Tahe dil se

It seemed at first as if it would never end. One week’s taxing work was no sooner done than we were preparing for the next week’s uploads – viewing clips, writing, editing, racing against time. It was made a little more difficult by the very nature of the subjects – heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching. There were topics that almost defeated some of us. Old Age, Ep 11, was one for me; writing about old people abandoned by their children was almost more than I could take. Listening to the Ep1 song, O Ri Chiraiya, and the Ep 4 song, Naav, are among the things that still make me tear up. 

It’s been an emotionally wracking project.

People have been talking about channel ratings and eyeballs and TRPs and seasons, but through all the din I can’t help feeling that Satyamev Jayate is not just another TV show. It is like no other show that has been done. In its essence it is not another programme that ends with the finale – Satyamev Jayate has lit a spark in the hearts and minds of a considerable number of its viewers. These viewers are ready for change – from elsewhere or within themselves. They want to change and bring about change, they have written in asking how they can go about it. 

This momentum should not be squandered. Satyamev Jayate by itself cannot do everything. In its way, it has raised a halla bol, it has given things a push, it has shaken people up. It can’t do very much more. The task has to be taken up by the army now – the army of people all over India who have watched and wept and laughed and hoped again for their country. 

My fear is that we will, like Everybody, hope that Somebody will do something. Anybody can do it, but if Nobody does it, then it will have been a scream in outer space – which no one hears. There has already been a good deal of change happening; the government has responded and organizations have taken up causes with renewed vigour, and overall there is a feeling that if we come together, we can do it.

But my fear is that as individuals we will be unable to change. Our systems, our institutions and our collective functioning may well undergo a transformation, and for that I am sure we will be grateful. My fear is that while outside the home we will become proud Indians, we will raise our arms in the Satyamev Jayate salute; when we step into our front doors we will once again go back to being our venal, indifferent, cruel individual selves. That will be the greatest tragedy.

The only way India can become a better place is if we become better people.  All of us. From the PM to the peon.

Namashkaar, Aadaab, Khushaamadeed, Satyamev Jayate

How I got into working - albeit somewhat peripherally - with the mad realm of television is another story. But the point is that my days and nights have merged - not always seamlessly - and the door that I opened has led me to a whole new world of sight and sound and terminology. All related to shooting and editing. 

In short, I agreed to an urgent request to come on board and help write material for the website for Satyamev Jayate, Aamir Khan Productions' new television show.  

One fringe benefit was that I got to meet Aamir Khan. And I mean meet in the real sense of the word - at work meetings with the team, sitting for endless hours over notes and briefings and presentations and more notes, and tea, and food, and once I even got to pet one of the cats at Chez Khan.

It's only towards the end of the second meeting that I realised with a sudden jolt that I was actually sitting about four feet away from Aamir Khan and talking quite normally (ie, not swooning) with him. It was like a slight time-warp shift at that moment, but there isn't time for daydreaming on the AKP caravan. One moves on, fataafat. It's electrifying, working with Aamir, because his energy is seemingly boundless. He's calm, sharp, doesn't miss a trick, and has a marvellous sense of humour. 

What I like the most about him is that his heart is so evidently in the right place, and moreover he's chosen to do something about it with the resources at his disposal. I've heard cribs that he's just another celebrity trying to cash in on the politically correct thing of being socially aware. But it's much more than that. If it was just that, he could have lent his face to some other production house. He could have done a social awareness ad campaign. He could have contributed a soundbite to some other kind of serial (a la Ashok Kumar in Hum Log, perhaps). But Aamir has put his entire might behind Satyamev Jayate. He's much more than a show host. If viewers are watching one and a half hours of an episode, Aamir has watched tens of hours of rushes and documentation and video testimonies and reconnaissance footage, he has spoken with countless people about their experiences, he has pored over scripts and edited episodes till the wee hours, he has done takes and retakes until he is satisfied that what he wants to say is coming across the way he wants it to.

He's no celeb riding on a bandwagon. He's a guy who is doing the job he has set out for himself, and doing it as well as he can.To my mind he's not a film star or any kind of star. He's someone who has seen things that are wrong, has felt a deep desire to do something about them, and has translated that desire into action. Many of us do do what we can. Lawyers fight cases, teachers teach, activists mobilise. Journalists write. Aamir Khan's medium is film. But one film would not have done what Satyamev Jayate is doing. Aamir has taken his expertise from the big screen to the small one - from the multiplexes to the living rooms and community halls of India. He's doing what many others have done before him and will do after him too. The fact that he is a “celebrity” is, to my mind, incidental. But the advantage of being a celebrity is (apart from the hazard of being constantly a target of many kinds) that one's reach is wider and possibly more potent than most other people's. The effect of that reach is making itself evident in the number and quality of the responses in all avenues of media from people who watched the first episode of Satyamev Jayate. 

There are late nights when the long corridor is empty and silent. Doors along the length of the corridor on both sides conceal the frenetic activity that goes on behind them - sound and colour and mixing and "please let me include just two more minutes" when the editor is already wondering how to squeeze in everything that the director wants.

These are nights when sometimes a little tiredness comes and taps on our shoulders. We think longingly of a couch and of "having nothing to do". Will that day ever come, we wonder.

Then the serial is launched, the world explodes with tearful applause, and those bleary eyes, those cramped feet, those aching shoulders all become worth it because Satyamev Jayate has touched hearts. Just the way Aamir wanted it to. The way the team wanted it to.

In memoriam: Bal Mundkur - Slogans, spice and a bite of ‘song’

The personal side of Bal Mundkur – offbeat, eclectic and a tad spicy.

“Bal Mundkur has passed away.” It seemed an impossible thing to believe, but the fell hand had indeed taken him, on the morning of January 7, 2012.

It was on a winter day many years ago when I first met Bal Mundkur at his home, Surya, on the banks of the river Mandovi in Goa. He was, of course, a legend and I trembled inwardly at actually meeting him, albeit in a personal capacity.

His career as a naval officer and aviator had been followed by an illustrious innings in advertising, which he had famously given up to retire in Goa. ‘Retire’ was only figurative, because he proceeded to put his unrelenting energy into designing and building his house, and then lending his prodigious talent to projects which he felt would benefit society, including restoration of a fort and setting up of a museum. He even found his way into an offbeat little film (http://wn.com/rare_indie_goa,_ma_cherie_part_1) which is quintessentially ‘Bal’.

For the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, where he contributed an article on ‘Incredible India: The Inconvenient Truth’, he described himself “as neither an activist nor a frustrated journalist but as a dispassionate commentator”.

People in Goa looked on him with awe, and he was known as a man of exacting standards and uncompromising expectations. Even my “Hello”, I felt, would be subjected to scrutiny. But he was delighted to meet a fellow Konkani, and dwelt pleasurably on the joys of Konkani food, much of which he was not allowed to eat by then. Pickle, chutney and spicy food was out of bounds, but Uncle Bal, as I called him, managed to sneak teekha stuff onto his plate now and then. When he discovered that I can cook, he extracted from me a solemn promise to make him some standard Konkani dishes, among them potato ‘song’ – a simple dish of cubed potatoes cooked in well-sauteed onions, tamarind and a lot of chilli. I made a mental note to tone down the chilli for Uncle Bal, who of course read my mind and said, “Don’t forget, lots of chilli!”

But Uncle Bal had so much else on his plate that he never did find the time to come over for a Konkani meal. With time and circumstances, I didn’t meet him again for some years. But being in the business of media news meant, inevitably, that our paths would cross professionally. When I rang him up after a long interval, to ask for an interview on Ulka’s anniversary, he remembered the long-promised ‘song’, and once again we assured each other that I would cook and he would eat, one day.

As always, however, Uncle Bal had too much going on in his life. One never knew where he would be next – dashing between Goa and Mumbai, scooting off to Europe or South-East Asia or somewhere else – or what project he would take up. Perhaps fittingly, his last offering was the history of Indian advertising, Ad Katha, which was released at Ad Asia 2011 in New Delhi.

But those who know him, know that he would not have rested after this. That fertile brain would have been working on something else, and he would have been ringing people up with exhortations to participate, to donate, to sponsor. His zeal was unwavering and his passion, perpetual. Somewhere he might even have found time to stop for a bite of ‘song’.

We will all remember Bal Mundkur in different ways. I’ll recollect him with a dash of spice.

Originally published on MxMIndia.com.

That which you most fear

My mother was practical about many matters, and death was one of them. She may have feared it, but she taught me not to. I grew up with what I think is a healthy attitude towards death. I don't see what there is to fear about it per se. It's not something one can somehow avoid. In a way, one actually spends one's life preparing for death. Macabre thought, you say? Only to those who don't think about it, I'm sure. You can't be so divorced from reality as to imagine that death will not come to you. It's the not knowing what follows that is scary, perhaps. The possibility that nothing follows, perhaps. Loss of control is difficult to handle, and the end of life is pretty much the loss of all control, generally speaking.

I don't fear growing old, either. And if you see me hovering endlessly at the edge of the pavement when crossing the road, you will know that I won't give traffic a chance to bear down on me so there's that taken care of.

The thing that I have actually truly feared for many years is cancer. Because of two reasons - there's no way to prevent it, and there's no way to cure it. This is not to say that it's led me to live life in a state of fluttery trepidation, but yes - if you asked me what I feared, this would have been the answer. I say "would have been" because even that fear has, in a way, been and gone.

I always thought in terms of cancer happening to me. And somehow, that was the one thing that I had subconsciously braced for. If it happens to me, I thought, such-and-such is what I will do. I never thought it would strike closer than close - that it would manifest itself in the one person closest in my universe of family, my elder brother. For those with more than one sibling and a larger circle of immediate family, this may not connect. But my parents have been no more for over 11 years now, and considering I shed a spouse along the way, it's been pretty much my only sibling, and his wife and son, who have been there for me. And with him stricken, I have not a clue what to do.

I sometimes feel a little surprised at this. I usually know what to do. I'm the girl who has a flashlight in her handbag and for many years toted along a screwdriver as well, just in case. I'm the one whom people call with questions, the one someone said is "better than Google". A "situation" generally has me thinking of solution first and reaction later. But this one has been a low tackle that has brought me down. I should have an answer, a solution, a way forward to help him with. Instead, I find myself groping in dark space where I simply cannot see ahead.

How do you deal with something like this? I don't know. There is no one answer. You take one day at a time; one chemotherapy session at a time; one uneventful night's sleep at a time; one birthday, one Ganesh Chaturthi, one Rakshabandhan at a time.

It feels like I have a fist clenched tight within me, and that if I let go I may fall to pieces. That if I unclench, it will all crash down and all I will be able to say is "More weight." At times I feel that at some level I've taken all that can be taken, and nothing can touch me any more.

But then a sparrow alights on the window, and another. They're looking for a place to build their nest. I rig up a little thingumabob for them and hope they will take up residence. A pair of pigeons seems to have occupied the box I'd left for them outside a bedroom window, and the female is apparently hatching. I don't look too closely, for it alarms them. My compost bin is thriving with little creepies. Ah, putrefaction! "Treat!" say the mynahs.

The sun shines. Somewhere I hear a bulbul. Where there is life, there is hope.

Bombay: Resilient or complacent?

The laundrywallah handed me my ironed clothes the other day and said, "I don't see you around much." "Only on Sundays," I said, "that is the haalat (situation) of working people." He agreed, and remarked, "Achchha hai, kaam karne waalon ka dimaag khaali nahiin rehta. Yeh blast karne waale - khaali dimaag waale hain." ("It's good, a job keeps the mind occupied. The people behind the blast - they're idle minds.")

It has been over ten days since Bombay saw its most recent series of blasts, at Opera House and Dadar Kabutarkhana. I was in Bandra when it happened but I could so easily have been at Dadar. Friends from outside Bombay sent anxious queries by phone, email and Facebook, asking whether I and everyone I knew was all right. No one I know was hurt, but that doesn't detract from the rage and frustration one feels at being so assaulted, repeatedly.

Twenty-four hours after the blasts, Bombay was back on track. It would have been back 100% except for the heavy rain which hobbled some of the train services and hampered road traffic a bit. A day later, however, everything was as before. We went to work, we held meetings, conducted programmes, made appointments... Bombay is a city that does not stop. It can't afford to, and the people who live in it can't afford to either.

The fact is, we may not want to. I speak as one who was born in Bombay (Andheri East, to be precise) but grew up and grew into my twenties in Goa. So when I came to live and work in Bombay it was a conscious choice. The city's energy drew me; its acceptance of anyone and everyone, on one condition only - that they work their way in and up. Bombay is a city that gives you as much as you give it.

If I wanted to kick back and relax, I'd go to, say, Goa. Bombay is a city for those who move, and where you have to keep moving. Stand still and you may get trampled. It sounds cut-throat but it's reality for countless residents of the city. These are the people who "bounce back". Mainly because they don't have a choice, they can't afford to give up a day's salary or lose a day's worth of customers.

I live next to, work with, and see these people every day.

A single mother who struggles to stay on her feet but does it, with nary a wobble. Her kids adore her and her friends love her smile. Only she knows how hard it is to manage.

A boy carrying a load definitely more than his own weight, and so big that he can barely see the road ahead. But he has to deliver it somewhere, and he'll do it without falling, no matter how many privileged teenagers lost in their cellphone screens get in his way.

A young man in a railway carriage, late at night, selling small plastic items - not particularly extraordinary, except that he is toting his baby son on one arm. Did someone say "working father"?

A young woman whose husband works in the Gulf, who has bought a house of her own, and works three jobs as a domestic so that she can earn enough to contribute to the monthly instalments on the house.

An old woman who sells vegetables and earns her self-respect in the family where she lives with her son and daughter-in-law.

An old man who carries loads on a handcart though he barely has the strength to push it.

The securityman, the breadwallah, the cleaners, drivers, peons, secretaries who keep the wheels of working life going.

And us. People like us who say "Bombay is complacent" although if you stop to ask any of these people I've mentioned, not one will say they "accept" the situation. It's true that they may be inured to it. After the first shock of the initial attacks wears off, and one gets almost accustomed to being a target of terrorism, one does learn to live around these incidents. Life, after all, has to go on. But give each of them a weapon, literal or figurative, and you will have an army that can defeat the terrorists. The trouble is that no weapon is proof against the enemy within - our own elected representatives who fail their constituents, repeatedly and miserably.

It's not complacency, it's a lack of options. Give us a viable choice and I guarantee you, we will exercise it. Till then, our only option is to fight back by carrying on with life. They call it resilience. And that is what it is, until something stronger is available to us.

Compost yourself

It all began with Orange Pekoe. My brother's mom-in-law dropped in at my flat yesterday - my first "visitor", although, of course, everyone else has been wandering in and out generally. This was a proper visit. We had tea and all. I made the tea with orange pekoe that I'd bought recently. I also have the strong CTC variety but since this was a late-evening cup, I thought I'd choose a lighter brew.

It's a leaf tea and after draining, the leaves looked so nice and, well, leafy, that I didn't feel like chucking them. My thoughts went back to the compost bin I'd had in Singapore, when I lived for a short while in a house with a garden. All one needs is a bin with a hole for drainage. My kitchen use is still small-scale, so I wouldn't even need a "bin". A tin would do, I thought. And there was one, just waiting for this opportunity - a steel tin that had become corroded in a spot on its bottom. I've bunged in the tea leaves and this morning's coffee grounds, then some potato and onion peels, and kept the tin on the terrace where it gets ample sunlight. The tin's lid serves as catchment for any liquid that drains out. I need to ensure it remains damp, and that Kaushalya - my daily - doesn't throw it out! A few weeks, a bit of turning, and if the birds leave it alone it should be a nice, dark mulch. If it fails I can always bung it at the bottom of a tree or one of the plants in my sis-in-law's garden.

If it works, I'll broadcast the results!

Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!

"Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!" started with a thread on a discussion forum hosted by expatsingapore.com. The poster said he had heard these words in a Peugeot car ad, and wanted to know what they meant. A couple of other posters provided more information: a link to the advertisement, and the revelation that the misheard words were actually "Tera husn bahut mujhe bhaata hai". I love good ads, and this one caught my fancy. Not only that, the mondegreen tickled me even more, so much so that I put the words on a t-shirt that I wear now and then even till date - seven years later.



That old discussion was fun, but no one may remember it. I do, thanks to "Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!" It's a yodelly yell, a celebratory exclamation with a joyous bounce which lifts my spirits. And the "huxtable" makes me giggle. Anything which does that must be good.

Thane Return

It has been almost a month since I started working in Bombay, and two and a half months since I arrived from Singapore. Faster than the speed of light, or so it seems to me, I got a job (MUCHAS thanks to friends and ex-colleagues for the helping hands!), organised the train pass and the lunch dabba at the office, figured out the optimum train timings and the best route to the platform so as to avoid the riot-like rush on the overhead bridge, and learnt to navigate the by-now-familiar monsoon puddles too. It feels as if I've been here for ever.

Before moving back I wondered how I would take to it. Till now, I've only visited. True, I've plunged into the city with a steadfast sort of fervour every time, but always I knew I would be going back to Singapore. This time, knowing I would not go back, I wasn't sure how I would react.

The result has surprised me. Very obviously, being with family and in a loving and comfortable environment has eased the transition immensely. But I was anticipating at least some degree of adjustment. Perhaps it's because I kept an open mind, was even prepared to be disappointed - but I seem to have slipped right into the groove, heaving train rush and all. Waking up in time and getting out to catch the 9.03 or, if lucky, the 8.56. Crossing the road at just the right moment between opposing streams of traffic. Making sure I reach the office (sometimes I disappoint my sister-in-law by rushing out sans breakfast) and sign the muster before it is taken away and gets red marks in blank spaces against the names of those who didn't make it by the cut-off time. Practising (not yet perfected) the art of managing a handbag when both handbag and hands are pressed tight as tight can be in a crush of bodies and ponytails. Negotiating the old, ultra-steep stairs at the office which, I thought (seeing as the office is on the third floor), would help me lose some of my - generous word! - embonpoint. Unfortunately my colleagues bring in cake with calorific regularity and I have not been able to muster the strength to refuse them. I should just go for a walk every time it happens.

The friendliness of my colleagues and the workplace atmosphere has had a lot to do with my having "fitted in", I'm sure. Working in the Indian milieu is a pleasure I still consciously enjoy - being able to speak Hindi at will, use Indian idioms, and wear comfortable salwar-kameez without being asked why I'm dressed up (in "costume", as some would put it in Singapore). In Singapore, culture is very Westernised. In Bombay, I haven't yet worn my standard-issue grey office-girl skirt - one item which helped make me feel less different in my erstwhile home. Trousers and jeans cross the border freely, though.

A great deal of my fondness for Bombay seems to have to do with trains. In Singapore, the trains run swift and smooth. All you hear is a hum. Very occasionally, only at one or two points, one hears the "rat-tat, tat-tat" of wheels going over joints. It's a sound I love - a sound I miss so much I used to weep when I visited Bombay and travelled by train just to hear it. I still love hearing it, every day of the working week. Another of my train highs is when a fast goes past - either an outstation train going through the station, or two trains passing one another on adjoining tracks. You hear the horn first, approaching, getting louder; and almost before you know it the great creature is passing yours in a wave of rushing metal and blurred bodies in doorways. If there is no joint on the tracks, the sound is a swift zoom-whoosh; when the wheels go over the joints there is my beloved old rat-tat, tat-tat; rat-tat, tat-tat; and then it fades.

Another thing is that on visits, I used to head out by car, with the convenience of a driver so I had no parking worries and could flit around in airconditioned comfort. I can't use the car every day now because my brother needs it, and even if I could, or even if I got my own car, the work commute is just too long. Between Thane and VT, train is best. That's another difference between visiting and living - the fact that the grime and grit is a daily experience and not a temporary touristy reverse-snobbish indulgence. The daily commute has its downs - nonstop pouring rain during the thick of the monsoon, delayed trains, bus breakdowns, occasionally even verbal abuse from male commuters when they can get away with it. I may well change my mind eventually but all this has not yet begun to bother me. Somehow, the goal seems more important than the means.

It's all still new enough that I savour the taste - and the convenience - of breakfast from the corner sandwich-walla near the office, and all but restrain myself from falling with mewls of joy onto the tea that arrives regularly at my desk, a far cry from insipid tea-bag brew in the office pantry. Working in Bombay is very different in several other ways from working in Singapore too, but that, I'm sure, goes for every place. I think with fondness of the dizzying variety of food and drink that Singapore offered, but I don't hanker after it. When I go back (as a visitor, this time) I'm sure I'll fall on all that too, with joy and delight and unseemly wantonness.

Singapore is a land of conveniences, all right, but why don't I miss them? Perhaps it is because I've attuned myself to being "Indian". Singapore - I spent nigh on ten years there - seems like a film I watched and enjoyed. Now I'm out of the cinema hall, dodging the puddles and autorickshaws, and steering clear of the BEST buses. I have not forgotten that you never, ever argue with a BEST bus.

The last time I did all this was when I worked at Lower Parel and stayed as a paying guest or PG ("lodger" to my British friends) at Bandra, and then at Mahim. But that was in the second half of the '90s - 12 years ago. Not only was the commute short, I also worked the odd hours of the newspaper world - starting in the afternoon or evening and ending in the wee hours - so I didn't brave the rush hour. Now, my knees feel far older than the rest of me does, and the rest of me just doesn't feel like doing the night shift any more. Still, I seem to have borne up pretty well so far, fingers crossed.

I had hoped to find a personal source of support by this time, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm hopeful of meeting someone when the time is right, however, and in any event confident enough that even if I don't, it won't be the end of the world.

Often it seems - still - that I've stepped out into space and am navigating new territory with every step. At times I feel - still - that it is dark out there, that the flashlight illuminates only enough for me to take the next few steps. I put my foot forward firmly, however, and as for support - why, my fabulous family is there!

Blink decisions

"What the heart knows today, the head will understand tomorrow." I came across this early in my teens and have remembered it often over the years. It's a one-line case for following one's instinct, which - as research has borne out - is the sum and culmination of our learning, experience, memory and survival skills.

The instinctive reaction is often dubbed "first impression" and sometimes ignored on that basis, but it shouldn't be. Last night I read a book that makes the same case - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Outliers a couple of months ago, when Blink was being read by someone else in the family. Quite simply it says what we know but don't often follow up on - that our instinct is usually right. We need to learn to recognise and listen to it, however, and know how to make it work to our best advantage. Marketing "professionals" - unfortunately - may never see the case for Blink, because there are usually no pie charts and statistics to bear it out. Still, it works.

I've had a Blink moment in the very recent past, when I learnt that my brother in Bombay was seriously ill. I was thousands of miles away in Singapore, and of course hotfooted it to Bombay. At the same time I decided, pretty much in the blink of an eye, that I would move back and live in Bombay near my brother and his family. I didn't stop to evaluate this decision - I just proceeded more or less headlong to put it into action. There was no question about it in my mind. If I had stopped to "think" about it, there would probably have emerged a compelling case for me not to relocate, but my Blink "reasoning" - as it were - puts up an equally compelling argument for relocation.

So here I am, I've stepped out into space and can only see about as far as the beam of my non-Union-Carbide-powered flashlight can reach. Still, somehow, it all finds me unafraid. I think I've done the right thing, Blink-wise.