Frankly my dear, go do suicide.

Those of you have known me a decent length of time, know my wild fluctuations in the process of deciding on a career. With my terribly unstable mind, only one degree will do. It is a most fluid degree. As someone once told me, “Oh, that’s the degree people do and then no matter what job they get, say, ‘Ah, this is what I was trained for.’” Let’s not give this degree a name. I don’t want to compound my embarrassment when I decide on something else a month from now. Let’s call it, degree X.

Though my mind is unstable, it has brief spells of single-mindedness. So, I am currently, preparing in real earnest to take the exam that will qualify me to go to X-school, where I will graduate with degree X. So, to attend a good X-school, I joined a class where they train you to write the X-exam. Here, the real story begins. At my class, we took a mock test to judge our levels of proficiency. We were then split into tailored batches, to brush up on our strengths, etc. Turns out, I did well on the test. Rather well. I was shifted to a ‘special’ batch, halfway across town. It was all very hush-hush. They didn’t even give me proper directions. Sort of a rite of passage thing, finding the place.

I did. I walked up two flights of stairs, past a dog and across a puddle of residual A/C water. I had arrived. I signed the attendance sheet and was ushered into a bright, neon-lit room where the other candidates sat. Very Men in Black.

I sat. Then my tutor from the earlier classes came in. “So, you guys are all knowing why you’re here?” We smiled smugly. “Ya, ok, first congratulations, excellent, like very good job, you guys have done!” Oh, come on, I thought: hand out the sweets and the back-pats already. But there was a conspicuous lack of sweets. The tutor went on for a bit about how awesome we were. At this moment, the Centre Manager barged in. We had only heard of CM before. Here he was, in the flesh: a lot of flesh. He plonked himself onto Tutor’s chair and gave the class an appraising look. Tutor had, by this time, begun talking about which X-schools we should consider. He named some big names. Specifically, he spoke of Colleges A, B and C. (Sorry for being so cryptic.) Already, some of us were uneasy. Were we good enough? Did we really deserve this? But then, CM raised a calming hand, as if he had read our fears. Tutor stepped aside. And CM began his speech. To paraphrase it, well, it’d be likely paraphrasing Mark Antony’s funeral oration. So, here, in full:

My dears, I am looking around and I see ok, your faces. That guy back there he’s turning to his friend and looking worried. He’s thinking ‘Dei, what this fellow is talking? How we’ll get into those schools?’ [nervous laughter] Right? Right, ya? My dear, let me tell you, this class is only for people who want to get into A, B, C. If you want to go to other X-schools means, better you leave. Ya, why, you’re looking like that? You guys are only A, B, C. If you get any other call-backs means, I will consider it a failure. You should not be applying anywhere else. Just A, B, C. That too, mostly A. All of you should get into A. [petrified silence] Ha ha ha ha ha! [Everybody laughs.] I’m not joking. [Everybody shuts up.] Why you think, my dear, that you cannot get into A? Tell me, one person here give my any reason [no pause] see nobody has any reason! How many of you are here? 30? Ok, I want 30 offers from College A this year.

To get into these places you need to put in hard work. You must believe in yourself. And you must always think that you will get into these colleges. Then you need not apply anywhere else. And think, you will be lucky. But keep working hard, because luck favours those who work hard.

So, can we say 99 percentile is good enough? What, can we say that? I can see some smiles. My dear, 99% is not good enough. Ok, let’s take 99.4 or maybe 99.5? How’s that? Better, no? I say, it is a waste. Just think, suppose you target 99.6% and the cut-off mark for College A is 99.7%. My dear, better to go do suicide.

Think of your seat. Just think, of Colleges A, B, C. Imagine a seat in the college and think ‘That is my seat.’ My dear, the very best to you.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I’m already judging myself for not having changed my mind about this career. 

The Sari-Virgin Suicide

 I am one of those rare Indian women who have worn a sari less than ten times in their lives—school and college functions included. (Oh, who am I kidding, school and college functions probably make up the entire count.) And I am ashamed of this. But I take refuge in the principle that most shameful secrets become endearing through confession.

On the few occasions that I have been required to wear a sari, I have been terribly conscious. I listen in wonder, as wiser women talk about tricks of the trade. Like the slight, kicking motion one employs, to swish aside the folded pleats, as one walks. The only time I tried this, I managed to produce a kick that would qualify me for the English Premier League. Though, the pleats did a cool fandango.

            Given my ineptitude on the sari front, I was shocked when my mother asked me to accompany her to a sari shop. She needed to buy a sari for a wedding and—in her death-like finality—no one ever buys a sari alone. I thought going to a sari shop would be suicidal. So, like all rookie soldiers, I went on the offensive. I began by remarking how confining a garment the sari is. Then I spoke of how overdone and garish some saris look. I ended with a statistic about how so many families go into debt while buying wedding saris. It was a feminist diatribe that would have made Kalpana Sharma proud. But my mother is not Kalpana Sharma. And she yelled to the driver to bring the car around.

            As we entered the sari store, I tried one final ploy. I turned to my mother and asked, “Why not buy a salwar instead?” A heavy hush fell over everyone in the store. It was as though the salesmen, the shop owner, the coffee boys, the large Sindhi customer and her five year-old son, had all been struck with a blunt object. (Actually, the son wasn’t bothered; I think the sudden silence horrified him.) My mother gave me one of those khandan ki sharam looks. I slunk away. I tried to hide behind the organza fabric rack. But, no sooner did I approach one of the saris, than a salesman appeared. 

            “Sit, madam, please baithiye,na?”

You have to hand it to North Indian salesmen. They are born with a special gene that enables them to sell anything to anyone. If part-time jobs at McDonalds existed in North India, I’m convinced every man, woman and vegan would have the Big Mac with fries and a large Coke.

Our salesman—curiously, there are no sari saleswomen—began by draping sari after sari onto the counter. There were Benares cottons, silk-chiffons, Bandhni borders and Georgette butti work. The salesman produced each sari with a practised flourish. Just as we reached out to touch the fabric, he swept it aside, replacing it with another. These were clearly shock-and-awe tactics. And they worked. Within minutes, I’d made the transformation from hostile witness to willing participant.

Not that the salesman and I agreed on everything. 

I was with him on the deep red with zari work. I nodded approvingly at the regal blue with a striped, mustard blouse piece. I gasped at the fantastic paisley-printed peacock green. But, when he tried to sell my mother a peach-coloured chiffon with pistachio trimmings, I had to intervene. This did not discourage our salesman. His next weapon, was what he breathlessly referred to as “digital print”. It had many futuristic plants, prehistoric birds and marine creatures: all living in disharmony.

I silenced him with a look. 

Half an hour and many folds later, we were done!

The peacock green won in the end. Our salesman deftly arranged its pleats. He whipped out a Velcro belt, that went around my mother’s waist, to hold the sari in place. He guided her to a full-length mirror and stood back with the smile of a successful parent. And why not? It was only 11 a.m. and he already had one convert, and one very satisfied customer. My mother looked quite lovely with the sari draped over her.

So, three days later, am I still a convert?

Put it this way—I’m secretly glad that the wedding is in Bombay, so I won’t have to attend it, sari-clad. But I am going to practise the pleat-kicking motion. And I won’t be hostile towards sari shops any longer. How can I? As the salesman said, “Madam, yahan sab milte hain, A to Jed!”  

Being Social

            A colleague was leaving our office. Not, in the sense of going home; actually leaving, to the greener pastures and traffic-choked roads of Bangalore. She would still drop in, but she would cease to be a regular. And so we had to inure ourselves to the idea of not seeing her every day. One less turn of the head as we approached her desk, one less nervous glance to see if she’d arrived (pretty senior she was), that sort of thing. And to make the transition, we threw her a farewell party. Cake, fake snow that smelled of shaving cream (and fell on the cake), balloons, streamers, tears, speeches, fried baby corn appetizers—it was an honest-to-God, proper send off.  

Then, as it happened, her move to Bangalore was delayed and she returned to the office, sporadically. This continued for a month. Until she left, yesterday. Us underlings at work, had had little, if any interaction with her. And yes, this came as much of our own reticence as of her aloofness. But the fact is, we were as far apart as that cake and shaving-cream-snow ought to have been. And so, after a cordial goodbye—just the word, maybe a smile— us underlings left to go eat lunch. This appalled our senior colleagues: who extended their goodbyes to several minutes’ worth. Apparently, we were sadly lacking in social graces, because we chose real nourishment over sweet-nothings. Really, it made no sense to tell our erstwhile colleague how much we’d miss her—we never knew her! It would be like the collective mourning for Whitney Houston years after she’d slipped out of everyone’s consciousness. 

They say our generation is uncomfortable with the rituals of face-to-face interaction. That is, to an extent, true. I find it easier today, to speak to most people online, than face-to-face. I find myself freer and funnier in text than I’d dare to be in the flesh. What is it that turns us into such blockheads or contrived idiots when we’re faced with a face; without the comforting distance of cyberspace and the power of editing our words? I wonder, were we scared to say goodbye because we knew we’d say it so much better in Times New Roman typeface? 

As we grow braver in the written word, and more eager to share every little bit of ourselves online, how much harder traditional conversation becomes. We have a tough time, I’d say, accommodating the freedom of online speech, to a live encounter. We want our conversations to be more meaningful. Instantly. But live conversation cannot jump into the thick of things without a degree of ritual first. It necessitates some small talk, some silences, some awkward disagreements at an elegant dinner table. And there is no ‘Go Invisible’ button in reach. We might scorn these rituals, but, the larger question is, are we becoming incapable of them? We can leave online chats with impunity; with the excuse of work, or dinner, or the cat peeing on the rug. And when we have no incontinent cats in real life, it can be scary. How many conversations are we retreating from, before they’ve really begun?

Running

We train for ill
And worse to come
While listening for the recess bell
To tell us that our shift is done
To now
Go out and play.

Ding. Ding ding. Ding ding.
A hundred times—once more.
We hear
A death knell's sound
And fury of the times to come:
Worse times—what else
Could children know
That had grown up to grow quite old,
Too weak to be outside and play
Too soon?

Ready. Aim. Wait! That could kill someone.

I edit schoolbooks.  Every now and then, I’m besieged by the question of ‘pitch’. The word is hopeless. It begins with an determined plosive and ends with Saxon grit. It cannot be said with grace. And it has become a hateful word—in the Indian school textbook publishing industry, at least.

Pitch refers to the the tenor of your book – the cultural references, the way you handle sensitive issues, the amount of hand-holding you provide and, enmeshed in all these, the proficiency of English you expect, both from teacher and student. You pitch the book at a certain level, in a certain kind of market where you expect to hit the wicket and bowl them over, as it were. (No, sports metaphors are generally avoided in our books.)

            

        The problem with pitching books correctly is that the publishing industry is full of authors and editors who would shudder to send their own children to anything less than a Grade-A school. You know the kind: open-minded, nurturing, armed with teachers who can spell their own names, parking lot with a profusion of Ashoka trees. Less than 5% of schools in India fall into this category. So, capturing the real market, the expansive middle ground, involves drastically changing one’s sensibilities.

For a lot as fastidious as editors, this can hurt. It does. It gnaws at your ankles.

             
         Not that I’d be able to say that in our books. It’d be a long shot to say that in any children’s schoolbook. But why? When we’re young we have the most vivid, but also the most lurid imagination. I bet you, a kid wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the idea of  gnawed ankles. She’d probably improve upon it. With glee. And that won’t mean that she is turning into a psychopath.

            

            Exposing children to chewed out ankles and their ilk, is the least contended of our issues. We wonder whether showing a mother in anything other than a sari will offend someone. Whether a parent will be outraged when we ask children to discuss an issue like video piracy (instead of expressly forbidding it). Whether a teacher who has taught Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade for years (probably since the actual Crimean War) will be able to grapple with Morte d’Arthur instead. And worst of all, given our disbelief at the ‘lower-down’ systems of education, whether we’ll end up condescending.

             

           There is no easy way to understand the realities of a different life and a different social order. It is likely that every attempt at understanding will be driven by an urge to unravel and change.

           
 One way of taking comfort is to believe that children don’t learn very much from textbooks. But, as an editor, I’d rather not think about the truth in that.

Do you really want to know?

When was the last time someone asked you a question?

If you’re still thinking about this, you’re rather slow! Stepping away from my classy joke however, the fact remains that some people forget to wait after asking a question. I’ve been unfortunate enough to encounter many of the kind. They believe it sheer laziness to throw a question out there and then remain silent. So they answer it. Some do you the further indignity of taking a long breath, during which you have launched into a (usually witty, frighteningly insightful) answer and then barge into your rightful exchange. Their responses (as exciting as a toaster manual) are met with wonder and approbation. From themselves, of course. Meanwhile, you, not one to be easily knocked off the perch of good manners, politely nod, hoping they will be on their way. They begin to leave. A second’s hesitation. You know you shouldn’t react, but you do. It’s too late. The inevitable, “But what should I…?” follows. You’re caught. To not answer would be rude. To shrug would be impertinent. Every ounce of practicality screams to you to take flight. But your better self (that invariably loves to be outraged) will not allow it. And so you begin to answer. Knowing your sentence will end before its time.

An easy way out I suppose, would be to field every question with the old reliable “What do you think?” But this is not without caveats. The person could turn it around with a quick “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you!” Or worse, could think you trust their opinion. In which case, they begin to advise you on everything from underwear to stock options, and expect resounding gratitude for it all. A more disturbing thought is that people are terribly afraid to listen. And why not? When every self-esteem column tells you to speak up to magically restore self-confidence. When management schools routinely screen candidates based on who can monopolize a three-minute conversation? When “We the People” (a popular TV debate on social issues) makes the flatmates on Big Brother sound like they went to finishing school?

It is a common human dream to achieve Zen Master-status and know everything – from the perfect brand of underwear to the sound of one hand clapping. But all too often we fail the simple test of being apprentices. In an era of insistence and a fierce imperative to find one’s identity, we are tricked into thinking all the answers lie within us. Why this need for affirmation? Are we convinced that we have won only when we have the last word? 

I’m reminded of MAD TV’s parody of the Oprah show. (MAD)Oprah invites a panel of guests, all with predictably miserable pasts. She asks one of them to narrate his story. As he begins, she bursts in with her own, similar experience and steals away the focus. This would be hysterical if it were confined to the multi-million-dollar-earning, celebrity talk show hosts of the world. But it is slowly becoming a sign of weakness to listen – you are either vapid or boring or “out of it”.

A colleague once remarked that I'd have a good career in Human Resources. I have no idea why: I’m not particularly fond of people, or seeing to it that they’re fond of each other. I was told, in a delightfully inventive turn of phrase, that I was suitable precisely because I was “neither left nor right”. And that was perhaps the most shocking thing of all. That to observe occasional silence in a conversation was now equated with having no opinion at all. No balls. No spine. No power.

       The Zen Master listens. And that is how he catches the fruit snapping the second before it falls off the tree.            

It is here.

            By which I mean the most awesome thing in the world has arrived and now lies in my bedroom. No, I don’t care that that sounds funny.

            We all make life lists, right? The things we’ll cross out before we die; the things that will finally transport us from obscurity; the things we put on a shelf, half-afraid that they won’t be all we’ve dreamed them up to be. Well, one of mine fell off its shelf. This is how it happened.

            I have always wanted to learn how to play piano. There is just no substitute for the fullness of a piano’s music. And for all you musicians going “pshaw”, I’m a classical guitarist. And I bow to the king. So, it was my birthday, and my idiot immune system decided to give way. Really, what a thing! I stayed home with a Premier Tissue box and old episodes of “The Wonder Years”. My parents, nodded pathetically. I growled and went back to sleep. I also wondered, what would make me happy? My thoughts went from Oreos, to Oreos and a Coke, to a beautiful mountain sunset, to a mountain-sunset with Coldplay playing for me in the background. And they finally landed up at a piano. Specifically, me playing a piano. So, when my parents tried to cheer me up with plans of a fancy dinner, I ungraciously mentioned a much fancier, space-consuming option. And then offered to pay for (most of) it.  

Since I’m a replaceable cog in the wheels of a mean, mean corporate machine (although we do get coffee in bone china), I had to hang up my expensive dreams of an acoustic piano. And so it came to be, that I discovered the world of digital pianos. For all you pianists going “pshaw”, I say, either give me your acoustic piano or go play the third movement of the Moonlight sonata. 
For those of you who’ve already started guessing, yes, it is a Yamaha. A Clavinova. A CLP-320 with a rosewood finish. Graded hammer technology. In layman’s terms – awesomeness in eight octaves. Plus, as my mother is quick to remind me, “At least now you can control the volume and we won’t have to hear you practise scales.”

             Any musician out there knows the torturous road ahead of me. Finger exercises. Tired fingers. Arched palms. Straight back. Tired shoulders. Ring fingers and pinkies that insist on pressing down at the same time. See? All this in just one day; and I can’t wait for the days to come. For the day I start playing the black notes. Then chords. Then little pieces. Bigger pieces.

            If my mother were reading this, she’d say “Stop dreaming.” (She does have a singularly limited opinion of me.) But I’m on my way. And I’m so entirely sure that my untried 22 year-old fingers will play those pieces. For now though, it’s C-D-E-F-G and back down again. Then C-D-C-D-E-D-E-D, twice. Also my left hand is a laggard. And lower notes are so resoundingly unfriendly. They are fatties. Big, obstinate, fatties. And they sound like heaven. Sigh.

            More rapture as we progress.