If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man. Albert Einstein.

Let us raise a toast to the humble bee. Or if you prefer, the bumble bee. I cannot assert with any degree of authority if the bee, be it ne’er so humble or bumble, can lay any genuine claim to humility as an inborn trait. I just put that in because the two words, humble and bumble, rhymed. Which is usually a good enough reason for any hack writer to get started on an article. Naturally, that raises the valid question as to why I woke up yesterday morning and decided to write a paean on the bee or, to give it its biologically generic name, Anthophila. My research on the subject further reveals that there are more than 20,000 known species of the bee and possibly, several hundred more variants. That’s a lot of bees to be getting along with, and the one thing you want to avoid are these flying insects buzzing around your head at any time. Get your head caught in one of these angry swarms, and your face could be rearranged forever – with the help of plastic surgery. If you spot a beehive anywhere in your line of vision, pause and admire a stunning marvel of nature, but on no account touch it.

On World Bee Day, however, I have no wish to dwell on the more unpleasant aspects of the bee’s behavioural characteristics. There are plenty of perfectly good things to say about the bee (honey for starters), and I shall manfully strive to focus on these. Particularly because we have been celebrating World Bee Day on May 20^th, to mark the birth anniversary of Slovenian beekeeper Anton Janša, widely regarded as the pioneer of modern beekeeping. Seeing as he was born in 1734, it is clear that beekeeping as a hobby and profession has a hoary old tradition. I am somewhat handicapped by the fact that there exists no further useful information on Mr. Janša barring his strange obsession with these busy, winged creatures. This bee lover was of Austrian descent which explains his appointment as the first beekeeping teacher at the Viennese imperial court. From early childhood, he was as dedicated in his quest to suss out information about the bees as the latter themselves were in single-mindedly focusing on hive building and honey producing.

We can set the domestic scene. I imagine the young Anton coming home every evening, joyously showing off to his parents the many stings he has had to endure from his favourite insects. ‘Look mummy, I got seventeen red stings on my arms and cheeks today. Aren’t they lovely?’ Mummy freaks out and heads towards the kitchen looking for some ancient herbal ointment to ease the pain and lessen the swelling while muttering under her breath, ‘he will not listen, he will play with those bees.’ But the boy will have none of it. Anton had firmly made up his mind to keep bees – a few stings here and there were little more than a flea-bite, a necessary collateral damage.  Beekeeping was thus born not just as an interesting if dangerous hobby, but one that was to become a cottage industry of considerable financial significance in the years to come. The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to paraphrase Shakespeare and begging his pardon. Yes, we will come to the honey part of it presently.

On this very significant day, when we are doffing our hats to bees of every genus and recognising their immensely industrious nature, their innate architectural genius in building those picture-perfect beehives and honeycombs, it is not my intention to take you on a National Geographic type excursion into the habits and everyday chores of the bee species. If they reproduce like rabbits, I shan’t go into the hows and whys. Some of their habits are pretty weird, mind you, like the queen bee literally making a meal of her king bee, assuming there is one, if he fails to obey her slightest command. Not unlike her other distinguished colleague from the insect kingdom, the highly poisonous ‘black widow’ spider which wouldn’t think twice about gobbling up its kith and kin at the drop of a hat, having invited them to her parlour. At the human level, there have been dark suggestions that in 1567 Mary Queen of Scots did her husband Lord Darnley in, but it remained in the realm of rumour and saucy palace gossip. Unlike the Scottish queen, the queen bee from the Queendom of Anthophila does not leave anything to idle speculation. It goes about its murderous business with cannibalistic efficiency.

Moving away from the darker side of bee life, as we are celebrating World Bee Day and singing hosannas to Anton Janša and his pioneering efforts in the arcane hobby of beekeeping, my thoughts turned to music. So many songs have been written and sung, leaving the hit parades buzzing the world over. (This is where I introduce the honey motif.) I felt this is a good time to look at some of these memorable numbers by famous artists that celebrate the sweetness of honey and the bee that is responsible for bringing the sticky sweet syrup into our homes and our breakfast tables. We are, thanks to Hollywood, familiar with the many terms of endearment this sticky, gooey substance has inspired in men – honey / hon / honey-bunch / honey-kins and so on. From there to bursting into song is but a lilting step.

This is a purely personal and subjective selection and could be conspicuous by the songs that went missing from your list. So here is a list of my personal song favourites on the subject of bees and honey. In so doing, I once again bow to this singular, largely unsung individual, Anton Janša, who gave us something sweet to cheer and sing about even if, in the process, he was stung pleasurably. 

A Taste of Honey. I first heard this beautiful song performed by The Beatles though the original composition is credited to Scott / Marlow. The song featured in their debut album, Please Please Me in 1962. While there have been many other cover versions of this song, for me the young Paul McCartney sets the benchmark and shows early signs of his melodic crooning talent as he takes the lead – A taste of honey / Tasting much sweeter than wine. It was one of those rare Beatles albums where they covered other composers’ songs, till they became the most prolific singer-songwriters themselves.

Honey. Bobby Goldsboro’s version of this iconic 1968 hit was one of those many songs that was played over and over again at parties and get-togethers during our college days. It topped the charts all over the world with its evocative lyrics set to a simple, hummable melody. The lyrics were mushy, demanding Kleenex tissues readily at hand. It was a time when people thronged to cinema halls to weep over Love Story. A sampler. She was always young at heart / Kinda dumb and kinda smart / And I loved her so / And I surprised her with a puppy / Kept me up all Christmas Eve two years ago / And honey I miss you.

Honeycomb. Jimmie Rodgers was a hugely popular American singer in the 1950s with a string of hits to his name, none more popular than Honeycomb. Never a Sunday passed during Calcutta’s favourite radio programme, Musical Band Box, without this song being played. Again, a simple and singable song with the honeybee garnering all the attention. Well it’s a darn good life / And it’s kinda funny / How the Lord made the bee / And the bee made the honey / And the honeybee lookin’ for a home / And they called it honeycomb.

Sugar Sugar. This 1969 teeny-bop hit had children and adults dancing to the tune of The Archies’ bouncy track, based on an animated TV show inspired by the Archie comics. The lyrics, if you can call it that, does not exercise the mind, more the legs – Sugar, ah honey, honey / You are my candy girl / And you got me wanting you. As a stunning variant, the second line starts with Honey, ah sugar, sugar. Not exactly the Gettysburg Address, but the pop world loved it. What is more, the song was played in the command module of Apollo 12 on the way to the moon in November 1969!

Honey Pie. The Beatles again, in 1968, gave us this jaunty little ditty, a direct homage to the old-time, British music hall style. The lyrics, mawkish but nothing to write home about, suggests a hopeless admirer yearning for the company of a Hollywood starlet. You became a legend of the silver screen / And now the thought of meeting you makes me weak in the knee / Oh, honey pie / You are driving me frantic / Sail across the Atlantic / To be where you belong / Honey pie come back to me.

Tupelo Honey. One of Van Morrison’s most beautiful songs, the Irish troubadour uses the theme of the unique brand of honey produced in the city of Tupelo (Elvis Presley’s birthplace) in Mississippi, to describe the love of his life. You can take all the tea in China / Put it in a big brown bag for me / Sail right round all the seven oceans / Drop it straight into the deep blue sea / She’s as sweet as tupelo honey / She’s an angel of the first degree / Just like honey, baby, from the bee. The much-acclaimed 1997 film, Ulee’s Gold, features Peter Fonda as a beekeeper who treasures the honeyed nectar from the tupelo tree. Van Morrison’s title song was played over the end credits of the film.

Like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, on honey-dew have I fed in this piece, and it is all down to an unsung Slovenian beekeeper’s pioneering efforts nearly 300 years ago. Happy birthday, Anton Janša.

Note: all the songs mentioned in this piece can be accessed on YouTube or Spotify. Just key in the song and artist name.

Badminton is not as glamorous as cricket. Saina Nehwal

I called a close friend of mine a few days ago and breathless with excitement, told him that India had just won the Thomas Cup for the first time in the 73-year history of the tournament. I knew he was travelling and felt he might have missed this sensational nugget of sporting achievement. His reply was somewhat muted and laconic. ‘Ah, Thomas Cup. Would that be tennis? No can’t be, that’s Davis Cup. Whatever, we won something. Great. Refresh me, will you, about this Thomas Cup.’ I need proceed no further. Case rests. It neatly brought home to me our country’s obsession with one sport, and one sport only, to the exclusion, and dare I say detriment, of nearly all others. I say ‘nearly’ because once in a rare, black swan moment, we have experienced a few triumphs in tennis, the odd medal in athletics at the Olympic games (we went justifiably bananas over Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold), and a couple of notable individual performances in badminton at the All-England and elsewhere. Hockey, once India’s pride and glory, an Asian celebration of stickwork wizardry, has become a physical, soulless push n’ run, hit or miss, penalty corner affair played on synthetic surfaces. Barring occasional glimpses of success in the sub-continent, the game in its present avatar has become the preserve of beefy Antipodean and European brawn.

Other than that, the nation has been engrossed in a game, witheringly castigated by Rudyard Kipling, ‘Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls / With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.’ Kipling, of course, was deriding his own countrymen for their misplaced priorities. It is significant that Kipling’s cricketing ‘flannelled fools’ come off slightly better than the footballing ‘muddied oafs’ in his pecking order. Not by much, but still. At the time Kipling wrote those lines during the turn of the twentieth century, the Indophile poet and novelist, born in Mumbai, was not to know that several decades later, India would outdo their erstwhile masters when it came to playing and following cricket. While the English still actively support cricket, most of them are obsessed with their ‘muddied oafs.’ The modern term for them, of course, is football hooligans.

That said, let me revert to badminton and India’s astounding success in Bangkok where our boys trounced their infinitely more fancied Indonesians by three matches to nil, rendering the remaining two scheduled matches redundant. It would not be an exaggeration to say that we wiped the floor with the former multiple champions. Predictably, the mainstream Indian sports channels did not telecast this historic encounter. They must be eating their hearts out. Look at all the ad revenue they could have garnered, the ravenous sods. I paid a pittance to trace it to a private cable channel. Let me come clean here. I was actually hunting for a channel that was streaming the ATP Masters 1000 tennis in Madrid and Rome. When I logged on to it, I discovered that they were dishing out the Thomas Cup badminton extravaganza as well. A fortuitous double delight. That is how I came to follow India’s historic march to badminton glory.

Apropos of the television coverage, it would not be out of place to mention that in 1980, when Prakash Padukone delighted all of India by winning the All-England Badminton Championships, our national television channel failed to telecast the game. Mind you, those days we only had Doordarshan, whose priorities were more in the areas of India’s family planning programmes and agricultural production highlights. Some enterprising spectator at Wembley had filmed part of that historic game from one side of the court only, and I recall watching a snippet of the elegant Padukone essaying a couple of delectable drop shots. His opponent was not visible! For the record, he was Liem Swie King of Indonesia. We took our jollies from such meagre scraps of unexpected generosity that came our way. Nowadays we wallow in an excess of sporting coverage and, ironically, place less value on them. More is less and vice versa.

The moment Kidambi Srikanth smashed his way to victory against his fancied opponent, the floodgates opened wide. Every single news channel on television stopped whatever else they were telecasting to focus on the Thomas Cup victory. The channels, in a competitive frenzy, tried to get hold of whoever was readily at hand to vent their considered views on this memorable win. ‘Remember, we brought this incredible news to you first, .005 seconds before the other channels jumped on to the bandwagon,’ they screamed. I am, naturally, paraphrasing with some poetic license. I say ‘they’ because all the channels said the same thing at pretty much the same time. What is more, the badminton celebrities comprising ex-champions and administrators plus a couple of de rigueur ministers as well, were to be seen in all the news channels repeating themselves ad nauseum. Can’t blame them, really. How much originality can you inject in your statements when you are faced with an intimidatingly long queue of television crews beating a path to your door.

The daily newspaper journos, who have the advantage of time to prepare their pages for the next morning’s issue, went about their coverage of the event more sensibly and methodically. Plenty of smashing photographs and some detailed, in-depth analyses by former players, coaches and inevitably, a few bullet points from our heroes on court who made this momentous victory possible. However, into each life a little rain must fall. We had to endure encouraging comments from the likes of the Prime Minister and other concerned Union Ministers, whose knowledge of the game, as one wag famously put it, could be written on the head of a pin with a pneumatic drill; but we should not cavil. Our PM often invokes the Opposition’s ire by keeping mum on many issues. That he pens a few well-chosen words to congratulate a stirring sporting triumph should be warmly welcomed. Union and State ministers will invariably dole out some moolah by way of cash awards, which will then generate some spicy controversy over why the players were awarded and not their coach blah, blah, blah. Then there’s always the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to chip in with their felicitous wishes on the subject. We can never get away from cricketers, never mind which sport happens to be the focus of attention. I have to say it surprised me not to see Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan adding their two-pice bit. Unless I missed it.

So, there we have it. Our boys (sporting heroes are always addressed avuncularly as ‘our boys,’ or ‘our girls’) have done the nation proud. They have served, tossed, smashed, dropped, feinted, driven and cleared their way to a first-ever Indian victory and taken their rightful place on top of the world badminton stage. Our Thomas Cup of delight is overflowing. Special mention must be made of India’s former badminton greats who, silently behind the scenes, coached and motivated our boys. Bravo Vimal Kumar, P. Gopichand and their dedicated teams. We now await a fitting response from P.V. Sindhu and company to return the compliment at the next Uber Cup. Finally, a request to all our television sports channels to look sharp next time round and not miss a trick.

 Love all, play.

(This article appeared in Deccan Chronicle dated May 21, 2022).

A recent banner headline in one of Bangalore’s leading dailies made me sit up with a start and spill my morning cuppa all over my shirt front. The headline boldly announced, ‘Majority in Karnataka believe it’s OK to beat wives.’ They have it on good authority, as the bizarre conclusion is based on the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) conducted under the auspices of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. As I am a long-time resident of the fictional Garden City (now an entirely inappropriate nomenclature), the findings did not fill me with pride. If my chest swelled at all, it would have been with shame. I hasten to add that this was an all-India survey but the findings in Karnataka were understandably given due prominence by a newspaper catering to the state. The study further reveals that a very large percentage of Indians, particularly in south India, opt for the convenience of consanguineous marriages, i.e., marrying into blood relations. Whether the resultant familiarity breeds contempt or not is open to question.

At this juncture, I would like to make it plain that I have no wish to bore you, dear reader, with numbing statistics on a variety of different issues pertaining to the justification of domestic abuse, as they are in the public domain. Speaking hypothetically, would it make a blind bit of difference to you if you knew that 72.5% of the men probed were wholly in favour of administering an upper cut followed by the knock-out punch to their wives for adding too much salt in the sambar, while 63.6% of the wives actually welcomed said punishment as an atonement for their misdemeanours? I thought not. Suffice it to say that the results of the study were shocking, not least because the sentiments in favour of clubbing the wives for all manner of specious reasons found favour, hold your breath, with men and women. I ask you! The victims, the female of the species, of this heinous practice appear to be willing sympathisers of and hark back to, the stone-age caveman syndrome.

That said, let us take a closer look at the various circumstances being listed by the NFHS-5 under which their respondents felt it was perfectly kosher for the husband to haul off and let his wife feel the benefit of an open palm while administering a tight slap, among other acts of pugilism. No mention is made, alas, of the wife returning the compliment in like measure.

For starters, let us dwell on the subject of cooking, which features right at the top of the priorities to ensure household bliss. As suggested earlier, the survey indicates, by some distance, that if the lady of the house failed to satisfy her lord and master’s gastronomic needs in some shape or form, he would be perfectly within his rights to let fly, all guns blazing. WHACK! Why is the rice undercooked? THUMP! You call this oily, dripping thing fried chicken? BIFF! Too little sugar in the pudding. CLANG! SPLAT! The last two are sounds emanating from the plate flung at the nearest wall, and the remains of the pudding splayed out against another wall. In short, the wife’s goose is cooked. But no harm done. We are assured by NFHS-5 that most of the husbands and wives of our country are entirely fine with this state of affairs. What is life without a spot of frenetic action at home, eh? Maybe they even get off on it.

We then move to that hoary, old chestnut – the in-laws. We can infer from this that if the wife should exhibit the slightest disrespect to her husband’s parents, there will be hell to pay. Popular Indian films over the years have, for the most part, portrayed the mother-in-law as a cruel harridan, ready to run to her darling son to complain about some misdeed or the other, real or imagined, mostly the latter. The son, who suffers from an Oedipus complex, then proceeds to remove his belt from his spreading waist and give his wife the lashing of her life, while Cruella watches with undisguised glee, and provides a spot of her own tongue-lashing from the sidelines. A mournful, tearful song by the stricken wife then follows. The father-in-law is usually a timid, shadowy figure cowering in the background. That is the celluloid template. Clearly, life imitates art. Our real-life husband will brook no insult to his mummy and daddy (particularly mummy), and he heartily approves of such retributive action as he deems fit, against his wife. And, as the all-knowing NFHS-5 informs us, so do most wives! So, what are we all beefing about? Our courts have also been yammering on endlessly about marital rape and the judges themselves are split, ergo confused, on how to deal with matters that take place ‘behind closed doors.’

To top it all, an elderly couple in Dehradun sued their son and daughter-in-law for not providing them with a grandchild after six years of wedded life. All they wanted, the poor grandpa and grandma, was a little toddler to play pin the tail on the donkey or hide-and-seek with in their dotage. Is that too much to ask? Instead, they were willing to settle with their beta and bahu for a piffling Rs.5 crores for ‘mental harassment.’ Conjugal bliss can go hang, as far as they were concerned. ‘Show me the money,’ as Cuba Gooding Jr. memorably urges Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. Now there’s a smashing script for a Bollywood potboiler!

Apart from the reasons stated above in the survey, a wife can also be subjected to merciless beatings if she ‘refuses sex,’ ‘argues with husband,’ ‘goes out without telling husband’ and ‘neglects house and children.’ The majority of the husbands and wives questioned by the NFHS-5 were quite happy with such punishment being meted out to the long-suffering wife if she is found to transgress any of the above commandments. The line has to be drawn somewhere. I cannot help but arrive at the conclusion that most of the wives questioned get some sort of perverted kick being beaten up by the worse half, kick being the operative word. I do not wish to go into the gory details of reasons for sex refusal, but evidently, the old ‘headache’ excuse as apocryphally trotted out by Eve to Adam is no longer applicable. As for arguing with the hubby, it would be interesting to know what precisely constitutes an argument. ‘How dare you say Kejriwal looks like a third division clerk, you stupid woman! Take that. And that.’ More onomatopoeic BIFFS and POWS.

The harassed wife remonstrates. ‘Yesterday you threw the cactus potted plant at me for going out without telling you.’ Retaliates the husband, ‘That was only because I could not find the steaming hot iron at that precise moment. Thank your lucky stars. And by the way, you have been neglecting the house and the children. I still owe you a few juicy ones with the broomstick for that.’ The nulliparous wife is now beside herself with rage. ‘What children, you idiot! Are you non-compos mentis? We don’t have any children or haven’t you noticed? That’s why your parents are suing us for Rs.5 crores.’ Checkmate! And the argy-bargy raves on.

From what one can observe, it would be logical to conclude that the average housewife who is at the receiving end of all manner of domestic abuse, should be slamming the door on her husband and leaving in a huge huff to go live with her parents (if they are not suing her). Instead, the redoubtable NFHS-5 would have us believe that the wife is very much in consonance with the idea that she was born to be the burning martyr – again, the filmy cliché. I find that hard to believe and would be immensely interested in meeting some of them.

‘Hi there, Madam. I understand your husband slaps you around daily if the cup of tea is not quite heated to the exact temperature he demands. Surely, that can’t be true?’

‘Oh, that is perfectly true. He demands absolute perfection in everything I do, and the slaps are his way of ensuring I get it spot on. A saucy variant of the love bite.’

No, no NFHS-5, I think you’ve got it all wrong. I am sure you interviewed the couple together and the husband would have hit the roof if the wife expressed anything other than total approval of his tantrums. Grill the wife separately and see what happens. Wouldn’t she just love to take a roundhouse swing at her husband with the hairbrush? You betcha.

Surveys! They never get it right.

My morning newspaper brings me glad tidings. The MCC or Marylebone Cricket Club to give it its full nomenclature, has just announced that its next President will be none other than the celebrated English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, polemicist, television presenter and film director, 64-year-old Stephen Fry. Not to mention that he is a gripping and side-splittingly witty public speaker. My research on the man also reveals that Fry has been a long-time advocate for mental health and has been President of Mind, the mental health charity, for well over a decade. The more astute and observant among you are probably reading this and going, ‘All that is very well but we do not detect the word cricket anywhere in that brief, though awesome, resume of MCC’s somewhat unusual choice for such an exalted position.’ On the face of it, dear reader, you would have made a telling point, but you would have been guilty of missing the wood for the trees. The MCC is not a body that takes decisions on a whim, even if this particular choice bears close scrutiny.

Around 20 years ago, on BBC Radio’s much-loved Test Match Special broadcast at the Oval, Stephen Fry was invited to the commentary box to have a chat with Jonathan ‘Aggers’ Agnew at The Oval, a day on which Sachin Tendulkar made 54 on his 100^th Test appearance. Amongst other things, including high praise for India’s little master, Fry shared his world view on the game. ‘It’s a whole cultural world and the marvellous thing is it’s not just a British one. I can’t bear the snobbery that says real cricket is cricket played within sight of a spire and an English field. It’s wonderful, village cricket, but cricket on a coir mat or on a beach or in an alleyway in Calcutta – that’s cricket as well. It’s a game that’s much bigger than its roots. That’s what’s so wonderful. Rather like the English language.’

That pretty much sums up Stephen Fry. A lifelong cricket lover, supporter and a patron of the MCC Foundation, the multi-faceted Fry was invited last year by the MCC to deliver its prestigious annual MCC Cowdrey Lecture, a sure sign that the once undisputed headquarters of world cricket had Stephen Fry in its sights for bigger things. Expressing his overwhelming emotions at the invitation to speak, Fry pointed out that he was only the second non-cricketer to be so invited after the Reverend Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa – ‘big shoes to fill.’ Fry will take over as President of the MCC from former England women’s captain, Clare Connor in October this year. Connor had notched up a unique distinction when she became the first woman president of the MCC in 2021.

While Fry’s love for the game of cricket needs no elaboration, his appointment to this august position underscores his deep concern and anguish at some of the darker aspects that have bedevilled the game in recent years. Yorkshire cricket’s infamous racism row last year, when Pakistan-born cricketer Azeem Rafiq had to face racial abuse in the dressing room, had the British thespian feelingly expressing his solidarity with the victim. ‘When he (Rafiq) said today that he didn’t want his son to go anywhere near cricket my heart fell to my boots. But actually, that simple statement crystallises everything, it gives us a clear human image that says it all. It is a rallying cry.’ In a typical example of Fry flamboyance, he described the handling of that abhorrent incident in Yorkshire as having exuded a ‘mephitic stink.’ He rounded off his observations on this unsavoury incident thus, ‘Unless all our nation’s sons and daughters with the talent and desire to have a life in cricket are confident that cricket will want to have a life with them, the spirit of cricket, its very flame, will flicker and go out. Let’s dedicate ourselves to ensuring that that will never happen.’ That is the kind of language one would like to hear from a president-elect.

While I was driven to hastily pen this appreciation of Stephen Fry’s rise to cricketing stardom, in a manner of speaking, I cannot but take this opportunity to recall some of his brilliant moments on print and television. His comic double act with fellow British actor Hugh Laurie in A Bit of Fry & Laurie and the same partnership delighting fans the world over in their televised interpretation of P.G. Wodehouse’s immortal creations, Jeeves and Wooster, his hilarious partnership with Rowan ‘Mr. Bean’ Atkinson in the memorable Blackadder series – we can watch these again and again and never tire of them.

Fry’s atheistic views on religion saw him take on the high and mighty of theology without taking a backward step. He often stood solidly side-by-side with friend and fellow non-believer, the brilliantly coruscating late Christopher Hitchens. You, dear reader, could do a lot worse than spend a relaxed evening watching these titans at their eloquent best on YouTube. Lest I forget, Stephen Fry’s role in the film Wilde, in which he portrays the protagonist, author and playwright Oscar Wilde, is so eerily uncanny. That Fry is a dead ringer for the controversial Wilde and given Fry’s own unabashed sexual orientation which meshes with Wilde’s, one could be forgiven for mistaking the one for the other. Fry is happily married to British comedian, Elliot Spencer, who is 30 years his junior. Stephen Fry even gained a brief period of notoriety when he was sent to prison for three months for a credit card fraud at the age of 17. Never a dull moment.

As a writer, Stephen Fry is an unmitigated delight. From his hilarious columns which are available in book form (Paperweight, The Stars’ Tennis Balls), his autobiographical works (The Fry Chronicles, More Fool Me), his magnificent retelling of Greek myths (Mythos, Troy and Heroes) – just a few dishy morsels from a wide and impressive body of work.

There you have it. Stephen Fry, a man of many parts and I may even be guilty of merely scratching the surface in describing his astonishing variety of achievements. In inviting such an extraordinary personality to helm the affairs of the MCC for the period 2022-23, the cricketing mavens at Lord’s should be warmly congratulated for their choice. One is confident Stephen Fry will carry out his responsibilities as MCC’s President with erudition, compassion, skill and above all with his renowned wit and humour – qualities the game and the world need more than ever, right now. The silver-tongued orator and soon-to-be cricket boss once famously said, ‘Better sexy and racy, than sexist and racist.’

May the force be with you, Stephen.

(This article appeared in Deccan Chronicle dated May 8, 2022).

As far back as I can remember, my first job interview happened when I was around 20 years of age. ‘Management Trainee’ was the buzz word going around, and I am speaking of the late 60s. The recruitment pages in the newspapers were crammed to bursting with adverts for management trainees, fresh out of college and wet behind the ears. The elite Indian Institutes of Management were still finding their feet. Talent spotting with a vengeance were well-known corporate houses along with private and public sector banks. Not to be outdone, candidates with good deportment and communication skills (in English naturally) were avidly sought for jobs in tea gardens. I lived in Calcutta and the tea garden contiguity was fertile ground for employment. Today, there is a great deal of furore over whether Hindi should be considered the link language for the nation or not, but that will keep for another day. At the time I am talking about, a job in a reputed tea garden was a particularly well-paid billet, primarily to compensate for the lonely life one was expected to lead in remote and hilly even if beautiful, surroundings.

 From the little I could gather via third party sources, a management job in a tea estate largely involved driving around in a jeep through lush vegetation and supervising crop rotation (whatever that meant), tackling a few labour issues and returning home to a lovely bungalow with a private garden; a quick shower and off the to the nearest club, about a 90-minute bumpy drive; play darts and drink the house down with your colleagues. An early marriage was highly recommended, at least by anxious parents. No worries about being stopped by the local cops on the way back home asking you to breathe into a tube. If anything, the cops would have shoved you into the slammer had you turned up sober! That was the kind of job it was. Nice work if you could get it, some might say. Well, I nearly got it, were it not for a couple of inadvertent missteps during the interview.

Unlike in the other sectors mentioned earlier, like banks and well-known business houses based in our bustling metros, the entire interview process for an executive trainee job in a tea garden was not particularly rigorous. The short essay you were asked to submit along with your application form, appeared to suffice. Why am I seeking a professional career in tea? in not more than 300 words was the task given, and I felt I had got it all down pat, including a couple of quotes from Shakespeare. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of this essay, because nearly all the questions at the interview were drawn from what one wrote about why a career in tea appealed to one. So there I was, along with twenty other bright-eyed and bushy-tailed applicants, clutching a file folder containing my precious certificates, waiting to be called in for the grilling.

As I was somewhere around 7^th or 8^th on the list of interviewees, some of us eagerly crowded around the candidates who came out after the interview to ascertain the nature of the questioning and the personalities of the officers seated on the other side of the table. This was a waste of time and effort because the candidates just interviewed never gave you an accurate account of the proceedings for fear you might gain an unfair advantage and pip them at the post. I just sat back, waited patiently while muttering, under my breath, some material I had read up about Assam, Darjeeling, CTC, Earl Grey and so on. Frankly, I have no idea why we candidates did this. Mugging up some stuff at the last minute, depending on which company you are being interviewed by, in the hope of impressing. The managers do not expect you to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the business they are in, neither are they going to question you on the same. They are there to assess potential, personality and bearing – the crease of your shirt and the knot of your tie, that sort of thing. Let me stress once more that I am talking about what used to happen over 50 years ago. Things are very different to-day.

Soon enough, the bell tolled for me. I quickly adjusted my Half-Windsor knot and walked in a nervous gait to the conference room. There were three gentlemen seated comfortably, two of them smoking. One of the trio motioned to me to sit across the table in a straight, hard-backed chair. To be perfectly clear, I was asked to sit on the chair, not across the table. After the cursory good morning, I did as I was bid. What is it about job interviews that you always feel the chaps who are asking the questions are out to get you? Stuff and nonsense, of course. They are probably very sweet guys, who go home to their wives and children and read a good book or watch something wholesome on television. I think it’s just some sort of paranoia that afflicts the candidates. The bloke sitting in the middle (I marked him down as the leader of the pack) kicked off the proceedings.

‘Right Mr. Subrahmanyan, or let’s keep things informal, shall we? Suresh it is. Why have you applied for a job in our company?’

I thought that was a stupid question, but I didn’t show it. ‘Well Sir, I am in the market for a decent job and you had advertised in the papers looking for candidates with my kind of qualifications.’

The man in the middle looked a bit muddled but he pressed on. ‘Yes, we can see that. I was looking for a less obvious answer. What I meant was why our company in particular. Do you have a special fondness for the tea industry?’

‘Actually Sir, I am not sure how to answer that. At home we don’t even drink tea. Filter coffee is the beverage of choice. As you might have guessed, I come from a Tam-Bram family. We are big on filter coffee. However, I heard tell that this advertised job is for a position in the tea gardens. I thought a change of scene from the usual city-based jobs, not to mention a change of beverage, would make for a diverting experience.’

The gentleman to the left of centre now piped up. ‘Tell me Suresh, if I’ve got your name right, have you ever drunk tea at all? And before you answer, let me assure you that coffee is also available at the tea gardens. Not sure about the filter, though.’

Smug character. What’s not to get right about a simple, two-syllable name like Suresh, I thought to myself. I bashed on. ‘In our college canteen Sir, we all drank tea because we could not afford coffee. However, we only had the canteen staff’s word for it that they were serving tea. For all we knew, it could have been warm water with some brown sludge mixed in and a sprinkling of sugar. College canteens! I am sure you have experienced it, Sir.’ A touch of levity, I felt would go down well.

Nobody laughed, not even a semblance of a smile. ‘Never mind about us,’ continued the smug one, ‘where do you see yourself ten years from now in our company?’

That was the killer. Every person who has interviewed me has had this horrid question tucked up his sleeve. I saw it coming but could do nothing about it, like one of Bumrah’s slower deliveries. I mean, this was my first job potentially, and I was not even sure about landing it and here was this guy asking me about ten years down the road. I decided not to hold back.

‘With due respect Sir, I know nothing about your company. Not yet anyway. I don’t even know if you will be offering me the job. Right now, I am unable to think beyond that, and my thoughts are all about my interview tomorrow with a Delhi based multi-product conglomerate. Ten years from now? Who knows? Maybe I’ll be sitting where you are right now.’ I was pretty certain I had blown it. The sheer effrontery! The interview was all but over. I had nothing to lose. In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought to myself. I proceeded to ask, ‘Excuse me Sir, but may I ask a question?’

‘Shoot,’ said the middle man. Ah, if wishes were horses.

‘I see that the person on your left has not asked me a single question. Looks like he was trying to stare me down, while blowing perfect smoke rings. Why is that? Is it some sort of passive-aggressive, psychological strategy to put me off my stroke?’ The person on the left merely smiled enigmatically and scribbled something down on his notepad. The man in the middle said ‘Thank you, we’ll let you know.’ The magic words, ‘we’ll let you know,’ meaning my goose had been well and truly cooked.

I then went through the rounds of some well-known companies. One of them asked me to draft a mission statement for them. I quietly demurred as I did not know what that meant. I was on a mission myself, namely, to find a job to suit my temperament. That is how I stumbled into advertising. They said the tea garden job involved too much drinking and having a good time. Guess what? Advertising had all of that, and more. And lots of exciting work at the ad agency. At the end of the interview, they asked me one question. ‘You speak and carry yourself well, but can you hold a drink?’ They were pulling my leg and my response matched their spirit, ‘Certainly Sir, I’ll be your bartender at all the agency parties. I’ll hold as many drinks as you wish.’

I got the job.

There are things that happen to us at various points in our lives on a consistent basis, simple and apparently inconsequential things, that we never give a second thought to. On reflection, however, and with the passage of time, these little happenings begin to acquire a somewhat deeper, philosophical tinge. Things that are sent to try us. In case you are wondering what this orotund introduction is all about, let me quickly cut to the chase. Take for instance, an everyday matter of ordering food at a restaurant. There you are, seated comfortably, along with your wife (or partner) and another couple, oblivious to some gormless fusion music playing in the background. A happy foursome, enjoying the liberty of post-pandemia, to coin a term. While you are still giving the menu the once-over, the waiter hoves into view with a cheery, ‘And how can I help you with the menu this evening, Sir? Some wine to start with, perhaps? I could recommend the Burgundy red. Or the Sauvignon blanc, if white is your preferred tipple.’ A vintner in the making, our waiter. Fact of the matter is while you’ve been intently studying the menu, you haven’t actually been paying any attention to the items. It is possible that the obscene amounts mentioned on the right-hand column, particularly the wine section, have distracted your attention from the actual offerings on the menu. You then turn to the waiter with a ‘We are still studying the menu, please come back in ten minutes, thanks.’ And the waiter vanishes, like he was never there.

Before I get to the actual ordering, a quick word about the menu itself. Barring a few sensible eateries, most restaurants have now decided they will not waste good money designing and printing lavish menus, where frequent, blotchy redactions have to be made for items currently unavailable for some reason or the other, as well as to incorporate frequent price changes owing to cost escalations, GST and unbridled greed. ‘Sorry Madam, we are fresh out of avocado, but might I recommend the Waldorf salad?’ Shades of Basil Fawlty!

 Instead, what they do now is to digitize the menu. So, when you ask for the outsize printed thing, the waiter points to a glass-encased card prominently displaying a squiggly design, like a QR Scan. In fact, I am informed it is a QR Scan, silly old me. Then you go through the elaborate and embarrassing process of holding your mobile phone in front of the display. When nothing happens, the ubiquitous waiter, reappears miraculously. He obligingly takes the mobile from you, ever so gently, turns the phone round the other way and says in an unctuously superior tone, ‘This way, Sir.’ You are tempted to tell him tersely that you were not dropped on the head as a child, but hey presto, the menu, all 125 pages of it, is in the palm of your hands in a type font and size that is barely readable. Let me rephrase that, it is completely unreadable. You now enter the rarefied world of scrolling – up and down. The process is repeated for all the four of us, and we are now ready to order, our mobile phones just a click away. Sadly, the establishment does not provide a magnifying glass to enable easier reading. One can, of course, expand the type by the simple expedient of the employment of your thumb and forefinger, but then half the text goes out of the screen and you are back to square one!

Given that we are not enjoying the first flush of youth, the digital menu is the cause for much squinting and removal and replacement of spectacles. If you ask me, we end up making quite a spectacle of ourselves. The waiter is still hovering obsequiously.

I clear my throat and announce, ‘I think I will have the Stricken Born Poop for starters,’ thus setting the ball rolling for the others to follow.

The waiter, looking puzzled, says that there is no such item on the menu. I give him a stern look. ‘Look, my friend, it clearly says Stricken Born Poop on your digital menu. Under Soups and Starters. I have no idea what it is but I am feeling adventurous, so let’s have some steaming hot poop, pronto.’

‘Sir, what you have ordered is Chicken Corn Soup. Perhaps the lettering was not very clear on your mobile. Try increasing the brightness, Sir.’ Tactful chap.

‘Ah, I see. Right then, Chicken Corn Soup it is. Pity. I was so looking forward to some stricken poop, just born.’ The waiter smiles patronizingly and turns to the others, who he hopes would be blessed with keener eyesight.

‘No starters for me,’ declares my wife. ‘I’ll go straight to the mains. Chicken a la Kiev sounds good, if I’ve read that right. And by the way, should that not be spelt Kyiv, or are my eyes also deceiving me? I read about Kyiv every day in the papers.’

‘Sorry Madam, that item is banned ever since war broke out between Russia and Ukraine. The management is sensitive to the feelings of our Russian and Ukrainian clients. Never mind how you spell Kiev. Or Kyiv.’ And cheeky, as they come.

My friend pipes up, ‘That’s taken care of my Molotov cocktail, I guess. And my Russian salad goes up the spout as well. Why did we choose this place, anyway? How is it you haven’t banned falafel, shawarma, hummus and all those Middle Eastern dishes? They are forever at war in that part of the world, aren’t they?’

Before the harried waiter could frame a suitable response, my wife rejoins the discussion with a curt ‘I take it you can manage the Shepherd’s Pie on digital page 79? Please place the order immediately before Britain declares war on Russia. And don’t spare the mashed potatoes.’

The waiter scribbles something on his pad and looks expectantly at my friend’s wife, who has remained silent thus far. She, fortunately, does not seem unduly fussed about the political ramifications on the restaurant’s food menu. Easy come, easy go was her motto in life. She then places the mobile phone very close to her eyes, adjusts her spectacles and pronounces gaily, “I’ll settle for, to start with, Honey Chirri Flied Potatoes followed by that old-time classic, Chicken Flied Lice.’ Let me quickly add that it was a multi-cuisine eatery.

The waiter then gets into the spirit of things and responds with a smart ‘I am afraid we are fresh out of lice madam, flied or otherwise, but I can get the chef to do you a plate of delicious Chicken Fried Rice. But if you insist on lice, there’s that louse of a street dog sitting outside the gates that might be willing to delouse himself in exchange for a marrow bone. ’And we all have a good chuckle, though I felt he was overstepping the limits for a waiter. I told myself I should tip him handsomely for the unsolicited entertainment. One rarely comes across hotel waiters with an ironic sense of humour.

That said, cuisine life in a touchy-feely-menu-less world is nothing to write home about. It has its uses if you are ordering food from home online. Seductive photographs of various dishes in all their lip-smacking splendour serve a purpose, enabling us to tap our fingers on the chosen item. Notwithstanding the fact that more often than not, the pictures flatter the actual items that arrive an hour later, often cold and unappetizing. However, when you are seated comfortably in a restaurant, the last thing you want is to bury your head in your mobile phone, squinting tightly, asking the waiter if Camel Custard under ‘Just Desserts’ on digital page 124 is veg or non-veg, not counting the eggs. Even the poor waiter stops seeing the funny side of things.

Thus, I return to my original premise. Apparently insignificant things in life happen for a purpose. It may not be immediately clear what that purpose is, but some unseen power that directs our destiny, moves in a mysterious way its wonders to perform. Today it is menu cards in restaurants that gradually disappear from our lives. The anticipated death of the newspaper has been greatly exaggerated, though environmentalists may ensure that eventuality in the not-too-distant future. Thanks to the internet of things, the ominous signs are already there. Cassette tapes, vinyl records and CDs are fast becoming one with the dinosaur, the rarity only adding to their false snob value. Hullo Spotify. In the meanwhile, menu or no menu, I am making a beeline for quality restaurants in the company of close friends, before food as we know it and conviviality, disappear altogether. We could be swallowing ‘food pills’ three times a day that provide all the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need. Like our astronauts in space. Convenience foods will acquire a completely new meaning. I hope by then, I will be one with the dinosaur.

I am gutted. Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor tied the nuptial knot in Mumbai a few days ago. Our television news channels, who have an uncanny sense of what the public wants to see and hear, went ape over the affair. Zelensky and Putin can continue to go hammer and tongs at each other, communal clashes in various parts of India can rage, Boris Johnson tries to save Rishi Sunak’s blushes, Covid appears to have been a closed chapter in India, at least for now and the reverberating IPL has become a bit of a yawn. However, the power couple #RanLia’s (preceded by the compulsory hashtag) power wedding gets top billing. Incidentally, coupled, hash-tagged acronyms (#RanLia) are all but de rigueur.

That’s all very well, two young and charismatic stars of our silver screen, hearts aflame, go riding off into the sunset for their honeymoon, while the end credits roll to the schmaltz of A.R. Rahman’s music. The pertinent question is, why am I gutted? What is it to me if a high-profile Bollywood couple decides to walk down the aisle, in a manner of speaking? Or, as some of my Bengali friends in Calcutta might have inimitably put it, ‘What goes my father?’ I’ll tell you what goes my father. The simple fact that I was not invited.

You, dear reader, can very well ask why I should consider myself eligible to feature on the wedding invitation list of Bollywood stars. Virat and Anoushka (#AnoRat) ignored me as did Ranvir and Deepika (#RanIka) and several others before them, so why all this mooning about feeling sorry for myself? That is a valid question and my answer may not satisfy your slavering curiosity. Be that as it may, this is how I view the entire scenario. The image managers of the Kapoor and Bhatt clans decide that they must have the entire country drooling over the various stages of this big-time affair. Pre-publicity commenced well over a month ago. Plenty of social media chit-chat, and a spot of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, then the hyperventilating newspaper reports, the colour supplements and glossies full of specially orchestrated photoshoots – all carefully planned and executed to whip up the idolatrous fans’ insatiable appetite for more of the same. At which point, the ground is well laid out for the television channels to take over.

Once the audio-visual medium gets into the act, with its ability to go the whole hog with son et lumiere, all hell breaks loose. Each channel tries to go one over the other, and they all go over the top. I sit and watch all this incredulously, while my heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. I was feeling the kind of melancholy that Keats must have experienced, not because he was not invited for a big-ticket wedding but for other reasons not relevant to this discussion. One of the news channels devoted well over half-an-hour chattering about what happened at the wedding with stills and moving pictures, often repeating themselves. Even informal dance rehearsals for the reception jamboree were not left out. Here’s Ranbir lifting Alia clean off the ground, there’s Alia and Ranbir in a tight embrace and yet again (wait for this), the sexy couple kissing each other. Not just any dainty peck on the cheek, oh no, but a full-on, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Bollywood morphs into Hollywood. Not sure which of the two needed the resuscitation after that, but there you go. The blushing Bollywood bride, side-by-side with her uxorious Bollywood husband. This is the New India. At least, the way Bollywood sees it in real life and on celluloid. As for the smooching, I am no prude. If Bollywood feels it’s time India went for the Full Monty, so be it.

Pressing on, I was quite tickled by how some of the television girls (it was mostly girls who were assigned this task), standing outside the imposing gates of the Kapoor residence, kept describing all manner of irrelevant and self-evident minutiae as events unfolded. ‘We now see Ranbir stepping out of the car, oh sorry, that was Saif Ali Khan and out the other door comes Kareena. Wow, they look gorgeous. Saif is wearing a special outfit designed by Manish Malhotra, wow he’s so hot, while…’ She was about to say something about Kareena’s sari, but just then she had to rush in another direction as a swank vehicle drew up. Off screen, you hear voices screaming things like, ‘Kareena, where is Karishma?’ and other similar inanities. The girl with the microphone could not have been more than 17 years old and her camera person ran after her puffing and panting. ‘Look, look. I think that’s Alia just arriving. Look at that unbelievably brilliant sari she is wearing. Your channel has learned that it was designed by Sabyasachi. No other channel knew, we are the first to bring this breaking news to our viewers. We will try and get Sabyasachi later for an interview, if he is here.’ If he is here and been invited, the excitable girl might have added.

At this point, we cut back to the studio anchor, who is breathlessly conducting affairs from HQ. She takes the viewer through an audio-visual slide montage of the burgeoning romance between Alia and Ranbir, who their mutual friends are, how Ranbir’s mother, yesteryear star Neetu Singh simply dotes on Alia while providing a choked tribute to her late husband and Ranbir’s dad, Rishi, how Ranbir went down on his knees, filmy style (what else?) to propose to his sweetheart and then literally swept her off her feet. The storyline goes into an endless repetitive loop during this televisual feast, and the only thought that goes through my mind is, ‘Perhaps it is just as well that I did not receive that gilt-edged invite.’ In all probability, I would have scanned the bottom of the card for the RSVP mail id, sent out a polite regret letter (‘Down with the flu, could be Covid, better not take a chance, blessings etc’), and sent them a cheque for Rs.21/-. The additional rupee is down to superstition, to ensure continued prosperity. And if you think Rs.21/- is a pathetic sum to gift, I assure you, for Ranbir and Alia even Rs.2 lakhs would have been pathetic. Erring on the side of caution was a wiser option.

It would be appropriate to add at this juncture that pretty much all the news channels had locked on to this glam wedding story. Irrespective of which channel you were hooked on to, the logos on rival microphones jostling for space were all too visible. Anyhow, while I was surfing, one of them had managed to get a famous fashion designer to talk to them and the brief interview went something like this. I cannot mention the name of the designer because I could not recognize him and the channel felt it was superfluous to display his name, given that he was a national celebrity. That tells you how much I know about fashionistas.

‘We are thrilled to speak with one of India’s foremost fashion designers. He is a very busy man, but he has condescended to spare a few minutes exclusively for our channel,’ crooned the anchor.

‘Actually, I can spare just three minutes because 12 other channels are also waiting to interview me exclusively. So, less with the introduction and on with your question.’

‘Right. Tell us, how did it come about that you were selected to design Alia’s trousseau for the wedding.’

I switched the television set off. I had had enough of this. On and on they’ll go about the mehendi, the wedding, the reception, the challenges of choosing the right material and colour to match the skin tone, blah, blah. blah. I am surprised they didn’t interview the celebrity chef and run through the entire wedding menu for us to salivate over. Or perhaps they did and I missed it altogether. Boy, am I glad I did not get that invitation, and don’t say ‘sour grapes.’ I turned the TV on again and switched to CNN. Putin was mumbling something unintelligible in Russian. His skin tone was not looking awfully bright. The dark suit only accentuated his desiccated pallor. I think he should have retained a fashion consultant. Or stylist. Or something.

Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage / Minds innocent and quiet take / That for an hermitage. 17th-century English poet Richard Lovelace from his poem To Althea, from Prison.

My heart goes out to the well-known human rights activist, Gautam Navlakha. I shan’t go into the whys and wherefores or the rights and wrongs pertaining to the justification or otherwise of his confinement in a prison in Mumbai, where he is holed up in a high security cell. Let the lawyers and the judges break their heads over matters that go over my head. That is not part of the mandate I have set for myself in setting out to pen this piece. Reports tell us that he is allowed a 30-minute constitutional ‘in the open space’ and must clean his own cell. So far so bad, but it gets worse and this is where my heart does its bleeding act. Mr. Navlakha has been denied, on the face of it a most reasonable request for a copy to savour of one of master humourist P.G. Wodehouse’s books, evidently from the Jeeves-Wooster canon. That went through my heart like a flaming arrow.

Now anyone who knows me even remotely or have read some of my weekly outpourings, will surely be aware that I am more than an avid Wodehouse fan. During my callow, wet-behind-the-ears phase of writing, I would unabashedly imitate the great man. Like any avowed fan, I would read many of his books over and over again (and still do), sitting quietly somewhere and chortling uncontrollably to myself while the rest of the household or fellow passengers on a train or flight, would conclude that I have become discombobulated, disoriented or even slightly demented. The more perceptive, bless them, will turn to me and say, ‘Another Wodehouse fan, I see. Which one is it?’ There’s a man after my own heart. Any Wodehouse devotee will relate, word for word, to what I have just said.

Under the circumstance, it should come as no surprise that I was shocked to the core on learning of this insane refusal, on the part of the jail authorities, to allow this incarcerated activist his daily fix of Bertie Wooster’s imbroglios while his personal gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, pours oil over troubled waters. All Mr. Navlakha wanted was some respite from the gloom of his darkened cell, and who better to provide that relief than Wodehouse? To add to the ridiculousness of the prison authorities’ position, we learn that the Maharashtra government argued that this request by Mr. Navlakha for a Wodehouse novel happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that it was the postal department that viewed this request as a ‘security risk.’ Thus, a case was made out that it was not the jailers who had anything against Wodehouse, but the postal department. A wag noted that neither our jail wardens nor the boffins at the post office would be able to tell a Wodehouse tome from a hole in the ground. The matter was laughable, only no one was laughing. Certainly not Gautam Navlakha. As the court asked the prison administration tersely, ‘Why was he not given the book? Is humour banished from jail?’ That’s telling them. On being told that there are only 2800 books in the jail library, the court observed pithily if ungrammatically, ‘That is very less.’ However, they went on to add that something should be done, and right speedily, to obtain more books of greater variety to keep the feast of reason and flow of soul in good order. Those are not their exact words of course, but you get the idea. They did conclude, in that admonishing tone which judges tend to adopt, that access to books is an important step towards the reformation of cell inmates. Well said, Your Honours. Bravo!

This strange plight of Mr. Navlakha’s set me thinking. What if I decided, one fine day, to stick a knife into someone I could not stand the sight of? Then, like Dostoevsky’s anti-hero in Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, who takes an axe to a corrupt, elderly lady pawnbroker’s head, resulting in a messy, gory murder. Having done his dread deed, consumed with guilt and remorse, he walks into the nearest police station and confesses. It takes all sorts. The punishment? Nothing short of a lifer. There is much stuff about subsequent redemption in an existential kind of way, and you can expect Russian authors to go on forever wallowing in that vein. Dostoevsky was no exception. Putting myself in Raskolnikov’s position, I visualised sitting in a cell and wondering, between the daily plate of cold gruel, liberally sprinkled with crawling insects, with some friendly bandicoots scurrying around for company, and only a mugful of turbid water to slake my thirst. Not a very pleasant situation, I grant you, but surely nothing a good, cheerful book can’t set right. So, at the appointed hour, one of the reprieved prisoners (for good behaviour) who has been given library duty, wheels into the cell corridors with his trolley full of books. He is whistling a happy tune from some obscure Hindi film I am unable to recognise.

‘Good morning,’ this cheerful dispenser of books greets me. ‘Any particular book you fancy reading over the next few days? Has to be returned inside a week mind you, otherwise your sentence will be increased proportionately by a week.’

‘Ha, ha. Very funny. You mean they will keep my body in the cell for another week after I die? I am here for life, you know.’

‘Just kidding. Where’s your sense of humour? Speaking of humour, any funny books you want to borrow? I can give you Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, if you wish.’ He was beside himself, laughing.

‘You are in fine form this morning, aren’t you? Look, my convict librarian friend, I am in no frame of mind for black humour. In Cold Blood indeed! How about good old P.G. Wodehouse? Have you any of his books in that miserable trolley of yours?’

‘Sorry mate, Wodehouse is banned in this prison. No can do.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘Why, for heaven’s sake? Because the authorities are worried that I might laugh myself to death? I see you have Enid Blyton’s Noddy in Toyland, A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner and an illustrated comic book of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I didn’t know we have convicts under the age of ten serving extended sentences here. Come on, fish out Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. I have read it only twenty-five times. Dying for another go at it.’

‘You are a glutton for punishment. I am sorry mate, but the big nobs at the office think Wodehouse is a pernicious influence,’ he said rather pompously.

‘Where did you learn words like that? Pernicious? I can see you’ve been reading too many Noddy books.’ I was feeling quite sardonic. Prison can do that to one.

My mobile librarian found his voice again. ‘Look, I do not know or understand the details. Come to that, I do not even know why people think this author is funny. Can’t understand a word he writes, but each to his own. However, I did read somewhere that Wodehouse once made some controversial broadcasts on behalf of the Nazis when he was under house arrest somewhere in France during the Second World War. That led to him being virtually blackballed in his home country, England, and he went and settled down in America. That is the story they tell about this funny man.’

I was beginning to get exasperated. ‘I am very impressed by your knowledge, but my good man, what has all that got to do with my wanting to read his book in prison. His works are not banned in India. In fact, my information is that there are more Wodehouse readers in India than anywhere else in the world, including the United Kingdom. Can you pass that on to your bosses?’

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a while and said, ‘Tell you what, I’ll slip through the bars a copy of R.K. Laxman’s cartoons. They are pretty funny. Even if the courts decide to hear your appeal, the prison management will have to get a budget approval for buying some new Wodehouse books through Amazon, Flipkart or whoever. That is going to take time. Plenty of papers to be signed in triplicate and all that bureaucracy stuff. For the moment have some fun with R.K Laxman, and I’ll see what I can do next week about Wodehouse.’

I sighed resignedly and said, ‘OK, I’ll take the Laxman, and while you’re about it, give me that Charlie Brown and Peanuts hardbound volume, plus two of those Amar Chitra Katha comics on the Ramayana and Mahabharat.’

‘Coming up right away Sir, and you can keep them all for an extra week on the one ticket. Only don’t tell anyone.’ And off he went, humming a tune I recognised from that old Raj Kapoor blockbuster, Sangam. Jolly jailer.

I have been informed, by those in the know of these things, that the Prime Minister is always ready to talk to the common man. Or woman, come to think of it. One has to be ever so mindful of how you employ these gender terms nowadays. If I had not hastily slipped in that ‘Or woman, come to think of it,’ I would have had to face an avalanche of angry mails from the gentler sex. Always trusting to fate that they have no violent objection to being described as ‘gentle.’ Sorry, haring off at a tangent like that. I was reflecting on the Prime Minister’s desire to speak to India’s common citizen at prescribed times on prescribed days. I am excluding his weekly wireless fireside chat Mann ki Baat from the purview of this discussion. This, if it is true, involves a person-to- person chinwag over the phone with people like you and me, and it shows how the leader of this impossibly vast and amorphous nation has his ear to the ground and, evidently, to the phone as well. The common touch, to borrow a phrase. The number given to me was obviously encrypted, this for the PMO to be able to trace any crank calls that are bound to be made, just for a lark. Like this one. ‘Hullo, good morning Prime Minister, this is Rahul Gandhi. I have underground connections in Sicily, through my relatives in Italy. For your own sake, take me seriously. I strongly suggest you had better watch your back. Say hello to my little friend. Capice?’

Any Mafia film buff would tell you that was a phony call. However, the PMO was taking no chances. A trace was placed on Rahul Gandhi’s mobile number, but after a couple of days of snooping and listening in, all they could get was, ‘Mamma mia Mama, how many times have I told you I hate Coco Pops? Where’s my fluffy, cheese omelette? I WANT MY FLUFFY CHEESE OMELETTE.’ Every day it was the exact same line that was being repeated ad nauseum, and the PMO’s telephone sleuths finally concluded that this was a recorded voice and that they had been had by the short and curlies. More likely it was a ring tone put in by some nutter with a corny sense of humour. Even Rahul Gandhi wouldn’t stoop to something like that,

However, I am not one to throw in the towel that easily. I kept trying, those powerful words of Kipling ringing in my ears, If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. My perseverance paid off, eventually. And before any of you clever dicks jump out of your skins to tell me that it was not Kipling who said that but one T.H. Palmer, let me quickly assure you I am fully seized of the fact. At heart I am a bit of a tease and just wanted to have you on. Begging your pardon. Seriously though, this T.H. Palmer’s name should have been up in lights for just that one memorable line he composed, but he was one of those poets who was born to blush unseen and waste his sweetness in the desert air. Thomas Gray. Once again, I am guilty of veering off from the subject on hand, but what the heck? Nobody ever told Shakespeare that he was using thirty words when seven would have served the purpose. My best friends keep telling me that my essays are too long. My philosophical response invariably is, ‘How long is a piece of string? Go figure.’

In case you are wondering, I am having to indulge in all this meandering small talk mainly because getting through to the PMO was no simple task. I was placed at number 375 on the call waiting list. Then all of a sudden, before I could say, tongue-twistingly, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, my mobile started ringing in that familiar shrill ringtone.

‘Good afternoon, are we speaking to Mr. Suresh Subrahmanyan?’ intoned a strong male voice. Not to miss the royal ‘we.’

‘We are, we are,’ I responded with an eagerness that was partly genuine and partly affected. ‘Is that the Prime Minister? Sir,’ I added as a respectful and precautionary afterthought.

“Not yet,’ continued the voice. ‘This is the Prime Minister’s Office, and we have some questions for you before we can put you through to Him.’

I could sense the capital H. ‘Does the Prime Minister’s Office have a name?’ I enquired somewhat cheekily. ‘It is rather unfair that you know my name, I need to keep addressing you as an office. A bit weird, don’t you think?’

‘We do not appreciate your tone. The PMO does not take kindly to smart alecks who make tasteless wisecracks. One more remark like that and you will be taken off the list and your mobile number duly recorded for posterity and future reference.’

Gosh, now I had to worry about my posterior. This was going nowhere, and if it was going anywhere, I did not care for the destination. ‘Sir, Mr. PMO, I did not intend to be smart. My apologies for the unintended solecism. Or gaffe, if you prefer. It’s just that I am number 375 on the call waiting list, I have dropped every other normal household chore that I am expected to perform on a Sunday morning, blocked calls from my entire contact directory and have been sitting and staring at my mobile for “The Call.” My eyes are hurting like blazes from the staring. I was merely anxious to know how much longer it’s going to take before our leader comes on the line to exchange a few friendly words with me.’

‘By and by, and if you keep on jabbering like this, it may never happen. Please answer these simple questions as briefly as you possibly can. How old are you?’

‘That’s a personal question. What’s my age got to do with anything? Let’s agree on 16. I know he likes to speak with youngsters.’ I was bridling.

The PMO was beginning to sound irritated, but no more than I was. ‘You do not sound like a teenager. If you are 16 going on 17, you know that you are naïve, in the words of that famous song from The Sound of Music. Once again, I must caution you. If you do not declare proper and correct information, there will be consequences. For the last time, what is your age?’

‘99. Happy?’

‘We need proof. Send me a scanned photo of you in standing position.’

‘I am 99, I cannot stand. I have a picture of me in standing-erect position when I was 43, but what use would that be to you? Later on, I developed a bad case of scoliosis and my spine is bent. And if I sent you a photo of my grandfather standing in crouched position with a walking stick, how would you know the difference?’

The PMO was by now at the end of his tether. Exasperation was clearly evident in his voice. ‘I have never come across such an ornery person. You wish to speak to the country’s most powerful person and you behave like a juvenile delinquent. I am afraid I cannot waste any more Government time, when there are 625 others waiting in the queue. So kindly…’

Just then a sonorous, authoritative voice chimed in. ‘Secretary Saheb, I have been listening in to your conversation with Mr. Subrahmanyan on the hotline. Please keep the line free. I will speak to him now.’

‘Yes Sir, Yes Prime Minister. Right away, Prime Minister. I am connecting you Sir.’

Next thing I know, I was on the line with none other than the PM himself. ‘Hullo,’ he said, very friendly and everything. What do you say after someone says hullo? Not just someone, but India’s leader extraordinaire.

‘Hullo ji,’ I responded, my voice barely above a croaking whisper.

‘My office will allow me to entertain just two questions from each caller, because there are so many on the waiting list, so please ask both your questions one after the other and I will try to answer them to your satisfaction.’ He was ever so courteous and polite. He didn’t say “Shoot” but I was ready with my two questions.’

‘Prime Minister Sirji, whom do you consider your greatest opponent on the Indian political scene? Second question. Who will take over from you as your party’s leader once you decide to retire? Thank you, Sir.’

‘Very good questions, Subrahmanyan ji. My greatest opponent is myself. I am fighting myself everyday to be a better leader for my people. Other opponents from all parties are also fighting – amongst themselves. I hope that is a good answer.’

‘Brilliant answer, Sir. Jawaab nahin. What about my second question, Sir? Who are you grooming to be your successor? And Sir, please don’t call me Subrahmanyan ji. I am underserving.’

‘You are 99. That demands respect. Recently I honoured someone who was 125. As to your second question, I will follow our veteran cricket captain, M.S. Dhoni’s footsteps. No unnecessary talking in advance. In our party, anyone can become the leader, but not till I retire.’

‘But Sir…’

The PM was now off the air. The PMO was back, ‘Your two questions are over, which is more than you deserved. Your time is up.’

Needless insult from the officious PMO. The PM was nice, but I still nursed doubts. Was this real or fake? He sounded like the PM but his English was faultless. Hmmm….

I’ll check later with number 376 on the call waiting list.

I think I am going deaf, and if I am not sure, I am reminded of it on a daily basis. ‘Deaf as a doorpost,’ is my wife’s pet phrase when giving me an earful. I’ll take her word for it that doorposts are hard of hearing. My better half is given to histrionic hyperbole, and I suspect there is more than a smidgen of exaggeration to her exasperated expostulation. As you can see, I might be deaf, ‘might’ being the operative word, but I can hold my own with anyone who wishes to engage with me in an alliterative combat. Just this morning, I was in the shower and the water, after a slow start came out in a noisy, powerful jet stream. It is the way with showers – strong and hot one minute, limp and cold the next. While I was wallowing in the pretend waterfall, singing a particularly catchy snatch from West Side Story, I faintly heard my wife shout to me from the en suite bedroom (actually it is the bathroom that is en suite, but you know what I mean). ‘Your bugger is falling, shall I bake it?’ That caught my attention. Well I mean, how do you respond to that? I knew only one way. I had to stop singing Maria in mid-verse, turn off the shower and shout, ‘WHAT?’ After further admonitions pertaining to the efficacy of my auditory canals, I finally understood that what the good lady wife was communicating through my own Niagara Falls was, ‘Your brother is calling, shall I take it?’ By now, the brother had rung off. After further recriminations, I told her not to worry, he is probably calling just to tell me that Nadal lost in the finals at Indian Wells. He is a tennis freak and his hearing is also somewhat impaired. Perhaps the malady is genetic.

Nevertheless, I thought it best to visit an ENT specialist in my neck of the woods, now that the pandemic is in recession, and have him check out if everything was in ship-shape condition as far as my tympanic membrane and the good old ossicles were concerned. Naturally, as is the habit with ear doctors, he fiddled around the innards of my ears with some instruments I couldn’t see, tut-tutted at the amount of accumulated earwax. ‘Gaunt you spleen your peers properly?’ he grunted. I am not sure I liked his tone, but I had to be polite. Also, I could not follow a word he was saying. I was strapped in one of those swivel chairs so favoured by doctors at their clinics. And that set of instruments which I did not get a proper sighter at, sounded ominous. I was helpless. ‘Didn’t quite catch that, Doc. What exactly do you mean by spleen my peers?’

‘Oh dear, this could prove to be more serious than I thought,’ moaned the doctor, looking concerned. Not that I heard it, of course. He then moved close to my left ear and said in a loud voice, ‘I asked if you, as a general rule, clean your ears properly. Nothing to do with spleen or peers.’

‘Why are you shouting, Doc?’, I shouted back. ‘I can hear you perfectly well. I have just returned from an invigorating trip to the Coorg hills (elevation 4000+ feet at its highest point), and the popping in my ears is yet to fully subside, which accounts for the slight hearing deficiency.’

That’s another thing about incipient or advanced deafness. You think the person to whom you are speaking is deaf, so scream at the top of your lungs. Let me hasten to add that all this does not, on my part, admit to any actual problem with my hearing faculties. I speak academically. I was then asked to listen to some bell-like sounds at varying volume levels, with the aid of a pair of ear phones, while a young lady, with a monitor screen in front of her, kept asking me to make a gesture when I could hear the sound no more. I cheated once or twice, pretending to hear sounds when all was silent. At which point she said archly, ‘Sir, the sound has stopped. If you are still hearing things, we may have to deal with some other problem.’ I bashfully admitted to my trying to pull a fast one and was forgiven. ‘Everyone does it,’ she smilingly said, the good sport. Anyhow, the upshot of it all was that while I was not quite in the deaf adder or doorpost category, my hearing capacity was a touch below par, but nothing to worry about at this stage, taking into consideration the ear-popping issue. We paid the extortionate bill and as we were getting into the car, my wife said, ‘It’s betting grate for crunch. Let’s lick up a granbitch on the way.’ I agreed right away. A granbitch for crunch was just what the doctor ordered. Preferably leg and fleece, laced with a dash of custard. If you couldn’t pick that gobbledeygook up, I could recommend a good ENT chap.

That said, if you do have a hearing problem, it is as well to have it taken care of the moment you hear ‘clean’ as ‘spleen.’ That is the warning sign. I am also aware that we are not supposed to address victims of these handicaps as being deaf or blind. Aurally or visually challenged is the accepted, polite terminology. Why something should be addressed employing two words when one is readily available is beyond my understanding. Imagine pulling up a distracted person with an ‘I am shouting at the top of my voice. Are you aurally challenged or what?’ See what I mean? Lacks punch.

I once had the misfortune to be sitting next to a person who was stone deaf and tone deaf at a Carnatic music concert. He was conspicuously sporting a hearing aid, a bilious pink earpiece, but appeared not to have turned it on. Else, it was malfunctioning. Either way, every time the musician essayed a song my aurally challenged neighbour vaguely knew, he would expand his lungs and burst forth to sing along in joyous disharmony. Eyes tightly closed in fervent ecstasy, he was blissfully unaware of hostile rubbernecks and craned heads attempting to shut him up. The collective shush, shush, was to no avail. When I shook his arm and woke him up from his heightened state of nirvana to make him aware of the disturbance he was causing, he turned to me, smiled beatifically and said, in a very loud voice, ‘He is essaying the raga Amritavarshini. Can’t you hear the thunder and lightning? Legend has it that this raga will bring copious rain. Don’t disturb me again, we are trying to listen to the music.’ I wondered how this handicapped music lover could hear thunder when nobody else in the audience heard it. Also, how on earth could a deaf man, or anyone for that matter, ‘hear’ lightning? It was futile to speculate on matters beyond my ken. At which point, I got up and found another seat. Why members of the audience seated nearby were throwing dirty looks at me was a mystery.

It is a matter of puzzlement to me why some ailments or handicaps are viewed with considerable pity and sadness, and rightly so, while others appear to be a matter for risibility. While the terrible affliction of blindness is generally dealt with in a sombre, grave manner, deafness which is the main thrust of my thoughts, provides much scope for a jolly good laugh. To a deaf person, it cannot be funny that he or she is oblivious to most conversations and other normal sounds we experience on a daily basis. It does help that there are professional deaf interpreters who use sign language to allow deaf people to follow what the news reader is saying. Then again, it would be a blessing not to be able to hear all the tripe that is dished out on our news channels. On a relative or comparative scale, one can take the position that, given a choice, deafness would be greatly preferable to blindness. Incidentally, how did the expression ‘blind as a bat’ come about? Bats are perfectly capable of seeing and are preternaturally gifted with sharp night vision. That said, the world continues to treat those hard of hearing as objects of good-natured comedy and the objectionable thing about that is that so many people do not find it objectionable. It has been that way for eons and will likely remain so.

 Thus, I continue to wonder if my own issues with hearing are the result of a genuine medical condition, or if it is just that my powers of concentration have tended to wane. What that means is that I can clearly hear what my wife is telling me when she asks me if this month’s electricity bill has been paid. However, the sound of the words emanating from her has not been processed by my grey cells into intelligible meaning. The hearing part is fine, the listening part is dodgy. That is a function of focus and concentration. I am probably deeply ruminating on the likely result of a Test match and missing the finer aspects of the settlement of the electricity bill, resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth and needless references to doorposts and deaf adders. And that is good news. Why? Because it means I am not going deaf. Probably just mildly batty and senile. And given to repeating myself. Phew! What a relief.