The Indian Tonsorium

For some reason, we Indians refer to barber shops as “saloons”, while for most people across the world, a saloon is a “watering hole” or a large hall for lounging around. Possibly an aberration of the word “salon”, but I leave that to the academics to figure out. I am sure all my Indian readers are familiar with the hair-cutting saloons found all over the country, from prime estates in the large cities to the remote villages in the far corners. Foreigners coming to this country need to know that if they want a haircut, they need to go to a “saloon”. A “barber’s shop” may be difficult to locate.

These saloons can be put into three broad categories : shops on the sidewalk, shops beside the sidewalk and shops above the sidewalk – in malls and bazaars.

The shops on the sidewalk – the most common – sport a mirror on a wall or a tree trunk, with four bricks wrapped in plastic for a seat. The Bengali nickname for it is “eentalian” saloon, “eent” being the Bengali word for “brick”. The upgrade from the “eentalian” variety is a rickety wooden chair or a rusted steel one. About those mirrors, the less said the better. Your reflection could take any shape or form. The Laws of Physics are severely tested.

The upmarket variety of these “eentalian” saloons have a plastic sheet tied to different parts of the immediate surroundings at different convenient levels to serve as an awning and protection against the sun and bird poop. One is expected to pay a premium for that.

The barbers at these shops can be considered experts at their trade, given the volume of customers they handle daily, though tonsuring seems to be the most visible and consummate art form.

If one enters the saloon beside a sidewalk – more often than not, a ramshackle hut made of corrugated iron sheets or bamboo screens called chatai, and covered with blue plastic sheets to keep out the rain and sun, one will immediately encounter a bewildering array of gods staring down at the potential customer. The intent, I presume, is to warn of things that will follow.

Apart from the regular offerings, these mid-range shops also offer the massage service. The massage comes in two varieties – head massage and body massage. The head massage typically begins with a gentle pinching and drawing out of the eyebrows, then moves to the ears, and finally the head. The hair is first pulled to the point where it is in danger of being ripped off, and then the head is pummelled with fists till the eyesight begins to blur. Then the fellow goes back to the neck and pinches it at different places, cutting off the blood flow to the brain at various times. The end game involves pulling the ears and eyebrows again, and wiping off the face with a towel that smells of so many things.

The body massage starts off with pinching the tender area between the neck and shoulders till the victim grimaces. Then the arms, one by one, are stretched, twisted and turned, fingers snapped and twisted, and the attention goes moves back to the neck. The poor fellow is asked to rest the head on the table in front, and the pummelling of the back begins. For a while, fists rain down till the area starts to become numb. Muscles are pinched and twisted, across the length and breadth of one’s back, interspersed with raining fists, till the barber himself is exhausted. Spondylitis, or any such ailment that the victim may have, goes for a walk, I suppose.

The more well-built the barber, the powerful and rigorous is the massage. If you opt for both the head and body massage, you will be wobbly on your feet for a while. And you need to pay at least Rupees forty or more, just to get beaten up in this fashion. Haircut and a shave, extra.

A word about those towels that are used. It is safest to visit the shops early in the morning because they typically wash the towels at night before going to bed. And you can draw the other conclusions.

Barbers have a special role in traditional Hindu society; all males, they are required to perform a variety of functions at births, deaths, thread ceremonies and weddings – roles defined by the ancient texts. Naturally therefore, the art is passed down from father to son and the profession runs through families for generations. Most of them take their profession as a “holy” one and try to deliver to the best of their abilities.

Of course, in the Indian context, a haircut is absolutely independent of one’s looks. It is a work of art by the barber.

What you get for free, however, at these saloons, is knowledge. Profound, deep insights into how to run the country or local government, control food prices or why India lost the last cricket match and cannot do well in football, even why sending satellites up constitute a waste of money for India. The more loquacious the barber, the wider the range of topics.

To get a haircut that matches with your facial structure or profile, you will need to go to the glitzy malls, where they will charge a hefty premium for showing you an album of past and present film stars and ask for your preference. The final output may or may not match with your desires, but that is not their fault – right ?

If you ask for a massage there, you will most likely get the same pummelling at three times the charge, because the place is air-conditioned. And there are fewer gods on the walls. Your choice.

Black 8 the Terrible

Like most students of our time, we had one year of compulsory Sanskrit classes. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it left a deep and indelible mark on my mind, and perhaps in the minds of most of my class-mates as well…

It did not make literary geniuses out of us – nor did it actually enhance our vocabulary, because our mother-tongue – Bengali, had evolved from Sanskrit anyway. We did learn some new words for everyday things and the origins of some of the words we use everyday; the latter being an item of information that is perfectly useless for the rest of one’s useful life – unless one is bent on making a living out of origins of words; in which case one would die very early from hunger.

The contribution of that language course was in a completely different sphere. It trained us to have regular, consistently fearsome, nightmares – an experience that has served me well in later life – people now look upon me as the “fearless ’un”.

Don’t get me wrong – Sanskrit was not the cause – it was the teacher. This fellow, and I forget his name, was a glossy, ebony version of Mr. Weatherbee of Archie’s comics. A huge black 8 in spotless, white dhoti and kurta, with a smile that could curdle the blood of most boys just entering their teens.

He would come into class, carrying a bunch of moth-eaten books in one hand and a cane in the other, like some medieval warrior with a sword. He would carefully place the bunch of moth-eaten books on the table – but the cane would never leave his hand. One day it would be Sanskrit Literature, the next day, Grammar. Most of us were so confused by the routine that we carried both books to school anyways. Else, it was three lashes of the cane on the right hand for not having the correct book in class.

The literature class consisted of little Sanskrit stories told in a completely incomprehensible language, with unpronounceable words, sometimes joined together to make bigger unpronounceable words. We always wondered about those fellows of yore who had Sanskrit for a mother tongue. Those kids must have had a terrible time trying to tell their mommas in Sanskrit that they were hungry, because Sanskrit demands that one possess a perfect set of teeth and an acrobatic tongue coupled with about 10 Terabytes of cached memory to store all those noun and verb forms for instant access…. but that is not part of this narrative.

Our teacher would read the stories out aloud and translate into Bengali, spreading gentle smiles of comprehension all across the room. And then it would start. His eyes would wander all over the class and come to rest on the first unfortunate fellow of the day, who would be asked to read the passage just covered.

Two lashes of the cane on the calves if it didn’t sound like he was reading Sanskrit, (and it never did). We all wore “half-pants”(“shorts” in today’s parlance) in those days, and there was no protection…..  Then another student would be called up, then another, till someone was able to read something that sounded like Sanskrit. Most had a difficult time controlling the spit from flying out while endeavouring to pronounce properly.

The following day, in the Grammar class, the routine would be slightly different. The randomly selected first unfortunate fellow of the day would be called up in front of the blackboard and asked to recite some noun or verb table, with our man standing right beside him, cane pointing to the roof.  Halfway through the recitation, the inevitable goof-up would take place – and the poor student, merely Bengali-trained, would get tongue-tied.

And then believe me, here is what would happen – in slow motion. Mr. 8 would take three steps backwards, gently, ever so gently, lay his cane on the table, and haul our little Sanskrit criminal towards him by the collar. Then, with his right hand, he would take a large pinch somewhere around the tummy area of the boy. He would close his eyes, grit his teeth, and start twisting the piece of flesh he had between his fingers, saying, “Porishni keno ?” (“Why have you not memorized the piece ?”)

Our friend would wince, and slowly bend over till his head touched the table, unable to scream or speak……. They would stay in that position for a few seconds, before he thought it proper to release his grip. The story would be repeated for the next little criminal who could not recite the tables, and the next, and the next… Most of the times we forgot to recite out of sheer terror.

Rumour had it that he also taught at the girls’ school next door. I never found out what he did there.

The grammar book was called “…some… Upakramanika”….My impression about Vidyasagar, the author, was one of pure contempt. Did he not have better things to do ? Were we supposed to honour this fellow for unleashing pure, unadulterated terror in our lives ? All those hundred and twenty pages of that book posed some of the biggest challenges of our early teen years…. Not the desire to master the language in the way that V-fellow did, but to go through life with the sole objective of avoiding those lashes…….

In the process, all the “bhekam” (frogs) and “loshtrum” (stones) were finally confined to the dark recesses of our minds, to be invoked during nightmares, but never to see the light of the day again….

*****

Just as a few words of French thrown casually about in an English sentence tend to project a person as “erudite”, a few Sanskrit words do the same job for the average Indian, irrespective of the language he or she is speaking……. That is what I learned later in life.

The intellectuals of our society go about doing just that… a few Sanskrit words thrown randomly into a conversation or a poetry, and lo !! We have the perfect scholar in our midst.

……“Lyob Lopey Karmanadhikaraney Chaw”…… Haven’t the foggiest idea what that phrase means – it is all I remember from the Upakramanika, learned with lashes and pinches during our days under the reign of the “BLACK 8 the Terrible”.

Didi

The Bengali language has a lovely word for the elder sister : “Didi”.

***

The other day, I was lounging at the club canteen after a gym session, when a young girl, barely eight or nine years old, came up to the counter, her grandmother in tow. She obviously had gone for a swim, judging by her wet hair, and was probably very hungry.

They went over the menu pasted on the wall, with animated discussions on each item. The grandmother then said, “Take a couple of chicken sandwiches – I know you like them.”

The little girl said, “Why don’t we buy a plate of chicken momo ? You know how bhai likes them.” (Bhai means younger brother). 

The grandmother reasoned, “He is at home and probably not hungry. You need the food.” The girl was insistent and then they reached a compromise. She was more intent on buying something for her brother before she bought something for herself.

They bought a plate of chicken sandwiches and a plate of chicken momo – one to be eaten here and the other to be carried home. The little girl promised to share both – one with her grandmother and the other with her bhai.

Watching them, I could not help, but comment to the elderly lady, “All didis are like that.”

***

Yes… all Didis are like that – I have witnessed it time and again.

God Armour

In his book, Letters from the Earth – published posthumously, Mark Twain makes a pretty unique observation (Letter X):

“…..Some Midianite must have repeated Onan's act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand.

A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity.

Take the case of Jeroboam. "I will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall." It was done. And not only was the man that did it cut off, but everybody else.

The same with the house of Baasha: everybody was exterminated, kinsfolks, friends, and all, leaving "not one that pisseth against a wall."

In the case of Jeroboam you have a striking instance of the Deity's custom of not limiting his punishments to the guilty; the innocent are included. Even the "remnant" of that unhappy house was removed, even "as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone."

That includes the women, the young maids, and the little girls. All innocent, for they couldn't piss against a wall. Nobody of that sex can. None but members of the other sex can achieve that feat.

A curious prejudice. And it still exists. Protestant parents still keep the Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall…..”

***

I once happened to go to the city corporation office to pick up tender papers. I was asked to wait in the “Complaints Hall” – a huge cavernous, semi-dark place with rows of wooden benches polished to perfection through constant use, a few rickety fans turning lazily overhead, and a man – the officer – sitting in the farthest and darkest corner of the place, taking complaints from the row upon row of people.

Every time a complainant filed his complaint and moved out, all the people on the benches moved one slot closer to the officer.  A naturally-occurring pantomime, given the peoples’ anxiety to lodge complaints. It was more synchronized than the “waves” at a football stadium.

I had to participate with the crowd, although I had no complaints; I was there for a different purpose. By the second row I was within earshot of the conversations going on; I could hear the complaints being made.

One fellow complained about “no water”. “OK” said the officer, “we’ll send you a tanker, just go to the next room and write down the address.” The fellow from the next room shouted that all tankers were out and it would be late afternoon before they could take any more orders. “Never mind”, said the guy.

The next guy complained about his drain being clogged and the drain water spreading all over the place. That was noted. It went on for a few more fellows each with a fairly unique set of problems.

Then came this irate chap. He was so angry that the veins stood out on his forehead. Like spaghetti. It seems he was the owner of a corner plot in a densely populated part of the city, and his boundary wall had crashed because every passer-by found time to pee on that wall. The resulting stink made his days and nights unbearable, his life unacceptable and as he complained, his boundary wall untenable. He wanted the city corporation to do two things; one re-build the boundary wall for him, and build a public toilet somewhere close by.

I do not know how that complaint was settled but thirty or more years later, we still have an acute shortage of public toilets, with the result that people (read men) still pee on the nearest available wall as and when nature demands it.

This has caused the Prime Minister of the country to impose a tax on the entire publicly non-peeing population, with the avowed intention of building public toilets all over the place. But how does one protect one’s walls in the meantime, particularly in a country where the God of the Bible described above is not very active ?

Innovations abound…. People who have boundary walls, particularly the ones with corner plots, have installed porcelain tiles with pictures of different local gods  at a height of about two feet off the ground, along the entire length.

God armour !!

Ever since gods were invented to take care of humanity’s aspirations, failings, desires and food, they have come a long way.  OK – the gods these days are not as vindictive as the one described above, but they still manage to do the job, by just being present on the wall.

Or do they ? The other day, I saw one fellow squatting… 

*****

ANCIENT LEGENDS – food for thought

This article is a simple collection of different data sets that defy explanation through conventional history.

There is a point where archaeological evidence staring at us in the face seriously contradicts conventional historical perspectives.  Religion, mythology and history then become one hazy mixture.

The examples are many :

·         The Pyramids and Sphinx of Egypt : While some pyramids were built as tombs for the Pharaohs, the big three on the Giza necropolis do not have any sign of ever being built as tombs. There are books written by modern authors that wax eloquent about the precision with which these three, and the Sphinx were built, and some theorists have tried to prove that these are much older than what conventional historians think. Perhaps older than the last ice age, that ended about 12,000 years ago, as proposed by Graham Hancock in his book “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

·         The statues of Easter Island ; Another major mystery – who built them ? How ? Why ?

·         The precisely cut stones at Pumapunku – championing a technology we are yet to develop.

·         The Olmec ruins of Meso- America that precede the Inca and Mayan ruins by a few thousand years. And we do not know who these people were, or what they were called.

The biggest challenge with these giant megalithic monuments lies in the fact that we cannot date stones through the conventional radio-carbon (C-14) method. Dating something lying beside a stone does not prove the age of the stone itself.

Some more examples :

·         The documents / tablets of ancient Sumer and the epic of Gilgamesh in particular.

·         The globally used symbol of divinity in antiquity – the entwined snakes – bearing a striking resemblance to the double-helix DNA molecule

·         The ruins of the Indus Valley civilization where bodies have been found as if they were killed in an instant, with substantial radioactive levels even today, and the sand around them fused into silica/glass, leading scholars to suspect a nuclear explosion

·         Sanskrit – that highly evolved language that does NOT NEED a glossary to describe modern technological discoveries and inventions – this alone could fill a whole book… And there are other contemporary or older languages – Tamil in India, three of the Chinese group of languages (not Mandarin), Akkadian in ancient Babylon, to name a few. How did these evolve ? There is no prior history.

·         High precision astronomical charts, calculations and calendars all over the world, including India.

o    Ancient India had over thirty calendrical systems that stretch over several thousand years. The Whitaker’s Almanac reduced this long list to seven calendar systems, where the oldest – the Kali Yuga calendar – has the year 6001 corresponding to the year 2000 of the Gregorian calendar. (Source : The Argumentative Indian by Dr. Amartya Sen)

·         Old maps of the Antarctica created at a time when people were not supposed to know it existed. (Example : The famous Piri Reis map).

·         The philosophy of the Gita (I refuse to call it a simple religious book) – that includes all notions of modern management in all spheres

·         Innumerable buildings, temples and other structures that align with the sun’s movement during the equinoxes and solstices…..

In many cases, archaeological evidence shows these civilizations “just appeared”, without any evidence of a gradual social / evolutionary / technological progress. Then there are astonishing similarities between the fables / myths / legends of cultures widely dispersed across space and time.

People thought the battle of Troy was the stuff of legends, till ruins of a city was discovered that scholars think, belong to Troy. If that is some day proved correct, then that was the last recorded battle where “gods” took sides and participated in it.

****

In the book “Twelfth Planet”, Zacharia Sitchin talks about four eras :

1 – When only “Gods” walked the earth;

2 – When they created sterile clones (supposedly the first humans) to work for them

3 – When the clones developed the power to breed and began to outnumber the Gods

4 – When the Gods left this planet to the proliferating humans

Compare that with the 4 “yugas” described in the Vedas : Satya / Treta / Dwapar / Kali.

Even today, across all religions, celibacy is considered a virtue; a virtual, first stepping stone to be closer to the “Gods”. A fall-out from Era 2 ?

Overview of Yugas as per the Sanskrit texts :

·         Satya Yuga (Krita Yuga):- 1,728,000 Human years (average human life-span : 100,000 years)

·         Treta Yuga:- 1,296,000 Human years (average human life-span : 10,000 years)

·         Dwapara Yuga:- 864,000 Human years (average human life-span : 1000 years)

·         Kali Yuga:- 432,000 Human years (as of 2015, 5,117 years have passed; 426,883 years remain). Kaliyuga started in 3102 B.C. (average human life-span : 100 years)

(Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology )

Why would an agrarian society, as conventional historians want us to believe, have the need to calculate and write about this kind of numbers ? Where did this information come from ?

In almost all ancient texts there are stories of people living for 600 – 900 years…. Were they from the “third era” ? (The ancient Egyptians too, talk about a “first time” when “gods walked the earth”).

By the way, the number 432,000 (or its sub-multiples 4320, 43200) is represented in all ancient cultures from the Mayan texts to Egyptian ones. (Source : “Fingerprints of the Gods” by Graham Hancock).

Most discoveries currently attributed to the western world are already explained in the ancient Sanskrit texts :

MEDICINE & SURGERY : Sushruta Samhita - The oldest Medical and Surgical Encyclopedia known to mankind. It is supposed to have been written sometime between 1200 & 600 BCE, but I think it is much older.  The Sushruta Samhita contains 184 chapters with descriptions of :

·         1,120 illnesses,

·         700 medicinal plants,

·         64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources.

·         Its author Sushruta, is also considered to be the first ever human to perform medical surgeries on humans. It is impossible for an individual to compile all that knowledge in a single life-time. Perhaps he drew from even older sources of information to accomplish the feat.

·         The book also has vast details on embryology, human anatomy, along with instructions for venesection, the positioning of the patient for each vein, and the protection of vital structures (marma).

·         The “Ayurveda” consists of the document described above as well another ancient text on medicine and medicinal plants and concoctions.

·         The oldest documented evidence (9000 years) for the drilling of human teeth of a living person was found in Mehrgarh along with the evidences of orthopedic surgeries.

The ancient Chinese school of medicine is another brilliant example. The map of the human nervous system on which the principles of acupuncture and acupressure are based, is knowledge that we are still discovering.

Cloning / Test-tube babies :

In the Mahabharata, Gandhari was blessed with 100 sons. The birth story of those 100 kids runs like this : Gandhari, after two years of pregnancy, gave birth to a “single, hard lump of lifeless flesh”. Rishi Vyas cut up the piece of flesh into 100 pieces and put them into 100 separate jars or “kund”. Thus, each ‘Kaurava’ was created by splitting a single embryo into 100 parts and growing each part in a separate kund (container). Is this not identical to the cloning process of today ?

In fact, none of the major characters in the Mahabharata had a normal birth, in the sense that their parents were their biological ones. The five Pandavas too, were born through “blessings” of separate gods, to King Pandu’s two wives – Kunti & Madri.

Draupadi the common wife of the Pandavas, and princess of the Kingdom of Panchal, “emerged out of a sacrificial fire as an adult”. Some versions say she never aged. She was not, therefore, a human female in the conventional sense. Some versions say that she was “created” to bring about the downfall of the Kauravas.

Space Travel : The ancient Sanskrit texts talk freely of “three worlds” (tri-bhuvan) and people travelling between them in “vimanas” or flying craft. “Swarga” or “heaven” was a place where people went even when alive, to learn things.

Arjuna (one of the central characters in the Mahabharata) did so. He went to “Swarga” to learn “the arts” and how to use “special weapons” that the “gods” had gifted him. And then he came back to earth to fight the war.

Distance between the Sun and Earth : This is captured in the Hanuman Chalisa composed by Tulsidas in the 15^th century C.E. It runs thus :

“Yug sahasra yojana par bhanu,

Leelyo taahi madhura phal jaanu”

The sloka translates to: ‘[When] Hanuman travelled thousands of kilometers to swallow it thinking of it as a fruit’. The word-to-word translation of the same excerpt reveals the distance that Hanuman travelled.

1 Yuga = 12,000 years.

1 Sahasra Yuga = 12,000,000 years.

Also,1 Yojan = 8 miles.

 Hence, “Yug Sahsra Yojana”, the first 3 words mean 12000*12000000*8 = 96,000,000 miles,

or 153,600,000 kilometres.

Interestingly, the actual distance from earth to sun is 152,000,000 kms. Bafflingly, there’s error of just around 1%. It is believed that he received this information from the monkey-god Hanuman himself.

This list can go on… speed of light, value of Pi, explanation of eclipses, the heliocentric theory, even the elasticity of time and space, are all described through various stories / couplets in the Sanskrit texts.

One of the Vedic stories runs like this : There was this beautiful, learned, accomplished princess for whom no man on this earth was good enough. Suitor after suitor got rejected and her father, the King, in sheer desperation, decided to consult the Lord Brahma. Father and daughter got into a vimana and took off.

When they reached the place, the Lord Brahma was meditating. When he opened his eyes, he listened to the King and advised him to go back to earth, to a particular village beside a river. There, he said, would be the son of a “rishi” (sage), who would be the perfect match for the daughter.

The King said that he knew that village, but there was no sage living there. Brahma explained that the time interval between the King’s leaving the earth and returning to it will be about 21,000 earth years and the King and his daughter will not be disappointed.

How do you explain this story without the concept of elasticity of time and theory of relativity ?

****

It is said that Kali Yuga started the day the great Mahabharata War ended, which is why every Hindu worship ritual today invokes the standards set in the Kurukshetra War.

Warfare :

It took more than 3000 years of savagery and brutal battles for mankind to come together at the Geneva Convention and set rules for warfare, some sixty years ago.

The Mahabharata War had strict rules along which it was fought, barring a few transgressions. The transgressors were annihilated.

Can we even imagine the level of socio- political- religious evolution those people had, to define rules and protocols even for a “winner-takes-all” war ?

****

I am beginning to believe that the truth lies somewhere between the theory proposed by Zacharia Sitchin and that by Graham Hancock…

I think the Great Flood, circa 10 – 12,000 years ago, completely destroyed a highly evolved global civilization. Ancient Indian stories, Sumerian texts, monuments all over the world, numerous other artifacts, bear testimony to this.

With due respect to their lives’ works and efforts, conventional historians chose to ignore a lot of the above evidence. If they thought independently, they would be marginalized, or even ostracized.

And conventional history cannot explain the above.

[Compiled from diverse sources…]

A Facebook Dilemma

Wanda Round, like 500 million people all over the world, is a Facebook addict. She visits her page first thing in the morning. So many exciting things must have happened during the night – so many “like it” signs, so many comments – they are more important than brushing teeth.  Of course, there are personal and household chores to attend to – she logs off in about an hour but needs to keep re-visiting her page for one-hour periods at approximately few-minute intervals throughout the day. This continues well past mid-night, till sleep – that unwelcome but necessary habit – intervenes.

In other words, her marriage consists of three entities – she, her husband, and her Facebook account, not necessarily in that order. A perfect ménage à trois, if ever there was one. Of course, there are the kids, but they were born in that primordial era when people looked at each other instead of at Facebook. Lucky for the kids, I must say. (There are rumours that kids are in short supply in this era of social networking…. But that merits an investigation..)

They say the average Facebook user has about 130 friends and I say they are lying. The average Facebook user would have a list of friends running from here to Timbuktoo, with more pouring in by the hour.  A spaghetti-style cobweb of people who never knew that the others existed, till the other day…..and now they are hopelessly entangled like flies in blobs of marmalade, in pursuit of commenting excellence…..for there is nothing else to do on Facebook except write comments on each other’s pages for no particular reason. Pretty much the IT equivalent of chewing gum.

The only variation to that activity is the changing of profile pictures and uploading some others. Comment, upload an album, change picture, comment again, change picture, comment, change picture again, upload another album, comment…. goes the cycle. Stringing your personal pictures on the Net. Like laundry.

 

Coming back to the original thread – Wanda Round was suddenly faced with a serious challenge to her equanimity. Not that she is known for her “equanimus” – the gentle ripples can be seen from afar – but it now had waves, or rather breakers with white foam crashing on the rocks. This was caused by two men who happened to be her Facebook friends.

For want of better names and in order to not get too personal, let us call them “Adam Sapple” and “Ben Dover”. Now, as things came to pass, Ben did something to annoy Adam, who immediately removed the fellow from his list of friends. It did not stop at that – Adam Sapple wanted all his friends to follow suit and quarantine Ben Dover. Pretty much like a kindergarten bully. And we are talking of middle aged blokes here, well past their mid-life crisis phase, with a penchant for chatting up other peoples’ wives. (The “Love thy neighbour” principle in the Bible – remember ?)

Quarantining Ben Dover as an isolated action would not have been too much of a problem if Ben’s wife, let’s call her “Betty Diddit” had not entered the scene. You see, Betty Diddit, also one of the 500 million we talked about earlier, suffers from a severe and chronic case of Like-it-itis. It is a Facebook-induced condition, where the “I like it” portion of the brain gets severely inflamed and sufferers go feverishly around the virtual world liking everything they see.

As things got unravelled, Betty Diddit is a great fan of Wanda Round. She is also a great fan of a great many other things, but that is another story. She likes everything Wanda does to her Facebook page, and don’t ask me why. If Wanda blocked Ben Dover, then the most likely reaction from Betty Diddit would go like this :

You blocked my husband ? I like it.

That means I should block you. (I like that too)

Now tell me, who likes to block an ardent fan ? Wanda Round thought about it till she got depressed. And did nothing. Betty Diddit was just too valuable to lose.

A few days later Adam Sapple found out that Wanda had still not blocked Ben Dover. He tried to bring up the subject and got a lecture from Wanda on how he should patch up with Ben. Though we are not privy to that conversation, we can very well imagine how it must have gone, having known Wanda Round and her ilk all these years… hauled over hot coals, would be putting it mildly…

The gist of the problem is that Adam Sapple and Ben Dover are still not talking to each other but are friends with Wanda Round, while Betty Diddit is engrossed in doing what she does best - liking things.

(What we do not know though, is whether Betty liked Adam Sapple too…..)

***

The latest update is that Wanda Round has moved to Google+ for the time being and planning for Twitter.

Another blob of marmalade….

(Author’s note : The names are pure fiction… any link to any living person is an act of God)

Wanderlust...re-visited

This poem was discovered among my daughter’s diaries a few years ago when she was cleaning her room….. A scrap of aged, yellow paper, neatly folded into a rectangle, with her baby scrawl saying “Daddy poem” fell out of one of her numerous diaries and would have almost been swept away, had it not been for the scrawled label.

We opened it and there it was…. I had composed it a few months before our final exams in college….

When she was a little girl, our daughter had this habit of rummaging through Daddy’s and Mummy’s papers and stuff, and then store the things that caught her fancy, in her cupboard.  Good for her and for me, I must say.

Looking back, this was composed at a time when our final semester exams were almost upon us; some campus interviews had taken place, no one had yet landed any jobs, my study partner and I had not yet qualified for any of the interviews because of our marks. There was a pall of uncertainty hanging over everyone as we prepared to move out of college and begin a new chapter of our respective lives. After five years in college, many were in the mood to “just get out there” in order to re-live a whole new experience; to try and “do something”….

Wanderlust

 (composed – 16^th April 1981)

I hear the call of yonder wilds,

As if a siren song –

The haunting tune of the living free,

Their pulse of life so strong.

O ! Take from me this fettered freedom

And let me feel them all;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The breaking of the surf on rocks,

The salty smell o’ the breeze –

The seething foam and towering waves

Out in the stormy seas.

The cozy nests that sea-gulls build

In cracks in the high cliff wall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The tinkle of the little bells

Of cattle homeward bound;

The gleeful sounds of boys at play

In the meadows all around.

The drone of bees in summertime,

The rustle of leaves in fall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The solitary eagle in a turquoise dome,

The petrified waves of sand;

The garish beauty of cactus flowers

Adorning the desert land.

Braving fiery storms that blow,

Stand hills so proud and tall –

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The bugle call o’ the early bird

Heralding the dawn of day;

The rustic tunes the farm girls sing

While loading their wagons with hay.

The beauty of the Indian summer

The rain-and-thunder squall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The sparkling rivers of endless flow,

The fields of golden grain;

The fiery beauty of a lonely sunset

O’er a desolate plain.

Never was born an artist whose

Hand could paint it all –

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

***

Epilogue

My childhood was full of long train journeys across the length and breadth of India with my parents and sister. I guess the long hours spent by the windows of trains as they sped through myriad landscapes find their reflection in the poem above.

Reading this poem after more than three decades of service, involving travels to many a distant land, and matching it with the events of my life during this period, I guess I had this wanderlust in me since childhood….

The thoughts of the sea and voyages were perhaps born out of the numerous stories I had read as a child; I had then never imagined even for once, the amount of air travel that I would undertake in the years to follow. (I am yet to set my foot on a ship, by the way…)

Wanderlust - revisited

(composed – 8^th Sep. 2015)

Night flights under starry skies,

Velvet, diamonds and fire-flies –

Pearls and gems laid out below

‘Tis the cities, as I watch them go;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Airport layovers – day and night,

People rushing to catch their flight;

Shops and cafes in fluorescent glow

Lovers and dreamers taking it “slow”;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Deep blue night o’er a sleeping land;

Blood-red dawn across desert sand –

Flying high with the sun so low

That quickly turns into a fiery glow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Two-hour sunsets and four-hour nights;

Endless days on morning flights –

Over forests, plains and coasts we go

Over burning deserts and mountain snow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

The joy of visiting some place new

Is a privilege granted to very few;

A smile and a nod with eyes aglow,

People turn into friends from long ago –

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

All those people, everywhere

Similar thoughts and fears, they share;

Bound by their lives’ high and low

Does not matter which God they know.

And my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

***