I Chose You My Dear (contd......) Part 2

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS

Anil and Shweta looked around nervously. The room had a very cheerful, friendly look. It was freshly painted in a pleasant shade of light pink. On the walls were pictures of plump, cuddly babies of various ages and races. All of them looked so cute and roly-poly. Looking at them, Shweta felt a twinge of pain. On another wall was a chart showing a foetus in the mother's womb. All around were arrows sticking out with legends against them explaining the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy. There was one more chart showing a woman with a foetus in her womb at various stages of pregnancy.

Dr. Aparna was a pleasant, matronly looking woman of around 40 or 45 years of age. She looked very well groomed with her hair in a rather severe knot and not a hair out of place. She looked exceedingly fresh considering she had had a particularly heavy day, during which she had performed a couple of hysterectomies, a few D&Cs and supervised the arrival of a baby or two into this world. Well, it was not for nothing that she was highly popular and had a roaring practice.

After a few preliminaries and history taking, Dr. Aparna asked to examine Shweta. 15 minutes later, she declared that Shweta was apparently quite healthy. There were no obvious problems and she would have to perform some more checks on her, requiring more complicated procedures, before she could say anything for sure. However, she would first like Anil to undergo tests to determine whether there was any problem with him. Anil squirmed at the thought, but finally acquiesced.

Next day, Anil went to a pathological lab and submitted his semen for testing. The results were expected that evening. At work, neither Anil nor Shweta said a word about this and there was an uncomfortable silence between the two. Shweta did not want to talk to Anil, as she was scared of him when he was in an irritable mood.

Evening came and Anil's report showed that his sperm count was very low. This did not do much to improve his mood. Next day, they went back to Dr. Aparna's office. After studying the report, she appraised the couple of all their various options with all the pros and cons. They heard her out, and promised to be back after discussing the matter with their family.

Back home, neither could eat too well. After dinner a conference was once again adjourned in their parents' room. After much discussion, it was decided that adoption was the best way out for them. This way, any embarassing, time consuming and expensive procedures would be avoided. Besides the biggest advantage would be that a homeless, orphaned child would get a loving family and parents, and Anil and Shweta would be proud parents of a child they desired with all their hearts.

I Chose You My Dear

This is a story on adoption written in 4 parts.  Shall post each episode one by one.  Looking forward to your responses.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF LIFE

Shweta was very worried. Her daughter Tanya was behaving rather strangely over the last one week. She was rather moody and tended to cry rather easily. What was the matter with her - a child who was normally happy, cheerful and playful? She had asked Tanya many times, but all she got in reply was silence. She had checked her temperature, but that was normal. So what could the problem be?

Her mind flashed back to the early years of her marriage.. She had married Anil after a whirlwind romance. Both families had accepted the marriage very graciously and happily. The wedding was followed by a honeymoon in Mauritius. After a week of holidaying and spending every precious moment exclusively in each other's company, they returned home and started settling down into a routine. Anil was an architect with a successful practice of his own. Shweta was an interior designer and was a partner in Anil's business.

Life settled into a predictable routine. Since they lived in a large joint family with Anil's grandparents, uncle and his family and parents, there was not much of a problem. They were a family of professionals and as behooves professionals, each one of them had their own jobs cut out. The household ran on well-oiled wheels with minimum friction. This also left the women in the household with enough time to follow their own chosen professions without being sapped of energy, looking after work and home. They had a couple of servants and a cook, who were supervised by Anil's mom and aunt. Life seemed idyllic.

However, this Utopian existence was too good to be true. It is an unwritten law of nature, that all who come onto this earth have to face some problem or the other - no exceptions, no favourite children of Mother Destiny. So, it was that 2 - 3 years passed by, but there was no sign of any offspring arriving to grace Anil and Shweta's life.

It was getting iincreasingly embarassing and difficult for the two to face endless questions from well-meaning but insensitive relatives and friends - initially in a bantering tone, and later persistently - when they planned to give them some "good news". This would be followed up with advice over the inadvisability of postponing having a child for too long. This constant intrusion from outsiders started creating tensions between husband and wife. There was an ever increasing number of fights and the intensity of these fights was also getting more serious. Eventually Anil's parents, who were silent spectators to start with, started to get rather worried at the visible strain in the young couple's relationship.

Finally, one day after coming to a consensus between themselves, Anil's parents decided that it was now time for them to step in and do something about the problem. That night, after dinner, they invited Anil and Shweta to accompany them to their room for a chat. After some pleasantries, and a brief awkward silence, they brought up the topic of the problem. After some hesitation and reluctance on Anil's part, it was decided that both Shweta and Anil should consult a gynaeecologist. Next day an appointment was made for that evening.

The day dragged by and Anil and Shweta were very stressed and restless. Eventually they found themselves waiting in the gynaecologist's (Dr. Aparna Anand) waiting room. Shweta's hands were damp with sweat as she looked around at the waiting women, some in advanced stages of pregnancy. She could not help feel a twinge of envy and anger at the idea that God could be so unjust to them. Anil, on the other hand, hid his face behind a copy of "India Today". He was clearly feeling awkward and out of place in this environment. After a wait of around half an hour, Shweta and Anil were ushered into Dr. Aparna's office.

Help I'm Going Nuts

"So what's new about that? Where is the question of going nuts? We all knew you are already confirmed, raving, hooting crazy and just humour you out of the milk of our human kindness" did I hear you say?

Please, please, please don't say anything about "milk"  and I think I should refrain from the word "nuts" too. Every morning I wish I could crawl back under my blanket and remain safely ensconced from all the harm and damage that food and air could do to me. DH was threatening the other day to have me shipped to the nearest loony bin if I continue this way and keep being paranoid about everything in my environment.

Tell me, what else could any sane person do? First thing in the morning you have a cup of coffee in your hands and a newspaper in the other. The newspaper does not bring any good tidings and what's more it brings some horrendous news. It tells you that you should go and chuck that cup of milky coffee down the closest sink. It is full of hormones and antibiotics that were fed to the cows and if you drink that milk, you will soon start resembling one . I decide this paper is no good and switch to the other. The other one tells me that unless I eliminate the coffee completely and drink the milk neat - maybe upto 4 cups a day - my bones will be seriously unhappy with my attitude and take me to task . Which paper do I listen to ?

Come lunch time and I am faced with another dilemma - veggies. They have chemicals sprayed on them and some of them liked the taste of the pesticides and soaked them in completely (to stave off pests like me, who love to eat them up at the least provocation). So now if I eat those vegetables, then I might land up being eliminated. I took care to buy the most attractive looking carrots on the market the other day, only to be told that dyes are being injected to make them look colourful and attractive. So I can't eat them. And if I buy organic stuff, then I run a serious risk of ingesting some parasitic cysts and may land up with cysticercosis (parasitic cysts lodging in my brain and gnawing away at whatever little of it is left, bit by bit). The proverbial choice between the devil and the deep sea, or between the rock and the hard place or Hobson's choice (at least I am giving you so many choices here - something that is entirely denied to me these days). 

Now white rice, which I love is not a good choice, or so I am given to believe. In fact eating rice will make me fat - so the dietician at the nearest health spa tells me. I may eat only fruits and veggies, which takes me back full circle to where I started off. 

Eggs could cause salmonellosis, contained devastating amounts of bad cholesterol and were bad for the health . But this week, their cholesterol content decreased and are at latest count indeed very good for the health. Suddenly this week the Vit D content of eggs has also increased . I wonder if the NECC (National Eggs Coordination Committee) or the Venkateshwara Hatcheries have anything to do with these new improved eggs!  . 

By the way, wasn't alcohol supposed to be injurious to the health? Yes, indeed, until the French secret of healthy, active and loving hearts was traced back to all the red wine they drink. No wonder we were told it was not good for health. The French wanted to reserve all the wine for themselves.

But hold on, alcohol was also known to be the cure for all sorrows, until last week, when it was decided it increased one's sorrows.

Hey, you scientists out there! Can you make up your minds once and for all? Why the hell do you not keep your research to yourselves? Oh yes, unless you publish your findings and send the unsuspecting public on a roller coaster spin, you don't get paid, do you? That is why I gave up this profession and vowed not only to live happily ever after but (as far as I am concerned) to let the general public do the same. But I should have done more. I should first have discovered a selective bomb to wipe out all researchers, quit my research career (I have to foolproof my safety you see) and then hurled the bomb at the remaining scientists.

Adding Insult to Injury - Labelling a Problem Psychosomatic

Ms. Sharma walks into the doctor's office.  She is around 18 years old.  She has been having a lot of aches and pains in her back.  The doctor (the family doctor) who has been looking after the family since she was around 5, examines her and prescribes some mild pain killers.  She takes them.  The problem repeats itself after some time.  The same routine follows.  This happens time and again.  The doctor tells her some exercises for her back.  She does them, but the pain persists.  The doctor asks her to get some X-Rays done.  Nothing abnormal shows up.  

So next time Ms. Sharma comes back with the complaint, she is told it is psychosomatic - it is in her mind.  She is probably stressed out about something and hence her muscles are in spasm.

Ms. Sharma is unhappy.  She smarts under the verdict that it is all in her mind.  She finds it unfair that she has to suffer the pain and on top of that be told that there is nothing wrong.  Could it be possible that the X-Ray was not properly read?  Is there something that is not showing up on the film?  It makes her feel like she is being labelled a hypochondriac.

The years go by.   By the time she reaches the age of  36 - 37, she finds herself occasionally getting locked when she lies down.  She is unable to turn to her side or get up.  There is no pain as such, except the usual muscular pain.  Within a couple of minutes, she is slowly able to turn and get herself up.  She is now up and back to her usual self.  She forgets about the episode.  It repeats itself a couple of times.  Each time, she gets up and gets down to business.  CTs and MRIs do not show any problem.

After a few years, she starts to feel a pain at one point on one side of her spine.  Turning to that side is painful.  The pain varies in intensity from day to day.  Sometimes the pain is more intense at other times.  CTs and MRIs when repeated still show nothing.  So she ignores the pain.  She has learnt to shut up and carry on - she does not want to be told again that it is all in her mind.  She does not want anyone to think she wants an excuse to shirk work.  She still carries on with her normal activities.  She is a very busy person who flits from one office to another - she is a consultant.  She normally goes everywhere on her scooter.  One day when going down the stairs in a bit of a hurry, she misses a step and slips down, landing on her back on the landing.  She gets up and manages to carry on with her work.  But it has come as a bit of a shock.  She also has a few falls from her scooter when she is knocked down by some other vehicle, pushed to the edge of the road onto a pile of sand by a speeding bus and so on.  

Gradually her pain increases and starts to spread round the hip.  Then it spreads down the leg.  It becomes increasingly difficult for her to manage her work with the pain.  Her work involves a lot of standing and sitting for long hours every day.  Eventually one MRI shows that she has a condition where the joints in her spine are wearing out.  That is causing pressure on the nerves and hence the radiating pain.  She tries to manage with that for a couple of years.  Following a few smaller procedures which do not give any significant relief, she has to go in for a surgery.  

The question is this.  Did she have something when she was younger, when X-Rays showed nothing?  How could they have been expected to, when even CTs and MRIs took so long to reveal the problem?  Once the problem was revealed, it was at the same spot where she was complaining about the pain.  So was that her imagination?  Was her habit of worrying causing pain at a site where a problem would be detected later on in life?  Was it a fair judgement when she was told it was psychosomatic?

While accepting that there might be conditions which may be psychosomatic, one has to accept that modern medicine and technology have their own limitations.  Just because one is unable to detect a problem, does not mean there is no real basis for the pain - that it is all in the mind.

How many patients suffer like this?  OK, no one is blaming the medical profession for not being able to help her.  That is the state of the art and one has to accept that.  But the least one can do is to give the benefit of the doubt and spare a person who is already in pain from such damning and mortifying judgements, and be a bit more compassionate  That is all one asks for..

When Humanity Triumphs Over Adversities

http://gspirittv.com/vshare/view/436/the-fragrant-spirit-of-life/

I first saw this video clip on facebook.  Over the years one gets inured to seeing such sights frequently on various clips on the net.  For whatever it was worth, I decided to check  it out.  

There is no two ways about the fact that it is very disturbing.  That so many millions could be dying this way in various corners is appalling.  The comment on the insensitivity of people who waste food in the face of such deprivation of a large section of the world's population is now almost a cliche.  I could not feel irritated at the lady who started sobbing loudly when the children were lying helplessly there.  It almost seemed to me to be making a spectacle of their fate.

But as soon as the older child stepped onto the scene (she was barely a year older than the two children herself), the whole mood of the film changed for me.  I was speechless at the sight of this child who was so responsible - a little mother to her two siblings - and the love and care with which she bathed them and laid them out to dry.  Words fail me.  She looks pretty emaciated herself.  Yet she first gives her starving siblings a cracker each before taking one herself.

Just what instinct could one put this down to?  A maternal instinct?  Or the very basic human instinct to protect its own species in times of adversities?  The indomitable spirit of human kind?  I can't find the answer to these questions.  It certainly seems to be beyond all human understanding - plain unselfish love.  This is what human nature is supposed to be all about?

How have we, who were meant to be like this little girl, become so selfish and self-centred as we are?  Is it that as soon as we get enough for our basic necessities, we start getting possessive and protective of it and become beasts in human clothing?  Do we have to be fighting for our basic survival before we start thinking of others and their needs before ours?  Rather contradictory isn't it?

When I Finally Broke My Jinx

I used to be a lukewarm cricket fan in my younger days.  By that I mean I used to listen to commentaries on radio, watch matches on TV (when it first made its appearance in the living rooms of average Indian homes), keep my fingers crossed and watch with bated breath.  But I was no hardcore connoisseur of the game - I still don't understand the technicalities of the game.  But I certainly wanted our side to win (needless to say) and used to get massively  disappointed if we lost.  Somehow we never won a match I saw.

Nothing changed over the years.  Only the feeling of disappointment each time we lost was overwhelming.  The last time I saw a match was in a hostel in the UK.  It was 1995.  We were playing the finals of the World Cup against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens.  In my enthusiasm, I went and bought samosas for all the people sitting there (15-20 people).  We got some coffee and tea for everyone and created a real atmosphere there.  The excitement was palpable.  A Sri Lankan girl and I were the only representatives of our country.

However, for all the enthusiasm, imagine my embarassment when we lost and then the crowd in the stadium turned violent.  That was the last time I watched a match.  Losing the match was bad enough. What was worse was the humiliation of our people behaving badly for the whole world to see.  That was absolutely the last straw to break the camel's back.   Somehow the whole spirit of the game seems to have been lost.  I decided in the interests of my blood pressure and in the interests of the country's prospects of winning (I am patriotic in my  own way, you see), to never see a match again.  Regular talks of match fixings were not a great incentive to watch the game either.

However, yesterday was another day altogether.  The excitement in the air was palpable.  The whole country seemed to be in the grip of cricket fever.  No one had any  intention of going to work.  There was hardly any traffic on the roads.  So after all these years., I felt tempted to watch the game again - and partly I was not left with any alternative either.  There was not much else to keep me busy.  As soon as India's batting was over, our prospects seemed to be quite iffy.  In order to avoid an impending catastrophe, I quickly switched over to my daily soaps and kept switching back to the match in the commercial breaks.  I think this combination was ideal - I was watching but not watching.  The outcome was there for all to see - we won.  I was happy to have broken a jinx of years and am determined to watch the entire match on Saturday.  So here's keeping my  fingers (and for good measure my toes too) crossed. 

Cricket Mania

Remember your school days? Your favourite aunt was coming to visit on a particular day and you had to go to school. Did you take it lying down? Yes and no. No, figuratively and yes, literally. Suddenly you had a bout of severe headache where you could not lift your head  and you could fool your mom into letting you stay at home. How the headache vanished miraculously as soon as aunt arrived – don't ask me.

How about the time you were too sick to go to the physics examination, because you were not prepared, or so you thought? Or the time you wanted to stay in bed longer and lounge around on a Monday, and called up office saying your darling child had run away from home or your pet sparrow had just died ?

Well, you now have some consolation in knowing that you are not the only incorrigible person around. There are many other fully grown adults who indulge in the same kind of behaviour . Today's newspaper had an interesting article on the excuses people are coming up with to take leave off work on (no prizes for guessing) Wednesday to watch the India-Pakistan cricket match. The cricket fever has reached a pitch and has people lying (pun intended) through their teeth to stay off work.

While some are more blatant and use bullying tactics  to get their bosses to let them of work in the afternoon, the others are thinking up some very innovative excuses.

From planning to feign an asthma attack at noon , so as to reach home to watch the match on time, to pretending to be away on field duty, to claiming there is hardly any work in the office, to taking advantage of being the boss (so who can question your absence), all possible excuses are being invented to get at least the afternoon off work. But the most innovative of them was a pilot claiming he had discovered he had a fear  of heights and needed to visit the psychiatrist !

I was at the receiving end of my physiotherapist's displeasure last Thursday when I landed up for my treatment. He hinted not so subtly that if I had not gone that day, he would have left earlier to watch the match. I do not know if the rather excessive workout  and the consequent pain in my shoulder had anything to do with the cricketmatch, but I have become wiser in the last one week and have decided not to go for treatment this Wednesday.

By the way, are you looking for an excuse to bunk tomorrow to watch cricket?  Well, since you are my friends, I'll provide you a few choice ones here.  Hope they come in useful.  

• Your car conked out and you had to push it to the nearest garage which was 5 kms away from home. They had to carry you physically to the nearest human garage and inject a unit each of saline and glucose, before you could go home.
• Your child had spilt some Superglue on the chair on which you sat without looking.  So you could not get off in time to come to work.
• Your husband / wife inadvertently locked you inside the house when going to work, and there was no way you could get out till he / she got back late in the evening.

What say?

We Indians surely do not lack creativity when it comes to finding ways of watching a cricket match .

In Search of Happiness

It is a Sunday. I wake up early in the morning. Having woken up early, I can not get back to sleep. There are a lot of ssues troubling my mind. Ask me to pinpoint one and I am severely challenged. There is a general feeling of dissatisfaction which seeps through my thoughts, leaving me disturbed and unhappy. I get up and walk across to the window. From there I can look onto the park outside. It is still fairly dark, but I can make out figures going for a morning walk.

I get ready, get dressed and am downstairs in about 20 minutes. Surely a walk around the park would do me some good. I do about 10 brisk rounds of about half a kilometre each. Why am I still so disturbed? What do I lack? I have a home, I have a family which loves me and takes care of me, I get good food to eat (the evidence for this is only too evident – necessitating this self-flagellation every morning ), I have a wardrobe full of good clothes to wear. What is it then that is lacking? I have a job which is not dis-satisfactory. It is fairly challenging and keeps me busy for most of the day. I haved pmestic help at home to allow me to concentrate on my career. Why am I still unhappy? Well, to sum it up, I am looking for that elusive creature called “happiness”.

It is fairly late in the evening. I am going for a walk along the neighbouring street. On the other side of the road is a sprawling shanty town. Lots of people live there. Nearby is a huge open nallah flowing past. The stench is unbearable. Outside the meagre tenements are long ropes tied across, on which clothes are hung out to dry. The path between the line of shanties is a narrow, uncemented road (if one can call it that - it would be more apt to call it a dirt track) full of potholes. I notice a few women sitting around the steps to one of the homes and chatting. One is combing the other's hair. The other is narrating some story. Suddenly there is a burst of laughter and a third one starts singing something. There is something about the scene that transfixes me and stops me in my tracks. The women are quite shabbily dressed. They are pretty poor. Possibly they work in 2-3 houses to earn a very measly salary. God knows what their husbands are like or how they treat them. Quite likely, the men take away their earnings and drink, come back sozzled and beat them up. Not an unusual scenario in that socio-economic group. They wear sarees which are hand-me-downs. Then what is it that makes them so happy and contented?

Around these women there is a group of kids, around 3-5 years old, laughing, playing, bellies protruding, only minimally clothed, snot running out of their noses. One of them stops in his steps and looks up at me with wide eyes full of curiosity. I contrast them with the children of my friends, who are so well-off. They have everything that money and doting parents could buy them. Still they are eternally complaining.

My mind goes back to the days when I used to attend Vedanta classes in the evenings. I remember a story told by Swamiji. A man (around 60 years old) is running along a beach wearing his shorts and vest. He is very trim and fit. As he runs, he comes across a young man (in his 20s) sitting on the beach, watching the waves and listening to the music of the sea. The elderly man stops by and asks the young man, what he thinks he is doing lazing like that at his age. He gives him a lecture and tells him he should be active and should go out for a run. So the young fellow asks him why. The old man says, so you will be fit enough to work hard, earn a lot of money, make your family happy, save a lot and then when you are retired, you can go on a holiday and enjoy yourself and be happy. The young man looks at the older one puzzled and says “Why do I have to do all that to be happy? I am already happy just sitting here and watching the waves. Just listen to their delightful music”.

As I remember that story, the truth hits me with renewed force. All our lives we keep running, trying to chase happiness when it is already inside us. Happiness is always with us, but we don't realize it and keep looking for it all around. It is like the hindi proverb “Bagal mein chora, gaon bhar dhindhora” meaning the groom is right next door and you keep looking for him all over he town. In this case happiness is the elusive “chora” or the groom. In our quest to earn more and achieve more, in the mistaken notion that these are the means to happiness, we miss the basic essence of living, and as a result feel constantly discontented. It is time to wake up and keep reminding ourselves of this truth, every time we feel down and out.

Character Certificate

I am sure none of us here has forgotten the days when it was mandatory to get a "character certificate" when we left school to join college, or left college to join a job or wanted to apply for a scholarship and so on. And the words generally went "ABC XYZ has been a student of this school/college for the past XX years and has been an outstanding student. blahdiblahdiblah and to the best of my knowledge bears a good moral character".

Note the words "to the best of my knowledge" and "moral character". Highly variably definable. The first caveat shrugs off any responsibility for any inaccuracy in the statement or change in status of the said persons moral fibre . The second, according to me, badly needs to be defined. What does "moral character" mean? 

Does it mean that ABC did not indulge in theft, robbery, gossip. philandering ways, did not talk or look at members of the opposite sex, did not copy in the exams, did not tell lies (how could the person certifying this know - maybe that is why the first caveat), or just what? 

I am equally sure that almost all citizens of this country (except a handful of really hopeless cases) have collected at least 4-5 such certificates. I am sure all our netas have hundreds of them. Then why do we have so many problems (not natural calamities, but man-made problems) confronting us?

How come there is such widespread corruption, intolerance and blatant indiscipline in this country (i do not imply that it does not happen anywhere else - but as they say, people who live in glass houses do not throw stones). Is this any indication of a high moral fibre?

What happens when there is a natural disaster or major accident? We see a few people trying to help and others who utilize the opportunity to pocket some valuables and personal effects of the victims and others who see them do this but say nothing. We jump queues and fight over water at communal taps, try to get everything first. It is always me first. If anything goes wrong, we wring our hands, and blame everything and everyone in this universe from shani, the moon God and our neighbours for our misfortunes.

In this backdrop, a news item I read about the way the Japanese are conducting themselves in the face of an unrelenting spate of disasters is absolutely heart-warming and restores one's faith in human kind. The article talked about the resilience of the Japanese people in the face of the calamities. It stated that

Quote:

"unlike the scenes in natural disasters in Haiti and New Orleans, there is little anger, no looting. Food and electricity are in short supply, but neighbours are willing to share with others and are cutting back on energy use on their own to limit the need for rotating blackouts". Ron Provost, president of Showa Boston Institute for Language and Culture, a campus of the University of Tokyo says "These are tough, strong, strong people.... That strength and resilience are rooted in a culture that has historically relied on social organisation. People have opened up their homes to others . I heard someone say they had two bottles of water and gave one to someone else". On a daily basis - in tragedy and in good times - the Japanese have "come up with a system to accommodate each other. They are kind to the neighbours and look out for their neighbours That's why the crime rate is low. You see someone doing something and you go to the local police". Alex Thompson, a journalist with Channel 4 News, who was the only Western reporter to make it to the pulverised coastal town of Minami Sanrikuin his heart-rending account for Daily Mail wrote of the resilience of the Japanese people. "the first thing you notice is the silence which seems to hang over the place. There is no sound as we approach this once-thriving coastal town." The war correspondent who has covered more than 20 conflicts and several natural calamities says "I have never seen anything on this scale. There is no crying, no hysteria, no anger. It is in the psyche of the Japanese people to do what they have to do in silence and with dignity". - Bangalore Mirror, Wed, March 16, 2011

How the Japanese built up their economy after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and where they were after just 60 years speaks volumes for their character - more than a million words. The same is to be said of the Germans and more so for their "trummerfrauen". After the second world war, when the entire country was in shambles and when most of the men were taken prisoners of war or dead, it was left to the women of the country to rebuild it. And what a job they did of it! Talk of national character, talk of woman-power.


We as a country have miles to go before we can get anywhere there. Just a booming economy and a population of a billion, or a satellite sent up to the moon are no indicators of the state of a nation.

This, then, my friends is what speaks of the highest grade of moral fibre, which we, starting out with ourselves must strive to achieve before living up to all those "character certificates" we may have lying in our portfolios.

Chasing Dreams

I am an unabashed lover of books by Enid Blyton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse. All my notions and dreams about Britain and the British was moulded by these three authors. For me Britain was embodied by crumpets for tea, professional and amateur detectives (either accompanied by a dog or by a loyal friend), boarding schools where there is at least one midnight party every term, a french teacher (Mademoiselle), faithful gentlemen's gentlemen, interfering, pompous bobbies ….. and the list goes on.

So imagine my shock when I eventually got to the U.K. Reality hit me like a stinging slap on my face. It was as if all the romantic images of the country painted in all these books had vanished into thin air – poof! - just like that. A friend who had lived in the country for atleast a quarter of a century when I eventually landed there had a good laugh at me, when I expressed my shock and disappointment. She wondered in which romantic world I existed. But I tell you, it broke my little heart to smithereens. I could not bear to think of, leave alone face a country so far removed from my illusions. I really loved the Britain painted in those books. I felt badly cheated, let down. But there you are. One has to come down to reality with a bang some time or the other. (I am sure at least 90% of married people – and this is a conservative estimate of mine – have had the same feeling when they wake up to the harsh realities of married life after harbouring notions straight out of M&B novels and Indian films. Suddenly there are no beautiful locales, no platoon of 50 faceless individuals to dance to a song along with you and your spouse). I mean, reality is really heartless, merciless, oh, my vocabulary fails me miserably at this point. It just has this nasty habit of delivering a really hard one in the solar plexus.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I felt totally idiotic. How could I have been such a complete fool? How could I have let a couple of authors to lead me on a completely misguided flight to the little island?

Not long. I mean I only felt this way for a brief 20-21 years of my life. I had in the intervening years graduated to “grown-up” books and authors. Jeffrey Archer was one of my newer discoveries and I had cottoned onto him like flying strands of cotton to my clothes. He came to my rescue in more ways than one. Not only can I proudly claim to be a reader of grown-up books, but I discovered that my latest favourite author suffers from the same syndrome as me. Or so I thought when I read the headline of an article in the newspaper which said “Archer yearns for Malgudi's flavour”. Yippee, I thought. Here is a famous British author who is very fond of R.K. Narayan and considers him in the league of authors such as Guy de Maupassant or F Scott Fitzgerald. I thought “so he too is looking for the imaginary Malgudi in India. Great – The Empire Strikes Back. Our very own R.K. Narayan has done to him what P.G. Wodehouse and Enid Blyton did to me”. But alas – this was one more of my illusions. When I read the entire article (an interview with the author), he did not at any point mention that he was looking for Malgudi as described by our R.K. Narayan. That was a dirty trick played on me by the author of the article in the newspaper. Looks like all writers suffer from this horrible disease called “cooking up tales syndrome” 

Hey do I hear you say I do the same? Well, I might have caught a milder version of it. May be it is catching. But at least the virus is attenuated. My stories are all based on the truth. You just have to look at my name to know that.