From my earliest childhood days, when my younger sibling and I were in boarding school in Bangalore, going home for summer and winter holidays meant catching the overnight Madras Mail from Bangalore Cantonment Station, arriving at the crack of dawn in Madras Central, spending the day with our uncle and aunt, and then taking the long, two-night journey to Calcutta by the Howrah Mail to join our parents, and tearfully returning to Bangalore and school post vacation by the same route in reverse. The journey was nearly as long as that opening sentence. To those of the present generation, I am talking about the 60s when Chennai was Madras and Kolkata was Calcutta. As an aside, it is instructive to note that The Telegraph newspaper still stubbornly sticks to Calcutta on its masthead. Bully for it, say I.

During those long train journeys, I had plenty of time to ponder on the meaning of a metallic sign nailed to the laminate surface on top of the window in every compartment. The legend read, in prominent red capital letters, TO STOP TRAIN PULL CHAIN. Underneath the sign in much smaller letters were the words ‘Penalty for improper use Rs.250.’ This was at a time when I would have been travelling on that same route annually during the age of between 9 and 15. I am sure that sign still exists on our trains with a greatly enhanced penalty component. Initially, the exhortation meant nothing to me. It was just something that was in every compartment, like the rusty fan that never worked, and my innocent mind paid no attention to what it was trying to convey. That said, those words were embedded subliminally in my sub-conscious even if its implications eluded me. Incidentally, I was reminded of all this while watching a British crime serial that involved the main characters travelling by train in their green and pleasant land, and the camera zoomed in on that very sign. Only the ‘penalty for improper use’ was expressed in pounds sterling. No surprise there as they were the ones who first built the railways in India.

Back to my contemplation. After a while, still in my teens, I was moved to analysing the import of that statement from the railway authorities. Why would I wish to stop the train, I asked myself, and how would pulling the chain achieve the desired result? What was the intricate mechanism involved? What mystery lay behind yanking that chain in one compartment, resulting in the entire train coming to a juddering halt? The penalty part of it, which was printed in much smaller letters, escaped me completely. The conundrum consumed me as an existential question, a Brechtian dilemma. Not that I knew what existential or Brechtian dilemma meant at the time. At first, I considered the sign as a personal invitation to stop the train, some kind of sporting challenge and in my naivete, as children tend to do, thought the Rs.250 would be given as a reward to anyone who was able to achieve what most people felt was an impossible task. The word penalty did not register. ‘Uncle, Uncle,’ I asked the elderly gentleman sitting across me in the compartment, ‘Can you stop this train by pulling that chain?’ He replied that it should be possible but that he had never come across anyone who had actually tried it. He went on to elaborate that he had read somewhere that one person did pull the chain, just for a lark. The chain broke, the train did not stop and he ended up paying Rs.500 as the cost for replacing the chain.

As is the practice on our trains, the ticket inspector came along to inspect our tickets with his ticket-punching implement. My fellow traveller, the elderly gentleman, with a glint in his eye told the inspector his young friend (meaning me) wanted to know what would happen if he pulled the chain. The taciturn railway official, without saying a word, merely looked daggers at me as if to say, ‘Just try it kiddo, and see what happens.’ I kept mum after that and flatly refused to speak to my senior citizen for spilling the beans and implicating me. Sneaking, we called it in school; just not done. Some hours passed as we chugged along the vast, baked southern countryside, crossing Andhra Pradesh, when my neighbour offered me a boiled sweet. It was a sort of white flag and I decided not to be churlish, stopped sulking and accepted the sweet. Now that normal service had been resumed, in a manner of speaking, I decided to ask my much older friend an ineptly worded question. I must have been 12 years old.

‘Uncle, have you flown by plane before?’

He looked amused by my query. ‘You can’t fly by train, can you? Not by this slow coach, anyhow. Yes, my young friend, I have flown by plane, as you so colourfully put it. Why do you ask?’

‘I was just wondering. Is there a sign somewhere inside the plane saying “To Stop Plane Pull Chain?” Or pull or push a button or something else?’

My nameless uncle guffawed like he had never heard anything so amusing in his life. I got no answer but he proffered another boiled sweet and our relationship was back on an even keel. That boiled sweet represented a peace offering. Kids have this habit of asking silly questions, but how else were we to learn that you cannot stop a large, passenger aircraft in mid-flight.

Things have changed over the decades. Kids are no longer kids. They are more like pint-sized adults. They do not ask silly questions; a lost innocence. They clutch a tablet (not a medicinal pill but the gizmo with a screen) and are totally absorbed in its arcane secrets. Cut to 2025. I was flying from Bangalore to Chennai, a short haul. Sitting next to me was a 10-year-old girl absorbed in her black screen, playing some computer game or the other. I decided to make polite conversation.

‘Hullo young lady, what is your name?’ No answer. She must have been instructed not to speak to strange men. I try again. ‘You seem to be playing some interesting video game. What is it? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?’ I thought she’d be impressed. Instead, she frowned and went ‘Tsk, tsk’ like Mr. Bean and fell silent again. I thought I should take the hint and proceed no further with this one-way conversation. Just then, the little squirt piped up.

‘Uncle, you won’t understand.’ Gosh, it speaks and what am I? An antediluvian relic? I did not actually use that term as she would not have understood. Instead of which I said, ‘Try me, why don’t you? I might surprise you.’

After another one of those interminable silences that pre-teen, preternatural kids are so expert at nowadays, she turned to me and said superciliously, ‘Uncle, you are so antediluvian. I am playing Little Big Planet Series on my tablet. For your information, in Little Big Planet, kids like me solve puzzles as Sackboy, a humanoid made out of burlap. Harry Potter is so yesterday. Duh!’

After that “duh” there was nothing more to say. She virtually dismissed me from her presence. I buried myself in my Times crossword puzzle. Structures that grow into flowers – 4 letters. Hmm, this needs thinking.

‘BUDS,’ cried the little girl. I didn’t even know she was peering into my folded newspaper. Abashed, I thanked her and wrote as dictated. For the first time, she smiled and offered me a green-coloured jujube candy – her version of my railway uncle’s boiled sweet of several decades ago.

I felt like stopping the plane, but there was no chain to pull. Or button to push. It was going to seem like a long flight despite the short haul, but there was a saving grace. I nailed Large, flightless Australian bird – 3 letters. I quickly wrote down EMU before my precocious companion shouted out the answer. Wordsworth it was, I think, who said The Child is Father of the Man. I now understand exactly what he meant.

 Caveat: The contents of this article may go clean over the heads of those under the age of 65, but that is no excuse for your not wanting to read the piece. Shakespeare went over my head every time I tried to plough through one of those interminable soliloquies by Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Mark Anthony and company, but read them I did for fear of incurring the wrath of my teachers and being administered six of the best in the juicy parts. For which injunction I should be eternally grateful, as I am able to fish out an appropriate quote as and when needed, which is quite often. With these few words…

I have said this before and I will say it again. When you reach my age, and I reached my age several years ago (if that makes any sense), you realise soon enough that you have more years behind you than in front of you. Not that I wish to sound maudlin and hark back to some dreary nostalgic stuff. I do that often enough. However, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride (if that makes any sense). What that means is that given half a chance, I might go back on my word and turn nostalgic, if not maudlin.

That said, today I shall be talking about the news. That was a bit of a red herring, because I have no intention of holding forth on Trump’s shenanigans, India’s response, or lack thereof, to the tariff war or indeed, how the DMK and TMC are preparing to take on the BJP’s looming presence in their backyards during the forthcoming state assembly polls. Speaking of which, another three-letter acronym will be hitting the headlines again – EVM. Not to mention SIR. If all else fails, our newscasters will spend a great deal of time in the dubious company of jumped-up political spokespersons on the issue of who to blame for the unfortunate and painful death in Delhi of a bright young techie who, while driving was sucked into an open drain and could not be rescued in time to save his life. I am, as I am sure you are, fed on a daily diet of such outpourings of disaster. Not that these are not important or tragic, but to have to listen to the same thing all the livelong day, with no added input, can be galling. At least, the newspapers have no value after 8 am, except to do the Crossword or Sudoku.

Instead, I wish to spend some time talking about Lotika Ratnam, Melville de Mellow, Pamela Singh and V.M. Chakrapani. And their ilk. They were heard, never seen. Think radio. I can already sense many eyebrows being raised in befuddlement. As I said, long before television and their several avatars took over India’s airwaves and wrecked our peace of mind forever, 9 pm every night meant listening, in calm reflection, to the news on All India Radio, brought to you by one of those worthies I just named. I was barely into my teens, when my father would switch on the radio precisely at 9 pm to listen to what was happening around the country. I am talking circa early to mid-60s. We didn’t bother too much about the rest of the world barring a few honourable mentions, like if Kennedy was shot dead, or if Neil Armstrong took that ‘one small step for man,’ or if Russia and the United States went eyeball to eyeball over Cuba, armed to the gills with nuclear missiles. Yes, they were at it even then. I am not sure if I actually sat around and intently followed what was being said, but I just loved those voices, their studied, precise accents and their unhurried, balanced articulation of matters of vital import. Incidentally, V.M. Chakrapani later migrated to Australia and became a celebrated cricket commentator, but that is another story.

A typical 9 pm news broadcast over All India Radio would go something on the following lines.

This is All India Radio. Here is the news read by Lotika Ratnam. First the headlines.

India’s agricultural production rose by 5% over the previous year.

India’s export of steel to Russia has registered a marked increase.

The Prime Minister will travel to Egypt to meet President Nasser to hold wide-ranging talks.

China’s Prime Minister, Chou En Lai has expressed a desire to initiate peace talks with India after the recent skirmishes on our borders.

Sports. India was defeated by Australia in Melbourne by an innings and 4 runs.

And now for the news in detail.

On the following evening at 9 pm, the dulcet voice of Lotika Ratnam will make way for the deep baritone of Melville De Mellow.

This is All India Radio. Here is the news and this is Melville De Mellow reading it. First the headlines.

According to the latest census figures, India’s population has grown exponentially to 850 million. The Ministry of Family Planning will be announcing new schemes and incentives to curb unchecked growth in population.

The Leader of the Opposition today asked the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha if steps were being taken to stop infiltration by Pakistani militants in the sensitive border areas of Kashmir.

India’s import of wheat from the United States under the PL-480 scheme grew by 8% over the previous year, causing a glut in our own granaries.

Cricket. Nari Contractor has been named captain for India’s forthcoming tour of the West Indies.

And now for the news in detail.

Pamela Singh would take over the reins the next evening, followed by V.M. Chakrapani thereafter and that is how we were kept abreast of current affairs that the country was seized of during those days. For reasons not entirely explicable, our daily news placed considerable emphasis on exports and imports of a variety of items. If it was steel one day, it would be coal’s turn the next day. Rice, wheat and pulses would keep us engrossed on other days. Ministers, particularly the Prime Minister, setting out for foreign lands to hold ‘fruitful talks’ was another major attraction. Precisely what those fruitful talks consisted of was never fully elaborated upon, but it gladdened our hearts to know that Mr. Nehru or Mr. Shastri were jetting around the globe to make India a better place. The nation was shocked over Lal Bahadur Shastri’s sudden and mysterious demise in Tashkent in 1966 after signing the Tashkent Declaration, while conspiracy theories about how he died were swirling around. That certainly earned prime slot in the news headlines though the alleged conspiracy was kept under wraps.

There could not have been a bigger shock to the nation’s system than when Mahatma Gandhi was tragically assassinated in 1948, though this was purely from hearsay as I wasn’t born then. Incidentally, an emotional Melville De Mellow it was who described to the country over the airwaves Gandhiji’s final journey as he was laid to rest. For close to seven hours, De Mellow walked with the cortege as he described the procession. While the nation wept. That is the stuff of legend.

An interesting side issue to reflect upon. Every time someone of importance passed away, All India Radio, for days on end would play doleful instrumental music throughout the day. Nothing else. Any time of day or night you switched on the radio, you will hear dirge-like strains of the sitar, sarod, veena or violin playing a series of extremely lachrymose ragas all day long. Depending on the importance of the person who shuffled off his mortal coil, this could go on for anything from three to seven days.

As I post this piece to coincide with our Republic Day, it occurs to me that watching endless processions on television of floats displaying various economic and cultural achievements at the state and national level, our defence might on air, sea and land – all this while our political leaders and special invitees from abroad watch in admiration and awe, it has all become somewhat passe. Not too many people sit in front of their television sets to take in the extremely long televisual feast. Republic Day honours are greatly anticipated as the list of Padma awardees are declared. Oftentimes the list of awardees is conspicuous for those who did not make the grade, leading to a bit of argy-bargy by political party spokespersons. Finally, as the televised parade is accompanied by a bi-lingual commentary by persons unknown, we long for those voices floating through the ether that are now no longer with us. Perhaps Melville De Mellow is providing eloquent commentary from ‘up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.’

Here endeth the news.

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running. Groucho Marx.

Hospitals have become nicer places these days. An assertion that will be hotly disputed by many and, I daresay, with good reason. Everything is relative and it all depends on how you compare the hospitals of today with those of yesteryear. Much will also revolve on your role as you enter the portals of a large ‘multispecialty hospital,’ as they are somewhat fancifully called. By which, I mean are you there in the capacity of a patient or just a carefree, or careworn, visitor keeping company and providing moral support to a close friend or relative who needs to be examined on some medical issue, emergency or the other? If it is the former, then you are not going to be idly reflecting on the hospital’s interior décor, the de rigueur avant-garde Lord Ganesh statue at an alcove in the spacious, Italian marble tiled lobby, with passers-by paying casual obeisance to the elephant god, the franchised branded cafes dotting the place and similar impressive accoutrements. Had my opening sentence employed the word ‘fancier’ in place of ‘nicer’ it is probable that the disagreement would have been muted. At times some of these grand medical establishments could be mistaken for a major airport. In one hospital, I did not misread a large sign outside a spacious, well-appointed, glassed chamber that read ‘International Lounge’ – cross my heart and hope to die! Not an appropriate phrase while discussing hospitals, but still.

If, on the other hand, you are being wheeled in as a patient for a consult, thoughts of contemporary artefacts, business class lounges and eating joints will be the last thing on your mind. Notwithstanding the benign and benevolent presence of Lord Ganesh or for that matter, Holy Mary Mother of God. Dark thoughts of the possibility of blood tests, CT scans, MRIs, being ‘persuaded’ to be a resident guest at the hospital for a few days (‘do I have medical insurance?’) and generally being poked around your frail body by a series of doctors, nurses and temps, fill your thoughts. Am I going to be under the surgical knife? ‘Scalpel.’ I binge on medical thrillers. More than the verdict to be passed on the diagnosis and the likely procedures and post-op biopsies that must inevitably follow, the daily bills being racked up prey on you in a manner consistent with some deadly virus that could be gnawing away at your vitals. Wiser heads than mine have often expressed the view that the treatment is often worse than the affliction.

I have also never been able to understand why a bevy of medicos, after examining the patient, insist on standing around close to him and carrying on endlessly about the intricacies of his situation. They do it well within earshot of the patient, in loud-enough stage whispers that come through clear as a bell. Perhaps they imagine stone-deafness is a natural corollary to any illness you may be down with. Psst, psst, they go whispering to one another. ‘I think a full body scan is in order,’ declares the senior doctor. ‘For the moment should we rule out malignancy?’ asks a bright young intern. ‘You could, but I will keep my options open until a full-scale endoscopy and colonoscopy is conducted,’ replies the senior doctor. By now, the patient genuinely cannot hear anything because he has fainted out of sheer fright.

Then again, I am just being needlessly alarmist. If it is your fate that you find yourself lying on a hospital bed, pencilled in to undergo a battery of tests and procedures, you may as well lie back and enjoy it. In any case, they will pump you with sedatives so that everything will just seem like a hazy, pleasant dream. Much will also depend on the kind of doctor or surgeon who has been detailed to take you under his tender, loving care. Once you have come out of the ether, after the surgery, with a standard ‘Where am I?’ you will be made an almighty fuss over by your near and dear ones. The doctor who conducted whatever procedure it was you had to undergo is likely to say something like, ‘You were wonderful Sir, wish we had more patients like you.’ There’s another inane statement for you. As if you had any control over what your completely inert body did or didn’t do while they were doing whatever it was they were doing and finally stitching you up. Still, you give the doctor a weak smile, ask for your mobile phone and thank him brokenly.

After keeping you in the hospital for a few more days for observation and recovery, surrounded by bouquets of flowers and get-well cards and selfies being taken to be instantly transmitted worldwide, you are finally given the green signal to be wheeled away to your home, sweet home, but not before hanging around for another three hours for the billing and settling of accounts to be completed. By now you are strong enough to ask your near and dear ones what the damage was. The answer is a curt, ‘Don’t ask.’ You console the family members (and yourself) by reminding them that the insurance chaps will cough up, but we all know that the paper work and procedure for that to happen will be another steep climb, even if you were on the ‘cashless’ system. Talk about pulling teeth.

Modern day cliches like ‘age is only a number,’ ‘you are only as old as you feel,’ ‘yesterday’s 40 is today’s 60’ and so on are repeated ad nauseum to make us all feel better. I think that’s a lot of hogwash. In many traditional societies in our country, crossing the age of 60 calls for special celebrations, rituals and the day is treated with the same unctuous religiosity as a ceremonial wedding. Which was all very well several decades ago, when people retired at the age of 60 or even 58, and were made to feel they should put their feet up and contemplate the infinite, as they were barely a shout out from joining their maker. Nowadays, social media is full of one-minute clips showing 90-year-old men and women doing press ups and running the half-marathon and looking none the worse for it; even if you discount much of it as AI generated. Crossing 100 years has become passé. Virtually every family has a centurion or two, and if they served the government during their lifetimes, their pension doubles! Lucky old sods.

As I conclude this contemplation on hospitals and doctors, I cannot help but hark back to the days of one’s childhood, when your friendly family doctor resided just round the corner from where you lived. And he was not averse to making house calls if the situation warranted. His method was unfailingly the same whether you complained of a stomach ache, chest congestion, raging fever, streptococcal infection or an ingrowing toenail. ‘Stick your tongue out, aaaah!’ he would intone. Followed by a perfunctory placing of his stethoscope at different points in your chest and back. ‘Deep breaths.’ Finally, the thermometer under your tongue or armpit (according to preference), which he would then peer at speculatively, look mildly concerned and without saying anything (and you didn’t dare ask), would write out a prescription, the contents of which only he, his compounder and God could decipher. The compounder will do his stuff in an adjoining, stuffy room and hand over a bottle of pinkish liquid with a serrated paper strip stuck on to indicate the dosage levels. It tasted like something out of the devil’s workshop but in three days, you were up and about, right as rain, humming Satchmo’s What a Wonderful World. Incidentally, I always felt it was extremely stupid to be threatened by our elders with ‘the doctor’s injection’ when we refused to eat our greens.

I recall a memorable snippet from Britain’s much-loved comedian of yesteryear Tony Hancock, whose unforgettable episode The Blood Donor, features this brief exchange, inter alia, between Hancock and a fellow patient at a hospital. To his companion’s appreciative comment about doctors, ‘What will we do without doctors, eh?’ Hancock provides this tart response, ‘Or conversely, what will they do without us?’ How true!

I have just returned from Chennai, having partaken heartily of the food of love, namely music; in common parlance, the December music season. Not just any old music, but the unfiltered, unadulterated pure offering provided by the doughty purveyors of Carnatic music, one of south India’s many gifts to the world of arts and culture. I have been doing this for over 25 years, year on year, without a break, leaving out the Covid years. I have, on many occasions, put down my thoughts on the various aspects of Chennai’s music season and it would be safe to assume that I have pretty much shot my bolt. Enough said. Then I said to myself, hang on, there must be something one can write about that has not been covered with a single-minded focus. That is when the metaphoric bulb inside my head came alight.

 A Japanese Zen Buddhist monk once asked, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ The question is rhetorical. Do not attempt to answer it. More to the point, how do we express our appreciation to these persevering musicians who slave day and night to bring us elevation and entertainment? We put our hands together and applaud. That is what we do. Nowadays, the more popular artistes are even showered with appreciative cat calls and wolf whistles, but we will put that to one side. I shall focus my essay and attempt to shine a light on ‘The Applause.’ In doing so, let me deconstruct this traditional show of approbation into different categories, since it is not merely a simple matter of clapping hands.

The spontaneous eruption. The singer has just completed a monumental exposition of Kalyani, exploring every nook and crevice of the raga, traversing up and down the scale leaving no stone unturned and no avenue unexplored. The audience sits in stunned silence and as the artist finally lands on home soil, the members in the auditorium rise as one, the applause never seeming to end. This does not happen all that often, which is understandable since a performance of such outstanding calibre is as rare as hen’s teeth. But when it does, it can bring the roof down.

The apologetic applause. For some reason, irrespective of the quality of the performance, the audience has been hardwired over the years into believing that we must put our hands together, never mind if the artist’s effort was demonstrably undeserving of an applause. When a song has been completed perfunctorily, the audience feels it is incumbent upon it to display some kind of gesture. Just to show that there is no ill feeling. This results in a deeply embarrassing and hesitant, underwhelming clapping by a handful, while the singer or the instrumentalist wishes the stage under him would swallow him or her up.

The impromptu applause. Some artists, without meaning to do so, can draw applause right in the middle of an exposition. This could happen when the singer goes all the way up to the highest register on a 7-note scale and stays there for a while. Or when a rapid-fire swara or scalar improvisation threatens to shake hell’s foundations before the violinist and percussionists all join hands with the singer to end the fireworks and drink in the rapturous applause while patting each other on the back on stage. A bit of self-congratulation never hurt anybody.

Applauding on length. This is an interesting one. When an artist essays an alapana and / or a kriti and finishes the whole thing off in double quick time, the audience feels short-changed and fails to show its appreciation. It might have been a brilliant rendition, but the length was too short. The effort was not worth the candle. It did not work up the required head of steam to forcibly extract an applause. The other side of the coin is when the musician goes on endlessly, often in adagio molto (very slow), boringly repeating phrase after phrase and finally, when the audience has virtually given up the ghost, decides to put them out of their misery, the congregation cheers and applauds enthusiastically like the reverberating clap of thunder. More out of relief that the agony has ended than anything else, but try telling that to the performer.

End of concert applause. If you are still sitting at the venue till the final curtain comes down and the traditional Mangalam has been rendered, you have no option but to stretch your hands and legs and give the performers on stage your show of gratitude by applauding. That is the very least you can do, even if you are the last man standing. Never mind if the other 20 or 30 stragglers are rapidly rushing out to catch an auto or a call taxi.

The art of applauding at a western classical concert. If you are a connoisseur of western classical music and particularly if you are not, you will quickly learn that there is a time to applaud and a time not to applaud. They are very particular about this. Take, to provide an example at random, that you are attending a recital of Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. All very prim and proper. This monumental orchestral masterpiece has four movements, a standard structure of classical symphonies. Opening with the stentorian Allegro con brio, followed by the Andante con moto, then a fast Scherzo and closing out with the grand Finale. In case you are wondering, I got all that from my precious vinyl record album sleeve notes!

An English friend of mine advised me to applaud only after I see the others in the audience do the same. The thing is, when the first, second, third or fourth movement is over, you instinctively feel an applause is due. It is a typical Indian impulse. This can be deeply embarrassing as the rest of those around you, who are more attuned to the idiosyncrasies of attending a western classical music performance, wonder which planet you descended from. You can only applaud when all the four movements have been completed and Zubin Mehta genuflects to take a bow. I have always felt this practice to be quite illogical and that you should be allowed to cheer as and when the mood takes you. Just as we do here in India. Which is why I was delighted when I attended one such classical concert some years ago in Mumbai, when a large group of the uninitiated was present. They kept clapping loudly whenever they felt moved to do so, and they couldn’t give a damn about all the stiff-upper-lips glaring down at them. I turned round and whispered to one of the puzzled foreigners seated next to me, ‘When in India, do as the Indians do.’

As the late irresistible and irascible writer Khushwant Singh once said, ‘There is no wine in the world as heady as applause; and it has the same effect. It temporarily subdues anxiety and restores confidence.’

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Deccan Chronicle January 12, 2026.

                     

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I am not quite sure when people started opening their sentences with the words ‘like’ or ‘so.’ I rather suspect this unfortunate habit is of a recent vintage, and largely confined to the younger set, by which I probably mean those around the age of 40 or younger. Applying the irrefutable logic of numbers, you would doubtless have deduced that people around the age of 40 years, give or take, are prey to this deplorable practice of indiscriminately strewing ‘like’ and ‘so’ about like so much Christmas confetti. This infection has also caught on among many older men and women, who ought to know better. Perhaps this mode of conversation is considered fashionable, the new small talk. Possibly I am not seeing the wood for the trees. While the phenomenon can be seen in most parts of the English-speaking world, it is particularly evident in India. To illustrate, let me provide a few examples of conversations I have had with people of varying age groups during the past few years.

I ran into a college student at a book fair, a teenage girl who might have just qualified to get a driving license. We were browsing at a well-stocked book stall, and I watched her closely as she picked up Mother Mary Comes to Me, the runaway best-seller by the redoubtable Arundhati Roy. In a spirit of camaraderie and good fellowship towards another book lover I remarked, ‘You are a fan, then? Of Ms. Roy’s works, I mean. Have you also read her The God of Small Things?’ She looked at me a wee bit suspiciously, then noting my silver-grey, correction snow-white mop of hair, she appeared reassured that I was not flirting and proceeded to respond. ‘Like, I don’t know uncle.’ That uncle thing put the lid on it. She continued. ‘So, like I was saying, everybody was talking about this book like. Like I have not read her books before. So.’ A strong finish to a diabolical sentence!

Fair enough. She had made her point. I also asked her if the book title reminded her of a very popular song title. She thought hard, screwed up her eyes tightly and drew a blank. ‘Like I am not sure uncle. Like it’s something to do with Mary, yeah? Mary, Mary…’

‘Yeah, and nah, not quite contrary’ I butted in, getting into the spirit of things. ‘The Beatles, Let it Be.’ She looked at me vacantly. Clearly the swinging 60s meant nothing to her. I took courage and, sotto voce, sang the first few bars of the lyrics to her. When I find myself in times of trouble / Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom / Let it be. This time the girl did look alarmed, put the book back in its socket and was off in a flaming blur. She was blameless. Any young girl would have headed for the hills had a man of my age broken into song without so much as a by your leave. Some of the onlookers and even a couple of the sales staff at the stall came rushing to see if anything was amiss. Accusatory stares all round but I gutsed it out. ‘I was only singing Let it Be under my breath’ I said and handed them a copy of The Collected Works of J.D. Salinger (containing four of his most celebrated books). ‘Kindly raise a bill for this.’ That neatly took care of the stares.

More’s the pity. I could not get to the lovely Paul McCartney chorus, which basically involved repeating Let it Be half a dozen times and the other browsers could have joined in for the singalong. I apologise to the author if I deprived her of royalties for one more copy of the book that has probably already sold a million copies worldwide. Arundhati Roy is not exactly breaking into a sweat over where her next meal is coming from. Later that afternoon, I came across that girl again. Before she could swiftly turn tail, I expressed my regret and said something like, ‘So, I am so sorry. I used to sing quite well in my younger days. Like I was an A singer in school. Now my voice has gone to kingdom come. Please go back and buy the book. She writes well. An understatement. Your English will improve. You will not scatter so many likes and sos in conversation.’ She looked somewhat mollified, ‘Thank you, uncle. I will think about it.’ She was already getting better. No like or so in that last, albeit short, couple of sentences. You might have observed that I too dropped a so and a like when I addressed her, just to show there’s no ill feeling.

I now move on to the dreaded double negative in speech. That two negatives make a positive is not just a well-known adage, but one that the world of mathematics and science has battened down as an immutable principle. By inference this applies equally when we converse with one another. Forget about young students who may still be learning the ropes on the finer aspects of grammar. Television anchors and panellists in India, may their tribe decrease, think nothing of blissfully employing the double negative, thus indicating precisely the opposite of what they meant to convey. One prominent news anchor proclaimed loudly to a panellist, ‘I will not invite you to my programme till you don’t learn to be polite.’ The panellist in turn was not found wanting as he shot back with a, ‘Never mind, I will never come to your show till you don’t respect my leader.’ An Indian cricketing icon once said, ‘Till you don’t take catches, you cannot win matches.’ I think you get the drift, dear reader.

A quick aside. A linguistics professor once said that while in English, a double negative signalled a positive, in the Russian lingo, a double negative remains a negative. Under the circumstances, if Donald Trump, on requesting Vladimir Putin to stop raining bombs on Ukraine is met with a ‘nyet, nyet’ it simply means Putin will continue to bring grief to Zelenskyy, and might add in Russian, ‘Till they don’t give up Donbas and Odessa, I won’t stop dropping the bombs.’

There are exceptions. Exceptions that only prove the rule. Americans have patented the double negative to establish the positive. ‘I ain’t got no friends’ means the person has no friends and not the other way round, as it ought to mean, strictly speaking. Pop groups, irrespective of the country they hail from, have long since accepted the American way as the norm. At least, when they sing. Pink Floyd, the British supergroup, made millions by crooning, We don’t need no education. As did the Rolling Stones, equally British, with I can’t get no satisfaction. I suppose ‘we don’t need any education’ or ‘I can’t get any satisfaction’ would have sounded too unfashionable and plebian. Perhaps they had a syntactic issue to go with the lyrics and music. We can only surmise. Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady said it best, ‘There even are places where English completely disappears. Why, in America they haven’t used it for years.’

Lest I be viewed as a prig, I hasten to add that I am merely observing subtle shifts in the varying ways in which we speak English. It is not to be viewed as trenchant criticism. I say it as I see and hear it. In the event, I have only skimmed the surface. There are many layers to this subject worthy of a doctoral thesis. In the words of former American comedian Al Jolson, ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet,’ a ringing slogan the late U.S President Ronald Reagan used to good effect at the hustings, except he slightly changed the line to ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Postscript: Apropos nothing, recent events of great import on the international stage put me in mind of a calypso that Harry Belafonte regaled us with back in the day. You can join me in the chorus it if you know it. Ma-til-da, Ma-til-da, Ma-til-da she take me money and run Venezuela. Rumours that Venezuelans are singing this song on the streets of Caracas, replacing Matilda with some powerful American names, will bear verification.

          

I was at the Bangalore Lit Fest last week. Ever since I moved from Calcutta to Bangalore some years ago, I have been meaning to attend the BLF, to accord the festival its popular acronym. However, something or the other arrived to militate against my putting in an appearance. I reckoned that I was the poorer for it. As one who is never happier than when curled up with a Wodehouse on my umpteenth reading or the impressive offerings of the Amis father and son duo, Kingsley and Martin, or indeed, any of the great contributors and editors of the now defunct Punch magazine, I sorely missed the Fest. Even if I was not sorely missed by anyone.  I decided to make amends this year and registered my name online to indicate my eagerness to attend. Not that anyone checked. I just breezed in and there I was, surrounded by bookworms, bravely shouldering my way through a throng of eager beavers soaking in the heady atmosphere of intellect and erudition.

Wonderful thing, reading. And books. Which puts me in mind of one of Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson’s (The Finkler Question) columns where he had recommended the following succinct slogan for World Book Day: “‘Read, read, you little bastards,’ the exhortation to be delivered by a masked flagellator sent to every school in the land. A proposal the organisers rejected, presumably on the grounds that ‘little bastards’ contains too many syllables for the little bastards to read.”

During my days in Calcutta, winter gatherings of book lovers did not carry the impressive, some might even say pretentious, title of a literary festival. Plain and simple, it was just known as the Calcutta Book Fair. The exhibition, for that was what it was when you got right down to it, consisted of a plethora of book stalls, telescoping into each other, vying for space and attention. Publishers, famous and modest, advertised their presence and impressive titles on view in the local newspapers. It goes without saying that there were food stalls aplenty (‘the phees phry coated with mustard is to die for’), and cotton candy vendors dotting the grounds attracting children and parents alike. Not to mention the almost statutory Ferris wheel to keep the kids in good humour. It was a fair after all.

 In a separate enclosure, someone quite well known will present a talk on Rabindranath Tagore or dwell at length on Shelley’s influence on Bengali poetry and literature. It was an elevating day out for the family, students and the local intelligentsia, of which there was no dearth in our City of Joy. Boys were there to impress the girls (‘Have you read Salinger’s Franny and Zooey? You haven’t? Eeesh!). The girls were not found wanting with their tart response either (‘And have you even heard of Kafka’s Amerika, and don’t keep showing off about The Metamorphosis. We have all read it.’) And so the long day wears on as the mermaids sang each to each over several cups of tea and T.S. Eliot. ‘Hurry up please, it’s time.’

Pardon me if I droned on a bit about the Calcutta Book Fair, but to me it was an interesting counterpoint to what I witnessed at the Bangalore Lit Fest. First off, I must express more than a smidgen of sympathy for the organisers of the Fest as they were done in by the now infamous Indigo imbroglio resulting in quite a few prominent no-shows. That said, Shashi Tharoor made it as advertised and greatly anticipated. Hurrah, all is well! I will come to Tharoor in a bit. Bangalore based, much-admired historian Ramachandra Guha was spotted flitting about in a hurry (perhaps avoiding selfie hunters) while his budding author scion, Keshava held court with aplomb at a couple of the panel discussions. More celebrity spotting was to be there for the taking in the forms of International Booker Banu Mushtaq, Sudha Murthy, Vir Das and Pallavi Aiyar, to name just a handful off the top of my head. There were many more, in spite of Indigo’s shenanigans. Given the largely open environment, one was grateful that the fickle rain gods stayed away.

A word about the venue. What was once a prison has now been converted, with not a little imagination by the powers-that-be into a huge venue for all manner of gatherings – cultural and political. Organised protests also find a welcoming space here. Formerly the Central Jail, it is now called, appropriately, Freedom Park. Famous political leaders have done time here behind bars. Spread over a sprawling 21-acre land space Freedom Park, even without any event happening, is worth the trek for its curiosity value alone. With its imposing Central Watch Tower, Cell Blocks, Gallows and Sculpted Prisoners among other attractions, any student of history can spend an instructive afternoon in what is nothing less than a historic museum.

In the event, the organisers of the BLF should be commended for using intimate, and understandably constricted, prison spaces cunningly to organise panel discussions amongst authors and moderators. Wide open spaces were devoted to erecting large covered shamianas and a stage to conduct similar events. These spaces were used simultaneously to provide the general public with a packed feast of programmes. So much so that at times many visitors were found frantically poring through the supplied brochures to figure out which event they ought to be attending. As mentioned earlier, it didn’t help that some of the star speakers could not make it to Bangalore.

The food courts, to coin a term, were full to brimming. At one point, not finding room at any of the panel discussions and feeling peckish, I sauntered towards the eating joints, not knowing exactly where they were located. Spotting a group of young men and women in animated discussion, I asked them where the cafes or canteens were. They asked me to stay put exactly where I was as that is where the interminable queue ends. Moving at a swift snail’s pace, I guessed it would take me at least another hour to buy coupons and stand in another line to get my egg roll and Coke, if they had not been sold out by then. Happily, I found a friend holding two veg sandwiches walking by. To stop him and grab one of the sandwiches was with me the work of a moment. He was that kind of friend. At least, I wouldn’t collapse in a heap for some while.

Time to get to the climactic part of the evening. Shashi Tharoor in the spotlight, topping the bill. Hordes of men, women, boys and girls were seen rushing and descending on the venue like the ancient Assyrian, collectively coming down like the wolf on the fold. If the boffins at the BLF, troubled by the Indigo setback and consequent loss of important speakers, needed a celebrity to get the pulses racing, the politico cum writer cum eloquent orator, he of the dulcet tones was just the man they needed. As the gloaming set in on Freedom Park, the Shashi Tharoor show commenced. I am in no position to share with you details of what must have been a riveting finale. I could not see or hear a thing. Standing room only, miles from the proceedings. Rubberneckers stood on tip-toe well outside the packed venue to get a peek at the personable Congressman. Just as well Arundhati Roy or Vikram Seth was not there, else bedlam would have ensued. I wished the rubberneckers well and made hasty tracks towards the parking lot.

One concluding observation on the BLF. Almost every panel discussion ended with an invitation to the stalls where the books of the authors were displayed. Orderly queues were formed as visitors, having presented their mobile phone face to the ubiquitous QR Code, clutched their books and waited avidly for the author to autograph the flyleaf of the book and perhaps, agree to a selfie for good measure. This has now become standard practice, an integral part of book fairs, or lit fests as they have been upgraded to. Let us face it. Authors must put food on the table as well, and every little bit added to what they have already got makes just that bit more. That said, Lit Fests are now part and parcel of India’s cultural and literary landscape. Every important city has one. The downside of all this excess dabbling in book releases (can there ever be too much?) is that it can inevitably breed mediocrity. More can be less. The brilliant polemicist, the late Christopher Hitchens did not mince words on the subject. ‘Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.’

Finis.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot / And a big yellow taxi took away my old man. Joni Mitchell.

No one hails a taxi anymore. Shades of coming out of a cinema or concert hall, standing on the edge of a pavement and waving your hand frantically yelling ‘Taxi’ as another one whizzes past without bothering to stop. Those days are gone. Maybe the yellow cabs are still plying in good, old Calcutta, where I used to semaphore at taxi cabs frequently with little success. Calcutta takes its own time coming to grips with the dial-a-cab online generation and bully for it, say I. What you see in many cities, for the most part, is people milling around street corners, glued to their mobile phones, trying to call up one of a myriad number of cab hire services, whose vehicles are moving along at a leisurely pace or parked somewhere in the vicinity. You can even track them squiggling along on your mobile GPS. When the vehicle does arrive somewhere close, you and a dozen others rush to peer at the number plate to see if it is the cab you had booked. It can get quite frantic.

Nevertheless, once you are safely and comfortably ensconced in the back seat, or in the front if other members of the family are bringing up the rear, you can begin to strike up a conversation with the driver. As a rule, most drivers are not averse to a spot of chit-chat, particularly if the drive promises to be long with plenty of traffic jams along the way. Some of the drivers can be painfully garrulous. There are some drivers who are reticent and prefer to keep their own counsel. Which is fine so long as they are well-versed in the local topography, possess more than a rudimentary idea of where the short cuts are, not to mention the uncanny ability to avoid most of the one-way thoroughfares.

Incidentally, you want to be wary of the silent, brooding type of driver, probably nursing a secret grudge or sorrow. It could be the onset of manic depression. If you are still not with me, watch Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver on OTT. Spoiler alert: it is not for the faint hearted.

Then comes the interesting but not insurmountable challenge of which language to employ while conversing with the driver. If you take cities like, Delhi, Chennai or Calcutta, you can be reasonably sure that Hindi, Tamil or Bengali respectively will be the preferred tongue of choice though most of them can speak at least one other language. In Bangalore, where I live, a linguistic melting pot where people from all over the country converge looking for employment, the name of the driver alone does not definitively signify his mother tongue. A Venkat or a Raju can hail from any of the four (now five) southern states. Ditto a Joseph, a Karim or a Bashir. They could all be migrant itinerants from anywhere in a country like India where the peripatetic job-seeker is the rule rather than the exception.

A cheerful driver enlivens the drive and keeps you in good spirits. While such a one is unfailingly polite, he will not fight shy of letting his window down and discharging a volley of colourful oaths if a neighbouring car or two-wheeler attempted to cut across dangerously in front of him. Having got the invective in the chosen vernacular off his chest, he will roll up his window and profusely apologise for his intemperate language, particularly if there are ladies present in the car. ‘Sorry Sir, Madam, but that fellow was breaking traffic rules and might have caused an accident. This is the only language these fellows understand.’ The fact that we did not catch the return volley of abuse from his target was just as well. It is a well-founded truism that when it comes to road rage, the other fellow is always at fault.

Allow me to get a quick word in on car horns. I doubt if there is another country in the world where horns are employed so persistently and indiscriminately as in our own motherland. Most drivers have one palm semi-permanently placed on the horn. The resultant din is calculated to break all sound barrier laws, which in any case are observed strictly in the breach. For crying out loud, what do our drivers hope to achieve by blaring away at a large family of bovine creatures dreamily chewing cud and blocking the road? This is Bharat. Learn to live with it.

Matters don’t always have to be tense. On one occasion, I got talking cricket with one of my drivers. Always a safe subject to open a conversation with just about anyone in India, cabbies being no exception. ‘Tell me Raju (or it might have been Bashir), you must be a T20 fan. I am sure you have no time for the long-format, Test matches.’ Bashir (or Joseph) surprised me with his prompt response. ‘Sir, this T20 is masala cricket, just hitting every ball for six or four. No skill involved. I pity the bowlers who get to bowl only four overs and get slammed all over the park. Give me Test cricket any day. Five days of thinking, strategizing, two innings and the winner would have truly deserved it. Even a draw can be very exciting at times. Test match for me, Sir.’ I am, of course, translating and paraphrasing Venkat’s (or Karim’s) views loosely, but his mature and sophisticated take on the game took me by surprise. I felt abashed at thinking the less of him.

If it is election time, which is pretty much all the year round in India, who better than the all-knowing taxi driver to give us his seat-of-the-pants prediction on the likely results. With his uncanny pulse on current affairs, his predictions are usually right on the money! I will take his word against any jumped-up television psephologist.

Some drivers have the annoying habit of keeping the car’s music system on while driving, without so much as a by your leave. Whether the passenger is interested in the latest hits from Bollywood, Tollywood or Kollywood is of scant concern to them. One feels awkward to request them to shut the damn thing off, but needs must. You fish out your mobile and dial no one in particular, but it is enough of a broad hint to instruct the driver to stop Lata Mangeshkar’s high-pitched soprano or Kishore Kumar’s yodelling in mid-stride. After that, the driver himself is hesitant to turn the music on and you can then sit back in peace. One feels sorry to have to deprive the poor chap of his small joys, but there is a time for Lata or Kishore. A passenger at the back wrestling with his thoughts is not the right time.

Then your driver gets a call from home. He has to take it. He plugs in his ear piece. He looks at his passenger apologetically to indicate it’s his wife and he can cut the call only at his own peril. The next five or six minutes go by in listening to his better half and being at pains to explain to the apple of his eye that he cannot pick up the kids from school nor can he pick up the chicken biryani on the way home and could she rustle up something in the kitchen. At which point he removes the ear piece and holds it well away from his left ear as the good wife’s screams can be heard loud and clear. One’s heart goes out to the poor chap.

Oftentimes you call for the same driver multiple times because you have got to know him and he is familiar with all your usual haunts. GPS not required. At a pinch, he will even take your pet pooch out for walkies. By now the driver is almost a friend, if not quite a bosom pal and you encourage this association, unaware of a looming threat. Finally, it happens. He touches you for a not insubstantial loan. Sob story coming up. His father is going in for a bypass surgery. Tears well up in his eyes. He has managed to mop up most of the money but is short of 25k. By now you are choking up as well for your dear taxi driver friend and proceed to cough up the dough. He thanks you brokenly and promises the loan will be repaid with interest inside three months. You wave your hand grandly and waive the interest. You feel good about yourself for having done a noble deed. Dear reader, you know how this story ends. It ends badly. No sign of the blighter thereafter. Does not respond to your calls, probably changed his sim card. Bye, bye, 25k. Bypass surgery, eh? Pull the other one. Ah well, as P.T. Barnum famously said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’

Shakespeare, through his character Polonius in Hamlet, has this to say about treating friends: Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. If Shakespeare had been aware of them during his time, he would have made an exception and drawn the line at taxi drivers. Not all taxi drivers are devious, I grant you, but some of them are. If you are not on your guard, they can take you for a ride.

An allegory

It has been widely rumoured that the two chief honchos who carry the enormous burden of running one of our country’s most important and prosperous states, let us dub them Number 1 and Number 2, have had differences to iron out and scores to settle. As a common citizen, I am not privy to the precise nature of this alleged contretemps, though Chinese whispers suggest that it has something to do with an unwritten, unverified understanding that Number 1 will graciously make way for Number 2 to acquire the numero uno slot during their term of office. Being Chinese in origin, the veracity of the whispers will bear close scrutiny. That said, the present incumbent of the Number 1 chair has made it plain he has no intention of vacating it for the benefit of Number 2. Wild horses will not shake his resolve and unseat him. His seat is coated with Araldite. Is Number 2 sulking? The photos in the newspapers suggest that his smile is somewhat strained, but he insists we should not read too much into it.

On persistent questioning by the inquisitive and intrusive media, each of the two Big Chiefs has repeatedly said that it is the coterie at the High Command that they will answer to and on their instructions alone will movement, if any, take place. All this while proclaiming undying fealty to their party. Persistent gossip that one or the other of the two is imminently catching a flight to the country’s Capital have thus far proved infructuous. Of course, it is entirely possible that the notoriously inclement weather at this time of the year around the environs of the Capital has made flying at short notice a hazardous proposition, particularly if Indigo was the carrier of choice. The all-knowing media reckons that that explanation is somewhat facile and that there is more to this imbroglio than meets the eye. It must be added that the high-profile visit of the Russian President to New Delhi could have been a further dampener to lesser mortals flying into the capital to address their own agendas.

Meanwhile, the august members of the High Command have expressed their wish that the two chief protagonists running this critical state should sit down and sort out their own issues and not attempt to run to Mummy and her brood at every turn with a request to pour oil over troubled waters. If indeed the waters are troubled requiring the injection of some elbow grease. Mummy can do without cry-babies. She has problems of her own to grapple with when leaders with genuine ability are thin on the ground. We ordinary citizens are in the dark on this matter, relying entirely on unreliable media sources for enlightenment.

Subsequently, it has come to light that Number 1 and Number 2 have decided to have a series of breakfast meetings to iron out their differences, discuss weighty matters of state in pitiless detail and not put undue pressure on their bosses to intervene. This could also effectively squash any creeping aspirations of sundry, wannabe bit players, waiting in the wings to try and step in and usurp power when the Captain and Vice-Captain have taken their collective eye off the ball. One can never be too careful in politics, what with all manner of inquiries swirling round their heads.

These breakfast tête-à-têtes have consequently assumed immense importance and the much-reviled media, the chattering classes and the general populace are waiting with bated breath. Shades of historical international summits such as the Yalta Conference in 1945 starring Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin to put the kybosh on Hitler’s ambitions for world domination. They too must have had quite a few hearty breakfasts, not to mention long, liquid lunches and dinners. The lavish conference halls at this beautiful Crimean resort were, doubtless, redolent of Romeo y Julieta and Trichinopoly cigars, to say nothing of the finest cognac money can buy.

Anyhow, not to put too fine a point on it, our very own Number 1 and Number 2, more modestly inclined, agreed that desi breakfast was the way to go, and let Delhi or the devil take the hindmost. As these meetings were to be held in the strictest confidence, no one was allowed to be present in the dining hall of either of the two leaders, during the petit-déjeuners, barring the statutory photo-ops for the media. Lensmen had their fill of the VIPs drooling over the impending repast and had to scram immediately thereafter, leaving the leaders to tuck in. Taking no chances, stone-deaf waiters  were recruited to attend to the gastronomical needs of the leaders. A cunning, fool-proof plan.

One therefore had little choice but to rely on our old friend Fred the Fly, sitting unobtrusively on the table, largely unnoticed, pricking up his ears and picking up on the conversation. An added bonus for our household fly (Musca domestica) was that every now and then he could alight on one of the toothsome dishes and partake to his little heart’s desire. If he is swatted away, he could land on the broad shoulders of one of the two main heroes at the table. Fred attended as many as four such breakfast summits and finally shared his findings with the media. The details may be somewhat sketchy, but finally, we had our very own Deep Throat – Fred the Fly.

The local daily correspondent opened proceedings. ‘Fred, can you tell us how the meeting went?’

Fred smacked his lips, fluttered his little wings and said, ‘It went swell. It started with a plate of steaming idlis, accompanied by coconut chutney and piping hot, onion sambar.’

A stringer piped in. ‘That’s great Fred, but what did they actually say to each other?’

Fred leaned back on his black wings. ‘As this meal was at Number 2’s residence, Number 1 was gracious. He praised his colleague for keeping a good table. Adding that the idlis were really soft and fluffy but the sambar could have done with a bit more salt.’

‘And what happened next, Fred? I have to file this important story in an hour’s time. Please spill the beans.’

‘Ah, beans rings a bell,’ cut in Fred. ‘The beans poriyal, an unusual item for breakfast, went down a treat. It paired well with the next item on the menu, the rava masala dosa. Yum, yum. I was really buzzing.’

A young lady from one of the leading TV channels was getting impatient. ‘That is great to know Fred, but really, what did Number 1 say to Number 2 about vacating his seat?’

‘There was no question of vacating seats. Both of them were perfectly happy sitting where they were, expectantly waiting for the piece de resistance, the native country chicken dish, Nati Koli, though No.1 did mutter something about the leg-piece being a bit tough. Boy, did they attack that with gusto! I managed to find a greasy morsel on No.2’s hand-woven gamcha. Lip-smacking!’

An elderly correspondent from a leading local daily was beside himself. ‘Arre Freddie, are you going to give us some real news or what? All you have managed is to whet my appetite. At least, ask them to share some of the breakfast. We are famished.’

Fred smiled. ‘Don’t be so impatient, Sir. I haven’t even started on the dessert. Kesari halwa, with some outstanding Mysore filter coffee to die for, served in silver tumblers, to wash it all down. These things take time, Sir. As for sharing some breakfast with you lot, let me see if there are any leftovers.’

At this point, the press meet broke up, feeling badly let down, while Fred the Fly winged his way back to the dining room to attack the remains of the day. The two leaders had left to attend to matters of state after this hearty feast. Whether there was a feast of reason and flow of soul, we are not in the know. In the distance, Fred the Fly could distinctly hear the satisfied belches of the two leaders.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I quite enjoy picking up a conversation with complete strangers. This could happen just about anywhere. Mind you, not every stranger you broach is likely to return the compliment, but you press on regardless. If your target, if that is the word I want, is reticent you take the hint and try your luck elsewhere. If you don’t take the hint and pursue, on your head be it. The waiting room at a doctor’s or a dentist’s chamber is usually an excellent place to get fraternal. A typical scenario can go something like this.

The man sitting next to me was absorbed in a paperback. I peered at the cover and took first strike.

‘Good morning, nice book you’re reading. P.D. James. Big fan. Big, big fan. One of my favourite fictional detectives, Adam Dalgliesh.’ That was a good opening, I thought.

‘Yes, I am reading it, and would like to continue reading it without being interrupted. If you don’t mind.’ I thought I detected an incipient frost in the gentleman’s response. Rather than reading the signal, I persisted.

‘The Black Tower, eh? One of her best and that is saying something. I shan’t spoil it for you and reveal the ending. This much I can tell you. It was not the butler that did it.’ I smiled broadly at my own, time-worn cliché. I was just trying to be convivial. He didn’t see the funny side of it. He got up and pointedly moved to another seat at the far end of the room. I raised my voice and called after him.

‘You must watch the television serial. Roy Marsden is brilliant as Dalgliesh.’ The duty nurse walked up to me and asked me to remain silent. I tried telling her that I was just working off my nervousness, what with the doctor’s consult to discuss the worrying swelling in my throat and trying to be friendly. She repeated her instruction, curtly this time, to keep quiet and not further aggravate my throat condition. I told her to watch Tony Hancock in The Blood Donor. She handed me a very old, dog-eared issue of India Today lying on the table. The cover story was ‘Finance Minister Manmohan Singh presents the Budget.’ That was how old it was!

Another place where you wait for long periods is at the airport departure lounge. Pretty much every single person is fiddling with his or her mobile phone. Even those reading a book are doing so out of their mobile Kindle app. Others are keeping themselves busy watching Tik Tok or taking selfies of themselves and posting the results on Facebook or Instagram. ‘Hi Mom, flight slightly delayed but we should be boarding soon. Love you.’ Accompanied by several red hearts. Mind you, the message could also easily be, ‘Hi Mom, biting into this gooey chocolate doughnut, yum-yum. Love you.’ Accompanied by more red hearts and other indistinguishable emoticons, smileys, memes etc. Such is the intellectual pressure of these video cons that one can barely keep up. On one such occasion, I turned to a teenage girl sitting next to me and asked her how many hours in a day does she spend on her mobile.

‘I am not sure Uncle, let me see.’ She then closed her eyes and went mutter, mutter to herself, presumably calculating her daily routine and declared brightly, ‘If you take out the ten hours of sleep, I could be on the mobile for at least nine hours daily.’

‘Good God, you sleep for ten hours? What about waking up for school or college? Have you heard of Kumbhakarna from the Ramayana? No, of course not. It would have been epic if you had! Go ask Google Gemini.’ My sarcasm escaped her completely.

 ‘Anyhow, you will have to switch off your mobile once we are airborne,’ I concluded with a wry chuckle.

She was equal to it. ‘Uncle, I don’t crash before one in the morning, so I need my beauty sleep, never mind your Kumba whoever he is or was. I am done with college and I work from home, mostly networking. As for being airborne, I will turn my mobile on to flight mode and binge watch Friends. For the nth time. So, it’s all cool.’ She spoke at such a rapid-fire speed that I could have done with subtitles! At which point, I turned on my mobile to check my email and WhatsApp messages. And browse a bit on YouTube. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Incidentally, I felt her employment of the word ‘crash,’ even as a shorthand for ‘sleep’ was unfortunate, seeing as we were about to take off shortly!

Then we have a situation where an almost unknown person at a departmental store approaches you with an uncertain smile. Too late to duck, followed by that old, familiar line. ‘Haven’t we met before?’

‘No, I don’t think so. You must be confusing me with someone else. Sorry, must rush.’ Of course, I knew the blighter. Met him last several years ago somewhere and had no wish to renew acquaintance. A real pain, he tried to interest me in some financial instruments for investment. Eminently avoidable. I then tried to push my trolley past him to reach for a brand of salad dressing, but he wasn’t having any. Stood right in front and wouldn’t budge.

He was persistent, I’ll give him that. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we meet at the coffee shop after you’ve finished here. You will not believe the kind of schemes I have to offer. What say you?’ I was sure it was some Ponzi scheme or the other calculated to erode my meagre savings dramatically while increasing his. Scheming would be a good epithet to describe him.

‘Some other time, if you don’t mind. I have guests coming for dinner and the cook can’t wait. Bye bye.’ Just then, fortuitously, he had to attend to his mobile and I made good my escape to the billing counter. As fast as my legs and my trolley would take me.

The one person you want to avoid at all costs, but almost impossible to shake off is the bore who will talk endlessly regardless of how many times you pointedly glance at your watch anxiously or try to catch the attention of an imaginary friend somewhere in the middle distance. The bore is made of sterner stuff. Not for nothing did Oscar Wilde define this pestilential nuisance thus, ‘A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.’ You can come across such a person almost anywhere. I was sitting next to a young man at my bank waiting for the teller to call my token number. It was a long queue so we struck up a conversation, mostly one-way traffic. I took first strike.

‘Hullo young man, how often do you visit the bank?’ A harmless way to open a civil conversation, you would have thought.

‘What is it to you, old man?’ riposted the cheeky, young thing, removing his iPhone earpiece.

The ‘old man’ nomenclature stung, but I did not let it show. ‘Distinguished grey hair’ is greatly overrated. ‘Nothing, just making friendly conversation, but if you are not in the mood…’

He cut me in mid-sentence. ‘Purleez Uncle, don’t be such a bore. Can’t you see I am on a group chat?’

That was it. I had had my fill of this brat. I could have told him civility costs nothing, but that would have gone clean over his head. I decided to shut up, preserve my dignity and move to another seat. He called me a bore; the unkindest cut of all. I have never been accused of being a bore. The joke was clearly on me. Only I was not laughing. Once you start being addressed as ‘Uncle,’ you know it is a slippery slope. How did that Bee Gees song go? I started a joke which started the whole world crying / But I didn’t see that the joke was on me oh no / I started to cry which started the whole world laughing / Oh If I’d only seen that the joke was on me.

Acta est fabula, plaudite!

‘The only thing you’ve got in this world is what you can sell.’ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.

A few decades ago, if you paid a visit to a home with a modicum of house pride, you would unfailingly have found in their bookshelves or ornate glass cupboards, an entire line of leather-bound volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). They would stand tall and proud alongside the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bhagavad Gita, The Oxford English Dictionary and possibly jostling alongside, some of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and for light entertainment, at least half a dozen of P.G. Wodehouse’s best and brightest. The last couple of titles could easily be interchanged with Agatha Christie’s whodunnits and Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason courtroom dramas. Not forgetting the almost de rigueur Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, which were offered at a throwaway price if you were a subscriber to the RD. All of which do not preclude any other favourite of your choice, so long as we bear in mind that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was a must and consequently, irreplaceable.

Now here’s the thing. In my living memory, I do not recall ever having taken out a single volume of the EB series to bone up on the exact dimensions of the tallest mountain peak in the world, the deepest ocean bed, the biggest star in the firmament, the most poisonous, carnivorous plant in the Amazon jungles or for that matter, everybody’s favourite, the tallest and shortest humans ever to set foot on planet earth. The more arcane the information one sought, the more EB became your go-to source, not that one went to it much, if at all. That is just a very small sample of the enormous amounts of minutiae contained in the alphabetically arranged EB, hard bound volumes. Come to think of it, I cannot recall an occasion when my father, a professional banker, slid out one of the tomes to satisfy his curiosity on the question of which was the first bank in the world to go kaput and leave its customers tragically insolvent. The only time these volumes were ever taken out of their shelves, very carefully by my mother, was to blow the accumulated dust off the top of the books, open each volume right in the middle pages and slam them shut with a hefty ‘thwack’ to get rid of more dust. Place them all back diligently in the same order and her work was done. And dusted.

Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that one displayed impressive volumes like the EB more for show than for any practical use. In our present digital age, this issue is purely academic, as internet searches allow us to discover, in a trice, the precise length of the Trans-Siberian Railway (down to the last decimal point) or the average number of quills to be found on an adult porcupine. Or fretful porpentine, as Shakespeare preferred to describe the prickly mammal. Clearly the Bard of Avon had studied the nervous mental state of the porpentine in some detail. What a man!

We now live in an age where FB rules and the EB is all but extinct, one with the dinosaur and the brontosaurus. If at all they have not been sold to the highest bidder at an antique auction sale, or conversely a ‘raddhiwalla,’ they can only be treated as museum pieces. As I have not visited a museum in ages, I have no means of knowing if the EB is preserved in mothballs at some such habitat. Perhaps I should visit a museum, if only I knew how and where to find one. When I punched in ‘museum’ on my GPS, it guided me to Museum Road in Bangalore which had a number of colleges, churches and commercial establishments. No sign of a museum anywhere. I am sure I will locate one in the near future with some diligent digital search. As to whether I will find a collector’s set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica there or not is a matter of conjecture. Incidentally, Amazon (not the jungle) offers amazing deals on all manner of encyclopaedias, including the Britannica. If you wait long enough, they might offer them free, delivery included, provided you have adequate space in your basement; if you have a basement. No takers reported so far.

When all is said and done, one’s heart goes out to the encyclopaedia salesman of yore. I doubt very much if such a specimen exists anywhere in the world today, but time was when the salesman peddling encyclopaedias was the stuff of legend and song, almost a time-worn cliché. Equally admired by his bosses and colleagues for his indefatigable spirit and courage in travelling around the countryside, knocking on doors in an often-futile effort to sell these voluminous tomes, he was also reviled by housewives who were the salesman’s primary target as he invariably dropped by when the husband was off to work, fearing grievous bodily harm – the salesman that is, not the husband. Selling encyclopaedias was also a favourite subject for lampooning in comic strips in print and on television shows. I recall a sketch from an old Monty Python show, which I have reworked in my own imagination from a sketchy memory, as I cannot recall the exact dialogue. It takes the theme to absurdist lengths, a Monty Python trademark, to make the point.

EB salesman (rings the doorbell and raises his voice) – ‘Good morning, madam.’

Housewife – ‘Who is it?’

EB salesman – ‘A burglar.’

Housewife – ‘A burglar, did you say?’

EB salesman – ‘Yes madam. If you would be so kind as to let me in, I will help myself to some of your valuables and scoot.’

Housewife – ‘How can I be sure you are a burglar? How can I be certain you haven’t come to sell encyclopaedias? I cannot stand the sight of door-to-door salesmen offering encyclopaedias at special discounts.’

EB salesman – ‘Cross my heart and hope to die, madam. I know nothing about encyclopaedias. All I want is to burgle your sweet home.’

Housewife – ‘Well that’s a relief. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? You had better come in then. Can I make you a nice cup of tea? I’ll just put the kettle on and you can help yourself to anything your heart desires. Don’t you have a bag or something to put all the swag in?’

EB salesman (very hesitantly) – ‘Actually madam, I am not a burglar at all. I have been lying through my teeth and you were right. Profuse apologies. Can I interest you in a luxury edition of the Encyclopeaedia Britannica? There is something there about the Desert Horned Viper that will make your hair stand on end. Please madam. Take pity. It is as much as my job is worth. As a free bonus, I can throw in the complete works of Jane Austen – the Reader’s Digest Condensed version, of course.’

Housewife (looks pityingly at the salesman) – ‘Tell you what young man, I will not report you to the police for coming into my home under false pretences. You will never be able to burgle a baby’s rattle from its pram. And I have no interest in learning about the Desert Horned Viper or, come to that, the Iwasaki’s Snail-Eater. If you like, I can tell you a thing or two about the Hainan Black Crested Gibbon, also known by its biological name, Nomascus Hainanus. Look, you look like a nice chap. Have this cup of tea and a biscuit and be off with you. I hate it when burglars walk in pretending to be encyclopaedia salesmen. Or was it the other way round? Only yesterday, I had a nice-looking chap claiming to be a serial rapist, only to learn after letting him in that he was selling encyclopaedias. You can never trust anyone these days.’

Truly, one’s heart goes out to the encyclopaedia salesman. World famous director Woody Allen summed it up rather well. ‘There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an encyclopaedia salesman?’