Why Are We Who We Are?

Sankranti/Pongal/Lohri Celebrations 2012 - Project GXBO

2012-01-13T23:11:00.001+05:30

Google-HYD-Sankranti-Pongal-Lohri-2012

My Infographic Resume

2011-12-18T23:45:00.000+05:30

My Infographic Resume: Check out my infographic resume created via Vizualize.me. Create yours with one click.

The Ingenious Sun-Mar “Bio-Drum”

2011-09-17T20:44:00.000+05:30

In an earlier post about “Sun-Mar” and their amazing products[LINK: http://yrv-whovr.blogspot.com/2011/09/sun-mars-composting-toilets-and-garden.html] I did a sort of general overview of the company and its products – the Composting Toilet[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod.html ] and the Garden Composter[LINK:http://www.gardencomposter.com/ ]. But the fact of the matter is, when I first came across information about Sun-Mar on the Internet, I was shocked that in all the time I have been “surfing the net” I've never once heard about something like this. I mean quite frankly, in all my years of keeping an ear and an eye out for technology that was environmentally sound – this goes back to when I saw things like solar cookers, bio-gas plants and solar cells on a field trip to Auroville[LINK:http://www.auroville.org/research/ren_energy/biogas.htm ], back in the 5^th grade – something like one of Sun-Mar's Composting Toilets would have and should have stood out like a sore thumb. But nothing. I mean, even in the last 15 years, since the advent of cable television and the wonderful world of the Discovery Channel, not a single show, not even an environmental show about it. So I thought I'd do my bit to spread the word in my little neck of the woods on the Internet, if nothing else, just so people know that there is such a thing as being able to deal with your waste in a positive way. Now, I don't want to make it sound like Sun-Mar invented the notion of composting, but I did want to point out that of the numerous experiments at composting that I've seen people have a go at, this is by far the most simple, logical and overall solution to anyone's composting needs. People have always been composting, whether in large shed-like storage bins, or in a little pile in the back of the garden, but the ingenuity of Sun-Mar's “Bio-Drum” was so astounding that I gasped when I first looked at the website and saw how they were making it happen. It was too easy to do, and that fact alone left me wondering about how this product wasn't more popular, let alone being more widely available. Seriously, if you put all the money people spend purchasing products that massage their scalp while they watch TV and fret about their apparently obese 'love handles', it would go a lot further in so many more ways for them, for you, and for me.

Sun-Mar's One-Stop Composting Chamber

The idea of putting compost in a drum and being able to rotate it to promote more aeration and better composting is brilliant. However, when you add an inner drum that allows a Sun-Mar product owner to simply continue rotating the drum to extract the composted material – Sun-Mar's patented “Autoflow” technology[LINK:http://www.gardencomposter.com/product_400.html ] – it's sheer genius! Seriously, I know so many well-meaning, potential environmentalists who are unfortunately too rooted to a “civilized” existence to have to deal with anything that can be labeled “trash”, let alone “human waste”, who would love to use a system like this that doesn't require them to get their hands dirty. For the rest of us – now that I have conveniently switched sides in the last few years – a neat-and-tidy system like this is just a bonus. The fact that both the Sun-Mar Composting Toilets and Garden Composters aim to deal very effectively with the odor generated during the process of bio-degradation is a huge enough deal already. I still can't get over how ingenious the system of putting your waste inside a drum, which has another drum inside of it which collects and removes the finished compost is. But, a little more detail on this technology in a bit. Being made of hard, durable plastic compounds, Sun-Mar's products are “Pest Proof”, keeping out everything from rats to racoons, as advertised in the symbol.

What is Composting?

Not wanting to get too much into something as general as “composting” I thought I'd try and spend a little time on some of the apparent changes in what I always regarded to be compost-pile-worthy. Growing up, we seemed to have been told to keep compost to things like leaf-cuttings, cut grass, assorted trimming and shavings, and whatever you kept throwing out of your kitchen in the form of peels, shells, and cores without the seeds. I did wonder about why most people seemed to refrain from adding leftovers and other rotting foodstuff to their compost piles, but the more I thought about the things we do put in our food – I'm thinking of food coloring, additives, emulsifiers and a whole host of things on your average piece of packaged food – it kind of seemed to make sense that while we can ignore the ill-effects of these things on our bodies, the helpful bacteria and microbes would probably not be as likely to make this allowance. Still, it didn't quite make sense, or seem to sit well with the overall logic of composting if what we eat, no matter how chemical-ridden, artificial and unhealthy, was going to sit aside and rot to everyone's inconvenience. Well, it was a pleasure to see Sun-Mar list a couple of leftovers[LINK:http://www.gardencomposter.com/composting.html ] that could be thrown into a compost pile, like “Old pasta” and “Jell-O” to promote nitrogen or “Shredded paper” and “Dryer lint” to help with carbon infusion of the compost. It's important to remember this, well, it's more important to try and give your compost a more general sprinkling of all the different kinds of things that we eat or end up pruning from our gardens, to promote a more well-rounded type of compost.

“Sun-Mar's Unique Bio-Drum”

Some of the listed benefits of the patented “Bio-Drum” by Sun-Mar include, and I quote, “Continuous composting, No waiting for batches to finish, Loads and turns easily, Compost exits automatically,” and, “Pest resistant.” For me, it's the fact that after I decide to throw something away, say a few potato peels, after peeling the potato and actually generating the peels, I don't need to come into contact with it, even after it has become compost. All I have to do is slide open the “Food Port” on the Bio-Drum, tip my biodegradable waste in, rotate it a couple of times to get the old and new bits of waste to mix. Once there's a significant amount of completely composted matter inside the Bio-drum, let's say if it's about half full, then I give it a few more rotations allowing the inner drum to collect any finished compost and siphon it back out the “Output Port” and into a waiting receptacle to collect it. I'm almost tempted to type out that sentence again, just so you and I can read it again and bask in the sheer simplicity of what is involved to make a difference, and “give back” to the World, in a manner of speaking. I'm not going to of course, but the point is that this Bio-Drum makes turning waste into something useful again as easy as possible. It's a clear example of the perfect blend of simple mechanics, common sense, and the will to live consciously. For those of you wondering what the numbers on the image are all about, here are the various parts labeled: 1. Waste Inlet Port, 2. Waste Inlet Door, 3. Screen, 4. Front Support Bearing, 5. Drum Lock Catch, 6. Direct Drive Gear, 7. Top Air Vent.

Surprising Lack of Global Presence

Now, before you start thinking that I'm out here to bad-mouth Sun-Mar in any way, please hold those thoughts and comments. I refer to my earlier show of surprise, or at least my mention of such surprise regarding how I hadn't heard about something as magnificent as Sun-Mar's Composting Toilets and Garden Composters until sometime last month, when for the last 30 years, I'm pretty sure I must have come across at least a bajillion, gazillion, any other number I can't make up at the moment, and more calls to save the environment, at the school, local community, city, state, national and international levels from a growing number of budding young NGOs, and a few well-established state agencies. It seems ridiculous to consider that with a little more effort than I put in, a couple of them would not have spread the word enough about technologies such as Sun-Mar's to put them, at the very least, on a national platform, showcasing the tip-of-the-iceberg possibility of living a “sustainable life” that we all talk about so fervently. To make matters worse, the countries where Sun-Mar has retailers currently stocking goods (the list of countries includes Argentina, Australia, Chile, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Panama, Puerto Rico, Russia, Taiwan and the United Kingdom) doesn't reflect any of the “poorer”, developing nations such as those of Africa, not to mention the world's two largest contributors to the “rat race” - China and India. On the one hand, price may be an area of concern, I understand that completely. I mean, from my brief stint abroad, I realized that there was a reason why, in spite of my ongoing college education and therefore supposed knowledge, I was turning to pizzas and burgers, instead of tofu salads and hearty avocado subs. Budget. It makes perfect sense. However, what doesn't make sense, again “for me,” particularly with regard to the logic that appears to be missing in all of this, is that if the slow and painful attack on the environment has been a major problem for so long, is it not possible for governments to use economic mechanisms like “subsidies” to assist people in making eco-friendly choices? In fact, wouldn't it be prudent for governments, like India's for example, to invest in technologies like the Composting Toilets from Sun-Mar to assist with the dual problems of a lack of hygiene in large urban population centers and the inability to deal effectively with the mountains of biodegradable waste generated? Think of the benefits. I'm still a little shocked by all this, and I really do hope that I hear about things like the Sun-Mar Composting Toilet and the Sun-Mar Garden Composter in my neighborhood soon.

For More Information...

If this post has piqued your interest any, and you've managed to resist the urge to click any of the links until this point, then why don't you check out Sun-Mar's website[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html]. The website is a good starting point because it provides you general information like the company's history[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/comp_hist.html ], or something more specific, like how the Bio-Drum is only part of their revolutionary “three chamber system” of composting[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/tech_our.html ]. Maybe you would like to intersperse your Internet reading with a video overview of Sun-Mar's products[LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_O3FFnZVM]. Or perhaps, and this is extremely wishful thinking on my part, I know, this post has convinced you so thoroughly that you don't want to waste another minute listening to me, and you want to get your hands on a Sun-Mar catalog[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/cata_req.html ], also available in French[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/cata_fran.html]. In fact, you may even be looking to skip the casual glance at the FAQ page, and go directly to picking out the Composting Toilet / Garden Compostoer of your dreams by either “question process”[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/images/products/Questionselfcentral.html] or by “model selector[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/2002/modelselectorframe.htm]”. Ready to order? Then go right to Sun-Mar's Dealer Network page[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/orde_inter.html ] if you are not in the US, or their Dealer Locator[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/orde_dloc.html ] for international orders. Last on this long list of what you could possibly do after reading this post, is actually emailing the fabulous people at Sun-Mar [LINK:https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=compost@sun-mar.com], or you could just call the toll-free number in the US (1-888-341-0782 ) to connect with someone and get started on doing your bit for the Environment. Happy “composting”!

Note: Pictures used with permission from Sun-Mar.

Sun-Mar's Composting Toilets and Garden Composters

2011-09-17T19:06:00.002+05:30

Some time ago, while browsing the Internet at random, as one is wont to do from time to time, I found myself staring in disbelief at a small banner ad that flashed the words “composting toilet”. Having some idea of what it takes to get rid of human waste – the ancestral home has a septic tank that needs emptying at least once a year – I was apprehensive about the single unit of the product being advertised staring me in the face. Long story short, the ad brought me to the Sun-Mar website.[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/ ] Once here, I couldn't begin to wonder how I hadn't heard about anything like this ever before even though Sun-Mar has been in the business of making green, Eco-friendly technology for the home for 25 years and a bit. Although this shocks me no end, simply because I've been hearing about “saving the environment” since I was 5, only to, so many years later, find that the problem has only gotten worse, I feel it to be almost a duty of mine to let people know that these kinds of Eco-friendly, “green” alternatives to how we normally live are out there, just waiting to be used by all of us. Allow me to give you a snippet of what I discovered.

History of Sun-Mar

According to the “Company History” page [LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/comp_hist.html ], the Sun-Mar's product line was flagged off in 1971, when a gentleman by the name of Hardy Sundberg invented the “world's first self-contained composting toilet.” The next major breakthrough in the Sun-Mar line came when Mr. Sundberg invented the new ingenious and revolutionary “three chamber system”[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/tech_our.html ] of contained composting that involved a storage drum that could be rotated along a central axis, much like a large animal on a spit fire. This seemingly innocuous addition or amelioration to the model was, in my opinion, the single greatest breakthrough in the company's history, and it makes sense on so many levels. After the realization of this innovation, or perhaps during the same period of time, Sun-Mar moved production to the US. This signaled the next great phase in the company's noble effort to encourage people to live more consciously, as they became the first to receive National Sanitation Foundation (NSF)[LINK:http://www.nsf.org/Certified/Wastewater/Listings.asp?TradeName=&Standard=041] certification for their line of products, as well as securing patent after patent for their pioneering technology. Today, Sun-Mar boasts an “unparalleled range of 22 models from 6 different product families.”

Core Products and Avatars

Composting Toilets

"Composting Toilets" By Sun-Mar

Sun-Mar's “Composting Toilets” vary along three basic features: 1) Self-contained[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_self.html] or Central Compost Collection[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_flush.html], 2) Wet or Dry Flush System[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_dry.html], and 3) Electric or Non-Electric ventilation/heating system. The first thing you should consider is how many you plan to install. Do you want just one in the closet-like bathroom on your RV, or do you want to refurbish all the toilets at a campsite in an effort to earn you some serious Eco-friendly mileage with the children's parents? Next, think about how you want the flush to work. Do you want to go with a water-conscious system, or a severely water-conscious, “A/F Waterless” flush system? Finally, you are probably going to consider wanting to ventilate your composting toilet system, if nothing else, because you really don't need anything malodorous hanging about your house like a cloud of human repellent. Do you have enough room for a ventilation shaft, or do you need to install an electric fan to help draw the air up from your composting toilet and out of your house?

To be more widely accessible as a post-design installation in the average bathroom, all Sun-Mar products are available in the colors “White” or “Bone”. Another innovation is to be able to install a “compact” unit on a boat, making it possible to compost even on water! Be sure to check out the Sun-Mar “EXCEL[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_self_exce.html]”, “SPACESAVER[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_self_spac.html]”, “COMPACT[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_self_comp.html]”, and “CENTREX[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_flush_cent3_acdc.html]” lines, guaranteed to suit most of your waste management needs. Being a very understanding company they have round-the-clock support, and you can even run your plans to install one of their products in your home by them, just in case you're not sure if you have the right kind of set up for it. Think of it this way, if you already use solar power for most or all of your energy needs, then running an electric ventilation/heating system on a Sun-Mar composting toilet only racks you up more points for being a conscious human being who considers his or her impact on their world in every possible way.

Garden Composter

As far as millions of tons of useful, biodegradable waste being lost to landfills around the world every day goes, Sun-Mar's “Garden Composter”, available in two sizes, is an answer to this problem. There is absolutely no reason to let anything that we waste, particularly stuff that gets thrown out of our kitchens and gardens, to be just that – thrown out. No, if you're the type who looks at a banana peel on the kitchen counter with a scrunched up face, having to put on rubber gloves, and an oxygen mask just to consider picking it up and throwing it in the trash, then I'll admit that regular composting may not be for you. But, there's always the Sun-Mar Garden Composter, where you won't even need to make physical contact with whatever you're putting in once you've chopped it off of whatever you were trying to cook up and eat, or throw away because you forgot to pull it out of your fridge before it went bad. Seriously, once you throw something into the garden composter, it's just a matter of roll, roll, and roll some more until it breaks down completely and exits the system with yet another roll. The amazing thing about this garden composter is that it uses Sun-Mar's patented “Double Drum” technology[LINK: http://www.gardencomposter.com/technology.html ] which makes filling and emptying this garden composter a breeze. By simply rotating the drum regularly, and after each time you add some material to it, this technology uses nothing more than gravity and an inner drum to siphon completely biodegraded compost away from the rest of the garden and kitchen waste, and out of the composter.

Accessories

To get you started with the whole process of composting, Sun-Mar sells a couple of “Accessories”[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_acce.html ] that will help the waste in the drums of your Sun-Mar products begin to break down. Mostly a combination of helpful bacteria and other enzymes, there are also microbial mixes that you can purchase to get the composting rolling.

Trust me, from the ongoing composting experiments I've been running out back behind my kitchen, if it isn't the wet weather, it's the odd rodent or curious cat, and if not either of them, then a bunch of red ants will attack whatever I've left outside to compost. Last but not least, if I can't blame any other “critter” then I can only blame myself for setting up this composting experiment so that the only way to turn everything over is for me to put on elbow-length, super-reinforced, rubber gloves and dig in, like I was hand-tossing a salad. Made from durable plastic, the Sun-Mar Garden Composter would help solve these problems because it is pest and animal proof. It is also easy to assemble, so you don't need any technical expertise or a special degree just to think of buying one and setting it up at home. Besides these advantages, the circular, rotating drum design makes turning over the compost for better aeration and a more even breaking down a cinch. I'll wager that even people who live in apartments can make use of this garden composter, maybe the smaller of the two models, eventually being able to set up little terrace or balcony gardens that can yield a mini harvest of herbs and vegetables, thanks to their own fertilizer produced from their own kitchen waste. It's a dream, not at all a fantasy.

Where Can I Get One?

During its 25 years in operation, Sun-Mar has managed to establish a global network of dealers in several countries around the world. At the moment, the list of countries includes Argentina, Australia, Chile, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Panama, Puerto Rico, Russia, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Still, having established a global presence, it is my humble opinion that more isn't being done to promote products like the Sun-Mar Composting Toilet or the Sun-Mar Garden Composter worldwide, judging by the tremendous market potential that remains still untapped. Furthermore, as more and more developing nations find themselves faced with the added burden of having to deal with deteriorating environmental conditions in the face of their own socio-economic well-being, products like those offered by Sun-Mar will help them realize their potential, while helping them reduce the negative effects of this development on the environment. Whatever the level of living and the average lifestyle in the country, there is more than enough room for the people to invest in a Sun-Mar Composting Toilet or Garden Composter.

Take a look at their Dealer Network page[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/orde_inter.html ] if you are not in the US and wish to order a Sun-Mar product, or try out their Dealer Locator[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/orde_dloc.html ] and see where the nearest available dealer is. If you don't find a store in your country, keep shipping and handling in mind when you try and figure out what the closest country to you is where an authorized dealer is located. In the meanwhile, feel free to browse the website[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html] , and if you feel stumped for choice, or otherwise unable to make up your mind, you're in luck. Sun-Mar has one of two ways for you to whittle your way down to the product that will work best for you, either by “question process”[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/images/products/Questionselfcentral.html] or by “model selector[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/2002/modelselectorframe.htm]”.

For More Information...

Check out the Sun-Mar website[LINK: http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html], or better yet, check out this short video about their products[LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_O3FFnZVM] on YouTube[LINK:http://www.youtube.com]. Or, maybe you'd like to browse the FAQ page[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/tech_faq.html ] or request a free catalog online [LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/cata_req.html ]. This catalog is also available en Francis[LINK:http://www.sun-mar.com/cata_fran.html], si vous voulez. If none of these strike you as possible next steps, then maybe you want to be like me and drop everything and write to the fabulous people at Sun-Mar [LINK:https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=compost@sun-mar.com] asking them where they were all my life, or you could just call the toll-free number in the US (1-888-341-0782 ) to connect with someone and get started on doing your bit for the Environment. Happy “composting”!

Note: Images used by permission from Sun-Mar

Whatever's in the fridge...

2011-08-15T16:29:00.005+05:30

I'd be lying if I said that it was just another Saturday morning. No, it wasn't. In fact, it most certainly was not a Saturday morning that I could under most circumstances refer to as "ordinary". It had been a while since I had woken up at 7:00am on a Saturday morning all charged up to face the day ahead. Boy did it feel good. The energy felt great, and long story short, I planted the wild lily seeds that I had earlier collected, made myself some tea, and got started on checking out "who said what" on Facebook. Oh, that and the incessant updating of the several grow-this-now-and-come-back-tomorrow-to-harvest-it-and-get-coins-to-be-able-to-buy-more-seeds-or-whatever-to-come-back-and-harvest-the-next-day games that I find myself in the vice-like grip of. Didn't make it to the end of that overly hyphenated description? Me neither, the first couple of times. But, you get what I mean. Anyway, a couple of hours later, I found myself in a position to be making a slightly early lunch for my roommate Venky and myself, and it got my mind working on what to make that I hadn't really made in a while...or ever.

Wait for it...

I was glad, among other things, to rediscover my will to experiment with what I could or could not cook, and to top it off, I've been trying to arrive at the "bare minimum" kind of cuisine, where something like your regular button mushrooms is something that I pick up once a month. The key concept behind "bare minimum" cuisine

Mixed Vegetable Stew a la Pressure Cooker

in my mind, or as I define it - not to imply, in anyway, that I spawned the idea or anything - is to eat what is most easily available, hopefully locally, and trying to serve them up in different ways. The vegetables that fall into this classification are potatoes, carrots, onions, beans, and tomatoes. They, in my opinion, form the basis for most hearty meals, and you can make anything from a nice vegetable masala curry, to a hearty broth-like dish that I love to make. It's a hodgepodge recipe that's a combination of things I learned in my International Cooking class in my senior year of high school, and all the TV shows that I've seen of people making some kind of "western" gravy dish, but it includes all of the vegetables listed above, plus a couple more if you think it will make sense in terms of the overall dish, or something totally random, if you're feeling a little risqué. I went with "random" and ended up throwing some cabbage in there too.

Holy Stew Batman!

Why not, right? I mean, it's only going to help thicken up the gravy, right? Uh, not exactly. As it turns out, I seemed to forget that slight hint, that faint edge that cabbage has in terms of its final flavor. So, while not exactly a taste I would call "European" in any sense of that word being applied to the description of cuisine, it did seem to have and "Asian" leaning. Not too much, just enough to keep the dish interesting. Besides, the tomatoes seemed to add their own little acidic twist to help take the flavor from "strange" to "mildly intriguing". Here's one of the recipes that I aimed to ape with the limited number of ingredients that I had on hand. Not that that's a bad thing, by the way. If nothing else, it's the perfect way to get rid of your left-over veggies, before you have to "really" get rid of them, know what I mean?

Anyway, long story short, here's what was on the menu. I made a mushroom rice, a mixed vegetable stew (that you've already been introduced to), and a stuffed focaccia. That last little bit I thought up when I opened the fridge and saw that there was a little leftover vegetable from "homemade pizza night" a couple of nights ago. Anyway, here's what I did, one dish at a time, using recipes already out there, plus my usual brand of going on and on about things I may not completely know about.

Tell me that doesn't have the makings of 'the perfect murder' written all over it.

The mushroom rice, or the idea for it, popped into my head before the idea of what to eat it with did. I guess I was pining to make something different from the usual plain or jeera rice that I had become accustomed to throwing into the rice cooker. So, it made perfect sentence that the "back burner" of my mind helped me put the button mushrooms that I'd picked up two days ago perfectly together with the need to make a different kind of rice to come up with "Mushroom Rice". A search of this term on Google revealed a whole bunch of recipes that were similar at first glance, so I went with one of the first ones on the list. Now, when I say "...went with one of the first [recipes] on the list," I am of course referring to treating it as an overall suggestion. I find that I usually don't have anywhere close to half the ingredients necessary for dishes where I expect to use no more than a handful of ingredients, based on such things as the fact that the name of the dish is made up of its key ingredients - "mushrooms" and "rice", in this case. Armed with a couple of handfuls of slightly large, robust-looking button mushrooms,
some sona masoori rice

So, this is what fungi cooked in rice looks like...

(the kind we "normal" people "normally" eat), some fresh coriander and dill that I had had the foresight of picking up, just in case I found occasion to throw them into anything, of which there was never a dearth of opportunities, and last but not least, an onion and some butter, to sauté everything to enhance the flavors. So, I did just that, after chopping up the onion and the mushrooms, and frying them in butter, with a little hint of pepper to give the mixture some character. I mixed it with the rice and appropriate amount of water (Ratio of water:rice is 2cups:1cup. In this case, add at least a half cup extra for the mushrooms and onions to help integrate better with the rice) and put it in the rice cooker to cook like it "normally" would. Just kidding about the "normally" thing. CAUTION: Upon closer examination of the photograph, and the cooking pot part of the electric rice cooker, what I thought was aluminum, anyway, has revealed that further cooking in said kitchen utensil is probably, most definitely and certainly "injurious to health". ;)

It came in through the window and flew straight onto the frying pan. I swear!

And then we come to the stuffed focaccia, which was my own personal moment of brilliance when I finally pieced together what I could do to get rid of the left-over pizza base, the chopped up onions, tomatoes, and green bell peppers and roughly 100 grams of mozzarella cheese that was also cubed. Those were the ingredients, by the way. Bet you never had a recipe thrown at you sideways before eh? Don't worry, here was my inspiration for this side project. Although, I would eventually like to get closer to something like this "Cheese Focaccia" recipe in my abilities as an amateur chef of sorts.
Now, the reason why it looks a lot like a flying saucer of some kind is because I only had a small vegetable knife with me that was both sharp enough and accurate in line that I couldn't get right through the base horizontally at the center. The blade was too short. When I tried and used a longer, but unfortunately much duller knife, I ended up carving out a monstrosity -- a freakishly lobotomized pizza base on the table, and an eerily crooked "O" in my non-knife hand. I can't but thank my stars for the good fortune that made decide to go ahead anyway, rather than abort and duck for cover, but I decided to make it work to my advantage.

So, I went about stuffing all the remaining chopped vegetables and cubed cheese mixture, making sure to add that last hint of parsley to wake everything up. The last few slices of cheese I carved off a larger piece of mozzarella that I had lying around, just to try and tie in all the elements and to not make it stand out on the table like a botched operation. Needless to say, I'm glad I did it the way I did it because I managed to get a nice, crisp base that had been laden with chopped veggies and cheese, and because I had covered the deep-dish-style frying pan as soon as I had put the focaccia on the stove, the top stayed still mostly soft.

Not to sing my own praises, but I think I'm fortunate that things worked out for me the way they did on this amazing Saturday. Well, I don't know if it was the fact that I was supposed to be working but the company that I work for finally decided to give us Saturday off, in light of Monday, today, being a holiday because it's our 65th Independence Day, or if I was just up to the task of waking up early on Saturdays and seeing what was up. Whatever the case, I finally managed to put it to good use and saved myself the heartache of watching vegetables turn bad and get thrown in the makeshift composting project in the back. I finally managed to put together three dishes from what I could find in the fridge, or in the kitchen cabinet and thereabouts. All in a day's work, like the title of that Reader's Digest section which has jokes that people send in about funny things that happened to them at work. Or at least, for my own satisfaction, meeting the criteria of "waste not, want not". Maybe we can use more of this in our everyday lives in these times of not-so-plenty. I sure hope so. Glad I grew up and stopped being a spoiled kid from the city who wanted everything close enough so that he didn't have to reach too far, to a half-hermit, seeking sense and common logic in all things "life", learning to recognize it as the force that powers every beginning, and brings about every end.

Happy 65th Independence Day to all my Indian Brothers and Sisters. Uncles and Aunties too. Yes, yes, and all of the rest...

Dead and Alive

2011-07-07T02:07:00.000+05:30

The relative darkness,
Gives way to a newfound light.
Relinquishing innocence for bliss
That will lead us to ultimate freedom.
Our souls to blessed, Godly salvation.

A great awakening.
A new dawn exuding hope,
This new future of our own hubris.
We create puppets, in our own image,
And "Limited Edition" redemption.

Bathed in glorious light,
We run around in circles.
Existence ruined, falling debris,
Seeking shelter under the very trees
We cut down to build "civilizations".

Free-range chickens, are we.
Boundless freedom, it appears,
Always on the condition that this
Gift of mercy that grants us wholesome life,
Must be lived in service to "The Nation".

Peering out, blinded
By the very light we sought,
We shield our eyes, praying for aegis.
A life lived in the pursuit of glory,
A fitting end without premonition.

Sample from a "Content Writing" Test

2011-06-15T11:57:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago, I found myself at an interview for the position of "Content Writer" sitting around waiting for whoever it was that I spoke to on the phone like a half hour ago, to show up and tell me what was supposed to happen next. Stranger still, it turns out that the person I spoke to on the phone was a "Recruiter" from another company, people to whom the company in question, the one whose office I was in, had outsourced their recruitment to. So, as I finally heard my name called by someone who I could have sworn had been sitting "behind the glass" this whole time, I got up from my seat and decided to see what was next on the agenda. "Test of patience over people. Moving on..."

I found myself shepherded into a room full of computers and people, but as silent as a morgue, shown to a computer and given instructions about producing a piece of writing as a sample, that would either get us into "an interview" or see us out the door with only a sore wrist to show for it. My topic was "District Attorney." What? Yes, that was the topic, but thankfully, the instructions were to write, in 500 words or less, an article that would give someone wanting to be a District Attorney enough information to make them want to come to the site and read the article. That made sense somehow, I guessed, so I got down to browsing the Internet for the necessary info to be able to tell an interested person what it takes to be a District Attorney. The article I typed in well under the allotted time limit follows. Let me know if you think its the most ridiculous thing you've read in a while, or in your whole life. :)

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Becoming a District Attorney

For those of you with legal ambitions in life, looking to get a job along these lines in the US government, the job of District Attorney, or “DA”, may be for you. While only able to oversee the legal jurisdiction of a particular district in a US State, becoming the DA is a firm step in the direction of more ambitious things, such as becoming the Attorney General, or perhaps a United States Attorney who is able to prosecute Federal cases. Here are the steps that you need to take to become a DA.

The first step in becoming a DA is to earn a Bachelor’s Degree. It doesn’t matter what kind of Bachelor’s Degree you get because you have to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) to get into a law school of your choice, and the Admissions Committees usually take this score as well as a strong academic record into account to make their decision.

The next step is to get your Master of Laws (LLM) degree. In some cases, a Juris Doctor (JD) is preferred, so make sure you are aware of the requirements of your local bar association. As with any job, when in the hunt, you must do your best to show the relevant extra-curricular activities that you participated in, things like being part of a debating society, or having joined and received a Toastmasters Certification in public speaking, in addition to maintaining both a stellar academic record and a “clean sheet” as far as any criminal record is concerned. The position you are looking to apply for is that of Additional District Attorney, or “ADA”. Once you have secured this job, it’s a smooth transition to the next step in the process.

Like all things “government”, your time as ADA is well-spent establishing contacts and building up some “mileage” in terms of what will help you win support to get the job as DA. Being an elected position, the office of the DA is only accessible to those who show some involvement with local politics, supporting generally well-received movements and drives, like Blood Donation drives campaigns aimed at revamping the Education system. Once you think you’re ready, and sure enough, the position of DA becomes vacant, you simply have to follow through with the “official” aspects of announcing yourself as a possible candidate for that position. This would mean having to establish with your local bar association the necessary requirements for the position, and filing your candidacy with your local election board. If you have come this far in the process, then I wish you the best of luck in your quest to become the next DA of your district. Keep up the good work?

Remember, to become a DA, as with most things in life, it’s all about the preparation. You have to prepare yourself for a lot of hard work, good grades, and building both your repertoire of legal skill as well as your professional network of would-be supporters in the future. But first things first, get that Bachelor’s Degree.

Sources:

How to become a District Attorney: http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-District-Attorney
What is a District Attorney: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-district-attorney.htm
How Much Do District Attorney’s Make?: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070913141913AA0UkSK
District Attorney – Definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/district+attorney
District Attorney – Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_attorney
How to be a District Attorney: http://www.ehow.com/how_2156741_be-district-attorney.html

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So, this is apparently the kind of thing that passes for "good writing" here in India. I think it's a bit of a farce, but there seems to be a whole industry that sits behind the innate human ability to BS! Worse? There are articles like this one which take BS and re-hash it into BS v. 2.0...but it's still the same thing in the first place. BS!

Still, don't let all this BS stop you from leaving a comment about what you think of the article though. Thanks. :)

Look this way...

2011-06-09T08:56:00.000+05:30

Fixed, translucent but lifeless.
On a table, gazing at the sky.
A window to nothingness,
A promise unmasked. Another lie.

Detached, loosed from a safe place.
Focusing on a day far away.
No longer able to face,
The realities of another day.

Inevitable, the end.
Fast upon you when you turn away.
Inevitable, the end,
That leaves you lifeless where you may lay.

Set free, unbounded by mind.
Purpose and meaning fall from their place.
Set free, like chaff in the wind,
Unwanted for a while. Peace at last.

-------------------------------------

This is my entry for Magpie Tales, specifically, their "Mag 68" post. Let me know what you think, or better yet, why not give it a whirl yourself?

Whitey was her name...

2011-06-08T06:01:00.002+05:30

You may remember this cat in my lap when she was just a kitten. She was part of a pair of kittens, but after her sibling -- Patches -- succumbed to a most gruesome illness that I've mentioned before. Well, here's the slightly-older "Whitey", as we call her, being her usual self, but a very different self in a lot of ways. Whitey was the more watchful and wary of the two kittens, and when she used to come within five feet of us, any attempt at crouching down with an out-stretched hand to try and offer her a snack would set her running in the opposite direction. Sometimes, it was almost as if we wouldn't see her for a couple of days between snacks. Having said that, however, it's been an interesting role to play, that of "observer" in the development of this little kitten into not just another adolescent/adult feline, but into another living organism that is trying to make its way in this world, making a little more sense of things with each passing day. Let me start you off with a picture of one of her current activities.

This is Whitey in a loft that I set up a little after she and Patches arrived. Don't get me wrong, I didn't set it up for her, but she, like most feral cats that have wandered through a house, don't need to have things made especially for them. In fact, they seek to make the most out of what's there, with specific regard for places and things they must not end up perched upon, no invitations necessary. This is an old refrigerator box that I turned upside down so that we could throw in any unsightly odds and ends that we ended up accumulating, to help keep them out of sight. I thought it was an ingenious way to apply the old "under the rug" approach to junk, but as luck would have it, Whitey figured out a way to sink past all the wire, clothes hangers, and the God-alone-knows-what-assortment of gadgets to get to the bottom of the box and indulge in what I can only imagine to be a game of try-not-to-lose-an-eye-in-this-dark-confined-space. That's pretty crazy, considering the fact that this cardboard box that the refrigerator came in stands at least five feet tall, meaning she was essentially burrowing down into the nether realms of our junk. Such unbridled curiosity meant that I had to block her entrance into this magical world, lest we end up finding interesting objects that resemble 'leavings' from years gone by the next time we decide to inventory the junk. Furthermore, whereas I thought it cute initially that she was entertaining herself this way, the alternative to which is her getting on my nerves because she wants to do something but doesn't know what, one night my roommate Daya discovered a tom cat -- one of the suitors trying to woo Whitey into a few nights of passion, the end result of which is probably a lot of work for us at home, attempting to raise more feral kittens than we originally bargained for -- playing some strange game, but creating an unholy ruckus at the bottom of the box. This led to me taking an old, worn out bean bag and placing it in the box, blocking out what remaining space there was at the top, forming a flexible cover that would move and mold itself to anyone or anything on top, but never giving way and allowing them to get through. First day after this addition of a cork to keep all the junk in the box, and all the nosy people who wanted to be like Scrooge McDuck and swim in a vault full of gold out of it, I noticed that Whitey was doing a thorough search and analysis of the edges of the box. She was trying to sniff a crack, a tiny gap, any chink in the unassailable seal formed by the aged bean bag, gravity plus a teenage cat jumping around, and an I-was-this-close-to-throwing-it-out box that once housed a refrigerator. With no such chance being made available to her, thank God, she quickly settled down to a nice long nap, five feet in the air and nestled cozily on top of a bean bag in a box. If this was ice cream on a cone, she'd be the little white, cherry on top. See how she peers at Daya who took this picture, with an air of unmistakeable "Leave me alone!"

The most interesting thing about Whitey, is how unlike Patches, she always shied away from any sort of human contact, keeping a safe distance at all times to rule out even accidental contact with us. And, we were okay with it, not really forcing her to have to come to us to get her food, for example. I would speak to her and Patches like I would children, strangely enough, children who understood my Malayalam, which is so wrong on so many levels I can't even dare to get into that. Alright, briefly, my own Malayalam has been a source of much debate every time I'm around another speaker of the language, and especially when I find myself back in my home state. The way I speak is a horrendous amalgam of what I perceive to be words and sounds that I've heard others utter, often missing the mark completely, stretched out painfully over an English Grammar framework that more often than not has people making weird faces as their minds try to overcome this barrage of what could well be insults and other assorted expletives. With the cats, and this being the state of Andhra Pradesh with it's state language being Telugu, I'm sure they have a hard enough time trying to make out the local language -- because it is yet another human language -- without having to deal with my madness and foaming at the mouth. Both Patches and Whitey have just stared at me as I've harangued them about doing something or not doing something, half amused, and only long enough until a yawn diverts their attention to better and more restful things. When it came to being able to pet them, it was only Patches who would come running up to us if we called, jumping into our laps and purring with gusto. That was until the day that she fell ill and left us. However, and most strangely enough, a couple of days before Patches fell ill, Whitey, from out of the blue, came up to me as I was sitting on the sofa with Patches asleep on my lap, and seemed to request that I make a little room for her too. I didn't get it at first, but as she stood there staring at the sleeping Patches, occasionally looking up at me nervously before placing a paw on my lap in hesitation, trying to make it obvious that there wasn't enough room for both Patches and her, it finally dawned on me what she was trying to do. So, true to form, I just pretended to be the best piece of furniture that I could be and sat back and watched what she was going to do. It took the better part of 15 minutes, but Whitey first managed to get comfortable with walking around on a living mattress with slightly wobbly skin and flesh concealed under a lungi. Once she mastered this, it was only a matter of nudging her sister aside and claiming a spot for herself. With Patches unfortunate demise, Whitey had my lap all to her self. Now, I say "my lap" at this point because she would never dare to jump into anyone else's lap. In fact, she didn't let anyone else touch her, often "running away like the Dickens", to use that expression. And I didn't think it to be a particularly special things for me to be able to be the only one to pet her, I don't know, she didn't really seem comfortable coming up to me either. I mean, of all the time she ended up spending on my lap, there were only a few moments when she seemed genuinely happy to be there.

This is one of those moments when she was being a little coy and requesting a brushing. A little bit of history about this, Daya had donated a hairbrush to the cause of grooming the cats, and with some initial coaxing, I had managed to get Patches used to the idea of a brush with individual bristles doing the work of one of my fingers, multiplied by 50. Once she got used to it, it first became an addiction for her when every waking moment became a trip to the brush to see who would brush her, finally turning into a way of pacifying her if she was feeling a little naughty and looked like she was setting up to commit minor acts of damage around the house. And this was exactly how it went with Whitey, when she eventually replaced Patches as the "Guardian of the Hair Brush". From my side, I didn't mind either of the kittens, or any other kitten since Panda Kutty sitting in my lap. When I think back to a year ago, I remember Patches waking me up in the morning by scurrying up from near, or on, my feet where she was just sleeping, to right on my chest, only inches from my nose. Then, with some well-aimed purring, and lots of patience, she would slowly begin to hypnotize me out of my slumber. I always thought it adorable how much like "Puss" in "Shrek 2" with his large, dilated-pupil, Awwww-evoking eyes, I would often wake up to find Patches almost nose-to-nose with me, with large saucer eyes mounted on a sad, little face staring, yearningly into my soul. She didn't do this because she loved me, but because filling me with a sense of almost-guilt for potentially being behind this sad face with big eyes would have me scampering around to serve her breakfast of my own accord. I didn't really mind it, and don't mind it still, but I do admit that until I had a better handle on this, it used to frustrate me to no end. So, although in some sense Whitey had certified me "safe" to interact with, as far as non-felines went, she was still very tentative, like she never really trusted her decision. For example, one day she came back all dirty, looking like someone had physically rolled her in the dirt, or worse, in a pile of ash somewhere.

Try as I might, I couldn't get a piece of cloth, any cloth including a rag-like handkerchief, close enough to her to start wiping her off. Every time I tried, it was out the window, or under the couch. If you noticed in the picture, the black background is my lap, shrouded in the black lungi I was wearing at the time. It took a couple of days of Whitey grooming herself, and me brushing her every now and then, to get her looking like she used to. And, while I was normally used to her skittish ways around everyone, including me on some days, there was one thing that I never really got used to. Remember how I described Patches making me feel guilty about not feeding her on time? Well, with Whitey, there was more than one occasion where after endless meowing and coaxing me to give her something to eat, making it sound like she had been wandering the vast emptiness of the Deccan Plateau in search of food, she would take one look at what I was offering her for lunch, and without a moment's hesitation, turn around and walk out of the house, without a sound. A couple of these times, I remember I was quite ill, struggling to try and feed myself, let alone being able to move around at all. And when, after some life-and-death struggle kind of effort to put something together for Whitey alone, usually because I was feeling too nauseous to even think of eating anything, she'd pull the same not-interested stunt. And that's when it dawned on me. Well, it dawned on me that I was trying to be like a surrogate mother, firstly, which was more than just strange, but also, I was expecting her to behave a bit more like a pet, and a little less feral. And that, was just a recipe for frustration, if nothing else, simply because it meant that I was just one more source of food and shelter in the vast expanse that was her territory. This was very different for me, who had invested energy and time in trying to chase away other cats that would hang around and try to harass her off her property, whatever time of day or night. And so, one fine day, after she pulled her trademark I'm-in-the-mood-for-something-else, turning around nervously to see if I would throw something at her (and I have to admit that I have thrown things at her before when she did this, not to hit her, but just to let her know that what she was doing was not appreciated), but I didn't. I waited until she had made her way out of the window – the window that we left open permanently so that she could go in and out of the house at will – and closed it. That was the end of the Whitey chapter.

This happened almost six months ago. I saw her a couple of times in the first few days after I locked her out of the house, but she looked at me like I was a stranger or a hideous beast, and ran off. The last time I saw her was a month ago, and she seemed to be doing well for herself. I spotted her climbing over the neighbor's wall, a couple of houses down from ours, and though I didn't call out to her, she turned around to make eye contact. It was a brief instant of eye contact before she turned her head back around and completed her journey across the wall. I wasn't saddened at all. In fact, I smiled to myself, mostly because although I didn't understand it completely yet, this is what it meant to try and support a feral cat's existence, enhance her survival so to speak, and although there may have been grand overtures of emotion when she was in my lap, at the end of the day Whitey, like her sister Patches, or any cat that had ever come sashaying up to me, was just trying to get me to cough up a few morsels of food. And that's just the way it was. I'm thankful for the realization, or at least, for finally allowing myself to understand and accept my role in Whitey's life, or any other cat or dog's life that I've had the occasion to influence, whether directly or not.

To me, this was a much awaited lesson in letting go of the illusion of control; that I controlled their fate, and that if I didn't do something like feed them, they would die of starvation. If I had understood this earlier, I would have easily noticed my own tendency to get extremely disappointed and frustrated at things not going according to plan, like having Whitey reject an otherwise tasty meal, which was really a small part of whatever I was eating. Also, placing these kittens into some sort of “poor little waifs” category in my head, I was doing them and myself a great injustice. I was expecting them to behave like domesticated cats, when they weren't. And, I was adding to my own sense of annoyance by expecting such behavior, when on the other hand I was making all sorts of arrangements for them to still have access to their freedom, like leaving the window open so that they could go outside of their own free will. Lesson learned, in part at least. I don't know where she is now, but wherever she is, I wish her well. I'd like to leave you with a picture of Whitey sitting on a bike parked outside the front door, trying to get some early morning sun after a cold winter night. Her pose, looking at something so that her head is perpendicular to the rays of sunlight hitting her on the opposite side of her face, seems almost philosophical to me. Like she always knew. And now, time to keep ticking on until the next time I find occasion to care for a stray animal in need of a home and shelter. Love, affection, and a human doormat free. ;)

And Life Goes On

2011-06-07T14:47:00.000+05:30

You open your eyes, a brand new day.
Sleep-laden eyelids fighting hard but,
You get out of bed anyway.
It reminds you what they used to say.
Blah blah blah blah blah...and life goes on.

Eating breakfast, coffee and burnt toast,
You savor the taste of forgetting.
Still smiling, still believing the most
Ludicrous things in the Morning Post.
A suicide bomber. And life goes on.

In the car, on the road to somewhere.
The radio drones on, song by song.
It's 7:00, still too early to care,
About a hundred thousand others,
Or their miseries. And life goes on.

At work. At desk, till 5pm,
You check your email, again, just in case.
Hiding agony behind boredom,
And depressed by what you do for them,
You wonder, "How come this life goes on?"

Grabbing a tray, you glance at the spread.
"Sure beats charred toast," you whisper to you.
You ditch the soft drink, pasta and bread,
For something slightly healthy instead.
Starving millions die. But life goes on.

A long commute, back to your abode.
Hollow creatures in their hollow shells,
Staring blankly at the crowded road.
Perhaps you cared once. Perhaps it showed.
Smiling blatantly, as life goes on.

Green to amber. Amber to bright red.
You jump the gun, to avoid waiting.
CRASH! Strewn metal and glass laying dead.
Can't feel your arms. You can't feel your legs,
In a pool of blood. And life goes on.

Let's do the...Hazare?

2011-05-25T12:50:00.002+05:30

"...to do a Hazare..."?

This was in the paper a few weeks ago.Up front, I wanted to say that for me, this picture captures perfectly the fate of humanity in the modern era; positive activism in the name of justice and the common good, reduced to a catch phrase that we throw in a “Catch Phrase” pile once the hype is gone. If the phrase “do a Hazare” doesn't have you smiling, then you're either taking that whole public furore from a little while ago too seriously, or you have no idea what I'm talking about. The rest of this post is for the second lot of you, with the added benefit of what I think of the whole thing, if only to entertain you. Oh, and if you laughed your ass off like I did when I saw this headline, then do give this a read and let me know what you think.

Not more than a month ago, the news media in India were all aflutter with reports of how finally, a 73 year-old man - Anna Hazare - having had it “up to here” with corruption, was taking matters into his own hands by fasting unto death, or at least until something was done about this menace. He was going to go without food so that the Indian Parliament would pass the “Lok Pal Bill,” one that would put an end to corruption. There was a whole lot of support for this old man, now the vanguard of the perpetually impoverished, incessantly ripped-off masses, so much so that people assembled at select locations around the country to commit to their “branch” of the hunger fast. There were celebrities and government officials aplenty, giving us their two cents, which really boiled down to what a good job they thought Anna Hazare was doing by taking such drastic measures. The PR surrounding the event was only rivaled, both at the time and for a short period thereafter, by the “Royal Wedding” of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The four days that he did manage to fast, or maybe I should say, the four days that the government allowed the spectacle to continue before taking on this “movement” of sorts, the growing crescendo of activity in the name of activism threatened to balloon into a revolution a la Egypt and Libya, other nations and general “news headlines” from the time period I am referring to. Such were the emotions of the people being shown on TV, gripping an entire nation in a great, big smoke cloud of euphoria, hoping that all would be well once the smoke cleared.

When the fifth day rolled around, I switched on the news to learn that the government had relented, and had agreed to take this bill into consideration, which was hopefully more consideration than it was giving the rest of the issues it was supposed to be dealing with. It was a victory of all things Anna Hazare inspired, but it wasn't really a defeat for the government either. They had just agreed to take the first step, to set up a panel to sit down with a bunch of people who were suggested by Anna Hazare, and then draft the newest avatar of The Lokpal Bill. So, for all intents and purposes, all they were doing was taking the request made by a 73 year-old gentleman no less, “into advisement”. But on TV, anyone watching would have thought that India had just won every single gold medal at the Olympics the way all the news channels was following this, dare I say it, “event” with uninterrupted devotion. Well, this continued coverage and the fact that people were assembling nationwide to show their support for this movement, whether common man or demi-god-like celebrity, went a fair way in creating that effect. But the real irony lay in the fact that these “masses” were only playing their part in what seemed to be the same insipid soap opera by seeking justice from a power-hungry, money-craving, and in many cases oppressive leadership, for the hundredth time. Jokes apart, and I was shocked to find this out myself, the “Lok Pal Bill” has been around since the 1960s! 1966, to be exact. Yes, I said that right. To put it another way, perhaps with an analogy, think of the “Lok Pal Bill” as being a kidney stone that the Indian Government, no matter which party was heading said government, had managed to live with without having it cause them any irritation. Or at least, the government managed to assuage the public with one thing or another so that in a little over half a century, the people have decided to give corruption the indomitable Indian Shoulder Shrug and complain about it, being somehow fated to live in a society where even the people trying to console you may really be ripping you off. And, the fact that the bill has been around for longer than I have is mentally jarring to me, because I can't seem to figure out how, well, more than 500 million people can collectively accept a corrupt society as their lot in life. Even more shocking is the fact that the Lok Pal Bill was first drafted a little less than 15 years after India achieved independence from Britain – that is, after 400 years of oppression during which time corruption was a non-entity for the colonial power running the show – according to this analysis of the Lokpal Bill - because the level of corruption in a still nascent democracy had gotten to stifling levels. That's a real shocker because it implies that although people at that time felt that the proverbial “shit” had hit the “fan”, to use that figure of speech, they weren't willing to do a whole lot about it because the Bill managed to stay on the back burner for so long. So, the people of this country waited a long time, a time that saw Anna Hazare go from being 20-something to 73, before they all gathered in public squares around India declaring their undying support for the septuagenarian who was going to fast unto death.

Another way of putting it, now immortalized by the headline that I started this post with, would be to say that although he didn't know it at the time, and by no means is he the first one to adopt this sort of strategy against the Indian government, Anna Hazare was “doing a Hazare”. I can't even type that out with a straight face. Alright, I'll laugh heartily to myself later, but before saying what I have to say next, I really hope that you're scratching your head about how any of this came to pass. I mean, does it not boggle the mind that in the last 50 years, there have been more riots based on religious differences in such an ethnically diverse nation, than there have been organized rallies to combat corruption, for which there was already a bill drafted and just waiting to be passed through both houses of parliament? What does this really mean? For one thing, it's not as big a problem as we make it out to be, corruption. Having lived in this country as an adult for a while, corruption is the daily headache that after you first encounter it, just becomes something that must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, it is absolutely vital to get something done so that “greasing the palms” of the official standing in your way is not only what you have to do, but depending on how you do it it could get you what you wanted a lot quicker than anyone else. In other cases, it's the status quo that no amount of brave invective against the evil, corrupt sons of bitches who hold open filthy palms “under the table” will end up getting you what you want, unless you do as everybody else is doing and pay up.

And that, as they say, is pretty much how it is. Corruption has been such an intrinsic part of people's lives in India, that I think somewhere deep down, we don't want to let it go. Why not? For the simple fact that it's a way of ensuring that we get what we want to, everything else be damned. Ok, perhaps that's a bit harsh, but allow me to illustrate. To take something that I've witnessed firsthand – I'll let you decide how ironic or ridiculous this is for yourself – on my very first pilgrimage to Sabari Mala, I learned that with the right connections, it was possible to avoid having to wait in line for a day or two, and get right to the front of it. Furthermore, and I was in the capable care of veteran “Swamis” as the pilgrims are commonly known, we could access parts of the temple that were unavailable to the rest of the “public”. Most notable of these places was being able to stand in front of people who had waited for as long as it took them to get there, and take our time in prayer directly in front of the sanctum sanctorum, with an unobstructed view of the idol of Lord Ayappan. This was drastically different to what was going on behind us, with people scrambling over each other for a glimpse of the idol, not getting a second to bring their hands together in prayer before a security guard shoved them aside to make room for the next person, who had as much or as little time as the person before, and so on. But getting to this place took the leader of our little pilgrim clan, first to the office of the head of security, where after about a half an hour he came down with a constable who would accompany us through our journey of visiting the various shrines without the risk of harassment from his colleagues on security detail. In fact, while it takes most people at least a couple of days to wait in a line that gets so long it appears to be a record attempt for the “Longest Human Chain,” we managed to get in and get out in less than six hours, with a police escort, no less. Sure it was “corruption” but neither me nor the people in that group would have had it any other way. Why not? Because the alternatives to resorting to corruption in these kinds of situations, especially if one had or knew people who had the means to “work around it,” almost seems idiotic. It works, therefore it survives thanks to we the public who both fight it, and keep it alive.

And this brings me to the fate of humanity that I started out talking about, reduced to “doing a Hazare” after which it's back to the shoulder-shrugging existence of greasing palms whether we like to or not. Actually, I think the primary reason the people of India cannot part with corruption, apart from anything nostalgic, is because it's more a tool, a catalyst if you will, than it is a “disease” that plagues society. Mind you, it only plagues that part of society that isn't willing to cough up the money, or find a creative way to enter into a quid pro quo arrangement, whatever that may involve. With a population such as ours, we have been standing in line since before we were born. No, that's a very serious statement, if you consider what the average parent goes through in trying to secure a quality education for her or his children, or even the appropriate level of healthcare during the act of childbirth. There are waiting lists in the prestigious educational institutions, and newer schools and colleges have resorted to tests – it was reported that many play schools, Lower Kindergarten type places where kids no older than five, had “Entrance Tests” for the kids, as well as interviews with the parents, all in an effort to ensure that only candidates of a high quality are being admitted. But when a burgeoning population is all trying to access the same sorts of opportunities, of which there are a very, very limited number, we run into a severe bottleneck everywhere we turn. So, what do we do? We try and worm our way in, or better yet, see if we can spot someone that we know, and if there isn't anybody like that around, well, then we turn to our backup – the money in our pocket that we're willing to part with to get done what we were there to get done in the first place. Sure this turns into some kind of “system of corruption” because an existing loophole was spotted as a potential money-making opportunity, but coining a term with the word “system” seeks to put off blame from the real perpetrators of daily corruption – you and me.

So, it's pretty much time to stop shrugging our shoulders, and whining about the state of things in these the most notoriously corrupt times in India. It's time to stop cheering on people who we willingly parade around as the vanguards of all things socioeconomically just, celebrating petty, media-hyped victories, and then forgetting about them until such time as a familiar distraction becomes necessary. We have to decide on what we want to do. If we find ourselves in “a spot of bother” with the law, will we reach into our pocket to fend off a fine, saying things like, “Why would I pay a fine when I can pay the official a fraction of that amount and put this behind me?” to rationalize our actions? Or, will we put our faith in a system that, though flawed, only works if we're willing to follow the rules, and own up to what we've done, making an attempt to not do something as foolish as not wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle and try to weasel out of getting caught, for example. Whatever you do end up doing, just make sure you're not “doing a Hazare”. We've got a long line of people gearing up to do that, like Baba Ramdev, as the headline shows. Most importantly, don't let yourself get “coined” into any kind of term because once that happens, you become a few words that the media and the public will use ad nauseum, until they lose their flavour, like hour-old chewing gum, and get thrown in a Book of Idioms and Expressions somewhere. Hazare ji, for what its worth, I hope there is some element of a “real” victory in your fight against corruption before you leave this world forever.

Almost Recycling...

2011-02-03T14:08:00.001+05:30

A curious case of something literally "landing in my lap" occurred this morning. An "unidentified flying object" discovery led to a quick study and analysis of said object before true to form, I noticed something quite possibly amiss. I saw a curious piece of string reaching down to the ground, all the way from the terrace. Stranger things have greeted me on some mornings, I assure you, but as I tugged on it, hopefully to come across more of this kind of industrial-strength string that I could use in my latest adventures in the garden, I couldn't help but feel that something a little larger and wholly unexpected was at the other end. The string, or whatever was the other end of it, began teasing me, giving a little with one tug and then refusing to budge on the next. While I played a curiously non-kinky game of cat-and-mouse, I sincerely hoped none of the other "early risers" that we had for neighbors were watching. The last thing I wanted was to be the subject of a witty recollection that begins with the sentence, "You wouldn't believe what I saw first thing in the morning..."

"What if it's like a large rock or a brick?" I questioned myself. True. It could be something heavy like one of these, making for an absolutely "Wile E. Coyote" moment. But that didn't explain the intermittent smooth tug that resulted in a few inches of string coming over to my side, so to speak. I attempted to wrack a half awake brain, but with the slight chill in the air the overall effect was similar to trying to light up a room with a pair of flint stones. I was so caught up in getting to the bottom of this, or at least to the end of this thread, that I hadn't even realized why I was doing this in the first place. Was this string in my way as I opened the door? No. Was it in anyway offensive, either being visually unholy to bear, or nasally unthinkable to whiff? No. Was it threatening either the structure, in part or in totality, or the residents inside? Not bloody likely. So what was I doing this for? Well, obviously for the satisfaction of pulling down random bits of string first thing after opening my eyes.

"..skr....shhh...," I could hear from the terrace, as if someone were sweeping fine gravel across a smooth, cement floor, and it only got louder turning into, "Skrs...sk....skrshhht!" before I looked up in time to see the other end of the string on its way down. True to my earlier suspicions, there was something attached to it. That I had even considered the attachment to be either a rock or a stone seemed to redefine "bad guess". I had to wait a few seconds for the string to slowly descend to my outstretched hands, no not because the terrace is halfway to the moon, but for the simple reason that there was a kite that was keeping the string hostage as it slowly see-sawed it's way down to the ground itself. What a random find, at the crack of dawn pretty much.

At first glance, it's a very cute kite, constructed in a manner so simple you can just look at it and tell that this is probably how the first kite was made. Well, obviously not with the plastic sheet because they didn't have any plastic back then, but the two bits of bamboo or reed to form the spine and the bow of the kite along with the two bits that form the front of the kite haven't really changed at all. If this kite sold for anything more than five rupees (INR 5.00 = USD 0.11) the seller should be shot, it's that cheap. And, come to think of it, there were a bunch of kites being flown from a couple of weeks ago when it was Makar Sankranti. Obviously this should have been the first thing to occur to me when I first encountered the string. Silly, sleepy old me, I suppose. Not bad for a bit of tugging and pulling, because I landed myself with a new toy. No, not the kite, the string, remember? I was going to use the string to help direct a few of the extra-friendly plants that were attempting to get really cozy with some of the other plants, by pulling them apart with some old bricks that I would use as weights. There was absolutely no interest in the kite on my part. Not since my first frustrating attempts to try and get one up in the air as a child, or any that I may have willingly passed up since, have I liked to fly a kite. I suppose I've always thought of this as being "flying vicariously" but being so not-a-pilot, I should be the last one to comment like so. The point is, kites don't do it for me, unless of course it's a brilliant display of a million kites, and I can get people to move in and out of formation on my every whim. Still, as uninterested as I was, there was something strange about the kite. It was the plastic sail.

When I got down to trying to figure out what the crazy pattern on the sail of this kite was, I was in for a bit of a pleasant surprise. It looked like a series of assorted sachets that had obviously been recycled into a kite, a glorious thing in India, a country on the verge of collapse as it continues to swell its ranks and adopt the most horrendous of lifestyles. But then again, these kinds of things have a way of "appearing" to be a certain way in this country. And so it was. Upon closer inspection, the label on the sachet, which I thought said "Rasna" actually said something else. So the sachets were from a spurious powdered drink product that mimicked a nationally loved and recognized brand? Far from it. The sail of this cute kite that I found after tugging on a string that I noticed first thing in the morning, was made from part of a sheet of plastic that had on it a logo and pattern for sachets of powdered orange drink to be cut out of it, but were not. So, how was this a good thing in terms of the environment? I mean, here was a potentially noble example of recycling, if the sail had been constructed from what were used sachets of powdered, flavored drink. But they weren't used. In fact, if we start considering the fact that these may have been part of a reject pile of plastic sheets that a copycat manufacturer of powdered drink products threw away, only to be salvaged by people who had an eye for recycling, the overall picture of environmental impact becomes that much more grotesque. But by far the most important question, even before I began to consider where the plastic came from and where it was headed, or even if it was thoughtless waste or thoughtful recycling, was the fact that now that I had found this kite, with some major damage to its shiny, plastic sail, where else was it going to go except in the trash? And, once there, how exactly was all of this recycling in the first place?

------

I'm using this kite to entertain the cat. I've got it tied to one of the tassels of a raised cushion that she sometimes sleeps on, and every now and then she'll have a go at it. All's fun until the kite comes undone and we all go back to our lives. That is, until something else randomly shows up with a story to tell. ;)

A Training We Will Go: Foot in and out the door

2011-01-24T18:30:00.000+05:30

To say that Saroja and Gangaram were both utterly shocked would have been the understatement of a lifetime. I was just amused that it was now their turn to deal with the awkwardness that until a second ago, I had so selfishly kept all to myself. They jumped back with a lot more of a jolt than I did when I first noticed that there was blunder of near-epic proportions staring me in the face. I decided to break the deadlock in communication, if only to allow one of us a chance to breathe. I tried to play it down, allowing those representing my new employer the chance to save some face, suggesting, “I think I've got the wrong letter.”

Nothing. Wow! This moment was going to have to pass, by hook or by crook, otherwise we were going to be stuck in it for the rest of our natural lives. I kept going, “My name is Girish A. Pandey,” I started off with, trying to point out to the obviously mismatched name on the offer letter – Ms. Girija Pandey – “So, this must be for someone else.” Gangaram was the first to crack a smile. No sooner had the smile broken through, but he seemed to draw in a large breath that had all the makings of instant, uproarious laughter. But, he controlled himself admirably. Furthermore, having broken free of the shackles of embarrassment, he displayed great understanding by silently shaking his head. Saroja, whom we had last left with a look of horror and five shades more pale than normal, was now looking down at the letter. It was almost as if she was wishing it out of existence, and effectively willing its memory expunged from our brains. She then proceed to, in quick succession, look all around the room before finally meeting Gangaram's shaking-head gaze, making absolutely sure that she didn't make eye contact with me.

“I don't know what to say, but we'll get another letter printed out right away,” said Saroja, with an air of abject sheepishness, enough to make me want to assure her that it was an honest mistake, pretending not to have caught on from the very start, and trying to sweep it under the rug like so much dust.

Gangaram chimed in with a, “I think my assistant must have misread the name, he he he,” he chuckled almost mockingly, explaining himself by finishing with, “We are so busy with so many new trainers joining us, he must have got confused.” Yeah. That sounded plausible. Hey, I wasn't the one demanding an explanation. They were throwing this stuff at me. Also, I decided to not raise my eyebrows at the fact that his assistant had confused my gender, nearly impossible to do with my name as I had mistakenly thought for so long. I mean, it isn't like my name is something weird like Anit or Kamal, because then it would have made perfect sense to come across “smart” people who think they know what my name is better than I do, reading my first name and middle initial together to make “Anita” or “Kamala”. Either that or Gangaram's assistant was an eligible bachelor who spent his every waking moment willing some sort of female “companion” into existence, no matter where he came across the chance.

While I was attempting to be humorous in my head, I couldn't help but notice that between the earlier shock and the tons of guilt that had since started to weigh her down, Saroja looked like she wanted to pull a Houdini and vanish. She looked visibly troubled, so I decided to end her suffering by suggesting that I read the rest of the letter anyway, since I was guessing that the rest of the content was standard. She nodded absentmindedly just as the phone rang, when in a burst of activity she pounced on it before it had finished ringing half of its first ring. I pulled the letter towards me, and gave it a once over. I was reading it, but I wasn't really reading it. I mean, I made sure that my eyes were following the lines of the first page that seemed to welcome me to the organization in a heartier manner than I was used to, before flipping the page and glancing at the long list of bullet points that told me what I shouldn't do at work, and a table on the last page that appeared to pull numbers and formulas out of thin air to tell me that I was being paid, in essence, several small amounts of money that went towards turning my “salary” into a “compensation package”. Well, at first glance, the final amount that they said I should make if I dotted my 'i's and crossed my 't's, as well as jumped through a flaming hoop every now and then, was a lot more than I was getting at my last job, so I didn't really bother with the calculations. Sitting there at that moment, my first thought was to be pointed in the right direction so that I could get right down to equipping myself with the requisite knowledge and skills to become “an English Trainer”. When I was done fake-reading, I looked up at Saroja and put the letter down on the table. She had finished her call by this time, as hushed as it was, and thankfully she seemed to have calmed down to almost normal.

“So, did you have any questions?” asked Saroja in her usually controlled manner. I said that everything seemed to be in order, and may even have flashed a very sated smile, the kind that's more wide, fruit bowl than deep, soup bowl. This may have been a mistake, because she followed it up with a, “Really?” that went way up with the rising, inquisitive intonation. I guess I felt the need to quell her panic, if there was any left, you know, so as not to have to deal with ultimate embarrassment and a strange new employee who doesn't ask questions about his offer letter, all in one day. I said that there wasn't anything there that seemed to be out of order for me, and hoped we could leave it at that and move on.

“What about how much you'll be earning?” she got right to the point. So that was what she meant when she asked me if I “had any questions”. Though I didn't mean to play the naive little village boy, I guess my unwillingness to haggle over the price of anything just didn't see that coming. Maybe I hadn't really done a good job preparing myself to be back out on the job market, you know, know-how-wise. Maybe I should have paid attention to all that nonsense that people talk about “bargaining” and “getting your dues” because it sure would have helped right now. But maybe it wouldn't have helped either. I mean, I was unsure about – and still am unsure about – the need to bargain with HR for salary because by definition, if a person fits a job description, or has otherwise demonstrated the ability to satisfy all of the conditions set forth by the company in an admirably efficient manner, the company, no, the industry should have and would have arrived at an equitable cost of labor value, which then becomes a “take it or leave it” decision. Going by this logic, I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to write down a number, signifying what I thought was adequate remuneration for spending my time in an office for over eight hours a day, five days a week, when I could be doing something else with that time? Well, theoretically doing something else worthwhile, of course. Or, was I suddenly going to have to shake Saroja's hand, shrouded under a piece of cloth, as we exchanged complex finger signals out in the open, but under wraps, negotiating and renegotiating in the blink of an eye before finally concluding with a final, hearty handshake, like I had seen in many a Malayalam movie before? In those movies though, they were negotiating the price of cattle at a seasonal market that brought together the wares and produce from all around. I think I smiled inwardly for a split second, seeing how apt the connection was; the men in the Malayalam movie bargaining for a better price for cattle and heads of livestock, which was just like people in HR haggling over salaries with future cattle and heads of livestock, soon to join their ranks and realize their folly. Maybe I could just yell out a number and see what happened. Or perhaps I was supposed to hold up a placard with a number on it, using a piece of satin cloth to do the whole sexy unraveling thing that they do with every surprise gift that was ever won on TV. Visions of the most outlandish, one-member auction slowly began to cloud my brain, so it was with considerable effort that through this miasma of how the scene before me would play out I managed to utter that I thought the compensation being offered was adequate because it was considerably more than I was making at my last job.

Saroja pulled the letter back towards her side of the table, and picking it up neatly, she turned to Gangaram and handed it to him with both hands, rather ceremoniously it seemed to me. Then, she turned to me and asked, “Do you have a couple of minutes to spare? I wanted to quickly introduce you to some of the folks here at the office, while Gangaram went and got a corrected version of your offer letter?” Sounded perfect to me. I wasn't going to go do anything after this, except maybe go home and try and catch up on as much unemployed bum-ishness as I could before having to come in to work the next day anyway. Yup, I was going to go home and save the opportunity for any madness, or any more madness as the case may be, to take place and ruin an otherwise bizarre day. I couldn't believe I was doing this, but I declined her offer, making a counter offer instead to come in bright, fresh and early the next morning in time to catch everyone at the very beginning of their day so that whatever business needed to be taken care of could be take care of then. I hesitated in the back of my mind, preparing myself for some kind of reprimand, however slight, at displaying a “work ethic” that was contrary to the “code” of this company, or any other employer for that matter. But no. In fact, my refusal seemed to be exactly what Saroja had hoped for. Maybe she meant to show it, maybe she didn't, but either way, there was a hint of a smile, slowly curling the corner of her otherwise pursed lips.

I excused myself with some made up errand-of-an-excuse, sounding sincere and apologizing for not making the most of the opportunity to meet my new found colleagues. Saroja, who seemed equally up to the task of sounding disappointed about me not accepting her invite, began with, “That's too bad. But, I think it's better to come in in the morning and meet everyone then,” as she stood up from behind her desk, shepherded Gangaram to the door, and made her way towards me with a handshake that plucked me out of my chair, and placed me second behind Gangaram on the way out of the room. I couldn't have agreed more, and although I was getting what I wanted in terms of the chance to go home and relax before getting back to work, I stood there outside Saroja's room feeling a little lost in the moment. A lot had happened today, and I needed to go home and reflect on it to make sense of what happened, but also to see what this would mean to me in the career that I was going to have to start setting up in this place. Oh, a career that I was going to have to start setting up in this place now that I had a job, of course.

“Thank you for coming in again today,” began Saroja as she put the final nail in today's coffin, “If you can get here by 9 am tomorrow, I can introduce you to some of the people that you will be working with.” I thanked her for her time and said that I'd be here, as she smiled and shut the door behind her. Then, it was just Gangaram and me, walking down the hallway, the end of which was less than five steps away. As we took our third step together, I noticed Gangaram listing heavily to the right, the opposite of the direction in which I was headed. I took that as an opportunity to look up and say goodbye, seeing as to how we were not acquaintances and all. I looked up and smiled at Gangaram, as I extended my hand, only to find that he had beaten me to it, and was already looking at me with an extended right hand. I shook it and thanked him, to which he replied, “I look forward to working with you. I heard you gave an excellent presentation...” Oh no! Not that again!

A Training We Will Go: There seems to be a problem

2011-01-15T10:22:00.001+05:30

I watched Saroja closely as she stepped up to the door of the conference room. She was just setting herself to open the door, like we do when we're weighing heavily until the last minute to find the perfect way to break the bad news to someone inside. She hadn't looked up at me once since I spotted her walking this way, and that didn't help my attempts to study her face for any clues about my fate. As she stepped into the room and looked up, her flow of motion skipped a beat, making for an uncomfortable full-body spasm, as she half jumped back in horror at my probing, searchlight eyes, eyelids peeled well back.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she started again like it was a stock phrase I never tired of hearing, “And for the confusion about who the team gave the feedback to. Can you please come to my office?”

This was it. I could see it unfolding moment by horrible moment, right in front of my eyes. They were taking me some place quiet because my feedback was so bad they wanted any potential breakdowns to happen away from the public eye. Or maybe Saroja just wanted me in some place that was more centrally located in the office, and within earshot of many a potential "new joinee", in case she felt the need to make an example of me by exploding with, “Oh. My. GOD! You call that a “presentation”? I wasn't there, and I'm awfully glad I wasn't judging by what I hear,” using her fingers to do the whole double-quotation-marks-in-the-air thing to accentuate how ludicrous she thought her decision to even consider me in the first place.. Or, how utterly idiotic she thought me for thinking that I even had a chance at becoming a hallowed and exalted “English Trainer”. This time I did the double quotes thing in my head. I almost cursed under my breath as we rounded the corner towards her office, catching myself in time as another senior executive came into view, sitting behind her desk in what seemed to be a recently done up office, her door half open while she was on the phone staring at the world pass by her in the corridor. Once we were inside Saroja's office, I waited for her to be seated and for her to then ask me to sit down before I even lowered my behind from where it was. She looked up fleetingly, only long enough to make eye contact, like there was a legally stipulated minimum duration of eye contact that had to have transpired for it to be considered not casual but communicative, while simultaneously extending an upward facing palm at the end of an extended hand, aimed in the general direction of one of the two chairs in front of her. I did as I was told. I didn't realize it then, but I had brought my bag with me, and I was now sitting in front of the Central Training Head of a company that I was trying to get a job at, clutching my bag for dear life. When she looked back up, I immediately looked down at my feet, almost as if it was some strange reflex and I was guilty about something. Then, realizing what I had done, and trying to recover in an instant, I pretended to see something on my shoe and dust it off, before I finally sat back up and looked at Saroja. I winced as she opened her mouth.

“How did your presentation go?” she asked.

What? Was she serious? Was this the trickiest of all trick questions, saved until the very end like some “killer blow”? What was I supposed to say? That I wanted to throw something at my audience when their staring at me with jaded eyes started to get on my nerves? I started to answer and paused briefly, hoping that it appeared to be a well formulated response, one that would floor her, finally saying that I thought the presentation went alright, after an initial hiccup. I was sure to include this last point, lest I appear to be some vacuous buffoon who always thinks that every single presentation he has ever given has been a resounding success, even the time when he showed up totally unprepared and proceeded to exceed his allotted podium time by fifteen whole minutes just because he's the CEO. What can I say, I was hoping to turn a certain negative into a work-in-progress positive, all in a potentially vain attempt to try and get a job. The moment the last syllable of the final word of my response had barely left my lips, Saroja reacted by standing up all of a sudden. “She's going to throw something at you,” screamed my mind, as the wincing turned to cowering. All I wanted was a job. How and where did it all go so horribly wrong?

“Congratulations! The senior trainers said I missed a wonderful presentation,” began Saroja as I felt myself blacking out from the sudden shock of it all, strange as that may have appeared with me bracing for an unidentified-table-object to be heading my way. Lost in this bizarre moment, and lucky to still be conscious and seated although thoroughly perplexed, I sat there like a deer caught in the headlights of Saroja's vehicle, as she continued to speak, finishing with, “...but at least I still have the privilege of welcoming you to the company.” There she was, having walked around from behind her desk, standing next to me, kind of towering over me if I remembered correctly, right hand extended in the offer of a handshake.

It must have been the look of fear on my face, or the strange combination of petrified-look-in-the-eyes and nervous smile, or maybe it was the fact that I hadn't moved or said anything in the last few seconds that prompted her to ask, “Is everything alright Girish?”

I snapped out of my own little weird nightmare when she asked the question a second time. What can I say, I was freaked out because while attributing the fact that I had gotten the job to luck, it didn't completely explain the chasm in the difference of opinion between what I thought was a bad job and what Saroja here was telling me about how well I had done. Luck certainly didn't explain how the plaster-of-Paris expressions of the panel of trainers that I had encountered not more than a half hour ago, had transmogrified into effusive praise from one even further up the ladder than them. What on earth had happened here? Pondering the strange events slowly unraveling before me, I cautiously extended my right hand to meet hers, giving her the most “dead fish” handshake humanly possible. Maybe I imagined her yanking me up on my feet, shaking me vigorously to knock the stunned silence out of me, because in reality it's more probable that I stood up because she was standing next to me, a common sign of respect to our elders. The limp handshake? That was a result of going through the motions at snail's pace, waiting for the ax to come down with each nervous breath. I was still standing when she returned to her side of the table, prompting her to do a repeat of her earlier large sweeping motion of her arm, that ended at the chair I had been sitting in, accompanied with a, “Oh, that's not necessary. Please sit down.” She was playing this cool, no, cooler than cool, like this was how every day went. I was still puzzling out which part of the presentation had been so worth the mention. I even considered the fact that I had walked into a TV gag on one of those prank shows, where I was being tricked into showing some emotion, only to have the hidden cameras pointed out to me, and forcing me to smile in good taste at the end of it all. I even glanced all around me, with darting eyes lest she catch on to the fact that I was finally catching on. Nope. Just a smiling Saroja and an utterly confused Girish, in an office that could accommodate a busload of people if it really wanted to. Forcing myself out of this mental haze, I asked if there had been any points about where I could improve to be a proper trainer, according to the trainer panel that was present.

“Oh, there wasn't anything major, just a bit of a hiccup at the start of the presentation, like you pointed out.” And she went right back to giving me the pleased grin. Now, I was even more confused. Was that all they, the panel of senior trainers headed by Naveena, had communicated to Saroja? But that didn't even begin to explain the fact that I could have presented my topic to a bunch of propped-up cadavers in a morgue somewhere, going by what I had experienced, and judging by the lack of excitement in the audience that was actually in the room with me at the time, as opposed to the decision-making, secondary audience that was sitting in front of me right now. It made little to no sense, no matter how I tried to explain it to myself. I even gave the benefit of doubt to a bunch of shape-shifting extra terrestrials who may have been sent from some dark corner of the galaxy to save me by, at the exact moment, vaporizing the original members of the trainer panel, making themselves look like the trainers, and then giving Saroja gushing praise about a presentation that they themselves hadn't seen. Great time to sit there and fantasize about the ludicrous, right? So, I moved on to the next order of business – my diploma and certificates in that lovely little folder, arranged chronologically by section, starting with a letter of recommendation from my stint as an English Tutor, and ending with some additional certificates that I had gotten back in high school. If I remembered correctly, Saroja did say that she would look at the documents after I had completed the presentation and received feedback. Well, here I was with said tasks complete, and their memories repressed to the deepest, darkest catacombs of my mind. As disoriented as I was, not knowing when the sick joke would stop, or at least when it would put me out of my misery, I decided to bring up the question of exhibiting proof of my achievements, so to speak.

“No, don't worry about that,” she was about to say when there was a sharp knock on the door. Startled further, I spun around, almost giving myself whiplash-with-a-twist. There was a gentleman, smiling very pleasantly, waiting outside the door with what seemed to be a few sheets of paper in his hand. Saroja motioned for him to enter, not as pompously as this sentence makes it sound. He did, and as he made his way to the table, he turned to smile at me, with an ever-so-slight hint of a bow. I smiled back, but considering the fact that he was old enough to be my father, as young as my father is, I got up and reciprocated his gesture. Noticing this exchange of extreme politesse, Saroja ventured to introduce us, “Gangaram, I'd like you to meet Girish, he's going to join our training team,” then turning to me she said, “Gangaram heads our Legal and Accounting section here at the head office.” I shook Gangaram's hand, and I was surprised to get a “gentle giant” kind of handshake, where my hand completely disappeared into his, but was very safe ans secure where it was, kind of like fine China being packed with a generous layer of packing material to prevent damage.

“Nice to meet you,” said Gangaram, with a dulcet voice to match his gentle nature. I smiled politely, slightly less befuddled from a moment ago, but plenty hazy inside the head still. The moment we had formalized our first meeting, he proceeded to plant the papers he was still holding on Saroja's desk, setting off a hushed discussion of which all I could hear was the odd “s” being hissed and an aspirated “p” here and there. I didn't wait around to be shown to my chair yet again, and so as not to appear overly curious, I directed my glance to everywhere else in Saroja's office, except directly in front of me. The discussion seemed to be going full steam when suddenly both Saroja and Gangaram stopped talking and looked up at me. Tempted to glance at them the moment I heard the hushed voices stop, I continued staring at a painting on the wall that my eyes had fallen on the moment the silence kicked in. Gangaram cleared his throat a little, and I let my guard drop, making eye contact with him before he was done. Nothing worse than being caught trying to fake something, especially something so tiny as trying to fake your lack of interest in a conversation that you were obviously not a part of, even though you were pretty much face-to-face with the people having the conversation. It wasn't that serious an offense obviously, because Saroja and Gangaram were sporting Cheshire Cat smiles at me. I decided to break the quietude with a, “I...I'm sorry. Were you talking to me?”

“So Girish, when can you join us?” asked Saroja, brushing aside my query effortlessly. Okay, so that's how we were going to play it. I decided to stop worrying about all the stuff I had been beating myself up about, like the opportunity to get accurate feedback, or the chance to show everyone my life-history-in-official-documents folder. After close to fifteen minutes of utter bewilderment, imposed upon myself by me and my thoughts, I smiled and told her that I was ready to join immediately.

“That's excellent news!” she cried, throwing me back a little. Gangaram was still smiling at me, and because he was already standing, simply extended his right hand to congratulate me. I obliged, rising to the occasion, if you will, as Saroja proceeded to move things along. “I want you to go through this offer letter and tell me if you have any questions, If you don't, then we can both sign it and I can show you around the office and introduce you.” Wow! Amazing! Talk about being easy as pie. This whole job search thing wasn't as bad as people made it seem. Well, with a presentation thrown in for good measure. Thrilled to bits, finally, I eagerly reached over and completed the over-the-table transfer of my employment offer. I glanced down at it. Letters. Bits of ink, neatly arranged on the page. I don't know why, but I couldn't get my eyes to focus at that very moment, so I was in effect illiterate. Still, through the haze of miniscule inkblots on paper, something seemed amiss. I wasn't able to pick it out, but my gut told me that I had encountered my first “foul up” at my new place of employment. Wow! And this wasn't even Day 1, technically.

All of a sudden, my eyes shot back into focus, and I was no longer just dazedly glancing at the offer letter that I had been handed. Immediately, as if all this while I had been an eagle, soaring over the land in search of my prey and having just spotted movement on the ground, hundreds of feet below, using my hyper-zoom abilities to lock on to my target, I spotted the error. It wasn't egregious. But, it was something that I couldn't believe I had to point out to the people sitting in front of me. I leaned back, away from the desk with the letter on it, without even turning the page or glancing below the halfway mark of the first page. I looked up to see the beginnings of an “Oh? What seems to be the problem?” head-tilt slowly bending both Saroja's and Gangaram's necks, inquiring about what had caused such a reaction from me, almost like I had lifted up some elegant cloche at the Duke's banquet that concealed a potentially veritable bonanza of mouthwatering treats, only to find some maggot-infested goop on the plate. It was my turn to speak now, after all, she had told me to ask questions if I had any. “Uh..,” I began politely awkwardly, “I think you may have given me the wrong letter.” I was being as humanly polite as I could. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't about to erupt like Krakatoa or something; it usually takes way more to elicit that kind of reaction from me. I was stifling a giggle that at this moment may as well have been a guffaw that I was trying to madly choke the life out of. I pushed the letter to the “No Man's Land” area in the middle of the table and swiveled it 90 degrees so that people on both side of the table could read it, my index finger being used to both push the letter to its desired destination, as well as underlining the question that I had. Both Saroja and Gangaram leaned in, he craning over her slightly because he was still standing next to her. Then, like me, but with a lot more conviction, it was their turn to jump back a little. It should have been the first thing anyone spotted. There in front of all of us, right in the middle of Saroja's table – as I imagined the camera in my head zooming upward, away from the table with a slow spin to denote the end of the scene – was a letter addressed to “Ms. Girija Pandey.”

A Training We Will Go: "Pro forma" is always "in"

2010-12-26T17:15:00.001+05:30

I was back at the office the very next day, and I suppose that I was ready to do my presentation. Well, the main reason I was unsure about presenting was because I didn't know my audience. I had considered that the panel of trainers would look for something more “technical” in terms of analysis of the examples I had used in my presentation. However, I also considered the fact that I had no clue what an “English Trainer” did really, but if my experience from being a trainee in my last job was anything to go by, it was going to be a whole lot of fun and games. It would still be another eight months before senior management at this company would issue the “Write It On The Board” directive, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I was back at the office, waiting in the conference room, which although not large, was a good enough place to slaughter a lamb, or a presenter gone horribly awry. I was waiting to meet the panel of trainers who would decide whether or not what I had to tell them was good enough for me to get a job here. Not sure of how this would turn out, I was banking on my sense of humor coming to my rescue. In fact, I was banking on it so heavily, I decided to let my sense of funny lead. .After all, maybe I hadn't really considered the fact these trainers were a fun-loving lot, tired to death of teaching language in the traditionally, dreary way..Faced with no other “real” choice, and only adding to my confusion, I was pacing up and down at the front of the conference room with the white board beside me, when I heard the door open.

“Good morning Rohin. How are you doing? All set?” began Saroja. I nodded and sputtered something in the region of “Yes thank you. Please go away.” I wasn’t trying to be rude, but I wasn’t much for conversation when there was something bigger that required my total concentration. Alright, I didn’t tell her to go away, but I was thinking it. I wished her a good morning and tried my level best not to faint or throw up. It felt like it’d been years since I'd been up in front of a group of people. But that was still no reason to act like my brain was short-circuiting, resulting in a string of bovine utterances rather than an intelligible human language. I said I was ready, and against my wanting to seem in control of the situation, I asked her where the men's room was.

Isn't it funny how sometimes you can find comfort in a place that many people dread having to visit unless it's life-or-death? Not to sing any “Odes of the Men's Room” or anything, but even the smelliest of them, and there have been some real nose-hair curlers that I've walked into, have offered me comfort if I've ever been in need. Or perhaps, ammonia is really a hallucinogen if inhaled. Either way, whatever peace of mind I had managed to gather in the little public toilet somewhere behind the receptionist's desk soon disappeared when I opened the door of the conference room. There before me, were five women, old enough to be my mother to add that level of complexity to the interview and selection process, all dressed in very fine Indian attire. It was a fashion bonanza of the most neatly kept, quite possibly starched to within an inch of becoming a plywood board, saris that I had seen in a long time. These were “professional” saris that Indira Gandhi herself would have been proud to sport, and they suddenly filled the room with the air of cold, steely death. Don't get me wrong, a couple of the ladies had on saris with a little more pizazz, and weren't afraid to show streaks of vibrant red and saffron, or deep, dark violet from under swathes of gun-metal gray and feisty black. On the whole, however, the air of anxious expectation that had almost gotten the better of me, was now replaced by one of certain death. As the ladies took up their positions at the far end of the small conference room, I could almost imagine one of them offering me a blindfold, you know, just in case I was afraid to witness my own end by a business-stylish, sari-clad firing squad.

“Uh...Girish, isn't it?” began one of them. I nodded in agreement. “Hi, my name is Naveena, and these are some of my colleagues,” at which point she shifted uneasily in her chair to turn towards the four others who were seated around her, but from where I was standing, they were seated in a neat semi-circle behind her. I've seen these kinds of panels adopt different ways of introducing themselves to their victims, and no matter how many times I do see it, it always makes me wonder what they were thinking when they adopted their strategy. At the moment, it seemed a little like Naveena was taking charge of proceedings, and the others were remaining intimidatingly aloof, on account of this being part of the interview process of a potential candidate. Naveena continued, after what seemed like an unnaturally silent passage of time between the word “colleagues” and she having achieved the appropriate posture, “Mamatha, Amanda, Swapna and Yukta.” With each name, Naveena would gesture at the lady whose name it was with an upward facing palm, and the lady in question either smiled and waved at me, or made a most uncomfortable effort to pretend to stand up where they were seated without so much as pushing their chair away to be able to do so. Remembering new names was of the utmost importance, especially in trying to make a good impression, so I thanked my brain for processing what had just passed as, “Hi, my name is blah....blah-di-blah, blah-di-blah, blah-blah and blah-blah.” Nice. As if not getting any of the names wasn't bad enough, my brain admonishing itself for not being more outgoing and introducing me earlier, compounded by trying to figure out another way to work around having to say, “I'm sorry, I know I was staring you in the face, but I didn't get your name,” I almost missed Nina's follow-up question, “So, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?”

I didn't know it then, but an interview can be made or broken at this stage. I kept it brief though, without getting into what my mother had done with her life after she finished college and before she had gotten married. I stuck to what and where I had studied, and the little bit of English tutoring I had had the opportunity of doing while in college in the US., which was my USP, and I was sure would get me this job as an English Trainer. Don't know if that impressed her much, but she did seem to pause for a couple of seconds, as if to weigh the impact of what I had just said. Then, she looked up at me with a bit of surprise in her eyes, as if I hadn't said a word to her just a moment earlier, she asked me to begin my presentation. I cleared my throat a little, some of it to actually clear my throat, but most of it to appear like I was ready to begin. I was ready. Well, I guessed I was anyway. I had a joke lined up, and so I launched right into it. If you haven't heard this one before, the first person asks, “Why did the Malayalee go to college?” where 'college' is pronounced more like “KOHW-layj” than what we're normally used to. The second person usually responds with a “Why?” because he has no idea, which is when the first person will jump in with, “To gain more knowledge” (pronounced NOWH-layj). It's a joke about Malayalees mispronouncing things. It's one of the most common Malayalee jokes around. And, it used to piss me off that people made fun of Malayalees. We reasoned that it was because everyone else was jealous by how smart and prolific we are. Isn't there that joke about Kutappan and the Pope? What about that Mallu-chai-shop-on-the-moon joke? But, all I heard in return was silence. For a split second, I thought I heard a cricket in the background, immediately putting it down to my imagination adding a few details, for effect. The silence was deafening, made even worse by the fact that that this foolish Malayalee decided to tell a Malayalee joke, to a group that consisted of three Malayalee and two Bengali women. Still silent, I guess I was more confused at how that had failed to evoke a laugh, at least a slight chuckle of disdain for crying out loud! Instead, it looked like the ladies at the not-so-far end of the conference room were a little upset at this crude joke, lips curling backwards in horror and disgust in case there was more of the banal to follow. In a swan dive from grace, I stumbled, bumbled and mumbled, telling them that I had obviously overestimated the effect that joke would have, and moved directly into how there are several kinds of problems that people face with pronouncing words in other languages, including the lack of occurrence of a particular sound in a language. This seemed to mollify them, so I continued.

They first smiled when I presented my first example. I told them how many of the Asian students I worked with as an English Tutor in college would call me “Gileesh” with an “l” instead of the “r” sound. I even touched briefly on the fact that the for the native Hawaiian language could be represented in English using only 14 of the letters. This, I convinced them, led to some words being constructed completely of vowel sounds, and some that seemed to go on for miles and miles. I used the examples “Aiea”, an area just outside of downtown Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, and the name of the last queen of the islands, Queen Liliuokalani, a name I remember seeing on street signs in Waikiki. Finally, I ended with how in India we deal with people doing this on a daily basis, but with so much more variety. For example, where else can you have the opportunity to hear a national language, and often English too, being spoken in a plethora of dialects, all influenced by a different state or regional language, all in five minutes. The piece de resistance, although I hadn't intended on it playing this role and being a saving grace for this presentation at the same time, was when I went into my example, personal as it was to me and 60 percent of my audience, about how there are dialects in Malayalam that seem to be divided along lines of region, as well as religion. I ended with an, “I mean, where else in the world can you walk into town and have the Hindus, Christians and Muslims all speaking the same language, but differently?” ending with an added harrumph for effect, quite unlike anything I'd planned. It was obviously my mind, but I imagined that I heard a “There, there” here and a “Hear, hear” there, with a couple of the ladies even applauding. I was done. I was also breathing heavy, although nowhere nearly as heavily as when the opening joke crashed and burned. But, I was done, a little drenched with sweat, and dare I say it, pale in the face.

I looked up at the ladies, and for some strange reason there were all looking back at me. Strange. So, I repeated my closing statement – “That's all for this presentation. Thank you.” – and hoped repetition would do the trick. At least, I hoped, it would wake them up from their wide-eyed daydreaming. Seconds became almost half a minute, when suddenly one of them, without moving or altering her earlier posture, not even to make communicative eye contact with her peers, spoke. “I have a question, if you don't mind. Where did you say you were from?” she asked me. I told her I was from Kerala, but my mind was racing to try and figure out if she hadn't heard anything past my name, or if she was trying to put two and two together by matching me to my Malayalee examples. “So,” she began, “That would explain your inside knowledge of the Malayalee dialects,” with which she proceeded to laugh. As the other ladies joined in, I stood there, baffled. What had just happened? No time to worry about it, I thought, so I joined in the laughter, with a few choice guffaws of my own.

Naveena spoke first, after the giggles had subsided, saying, “Well, that was an interesting presentation.” glancing at her peers momentarily, for effect. “We're going to have our discussion and get back to Saroja with your feedback, so I guess you can wait in here or come back when Saroja asked you to, to collect your results.” Sounded alright. But I simply had to be sure, so I asked her if she was supposed to give me the feedback, once the group had come out of its huddle, or if she was going to give it to Saroja. If I remembered correctly, Saroja did say “After they give you feedback” when referring to the next steps in the interview process. Naveena paused. The other ladies went silent. Then, they turned to face each other, proceeding to engage each other in a game of serious eye-darting, in a very me-against-all style of game play.

About eight seconds later, Naveena turned to me, having gotten a round of vigorous nods in agreement, and said, “Oh, I think she have made a slight mistake,” vindicating what I had thought yesterday. “We moved to a new system last week, and many of us are still getting used to the system,” again ending in laughter, but this time a little more tentative. I smiled in acknowledgment, and then pointed out that it only solved half the problem. In this muddled up bit of information, I hadn't received instructions about whether I should stay because Saroja could let me know in a short while, or if I should come back later, perhaps tomorrow, if there was some particular way in which feedback was to be given. I even offered to take their feedback right then and there, claiming that it was a surefire way to help me become a better trainer, if not human being.

Puzzle and alarm stared each other in the face for a second. I was puzzled at why initial question about “Who gets the feedback first?” had caused more than a significant flutter in the group, and I was staring at them with a bit of a skeptical scowl, I was sure. They were alarmed, for some reason that seemed to me to indicate that not only had I not “made the cut”, but apparently I had missed some invisible cue letting me know that we had moved into “awkward moment” time as far as being in each other's company was concerned.

In fact, so uncomfortable was Naveena, that she blurted out an, “I'll just check with Saroja and tell you,” dashed out of the room like greased lightning, with four slightly more sluggish colleagues in tow, all eager to make it out of the now claustrophobic conference room with their lives. As the door closed behind them, I pulled up a chair and plonked myself down on it. I was aghast! Alright, so I hadn't come in here with anywhere near the amount of preparation I was supposed to have, and I was being a bit callous and cheeky every now and then. But, after a flopped joke, I thought I'd recovered pretty well to end on a seemingly matter-of-fact note. But was it good enough? As I sat there, waiting for the inevitable shake of the head with a fake frown that preceded the, “I'm sorry, but you didn't make it” line, my thoughts went back to all the other job opportunities I had circled in today's paper.

I didn't know how long I had been staring at my feet, but when I looked up I saw Saroja heading down the hall towards the conference room. Well, at least I couldn't say that I tried too hard to end up feeling devastated at not getting the job, right?

Ravioli Story: From scratch to sniff, almost

2010-12-20T17:58:00.000+05:30

Visions of ravioli had been haunting my sleep of late. I don't know why, but with each passing night, I seemed to remember, and play back in my mind again and again, the first time I had ravioli and how awesome it was. Alright, so it wasn't in Italy, at a beautiful restaurant that overlooked a small bay, from the cliffs. It was more like a fast food Italian place in a mall in Dubai that I remember from over 10 years ago, and they used to have a counter where they made your pasta to order. They used to have the best beef ravioli there, and I know all you “true fans” of “real Italian cuisine” are booing me for not going anywhere near an authentic product, if not to admonish me for my tall claims to have tasted the world's “best beef ravioli” from a mall in a country that was once a desert kingdom with a creek running through it. However, I still maintain that that was the best ravioli ever. It was certainly the best ravioli in the nearby area, because it always sold out first. It's just like what happens with all the fancy breads at Subway; they disappear first, and you're left holding a six-inch something or the other “on white bread”. So, these dreams of this delectable ravioli had been haunting me for a while, and I finally decided to throw caution to the wind and attempt to make some. I know I passed that off as some sort of “slight” task, but trust me, I was perfectly aware of the work I was going to have to put into it to make it even barely passable as “edible”. But for whatever reason, I felt up to the task.

I found this recipe online, for Ravioli dough, and I didn't realize that I had it until I was browsing through my collection of recipes, trying to hyperlink the document so that I didn't have to hunting for the recipes each and every time. Here it is, but it isn't mine.

Ravioli Dough Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, whole
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. sea salt
3 tablespoons water

Steps:

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process for 30 seconds. Check consistency and add a small amount of flour is pasta is too wet, or a small amount of water if pasta is too dry. Process another 30 seconds to incorporate any additions.
Turn dough out onto a silicone mat or work surface sprinkled lightly with flour and knead by hand for a minute or two, until smooth.
Place the dough under a bowl to rest for 20 minutes before rolling, or refrigerate, tightly wrapped in plastic and stored in a plastic bag if not using right away.
Use within a few hours for best results.
Roll pasta out using a roller machine, beginning with the widest setting. Fold dough over and roll through again, gradually decreasing the roller setting as the pasta becomes smoother; dust lightly with flour as needed, but not too much. It helps to brush off excess flour with a pastry brush.
When pasta is thin enough (about a 3 setting on most machines) it is ready for use in making ravioli.

Use the pasta sheets as soon as they are rolled; dry pasta sheets don't seal as well at the edges as fresh sheets, causing the ravioli to separate when cooking. If your pasta sheets have dried out, brush the edges with an egg wash or water (where the pasta is crimped together).

Fighting, no, Rolling the Ravioli Dough

So that was what I had to work with. No wait. I had to knead the dough by hand, after which I had to roll it an cut it out sans a pasta machine thingy. I had to come up with a filling for the ravioli, using a combination of either potatoes, tomatoes, green chillies, cabbage, and cubes of cheese, the processed-beyond-belief kind. Did I say this was one of the easiest things I did? Oh, and how can I possibly forget the sauce that needed to be around for the ravioli to be tossed in? A not-entirely-tried-and-tested combination of ketchup and barbeque sauce popped into my head, to present itself as a strong contender for “sauce du jour”. But, as much as I kept thinking about the work I had ahead of me and how much picking up two bottles of hey-I'm-already-a-sauce to mix together would save me the trouble, I wanted to make this as close to authentic as I possibly could. It would be a feat of super-Rohin proportions for sure, but at the end of it all, I just hoped to be able to make something that I could put in my mouth. I got down to rolling out the dough, folding it, rolling it out again, and folding it, so that as the recipe said, I appeared to be “gradually decreasing the roller setting as the pasta becomes smoother”. Halfway through this process, I realized that the I was working with too much dough, so I had to halve it and leave one half to rest. On the surface of things, I welcomed the opportunity to have some “standby” dough, just in case I did a horrendous job with the first batch, so that I could still recover and feed myself. However, I also remembered that I have a terrible track record of “fluking out” with things the first time because in my “trial-and-error” world of cuisine, if it succeeds the first time, you're in for an “error” the second time. So, did I want it to work or not?

There's another way to tell if you have a nice soft dough, and that is usually when you realize that it's doing as you asked; staying down on the board if you roll it, and keeping shape however you mold it. This new technique is really all about awareness, and in particular, paying attention to the fact that you are working with the dough, and not against it, wrestling the dough down flat on your board. This was the last thing I needed because when I first mixed the dough and kneaded it, I thought it felt about right. I even did the little finger-poke-dough-test thing, where if you prod the dough with your finger it should bounce right back and show a little elasticity. It played along and did the whole Pillsbury Doughboy thing, so I was satisfied. Now that I was trying to roll out the dough, with almost the weight of my whole body resting down on the rolling pin, the dough decided to show me who was really the boss. With a Herculean effort, I managed to halve the already-halved bit of dough to adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy, and lo and behold, it worked.

Three Tanned Ravioli

I managed to roll out some kind of shape that stayed rolled out, and wasn't trying to bring itself back together in a little ball, and once I'd placed the little fillings far enough apart, I folded the rolled out dough on itself, the side without the fillings over the side with. I got to cutting and crimping, and didn't think much of the size of these “little pieces” of ravioli. Sure it was my first time making it, but I had eaten it before. And the ravioli that I had eaten, was all nice and bite-sized, forming a perfect little mouthful of pasta, filling and sauce every single time. Here I had three pieces of ravioli that were doing the whole two-is-company-three-is-a-crowd thing on a plate, and refusing to sit altogether. And to make matters worse, with the next bit of dough, although it was the same size and I had only a minute ago made such gargantuan ravioli, I found myself staring at not more, but fewer pieces of ravioli. There were two, saucer-sized, bits of ravioli staring back at me. It stands to reason, therefore, that I didn't want to photograph these works in progress, banking on the second half of the dough to right this wrong. Here's a shot from the second, more “normal looking” batch of ravioli.

Approaching Normalcy, size-wise

I wasn't worried about the size of the ravioli because I was filling it with a partially cooked filling of some kind that I was hoping would cook with the ravioli, which meant that if I had a piece of ravioli the size of my head, I could kiss it goodbye if I stuck it a pot of boiling water, and serve soup instead. I was worried about the size of these ravioli pieces because I was going to have to cook them in a little rice cooker and I didn't want to be serving them one at a time. As you can see from the picture, its a bit crowded in the rice cooker, but it had to be this way if I wanted to finish this meal this day, and not be eating ravioli one piece at a time for the rest of the week.

Ravioli with Growth Hormones?

Speaking of the filling, I decided to go with a mashed potato and cheese filling that I spiced up with some oregano and thyme. After boiling and peeling the potatoes, I cut up the cheese cubes into even smaller cubes, sprinkled the oregano and thyme over it, and mixed it till I had a really cheesy, mashed potato. I didn't add any salt to this mixture because the cheese cubes are well salted already. I didn't realize it at the time, but the melted cheese and potato filling ended up being the icing on the cake of this ravioli cooking experience.

The sauce I finally settled on was a simple, fresh tomato and garlic sauce, with an extra hit of chili powder. I figured that because the ravioli filling was cheese and potato, it would be nice to have a sauce that added a little edge to the dish, instead of turning it into a bland food experience from kitchen hell. I chopped up my onions and tomatoes, and the garlic that I'd set aside, threw my pan on the stove to heat it, and drizzled in a bit of oil. Then, I ran to the refrigerator to get what I remembered seeing as a small carton of tomato puree. However, when I got there to find it missing, I remained rooted to the spot, crushed, summoned back to the kitchen only by the crackle of hot oil on a pan I had left to heat. The little tetrapak that I had seen only the top of, turned out to be a mango drink. There was no way conceivable that substituting tomato puree with mango drink was going to fly. What was I going to do now? Sure it was a “fresh tomato and garlic sauce”, but a little tomato puree, even if it's only a drop, would give the sauce that much more of a nice, tomato-ey flavor. Well, I ended up doing what I guess anyone in my position would have done after photographing his meal stage by stage, from raw material to dumpster. No, I'm kidding. I didn't throw it out, I just went ahead and made a simple, fresh tomato and garlic “dip” with which to toss the ravioli in. Ok, when I say “dip”, I don't really mean dip. What I do mean, is that I like a bit of structure to remain in the fresh tomatoes that I use in a pasta sauce, which is where the tomato puree comes in to give the sauce its “saucy” quality, to use that word out of context. So, while I did let it cook a little bit more because I didn't have the puree, and although it may appear to be more dip than sauce, the combination of chili and tomato as it met the cheesy potato filling of the ravioli was divine! You had to have been here. :)

Franken-ravioli

Now, I'm not going to sit here and be all praises for myself. There are several things wrong with the exhibit in the picture. Apart from the “bits of tomato”, which I covered at the end of the last paragraph, there are a few edges that seem off-color and almost biscuit dry. Well, if you'll pay closer attention, these happen to be the edges of the two humongous pieces of pasta I ended up creating with the remainder of the dough from the first attempt. The one on the left of the picture can been seen occupying that entire half of the plate. And if you're worried about the color of the ravioli, they were a little tanned to begin with because I used one cup of all-purpose flour, and one cup of whole wheat flour, just because I have a thing for more coarsely ground flour. I guess I support the theory that we could all use a little more roughage in our diets. I didn't want to try two cups of whole wheat flour because I imagined that would result in, if I had screwed up a little more, bits of potato-and-cheese stuffed bread floating in spicy tomato dip. The worst part? There happened to be a little left over for dinner as well, but when I threw it in the microwave, what had been a nice, mostly moist ravioli at lunch, had turned into a soggy bread-like dish even the cats were glancing at it cautiously.

On the whole, from start to finish, raw material to finished product, 11 am to 2 pm, I have to say that I was pleased with the whole effort. In a way, I guess I had to be, otherwise one of my roommates would be posting this, my last blog post, because I finally took my own life after a fiasco of plate-sized ravioli proportions. Sure there were rough edges, and imaginary ingredients to cook with when I first started out. Sure I can complain about having to boil my ravioli in a rice cooker. But after three hours in the kitchen, putting together several little experiments to come up with one overall, “big” experiment, if you take the dough, the filling and the sauce, to be individual experiments, I was more than happy with what I had on the plate in front of me. I suppose it did look like a Franken-ravioli dish, an appearance made worse by the salsa-like tomato all over. But if this is the case, then I'm Dr. Franken-ravioli, and obviously only I can love my own, hideous creation. Melodrama aside, my roommate Venky thought it turned out rather well for a first attempt, telling me in quiet that he hoped I'd make it, although not exactly like this, again.

Now, I'm thinking I can make all sorts of doughs for things like noodles, pasta, even puff pastry based on sticking to simple ingredients, and oodles of innovator spirit. Luckily, I seem to have truckloads of patience and I-wouldn't-do-that-if-I-were-you that keep from stepping off the edge, so I'll have to plan my next move well, and very much in advance. Here's hoping for a better sequel, which though seemingly impossible in the world of movies, happens to be the status quo for the kitchen. Wish me luck. :)

A Training We Will Go: How to get pre-hired

2010-12-20T13:04:00.003+05:30

“Hello. Sorry for making you wait. My name is Saroja Naidu,” my interviewer said, extending her right hand. I grabbed it, most professionally and squeezed the right amount of confidence into her hand, just like all those etiquette pointers that people always talked about when meeting new people and how hard to shake their hands, etc. “Oh, that’s alright,” I said. It was by no means “alright” I tell you, but I wanted this job so the honest opinion had to be chained down.

“So tell me,” went on Ms. Naidu, “What do you know about training and why do you want to be a trainer?” She got right down to it, and this I really liked. It was a refreshing change from all the people who had asked me to send them my résumé, only to spend the first five minutes of the interview reading it right in front of me. Furthermore, although the question seemed generic, I appreciated the fact that it was open-ended enough to get unsuspecting interviewees to start off on one of their practiced rants about how they felt it was something they were good at, or in some extreme cases, how a deceased family member appeared to them in a dream and informed them that it was their destiny to be an English Trainer. I immediately pointed out that although I hadn’t necessarily trained a large number of people in a classroom before, my English Tutor experience, complete with certificate, had ensured that all my fundamentals of the English language were intact, with the added benefit of having had to explain grammar and syntax rules and exceptions to non-native speakers of English already. On top of all that, well, I did speak English at home, of a pretty decent quality as far as “English Spoken by Indians Living Abroad” goes. And I left it at that. I realized that I hadn’t completely answered the question posed to me, but I was hoping that Ms. Naidu would look below the surface of this seemingly irrelevant answer and uncover “honesty” and “potential,” what I imagined every employer longed for. “Okay,” she began her response, “So here’s what we’d like you to do as a next step…” What? That was unbelievably fast. Next step? But I had barely said anything. Or was I getting ahead of myself? I had to calm myself down and pay attention to what she was about to say. “We’d like you to do a presentation for us,” she said, “Nothing fancy, just a 3-minute presentation about something related to the English Language.” Again my mind drew a large question mark, in triplicate. What was this? A presentation was something I hadn’t expected at all. But I was up for a challenge, and if it meant braving a panel of experts to get a job, I was going to do it to the best of my abilities. Still a little confused after building up this resolve, I decided to ask for an example of a topic for the presentation, seeing as to how nebulous “something related to the English Language” was. “Um, for example,” she started, “why don’t you focus on some of the errors that are commonly made by speakers of English in this country, and talk about how you would go about correcting them?” Brilliant suggestion! That was exactly what I was looking for. In the back of my mind though, I was berating myself for not having the presence of intellect to say something witty and to have blurted this topic out loud with a little feigned innocence and a “I was just wondering if something like this would be an appropriate topic…” kind of an act. It was amateurish at best.

“When can you come in and present to us?” she asked. The words “immediately” and “today” almost escaped my lips simultaneously, but I bit down on them hard and saved myself any undue future distress. I suggested that I come in the following day, at the same time, to present, and she seemed to suggest that that was the reasonable thing to do. In the back of my mind, I heard a voice warning me about how 24 hours was going to be the perfect opportunity for them to have filled the position or positions. Still, being one given to requiring relatively inordinate spans of time, I thought it better to take that time to do a good job of presenting, rather than rushing into it and ruining my chances. “Haste makes waste, right?” Ms. Naidu chimed in in what could only be sarcasm. I responded with a laugh that I’m pretty sure came across as poorly masked nervous hesitation before letting her know that if the amount of time was a problem I was willing to do the presentation today. “No, not at all,” she reassured me, “I’m all for adequate preparation for these kinds of things.” I smiled in nervous agreement, still unsure about there being a hint of sarcasm. So, it was settled then. I was going to present tomorrow. But there was still something amiss, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me already.

She hadn’t asked to see my certificates, in my nice new folder, arranged chronologically just for such an occasion. Every piece of paper that would collectively reveal my story, at least the roller coaster ride that was "academics", had been arranged in its own plastic sleeve, so that a potential employer could glance through it as he or she would one of those coffee table books, pausing briefly on every page. So, I took the bold move -- others have since told me that it shows a remarkable willingness to either put my neck on the guillotine, or shoot myself in the foot -- and asked if she would like to look at my hard-earned pieces of fancy and unbelievably expensive paper. “No, not at the moment. I’ll do that after you’ve done your presentation and the team has given you feedback.” What? Did she say she’d take a look at my diploma et al after the presentation? But what if I don’t make it past the presentation round? Was that just a slip of the tongue in the middle of a harrowing day? Hoping that my chain of questions wasn’t showing on my face, I thanked Ms. Naidu, who replied with an, “Oh please, call me Saroja. Everyone does.”

I got up, and left the room still facing Saroja, like one of those really, super, duper, holy fellows do at an Indian temple, making it a point not to show their backs to God. I had a presentation to prepare for, and at the present point in my life, she was as good as God. Or maybe that was to be embodied by the panel of trainers I was going to present to. Either way, I decided to get back home and get cracking on my presentation for the next day.

Imagining Life and Love, In a Moment

2010-12-15T20:39:00.001+05:30

I was on the train, returning home to Thalassery. Having left town less than 48 hours earlier to attend a couple of business meetings, and returning by way of this overnight journey, I was rather exhausted. Sure I was only traveling up and down the state of Kerala, as diminutive as it is, but traveling in India, even if it's only for five minutes, can be exhausting as all hell. Dozing off in my seat, I was rudely awoken by the sudden rush of feet, and the low but all-pervading buzz of hushed human voices, accented by the odd shout. We had arrived at a major hub as far as train travel was concerned, and what was once a peaceful overnight train was soon transformed into a cacophonous day train. It was only about 7:30 am, which for someone on a night train is just about the right time to wake up. For those working folk who live “here” and work “there”, this is probably the last train they can catch to make it to work on time. Sure it's like this everywhere in the world, minus the one billion and still growing population. Trying my best not to adjust too much, lest I land up with less than half a seat to sit on, I continued to maintain my dozing posture. No matter, because all it took was for a heavy-set man to ignore the fact that there were already three people including me on a three-seater, to bend his knees a little and throw his hip into the gentleman closest to him, in the direction away from the aisle, and the seat now seated five. Before too long, and as the human activity all around me reached its crescendo, the train sounded its horn and we were off again.

Once the journey had recommenced people around me settled down, and I found that I was still in possession of my original seat space. Well, mostly all of it, anyway. Resting my head on my hand, which was itself resting on the window sill, I slowly opened my eyes to take a look at my new, temporary neighbors. How strange is a journey that throws random people together, packing them in so tightly, almost on top of one another, constantly reminding them that this is their lot in life, because if they had it any better, this is probably the last place they'd want to be right now? Uncomfortably cozy, I guess I'd call it, if that's even possible. Well, while doing my nonchalant recce, I noticed that there was a couple sitting in front of me. Middle aged, and somewhat stiff as is often the case with a well established, long running, “happy marriage” in India, what struck me as being odd was that the husband occupied the window seat, while his wife had to deal with sharing the rest of the padded, bench-like seat with three other gentleman. From general observation of male behavior when the man finds himself having to consider the safety of his mate from others of his own wretched kind, it's usually the other way around, with many husbands willing to deal with members of their own gender jostling for more room to rest at least one buttock, ensuring that their wives get all the fresh air they want, never having to deal with the flying elbows and stray knees. Just an observation. And, to avoid staring at them myself while several of these images flashed through my mind, I quickly averted my gaze to the outside world whizzing by.

Briefly, I did consider the fact that maybe the husband occupied the window seat because otherwise I would have been sitting opposite his wife. Going by my logic, I could have been the most obvious and lethal threat in that section of our train compartment to the gentleman, in terms of the person most likely to cause his wife harm, judging by my apparel and overall drowsy, red-eyed state. Frankly, the only damage I could have really done would have been to explode in her face, in which case the entire compartment would be at risk, to establish a “potential terrorist” image of myself, from my own assessment of what I was wearing. However, the four other men on the other side of me quickly dispelled that myth. I mean, I wasn't exactly sitting pretty, so to speak, with my scraggly beard and a long kurta, looking like some Osama wannabe, clutching my bag like I was about to flick a switch and send all of us sky high one itty-bitty bit at a time. But of the remaining “gentlemen” on the seat next to me, there were at least two who looked like they would slice you up for a couple of extra rupees to buy themselves a cup of coffee. One of them, I was sure, was going to slit my throat just for fun, the way he get glancing at me with a half-psychotic, half-not-all-there look he kept flashing me. The first couple of times, I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or out the window. I clutched my bag even tighter. Reaching into my pocket to grab my phone to try and distract myself, I soon realized that I looked really obviously like I was trying to do something else as uncomfortably and with the subtlety of a rhino in heat. In spite of what my brain was telling me, I spent another uncomfortable minute trying to make it look like I was doing something important on my phone, when in reality all I was doing was resetting the alarm I had set an hour ago. Unbelievably, and as if I was about to reveal the miraculous answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” everyone around me, including the couple, continued to stare at me. That was it. They only averted their gaze when my phone was finally in my pocket. Or maybe they were staring at me because they thought I was going to trigger an explosive device with my phone. It was back to the closed eyes, pretending to be asleep, for me. When would I finally reach my stop. I almost started praying, then thought against it. If the "potential terrorist" look with a fervent jamming of what appeared to be a numeric code on the cell phone wasn't freaking people out already, the prayer was sure to send them over the edge. You know, like I was paying my final respects to God before the big "ka-boom."

I must have really fallen asleep, because I was woken up by the sudden jerk of the brakes on the train. The almost-melodious screeching indicated that we were approaching a stop. Was I finally here? Had I arrived at my destination? No. I was still at least an hour away. To make matters worse, this was another major, or "Junction" stop, which meant suffering in stationary silence, still crammed in with everyone. In the world of the Indian railway system, there were stations that had very limited train traffic, often having only one passenger train stopping there like once a week, coming up to stations which had a lot of passenger and cargo traffic, but only warranting the stipulated “two-minute” waiting period that allowed people to just get on, by the seat of their pants in many cases, and “Junction” stop, a place where several rail lines converged, and where the trains would wait for a duration of time ranging from five minutes to infinity. The world outside the train was abuzz, here at Kozhikode Junction. Vendors were screeching at the top of their lungs, selling everything from hot tea and snacks, especially the local delicacies, “Calicut Banana Chips” and “Halwas”, while even random bits of educational material for children aged 3 to 7 were appearing by the sack load. Being at the window seat, I stuck out my hand to stop a fleet-footed tea vendor, or "chai guy" as I liked to call them. It was supposed to be a great way to slowly emerge from my slumber, at least as played out to the other members of the compartment, while ignoring them all along. However, no sooner had I stopped the chai guy, everyone else in the immediate vicinity sprang to life and started buying themselves cups of tea as well. The couple in front of me seemed to be an exception. It was almost as if they were playing a game of "statue" with each other, seeing who would be the first to make any sort of involuntary movement. Next to them, a pair of gents with briefcases who had been talking nonstop since they showed up, always being careful to keep their conversation below a "clearly audible" level. They appeared to be colleagues, both sporting company satchels, which were all the rage these days. The heavier set of the two, had shown signs of excitement as the train was pulling in to the station, perhaps due to an acute sense of smell, or food-related ESP. Before I could say the word "Tea" to the chai guy, Mr. Heavy-Set, seemed to be headed for a name change in my head, because he grabbed the railings with his left hand, and squashed me against the seat with his right. He was out for more than just tea, from the looks of it. In fact, Mr. Uncouth-formerly-Heavy-Set and his colleague went a step further, purchasing snacks from the chai guy's friend, who happened to pause momentarily to share a light-hearted moment, or so it seemed. As more people reached out over and in front of me, breathing heavily on me for the sheer effort they had made to be able to get out of their half-seats just to get their hands as close to the window to collect their refreshments and pay for them, I silently prayed to the Almighty to give them all steady hands, lest I suddenly and inadvertently play the role of "table cloth at a children's party". There were a few brief, but tense moments, the most tense being when Mr. Leather-Mitts-For-Hands grabbed his friend's and his little paper cups full of tea, and proceed to withdraw his hands back inside without considering the horizontal bars in the window that were only barely large enough to allow said paper cups through in an upright position. The moment his cup made contact with one of the bars, we all froze, the chai guy included, waiting to see what would happen next. I was the only one not relishing the potentially disastrous outcome because I was on the bottom of the pile, and soon-to-be unwitting recipient of hot drink on my shoulders and upper back. In that split second, the clumsy gentleman was staring at his cup along with a couple of the other "pushers and shovers" who recognized this as the moment that one of them had gone too far. The chai guy was staring at me to see how I would react, always hoping for something explosive to be able to tell his friend that night, and I was looking down at the platform outside, hoping for a miracle, wondering how devoid of excitement the chai guy's life was anyway, and bracing myself for the first drops of scalding, watered down, railway station tea. Luckily for everyone involved, nothing happened. After that moment had passed, the cacophony picked up where it had left off.

As I settled back down to my squished-but-I-still-have-a-bit-of-seat space, I noticed the couple in front of me sipping on some tea themselves. In all the confusion a few minutes ago, I didn't notice the husband making a purchase of any kind, not that I was supposed to be watching him or anything. Smoothly done, if I was to say so myself and going on the melee that resulted earlier. Still, paper cups of tea in their hands, looking out the window, I could almost hear myself telling myself that in about twenty or thirty years' time, I would like nothing better than to be sitting there with my special someone, looking out at the world passing by, as we sip on some tea. It was one of those moments of particular beauty, not so much in the physical appearance of the people or the place, but more in the symbol of the moment being one in which two different people came together one day, and how time and the world brought them together. Well, together enough to enjoy a cup of tea on a crowded train without letting any of the nonsense around them affect them whatsoever. It made me think about all the ideas that I had harbored of settling down. Did they include seeing myself with my beloved, surrounded by a sea of humanity at every turn? Did I picture myself sitting on a train, whether or not next to the window, with my dearest beloved seated right next to me, cups of tea in both our hands? Or, did I imagine sitting on a porch, our porch, on a house by the beach, sipping tea as we watched the sun set gently behind the horizon? We could be rich or getting by, it didn't matter, as long as we were in it for ourselves and each other, hoping to discover the magic of life in the company of the person we had chosen to live our lives with. Maybe I could bicycle to work, because I worked at a nearby shrimp shack, and we only traveled into the city once a month. I could already imagine myself getting ready to board the bus into town, vigorously helping my beloved onto the bus while cursing some jackass for being inconsiderate for choosing to try and get down at that very moment. Was that how it was with these two in front of me? What sort of lives did they lead? How did they meet? I began to let my mind wander with the images of “The Imagined Lives of Mr and Mrs So-and-so” pieced together from old Malayalam movies and TV shows that I remember seeing.

The husband had been one of the better students in his class. He had a passion for cricket, but never let it get in the way of his studies, because he had a dream. He was going to do something big because that was his destiny. Sure his grandmother kept saying this to him, but it was almost as if he knew that his purpose on this planet was special. He was biding his time, all through school and college, right until it was time for him to enter the “rat race” and get a job. Not wanting to create a fuss with anyone, because he was so not the “dramatic” kind of person, he knew that one day it would come to him. He couldn't say what it was, and he certainly never spoke about it, but all the while, he knew some powerful force was working towards an expansive crescendo of cosmic proportions, and he was going to be right in the middle of it all. He started out as a junior executive in a local accounting firm, and never gave his career much thought. He was happy with what he was doing, and he was good at it, even if it wasn't his true purpose. But, he was patient, if he was nothing else at all. His wife, she had been raised as the quintessential Malayalee girl in a small town. She grew up climbing trees and throwing stones at ripe mangoes in the neighbors yard, like the boys were wont to do, but because she grew taller than them earlier on, she established her dominance over the group from Day 1. She had been excellent in her studies, and because her father had insisted that she learn classical dance at an early age, by the time she graduated from high school she already had a glass cabinet's worth of trophies, medals and awards. She worked hard and loved doing it if it made her father happy, so it was no surprise to anyone when she unquestioningly accepted her father's wishes to have her "married off" immediately after her graduation from college. It didn't matter to her that her husband would be almost twelve years her senior, or that he was almost married once before. As long as her father had made his wish clear to her, her only job was to carry it out with aplomb. She knew she was special because her father always told her her that he believed she was a gift from God, and because he believed it, she did too.

The first year was awkward , but also a little fun. They both learned that they had no idea what living with another person meant, let alone sharing in the other person's daily routines, etc. But, they figured it out in their own little way. Whenever there was a potential for conflict, his first reaction was to start playing the “omniscient father”, using stock phrases like, “See,...” and “You have to look at it in the larger scheme of things.” She, on the other hand, would revert to a child-like, pouty, little girl, often stomping her feet as she stormed off mid sentence, screeching and wailing. The cute thing was, even without them realizing it, one of them would overdo the role-play, causing the other person to crack up, effectively ending the fight. It went on like this until their first daughter showed up two years into their marriage. They ended up having two children in all, and both of them had had stellar academic records and were married to well-off gentlemen when the time was right. There weren't any grandchildren yet, but from their own experience of having their parents pestering them about the “ticking biological clock”, they decided to let things run their course, especially in this new 21^st Century world. Now that they were all alone at home, and because retirement meant that the husband didn't have to go anywhere, it meant they had all the time in the world to themselves. And, that was the problem.

For over 25 years, he had rushed to work to crunch numbers all day long, and she had tried to do a million things that she remembered being good at when she was in school. He spent his first year of married life on an underpaid bachelor's salary, but soon went into a partnership with some friends and set up their own accounting firm. She turned her attention to artistic pursuits that she had once enjoyed. In the last two and a half decades, the interiors of their house had gone through more aesthetic revisions than there are classical art styles found the world over. She did a fine job with each one, don't get me wrong, but a passing fancy meant that he could walk out of a house that looked like it was pieced together from bits of Angkor Wat, and walk into a house that looked like it gave birth to the Hippie Movement. They loved each other, of course, and they loved their kids even more. But, laying there in bed, one fine Sunday morning, it hit them both. They had had dreams once, long ago. And somewhere in the running around of the last half of their lives, those dreams had been suffocated, mercilessly. Oh they still had potential, alright, but it was going to have to be the potential to move past this revelation as quickly as possible. It was one of the saddest things for them to realize that just when they thought they had had it all figured out, and that just when they had done everything to make the people that mattered most to them happy, they had somehow neglected themselves in the end. All of the little stories, with the even more miniscule sub-stories in my head seemed to make sense as I watched them sitting there next to each other, sipping their tea. They hadn't said a word to each other since they had gotten on. It seemed to me that the lady was almost afraid to make an utterance of any kind, lest she anger her husband, while whenever he did seem to say something to her, the husband resorted to a Neanderthal-like dialect of some language, consisting purely of grunts and snorts. It's a pity, I thought to myself, because I'd seen this sort of thing way too often in my own life. It reminded me of my parents, and the way that we had seemed to co-exist in a broken home that was somehow kept together by a daily liberal coating of super glue. It seemed curious to me how people didn't seem to learn from each other's mistakes when it came to bungled relationships, preferring the opportunity to commiserate rather than to sort out the issue. I watched the wife as she finished her tea and handed her empty paper cup to her husband to dispose of it appropriately. He had finished his tea too, and without looking at his wife, he grabbed her cup, crushed them both together, and flung them out his window. Suddenly, there was a little fluttering noise, followed by a sharp jump by the husband, and a short yelp by his wife! Because the train was traveling in the direction that they were facing, the husband's weak-wristed throwing of the crushed paper cups only resulted in them flying back in through the window, startling both of them.

In an instant, the all-pervading discomfort of traveling with strangers in closed quarters had been infused with a sudden burst of energy. Like the intense, shooting jolt you feel when you sustain an electric shock, the lady's yelp, as muted as she had tried to keep it, managed to wake up even the most dead-asleep man on my seat. So rudely awakened, the man spent no time in returning to his sleep after attempting to clean his throat with a few raspy breaths, adopting the exact same posture from a moment ago, resting his head on his neighbor's unwillingly limp shoulder. The husband shot his wife a shocked look before they both looked down on the ground to see what had assaulted them. He bent down to pick up their used paper cups, and proceeded to hold them in his hand until such time as they were ready to disembark, so that he could put them in a trash can. When he sat back up, cups in hand, he leaned back and glanced at his wife. She was hunched, facing towards him, and trying to duck out of his line of sight, it seemed. But no sooner had he shifted slightly to meet her gaze, she cracked first with a chuckle. Almost miraculously, the husband, a man who hadn't once said anything to his wife that didn't sound like he was annoyed with her, showed a glint of canine. He smiled ever so slightly, you could have missed it if you took your eyes off him for even a fraction of a second. But, it was enough of a hint, a sign that he too saw the humor in the moment. Enough of a sign to let his wife breathe a sigh of relief, and end with a series of softly shrill shrieks of excitement. She tugged at his arm playfully, like a child who had just discovered that her father was making a fool of her, catching him just in time to let him know that he had almost made a fool of her. Almost. With that, he turned to continue staring out the window at the world whizzing past, and his wife withdrew her hand from his arm, which she had been only just begun to tug vigorously, returning to her parallel gaze of the world outside our little train compartment.

As Badagara gave way to Mahe, and Thalassery was fast approaching, I stood up to attempt to make my way to the aisle. With a raised foot here, and a cry from a stepped on toe there, I managed to get to the door just as the train ground to a halt at Thalassery station. The gentlemen on my bench seemed to slouch naturally into place to occupy the void left behind by me, never once opening their eyes. Not even when an even bigger man than the first spotted an opportunity to turn three comfortably seated gentlemen into four slightly-less comfortably seated gentlemen. Thalassery was a “regular” railway station, so the train would be off in under two minutes, which meant getting to the door as soon as possible, whether on the way in or on the way out, imperative. Glancing back at the couple in the train, the man in front of the woman from where I was standing, I wondered if this is what I would be like. No, not sitting in the window, stern-faced and unwilling to speak to my wife in public. Well, I first wondered if I would someday have something like in my life. It's a thing of luck to find the right person sometimes. I mean, you come across more than enough stories of heartache on account of forceful match-ups made at the hands of selfish family members, too concerned about “image” and “wealth”. Even worse, the stories of people who braved life and limb to elope, just like in the movies, living rough and tumble lives in strange, new cities, until their families issued public pardons and invited them home, only to file for divorce a year later. Yet, here was this couple, who appeared ordinary on the surface of it, but who had surely shared a very unique life together, in spite of whichever over-arching demographic they seemed to fit. As the train began to sound its horn, and I turned around just in time to catch the final bogey leave the station, I thanked the couple on the train for their little story within a story, insofar as it had been a figment of my imagination. Still, whatever their tale, I had managed to catch an everlasting glimpse of the happiness that can exist between a man and a woman who love each other, no matter how many layers of iron hide it is trapped under. I guess what I should really have thanked them for, is for not calling the cops because of my staring at them so blatantly and ceaselessly.

"Bussing it" - Another story told in tickets

2010-12-14T09:16:00.000+05:30

This isn't the first time, but I seem to have this utterly pointless fascination for tickets that I receive as I go through my day. I've posted about tickets of different kinds before, but I've often wondered about the reason for their existence, i.e., why do I need a ticket for a parking lot that is not responsible for my vehicle? Anyway, here is another set of tickets from a business trip that required me to travel to Kollam (Quilon) to visit our "sister concern" as people say, to find out what and how they were doing things differently to get more business, seeing as to how we were both franchisees of the same franchise.

Amazingly enough, most of the inter-city buses, and even some of the local ones have adopted the use of those little handheld billing machines to generate tickets. This allows the conductor to make his way up and down the length of the bus and hand out neat, crisp, little rectangles of paper with wonderfully printed information on them. See for yourself.

Now, the ticket you just saw was what I got when I boarded the bus at the Thampanoor Bus Stand in Thiruvananthapuram. Turns out, however, that if you want a seat on these buses that take you from one city to the next, you have to have a "reserved seat", and that's where the next ticket comes in.Well, technically, and as it says on the top, it's more of a coupon than a ticket. But, you need to get to the counter and get yourself a ticket to reserve your seat because otherwise, even though you may already be seated comfortably, someone somewhere along your journey can ask you to "kindly get out of [their] seat." That seems to be the logic, anyway. I find it hard to believe that would ever happen, because this system is so counter-intuitive I'm surprised it works at all. Maybe I'm missing something, but other than it being another opportunity to make some money, there is no reason for any sort of transportation service to give you one ticket to travel, and another to keep your seat.

Don't you just love tickets with instructions on the back? Especially those tickets with instructions that are in a large enough font to be read without glasses, and which stick to the bare essentials.

Number 3 says it all. But you won't believe the number of times I've seen hapless passengers ask an annoyed bus conductor why they have to relinquish their seat when they just paid for a ticket to their destination. The worst part is, I've only made this trip like three or four times in the last six months, and even then I've seen more than a couple of cases of people being asked to get out of their seats, or thinking that they had found the cheapest bus service around, paying only 2 bucks for a 40-buck journey.

Here's the return ticket, printed out much in the same way as the first. You'd think that "computerization" and "upgrading" of earlier systems to one that operates on a more centralized network would lead to a product that is "standardized" in all respects. Surely you can expect this from a bus ticket you got on a bus from Thiruvananthapuram to Kollam. But, contrary to popular belief and logical deduction, this isn't the case. See if you can spot any differences between the earlier ticket and this one?

Well, firstly, it appears to be cheaper if you travel back to Thiruvananthapuram from Kollam. Then, and this I thought to be particularly curious, where the first ticket has a bit of a mathematical calculation going with the (Full - 44) + (Cess - 1) = INR 45, the second one chooses to let you know about the additional tax, for education if I'm not wrong, in a little parenthetical reference directly above the fare amount in extra-large, boldfaced font. It's not a whole lot of difference, but why does one machine print out tickets one way, and another another way? What's with the negligible levels of inconsistency, and how far do these inconsistencies run? I guess most importantly, why is cheaper one way, even though it's the same bus and we're going the same way as which we came?

Why I Think "Save The Tiger" Is Pointless.

2010-12-12T14:26:00.001+05:30

This post is in reference to my Twitter comment which follows, and how I think that there isn't a whole lot of point to having a 12-hr TV show in trying to save tigers in the wild...or "tiger conservation" as they put it:

"Oh no! Save the tiger! Stop the NDTV AIRCEL TIGER TELETHON. I was kidding about "taking it to the forests". :-S #tranquility #shattered"

Rohin Kallat (2010, December 12). http://bit.ly/f8pC9b [Twitter Post].Retrieved from http://twitter.com/rohinkallat/statuses/13828181408620544.

Screenshot of NDTV-Aircel Save Our Tiger site.

There are too many things that work against the survival of the tiger, and conducting a feel-good exercise that's only really a lot of song-and-dance isn't going to help. The problem is that there are too many people around, and that's having a direct impact on the tigers in the "wild". Forests are shrinking, and "villages" are encroaching into land allotted for and designated "tiger reserve" areas. Tigers just went on the market with China putting them on the open market. And with the openly admitted failure of "Project Tiger", there's nothing to suggest that shuffling a few people around in perhaps the most corrupt times in Indian Politics and Financial Institutions, what with all the scams about, will lead to anything spectacular. What was that saying about wasting your time trying the same old thing repeatedly in the hopes of achieving a different result? If you're wondering what's with all the "big talk" and how it's possible for someone like me to sit here and BS on my Blog while prominent Indian movie stars are donating upwards of 14 lakhs to NDTV and Aircel's Save The Tiger 12-hr Telethon. If you're wondering how I can shoot my mouth off without providing an alternate solution, I have a solution for you. Let's start with something simple. How about we pledge to put less effort into fighting the people who already live in the forest, a conflict that leads to many of them becoming "Naxalites" or :Maoists" , and put that effort into moving the "encroaching villages" out of the national parks and protected areas? Just a thought, trust me.

If I had to list all the things working against the realistic conservation of the tiger, I'd begin by listing that in a world where the number of people on it continues to rise every single day, still, it's impossible to protect every living thing. It's a simplistic application of the law of conservation of energy, in terms of biological, living matter, "[not being able to] be created or destroyed". There's a limited amount of this "life" stuff around, cells and whatnot, and if there's more of one, there are less of another. Don't we know this already? It's part of every single lesson about environmental conservation.So, the first point is, "More people means less everything else...tigers included."

China just put tigers on the open market...in The Year of The Tiger, no less. Supreme, perhaps diabolical irony that. And now that that's happened, there's really nothing to protect the tigers, or anything for that matter. It has been shown, both in real life as well as in celebrated fiction, that the offer of more money often results in a convenient switching of sides. Ergo, a poor forest ranger, paid not near enough if you think about the amount of media attention this "issue" receives, is more likely to go in with someone who can assure a better financial turn around on a dead tiger, instead of being content with the pittance received for traipsing around the forest, risking attack by a live one. Even if we assume that there is no such thing as a corrupt forest ranger in India, amazing as that feat may be, the rising price of anything "tiger" will only cause poachers to mount larger attacks on the forest rangers and "special forces" or "rapid action force" or whatever. The poachers don't even need to be following the tigers because the rangers are already doing that. If they follow the people who are keeping an eye on the tigers, it's one less thing for them to worry about. Judging by the "flop show" that "Project Tiger" was, I'm sure conservation efforts would be aided by hiring former poachers to be rangers, simply because they would have better technique from being in the field...as opposed to being trained and employed by government. Even if they hired a pair of guards to loosely "tail" every single tiger in India at the moment -- 1400 supposedly, although I remember Aircel saying 1411 like a month ago -- the poachers, or team or poachers, would only have to be able to overpower this pair of guards to get to the tiger that the pair was following. More likely than not, at gun point, many a "protector" would turn over his ward to the more powerful, and currently life-threatening, bad guy at the trigger end of a firearm, if only to save his own life...so that he may support his family somewhere. Check out how long ago this article, "Where have all the tigers gone?", was published on BBC.com. Apparently, as I look up at the TV at 2:14 pm, on this sunny afternoon of the 12th of December, 2010, INR 90,46,294 has been donated to help save the tiger, and there's about nine hours left in the telethon. God help us all!

I don't understand what they expect to happen by sticking to conservation techniques that have failed so far. So we throw people out of the tiger reserves and national parks. First the "squatters", then the tourists, "No human contact is good human contact", being the operating principle. And let's say it doesn't work, because we find that on the one hand, tigers aren't really used to keeping to "human boundaries" whether or not the fence shocks them on the way out, and on the other hand, people still find it mystical and powerful to grind a little tiger "this", and it to some powdered tiger "that", for assistance in the sack The next best thing to do would be to farm them. It sounds unacceptable and wrong on so many levels, mostly because you can't stand the thought of a majestic orange and black coat, behind a stall, with a large bell around its neck. But, if we want to hold on to it in spite of all the other horrors that we continue to inflict upon this world, it may be the only viable option. Check out this article and its views on the appropriate M.O. for putting a bounty on tigers to help save the species. I don't imagine you'll ever take the "wild" and "jungle" out of the tiger, no matter a few generations in the stall. The tiger would have to evolve into either a far quieter version of itself, or become a miniature in the wild so that it wasn't very easily spotted. Or, tigers would have to learn to leave people alone altogether, resorting to Lochness Monster tactics if they had to.

I suppose the final step would be to accept the fact that no matter what we do, because "we" are the problem, we can't also be the cure. It's not possible. Nature isn't designed that way. Civilization tries to justify it, but so far it hasn't been able to simultaneously be the protector of life AND death. We have to make excuses for things to die, they have to be enemies or otherwise deserving of death, but we can't accept that because more and more of us exist, and because meat is still on the menu, it's no surprise that people are in the mood for more exotic kinds of food. Did I tell you about tiger penis soup? It's just the way the world is, because this is just the way we are. This is our world. This is the world that we created. In it, tigers, like many other things, will become extinct. It's sad, sure. But that's just the way it is. Because it's "our" world. So go ahead and have some fun. Painted faces of little children, some of them wearing masks, while others sport t-shirts with one tiger motif or another. These are "in-between" shots. The main image is of four, nationally prominent gentlemen, on a platform, in the jungle, having people call in and talk about how else we can do a better job to save the tiger. Something said about it being our "national symbol". Poor guy, the tiger. Soon to be relegated to the infamous Indian Rupee, perhaps. Hey, it got a symbol makeover of its own recently, so maybe that won't be so bad. But on the whole, another trifle in the human history of our planet.

A Training We Will Go: What is a "career", anyway?

2010-12-11T17:35:00.000+05:30

Here I was, sitting in a noisy lobby of a training institute. I was looking for a job, and the ad said “English Trainer” so I made my way to the address in the ad, only to find this madness. Why madness? Well, because between the constant flow of people, some with questions, others with loud voices and apparently empty opinions, the decibel level and the back-and-forth of human activity reminded me of a fish market. Thank God it didn’t smell that way though. I informed the lady at reception that I had arrived for my appointment, set up as soon as I opened the newspaper and saw this ad. It’d been about a week since I quit my last job at an “International Call Center“. Things weren’t really desperate yet, but I didn’t want to let things get to that level. It didn’t take me long to figure out that a Thank-you-for-calling kind of job wasn’t for me. It certainly wasn’t for me when they enforced useless restrictions on people they were making work six days a week without overtime pay. That was a week ago. Now, sitting here in this simulated, fish market environment, I quietly waited for my interviewer to call me in and get started. It was hard, but for the next ten minutes before my name was called out, I managed to drown out this cacophony around me by burying my face in a magazine that was lying around.

I remember being pretty desperate for a job back in college too. I had been in a new country for a little over six months, studying hard and trying to live the “Indian Dream”. But that wasn’t really helping with paying the bills. I had been visiting the Career Guidance Centre on campus every single day, making sure to visit twice on the days when I had an extra 15 minutes for lunch. You know, just in case they changed or updated the “Jobs Open” folder, even though people at the front desk had gone out of their way to assure me that they only updated the listings once every two weeks. Being the quintessential Indian-boy-from-a-village, I always managed to out-reassure them that it was really no trouble for me to climb three flights of stairs to get to the office as many times as I saw fit to get me a job on campus. Now, there are jobs off campus that pay better, but being a foreign national, or “legal alien” as it turned out, there were certain residence and academic requirements that I had to fulfill at the State and Federal level. I had done my research, and then double checked the information that resulted from the research, just to be sure that there weren’t any cracks in the “Necessary Skills” section or that maybe there would be a job vacancy that had my name on it. Desperation can drive the mind to hallucinate. Just ask all those people who chased mirages in the desert, before there was a reference to them in the English language. But now, here I was. Sitting here, on one of a row of chairs against the wall, facing a receptionist. The opening was for “English Tutor”. The responsibilities included things like being good with training stuff, having a good command of the language, and it was common knowledge that any “foreign” experience increased your chances greatly. The floor was carpeted with some sanitized color scheme, one that would hide most kinds of stains that you could expect to find in an academic environment. There were other people there, filling up the rest of the chairs, but they weren’t there for a job. They had come there for business. As I looked at the guy sitting next to me, staring eagerly at the receptionist for a cue, I hoped that this would be it, and that I would get the job. From the description, it didn’t sound too hard. And besides, I had a teacher who was more than willing to give me a reference because I was doing well in her class. Momentarily, I reveled in the euphoria of positive thinking, floating gently along the surface of a playful stream of consciousness. And then, as if by some magical touch to embellish this bliss, I heard a voice calling out my name.

“Guh-rish?…uh…Jee-rish…Pa…Pan…di? Jee-rish Pan-di?” echoed a voice, sending ripples across the surface of the stream against the flow, causing a jarring of the mind. It was my name alright, but in any other country it sounded like the person could have been cursing out loud. I heard it again, before my little reverie progressed into the realm of physical sensation. The first touch, light and caring, I took in my stride, dreaming it into oblivion. The subtle shaking, however, broke me out of my daze, only to find me face to face with the lady behind the Reception desk. “Hi there. Yeah, you can go ahead and meet Anne. She’s in her office, just over there behind those tables,” she said to me, being very polite and ignoring the fact that I had fallen asleep with my eyes, and unfortunately, my mouth open. All I could manage was a sheepish “Thank you,” before grabbing my bag and rushing to the door of the room that I was supposed to go to, avoiding any and all eye contact, whether accidental or not. This was my chance to make it, and get a job that would help earn a little money to help pay the rent, and eat anything better than the hellish concoctions that three poor Indian students could throw together with a limited knowledge of what to do in a kitchen, two 5-pound boxes of chicken thighs to last them the entire month, and anything else they could afford on a two-digit shopping budget. So far, this interview had gotten off to a terrible start. Falling asleep, and the little hint of drool at the corner of my mouth certainly worked against me, I was sure. But I was more determined to see this interview through successfully. I needed that job, and I needed it bad. Besides, I was applying for the job of English Tutor, and the level of responsibility for the position, along with their stellar on-the-job training program, I was told, would see me through successfully if they thought I was capable enough. I really wanted to do it. And, in my own way, I had had the opportunity to help people out with their English needs, and not just helping them write papers and essays for Literature class. So, with a deep breath, I stepped into Anne’s office with a resounding “Hello, nice to meet you…” Albeit too clichéd nowadays to use the phrase, “And the rest is history,” that was exactly how it happened. I had a pleasant chat-slash-interview with Anne, she apparently saw enough potential to think it worth the trouble to hire me, and the next thing I new, I was going to begin my training to become an English Tutor the following week. I was smiling from ear-to-ear when I left Anne’s office. I was still smiling in my Organizational Change and Management class a whole hour later, prompting the professor to avoid my placidly contented gaze entirely, seemingly freaked out as he was. But, no matter the aesthetic qualities of the smile, it was a good 12-hr smile, brought on by getting the job, and more importantly, that there was now a little more money to help out with living expenses. Hey, it may have been only six dollars an hour, but it was six dollars an hour better than being broke every month from the 2nd to the 30th/31st.

That seemed like just yesterday, but it was more than a few years earlier. I guess part of the feeling that it was just yesterday was because the noise levels in the lobby, where I was still waiting, had doubled in the last ten minutes. Apparently, the majority of the people waiting around were looking forward to the results of a group interview that they had just attended. As the results were on the verge of being announced, the excitement growing was only a natural progression. Having said that though, it was still one of the most unnerving interview experiences I had had till date. “Mr. Rohin?” I thought I heard something, so I forced myself to look and listen harder from the direction that my name was spoken from. “Hello, Mr. Rohin?” I heard again, and though it sounded like the beginning of a phone call, I finally saw the lady at reception manage to part the sea of aspiring candidates wide enough to be able to see and signal me that my turn had arrived. Finally! I almost didn’t bother to ask her which way to the HR person’s office, but she shouted directions at me as the distance between us grew. “Just like stepping into Anne’s office,” I told myself, before knocking on the door, opening it and starting out with my soon-to-be-patented version of, “Hello, my name is…” Sure I hadn’t embarrassed myself like the last time, falling asleep and all that, but this wasn’t a part-time job on campus. This was the real world. So, with a bunch of ideas running through my head, not to mention a heady mix of anxiety and excitement, I obliged my interviewer’s request and took a seat.

Feral Pets

2010-12-11T17:13:00.000+05:30

There are a series of posts on this blog about the cats that and dogs that I’ve had the chance to meet and know in my life. Well, more cats than dogs really, certainly of late, but in all this time, I’m surprised I never really explored the difference between what it meant to have an animal around the house as a permanent resident, as opposed to one simply passing through, so to speak. I got my first dog, quite by surprise and because someone didn’t want him, but I had already had the opportunity to visit several houses, especially those of my aunts and uncles, to have interacted with dogs a long time before I got Rex. It wasn’t all fun and games I assure you, occasionally having to sustain a scratch or near bite from an aging and moody animal not willing to put up with a toddler’s incessant curiosity, but it was an experience that I am grateful for. Being around pets from an early age has allowed me to cultivate a liking for and an understanding -- perhaps a very individual sort of understanding based wholly or largely on how you look at it -- of the animal psyche. Surely, earlier on I relied on explanations given to me by my aunts and uncles, even my parents, about the reasons for why they did or didn’t do things in a certain way. And, the information was accurate, regarding a whole host of strange behaviors that I heard about or witnessed. Surely, it’s easy to imagine that when I was four years old and asking about why some of the bigger cats or dogs would suddenly snarl at their kittens or puppies, it provided the perfect opportunity for them to validate disciplining errant children with a beating of some kind, no matter what the species. But in the last few years, I’ve been puzzling over this whole “feral” or “pet” thing in my head. I’ve referred to the cats at home as feral, implying that they exercise a level of freedom very different from some of the “pet” cats that I’ve known, the biggest difference being a pet cat would be taken to the vet for and ailment, but with our feral cats, well, if we find their little lifeless bodies somewhere, we bury them with the hope that none of the others are infected. But the amount of human contact and interaction notwithstanding, there are a few traits of the feline species that I’ve noticed, which is most likely a result of having to adapt to this new “modern world” of man. And in a sense, that could be as alarming as it is fascinating, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

By far the most interesting of these stories that was told to me was of a dog called Stranger, which belonged to a neighbor who was said to be an upstanding member of society, but also a very strict man. He trained the dog very well, but was also very unforgiving of its mistakes. On one occasion, he was so unforgiving that the dog fled the house and came to my grandmother’s house, which was right next door. Everyone at home recognized the dog, so they said their hellos and assumed the dog was just going on his daily rounds. When they saw him sleeping on the lawn a few hours later, they were a bit concerned, and my uncle fed him some leftovers from lunch, and took him back to his rightful owner. Was he in for the surprise of his life, because no sooner had he opened the gate to enter their compound, the neighbor bellowed something about not wanting a dog that was happy to run away, and went back in without another word. It seems that that was all the invitation my uncle needed to adopt the dog, so they brought him back to my grandmother’s place and he become our dog. This, however, isn’t the bizarre, part of Stranger’s tale. According to my uncle, one of the things Stranger was trained to do was to hunt down stray cats. If he got wind of a cat anywhere in the immediate vicinity, he would begin his hunt. After spotting his quarry, he would run it down and catch it, rather efficiently, I was told. Once he had alleviated the cat of its painful, miserable existence, he promptly dug a little hole, buried it, and would come running back to where he was resting before. And that was that, until the next hapless cat that mistakenly wandered onto our property. Needless to say, there were no cats at home during Stranger’s reign.

Now, Stranger’s behavior isn’t too out of place, and from previous experience with finding bodies of cats left mutilated by stray dogs or jackals, often in the most gruesome and contorted postures I’ve ever seen, I would have preferred a little out-of-sight-out-of-mind cleaning up a la Stranger. But the “burial” part of the hunt was trained behavior, whereas the killing of felines seems to be a trait shared by domesticated and wild canines. The worst discovery? One day, about six months ago, I was looking out the kitchen door at the bit of “jungle” that separated our house from the neighbor’s house. A couple of seconds earlier, I thought I saw a Brahminy Kite descending to ground level, not something one gets to see from such a close distance. So, I went to try and spot the bird, if it was indeed that, but in a manner that wouldn’t alarm it and cause it to take off. I spotted it about 10 yards away, and it was feeding on something. In my mind, I cursed the neighbors for still continuing to throw their trash into our compound, usually leftover bits of meat or fish, along with plastics and god-alone-knows-what. I continued to watch the bird from my vantage point, half hidden by the kitchen door, for about another minute or so. Being one to try and merge the human-being/wild-animal divide, wishful thinking if you asked me, I managed to step out from behind the door completely without startling the kite. My patience wearing thin, as my excitement was pouring out of my ears, I couldn’t help myself, but I took a step forward. Immediately, I knew I’d gone too far, because no sooner had my foot landed on the step below, the kite turned around, spotted me, and with a mighty flapping of its wings, it was off. I may have lost the bird, but I noticed that it didn’t manage to carry off whatever it had been feeding on. Curious as ever, I went to check out the kite’s meal of choice, interested only in identifying whether or not the food had come from elsewhere, courtesy of the kite, or from across the wall, courtesy of the neighbors. Also, whatever it was, I didn’t want to pick it up or move it because I was pretty sure the kite would be back. So, jolly old, excited me went into that little patch of jungle, to see what he could see. When I got to within five feet of where I had seen the kite, I reeled back in horror, being bewildered, frustrated, and physically sick all at the same time. There it was, a kitten with its head pointed upward as if it was looking into the canopy of the jackfruit tree above, its front paws facing North, its hind legs facing Southwest thanks to a snapped spinal column, with whatever was left of its insides forming a grotesque pool of blood and guts right next to it. Without thinking about it, I rushed back into the house, grabbed a shovel, and buried it where it lay.

Returning to the point I had in mind, gruesome tangents aside, there is a certain behavior that I’ve noticed with cats and potted plants. Well, not just potted plants, but plants that we in the house are trying to cultivate. From an early age, and then well into adulthood, all the cats I’ve seen in the last couple of years have been the bane of my mother’s garden. She’s an avid collector of plants, trying to slowly set up a botanical garden of her own I suspect, but there are tons of little saplings and cuttings that she keeps bringing home from time to time. Without fail, I’ve noticed the cats and kittens, no matter who their mother was, or how old they are, will jump on all of these, as well as play games that involve jumping into already well established pots containing some unique lilies and orchids, stopping only after the plants have been obliterated. Now, I can understand the kittens here in Hyderabad ruining the floral contents of the one pot I’ve managed to fill with enough soil to grow something in, because this place is, in effect, an “urban jungle”. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of coconut palms that tower over the house and are rather close to the structure, but expecting cats and kittens to make do with these as their outdoor playthings would be like putting a baby on the hood of a car, hoping it would entertain itself without unwittingly committing suicide. But the cats in Kerala, they have tons of space to run around, lots of little trees and overgrown bushes to play hide-and-seek in, and plenty of vantage points with excellent leaf-cover from which to ambush little birds and reptiles. In fact, the potted plants, along with the ones we tend to -- differentiating these from the ones that were planted by ancestors, now having reached gargantuan proportions and beyond everyday pruning -- form less than five percent of the land available to them for fun and frolic. Still, for reasons beyond me and my imagination, they insist on causing carnage by flattening hibiscus cuttings that have just sported a new shoot, and reducing the large leaves of some of the decorative plants to some form of sheer lace, thanks to incessant sharpening of their claws. Before you even think about suggesting a “scratching post” I warn you, my ability to tolerate idiocy has diminished greatly in the last few years. If you’re still wondering why, that’s because these cats have scratching posts that are taller than the house! So, for whatever reason, these not-so-stray cats who sleep only on the sofas and couches in the living room, don’t see it fit to sit on the floor in the kitchen, and love to be pampered and brushed are not really flora friendly. Either that, or there’s some secret “Reclaim the World” movement afoot, with every other species coming together to overthrow the human hegemony, beginning with gardens and potted plants.

If you don’t find yourself convinced in the least by this and you’re sitting there going, “A few potted plants are ruined, and this asshole thinks that cats are destroying the world?” then consider a BBC documentary that tried to get a handle on just how much pet cats impact local ecosystems. I remember my jaw dropping to the floor the first time I saw one woman produce a large baking tray, with over 40 dead critters on it. They had all fallen victim to the lady’s cat in the previous week, a cat she fed well beyond any legally healthy limit from the looks of it. Or at least, from the looks of the cats that hang around the house. Therefore, it’s pretty obvious that this hunting is not for food, or because they suddenly had a craving for hill myna. It’s the thrill of the hunt. How “human” is that? Frankly, I’m disgusted by it, and I’ve attempted to discipline cats wherever I happen to find them chasing after a beautiful butterfly, just because they think it’s funny. But they obviously manage to be on their best behavior when I’m around, which isn’t a whole lot, resorting to lying in wait for a stray Drongo or one of the plump, little Seven Sisters birds on the lower braches of the Lavender bush. Good for them. The net result, from all the hunting of “everything else” that moves, is far fewer squirrels, birds of all feathers, and even the lizards that lord over the walls, a half-inch out of our reach, now stick to peeking out from behind a picture of my great-great-grand parents. In fact, it’s been years since I saw a butterfly. Nothing is sacred with these cats, so to speak. Well, there is a mongoose on the property at my grandmother’s place, and not normally one to put up with any feline nonsense, the cats have learned the hard way to keep especially clear of her when she has a little one in tow. But on the whole, a pretty massacred ecology. I mean, the only things not on the cats’ menu are the birds that fly way overhead, as long as they stay up there. I’ve seen a curious cat or two charge Brahminy kites when they tend to spend a lot of time on the ground picking out the right twigs to make their nest. Luckily for them, the cats never followed through with the intent to attack lest they meet with a swift and halcyon end. But the point I’m making is that other than the cats, and the kites, and maybe the odd squirrel, we have nothing much else to look at. Where we once had parrots and little sunbirds aplenty during the day, only to have our own little owl quartet in the evenings, now there are cats, 24X7. It wasn’t a fun trade-in really, but such is the power of the unrelenting wave of civilization, which in the cats’ cases refers to the ability to simultaneously be civilized and wild at the same time; won’t sit on the floor, but will catch and kill a hummingbird for fun, after dinner. What was the “straw” that broke this camel’s back and made it write a post about how the world was going to end in a serious case of “Death by Feline”? The things we expect them to hunt, rats in particular, often get safe passage to and from their burrows. How many times have I watched a rat jump out and run between the cat and me. Instinctively, I flash the cat a very cross, scrunched-up-brow with a no-nonsense, What the “f@($???” only to have it returned by her eyelids pursed tightly together, head turned away from me, as if doing this would make me disappear, or at least get out of her hair. Even when we’ve trapped rats in well-placed traps from the night before, and tried to hand out a free, live meal, only a few of the cats would grab it and end up eating it. Many of the other cats would grab the rats, run down the stairs and stop. Then, you saw the cat watch as the rat scurried off. What? I swear! And the moment the rat had made good its escape do that, the idiot cat would turn around and give you this blank, yet expectant stare, as if wanting a verbal pat on the back. Maybe that’s how I learned to curse.

The results speak for themselves, for me. So, apart from my observation of a feral cat being somewhat different yet exactly the same from a pet cat, I have attempted to establish the fact that continued contact with humans leads to displays in like behavior for both. They’ve been known to ruin a garden or two, but they’ve been proven to be handy little killers that can’t be unleashed on selective animals, using a more all-or-nothing modus operandi. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a documentary a while ago, about some seabird that was endangered, and when researchers set up cameras around a few nests to find out how the birds’ eggs were always being damaged, they discovered it was because stray cats were making a meal of the eggs? To expand the scope of my argument, for the sake of argument, or perhaps a couple of comments, I’m going to include every domesticated, non-food-source animal known to man as being party to this. Dogs are another culprit, especially in cities. Some places in the world, cities in India from personal experience, have gangs of dogs that patrol specific territories, making it unsafe for people to be up and about very late, and especially alone. These animals have gone ahead and taken on a part of the insanity that is a human civilized existence. They seem to show a disregard for nature, just like we do, clinging to the savage aspects of a life in the wild, such as killing off a rival’s offspring just so one set of parents has a better chance of passing on its genes, while simultaneously ascribing to a new order, learning to live life according to human commands. I suppose saying that none of this bodes well for any of us would just sound a little doomsday-prophet-ish, although a lot of this blog is already like that. So, I’m just going to finish by saying that there are surely many pros and cons with being either feral or a pet, but from my observations, all creatures recognize the comfort and opulence of a civilized way of life, and crave it wholeheartedly once they get a taste. It’s a scary proposition on the whole, but nowhere nearly as scary as sitting here wondering if the rose cuttings that I have rooting are safe from the amazingly polite cats that now see it fit to do their “business” while in the flower pot. God please save them all.

Job Guaranteed. Bring Cash?

2010-12-11T17:06:00.001+05:30

Check out this little scam that arrived in the "e-mail" today. You can tell it's a con job the first time you set eyes on it, giving a whole new meaning to the company's name - Videocon Electronics UNITED kINGDOM Ltd.No, I didn't type that all wrong, that's how it is in the message. Here it is for you to go through at your convenience. I don't understand why people would pay to get a job. I mean, isn't the reason for needing a job to make some money in the first place? So what makes them think I have any money to give them? And people never seem to learn. There's always some company or the other hiring people for a hefty sum of cash, often in excess of one lakh rupees, turning out to be a fly-by-night operation and making off with some easy pickings. Check out this gullible bunch of people. It's sad, but I can't believe that it happens, and still continues to happen. Malayalees may claim to be as damn near 100% literate as possible, so in some sick way it's ironic that the chasm between literacy, the ability to gain and disseminate additional bits of knowledge to one's heart's content, and common sense, the ability to survive based on learning from one's own or someone else's misfortunes, is best described using them as a model. How else do you explain the desperate hope that in spite all that you have heard about, and all that others before have had to endure as a result of their "bad luck", you are still willing to put your money in the exact same kind of place, hoping for a different outcome. That kind of thinking is beyond me. Umm...not really, if the dregs of what one, in this case "I", can Oh well. That's the way the pappadom crumbles, I guess. ;) No offense to my Malayalee brethren who I do so dearly cherish. West SIIIDE!!!

-----------------------------------------------

Dear Applicant,

Ref: “VIDEOCON” Direct Recruitments offer.

It is our good pleasure to inform you that your Resume has been selected for our new plant. The Company selected 62 candidates list for IT, Administration and Production Departments, as well as Company offered you to join as an Executive/Manager post in respective department. You are selected according to your resume in which Project you have worked on according to that you have been selected in Company. The Company is dealing in Electronics manufacturing business in India The Company is recruiting the candidates for new plants in Delhi, Bangalore and Pune.Your interview will held at Company Corporate office on – 23RD December 2010 at 11.30 You will be pleased to know that Company has advise you in the selection panel that your Application can be progress to final stage. You will come to Company corporate office in Delhi.

Your offer letter with Air Ticket will be send to you by courier before date of interview. The Company can be offer you as salary with benefits for this post 30, 000/- to 2, 00, 000/- P.M. + (HRA + D.A + Conveyance and other Company benefits. The designation and Job Location will be fix by Company HRD. At time of final process. You have to come with photo-copies of all required documents.

REQUIRED DOCUMENTS BY THE COMPANY HRD.
1) Photo-copies of Qualification Documents.
2) Photo-copies of Experience Certificates (If any)
3) Photo-copies of Address Proof
4) Two Passport Size Photograph

You have to deposit the (Cash) as an initial amount in favor of Company HRD. Department. for Rs. 6,500/- through any [STATE BANK OF INDIA]Branch from your Home City to Company Senior HRD

BANK NAME: STATE BANK OF INDIA
ACCOUNT NAME:
ACCOUNT NUMBER:
(Contact via email for complete details)

This is refundable interview security. Your offer letter with Air tickets will be send to your Home Address by courier after receiving the confirmation of interview security deposited in STATA BANK OF INDIA. Company will pay all the expenditure to you at the time of face-to-face meeting with you in Company. The Job profile, salary offer, and date -time of interview will be mention in your offer letter. Your offer letter will dispatch very shortly after receiving your confirmation of cash deposited in STATE BANK OF INDIA. We wish you the best of luck for the subsequent and remaining stage.

The last date of security deposited in bank - 17/12/2010 You have to give the information after deposited the security money in bank to Company HRD – direct recruitment email ID:videoconrecutdept@hotmail.com Your Letter with supporting documents will be dispatch same time by courier to your postal address after recd. Your security deposited confirmation in bank. The interview process and arrangement expenditure will be pay by Company. Lodging, traveling and local conveyance actual will be paid by Company as per bills. The candidate has to deposit the initial refundable security as mentioned by HRD.

If the candidate wants to come with his parents or friends, the Company will arrange all facilities only for female candidate.

Thanks
MRS SUMAN KHAN - (Executive - HRD)
Videocon Electronics UNITED kINGDOM Ltd.
Contact EMAIL:videoconrecutdept@hotmail.com
---------------------------------------------------

What did you think? Isn't that just lovely? Hahaha! The first time around, I was a little shocked. I guess I believed that my inbox had become more and more impermeable over time, thanks to all the spam filtering technology out there. However, I guess "impermeable" is itself impermanent because it only lasts until something stronger and harder takes a crack at the defenses. Still, you have to love them for trying so hard. I mean, it must be pretty hard to put together a letter like this in the first place, not only because you're lying to people, but also because in your haste you forgot to pay attention to the many errors in it. Whether they were trying to "con" me or do some sort of "recut" as the email address says -- whatever the hell that may be -- I just hope this goes to show that just like skinning the cat, there's more than one way to make a quick buck. :)

Activism or "Slacktivism"?

2010-12-03T16:48:00.000+05:30

The other day, I happened to be browsing the news and read about the co-Founder of Facebook starting a new service - Jumo.com. Apparently, in its present “beta” form, Jumo is positioned as a platform to help like-minded people connect with each other to help come together over a project or issue that was up for resolution. This was supposed to be different from the “Causes” feature on Facebook, but without getting into too many details -- I didn’t bother with that either -- I couldn’t really see the difference. Furthermore, you needed a Facebook account to be able to log into Jumo, which seems strange because I imagine a more “OpenID” approach would be in order for this kind of thing. Then, I happened to read an article titled “HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activist with Social Media” on Mashable.com, generally the first people to break this kind of news, at least on Twitter, and it got me thinking. I was more curious about this word, “Slacktivism,” which to me seemed to be along the lines of what I previously referred to as “armchair philosophy,” namely being all talk and no action. Turns out, that was exactly what it was, at least according to the Wikipedia definition which states, “Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist.” Then, I brought to mind all the causes I had been gung-ho about in my days as a person who fought for causes because they were “right”. Or at least they seemed worth fighting for at the time. And, I was reminded about why I gave up activism for Slacktivism.

There were a hundred different ways in which the school I studied at was involved with improving the lives of the local community. By the time we hit high school, we had a few hours a week of scheduled extra-curricular activity that took us out into the nearby villages and townships, doing everything from spending time with children in an orphanage, to consoling and putting smiles on the faces of the people at the old folks home, to giving the blackboards a new coat of black paint, seeing as to how they were all a smoothed out section of wall with a ½-inch cement border that was raised to demarcate where the board ended and the wall began. It felt good, yes, because I could see that we were making a difference. I mean, with the painting of the blackboards, we would know we were finished once we saw a bunch of glossy, black rectangles on the front wall of the classrooms, which in many cases you could count the number of on a single hand. Sure there was a bossy principal every now and then who would come along and make sure that we doing a satisfactory job, with a “Hey, you missed a spot,” forgetting that we weren’t getting paid for this. But on the whole, we just put people like that out of our minds and went on doing what we were supposed to, because it was one of the little things that we could do to give back to the community. On the whole, I really appreciated the fact that the school made the effort to help us understand the importance of reaching out to the community around us to improve our collective existence.

The next couple of examples that came to mind included putting a small amount of money into an envelope that they handed out to us on an airline. I was traveling alone, on my way back to school, and when I saw all the poor, starving children on the envelope, and then noticed that I could really spare the amount in question plus a 100, my heart melted. I gave the envelope to one of the members of the cabin crew as I was exiting the aircraft, and didn’t stick around for a thank-you, which I still happened to hear from behind me. It wasn’t about the gratitude for me, it just felt good to be able to help. Then, there was the time that a couple of friends of mine and I set up a table on campus to collect donations for a devastating earthquake that had rocked our homeland, India. We managed to put together a decent bit of “loose change” that we handed over to an international aid agency, which we happened to be coordinating with to get the money back to the people who needed it. Also, it would legitimize the fact that there were three or four of us, raggedy-looking college students trying to make money, which without the official endorsement by the aid agency may as well have been a fundraiser for booze for the weekend. Then, there was this one time that I happened to catch a friend waiting for a bus, which was interesting because he lived less than a minute from the bus stop. I asked him where he was headed, and he said there was a rally on to help some exotic animals find a better home. Being my cup of tea, I tagged along, and discovered that the issue surrounded three spider monkeys -- apparently there were four, but one of them died in transit -- who were at that moment in quarantine, being “exotic” and not from this place, soon to be cleared and put behind the bar in a nightclub, so that they could be a “live exhibit” and the next big thing in that club. Once we got there, I grabbed the biggest sign, and marched to the edge of the pavement to hold it up. My sign read, “Honk for support,” and although I did occasionally get ‘the finger’ the overall response was overwhelmingly a resounding honk from most passers-by. To me, it seemed criminal that someone would go through so much trouble to import a non-indigenous species of animal, only to have it live in a cacophonous and stressful environment, simply for the entertainment of a bunch of people who were there to drink and dance. It was like a circus, but far more pointless.

Later on, once I started working, I participated in a couple of blood drives and visited a school for the blind which really impressed me, making a couple of donations, especially on my birthday. In fact, I remember going back there once to offer my teaching/training services to them, and I had a very meaningful discussion with the man running the place. Unfortunately for me, they were looking for people with a different set of skills, but welcomed me back anytime I wanted to drop by and see if they needed anything. Although I was a little disappointed at not being able to help out right then, I took it in my stride and looked forward to the next available chance. And, there are a bunch of other little near-activist stories from my life, but suffice it to say that the examples I have provided I intended to use as the broad strokes that would paint me as a mild-mannered activist. Still, an “activist” nonetheless.

Reading about slacktivism, it reminded me of all the times I’ve said that most people are “all talk and no action” when it came to saving the world, as it were. Inspired by how Gandhi turned his life into a search for truth, I even experimented with vegetarianism, and taking coldwater bucket baths all through winter, just to try and save water and energy. Yet, for all that I have said so far, I’ve done nothing more than talk about a lot of the issues that I’ve “made an issue” about. In truth, I’m nothing more than a rotten slacktivist. It’s only now that I’ve discovered the cojones to accept it. Once I’d crossed this mental hurdle, I began to reflect on all the misguided “activism” I had either been a party to, or close enough to be able to understand what really went on. Or at least, what really went wrong. Allow me to revisit all of the examples I’ve provided, and to fill you in on other details about them.

The school “Social Experience” program conducted one curious activity. They would bring a bunch of school kids to our campus -- and these were some of the extremely “have-not” children, I must say, -- and they would take them to our computer labs and let the children explore these machines by showing them a few games they could play. Once time was up, the kids were packed up in their buses, smiling of course, and sent back to their will-probably-never-see-another-computer-in-my-natural-life lives. I didn’t get the point of that, and thankfully, I never signed up for that assignment. But what was the point of that? In my mind, the equivalent would be teaching someone to sculpt, and then chopping off his/her hands, hoping that one day they would learn to sculpt with their feet, because when the person did sculpt, he/she seemed to love to do it. Next, the donation on the airlines, well, the risk I took there was that there was nothing stopping people from siphoning the money into their own pockets. Perhaps the stewardess wouldn’t do it, because she gets a handsome salary, but someone somewhere was bound to get their filthy paws on it. A couple of years later, this same organization was in the news because funds had been embezzled, and contrary to what the envelope had said about making a difference to a child’s life for a whole year, the children were worse off than before. Don’t see what I’m saying? Well, then you should ask yourself how after the tsunami that devastated a lot of coastal South East Asia, there are people living in crudely fashioned “wigwams” near the beach in many parts of Tamil Nadu, still waiting for their bit of “aid” to get to them. It’s the same thing with the “earthquake” fund that we set up and collected money for. Well, not entirely, and here’s a brief aside about this incident. We spent a week on campus, trying to get as much as we could, and the people who donated without hesitation were those of every other nationality, except the Indian students on campus. In fact, apart from the friends who set this up and a few others, almost every single Indian student would make it a point to cross the street and walk on the opposite side, avoiding eye-contact at all times. It was funny, come to think of it. Moving on to the “spider monkeys,” it turns out that because the nightclub had followed the law in getting the appropriate licenses, and because they didn’t try and skip the mandatory quarantine and observation period that every “alien species” had to go through, it was alright to have the monkeys sit behind the bar. I never went in to check them out, and we saw that the humongous bouncers, as well as nightclub management, had made a note of who was at that picketing event that day, taking pictures galore. I think they imported another one shortly after, just because, you know, “Three is a crowd,” and four is a party. Just the sort of thing a nightclub needed, I’m sure.

The school for the blind that I talked about had a far more ingenious system of ensuring it got what it needed, and in the couple of years that I had known about it, they had expanded their operations to another couple of buildings to house the growing influx of blind and under-privileged children. Also, they had featured in the news several times for being one of the first schools in the city to ensure that a blind student got her Masters Degree. This is a special case in my search for and understanding of what a “cause” is, and the only thing I can say about it is that it goes beyond activism. There are no rallies and no demonstrations about anything. Just a school for the blind that is working towards becoming more self-sufficient, so that it is not at the mercy of its donor pool, no matter how much they claim they really care.

One of the many buzz words in the corporate world in the last decade has been “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). It’s the overt way in which companies try and show the world that they are giving back to the community. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some heads of CSR, and to have participated in the events that the companies I’ve worked for have managed to put together. One of the companies I worked for used to set up one day a year when they would close the office so that every single employee would have to go and spend the day participating in the many programs that had been set up. It was organized in true corporate fashion, with sign up sheets popping up a couple of months before the event, followed by meeting invites sent to your Outlook, and then a whole slew of meetings about who does what and why. It was fun, and exciting for me, a generally accepted cynic when it came to believing that there was scope for charity no matter how motivated by profit an organization could be. Here I was, helping design some material that would help the cause I had signed up for -- helping people who didn’t have access to fancy schools and training institutes, for purely financial reasons, learn about how to face an interview, prepare a résumé and be otherwise job-hunting ready -- and all signs seemed to indicate that this might actually be worthwhile. Yet, after all the lead up to this event, the day came and went quite quickly, with only a big party to show for it that evening, and a couple of mentions in the newspapers the next day. It struck me as strange that a one-off approach to helping people out was deemed effective. I stayed on at the company for another couple of months, but in that time, none of the people who had been a part of our group could tell me anything about any follow-up being done, you know, like finding out if any of those people had actually gotten jobs thanks to our assistance. Then, another company I worked for, and there are two hilarious stories here, they had a bit of a bonanza going with the whole CSR thing, because there was a school that the company, or at least our office -- there were three offices in the city -- had taken under its wing. Soon after I joined this organization, there was a 5-mile walk event where all of us as employees were supposed to try and collect donations from our friends and family, and our amounts would be matched by the company, where the total sum would go to the school at the end of all of it. It was only a walk, so I thought it shrewd of management to have kept effort to a minimum, while keeping the fun factor high. When I got to the event that fine morning, I was a bit surprised to see two things: 1) An Ambulance and 2) a bunch of kids from the school, all lined up and dressed in their best clothes, standing at the ready to sing us a song. The ambulance was a hoot because I couldn’t figure out why those who walked at the risk of dying would even consider participating. I mean, how hard is it to figure out that any charity prefers a live donor rather than a dead, fat-assed, lump of human being? The kids? That was just wrong. Either that, or it was the cruel irony of the phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch” in real life. Worse? I got there a half hour before the walk started, and it didn’t begin officially until about a half hour after the scheduled time. That means those poor kids were just sitting there since forever. Anyway, the event got underway after a few words from one of the Directors, and the kids had sung their song. Now, it was a walk, remember, and it was only five miles long, around the outside track of a large and beautiful park. So, imagine my surprise when I noticed a bunch of tables at the end of every mile, laden with not just cups of water, for us poor walkers, but also several kinds of juice. It was so ridiculous, I almost expected to see a cigarette stand by the end of the third mile. If the company really wanted to make a difference, they could have put all of this “juice” money into the charity pot too, or at least that was what I thought. I finished my 5-mile walk as quickly as I could, and fled the scene after submitting my form and my earnings. But wait, the story doesn’t end here. About a month later, a colleague of mine shared with me the fact that some of the trees that had been planted around the school two years ago, in what was then perceived to be a blessing to the school, were now threatening to bring the school crumbling down. The roots of these trees had found their way into the foundation of the school building, a building that the company had nothing to do with erecting in the first place. I was so dumbfounded, all I could manage was a, “Good job.” I didn’t even bother to ask what “we” were doing about it, lest it result in another horror story sporting a clown mask.

I’m proud to be a slacktivist. No, not because almost every one of these attempted good deeds had resulted in failure. Not even because I had had enough of trying to help, only to be thwarted by my and other people’s own “good intentions” over and over again. I discovered that there is something fundamentally wrong with activism and it had to do with accepting the cause at face value. Take any scheme aimed at poverty eradication, for example. Or better yet, let’s look at famine relief programs, where we see images of starving people too weak to take another breath, laying helplessly on their backs with huge, bloated bellies. And then, cut to other nations around the world, dumping food grains down the drain to help regulate the price of these commodities, not to mention those that pledge aid and leave it at that. Coming back to getting rid of poverty, I still find it beyond the realm of logic and faith, in this case, how we can do with a burgeoning human population. What does that even mean? Are we thinking that elevating more and more people to an acceptable standard of life, in all its facets, will bring us to a new world? Consider all the statistics that have been published about the consumption habits of the average American, a hot topic in the last 15 years. Now, that level of impact on the World involves only a handful of people, roughly 350 million. Can you imagine if a country like India were to achieve this state of being, with its population already at more than one billion? To help you picture it, remember that the US is three times larger than India. How would we even begin to deal with the amount of waste generated, for example, not to mention where all the resources to sustain this standard of living would come from? And this we’re supposed to do for the entire world? Call me pessimistic, but that’s impossible! You're telling me the "cracks" aren't already showing? Riiight. Yet, year after year, someone else is championing the cause, tagging it along with either religion or politics, or even fantastic notions of a society where there will be no wasteful use of resources and all cars will fly. Rethink your activism. Do you go out and pick up a sign for fun, or because you believe, or because you think you believe? Try and pay attention to the fact that there should be a positive correlation between the amount of effort you put in, and the result you achieve. I’ve seen anti-smoking campaigns a plenty, and participated in rallies, only to sneak away for a smoke every five minutes. But more and more kids are smoking these days. How does that happen? And, by extension, because smoking is "addictive" how is this not going to mean a larger group of people smoking in the future? While you try and figure that one out, allow me to sit here and try and set up a foundation for the “Slacktivist of the Year” Award. Who knows, it may turn out to be time well spent, especially if I can find a sponsor, and a bunch of people to help me promote it. ;)

Learning To Let Go

2010-12-02T02:15:00.000+05:30

It’s taken me a while to write this post, but it has been something that I’ve been meaning to write eventually. It has to do with death, and the eventual “letting go” that we who remain must deal with. This is not the first time I’ve had to do this, and it most certainly will not be the last. Still, no matter how many times I go through this, I still find myself so conflicted and unable to get through it, like I’d forgotten what to do since the last time. It hasn’t ever been easy for me, but throw genuine care and attachment into the mix and it becomes a life-changing situation that usually leaves me devastated. This is how it was with “Panda-kutty” the day that she left us all, and went to that big Animal Paradise in the sky.

Setting The Stage

A few months ago, when I was at home at my Grandmother’s place, I had the unique opportunity of finding myself with enough time to get reacquainted with many of the cats whom I had only happened to see for a weekend at a time before that. They always looked at me like an outsider who would leave soon enough for them to resume their normal lives. Of course they’d come up and beg when I was eating something, being particularly sure to hang out around the dining table around meal times. It’s like they had secret cat watches that we didn’t know about. Either that, or they had figured out the human concept of time and learned to read the clock that was in the dining room. But, if I took food out of the equation, I suddenly became the outsider all over again. Now, however, here I was rather indefinitely, so eventually I figured that they had to get used to me being around. I have to point out at this time that I consider myself to be a bit of an animal person. Had a pet dog who died a few years ago after a long life. And although he was more attached to my mother and should really have been her dog, every time he was up to no good people would come to me with, “Look at what your dog did!” Now, I like cats too, and interestingly enough, I can remember a time when I was really little and we were visiting my grandmother, and there were almost 14 cats and kittens around the house. The reason I bring up the cats and the number of them who used to be around is because the numbers had swelled to the same level. Actually, when I first got home on my indefinite break, many of the female cats were pregnant. Funny thing about that, because apart from two of the cats, all the rest are female.

As I had hoped, the existing cats did warm up to me, and my particular brand of doling out snacks at a moment’s notice, while being very wary of my ability to admonish and throw something in their direction if they were being naughty, like going through the trash in spite of their incessant snacking. It was a love-hate relationship that we were both comfortable with, and the most contact that was made was 12 seconds of petting for those that allowed me to touch them. And then, almost as if on cue, within a two-week span, all of the females had given birth.

When I say “all the females had given birth” I’m referring to five of the females; three cats who had already had litters before this, and two cats for who this was their first time. I make this distinction because the experienced mothers had located and occupied the best spots in the house, the most prized location being somewhere in the woodpile near the kitchen because it meant a nonstop access to food throughout the day. In all, there were 12 kittens. Within a week, the ones who were born at the beginning of the fortnight were walking around and getting ready to cause havoc, while the rest still hadn’t opened their eyes but were loud enough to be heard if not seen, when they were hungry. Soon enough, all of them were mobile, and slowly finding their way towards the kitchen where their mothers used to hang out. Pandemonium ensued on a daily basis with my mother trying to half discipline them and half keep the kitchen from being totally destroyed by overly curious kittens running amok. It was quite cute, obviously, since I was only observing. However, there is a lot to be said for pets getting used to the human concept of hygiene and being “house broken”. Well, I did help with clean-ups every now and then, mostly in the mornings when I came downstairs and discovered oddly colored puddles all over the place. Potty training hasn’t really been an issue once the kittens grow up, going by previous experience at home, because there is enough land around the house for them to do their “business” outside, something that they learn once they’re old enough to jump in and out through the windows and observe the other cats. Before you ask, it’s a 150-year-old house with thick wooden doors that are thicker than all the doors in the average house stacked one on top of the other, which means a cat flap is out of the question. In spite of all this, and the apparent extra stuff that we had to do around the house cleaning up after them, it was still really cute. I took tons of pictures and short video clips of them, mostly for my own amusement. Curiously, the more I hung around the kitchen or thereabouts to photograph them, they got used to me being around, and many of them resorted to playing around my feet and playing hide-and-seek near my ankles inside my lungi (think ‘sarong for men’ and worn all the way down to the ankles, the South Indian equivalent of track pants, or shorts, or whatever house wear you’re most comfortable in). That was the icing on the cake for me. They were comfortable with me, so much so that they almost always assembled near my feet whenever I was around; hiding, seeking, and occasionally missing their mark and clawing my with their tiny claws in the process. This continued for another couple of weeks, and the different litters did this in batches, almost. The older they got, the more inclined they were to discover the bigger world outside of the kitchen and the house, so playing hide-and-seek with my lungi for a screen just got boring. Well, that and the fact that I used to jump up yelping when better developed claws had my feet and ankles looking like a sheet of graph paper with fine, red welts everywhere. I think it was the second litter of kittens that delivered a surprise to me, in my lap literally. There were three of them, and they all looked rather regal in their own way. Their mother was one of the older cats, one of a pair of cats that had survived for more than five years. This is a big deal among feral cats at the house, and I imagine in semi-rural India, where they have to keep their eyes open for feline-hating humans, dogs, jackals, and other cats who were constantly trying to muscle in on their territory.

Meet “Panda-kutty”

Sure enough though, in this litter, there was a kitten, the prettiest of the lot, who began climbing into my lap instead of keeping to the games going on at my feet. My uncle named her “Panda-kutty” (“kutty” being the Malayalam word for “child”) because according to him, she looked like a miniature panda bear. Even if this wasn’t the case, I kind of agreed with him. More importantly, she was really cute to begin with, and the climbing into my lap only endeared her to me no end. It was like a special bond had been formed, and I don’t know why, but I guess I let myself get carried away a little, being perfectly willing to let her treat me like a couch of sorts. If things weren’t particularly well for me at this time, this was the one thing that made it all worthwhile. This was the first time that I had made an animal friend like this. It had all the promise of becoming something near-legendary, as far as human-feline relations went.

Panda-kutty sleeping on my lap

Panda-kutty grew into a fine young kitten. Together with her mother and her two sisters, she learned to go from the kitchen to the living room and back on her own. She learned to jump through the window in the living room to get outside, when she was able to jump that high. And one day, I found the whole family waiting on the bottom-most branch of a neem tree. What were they waiting for? The mother thought it fit to teach them how to climb onto the roof , which was at the same level as the branch they were on, even though it was at least two-and-a-half feet away. To my astonishment, the kittens didn’t follow their mother onto the roof on that day. A couple of nights later, however, as we sat down to dinner, I heard some frantic meowing from right above my head. I looked up at the rafters and the tiles resting on them, but I couldn’t see anything. I grabbed a torch and went outside, and when I shone the beam on the roof, I found a perplexed Panda-kutty cautiously pacing around, trying to make her way down to ground level. Without a second thought, I called out to her, and coaxed her to the edge of the roof near where they had tried to jump onto the roof a couple of days ago. She came down, still cautiously, and when she got to the edge, she looked doubly confounded. I kept calling out to her, and I kept assuring and reassuring her that it was alright. I even told her that I would catch her if she jumped towards me, but who was I kidding, right? Still nothing, except scared meowing. In the dark, among plants and trees, with a torch in my hand, I decided to try and look at things from her point of view. I looked at the branch again, and I noticed a few new shoots that seemed to be obstructing her landing. Immediately, I put the torch in my mouth, jumped a little bit to reach the branch, grabbed on with one hand, and with my other, now “free” hand proceeded to snap off the branches that were apparently causing all the trouble. With my simian antics complete and my feet back on solid ground, I transferred the torch back to my hand and resumed calling out to her, still in as soothing a tone as I could muster. The adjustment seemed to be the answer, because after a couple of gentle words she jumped onto the branch and climbed down the tree. As I led her into the house, through the kitchen, and made my way back into the dining room to continue my dinner, Panda-kutty in tow, my mother made it publicly known that I was off my rocker for trying to teach a cat to climb down off the roof. Yes, I’m pretty sure that the neighbors heard her. As far as I was concerned though, it was my duty to ensure that Panda-kutty or any of the other little kittens were never in distress. It felt right. It felt like I could make a difference. And quite honestly, the image of Adam, as caretaker of the Earth came to my mind. It almost became an ideal that I should work towards, and I was determined to prove wrong all those opposed.

Plot Twist

Life has a funny way of making you question your beliefs. It also has a sense of humor or something to that effect that I haven’t yet managed to put my finger on. Whatever it may be, it resulted in the overall cat-and-kitten count dropping to six! For whatever reason, and I even did some reading online about this, but it appears that feral kittens are particularly prone to a kind of disease that resembles the flu, and it often results in a slow and painful death. It was heartbreaking and gut wrenching and unlike anything else I had experienced before. My dog passed away early one morning, I was told. My aunt’s dogs, the ones that had to be put down because they had developed some kind of cancer, and I had to take them to the vet to do it. That was pretty bad. This? This was far worse. One by one, we watched the kittens die. Even a couple of the adult cats succumbed to this epidemic, which was very rare according to my online reading. Thinking about it all over again is quite painful, especially when the images come flooding back from the dark recesses of my memory. It was sad, strange, and so frustrating to not be able to take them to a vet or anything. On the first day, they would refuse to eat anything, and it sounded like they were wheezing. Then, after a day of starvation, they would stop consuming anything at all, including liquids. That second day, as their little bodies seemed to battle the hunger, and the spasms that periodically wracked their bodies while struggling to breathe through all of this. I tried my level best, bringing them water in half coconut shells, and trying to tell them that it would be OK and they’d make it. To no avail. The morning of the third day, whoever discovered a tiny feline body automatically took on the task of burying it. Between my mother, my uncle and myself, we buried them all of them. It was horrific, made far worse by the questioning glances of the mother cats looking up at you, and then their fallen offspring, as if to say, “Please, do something.” But anthropomorphizing or not, the devastation was unbearable.

What really got to me was one morning, when I woke up, and after my customary cup of tea, on my rounds to see how all the surviving kittens were doing, I found Panda-kutty laying on her stomach, paws folded regally in front of her. Nothing seemed amiss. Nothing, until I approached her and she looked up at me with a little wheeze and a cough! My head started spinning. This couldn’t be happening to her. I think I cursed out loud. I grabbed the water bowl, washed it out, filled it up with fresh water and took it to her. She looked up at me, opening her eyes slowly almost as if it hurt her to do that. Then she looked at the bowl of water in front of her, and turned her head away. I think I wanted to cry at that moment. I moved the bowl of water away from her and sat down next to her. Almost instinctively, she climbed into my lap and laid down. I shed a tear, and stifled a sob, almost. This was the first day, and I didn’t know for the life of me what I would do all of the second day. I wasn’t even thinking of the morning of the third day. I can’t explain what I really felt, but I know I felt a lot of rage. When I opened my eyes again, I saw red! I was furious at not being able to figure out a way around this and somehow limiting the spread of this virus, or whatever it was. I was frustrated that of all the things we tried to do to nurture these little guys, they ultimately surrendered their lives to a debilitating illness that seemed inevitable, judging by the literature I had come across. Also, I was extremely upset at my mother and uncle for telling me to get Panda-kutty off of my lap because she was infected. Perhaps they meant well, but it didn’t quite come out like that. All I knew was that it hurt like hell. And, it hurt even more because although there was an encouraging sign on the second day when Panda-kutty was at least drinking a little bit of water, the fact that she wouldn’t eat anything still worried me. I hoped for the best. I prayed to every god I’d ever heard of. I even wished in my heart that if it were possible I would give up my life so that she would grow up to be a cat and make the most of her feline life. On the evening of the third day, when my uncle stepped outside with some rice to feed the cats their dinner, he found Panda-kutty laying near the door, motionless. I was watching TV when I heard him call out to me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, so I decided to go find him. My heart sank when I got there and saw Panda-kutty there. Still. Not breathing. Face contorted as if horrified by the first glimpse of death, completed by her tongue hanging out of her mouth. I froze for a second, before recovering to look up at my uncle who had been asking me to get the shovel. I went back in to get it, but my mind was blank. I had hoped against hope that Panda-kutty would make it out alright. Now? Well, I guess I was simultaneously preparing myself for the worst. No matter who much you prepare yourself for something, life sometimes has a way of throwing a wrench in to the works. No wrench here, just a void. I handed my uncle the shovel, and right outside the kitchen, near the jackfruit tree he went right to work digging a hole. He worked fervently and at a furious pace. As I watched him, I could tell that he too was trying to cope with this tragedy in his own way. Despite my constantly reassuring him that he had a deep enough hole, he kept at it until he was satisfied, telling me that you could never get deep enough to avoid the marauding jackals for who carrion was always on the menu. When it was all over, he scooped up Panda-kutty’s body, and put her in the hole he had dug, covering her up gently as if the falling dirt might have caused her some last minute discomfort.

The End Came Slowly

I was at a loss the next day. Where I expected to see a healthy, robust Panda-kutty come bounding up to me expecting a snack, or at least for me to sit down so she could climb into my lap, there was nothing. Only a couple of other kittens in various stages of slowly having the life force drain out of them. I started to think back to when I first saw her, and when she first climbed into my lap. No other kitten had ever ventured that far, so early on she showed a lot of promise to be a more exploring and adventurous cat. She had oodles of potential. “Had,” I guess, being the key word in that last sentence. I even thought back to how just a week before she fell ill she had discovered the portico upstairs, and me sitting at the computer. I remember that amused gleam in her eye, as she jumped up on the table and proceeded to investigate what was going on, finally settling down into a Sphinx-like pose near the computer, tilting her head with genuine animal curiosity. But, that was the week before all this. And now, well, 12 bundles of “potential” and joy and cute-and-cuddly had starved themselves to death for no apparent reason. In fact, two cats from an earlier litter had disappeared. One of them had given birth to two kittens in the midst of all this death. And now, the mother was gone. Presumed dead. Well, “presumed dead” until I found her at the base of one of the coconut trees, fighting for her life. Two days later, she came back into the house, skinny as all hell, but alive and hungry. That was a good sign because it meant she had fought it and one, technically being a “cat” and not a “kitten” having delivered her first litter. It was fortunate. Unfortunately for her, two days away from her newborn kittens was two days too many. They died, somewhere in the wood pile, crying out for their mother, or some kind of helping hand, from anyone, or even any of the other cats that was willing to play surrogate mother. Did I already say that this entire ordeal was emotionally devastating?

A Lesson, Somewhere

I still think about this, and it has been a long time, I know, but still, it just seems too hard to let go. What am I holding on to? Well, the memories of Panda-kutty and all the other kittens that I had played with, fed, and gently persuaded to avoid doing anything that would upset my mother. All the time, I kind of grew closer to them as I observed them and tried to share in their world. Sure I was anthropomorphizing again. Sure I treated them like children, almost. At times. But the fact of the matter is, I developed a sort of connection, whether imagined or not, and I let it get to me. I mean, if I really think about it, part of the whole “cute” animals thing is the fact that they’re just trying to survive. Most of the attention I receive from these feral cats and kittens is food related. They’re always around when there’s food available, and most of the contact that they’re willing to make, perhaps even coming up to you and rubbing up against your leg when you’re holding a snack even though five minutes earlier they ran for their lives when you tried to reach down and pet them. Still, regardless of what the motive may be, there is a connection that develops. And sometimes, with some people, it’s all about how you deal with that connection once it no longer exists..

Thinking about this makes me think about and appreciate the lessons of the Buddha. To understand that desire is the cause for suffering is a truly profound concept to grasp. I tried puzzling it out for myself, like really putting it through the cogs and wheels of my mind to get a handle on it, especially in light of this disaster. Especially since we lost Panda-kutty. The fact of the matter is, and I’ve thought about this, if I’d treated Panda-kutty like anyone else would have treated a normal, feral kitten -- ensuring that they didn’t get on the furniture, if they were allowed into the house in the first place, an advantage that came from my family being far more tolerant overall -- I probably wouldn’t have been so attached, and this wouldn’t have been so hard to deal with. I would have probably swatted her off my lap the first time she tried to climb into it, and that would have been the end of that. But that’s the kicker. I would never be able to do that. It’s just the way I am, I guess, and I don’t really feel the need to change it. And that’s when it struck me!

I had arrived at a “Eureka!” moment! I wasn’t like that. I was not capable of not falling in love with a kitten who thought nothing of trying to climb into my lap, or anyone else’s lap for that matter, whenever the opportunity presented itself. It was too cute. And it wasn’t something that I was capable of keeping my grimy human hands off of. Too bad, perhaps, but it’s just the way I am. This is my true nature with regard to how I interact with the cats at my grandmother’s house, and as a result, I would like to interact with all cats and other living things in like manner. And now that I had arrived at this point in my journey to myself, it was for me to act upon this new information, by understanding that life passes us by when we least expect it. To word it otherwise, and more closely to resemble the events that I refer to, even though I know that death is inevitable and that it’s the one thing you can be absolutely sure of, I shouldn’t think of any pain that I experience as being a problem for me because it limits my ability to give of myself the next time it is needed. As my friend Lotay puts it, “The moment we are unable to feel pain, is the moment we are unable to love.” Truth be told, in the past, I’ve walked past many a stray puppy or kitten on the road, and even shooed some of them away, trying to keep a brave face and giving people the “c’est la vie” argument for not helping out. The moment I get back home, or have a moment to collect my thoughts, I can’t get that cute, furry little face out of my head, and I spend the rest of the day playing all the “worst-case” scenarios back in my head, wishing that help, or the end, came quickly. Sure it’s confusing, and sure it can be a cyclical argument if you wonder about it being better to save a starving life, or to choose to not interfere and disrupt the workings of “fate” whatever they may be. My only issue with the first scenario is that many times, people consider feeding to be a form of help. And, it is for sure, but there is a lot more that goes into “care”. I mean, can you imagine if your parents only fed you, either when you begged or when they saw you starving and trying to fish any edible morsel from the trash? What would you do about hygiene needs? Worse, what would you do if some of the food you ate was tainted and made you feel sick. Perhaps the food was poorly prepared, and it has tapeworm larvae in it. You’re in pain, and quite possibly dying all the while, but every time you show up at your human Samaritan’s door, all they do is have more food waiting for you. Even if they notice you limping, or twitching on the floor in the near-final throes of death, all they can hope for is a quick death to happen, before they close the door and return to their life with a “That’s too bad.” The second scenario? Well, that’s a little cold-hearted, even for my taste, but I learned as a child that by appearing to make it work, people left it and you well alone. Having said that, however, I have to say again, it’s the toughest thing to try and do.

If You Let It, History Will Repeat Itself

I’ve posted a couple of times about the two new kittens, here at my friend’s place in Hyderabad. The names Patches and Whitey seemed to pop up, and so they stuck. For me, it was interesting to see how the stray cats around, though petrified of people, would still come running up to us when we held out a snack. Some were more aggressive, often resorting to playful clawing or vigorously rubbing up against our legs. It was like I was witnessing the setting up of what was to become a dynasty of feral cats and kittens. It’s a curious place to be, as you see the alteration of behavior; some of it learned and then altered to suit changing living conditions, like having a roof overhead and a “place” to come back to, while the rest of it is reacting to instincts that tell them that human beings are dangerous, but who seem to be feeding them and caring for them. And that’s how it was with these two. We’d feed them just outside the side door of the house, so that their mother could come up and share in the meal, this being while she was still feeding, and just in case any other bullies came along and tried to cash in on the food bonanza. Once she stopped feeding them, we moved the feeding inside because that eliminated the need to keep an ear out for any random attacks by one of the marauding, bulbous-headed tom cats around. Of course they were allowed on the furniture, and for the longest time we enjoyed their antics and took great pains to try and entertain them. A big positive seemed to be the fact that by the time they had come to us, they seemed to have already been housebroken by their mother, so there wasn’t all of that cleaning up to do. They feasted on snacks a plenty, and sampled every little thing that we either made at home, or brought home from a fancy restaurant. In between, there was a bit of a scare with Whitey, because she fell ill on a couple of occasions, and watching her lose her appetite and sleep all day long, I thought she was a definite goner. Still, whenever possible, I tried to see if her condition would get better, making sure to offer her something every time we sat down to eat, or whenever we gave Patches anything. Remarkably, she bounced back after letting the illness work its way out of her system, and we knew this by her extra loud meowing when we opened the fridge or the kitchen door. And so it seemed to go for the better part of the last six months.

Then, one day, I happened to be trying to write something, or maybe do a little bit of reading up on something, and so I used my friend’s room to do it without any interruption from the kittens. By now, they were both old enough, pushing 6 months of age I think, to be able to visit the neighbors’ houses and see if there was a bite on offer. Still, I took it upon myself to ensure that their bowl of milk always had some milk in it, and that they would get something to eat whenever I was eating. I placed a little bit of a rice and curd mixture in their little feeding dish, and called to them. Patches was sitting in a Sphinx-like position, with her nose resting on the cushion that she was sleeping on, and Whitey craned her neck to look at me from on top of the TV. I told them, much like I would tell other people, that lunch was ready. They didn’t really budge, so I assumed they had feasted elsewhere and were going to let the curd-rice sit there and rot. A few hours later, maybe around 8 or 9pm, I happened to step out of the room having finished what I set out o do, and I found Patches still on the cushion. Her head was up, but her eyes were closed. It reminded me of the posture she adopts whenever I’m telling her she was bad for doing something that she shouldn’t have done. I went up to her with a, “Hey, lazy bones. What are you trying to do? Set a World Record?” No sooner had I said it, I finally saw it, and I really, really wished I hadn’t been so offhanded with that remark. There was a large wet patch under her, and when I looked a little closer at her, she was shivering a little. Oh no! I didn’t know what to do, but I did think about cats not liking water, or anything wet, so I tried to get her to move into the little box we had lined with old clothes for the kittens to sleep in. I tried to ease her into the box, gently, bringing it all the way over to the couch, then lifting the cushion and placing it in the box. The cushion was only half the size of the box, so I was hoping she would move, taking as much time as she needed, from the cushion to the box. For some reason, this startled her enough to climb out of the box entirely, and go sit by her bowl of water. Did she want water? I quickly threw out the water I had filled that morning, and refilled it with fresh, up-to-the-minute water from our large, drinking water canister. Nope. She didn’t want water. I tried giving her a snack, one of her favorite things, but she didn’t want that either. I sat down next to her, asking her what was wrong, and hoping that there was some way to make her well again. I know that in that instant, much like with Panda-kitty, I was wishing whatever was happening to Patches would happen to me, even if it killed me. After a little while of my attempt at verbally alleviating her discomfort, she hobbled up to the window and hopped outside, like she normally did. As much as I wanted to follow her, I didn’t. I mean, Patches used to climb into people’s lap whenever she wanted to, so the fact that she didn’t seemed to mean, to me, that she wasn’t about to do that. I kept an ear out for her, though, just in case she needed something. Sure enough, a little before I went to bed, I heard the amorous, baritone meowing of a stray tom. When I went outside, there was one of rowdy looking tom cats, missing half his left ear, sitting face-to-face with Patches and in all probability, dishing out some cheesy, feline pickup line. I chased him away, as far away as I could, boundary walls of the house permitting. I reassured her that I was right here if she needed anything. Then, I went to bed, sleeping as lightly as possible, lest another randy tom cat try and take advantage of our dear, little, convalescing kitten.

The following morning, I woke up to find myself sleeping on my side facing left, which happened to be a great vantage point to quickly scan the living room. There was no sign of Patches. So, I jumped out of bed, opened the front door, and looked around the house. Still no sign of her. My heart sank a bit, and even though I was telling myself it was all for the best and whatever had to happen had happened, I couldn’t help but feel a couple of tears well up. I waited all day, in case I heard her crying from somewhere, even from the neighbor’s compound. But there was nothing, not ever a whimper. I waited the next day as well, hoping that like Whitey, she would suddenly pop in and surprise us all by letting us know she was back, and ready for a snack. Maybe it’s just me and my misguided optimism when it comes to this sort of thing, or perhaps I just haven’t evolved enough mentally to be able to deal with this thing in a mature way. Either way, I didn’t take it well when on the third day, my landlord informed my roommate that Patches had found her way to his apartment -- where she spent her earliest days, as it turns out -- and in spite of his best efforts to offer her some comfort and nurse her back to health, she had died the night before. I didn’t see her, and somehow it was better that way. I don’t care that I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. In fact, when I think about it, she seems to have known me really well in the short time that she had come to know me as one of the people at home. She knew me well enough to have left, so that I didn’t see her lifeless corpse, because quite frankly, I don’t think I would have been able to handle it all over again. But look at me trying to rationalize her passing away, by putting myself at the middle of it all. I just hope she hadn’t suffered in her final moments.

Patches on my lap. One of the last times we'd share a moment like this.

Since Then

It’s been a little over a month since Patches left Whitey and the rest of us behind. That’s how long it’s taken me to try and write this. Weird, but it was really tough for me to think back to all of this suffering that I had witnessed with these kittens I had come to know this past year, and to admit to myself that I had done nothing but play “observer” as they painfully trudged towards their horrendous ends. I blame myself for not having the courage to get any of these suffering kittens to a vet, or someone who could have helped them better than I did. Well, that was before I got down to writing this. How so you may ask, and my answer would sound selfish by most accounts. But I guess I have a better handle on how to care, or at least seem to offer care, without really caring. Wow! When I say it like that I sounds like a typical, scum-of-the-Earth politician. But, it’s not quite feigning care and consideration that I had in mind. No, it’s more along the lines of being more accepting of the fact that death is a part of life, and that there is no use feeling anger and frustration at forces that are outside of your control. The Buddha had it right, of this I was sure already. But I have already explained why I can’t or won’t follow the idea that attachment causes suffering. To a large extent, attachment forms a large part of our existence as human beings, and I imagine as any sort of living thing on this planet. But it is also the cause of some of our greatest sufferings. Yeah, the Buddha had it right. But what he didn’t count on was people admitting that although they understood his idea, it was beyond them to employ it in their lives, simply because they owned up to being lesser human beings in the first place. Hey, I’ll be the first person to put my hand up and say that I’m not a saint. There was a time in my life when I aspired to saintliness, but after seeing kitten after kitten die, one labored breath at a time, I realized that even the great, omnipotent, omniscient God up there in Heaven did his fair bit of observing. No matter how I looked at it, the only way I could allow myself to move on from this, and to give myself a sliver of hope of achieving peace, was to accept what happened as just something that happened. One day, I would be face to face with my own end, and all I can hope for is for it to be painless. But hey, if pain is written into the plan, then all I will be able to do will be to grin and bear it. C’est la vie, after all, full of glorious joy, but also of unimaginable suffering. Rest in peace Panda-kutty and Patches. Thank you for all the love and the warm, fuzzy feelings that you allowed me to feel.