I think the topic I have picked up is sensitive, but it is something that all of us experience in our day to day lives. Theodore Roosevelt once said "The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
Simply put, to me essentials of a leader are that he should know what are his team's capabilities and what can be expected out of them. He has to decide how to construct a bridge between what is required and what is being delivered,while making sure that the transition is ever so smooth.
"To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!"
I do not think that one can be a great leader if he doesn't understand the pulse of his men/team. Only when he blends in with the team, will he be able to analyze the qualities of each person and understand how best to utilize a person's capabilities to the best of his abilities. If a leader thinks that by inducing fear in the minds of his men he will be able to get them to work, I think he would have done enough to dig his own grave.
The leaders who work most effectively, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. I think leadership comes from integrity – that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity. The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it.
A famous saying goes, "The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed."
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
The legend called P L Deshpande
P L Deshpande (Pu La as he was fondly remembered) is a known name in every Marathi household. Pu La was an actor, music composer, harmonium player, singer, and a powerful orator. He was someone whom everyone would have wanted to emulate. Thus he is also called "Maharashtracha Ladka Vyaktimatva"
meaning Maharashtra's Favorite Personality.
Pu La was a writer par excellence. And he often read out his stories/ characterizations at events organized specially for the same purpose. People often used to flock from far and wide to get to hear him speak. Pu La had a special knack of holding his audiences' attentions by playing out, acting or mimicking characters who were a part of his writings. I for one, never got a chance to see him perform live and do regret that for sure.
Now, people will come up and ask why is it that you chose to write about Pu La only why not anyone else? My answers are simple to this. Pu La always wrote his stories deeply rooted with the common man. They were stories of everyday occurrence or of people who can identify with. But then the difference in his writing (story telling) was that he could make people laugh and cry in 2 successive sentences.
The brilliance comes out when simple stories become larger than life. When you look around you and find a similar character in the midst of your near or dear ones. His plays have been made in successful stage dramas in so many languages apart from Marathi. Pu La had a penchant for ending his humourous works with thought-provoking punchlines.
In this quote from his work Post Office, he sums up on how life is a lot like the the letters that pass through the post office. "Shevati kay ho, aapan sagle pattyache dhani .. majkuraacha maalak ha niraalach asto" which is translated as follows. "In a letter, all we own is the address on the envelope. The contents are a matter of fate."
Alternately one can interpret the same line as, "Ultimately, it may be our name on the envelope, but someone else (God) is the one who wrote the message."
R.I.P Pu La sir..
meaning Maharashtra's Favorite Personality.
Pu La was a writer par excellence. And he often read out his stories/ characterizations at events organized specially for the same purpose. People often used to flock from far and wide to get to hear him speak. Pu La had a special knack of holding his audiences' attentions by playing out, acting or mimicking characters who were a part of his writings. I for one, never got a chance to see him perform live and do regret that for sure.
Now, people will come up and ask why is it that you chose to write about Pu La only why not anyone else? My answers are simple to this. Pu La always wrote his stories deeply rooted with the common man. They were stories of everyday occurrence or of people who can identify with. But then the difference in his writing (story telling) was that he could make people laugh and cry in 2 successive sentences.
The brilliance comes out when simple stories become larger than life. When you look around you and find a similar character in the midst of your near or dear ones. His plays have been made in successful stage dramas in so many languages apart from Marathi. Pu La had a penchant for ending his humourous works with thought-provoking punchlines.
In this quote from his work Post Office, he sums up on how life is a lot like the the letters that pass through the post office. "Shevati kay ho, aapan sagle pattyache dhani .. majkuraacha maalak ha niraalach asto" which is translated as follows. "In a letter, all we own is the address on the envelope. The contents are a matter of fate."
Alternately one can interpret the same line as, "Ultimately, it may be our name on the envelope, but someone else (God) is the one who wrote the message."
R.I.P Pu La sir..
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Mumbaikar, Punekar or Nagpurkar?
Ever since Maharashtra became United Maharashtra, we have started feeling even more divided than before. Nowadays it doesn't suffice just to say that you are Marathi. You need to specify whether you are a Punekar, a Mumbaikar or a Nagpurkar. So the Maharashtrian of today is faced with an identity crisis of sorts. Being just a Maharashtrian in Maharashtra is like being without an identity. There are only 3 identities that matter - Punekar, Mumbaikar and Nagpurkar. Actually there are hundreds of towns in Maharashtra, but these are the only three that deserve the suffix "kar" after them.
So do you want to be a Mumbaikar? If you do, then it is very important that you should be born in Mumbai. Letting the one who gives birth to you also give you a roof over your head is the easiest way to solve the thorny issue of a residence in Mumbai. Otherwise you need to be prepared for another crisis. Just imagine, these days you need to pay in thousands even if you want to sleep on the pavement at night. So unless you are actually born in Mumbai, you can conveniently forget the thought of becoming a Mumbaikar. Be happy as and where you are. You don't always get what you want in life, do you? Think of this as one of those things.
But, if an aunt living in some chawl or apartment in Mumbai is willing to adopt you, then things might look up. That's the easiest way to achieve re-birth. Or you could always become a "ghar jamai". In Mumbai, the definition of a "ghar jamai" is someone whom you have to give your daughter as well as your house.
However if you do manage to take care of the housing issue, then there are few joys in the world as unmitigated as being a Mumbaikar, believe me.
"Mumbai is too crowded" is a complaint which you are more likely to hear from outsiders than from true blue Mumbaikars. If someone cribs about Mumbai's air, heat, crowds, mosquitoes, let him do it because it is not mandatory for you to be proud of everything about Mumbai. In fact pride is not a pre-condition to being a Mumbaikar at all. That's a pre-condition for becoming a Punekar. You've got to have oodles, if not tons, of pride in Pune to be a Punekar.
In fact if someone calls Mumbai rotten, you should agree with them whole-heartedly. There is no better way to dodge guests and potential immigrants who might drive real estate prices even higher. In Mumbai, dodging out-of-town guests is an exercise you have to carry out like guerilla warfare. Luckily, Mumbai is continuously plagued with epidemics. To top it all there are political epidemics like bandhs. Those poor misunderstood political parties. Every year each of them has to successfully carry out their bandhs, or no one will take them seriously. What can they do about it, poor things?
So if some relatives of yours plan to visit you in Mumbai, don't forbid them from coming. Write to them, "Yes yes, please grace us with your presence. But please remember to be vaccinated against cholera, typhoid, malaria, chikungunya, leptospirosis. There were 214 deaths last month, but nothing great about that. By the way, hepatitis is making rounds again. So please do come. Heartiest blessings to the new born" put this line also in the post card. This will take care of most of your relatives. But then there are some stout-hearted relatives who will still want to visit. For such people, assure them you will be there at the railway station, and then don't turn up. Or even better, call up the Taxi Driver's Association, ask them when their next strike is scheduled, and tell your relatives to come on that day. If the relative is coming to Mumbai for the first time, then there's more scope for guerilla tactics. If you live in Girgaon, tell your relatives, "It will be better if you get down at Thane". The only pain of living in Mumbai is avoiding these unwanted relatives from taking up valuable space in your tiny homes. Apart from that, there is no city like Mumbai, believe me.
If you want to live in Mumbai, you need to learn Mumbai's Marathi. Every sentence should have at least 3-4 English words. In fact while speaking, you should know that Mumbai has only two tenses - present and future. Mumbai doesn’t have a past tense. Mumbai, poor thing, doesn't have much of a past. She cares only about today and tomorrow. The Mumbaikar cares less about how fast Shivaji's horse galloped, and more about when the next fast local train is scheduled. It is only after you come to Mumbai that you realize that the minute hand in your watch is also of great significance. In any other city, you can go through life just paying attention to the hour hand but not so in Mumbai. In Mumbai your watch is tied not just to your wrist, but to your fate.
Mumbai might not have a rich history like Pune. But the only time a Mumbaikar feels passionate about the past is when he is talking about that special topic. You guessed it. Cricket. Cricket is the only sport that Mumbai recognizes. In other places, cricket is played on grounds and in fields. But in Mumbai, even corridors play host to legendary test matches. And please do not dwell under the misconception that to know about cricket you need to have handled a bat and a ball in your life. Remember, cricket is more about talking and less about playing. However you need to be well-versed with the history of cricket. You need not know any other history. In fact a true blue Mumbaikar is very likely to pose the question "You know that Battle of Panipat....where exactly in Pune did that happen?" to a Punekar, causing him to have apoplectic fits on the spot. But ask a Mumbaikar anything about the sport of Cricket, and you'll never find him wanting.
The way a Punekar can wax eloquence about his pantheon of "Bajirao, Nanasaheb, Narayanrao...", a Mumbaikar will launch into the exploits of "P Balu, CK Nayudu, Vijay Merchant...." right upto Gavaskar, Vengsarkar and Tendulkar.
The true blue Mumbaikar always had a special connection with the Brits. You see, Mumbai was never ruled by Mughals or Marathas. In fact Mumbai did not exist until the Brits built it. The Brits came and built Mumbai from scratch. So the first and last Kings of Mumbai were the Brits. Outsiders like Tilak and Gandhi needlessly came and stirred up trouble between the Mumbaikar and the Brit Saahib. Even today, the true Mumbaikar wells up with emotion when he looks at the old buildings in Fort and misses the Brits. So even though Pune retained its grace even after the extinction of the Peshwa dynasty and the horse carts, the Mumbaikar still misses the Brits and the good old trams. “Saala, they should have at least retained the Tram # 6.” The pain of the good old Mumbaikar while making this statement cannot be understood by anyone else.
Ok, so now... do you want to become a Punekar? Go ahead. We have no objections. But our advice is... Think again. Do you really want to? OK, if you insist then your preparation needs to be thorough. And once you are fully prepared, then being a Punekar is as enjoyable an experience as any.
Firstly, do not nurse the notion that you are inferior to anyone in any aspect of life. You are not. You are a superior being. Secondly, learn to express dissent on every issue possible. I mean seriously, stop thinking about minor things like who you are, how educated or rather uneducated you are, and what your achievements are..... Don’t think about any of these things and just express a contradictory opinion. Whatever the topic under discussion, your opinion needs to be strongly voiced, and it has to be contrarian. Even if the topic under discussion is "How to get the United States of America back out of the economic depression?", You should be able to freely express your contrarian opinion forgetting that are just an employee of the Rat Extermination Department in Pune Municipal Corporation. Don't let such inadequacies stop you from holding forth.
At least once every few hours you need to cluck your tongue making that disagreeing noise (chuk chuk chuk), shake your head and say "Pune just isn't the way it used to be." There are no age-related requirements for saying this. In Pune doddering geriatrics and school-going striplings are entitled to say "Pune just isn't the way it used to be" with matching conviction. So you will get to hear this statement with comforting regularity in offices, colleges, Pensioner Maruti’s hillock, Mandai (vegetable market) and even at most Kinder Gartens.
Marathi, or in general any language, exists in several forms in Pune. Public Speaking Puneri, Shopkeeper's Puneri, Domestic Puneri.... are all various dialects with little in common with each other. Here is a demonstration of the difference between the dialect used in private conversation and the dialect used for public speaking, with an example.
Imagine that a Prof. Bhamburdekar is talking about a Prof. Yelkuntkar with his wife –
"What nonsense! Yelkuntkar is being felicitated? Utter nonsense. Actually he should be thrashed with his own shoes. What is he being felicitated for? Translating the Rigved? More like transmutating the Rigved. But still he gets government grants, thousands of rupees."
NOTE- One of the typical ways for a Punekar to vent his anger about someone else is to rant about the money he is making.
"Yes, you fool! Live it up! Embezzle that money! Live the big life! Eat banana pudding and peas curry everyday!" continues Prof. Bhamburdekar.
The most superlative form of living the big life for a Punekar stops at these humble heights - eating banana pudding and peas curry everyday.
Now let me show you the transformation of this sample of private Puneri language into public Puneri language. Imagine, the same Prof. Bhamburdekar at the felicitation, giving a speech about Prof. Yelkuntkar.
"Felicitating Guruvarya Prof Yelkuntkar is like felicitating he Sun God of Scholarliness. Friends, today's date will be carved with gold in the annals of Pune's cultural history. This great teacher of mine.... I mean I have always considered him my teacher.... I am not sure if he considers me his student..."
At this point the audience laughs a little. According to Puneri Public Speaking rules, if you don't make the audience laugh after every third sentence, then it is termed as a FOUL. All aspiring Punekars should always keep this in mind.
"Now of course, in a way I am his student. Because when he was a teacher in the municipality schools, I was his student in Class 1"
See how cleverly he slipped in the information that Prof. Yelkuntkar was once just a school teacher in a rundown municipality school.
"His father was an employee of the nutritional department in the palace of the Sardar Panchapatlikar"
Another masterstroke.... the good professor's father was just a cook!
"Having spent his childhood in extreme poverty, Professor must be feeling great contentment living in his spacious bungalow in Aranyeshwar Colony"
i.e notice how he's embezzled all this money under the garb of education.
"Prof Yelkuntkar and our Honorable Education Minister have been friends right from their school days"
i.e now you know why he gets all those government grants he doesn't deserve.
So you see, unless you are Dale Carnegie, you will have to prepare a lot before your public speaking skills can match up to Puneri standards.
Now when it comes to Puneri language to be used in day to day life, the standards are pretty stringent too. Let me illustrate with another example. All over the world, the convention is that when you answer the phone it should be with a polite "Hello?" Not so in Pune.
In Pune when you answer the phone, your voice must take on that natural irritable brusqueness that descends when someone wakes you up from a Sunday afternoon nap, and you must yell "WHO’S THIS??" It helps to pretend that it costs you money not just to make a call, but also to receive a call.
Now if the caller responds with "Err...could you please get Mr. Gokhale to the phone?", then his non-Punekar status will be blindingly obvious even to a Puneri kid. A true Punekar will yell back testily "CALL GOKHALE TO THE PHONE".
"DAMN IT, THERE ARE 10 GOKHALES HERE. WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT?"
"GET THE GOKHALE THAT L.I.C PAYS TO SLEEP ON HIS JOB"
“HEY GANNU, someone is trying to find you like Crazy” muttering “Damn it, this Gannu gets a 1000 calls per day, god only knows who all, he has given this number.”
To be a true Punekar, you have to have a burning pride for something. Not just normal pride. Normal pride can be felt by anyone. It has to be fierce burning pride. It is not necessary to feel this pride only about major things like the life of Shivaji or Tilak. It could be something as flippant as the rank of your lane's Ganpati statue during the Ganpati immersion procession or even peanuts from the rural regions of Pune district. But no matter how flippant the issue is, the pride must be fierce and burning.
This burning pride is very helpful when you have to make dissenting arguments. So then, on the day of Tilak's Death Anniversary, you could tap into burning pride for Gopal Ganesh Agarkar. On the day of a cricket test match, you could tap into burning pride for kabaddi.
Expressing your dissent merely in private conversations is not enough to get you the Punekar tag. You need to frequently write in your dissenting opinion to the 'Letters to the editor' column. It does not even have to make sense.
Dissent is primary. Logic is secondary.
Now another art you need to perfect, and that too in a specialized Puneri way, is driving a bicycle. Just sitting on a bicycle and going all around town on it does not qualify you as a cyclist in Pune. The verb "driving" when it comes to cycles in Pune, is used in the same sense as "driving an axe into a block of wood" or "driving hordes towards revolution".
A bicycle in Pune is viewed, not as a means of transport, but something to sit on when you meet for chit-chat with a group of friends in the middle of the road. It really helps in training new traffic policemen. It also helps in making access to any building virtually impossible for pesky salesmen. Managing to cluster bikes together to construct such a barricade is as crucial as being able to extricate your own bike from the cluster without toppling others.
Bicycles should not be driven alone, in Pune. There should be at least 3 bikes together going parallel to each other in the middle of the road, at a leisurely speed while talking to each other. Your eyes should not be on the road, but on the walking-and-talking attractive scenery (read girls) on the road. Having unnecessary accoutrements like horns, mirrors, lights, indicators is a sign of cowardice on the streets of Pune.
In this way, as you are crossing various levels in the game "How to be a Punekar", you should in parallel keep up your efforts to become an office bearer in some social or cultural organisation or a Rotary Club. Holding a hollow post in a useless organization is central to the completeness of the Punekar's existence.
It is also necessary to attend as many lectures, talks and seminars as possible on topics as diverse and vacuous as "Shrimant Bajirao II’s beautiful Handwriting" or "Fungus on the Bajra crop". And after the lecture, it is imperative to catch hold of the speaker, and in full view of at least half a dozen people say to him with an earnest expression on your face "I would like to discuss this topic in more depth with you some time."
All this preparation should be enough to make you a normal Punekar. But if you want to operate a shop in Pune, you need more lessons. You especially need lessons on language. Only then will you be able to heap maximum insults on your customer in minimum possible words. Because in Pune, the verb "operating" a shop is used in the same sense as "operating a bull dozer" or "operating a machine gun". The most negligible entity in a shop in Pune, is the customer. This is the secret to operating a shop successfully in Pune.
A shop operated in this way can realistically make money only for 7-8 years until all the customers desert it. Once that happens, you can sell your shop to a Sindhi or a Marwari. The price of land must have appreciated enough to get you a hefty bank balance to last you for the remainder of your life. And you are free to conduct seminars and attend panel discussions on the topic "Why are Maharashtrians unsuccessful in business?" in the Tilak Smarak Mandir.
Summing it up, to become a Punekar, every action of yours should be aimed at ensuring a felicitation ceremony for you some years down the line.
Now, do you wish to be a Nagpurkar? This ambition of yours is very simple to be realized. The only pre-condition required is that you cannot live in Nagpur for this. All real Nagpurkar’s are always eager to show off how important they are. So, If you live in Pune or Mumbai, only then will you be able to show off in your Nagpuri style. Just keep praising Nagpur in comparision to any other city that you might be living in.
A Few examples:-
1. If, someone invites you to a lunch or dinner and serves you excellent home made ghee, you should immediately speak about “Varhaddi ghee”
2. Even if you are eating, Biriyani, you should say “Vada-Bhat tastes much better than this”
3. If the climate is very endearing cold, you should speak about “Nagpuri summer”, like “Nagpuri summer, man how beautiful it is, such tasty oranges, etc etc.” Keep doing this, till the person who is listening to you does not start sweating in that cold.
But all this should be done, only when you are living a bare minimum of 200 miles away from Nagpur. If you live in Nagpur and start showing off like this, the guy next to you will snap back, “Shut up. Why the heck are you building castles in the air?”
To become a Nagpurkar, you must always try and play the victim thinking that somebody is constantly trying to condemn or victimize you. And even, if we are offering only a cup of tea to a guest in our house, you should say “Man, you guys from Mumbai and Pune are very stingy, have your tea.”
You should develop a mindset such that outside of Nagpur, people do not appreciate food and drinks at all. But the catch is to refrain from going into the details of the items prepared, cause, a Goan guy will give you at least 20 types of preparing the “Bangda Fish” and the max that you can go is up to “Vada Bhat”, then it will become an embarrassing moment for you. In case you get caught up in such a debate, you should change the topic and bring it on your city’s specialties like Oranges and Cotton.
Because, a real Mumbaikar, trusts that Oranges are meant to be eaten with “Erandale” and cotton grows inside the mattresses and one day tears it apart and comes out of it.
If you want to show off about being a Nagpurkar in Mumbai, then ensure that the other person’s surname is Kulkarni or Dhurandar and then start in your Nagpuri special Hindi. Because, a real Mumbaikar doesn’t fear Ghosts as much as he fears Hindi.
That is because, just as the mother tongue of a Nagpuri Marathi Manus is Hindi, similarly the mother tongue of a Mumbai’s Marathi Manus is English. But this Mumbai English and the one spoken in UK has no relation whatsoever. Pune’s English came to life on the Banks of the Mula-Mutha River and was buried at Onkareshwar.
Nagpur, does not have to bother about English at all, because, according to a reputed linguist Pune’s English finds its roots in Sanskrit, Nagpur’s Hindi find its roots in Marathi and Mumbai’s Marathi finds its roots in English.
Now, the belief that to become a Nagpurkar, chewing Paan is very important is baseless. Paan gives you the best chance to show off that you are a true Nagpurkar. Imagine that you are invited by a friend living in Pune or Mumbai for lunch.
As soon as you finish your lunch, ask him out rightly, “Don’t you serve Paan after lunch?”
The poor Puneri/Mumbaikar guy feels embarrassed, and you have scored your point.
“Then, send someone to the nearest Thela and ask him to get it.” The poor host guy does not understand what a Thela is or whom to send there and again is embarrassed. You have scored your second point.
“If that’s not possible, ask someone to get some Supari at least”
Then in a jiffy the host sends someone out to the nearest shop and asks for Masala Supari. As soon as he gives it to you, the reply should be “Hutt.. This is Masala Supari, even Kids in our Nagpur don’t eat this” again the host guy is clean bold.
And after all this embarrassment, if he manages to get you a Paan then without thinking of anybody you should chomp on it and then spit straight out of the window. In case, the neighbors living below are forced to celebrate Holi, when the host goes down the next time, he will celebrate a forced Diwali. We should be undeterred. The point is to show off that we are real Nagpuri people.
A thing to note is that, even if you act too prudently from above, you should always project that you are very generous from the within.
For example;
If you are a Nagpurkar currently living in Mumbai and are going live there till and long after your retirement also, then too your should be insisting that your Mumbaikar friends like this, “Come to our Nagpur once in the orange season. We will have a lot of fun eating Oranges. Come and experience our hospitality” Now if you calculate correctly and add, the to and fro fare from Mumbai to Nagpur for a family.. Eating Oranges in Mumbai itself, would be a better and a cheaper option so no one will accept this invitation of yours so you do not have to worry.
Hmmm.. This is just a prologue of the entire book that has been written on this topic. The entire book is ready and waiting to be released, but whom to invite for the release ceremony.. a Mumbaikar, or a Punekar or a Nagpurkar is the only crisis that I am now facing.
So do you want to be a Mumbaikar? If you do, then it is very important that you should be born in Mumbai. Letting the one who gives birth to you also give you a roof over your head is the easiest way to solve the thorny issue of a residence in Mumbai. Otherwise you need to be prepared for another crisis. Just imagine, these days you need to pay in thousands even if you want to sleep on the pavement at night. So unless you are actually born in Mumbai, you can conveniently forget the thought of becoming a Mumbaikar. Be happy as and where you are. You don't always get what you want in life, do you? Think of this as one of those things.
But, if an aunt living in some chawl or apartment in Mumbai is willing to adopt you, then things might look up. That's the easiest way to achieve re-birth. Or you could always become a "ghar jamai". In Mumbai, the definition of a "ghar jamai" is someone whom you have to give your daughter as well as your house.
However if you do manage to take care of the housing issue, then there are few joys in the world as unmitigated as being a Mumbaikar, believe me.
"Mumbai is too crowded" is a complaint which you are more likely to hear from outsiders than from true blue Mumbaikars. If someone cribs about Mumbai's air, heat, crowds, mosquitoes, let him do it because it is not mandatory for you to be proud of everything about Mumbai. In fact pride is not a pre-condition to being a Mumbaikar at all. That's a pre-condition for becoming a Punekar. You've got to have oodles, if not tons, of pride in Pune to be a Punekar.
In fact if someone calls Mumbai rotten, you should agree with them whole-heartedly. There is no better way to dodge guests and potential immigrants who might drive real estate prices even higher. In Mumbai, dodging out-of-town guests is an exercise you have to carry out like guerilla warfare. Luckily, Mumbai is continuously plagued with epidemics. To top it all there are political epidemics like bandhs. Those poor misunderstood political parties. Every year each of them has to successfully carry out their bandhs, or no one will take them seriously. What can they do about it, poor things?
So if some relatives of yours plan to visit you in Mumbai, don't forbid them from coming. Write to them, "Yes yes, please grace us with your presence. But please remember to be vaccinated against cholera, typhoid, malaria, chikungunya, leptospirosis. There were 214 deaths last month, but nothing great about that. By the way, hepatitis is making rounds again. So please do come. Heartiest blessings to the new born" put this line also in the post card. This will take care of most of your relatives. But then there are some stout-hearted relatives who will still want to visit. For such people, assure them you will be there at the railway station, and then don't turn up. Or even better, call up the Taxi Driver's Association, ask them when their next strike is scheduled, and tell your relatives to come on that day. If the relative is coming to Mumbai for the first time, then there's more scope for guerilla tactics. If you live in Girgaon, tell your relatives, "It will be better if you get down at Thane". The only pain of living in Mumbai is avoiding these unwanted relatives from taking up valuable space in your tiny homes. Apart from that, there is no city like Mumbai, believe me.
If you want to live in Mumbai, you need to learn Mumbai's Marathi. Every sentence should have at least 3-4 English words. In fact while speaking, you should know that Mumbai has only two tenses - present and future. Mumbai doesn’t have a past tense. Mumbai, poor thing, doesn't have much of a past. She cares only about today and tomorrow. The Mumbaikar cares less about how fast Shivaji's horse galloped, and more about when the next fast local train is scheduled. It is only after you come to Mumbai that you realize that the minute hand in your watch is also of great significance. In any other city, you can go through life just paying attention to the hour hand but not so in Mumbai. In Mumbai your watch is tied not just to your wrist, but to your fate.
Mumbai might not have a rich history like Pune. But the only time a Mumbaikar feels passionate about the past is when he is talking about that special topic. You guessed it. Cricket. Cricket is the only sport that Mumbai recognizes. In other places, cricket is played on grounds and in fields. But in Mumbai, even corridors play host to legendary test matches. And please do not dwell under the misconception that to know about cricket you need to have handled a bat and a ball in your life. Remember, cricket is more about talking and less about playing. However you need to be well-versed with the history of cricket. You need not know any other history. In fact a true blue Mumbaikar is very likely to pose the question "You know that Battle of Panipat....where exactly in Pune did that happen?" to a Punekar, causing him to have apoplectic fits on the spot. But ask a Mumbaikar anything about the sport of Cricket, and you'll never find him wanting.
The way a Punekar can wax eloquence about his pantheon of "Bajirao, Nanasaheb, Narayanrao...", a Mumbaikar will launch into the exploits of "P Balu, CK Nayudu, Vijay Merchant...." right upto Gavaskar, Vengsarkar and Tendulkar.
The true blue Mumbaikar always had a special connection with the Brits. You see, Mumbai was never ruled by Mughals or Marathas. In fact Mumbai did not exist until the Brits built it. The Brits came and built Mumbai from scratch. So the first and last Kings of Mumbai were the Brits. Outsiders like Tilak and Gandhi needlessly came and stirred up trouble between the Mumbaikar and the Brit Saahib. Even today, the true Mumbaikar wells up with emotion when he looks at the old buildings in Fort and misses the Brits. So even though Pune retained its grace even after the extinction of the Peshwa dynasty and the horse carts, the Mumbaikar still misses the Brits and the good old trams. “Saala, they should have at least retained the Tram # 6.” The pain of the good old Mumbaikar while making this statement cannot be understood by anyone else.
Ok, so now... do you want to become a Punekar? Go ahead. We have no objections. But our advice is... Think again. Do you really want to? OK, if you insist then your preparation needs to be thorough. And once you are fully prepared, then being a Punekar is as enjoyable an experience as any.
Firstly, do not nurse the notion that you are inferior to anyone in any aspect of life. You are not. You are a superior being. Secondly, learn to express dissent on every issue possible. I mean seriously, stop thinking about minor things like who you are, how educated or rather uneducated you are, and what your achievements are..... Don’t think about any of these things and just express a contradictory opinion. Whatever the topic under discussion, your opinion needs to be strongly voiced, and it has to be contrarian. Even if the topic under discussion is "How to get the United States of America back out of the economic depression?", You should be able to freely express your contrarian opinion forgetting that are just an employee of the Rat Extermination Department in Pune Municipal Corporation. Don't let such inadequacies stop you from holding forth.
At least once every few hours you need to cluck your tongue making that disagreeing noise (chuk chuk chuk), shake your head and say "Pune just isn't the way it used to be." There are no age-related requirements for saying this. In Pune doddering geriatrics and school-going striplings are entitled to say "Pune just isn't the way it used to be" with matching conviction. So you will get to hear this statement with comforting regularity in offices, colleges, Pensioner Maruti’s hillock, Mandai (vegetable market) and even at most Kinder Gartens.
Marathi, or in general any language, exists in several forms in Pune. Public Speaking Puneri, Shopkeeper's Puneri, Domestic Puneri.... are all various dialects with little in common with each other. Here is a demonstration of the difference between the dialect used in private conversation and the dialect used for public speaking, with an example.
Imagine that a Prof. Bhamburdekar is talking about a Prof. Yelkuntkar with his wife –
"What nonsense! Yelkuntkar is being felicitated? Utter nonsense. Actually he should be thrashed with his own shoes. What is he being felicitated for? Translating the Rigved? More like transmutating the Rigved. But still he gets government grants, thousands of rupees."
NOTE- One of the typical ways for a Punekar to vent his anger about someone else is to rant about the money he is making.
"Yes, you fool! Live it up! Embezzle that money! Live the big life! Eat banana pudding and peas curry everyday!" continues Prof. Bhamburdekar.
The most superlative form of living the big life for a Punekar stops at these humble heights - eating banana pudding and peas curry everyday.
Now let me show you the transformation of this sample of private Puneri language into public Puneri language. Imagine, the same Prof. Bhamburdekar at the felicitation, giving a speech about Prof. Yelkuntkar.
"Felicitating Guruvarya Prof Yelkuntkar is like felicitating he Sun God of Scholarliness. Friends, today's date will be carved with gold in the annals of Pune's cultural history. This great teacher of mine.... I mean I have always considered him my teacher.... I am not sure if he considers me his student..."
At this point the audience laughs a little. According to Puneri Public Speaking rules, if you don't make the audience laugh after every third sentence, then it is termed as a FOUL. All aspiring Punekars should always keep this in mind.
"Now of course, in a way I am his student. Because when he was a teacher in the municipality schools, I was his student in Class 1"
See how cleverly he slipped in the information that Prof. Yelkuntkar was once just a school teacher in a rundown municipality school.
"His father was an employee of the nutritional department in the palace of the Sardar Panchapatlikar"
Another masterstroke.... the good professor's father was just a cook!
"Having spent his childhood in extreme poverty, Professor must be feeling great contentment living in his spacious bungalow in Aranyeshwar Colony"
i.e notice how he's embezzled all this money under the garb of education.
"Prof Yelkuntkar and our Honorable Education Minister have been friends right from their school days"
i.e now you know why he gets all those government grants he doesn't deserve.
So you see, unless you are Dale Carnegie, you will have to prepare a lot before your public speaking skills can match up to Puneri standards.
Now when it comes to Puneri language to be used in day to day life, the standards are pretty stringent too. Let me illustrate with another example. All over the world, the convention is that when you answer the phone it should be with a polite "Hello?" Not so in Pune.
In Pune when you answer the phone, your voice must take on that natural irritable brusqueness that descends when someone wakes you up from a Sunday afternoon nap, and you must yell "WHO’S THIS??" It helps to pretend that it costs you money not just to make a call, but also to receive a call.
Now if the caller responds with "Err...could you please get Mr. Gokhale to the phone?", then his non-Punekar status will be blindingly obvious even to a Puneri kid. A true Punekar will yell back testily "CALL GOKHALE TO THE PHONE".
"DAMN IT, THERE ARE 10 GOKHALES HERE. WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT?"
"GET THE GOKHALE THAT L.I.C PAYS TO SLEEP ON HIS JOB"
“HEY GANNU, someone is trying to find you like Crazy” muttering “Damn it, this Gannu gets a 1000 calls per day, god only knows who all, he has given this number.”
To be a true Punekar, you have to have a burning pride for something. Not just normal pride. Normal pride can be felt by anyone. It has to be fierce burning pride. It is not necessary to feel this pride only about major things like the life of Shivaji or Tilak. It could be something as flippant as the rank of your lane's Ganpati statue during the Ganpati immersion procession or even peanuts from the rural regions of Pune district. But no matter how flippant the issue is, the pride must be fierce and burning.
This burning pride is very helpful when you have to make dissenting arguments. So then, on the day of Tilak's Death Anniversary, you could tap into burning pride for Gopal Ganesh Agarkar. On the day of a cricket test match, you could tap into burning pride for kabaddi.
Expressing your dissent merely in private conversations is not enough to get you the Punekar tag. You need to frequently write in your dissenting opinion to the 'Letters to the editor' column. It does not even have to make sense.
Dissent is primary. Logic is secondary.
Now another art you need to perfect, and that too in a specialized Puneri way, is driving a bicycle. Just sitting on a bicycle and going all around town on it does not qualify you as a cyclist in Pune. The verb "driving" when it comes to cycles in Pune, is used in the same sense as "driving an axe into a block of wood" or "driving hordes towards revolution".
A bicycle in Pune is viewed, not as a means of transport, but something to sit on when you meet for chit-chat with a group of friends in the middle of the road. It really helps in training new traffic policemen. It also helps in making access to any building virtually impossible for pesky salesmen. Managing to cluster bikes together to construct such a barricade is as crucial as being able to extricate your own bike from the cluster without toppling others.
Bicycles should not be driven alone, in Pune. There should be at least 3 bikes together going parallel to each other in the middle of the road, at a leisurely speed while talking to each other. Your eyes should not be on the road, but on the walking-and-talking attractive scenery (read girls) on the road. Having unnecessary accoutrements like horns, mirrors, lights, indicators is a sign of cowardice on the streets of Pune.
In this way, as you are crossing various levels in the game "How to be a Punekar", you should in parallel keep up your efforts to become an office bearer in some social or cultural organisation or a Rotary Club. Holding a hollow post in a useless organization is central to the completeness of the Punekar's existence.
It is also necessary to attend as many lectures, talks and seminars as possible on topics as diverse and vacuous as "Shrimant Bajirao II’s beautiful Handwriting" or "Fungus on the Bajra crop". And after the lecture, it is imperative to catch hold of the speaker, and in full view of at least half a dozen people say to him with an earnest expression on your face "I would like to discuss this topic in more depth with you some time."
All this preparation should be enough to make you a normal Punekar. But if you want to operate a shop in Pune, you need more lessons. You especially need lessons on language. Only then will you be able to heap maximum insults on your customer in minimum possible words. Because in Pune, the verb "operating" a shop is used in the same sense as "operating a bull dozer" or "operating a machine gun". The most negligible entity in a shop in Pune, is the customer. This is the secret to operating a shop successfully in Pune.
A shop operated in this way can realistically make money only for 7-8 years until all the customers desert it. Once that happens, you can sell your shop to a Sindhi or a Marwari. The price of land must have appreciated enough to get you a hefty bank balance to last you for the remainder of your life. And you are free to conduct seminars and attend panel discussions on the topic "Why are Maharashtrians unsuccessful in business?" in the Tilak Smarak Mandir.
Summing it up, to become a Punekar, every action of yours should be aimed at ensuring a felicitation ceremony for you some years down the line.
Now, do you wish to be a Nagpurkar? This ambition of yours is very simple to be realized. The only pre-condition required is that you cannot live in Nagpur for this. All real Nagpurkar’s are always eager to show off how important they are. So, If you live in Pune or Mumbai, only then will you be able to show off in your Nagpuri style. Just keep praising Nagpur in comparision to any other city that you might be living in.
A Few examples:-
1. If, someone invites you to a lunch or dinner and serves you excellent home made ghee, you should immediately speak about “Varhaddi ghee”
2. Even if you are eating, Biriyani, you should say “Vada-Bhat tastes much better than this”
3. If the climate is very endearing cold, you should speak about “Nagpuri summer”, like “Nagpuri summer, man how beautiful it is, such tasty oranges, etc etc.” Keep doing this, till the person who is listening to you does not start sweating in that cold.
But all this should be done, only when you are living a bare minimum of 200 miles away from Nagpur. If you live in Nagpur and start showing off like this, the guy next to you will snap back, “Shut up. Why the heck are you building castles in the air?”
To become a Nagpurkar, you must always try and play the victim thinking that somebody is constantly trying to condemn or victimize you. And even, if we are offering only a cup of tea to a guest in our house, you should say “Man, you guys from Mumbai and Pune are very stingy, have your tea.”
You should develop a mindset such that outside of Nagpur, people do not appreciate food and drinks at all. But the catch is to refrain from going into the details of the items prepared, cause, a Goan guy will give you at least 20 types of preparing the “Bangda Fish” and the max that you can go is up to “Vada Bhat”, then it will become an embarrassing moment for you. In case you get caught up in such a debate, you should change the topic and bring it on your city’s specialties like Oranges and Cotton.
Because, a real Mumbaikar, trusts that Oranges are meant to be eaten with “Erandale” and cotton grows inside the mattresses and one day tears it apart and comes out of it.
If you want to show off about being a Nagpurkar in Mumbai, then ensure that the other person’s surname is Kulkarni or Dhurandar and then start in your Nagpuri special Hindi. Because, a real Mumbaikar doesn’t fear Ghosts as much as he fears Hindi.
That is because, just as the mother tongue of a Nagpuri Marathi Manus is Hindi, similarly the mother tongue of a Mumbai’s Marathi Manus is English. But this Mumbai English and the one spoken in UK has no relation whatsoever. Pune’s English came to life on the Banks of the Mula-Mutha River and was buried at Onkareshwar.
Nagpur, does not have to bother about English at all, because, according to a reputed linguist Pune’s English finds its roots in Sanskrit, Nagpur’s Hindi find its roots in Marathi and Mumbai’s Marathi finds its roots in English.
Now, the belief that to become a Nagpurkar, chewing Paan is very important is baseless. Paan gives you the best chance to show off that you are a true Nagpurkar. Imagine that you are invited by a friend living in Pune or Mumbai for lunch.
As soon as you finish your lunch, ask him out rightly, “Don’t you serve Paan after lunch?”
The poor Puneri/Mumbaikar guy feels embarrassed, and you have scored your point.
“Then, send someone to the nearest Thela and ask him to get it.” The poor host guy does not understand what a Thela is or whom to send there and again is embarrassed. You have scored your second point.
“If that’s not possible, ask someone to get some Supari at least”
Then in a jiffy the host sends someone out to the nearest shop and asks for Masala Supari. As soon as he gives it to you, the reply should be “Hutt.. This is Masala Supari, even Kids in our Nagpur don’t eat this” again the host guy is clean bold.
And after all this embarrassment, if he manages to get you a Paan then without thinking of anybody you should chomp on it and then spit straight out of the window. In case, the neighbors living below are forced to celebrate Holi, when the host goes down the next time, he will celebrate a forced Diwali. We should be undeterred. The point is to show off that we are real Nagpuri people.
A thing to note is that, even if you act too prudently from above, you should always project that you are very generous from the within.
For example;
If you are a Nagpurkar currently living in Mumbai and are going live there till and long after your retirement also, then too your should be insisting that your Mumbaikar friends like this, “Come to our Nagpur once in the orange season. We will have a lot of fun eating Oranges. Come and experience our hospitality” Now if you calculate correctly and add, the to and fro fare from Mumbai to Nagpur for a family.. Eating Oranges in Mumbai itself, would be a better and a cheaper option so no one will accept this invitation of yours so you do not have to worry.
Hmmm.. This is just a prologue of the entire book that has been written on this topic. The entire book is ready and waiting to be released, but whom to invite for the release ceremony.. a Mumbaikar, or a Punekar or a Nagpurkar is the only crisis that I am now facing.
Chitale Master -- A translated version.
In those days, once a kid in our village was admitted to kindergarten, his parents didn't take any interest in his studies until he passed or failed his HSC. The universal belief held by each parent was "The brat is under Chitale Master's charge now. He'll turn out OK."
Holding his dhoti in his left hand. Wearing a jacket which raised strong suspicions of having been blue in colour in the distant history. Head playing host to a black Nehru cap which faithfully pointed to the North East. A few strands of hair, only survivors against the unstoppable forces of baldness, sticking out of the cap. A moustache suspiciously similar to Lala Lajpat Rai's. In the remarkable event that they hadn't been forgotten in the school the previous day, sandals on the feet. Since the left hand was busy holding the end of the dhoti, the right one was left to handle the entire load of books. The right hand so hardwired to hold its position, that if there were no books to carry, it would still be next to the shoulder, empty, and holding up an index finger.
This is how you would describe Chitale Master on any day out of the past 30 years that he has been trampling the long distance between his house and the school. He taught me. He taught my uncles. And now he is teaching my nephews.
A few years back, folks in the village felicitated me after I returned from a visit to England. After the ceremony, Chitale Master walked up to me, patted my back proudly and said, "Purshya, Purshya, you've made the school proud. Tell me, did you go and see how Westminster Bridge looks at daybreak? Remember Wordsworth's poem? 'Earth has not anything to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pass by; A sight so touching in its.....?"
"Majesty", I said.
"That's right"
Old habits die hard. This habit of Chitale Master's was still alive and kicking. He would often make students say the last word in a line. My mind wandered back to his English period.
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care:
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so....?"
"FAIR", the whole class would yell in chorus. Starting with English in Class 1, right through high school, Chitale Master taught us many subjects. His area of expertise was English. But with the welcome exception of "Art" and "Drill", he would teach any subject. Two entities he never saw eye to eye with were the school bell and the time table. In those days, our school could not afford the luxury of hiring a separate teacher for each subject. 8-10 teachers managed to run the whole school.
Of course now, the school has swelled up, not unlike a river swelling up during monsoons. A huge building, each class with 8 divisions, two different shifts, two thousand kids, all these things make me realise how much the world has changed. Nowadays there are kids who don't know the names of their teachers... in my day, the teachers would know each and every student in the school by name.
Chitale Master would take additional free sessions at home, specifically for kids who were above average, and those who were lagging behind.
"Young Ashok is displaying unsatisfactory progress in Mathematics, and we would advise you to enroll him in some special tuitions".... notes of this kind from teachers to parents which are a norm today, were unheard of in those days.
If a child failed an exam, the teachers would take it as a blot on their own reputation. And a cane was as integral to the school's existence as chalk and blackboard. Chitale Master however never used the cane even once in his entire career.
His tongue itself was so acidic, the sting from it was enough to keep kids in check. If rarely he got really angry, then he would press the culprit's shoulder very hard with this thumb. And it hurt!
The vocabulary Chitale Master used in class was in a class of its own. Since English period was first, we would be sitting in the class with Nelson's textbook out on our desk. And Chitale Master would astound us by marching in like a soldier with a world map on his shoulders instead of a rifle. We all would start whispering among ourselves, trying to figure out this development. Right then Damu, the school peon who is as ancient as the bell he has the monopoly to wallop, would walk in with a huge world globe. Since he would carry the whole world in his hands, Chitale Master referred to him as 'Hercules'.
After the attendance had been taken, Chitale Master would address a sincere sort of a kid on the front bench and ask "Hmm...where did we stop in the last period?"
"Sir, it's English period!"
"Ack! Then when is the Geography period?"
"Third"
"Alright, then let's hold a memorial for Nelson in the third period. Now take out your Geography textbooks."
This exercise of taking out the textbooks was utterly futile. Chitale Master never taught anything by the book. Be it Geography, History, English or Maths, the only appropriate answer to the question "Which period is it?" was "Chitale Master's".
Which subject to pursue in the class was a decision taken after reaching a consensus post a lot of deliberations. And then Chitale Master would come into his element. All his life, Chitale Master taught many subjects. But there are some things he could never quite manage to do. For instance, drawing a map of India.
With a chalk in his hand he would be labouring over the blackboard for about ten minutes. And after all this trouble, a pitiful outline bearing at best a passing resemblence to the Indian map would materialise.
Eyeing his creation critically, he would joke, "Tell me children, is it just me or is India becoming more and more like South America these days?". The rolled up map which he would march in with was rarely if ever unrolled. After his attempts to draw the map successfully failed, he would say,
"Pandu, be a good boy and draw the map of your motherland"
Then Pandu Gharat, who was the budding artist of our class, would erase the board and draw a perfect map of India.
"Wow, splendid. God has really blessed your fingers." he would say effusively, "Anyway, now tell me Pandu Anna, where do the monsoon winds come from?"
Pandu Anna clean bowled!
Speaking of winds, I remember this one time when he was teaching us about land winds and sea winds.
"Hmm..Goda Akka, tell me, which direction is the wind blowing in right now?"
Teachers who refer to the girls in their class as "Miss Joshi", "Miss Sathe" etc had not even been conceived then. In fact when Mr. Deshmukh, who came to teach wearing a suit, a tie, and referred to girls as "Miss" first turned up in our school, we were all wondering where this child-sired-by-a-Brit had come from. All teachers in those days were the dhoti-types, who referred to the boys as "Bandya, Baalya, Yeshya, Purshya" and the girls as "Ay kusmey, chhabey, shantey, kamley".
Chitale Master however had this quirk of referring to the dumb kids in extremely respectful terms. Goda Gulawni was the encyclopedia entry for "dumb". Fair skinned, light eyes, built on the lines of a flour sack, dumb Goda attended school with great difficulty until 4th or 5th standard. Finally her father managed to find her a groom. Girls in India were married off very early in those days.
In her wedding, chitale Master said to to the groom, "She's my student, mind you. Great girl. Will make an ideal wife and run a family very well. But don't send her grocery shopping. Or else she'll buy 6 mangoes costing 12-annas-a-dozen for 14 annas. Am I right Goda Akka?"
Imagine that, he said this right at the wedding in front of everyone!
While leaving, Goda first touched her father's feet, and then touched Chitale Master's. I could see that he kept his emotions in check with great effort. As Goda crossed the threshold, he discreetly wiped his eyes. Balu Paranjape and I were the only ones who noticed it.
"Look look, Master is crying", Balue said out loud with the tact of a crazed dictator.
"Heh, they jump around in your front yard like sparrows for a few years, and then fly away with a flutter, don't they?", Master said to Goda's father.
This very Goda, whose wedding he cried in, was the butt of so many of his jokes in class, that if it were to happen today, parents would have sent the Principal a "note" complaining about it. But parents in our day? Nah, they were of a different bent of mind. In fact if a father came to know that his child had been caned by the teacher in school, he would ensure an encore at home.
Back to the time in the class,
"Godakka, which direction is the wind blowing in?". Goda silently stayed put on the desk, like a resolute flour sack in a grocer's store room.
"Damn you, move that ass and get up at the very least"
Telling an adolescent girl to move her ass might be inappropriate is a thought that never crossed either Chitale Master's mind or the students' minds.
Goda got up, pouted her lips, and did her best impersonation of a statue in summertime.
"OK, now tell me, which direction is the wind blowing in?"
Goda still silent. Then Chitale Master got exasperated and said,
"Goda Akka, use your head a bit. Look at the pallu of your sari. Which direction is it fluttering in? Is it fluttering towards the sea or away from it? Ramu, you tell us."
Then Ramu Gogate got up and confidently commanded Goda, "Hey Goda, stand up properly."
"Why are you asking her to do that, Ramu?" Chitale Master asked
"How else will I see her pallu properly?" Ramu said innocently.
"You idiot, why the hell do you need to see her pallu?"
"How else will I know if the wind is blowing towards the sea or land?"
"You dumbass, are you going to make Goda to stand in front of you during the exam?" Master thundered. "Idiot, it is daytime. During daytime, is it sea winds which blow or land winds?"
Then the entire class had to repeat after him a dozen times "The winds during the daytime are..". And after that, we also had to repeat "You dont need Goda's pallu to tell which direction the wind is blowing in."
Mugging up, commiting things to memory, were concepts that Chitale Master firmly believed in. But even this memorising was done in a way that was fun. His whole period would be fun. We would never realise when the hour was up. Often the teacher for the next period would be standing at the door, annoyed and waiting for Master to leave.
Chitale Master was very absent-minded. Forgeting his sandals in the classroom was a regular occurence. Then one of the students would take them to him in the next class. Master of course would not let go of the opportunity to make a wisecrack,
"Bharat took care of Ram's sandals for 14 years, and you brats can't keep them with you for even an hour?"
In 12th, a few students would he handpicked by Chitale Master to attend special coaching sessions at his house. These free sessions would happen early in the morning. His wife would give us something special for breakfast. He taught these sessions in a very different way from his classes. Even today I remember those sessions fondly. In those classes, I learnt Raghuvansh, I learnt the poetry of Tennyson and Wordsworth. In the batches before us, quite a few of his specially coached students had won the Jagannath Shankarsheth Scholarship. No one in our batch managed it. So after our results came out, were were a bit embarassed as we went to meet him.
"Aunty" he said... Chitale Master's wife was called Aunty not just by the kids, but by him too. "Aunty, the children are here. Bring out those sweet coconut dumplings."
Then he said to me, "You must join Elphinstone College, alright? I had told your father this. Don't go to some shady college. If you decide on going to Pune, then Fergusson.I warn you. And in Bombay, which college?"
"Elphinstone."
"Spell it!"
Aunty came out with the dumplings and said "They're sprouting moustaches and you're still giving them spelling tests?"
"So where are you going? Mumbai or Pune?"
"I don't know. Wherever father decides", I said.
And it is at this point that the path of Chitale Master diverged from mine. Staying in touch regularly was not possible. But almost every day I still apply what I learnt from him. For instance, his strict rule of "Only 8 words in a line". He would threaten us,
"If I see even a single line with 9 words, I will draw a lovely egg on your answer paper", and he even came good on this threat a few times.
One evening, I was sitting in my house in Bombay when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to see Chitale Master standing there. Still the same. The same coat, the same north-easterly cap, and the same right hand near the shoulder.
"Chitale Master? How great to see you!"
"Your Bombay is quite a place, Purshya" he said as he walked in.
"Why? What happened" I asked as my wife took his bag from him.
"I'll tell you what happened....hey, careful with that bag. It has mangoes. Don't bang it somewhere like a clumsy oaf."
My wife used to be his student as well, so he does not need to mince words with either of us.
"So tell me, what wrong did Bombay inflict on you?"
"I knew the place you used to live at earlier. This part, Worli, is relatively new to me. Had come here a few years back for a Boy Scouts Jamboree. It was almost like a jungle then. And look at it now. I couldn't find your building for a long time. Now you... you are Lokmanya Tilak's father."
"What???"
"I mean you are famous. So I thought everyone would know where you lived. Shame on you, even the paanwaala downstairs doesn't know. I told him you are a writer, into theatre, had recently been abroad. And do you know what he said to me?"
"What did he say?"
"He said, sir, nowadays even street sweepers go abroad. He's right actually. You are a big name for us. Why would others know you that well? But you should do something. Give the paanwaala free tickets for your play. At least he'll tell people the directions to your house respectfully."
"Anyway, when did you arrive?"
"Have been in Bombay for ten days. Living with Janu Panshe. Was he in your class? No no, he was in the batch of 38. Dumb son of a bitch. Couldn't tell the difference between Bajirao and Abdali if his life depended on it."
"So what brings you to Bombay?"
"Begging for donations, what else? We're building an open air theatre for the school.."
"What are you building?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly.
"Open air theatre. Why are you looking so surprised? You're a theatre guy yourself. The government is paying for half the expenses. We have to gather the other half. You know last year, our school won the district play competition."
"Our school?"
"Yes, our school. We performed "Bebandshahi". Jilgya Pavshekar's son did a superb job as Sambhaji. The audience was applauding for nearly ten minutes."
All this was new and surprising for me.
"And you let people do all this? Remember, when I had suggested that we perform a play for our school gathering, you kicked me out of the class?"
"Purshya, come on. Times have changed. In fact our special early morning sessions have stopped. The school itself starts at 7 am. There's a shift in the morning and a shift in the afternoon. It's become a factory, I tell you. 52 teachers in the school, but sun and moon."
"Sun and moon?"
"It means they're in the same sky, but when one rises, the other sets."
"Ok ok. Anyway, stay for dinner."
"No no, can't do that. Dinner's at Nuru Kazi's place. Ismail Kazi's son. Smart guy. Batch of 40. He's in the Education Ministry now. He's the one who arranged for this open air theatre grant. Helps us out a lot. Really smart guy. Has an amazing command over English. He was telling me something funny the other day. A new officer joined his department. His file was sent to Nuru. In the file, he noticed, every line had 8 words. So Nuru called up the guy and said "Joglekar?". He said "Yes sir?". Nuru said "Are you Chitale Master's student?". That Jogalekar almost hit the roof in amazement. "How did you guess, sir?". So Nuru said, "In one place in your file, you rubbed out the ninth word and wrote it in the next line"."
"So you're going to Kazi's place for dinner?"
"Yes, I have warned him - if you feed me meat, then I'll go to your Education Minister and tell him you were caught cheating on your geography exam in 3rd."
"So what will you have? Tea? Coffee?"
"Whatever your better half gives me. Speaking of better halves, Aunty speaks of you often."
"Is she doing fine?"
"Developed cataract."
"Oh. Sorry to hear that."
Something has been bothering me for a while. Finally I said,
"Master, what is all this about building a theatre in the school?"
"What's the matter with you? You're from the same line, and yet you're bring so weird about it. I tell you, if you had seen our "Bebandshahi", you would have patted my back."
"Your back?"
"Well I directed it, didn't I?"
This was surprising news. "You were the director?" I asked with my mouth agape.
"Yes, did you think you're the only director in the world? Got all the kids to mug up the lines properly. Not just their own lines, but everyone's. The entire cast knew the entire play by heart. We'd meet at 5 a.m. for rehearsel every day. These kids are such brats, I'll tell you. Usually they turn up for school at 7 a.m. as if they are sleepwalking zombies. But when it comes to acting, everyone from Sambhaji to Aurangzeb was on time, fresh as a daisy at 5 a.m."
"But why did you make everyone memorize the whole play?" I asked when I managed to get a word in.
"Why not? If some kid fell ill at the last minute, it would ruin the whole play. By the way, we inaugurated the play by breaking a coconut at an auspicious muhurat. I don't believe in this astrological nonsense, but strangely, these kids, quarter my age, insisted on it. I don't get these kids of today, Purshya. No one wears a cap these days. They may not have a pen in their pockets, but they'll have a comb for sure. Each one has a different hairstyle. Modern in so many ways. And yet, they'll look for muhurats, wear rings and lockets given by various babas and swamis. This is really puzzling, really puzzling. You know, after this second world war and independence, the world seems to have turned upside down. Nothing makes sense."
"For how many days are you in Bombay"
"Leaving in two days"
"Then come for dinner tomorrow"
"Alright."
"But will you be able to find the house again?"
"That's a good point. Actually I should not have trouble locating houses in Bombay. After all I am a Wilson alumnus. In those days Wilson was more affordable than Elphinstone. McKenzie was the Principal. Dedicated man. It was the dedication of men like him that inspired me to take up teaching. I did try to work in the Collector's Office for a few days. But they found a copy of Tilak's 'Kesri' in my pocket and kicked me out. I went to meet McKenzie before I left Bombay. He asked me what I planned to do next. Told him I wanted to become a teacher. He felt so proud. Ah those days. In those days our college would look majestic on the Chowpatty. Now it's just shrunk into insignificance between bigger buildings. The waves of the Arabian Sea are the same as before. Other than that everything has....?"
"Changed" my wife and I completed his sentence together.
"I'll come to pick you up. Where will you be?" I asked.
"In the evening I will be with... oh yes, from your batch, Mukund Patankar."
"Oh, Hindu Colony?"
"Yes. He's also doing very well. Owns a car! He took me to see a lot of places in it when I visited last year. Come to think of it, I do own about 5-6 cars in Mumbai... hehehe"
Chitale Master's childlike laughter was still intact.
The next evening I went to Mukund's place.
"Is Chitale Master there?" I asked him
"Yes, he's in the other room. Telling Baby a story." Baby was Mukund's 6 year old daughter who had been bed-ridden for a year since she developed polio. I entered the room and saw Chitale Master in full flow. It was a story about some Prince. Both Master and Baby were completely engrossed in the story, oblivious to everything else. In the story, when the Prince's airplane took off, Master spread his arms and ran around the room to act it out.
Mukund and I looked at each other. There were tears in Mukund's eyes.
"Every day that he's been here, he comes in the evening to tell Baby a story." Mukund said to me.
Chitale Master's story was about to end.
"....and so the Prince and the Princess lived happily ever.....?"
"After", Baby, Mukund and I said at the same time.
Master and I got into the taxi.
"Wait I'll be back" I said to him
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing, providing an old service. Noticed that your feet are bare. You've forgotten your sandals again."
"Oh, let it be. I'll be coming here again tomorrow anyway."
"No no, I'll get them"
I ran upstairs. Spotting Master's sandals from the rack in Mukund's house was not very difficult.
They were the ones with the most worn out soles.
Holding his dhoti in his left hand. Wearing a jacket which raised strong suspicions of having been blue in colour in the distant history. Head playing host to a black Nehru cap which faithfully pointed to the North East. A few strands of hair, only survivors against the unstoppable forces of baldness, sticking out of the cap. A moustache suspiciously similar to Lala Lajpat Rai's. In the remarkable event that they hadn't been forgotten in the school the previous day, sandals on the feet. Since the left hand was busy holding the end of the dhoti, the right one was left to handle the entire load of books. The right hand so hardwired to hold its position, that if there were no books to carry, it would still be next to the shoulder, empty, and holding up an index finger.
This is how you would describe Chitale Master on any day out of the past 30 years that he has been trampling the long distance between his house and the school. He taught me. He taught my uncles. And now he is teaching my nephews.
A few years back, folks in the village felicitated me after I returned from a visit to England. After the ceremony, Chitale Master walked up to me, patted my back proudly and said, "Purshya, Purshya, you've made the school proud. Tell me, did you go and see how Westminster Bridge looks at daybreak? Remember Wordsworth's poem? 'Earth has not anything to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pass by; A sight so touching in its.....?"
"Majesty", I said.
"That's right"
Old habits die hard. This habit of Chitale Master's was still alive and kicking. He would often make students say the last word in a line. My mind wandered back to his English period.
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care:
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so....?"
"FAIR", the whole class would yell in chorus. Starting with English in Class 1, right through high school, Chitale Master taught us many subjects. His area of expertise was English. But with the welcome exception of "Art" and "Drill", he would teach any subject. Two entities he never saw eye to eye with were the school bell and the time table. In those days, our school could not afford the luxury of hiring a separate teacher for each subject. 8-10 teachers managed to run the whole school.
Of course now, the school has swelled up, not unlike a river swelling up during monsoons. A huge building, each class with 8 divisions, two different shifts, two thousand kids, all these things make me realise how much the world has changed. Nowadays there are kids who don't know the names of their teachers... in my day, the teachers would know each and every student in the school by name.
Chitale Master would take additional free sessions at home, specifically for kids who were above average, and those who were lagging behind.
"Young Ashok is displaying unsatisfactory progress in Mathematics, and we would advise you to enroll him in some special tuitions".... notes of this kind from teachers to parents which are a norm today, were unheard of in those days.
If a child failed an exam, the teachers would take it as a blot on their own reputation. And a cane was as integral to the school's existence as chalk and blackboard. Chitale Master however never used the cane even once in his entire career.
His tongue itself was so acidic, the sting from it was enough to keep kids in check. If rarely he got really angry, then he would press the culprit's shoulder very hard with this thumb. And it hurt!
The vocabulary Chitale Master used in class was in a class of its own. Since English period was first, we would be sitting in the class with Nelson's textbook out on our desk. And Chitale Master would astound us by marching in like a soldier with a world map on his shoulders instead of a rifle. We all would start whispering among ourselves, trying to figure out this development. Right then Damu, the school peon who is as ancient as the bell he has the monopoly to wallop, would walk in with a huge world globe. Since he would carry the whole world in his hands, Chitale Master referred to him as 'Hercules'.
After the attendance had been taken, Chitale Master would address a sincere sort of a kid on the front bench and ask "Hmm...where did we stop in the last period?"
"Sir, it's English period!"
"Ack! Then when is the Geography period?"
"Third"
"Alright, then let's hold a memorial for Nelson in the third period. Now take out your Geography textbooks."
This exercise of taking out the textbooks was utterly futile. Chitale Master never taught anything by the book. Be it Geography, History, English or Maths, the only appropriate answer to the question "Which period is it?" was "Chitale Master's".
Which subject to pursue in the class was a decision taken after reaching a consensus post a lot of deliberations. And then Chitale Master would come into his element. All his life, Chitale Master taught many subjects. But there are some things he could never quite manage to do. For instance, drawing a map of India.
With a chalk in his hand he would be labouring over the blackboard for about ten minutes. And after all this trouble, a pitiful outline bearing at best a passing resemblence to the Indian map would materialise.
Eyeing his creation critically, he would joke, "Tell me children, is it just me or is India becoming more and more like South America these days?". The rolled up map which he would march in with was rarely if ever unrolled. After his attempts to draw the map successfully failed, he would say,
"Pandu, be a good boy and draw the map of your motherland"
Then Pandu Gharat, who was the budding artist of our class, would erase the board and draw a perfect map of India.
"Wow, splendid. God has really blessed your fingers." he would say effusively, "Anyway, now tell me Pandu Anna, where do the monsoon winds come from?"
Pandu Anna clean bowled!
Speaking of winds, I remember this one time when he was teaching us about land winds and sea winds.
"Hmm..Goda Akka, tell me, which direction is the wind blowing in right now?"
Teachers who refer to the girls in their class as "Miss Joshi", "Miss Sathe" etc had not even been conceived then. In fact when Mr. Deshmukh, who came to teach wearing a suit, a tie, and referred to girls as "Miss" first turned up in our school, we were all wondering where this child-sired-by-a-Brit had come from. All teachers in those days were the dhoti-types, who referred to the boys as "Bandya, Baalya, Yeshya, Purshya" and the girls as "Ay kusmey, chhabey, shantey, kamley".
Chitale Master however had this quirk of referring to the dumb kids in extremely respectful terms. Goda Gulawni was the encyclopedia entry for "dumb". Fair skinned, light eyes, built on the lines of a flour sack, dumb Goda attended school with great difficulty until 4th or 5th standard. Finally her father managed to find her a groom. Girls in India were married off very early in those days.
In her wedding, chitale Master said to to the groom, "She's my student, mind you. Great girl. Will make an ideal wife and run a family very well. But don't send her grocery shopping. Or else she'll buy 6 mangoes costing 12-annas-a-dozen for 14 annas. Am I right Goda Akka?"
Imagine that, he said this right at the wedding in front of everyone!
While leaving, Goda first touched her father's feet, and then touched Chitale Master's. I could see that he kept his emotions in check with great effort. As Goda crossed the threshold, he discreetly wiped his eyes. Balu Paranjape and I were the only ones who noticed it.
"Look look, Master is crying", Balue said out loud with the tact of a crazed dictator.
"Heh, they jump around in your front yard like sparrows for a few years, and then fly away with a flutter, don't they?", Master said to Goda's father.
This very Goda, whose wedding he cried in, was the butt of so many of his jokes in class, that if it were to happen today, parents would have sent the Principal a "note" complaining about it. But parents in our day? Nah, they were of a different bent of mind. In fact if a father came to know that his child had been caned by the teacher in school, he would ensure an encore at home.
Back to the time in the class,
"Godakka, which direction is the wind blowing in?". Goda silently stayed put on the desk, like a resolute flour sack in a grocer's store room.
"Damn you, move that ass and get up at the very least"
Telling an adolescent girl to move her ass might be inappropriate is a thought that never crossed either Chitale Master's mind or the students' minds.
Goda got up, pouted her lips, and did her best impersonation of a statue in summertime.
"OK, now tell me, which direction is the wind blowing in?"
Goda still silent. Then Chitale Master got exasperated and said,
"Goda Akka, use your head a bit. Look at the pallu of your sari. Which direction is it fluttering in? Is it fluttering towards the sea or away from it? Ramu, you tell us."
Then Ramu Gogate got up and confidently commanded Goda, "Hey Goda, stand up properly."
"Why are you asking her to do that, Ramu?" Chitale Master asked
"How else will I see her pallu properly?" Ramu said innocently.
"You idiot, why the hell do you need to see her pallu?"
"How else will I know if the wind is blowing towards the sea or land?"
"You dumbass, are you going to make Goda to stand in front of you during the exam?" Master thundered. "Idiot, it is daytime. During daytime, is it sea winds which blow or land winds?"
Then the entire class had to repeat after him a dozen times "The winds during the daytime are..". And after that, we also had to repeat "You dont need Goda's pallu to tell which direction the wind is blowing in."
Mugging up, commiting things to memory, were concepts that Chitale Master firmly believed in. But even this memorising was done in a way that was fun. His whole period would be fun. We would never realise when the hour was up. Often the teacher for the next period would be standing at the door, annoyed and waiting for Master to leave.
Chitale Master was very absent-minded. Forgeting his sandals in the classroom was a regular occurence. Then one of the students would take them to him in the next class. Master of course would not let go of the opportunity to make a wisecrack,
"Bharat took care of Ram's sandals for 14 years, and you brats can't keep them with you for even an hour?"
In 12th, a few students would he handpicked by Chitale Master to attend special coaching sessions at his house. These free sessions would happen early in the morning. His wife would give us something special for breakfast. He taught these sessions in a very different way from his classes. Even today I remember those sessions fondly. In those classes, I learnt Raghuvansh, I learnt the poetry of Tennyson and Wordsworth. In the batches before us, quite a few of his specially coached students had won the Jagannath Shankarsheth Scholarship. No one in our batch managed it. So after our results came out, were were a bit embarassed as we went to meet him.
"Aunty" he said... Chitale Master's wife was called Aunty not just by the kids, but by him too. "Aunty, the children are here. Bring out those sweet coconut dumplings."
Then he said to me, "You must join Elphinstone College, alright? I had told your father this. Don't go to some shady college. If you decide on going to Pune, then Fergusson.I warn you. And in Bombay, which college?"
"Elphinstone."
"Spell it!"
Aunty came out with the dumplings and said "They're sprouting moustaches and you're still giving them spelling tests?"
"So where are you going? Mumbai or Pune?"
"I don't know. Wherever father decides", I said.
And it is at this point that the path of Chitale Master diverged from mine. Staying in touch regularly was not possible. But almost every day I still apply what I learnt from him. For instance, his strict rule of "Only 8 words in a line". He would threaten us,
"If I see even a single line with 9 words, I will draw a lovely egg on your answer paper", and he even came good on this threat a few times.
One evening, I was sitting in my house in Bombay when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to see Chitale Master standing there. Still the same. The same coat, the same north-easterly cap, and the same right hand near the shoulder.
"Chitale Master? How great to see you!"
"Your Bombay is quite a place, Purshya" he said as he walked in.
"Why? What happened" I asked as my wife took his bag from him.
"I'll tell you what happened....hey, careful with that bag. It has mangoes. Don't bang it somewhere like a clumsy oaf."
My wife used to be his student as well, so he does not need to mince words with either of us.
"So tell me, what wrong did Bombay inflict on you?"
"I knew the place you used to live at earlier. This part, Worli, is relatively new to me. Had come here a few years back for a Boy Scouts Jamboree. It was almost like a jungle then. And look at it now. I couldn't find your building for a long time. Now you... you are Lokmanya Tilak's father."
"What???"
"I mean you are famous. So I thought everyone would know where you lived. Shame on you, even the paanwaala downstairs doesn't know. I told him you are a writer, into theatre, had recently been abroad. And do you know what he said to me?"
"What did he say?"
"He said, sir, nowadays even street sweepers go abroad. He's right actually. You are a big name for us. Why would others know you that well? But you should do something. Give the paanwaala free tickets for your play. At least he'll tell people the directions to your house respectfully."
"Anyway, when did you arrive?"
"Have been in Bombay for ten days. Living with Janu Panshe. Was he in your class? No no, he was in the batch of 38. Dumb son of a bitch. Couldn't tell the difference between Bajirao and Abdali if his life depended on it."
"So what brings you to Bombay?"
"Begging for donations, what else? We're building an open air theatre for the school.."
"What are you building?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly.
"Open air theatre. Why are you looking so surprised? You're a theatre guy yourself. The government is paying for half the expenses. We have to gather the other half. You know last year, our school won the district play competition."
"Our school?"
"Yes, our school. We performed "Bebandshahi". Jilgya Pavshekar's son did a superb job as Sambhaji. The audience was applauding for nearly ten minutes."
All this was new and surprising for me.
"And you let people do all this? Remember, when I had suggested that we perform a play for our school gathering, you kicked me out of the class?"
"Purshya, come on. Times have changed. In fact our special early morning sessions have stopped. The school itself starts at 7 am. There's a shift in the morning and a shift in the afternoon. It's become a factory, I tell you. 52 teachers in the school, but sun and moon."
"Sun and moon?"
"It means they're in the same sky, but when one rises, the other sets."
"Ok ok. Anyway, stay for dinner."
"No no, can't do that. Dinner's at Nuru Kazi's place. Ismail Kazi's son. Smart guy. Batch of 40. He's in the Education Ministry now. He's the one who arranged for this open air theatre grant. Helps us out a lot. Really smart guy. Has an amazing command over English. He was telling me something funny the other day. A new officer joined his department. His file was sent to Nuru. In the file, he noticed, every line had 8 words. So Nuru called up the guy and said "Joglekar?". He said "Yes sir?". Nuru said "Are you Chitale Master's student?". That Jogalekar almost hit the roof in amazement. "How did you guess, sir?". So Nuru said, "In one place in your file, you rubbed out the ninth word and wrote it in the next line"."
"So you're going to Kazi's place for dinner?"
"Yes, I have warned him - if you feed me meat, then I'll go to your Education Minister and tell him you were caught cheating on your geography exam in 3rd."
"So what will you have? Tea? Coffee?"
"Whatever your better half gives me. Speaking of better halves, Aunty speaks of you often."
"Is she doing fine?"
"Developed cataract."
"Oh. Sorry to hear that."
Something has been bothering me for a while. Finally I said,
"Master, what is all this about building a theatre in the school?"
"What's the matter with you? You're from the same line, and yet you're bring so weird about it. I tell you, if you had seen our "Bebandshahi", you would have patted my back."
"Your back?"
"Well I directed it, didn't I?"
This was surprising news. "You were the director?" I asked with my mouth agape.
"Yes, did you think you're the only director in the world? Got all the kids to mug up the lines properly. Not just their own lines, but everyone's. The entire cast knew the entire play by heart. We'd meet at 5 a.m. for rehearsel every day. These kids are such brats, I'll tell you. Usually they turn up for school at 7 a.m. as if they are sleepwalking zombies. But when it comes to acting, everyone from Sambhaji to Aurangzeb was on time, fresh as a daisy at 5 a.m."
"But why did you make everyone memorize the whole play?" I asked when I managed to get a word in.
"Why not? If some kid fell ill at the last minute, it would ruin the whole play. By the way, we inaugurated the play by breaking a coconut at an auspicious muhurat. I don't believe in this astrological nonsense, but strangely, these kids, quarter my age, insisted on it. I don't get these kids of today, Purshya. No one wears a cap these days. They may not have a pen in their pockets, but they'll have a comb for sure. Each one has a different hairstyle. Modern in so many ways. And yet, they'll look for muhurats, wear rings and lockets given by various babas and swamis. This is really puzzling, really puzzling. You know, after this second world war and independence, the world seems to have turned upside down. Nothing makes sense."
"For how many days are you in Bombay"
"Leaving in two days"
"Then come for dinner tomorrow"
"Alright."
"But will you be able to find the house again?"
"That's a good point. Actually I should not have trouble locating houses in Bombay. After all I am a Wilson alumnus. In those days Wilson was more affordable than Elphinstone. McKenzie was the Principal. Dedicated man. It was the dedication of men like him that inspired me to take up teaching. I did try to work in the Collector's Office for a few days. But they found a copy of Tilak's 'Kesri' in my pocket and kicked me out. I went to meet McKenzie before I left Bombay. He asked me what I planned to do next. Told him I wanted to become a teacher. He felt so proud. Ah those days. In those days our college would look majestic on the Chowpatty. Now it's just shrunk into insignificance between bigger buildings. The waves of the Arabian Sea are the same as before. Other than that everything has....?"
"Changed" my wife and I completed his sentence together.
"I'll come to pick you up. Where will you be?" I asked.
"In the evening I will be with... oh yes, from your batch, Mukund Patankar."
"Oh, Hindu Colony?"
"Yes. He's also doing very well. Owns a car! He took me to see a lot of places in it when I visited last year. Come to think of it, I do own about 5-6 cars in Mumbai... hehehe"
Chitale Master's childlike laughter was still intact.
The next evening I went to Mukund's place.
"Is Chitale Master there?" I asked him
"Yes, he's in the other room. Telling Baby a story." Baby was Mukund's 6 year old daughter who had been bed-ridden for a year since she developed polio. I entered the room and saw Chitale Master in full flow. It was a story about some Prince. Both Master and Baby were completely engrossed in the story, oblivious to everything else. In the story, when the Prince's airplane took off, Master spread his arms and ran around the room to act it out.
Mukund and I looked at each other. There were tears in Mukund's eyes.
"Every day that he's been here, he comes in the evening to tell Baby a story." Mukund said to me.
Chitale Master's story was about to end.
"....and so the Prince and the Princess lived happily ever.....?"
"After", Baby, Mukund and I said at the same time.
Master and I got into the taxi.
"Wait I'll be back" I said to him
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing, providing an old service. Noticed that your feet are bare. You've forgotten your sandals again."
"Oh, let it be. I'll be coming here again tomorrow anyway."
"No no, I'll get them"
I ran upstairs. Spotting Master's sandals from the rack in Mukund's house was not very difficult.
They were the ones with the most worn out soles.
Home and Away
Coming back to blogging is something that I had wanted to do for a very long time. But the lazy bum in me kept winning and my blogger self made peace with losing all the time. Coming back to blogging was also not something of a spontaneous decision and its not like I feel inspired and I need to change the entire society and will launch a crusade via blogging. It is just that for a long time, I didn't feel anything was worth writing about.
I was born in Bangalore and don't remember much about the event, though my folks keep telling me that it happened on a cold wintry evening on the 12 of December one fine year. My dad remembers it clearly because he was watching an India Vs Pakistan cricket match on TV that day. :) Anyways, I don't intend to write about my birth and things associated with it and bore most of you readers.
The thing that I took a fancy for writing this time is how is living different at home and away. All my friends who are die hard football fanatics, I am sorry. This is not about any of the Leagues played in Europe. It plainly is about how life is different in your home town and in any other city or a town.
As I said, I was born in Bangalore. I grew up in Pune and Mumbai. After completing my entire academic life, I joined a MNC in Pune. 2 months down the line, an opportunity came up in Chennai and I took it up. Lots of people gave me lots of advice about the place. I was given advice about how to live in a place which is not home. And it is funny when such advices pour in. You then get to see how much free advice we Indians can give to each other. So, armed with tons and tons of friendly, scary, sound, sympathetic and even a few outrageous advices, I landed in Chennai. A lot of people openly told that Chennai was one of the scariest places to live, especially if you are living outside your house for the first time. I cared a damn for such advices and decided to make my own experiences count. The problem is if you heed to such advices, you always tend to live on them. Your own sense of adventurism is lost. If you look down upon an opportunity to live in a city which is not your own, as a jail sentence you will never tend to enjoy it. I mean, lets face it no matter where you come from home will always remain home.
I had friends of my sister coming from a remote hamlet in Bihar and telling tales of how their hamlet was better than Pune. I had a few friends of my own telling me how cities in MP were better than Mumbai. Even now, I get to hear stories of how Jaipur has better infrastructure than Bangalore. I, for one cannot accept that a hamlet in Bihar can be any better than the 2nd most important city in one of the most important states of the country. I do however accept that it is someone’s hometown and they will tend to like more than Pune. I absolutely don’t accept that a city in MP can compete with the metro/cosmopolitan city called Mumbai. If that was the case, the city in MP would have been a metro city. I do however accept that it is home to may people and all of them will like their city more than Mumbai. I have no qualms with that. On the same note, if you tell me that Jaipur is more technological advanced and has better infrastructure then my question to you is, what is Japiur’s population? And why is it that the Rajasthani’s make up for a sizable chunk migrant population in India? If all is well in Jaipur, why set up home in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi?
I just want to say, a place which is not your hometown will never be able to live up to your expectations. I was one of the people who did not want to get adjusted to Chennai as I thought I would be betraying my own city Pune. I complained and grumbled a lot about the language, climate, the dirty smell, the unkempt beaches and virtually everything about the city. But then no one bothered about it. I had to let go of myself to realize that this city is home to millions. If I complain about it, I don’t make myself any different from what I hated the most .. people complaining about Pune. That is when I came about and made my peace with it. It did take time and was a long and slow process. But if you don’t do that the only person left whining is you and no one else bothers. So as a humble request to all people who are not living in your own hometowns, stop complaining. Don’t live in an another city and compare it everyday to how it is worse than your hometown.
Don’t complain that you don’t get good Paneer in Chennai. You get the best Idli’s and Dosa’s in the whole wide world at Murugan Idli Shop in Besant Nagar, Chennai. Not to mention a divine connection that you can make via food at Hotel Anna Lakshmi on Anna Salai.
Don’t bother giving details about the high quality infrastructure that the capital has as compared to Bangalore … Delhi has to have it. Bangalore was built despite being out of sync with the centre in the last fifteen years. If you can, then be grateful that you have peace, tranquility and safety for your women here of which the capital can hardly provide.
Don’t boast about how your city in MP is a religious place and people from 3 different religions can pray at a one specific spot. Dadar (West) has had it for decades now and it still stands as a mark of solidarity in the city.
The bottom line is if you keep whining, the only person listening to you is you yourself or some other random guy. ;) Think about it.
I was born in Bangalore and don't remember much about the event, though my folks keep telling me that it happened on a cold wintry evening on the 12 of December one fine year. My dad remembers it clearly because he was watching an India Vs Pakistan cricket match on TV that day. :) Anyways, I don't intend to write about my birth and things associated with it and bore most of you readers.
The thing that I took a fancy for writing this time is how is living different at home and away. All my friends who are die hard football fanatics, I am sorry. This is not about any of the Leagues played in Europe. It plainly is about how life is different in your home town and in any other city or a town.
As I said, I was born in Bangalore. I grew up in Pune and Mumbai. After completing my entire academic life, I joined a MNC in Pune. 2 months down the line, an opportunity came up in Chennai and I took it up. Lots of people gave me lots of advice about the place. I was given advice about how to live in a place which is not home. And it is funny when such advices pour in. You then get to see how much free advice we Indians can give to each other. So, armed with tons and tons of friendly, scary, sound, sympathetic and even a few outrageous advices, I landed in Chennai. A lot of people openly told that Chennai was one of the scariest places to live, especially if you are living outside your house for the first time. I cared a damn for such advices and decided to make my own experiences count. The problem is if you heed to such advices, you always tend to live on them. Your own sense of adventurism is lost. If you look down upon an opportunity to live in a city which is not your own, as a jail sentence you will never tend to enjoy it. I mean, lets face it no matter where you come from home will always remain home.
I had friends of my sister coming from a remote hamlet in Bihar and telling tales of how their hamlet was better than Pune. I had a few friends of my own telling me how cities in MP were better than Mumbai. Even now, I get to hear stories of how Jaipur has better infrastructure than Bangalore. I, for one cannot accept that a hamlet in Bihar can be any better than the 2nd most important city in one of the most important states of the country. I do however accept that it is someone’s hometown and they will tend to like more than Pune. I absolutely don’t accept that a city in MP can compete with the metro/cosmopolitan city called Mumbai. If that was the case, the city in MP would have been a metro city. I do however accept that it is home to may people and all of them will like their city more than Mumbai. I have no qualms with that. On the same note, if you tell me that Jaipur is more technological advanced and has better infrastructure then my question to you is, what is Japiur’s population? And why is it that the Rajasthani’s make up for a sizable chunk migrant population in India? If all is well in Jaipur, why set up home in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi?
I just want to say, a place which is not your hometown will never be able to live up to your expectations. I was one of the people who did not want to get adjusted to Chennai as I thought I would be betraying my own city Pune. I complained and grumbled a lot about the language, climate, the dirty smell, the unkempt beaches and virtually everything about the city. But then no one bothered about it. I had to let go of myself to realize that this city is home to millions. If I complain about it, I don’t make myself any different from what I hated the most .. people complaining about Pune. That is when I came about and made my peace with it. It did take time and was a long and slow process. But if you don’t do that the only person left whining is you and no one else bothers. So as a humble request to all people who are not living in your own hometowns, stop complaining. Don’t live in an another city and compare it everyday to how it is worse than your hometown.
Don’t complain that you don’t get good Paneer in Chennai. You get the best Idli’s and Dosa’s in the whole wide world at Murugan Idli Shop in Besant Nagar, Chennai. Not to mention a divine connection that you can make via food at Hotel Anna Lakshmi on Anna Salai.
Don’t bother giving details about the high quality infrastructure that the capital has as compared to Bangalore … Delhi has to have it. Bangalore was built despite being out of sync with the centre in the last fifteen years. If you can, then be grateful that you have peace, tranquility and safety for your women here of which the capital can hardly provide.
Don’t boast about how your city in MP is a religious place and people from 3 different religions can pray at a one specific spot. Dadar (West) has had it for decades now and it still stands as a mark of solidarity in the city.
The bottom line is if you keep whining, the only person listening to you is you yourself or some other random guy. ;) Think about it.
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