Petrichor and Angostura

In the first half of the 1970s, I was posted in Calcutta. After trying out a few lodging houses, hostels and paying guest arrangements, I moved into the Chowringhee YMCA in Calcutta where I stayed for well over three years. It was on a hot Saturday evening in April 1973, when the city was reeling under the sweltering heat of the summer of Calcutta that I checked in.

Dark clouds had occupied the skies, promising imminent rains. I was afraid the suitcase with my belongings would get drenched, but I was lucky: it started drizzling only after I got out of the cab with my belongings.

As the young Mr Russell, the Assistant Secretary at the reception, went through the admission formalities, I waited in the lounge with the high ceiling, admiring the portraits of the past leaders of the YMCA movement worldwide.

It was pouring by the time I was through. The nor’westers had cooled down the atmosphere, bringing immense relief. “Room No 5, Mr Rajagopalan,” announced Mr Russell matter-of-factly. As if as an afterthought, he added, in clipped accent, “Salim Ustad will show you the room. Mr Salivati will be your roommate. Have a good day!”

As I thanked him and withdrew, Salim Ustad, the bearer to whom the block my room was in was assigned, carried my suitcase and took me to my room through the broad corridor abutting the billiards room. It overlooked the inner courtyard. Stopping in front of the door which was ajar, he knocked deferentially. “Come on in,” a gruff voice responded from within.

There was nobody in the room. The door to the washroom was open, but there was none there either. ‘Who’s that?” the voice came from beyond another door which creaked open. It was a balcony and seated on a cane chair with a magazine in his hand and a glass beside him was Ramu, the man who would be my roommate.

Introductions over, he offered me a drink which I promptly declined, more out of politeness – I was meeting him for the first time – than any other reason. Ramu did not press. “Have your way, but there’s nothing like OMR and petrichor on a day like this,” he said. That was the first time I was hearing the word, but guessed that petrichor must be one of those potions like angostura, tabasco, orange bitters or grenadine added to hard liquor for flavor.

How wrong I was! Petrichor, I learnt later, is the pleasant smell that wafts in as the first drops of rain hit the parched earth baked dry after a long period of warm, dry weather. That was the only time I have seen the word used. In a conversation. Months later, he told me that he loved vellichor, adding that for a wordsmith, there is nothing more distinctive than the smell of old books, redolent of dust and decayed hopes.

Ramu was always like that: a great one for quaint words. He used to like Tuesdays because the jentacular (breakfast) menu had porridge and french toast, his favourite. On Saturdays, he would say he missed the nudiustertian (day before yesterday’s) dinner because it was all ghaas-poos. He referred to the new team of cubs reporting to him at The Statesman as Yarborough. A keen bridge-player would know that it is a hand of thirteen card with no honours – cards above 9. Weekends sometimes were drab because he was cash-strapped and the tittynope (small quantity left over) of OMR in the bottle was too little.

Ha, we are back to OMR. Ramu used to describe it as the single malt of rums. "I love scotch, but it is way too expensive. This is the next best," he'd say. He was the self-appointed President of COMRADE – short for the Comity of OMR Aficionados, Drinkers and Epicures. Each has his own recipe for making his poison with OMR: with varying proportions of coke, soda, water, ice, etc. My favourite is OMR with a dash of lime, a lot of ice cubes and a little soda.

I read the other day that the market of OMR – variously called Buzurg Baba (Patiala) Muthumuni (Kerala) and Buddha Saadhu (Mumbai) – has been shrinking and it is facing the threat of being withdrawn from the market. It will indeed be a sad day if it happens.

Note: On reviewing this piece, I thought that this reads like a pot-pourri of two odes – one to Ramu and the other to OMR. I felt I should rewrite it, but on second thoughts, it is just as well: for, who can separate Ramu from OMR?

A REQUIEM TO A BOSS

I was in the railway station when the mobile phone rang. The screen displayed a number, not a name. I answered the phone. An unfamiliar voice. 'I am Nilanjan, son of ...' The rest was drowned in the roar of the engine of a passing goods train. Unable to continue the conversation in the cacophony, I disconnected and sent an SMS message to the caller: 'Will call back in a few minutes.'

When I returned the call, it all fell into place. Nilanjan is the younger son of my former boss. He is in town with his mother and would be leaving the next day. Before I could ascertain where they were staying, a train arrived, disgorging hundreds of passengers and with that the noise levels rose. So I sent another SMS message: 'Will be back by 7 PM. Can we meet around 8 PM? Regards to your father.'

The response read, 'Sure. We will meet in the lobby of the hotel. Also, my father passed away on April 05, 2009.'

I was stunned. Shocked. My one-time boss had been dead for six years and I did not know! How remiss on my part! Shame on me!

***
Mr Nirmal Chandra Banerjee was a perfectionist in matters. The impact of the changes he made to the letters put up to him for signature had to be seen to be believed. When I tended to draft letters with a flourish, he would advise me, 'Reserve your poesy for other occasions. To be effective, official letters have to be matter-of-fact.' The first thing that he would do to any draft was to spot and delete all the superlatives, the very's and the extremely's. 'These add not a whit to the letter,' he would say.

Mr Banerjee had a wry sense of humour. His instruction was, 'Give me all the easy-to-dispose files for my first hour in the office so that I can have a cup of tea at 11 AM after disposing sixty files.' When travelling by air, he would take some reading material - most often the latest copy of the TIME Magazine or The Economic and Political Weekly or The Economist - and eyes twinkling, tell me jestingly, 'One should not only be erudite, one should also appear erudite.'

He practised speed reading. He did not have to pore over files or read them line by line. One glance at the centre of the page, and Mr Banerjee would have grasped the essence of the contents. I have been astonished at the alacrity with which he would spot the crux of the matter. I might have spent half an hour reading the paper but completely missed the point.

At times, when he wanted to make sure of facts or instructions of the Government or the Reserve Bank, Mr Banerjee would tell me, 'I recall that there was a letter three years back from the Finance Ministry - or was it the Reserve Bank? I don't recall - on this subject. Please show it to me.' I would search high and low, and, having failed, finally go back to him saying that I could find no such letter. 'Then there may have been no such letter,' he would say, but in the process of making me search for that elusive letter, he had made sure that the paper on which he was affixing his signature was foolproof, what if it had made me turn the office upside down?

He had a mind of his own. Unlike several executives, he was never influenced by those who carry tales. He was dictated by his judgement of men, matters and circumstances, by his conscience. With the imminent superannuation of his Secretary, a vacancy was to arise in a couple of months. Mr Banerjee chose me to the position, though I had, in my then short stint, earned the reputation of being a rebel of sorts.

A week or two before I took up the assignment, a former Senior Executive who had retired and was heading a private bank called on Mr Banerjee for discussing some official matter. Towards the end of the meeting, this gentleman told Mr Banerjee that he had chosen the wrong person as his Secretary, a view that was endorsed by a General Manager who had a favourite of his in mind for the assignment.

Despite the fact that two General Managers - one serving and another retired - cautioned him that that I was unsuitable for the assignment, Mr Banerjee did not change his mind. He vetoed them and did not relent. I hope I did not belie the trust he reposed in me.

Mr Banerjee was a keen bridge player. People would talk in hushed tones about his obsession with the game, but I can say with confidence that his friendship with the senior bureaucrats making the foursome has helped the Bank on several occasions in solving intricate issues involving the government. Like Sir Winston Churchill who said that he had taken more out of whiskey than whiskey had taken out of him, I daresay that the Bank has taken more out of his bridge sessions than what the bridge sessions have have taken out of the Bank.

A little before retirement, Mr Banerjee was appointed a Member of the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction for five years after which he settled down in Gurgaon. I had appeared before him representing the Bank in several cases that came up before the BIFR. Later, I continued to keep in touch with him during my deputation to State Bank of Patiala. I had even called on him at his residence a few times.

He always had a special place for me in his heart. When I told him that I was being interviewed for the post of the Chairman of IDBI in 2000, he told me, 'You will not be selected, but don't lose hope. You're too young for the position. You will be chosen when the Chairman now selected retires.' Mr Banerjee was very cut up with me when opted for voluntary retirement in 2001 and put in my papers. 'Adversities will drift. Stay on,' he had urged me. That was the one and only instance when I disobeyed him.

I had sent an invite for my son Hari's marriage in January 2009 and was surprised that there was no response from him. Little did I know that in less than three months, he had breathed his last.

***
I have been remiss, sir, in not keeping in regular touch with you, but the fact that Mrs Sheila Banerjee and Nilanjan sought me out yesterday and connected me to your older son Anup (who, coincidental it may seem, works in the same bank as my own son Hari) tells me that you will not allow the tie to snap.

IN PRAISE OF THE RADIO

It was during a three-week holiday in Bengaluru with my son that I realised how addicted I was: four days in the Garden city, and I had already started missing my daily fix of Anantapuri FM.

The first thing that I do after our morning constitutional while in Trivandrum is to reach for the radio. Quite often, AIR would not have opened shop by then; or its signature tune might have just started wafting in. And my edition of the Marconi Machine remains on as long as we are at home. The radio is switched off only when we go out or at 11 in the night when Kabban Mirza (or Nimmy or whoever) closes the station with the ‘aap ki farmaaish’ programme wishing the listeners a ‘shubh raatri’, ‘shabba khair’ or ‘khudaa haafiz’. (I might go to sleep at 9:30, but the radio does so only at its designated time!)

The radio has been a habit with me for several decades. One of the purchases of mine from my first salary was a transistor radio. It worked fine in Trivandrum which has a radio station, but in the mofussil areas I was posted in, the signals were weak; unless one had nimble fingers that turned the tuning knob accurately, the radio would stay dumb or just emit static noises.

The first radio in my life was a huge Grundig which belonged to my grandmother. It had a perforated board on its hind through which one could sight valves (For the benefit of the pre-transistor generation, these were like glass bulbs with elements). When the radio was switched on, the valves slowly acquired a glow and after a long wait of about ninety seconds, the speaker would come alive with a crackle and static, and, if one was lucky, human voice or strains of instrumental music. 

It worked on a cuboidal 12 volts battery pack made by Estrela (or Eveready?) As it was quite expensive, an inventive uncle of mine reduced the recurring cost by making a contraption that could accommodate eight 1.5 volts A-size cells (the ubiquitous cylindrical ones) which was a good substitute.

Of abiding interest to us kids was its ‘magic eye’, the small translucent plastic part on the face of the radio. It acquired a pale green glow when the radio had been tuned to of the few stations it could access. As my grandma (not many others were allowed to touch it) turned the tuner-knob gently, ever-so-gently, the static noise would fade and the magic eye, so far asleep, would acquire a soft glow. As she zeroed in on the station, the intensity of the static would fall, to be overpowered by human voice or instrumental music, often in subdued tones. When the glow of the magic eye was at the greenest best, that was when we knew she was bang on.

https://www.facebook.com/hariharasundaram.parthasarathy/videos/825512064226560/

The  radio station nearest to Kannur, in North Malabar, where I spent most of my boyhood was in Kozhikode, a good sixty miles away. The signals were often not as strong as one would like them to be and at times, the magic eye would not glow at all, spreading gloom all around. 

The heroes of MW were giants in the literary firmament and theatre like P Bhaskaran, Thikkodian, Uroob, et al who had a significant role in shaping the aesthetic sensibilities of a few generations. Trivandrum station had the likes of P Gangadharan Nair and T P Radhamony whose voices enthralled the listeners as much as the voice of their son Nanda Kumar​ does today. 

Newsreaders Ramachandran and Rani (For quite some time, I had thought her name, thanks to her nasal accent, was Nani!) read Malayalam news from the nation’s capital. How can one forget the 'pravaachaka: Baladevaanandasaagarah' of the 'yam aakaashavaani. samprati vaartaaha shrooyantaam'!

On the English news scene, there were several stalwarts: Melville DeMello, Surojit Sen and Barun Haldar to update us on the goings on in the country in their baritones. Complementing (and competing with) them were the sweet voices of Lotika Ratnam and Sphurti Sinha. 

As a teenager, I used to listen to the BBC. Country Music USA from 7:00 to 7:30 am on the VoA as a delight. I can never forget the sign-off line - ‘If you see someone without a smile, give him one of yours’ – but sadly, I cannot recall the name of the compere.

The Tamil Service of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) was quite popular in the whole of South India. An hour-long Malayalam programme anchored by a compere called, I think, Sarojini Shivalingam, used to be aired in the evenings. The highlight of SLBC was the Binaca Geet Mala at 8:00 om on Wednesdays compered by the inimitable Ameen Sayani closely followed by Aaj ke kalaakaar and Ek aur Anek. He would pack ten songs from new films into a fun-filled one-hour programme.  The top songs of the year would be ranked according to the popularity they were able to rustle up.

This monopoly of SLBC was broken when Vividh Bharati was launched. They offered several bouquets of Hindi film songs. Places like Jhumritalaiya and Rajnandgaon, hitherto unknown to the rest of India, became popular because of the listeners’ choice programmes. Requests for songs were received from ‘Yavatmal se Ramesh Bijapurkar, unki Shreemati Aarti, beta Bittoo, bitiya Sonali aur unke dher saare dost’. I have a secret doubt that some of these names   were made up by the comperes themselves – as in ‘Kandivli Mumbai se Kishore Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Nutan aur Mukesh’, but who are we to deny some variety and fun to the Akashvani staff?

Perhaps as a matter of concession to South India, Vividh Bharati, most of whose programmes were in Hindi, broadcast fifteen minutes each of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada songs from 4:30 to 5:30 pm, with the five-minute news bulletin at 5:00 pm eating into the quota for one of the languages. Vividh Bharati was fair and rotated the sequence every month, so that if it was Tamil that had only ten minutes last, it would me Malayalam this month, Telugu the next and Kannada after that. I also discovered that this pattern of rotation extended beyond this: Vividh Bharati had twenty or thirty sets of four songs each in the four languages and these would be played in sequences – so much so that a regular listener, having heard a song, could predict what the next song would be!

Transistor radios brought in a revolution of sorts. Portability was a selling point with them. One could see men walking around or riding bicycles and listening to the radio. A lion's share of the credit for the popularity of cricket in India should, in my view, go to the transistor radio. The way cricket lovers strained their ears to listen to the live commentary needs to be seen to be believed. As one moved away from the ‘range’ of the radio station, one had to turn the antenna, the radio, or oneself in a direction that would enhance the quality of reception.

FM and mobile phones have changed all that. Now music is on tap, as it were. You can store more music in a tiny device than you can listen to in your lifetime. This easy availability has, I am afraid, taken away some of the charm of the music one coaxed out of grandmother’s old Grundig.

GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSEVES

Countless is the number of meetings I have attended in my career spanning over three decades. Before every meeting, the secretarial staff place a pencil before my name plate on conference table. When I see a pencil, I MUST have it. I do not know if you will brand me a klepto, but I confess: one thing that I cannot stop myself from is acquiring – beg, borrow or steal I will – pencils.

So, at the end of every meeting, I invariably take the pencil and put it into my pocket. I do not feel guilty about it because I know that the pencil is meant for me.

Likewise, I am not, for once, smitten by the pangs of conscience when I recall after checking out of a hotel room that I could not resist the temptation to ‘steal’ the pencil they keep next to the scribbling pads on the bedside table, the writing table and the toilet. (Why one in the smallest room, I have always wondered. Maybe the brightest of ideas spring forth in the loo, as good old Archimedes demonstrated in the third century BC.)

I have my collection of Parkers and Sheaffers, Crosses and Watermans, DuPonts and Mont Blanc Meisterstucks, oodles of them, but I love pencils. Why pencils, you may ask. That is a million-dollar question.

Coming to think of it, it is not just the pencil that catches my fancy. I like those scribbling pads too. I jot down ideas or thoughts that flash in my brain, in the scribbling pad which doubles as my organizer. I want to use these ideas later . I always have a scribbling pad nearby, to note down phone numbers or messages, or a list of things to do the next day. This pad is where I arrange my daily life.

I am not partial to these items: I love the entire range of hotel stationery – letter paper and envelopes. I like to impress my mother by sending a letter in the thick manila envelope containing a missive written on the letter paper of a five star luxury hotel.

How can I forget toiletry – shampoo and hair conditioner, moisturiser and talcum powder, soap and disposable razor which I help myself to? I do not lay my hands, however, on napkins, bath towels or bath robes. Some hotels pin a notice on the bathrobe exhorting the guest to contact the front office if he (or she) would like to ‘buy’ the bathrobe. Clever guys, aren’t they? Ditto with the luxury leather folio in which the letter paper and envelopes are placed.

As long as they do not attach such labels on pencils, stationery and toiletries, my inner voice won’t hold me back!

A Dead Letter

serendipity ser-ən-dip’i-ti, n. the faculty of making happy chance finds. –adj. serendip’itous. [Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka. Horace Walpole coined the word (1754) from the title of the fairy-tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ whose heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were in quest of’.]
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary


Yes, serendipity it indeed was. I was in front of my computer searching for something on the ‘net’. As it happens to most of us, surfing soon gave way to ‘wilfing’ (For the uninitiated, WILF stands for ‘What was I Looking For?’) – and I lost my way, hopelessly.

It was in those labyrinthine mazes that I found you – by serendipity. A happy coincidence indeed it was that this lovely word, with a beautiful etymological background to it, is what I associate with my first contact with you a little over five years back. Because your vocabulary, your felicity with words, your easy erudition, have all held me in your thrall ever since.

Wait a minute! Did I mention that we have not met? I mean physically. We have met only in the cyberspace. The byline of your blog was ‘Madly in love with words’. And did it show! Among your first posts was one on the daily crossword puzzle in the Guardian. The thrill you experienced when you cracked a clue was palpable when one read your post. Only a numskull of unexceptionable merit could, after having stumbled on your blog, have gone ahead, overcoming the urge to read on or without making a mental note to come back.

To say that I was impressed by the range of topics that you were at ease with – from classical music to poetry to Sanskrit to Scrabble – would be the understatement of my life. You wrote about human frailties and miseries, about nature, about caterwauls, about parrots. You wrote about the most ordinary chore of a housewife like making tea with as much seriousness as about the nuances of how the Carnatic raaga Gamaka Saamantam is similar, but not identical, to Multani, a Hindustani one. Your everyday experiences like the travails at a bank branch, the passport office, etc found as prominent a place in your blog as the one on the different sounds a cat makes mean different things.

Your posts entertained as much as they educated the reader. Only one out of 117 readers of a blog take the trouble of posting a comment, I have read somewhere. Going by the dozens of comments a post of yours would elicit, the number of readers you have would make any blogger green with envy.

I had not bothered about the names of cruciverbalists like Aurcaria (Rev John Graham) of the Times, Paul, Bunthorne, Bremmie… which would roll off your tongue. In your blog, you talked of special crosswords, like theme crosswords (Christmas, Chemistry, Western musicians, Greek gods), crosswords with solutions consisting of the same number of letters, crosswords with only one vowel, crosswords with no anagrams ... the works!

You never gave out much details of your family except that your husband was a mathematician and you have a grown-up son employed in Bangalore. I got the impression that you prided yourself upon your innumeracy – ‘I get cross-eyed when I see three-digit numbers’, you had confessed in a post.

You were transparent and made no secret of the fact that you enjoyed a drink of two – something a Bharatiya naari would never confess to. A schooner of cold beer on a Sunday afternoon with your husband, you wrote, was your idea of a perfect Sunday, made more perfect if followed by a game of Scrabble with your son.

You would often rave and rant about the liberties the Indian painter of signboards would take with Queen’s English. That brings me to your spelling and grammar. One thing you could just not tolerate was typos and grammatical errors, irrespective of who committed them. Armed with a reputation of being the best proof-reader this side of the Suez, I scoured your blog for a solecism. When I did spot one (Let me confess, the only one I could in over three years), I pointed it out to you with a ‘Gotcha!!’ expression with infinite glee that I could hardly suppress.

You responded, matter-of-fact-ly, rather, in a dignified manner, that both versions were listed in the dictionary and added that I must have consulted an American lexicon. If I were you, I would have cocked a snook at a critic who was not on sure grounds, but you were too decent to do make the ‘opponent’ eat humble pie.

Many (I, for one, was one such) found it difficult not to fall in love with you, but some could not make a secret of their infatuation. I particularly recall one who kept on with his thinly disguised professions of affection. You never got cross with him; you simply replied back with a puzzled civility. In many of his subsequent posts, he kept paying you compliments and getting a word edgewise about the prospects of spending some time with you, but the unflappable you responded correctly, rather, frigidly.

Some readers would make extravagant statements, sometimes sexist, sometimes just plain stupid, to prod you out of your prim manner but you would to maintain your cool, composed self.

In one of your posts, you talked of having woken up in the middle of the night with a severe headache. A doctor had to be called in; it must have been an emergency, but it passed. A fortnight later, you wrote of a day in a nursing home. After that, the frequency of your posts fell. You wrote once about your tonsured head and chemotherapy. No, that was not how you did it: you joked about having had your head shaved for nothing because it was ‘anyway too late for the chemo, after all’.

You didn’t whine. And for some reason, I could never make bold to ask you how you were doing. I knew I could never deal with the truth. It’s in selfishness that I miss you. Because in your love for words, and your anagrams, I saw flashes of such strength and compassion one could learn a lot from.

Mortified as we were by the unspoken C-word, all the readers prayed. Your next post was after a longer spell in a hospital. Rather than dwell upon sordid details of the stay there, which merited just a casual mention, you wrote of the bough of the laburnum and the birds perched on it, silhouetted against the blue sky as seen through the window of the hospital room.

Then there were no posts for long. I would go to your blog, see no fresh posts, and, disappointed, shut down the computer. One did not now whom to ask.
Several people, it transpires, did. They were in touch through the comments page of your blog. It was by accident that I opened that page. By then, the worst had happened.

I’ve known you for just over three years. Too short a time to know someone so wonderful. You know how it is, sometimes you sort of adopt someone and make them a part of your life. I have your blog open in another tab, and for some reason, I choke.

I know what happens to people when they die, I mean, to their mortal remains.  But what happens to the virtual ones? Do they perish? When? Or, do they get irredeemably sucked into a black hole in the cyberspace?

I can see you in my contact list. There you are, I can see your name - but there’s never going to be a round green light next to it. I find myself wondering what happens to the online Scrabble games you have saved, your words, your blog… Does your email account get purged at some point? I am tempted to mail you.  

PS This, again, is the rehash of an old post. Updated and expanded, as they say.

Romance in the Rain

(An old post rehashed - with fewer typos, I hope!)
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There are a lot of things I hate doing, but have to do. Like writing up the accounts and preparing the tax returns. (Is death better than taxes? The former troubles you only once!)

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And there are several things I love doing, but don’t have to. Yet, I love doing it because the satisfaction you derive from performing these tasks. Like ironing clothes or doing the dishes: you can’t go wrong, and you can do it well – the joy of doing something well and correctly has to be experienced to be believed.

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There are some things I love doing, and do get to do: like solving Sudoku and crosswords and other puzzles. Going out in the rain is one such.

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As a child, I used to love going out in rain because the whole area gets 'drownded', as Huckleberry Finn says. Rain in our contry home was nice not just when you stood in the verandah watching the tall coconut palms and the slender arecanut trees swaying in the wind and the myriad rivulets falling from the grooves of the tiled roof. It was greater fun when you were outdoors, road glistening, an occasional car whooshing by. Streaks of lightning followed by rolling thunder and the muddy water gushing down from the hillock proved to be the proverbial icing on the cake.

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My fascination with the rain in my childhood has grown with me. But the rains these days are different. Sewers in the city are invariably choked with plastic and garbage, causing water-logging. And water-logging means having to wade in slush and filth, and I absolutely hate that.

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We live in an area which has natural drainage for the storm-water; so we are usually spared. Unless we venture out. On Friday morning, we had to go out and get a railway ticket cancelled before noon; or else the cancellation charges would be heavy. It could not be done on the internet which was down because the modem was down because there was no electricity because an uprooted tree had fallen on the power lines because ... 

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It had rained the whole night and was still drizzling. The sky seemed low, the clouds sitting on treetops almost. There was a misty look to the city. The trip was a welcome proposition because of the rain, but was an unpleasant idea because the overnight flooding wouldn't have receded yet.

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The trip to the railway station could not be put off. Is there a lot of water logging near the railway station, I enquired anxiously before setting out. The area won't be so bad, I was reassured, because intensive drainage work had been done over the last few years. Let’s brave the water-logged roads, we decided.

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The streets were more like rivers than roads, we discovered soon. As soon as we turned into the Museum Road, we knew it was going to be bad. Traffic was slow, the streets were awash and inconsiderate drivers splashed the pedestrians and sheets of water rolled and heaved in waves. It got steadily worse.

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It was a nightmare under the fly-over and near the Town Hall, but, as I had apprehended, the Railway Station area I had to go into was not knee-deep as it was in some parts of the city, but this was water I'd have to wade through. No way out, so I rolled up my jeans and stepped out. There was garbage floating. There was muck and more. And the booking office I had to go into had water sloshing against the steps. Again I had to wade.

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Did I mention I hate wading in the slush? I did?

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Mission accomplished, I climbed back into the car and set off for home. In the thirty minutes I spent in the booking office, it had poured. The roads were flooded, but of course. And it got worse. The car felt like a metal coffin buffeted by the water that was churned up by the traffic. Each time a car moved the water thumped the cab. When a large SUV moved alongside, water entered the interior.

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Some cars had stalled. Traffic was at a standstill. Turn in to the side roads, more water logging. It was the worst yet. Laboriously crawl along the street and re-enter the College Road.

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Did I tell you I dislike having to get intimately acquainted with sewage and garbage and overflowing drain water? I think I did.

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I was miserable. The traffic crawled, we moved a few meters ahead. I was doing what I usually do at such times to alleviate boredom. Looking at number plates and thinking about numbers. There, ahead of mine was a two-wheeler. It had the number 2357. It is the sum of a set of three consecutive primes: 773 + 787 + 797.

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Try spending an hour in a car tucking your knees to your chest because water, rain excess and sewage all mixed up, is lifting the car, rocking it, and threatening to come in and making good on the threat. I realised that the number of the motorbike is the sum of a set of five other consecutive primes: 461 + 463 + 467 + 479 + 487.

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Despite the discomfort, despite the hated water logging, sodden footwear, cold and clammy feet and drenched day, I smiled.

THE EDIFICATION OF VAIDYANATHAN

This story was told to me by Raku, an old friend of mine on one of those beery Sunday afternoons during my visit to Calcutta in the early 1980s. He was then a ‘junior’ to Mr Shashank Moitra, a famous advocate who was on the panel of several corporates. He also gave legal advice to banks, which mainly was examination of the title to immovable property offered as collateral security.

For the benefit of those who have heard the word ‘collateral’ only in the context of damage (Recall the expression ‘collateral damage’ popularized by 9/11), let me explain what constitutes collateral security. It stands for an asset which is not the primary security for a loan. It may belong to the person who applies for the loan (or a relative or a friend of his) and is mortgaged or otherwise charged to the bank as further security for the advance.

When a customer approaches a bank for a loan, he would be told that the loan would be granted if he could offer adequate collateral security. If he agrees, he has to procure a certificate from a lawyer that he has satisfactory title to the property. The bank would address a letter to the lawyer, hand it over to the applicant with a request to take it to him, along with the title deed and the several supporting documents – land tax receipts, building tax receipts, prior deeds, non-encumbrance certificates, location map, site-plan, and a host of others. The hopeful applicant would darken the doors of the banker again, armed with the report and ready to avail the loan.

Moitra used to provide this service to banks as a matter of routine. Being a busy lawyer, he would assign the work to Raku. After examining the documents, Raku would prepare the report, get it signed by Moitra and hand it over to the applicant. The Bank would rely on the report and proceed to give the loan.

The routine changed when the Manager of the bank was transferred. Vaidyanathan, the new incumbent, believed in the concept of abundant caution. He was not satisfied with the routine title-clear certificate of lawyers. ‘You can’t be too sure, you see,’ he would tell Raku. ‘The primary security can vanish any time. At the end of the day, this is the only security we can fall back upon. Therefore you need to be satisfied beyond doubt that the title is absolutely clear.’ Raku would be asked to track the prior transactions and confirm that the title was indeed clear.

Abdul Buhary who owned a tannery in Tangra was one of the first to approach Vaidyanathan for a loan. Anticipating the demand, he had the title deeds of the collateral security handy. Vaidyanathan addressed the usual letter to the lawyer seeking his legal opinion and handed it over to Buhary, ‘Take it to Moitra-moshai along with the title deed and the supporting documents and get me his report.’

In a week, the report was ready. Vaidyanathan had a look at it and shook his head, ‘This covers the period from 1947, but I need the lawyer to look at the prior documents and the legal opinion should cover earlier periods.’

Buhary went back to Raku who informed Moitra of the banker’s demand. He asked, ‘Why? A report covering thirty-five years should serve the purpose. I’ll speak to the manager.’

He put the pipe in his mouth and took a few puffs of the unlit tobacco. Putting a lighted match to the weed in the bowl of the pipe, took a hard puff. Relaxed, he let the smoke out through his nostrils and dialled the six-digit number.

Vaidyanathan lifted the telephone. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Moitra went into the business.

‘Mr Vaidyanathan, this is about the title certificate of Buhary’s property.’

‘Yes, your certificate covers only the last thirty-five years, but for me to sanction the loan, it need to be sure.’

‘Mr Vaidyanathan, take my word: Mr Buhary has a clear and marketable title. If anyone else has any claim on it, he is supposed have raised it within thirty years. I have examined the documents for the last thirty-five years and there are no issues. You can proceed on the basis of my certificate…’

The banker interrupted the lawyer, ‘But one cannot be sure. Better safe than sorry, you see.’

A visibly annoyed Moitra chewed on the tip of his pipe and responded rather curtly, ‘Mr Vaidyanathan, it will take a while to explain, but I will walk you through the prior deeds chronologically.

‘You have my certificate which covers the period from 1947. This property is located in Calcutta, the capital city of the state of West Bengal, which was created when India gained freedom in 1947 and the country got partitioned. Till 1912, Calcutta was the capital of India, when the British moved the capital city to Delhi.

‘It was in 1772 that Calcutta became the capital of British India, and the first Governor General Warren Hastings moved all important offices from the then capital in Murshidabad about 60 miles away. Calcutta was captured in 1757 by Robert Clive when the British defeated Siraj-ud-daullah on the battle field of Plassey. Actually it was a re-capture because Siraj-ud-daullah, Nawab of Bengal, had attacked the city in 1756 and captured the fort.

‘Going back further, in August 1690, Job Charnok, an agent of the East India Company, chose this place for a British trade settlement. The site was carefully selected, being protected by the Hooghly River on the west, a creek to the north, and by salt lakes about two and a half miles to the east. There were three large villages along the east bank of the river Ganges, named, Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata. These three villages were bought by the British from the local land lords. The Mughals granted East India Company freedom of trade in return for a yearly payment of 3,000 rupees.

‘Now, East India Company was an agent of the Queen. As all of us know, the Queen of England was charmed by India and treasures it held which is why in 1492 the then reigning monarch, Isabella granted a sea captain named Christopher Columbus the privilege of seeking a new route to India. The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the manager of Bharat Bank, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition. Now the Pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made the part of the world called Calcutta. I hope you are satisfied. Now, may Mr Buhary have the loan?’


Raku, being at the other end of the phone, could not hear the reply of the Manager after this edification. His greatest regret is that he was not at the Bank to see the face of the Manager.

Of Monickers and Distortions

My final years of schooling were in Cochin (now Kochi). Hajee Essa Hajee Moosa Memorial High School, Mattancherry, to be exact. My favourite teacher was Venceslaus. He was very proud of his name and would announce the fact very often. I have not met a man bearing that name before or after him. And I am prepared to wager ten to one that you too have not.

'One of the few things that you can call your own, something nobody can take away from you, is your name,' he would say. True to his word, he was fiercely protective about his name. He would react quite strongly to people who misspelt, mispronounced (Ven-slaus) or abbreviated his name (Venchy).

Perhaps some of this trait has rubbed off on me too. After all, he was my hero of the time. And that is the reason why I am a stickler when it comes to names. When a stranger is introduced to me, I make it a point to commit his name, complete with initials, to my memory. Often I find out what the initials stand for and remember that as well. 

This habit of mine has helped me, a former banker, professionally. The way the face of a stray customer lights up when he realises that the Branch Manager recognises him (not forgetting the mandatory 'her') by name has to be seen to be believed. Countless are the times when a former junior colleague phones me up years later and the dialogue goes something like this

'Sir, I am Desai speaking. H G Desai of Veraval (South) Branch.'

'Yes, Hasmukhbhai Govardhandas Desai, how are you?' 

'Sir, you remember my FULL name! You served State Bank of Saurashtra for hardly one year and yet! I was reporting to the Regional Manager who was reporting to the Zonal Manager who in turn was reporting to you. Still you remember my name!'

Perhaps because of this, I expect people to remember my name. And remember it correctly. Failure to do so upsets me no end. (My friend Manimury used to say that half the problems in the world would get resolved if you do not expect others to behave the way you would have behaved  in a similar situation, but his advice has not chastened me one bit - at least in this matter.)

We were in a conference of  senior Branch Managers. Among those present was my colleague Guruswamy with whom I had worked in the Head Office for about three years. We were now heading  branches in two district headquarters. I had just made a point and sat down when Guruswamy got up and remarked, 'There is merit in what Rajasekhar has stated, but I beg to differ with him when he says that ...'

It was my turn to respond. I concluded my response with, '... To this limited extent, I would agree with Ramaswamy.' Whereupon Guruswamy leapt to his feet and corrected me, 'My name is GURUswamy!' and I replied, 'And mine is RajaGOPALAN!' I rested my case.

It was when I was working in State Bank of Patiala that my son recited a new doggerel he had learnt from his friends in the school. It went thus: ' Nattha Singh and Buta Singh, One and the same thing!' There I had a boss there who seemed to believe in this dictum. I had a colleague there by the name Balagopal and when the boss wanted to meet one of us, he would often send word for the other. On discovering that he had the wrong General Manager before him, he would say, 'Rajgopal, Balgopal, sab ek hi baat hai.' I have not forgiven him for the number of times he had made me get up from my seat, interrupting the work on hand, and walk to his chamber.

It was widely reported that our Prime Minister, during his recent US visit, said Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi when referring to the Father of the Nation, but can one buy the excuse that it was a slip of the tongue? 

This disdain for the names of people gets my goat. I have my own views about the RSS supermo Mohan Bhagwat being given airtime by Doordarshan, the government-owned television channel. I did not watch the programme, but later read the full text (or what is purported to be the full text). I found it quite inclusive and, shall we say, cosmopolitan, despite the RSS credentials. He certainly did not spew venom harboured in several hate speeches by political bigwigs and practitioners of several religions I have heard. In fact, I did not find anything that would offend one's sensibility except for the ban on beef. He can eat the food of his choice, but how can he decide what others should ingest?

But what I found difficult to stomach was the utter disregard for accuracy that he has displayed when referring to the erstwhile kings of certain parts of the present Tamil Nadu. He referred to a king called Rajrajinder Chol. My history books tell me that during the last part of the 10th and the early part of the 11th centuries, a king called Raja Raja Chozhan (changed to Cholan by the English) reigned over the kingdom for nearly three decades and that he was succeeded by his son Rajendra Chozhan/Cholan. What the RSS chief did was, I think, to combine the two names into Rajarajendra Chozhan/Cholan, thus creating a fictional character. Then he distorted the resultant name by 'Hindi-izing' it into 'Rajrajinder Chol'!

How would he like it if the thorough-bred Mallu that I am were, like my friend Hari Prahlad, to refer to him as Mohanan Bhagavathar? (For the non-Mallus, I will give a rough translation: it would mean Mohanan, the exponent of classical music.) 

WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE

A few months back, a puzzle enthusiast asked me: 'What is special about the surname of the first US President? You have to give me the answer I am looking for. It has something to do with the surnames of all his successors.' I confess that it did take me a while, but solve the riddle I did. 

As I do not want to be a spoilsport and deprive you of the exercise your brain needs, I am not giving the answer straightaway. Those who give up can highlight the next few lines and see the answer for themselves.

The answer: The surnames of all the US Presidents have at least one letter in common with the surnames of all his successors. (No big deal, coming to think of it, because hardly a surname can be formed without a vowel and WASHINGTON has three of them. And it hasm to boot, the letters H, N, S and T at least one of which would be present in any surname.)

I was reminded of the puzzle this morning when I chanced upon the sonnet 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' by a little-known poet called David Shulman in 1936. Here is the 14-liner. 

WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE

A hard, howling, tossing, water scene:
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
"How cold!" Weather stings as in anger.
O silent night shows war ace danger!

The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When general's star action wish'd "Go!"
He saw his ragged continentals row.

Ah, he stands - sailor crew went going,
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens - Winter again grows cold;
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.

George can't lose war with 's hands in;
He's astern—so, go alight, crew, and win!

In this fully metrical and rhyming sonnet, Shulman does paint a vivid picture of the violent waves and the wild wind lashing, but it is not without its faults, purists might argue. The rhyme-scheme is not exactly perfect (the 'anger'-'danger' bit), I agree.  In the second line, it should have been 'the hero'. The contraction in the penultimate line ('s for 'his') is a bit outlandish, to say the least. It is hard to parse lines like 'Redcoats warn slow his hint engage'. There are several points where the construction jars.

Yes, granted, it is not exactly the model verse, but did you notice that every line, like the title, is made up of the same letters as the title of the poem? (A Scrabble player will be quick to notice that the high-value letters - Q, Z, J and X - as well as many of the mid-value letters - K, F, V, Y, B, M and P - and the poor U are missing.)

That was quite a feat, considering that the bard had a self-imposed constraint of 16 letters to work with. And each line had to be an anagram of the title! 

PRIEST OF CROSSWORDS

Until his death a few days back, I had not heard of Reverend John Galbraith Graham, a priest of the Church of England.

That was because he used the pen-name Araucaria, which, I believe, is Latin for the monkey puzzle tree. For more than half a century, he has conjured up crossword puzzles. Araucaria used to create cryptic crosswords for The Guardian. They were loved – and feared – by most enthusiasts. Frankly, but for my e-friend Lalita Mukherjea who passed away a couple of years back, I would not have been ‘introduced’ to him.

When Araucaria was diagnosed with a dreaded disease at the age of 90, he broke the news to the world, typical of him, I should say, through a crossword puzzle in the December 2012 issue of the magazine called, what else, ‘1 Across’. It came with what he called ‘Special Instructions’ which read: Araucaria has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13, 15. (That being a dedicated magazine patronised only by the fanatic crossword addicts, the news spread  only when the puzzle was published again in The Guardian as Crossword No 24852 on 11 January 2013.)

The clues were:

18 Down: Sign of growth (6)

19 Across: Food transporter heard to gradually reduce an endless effusion (10)

13 Across, 15 Across: Friendly (say) vicar at ease (say) with arrangement for coping with 18 down (10,4)

15 Across: See 13

Without going into the intricacies of cruciverbalism, let us look at the solution.  The sordid answer to 18 Down: Sign of growth (6) is CANCER (It is easy to work back, isn’t it?). As for 19 Across: Food transporter heard to gradually reduce an endless effusion (10), ‘food transporter’ translates into ‘OESOPHAGUS’ which, when pronounced, is likely to be ‘heard’ as ‘ease-of-a-gus’. To ‘ease’ is to ‘gradually reduce’ and the last word ‘gus’ is, if you would notice, is ‘gush’ (which means effusion) without ‘h’ at the end – and hence ‘an endless effusion’.

Thus, we come to learn the painful truth that he is afflicted with the cancer of the oesophagus. The words ‘arrangement for coping with 18 down’ (which, we now know, stands for cancer) point to ‘PALLIATIVE CARE’. Observe that ‘friendly’ is a ‘PALLY’( which sounds like ‘PALLI’) and two E’s would sound like ‘Ease’. Anagrammise PALLI + VICAR ‘+ AT + EE to get PALLIATIVE CARE, confirming that we are indeed right. The solutions to some of the other clues were: NURSE, STENT, ENDOSCOPY and SUNSET – ominous, but leaving one appreciative of the grace of the man, to manipulate his malady into a crossword.

The thrill of solving the crossword was overshadowed by a sense of sadness as one works his way through the clues. When he was asked about the morbidity of the puzzle, speaking from his home in Cambridgeshire, Araucaria said that a crossword had seemed the most fitting way to make the announcement. ‘It seemed the natural thing to do somehow. It just seemed right.’

Araucaria was an erudite man. His range of learning was extraordinary. He used his erudition when compiling his crosswords. He could and did set fiendish puzzles. The purpose of the running battle of wits between the setter and the solver, he believed, was that the solver should win. Unless the solver, having cracked some of the codes, feels good it’s no fun. If he is proved a dullard unable to decipher how a clue worked (even when he had the solution in front of him), it is pointless. After all, he is there for the joy of solving it; whether he solved the whole puzzle correctly, or filled in just a few cells and cracked just a handful of clues by the end of the day, it was only worthwhile if they had some fun on the way.

One solved Araucaria’s puzzles and acquired nuggets of infomation. Like ‘Welshmen dressed as women, protesting violently against the high road tolls between 1842 and 1844’ are collectively called ‘REBECCA RIOTERS’. Perfectly useless information, but that is the the staple diet of trivia quizzes.

What could be a better tribute to him than a few comments by those addicted to him? So, here goes:

I can't count the number of times you've provoked a groan, a forehead slap, then a chuckle; that very specific reaction to solving a tricky and perfectly elegant clue.

His clues were like little presents that were hard to unwrap, but full of joy inside for those who persevered. And I think that's why he was so loved. The sheer poetic perfection of some of the clues and answers.

What I loved about his clues, as well as the wit and imagination, is that, although often difficult, there was never any ambiguity - once you had the answer you knew it was right, even if you'd never heard of the word before.

A TRAFFIC-STOPPER, AGED CIRCA 45

She has been attracting more eyeballs than even Bollywood bombshells. She has always fascinated everyone with her wit, her sharp sense of humour and her unique style of analysing current affairs.

Peering down billboards at prominent landmarks all over the country for over the last four decades is the Amul girl in a polka dotted frock with a matching bow in her hair. A brainchild of Sylvester DaCunha, she is perhaps second in popularity only to the Air India’s mascot Maharaja created by Bobby Kooka. Like him, no subject is taboo to her, no individual beyond her jibes.

The moppet made her first appearance in 1966 – long, long before I saw the first billboard. I think it was in the Readers’ Digest that I saw the first ad featuring her – at prayer, genuflecting, with one eye closed and another on the pack of butter with the words, ‘Give us this day our daily bread with Amul Butter.’ There has been no looking back.

There was this lovable sign-off line – ‘Utterly Butterly delicious’. Purists frowned. ‘Butterly’ is not grammatically correct, they cried. But, by then, the tagline had become so hugely popular that a solescism on the part of the impish and lovable mascot was not considered a serious transgression. It was perhaps a sign of things to come – she could get away with blue murder as long as she could tickle your ribs.

No mean achievement this, if you recall that this is a country where a sixty year-old cartoon reproduced in a textbook can spark off a political crisis and a professor distributing cartoons lampooning the Chief Minister is sent to the cooler, making us wonder what we are coming to.

There is no sphere that the tongue-in-cheek humour has not touched – be it cinema, politics, sports, science, society, art or infrastructure.

Like, at the dawn of the millennium, when the wired world feared a collapse, Amul girl interpreted the Y2K phenomenon as 'Yes to Khana'. The first escalator in Mumbai in 1979 was celebrated with a slogan 'Automatically Amul'. In the early '90s, when Coca-cola was getting popular after its re-entry, she twisted their slogan ‘The Real Thing’ to 'Eat the Real Thing'. 

When Mumbai, electrified by BEST, a Tata Company, witnessed a power shortage, the Amul girl said, with characteristically evocative humour, 'Ta ta power? Amul, unlimited supply.' When Mumbai Police were engaging with Haseena Parkar (underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's sister),she lifted the title of a yester-year's movie and simply asked, 'Haseena maan jaayegi'? 

She learnt it the hard way that a joke is a joke only as long as it is not at one’s expense on the eve of a strike in the Indian Airlines. When the Amul hoarding declared, ‘Indian Airlines Won’t Fly With­out Amul’, the national carrier was not amused. It threatened to cancel all orders unless the hoarding was taken off.

Congress was heckled when she wore a Gandhi cap. The plea the High Command took was that the Gandhi cap was a symbol of independence and one could not take that lightly.

Not everyone was that stern. Known for flaunting his obsession with Madhuri Dixit, the bare-footed artist liked the ad ‘Heroine addiction’ featuring him so much that he requested for a blow-up to be put up in ‘Gufa’, his art gallery in Ahmedabad, designed him and famed architect B V Doshi.

It is not as if she is always seen in the polka-dotted frock. In an ad in the late 60’s, she was seen wearing a white apron in the 'Taste Tube baby' ad, referring to the developments in medical science. When the Bollywood blockbuster Khalnayak's 'choli ke peechhe kya hai' song created ripples in 1993, she dropped her frock and appeared in ghagra to sing, 'Roti Keniche Kya Hai? Amul, Asalnayak'!

There were times when Amul hit below the belt. Like, it ran the ‘Cadbura’ campaign when worms were reportedly found in Cadbury’s choco­lates.

The best way to sign off this post, I guess, is by stringing together a mosaic of a few great Amul hoardings of the past.

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