The Pihu Diary: Fit and Five!

When I look back at the day Pihu was born, I can only remember the element of surprise at her arrival before time. She took us by storm and made a dramatic entry, one we had planned but were not exactly prepared for. Since then until now, she has only managed to pile on the surprises. From holding a banter at 1.5 years of age in her mumbo-jumbo baby tongue, to grooving like a self-styled diva at her favourite dance numbers at 3. It is beautiful how a most regular conversation with her already appears so mature and thought-provoking. When people talk about enjoying parenthood, I guess this is what they really talk about- the journey from a pint-sized milk guzzler to a prim and proper five-year-old who wants to be elegant and at the same time, be super-active, how fascinating it has been! Makes you almost overlook the cumbersome responsibilities that come with being a mother to a pre-schooler. How to keep a pro-active kid engaged, how to tell her she’s too talkative and you have to get back to work, how to feed her healthy meals without a fuss, how to restrict her screen-time, how to get her dressed in a jiffy knowing the more time she takes finding what she wants to wear means less time for your bath…these are the daily struggles we all have to come to terms with and then some more.

Pihu recently made the transition from India to Australia with us. Everyone back in India wonders how she coped with it but to be honest, she has hardly been a concern in that sense. It has almost seemed like she was waiting for this and here is where she belongs. She has never missed her home, our relations or her own small bunch of friends and trusted teachers back in India, ever since moving here. Like recently she asked me, “Mamma, do you think my friends in India miss me?” I replied, “Of course they do, love. Do you?” To which she paused for a moment and responded, “Well, sometimes.” And that was it. Is it that her wonder at all things Australian has taken over her memories of 4 years? People even wonder at the Aussie accent that has crept in to her English these days but I feel that’s her natural way of adapting to her circumstances and immediate school environment.

The fact that at 5, she is amazingly independent and balanced is indeed a relief. It gives me the confidence of venturing out for work knowing that the strong bond I have established with her by staying at home these last three years have been worth it. She is now most comfortable with me but allows room for me to go to work without her feeling like being abandoned. I know most working women have to leave their kids at as early as 3 to 6 months to get back into work mode so Pihu has been lucky that way. It also means I have been lucky enough to be able to become indispensable to her and make her understand that I am a reliable, loving and omniscient presence in her life- who she loves being with. When she now acknowledges my presence in her life saying, “You’re the best mamma ever,” at least I know I have done something right to deserve that compliment.

At merely 5, Pihu is a sprightly child with a zest for life that reflects in the easy way she has adjusted to her new school, friends of different races and communities and a school curriculum that’s completely different (read ‘no studies’) from the one she has left behind. Pihu’s father recently narrated an incident that happened while we were watching a touching film about a college professor called Alice who suffers from Alzheimer’s in her 50s. “Why is everyone sad around her?” Pihu asked him pointing at a scene where the children are gathered around her as she tells them what ails her. “Because she is growing old and weak, and she wants to tell her children that.” He added, “One day I will get as old as her and then I may not be able to take care of you anymore.” To his surprise, Pihu got all teary-eyed and replied, “I will take care of you Papa.” So dear Pihu, those are brave words from a 5-year-old, but do rest assured, that we will never smother you with such expectations. Hopefully, we will be able to equip ourselves as much as possible so as to never overwhelm you with our responsibility because that is not what we are bringing you up for. But do keep surprising us with your antics, your amusing banter and your thoughtful gestures because it makes our lives that much fuller. Happy 5 my love!

The Auscillating Indian: The Adventures of a Blessed Book-Lover

As an avid reader who wishes she could curl up with a book for the whole day and call it a career, books are the third ‘b’ in my dictionary, after bed and breakfast. I was drawn to books as a four year old (a legacy I have passed down to my kid) and fortunately, that habit has only grown with time. Books changed my life. They drew me in in a way no person has and has made me the person I am. Even before I understood the word ‘passion’, I was snatching and stealing moments away from my classroom as an eight grader to sneak in to the hall downstairs which housed a single, rickety, wooden cupboard with books of all kinds. It was my school’s definition of a library (mine was a humble missionary school after all) and yet, the treasures in it had me drooling for hours. Suffice it to say that by the time I had passed out, there was not a single popular title I hadn’t read. My idea of a brilliant birthday gift was a box full of books and a library subscription. My first whiff of a library was the one in my college at St.Xavier’s and what an Alibaba’s cave it was! Often photographed and shot in as a spectacular heritage library in numerous films, ads and songs, the St.Xavier’s library is grand, ornate with its Gothic façade and construction, (it’s all stone and wood), and has that whiff of old, worn books fingered and handled by lakhs of students, year after year. From a library dedicated to purely reference books for study and course-related research, it also has a smaller area dealing entirely in the realm of fiction literature and this was usually where I was caught in my break time, borrowing, browsing, reading or just getting lost in the melee of literary magic around me, as I walked through every aisle. 

It propelled me to take up a course in English Literature which further urged me to take up two more memberships- at the British Council and American Library in South Mumbai. Excuse me though, I was no nerd and soon the glamourous world of the media gave me little mindspace or time to even browse through bookstands, forget actually read. It didn’t stop me however, from building my own book case in my room stacked with gifts, hand-me-downs from childhood and purchased books to make up my own personal collection of literary gems- you will find everything here from a Linda Goodman’s Love Signs to Evelyn Waugh, JRR Tolkein and chick lit. It means I can wake up to the glorious sight of books whenever I am in Mumbai and that is enough to make my day. I know I am a bit crazy, one of the highlights of my life has been going for the Jaipur Literary Festival when I was three months pregnant just so I could tick it off my bucket list.

It was only after a colleague mentioned that there were online libraries these days where for a minimal subscription, I could order online and read books at my own pace, that I discovered how technology had indeed made being a bibliophile easier! So librarywala.com in Mumbai and friendsofbooks.com and libraryathome.com when in Delhi have ensured I always had a surplus quota of books to feed my reader’s lust. When I was moving to Canberra then, apart from letting go of a lot many other things, and one that I delayed till the end was ending my library subscription in Delhi. My constant worry among other things foreign, when settling in another land was how was I going to fill the need for books in my life here? Thankfully, my generous brother-in-law’s Bayside library card and my loving sister’s assurances of everything being taken care of got me through the welcoming doors of the fully automated, and friendly interiors of Rockdale Library in Sydney. With a humongous floor dedicated to literary fiction, and a kids’ area where they can lose themselves in a bookish wonderland of sorts, I could not have asked for more. So of course my whole family is now enrolled as members of the library, memberships to Government libraries being free in Australia with the added bonus of picking up your monthly supply of films, music, audio books, non-fiction, newspapers, journals, magazines and even internet time. Kids even get regular invites to storytelling time in multiple languages which I believe is the best way to initiate them in to reading and developing an awareness about different languages in the world.

The natural next step was to find my way to an ACT library after coming to Canberra and my need was answered in the form of the Woden Heritage Library. Now all I have to do is hop in to a bus and get there in 10 minutes, to leave my kid free to browse the kiddie section while I do my own book-hopping.

One should be thankful for all the pleasant surprises God springs our way and to my utter delight, a resident in my suburb has meticulously used the bark of a tree stump to put up his own home-grown library with titles that I have not come across. I recently picked up Kate Forsyth’s The Wild Girl, unable to resist temptation a few days after seeing the book lined up. It was a wonderful read based on the real foundations of the Grimm’s fairytales. It imagines how they all came to be, woven together by the Grimm brothers- Jakob and Wilhem against the backdrop of the Napoleanic war-ravaged German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel and a moving love story between Wilhem and Dortchen Wild, his neighbour who contributes the best of these fairytales through recitation. For trivia lovers, The Wild Girl was named The Most Memorable Love Story by Australian readers in 2013. Now that I have read the book, I can understand why.

I cannot thank the gentleman or lady who has put up this mini-public library for opening up a new possibility of reading for avaricious readers like me who are always hungry for more. Back in Delhi, I read about how volunteers were placing books at visible corners at metro stations where people can read, return and exchange books whenever they can. Gestures like this bind a community of like-minded readers to make the world a better place, one book at a time.  Another reason to be thankful these days is the cosy Community Library Nook with a book share system at the shopping centre in my neighbourhood. Now what more could I ask for?

And now our watch has ended…so let us all kindly move on!

(The following post contains spoilers. Please don't read ahead unless you have watched the last season of GOT)

At last count and at the time of writing this blog post, over a million people have said to have signed a petition to remake Season 8 of the world’s most popular TV series- Game of Thrones #GOT. Apart from the sheer audacity of people to demand such a thing of a fictional product and the ridiculous hope that someone at HBO is listening, I am miffed at how people have so much time on their hands and so little on their minds to be affected this way! So today’s post is to try and help these people to understand why the show has given us plenty of reasons to be joyful, grateful and hopeful. Joyful because we were hooked to our screens lapping up this entertainment for a decade now and no one forced us to watch it. We did because we enjoyed watching it- period. I don’t know about you but I have been over 30 years on planet Earth and I am grateful I saw something of this scale and prowess in my lifetime. Such shows don’t get made everyday and now I am hopeful that someone in this lifetime treats me to something of this stature again.

I was a late bloomer as far as the GOT fandom is concerned. It was only after three to four seasons had gone by that I finally started catching up by binge-watching the show in fifth gear mode. I was hooked with Episode 1, and successive seasons got me craving for more drama, more treachery, more evil and more vengeance. We can go on about the moral degeneration of our times and how we are lapping up content that does not shy away from violence, sex and even misogyny but the truth is, 18 million people across the world have been hooked on to this show like no other show in our generation. To limit the reasons for viewership to just these is to denigrate the efforts and creativity of its makers and its literary source, courtesy George R R Martin.

Yes, the show went beyond the books. Yes, the producers twisted the plot to suit their themes and independently wove around its endings as they thought fit. And yes, the show did look rushed especially this last season. Now consider the millions of dollars spent in production of this show. The man hours each person connected to the show, from technician to actor spent on making it is unbelievable. The making of just ‘The Long Night’ in this season took 55 long nights. For ‘The Bells’, an entire set was erected to look like King’s Landing and then burnt to the ground because obviously the makers couldn’t go back to Dubrovnik and burn up the city to show the destruction Daenerys inflicts on Cersei. Real people risked their lives to make the burning look as real as possible. The magnitude of the show is unheard of, let alone bringing it to life. I thought I had watched the most spectacular battle scene ever when I saw the Battle of Helm’s Deep in the cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings. So why are we behaving like a bunch of ingrates with the way this season has turned out?  

Dany’s character arc: Sorry to break everyone’s bubble but Daenerys’ whole premise to justify her right to the throne was convoluted, right from the start. Her sudden bloodthirst for the throne is passed on from her brother Viserys when he dies failing to claim it for himself. If she wants to break the wheel which proclaims that every direct relation of the king must not automatically have a right to the throne, how is she tracing her own lineage to the Mad King as the reason why she should be sitting on it? How can she justify manipulating her husband Khal Drogo to fight for the throne when he is completely happy raiding villages with his khalasar? How can she conveniently refute the fact that she walks over many dead bodies, burning and killing at will only so that she can get to the throne? How can someone liberate slaves and yet harness their lives to the single-minded and selfish purpose of wanting something for oneself? How can she conveniently shrug off the fact that her nephew is the rightful heir to the throne while he is still alive and kicking? So much for her faith and loyalty to House Targaryen. There was always an unreasonable, warped, childlike ‘Id’ complex Daenerys suffers from. It just got heightened as she came close to reaching her goal so all those people who missed all those telltale signs, stop whining and accept you just bought in to her ‘Mother of Dragons’, ‘Breaker of Chains’ act.

The feminist angle: The show went through an early phase where it did objectify and use women to serve the purposes of men. Then moved to raising them up on a pedestal as characters like Catelyn Stark, Sansa, Arya, Brienne, Cersei, Yara, Lady Olenna, Ellaria Sand and Daenerys started emerging as women growing from strength to strength, becoming important decision makers and equal plot turners. I think since then it has steadily upheld its feminist banner by having female protagonists and antagonists share maximum screen time, to a point where all the principal male characters look like support staff- right from Jon Snow, to Tyrion Lannister, Varys and Jaime. What better than having Sansa Stark rule Winterfell as an independent kingdom, Arya Stark turning explorer and go beyond Westeros to discover errr….America may be and Lady Brienne taking on the mantle of the Kingsguard, from a so-far male bastion?

The rushed deaths: Anyone who thinks prime characters were being tossed out of the show like nine pins hasn’t seen episode one or has clearly forgotten it. It ends with Ned Stark losing his head! This show’s storyline is anchored by the numerous deaths and how those events influence a succession of plotting, planning, scheming and sorcery.

Life comes full circle: The whole story based on the books, traces the tragic seperation of the Stark children as a family, how they all find hope in their toughest times. The TV series goes a step beyond and takes on from there to depict their phoenix-like rise from the ashes and how they all become invincible in their own way to reclaim what is theirs. The final culmination of who sits on the two most important thrones (and even beyond the Wall)- Winterfell and King’s Landing is a resounding victory for all the Starks. Jon Snow who became Lord Commander after Jeor Mormont retains his position in the end and is a severe and yet complete sort of justice, bringing him back to where it all began so he can come to terms with his fate. The Starks are who the story started with, they were always vital to the plot and were the best candidates for the posts we see them assigned to. Our sympathies, our hopes and our determination to see them safe and victorious has been rewarded through the show’s ending, so what are we really complaining about?

At the end of this long investment of our time and patience, we as viewers need to feel relieved that we can now go back and challenge ourselves to find better ways of spending our time. I think a show like this has tried to do the impossible already by animating these characters that haven’t even reached conclusion in the original books on which they are based. To try and please every one of its 18 million fans is a tall order and was never meant to be achievable. I choose to remain on the side of those who salute the show for all it has accomplished in the span of ten years. Take a bow, D B Weiss and David Benioff and all the people behind the show. You deserve credit. Take the criticism with a pinch of salt. It shows you have touched people in a way they can’t even come to terms with!

The Auscillating Indian: Caught up between two countries

Pic courtesy: Matt Evans (Visit Canberra)

Now that I have started this post, let’s get the negativity out once and for all. I never wished to migrate- leaving my motherland for a foreign shore was not part of my wildest dreams and I have had a few wild ones, trust me. I never wanted to move out of Mumbai either. I did that too of course, never to move back. So yes, life hasn’t really worked around the way I saw it, a decade ago. I was in fact, quite the self-appointed ambassador of staying rooted, sharing a sense of belonging with one’s city. I love Mumbai- the pulsating vibe of the city still rocks my boat. Every time I visit now, it embraces me like I had never gone, like an old relation who saw you fly the nest but can’t really get enough of you everytime you visit. So I remember sitting by the seaside with a good friend who wanted to move to Delhi back in the days when I was still in ‘Me Mumbaikar’ mode. I was forthright in my cause of trying to steer her away from the plan, emphasising the fact that the city would never accept her sense of freedom and space. Everyone who knew me could bet I would never move a limb to the blasted capital, with its extreme weather, the profusion of North Indian culture, the widely prevalent class divide, the issue of women’s safety, the so-called conservative outlook of the middle class and so on. There was enough to actually dislike the city. And then I moved there myself, surprising anyone who remotely knew me. And now I seem to have shocked more people in coming to terms with my migrating to Australia.

I have always been very nationalistic. Not the trigger-happy variety who think we should just kill every person who does not like my country, swearing my patriotism at every Indian flag I see or even the ones who believe they have done their bit by standing up for the anthem every time it plays in a movie theatre. I like to associate myself with the country which is tolerant amidst all its multicultural hues. I devour all kinds of Indian music, performing arts and cinema. I am similarly obsessed with reading good Indian authors writing in English. And with time, I came to accept even Delhi as my home simply because there was enough of Indianness around me to keep me grounded, secure and satiated. The opportunity for moving abroad was always open right since I was student. Then why let go of the seemingly comfortable life one has, and move bag and baggage, kid in tow to a place where I had no assurance of ever feeling that sense of belonging again? At an age when couples are usually falling in to the gentle rhythms of the daily grind- read marriage, children, permanent jobs etc. I was busy booking tickets to an island country, nearly 8000 kilometres and time zones away from India.

On the contrary, age has a lot to do with the decision of moving out. Unknowingly, I have been mentally listing down the things I see myself wanting for the future, and it wasn’t long before I found a place that ticked all the boxes. Especially after the birth of my child, it became essential to plan out her upbringing to give her the best she can get. Whenever I caught her coughing on the choking Delhi pollution on her way back from school, I asked myself, is this how she will struggle through her childhood? When I saw parents bar their children from playing unsupervised in the neighbourhood park, I wondered if this is the claustrophobic way I want her to be raised- always having to look out for her lest she become prey to crime against women in a country that is gaining a disturbing reputation for it. When I saw the reason why young parents were heaving their way through jobs in the private sector so that they could send their children to good English medium schools, I wondered if earning a fat pay cheque only to pay through your nose for that private school fee, tuition and day care was finally worth it- all for the price of not being able to be there for the actual upbringing of those kids they were spending a fortune on. Even after motherhood, women in competitive jobs are expected to be superhumans, clocking overtime and then rushing home to get supper in order, day after day. It is the ultimate balancing act I shuddered to undertake and am in awe of every woman who is managing to keep it all together. And after everything, I was confronted by my own need to want to have it all- a decent income that is enough to keep my financially independent status, time to nurture my child’s journey in to school, college and finally adulthood and even then, have time to relax, rejuvenate and rejoice in what I love to do for myself. Read a book, hell, may be even write one. Paint. Take a walk in the park (without wondering if a mosquito will bite me and bring me down with malaria!) Swim. Did modern urban life in India give me space and time to accomplish all this? Was I ready to give up good money, a great support system (relatives, grandparents and household help) and materialistic comforts, to seek more from life?

My husband and I over the past few years, have been discussing how we spend the better years of our life raising a family and nursing a job full of drudgery, only to end up with BP and a thousand other health ailments in the latter part of life, when you really actually get down time to call your own. We would fondly joke about taking off to the hills as soon as our daughter was old enough to take care of herself. So I wondered, what if we could combine the beauty of living amidst untamed and unspoilt nature with the best modern utilities of everyday life? For someone for whom God is in the details, I was up scouting for cities that met that match. And that’s how we found Canberra- a city that gave us ammunition enough to bid farewell to my first love- India.

With its bountiful natural beauty, quiet and private urban lifestyle, safe and secure domesticity, four striking seasons, wide roads and twenty minute commute around the city’s length and breadth and the best education prospects Australia could offer, this was the best place to move to as a young nuclear family. Add to that the surplus offers of working casual hours and still being able to earn a decent buck, no angst of fighting a rat race and work discipline of rising early, closing early and we had the means to earning our freedom post 6 pm.

The promise of good nutrition via healthy food products, parks and play areas at every corner, state-of-the-art housing within one’s budget and an education in a public school that empowers my child without costing a dime- plenty of reasons why my daughter has taken to the city like fish to the water. Speaking of water, we recently went out for a drive and within ten minutes, hit a happily gurgling river and camping site with kangaroos hopping about, curious to check us out, albeit from a distance. With its abundance of crystal clear lakes, endless expanses of green landscape and spectacular twilights over the valley, I know I am now breathing easy. Will this be my last stop as a migratory bird? Time and tide have taught me to believe, I can be proved wrong when it comes to life decisions. At least, I don’t hope to wallow in the predicatability that mid-life crisis will bring with it. Until the next twist of fate, I am taking in the lush red, yellow and orange hues of this pleasant autumn day, while bringing this post to a close against a backdrop of a swaying eucalyptus tree outside my kitchen window.

The Pihu Diary: How your kid mirrors your childhood

Pihu is a feisty four year old now and she seems to have a mind of her own when it comes to what she wants, how she feels and her self-proclaimed aversions. While I do believe a child inherits the good and bad from both parents, the proportion in which she will exhibit these traits will depend on her and are too often, not beyond her control. What I love about my experience of being a mother is chronicling those personal habits or quirks that I used to follow that are naturally passed on to Pihu as well. So I know she likes to keep her toes out when she is asleep with a blanket in bed, loves pouring herself in to creative pursuits like artwork when at home and pouring  over the pages of a book (even if it is beyond her comprehension like a dictionary). 

Inventiveness at this age is essential and needs to be encouraged. This is something that education experts today believe is not being cultivated enough thanks to our natural tendency to steer our kids towards digital devices which make them mechanical, unsocial and silent receptors of content fed to them from a preset, preconceived and standard module of learning and leisure. Where is the scope for the games that we used to think up as we grew up- role-playing, active engagement in interaction with peers and the most important, being a sport? Most kids these days are hardly competitive. They like playing solo games. They give up too easily when they fail at a task or at a game of football because well, no one told them they had to try harder. I love it when Pihu beats us at a game of Dragster but at the same time, we teach her to lose gracefully as well if we win. And if she still makes a face, we know we have to try harder to teach her vital life lessons which will come in handy later in life.

It doesn’t help that we have a very sentimental kid at hand. Someone who realises quickly that she has done wrong and then is hurt if we point it out. The dam of tears bursts when we reprimand her for it which means we automatically become the mean parents and she the helpless victim of our wrath. Does that mean we stop admonishing her over mistakes or overlook them? As much as we would not like to feel guilty when we scold her, it is important to do so and the sooner she realises it the better. At 4, she may be a kid but she knows that doing something wrong is shameful. Snatching a toy, pushing another kid or just being rude to anyone is not acceptable and never will be. 

Another trait she has inherited from both her parents is her propensity to keep busy with something always- whether it's her homework, her toys, my library books or kitchen utensils. She loves being helpful and caring. Cleaning up a kitchen, dusting around the house, combing out my hair, applying moisturiser on her dad’s hands because they are too dry, sharing food with everyone – we are surprised by her compassion and equally amused by her fury which she unleashes on someone who rubs her the wrong way. Having a daughter who is an emotional landmine can be difficult and endearing at the same time, something she doesn’t get from me and something we are coming to grips with. All I can tell you is that when I see her sway to music that I loved as a teenager, dig in to a sweet I savoured as a kid or refuse milk that has a layer of cream on its surface, I know where it is coming from. It is wonderful to relive your childhood through your child organically. At the same time, curbing those traits that show signs of indolence, disobedience, disrespect and indulgence is a task we can’t neglect. So it’s really a fine balance we are trying to strike here. If she becomes the best of what she can be, while tapping on the good she has inherited from us, it will be our biggest achievement. Meanwhile, if I see the bad traits gaining significance, I am reminded of how I dealt with it while growing up or the reason why it was kept in check by my parents. So remember, if she is stressing over something needlessly, she might be mirroring your own anxieties that you faced in your childhood. If she is poles apart from your own personality, don’t fret or feel you can’t relate to her. She is just her own person with an individual persona you need to complement. Easier said than done I know, but you are parent-child, not Siamese twins right? And even twins aren’t replicas of each other’s personality so why complain?!

Even as I end this post, Pihu is getting ready for a trip to the fish market, a task she enjoys as much as she relishes her fish and rice at mealtime. Much like her Mom!

The Indian Railways: A Lifeline that became a Landmine

When the first railway track was laid down in India in 1853 between Mumbai and Thane, it spelt an occasion for celebration. Suddenly, the country was experiencing a momentous industrial high. The Times of India reported this historical event hailing the dawn of a new age in British-governed India as quoted here: “Nothing could’ve been more magnificent than the train of 20 enormous carriages with their three stupendous engines, all spick and span new, with the most perfect forms engineering could suggest, and the most beautiful tints taste could impart, occupying a line from first to last on close to four hundred feet.”

Indians were now invited to be part of the newfound luxury of covering long distances comfortably, seamlessly and elegantly, nursing a ‘cuppa’ while they rode to their destination, without getting their feet muddy, their belongings misplaced or their addresses mixed up. If there are notable inclusions of progress that the British regime ushered into a country reduced to serving as a colony under its persuasive, dominant and monopolistic rule, one of them had to be this. To quote a British official who commented on the occasion of the Indian railway’s inauguration, “This was not the triumph of nation over nation, of race over race, of man over his fellow man. It was the triumph of mind, of matter, of patience and perseverance.”

A lot has happened since then, to put it mildly. The British ouster from its colonial stronghold in the Indian sub-continent, the partition of India, the assassination of Gandhi, the composition of the Constitution of Free India, the UN charter, the introduction of birth contraceptives, boybands, Indipop, item songs, India’s tryst with the global economy, the internet, Game Of Thrones….and so on.

The world is now a writhing seven-legged creature stuck in a claustrophobic oyster. Even the length and breadth of the seven continents cannot keep in check the burgeoning population that it breeds. With China to transfer the title of ‘World’s most populated country’ to its closest competitor India (as soon as 2022 if the experts are to be believed), there definitely seems to be a tidal wave ahead that India must finally grapple and come to terms with. Overpopulation! A word that has clearly crippled the progress that India deserves and has always been striving towards. Our country is a land of contradictions and for every scheming despot, corrupt politician, bigot, religious zealot and serial criminal, there is an equally laudable scientist, literary figure, astute leader, honest farmer, meritorious intelligentsia, accomplished artist or nation-loving martyr worth raising a salute to.  The antics and blunders of the miscreants however often mar and besmirch the laurels of the achievers.  So for every step that this country has taken in the direction of development, it has also dragged in disaster due to the lackadaisical, irresponsible and insouciant nature of the aam aadmi.

The aam aadmi or the common man wants progress but is quick to misuse and misinterpret it. The common man wants a free public toilet but is too pre-occupied to clean up his mess, he wants protests against discrimination but is too proud to personally fraternise with ‘the others’, he wants financial aid but is too short-sighted to realise that a wedding can be a small-budget affair. So yes, coming back to the railways and how they became the modern motif of civilization on the move, steam may have been replaced by diesel and electricity when it comes to fuelling the wheels of locomotion in the current century but even the rail tracks have become the new utilitarian means to innovative ends.

If you have ever lived in Mumbai, the birthplace of this locomotive landmark, railway tracks are often the hotbed of activity of all kinds. People have discovered new ways of making them multi-purpose in their functional existence. Just so that the government doesn’t feel that using so much of the country’s arterial landscape to simply laying tracks for trains is not worth its coffers’ expenditure, they are used for every other mundane purpose as well- performing daily ablutions, jaywalking as a time-effective way to bridge the gap between platforms and as a recent tragedy would indicate, as extended grounds for spectators to spread out in to behold a visual and aural display of festivities.

After all, why must this absolutely wonderful manifestation of human genius be relegated to being a mere pathway for the urban transport system that it was originally meant for?

Illegal encroachment and the Indian psyche of ‘chalta hai’ means that we are unstoppable when it comes to not abiding by a standard code of safety. How else do you explain having to fine people who sit on top of trains to commute to work daily, or those who hang out of doors and windows, precariously holding onto a fellow-passenger’s shirt, jumping out of moving trains or the lakhs of people who continue to cross the rail tracks everyday ‘to get to the other side’ and save some precious minutes of their lives, day after day? You cannot refute the undeniable truth of the matter which is that the common man has a certain nonchalance when it comes to protecting his own self from imminent danger even when it is staring him right in the face. What is this devil-may-care attitude that makes us stand in front of a wild animal every day and then one day blame the carnivore for making a prey out of the so-called ‘innocent’ victim?

In a city in North India that is still reeling in the aftermath of a recent rail tragedy that hit it, Dussehra celebrations are held every year with hundreds of spectators congregating at the designated spot to revel in its glory. To have them spill over onto the rail tracks is an annual occurrence and not a one-off, as clarified by local residents themselves. The incident has snowballed into a political blame game with each participating player trying to identify one scapegoat to nail on the wall- the train driver, the local police, the railway administration or the ruling state government. One can’t help but wonder if an accusing finger is being wagged at the trains for running on schedule on a track meant for it. My question is, why must the common man be policed to abide by rules for his own safety- why must we be told to wear helmets, not drink and drive, not take speed near a school, not play a loudspeaker near a silent zone, not park our cars in the middle of the road, not throw a banana peel on the footpath, not run in to a moving train….and who is to be blamed for the loss of lives when such accidents occur day after day?

I wouldn’t want to stand on a railway track to witness a public display of fireworks, even if someone paid me to do it. It doesn’t take a wise person to make that decision. Unfortunately, common sense is a sense uncommon to the common man in India. As we continue to try and find the cat who must be billed for a crime, self-perpetuated by the common man himself, the railways that were originally meant to be a lifeline to boost the country’s economy, is being turned in to a demonic landmine that will spew debris on everyone involved, in its wake.

Driving a point two feet deep

I generally think we don’t give our feet the respect they deserve most of the time. Yes, we go shopping for shoes all the time, pride ourselves on those 22 pairs of footwear we may use to drape them up, make sure we make pedicure appointments and are happily dolling them up in a thousand shades of nail paint (if you are the fairer sex mostly) but really is that all? I mean what about all those times when we end up using not-so-flattering adjectives to refer to feet- smelly, dirty and unholy? Remember all those times when your Mom told you off when you touched your books accidentally with your foot? Or how it is generally considered disrespectful to sit with your feet up on a chair? Poor feet, like they don’t deserve to chill! To cut a long story short, this ill-treatment and the constant pressure of being inferior is the bane of our feet’s measly lives. One can almost associate it with a waging class war among the different body parts where the brain commands supremacy for enjoying the topmost position in the physiological hierarchy of the human anatomy followed by the heart, stomach, the pelvis and then finally, way down below those lowly, neglected and down-trodden feet. One can actually explain the ancient caste system that our country has been practising for a thousand years by depicting it through our various body parts and why not? The Brahmins have always looked upon themselves to serve as the society’s intellect and conscience, primary functions of the brain. The Kshatriyas are the chest- denoting valour and a heart swelling with pride. The Vaishnavas can be the hand, dealing in the trade of goods and services or exchange of hands. The Shudras are the feet, often allowed in public only when covered and hidden, and relegated to unjust terms such as ‘dirty’ and ‘unholy’. 

All these metaphorical explorations aside, I myself realised the true worth of my feet only when they became dysfunctional through a couple of minor accidents. So if you have ever had a foot fractured you would know what I am talking about. I had the misfortune to crack not one, not two but three toes in between the biggest and smallest toes in my left foot not so long ago. Not only did this translate into an excruciating pain in the foot every time I even dared to land its sole on any surface but it also meant wrapping it up in bright blue plaster that would render it immobile and pretty much out of action for a month. Of course, accidents aren’t deliberately acted upon and I would have never intentionally hurt the poor foot but the fact that it was now in abject misery stupefied me. It had never really struck me that I would be dependent on a crutch or someone to hold me up to attend to nature’s call. How I had taken it for granted that I can walk thanks to my foot! The accident enabled me to get some perspective two feet deep. 

I was forced to acknowledge the worth of the two most underestimated parts of my body- the reason why we are able to stay rooted to our earthly existence and why we don’t simply topple off. Together, they suddenly struck me as the sheer foundation which enables us to balance and speed up our pace of life as per our preference. Finally, it dawned on me that if not for our feet, we would be stationary, stagnant, stilted, stunted, unable to mobilise our energies and our thoughts through our actions or movement, unable to walk the talk. Suddenly, a deep sense of gratitude flowed through me for this precious gift we are born with and it struck me how we are so indifferent to those who are differently abled- moving through life without these gifts and yet, doing as well as our so-called normal selves if not better. 

Once my feet were back in action healed from the fracture, I felt like a baby reborn. I caressed my recently healed foot, imagining the newly grown tissues, the throbbing nerves, the delicate veins that fueled it and the gentle bones that traced their own intricate architecture within this external encasing. There it was, my foot reborn. I could stand again, dance again, exercise again and even jump for joy like my three-year-old kid. I knew I was blessed, privileged and lucky to be whole again. Never again would I doubt the significance of my foot, neglect its utility and function or take it for granted. 

So while riding in the metro one day, I happened to look down at my feet, and remember feeling so happy that I could stand like this. This was the kind of revelation the fractured foot had made to me, how lightly I had thought I could take life, standing on the balls of my feet when actually that mere act meant the flexing of bones, muscles and nerves so that I could assume such a stance. I looked at the pearly white nails and reminded myself that it was time to coat some paint over them to make them look better and more beautiful. Suddenly, though the train lurched and I was pushed back to the world around me, only to experience a rush of pain concentrated on the big toe of my right foot. I looked down, unable to detect any visible injury but the pain worsened with every passing minute. I looked up to see the poker face of a teenage girl, guiltless and without remorse. She looked like she couldn’t care less that she had just nearly mangled the toe of a perfectly healthy person just a few seconds ago. I looked down at my foot again and it throbbed with self-pity this time, pained further at the sheer insouciance of the perpetrator of the injury. I wondered how people had become so rude in this generation of teens, not caring to even apologise for an accident it caused, even though unintentionally. All the way back home, the night of the accident and the one after that, pain coursed through the toe, disabling my body from concentrating on sleep or work. I applied balm on it, creamed its surface with an anti-injury ointment and wondered if I had experienced a second fracture- this time on the right foot? Was this a sign from God that I was to be punished for some vile disservice I had done to my limbs waist down? 

All I knew is the terrible pain gave way to the gradual uprooting of the injured toenail. Who knew some unruly teenager’s stamping on my foot would lead to this mishap? So now recently jolted into looking at my right foot in a new light, I am seeing it through the uneven, misshapen, unsure growth of a new-formed nail. As I  marvel at the regenerative strength of the human body, I still travel by metro, I still savour the fact that I have two functional feet albeit one with a weird-looking toenail, and I celebrate my right to free locomotion all the time. After all, life is all about enriching one’s perspective of survival, one foot at a time.