Travel checklist!

There are some who live a jet set lifestyle, hopping from continent to continent. Their job needs them to be up and about, sleeping at Los Angeles and waking up at London!

Some of us are different. We stay rooted to one place, so much so, going from Chennai to Bengaluru is like going to the moon! Preparation for the trip starts with an elaborate checklist. The modern generation trivializes the entire process with absurd ideas- “Checklists are already available on the Internet.  Why do you need a fresh one?” The suggestion irritates you. You question, “Does your blessed Internet know that I have to carry my “pancha-paatram” for daily Sandhya Vandanam? Then?”

Preparing a checklist is like practicing mindfulness. You visualize each moment right from the time you wake up till you go to sleep. If you gloss over any step, you could be stranded without your reading glasses or worse, without dentures! It should cover every contingency- from a cloudburst at Bengaluru to a stomach-upset. Oversimplifications like “You can buy it in Bengaluru” are struck down with an iron hand.

Ideally, you want to strike off the checklist after placing the item in the suitcase. It is now that you hit a traveler’s block. If you pack the toothbrush right away, what will you do tomorrow morning? After all, the travel is still one week away! Evidently, your hands are tied till the day of the travel.

Meanwhile, your wife looks at the checklist and is alarmed. She strikes out items deemed unnecessary like jacket, thermal innerwear, and monkey cap. “We are not going to Alaska!” she argues. You hit back, “Do you know how freezing the train air conditioner is? And Bengaluru is not like your Chennai. It is frightfully cold!” She warns, “If you wear a monkey cap at Chennai station, the dogs on the platform will be after you!”

The checklist soon gets out of hand. There are scratched out items and overwritten items and items that can only be packed later. Some items are undecipherable because they were written in a Eureka moment of enlightenment, with an unsteady hand. A smaller checklist is prepared for the critical items alone- ticket, cellphone, and wallet. Another checklist is to match each item with its location in the suitcase. And yet another checklist referencing what each checklist broadly contains.

Totally exhausted, you sink back in your easy-chair and switch on the fan. You watch the checklist papers swirl in the air and scatter across the room. Suddenly, they appear completely irrelevant. You resolve to travel light and pack the most important checklist item- an uncluttered and uncomplicated mind. Everything else can be left behind!

Mannequin Mania!

We are bitten by the shopping bug. Malls are packed with tireless shoppers through the day. It is the clothes store that draws the maximum crowd. The attraction is instant! It happens the moment you see the mannequins. The wooden dolls draped in elegant saris and trendy menswear drag you to the store, as though an irresistible magnet.

Mannequins come in different flavors- some stand in attention, while others are animated. These days, mannequins have hinged limbs that can be propped in different postures. Lady mannequins sit down, their legs crossed and the hand stylishly resting on the chin! Male mannequins stand tall and upright, with their broad shoulders and chiseled features.

Modern art has entered the mannequin space too. The trend is to see mannequins with no facial features whatsoever. It is as though the craftsman suddenly ran out of patience when he came to the face. The head is a full egg, with no eyes or nose or hair. The mannequin stands like a Martian, wearing designer clothes in earthen colors!

Another modern twist to mannequins is to slice them at the waist leaving only the legs standing! Multitude of such legs decorate the shop entrance- all in tight-fitting jeans and colorful leggings. At times, these leggy mannequins hang from the ceiling! It looks as though they tried to escape by drilling through the ceiling, and were caught midway through the act! Perhaps, on the upper floor, the heads of these mannequins will jut out from the ground- an image straight out of a horror film!

The fascination for mannequins takes extreme forms. Captivated by the mannequin’s outfit, you tell the salesman you want to purchase that mannequin dress. The salesman pulls out similar outfits by the dozen, but you reject them summarily. Seeing you fixated on that dress, the salesman is forced to take the extreme step. He tells his attendant to take the mannequin inside, disrobe it and get that dress for you. The mannequin’s outfit is in your hands. But now, the mannequin is back in place, wearing a different dress. Seeing that, the mind is again in a tizzy. “Do you have that color? It looks better than this one!” you shuffle your feet. This time, the salesman’s reaction is curt!

Back home, you wear the mannequin outfit and scan yourself in the mirror. The mannequin looked so charming in the same dress, but the reflection is unflattering!

Thankfully, the brooding subsides, and good sense prevails. For all its dainty features, a mannequin can look good, but do no more. It stands cold and emotionless, with no feeling or empathy. End of the day, a mannequin is what it is- an attractive, wooden, doll!

 

The dog ate my homework!

We hear the expression “The dog ate my home-work”. It was the proverbial, lame excuse that students used, to outwit teachers. Teachers had a tough time to sieve out the legitimate excuses from the outlandish ones!

“Ma’am, I completed my homework, but forgot the book at home! Mother promise!” saying so, the student pinched his neck. The teacher retorted, “So forgetful, is it? Do you forget to brush your teeth also?” You had half a mind to respond, “Yes, I forget that too!” But then, such an indiscrete answer would provoke the teacher. Silence was a better option. You put on the most sad-puppy face to bail you out from the brewing crisis.

Back then, the absence of the cellphone gave complete anonymity to the student. The parent was  inaccessible. Information was exchanged between parents and teachers through hand-written notes in the school-diary. For most parts, students wrote the notes, filling those big parental shoes at that tender age! Sridhar was absent for a couple of days. When he came back, his diary said- “Sainus”. The teacher caught him by the ear, so sure that he had fudged the excuse and his mother’s signature. Sridhar had a glib answer for his sinus ailment, which caught even the teacher off-guard, “Ma’am, my mother does not know English! She studied in Tamil medium!”

Playing truant from school was common. The diary was filled with reasons like “cousin sister’s wedding”, “went to native”, “high fever” or “bad cough”. When you got the diary signed, you coughed a few times, to lend an element of authenticity. Students invented innovative excuses- “helped grandaunt who fractured leg”. Some went one step further- “granduncle gone”.

The occasional parent-teacher meetings led to prickly situations. The teacher expressed genuine sympathy, “I am very sorry to hear about Dinesh’s granduncle.” Dinesh’s mother was confused, “But he does not have a granduncle!” Sridhar quickly saved the blushes- “Teacher, that was not Dinesh, it was Rajesh’s granduncle!”

One lost count about the number of relatives who had broken legs or who had passed beyond the pale of human existence! The following year, students resurrected the same relatives for another round of falls and broken bones.

Class tests and excuses went hand in hand. Just when the test was about to begin, Dinesh complained of stomach-ache, the most unverifiable ailment! Dinesh put on such a theatrical act that the teacher was forced to excuse him.

Dinesh limped away to the sickroom, holding his belly. He passed by the class-window. The coast was clear.  He glanced at his buddies. His face lit up with the most mischievous half-smile before he doubled the decibel level of his pain! What a sly fox!

Footwear Escapades!

There are situations where there is no choice but to leave your footwear outside. It could be a religious event or a group gathering. You come back and cannot spot your slippers. The mind is in a haze- you try to recall your footwear and where you left them. In a frenzy, you shuffle all the footwear in the pile. Some look similar, but they are not yours. Anger fumes from within- who could be so unscrupulous as to steal your footwear of all things! Or perhaps, so careless not to recognize their own slippers!

The next course of action is unclear. Should you file an FIR? Or should you make a dash with a different pair? What if the rightful owner comes running and holds you by the scruff of the neck? As you ruminate over the possibilities, all the people leave the premises. It is now totally empty, but one forlorn pair of slippers is still standing! The feet have an uneasy feel as you trudge away with that pair! At times, the shock is worse. The last pair belongs to different slippers and sometimes, both slippers are for the same foot! The mind goes blank trying to piece together this puzzle.

Slippers are slippery fellows- with a mischievous soul pervading the sole! They wait for the opportune moment. You are pleased with life and walk with a larger-than-life swagger. Suddenly, the foot is arrested. The Hawaii-chappal buckle has slipped off from the base! Hobbling on one foot, you manage to set it right by threading the buckle back into the hole. From now on, you are on the backfoot. Every 100 steps, the problem resurfaces. It is like a tooth that has developed a cavity. The shooting pain is just round the corner!

Shoes are funny fellows. They are pebble collectors! The collection stays unnoticed on the sides and heel, till it swells, and you start feeling them! Upturn the shoe one day, and an entire family spills out. It rains shells and stones, nails and coins, an entire treasure that you never knew!

Formal shoes play a particular prank. The sole gets partially detached at the tip. As the foot is raised, it opens its mouth, and snaps shut, when you place the foot on the ground. Call it Murphy’s Law, but faced with this predicament, not one cobbler or shoe-shop is in sight. How far can you walk thus, scraping and flapping your way?

Just when you lose all hope, something snaps from within. In a moment of brazen recklessness, you abandon both the footwear forthwith. The crutches are thrown away. You step out and hit the turf with bare feet. The freedom is total!

 

The vanishing skill of handwriting!

Back then, we dealt in sweeping generalizations! If someone had a bad handwriting, we were sure he would be a doctor! The doctor’s proverbial scribble while prescribing medication was well known. And if someone could decipher that handwriting, he would be a pharmacist! It was a miracle that the pharmacist handed out the correct medicine, for the prescription was totally illegible!

Teachers pulled you up if the handwriting was bad. “Your handwriting is like your head-writing!” they scolded, as if destiny’s reading was easier than this gibberish! The first-ranker in class invariably had a beautiful handwriting. His proficiency was a nuisance since he showed the rest of us in bad light! Any time, you brought home the first-ranker’s notebook, comparisons were inevitable. “Look at his handwriting! They are like pearls!”

Handwriting was a skill you worked on from the beginning. Initially, you went through the drill to write one letter at a time, and then, moved to “running-hand”. These days, the nomenclature has changed. “Running-hand” is replaced with the Americanized term called “cursive-writing”. A “running-hand” gave you speed- a critical need for the old-style exams. Invariably, there were outliers, who never took to running-hand. They continued to write in “print letters” all through life, and still managed to clear exams. “Lefties” had a different writing style. Their elbow was bent and came around the paper, and the wrist was cocked, as they chiseled away with their pens! Some stuck their tongue out or babbled away involuntarily, as their writing hand kept pace with the mouth! Writers came in all flavors at school.

It is ironical that a skill so fundamental as this, is on the brink of extinction. Some of us have not written for ages. Signing a bank-cheque makes us nervous. The hands tremble as the pen is brought to paper. It requires several trials on scrap paper before the cheque is signed! A week later, the cheque is back with us, with a blunt note that the signature does not match! The helplessness is acute, as if we need to go to kindergarten all over again.

The question is- does handwriting have a place in tomorrow’s world? It is amply clear that the future is typing- whether it is on the cellphone or the laptop. That said, wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to replace the writing drills in school with typing exercises?

Going forward, no one is going to sign a bank-cheque. “Bio-metric” security and its ilk will take care of that. It took us decades to go from thumbprint to a reasonable percentage of writing-literacy. And now, with bio-metric, we are back to thumbprint all over again! Life has come a full circle!