It happened one night

That day did not seem different from the other days. I had spent the previous night staring at the staircase that was in front of me. The night seemed darker than usual and I could not see anything to my right or left. It rained through most of the night and each step of the staircase glistened in their new found wetness. The night ended when the sky started lighting up. I could not see the sky from my position but the light from the sky bounced off the objects around to inform me that the sun was about to start its journey across the sky.

I loved the day time more than the nights. I did not see many people through the night. Occasionally an insect hovered around me. Even the dogs and birds could not be seen or heard during the nights. This made me feel lonely.  So I spent my time staring at the staircase and counting the steps from the bottom to top and in reverse. Over time I had started identifying the differences between each of the steps in the staircase. The fifth step, for example, was noticeably different from the others. Its right side was higher than the left, meaning, it slopped down to the left. Also, the right side was slightly broader than the left. The second stair, had lot of marks near its middle. These were in the shape of arcs. They were not prominent but I was able to discern them.

The mornings were filled with the sounds that constantly emanated from the people. The eerie noises made by the insects pierced through the quietness of the night. But evenings, were reserved for the conversations between birds. I liked the evenings the best. The birds began the proceedings by singing the following verses.

The sun is nearly down

The Night is but a step away

So come back home

Else you will be lost

Forever to darkness

As the birds settled down in their nests, they talked about their experiences during the day. For many, these conversations might seem like a cacophony of chirpings but I was able to identify many of the voices and follow their conversations. The big advantage with birds is that though their voices and style of delivery changed all of them spoke the same language. This enabled in their conversing across species, which in turn helped in them passing information to each other efficiently. 

As the darkness set in, the birds quietened. The insects started screaming out their presence. The insects are very different from the birds and other creatures. They loved to scream. One starts off by screaming "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...". Almost immediately another insect responds with "AEEEAAEEEEEAAEEEEAA...". A third one joins in with "UUUUUUEUEEEUUEUEUEUEUU....". All the insect screams were built around the syllable 'E'. They combined it with another syllable and this somehow made its sound unique. I have not been able understand the language of the insects. I get the feeling that the insects love to hear their voices and as a result scream as loud as they can. I hate insects. They make the nights sound lonely and scary.

The darkness limited my field of vision to the staircase. A bright light lighted the path that went to right. But the light faced the other way and the room to the right blocked it. So, I could only see a small area on the top right corner of my field of vision. The night proceeded like the other nights - nothing happened. A few insects flew around me and obstructed my view. Insects are annoying. I like to call them bugs as I like to say "I hate bugs". They are like unwelcome lovers or worse, perverted stalkers. They hover around me, sit on me and at times, even kiss me. They are annoying and there are far too many of them. I know I am repeating here but I hate bugs.

As the night proceeded, lightning started flashing, at first infrequently, but as time passed with increasing frequency. Soon, the sound of thunder announced the impending arrival of rain. A cool breeze started blowing in from the west. The heat left by the sun disappeared and it seemed to me that the earth heaved a sigh of relief. I felt the first drops of rain fall around me. The rain increased the darkness that surrounded me. Soon the intensity of the rain and the lightning and thunder increased. I could hardly see anything now, except when the lightning flashed. The thing about rains is that I love the coolness that it brings in but as its intensity increased, I felt scared. The blinding flashes of the lightning and the grumbling rumble of the thunder made me uncomfortable. I hoped that the rain would not continue for long. 

I heard George moan from his position to my right. I could not see him as he stood beyond the room to my right. He has told me that his position was right by the compound wall. He did not have the cover that I had and was constantly exposed to the elements. He hated the rains more than me and he moaned loudly when it rained. I could hear his moans over the din caused by the rains and the thunder. But I was happy that George was close by. Conversations with him made these lonely nights bearable. But these conversations were never happy for he constantly lamented about his position. 

"Bob! I got a raw deal man."

"Damn it, Bob! The sun is beating down on me. I can't bear it no more."

"Why is it so windy, Bob?"

"Oh no Bob! The dog's peeing on my leg. Shoo dog shoo."

I am not very proud to say this but the last one made me laugh. But I laughed silently and hoped that George did not hear it.

By the way, if you are wondering who Bob is. I am Bob.

Soon, I heard George shout "Hey Bob, why is it raining so hard? It never rains in June."

"It's due to global warming, George."

"That sounds stupid, Bob. It's raining and I feel cold. I don't feel warm. Shouldn't Global warming make the place warm?"

"I don't know, George. I heard someone mentioning that global warming is disturbing the climate pattern of the planet with droughts and unseasonal rain."

"'Climate pattern of the planet'. What is that?"

"I don't know, George. Rains in June is unseasonal and so I am guessing this is caused by global warming."

"These humans spend too much time thinking. Maybe they should run around buildings like the dogs or fly around like the birds."

"But George, human can't fly."

"True. But they can run. They too have legs like the dogs."

"Only two and not four."

"Two legs are good enough to run Bob."

"True, George."

George remained quiet for some time. The rain continued to pour down. The night was proving to be wetter than all the summer nights that I have seen. It had the feel of a November rain. George started speaking again.

"You know Bob. These humans are clumsy."

"How so, George?"

"This morning one of them carelessly pushed me to the right. He did not bother to straighten me. Now I am no longer looking at the path that was in front of me but I am looking at a group of plantain trees. There is a bright light pointed straight at me. Fortunately, a plantain leaf is blocking the light else I would have been blinded. I hate this view, Bob. I want to see the path."

I attempted to assuage him with a few sympathetic sentences. I was in the middle of the third sympathetic statement when George gave out a shriek. He said "Someone has jumped the compound wall. There is an intruder, Bob. I saw his legs. He is coming towards you, Bob." I felt a combination of excitement and anxiety rise through me. This has never happened before. We had an intruder in our midst and it was my duty to capture his features to help others identify him. A thought struck me. I called out to George. 

"Hey George. How the know that the intruder is a 'him'?"

"Bob! Do you expect a 'her' to jump over the wall in the middle of the night? That too in this rain?"

"Why not?"

"Don't be... Eh! You are right. Why not?"

"He's here, George. He is climbing the stairs. I can see him."

"You too said 'him'!"

"Yeah! He looks like a 'him'."

"That's what I said Bob."

"That's not important George. He is here, George."

"How does he look like, Bob. Did you get him?"

"No! It's too dark. I can only see the silhouette of his legs. He came in folded his umbrella and now he is going out again. No! He is back. He has a cloth in hand. He is... He is... He is going out again, George. He is going away."

"I can see his legs, Bob. He has jumped out, I think."

"What! He jumped in the middle of the night in this rain to get a piece of cloth. I don't get it George."

"Nor do I, Bob. Let us be on the vigil."

Time passed slowly. Every second seemed like a minute and every minute an hour. We waited but did not notice anything. The rain had increased and now we were not able to see much. The lightning and thunder had stopped. The night had just turned eerier. I was not sure if this was the worst night of my life or the best. The intruder coming in was scary but this was a good break from the boring eventless nights. The tension of not knowing the intruder's next step was too much to bear. Suddenly, George screamed. "He is back, Bob. Call out for help, Bob". Both of us shouted "wee-waa, wee-waa, wee-waa" in unison. Almost immediately I realized the futility of our action and shouted "stop it, George. It's pointless. We are screaming in digital. The humans and dogs function in analog space. They can't hear us." 

"Oh no! I forgot. Do you see him?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. He has climbed the stairs. Where is he? Oh, he is hiding in the darkness. What is he doing? Where is he? I can't see him, George."

"Calm down, Bob."

"There is an intruder somewhere close by, George. So, I can't calm down. I am very uncalm, George."

"Uncalm! Is that a word?"

"Shhhhhh! I don't care if uncalm is a word or not. That is how I feel and so I will use that word. Hey! What is that?"

"What is what, Bob?"

"It's the cloth. He is covering me with the cloth he picked up, George. I am blind, George."

"Calm down, Bob."

"Don't you dare calm-down me, George.  I can't see. What is this good for nothing fellow up to?"

"Mind your language, Bob."

"Will you shut up, George. I can't see. I can't see. I can't see."

"What is he up to?"

"How would I know, George? I am blind. Did you not hear?"

"I was not asking you, Bob. I was asking myself."

"Then ask it to yourself and don't announce it thus."

George became silent. I lamented about my blindness silently. The rain subsided and the night had become quieter. I heard the intruder making some metallic noises. Soon I heard the sound of rushing water. He said something in a language I did not understand. I listened intently. The sound of metal coming in contact with metal continued. I shouted out to George "I can hear him do something". George responded "What is it?" 

"I don't know. What are those dogs doing? Can't they hear the sound?"

"I can't see the dogs. Ask Victor."

"Hey Victor. Can you see the dogs?"

"Hey Bob. They are sleeping here."

"Wake them up, Victor. There is an intruder."

"Bob, how can I wake them up?"

"Damn!"

We did not know what to say. We waited in silence. The intruder continued to make metallic sounds. Soon, the sounds stopped. A little later George announced in a tired voice "The intruder has jumped out. It seemed he left in a hurry".

Ba ba bacon

 "Get some bacon from the super market."
"Now?"
"Right now!"
"Are you sure supermarkets sell Kevin Bacon?"
"If I am a cannibal, you wouldn't be here to ask this question."
"Ha! I like your thought."
"If you continue like this, this liking shall pass too.
 Go now and get the bacon. I feel the need to fork in some pork."
"Pork - fork. Neat rhyme crime my dear."
"Go on! Go away and get back soon."
"... so that you can work with a fork on the pork."
"Stop being a pig. Don't tempt me to bacon you. Go now."
"Oh no! Your desire for bacon has woken up the pagan in you. I am leaving."
"While you are there get some Salami too."
"Salami! Tell me that you love me if you want some salami."
"I will not trivialize my love for the sake of a few slices of salami."
"You find mixing love with salami alarming."
"I mix love in everything I make but I will not bargain love for salami."
"I give a salaam to you for your thought. 
  I will give you salami and bacon soon."

 

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Every week I bought one and a half dozen country eggs from a vegetable shop close by. The shop was run by a family. At most times, the husband sat behind the billing counter. Over the course of the past two years, I have developed a cordial and yet distant relationship with him. On most days, we only exchanged a smile with each other. My smile was usually hidden underneath my mask. At times, we talked a little about eggs. 

"When did the eggs come in?"

"Yesterday."

"Are they fresh?"

"Of course! I only buy two crates of egg as not many people buy country eggs."

The cost of the eggs has remained the same for the past year or so and so I don't even ask "How much?" before I pay. The payment takes place through Google Pay and so we don't even have the "do you 5 rupees with you?" - "No. I don't have 5 rupees with me" exchange with each other. Overall we maintained a professional relationship.

This morning too, everything went in the usual manner. I picked the eggs placed it in the boxes. He helped filling one of the boxes. I placed the boxes in the bag and took out the mobile phone from my pocket when he asked a question. "Have you heard of the RSS?" The question took me by surprise. Of course, I have heard of the RSS but I did not expect him to ask that question to me. So I blurted "The RSS?" He confirmed "Yes. The RSS." At that point I noticed his attire - a shiny saffron shirt and a saffron mundu. A 'U' shaped vaishnava namam adorned his forehead. I understood which RSS he was referring to. I responded "Yes. I know RSS". He asked immediately "Would you like to join the RSS?" The question shocked me. I did not expect anyone to ask me that question. A few years back, I realized a cousin has been a member of RSS for many years. Even he has never talked to me about RSS. But this person whom I barely knew was asking me to join RSS. I was reminded of a Malayalam movie dialogue "Aye, njan anganathavanalla". I responded "I am not that kind of person". He did not let me proceed beyond the sentence and started on a long monologue on RSS. It contained the following points.

• RSS is a very good organization.
• RSS helps in a person achieve self control and other attributes that are described using words starting with 'self' through Yoga, exercise and other such activities.
• RSS conducts pooja's and other religious activities for a person to achieve something (I don't remember what now).
• RSS discovers common people who quietly serve the downtrodden/needy in our society. These are people who serve food for the needy or teach them for free. They do it quietly without fanfare. Members of RSS discover them and send information about them to city/town/village office. From there the information is sent to the centre via the district and state offices. He gave example of many people in our neighbourhood who are involved in such services.

The last point got me worried because I wondered if he had discovered some selfless service that I had rendered to the society. I frantically searched through my head to discover an activity that will fit the description he had provided but found none. I felt relieved. I will not receive an award from the RSS. That would be the end of my social life. Though I don't give a damn to left or right, I have friends who think right is not right. But that's not me. I am so non-left and non-right that I freeze with one of my legs stuck halfway in the air when I hear a dance instructor say "now twirl your left leg around your right leg and jump half a feet in the air". Before anyone says "Dance! You!", let me tell you that there a few poor souls who have tried to make me dance and who still believe that they I will dance one day. As far as I know none of them like the right. They refuse to do dance steps that involve putting thei right leg out first. 

Damn! I digressed.

Anyway, at the end of the monologue, he gave me a card that had the picture of goddess clad in saffron saree, holding a saffron flag leaning against a smiling lion. He said "please attend the guru pooja tomorrow morning". I smiled beneath my mask and said "I will try". As I walked out of the shop I had two questions in my head.

1. "Should I find a new shop that sells country eggs?"
2. "Why did he think that I am a good candidate to be a part of a guru pooja conducted by RSS?

Kosiru (Roughly translate to unimportant extra bit)

As I was driving to my parents place, I noticed the number of the car ahead of me was TN74AY... The 4 was written such that it looked like a stylised 'G'. I commented the '4AY' in the car ahead looks like 'GAY'.  A little later I overtook the car and my son observed that the car had a BJP flag at the front. Almost immediately he commented "it's a BJP car. So it's definitely not GAY. It has to be 4AY".

Today's child's world

Words have a way to get into your heart. Not just words from a poem but words from prose too. Recently, I came across two instances where words and thoughts struck a chord with me.

Ad Busters

From time to time, he brought one of his books and shared something interesting in them with us. I have never understood his selection of books. I never knew that such books existed. Normally I would not have considered the topics that the books covered as topics for a book at all. But most books turned out to be interesting. Though life did not give me the time required to look through these books, the past two times I have taken out time to go through the books that he brought to me. One such book was a journal called Ad Busters. The March/April 2011 edition of the book has an interesting article about children called ‘Dopamine Squirts’. This article contains the following snippets based on an interview with Dr. Gabor Mate in Democracy Now!

• If your spouse or partner came home from work and didn’t give you time of day and immediately got on the phone and started talking and texting with other people, your friends would not say “Your partner has a behavioural problem. You should try tough love”. They would say you’ve got a relationship problem. But when children act in these ways, many parents think their children have behavioural problem and they try to control those behaviours. In fact, what our children are showing us – my children showed me this as well – is that we have a relationship problem with them. They weren’t connected enough with me and were too connected to their peer group.
• The child peer world is so dangerous. It is fraught with bullying, ostracization, “dissing,” exclusion and negative talk. How do children protect themselves from all that negativity in the peer world? They are not committed to each other’s unconditional loving acceptance. Even adults have a hard time giving that. Children can’t do it. So those children become very insecure. To protect themselves emotionally, they shutdown. They become hardened. They become cool. Nothing matters. Cool is the ethic. You see that in the rock videos. It’s all about cool. It’s all about aggression and cool and no real emotion.
• Brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing … the worry is that we are raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.
• The conditions in which children develop have been so corrupted and troubled over the last several decades that the template for normal brain development is no longer present for many kids. Dr. Bessel von der Kolk, a professor in psychiatry at Boston University, actually says that the neglect or abuse of children is the number one public health concern in the United States.
• There are about half a million kids in this country receiving heavy duty antipsychotic medications such as are usually given to adult schizophrenics to regulate their hallucinations. But in this case, children are put on these medications to control their behaviour. So, what we have is a massive social experiment of the chemical control of children’s behaviour, with no idea of the long-term consequences that these heavy-duty antipsychotics will have on kids.
• In other words, what we’re doing is correcting a massive social problem that has to do with disconnection in society and loss of nurturing and we’re replacing that chemically. These stimulant drugs seem to work and a lot of kids are helped by them. The problem is not so much whether they should be used or not. The problem is that 80% of the time a kid is prescribed a medication and that is all that happens. Nobody talks to the family about the family environment. The school makes no attempt to change the school environment. Nobody connects with these kids emotionally.
• Canadian statistics just last week showed that within the last five years there has been a 43% increase in the rate of dispensing stimulant prescription for ADD or ADHD, with most of these going to boys. In other words, what we are seeing is an unprecedented burgeoning of the diagnosis. More broadly speaking, what I am talking about is the destruction of American childhood because ADD is just a template. It is just an example of what’s going on. In fact, according to a recent study published in the States, nearly half of American adolescents now meet some criteria for a mental health disorder.
• There are parts of the brain in the prefrontal cortex, right in front of the brain, whose job it is to regulate our social behaviours. They give us empathy. They give us insight. They give us attuned communication with other people. They give us moral sense. They are the very conditions that, according to a Notre Dame study, are now lacking. So, a lot of kids today are growing up without empathy, without insight into others, without a sense of social responsibility. Bullying is just one example of that.

Poor Economics

Many years ago, I gave a talk to a set of students in a business school. At the end of the talk, I was given a book as a memento. I saw that the book had the word ‘Economics’ in its title. So, I put it at the bottom of my book shelf at home and forgot about it. Recently, when I was cleaning my bookshelf, I chanced upon the names of the authors of the book, Abhijith Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The name Abhijith Banerjee seemed familiar. Soon I realized that he had won the Nobel Prize for Economics recently. Suddenly, my respect for the book went up. I looked at the title of the book. It read ‘Poor Economics’. Under the title of the book was the phrase ‘A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty’. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I felt a deep interest for the book rising through me. I put back the Malayalam novel that I was reading and started reading this book. I found the contents of the book interesting. The authors presented interesting views of poverty. One of the chapters talks about the role education plays in alleviating poverty for families across the globe. This chapter has the following points on the issues in the education system with respect to the education for the poor.

• In a study designed to study whether this prejudice influenced teacher’s behaviour with students, teachers were asked to grade a set of exams. The teachers did not know the students, but half the teachers, randomly chosen, were told the child’s full name (which includes the caste name). The rest were fully anonymous. They found that, on average, teachers gave significantly lower grades to lower caste students when they could see their caste than when they could not. But interestingly, it is not the higher caste teachers who were doing this. The lower caste teachers were actually more likely to assign worse grades to lower caste students. They must have been convinced that these students could not do well.
• Because in many developing countries, both curriculum and the teaching are designed for the elite rather than the regular children who attend the school, attempts to improve the functioning of the schools by providing extra inputs have generally been disappointing.  … It should now be clear why private schools do not do better at educating the average child – their entire point is to prepare the best performing children for some difficult public exam that is the stepping stone towards greater things, which requires powering ahead and covering a broad syllabus. The fact that most children get left behind is unfortunate but inevitable.
• The public-school teacher seems to know how to teach the weaker children and is even willing to put some effort into it during the summer, but during the regular school year this is not his job – or so he has been led to believe. Recently in Bihar we evaluated a Pratham initiative to fully integrate remedial education programs into government schools, by training the teachers to work with their materials and also by training volunteers to work as teacher’s assistant in these classrooms.  The result was striking. In those (randomly chosen) schools that had both the teacher training and the volunteers, the gains are substantial. Where there was just teacher training, on the other hand, essentially nothing changed. The same teachers who did so well during the summer camps completely failed to make a dent. The constraints imposed by the official pedagogy and the particular focus on covering the syllabus seem to be too much of a barrier. We cannot just blame the teachers for this. Under India’s new Right to Education Act, finishing the curriculum is required by law.
• A combination of unrealistic goals, unnecessarily pessimistic expectations and the wrong incentives for teachers contribute to ensure that education systems in developing countries fail their two basic tasks: giving everyone a sound set of skills and identifying talent. Moreover, in some ways the job of delivering quality education is becoming harder. The world over, education system is under stress. Enrolment has gone up faster than resources, and with the growth in the high-tech sectors, there is a worldwide increase in demand for the kind of people who used to become teachers. Now, they are becoming programmers, computer systems manager and bankers instead. This is going to be a particularly serious issue for finding good teachers at the secondary level and beyond.

Minor occurrences

Some days back I saw a child rummaging through the lost and found box for a water bottle that he had lost two years back. I informed him confidently that two years is a long time and objects missing for two years will not be found in the lost and found box. He then tried to find the water bottle that he had lost six months back. I politely shooed him away. That evening, I wrote the incident down and posted it in this blog. I smiled at the naïve hopefulness of the boy as I pressed the 'publish' button. The next day as I walked out of the dining hall two boys came running towards me. One of them held up a bag and talked excitedly "Look at what I found". I asked "What?" He responded "I found the shoes that I lost a year back in the lost and found box".  I was stumped and did not respond for a moment. The boy was disappointed to see my reaction. He waved the bag in his hands and repeated "I found the shoes that I lost a year back in the lost and found box". I forced a thin smile onto my lips and said "that's nice! You mean you lost this pair of shoes a year back?" He responded "yes". I continued "... and you found it in the lost and found box?" He responded "yes, yes, yes". I asked "can I see the shoes?" He opened the bag and brought out a pair of sports shoes. I said stupidly "you are right; these are shoes". He agreed "Of course". I said "That's good. Yeah. Cool. I gotta go". As I walked away from the boy I hoped that the boy I had seen the previous day searching for his water bottle in the lost and found box would not hear this news.

****************************

I did not notice the little boy on the path perpendicular to mine till he stopped to check the sole of his right foot. Something on the sole was bothering him. He wiped it with his hands a few times but he was not happy with the result. He wiped his leg on the path tentatively. He started moving slowly but halted from time to time. He dragged his right foot over the stones that paved the path. As I reached closer to him, he started walking faster. I saw that he was wearing a yellow t-shirt with black stars on it. By the time I crossed his path he had gone ahead some distance. His walking had become normal and I decided to not ask him if he had an issue with his foot. I continued on my way to the office. On the way back, I saw the boy going in the opposite direction. He was now skipping down the path with a happy smile on his face.

****************************

The boy had a sheepish expression on his face as he walked out of the toilet. He looked at me and said "there was a frog in the toilet. I felt scared". I said "The frog was probably scared too. What did it do?" He responded "Nothing! It was just sitting there. I squirted water using the faucet. It went away". I smiled at him. He smiled back and went away.

****************************

On seeing me he asked "Should I attend the workshop this weekend?" I responded "I hear it is a good workshop. You should try and attend". He pondered at my response for a moment before asking "Are you planning to attend the workshop?" I responded promptly "no". He asked "Why?" I said "I don't have the time this weekend." His face brightened as he said "I too am occupied with other activities this weekend and so will not go either". 

As I was having my breakfast, a colleague looked at me and mentioned "I hear the workshop this weekend is interesting. You should attend it". I responded with a noncommittal "Oh is it? How interesting!" Later, as I was leaving she asked "So can I confirm that you are attending the workshop?" Her question should have surprised me but it did not. I responded without hesitation "No. I am tied up this weekend".

****************************

She said "Updation is happening". He looked at me and asked "is updation a word in the dictionary?" I felt confused because I thought it was and that I had used the word at some point of time in my life. I searched Google for the word. The top entry in the result page read as follows. 

updation

/ˈʌpˌdeɪʃ(ə)n/

noun: INDIAN

the process of updating something.

"the deletion or updation of data"

The word 'noun: Indian' seemed interesting. On searching further, it was mentioned that the word was not a part of the Oxford or Merriam-Webster dictionary but it is believed that the word is used by Indians. I felt updated.

****************************