When I shoplifted… and got caught

I was four. She was seven. And we were bored to death at a sari shop in Paltan Bazar, Dehra Dun’s main market, where mummy had spent close to two hours looking at saris but not liking any of them.
My sister and I were initially interested looking at the bright coloured saris but lost interest in no time. Perhaps also because of this carpeted staircase inside the shop that caught our fascination. We were running up and down the stairs giggling and relieved to be out of that sari section when we spotted a pen stand on the landing of the staircase. There were bright coloured plastic pens kept neatly in the stand. We hesitated for a bit and then without giving much thought picked one pen each.
To be honest, we didn’t know we were stealing but for some reason knew that we could not show the pens to our parents sitting at a distance looking at the saris. So, we hid the pens inside our ponchos, which were an integral part of our clothing through the winter season in Doon.
After the sari was purchased, finally, we went to Laxmi, the only south-Indian restaurant in Dehra Dun where we had our regular masala dosas. My parents would have guessed then that we were hiding something as we ate our dinner with our left hands inside the poncho all along. It was then that we started getting tensed.
By the time, we reached home didi and I had perhaps started sweating apprehensive of being caught. We were not off the mark. Our discomfort at the restaurant had been noticed and we were caught.
Funnily, my sister locked herself in the bathroom when my mom discovered that I was hiding a pen under the poncho. I don’t remember what I told her or my father but I do remember saying sorry several times (on hindsight I think I should have said it was justified given that they took so long to buy one sari). Then it was my sister’s turn. She came out of the bathroom and she too was asked to show what she was hiding.
The two yellow ugly plastic pens were placed on the bed. Didi and I stood there ashamed of our `crime’. We were asked to hold our ears and say sorry. We were even made to do ten sit-ups. It was fine until then. But, the shocker came when my parents decided to take us to the shop again to apologise to the shopkeeper and return the pens to him.
Even to my four-year-old mind, it sounded bizarre. What would the owner of a big shop care for two plastic pens. I didn’t dare to reason with my parents. The next day, didi and I sat behind Papa on the scooter feeling embarrassed at the prospect of apologizing to the shopkeeper. We reached the same shop. Papa handed over the pens to the fat man, who was the owner, and asked us to say sorry. We squirmed but managed to mumble a sorry. The man smiled and said it was ok.
I thought of this incident while watching Oprah the other day where she was interviewing people who had secret lives. The first interviewee was a shoplifter who was profusely apologizing to her family for this secret she had hidden from them much like the pens didi and I had hidden from our parents under our ponchos. Luckily, we were made to apologize on time.

Awadhi: my mother tongue?

Hindi. Well, that’s the language I have always assumed to be my mother tongue until last evening when I asked myself whether it was really so. While my parents have conversed with me and my sister in Hindi at home and continue to do so even now, it was always understood, never questioned, that they spoke in `Awadhi’ with their parents and siblings, but never to us.
Here I would clarify that Awadhi is a different dialect from Bhojpuri and Bihari. The three dialects may have similarities, but they are very different from each other, a fact reiterated by my parents each time they would watch actors (usually playing servants in films or television serials) goof up on the dialect big time in their unsuccessful attempts to represent an eastern UP immigrant to Bombay.
It is strange that I have this newfound fondness for a dialect I never paid much attention to. As long as I was in Dehra Dun I would hear it at home all the time as Baba and my mother would talk to each other in the language. We were always encouraged to polish our Hindi and English but never asked to learn Awadhi. My sister and I didn’t even try.
Even now, each time my mom calls up her brothers in Gonda (a place in Uttar Pradesh) its never, “`kaise ho” but always “ka haal hai bhaiyaa”.
The sweetness of the dialect never registered because perhaps I was hearing people speak it very often as long as I was in Bombay. It could be my mother over the phone or the innumerable `bhaiyas’ in the city__ I was always in earshot range of Awadhi. But, no longer so.
The fact that I miss its presence in my day-to-day life suddenly struck me in office one day. There is some construction work happening on the floor where my cubicle is and one day I almost jerked I heard one of workers say, “ka bhaiya, kab tak kaam chali”. It was perhaps after many many months that I heard somebody speak in good Awadhi. And I loved it.
Last evening, it was while watching the extremely talented Ashish Vidyarthi perform his solo act in Nadira Babbar’s Dayashankar ki Diary, that I started pining for the language again. Vidyarthi, who plays Dayashankar, a boy from UP working as a lowly clerk in a government office and weaving dreams of marrying his bosses’ daughter, speaks in very UP-Hindi through the play. In the end when he takes a beating, both emotionally and physically, that he starts missing his mother, his motherland and breaks into perhaps the best Awadhi I have heard in a long time… “humka hiyan se le jaaon amma”, he cries out to his mother who lives in a village in UP.
After the play got over, Vidyarthis’ last lines kept haunting me. I realized that how I had enjoyed the last part the most__ not only because it was the most well enacted part but also because I connected with the language he spoke in.
That's when I asked myself whether Awadhi should technically be my mother tongue? But, can a dialect that I have never ever spoken in be my mother tongue?

Doctor ki kahani

I have been thinking of the Pankaj Kapoor-starrer `Ek Doctor ki Maut’ since last evening. The film, loosely based on a true story, was about a Calcutta-based brilliant but frustrated scientist (Kapoor) who is sidelined at work and later posted to some remote village to prevent him from continuing his research work on a vaccine, thanks to ego tussles and bureaucracy typical of government departments.
In one particular scene of the film when Kapoor is visited by his wife (Shabana Azmi) in the village where he is posted, he brilliantly portrays the angst of genius unable to do what he is best at since the facilities in the village were poor for any kind of research work.
I thought of the film while speaking to various state government officials and a famous doctor while working on a report on a rare case of conjoined twins who have been brought to a government hospital in Hyderbad from Guntur for treatment.
The two-and-a-half-year-old twins, who were abandoned by their parents soon after birth, were being treated at the government hospital in Guntur and were even fortunate to have a world-famous doctor, Dr Y Nayudamma, treating them. The doctor, who has performed similar surgeries on three cases of conjoined twins over the last 15 years, retired from the hospital last year. I wondered why neither the state health department nor the hospital superiors extended his tenure knowing fully well that he was perhaps the only hope the twins had.
During his tenure, he had already performed a preliminary surgery on the twins and was planning to undertake another surgery after the two conjoined babies had put on weight, he told me. But, that was not to be. Even as he was consulting other doctors about the twins, the hospital decided to move the babies out of Guntur as the hospital there did not have the infrastructure to take up the surgery.
The doctor is now watching from the sidelines even as fresh investigations are being conducted on a case that he knows far too well. I wondered whether he was feeling as sidelined and frustrated as Kapoor had felt in the film. The doctor did not say anything like that to me except that "58 is n o age to retire".
Meanwhile, the government hospital in Hyderabad is preparing to undertake such a surgery for the first time.

Celebrating the moment

Its been raining here since last night and I have been fishing out my favourite music from the nanosecond the first raindrop hit the ground. So it was old Lata numbers including the very melodious `uthaye jaaye unke sitam’, `thandi hawayein lehra ke aaye’, `aayega aanewala’ and `thandi hawa kali ghata’ among at least a hundred others that have been playing on the system setting the perfect mood for a perfect weather.
I love celebrating these small moments in life with music. While listening to these Lata songs, I started thinking of the lines I remember from my other favourite songs that are about living in the moment.
The song `Aanewala pal’ from the very funny `Golmaal’ film, has a line that goes, `Ek baar waqt se, lamha gira kahin’. I listen to this song several times only to hear this particular line over and over again. In a very funny filmi way, I mentally give a background score for situations in my life. So, this particular line is the perfect score when I am in love with a particular moment.
Another song, a ghazal that has been my all time favourite, coaxes people to live in the present__Farida Khanum’s `Aaj jaane ki zid na karo’ has this gem of a line: “waqt ke qaid mein zindagi hai magar, chand ghadiyan yahin hai jo azaad hai.. in ko kho kar kahin jaanejaan umra bhar na taraste raho”. I truly believe that there has not been a more beautiful expression to explain the reason why we need to live in the moment.
But then, some songs even question such moments that people treasure. Shyam Benegal’s `Sooraj Ka Saatwan Ghoda’ has this song: `Yeh shaamein, sab ki sab shaamein..kya in shaamon ka arth nahin. Ghabra ke tumhe jab yaad kiya, kya un shaamon ka arth nahin’ filmed beautifully on a depressed Pallavi Joshi and Rajit Kapoor who are singing the song to each other on the former’s wedding day as she is getting married to someone else. The imagery, which I vividly remember, is simply beautiful. Joshi clinging to Kapoor for dear life, rainfall in the background, light blue-coloured curtains swaying softly in the gentle breeze.
And even as I am writing this, I am listening to another melody, MM Kreem’s ‘chup tum raho, chup hum tahe..khamoshi ko khamoshi se baat karne do’ from Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin. I agree with these lines __ the most beautiful moments are best celebrated in silence.

Tale of Two Cities

The disparity between the two cities situated within Hyderabad has perhaps never struck me as much as it did last week.
The Old City of Hyderabad and the Hi Tech city are perhaps as different from each other as the colour black is from white. It is difficult to assume that the Charminar area is in the same city as the ever-grwoing IT hub expanding from Hi Tech city to Gachibowli, where the biggest multinationals have set shop.
While the difference between these two poles of Hyderabad has always intrigued me, it was last week when I was working on a story that it became most obvious.
On a hot afternoon, I was touring the Old City, where the Charminar is located, interviewing young girls in their burqas who had taken up computer classes with dreams of getting jobs at a call center. These girls were smart, spoke their mind, and very candidly shared what they wanted to do in life.
It was during my interaction with these young girls, aged 9 to 22, that I realized how these spirited girls assumed that the computer classes they were going for were perhaps the best vocational programmes on offer. They spoke about their parents with a modest monthly income of a few thousands shelling out a princely sum of Rs 7000 for their classes. I also realized that despite the poor quality of the course, the fact that these girls were coming out and taking up the programme said a lot about changing mindsets in this part of the city, once known to be conservative.
After a long day’s work, I was gathering my thoughts, writing down the quotes I wished to use for my story when the ISB crorepati news broke. Four students from the Indian School of Business had been offered salaries over Rs one crore each. By late evening, there was a mad chase for the names of these students. While the ISB was tight-lipped about the names, they did help in getting some students speak to me. One of the girls I spoke to had over five years of work experience, had traveled all over the world and said that ISB was the best institute in the country and had helped her get an almost 100 per cent raise from what she was getting in her previous job.
Even as I was interviewing her, the images of the burqa-clad girls I had interviewed earlier in the day in the Old City kept flashing through my mind.
I saw the contrast between the two ends of Hyderabad through the people I had interviewed during the day.
At one end of Hyderabad, an ISB girl was getting ready for her job in London, her dream fulfilled.
At the other end, girls in the Old City were mouthing English words and learning computers to embark on perhaps their longest journey __ from their homes in the Old City to a plush call center in Hi Tech City.

Mandal Commission

I vividly remember the Mandal Commission days mainly because they marked an unending vacation from school.
As a Class VIII student in Dehra Dun, I remember going to school on several mornings only to be turned back by the principal who would be standing on the school’s main gate speaking to a bunch of boys holding placards. After refusing to close school for several days, the principal had to announce that school would reopen only after the Mandal Commission matter was settled.
It was during this time that I first saw riots breaking out in the otherwise peaceful Doon valley. Memories of the last riots, after India Gandhi’s assassination, were vague as I was in Class III then. The only image of those riots that stayed with me was that of my classmate who came to school bare feet and in a torn dress. Her father (a sardar) had lost his shop, house and the entire family’s belongings to the riots.
But, the riots during the Mandal Commission are still fresh in my mind. I remember watching news reports on Doordarshan that always mentioned the rioting in this part and that part but never ever showed images. I saw the first images of the riots in New Delhi on NewsTrack, an extremely popular news video then that gave viewers uncensored versions of stories. Nothing like `breaking news’ and `news flash’ that is the norm across all news channels now but news, simply told.
On this video, which sold like hot cakes during the Mandal Commission, I saw images of boys being brutally caned just because they had staged a dharna outside the then PM V.P Singh’s house. Then I remember Rajeev Goswami immolating himself. I remember the police dragging a boy by his arm, the one where he had a bullet injury. I clearly remember his arm dangling with a piece of tissue.
There were heated debates everywhere I went to those days. People were upset with the government enforcing Mandal. There were discussions on merit vs quota at my friend’s house. At my place, we didn’t spend a single evening without Baba, my grandfather, leading a discussion on the demerits of reservation.
With time, I too formed an opinion. I simply could not agree with someone getting admission merely because of his or her caste. Didn’t the Mandal issue divide the society more than any caste system would have? It was during this time, I remember reading a letter in one of the newspapers where a girl had recounted how her friends started treating her differently, when they found out that she was from the SC/ST quota. A meritorious student, the girl had written it had offended her no end to be looked down upon because her friends wrongly assumed that she got a seat in the college because of her caste.
I believe that reservation is important in a class-divided country like ours. But then, the reservation too has to be class and not caste-based.
Let the government reserve seats for financially backward. Let the government support those who go to night schools and work during the day and help them get admissions into the best colleges. Let the government first make school education for all a reality. Let the government first open more secondary and higher schools. Let the government then implement reservation policy for these deserving candidates.

Honey, I shrunk our `palace’

My journalist friends would understand this better, my feelings that is.
When I moved to Hyderabad from Bombay, the only thing that brought me immense joy in a new city, new office was the house that we moved in. Thanks to a friend from Mumbai who had also recently moved to Hyderabad and was staying on the first floor of this independent house, that we found this very very spacious, un-Mumbai kind of a house.
Palace. That’s how I used to describe the house to my jealous friends who were still in the two-BHK houses of Mumbai. Here, we had a separate dining room, which to my Bombay-dyed eyes appeared like a banquet hall. Yes, a bit of exaggeration here, but, honestly, I had never imagined moving into as spacious a house as this after I left my beautiful house in Dehra Dun (where we had a kitchen garden and a lawn and of course, a separate dining room).
So, the palace fascinated me no end. The first time I realized it wasn’t as big after all, when a couple who live in a oh-so-beautiful bungalow in the posh Banjara Hills visited us and the wife sweetly commented, “What a sweet compact house!” I laughed out so loud that she got scared. I told her I called this house a palace. It was so huge, for us.
Her comment not withstanding, I continued to believe that this was the most awesome house on planet earth.
This morning, I shrunk the palace. It is important to mention here, that we had minimal furniture…actually no furniture apart from a bed and a table. Yes, four chairs too. Of late, I had been obsessing over the idea of “doing up” the `palace’. Last night, I brought an auto-rickshaw full of stuff that is now sitting in my once spacious drawing room.
This morning, as I was busy giving the finishing touches I had mixed feelings about having “done up” the room. Yes, it was looking nice but I missed the open space.
I have taken care to keep room but still its not the same. I, for the first time, felt that it was small house. A bigger drawing room would have been better. Or, was it a right decision to get furniture in the first place? Have I shrunk our `palace’.
Now, why I said that my journalist friends would understand my feelings better is because I was very driven and passionate about decorating the drawing room with a nice sofa set, hanging lamps... the works. I worked hard on all this, almost as I would for a story that I feel very passionate about. But, there are times when you put your heart and soul into a story but you yourself do not know how it reads. Are there too many quotes? Or, are there too few? Should I remove this line or paraphrase this quote? In my case, until someone gives my story a read I can never be sure whether it’s good or bad.
It’s with the same feeling that I view my done up drawing room. I want an opinion. To be honest, am scared of an honest opinion.

Friends

I am at my wits end these days. I am strangely ill at ease with most of the people I meet. I don’t find them ``my type’’ and they don’t fancy me either. I don’t blame them.
Is it old age? Nah, I brush the thought aside. But, it is a fact that I, for reasons unknown, cant seem to like the new people in my life and more often than not, have problems with the way they think and, perhaps more importantly, the way they interpret friendships and friends.
It’s strange because the best friends I made are still thick with me. I cannot possibly end my day without having messaged them or spoken to them or at least having thought of them. Calling them up suddenly late in the night, or simply dragging them out of office for a film or bhutta at Marine Drive on a pleasant windy rainy day in Bombay or to discuss an unpleasant day in office over Britannia slice cakes and coffee sitting cross legged in the local train hoping that my station would not come for at least another hour__ they all appear to be distant memories.
Going for long drives listening to `dil mein jaagi dhadkan aise’, a song from the film `Sur' , and sharing life’s details without any concern of being judged. And of course, calling them up at weird hours for directions to this place or that place. Yeah… I didn’t know where Kala Ghoda was. I kept discovering Bombay through the eyes of my friends.
I cannot imagine being as spontaneous with anyone right now. I cannot think of one person whom I can call for directions. I cant think of one person whom I can spend a rather enjoyable evening with without having exchanged a single word. I can’t think of one person who can give my story a dispassionate read and ask me to rewrite it from scratch. I can’t think of one person who would understand my silence and interpret the way I would want it to be interpreted. I can’t think of one person whom I can proudly `own’ as a friend. I have none here. The ones I have are not in Hyderabad. I miss them.
Until I see them again, I can only wonder why God stopped making more such people. Perhaps I am no longer the same person.