outside the block that the Hotel was immersed in because it felt "so much like downtown Sydney"! Much like her, Mr Mungee may have missed the point too. I am not suggesting that Mr Mungee ought to have lived in the gullies and by-lanes of Suddhaguntapalya. But the fact that he aimed a re-creation of an American (or America-like) experience in India suggests to me that he did not work hard enough to create a personal experience for himself that was distinct, special and very possible -- India offers that to everyone that wants a personalized experience.

Much like my friend from Sydney who wanted to see and recreate downtown-Sydney in the very different and far-away Kenya, Mr Mungee gives me the impression that he wanted to carve out his own downtown-US-city experience. Which is fine. But such an expectation should come with a statutory warning: "Expect to be disappointed. Repeated and bullish insistence on this expectation is likely to lead to extreme depression and/or severe disappointment."

And this is precisely where this "expectation setting" continues. If I insist on recreating my little pocket of America or Australia inside the carefully constructed cocoon of my existence in India, I will have missed the opportunity of being confronted and assaulted by myself.

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Many people have tried to classify and categorize India. Neatly. They have mostly failed. Few people have succeeded.

One legend that understood India for what she is, and, more importantly, did not attempt to change it, was the late Yehudi Menuhin, the legendary violinist. He says in his autobiography, "Unfinished Journey" (an excerpt found here) that he recognized early on in his interactions with India and her music that Indians rely predominantly on the individual spirit and an entrepreneurial mindset. Indians prefer that to a systems-organisation-mindset. In his autobiography, Yehudi Menuhin also says that a symphony orchestra type organisation for Indian classical music would just not work because each musician would want to express themselves differently, the way they thought was right or necessary!

"Just because the Indian would unite himself with the infinite rather than with his neighbour, so his music assists the venture. Its purpose is to refine one's soul and discipline one's body, to make one sensitive to the infinite within one, to unite one's breath with the breath of space, one's vibrations with the vibrations of the cosmos. Outside the family, the Indian's concern does not easily fasten on the group. Europe's genius, on the other hand, has been to form individuals into communities, each accepting loss of freedom in the interests of the whole. Hence collective worship, hence armies and industries and parliamentary democracy, and hence chorales in which each voice has a certain independence but is nonetheless severely constrained by other voices."

One read of the above and you know why neat compartmentalization of India is impossible. So, attempts to classify India into neat compartments or buckets invariably fail. There aren't 1.2 billion buckets in the world, leave alone identifying labels for each of these 1.2 billion buckets!

Yet, Mr Mungee talks to three (yes, three) neat buckets to classify India: "airplane India", "scooter India" and "bullock-cart India".

Neat. But what about buckets like "scooter India but with iPhone in hand" or "bullock cart India but with the most modern LED TV in the thatched roof home" or "airplane company India" or "a few airplane companies and steel companies but still dependent on (and work with) bullock cart India", or the "airplane India but I will still not purchase the latest A. R. Rahman album, instead preferring to download the pirated copy" or the "autorikshaw driver India but will insist on either purchasing Dork 2 or not reading it at all".

Each of these India's are unique, distinct and different. And there are more. Many more.

India cannot be classified neatly. And most attempts to do so have fallen flat.

At best I might marvel at how "scooter India" can fix "my Bose speakers" while, simultaneously chiding "tricycle India" for running over the feet of people who walk to some unknown destination on non-existent pavements.

To even begin to understand India in the manner of bibliosoph or a cataloger is, in my view, exercise in utter futility. It is complex system that does not attract bibliognosts readily. It is a multi-dimensional, complex, nonlinear, dynamical system with utterly unpredictable behaviour. We expect completely deterministic results. What we get instead is confusion to the chronicler/observer. Welcome to an anarchic chaos trapped inside a complex and seemingly orderly democracy. We are dealing with a complex chaotic system.

To try and find neat/precise solutions in such chaotic dynamical systems is a somewhat specious and nugatory exercise. And that is what chroniclers like Mr Mungee have tried to do. They try and find closed form descriptions by defining it as a problem that is in need of a solution!

A more compelling and persuasive approach would be to ask if there is a steady state in such systems and how we might approach such a steady state which is even partially describable!

However, we did not come to classify (or even understand) India. We came, instead, because we needed to classify and understand ourselves.

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So Mr Mugee arrived with an expectation of seeing Shriman Friedman's India and immediately carried out a task of cataloging that a senior librarian would have been proud of.

Immediately after that, he saw himself become more and more Indian and he hated himself for it. And that is where his problems really commenced. And this is where we begin to address the "eyes open" weasel word.

Mr Mungee started to hate himself for designating separate dinnerware for his maid and for his family, because his children were down with amoebiasis! He was advised that it may have arisen from his maid's lack of hygiene. The maid who probably cooked his clean food and cleaned his house of unwanted bacterial elements was sadly responsible for introducing these unwanted elements into the body of his family. Ironic. But that is not the point. The point is that Mr Mungee designated separate plates and hated himself for it.

Like all his workmates and friends, Mr Mungee's cycle of distrust in his driver drove him to despair.

Mr Mungee was locked in a road-rage incident against a hawker who dared to block his car's path. How dare "bullock cart India" block the progress of "airplane India"?

Mr Mungee saw him being continually confronted by deception and with each such mendacious behaviour, he found himself sucked into a vortex of trust-deficit that afflicts much of Indian society. And he hated it.

These are very honest accounts of a journey that Mr Mungee did not like. His was a compelling battle against who he was becoming! For him what he was becoming was a constant affray on his senses. And he was losing. Constantly.

He took the only action he could, to rebel against the "surrealistically familiar stranger" inside him. He quit to escape from inertia and denial.

This is really the crux of the decision in my view. Factors like "appropriate expectation setting" and "cataloging librarians" are useful but not critical in any journey like the one Mr Mungee undertook. What is of greatest importance is the battle within.

And this is the battle that one faces in India. And provided one does not lapse into either inertia or denial, the resulting lesson is one that India is most capable of teaching.

We made the decision to move back to India because it presented us an opportunity to confront ourselves; it presented us a valuable opportunity to face our own worst enemies (ourselves). To accept defeat in such an exercise would be akin to the surrealistically familiar stranger in me mocking me for having won the battle against myself!

As I say in an earlier post, my life in Australia had become too regimented. Too planned. Incredibly structured. Too well-organised. There was an absence of anarchy in my life. There were few surprises to life. Moreover, my senses weren't attacked constantly. My principles weren't brought into question periodically.

Here, it is.

And when I see it alive, I know I am, myself, alive. I have made it define my existence. I constantly fight the "high-fidelity bigotry" where I can. I battle the "surround-sound-enabled stereotypes" when I see them. I also aim to battle the "chronic amoebiasis of the soul".

I am not going to provide examples here because these examples would serve to trivialize the exercise into one of bluster and self-aggrandizement.

It is sufficient to say that we now have the opportunity to look at the surrealistically familiar stranger within ourselves and strive for sharper congruence and alignment. Again, we came back because we had to understand ourselves better.

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So my message to Mr Mungee is simple:

Come back to India because you want to see Mr Mungee's India and not Shri Friedman's India. Come back to India not to solve her problems (and these exist, let us not deny them) but so that you may undertake a journey to solve your problems (and these exist too, let us not deny them). The process of you confronting and vanquishing that surrealistically familiar stranger may well lead to India's problems being solved too. If your process of discovery does not solve India's problems, you will have undertaken a journey and benefited from what India taught you.

And India affords that to any honest explorer.

To give up and head back would be to give up on oneself, and that just cannot be acceptable.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

How clean is your milk?

2011-10-21T18:55:00.002+10:30

In an earlier post, I wrote about how we struggled to settle into a new life in Mumbai after living overseas for several years. I continue on that same theme in this post too...

After living nearly 20 years overseas, my Tamil, Kannada and Hindi had gone quite rusty. On reading the above, please do not make the assumption that my Tamil/Kannada/Hindi was on solid footing at some point. To make that assumption would be a bit like Himesh Reshamaiyya saying he could not sing on the night because he had temporarily lost his voice!

One aspect of re-settling into a life in India that did scare me initially was language. I was worried I would continually make an ass of myself. Even though life had prepared me, through a series of valuable experiential learning opprtunities, to recover well from a series of seemingly hopeless and relentless "Oh!I made an ass of myself... Again!" situations, not being able to communicate in an articulate manner was something that bothered me a lot.

So, our initial few months were spent polishing and practicing our Hindi. We had to communicate with people effectively in Hindi and it had to be 'reasonably perfect Hindi' we thought. It was only later that we realized that anything goes in terms of Hindi in Mumbai.

But the initial few months were frustrating. We had to interact with numerous tradespeople, workers and suppliers. It seemed as though we just could not get things right in terms of communication.

I believe deficiencies in language are brought out maximally when one is frustrated and/or angry. In those initial months we would often sputter and flounder maximally when we were frustrated with tradespeople or furniture delivery people.

No one would arrive at the appointed time and those that did would often not bring the required tools or equipment with them. And this would inevitably mean more delays in an already delayed process. Getting the right words out was always a struggle in those desperate moments. We would often launch into English or Tamil in the middle of a high-pitched Hindi-based diatribe. We would then look at each other and break into a laugh.

Try yelling in a language that you are not totally comfortable with!

Sometimes we would translate from English to Hindi and get it messed up totally. For example, in response to a request from a friend for us to visit their place on a very busy day for us, I blurted out: "patha nahin yaar. kaan se khelna padega" ("I'm really not sure. We will have to play it by ear?").

A colleague of mine insisted on speaking with me only in Hindi. Indeed he took it on as a challenge that I would be proficient in written and spoken Hindi before I completed my contract in India and before I headed back to Australia!

In one particular meeting that both of us attended, I wanted to communicate to this colleague that the situation we faced was almost impossible. It was a bad "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

The first phrase that came to my mind to describe our situation was "We are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea". The next thought was "We are the meat in the sandwich". And the third was "We are caught between a rock and a hard place".

So, here I was, saying to this colleague: "hum shaitaan aur neela samundar ke beech mein khade hain!" That comment sank faster than a Uday Chopra movie!

So, I used the next option and rattled off confidently, "hum bread ke beech mein ghost ban gaye". At that point, all blood drained from my colleagues face. He looked like a bit of a 'ghost' himself!

I gave up on attempting the third phrase. Had I tried, my colleague would have picked up a rock and flung it in my direction.

Translation from one language to another just does not work.

For example, on another occasion a friend of ours was visiting us. They struggle with their Hindi as much as we do. We were talking about a mutual friend of ours who had a large farm in Australia. Now this common friend specialized in growing fruits and vegetables on his farm. I asked how this friend was doing. In response, after a quick translation, pat came the reply, "Woh to ab ghay me ghus gaya" ("he has entered a cow")!

I immediately choked on the samosa that I was munching! The picture of a hapless Malcolm being stuck in a cow's underbelly was both funny and tragic! It was only when I did a literal re-translation did I realize that what was meant was, "He has gotten into cows now!"

There are several similar lovely examples of single-language (mainly English-to-Hindi) translations, particularly in those early days that provided us with much mirth and also significant learning opportunities! But it is when one has to do a double-translation to convey meaning that you lose the plot quicker than a Himesh Reshamaiyya melody!

An early classic was when Girija was trying to communicate to our maid that yogurt had to be cultured. Now "culturing yogurt" is a process and we hadn't got to that degree of refinement in our language construction. We were struggling with nouns and adjectives in those days. This was a difficult phase. When we got gender right, we'd often launch a week-long celebration! So, pronunciation or lyrical efficiency were not top on the priority list! We had not yet got to mastering the Hindi equivalent for the activity/process of "culturing yogurt".

However, the activity had to be communicated to the maid.

So, what does one do? Girija's mind quickly jumped to the nearest possible translation opportunity, which was to translate from Tamil to English and then, from English to Hindi! Now, in Tamil, this process of culturing yogurt is known as "tozhkaradu". Indeed that word in Tamil is common to the process of "culturing yogurt" and "washing clothes".

So, here we were, on a Monday morning, about to rush out to work. Girija communicated a series of instructions to the maid and remembered that yogurt had to be cultured for the first time at home since we moved to Mumbai.

So she said, "arre haan. aaaj doodh ko... doodh ko... matlab... [double-translation affected effortlessly from Tamil-to-English-to-Hindi]... haaaan! doodh ko dhona hai!" ("Oh yes, the milk needs to.. needs to... I mean... the milk needs to be washed!"

The maid looked at us as though we had just descended from another planet! She must have thought that we were funny people with weird tastes. She slowly re-attached her jaw to her face. She probably did not know what to say. She wanted to laugh, and she did. A bit. But she wanted to be polite too. She also had no idea what we meant and was scared she was taking on a task that would eventually land her in trouble.

So, she stared at us blankly and said somewhat innocently, "Madam, doodh ko kaise dhona hai? vaise bhi, doodh to safed hi hai" ("Madam, how do I wash milk? In any case, the milk is already white!")

We ran out of the house.

We purchased ready-set yogurt that evening!

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Ps: The right phrase for that process is "doodh to jamana hai"

Settling into life in Mumbai: A Licen...

2011-10-19T00:44:00.002+10:30

It is now 18 months since we moved back to Mumbai. Girija and I had lived in Australia for many years prior to that.

A few days back, we had organised a Twitter-inspired get-together -- a TweetUp -- at our appartment in Mumbai. The evening has been captured wonderfully in a blog-post by the lovely Naren Shenoy.

During the evening, I recounted -- badly, of course -- some of the initial struggles we had when settling into a "new normal" life in Mumbai.

"You are so incredibly bad at telling a story Mo," Girija said. She is good like that! She calls a spade a shovel and keeps me grounded. Always!

As I sulked and slithered into a corner that was happy to receive me, perhaps out of extreme sympathy, one of our guests (Twests, perhaps?) said, "Why don't you write these experiences down?"

I thought that that was a sensible idea since I do write better than I narrate -- now you know how terrible my narrations are!

And so, here I am... Using my hitherto suspended blog to write once again about things other than cricket.

The invitation and encouragement to blog about my experiences may have been driven by a momentary rush of face-saving empathy on the part of my friend. However, on reflection, I think it is a good idea to write because I believe I am caught in the middle of a truly fascinating process; a process of re-connecting and re-discovery.

I moved back to Mumbai in March 2010. I had been away from India for some 24 years. That is a long time to be away from a place. I needed to re-establish connect with the place and her people. Of course, in the time I had been away, I had made the pilgrimage to attend the Madras/Chennai "Music Season" almost every year since I had left. However, we soon realized that living in a place is quite different to making fleeting annual appearances during which one eats out almost everyday and when one attends classical music concerts in well-appointed air-conditioned halls.

"Living in a place like India is very different to visiting every now and then," I was warned by a friend!

"Unless you stand in a queue to purchase a train ticket, you have not really lived here," said a another.

I had lost all sense of what it was like to live and work in India.

It is now 18 months since we moved back, to live in India; a year and a half of immense paradoxes.

Initially, when we had just moved back to India in March 2010, I used my "Face Book" (FB) Status updates quite a bit to connect with the friends we had said goodbye to in Australia -- I wasn't much on Twitter then. I used my FB status updates to talk about life here. I would marvel at things that astounded us. I would also whinge and moan about things that weren't 'quite right'! Even when I whined, I was trying to laugh at the situation in a mock-tragic manner rather than ridicule the situation and the actors in it. That said, I did also post positive messages of some amazing things that we were seeing. I did marvel at the fact that we had our MTNL connection within 12 hours of applying for one -- that too on a Saturday! I did marvel at how 'easy' life had become in India. But "perception" is a funny thing! People remember the negative comments more than positive appreciation/affirmation.

One of my FB friends who lives in Chennai called me immediately after one such 'negative' FB status update and snorted angrily, "If you don't like it here, just pack your bags and go back."

I accepted and empathized with that sentiment even if I did not support it entirely. Mainly because that sentiment resonates strongly with a picture I have of Indians as people that love humor and love a laugh except when it is on us! And even when the laugh is on Indians, more often than not, only an Indian can be the originator or creator of such self-denigration.

In those initial days, I wasn't Indian enough; I had not earned my self-sledge rights. So the "go back" comment was par for the course.

Witness the Edison drama that played out when Joel Stein wrote an article in The Times. The 'race card' was used and waved quite easily. If the same article had been written by an Indian-Indian -- like say a Karan Thapar or Rajdeep Sardesai -- I submit that it would not have registered a blip on the race-card-scale!

I say "Indian-Indian" to indicate Indians who live in India. The Indian-Indian has self-sledge rights by virtue of his/her residency. Indians who live overseas are not considered "Indian" enough. The overseas-Indians who only visit here during their children's school holidays or for "Music Season" visits are commonly referred to as NRI's. Non-resident Indians is the official expansion of the acronym, although Not-Required Indians is a commonly accepted expansion too!

So one needs to earn self-mock stripes and you only earn it after spending (read: suffering) enough time here. It is like a prison sentence.

Indeed, a few months after I moved to Mumbai, a friend of mine said to me, "I totally agree" when I whined about needless traffic delays in Andheri West caused by a truck moving the wrong way on a one-way street!

I said to her, "But when I whined about exactly the same issue last year, while I was visiting, we had a three-hour argument! We argued about the impact of population and then moved quickly on to how discriminatory the ICC was against India, Ricky Ponting's misbehavior, Adam Gilchrist's ears, Arjuna Ranatunga throwing his weight around and the need for Sri Sri Ravishankar to have two titles in his name!"

She said, "Ah! But that was different. Now you have earned the right to complain!"

But I accept that some of what I wrote in those initial few months (on my FB updates) could be seen as "grating". In that sense, the "pack up your bags and go back" friend was right. But the intent of those FB Updates was less to "make fun of" or "laugh at" and more to share my somewhat unique experiences.

I was seeing India with a different lens.

And to be constructively balanced about it, I was having an incredibly rich experience! My life in Australia had become too regimented. Too planned. Incredibly structured. Too well-organised. There was an absence of anarchy in my life. There were few surprises to life. Here, in India, at least in those initial months, every hour threw new surprises! I learned to cope in a highly ambiguous environment, interacting with highly ambiguous personalities! I soon acquired inter-personal skills that were hitherto buried or latent. I had to hit the ground running. I had no choice. I sharpened these hitherto absent skills considerably in order to "cut through" on many issues. As a mentor of mine often says, "In India, there is no point in climbing stairs, you have to land on the terrace using a helicopter!"

But, simple/small things used to get to me initially.

For example, I would constantly get irritated by the fact that people pressed the "Up" and "Down" button on elevators. Simultaneously! "Surely, they don't want to go up and down at the same time," I'd think to myself.

One day, I plucked enough courage: "Why did you press both buttons, madam", I asked one of these Up-Down-lift-button-pushers politely.

"Mein neeche jaane ke liye lift ko upar bula raha hoon," was the assured response ("I am calling the lift up so that I can go down")

A novel explanation for why both buttons needed to be pressed. I had no come-back to that.

Initially, I marveled at how simple English errors would cause me to break into a smile or a laugh.

For example, the other day, I was at a hotel in Bangalore. I had asked for a cab to pick me up at the hotel at 8.30am. At exactly 8.30am, I got a call from the hotel concierge. He said, "Sir, your car has been reported!" It took me a while to realize that my car had reported to the front desk and that it had not "been reported"!

And there was that bandh last year where some political party was protesting against price increases. A party spokesman claimed victory and in a passion-filled speech he said, "Prices have begun to rise. We are revolting!" I had to agree with the second statement!

And then, there would be some deeper frustrations.

For example, I would often get worked up about the fact that not many people would respond to a meeting request 'appropriately'. Back in Australia, I'd get a, "Yep, you are on mate." or a "You got to be kidding. No way. Get stuffed." The best I would get initially in India would be "That time should be ok" or "That time would be ok". Now what exactly does that mean? It took me a while to figure out that the presence of would/should/could in response to a meeting request means that the person is buying an option on a potential future cancellation! This made life quite complex for a neurotically organised and frenetically structured person like me. But I guess that is my problem and not their problem! And therein lies a fundamental dysfunctionality in the landscape -- far too many people worry about their issues and problems.

But like much else over here, I got used to that too...

Until a few weeks back that is, when, in response to a meeting request, I had the person at the other end of the line saying, "I think that in all probability that date-time would be possibly ok!" Now, I can buy one option on a future cancellation. But I counted at least four in that particular form of extreme dithering!

Nothing, however, prepared me for my drivers' licence experience. The test was the biggest joke played out on me in the initial 5 months of my stay here. The way it works these days is that one has to go through a driving school in order to secure a drivers' licene.

So on the appointed day, my local driving school piled on 15 of its test-ready candidates into 4 cars. It is a surprise that these cars traveled 20 meters! However, somehow the 4 cars managed to reach the RTO office in a place called Wadala, located some 20 kilometers away! We were warned the previous day that we had to get there "on the dot" at 10.30am. "We cannot keep the inspector waiting," we were told.

So, we got there at 10.30am and waited... and waited... and waited... in the rain and out in the open and right next to an open drain! There were 5 other driving schools with their gaggle of test-ready candidates. In all, some 90 people, 20 cars and only 10 umbrellas waited patiently for the arrival of an inspector.

The inspector finally made an appearance at 2.30pm. By then I had already devoted 5 hours to this utterly useless exercise, and that was already 4 hours and 45 minutes too many. I was quite irritated -- especially considering the fact that I stood out in the rain and alongside an open/smelly ditch.

When the man arrived, there was a mad scramble by the entire collection of hungry, irritated test-ready candidates to get into the cars of their respective driving schools. The driving instructors from these schools meanwhile jockeyed for positions on the circuit. This was akin to a Formula-1 grid where cars and drivers often duck, weave and swerve in order to eke out a starting position on the grid for themselves: "Mark Weber would have no chance of surviving this mad scramble," I thought to myself.

Anyhow, the result of all of this frenetic activity was that 20 cars lined up one behind the other on a busy highway in Wadala. I was in car number 15.

And so, the procession set off with the candidate who was to be tested in the driver's seat and with the portly inspector in the front passenger seat. After each "test", which would last no more than 300 meters, the portly inspector would ask the candidate to stop and get out of the car. The test-driver would move to the back seat and the next candidate in the back seat would move to the driver's seat and take the "test". Once all test-candidates in one car had completed their "test", the portly inspector would get out of the "now completed" car, shoo that car and its contents away and move to the next car in the queue!

This uniquely ridiculous procession made several U-turns on this very busy highway. Several large trucks traveled on both directions on this highway. The fact that I did not witness an accident that day was a minor miracle. It was totally surreal and incredulous!

I had never seen anything quite like this before... ever! One part of my brain was exploding. The other laughed so hard, I had a head-ache. I sat there shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all. This "procession test" went on for an hour before portly guy settled into the car I was in -- car number 15 in the mad-grid-scramble earlier on.

Portly guy asked me to sit behind the wheel and drive. I was quite irritated by then. Frankly, by then, I didn't care if I got my licence or not.

Portly guy announced: "Licen Test shuru!" ("Licen Test starts now!")

A point to note here is that the traffic inspectors call it a "licen" here and not "licence". I could never figure out why, but I would soon have the answer.

I settled down behind the wheel with the express intention of irritating portly guy. I asked him, "Should I wear a seat belt?" to which he said in Hindi, "No. Not required". I continued with tongue-pressed-firmly-in-cheek and asked if I had to adjust the rear-view mirror. I was met with a stony glare and a terse response, "I haven't got all day. Just drive now, will you?"

I drove fast. I changed three gears in 20 meters! I was angry.

Portly Guy: Stop! Looks like you have driven before.

Me: Yes

PG: Why did you not say this before?

Me: Why did you not ask me before?

PG: It is not written in this form.

Me: It was not asked on the form.

PG: Ok. Do not try to make too smart. Get down. (zyaada smart math ban-naa. uthar jaayiE)

As I got down from the test-car, I asked Portly Guy in my broken Hindi:

Me: "ab kya hoga?" ("What will happen now?")
PG: "ab aur kya hoga? Licen mil jayega do hafte mein". ("What else can happen now? You will get your LICEN in 2 weeks")

Pleased as punch, I pressed on, innocently:

Me: "Sir, isko aaap Licen kyon bolte hain?" ("Sir, why do you call it a LICEN")
PG (looks at form and then at me and says in a brusque and angry tone): "aaapko ek hi chahiye naaa?" ("You want only one no?")
Me: "haaaan, ek hi chahiye". ("Yes, only one")
PG "to theek hai. Licen hi hai. Ek Licen, do licens" ("So that is right. One Licen. Two Licens")

I had my licen in two weeks. But more importantly, I was finally able to figure out why the traffic cops call it a LICEN in these parts. One licen. Two licens!

Since then, that word has become part of our vocabulary at home. I need a licen from Girija to drink one glass of wine. If I feel like a second, I need a licens! A licen for one morning coffee. A licens for two!

Precious lessons, these.

-- Mohan

Cricket-related comments...

2007-02-20T05:39:00.000+10:30

Since February 2007, I have moved all my cricket-related ramblings to a multi-contributor blog named i3j3. Please visit http://i3j3cricket.wordpress.com for my cricket-related views.

Full calendar for Team India in 2007

2007-02-07T12:25:00.000+10:30

The cricket calendar for 2007 is going to be quite crowded team India.

After the current 4 ODIs against Sri Lanka, India prepare to go to the World Cup.

The World Cup will see out March and April 2007.

In May, India play Bangladesh in 2 Tests and 3 ODIs. Clearly, this is nothing but an opportunity for the India players to shore up their averages before the year becomes gruelling again!

June appears to be an “off” month.

India will tour England from July to September to play 3 Tests and 7 ODIs. Playing 7 ODIs in England in a World Cup year — and that too, after the World Cup — seems a bit bizzarre to me! Nevertheless, that’s the plan.

In October, Australia visits India to play 7 ODIs.

India then hosts Pakistan for 3 Tests and 5 ODIs.

As a result of the Pakistan tour of India in November, the Indian tour to Australia from December through to March 2008 has been postponed by 3 weeks or so. In fact, while most previous tours of Australia have traditionally commenced in late-November, India’s tour of Australia in 2007-08 will probably only commence in the second week of December!

As a result, the 1st Test of the series will be the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, with the 2nd Test starting immediately after the conclusion of the 1st Test (on 2 Jan 2008). Two other Tests follow in January. The ODI tournament — which also involves Sri Lanka — would commence only in February!

An article on this re-scheduling appears in the Sydney Morning Herald today.

A busy cricket calendar for Team India!

– Mohan

Indian Team for the first two Sri Lanka matches...

2007-02-04T11:31:00.000+10:30

The Indian team for the first two ODI matches against Sri Lanka has been announced. The team is along expected lines and reads:

Rahul Dravid (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, R Uthappa, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Dinesh Karthik, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Virender Sehwag, S. Sreesanth.

Unless Virender Sehwag or Irfan Pathan or Munaf Patel blow it big time with either form or injury, it is very likely that this XV will be the team that goes to the World Cup in four weeks' time.

This team is not too different to the team that I had suggested in my blog entry a few weeks back. I had suggsted a World Cup XV of:

Rahul Dravid (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Robin Uthappa, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Virender Sehwag, S. Sreesanth, Rudra Pratap Singh, Suresh Raina, Joginder Sharma.

The differences are Anil Kumble, Dinesh Karthik and Munaf Patel (in the team that the selectors chose) instead of Suresh Raina, R. P. Singh and Joginder Sharma that I had suggested in my team.

The selectors have probably got it right with their choices of Kumble, Karthik and Patel. I am just not sure about the durability of Munaf Patel.

The next four games are going to be quite vital for India's preparations. Sri Lanka are a good opposition although they will sorely miss Chaminda Vaas and Muthiag Muralitharan. But as coach Tom Moody said in a recent interview, it is also perhaps an opportunity for others to step up to the plate.

Runs galore...

2007-02-02T11:31:00.000+10:30

With the cricket World Cup 'round the corner, I decided to take a peek at stats. If we take a look at the maximum number of career runs scored in ODIs the top-25 looks like this.

The columns read Matches, Innings, Not Outs, Runs, Highest Score, Avg, Strike Rate, Centuries, Fifties and Catches respectively [Source: Cricinfo].

01. SR Tendulkar        378  369  36 14728  186*  44.22  85.67  41 75  113
02. Inzamam-ul-Haq      370  342  52 11591  137*  39.96  74.48  10 83  108
03. ST Jayasuriya       375  364  16 11442  189   32.87  90.40  23 61  110
04. SC Ganguly          282  273  21 10302  183   40.88  73.92  22 62   96
05. BC Lara             290  281  31 10136  169   40.54  79.46  19 62  115
06. R Dravid            306  285  36  9973  153   40.05  70.71  12 76  182
07. RT Ponting          266  260  31  9670  164   42.22  79.32  21 57  117
08. M Azharuddin        334  308  54  9378  153*  36.92  73.99   7 58  156
09. PA de Silva         308  296  30  9284  145   34.90  81.13  11 64   95
10. Saeed Anwar         247  244  19  8823  194   39.21  80.66  20 43   42
11. DL Haynes           238  237  28  8648  152*  41.37  63.09  17 57   59
12. AC Gilchrist        253  246   9  8531  172   35.99  96.29  14 48  372
13. ME Waugh            244  236  20  8500  173   39.35  76.83  18 50  108
14. MS Atapattu         264  255  31  8448  132*  37.71  67.77  11 59   70
15. JH Kallis           242  231  40  8327  139   43.59  70.37  14 57   93
16. Mohammad Yousuf     228  215  31  7608  141*  41.34  74.07  11 51   50
17. SR Waugh            325  288  58  7569  120*  32.90  75.91   3 45  111
18. SP Fleming          265  254  19  7484  134*  31.84  70.74   6 45  128
19. A Ranatunga         269  255  47  7456  131*  35.84  77.91   4 49   63
20. Javed Miandad       233  218  41  7381  119*  41.70  66.99   8 50   71
21. Saleem Malik        283  256  38  7170  102   32.88  76.41   5 47   81
22. NJ Astle            223  217  14  7090  145*  34.92  72.64  16 41   83
23. MG Bevan            232  196  67  6912  108*  53.58  74.16   6 46   69
24. G Kirsten           185  185  19  6798  188*  40.95  72.04  13 45   61
25. A Flower            213  208  16  6786  145   35.34  74.60   4 55  141

If we now prune this to only include players playing currently, we get the following list:

01. SR Tendulkar        378  369  36 14728  186*  44.22  85.67  41 75  113
02. Inzamam-ul-Haq      370  342  52 11591  137*  39.96  74.48  10 83  108
03. ST Jayasuriya       375  364  16 11442  189   32.87  90.40  23 61  110
04. SC Ganguly          282  273  21 10302  183   40.88  73.92  22 62   96
05. BC Lara             290  281  31 10136  169   40.54  79.46  19 62  115
06. R Dravid            306  285  36  9973  153   40.05  70.71  12 76  182
07. RT Ponting          266  260  31  9670  164   42.22  79.32  21 57  117
12. AC Gilchrist        253  246   9  8531  172   35.99  96.29  14 48  372
14. MS Atapattu         264  255  31  8448  132*  37.71  67.77  11 59   70
15. JH Kallis           242  231  40  8327  139   43.59  70.37  14 57   93
16. Mohammad Yousuf     228  215  31  7608  141*  41.34  74.07  11 51   50
18. SP Fleming          265  254  19  7484  134*  31.84  70.74   6 45  128


In other words, only 12 of the top-25 ODI career-run-getters
are still playing. Of these, 3 are from India!

Indeed, if we assume that Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly will
score an additional 500 runs in the remaining 4 games before
the World Cup, in these three players, India would account for
a total of 36,000 runs -- that is a lot of experience!

Let us assume that Dravid gets another 27 runs in the remaining
4 ODIs prior to the World Cup. Seems reasonable to me! In that
event it is likely that only 6 batsmen will go into the World Cup
with 10,000+ runs to their credit. Of these, 3 will be from India!

Yes, India does play a lot of ODIs. So, just looking at aggregates
is probably unwise.

So, let us look at number of runs and averages together. Only 14 of
the top-50 ODI run getters of all time have an average of over 40.
Only 7 of these are still playing (8 if we include Inzamam, who
is so close ot an average of 40 that it is not funny!). Of these 8,
three are from India. This is, of course, assuming that Dravid's
average does not drop below 40 prior to the World Cup.

What is this saying? Nothing much really apart from the fact that
the Indian top order batting has a heck of a lot of experience and
capability. All they need is the right mental make up and the
application to pile on the runs.

On why Sachin and Sehwag should not be dropped...

2007-02-01T09:18:00.000+10:30

I have seen some interesting posts in the last few days/weeks relating to Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag. Some of these have been laughable and some of these have been plain annoying (to me!).

Several experts and non-experts (including close friends) have suggested that Sachin should be dropped from the team.

I have always been amused by these suggestions and looked at the (non-)experts dangle perilously as the pendulum -- their pendulum -- swung wildly from one end ("wow he is a legend") to the other ("ohhhh! kick him out..." or "he should retire") without as much as pausing for breath at a stable, central, core (read: rational) resting point. And would these (non-)experts ever think of either humble pie or (God forbid!) egg-on-faces in the light of his majestic match-winning innings in the 4th ODI against West Indies in Vadodhra yesterday (31 January 2007)? I do not think so. The manner in which he played was incredible [Photo below from Times of India]. Sachin Tendulkar first steadied the innings with Rahul Dravid and then slowly accelerated to a fine (match winning) century.

The (non-)experts would quietly move on to pick on the next random player to be either "sacked" or "incarcerated" or "chopped at the limbs" or some other form of extreme punishment, until it is time to pick on Sachin Tendulkar again. If these experts thought about eggs on faces, there would be a dearth of eggs in the land!

Captain Rahul Dravid himself captured this mood quite adequately in a series of comments laced with sarcasm which was so subtle and delicate that it probably didn't quite measure on their egg-on-faces-laden-Richter-scale! Dravid said, for example, "We were not unduly worried about Sachin. Maybe everyone else can stop worrying now so we can have a bit of peace around. But what will we discuss then?"

A look at Sachin Tendulkar's comparative stats in ODIs indicate the sheer fallacy of these chest thumping opinions. An interesting article today compares the batting stats forSachin vis-a-vis other international cricketers. Other than Mike Hussey -- and that lad is clearly in the zone -- Sachin has fared as well as the others in recent times! And no, lest the typical Indian cricket fan jumps up and down in non-factual hand-waving, in this comparative period that the author has chosen, India has not played either Bangladesh or Kenya!

Sachin Tendulkar is a proven match winner. Yes, he probably let himself and his team down in the manner in which he played in the 3rd Test in South Africa. But, let us not forget that he is a proven match winner. And he still knows how to hold a bat. And he still knows how to score runs.

The mere presence of Sachin Tendulkar in the team makes the opposition bowl negatively. They do not know what he will do on any given day. Similarly Sehwag. These are players that can (and have) taken games away from oppositions. This is why it is absolutely important that Sehwag goes to the World Cup. This is a view shared by John Wright (quite emphatically) and Arun Lal, in a roundtable discussion with Sanjay Manjrekar.

This is one of the reasons I feel Sehwag should go. And I agree wholeheartedly with Prem Sanjay Vuthandam when he pleads, "Leave Sachin alone". The presence of these two is, I believe, worth 40 runs on the field. Opposition teams would often take risks to set of target of 280 when 240 may have sufficed, because they know that, with Sachin and Sehwag in the team, India can take the game away from them. They might bowl a negative/defensive line because they may not know what the realms of possibilities are when these two guys are on song.

We have a habit, in India, of putting people on terribly high pedestals. I feel we do that so that we retain the right to be able to drag them off it whenever we chose to do so. This is surely a sad state of affairs! This has been commented on recently in a lucid and frank interview by Greg Chappell. Sachin Tendulkar himself responded rather tersely (and I think, uncharacteristically) to this issue when asked about the pressures on him at the conclusion of the 4th ODI against the West Indies yesterday.

There must be stable ground somewhere between those two extremes.

One step closer :: India name 12 for the 4th ODI

2007-01-31T10:48:00.000+10:30

India named its 12-member team for the 4th ODI against the Windies to be played today (31 January 2007). There are few surprises. And as I suggested a few days back, the team management appears to be slowly honing in on a final combination. Dravid stated yesterday that the team management has more or less pencilled in 17-18 players from which the final 15 that will travel to the World Cup will be chosen. To me, the big surprise in this statement was that both Kumble and Harbhajan would go to the Windies and that Powar will need to fight it out with a pace bowler for a spot in the 15-member team!

It is clear that the team management have invested a lot of faith in Irfan Pathan. In that sense, Pathan seems to be a certainty to go to the Windies. One certainly hopes that Pathan can deliver. Dravid also confirmed that Ganguly and Uthappa will open.

So, the 12-member team for the 4th ODI (in possible batting order) is:

1. Saurav Ganguly, 2. Robin Uthappa, 3. Irfan Pathan, 4. Sachin Tendulkar, 5. Rahul Dravid, 6. Yuvraj Singh, 7. M. S. Dhoni, 8. Ajit Agarkar, 9. Harbhajan Singh, 10. Anil Kumble, 11. Zaheer Khan, [12th man] Dinesh Karthik

I suspect Dinesh Karthik will carry the drinks. He would also field after Kumble finishes his quota and runs of feigning a non-existent injury!

I would certainly advocate Pathan coming in at #3 in the batting order.

Again, the absence of Virender Sehwag is quite telling. If, as I had suggested the other day, Sehwag were to occupy the #6 position, just after Yuvraj Singh, the composition would look a lot more balanced and even... But then, perhaps the thinking in the team is that Sehwag would be in competition with Irfan Pathan for the #3 spot.

Either way, given Dravid's comments on Sreesanth it looks like the final XV would be the 12 chosen for this match plus Virender Sehwag, [either Romesh Powar or Sreesanth], Munaf Patel. Munaf Patel appears a sure look-in given the positive comments expressed by Dravid. The team seems to be pinning a heck of a lot of hopes on Munaf Patel (moreover, the other pace bowlers have been sent home). Given his propensity to break down at crucial times, this choice is a potentially risky proposition. But it looks as if the team management has painted itself into some sort of a corner here.