Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects belonging to the order Blattodea (Blattaria). About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known pests. Source: Wikipedia.

There you go. That particular definition of cockroaches, as acknowledged, is not mine. Clearly some entomologist, whose misfortune it is to delve into the behavioural aspects of these hardy, never-say-die insects has put together that precise description. You, dear reader, might wonder why I, out of the blue as it were, decided to write about cockroaches. Not being an entomologist myself, my interest in cockroaches and other creepy-crawlies is strictly confined to literally stamping or ‘Flitting’ them out should they come within sighting distance. If they happen to multiply on an industrial scale, which they do if you so much as take your eyes off them for a minute, then one has to summon the pest control chappies to do their dread work, leaving the home smelling of insecticide for days on end. Which, like passive smoking, was bad for the health of my family and for Paddy, our Cocker Spaniel. Happily for him, Paddy has gone to gnaw on his bone in the great kennel in the sky, blissfully free of roaches (one can only hope, given their ubiquity), and he has not been replaced. He was irreplaceable. Meanwhile, the cockroaches die in their hundreds while the survivors run for cover and hibernate for months in unreachable crevices, there to propagate their species multi-fold and reappear at a time of their choosing. Moral of the story – you can stamp out a cockroach but you cannot stamp out the species. Their life expectancy is infinite.

While I was musing on this unusual and frankly, not very savoury subject after a fairly substantial (and savoury) lunch, I nodded off for a quick nap. It happens to the best of us; usually with a book in hand. Then the book drops off at your feet and you wake up with a start, annoyed at yourself for losing the bookmark. Show me a man who says this has never happened to him and I will show you a man who is lying in his teeth. Anyhow, during this particular siesta, a funny thing happened to me. Did I say funny? Make that terrifying. I was accosted by a rather larger than usual, brown cockroach. This pestilential insect alighted on my nose and started talking to me. Not unlike Kafka’s protagonist, Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis who, on waking up one morning from unsettling dreams, found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. My dream, or nightmare (daymare) to be more accurate, could not make up its mind whether I was conversing with this cockroach, or if I had myself turned into a cockroach. In which case I was talking to myself. Truly Kafkaesque. The conversation with the cockroach (or with myself) proceeded along the following lines.

‘Hullo, who are you and which rock did you crawl out from?’  That was me, not the cockroach, but since I am suffering from an identity crisis, I shall henceforth not identify myself. Or ourselves. You can go figure it out for yourself.

‘Good afternoon, I am your resident cockroach, representing our community in your apartment. There are plenty more of us where I came from, but for now, it is strictly one-to-one.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘My generic name has been shortened by many people to Roach but you can call me Cocky.’

‘Well, you certainly sound cocky, Cocky. Do you think you can get off my nose and sit on the arm of this chair? You are irritating my nostrils. I could sneeze violently and you could go flying to the other end of this room. That will spell curtains for you as I sweep you up and flush you down the toilet.’

‘All right, if you insist.’ So saying he hopped gently from my nose and settled comfortably on the right armrest of my sofa.

‘Thank you, Cocky. Now that you are at a safe remove from my killer sneeze, why are you here and what can I do for you? If that is not a leading question.’

Cocky gave me a good, long stare and said, ‘Look, it’s like this. You have been killing my mates mercilessly every time one of them staggers out of your kitchen drain or is found nestling amongst one of your favourite vegetable preparations. Those fried, red chillies provide an excellent camouflage but you hunt us down.’

‘So, what would you have me do, Cocky? I do not relish live cockroaches in my food. I am not Chinese.’

‘Look, we are a very large and forever-growing community, the cockroaches. You simply cannot wish us away. Just reflect. The dinosaur, the brontosaurus, the Tyrannosaurus rex and many more such species, huge as houses, have disappeared off the face of the earth. More will vanish including lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, reptiles, rodents, avians and why, even you human beings. You will be nuking yourself to extinction, if Trump and Netanyahu had their way. Amidst all this death and destruction, we cockroaches will survive. It is in our DNA, the survival instinct. Racial memory.’

‘Bully for you Cocky, but what is it you want me to do? I am befuddled. If I stop trying to keep you out, at least from our kitchen and food space, you will breed like rabbits (if they too don’t become extinct) and you will overrun my home. I can’t have that, and neither can my wife. She may not go “Eeek” when she spots you but she will speak with her slipper.’

Cocky just sat there on the armrest, his whiskers swaying this way and that, thinking deep thoughts. Finally, he gave tongue, always assuming cockroaches have tongues.

‘Well, off the top of my head, you can stop trying to beat the life out of us every time you see us peacefully strolling along your carpet. Why don’t you get it into your thick skull that we do not die. We have a never-say-die attitude. We merely regenerate. On behalf of my species, therefore, my first demand is, do not try to eliminate us. It is a waste of time. There are too many of us. Put your slippers to better use. Like walking.’

‘Any other demand?’ I asked caustically.

‘Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head, my friend. I am just getting warmed up. Here is our second demand. Please leave adequate food in the kitchen, anything will do so long as it is cooked. Burgers can be avoided. We will come out after lights-out and tuck in to our hearts content. We are not fussy. I will not insist but a sweet dish will not go amiss. If you do that every night, you will not find us helping ourselves to your bhindi fry as you sit for dinner. We are not hogs, which species will also, incidentally, be one with the dinosaur.’

I was flabbergasted. This was simply off the charts. ‘Listen Cocky, I make no promises other than agreeing to talk to you. Shall I take it that that was the last of your demands?’

‘Not so fast, Sir. One last request. Oh, okay it is a demand. Forthwith, you will stop using noxious anti-repellent agents like Hit, Flit and other herbal formulae on us innocent roaches when we are scouring for sustenance and just trying to get ahead in life. And you will arrange, through the proper agencies, to impose a ban on all such products being advertised on television and the newspapers. If you accede immediately to all these demands, you will see neither hide nor hair of us. Unless, of course, you sleepwalk into the kitchen for a midnight snack, when we will all be feasting on the repast you will have so kindly left in the open vessel for our delectation. If that suits you, or even if it doesn’t, we can sign on the dotted line right this minute. And do not leak this to anyone till we have signed off on it. Isn’t that a neat solution?’

I think I woke up just then, loudly muttering and sputtering something incomprehensible which sounded to my own ears like ‘NEET, leak, neat, NEET, neat, leak, what NEET, why leak, which NEET?’ I also became aware that my wife was violently shaking my shoulders, urging me to wake up. ‘What are you shouting NEET or neat for? In broad daylight, for heaven’s sake. And what is leaking? Were you having a daydream? Did you come up with some neat solution to some problem?’

I was now fully awake. ‘It’s nothing. I was having a bad dream about cockroaches.’

The wife was startled. ‘Yuck, it must have been a daymare? Why on earth would you dream about cockroaches? Ah, I see. The penny has dropped.’

‘Never mind. I don’t wish to talk about it. Just one thing. Kindly get rid of all the insect sprays pronto. Give it to the housemaid.’

‘WHY?!!!’

‘Don’t ask.’

I don’t know why, but Pink Floyd’s iconic lyrics played in my head as I imagined all the cockroaches marching along the kitchen floor. We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom / Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone / All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.

Their venom is like the venom of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. Psalm 58:4

Right folks, here’s the thing. We are 70 plus. We are employing the royal ‘we’ here. Alright, alright, we tell a lie, we are 75 plus. In fact, sod it, let’s call a spade a shovel. We are 80 minus. That should, more or less, pin our age down to the closest geo-stationary position, but we are damned if you are expecting anything more precise from us. At which point, I am done with the royal ‘we’ and shall revert to the more accustomed first-person singular, as I just did there. Those of you who are reading this with the aid of a powerful pair of bifocals are doubtless motoring along life’s highway, enduring the odd health pothole or speed breaker. If you are not afflicted by anything seriously life-threatening, and I exclude migraine, mild depression, cervical and lower back pain, knee or hip trouble from that list, the first things to start bothering you are the eyes and the ears. In fact, ocular issues can crop up at a much earlier age. Even toddlers and those in their early teens are happily sporting fashionable Harry Potter spectacles with nary a care in the world, forget about septuagenarians. Speaking of Harry Potter, the pair of spectacles he wore looks pretty much like the one Mahatma Gandhi had patented! Make of that what you will.

Let me put the subject of eyes to one side. For now, specifically for my contemplation in this article, I ask you to lend me your ears. Going gradually deaf is a devilish thing, gradually being the operative word. As the Bard might have put it, ‘creeps in this petty pace from day to day.’ The reason being that owing to the natural decline of some of our faculties, we do not realise, or want to, that our hearing is somewhat impaired. More than anything else, we quickly slip into a defensive mode. We are in denial. I am not talking about going stone deaf here, not like the wondrous actress Marlee Matlin in Children of a lesser God who was deaf in real life and played the role to perfection on celluloid. I am talking of subtle changes in hearing patterns that we barely notice. In Tamil, we have a colourfully coined onomatopoeic word, damaaram, applied somewhat mockingly to a stone-deaf person, the coinage connoting that even a very loud explosion or bang will leave the unfortunate person blissfully unaware. That is another peculiarity with us humans. We are quite happy to make all manner of jokes about the deaf. Other afflictions like blindness are treated more gravely and with sympathy. Have you ever come across a deaf beggar knocking on your car window at a crossing? I thought not.

A person who is hard of hearing will never say something like, ‘If you don’t mind, could you speak a little louder? I am somewhat aurally handicapped.’ Anymore than you are likely to get the person to say, ‘I am deaf.’ Closer to home, quite literally, it is being periodically pointed out to me by my better half that I should be seriously considering a hearing aid. Some tests and visits to ENT specialists would be in order, she suggests helpfully. Been there, done that but nothing alarming came out of it. Opinion, however, is divided between the two of us as to what it was that she actually said to me.

I knew she said something, but I was somewhat hazy on the details. ‘Sorry, what was that again? It’s that damned generator going full blast. Can’t hear a blessed thing. I must remember to complain to the building admin manager to do something about it. It is a dinosaur. They must be having silencers or mufflers and stuff, surely.’

I felt I had handled that quite adroitly but the good wife wasn’t buying. ‘It is always the generator. Or else the roar of some low flying aircraft that is preventing you from hearing clearly. Why don’t you come up with something original? Like, “I think my hearing is going.”’

‘But my dear, that is precisely the point at issue here. You cannot deny that with the air force undertaking all these aerial exercises, what with an imminent conflict with our westerly neighbours being bandied about, you can’t blame me for begging your pardon every now and then. In fact, I am surprised this daily din hasn’t affected your hearing.’

Clearly unimpressed by my eloquence, she pressed on. ‘Look, last night well after ten, when we could have heard the proverbial pin drop, I asked you in clear, ringing tones if you have paid the maintenance bill for our apartment to the society. And what was your answer?’

‘What was my answer to what? And please don’t start saying things like deaf as a doorpost.’

‘You said it yourself. Now read my lips. I was asking if you had settled our maintenance bill. Last month we were late and they were threatening us with a penalty. One more delay and they might cut our power supply.’ She was sounding quite crotchety.

‘There you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Speak clearly, enunciate properly and I am all ears. The problem is you keep mumbling. And let me tell you, even at the dead of night, those crickets are chirping at high decibels. They always appear to come alive at night time. Maybe you are unable to hear them.’

‘Nice try,’ riposted my bitter half, ‘you have an answer for everything. Except, most of the time your answers are wrong because you have not heard the question.’

‘And speaking of crickets, my research tells me that this chirping sound from the crickets is produced by adult male crickets through a specialised biological process called stridulation, where they rub their leathery front wings together, thus producing that continuous chirping sound, that prevents us humans from engaging in intelligent conversation.’ I leaned back on my reclining chair triumphantly.

‘You quickly looked all that up on Google, didn’t you? That still does not change the fact that your average doorpost can hear more clearly than your far from incipient deafness will allow. And that goes for adders as well.’

‘Very droll. Anyhow, you will be glad to know that I have been including carrots on a regular basis in my diet.’

The good wife looked puzzled. ‘Carrots? What’s carrots got to do with anything?’

‘I am sure someone told me carrots are excellent for improving one’s hearing. Are you sure it wasn’t you?’

‘I might have said carrots are good for the eyes, and you heard ears! Proving my point again. I know of no food supplement that can improve hearing. So there.’

By now, I was beginning to get restless. ‘Look, I have been stuck on page 36 of The Girl on the Boat for the past 30 minutes. I have read the second paragraph 12 times because of your frequent questions about my imagined hearing problem.’

‘Imagined? That should get more laughs than page 36 of The Girl on the Boat. Forget about re-reading the second paragraph. You have read that book at least 27 times. I have not seen a more dog-eared novel in my life. Thank heavens your eyesight, with your new glasses, is fairly sharp.’

I deflected again. ‘Bloody hell, it’s those damned crickets again. I only half heard what you just said. What can I say? You need a refined sense of humour to understand why a person would read a Wodehouse classic 27 times. Even if I know that it was the butler who put the strychnine in the soup, it is the way the Master says it that consumes me. I rest my case.’ I thought I finished quite strongly there, though the strychnine reference is from somewhere else. Agatha Christie, I’ll wager.

She was resigned to her fate. ‘And I am resting my weary bones till the crickets go to sleep and I shall rise again when the more sonorous chirping sounds of the Koel, Red-vented Bulbul or the Magpie-Robin wakes me up. I can never quite tell them apart, though my ornithologist friend educates me daily on the subject. You, of course, will not hear any of that. More’s the pity.’

‘I am sorry, what was that again? I was just starting on page 37. Didn’t quite catch what you were saying.’ And I fell about laughing helplessly as I continued lapping up Wodehouse’s nautical romp.’

‘Nothing. Good night.’

The good lady wife turned over and slipped into the land of Nod. She could at least have wished me good night!

 In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team. Jean Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason.

It’s one-on-one out there, man. There ain’t no hiding. I can’t pass the ball. Pete Sampras.

Pelé, arguably the greatest ever footballer to dribble past 10 men and essay a bicycle kick past an astonished goalkeeper, (with due apologies to Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Kane and others) famously dubbed football O Jogo Bonito in Portuguese, which translates to The Beautiful Game. As I key in these lines, more than half the world have been staying awake across time zones to witness their country’s fortunes currently being played out in the North American continent, along with Canada and Mexico for the coveted Jules Rimet Trophy, which Donald Trump coveted more than anyone else. Fortunately for the whole world, his stubby reach exceeded his grubby grasp by some distance. Here in India, we are not represented in the tournament and are unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future. However, for our delectation, every single match is being brought to us on our television screens courtesy ZEE 5.

The catch is, with very few exceptions, almost all the games are featured well after midnight Indian Standard Time. Deducing logically, that means millions of football crazies in West Bengal and Kerala, our own temples of football and several hundred more from other states will be attending their schools / colleges / offices bleary-eyed, and many will have developed mysterious illnesses and put in for sick leave. In Calcutta, where I lived for many years, walls skirting homes and buildings will have been painted (with or without permission) with the city’s soccer heroes, flags of all the playing nations will be fluttering across streets and roadside socceroos will hold up traffic with impunity, suitably attired in tee-shirts bearing colours of their favourite teams – Brazil’s yellow and Argentina’s blue stripes winning the bragging rights by a country mile. The odd Mohun Bagan and East Bengal jerseys may also be fleetingly seen. The more ambitious fans even create a football ‘Nativity Scene’ with puppets and wax images featuring their stars, as they do during the Puja festival. At times, incongruously, even a Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguli image will make an appearance.

Getting back to binge-watching football, let me state straight from kick-off, that I am not of their number. I am referring to those who stay up all night to take in the games. If I read in the papers the next morning of some great feats or stunning upsets that have taken place, I might watch the 10-minute capsules of the highlights at my own, sweet pleasure. As an avid tennis fan, my evenings these days are taken up mostly with Wimbledon as I wallow in the age-defying pyrotechnics of Djokovic or his natural successor for tennis supremacy, Jannik Sinner, while Alcaraz recuperates from his injuries. The scorching ‘Indian Summer’ that has invaded England and much of Europe consumed Wimbledon. It must be some kind of dubious record that not a single day’s play was lost due to rain. Which is a shame because rain interruptions provide their own challenges to the players and plenty of fun for spectators.

Flashback to 1996, when Cliff Richard entertained the crowds from the stands during a rain-drenched day with hit songs like Summer Holiday, The Young Ones and Bachelor Boy, while Wimbledon champions Martina Navratilova, Virginia Wade and other tennis luminaries were the back-up singers! Instead, what we witnessed was hundreds of Lady Windermere types hand-fanning themselves, some even fainting, if not swooning, due to the heat. As for the tennis, some of the women, if I could only pronounce their East European or Balkan names are making a huge impact. Two girls from Czechoslovakia have just qualified for the finals. Expectedly, the media are going bonkers with puns like ‘Czech Mates.’ The Wimbledon games, on odd occasions when they go on late into the night, coincides with the World Cup football. Which brings with it its own comic interplay.

A ladies’ singles was in progress on Centre Court. The game was proceeding at a sedate pace with nary a grunt or squeal to disturb the peace, nothing untoward for the crowd to go ballistic. In fact, to quote Wodehouse, you could have heard ‘the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.’ Yet unaccountably for me, as a television watcher, I could not understand the periodic ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and an almighty roar when one of the girls had just served a double fault. It took me a while to cotton on to the fact that most of the spectators were listening to the football commentary on their mobiles while England were slipping it across Mexico and Bellingham and Kane were scoring those goals. When the final whistle blew with England emerging victorious, the noise went through the Centre Court hi-tech roof! Premature and off-key chants of Queens’s anthemic We are the champions rang round Wimbledon. They may as well have stayed at home and watched the football. The two girls stopped playing tennis while things settled down. That is what football does to people. One last remark on Wimbledon. Now that a young, unsung British tennis star, Arthur Fery, has reached the semis from nowhere, the Brits will actually have some tennis to get raucously vocal about. Hopefully, England will not be playing football at the same time.

My wife often cynically remarks, ‘Can’t understand why there is so much fuss being made over 22 men kicking a ball around.’ My cutting response is to paraphrase Trinidadian historian C.L.R. James’ memorable quote on cricket (which in turn is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s quote on England), ‘What do they know of football who only football know.’ ‘Check mate’ I said, metaphorically toppling over my better half’s white King and strutting off in a marked manner.

Having watched a bit of football on the telly in recent years, particularly a few games from past World Cup fixtures and some English Premier League games involving the big guns, I have to wonder how beautiful the game really is. Conversely, how ugly it has now become. When Pelé was on song on the field, the game was, indeed, close to poetry in motion. The same could be said of Maradona in full flight. Although one of his most celebrated and infamous (‘hand of God’) goals against England in 1986 turned out to be an undetected, hand-fisted foul. Today VAR would have disallowed that goal. Barring those few instances along with a bit of Messi magic, most teams depend on extracting a foul in the penalty box to earn a spot kick. At which point, the field turns into a melee of unseemly argy-bargy, at times resulting in violence involving players and coaches as well. The referee keeps strewing yellow and red cards like Christmas has arrived early. Not to mention the rival factions among the throngs in the galleries, tanked up to their eyeballs in beer, turning the whole stadium into an ugly free-for-all. Just a few days ago, the Egyptian Pharaohs were beside themselves with fury as they lost to Argentina in a cliff-hanger of a game. The rival players nearly came to blows and the referee barely escaped physical injury. Every foul is questioned with rude gestures and oftentimes, abuse in their own vernacular. The English are clearly at a disadvantage here as their four-letter words are now an integral part of universal parlance!

Which is why I prefer watching quality tennis. Once in a rare while, a player might smash his racket while in extremis and throw a few choice verbals at his coaching staff, but by and large, a certain decorum is maintained. I end this contemplation with a quote from 24-time Grand Slam champion, the G.OA.T., 39-year-old Serbian Novak Djokovic. When asked after his 5hr 15 min marathon quarter final win over Canadian Felix Auger Aliassime, how he compares with football legend, also 39-years old, Lionel Messi. ‘Unbelievable how Messi is 39 years old and still scoring goals. And you win after 5 hours and 15 minutes,’ the journalist said and in reply Djokovic quipped, tongue firmly in cheek, ‘I would like to play 90 minutes like him, but…’ The man even thinks on his feet!

Footnote: Somebody asked me if I am following the Indian cricketers’ disastrous tour of England where I am told we are getting a royal hiding. Short answer – I am not.

I have had occasion in the past to share my thoughts pertaining to the challenges one faces getting rid, over time, of various objects from home and hearth. Notably books that have seen better days, music cassettes, spool tapes and LPs that are of no more use to man or beast given the rapid advancement of technology in music delivery systems (Spotify, Apple Music et al) and sundry knacks and gewgaws lying about the house for the proverbial donkey’s years. The bottom line being that after much soul searching and emotional contortion, pretty much most things are carefully put back where they have lain. Perhaps the one category that one finds most heart-rending to consign to the rubbish heap are old, handwritten letters. Remembering that we are talking about missives written by or to us over the best part of seven decades. School friends, pen pals, relatives providing gratuitous advice, reject letters from some newspapers or magazines to whom one had the temerity to submit articles and much, much more – all of them stuffed to bursting in three or four old Bata shoe cartons or rusted, Black Magic chocolate tins.

Many of these letters can safely be dispensed with because they are not likely to enhance anybody’s reading pleasure once you have departed for the great post office in the sky. For instance, who on earth is going to be even remotely interested in learning that your pen friend in Addis Ababa recently contracted small pox and was lucky to survive the ordeal? Into the shredder it goes, as do many other such inane letters sent par avion. However, one bunch, carefully preserved and tied with a thick brown twine by my father, contained a series of letters written by me and my brother to him from boarding school. My old man had this obsessive habit of never destroying any letter or note he received from anybody. Even provision bills or hand written receipts for salaries paid to drivers and sundry household staff could be found amongst his effects. They are of scant interest to anyone other than to know that his driver in 1961 earned a monthly salary of Rs.120/-, petrol set him back by Re.1/- a litre and that vegetables purchased over an entire month burnt a very small hole of Rs.300/- in his pocket. An economist studying the effects of inflation over the decades might have jumped for joy at such discoveries, but I was indifferent.

However, the personal letters I wrote from boarding school on a light blue 10p ‘Inland Letter’ to my father made for extremely absorbing, if not entertaining reading, a weird trip down memory lane. There were at least 40 or 50 such letters gathering dust. So, I duly dusted them off and started poring over them. Many of them were just routine “How are you, I am fine” type of letters, but every now and then, I extended myself and made an attempt to bring a smile to my dad’s lips. I have picked just three of these which are representative of that period and am reproducing them here, carefully censoring such observations as I deemed were not relevant to a wider public. Bear in mind, dear reader, that these letters were written when I was around 10 to 15 years old. They have been hand-picked by me at random and they are not in any chronological order.

July 10, 1960

My dear Appa,

How are you and Amma? I am doing fine. Boarding school life is not too bad. Everybody complains about the grub, but you get used to it. The Pantry Sergeant, his name, believe it or not, is Mr. Rice and he is in charge of deciding what we get to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My being a vegetarian is making me the laughing stock with many of the boys. Even one of my teachers, a Mr. Caleb, mockingly calls me ‘grass eater’! So, I decided to try an egg yesterday for breakfast. It was an omelette stuffed with plenty of onions and chillies. It looked and tasted a bit like masala dosa but I quite enjoyed it. Don’t tell Amma about my eating omelette or she will immediately have a bath and sit in the puja room for an hour.

Our dormitory master came in this morning with the daily newspaper and announced that Ramanathan Krishnan lost to Neale Fraser in the semis at Wimbledon. We were all pretty cut up about it. The master pompously exclaimed, ‘So near and yet so far.’

We boarders have to attend chapel service every evening. There is a little black book called Manual of Worship and a brown book called Hymns Ancient and Modern. Don’t worry, nobody is trying to convert us and again, don’t show this to Amma or she will throw a fit. Actually, some of the hymns are quite nice.

Till next week then.

Yours lovingly,

Suresh.

P.S. In case you are wondering, I first spelt omelette as ‘omlet’ till my house master, who was walking around the classroom (from where we are to write letters on a Sunday) to ensure silence, peered at my letter and gave me a smack on the back of my head while dictating the correct spelling. Nobody taught him that he is not supposed to read other people’s personal letters. I could have told him but I feared for the back of my head.

Undated, 1960

My dear Appa,

How are you and Amma? Ramesh and I are doing fine. Daily classes are quite boring. I am enjoying the English language periods but Maths is hell, particularly Geometry. Our class master asked us to treat riders like solving puzzles. I just found riders puzzling.

 Today, I started playing hockey for the first time. The school supplied us with hockey sticks with which you have to dribble and hit a white ball into the opponent’s goal. It’s a bit like football, only instead of feet and head, we use sticks. A good hockey player must display good stick work. The first day I played was a disaster.

There is a foul called ‘sticks,’ which means you are not allowed to raise your hockey stick above shoulder height when you hit the ball. Not knowing this, I took an almighty wind-up swing way above my shoulder and the chap standing behind me, Ashok, caught my stick on the downswing plumb on his mouth. He broke three of his front teeth, bled a lot and was taken to sickroom needing several stitches. I had to go and apologise to him while he recovered. He said something nasty through his gap teeth I can’t write about, not even to you. I was suspended for three games after that and sent to detention class. I think hockey is a lousy game though India has won some gold medals in the Olympics. What is more, you can use only one side, the flat side, of the stick, else you are fouled for ‘backsticks.’ There is also a stupid foul called ‘legs.’ If the ball misses your stick and hits you on the leg, it is a foul and the opposition gets a free hit – altogether a foul game. Ha, ha! I did not like hockey.

I had vegetable cutlets and two cucumber sandwiches for dinner last evening. It was quite tasty, covered in tomato ketchup. The chap sitting next to me was tucking into beef steak. Please don’t tell Amma about this (the beef steak part) or she will again rush to have another bath and sit in the puja room for two hours.

We were told by our dormitory master that the Queen of England is soon going to visit India. And that we should all be ready. For what, I don’t know.

Till next week then.

Yours lovingly,

Suresh.

September 12, 1961

My dear Appa,

There’s a bunch of senior boys in school who are called Prefects. Why they are called that I don’t know but all they seem to do is to strut around bullying the junior boys. ‘Walk straight, don’t slouch,’ ‘Take your hands out of your pockets, stop playing pocket billiards,’ ‘Stand in the corner,’ ‘LANGUAGE!,’ ‘Fall in line or you’ll get one kattu from me.’ Kattu, which is a corruption of kuttu in Tamil means to give you a painful knock on the head with the knuckles. Who the hell do they think they are, anyway? One day I too will become a Prefect and give the same treatment to my juniors. Can’t do it to the seniors because they would have left school. Too bad.

I was selected to sing in the school choir. I am what they call an A singer. B singers are not bad, not as good as the A singers, but the C singers are gone cases, a dead loss. Can’t hold a note to save their lives. The music teacher asked me what song I knew. So, I started singing a Varnam in the raga Mohanam, which Amma had taught me.After one minute of this, he asked me to shut up.

Today is something called St. Peter’s Day. Don’t know what it is but we get special food through the day. For lunch, Mr. Rice asked us vegetarians to try fish and chips. ‘You will like it. It won’t taste like fish at all.’ Since I had never tasted fish, I had no means of telling. Anyway, I quite liked it with mayonnaise. They say it is good for the brain. Mr. Rice told us Jeeves eats a lot of fish, whoever Jeeves is or was. Please don’t tell Amma about all this fishy stuff, coming on top of the omelette and beef steak. She will take two baths and lock herself up in the puja room for the whole day and you might have to starve.

 Oh, I almost forgot. Somebody stole my Gibbons stamp album from my locker. The so-and-so used a compass or divider to open my stupid Klik lock. I am devastated. That triangular Monaco stamp was my favourite. I reported this to the House Master. He told me to change the lock. Big deal!

That’s all for now.

Yours lovingly,

Suresh.

Footnote: One of the letters records my maternal grandmother, Paati’s surprising visit to our school, escorted by our local guardian uncle and aunt. Paati was like the biblical Methuselah! To us kids, she might have been 90 or 900 years old. My brother and I felt awkward, I don’t know why, but our senior matron hollered at us to ‘Come and say hello to Granny.’ All Paati wanted to know was if we are getting enough to eat!

I was interested in both western and Indian classical music. Satyajit Ray.

What with classical music in India being fused by musicians, in tandem with light music across genres, an increasing number of people are now more than familiar with the art, science and practice of Carnatic music. It is a self-evident truth judging by the space devoted to this classical art form over recent years by our media channels. My own musical leanings, as a listener, owes much to Carnatic music which can almost be viewed, loosely, as a family heirloom. I appreciate that several others from a similar background reading this can make the exact same claim. Owing to the peculiar circumstances of my upbringing, I have also been exposed to other musical genres, such as western popular, jazz and classical music and these experiences have been recorded by me at length and do not bear repetition. Of these streams, appreciating western classical music to one who had no exposure to the genre, makes for interesting contemplation. For a first-time listener, when I was in my late teens, it was almost as strange as attempting to understand Chinese classical music – if such a category exists.

It happened quite by accident. A cousin of mine from London presented me with a set of spool tapes consisting of what he swore blind was the best and brightest of western classical music. An ideal introduction, virtually a ready reckoner, for a beginner who wished to delve more into the treasures of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and their ilk. In any case, those three named were, arguably, western classical music’s ‘answer’ to Carnatic music’s own revered Trinity, namely, Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Shyama Sastri. That can also be stated the other way round depending on chronology. Cursory research also informs us that these Indian and western composers lived roughly around the same time period and plied their genius, completely unbeknownst to each other during the 17^th, 18^th and early 19th centuries. One must conclude that these serendipitous coincidences happen for a reason that is beyond our ken.

I ignored these precious tapes for many months. As the saying goes, you can take a horse to a water trough, but making it drink is another matter altogether. Notwithstanding, after giving a wide berth to that treasure trove of western classical music tapes for several months (between G.N. Balasubramaniam, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Elvis Presley, Lennon and McCartney, I was pressed for time), I finally decided to roll one of these TDK tapes on to my AKAI machine. Just for a lark. Thoughtfully, the contents of these tapes had been meticulously noted and listed in proper order, so I knew exactly what I was listening to. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, in three movements, was one of the first long pieces I sat back and attempted to understand. This monumental orchestral work by a man who suffered from tinnitus and gradually became completely deaf in his thirties, grew on me as I kept rewinding and relistening to it again and again. The crystal clear, pure sound emanating from the solo violin and the build-up of the concerto from the slow movement to its ethereal climax is an experience never to be forgotten. Even today, after several decades, I keep returning to Ludwig’s D Concerto. When you consider the man’s humongous body of work, that is saying something. I was hooked.

Speaking of the violin, there are those that aver that the stringed instrument, as essayed in Carnatic music, can never achieve the pristine clarity of its western counterpart. It is a debate as old as the hills, the pros and cons cancelling each other out. Yehudi Menuhin and Lalgudi Jayaraman produced a different soundscape from their instruments dictated entirely by the grammar of their respective musical genres. Technical comparisons between vastly different streams of music are ultimately counterproductive. Like comparing apples and oranges. Menuhin and Jayaraman may not have actually ‘jammed’ together but their paths famously crossed at the 1965 Edinburgh Festival, where Menuhin—stunned by the phrasing and tonal precision of Jayaraman’s performance—invited him backstage and gifted him his own Italian violin as a gesture of profound admiration! I daresay the instrument is preserved in a glass case in the Lalgudi household and paid obeisance to by Jayaraman’s son and daughter, themselves noted violinists.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a different kettle of fish altogether. Those in the know of these things say that he was a cerebral composer. He may not tug at your heartstrings or cause an emotional upheaval the way Beethoven could, but the intellectual rigour he brought to his compositions, the harmony and polyphony that was unique to his music made the cognoscenti of the day sit up and take notice. It is interesting to note that a similar parallel is often drawn between Tyagaraja and Muthuswamy Dikshitar, the former more aligned to Beethoven’s instinctive feel and the latter to Bach’s cerebration. The tale is told, and not apocryphally, that Bach composed the Goldberg Variations for the harpsichord as a possible cure for insomnia suffered by the Count Carl von Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to Saxony. We are reassured that the Count slept well as a result and Bach, who sired and had to support 20 children (some of whom died) across two wives, was handsomely rewarded. Speaking for myself, I listen regularly to the Goldberg Variations, fully conscious of all my faculties. For sleep, I can always reprise our own Carnatic lullaby raga Neelambari.

A quick sidebar here. By definition, Carnatic music is atonal whereas western classical music relies heavily on harmony. I bring this up because some Carnatic musicians in recent times have attempted to introduce harmony in their renditions during certain improvisational phrases. A laudable experiment but to my heavily conditioned ears, it does not sit well. I am open to correction but I don’t believe the Indian Trinity or other composers ever thought harmonically while composing their devotional kritis. Whereas when Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison harmonise on a simple song like If I fell in love with you, the result is complex and magical. Harmony is second nature to the westerners.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could be aptly described as ‘the happy composer’ though Time Magazine’s characterisation of A.R.Rahman as the ‘Mozart of Madras’ is, in my opinion, clearly over the top; even if it can be attributed to poetic license. Pretty much Mozart’s entire oeuvre provided us with a joyous lilt. He was one of those child geniuses who, at the age of 8, could turn out an entire symphony between breakfast and lunch, the same to be played to an appreciative audience that very evening! Prolific is the word that springs to mind. Again, like Bach and Beethoven, his body of work was prodigious. To single out one or two from his works would be virtually impossible, if not invidious. Nevertheless, if push comes to shove, I would pick his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (a little night music), a delightful suite of pieces that has Mozart’s imprimatur in every movement. If you happen to be down in the dumps (or if you are down with mumps), young Amadeus is just the joyous placebo you want.

It goes without saying that I have barely skimmed the surface in subjectively picking just three out of several other great composers (Schubert, Chopin, Handel, Tchaikovsky and Brahms, amongst others). Not to mention that those three worthies, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, have a list of compositions to their credit as long as your arm, if not longer. To make that same claim with respect to Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Shyama Sastri would be entirely appropriate. I would strongly urge those who may not have delved into the wonderful world of western classical music, wade into your YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music and simply search and click. Things have been made so easy for us in our spoon-fed, digital age.

As for me, I can now turn to the intriguing Ilayaraja / Sanjay Subrahmanyan combo and see how that pans out. A dose of Madurai ‘madhura’ Mani Iyer won’t hurt and, across the seas, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen or Van Morrison can keep me ecstatic company. The agony of choice, one that I welcome. After all, even Aldous Huxley, who opened the ‘doors of perception’ for us said, ‘After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. Alan Turing.

All right folks, I am willing to reluctantly concede that there must be some deep-seated logic behind why certain websites ask you to confirm if you are human by clicking your uptick mark of confirmation on the box helpfully provided. I look in the mirror. Two hands and feet fully accounted for with requisite fingers and toes, all other parts of the human anatomy in place and what is more, I am biped and can think and speak four languages. Yes, I am a human being! Before I researched this subject thoroughly to be better informed on what appeared patently to be an absurdity, I would routinely click on the box to let Big Brother know that I do indeed belong to the species of homo sapiens. That I am not some galactic, brushed-aluminium, ‘avatar’ conceived by James Cameron and descended from Mars or even further afield in the Milky Way.

Nevertheless, like the mechanical, unthinking, non-sentient beings we tend to be for the most part, I kept clicking on that idiotic box reflexively, with nary a thought as to why I was doing it. I once asked a chap from the information technology world why we are being asked to tick a box in order for the nerds to confirm that we are descended from the apes, before the wonders of a particular website are revealed to us. To which he answered laconically, ‘Because it is there.’ I thought he was just trying to be ironic, but then again, to the best of my knowledge and experience, most of these geeks from the technology world probably haven’t even heard of the word irony and would not recognise it if it was handed to them on a plate strewn with rose petals. For them, what you see is what you get. No understated, hidden suggestions. Anyhow, I refused to be fobbed off by his monosyllabic, muttered answers (a common trait with the I.T. community) and I pressed him further.

‘How do you mean “because it is there”? Can you be more specific?’ I could sense the mesh network in his brain whirring, the chemical and electrical synapses clicking into place for a few seconds before he answered.

‘Look my friend, to be perfectly honest, I have not given it a thought. If a box appears on my screen, I just go ahead and click on it for the simple reason that if I don’t, I will not be able to proceed to the next step. Simple as that.’

‘I know that,’ I said irritably. ‘I do the same thing, but I am not you. You work in this big tech firm and you should know about all these things. What happens if I click on one of these boxes and my bank account gets cleaned out? We read about it every day in the papers. That’s what frightens the life out of me.’

He seemed quite amused. “No, no, nothing like that can happen if you take adequate precautions. This is quite different. You are requested by websites to verify you are human, bizarre as that sounds, to block automated bots.’

I frowned. ‘You sound so convincing, if bizarre, but it is still Double Dutch to me. For instance, what in heaven’s name are automated bots and why do they need to be blocked? Plain English, please.’

My nerdy friend smiled at me, somewhat patronisingly, I thought. ‘Look I don’t have the time or the inclination to give you a ready reckoner on the rapidly-evolving software world. Let us just say that by confirming your status as a human being, as opposed to a quadruped or a mollusc, the website protects you from malicious online activities like spamming comment sections, scraping content to train AI models, stuffing passwords or crashing servers with overloaded traffic. Capish?’

By now my techie pal had digitally pushed me base over apex. ‘Good grief, Italian and everything. I am impressed. You know what, you might as well have narrated that entire spiel in Italian for all the sense that I was able to make of it. Thanks for nothing.’ I wished him well in his endeavours and hoped that his company employs English translators to translate computer speak in English for the common man.

As I shook hands and took leave, he smiled broadly and said, ‘I will pass that on to my bosses. Ciao!’ Again, with the Italian. He must have been sent to Rome or Florence to do a crash course on ‘Bots, their treatment in sickness and in health.’ Or something like that anyway.

A couple of days later found me signing in online to access my bank account. I needed to check my accounts and verify some recent transactions. In earlier times, I only had to key in my username and password (which I am encouraged to change every three months) and the details of my ill-gotten gains would be instantly revealed. More recently, for my own safety naturally, the bank website has introduced a rectangle which they call CAPTCHA, in which is preprinted a jumble of letters and numerals which are, more often than not, virtually impossible to decipher. Illegibility being a sine qua non for the bank’s purpose. However, decipher the CAPTCHA you must and faithfully reproduce it in an accompanying box, else you will be barred for 24 hours from entering your own accounts page (after the third failed try).

In order to understand more, I naturally visited Google Uncle and this is what he had to say. ‘CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is a security mechanism used by websites to verify that a user is a real human rather than an automated bot or malicious script.’ We are again ccaught up in that rarefied world of bots, and it has taken all this fooling around with gobbledegook to tell the difference between us humans and ‘bots and malicious scripts.’ Incidentally, what in heaven’s name is ‘Turing?’ Anything to do with Alan Turing, quoted at the top of this piece, the genius British computer scientist who was chemically castrated for being gay and took his own life as a result? I know this because I saw the wonderful biopic, The Imitation Game, starring the incandescent Benedict Cumberbatch.

I am somewhat comforted to learn that all this is being done and constantly revised to keep us in a state of ‘healthy flux’ only for our own good. There are some very evil people out there who will think nothing of being one step ahead of these automated bots such that they can ‘imprison’ old and vulnerable people in their own homes and rob them, digitally, of every last paise they own. Not a day passes when our newspapers do not report an octogenarian robbed of his or her life savings by some ruthless crooks who have mastered the art of inveigling vulnerable elders into their vicious web while cocking a snook at bots and CAPTCHAs. These behavioural checks, as my tech wizard friend likes to call them, must be bravely borne by us common folk for our own good – that phrase again. My sickroom matron at boarding school used to say the same thing when she forced Epsom salts down our throats. ‘Don’t be such a fusspot. It’s for your own good. It will clear your tummy and you will feel wonderful.’ Leaving us kids, for the rest of the day, standing restlessly on one leg in front of the school bogs, agony writ large on our faces, till the other fellow sufferer rushes out retching and groaning, holding his stomach. It does not bear thinking.

A pox on all bots, say I. And the same goes for CAPTCHAs.

‘Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.’ Mike Tyson.

Ever since Muhammad Ali passed on into the great boxing ring in the sky, I evince scant interest in the pugilistic sport. Cassius Clay, as we first came to know of him, was a fast-talking, fast-punching and, for good measure, a handsome and charismatic young man who had the world, and indeed most of his opponents, at his feet. His immortal quote, ‘float like a butterfly and sting like a bee’ was enshrined in legend and song. Boxing as a sport was a closed book to me till I joined boarding school in Bangalore in 1960. During those early sixties, our sporting heroes were mostly non-Indians. Everybody thrashed us in cricket, we paid obeisance at the altar of Sir Garfield Sobers and Ramanathan Krishnan’s semi-final appearances at Wimbledon, immense as they were, would propel us into an orgy of celebratory overdrive. Rather like Milkha Singh’s 4^th place at the Olympics 400 metres (P.T. Usha was to reprise that performance several years later). The bar was not set very high. Hockey was pivotal to our sporting hopes and dreams in that we covered ourselves in golden glory on multiple occasions only to lapse into permanent decline. A false dawn.

Let me get back to boxing. When we boarders were taken to the motion pictures by our school masters, once a month, to one of the many English cinema halls in the vicinity (Elvis Presley’s G.I. Blues anyone?), we would spend our precious pocket money on popcorn or stick-jaws and wait, with bated breath, for the trailers and newsreels to commence. Apart from the Indian News Review which was mostly about Nehru or Shastri visiting Egypt or Moscow, China’s Zhou Enlai or the Queen of England visiting India, not forgetting the dreary accounts of agricultural production in the face of drought and something called PL 480, nothing that was riveting. A crashing bore for us boys. Then came the British Movietone News and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) newsreel when we all sat up bolt upright popping popcorn into our cavernous mouths, eyes agog.

Though politically naïve, if not totally ignorant at the time, the Kennedy-Nixon election campaign and the subsequent assassination of John Kennedy held our attention. Invariably, there would be a section on sport and boxing was in the limelight. Floyd Patterson, Ingemar Johansson, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, Henry Cooper and yes, our hero, Cassius Clay, before his conversion to Muhammad Ali were all lit up in neon lights. Not necessarily in that order. It goes without saying that no one caught our fertile, young imagination more than the last named. The Thrilla in Manila, Ali vs Frazier was to come later in 1975. Even without understanding the science of boxing or knowing the difference between a left hook and an upper cut, Ali’s personality and charisma captivated us impressionable lads. It was not uncommon to find us boys side-stepping, feinting and flailing imaginary jabs at one another, instead of walking unctuously from chapel service to the science lab or the classroom. This juvenile exhibition often earned us a sharp clip round the earhole from the master on duty, ‘Boxing, eh? I’ll box your ears in a minute’ was a common refrain. It was a small price to pay for the punches we were throwing at shadows.

Then came the unexpected announcement from the school’s sports master. The inter-house boxing championship was to take place, dates revealed and all those who wished to take part had to present themselves at the weighing-in. I thought this was a voluntary invitation (and it was) but our housemaster was not having any. Unless one of us was battling consumption, chicken pox, diphtheria or some other deadly affliction we had to enter. ‘Be a man,’ we 9 and 10-year-olds were told. For me, this was crunch-time. I had never, ever stepped into a boxing ring before (for heaven’s sake, I was barely ten years old from a traditional Tamil Brahmin family) and was not looking forward to it. Dormitory pillow fights and a scrappy brawl behind chapel was as close as I ever got to a fight. It was all very well mimicking Ali in our dormitories but this was the real thing. Bloody nose time. Given that I was quite puny at the time (not that I am a Hercules even now), I qualified for the feather-weight class. ‘Am I not below the minimum weight, Sir? I could get seriously injured. I prefer to represent my house in table-tennis. You should see my wicked forehand top-spin. If it’s cricket you want, my gentle off-spin is quite deceptive as well.’ For which impertinence, I was given a smack across the back of my head. (They can’t do that nowadays). Anyhow, after the weighing-in was completed, the lightweights, bantamweights and welterweights got measured up for height, weight and a quick physical. Heavyweight was not on the cards. The draw was to take place the same evening for the preliminary rounds. We were up early next morning to check who we were pitted against.

Then came the practice sessions. Not shadow boxing, mind you, but the real thing. With real, pulpy gloves. No helmet was mandated in those days. Our P.T. Master ‘Vincy’ Vincent was our coach. ‘Now come on laddies, let’s see what you’re made of. That’s it boy, lead with the left unless you’re a southpaw. Wait till you see the whites of his eyes. Jab, jab, jab. Duck, duck, duck. Feint, feint, feint.’ By now I was ready to faint anyway. After that, we had to run round the field three times, do some skipping and were finally let off, our tongues hanging out.’ We had to go through this routine every day for the next five days before the actual bouts commenced. Each bout was an elimination round. Three rounds per fight, each round lasting three minutes.

At last, D-day dawned. The referee, the bow-tied Bill Scott’s booming voice introduced us two boxers in the red and blue corners and made the ringing cry, ‘Seconds out of the ring, first round, fight.’ It was only later that I learnt seconds did not refer to a unit of time but to the coach and the two lackeys kneading and massaging my skinny hands, whispering sweet nothings into my ear. Believe you me, those three minutes each round felt more like 30 minutes given the nerves and the battering I was taking. All the while, supporters of both the boxers screaming encouragement, ‘Go for his throat,’ ‘His guard is down. Give him an upper cut,’ ‘Right hook, you idiot,’ ‘A roundhouse punch,’ and so on. What the hell was a roundhouse punch? At the end of each round, our Vincy and the two seconds, probably prefects, doused water on me and made me drink as much as I could without bringing it up. ‘Come on laddie, fight, fight. Lead with your left. You are ahead on points. Go for his stomach.’ Vincy was beside himself. ‘Sir, I am feeling groggy, can I give a walkover?’ I was half-serious. Vincy pointed his right forefinger at me. ‘How many fingers?’ ‘Seven,’ I lied. ‘Liar,’ he yelled, gave me an encouraging if painful headbutt and said, ‘Fight on, laddie. Punch his lights out.’ That was that.

My opponent, one Prem, was a good foot taller than me. I did not believe for one moment that he was less than 12 years old, the age limit for my category. There was no way I was going to even reach his stomach, leave alone his face. And as you all know, hitting below the belt meant instant disqualification. I set my mind on attempting to aim for the award under the fancy title, ‘Most Scientific Boxer.’ This involved no actual boxing at all. Just had to make sure you did not get hit and keep ducking, weaving and shaking your head sideways with the gloves covering your face so that your much taller opponent, Prem, could not reach you. As Ali said, ‘His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.’ And lest I forget, plenty of skipping round the ring and leaning against the ropes as well. Rope-a-dope, I think they called it. Ali invented it. Every now and then I would just hug my opponent in a clinch and not let go. Till the referee’s admonishing whistle blew, ‘Break it up lads, break it up. No hugging. This is not a love feast.’ I could have also gone for the ‘Best Loser Award’ but who wants a loser tag against his name, best or otherwise?

At long last, the fight was mercifully over. Nine of the longest minutes I had ever endured. We stood beside the referee for the announcement. Old Scottie lifted the hand of the winner, Prem. It was not my hand but I had fought the good fight, lost on points and was not knocked out. Not even a technical knock-out. I was not awarded the ‘Most Scientific Boxer’ title either. That hurt. Apparently, you had to land a punch at least once on your opponent’s face or body, which I signally failed to do. After the fight, we two protagonists had to perfunctorily shake hands, or rather, gloves. We did not make eye contact. There was no ‘prem’ lost between us.

Simon & Garfunkel best captured the spirit of the aspiring boxer – inspirational but nowhere close to our nervousness and shaky legs in school. In the clearing stands a boxer / And a fighter by his trade / And he carries the reminders / Of every glove that laid him down / Or cut him till he cried out / In his anger and his shame / ‘I am leaving, I am leaving’ / But the fighter still remains.

Author’s note: Much of what is written in this piece is based loosely on fact and actual events. Loosely being the operative word.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? Zen Buddhist paradox or koan.

While doing a bit of surfing on the net, I came across this amusing anecdote. A man meets a friend in the street, looking worried. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he inquires. ‘Quick,’ says his friend, ‘I need help – do you know a one-armed lawyer?’ ‘Why does he have to be one-armed?’ ‘Well,’ says his friend, ‘I’m involved in a very complicated case, and every time I go to a lawyer he says, ‘On the one hand you can do this, and on the other hand you can do that.’

Presumably the moral of that gag is that when you consult your lawyer, doctor or investment consultant, you would appreciate a straight answer, a clear diagnosis or recommendation instead of beating round the bush and leaving you in a quandary. The last thing one wants from professionals who are retained to counsel and reassure you, and in whose hands you repose your faith, is a wishy-washy, neither-here-nor-there opinion. The unfortunate part of it is that oftentimes, that is exactly what happens. It is colloquially referred to as ‘covering one’s backside’ but it does little to enhance the client’s confidence.

The other day, I was at my GP’s clinic for a routine throat infection problem which needed a quick-fix medical prescription, a course of salt gargle and, as they say in England, Bob’s your uncle. However, the course of a doctor’s consultation rarely runs smooth. I walked into the medico’s chamber looking as cheerful as it was possible while coughing intermittently.

‘Good morning, Doc.’

He quickly put on his face mask (you can never be too careful these days with coughing patients) and greeted me perfunctorily.

‘Good morning, and what seems to be the problem?’

I would have thought that was obvious. Still, I soldiered on. ‘Sore throat, Doc. Streptococcal whatever you wish to call it. It’s in the air. A course of antibiotics should do the trick.’ As usual in front of a doctor, I tried to sound casual and unconcerned, jabbering more than required.

‘Allow me to be the judge of that’ he responded tartly. ‘Please stick your tongue out and open your mouth wide. Aaaah! Yes, tongue thickly coated and the back of your throat is a sorry mess.’ He then pressed a button under his table for the nurse.

‘Nurse, please take the patient’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse reading while I see the next patient.’

I followed the nurse to another room where she did the needful. ‘Look nurse, I am not running a temperature and my BP is always rock solid. Do we really need all this?’ She just said those two immortal words and shoved the thermometer into my mouth before I could blab any further, ‘Doctor’s orders.’ There was a finality in her tone that brooked no argument. In any case, I couldn’t argue, what with the thermometer stuck in my mouth. Simultaneously she strapped the inflatable cuff round my left arm and went to work with the inflation bulb, valve and stethoscope watching the pressure gauge like a hawk. She certainly knew her onions. When all that rigmarole was done, she scribbled some numbers on a piece of paper.

‘All normal, nurse?’ I asked. She made no response and strutted off to the doctor’s chamber with her scrap of paper. She then asked me to wait till the patient inside came out. ‘So how did my numbers stack up?’ I might have betrayed just a wee bit of anxiety. ‘Doctor will speak to you,’ she said, rather ominously.

At last, I got the call after the patient inside came out coughing uncontrollably. Perhaps I should have also worn a mask, what with germs floating about the place, if floating is what germs do. It is my firm conviction that perfectly normal people can catch all kinds of infection when they walk into a clinic or hospital. Stands to reason. Anyhow, I walked in breezily.

‘Here I am again, Doc. Like the proverbial bp. No, no, not your kind of 120/80 BP. Bad penny. Sorry, just shooting the breeze. The nurse took all the tests. Did I pass? By the way, great win for RCB yesterday. I know you’re a fan.’

The doctor was not to be distracted by my nervousness-induced small talk. ‘Look, I am not sure what to make of this. Your BP is slightly elevated, temperature just under 100, and the throat is really ugly. I do not like the redness and the yellow, pus-like formation. Hmmm.’

‘Well, I don’t much care for it either, Doc. What are you going to do about it? That is the question.’ Come to think of it, I did not like his ‘Hmmm’ one bit.

He hummed and hawed some more. ‘To do or not to do. That is the question.’

I was beginning to get a bit fidgety. ‘Less of the Hamlet soliloquy, if you don’t mind Doc. What is it that you wish to do or not to do?’

‘Send you for some more tests. I am conflicted. There is a decent lab just down the road, I could prescribe a further analysis including blood samples and chest X-rays. An MRI can be considered, if push comes to shove. You have insurance? On the other hand, I could prescribe some strong medication and watch and wait. What do you think?’

You see what I mean? It went on like that for a few more minutes. He also added that he is a CSK fan to which I offered my condolences. I finally lost patience and he probably lost a patient. I told him I have an urgent meeting to attend and that I will get back to him later in the day. I went home, sucked on several throat lozenges through the day, salt-gargled three times with hot water and the next morning, I was right as rain.

It was not very different with my investment consultant. The market has been going up and down like a yo-yo, mostly down. Every time Donald Trump makes an announcement about the war in Iran and in particular, the Strait of Hormuz, my meagre ill-gotten gains tend to do a flip-flop which might very well account for my elevated BP and throat allergy which my doctor was so conflicted about. I was on my mobile in a trice and called my financial doctor for the umpteenth time.

‘I say, have you seen the Sensex this morning. Down 1500 points. Don’t know about Hormuz but I am in dire straits. Should I pull everything out and put it into an FD in my bank? Low on interest yes, but high on safety. I am already in the red. Can’t afford to be taken to the cleaners. What say you?’

Long pause from the consultant. ‘You have a point Sir. Situation is volatile. We have solid information that India’s trade deal with the U.S. is going through and that Iran and the U.S. are on the verge of a deal. Our fundamentals are strong. On the other hand, Israel is still refusing to play ball. Which is why, I am not sure. Why don’t we wait for a couple of days more?’ While I go bankrupt.

I was miffed. ‘What Donald Trump thinks today, he does not think tomorrow eh? All that geo-political hogwash just to tell me you don’t know. Why can’t you stick your neck out and let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, as my Warden in school used to say? I can’t put you in jail, even if I am skint.’

‘On the one hand Sir, I can’t deny I am also in a bit of a hole. Then again, on the other hand…’

I cut the line. I decided to consult my car cleaner. He will give me a shrewd idea of what to do. It is the same story with my lawyer.

 ‘Do you feel we have a strong case?’ I ask my legal beak about the accident damages case.

‘That depends on who the judge is. If it is Judge Grumps, we could be in for a rough ride and might have to move to a higher court. On the other hand, if we strike it lucky and get Judge Smiley, we could be in for a windfall. It all depends.’

I was about to add, ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,” / Like the poor cat i’ the adage?’ Then again, I thought better of it. He would have just looked blankly at me.

At the end of the day, doctors, investment consultants or lawyers, we can’t do without them. We are caught between two stools. Rather like those characters from Dante’s Inferno, trapped between two circles of hell. And lest we forget, we shell out an arm and a leg for the dubious privilege.

Why is it that no one, and I mean not a single, solitary person, has anything good to say about anyone on our television news channels? Politicians naturally are the prime targets, crosshairs clearly emblazoned on their backs inviting us to take aim and shoot. We elect them every five years to represent us in parliament, and they make it a habit of going out there and making a complete pig’s breakfast out of whatever it is that they are supposed to be doing on our behalf. At least, that is the impression one gets while watching the news on television. You can ask me to stop watching television, at least the news channels, but where would the fun be in doing that? Or rather, in not doing that. Mind you, it is not just the politicians or their representatives who sling mud at each other on a daily basis. They just happen to be soft targets. Our country is virtually impossible to govern without displeasing someone or the other. The ruling party at the centre or in the states, keeps muddling its way through. At times they actually manage to do a bit of good. Then again, try telling that to the opposition parties.

The ruling BJP party, having spread its tentacles across most of the country barring the southern states, considers the opposition to be a bunch of disjointed invertebrates who can just about manage to put one foot in front of the other without tripping up. The ruling dispensation adopts an insufferably patronising tone, if not downright insulting, and this does nothing to make their opposing parties any too chuffed. Many analysts aver that the level of opprobrium hurled at the opposition alliance is well earned! Contrastingly, the opposition party representatives make it their avowed business to take their nomenclature quite literally and make it a point to oppose anything and everything that the ruling dispensation does. Most of them strut around with a massive chip on their collective shoulders, ready to condemn every single move that the government makes. With friends like these, who needs enemies? The trick is to win elections. Once you do that, you are sitting pretty. Never mind the tongue lashing all round. As the popular song goes, ‘The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall.’

Having said that, here is the piquant twist. I am reliably informed that at the parliament canteens, if that is not too downmarket a term, they lay a good table. The catering is top class (presumably vegetarian) at very friendly prices. Why do I mention the canteens? Because it is here, where the nosh is most toothsome, that ruling and opposition party members sit together and feed their faces while being so excessively bonhomous and friendly that you would scarcely believe they have just been spitting fire and brimstone at one another while the nation’s business was being transacted in their respective Sabhas. They slap each other’s backs, indulge in friendly banter and jollification while the ghee masala dosa or aloo paratha goes down a treat, and the filter coffee begs for a second round. A cozy club, in short. However, the moment they return to the Lok or Rajya Sabha post prandial, the gloves are off and they revert true to type, looking daggers at each other, yelling and screaming while just stopping short of hurling slippers across the Treasury and Opposition benches. Once in a while even that abomination has taken place.

I will have to assume that much of the drama in parliament is enacted for the television cameras so that their publics all over the country can sit back and approve the shenanigans being played out on their behalf. Bring on the popcorn or the jhalmuri! Since the average citizen on the street has little to go on other than what he or she views on the idiot box, it occurred to me that I could offer a few tips to some of the key players in parliament as well as most of the garrulous panelists on our home screens who suffer from a bad case of verbal diarrhoea. They keep saying ‘Just 10 seconds more Arnab / Navika / Rajdeep / Rahul’ and go on for another 500 seconds.

Bearing all this in mind, I would like to gratuitously offer my two cents worth to our tallest political leaders, television anchors and panelists such that they might present a more acceptable version of themselves and those whom they are mandated to represent.

First off, let me start with our Prime Minister. As everyone knows only too well, PM Modi has stoutly refused to address press conferences, a decision that has come in for frequent criticism and one that came to the fore recently when a young Norwegian journalist attempted to confront him and was peremptorily given the brush off. However, whenever the PM chooses to address the public directly, either on special occasions, elections (particularly after a spectacular victory) or while addressing the parliament, he has a few pet peeves that he never fails to touch upon. Irrespective of the subject he has chosen to take up, giving the Congress Party a severe scolding is an absolute must for our leader. It is almost an article of faith with PM Modi that his peroration will be peppered with sentences starting with ‘Yeh Congrayj….’ Followed by spouting a litany of misdeeds attributed to the Grand Old Party since independence. He never misses a chance to rub it in, good and proper. I am not here to debate whether this is appropriate or not. The man must and will do what works for him and he does his homework thoroughly. My fervent appeal to him is to look for other targets, just for a change. The Congress Party and their first family have been done to death; done and dusted.

While on the subject of the Congress Party, I move swiftly on to their leader in parliament, Rahul Gandhi. Since television close-ups are a primary source of visual evidence and conclusions drawn therefrom, I would strongly suggest a few changes to how our LOP comports himself in front of the cameras. Firstly, he should stop winking into the middle distance whenever he thinks he has made a clever comment or barb. He did just that while directly addressing the PM on one occasion and never heard the end of it. The wink is more ‘too-clever-by-half’ than just clever. I would suggest he ought to smile more frequently, even if he intends to be ironical. Rahul Gandhi is naturally blessed with dimpled cheeks and the smile brings out this pulchritudinous quality which is bound to receive rave reviews on television. Young ladies will swoon and that is all to the good. He also has this distracting habit of constantly fidgeting with the microphones with both hands during his public speeches like it is second nature to him. This should be avoided especially when there are sound technicians and sundry lackeys around to do that job. While on that note, his voice appears to have acquired a grating, disturbing gruffness that ought to be attended to. He should consult an ENT specialist soonest. Lastly, why this obsession with the white tee shirt? I grant you the half-sleeve sporty outfit shows his biceps and chest to good effect (56 inch?), advertising his fondness for ‘hitting the gym,’ to employ the current parlance. Why not a different coloured tee shirt every day? Black to register protest, green for the environment, saffron for…..no, better avoid that colour. He can always get back to white if he wishes to show, metaphorically, the white flag. Not likely, but you never know. In sum, he could do a lot worse than pick up a few sartorial tips from his bete noir, India’s Prime Minister.

I conclude this reflection with a brief note on our television anchors and how they could look more appealing on screen. Republic TV’s angry not-so-young man Arnab Goswami, never out of his pukka blue suit should, attire-wise, reflect more of the Bharat ethos he propagates so passionately. They are tearing down the Delhi Gymkhana, Arnab. What price three-piece suits? Karan Thapar raises the sartorial bar a notch, distinguished grey hair in place and the occasional bow-tie to go with his clipped accent. CNN-News18’s Anand Narasimhan appears to have struck the right chord – understatedly turned out and always shrewdly says Bharat, never India. I love Barkha Dutt’s professionalism and the meticulous homework she puts in on her podcasts which is reflected in the respect her panelists hold for her. It’s just that she could do a tad better than just hurriedly getting into whatever clothing she could lay her hands on before rushing off to the studio. Rahul Kanwal, NDTV’s new boss, is usually quite natty but he has this tendency to perform his own version of the Bharatanatyam while presenting his insights. Navika Kumar is graceful in her traditional sari though she tends to throw her weight around. As for Rajdeep Sardesai, it won’t matter a jot what he wears, the I&B honchos will keep sticking pins into his voodoo doll lookalike.

That about sums it up. The television is, above all else, a visual medium, meant to entertain. Politicians, anchors and panelists will forever be defined by what they wear and how they look. ‘Watch the birdie!’ What they say will be forgotten as soon as our television sets are turned off. There’s a sobering thought.

Underneath the mango tree / Me honey and me can watch for the moon / Underneath the mango tree / Me honey and me, we plan marry soon. Monty Norman’s calypso from the film Dr. No.

The mango season is upon us, and if it were not for the IPL, the recently concluded assembly elections and the never concluding US/Israel – Iran imbroglio, not necessarily in that order, all dinner table and party conversations will have been dominated by the mango. Under the circumstances, the luscious fruit is finding it hard to get a word in edgeways but not for want of trying. Let’s face it, the mango is a delicious fruit, probably the queen among fruits (or is it the king?), and the average Jai or Jaya in India cannot wait for the newspapers to formally announce its arrival. Rather like anticipating the monsoon hitting Kerala(m). India is the world’s largest producer of mangoes, which gives it an exalted status for the globe’s fruity bragging rights. When it comes to mangoes India is way ahead of laggard China, a distant second. Eat your heart out, President Xi.

At his recent tête-à-tête on the sidelines during Prime Minister Modi’s 5-nation tour of Europe, his dialogues with the heads of Italy, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands could well have been dominated by issues pertaining to bilateral trade keeping in mind the EU-India Free Trade Agreement. Not to forget the historic Chola copper plates our Prime Minister wheedled out of the Netherlands. It is thus entirely possible, and I am only conjecturing, that our Prime Minister, while accepting the customary gifts from the different heads of state exchanged, along with handwoven silk scarves and other exotic objet d’art, boxes of succulent Indian mangoes. The mango motif, if indeed it figured, faded into the background as India’s brand of Melody toffees was especially reserved for the Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. Which was the cue for our social and conventional media to go completely bonkers.

Evidently some bright spark in our bureaucracy, or perhaps our PM himself, who is no slouch with word play, took up PM Meloni’s algebraic equation that Meloni + Modi = Melodi and spun it for what it was worth, presenting her with a bagful of Melody toffees to sweeten the deal! It was an overwrought pun but it received over-the-top television coverage here in India. From Melodi to Melody was but a small step, and perhaps a giant leap for  Parle confectionary, the makers of Melody and beneficiaries of this fortuitous serendipity. Last heard, they were laughing all the way to the bank, given the humongous amount of free advertising the brand received. Melody toffees are presently stocked out and Parle’s factories are working overtime to meet the demand. Social media went berserk, going clean off the charts. The only unhappy person appeared to be Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who, as is his wont, mocked the PM for his toffee diplomacy while doom and gloom, if not total Armageddon, was drawing nigh here at home. Rumours that Parle have despatched an assuaging carton of Melody toffees to the Gandhi scion may or may not be true.

Notwithstanding all the geo-political distractions, I am guessing that the mango would not be denied its due place in the seasonal scheme of things. Given the mango pecking order, it would not have been surprising if the Indian Premier wore a superior smile, with a keen eye on the cameras, while handing over a box of Banganapalli, Himsagar and Alphonso, while the chief honchos of the European nations would have been hard pressed to find a suitably delicious response. If a Norwegian press reporter tried to badger him with inconvenient questions about freedom of expression back home, our indefatigable PM merely swotted them away like so many gnats. He never answered a press reporter in India. Why would he start now on foreign shores?

Frankly, I have no idea if the mango played any part in Mr. Modi’s Europe sojourn, but my imagination would like to believe it did. So much for mango diplomacy. Let us return to our social whirl. I was a fly on the wall at a dinner hosted by a prominent socialite a few days ago, and the mango was the central subject of conversation, once the party folks had tired of discussing Dhoni’s rousing non-return to CSK and if the unstoppable BJP will ever meet an immovable force. Or vice versa. The latter being laughed out of court given the recent assembly election results. Here are some random snatches of tittle-tattle I was able to eavesdrop at the party, as I flitted to and fro sipping my tall, cool glass of aam panna.

‘I just can’t wait for the mango dessert. There’s nothing quite like the pure, sliced Alphonso with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream after that rich, spicy Indian curry,’ chirped a loud, visiting American lady journalist. ‘Can’t get enough of it, and to hell with watching my weight. The mango Trumps everything else. That’s with a capital T,’ she added, giggling girlishly at her own unfunny pun.

Then of course, no mango season can be complete without pearls of mango wisdom issuing forth from the mango snob. ‘You know, everyone runs after the Alphonso like it was the nectar of the gods. I grant you the finest Alphonso is quite a treat, but I do believe it is a tad overrated. For my money, the Himsagar from West Bengal takes the cake, if you’ll pardon the mixed culinary metaphor. Not to forget that West Bengal is also currently the flavour of the season in more ways than one. There’s just that right blend of sweetness and a slight hint of sour mischief that makes it an all-time favourite. While I yield to no one in my admiration for the estimable Banganapalli from Andhra, it will have to bow before the Himsagar’s majesty’.

Speaking for myself, these cocktail circuit fancy mangoes are all very well. Priced extortionately (‘Rs.250/- a kilo, daahling, for this sinful pre-season Kesar from Gujarat’), you cannot avoid severe indigestion at those sinful prices. For me, there’s nothing like the raw mango peddled by the street vendor, expertly sliced, diced and smeared with salt and chilli powder. That’s what we used to devour standing outside our school gates. And we did not come down with food poisoning. I am talking ‘swinging ‘60s’ here. At 10 naye paise a slice, it was like mann(g)a from heaven. A true Aam Aadmi Phul. As a rule I try to go easy on puns, but I could not resist those two opportunities to indulge myself. An admonitory slap on the wrist is in order.

The mango snob is rather like the wine snob. The whole idea seems to be to preen his encyclopaedic knowledge of mangoes, and the more he has paid for it, the more his awestruck admirers hang on his every word. ‘Ok folks, we all know India is the largest mango producer in the world, and most of us are familiar with all the varieties. But wait till I fish out something special just for this small group of mango aficionados. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world’s sweetest mango. This is the Carabao mango from the Zambales orchards in the Philippines. It cost me a prince’s ransom but hey, what’s a few bucks between friends?’

So saying, he invited us to tuck into a slice of the Carabao dipped in a specially prepared Filipino avocado sauce. It tasted like nothing on earth, by which I do not mean it tasted ethereal. Au contraire, I would not have offered it to my dog,  fussy pooch. It was as much as all of us could do to swallow the damn thing and not bring it up till we ran to the nearest loo. We did not wish to offend our host but we declined a second helping saying it was too precious to waste on common folk like us with such plebeian tastes. Perhaps it was an acquired taste, like caviar. I think he got the message.

All said and done, you cannot keep us Indians, be they the hoi polloi or the upper crust, from discussing the mango threadbare in all its myriad facets. After all, the mango season lasts barely two to three months, and if you do not dive in and get yours as quickly as you can, you are going to rue your missed chances. And the connoisseur will continue to mumble his respectful ode to the Chaunsa from Himachal Pradesh, the Dasheri and Langra from Uttar Pradesh, and the Totapuri from Karnataka. Last but not the least, there’s the Mulgova from Tamil Nadu. Celebrated in legend and song and widely dubbed as ‘the Alphonso of the South’, a description the chauvinistic Tamilians scoff at. Their riposte would be that the Alphonso should be called the ‘the Mulgova of the West’. Quite right too! The new CM Joseph Vijay could take a leaf out of that observation and gain more brownie points from his adoring populace.

So there you are. We will fight over pride and prejudice, but the mango in India will reign supreme. Alas, for too short a time. I am reminded of a song, composed and performed to much acclaim by a Calcutta based band, The Cavaliers, during the heady 60s. It was called Love is a Mango which became a huge local hit as it was released during the mango season. I might be romanticising this, but what the hell! Some of my college mates played in that band and even today, when I take a succulent bite off a Himsagar, Love is a Mango plays in my head. What can I say? We are all going bananas over the mango.