The Wagah Drill

Recently i came across a news report saying that Pakistan has once again not agreed to the Indian proposal for toning down the show of the ritualistic hostility that is famously a part of the daily flag-lowering ceremony at Wagah gate on the India-Pakistan border.

This drill had been started in 1959. For 45 minutes daily at sunset, Pakistani Rangers and jawans of Border Security Force of India high-kick, stamp, speed march and bawl their way through a choreographed routine, staring into each others’ eyes and dramatically extending an arm, the fist entrenched and the thumb held skywards, while lowering their respective flags. This display attracts about 15,000 tourists and spectators every evening.

It appears like a ritualistic choreography of mutual aggression. The guards rush out, seemingly about to pounce on each other in utmost fury. They raise their knees almost chest-high and then stomp down with full force. It would seem the intent is either to make the earth tremble or to deliberately crack one’s legs! All that boot-stomping must be causing the poor soldiers’ knees, spine and other bones to creak painfully! :((((

This 'war', after the 1947 Partition, albeit by peaceful means, is going to beat Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage which lasted 118 years!

The show beats any filmi opening ceremony. Like any other show, there are balcony and stall seats. There is a cheer leader to coordinate the chanting of slogans on each side. In the hour preceding the actual ceremony, people compete to run up and down to the tune of patriotic filmi songs carrying the respective 2 national flags. It is like any Bollywood show: two heroes trying to outclass each other and to prove whose act is louder, bigger or stronger. The 'Mine is Bigger than Yours' show begins with the words of command like the alaapana of a classical singer elongating each word and showing how long he can hold his breath. Selected tall soldiers unnecessarily march many times up and down and stomp like martinets in a Charlie Chaplin comedy. Shoulder/arm flexing, eye-to-eye glaring, chest puffing with arms akimbo are all part of the choreographed show. India has gone up by getting two female soldiers to open the proceedings. Pakistanis sometimes bring a lone Sikh soldier to match it.

To bring peace between the 2 countries, a suggestion has been : why not start this ceremony by shouting 'Pakistan Zindabad' and then watch whether other side can match this?

Attempts were made in 2004 and even earlier, to replace this practice with a simple and dignified one but these did not succeed due to resurfacing of tension between the 2 countries. In 2006, the BSF unilaterally announced that it would discontinue the aggressive gestures as the drill is to pay respect to the respective national flags and in that, angry gestures have no relevance. However, Pakistani Rangers did not reciprocate.

So the comic show continues providing the tourists and spectators a source of entertainment and mirth!:))))

And the poor guards' bones continue creaking and the earth continues shaking.:(((

Spell Bound

‘CHILD BEAR AVAILABLE'

That was the legend written below the name of the restaurant on the board fixed outside the small eatery. It intrigued me and i asked the man at the cash counter near its entrance. He pointed his finger towards the refrigerator with a transparent glass door. I saw beer bottles stored in it and this made things clear to me. It was indeed chilled beer and the restaurant was not selling infant bears as pet!

(By the way, who invented the cute little word ‘fridge’ as a substitute to the long and labour-intensive word 'refrigerator' and to rhyme with ‘bridge’?)

If one goes around reading the writings on the rear side of lorries, one will wonder at the myriad possibilities of using (misusing) spellings of English words. ‘Keep distence’, warned one; ‘nason first, person afterwards’ exhorted another! And still another, after bidding 'O K, TATA', said, 'Work is war ship.'

At another eating place, i saw, ‘Lunch and snakes available here.’ Inside it, there was the warning, ‘No Smo King’. At yet another small eatery, i saw ‘Phamily Cabin’ written outside a small enclosure inside it.

In a small town, i read ‘City Bus Cervice’ painted on a local transport. In the same town, where i had given some clothes to a laundry for cleaning, the Receipt cautioned, “We shall not be irresponsible for any damage to the clothes.” Notice near a swimming pool read, 'Any accident caused during swimming is your responsibility.' I wondered whether it will be the responsibility of the swimmer or that of the person passing by and casually reading the notice.

Near my house there are 3 kiosks named ‘Beetle Shop’, ‘Pawn Shop’ and ‘Pan shop’ selling betel. Next to it is a small sign-board declaring ‘To Let- Shop’s and Offices’. How many places i have seen Name Boards declaring the building as ‘Boy’s Hostel! Is it meant for only one boy? And how many Name Boards i have seen with capital 'I's with dots over them!

I saw a notice near the gate of one Telephone Bhawan, ‘Complaint Book Available with Gaurd on Duty’. However, actually, i saw there no guard on duty. This reminded me of a story about the legendary poet Kalidas. He was in disguise and had joined other bearers to carry a King in a palanquin. The King asked (in Sanskrit), “ Kim skandham badhati?” (Are you experiencing pain in your shoulders?”) Kalidas replied, “Skandham na badhate rajan, taba badhati badhate.” (“There is no pain in the shoulders; the pain is given by your ‘badhati’” ) In Sanskrit, the correct grammatical form of the verb is ‘badhate’ and not ‘badhati’ used by the King. What Kalidas meant was that the real pain was caused by the King’s use of the wrong form of the verb. In this instance, what troubled me, was not the absence of the guard but the spelling mistake!

At one place where the road was being repaired, i saw a notice ‘Caution, Man at Work’. I felt the description was very apt, as out of the 4 labourers, only one man was working; the other 3 were relaxing by the wayside.

Wherever I see some sign in English, spelling mistake, if any, immediately attracts my attention. However, whenever I type something, after typing for sometime, I get a little tired very soon and some typographical errors creep in. Either, a letter goes missing from a word or some words get jumbled but when I go through the draft to find out any mistake, some mistakes escape my attention! Is it because we love to find mistakes of others but our own foibles escape our attention?

When my daughters were in school, i used to help them in studies sometimes. At that time i had told them there is a difference in merely correct English and good English. Correct English includes correct punctuation and spelling and good English includes choosing apt words. It is the proper adjectives that add to the beauty of English. Wordsmiths choose exactly apt words to write enjoyable pieces.

TAIL PIECE:

The Name Board of a small commercial unit had the inscription ‘Juhi Cha Wala’. A peep into the unit showed that it was indeed a tea shop! An enquiry with the proprietor revealed that he had named it after his daughter Juhi!

Everything Is Fair in Love and Gardening

I do not know when the gardening-bug bit me first. As far as i remember it was in Patna that i purchased 2 indoor plants and placed them in the drawing room. The wife never agrees with me on whatever i do but this time there was perfect harmony. Of course, she did not say it in so many words and in fact objected to it, which, i read perfectly, was half-hearted (Her half-hearted 'no' in fact meant 'yes'.) . I caught her secretly sitting near the plants and admiring them. Her eyes said that she simply loved them but she did not show it.

The open and unused terrace of the building provided me with a perfect area which i used for placing and growing plants. Then i saw a banyan-sapling outside the house. I playfully brought it and planted it in a pot. The plant generously responded to the love and care that i showered on it. When it grew into a considerable height with a substantially thick trunk, i cut it into two and placed the upper portion in another pot. To my utter delight, it responded and grew into a lovely second plant! That was in the late 80's. These 2 plants are still with me and i show them off to my friends and visitors as bonsai although i have not read any book or article on the subject. I do it in my own way and trim the plants just before the spring season. Now there are 5 such banyan plants and one peepal plant gloriously sitting in pots in my garden.

Since then i have had a fairly good collection of potted plants which i used to carry with me each time i moved almost all over India on transfers demanded by my job. It was a heart-rending experience to see some plants damaged during transit.

After retirement, i have settled in my old house built 27 years ago.

I have flowering plants in the the small area in front and 2 flowering creepers on the iron arcs fixed over the 2 gates. In the back-yard, i have planted some small as well as big flowering plants and a few flowering trees.

In the further back-yard, I have a kitchen-garden.

Wherever i find some open patch with potential for holding a plant, i go ahead in my own small way, in the cause of a greener and less warm Earth.

To add to my collection of flowering plants, i buy, beg, borrow and steal wherever i find an exotic variety. Yes, steal and smuggle! I buy saplings from nurseries; i also collect saplings, cuttings and bulbs of exotic plants from the wild; i beg my friends and relatives to give these. Occasionally, my friends and relatives present me with plants as gifts on my and their birthdays and on other special occasions. My daughters and sons-in-law bring flowering plants and other greens from abroad. And on one occasion, when i knew that these methods will not work, and it was a particularly attractive plant, i adopted the last method, persuading myself that taking a cutting is almost harmless and will not cause much loss either to the plant or to the owner. But the ever vigilant daughter discovered the act in no time and this was followed by a candid confession and a prompt forgiveness. :) Isn't everything fair in love and war, and gardening?

Whenever i visit some place, I look for plants to carry. I have plants from Patna, Kolkata, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Andamans, Coimbatore, Ooty and Singapore and from different places here. Like the photos in my albums, these plants carry sweet memories. Each such plant has a tale to tell. And whenever i sit near any one of these, each story unfolds itself bringing its own nostalgia!

Plants have been my first love. (Of course, after the wife and the daughters!) Plants are my greatest friends. Whenever I feel a little depressed or worried, I go and sit near a plant. And the depression or worry bothering me simply evaporates away instantly!!!

When i first set up the kitchen-garden, i had a not very good experience. The first pumpkin, whose growth i was following keenly, was stolen! I was crest-fallen. I suspected some labourers staying nearby. To prevent further such incidents, i adopted Gandhigiri. The next crops were tomatoes which were in a substantially large quantity. After keeping some for us, i distributed the tomatoes among the suspects by adopting the strategy, 'Steal One and Get One Free'. After that, stealing has stopped. Now, when vegetables grow in my garden, they come and ask for it and i readily share these with them. And of course, i share my vegetables with my other neighbors. My second pumpkin weighed 9.5 kg!

Dishes prepared from vegetables grown in your own garden taste really great! :))))))) I do not use any chemical fertiliser. I recycle the waste materials from the garden and the kitchen, turn them into compost and use these as organic manure.

More on greening the Earth in my next post. :)))))))))))))))))

Senior Citizen

A little more than a year ago i was promoted to the rank of a Senior Citizen. At the relevant juncture i was to travel by train from Visakhapatnam to Bhubaneswar and back. I had filled 2 separate Reservation Forms for the two journeys. I was thrilled to note that the fare for return journey was much lower than that for the onward journey and the code word 'SRCTZN' was added in the second ticket. This magic was performed by the fact that the date of my birth fell between the 2 journeys. I was below 60 at the time of the onward journey and crossed the magic age just before the return journey. I had become a Senior Citizen between the 2 journeys and the Railways were kind enough to extend me the privilege of having to pay a lower fare.

Soon after that, i retired from the services of my Bank. Two weeks before my scheduled date of retirement, my would-be successor joined. I took him to the Bank's clients for introducing him to them. The first client to whom i introduced my successor was a close friend of mine. Just before we left and my successor had walked ahead a little, my friend called me aside and told, " It appears he and not you, is due for retirement." The reason for this comment was that i still sport a dark crop of hair on my head and my successor already had a grey-coloured crown!

One bane of a senior citizen still having a head of dark hair, is that while traveling in trains, when he enters, no one gets up to offer him a seat while a much junior person with grey hair, is mistakenly extended that courtesy. I have suffered from this many times. Indeed I am expected to vacate my seat in favour of a person who may be junior to me, but by looks appears to be a senior citizen.

However, Income Tax Department in India has its own rules. For them the threshold age is 65 years and any person below that age is considered as still a junior citizen!!!

It is an irony of human life that no person is happy with his/her age! A child tries to show off as older than his/her age by wearing his/her parent's shoes/dress. An adolescent dislikes being directed by his/her parents and protests that s/he is old enough to take her/his own decisions. And the reverse trend starts after a certain period. Ladies (and some males also) try to hold on to their young age, even by dyeing. A lady dislikes being addressed as 'auntie' and prefers the address 'didi'. Senior citizens revert to shorts to look younger! Isn't old age called the second childhood? And when the occasion demands, they point to their grey hair as a sign of their wisdom!

Recently, Shabana Azmi said that she is happy to be 60!

Most people would wish to hold the advancing age. A few people like to age gracefully.

Meanwhile i have been enjoying my new status of a senior citizen

This Will Pass

 

Many years ago, i had read R K Narayan’s novel ‘Painter of Signs’ serialized in the then famous, but later discontinued, magazine ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ published by The Times of India Group. In one sequence, the protagonist, a painter of sign-boards, is handed over a folded slip of paper by perhaps an astrologer. He is advised to open it only when he finds himself in a difficult situation. Not long after that, such a situation does present itself and he opens the folded paper and finds the words “This will pass’ on it. He ponders over the words and realizes that his problem is temporary and will definitely go away.

The phrase appears in the works of Sufi poets. It is said that a king once asked his wise men to find something that would make a sad person happy and a happy person unhappy. The wisest of them coined this phrase. There is another version of this story which says that the king wanted a ring that would make him happy when he is sad and limit his effusion when he is too happy. The wise man made a ring with these words engraved on it.

Yet another version of the story is that a sultan requested King Solomon to say a sentence that would always be true in good times as well as bad. King Solomon said, “This too will pass away.”

Rishis of India have advised us to be sthitapragna, that is, to treat sorrows and happiness with equanimity. We should not lose our composure when a sad situation arises; nor should we be overwhelmed when a happy moment comes. Happy and sad events come in cycles and if one is overwhelmed by these, one will not able to think of ways to come out of a difficult situation. In the same way, when happy tidings come, we should not forget that such a situation is not permanent.

My father died soon after his retirement. I felt deeply sad and this state of mind continued for a long time. Then i came across a saying, “Talk happiness; the world is sad enough without your woes.”

I have read another version of this lesson. A king asked his wise men to give him one mantra, with the help of which he would be able to overcome any difficult situation. A Sufi sant gave him a folded paper and said that it contained such a mantra. He added that the king should use it only as the last resort; it should not be used when even a small ray of finding a way out was there. The king was not very happy but received the paper anyway. He faced many difficult and sad situations but always could find a way out. When he was dying, his minister said, "My lord, you have never used the mantra. At least now, you should open and see what it is." The king said, "There is no need to open it. The Sufi sant's mantra has helped me find ways out of all the difficult situations in my life even without opening it." After the king died, the minister opened the folded paper only to find that nothing was written on it! It was a blank bit of paper. The faith of the king in the sant had helped him find ways out of all the difficult and depressing situations.    

TAIL PIECE: Sooner or later, "These trying times" will become "The good old days".

Two Mothers

Here are true stories of 2 mothers, which i had read in the newspapers.

I

It was the time of the tsunami that hit the tip of Southern India in 2002.

A woman was wading through the chest-deep water of the giant-sized waves, clutching her 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, clinging to her on either side. The force of the water was increasing and she was finding it more and more difficult to move ahead to safety. After some time, it became clear to her that if she continued to try moving like that, all the three would be engulfed by the water and die. Only if she let go one of the children, would there be some chance for the survival of the remaining two.

Whom should she release? The boy or the girl?

What kind of thought would have passed in the mother's mind?

If she releases the girl, the boy would survive and would be of help to her in her later years.

If she releases the boy, the girl would survive and she will need a lot of money to get her married.

But the girl is so small and the mother is her whole world!

If she releases the boy, there is a faint chance that he may survive on his own since he is older. But if he survives and later comes to know of what his mother had done, how would he take it?

The water was pushing her around more and more ferociously.

Ultimately, she could not resist it any longer. She slightly loosened her hand by which she was holding the boy and in no time, he disappeared into the water.

Later, when the tsunami subsided, she went to each and every one of the Relief Camps set up to shelter the homeless, in search of her son. In one camp, with a flood of tears, she held her son in a tight embrace.

While being carried by the waters, the boy had hit a tree, had instinctively clutched a branch and was later rescued after the tsunami had subsided.

Just imagine the time when the mother was united with her son and their time thereafter.

II

A 3-year old child was found abandoned near the Tirupati temple.

A lady who found the forlorn and crying child, took her home. It was widely reported in the newspapers. TV channels repeatedly telecast images of the crying child. The mother of the girl, in a small town in Rajasthan, saw the visuals, heard her cries, came to Tirupati along with her husband and took her back.

The whole episode had transpired like this:

It was the woman's child from her first husband. They had a disastrous married life. He tortured her unbearably and had abandoned her soon after the child's birth. After leading a very difficult life for a couple of years, she had found a loving man and had married him. The child was a constant reminder to her of the cruelty inflicted on her by her father. So the couple had a thorough discussion, visited Tirupati and 'allowed' the girl to be 'lost' in the crowd. After seeing her face on TV and hearing her heart-rending cries for a couple of days, she could take it no longer. The couple came to Tirupati again and took the child back.

Imagine the state of the mind of the mother at the time of her reunion with the child!

How would she feel about the whole matter for the rest of her life?

Ghoti as Fish

It is a common experience to hear people mispronounce English words.

The fault lies with the language, not with the people who speak it. Why should 'but' and 'put' be pronounced differently? Why should the words like 'psychology' and 'tsunami' have a letter which has to remain silent? Why should 'schedule' be pronounced as 'shedul' and not as 'skedul'?

I have read in a popular encyclopaedia that the reason for the confusion lies in the fact that while the sounds made by human beings can be of about 50 types, the English language has only 26 letters to represent these. Indian languages have about 49 letters which almost completely represent these sounds. Indians read and pronounce almost exactly what they write. Of course a few Indians (including yours truly) are not able to differentiate while pronouncing certain letters like 'dantya sa', 'talavya sha' and 'murdhanya sha' but most people pronounce more or less correctly.

Englishmen are conscious about this deficiency in their language. Yet nothing has been done about this. To highlight this aspect of English language, George Bernard Shaw had coined the word 'ghoti' and prononounced it as 'fish'! He reasoned it like this: Pronounce 'gh' as in 'laugh', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in 'nation'! So you have 'fish'!!!

In that way, American English is better and more practical as the spellings in it in most cases are as the words are pronounced, e.g., program, color etc.

Recently, some have started pronouncing 'schedule' as 'skedul' instead of 'shedul' in English as was done earlier.

Happy pronouncing! :)))))))))))))))