My postman

"Don't worry! Your result will come tomorrow. Pukka! (definite)" reassured the postman surveying the disappointment writ on our innocent faces. Every year, during the first week of May, we stalked the postman as he did his rounds.. once in the morning and again in the afternoon. We waited with bated breath for the 'self addressed envelopes' containing our High School final results. The postman ceased to be just a messenger and suddenly assumed greater importance than anyone else in life- as if he handcrafted the results personally for each of us!  "My result is coming tomorrow. The postman said so!" we would run and announce at home!
The next day was just as futile. No results.
"All the boys in Jain Society have already got their results. Kumar Majithia got it last week itself. Why are you not giving it to us?" It hurt the postman when we accused him thus squarely. On those days, he simply passed the buck and sent us on a wild goose chase.  "Check with Godambe (pronounced goad (like goat)-aambay) at the Sion Central Post Office. He knows everything!"
The next few afternoons were busy. We hung around at the Sion Central Post Office, a behemoth of a complex with multiple floors, several cobwebbed, dusty rooms and teeming with posts and postmen. No one knew why we were there in the first place, sometimes asking for "our results" and at other times asking for "Godambe". Our presence irritated the officials and we ran the risk of being thrown out. No one had heard of any Godambe. We weren't even clear whether he was a postman or a postmaster. Someone had the temerity to chuckle that "ambes" (mangoes) were "god" (sweet in Marathi) this time of the year... especially Alphonso mangoes but sorry, there was no one by that name! The humour was lost on us; on the contrary, we found it laboured and dry.

When the envelope finally reached our trembling hands, the postman hung around in the side-lines. If someone let out a euphoric cry, "I passed! Yes! I actually passed!" the postman would be visibly pleased. "I told you that you will pass! Why were you so worried all these days?" He collected his "baksheesh", whistled a little tune and went about his job with cheer. He made it a point to come back to that house the next day to collect his box of sweets.
Chotu was not so lucky. Despite the postman's assurance that he will pass, Chotu failed and had to repeat a year in the same class. More importantly, our postman had to slink away that day and couldn't collect his "baksheesh".  You never shoot the messenger, but Chotu's mom gave the postman a earful for being a harbinger of bad-news and went to the extent of saying that she didn't want to see his "manhoos chehra" (ill-boding face) anymore!
The postman was more dejected with life than even Chotu. He needed counselling and had to be egged on with the philosophy that we can only do our bounden duty. The fruit is not in our hands. Sometimes, we get "baksheesh", sometimes "bakwas" and brickbats!
But we knew our postman and knew him well. He was dressed in khakhi and carried a bag overflowing with inland-letters, postcards, greeting cards, registered posts, money-orders and occasionally even magazines. Communication was open and transparent in those days. If the postman got bored, he simply flipped the back of a picture-postcard- read the intimate lines from a certain Mr X in London to a Miss Y in Mumbai and amused himself!

A recent article says that sparrows are on the brink of extinction due to the radiation from the cell-phone towers. We have no idea why cell-phones target sparrows in particular. While the veracity of this theory is yet to be confirmed, we are sure that cell-phones and email have driven the postmen to extinction. The days of handwritten letters delivered through postmen are passe.

If at all we remember postmen, it is only during the forbidding "antakshari" (film music) sessions in parties. "Da se?" (from the letter D?) asks a youngster. He immediately breaks into a thought provoking song of yesteryears -"Daakiya-daak laaya, daakiya-daak laaaya, daakiya daak laaya...." (the postman (daakiya) brings mail (daak), the postman brings mail...). He goes on and on, with little melody or variation and with no end in sight! Can someone stop this chap? Does this song even have a second line? Can the daakiya bring a duck for a change? Daakiya duck laaya, daakiya duck laaya! Daakiya duck laaya! We are sitting ducks all right.

The magic of Manohar's dramas

Manohar's dramas will never be replicated. His plays were adaptations from the classics- the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas and some from History. What set him apart was the unprecedented scale and the grandeur- the ability to package intricate plots with stunning visual effects on stage.
Manohar was the original anti-hero where he was always a Ravana, a Duryodhana or a Kamsa. He portrayed these characters convincingly and presented the familiar story as seen from the eyes of these dark characters. Good and bad got blurred in shades of grey and invariably, the anti-hero won our hearts and emerged taller than the heros we are traditionally used to. His plays generated debate and controversy; but never crossed the boundary to injure our sensibilities in any way.
As per hearsay, Manohar catapulted to fame with his portrayal of  Ravana in the play "Lankeshwaran" in the late fifties-sixties. It upset the traditional minded and the matter was placed before the sage "paramacharya". Paramacharya had no objection to this new outlook and indicated that such adaptations had been done in the past. With the controversy quelled, Manohar's rise was meteoric.

Indian Standard Time allows us the license to show up for a party an hour late and still find that we are the first for the event! Manohar though, was a stickler for punctuality. If the drama was to begin at 7:00 pm at Shanmukhananda Hall, Mumbai, the curtains rose exactly on time. It was common knowledge and the hall overflowed with people and extra seats on the aisles were taken well before the stipulated time.

The costumes were elaborate -dazzling golden crowns, falling locks of hair, glittering necklaces, angavastra twirled stylishly over the forearm, pleated trousers (pancha-style) laced with gold and foot-wear to match a king. If Ravana held a bow, it was ornate and regal, far removed from the apologetic hunter's bow that some mythological characters have to hold onto.. on TV shows these days!
The light effects enhanced the magic. All dark... with just an arc of light on the protagonist- now red, now green, now a sombre yellow...the anti-hero's sollioquys, in a low baritone found powerful expression in this atmosphere. We empathized with his highs, his lows, his pain, his angst and the machinations of destiny which had perpetuated the crisis that he found himself in....

The scene settings were a class act. One moment...a village scene with a temple tower in the distance, a flowing brook, a few trees and bushes thrown in.. and naive pastoral people in the foreground; lights-off for 20 sec and we were right in the middle of a durbar hall with pillars, thrones, chandeliers, kings, ministers, courtiers and all associated the regal trappings.
And then, there were the "trick scenes" - where the arrows flew across the stage, uprooted Jayadratha's head and dropped it on his father's lap...where the streaks of lightning lit up night skies amidst torrential rain, where Shukracharya turned into a beetle and plugged the spout of Mahabali's kamandalu (a vessel), where waves lapped the shores of Lanka while Ravana watched the vanaras from the ramparts of his fort.... They were crafted with breathtaking artistry and executed with a magician's finesse right in front of our eyes!

Duryodhana, bruised and battered, writhed in pain and questioned an ever-smiling Krishna whether Bheema's below-the-belt attack was justified. As the curtains came down, it was normal to feel a lump in the throat. A traditional "aarti"(mangalam) ended the performance where Duryodhana rose up once more and posed with folded hands with all the artistes of the troupe neatly arrayed on stage. We looked forward to the aarti and felt glad that everything was actually fine with the anti-hero and he was in fact great friends with Krishna!
Manohar's dramas were truly "manohara"....mind-blowing!


P.S. Manohar, a trail-blazer in his own right, was often compared to "nawab" T.S Rajamanickam Pillai.... As per word of mouth, "nawab" was the original master of the mythological drama genre. He was well before our times.


Manohar's prominent dramas: Ilangeswaran, maaveeran kamsan, duryodhanan, chanakya-sapatham--- as chanakya, with dark skin and grotesque appearance, shukracharya- with a bruised eye, shiva-thandavam, tirumalai-nayakan, kumbhakarnan, indrajit, narakasuran, soorapadman, poet ottakutan and kadaka mutharayan in which he has a quaint make-up... sporting a turban and a little beard.
Manohar's protege was "Heron" Ramaswamy who later had his own drama troupe and regaled us with his set of plays- Alexander, valmiki, shanishwaran, yamadharman, kaliyugam pirandhadhu, poiyyamozhi and mahakavi bharatiyaar.


Sometimes, Manohar appeared in "civilian clothes" on TV or spoke at a function. We hated it and wouldn't believe that this most ordinary looking stranger in shirt and pant was the one who twitched his eyebrows, reeled out dialogues punctuated with a sinister laugh, and who strode the stage like a veritable colossus. The images just wouldn't match and we preferred to switch the TV off!
The plays had a little intermission. Charu and I would use the opportunity to dig into some pop-corn at the Shanmukhananda Hall canteen and would top it off with "beeda"-  traditional paan with coconut filings also thrown in. We lugged a binocular as well and fought with each other to get a better view of the characters on stage!
In a way, Manohar's plays spoilt us. It rendered us incapable of watching "social dramas" which boasted of minimal props, common-place story line and everyday attire as costumes. Who wants to watch "theatre" which looks just like conversation at home!? Sadly, today, "social drama" is all that is left of "theatre":( We feel sorry for this generation.... They have truly missed something spectacular!

Feed the cold, starve the fever

Common-cold has never been uncommon. It existed in the times of Tenali Rama. We know that he had the audacity to ask Goddess Kali on what her predicament would be, should she catch a cold. With two hands servicing her 100 runny noses, it would have been quite a spectacle. It amused the Goddess and she bestowed Tenali Rama the sobriquet of vikata-kavi. More importantly, the Goddess was aware of common-cold and its inconvenience to see the inherent though irreverent humour.
Animals don't seem to break into a paroxysm of coughing or a bout of relentless sneezing. It is here that a human being feels singularly victimized. He can take succor from the fact that his condition is not so desperate as the Gods as Tenali Rama rightly pointed out. Lord Dattatreya with three faces, Brahma with four, Shiva with five, Kartikeya with six faces and the Virat purusha with thousand heads (sahasra-sheersha purusha!) surely have a far greater problem than us.

There is a spring in your steps; you sing like a lark (- to borrow Wodehouse's phrase) and feel on top of the world with a rainbow across your shoulders. The Gods conspire and the reverie is short-lived. Common-cold strikes you like a kick in the solar plexus and renders you completely incapacitated. The throat initially feels funny and scratchy; next a slight irritation which soon develops into an acute pain. The nose is clogged, the cheeks are puffed, the eyes smart, the ears are blocked, the voice is hoarse, the tongue feels tasteless, the head throbs, even the teeth fillings hurt! Shivers, fever and body-ache take over and in just one day, you are reduced to a pale shadow of your usual self - curled up like a foetus in bed! Even the mighty have nose of clay, leave alone their feet.

Managing a cold is not easy. If you take medicine, it will take seven days to recover. If you don't, it will take a week! There are more home remedies than even the varieties of virus causing the ailment! "Be sure to steam" is a popular theory these days to tackle a cold.
We always fight an element with its opposite- fire with water, the mouse with the cat and the serpent with the mongoose. It is here that steaming runs into rough waters. Common-cold is referred as "jala-dosham"- (don't confuse it with a special type of dosa!) It is an ailment caused due to water or a dosha which results in water- a watery nose at least. Steaming relies on vaporized water to fight water. That's where I have a problem. "Like cures like" in some controlled cases all right- like removing a thorn with a thorn, in homeopathy and as a principle in allopathic vaccination. I am unsure whether this can be liberally extended to common-cold management or whether it would simply aggravate the crisis.

"Feed the cold, starve the fever" is another adage which leads to confusing interpretation. One system of philosophy interprets this maha-vakya as follows: The moment you feel the nose sniffles and get your handkerchief out, be sure to call for a banquet and indulge in a gluttonous, eating binge! If you are lucky, the cold will vanish. However, if the cold develops into a fever, from the 100 mile-per-hour eating over-drive, the foodie has to instantly screech to a halt and now starve himself!
A second group uses this proverb as a Biblical call for social service- clothe the poor, help the needy, feed the cold- those who are starving and shivering in the cold, feed them! Blessed are these benefactors- they will keep fever away!
The third system of philosophy has yet another viewpoint- if you have a cold, eat well to starve- i.e. to keep the fever out. To put it plainly, the cold will not snowball into a fever if you eat well. We still don't have answers for cases where we have a fever but no cold, or both cold and fever!
We wish these proverbs could be simpler and direct so that they could actually be useful- just let us know whether it is ok to eat in simple English!

"High temperature can be reduced with a bath"- is another advice freely available especially in the US. We are tempted to ask whether the water should be hot or cold. Either way, it seems dangerous. When you are running a fever of 102, the body feels like a furnace anyway. It seems preposterous to add more heat to it with warm water. As far as cold water is concerned, the very thought is forbidding and sends shivers even when we are perfectly fine! This conundrum is yet to be cracked and informed readers can enlighten us.

Apples, oranges, amla, honey, tulsi, salt-water, green-tea- they all make tall claims to cure the common cold. Till then, we can use our hands to wipe the mucus off our nose and generously smear it on the street-lamp pole or the elevator button to ensnare the next unwary victim! The virus always has the last laugh!

P.S: I was on my way back from the railway station last week.  As I crossed the road, a brute of a human being spat from a speeding bus and the contents landed right on my shirt. The revulsion was so acute, the reaction so extreme, that I removed my shirt in full public view and threw it away (a la Saurav Ganguly at Lords). Thankfully, I still had my vest on when I boarded the Volvo. I shivered in the cold of the Volvo AC all the way back home and also endured the stares from  fellow passengers. And sure enough, I was down with a common cold.
The only saving grace is that he did not spit on my trousers! You never know- my reaction could have been most uncommon!

P.S: On the subject of Gods with multiple heads, we just don't have an example of an Indian God with two heads. Janus is the only Roman God with two heads-looking to the past and the future. But "Janus faced" is a derogatory term for a deceitful person.
The closest that we can get to a two faced Lord is Ardhanaareeshwara- Shiva and Parvati sharing half a face each and a more recent example: Aadi-anta-prabhu- Ganpati and Hanuman sharing half a face each.
Even Gods want to be multi-faceted, but not two-faced!

Date with a different doctor!

Dr Raghavan was a good doctor and a character. Whatever the ailment, we knew we were in safe hands. He had loads of experience judging by the way he wore his silvery hair long on his head and the generous folds of skin under his eyes!

His "dispensary" was different from "clinics" as we know them today. When we enter a clinic today, we are unsure whether the doctor is in or not. The waiting area is completely barricaded from the room where the doctor takes his prime spot. Hence, we need to accost the attendant and enquire whether the doctor has turned up at all. Invariably, he is absent. Our clinic  doctor always has duties elsewhere. Either he teaches in a medical college and is late to his clinic or he is "doing the rounds" at the hospital wards and hence can't make it on time.

Not so with Dr Raghavan. He stayed close to his dispensary and walked to work every day and walked back at the end of an honest day. At times, we met him on the way and as we kept pace with him, let him know that we also had a stomach upset!

The dispensary was all of one room. As we entered, there was a table at the other end. Dr Raghavan sat behind the table and behind his stethoscope and peered through his glasses that he occasionally wore. If we saw him, he was "in"-never a doubt. He greeted each patient with a flourish, made a couple of polite enquiries and asked him to take a seat. The patient immediately felt at ease and would find it difficult to recollect why he was there in the first place!

There were four wooden chairs on one side and another four on the other all leading to the Dr's table. There was no room for anything more. After all, it was Mumbai and space at a premium.
To the right, there was a wooden barricade with just enough space to squeeze a bed. If Dr Raghavan felt that he must have the patient lie down and have his tummy pressed or have his tongue out, he called him in. Otherwise, he just went from chair to chair and addressed each patient's problem within everyone's earshot! So much for privacy. 
As we sat in the wooden chair, we faced other candidates, scrutinized their features and familiarized ourselves with their problems as well. The problems were the same-"fever" or "sinus" or "cough" and occasionally "bronchitis"- nothing more sinister. Some of them had oiled hair or copiously oiled bald pates so that when they left, they left behind their oily signature on the wall as well! These patterns created a dark halo behind each candidate which made their already pained faces seem even darker! Dr Raghavan never considered repainting the walls or providing a head-rest. Those cosmetics would have to wait a couple of decades.

He prescribed  "mixture" (pronounced "mix-chur") for most people- a panacea (sarva-roga-nivaarini) for every disease. He scrawled something illegible on a piece of paper and we just had to hand it over to the "compounder".
Mr compounder- Velu was a thin, clean, soft-spoken gentleman who sat in a pigeon hole surrounded by bottles and beakers. We never knew how he looked in full. Our access to him was through a tiny hole, just enough to pass the paper and retrieve the medicine! With an artist's precision, he picked up pink, white, light-green tablets, separated them with a scalpel to have the correct number, pounded them, mixed them with some secret potion and poured the concoction into a bottle that every patient had to carry. We felt Mr Compounder was arithmetically challenged and thought "twelve" was the biggest number. He always said "twelve" which meant that we had to pay twelve rupees as Doctor's fees and medicine cost!
A couple of doses of "mix-chur" and we were on our feet regardless of whether we had a stomach ache or a headache!

Dr Raghavan could switch languages with the finesse of a radio anchor in the talk shows of today. To some, he spoke in Tamil, to others in Gujarati. At times, he would exclaim mockingly- "shatti-batti paaije? Bar bar! Aankin kaai?" (you want a certificate? Good! Good! What else?) in Marathi when someone said that he needed a medical "certificate" (shatti-batti!) for playing truant from office or school!
A man of taste- he had a ear for classical music. He played carnatic music over his music system at home, like rock music- so loudly  that we could hear it  from the adjoining building. Maybe, he danced to it as well- we don't know.
He had a sense of humour-it tickled him when he played Semmangudi's music blaring over the speaker when Semmangudi himself camped in our building (whenever he visited Mumbai). As per hearsay, Semmangudi wanted the "brahma-raakshasan" [1]
 toned down so that he could relax and not have to listen to himself! Dr Raghavan had made his point and am sure would have let loose one of his uproarious, inimitable, convulsive guffaws!


[1]  "brahma-raakshas" is a technical term. It refers to a special brand of "rakshasas" or ghosts who make a lot of noise and eat up the hapless victim! One becomes a brahma rakshasa in the next birth if we study a subject and acquire the knowledge but refuse to share it with others! So better share your half-baked knowledge!
The doyen of carnatic music, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer had a colourful vocabulary which matched his music!

P.S: "Dispensaries" in those days were sometimes called "aaspatri" by Tamil folk. Doctors always worked at aaspatris. Obviously a corruption of "hospital". However can you convert "Hospital" to "aaspatri" unless of course the person comes from Tadipatri! (place in Andhra Pradesh on the Mumbai-Chennai route)?
In the North, a doctor worked at an "aspataal"... a shade closer to the original, but still twisted. 
The French pronounce it as "Au-pi-taal". Any more possibilities please!?

We learnt L'Hospital's rule in Calculus. Any takers for Aaspatri's rule!?

For a gender free language!

English is a particularly simple language. The only language simpler and more powerful is possibly C or maybe Java! Little  wonder that English has found acceptance across the globe. The creators of the language resorted to a masterstroke- freeing the language from the fetters of gender "mania" or is it "womania"? The neuter gender- "It" envelopes the entire inanimate world in one, uniform, neutral sweep.

Constructs in English are easy- "the blue table" or the "blue mountain". A sentence as innocuous as this can be a major stumbling block in several "gender" oriented languages- French and Hindi to name a couple. Is it "neeli mez" or is it "neela mez" in Hindi?  Both seem equally fine to me. Anatomically, a table has no feminine features. Neither is the sound of the word "mez" particularly revealing. A newbie trying to make inroads into Hindi is genuinely flummoxed. The adept in Hindi claims that the gender is to be sensed only though usage. It seems a chicken and egg problem- I need to know the gender to have a certain fluency over the language and it needs a mastery of the language to know the gender!

Gender oriented languages surely have a broader, catholic ("samam") outlook. They refuse to accept only human beings as the sommum bonum of creation and bracket the entire world of plants, animals and inanimate objects disdainfully under a measly pronoun- "it"! For them, Shiva and Shakti or the Yin and the Yang pervade the entire cosmos and every inanimate object is "alive"- with the "Shiva" element and masculine or with the Shakti principle and hence feminine. While philosophy has lofty, egalitarian ideas, conversation is common-place and needs simpler constructs. That's where these languages pose a problem for the novice. Is it "Chai peeni hai" or is it "Chai peena hai"? There's many a slip between my tea-cup and the lip....slips which provoke laughter for others and a scalded tongue for the language challenged!

A more complicated problem in these languages is the necessity to adopt newer English words and assign a gender to them. While a "Cricket bat" has the Hindi equivalent "balla", "wicket" is used as "wicket" in Hindi commentary too. We are particularly "stumped" and batting on a rather "sticky wicket" to make a choice between the phrases- "accha wicket hai" or "acchi wicket hai"!
Another example- Is it "Keyboard par type karni hai" or is it "keyboard par type karna hai"? We are tempted to answer that it all depends on who is typing, but unfortunately the verb has to follow the object and not the subject!

"She set sail on April 10, 1912". We are not talking about someone's great-grandmom, but actually about the ship Titanic. The 1939 headlines on the Second World War read- "Russia defends herself". These are instances of gender-based quaint usage in English, but thankfully, a very rare exception.
Tamil may be a challenging language for those from the devanagari belt. The sounds are foreign, the words complicated and some letters- truly a tongue twister. Surprisingly, Tamil throws its weight with languages like English when it comes to usage of gender. Every inanimate object can be safely referred as "adhu" (it) instead of "avan" (he) or "aval" (she).
Every rule has an exception, except this rule! The sage of Arunachala, Ramana Maharishi was a spiritual master who lived in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu in the last century. His ashram teemed with people from different parts of undivided India. He was also very popular with birds and animals, some of whom regularly bonded with the Master. We have elaborate accounts of his life and times compiled in several books.
We learn that "Bhagwan" treated everyone alike- even the lame monkey "Nondi", the cow "Lakshmi" and the dog "Jackie". He never used the neuter gender "adhu" (it) for these creatures but addressed them just like human children- always as "avan" or "aval". To this day, we see a shrine for these animals at the ashram.

Mumbai is a great melting pot. The Bihari is equally at home as is the Madrasi. Certain elements in the city may have a problem in being so hospitable, but Mumbai herself has no issues and welcomes all with her open arms. Mumbaiyya Hindi has made some unique adjustments to "shuddh" Hindi and solved the gender problem so that it is the language of currency for all- natives and migrants alike. "Train aayelai" (the train has arrived), "bus gayelai" (the bus has left)-- the tapori screams and in one stroke simplifies and elevates the language. Why bother about "bus aaya hai" or "bus aayi hai"? He follows Buddha's middle path and uses a gender-free suffix for every noun! Any takers for Mumbaiyya Hindi as the national language? You have my vote!