If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing. Kingsley Amis.

For close to twenty years, give or take a few this way or that, I have been writing a weekly column or blog (call it what you will) purely for my own pleasure. Some newspapers and online sites have been good enough to publish my material on a regular basis, others less frequently, still others have given me the old heave-ho. Short shrift. However, for the most part I let myself go, high, wide and handsome, once a week in the verdant, unfettered pastures of my own blog. Of more pertinence, a handful of readers has been kind enough to read my offerings off and on while providing critical feedback. The advantage in managing my own blog is that there’s no word limit to constrain me, no junior sub ‘correcting’ my apostrophes and punctuations wrongly, which can drive you up the wall. Worse still, an entire line, at times, goes inexplicably missing making a hash of the sentence or paragraph. I am quite punctilious that way, and if an error does creep in, I am fine with it as long as it is my own. That way I can take full responsibility, be master of my own fate. It’s when I key in “O. Henry” and someone else converts the great American storyteller into an Irishman “O’Henry,” that sets my jangled nerves on edge. Over a period of twenty years, at an average of a column a week, that works out to a number not to be sneezed at. Quantitatively, I can point to a modicum of accomplishment. Qualitatively, the jury will always be out, a constant assessment in progress. I could, of course, put all that on the calculator and come up with a daunting figure. Then again, I am superstitious and have no wish to tempt the fates. I am the sort of chap, who will fret ceaselessly for seven years if I inadvertently break a mirror at home, worrying about the ill omens that are likely to visit me.

A close friend of mine recently asked me what keeps me going and did I ever consider taking a break. You know, get away from it all for a few weeks and come back refreshed and raring to go. I had to hum and haw before answering. I thought I detected a veiled hint that perhaps I should take a break as my pieces were beginning to show signs of fraying at the edges, but then writing is a bit like being a performing musician, even one from the top echelons. It enjoins upon you an unwritten commitment to keep at it unceasingly. A vocalist has to keep singing if he or she wishes to uphold high performance standards. If one stops singing or practising even for a week, it will almost certainly show. As to why I keep writing without giving myself pause, the only answer I could come up with was, ‘Sheer bloody-mindedness.’ It was just something I had to do. It’s rather like responding to your early morning alarm. You don’t want to get up but you do just that, grumbling the while and getting down to that 30-minute constitutional and those recommended exercises. It’s the boarding school boy in me. Oftentimes, you have to push yourself to come up with an idea, when you are gazing at your computer screen with a glazed look. All said and done, writing has become an ingrained habit and as troubadour Van Morrison said, ‘It’s too late to stop now.’

The late Miles Kington (one of my many inspirations), an effortlessly funny writer who was literary editor of the defunct and celebrated humour magazine Punch, then went on to write for The Times and The Independent, had this to say about writing a column a day spanning thirty years! Allow me to repeat that – a column a day. I puff and pant to complete one a week. One every single day is really pushing the envelope. Kington wrote over thirty-thousand newspaper columns in his lifetime. Mind you, he never wrote a full-length novel. ‘From an early age, I knew I wanted to be a humorous writer and a jazz musician… and when I went to Oxford University, I spent most of the time playing the double bass in jazz groups and writing undergraduate humour. Thus, when I left university, I was almost entirely unfitted for life, and consequently went to London to try my luck as a freelance humorous writer, where I nearly starved to death.’ That’s another thing about achieving great success in certain fields. You need to go through much suffering. It’s almost a sine qua non. Ask Kafka, Camus or Dostoevsky. They made a good living writing about other people’s suffering. I am not implying schadenfreude as they probably suffered themselves. Considering I have taken up writing purely as a hobby and relatively late in life, I can safely opt out of the suffering phase. I had enough of that in my professional career in the corporate world, so I’ll pass up the dubious agony and vainly aim for the illusory ecstasy.

The late Bernard Levin (forgive me for drawing upon the wisdom of eminent columnists no longer amongst those present) who wrote a column for many years for the venerable The Times of London, was a writer of coruscating brilliance. Like Miles Kington, Levin never wrote a novel and never wished to. His frequent observations drew more readers that many authors could aspire to, only in their dreams. Fortunately, we have his prodigious compilation of writings in several of his published books for our undiluted enjoyment. If I were to select just one of Levin’s many purple passages, I will go for this one, where he uses the genius of Shakespeare in a unique way to demonstrate how much we owe the Bard of Avon. In our everyday conversation, we casually toss familiar phrases and aphorisms at random, with nary a thought being given to the original source. The quote is long, but I would not dream of paring it down even a jot. Enjoy this Bernard Levin gem: of purest ray serene, I might add. ‘If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is father to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.’

Phew! Elsewhere in this column I had talked about being bloody-minded and given short shrift, having no idea that I might have been quoting Shakespeare. Mr. Levin set the record straight on that one. That goes for ‘Tut-tut’ and ‘By Jove!’ as well. However, I take perverse delight in being able to correct Mr. Levin when he attributes the expression ‘but me no buts’ to Shakespeare. I researched this thoroughly owing to a nagging doubt I harboured. Sure enough, the quote (it is authoritatively drawn from several unimpeachable sources) was coined by one Susanna Centilivre in the play, The Busie Body in 1709. That was centuries before Bernard Levin was even a twinkle in his great-grandparents’ eyes! Incidentally, that’s the way ‘Busie’ is actually spelt, in case you are about to shoot off a tart mail to me. Probably archaic, given the year of the play’s introduction. In the event, Bernard Levin is not around to take up cudgels with me, in case he was right in the first place. That said, if there are a bunch of keen Shakespeare Wallahs out there hiding in the woodwork, who wish to come out in high dudgeon and set the record straight yet again (with papers to prove it), they are most welcome.

There you are, you see. I am stuck with writing columns and may never write a full-length novel in my lifetime. I have no regrets on that score, even if I should never say never. If you must know why, I am delighted to quote one of my favourite authors, P.G. Wodehouse, ‘It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.’

Some things just creep up on you. One minute you are strolling along merrily, whistling a happy tune like Anna in The King and I. Next thing you know, you feel a slight crick somewhere in your lower back, possibly between your third (L3) and fifth (L5) vertebrae, think nothing of it and before you can say slipped disc, you are instructed to lie in bed for a fortnight, with orthopaedic weights straightening you out. That may not be the best parallel to introduce the subject of my column this week, namely, the word game Wordle, that is now the rage and spreading like a rash all over the social media world, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve. For me, at any rate, it crept up quite suddenly. A Welsh-born, Brooklyn-based techie by the name of, wait for it, Josh Wardle is responsible for inventing or discovering this game. Evidently, he dedicated it to his techie Indian girlfriend, collaborator and Spelling Bee addict, Palak Shah. These techies tend to stick together. Wordle by Wardle. There’s a nice ring to it. A fortuitous serendipity, I call that, to be able to name a word game that sounds so very like the name of the game’s discoverer. Of and by itself Wordle (the name, not the game) is just a jumble of letters, amalgamating Word and Wardle. You might even be excused for feverishly seeking an anagrammatic solution. However, if the inventor of the game is called Wardle, you have to cut the man some slack while indulging in a spot of rhyming slang.

A couple of weeks ago, I had not even heard of Wordle. For that matter, even the name Wardle meant nothing to me. The only Wardle I had ever heard of was Johnny Wardle, a miserly left-arm spin bowler who turned out in English colours during the late 40s and early 50s. My research does not indicate that the two Wardles are related. However, if someone feverishly goes through details of the family tree with a fine toothcomb and deduces that Josh is the twice-removed grand nephew of Johnny, I shan’t quibble. Live and let live, that’s my motto.

While I am still trying to get my head around the intricacies of this deceptively simple word puzzle, there are some side issues that provide for interesting reading. Apparently, the app for Wordle (where will we be without apps?) started off modestly with less than 100 users in November 2021, a figure that burgeoned to 300,000 users by mid-January 2022, and as we go to press, those numbers have exploded exponentially to hundreds of millions, who play the game daily. Even Omicron’s superfast version BA.2 will struggle to keep up! Most of you who have started dabbling in Wordle know that it’s a once-a-day online game that gives a player six chances to figure out a five-letter word, using the least number of guesses. Sounds like a bit of a lottery, if you ask me. A guessing game with minimal skill sets involved, interspersed with a smidgen of logic, but then again, I have been wrong before on such matters and will therefore suspend judgement. There could be more to it than meets the eye. Meanwhile, one has to bear with the Facebook and Twitter maniacs who are going, ‘Guess what, I got it in 2 guesses.’ Followed by 125 appreciative likes / memes / emojis and a few ‘got it in one.’ To which my only response is, ‘Go tell that to the Marines.’ Even our Congress Party’s first family scion and leader Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter, sailing close to the wind with a not-so-veiled Wordle swipe at the ruling BJP. His opening five-letter salvo? JUMLA, followed by highly suggestive, if somewhat contrived, efforts like TAXES, SNOOP and ending anti-climactically with the correct Wordle answer, a non sequitur – PHOTO.

Like any decent Welshman, Josh Wardle was quite satisfied with his efforts at introducing a new challenge to excite the minds of those who are sitting at home and fretting about the pandemic. And he, with no small help from Palak, did it all for free! His occasional visits for a beer and pub lunch with Welsh rarebit (cheese on toast being the common or garden term) on the menu in Brooklyn was probably all that he craved. A man of simple pleasures. However, he was on an unbelievably lucky streak, and next thing he knew, some slick suit from that media monolith, The New York Times buttonholed him on one of the high streets in Brooklyn, offering him a seven-figure payoff to buy out all the rights to Wordle. ‘Gosh, this is your lucky day, Josh,’ he exclaimed to himself. A closet poet, our Wardle. ‘I am so relieved,’ he sighed, ‘not overcome with joy or anything. Just a sense of relief.’

That understatement of the year may not be an exact quote, but pretty damn close, from what I could glean from various media reports. Rumours that he promptly fainted and needed a dose of smelling salts to revive him appear to be apocryphal. As is the word going round that when he came to, he said somewhat theatrically, ‘Where am I?’ Even if that has been romanticized, Wardle could have been subconsciously thinking of fellow Welsh celebrity and poet, Dylan Thomas who, in his famous poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night penned these memorable lines, Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay. If a green bay had been conveniently to hand, our Josh would have certainly danced in it. On the other hand, it is more than likely that another famous Welshman, pop superstar Tom Jones resonated with Wardle belting out those two mega hit songs, It’s Not Unusual and Help Yourself. One day in the distant future, Josh and Palak will put all this aside and settle luxuriously in their Green, Green Grass of Home.

Till Wordle came along to divert my attention, I was quite happy unjumbling jumbled letters to form a simple word and feeling good about myself. PAPEL was comfortably rearranged to read APPLE. If you are partial to Roman Catholicism, you can also struggle briefly with LAPPA and come up with PAPAL, which will earn you a few brownie points with the Pope. Slightly more challenging would be INKDEL, which I would triumphantly convert to KINDLE. If push came to shove and the degree of difficulty was stretched to breaking point, I would snap a pencil or two, scream a familiar four-letter expletive (ending with the letter K) but finally emerge victorious translating EGLTA into AGLET. Time for a celebratory drink. And if you wish to add to your vocabulary, ‘Aglet’ is a metal or plastic tube fixed tightly round each end of a shoelace. ‘Damn and blast, where’s the aglet on my left shoe lace?’ We live and learn.

Those of us who started out playing Snakes & Ladders, Ludo, Draughts aka Checkers and later on, took halting steps towards Chess while struggling with Crosswords, were feeling reasonably comfortable in our own skins. Bridge was still a far cry. Then along came Sudoku for the numerically proficient, which put the kybosh on chaps like me who managed to barely scrape through his arithmetic paper in school. Sitting next to a Sudoku-mad passenger on a flight is a painful experience. ‘If you don’t mind, could I take page 9 of your newspaper please, if you are not doing the Sudoku?’ I do mind, as Charlie Brown and Hagar the Horrible were on the same page, but what the hell. One has to be civil to one’s fellow passenger. It did not help to elevate my mood when, after solving the Sudoku puzzle, my neighbour passes the crumpled, folded page back to me with a smug ‘Today was plain sailing. You should have tried last Sunday’s. Absolute nightmare. Devised by a sadist. Took me nearly 12 minutes to solve.’ I buried my face in page 9 and took refuge in Charlie Brown.

As for Wordle, I am getting the hang of it. Very slowly. I DRUNEL (NURDLE), do not allow my mood to RUDLEC (CURDLE). Au contraire, I BWRLAE (WARBLE) like Keats’ blithe Spirit, the skylark. To those who tell me the game is a LUHRDE (HURDLE), I draw myself up to my full height and EDIRLB (BRIDLE). Come to think of it, some of those jumbled-up non-words could easily pass for names of some unpronounceable Welsh towns! All right, I can see you all going ‘Those words are all six-letter words. Wordle is a five-letter word game, you dolt! And it’s not a jumble game.’ As if I didn’t know. Gimme a break and pin your ears back, folks. I have got the drop on this Johnny-come-lately, Wardle J. This is Wordle 2.0, this is. My own version. The new, improved six-letter word game. I am getting frantic calls from The New York Times and The Times of London. As soon as I get my eight-figure payoff from either one of them (I am not fussy), I shall settle up promptly with Wardle on his well-deserved royalties. I shall not DDLWAE (DAWDLE). Fair play to you, Josh. If we ever do meet in Brooklyn or Bangalore, I’d like a quick Wordle in your shell-like ear.

The beautiful lyrics for the hymn, Abide with Me, were written by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte in 1847 as he was dying from tuberculosis, the haunting melody for which was set by William Henry Monk. During my boarding school days in Bangalore, we often sang this paean during chapel service, along with other equally memorable hymns. O God Our Help in Ages Past and Breathe on Me Breath of God spring to mind. However, you would not be far wrong in saying that Abide with Me was, by some distance, at the top of the hymn charts. If you woke me up in the dead of night and demanded that I sing the first verse of this hymn, I could do it without batting a droopy eyelid.  As most of you will surely be aware, this particular hymn has been hitting the headlines in India recently for all the wrong reasons. As India’s 73^rd Republic Day approached, it came to light that Abide with Me, traditionally played every year by one of the regimental bands at the Beating Retreat, alongside several Indian tunes that were redolent of valour, freedom and patriotism, will be conspicuous by its absence. Needless to say, this set the cat among the pigeons. Everyone and his uncle had something to say. I decided to clamber on to the bandwagon.

The powers-that-be who decide on such matters have clearly been mulling over this issue. A couple of years ago they took the decision to do away with Abide with Me at the Retreat, only to reinstate it, for reasons not clearly articulated. Perhaps somebody up there developed cold feet. This year, that same somebody decided enough is enough and the band stowed away the music sheet for this beautiful hymn in deep cold storage, with no prospect of thawing. Its place was taken by the uplifting tribute to India’s martyrs, Aye Mere Watan ke Logon immortalised by the peerless Lata Mangeshkar. Lest we forget, there’s always Saare Jahaan se Achha or Vande Maataram to fall back on.

Republic Day 2022, followed by the Retreat, has now come and gone without Abide with Me. For a few days, social and conventional media had nothing else to talk about. Musicians from various streams decided to put out their own versions of the hymn on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in simpatico with those who felt hard done by at the omission. A few days later, all is forgotten as is the way with most ‘hot topics’ in our country, and life has returned to the usual humdrum normality about the assembly elections and the (hopefully) receding pandemic.

An interesting aside. During the rehearsals prior to the Republic Day parade, the band decided to let their hair down, shake a leg and play some popular Hindi film songs. The racy tune from the 1971 hit film Caravan, Piya Tu Ab To Aaja (Monica my Darling), drew a great deal of attention on social media and television news channels. Many thought this was actually going to be part of the R. Day official song list and went berserk, hurling invective at our officialdom for their gross lack of taste. Once the truth was known, the boot was on the other foot and our trigger-happy media socialites, to coin a term, had egg splattered on their faces.  

Here’s the thing. At the top of this column, I talked about attending chapel service in school and lustily singing those gems from the compact hymn book, Hymns Ancient and Modern. This was during the 1960s and the school in which I was a boarder, Bishop Cottons Bangalore, was run very much on Anglican Protestant lines. Church of England, if you must know. Now I come from an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family. I assure you they don’t come more orthodox than that! There were many in my family circle who worried themselves sick over the possibility of our getting converted, if not in actuality, then perhaps through osmosis and ‘sinister influences.’

Let me make it abundantly clear that nothing was further from the truth. If I enjoyed chapel service in school (I was even called upon to read the Lesson now and then), I equally revelled in learning Carnatic music and attending concerts by the great masters and exponents of the time. Though I was not of a particularly religious bent, I was quite happy to be a part of many of our family functions, especially weddings where classical music and sumptuous food were the order of the day. Music, be it a hymn by Henry Francis Lyte or Tyagaraja, or for that matter, Joan Baez (check out her incandescent Amazing Grace), the words were of scant significance. If I liked the tune, nothing else mattered; the lyrics were a bonus. If the music was unappealing, even the most profound lyrics had no impact. If words were all that mattered, we can always turn to poetry. I would recommend T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata / Shantih, shantih, shantih.

What has all this got to do with the price of fish, I hear you ask.The government is of the view that vestiges of British imperialism, wherever possible, should be quietly done away with, though there is nothing quiet about it. This is a deliberate strategy not unique to the present dispensation. Ever since Independence, roads with English names have been gradually replaced with Indian equivalents. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (and his descendants) have dominated our urban geography. Almost every other city in India has an M.G. Road or a Jawaharlal Nehru Road. I won’t even get into the naming of stadiums. Calcutta’s streets with British names were renamed not only with Indian equivalents, but with Communist icons like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Maxim Gorky and so on. They could not quite remove Queen Victoria’s imposing statue in front of the Victoria Memorial, but the smaller plinths around the precincts have made way for Indian icons. This is not just a phenomenon unique to India. Most countries that were once colonized, would like to erase those painful memories over time. Let’s face it, you are scarcely likely to hear the band strike up Vaishnava Janato or Mirabai’s Hari Tum Haro at a royal procession in London. Both those lovely songs have been listed as among Gandhi’s favourites, as has the present cause célèbre, Abide with Me. The Father of the Nation clearly had many favourites for us to be getting along with! In fact, the Mahatma specifically requested Nehru’s ‘Queen of Song’, M. S. Subbulakshmi to render Hari Tum Haro at his last birthday celebrations. Speaking for myself, if the mood takes me, I am perfectly happy to listen to Abide with Me being performed by any decent choir with full throated ease. Truth to tell, the brass band version never quite worked for me. Too brassy.

Around the same time as the Republic Day furore, another controversy erupted, and I am not even touching on the annual Padma Awards hullabaloo. This time it was to do with the proposed installation of freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue at India Gate in New Delhi, earlier occupied by King George V casting his imperious eye into the middle distance. In keeping with technological advancement, while Netaji’s granite statue is being given the final touches, a hologram of the leader will be visible at night. Naturally, the ruling party and the opposition spokespersons were at each other’s throats, the former justifying their decision while the latter saw it as little more than naked opportunism. If there is a grave somewhere containing Netaji’s mortal remains (and that is an unsolved mystery), I am sure he is turning restlessly in it. While there are innumerable examples of statues and monuments being brought down all over the world for any number of reasons, leave alone statues that have been defaced, our politicians from all streams are only waiting for a chance to exercise their lung power when decisions are taken that go against their ideology. If history teaches us anything, it is that this will continue for as long as humans inhabit our planet earth.

The fact of the matter is, I have never been much of a one for parades of any kind. Floats and tableaux leave me largely untouched. I don’t believe I have ever sat in front of my television set to watch the reverberating pomp and splendour, all the way through, during Republic Day parades. Snippets maybe, but no way are you going to catch me sitting through the entire shebang, even with jumbo bags of popcorn. That being the case, whether the band trumpeted Abide with Me or not makes no difference to me. Let the idealogues fight over the rights and wrongs of the alleged error of omission or commission. For myself, I can go to Spotify and select the venerated St. Albans Bach Choir rendering the divine St. Mathew Passion by, who else, but J.S. Bach. Come to that, a recording of T.N Rajaratnam’s Pillai’s mind-blowing Todi on the nadaswaram will work equally well. As for Monica my Darling, I shall give it a miss.

I will make such a wonderful India that all Americans will stand in line to get a visa for India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Hands up, all those who have heard of The Henley Passport Index. All hands down, I see, which is pretty much what I expected. I had not heard of The Henley Passport Index myself, till I read about it a few days ago. In a nutshell, the index ranks all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without the requirement of a visa. In other words, the holders can either walk through Immigration without so much as a by-your-leave, or they can obtain a visa on arrival with minimal formalities. Unless of course, your passport bears the name ‘Novak Djokovic.’ Of relevance to this piece is the news item that India has now improved its ‘passport power ranking’ for the year 2022, climbing seven places to number 83. The number of countries we proud Indians can now waltz into, waving our passports with a cheery ‘Hi there,’ now stands at 60. That’s straight from the Henley’s mouth.

I couldn’t wait to scroll down the news report to scan the list of countries that will welcome me with open arms. It’s always extremely disconcerting, having gone through several weeks of form-filling and having to fly down (at my expense, I’ll trouble you) to Chennai or New Delhi for interviews with high profile embassies to obtain a three-month tourist visa, to be asked impertinently on arrival, ‘Are you travelling on holiday or business Sir?’ when your passport clearly states that your visa falls under the tourist category. The gall! All that is now in the past, thanks to Henley and his estimable Passport Index. But I digress. The list, the list. Let me take a look at all those countries that await my pleasure.

Broadly, the list of countries was categorized by continents. And what an amazing list of destinations it was. Let us start with the Middle East. You obviously wish to travel to Dubai, Bahrain, Sharjah or Abu Dhabi, the most frequented hot spots in that part of the world. Notwithstanding loonies who wish to bomb some of these airports. All our friends and relations have put down roots there, minting money. There’s also the attraction of taking in periodic sports entertainment, what with IPL games being shifted to the desert, thanks to the pandemic or elections in India. Well, I have news for you. Those countries mentioned are not on Henley’s list guaranteeing visa free entry. Instead, you have a choice of Iran, Jordan, Qatar and Oman. One or two names there may allow me free entry, but I cannot be certain of my exit. That pretty much puts paid to any immediate holiday plans I had for that part of the world. After all, there’s a limit to the quantity of dates and apricots, however delicious, one can consume. I have had it up to here with dried fruits.

We then move on to Europe. Oh, what joy! I have been to most of Europe’s favoured tourist delights, except perhaps much of Eastern Europe, but to re-visit Venice, Florence, Geneva, Paris, Athens, good old London and many other dream cities without visa hassles was beyond my wildest dreams. Guess what, that is exactly what it turned out to be, beyond my wildest dreams. The ‘Europe List’ put together for India by Mr. Henley contained just two nations. Yes, you heard that right. And they were? Albania, about which I knew next to nothing barring some attractive postage stamps in fascinating triangular shapes, which I came across whilst pursuing philately as a hobby during my school going years. Some thieving Gibbons filched my stamp album from my locker, but that’s another story. The second country on that list was, would you believe it, Serbia. If not for Novak Djokovic, I may not even have given this country a second glance, leave alone a first. And after ‘Novax’ Novak’s endless troubles in Australia, largely of his own making, I do not expect to be received by friendly faces in Belgrade. It’s not that Serbia has anything against India, but I think the entire nation is in a bad mood since their icon was, according to the Serbs, so disdainfully treated. As to what Novak did or did not do to earn such opprobrium, is a matter of public record.

Happily, the Caribbean gives us a much wider choice, thanks to Henley’s generosity. As many as 11 nations in the West Indian islands will be happy to lay out the red carpet for Indian citizens without the formality of having our passports stamped with an entry visa. That is how Indian fugitive and jeweller baron Mehul Choksi skedaddled and found a safe haven in Dominica, one of the nations on that favoured list. Cricket fans in India will rejoice at countries like Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago opening their gates wide open when international cricket is played in the home of Garry Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding and company. As for other attractions like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat or St. Kitts & Nevis, some of those names ring a bell for their reputation as safe tax havens and not for much else. Still and all, any destination in the sunny West Indies will be worth flying into without any visa hassles.

The vast Asian continent has provided a list of 11 nations for visa-free travel from India. Frankly it’s mostly a ‘been there, done that’ kind of list. Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia – ho hum. Then again, the exotic-sounding Timor-Leste promises much mainly because I know next to nothing about it – the seductive charm of the unknown! And how about this for an intriguing name – Macao (SAR China)? After the Covid 19 virus, allegedly originating from you-know-where, the prefix SAR before China provides speculative food for thought.

America was next on the list and my eyes lit up. New York, New York! No beefy officials to stop me at JFK’s forbidding immigration counters with a ‘Howdy, hold it right there, pal,’ as I flash my no-visa privilege at them. Instead, what I read under ‘America’ had me reeling. Just two names. Bolivia and El Salvador. Crikey!  I looked at the continent name again and it said ‘Americas,’ which meant the northern part of the continent was not obliged to wave me through. Latin America was more obliging. Bolivia was fine if I wanted to go on a trip, snort some white powder and get a real high, while risking being waylaid by some gun-toting drug barons. As for El Salvador, I hear the crime rate there is high but it’s safe for tourists. That’s a double-edged, guarded advisory which I have no intention of heeding. Wodehouse memorably named such places ‘the 78 rpm’ countries!

Of all the continents, Africa appears to be the most hospitable. As many as 21 countries there look kindly towards Indians, waiving all visa requirements. That said, whether I really want to land up in places like Rwanda, Botswana, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Somalia, Togo and Uganda, I am not sure. Bob Dylan waxed eloquent about the pretty girls in Mozambique and sang feelingly about the place. Which was nice for the Nobel troubadour but then, I am not Bob Dylan and may not get a similar warm reception. Cape Verde and Comores Islands sound inviting, but then all islands do. Never heard of these two, so I’ll take a raincheck.

Bottom line is that India’s jumping up the passport power rankings does little to fill me with unbounded joy, as I am not about to board a plane to any of these destinations in a hurry. Amidst these cheerless reflections, Henley also informs me that Japan and Singapore top the list with 192 nations open to them sans visas, Germany and South Korea a close second with 190 countries letting their populace in without let or hindrance. Under the circumstances, I don’t see why we should be screaming deliriously from the rooftops at just 60 countries, not all of them very salubrious, placing the welcome mat for us. However, let me tell you what gives me immense pleasure – the fact that our friendly neighbour Pakistan has been ranked the 4^th worst on the passport ladder, with just 31 destinations to boast about (China could be there!). Just below Pakistan are Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. So, there you have it. If that is not something to shout about, I don’t know what is.

Denied loan, man sets bank on fire. News reports.

Spare a thought for Wasim Hazaratsab Mulla, 33, a resident of Rattihalli town in Haveri district, Karnataka. He had applied for a loan for an undisclosed sum from his friendly (or so he thought) neighbourhood branch of a nationalized bank. As is the way with bureaucracy the world over, the boffins at the bank processed his application, took their own sweet time over it, and finally informed the wretched man that his loan application had been rejected. And the reason given? The applicant, the above Mr. W.H. Mulla returned a low CIBIL score. As the press report blithely assumed all its readers knew exactly what CIBIL’s expanded term was, I tried to look it up. While the expansion of the acronym remains unrevealed, I was able to conclude that it related to a person’s credit rating. We are in the dark as to the criteria applied to determine a loan applicant’s creditworthiness, but we can safely assume that our friend Wasim didn’t quite make the cut.

That appears to be, in a nutshell, what transpired between the bank and its customer. Now most people I know, who are in dire need of some cash at less than extortionate rates of interest, lean on their banks to cough up generously from their swelling coffers. Provided, of course, the loan is to be used for some genuine workaday purpose – buying property, purchasing a car or a two-wheeler in easy instalments, sending your child abroad for higher education, a medical emergency – that kind of thing. The bank, in turn, wants to be sure you are not squandering the loan betting on the horses or going on a wild bender at the local bar. Hence, they ask about 150 questions, in very small, illegible print, to make sure you are on the level and have more than an even chance of returning the principle and meeting your interest obligations. Not to speak of painful issues like lien and mortgage. All this information is analyzed till the customer is blue in the face, to determine that the money will be returned in God’s good time. If the results indicate that the would-be borrower is not a risk worth taking, he is politely shown the door. At times, not very politely.

Which is precisely what happened in the case of Wasim Mulla. Since I am not privy to the precise nature of the reasons ascribed for rejecting his application, one will have to assume they were sound. Most people, on facing such a rejection, would have merely shrugged their shoulders philosophically as if to say, ‘Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.’ They may then have approached some shady-looking money lender sitting just outside the bank, who can recognize a loser when he sees one. Which would have led to a successful deal where the interest burden alone would have led the borrower to take his own life at some future date. Mr. Mulla, however, was not having any of this nonsense. He was made of sterner stuff. He had, in his opinion, clearly done everything he could to satisfy the skinflint pen pushers behind their desks at the bank. Just the paper work involved would have driven most customers to distraction. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ cried the stricken man rather biblically. Deuteronomy 32:35. Romans 12:19. Those may not have been his exact words, but close enough.

Wasim Mulla went home in a dark mood and pushed away, untasted, the plate of chicken biryani his wife had lovingly prepared for him. This should have aroused her suspicion as to what had upset him and what might follow, but she knew better than to question her husband. The hour was late while Mulla planned and plotted. ‘That bank must be torched,’ he muttered grimly to himself. He then took with him a tin of petrol and a box of matches and stole out of the house at the dead of night, while his wife slept dreamlessly. He then crept up to the bank premises, broke open one of the windows, sprayed the petrol as far as his arm and wrist work would allow him, struck a match and threw it into the highly combustible gas. We have to assume no security guard was posted to challenge nocturnal marauders. The resultant conflagration caused extensive damage to furniture, equipment and sensitive files and documents. It would have provided ironic satisfaction to Wasim, as he scarpered from the scene of the crime, that his own rejection papers would have been amongst the records that were charred beyond recognition.

In attempting to make good his escape, the avenging arsonist was soon chased down, apprehended and brought to book by the local PC Plod. As I type these words out, he is doubtless being given the third degree, rubber truncheons et al, to understand what led him to resort to such extremes. On reflection, he could have gone back to the bank, sat down with the manager over a nice cup of tea, discussed cricket for a while and tried to sort things out. The manager might have even taken pity on him, after listening to his tale of woe, called his assistant who processed his file and asked him to take a relook. I realize that he might have been hoping against hope, but he should recall that unattributed quote ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ Then again, given his choleric temper, patience might not have been one of Wasim’s virtues. Anyhow, he did what he did and is now behind bars. I have no idea how the interrogation went, but if I happened to be an inquisitive fly on the wall at the dank police station, I might have been witness to a fascinating conversation. Naturally the exchanges would have been in the flavourful local lingo, but I have to necessarily imagine it in my brand of English.

Police Inspector (PI) – ‘Right Mr. Mulla, I take it you have been read your rights and you know exactly why you are here at my station.’

Wasim Mulla (WM) – ‘Because I was not sanctioned a loan by the bank.’

PI – ‘No, no, that is why you set fire to the bank and was arrested. I am asking you, Mr. Wasim Hazaratsab Mulla, why you decided to flood the bank premises with petrol and throw a lighted match into the building, thereby causing great damage to public property.’

WM – ‘Because I did not have bombs or any other explosive materials.’

PI – ‘I am sorry?’

WM – ‘I should be sorry for not doing a more thorough job. I am only answering your question. I am a poor man and at my home, I could only lay my hands on a can of petrol along with a box of matches. I could not afford anything more lethal. I will try to be better equipped next time.’

PI – ‘Smarty-pants. Mr. Mulla, I am trying to be patient and polite with you, but you are trying me. This is no time to be funny. You are in big trouble already.’

WM – ‘Funny? Who is trying to be funny? I was not laughing when my loan application was rejected. What would you have done Sir, if you had been turned down like me?’

PI – ‘God give me strength, again with the loan application. That is a matter between you and the bank. Look, for the last time, arson is a serious crime and you could be put away for a very long time. You are lucky no one died.’

WM – ‘Lucky, lucky? Ha, ha. You are the funny man, Sir. I am crying here. I asked the bank for a small loan for my daughter’s wedding expenses, for which I had to fill 35 pages of a highly complicated form. I spent Rs.500 on a human shark sitting outside the bank to help me fill the form. Then they sit on it for four months and tell me I did not score enough points with CIBIL.’

PI – ‘You were trying to score with Sybil? Who is she? This is interesting. A bit of excitement and forbidden romance. And why is the bank interested in your love life?’

WM – ‘Now who is being the smarty-pants? What love life? Are you trying to confuse me? I know all these slimy police methods of interrogation. By the way, if you are the good cop, where’s the bad one?’

PI – ‘ I am the bad cop. There’s no good cop. You said you failed to score with Sybil? She could be an important witness.’

WM – ‘CIBIL is not a girl’s name, Sir. C-I-B-I-L. I don’t know what it stands for. Something to do with credit, of which I have been declared unworthy.’

PI – ‘Oh, I see. Now I get it. And you get this, Mr. Mulla. You are not worthy of my spending so much time on you, either. I will draft out a confessional statement and you can sign it. In triplicate. End of interview.’

As Mulla was taken back to the lock-up he asked the constable for a light. The cop handed him a matchbox, which the accused casually slipped into his trousers pocket after lighting his fag. There was a wicked gleam in his eye. Now if he could only find a way to smuggle in a can of kerosene.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. John Lennon.

I have just finished watching 19 episodes over two seasons of an American serial titled, Boss. In case any of you is interested, it is being streamed on the Amazon Prime Video channel. My providing this information is in no way to be construed as a recommendation to view it. If you decide to watch it and find it unbearable after the first episode, that is entirely your lookout. On the other hand, you might even enjoy its fast paced, if a tad grim, action. So there, I have covered myself on all bases.

The eponymous Boss is the mayor of Chicago, corrupt to the core in addition to suffering from a degenerative brain disorder and he is surrounded by colleagues harbouring vaulting ambition and dubious intent, family members with nasty habits and some not very nice political adversaries. The mayor’s motto in life appears to be, ‘Look the other way so long as the job gets done.’ In fact, I was hard put to it to spot a single well-intentioned character in the entire series. There was one decent chap, the mayor’s 2IC who was summarily bumped off at his instance. Clearly not a plot for decent chaps. There’s plenty of drugs, booze, sex and, of course, gory murders to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats, and their teeth on edge. If this series is intended to portray normal life in the bustling metropolis of Chicago, I am glad I never set foot in it. One reflects, ironically, that it was in Chicago on September 11, 1893 that Swami Vivekananda stunned the World’s Parliament of Religions with his brilliant address on tolerance and universal brotherhood. After watching Boss one can only paraphrase Mark Antony, ‘Oh what a fall was there, my Chicagoans!’

This is not to be taken as a review of this somewhat dark and unpleasant serial about sleaze and chicanery in high places. However, the thing that got my goat was that every time the action portended some potential for heightened drama, the director decides to introduce an almost explicit and irrelevant sex scene. Let’s just say that if it got any more explicit, the serial would have qualified for a triple-X rating. The frenetic rolls-in-the-hay could be in somebody’s office, the mayor’s kitchen, on the deck of a luxury yacht, and of course, the inevitable back seat of a car. In fact, there was no accounting for when and where the couple (and they may have met only a few minutes earlier in the scene) would decide to drop trousers and skirts and make the proverbial pig’s breakfast of the kitchen table. With all those knives, forks and cooking implements around, they could have done themselves a serious injury. Pity they didn’t. The comic potential therein completely escaped the unsubtle director, who refused to draw the line even at same sex shenanigans.

 Now I am no prude and can tolerate the odd love scene in moderation, so long as the sequence is relevant and quickly pans to a painting on the wall displaying two love birds, with the background score rising to a climactic crescendo. After all, certain things should be properly left to the imagination. I am used to that sort of thing in our wonderful Indian films from a bygone era. Which is a real pity because the criminal element in Chicago with political backing could have made for a more compelling series, if gratuitous sex and mindless violence had not reared their ugly heads at the wrong times. That pretty much sums up all I have to say on Boss.

I shall therefore turn to something far more pleasant on cable television. Get Back is not merely one of The Beatles’ greatest hits, but is now the title of a seven-and-a half-hour documentary spread over three episodes on the Disney+Hotstar channel. Directed by Peter Jackson, the New Zealander who brought to the silver screen J.R.R. Tolkien’s two monumental trilogies, Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, Get Back is something to savour, particularly if you are partial to the music of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr. They went to work with over 60 hours of raw film footage (originally shot by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg) and 150 hours of audio tape mostly filmed and recorded in 1969. Performed live for the very last time on the rooftop of their recording studios in London’s tony Savile Row, Get Back painstakingly and memorably pieces together The Beatles’ method and work ethic. As viewers, we become unwitting ringside spectators to the blood, toil, tears, sweat, tension and dollops of humour that went into the making of a memorable album and the spontaneity with which a live concert is performed without the knowledge of their adoring fans.

Those of us who worshipped at the altar of Beatlemania during the swinging sixties will be very familiar with all the songs that are rehearsed and put together during the making of Get Back. Even if you were not part of those heady days, Beatle songs continue to fill our lives and that of several successive generations. What is particularly wonderful about the episodes is the quality of the edited footage, or rather what Peter Jackson has wrought with the original tapes. The film, technically, shines with such brilliant clarity that we feel as if it was shot just a couple of months ago. The late John Lennon, had he not been cut down in his prime, would have been 81 today. George Harrison, who died of cancer would have been 78. The two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are 79 and 81 respectively. However, on Get back, you see them at the very prime of their lives, in their late 20s. Vibrant and preternaturally gifted musicians, they throb with life and joie de vivre.

As mentioned earlier, one of the many joys of viewing this documentary is the surprise element that awaits passers-by on the busy streets in and around the building where the Fab Four decide to play, almost impromptu, a selection of songs shortlisted for the Get Back album. On the terrace. Curious at first, Londoners of all ages, men and women, stop in awe and wonder once they realize what they are listening to but can’t actually see. A camera follows many of them to gauge spontaneous reactions, which range from stunned surprise to mild irritation at the disruption of normal life.  Then the police swing into action wondering who is ‘disturbing the peace,’ as they receive complaints from the neighbours over the unbearable racket. The bobbies conduct their investigation with utmost politeness and courtesy and by the time they reach the rooftop to figure out what’s what, the performance is over. The interaction between the long arm of the law and the studio officials provides for some good-natured, comic interludes.

To watch John, Paul, George and Ringo play with gusto and energy is a rare pleasure, particularly with Peter Jackson’s marvelous editing, along with the intelligent use of split frames, whereby viewers can simultaneously enjoy the performance and the awestruck reactions of the street crowds. Most of all, to watch, arguably the greatest rock band ever, up close and personal, is a double scoop of delight. The recording sessions, the brainstorming, the conflicts and the sheer tension of trying to put an album out in record time, we experience these moments vicariously.

As for the main protagonists, John Lennon with his impish smile, constantly joking and miming for the cameras, steals the show for me. His charisma is infectious. His wife Yoko Ono is a constant presence, sticking to John like a leech, but otherwise unobtrusive. The other spouses make periodic appearances. A surprise visitor during the recording sessions is famed comedian, Peter Sellers. Paul McCartney seems to be the self-appointed leader of the group, initiating moves and pressing his colleagues to up their game. George Harrison, ‘the quiet Beatle,’ provides some drama by walking out midway during the sessions, threatening never to return. Somehow, he is persuaded and, thankfully, gets back in good spirits. Ringo Starr plays the drums but is clearly out of the limelight. All the while, ‘the fifth Beatle’ George Martin, their legendary record producer, keeps things under control while managing his four prima-donna stars.

Whether you are a Beatle fan or not, Get Back is a must watch for any cinema buff. You wonder how technology can bring to life something that happened almost 60 years ago with such vividness, almost making the waters part, in a manner of speaking. Amazing stuff. And lest we forget, there’s the music. What is a documentary on The Beatles without their music? The songs, a fair selection from the recording sessions, not all of them complete, but fascinating in the process of their making. Let It Be, I’ve Got a Feeling, Dig a Pony, The Long and Winding Road, and of course the title track, Get Back. And many more, all of which are a part of the soundtrack of our lives.

So, there you have it. Two recent selections from my cable channels – the Bad and the Ugly, as well as the Great and the Good. Boss, produced in 2011 represents the former while Get Back, filmed in 1969 and put together in 2021, a shining example of the latter.

Postscript: As I put this piece to bed, news filters through of the passing of veteran actor Sidney Poitier at the ripe age of 94. Reams of appreciation are already cramming the conventional and social media. Race relations was a central theme of many of his movies. In terms of mentions, To Sir, with Love, with Lulu (who co-stars) belting out the title song, appears to be hogging much of the limelight. My own favourites of this trail-blazing actor will have to be Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which also starred the magnificent Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Not to forget the gritty In the Heat of the Night, in which Rod Steiger goes head-to-head with Sidney Poitier. R.I.P.

New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions. Mark Twain.

With columnists and bloggers such as yours truly, it almost seems an article of faith that as the dawn of a new year approaches, we are honour bound to indulge in some form of ranking of the highlights and lowlights of the year just gone by. Not quite a shopping list (though that can also be conveniently squeezed in), but a kind of run down of all the things that caught one’s attention during the course of the year. There are the meticulous types who will do this chronologically, starting from January and ploughing their way through to December. This would have involved some painstaking jottings in their digital diaries during the course of the year. Hard working beavers. Others, like me, take the random approach, shooting off the cuff as it were, and trusting to a dodgy memory. Incidentally, new year resolutions have become passé. Still and all, I can claim that my somewhat impressionistic, stream of consciousness approach carries with it the benefit and charm of spontaneity, if not pin-point accuracy. My simple method is, if I can’t remember some event or the other with absolute clarity, I just colour in the blank spaces with my own invention. Who is to know? In case you are wondering, I shall studiously avoid mentioning the C word and the O word. I’ve had my fill of them, thank you very much.

Depending on your particular area of interest our intrepid writers fill our newspapers during this time of the year with all manner of lists. You will come across eminent writers who will talk about their favourite films (separate sections for Bollywood and Hollywood). ‘I distinctly recall Shah Rukh Khan emoting 17 different facial expressions in the course of one thirty second close-up. Shades of Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia,’ opined one well-known writer of Indian pulp fiction, and clearly a film buff. Conversely you will pore over the inarticulate ramblings of film stars who will fill our pages with books they would take to their graves (or ghats) with them. This is to let their readers and fans know that they are not just pretty faces. This book list is invariably an artfully chosen combo of Indian and western writers – Amitav Ghosh and Chetan Bhagat blending in seamlessly with Nadine Gordimer and Jeffrey Archer. It is not beyond our ken that a Bollywood action hero may say something like, ‘I read Archer not merely for his brilliantly inventive plots, but for the way in which he uses multiple metaphors to illustrate a single, telling point. Check out “Kane and Abel.”’ Thank you Ranveer, I’ll make sure to remember that the next time I visit the book section of Amazon.

Then of course, we must not forget the gourmets and the gourmands. Given half a chance, firebrand television anchor Rajdeep Sardesai could consume three columns of precious newsprint telling us all about what he is planning to cook up for family and friends this new year (that could include Yogi Adityanath and Asaduddin Owaisi at the same luncheon table, Ye Gods!). Will the belligerent Owaisi settle for bland, vegetarian fare out of respect for the saatvik Yogi? And will the Chief Minister of India’s largest state scrunch his face in utter disgust when a delicious aroma wafts in as the mutton biryani is wheeled in for Mr. Owaisi’s delectation? Mr. Sardesai will countenance a seriously contentious problem. We would love to read all about it. It would also be instructive to speculate on what the suave and gracefully ageing Prannoy Roy would serve bosom buddies Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramaniam, who one would presume are from vegetarian stock but whose culinary preferences may have turned eclectic thanks to their peripatetic, globe-trotting ways. However, Prannoy’s wine cellar ought to contain some vintage stuff. Perhaps the NDTV czar can fill a couple of pages on his Word.doc for one of our leading journals as we move inexorably into 2022.

There’s also a section devoted to music, mainly popular music in the western and Indian space. When I say Indian, it’s mainly Hindi film oeuvre. In keeping with the contrarian trend, the person putting this selection out is not likely to be from the music fraternity. The publishers will try and get hold of, if they can, someone like Virat Kohli or Sania Mirza to regale us with their favourite songs of the year we are waving goodbye to. As my pop music knowledge came to a screeching halt after Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, S.D. Burman, Shankar-Jaikishan, Lata, Rafi and Kishore, I ignore this page completely. As a Tamilian, I could add the names of playback legends like T.M. Soundarrajan and P. Susheela, but I can visualize huge question marks over the head tops of a majority of my readers. Himesh Reshammiya? Who dat? Never heard of him. Arctic Monkeys? Only by reputation.

As a sports mad nation, the year’s highlights from the world of cricket, cricket and other important sports like cricket, will be exhaustively covered. Footnote references to athletic events such as javelin throw and badminton will get passing mentions, as will Neeraj Chopra and P.V. Sindhu.

Lest we forget, no newspaper or periodical worth its salt can let the last week of December go by without a bit of inspired star-gazing. How are the planets aligned in relation to our individual future? Enter stage left, the many local avatars of the late Linda Goodman and the equally late and much-loved Bejan Daruwalla. Will there be a tall, dark stranger in your life? Will you clean up on the bourses if you invest your ill-gotten gains in a couple of little-known scrips which only ‘those in the know’ are privy to, between February 15 and March 11, 2022? How about health? Will I remain in the pink throughout the year, and should I stay rooted to the broken pavement for God-knows-how-long before I can cross the road, lest I be knocked base over apex by some ‘high-on-speed’ lunatic astride a Harley Davidson? All this and more will be revealed on the paper’s full page where every sign of the Zodiac will be closely analyzed and you will know exactly where you stand. You could be an Aries, a Gemini, a Virgo, a Libra or a Scorpio. No matter, your future will be laid bare in pitiless detail. Have someone strong nearby to hold on to while you read threadbare your particular Zodiacal sign. The signs are not always good, and you must possess an innate ability to read between the lines. I have been frequently told that my favourite colour is blue, whereas I am quite partial to green. That is when I see red.

In India, of course, we cannot escape the lavishly bearded rishi type who has studied the scriptures backwards and is possessed of an invisible third eye. His combined knowledge of astronomy, astrology, palmistry and Sanskrit make him a formidable presence in the occult firmament. He is frequently approached by politicians, particularly when elections are just round the corner, to predict their party’s chances at the hustings. There are a few such people who have acquired genuine skills by sheer dint of diligent study of the sciences. Not that they always get it right. However, a majority of them are charlatans, out to make a quick buck. The strange thing is many of our leading newspapers are quite happy to give these pretend godmen free space, and depending on the publication’s political leanings, the ‘expert’ will predict gloom for one party and doom for another.

Television is not to be left behind. Being a visual medium, the sight of a man in holy orders, eyes closed in frenetic ecstasy, holding forth on the immediate future of our Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition, provides for plenty of harmless entertainment. That said, I am quite happy to listen raptly to the rishi’s considered views (at least he provides some theological value with his sonorous sloka recitations and similar), whereas so many trained psephologists and other self-proclaimed gurus on the idiot box frequently make idiots of us viewers and voters, to say nothing of themselves. That said, it makes for digestible fodder as the new calendar year approaches.

So much for the fourth estate’s obsession with ranking everything under the sun, as we sing Auld Lang Syne to the year just receding into the ether of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ (with apologies to Keats). Between you, me and the gatepost, I would much rather consult the colourful fortune teller under the banyan tree with a couple of caged and garrulous parrots, who can be found in every Indian town and village; the polyglot, and at times foul-tongued, birds unerringly pick out the correct tarot card that tell me my dubious prospects for the year ahead. And it’s cheap at the price.

 2022, I have two words for you. Behave yourself.

It is that time of the year again. Whether we want to or not, whether we mean it or not, whether we have any genuine feelings for a particular individual or not, we feel obliged to send out all manner of overly cheerful and at times, even soppy messages of good cheer as the last couple of weeks of December comes around. Now don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with trillions of messages criss-crossing the globe over the ether wishing all and sundry a merry Christmas and a happy new year. In a world beset with bad news and little to cheer about, why deny folks the opportunity to spread some goodwill around like largesse. Kings and Queens do it, Prime Ministers and Heads of State do it, Popes and Pontiffs do it, it’s all part of our need to feel good about ourselves and nurse fond hopes about the next twelve months to come.

The cynics will tell you that these fond hopes are misguided and that if history teaches us anything, it is that every succeeding year brings worse news than the one we just, with great relief, waved goodbye to. Ah well, cynics will be cynics. We shall give them the lofty ignore. We shall turn to the optimists. Writer and lay theologian, C.S. Lewis said, ‘There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.’ William Shakespeare, who hates to be left behind when it comes to quotable quotes, had this to say on the subject, ‘If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.’ That was the problem with Shakespeare, he could never say anything readily comprehendible.

I do not have, conveniently at hand, statistics pertaining to the decline in sales worldwide of The Greeting Card, but the drop must be precipitous. The capital letters are deliberately placed to invest the item in question with the gravitas this dying breed deserves. To step into a book shop and look for greeting cards suitable for any occasion, particularly during festive seasons of good cheer, was a special delight. We browsed with nary a care for time pressure – birthdays, festivals, anniversaries, special occasions like exam results or notable achievements and even condolences – they were all provided for. As our budgets would permit, we would have carefully made a list of people who really mattered and bought just that many cards, with a few more to be kept in reserve. So, when someone thanked you for sending a ‘thoughtful card,’ they actually meant it.

In today’s age of social media domination, we find ourselves in the grip of innumerable messages from hordes of contacts you barely know, and quite a few you have heard neither hide nor hair of. That is without including the 32 banks, 27 mutual fund companies, 17 insurance firms and several retail houses and online portals you have purchased items from (Leathercraft Footwear wishes you a happy new year). The messages come in all shapes and sizes, as befits the technical versatility and wizardry characterized by the genius of present-day information technology. Moving images, pulsing hearts, firecrackers and starbursts, family audio-visuals with specially selected songs, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas being a particular favourite. Not to be outdone, many popular Indian film songs of a saccharinely sentimental nature find a natural billet on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If this sounds like a rant, I apologize.  It’s not intended to be.  I know most of the good wishes are genuinely well-meant, and if the technology is there for our benefit, why not use it? I get that logic. After all, I do it myself all the time. It’s just that when the same message with the same moving image comes from thirty-five different persons, it ceases to be very moving – if you follow my reasoning. Somehow, the ridiculous ease and lack of any real effort or thought involved in receiving and sending messages greatly detracts from the warmth of feeling one seeks to convey. We live in times when stepping out of the comfort zone of hearth and home poses unseen dangers, and we remain collectively blameless for not buying greeting cards, be they Archies, UNICEF, OXFAM or just plain FUNNIES. Affixing stamps and sealing envelopes with a couple of licks, and trotting off to the nearest post office to send them off par avion is a pleasant chore presently denied to us. In the words of a Steely Dan song, ‘Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.’

Under the circumstances, one must doff one’s hat to those near and dear ones who take great pains to design and make their own greeting cards at home, a labour of love wrought with not a little sweat of the brow. When such cards arrive at your doorstep from a caring aunt or grandmother, with a thoughtfully calligraphed message, you wrap them in cotton wool till the end of days.

That said, one does so miss the avalanche of Season’s Greetings cards that used to arrive and jam our letter boxes, to say nothing of the domestic joys of stringing them up in cheerful festoons across the length and breadth of the rooms in our wee homes. In passing, it occurs to me that we should be ever so grateful that good old JC, Mary’s boy child, was born just a few days prior to our calendar New Year’s Day, viz., January 1. Christmas morphing into new year is a continuous double delight, not to mention the double hangover! Had Christmas Day fallen on, say, May 25^th, how tedious everything would have been. No snow, sleigh and reindeer, while Santa Claus would have had to be togged up in a red tee shirt with white trimmings, huffing and puffing his way up and down chimneys in a profusion of sweat and grime. Even the false, flowing white beard would have been out of the question in the middle of summer. His cheery ‘ho, ho, ho’ would have turned to ‘oh, no, no.’ That said, how do the Australians and the New Zealanders manage, the Antipodean countries’ climate being the wrong way round, their summers being our winters and vice-versa?

Meanwhile, we shall all be Facebooking, Tweeting, Instagramming and WhatsApping goodwill messages by ‘selecting all’ in our contact sheet. To a handful we may draft special messages, just to show there’s no ill feeling. Our mobile phones will be pinging all day and all night long, as quite a few of these messages will arrive from different time zones. Pretty much the entire population of the globe will be wishing for 2022 to quickly rid itself of Covid and its mutant siblings, so that we can start visiting shops to buy greeting cards of our choice next year. Come to think of it we are all wishing to administer 2021 a swift kick in its retreating backside. Many wise men and women hold the view that it is all in God’s hands. Tell you what, if God (in whichever avatar) is masterminding all that has been going on in the world this past couple of years, then there is a dire need for the Almighty to recalibrate strategies and tactics pretty swiftly. Right now, God is way behind the eight ball. My own sense is that it is Beelzebub that is holding the upper hand on things and firmly ensconced in the driving seat as we go to press, and God needs to make a final, desperate dash on the straight, Usain Bolt style, if the all-seeing one is to show a clean pair of heels to his dark rival.

Here’s wishing you all a happy, if guarded, new year.

Oh the games people play now, every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say, yeah never saying what they mean

Joe South, 1969

Former NDTV news anchor Nidhi Razdan is in the news. Again. Let me rephrase that. Nidhi Razdan is the news. Till a couple of years ago, the personable face of the well-known English news channel had been, not just bringing us the news, but keeping her guest participants from all sides of the political, social and cultural divide honest and on their toes. Her deceptively easy manner often put her invited panelists off guard, while she seamlessly went for the kill. Always thorough with her homework, she came well prepared and for the most part, had even obstreperous politicians eating out of her hand. Else she was quick to shoot from the hip, Left, Right and Centre to refer eponymously to the name of the programme she anchored. Left of Centre was more her channel’s stated position, and Nidhi was unwavering in holding on to that stance.  She was sharp, shrewd, articulate and always one step ahead of her often-troublesome invitees. In short, Nidhi Razdan is not, or was not, one of those anchors whose eyes you could pull the wool over.

Which is why her much-touted embarrassment over being taken for a huge, academic ride comes as an unexpected surprise. The details of the case will be well known to all those who have been following the Nidhi Razdan story. Having announced that she is quitting her high-pressure, high-profile job at NDTV and moving on to the rarefied world of academia, she was the talk and toast of academic and intellectual circles in India. After all, it’s not every day that one receives an invitation to take up a teaching assignment at the redoubtable Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the toast before she became toast. An unfortunate victim of online chicanery from a bunch of spiteful, cybercrime nerds whose only objective was to embarrass her, the offer from Harvard proving to be a royal hoax. Poor Nidhi Razdan, red-faced, is nursing her wounds. As she herself put it, ‘How could I be so stupid?’ Indeed Nidhi, how could you? Had she been aware of the works of the late P.G. Wodehouse, she might have agreed with his description of a lost soul, ‘He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.’

Apparently, she is not the only one to be victimized by such phishing attacks, there have been other bright ladies who fell headlong for this kind of trickery. Speculation is now rife as to who might be behind all this, and the Razdan sympathizers are making no bones about their suspicions. Those who wish to know more on the subject can read all about it in the International New York Times, which decided to dredge up and regurgitate the story last week. The NYT has been a relentless baiter of the Government of India, or at least of the present dispensation, and their needle of suspicion with regard to l’affaire Razdan is barely disguised.

All this, naturally, got me in a right, royal tizzy. If the likes of Nidhi Razdan can be so easily led up the garden path, what possible chance could someone of my ‘bottom of the barrel’ status possibly have? Being a writer of essentially light-hearted, satirical and possibly, humorous columns, I have for some while now been entertaining grandiose dreams of winning some major literary award dedicated to my genre of writing. Nothing too grand mind you, not a Nobel or a Booker but something more modestly suited to my oeuvre. I’ve heard tell that if you thought long and hard about some fancy wish-fulfilment, it might actually come true. I was literally floating away in a wonderful day-dream.

   I settled comfortably in front of my desktop, booted it up and went directly to my mail inbox. Lo and behold, the first item in my unopened mail was from the P.G. Wodehouse Literary Society. Would you believe it! My heart, like the poet Shelley’s, was one with the skylark.  Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Before half a blink of an eye, I had opened the mail, and was disbelievingly looking at a letterhead cleverly designed with the logo of the creator of the comic Master’s bust smoking a pipe, and the Society’s full name beautifully calligraphed. The letter was music to my ears.

Dear Mr. Suresh Subrahmanyan,

It gives us, at the P.G. Wodehouse Literary Society, considerable pleasure to inform you that our panel of eminent judges has awarded you the 2021 Wodehouse Humourist of the Year Award. The Award was instituted in 2015 and the recipients have included some of the finest writers the world of satire and humour has known. You are the first writer outside of the United Kingdom to have received this honour. Our warmest congratulations.

Apart from the specially crafted gold commemorative medal and scroll of honour you will also receive a cash prize of £35,000 generously contributed by the family estate of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. The Awards function will be held at The Dorchester in London on August 15, 2022. We have invited the great comic actor, writer, thinker and avowed Wodehouse admirer, the remarkable Stephen Fry to give away the Award. We are awaiting confirmation from him. While further details will be communicated to you in due course, we would appreciate receiving your acceptance of this Award and confirmation that you will be attending the function. We will be sending you two round-trip first-class air tickets, compliments of British Airways for you and your wife. A suite has already been booked for you at The Dorchester for five nights. You will be received at Heathrow by one of The Dorchester’s fleet of luxury cars.

We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest.

With our very best wishes.

Sincerely yours.

Gareth Fowler

Trustee

 P.G. Wodehouse Literary Society

London.

Well, well! And another ‘well’ for good measure. I mean to say! I sat stock still, as if carved out of stone. I re-read the missive twenty-seven times, and could detect nothing suspicious. In fact, you might say I was too stunned to be able to react intelligently. Questions there were aplenty, of course. How did they get to read my blogs? I did not enter any literary competition. Did someone from the judging committee get hold of one or two of my book compilations? And the August 15^th fixture, coinciding with India’s Independence Day, seemed too pat. The whole thing was a dashed mystery, as Bertie Wooster might have put it, and I did not have the services of Jeeves to help me out. 35,000 smackeroos, eh? That’ll come in handy for a rainy day. Keep the wolf from the door and all that.

However, something kept gnawing at me. This can’t be right. Is the Nidhi Razdan fiasco playing out all over again? I did not want to get at the truth. Then again, why should I undersell myself. Surely, I can craft a funny sentence same as anybody else? Dear, oh dear. I was beset with doubts and possibly a smidgen of low self-esteem. Enough of all this nonsense, I said to myself. Let me put a call through to this Gareth Fowler chap from the P.G.W. Society and put an end to my misery, once and for all. I braced myself as I tapped the keys on my mobile.

I got through first crack out of the box. ‘Good morning, am I speaking to Mr. Gareth Fowler?’

‘I am he,’ responded this Fowler in pedantic English.

‘Hello. I am Suresh Subrahmanyan from India, and I have received your mail.’

‘And what mail would that be?’ That was a warning shot across the bow, if ever there was one.

‘The mail informing me of my having bagged the Wodehouse Award.’

The Fowler sounded a tad mystified. ‘I am sorry but what award? And who is this?’

‘I just told you who I was. You are Gareth Fowler, Trustee for the Wodehouse Literary Society, are you not?’ My throat was beginning to dry up.

‘My dear Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, somebody has been playing a huge prank on you. I am Gareth Fowler, yes, but I am employed by the British Gas Board in their Public Relations department. Sorry, wrong number.’ And the line went dead.

My legs turned to jelly. My depression was beyond description. The onset of the south-west monsoon could not have exhibited a deeper depression. I referred to Shelley’s joyous skylark earlier, but now I was more in tune with Keats’ nightingale. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.

Nidhi Razdan, if you are looking for a shoulder to cry on, you don’t have far to seek.

Sex toys hit city Customs barrier, end up in godown. The Times of India.

Honestly, I am fed up to the back teeth with our newspapers these days. All they ever talk about is the pandemic, border skirmishes, petrol prices, Modi and Putin bear-hugging, Sidhu, Channi and the Captain squaring off in Punjab, and some guy from Bollywood called Vicky getting hitched up to some gal named Kat, what the trousseau will consist of and who the lucky ones will be on their guest list. All right, so we thrashed New Zealand in a meaningless two-Test series at home. Big deal! In the midst of all this silliness, the tragic helicopter crash that took the life of India’s CDS General Bipin Rawat, his wife and other officers, was an extremely shocking change from the everyday, anodyne script.

It’s the same thing on television, only it’s impossible to follow the storyline thanks to everyone on screen striving to break the sound barrier in disharmonious unison. Which is why I was startled to come across this extraordinary headline about sex toys being seized by Customs officials in Bangalore. Naturally, I ignored everything else in my daily paper and gave the full weight of my attention to this earth-shattering piece of news. Here’s the gist of what this very enterprising reporter filed. Apparently, the pandemic has forced many of our denizens to look for diverting ways to take care of their claustrophobic idle hour. The Customs chappies were taken aback at the rapid increase in imports of a mind-boggling variety of titillating items, the primary aim of which was to satisfy man’s basest instincts.

It occurred to me that if I am to obtain reliable information on the subject, I should go straight to the horse’s mouth. I was certain the Customs office in Bangalore would be having in their employ a Public Relations department who could fill me in on the details. Having got the helpline number from Google search, thither I rang. After the usual interminable wait, and having punched several digits to choose language, subject matter and ‘if I wished to speak to one of our helpline officials,’ and ‘our lines are all very busy and we have limited staff owing to the pandemic, and we apologize for the long wait,’ I finally reached a human voice. In between, I had to put up with some stultifying Kenny G type of music.

‘Namaskar. This is Swati, how I can be of help?’ Given the subject matter I was absorbed with, I would have preferred to speak with a man. No offence, I am a bit queasy that way, but I pressed on.

‘Yes Swati, thank you. I am referring to a newspaper report this morning about which I wish to ask a few questions.’

‘Are you from the media, Sir?’ 

‘Not exactly. I am a columnist. Blogger, if you prefer. The news item I am referring to came from the media.’

‘And what is this news item about, Sir?’

‘Ah, well it’s a bit delicate.’ At this point, for some inexplicable reason, I dropped my voice to a barely audible whisper. ‘Sex toys.’

‘What? Sex boys? What are you saying, you dirty, old man. I shall complain to the higher…’

How could she have known I was old? No quaver in my voice. Anyhow, I interrupted her hastily. ‘No, no. I was whispering, there were people about and you heard me wrong. Total misunderstanding. There was a news item about confiscation of some material at Customs, broadly classified as Sex Toys. Please forgive me if I was not clear. Blame it on the poor line.’

‘Oh, sex toys. Why didn’t you say so, loud and clear, in the first place?’ She was quite blasé. ‘Let me connect you to the concerned department. Please hold. It may take some time. Lines are jammed today with calls on that subject. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ Gosh, they even have a dedicated department for this sort of thing! I was impressed.

After being put on hold for about seven minutes, while I was entertained to several recorded messages of the kind of punishment I could face if I brought in banned drugs, Chinese aphrodisiacs and pornographic videos, a tired sounding male voice finally answered.

‘Yes? What is it that you want?’ He sounded abrupt and vaguely threatening, as if daring me to bring up the subject of sex toys.

I decided to brave it out. ‘Good morning, I wish to speak with you about these sex toys you have confiscated and are threatening to destroy. Can you give me some details?’

‘What are you, a pervert, into kinky stuff? Don’t you have anything better to do than to get cheap thrills first thing in the morning?’

‘My dear Customs Manager or whatever your designation is, I am not seeking cheap thrills. I am not that kind of chap. I listen to Carnatic music. It is you who have proudly announced to the press about this haul of sex toys that you and your colleagues at Customs are sitting on, waiting for instructions to burn them. Like the cops do when they come across lethal arms, bombs, leopard skins, ivory tusks and the like. Usually, they pose proudly for photographs with the haul and the smugglers.’

‘So, you want me to pose for the camera in front of a cache of inflatable dolls, S&M whips with thongs, floggers, vibrators, triple X videos and other such dubious items?’

He was clearly well-informed on the subject. ‘Wearing a broad, triumphant smile, of course. And say “cheese.” By the way, one thing about your statement to the press intrigued me. You said that after the pandemic struck, the import of such items has greatly increased. And that you have approached higher authorities for directions. Presumably to incinerate these degrading items of sexual gratification.’

‘It has too. Increased after the pandemic, I mean. What is so intriguing about that? And your mocking, leering tone is not appreciated. We are doing a difficult job here. What do I go home and tell the wife and kids about how my day went at the office?’

‘You have my sympathies, Sir. However, when you say imports have increased it means, ipso facto, you have been allowing such items to come through in the past. Why get all cagey about it, now that more people are going in for such diversions? And you’ve been shouting from the rooftops about your capture, anyway.’ I could see that he was beginning to get hot under the collar. Before he could respond, I came up with another salvo. ‘With due respect Sir, my heart goes out to this bloke you have identified as Sid from Bangalore.’

‘Who?’

‘Sid. Not his real name, of course. He is heartbroken that, after paying 140 USD from an online Dutch portal for one of those thingummies I would rather not mention, you are now throwing the rule book at him. Have a heart, Sir. He is just a restless teenager with raging hormones. Just like Shirley (name changed) from Mathikere as well, who faced similar problems having imported some dicey stuff from the US. It’s not just the boys, you see. They all have their needs, same as you.’

‘Stop getting personal. You are skating on very thin ice. Look, I don’t have to answer all these idiotic questions from a two-bit, deviant blogger like you. You don’t even represent a third-rate, yellow-journalism rag. As it is, I have wasted too much time on you. As for this Sid and Shirley double-act, raging hormones, eh? Tough. They’ll just have to do what all of us did.’

‘And what is that, Sir?’

‘That’ll be all. End of.’

‘Just one last thing,’ I pleaded, ignoring all his insults. ‘Do you actually burn all these items, or just claim that you do? My own sense is that they ultimately find their way into…’

At this point, the line went dead. After a week or so, I received a registered letter (with acknowledgment due) from the Customs Department, asking me to explain an online purchase of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence and would I appear at their offices the following week with both the books in question. I replied to them, through my lawyer, that they will be wasting their time poring through these great works of literature looking for cheap, salacious thrills. Much better if they can get hold of Shobhaa De’s Starry Nights or Sultry Days to burn. Paperback editions, naturally. More combustible.