Automated options navigator!

If there is a barometer to measure frustration-levels, highest on the list will be the “automated options navigator” on the phone. All you want to do is to call your bank or the airlines with a particular query. The moment you hear "Our menu options have changed. Please listen carefully!", rest assured, you will spend the entire day on a wild goose chase. We have no idea who has had success navigating through this. If ever there is a modern day maze, this is one. At least, in a physical maze, you can scream for help, and alert some good Samaritan to pull you out. Here, there is none, you can scream your heart out.

The first problem with the navigator is that there are just too many options. You need a notepad just to jot down all the options before selecting one. As far as selection goes, it is like being in an exam with multiple choice questions, where all answers seem equally correct. You select an option to the best of your knowledge and hope for the best. Each option leads you to further options to be selected. That's when it dawns upon you that this is going nowhere. It is like a trick played in olden days, where someone would have scribbled on the margins of a library book- “Go to page 20”. When you go page 20, it will say- “Go to page 43”. At the end of this frantic turning of pages, you will get to a big, bold message “You idiot! Don’t you have anything better to do?” The navigator on the phone is a modern day version of this old trick.

Another version of this navigator trick is to raise your hope quotient. You will be greeted with the message – “You are now calling user 21”. At least, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. You bide your time. You move from 21 to 20 to 9 to 8...till it says...”you are calling user 1”. It is like playing the final over of a T-20 match. It does not get more exciting than this, the prospect to finally speak to someone and ask your blessed question. Just when your turn arrives, you hear a ring and at that opportune moment, nothing more happens! It is a complete blank or worse, the call gets disconnected. Sometimes, having waited on tenterhooks for over an hour, you hear “Our hours of office are from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. Goodbye!” You jerk the phone a few times, but it will not help one bit. You shout and vent your frustration, but no one is listening. You have to start all over again. It is like playing Snake and Ladders where the snake has swallowed you from spot 97 and dumped you back to spot 3. Better luck the next time!

The navigator always has a voice that is cheery and enthusiastic. This is also part of the trick. Your mood is so terribly sullen as you go through this grind. At least, the voice can be a little sympathetic and soothing, to apply some balm to your jangled nerves. Instead, each time you start over, the tone of the voice never changes- like sprinkling salt on a festering wound. The navigator designer surely has an evil streak. We would be better off if he left us with silence as we struggle with these options. Instead, we are greeted with instrumental music- trumpet and drums. As each stanza ends and the trumpet fades away, we feel we will get to a human being. The stanza ends; the next one takes over. Even a 3 hour classical concert may end, but not this one. It plays till eternity, or yes, till you lose patience and disconnect the call.

I accidentally stumbled upon an exit strategy. Just do not select any option when the first set of options come up. Be bold and stay silent. It will repeat the options once, twice, thrice. If you have the courage to persist and stay still, it will say “transferring you to the operator”. That is exactly what you want! I have had great success with this technique. But of late, I find some devious mind has plugged this hole too. These days, it says “Sorry. You have not selected any option. Goodbye!”

Human beings are social beings. We need another human being to hear us. Another human being to say “I understand”. That is enough. Automation and Artificial Intelligence is all nice and fine. But it is a poor substitute. Spare us from this exercise in futility. Can we make it mandatory for this automated navigation menu to have an option like “give me a human being”? I bet 100% of the people will select this option. That tells the story.

When Gavaskar got back his "Gandiva"

Arjuna hid his famous bow, the “Gandiva”, atop a tree in the forest. He did not need it anymore. After all, he had to spend the rest of the exile incognito as a dance teacher in the kingdom of Viraata. The Gandiva was forgotten and gathered rust. When the kingdom of Viraata was suddenly attacked, someone had to stand up. Arjuna climbed the tree and got back his Gandiva. The twang of the bow was unmistakable and struck terror in the hearts of the enemy. Armed with the Gandiva, Arjuna was invincible and skittled the enemy in no time. Arjuna’s mojo was back...and how! 

Sunil Gavaskar had given up the “hook shot”. It was a flamboyant shot that he played well, but the shot involved a lot of risk. He no longer had the luxury to play the shot. As the opening batsman of India, it was his responsibility to give India a solid start. Gavaskar provided that start through a dour, defensive technique that saw him grind the bowlers to submission. The hook shot was forgotten and gathered dust for over a decade. 

In the winter of 1983, Clive Lloyd’s West Indies side toured India. Smarting from the recent World Cup loss to minnows India, West Indies had more than a point to prove. Malcolm Marshall was the most fearsome bowler in the world. With his brisk, angular run-up, Marshall resembled a steam-engine firing on all cylinders. Batsmen around the world were flattened by Marshall with a combination of pace, bounce and movement. In addition to Marshall, there was Holding, Davis and Daniel, all lightning quick bowlers in their own right. The batsmen had no freebies at all. 

In the First Test at Kanpur, Marshall was at his meanest best. He bowled a vicious bouncer to Gavaskar. The ball was so lethal, that it knocked Gavaskar’s bat from his hands and he ended up being tamely caught. It was an embarrassing dismissal, like an ace archer ending up with a broken bow. The great Gavaskar was humbled. India lost the Test Match badly. We wondered how Gavaskar would now respond. The stage was set. 

Like Arjuna, Gavaskar rummaged through his attic filled with all kinds of Cricket shots. He blew the dust off the hook shot that lay in a corner. He resolved to play the shot once more. At the Feroz Shah Kotla Ground, Delhi, the venue of the Second Test, Gavaskar unleashed the hook shot against Marshall’s bouncers. It was a different Gavaskar we saw that day. A veritable David versus Goliath saga unfolded as Gavaskar met fire with fire. He played without a helmet, but not once did he flinch even at the risk of being hit. He had the conquered fear demons. It rained fours and sixes and Gavaskar raced to one of his fastest hundreds. It was a momentous century that leveled his tally with the legendary Don Bradman. Marshall’s meteors had been tamed and how! This innings remains part of Cricketing folklore.  

Many decades have passed since that winter of 1983. I still have the red “flicker-book” that was released as part of the Test Series. Each page has almost the same picture, but with a little change, providing a lesson in persistence of vision. Twirl the pages of the flicker-book, and Gavaskar comes alive- his white floppy hat, his characteristic stance and playing the hook shot one more time, right in front of our eyes! Along with the shot, comes back a slice of our childhood that is entwined with Cricket. 

Sport is much like Art. It gives as much joy to the spectators, as it does to the sportsman. When we see the genius of a Maradona or a Gavaskar, it pumps enthusiasm into our veins. There is a spring in our steps, a song on our lips and the world is that much lighter to deal with. Cricket folklore is filled with such tales- of triumph and despair and the indomitable spirit of a sportsman. These songs may date to a dim and distant past. But in our hearts, they remain enshrined forever.

The disarming ease of English Poetry

English poetry has no entry barrier. Anyone from 4th grade onwards, with a working knowledge of English can write poetry. The school magazines are filled with poems. It is English poetry’s strength as well as its weakness. The problem is, to an untrained eye, the 4th grader’s output is indistinguishable from a poet of merit. It is a little like Modern Art that faces a similar crisis. Except for the discerning eye of the connoisseur, for the rest of us, my child’s scribble and the Master’s work look much the same. 

 In some sense, writing English poetry has a disarming ease. “I went to the market” is a simple sentence. “To the market went I” becomes a poem! Just a little change in the construct and you have a prospective poem. Once you have the first line in your poem, you simply hunt down all rhyming words from A to Z looking for the right fit. You now have a set to play with- “Buy, die, fie, guy, high, lie...”. You finally settle for “buy” since it is connected to the “market” in the first line. The second line is now ready to team up with the first. ”To the market went I; apples, oranges and a lot more to buy!” The third line will be a fresh line. The fourth will rhyme with the third. You get it? It is simply too easy and reams and reams of poetry can be written this way! 

 At least, English poetry with rhyme has a certain cadence. You can read it loudly and it sounds nice. “To the market went I” when read loudly has a tingling effect, regardless of the common-place meaning. However, modern poets don’t subscribe to rhyme any more. This is a bigger problem. At best, the poems look like prose except for the trailing ellipsis, those tiny three dots at the end of the line. Now, “I went to the market...” itself is a poem. You just need to replace the full-stop with an ellipsis. School magazines, personal diaries and facebook pages are filled with these new poems. A third brand of English poetry has also found its way. In this form of poetry, you do not have to write even a sentence. You stack up a few words right out of the dictionary. “Anguish, Angst, Anger” That’s it! Voila! The poem is ready and can serve as a poetic response to any of the current social ills. 

 We have reached a point where we have lost the norm to evaluate English Poetry. Anyway, no one wants to evaluate. When we flip through the school English textbooks, we continue to see only Wordsworth and Keats and Browning. We wonder why none of these modern poets can find a place in school textbooks. We may not have seen Bradman in Cricket. However, we can relate to greatness in sport today through a Virat Kohli. On the same lines, shouldn’t a modern exponent of English Poetry walk into the school textbooks? 

All Indian regional languages have a rich tradition of poetry. It is a heritage that has come down to us. When lines of poetry are read out to an audience in a regional language, there is an immediate response- a “wah wah” for each line. Some beautiful turn of the phrase, some deft expression, there is an inexplicable delicate nicety to the lines that evokes instant relish.In contrast, a reading of English Poetry has a somewhat muted appeal. Not that it falls totally flat, but it fails to stimulate the senses to the same extent. At times, we are drowned with archaic usage like “thy”, “thine” and “thou” in the poems. It is jarring to the modern ear and we just cannot go past this barrier. Also, the locales for traditional English poems have a distant setting- Scottish highlands with its vales and dales. Though human feeling is universal and transcends location, still, the particular aspect of the poem is lost on us. It is a little like a polar bear from the Siberian regions that has accidentally strayed into Chennai and that too in the sweltering heat of summer. There is just so much commonality possible for both the bear and us to make each other feel truly comfortable. 

 A controversial streak runs through the mind- May be, English has limited tools for writing appealing poetry, lines that can truly touch the heart. Perhaps, the synonyms are limited. Perhaps, the words are scattered in all shapes and sizes and cannot be easily fitted in an attractive poetic meter. May be, it lacks the ability to coin new compound-nouns, words that can leap out with a meaning far different from the individual nouns. Conversational English is simple. It serves the purpose. English Prose is just fine. It has a bigger canvas and the elaboration compensates for the peculiar problems faced by English Poetry. As a language of Science and Technology, we appreciate English’s brevity. As a computer programming language, English is more than adequate. Only Poetry...where art thou?

Madras Mail

The railway line between Mumbai and Chennai has been operational since 1871! Much water has flowed since then, including a change in the names of the cities. In these days of instant messaging, it baffles the mind to know that a train ran each day just to carry mail. My memory goes back to the second half of the previous century. The Madras Mail started from Bombay VT at the stroke of ten at night. It ran the whole of the next day, and reached Madras in the wee hours of the third morning. Each journey was momentous, and in recollection now, it assumes a fairy-tale fondness! 

 Air-conditioned, sound-proofed compartments were non-existent. We listened to the raw sounds of the rail, the rhythmic clatter, the engine hoot and the guard's whistle. Pressing the forehead to the window, we peered into the darkness of the night as the train hurried out of Bombay. Lulled by the train's gentle rocking, sleep overpowered us. In semi-sleep, we continued to monitor the train's progress- the round of tunnels through the Western Ghats, the lonesome "chikki" peddler marking the arrival of Lonavla and the change in the engine at Pune. 

 We woke up in time for breakfast at Solapur. Peddlers competed with each other to outshout the other with "coffee-coffee" and "chai-chai". The compartment was a foodie's delight- the air redolent with the confusing crisscross scents of steaming idli and bubbling sambar, sizzling poha and wholesome upma. Through the rest of the day, the train covered the entire Deccan Plateau. The flag-posts were fixed- lunch at Raichur and early dinner at Guntakal. The sun was a constant fixture; it scorched the earth showing little mercy. A furnace raged outside the train and within. A bottle of "cool-drinks" was elixir, that only a parched throat on that train can understand; none else! From time to time, little hamlets greeted us with a wave of hands from little children. The mind wondered wistfully, what if fate had willed otherwise, and we were born in one of these homes. Sometimes, rail-crossings resulted in a sudden halt in no man's land for aeons. It would take a wake-up call of a thundering train in the opposite direction, to shake the Mail from its stupor. We cross-checked with the "Railway Timetable" handbook and grumbled that the train was running late by a couple of hours. 

 A host of stations went by, there was "Hotgi" and "Kurduwadi", "Wadi" and "Raichur", "Yerraguntla" and "Adoni". The train thundered over the Krishna River and the Tungabhadra, both a kilometer in breadth, an expanse of sand with a ribbon of water in the summer months. A basketful of juicy guavas announced the arrival of Kondapuram. As the sun went down, the landscape cooled and huge boulders and rock formations marked Guntakal Junction. It was time for dinner- crisp dosas, a generous bite into "medhu vada" and piping hot coffee! 

 A sense of impatience marked the rest of the journey. We had sat too long and now wanted to reach Madras at the earliest. But the Madras Mail showed no urgency. It reached Cudappah before sleep time with peddlers pacing the platform with trays of cool rose-milk. By 2:00 am, it neared Renigunta with the twinkling lights of the Tirumala Hills in the distance. A flurry of poly-syllabic stations whizzed past after Arakkonam. The "holdalls" and blankets had to be packed up in a hurry even as we begged to be allowed to sleep for more time. As the train negotiated the bend at Basin Bridge and pulled into Madras Central, it was still dark. We would alight to a brand new world at Madras for a full two months. Bombay was some distant planet.

Of masks and men!

The way you wear the mask entirely depends on the personality type. It is not just the mask. It extends to any mandate- like the requirement to wear the helmet or the safety-belt in your car or follow the traffic rules. How well you adhere to the mandate depends on what you are made of.


The problem is "wear the mask" is an injunction. It is a rule stipulated by the powers-that-be. Mr defiant is a personality type- allergic to any rule. He openly flouts it. The entire humanity may be behind a mask; but he stands apart, walks with a swagger, unmasked and unabashed. There is no point arguing with Mr Defiant- he is armed with his peculiar logic and is well prepared. He has stepped out of home, after spitting on both palms, pumped up for a fight, and in taking him on, we needlessly fall into his trap. If you want to shame him, do it quietly- just ignore him!


Some personality types are exactly the opposite- not only do they welcome the mandate, but go overboard in following it. Open their wardrobe, and an entire riot of masks tumble out- plain-masks, colored-masks, floral-masks and yes, even gold-masks for special occasions! It is their latest accessory, like a scarf or a tie, that needs to be matched with the rest of the person. The mask is their new style statement- when they take the dog out for a walk, it looks equally prim and proper, behind its tiny mask!


There are some who wear the mask for face-value (no pun intended) and no more. The mask is safely tucked under the chin, resembling a full-blown beard they have suddenly sprouted! In some cases, the mask covers only the mouth, with the nose sticking over it, as if they care for protection, but only partially. And then, there are others who wear the mask in full, but the moment they need to talk, pull it down to the chin. Once the conversation is over, the mask is back in place! And then, there are others, who wear the mask, in full,  that too without a break, but there is a catch- the mask is like a pair of pyjamas- it dangles so loose, that leave alone a virus, you could let in an entire swarm of bees! What do you do when someone shows up with a sari-palloo or a knotted kerchief as a makeshift mask? It plays with the wind and flaps- now in place, and now- all open, with a free invitation for the elements to gatecrash into the mouth and nose?  How do you police this motley crowd?


There are certain personality types who pretend to comply only for the fear of being pulled up. Their singular aim is to somehow beat the system. These are the types who carry the two-wheeler helmet in the back-seat like a trophy. The moment a policeman is seen in the distance, the helmet is promptly on the head! So too with the safety-belt in the car-  stretched over the torso, like the proverbial sacred-thread only at the road-check point.  His brain has grown- enough to pick loopholes, but not enough to appreciate the need for safety, his own personal safety. We know how he will wear the mask.


Sometimes, we feel the urge to drive some sense into people, even at the cost of being unpopular. After all, a totally pacifist philosophy does not help. I accosted the first man who wore no mask. He simply retorted "get lost!" and jogged past me! The next attempt was an elderly gentleman. He had an immediate answer, "Beta! I have a breathing problem, oxygen ki kami hai! I cannot wear a mask!" If you have a problem in breathing, you should very well be staying at home, for it is exactly this co-morbidity condition that Corona preys on, I tried to reason. "That I will take care, you don't worry!", said the man, leaving me rooted at the spot!


End of the day, each one is a victim of his own personality. It will decide how the mask is worn, whether it is worn at all! It reminded me of an incident years ago. In the railway compartment, there was a man stretched over two seats of the berth, in a brazenly callous way, leaving the rest of us falling over the edge of the berth. After a point, it was simply impossible to adjust. "Why are you doing this?" we asked him point blank. His reply was swift, "What can I do? My body itself is like that!"
Compliance cannot be bought or enforced. All we can do is provide access to information. The education has to happen from within. And yes, we should definitely pray- "Lord, may people have some common sense. Sabko sanmati dey Bhagavan!"

Learning about eclipses

Eclipse is a complicated phenomenon. It is even more complicated to explain the concept of an eclipse to school kids. May be, children these days have access to better resources and perhaps more academically tuned. Back then, we were very raw. To be fair, Mr Lawrence tried his best. It was just that we did not get it.


That there were two types of eclipses was the easy part. We registered their names all right. The problem was recalling which one is solar and which one is lunar. Someone came between someone else. That's all we could decipher. When Mr Lawrence went around the class and questioned each student, he got all sorts of answers. There was no consensus whatsoever. Most students tended to agree with David's explanation for he was widely accepted as the brain of the class. But Sridhar's definition of solar-eclipse was exactly the opposite, which swayed some votes in his favor. In the end, there was a stalemate and a distinct possibility of a hung-parliament in class. As far as a few other students were concerned, this topic of eclipse was the last thing on their minds. They were in their own world- either dreaming away or busy sharpening their pencils or trying to retrieve a lost protractor from the compass box by tunneling their way under the benches! It was a mixed crowd.


Mr Lawrence was irked. He felt a more practical demonstration may clear the cobwebs from our minds. He asked for 3 balls- a football, a cricket-ball and a table-tennis ball! Like a dog that has dozed away...suddenly picks itself up and scampers around, Mr Lawrence's request was just the impetus needed to liven up the class. When was the last time a teacher asked for a ball during class hours? In a jiffy, all sorts of balls lay piled up on the table, resembling a fruit-vendor's cart! The selection was tough- only one football could be the sun, another cricket-ball the earth, and one table-tennis ball...could be the moon. The discarded balls and their owners were equally morose.


The whole class was now at the table...as we curiously observed the proceedings. Mr Lawrence placed the balls in a particular sequence and beamed with pride. "This is a solar eclipse! This is the sun....and the moon comes between the earth...and...." Before Mr Lawrence could complete the sentence, the balls were just as impatient as the rest of us. The table-tennis ball drifted away from its orbit and fell off the table-edge. More hands were pressed to restrain these balls. A seventh-grader's mind is simple. He relates to a football as a football and the necessity to think of these balls as astronomical objects is lost on him. At the end of this exercise, we picked up some additional points about an eclipse. It appeared some hidden hand could make the cricket ball and the table-tennis ball swap places, like we do in class.  As for the football, well, it seemed to stay as-is.


Mr Lawrence was not yet done. He felt he had more concepts to convey. Dinesh would be the sun- he was the football. He selected a mid-sized boy as the earth and a tiny-fellow as the moon! He made the tiny fellow go around mid-sized and kept questioning mid-size whether he still saw Dinesh! Of course, he always saw Dinesh. He was the football of the class! The answer did not please Mr Lawrence. As far as Dinesh was concerned, he claimed he still saw  tiny-fellow's legs through the mid-sized legs! The class was a riot! We finally understood what eclipses meant.
Sridhar had an elaborate argument with Mr Lawrence on a point too subtle for the rest of us. It had to do with why eclipses couldn't happen more often. After all, the moon was going around the earth all the time. Only Sridhar seemed to grasp Mr Lawrence regarding earth and moon flying on different planes....with a slanted notebook in hand signifying a plane...perhaps in landing mode.


The mid-term exams were over. Mr Lawrence came to class with a sheaf of answer-papers. His face had a pained expression as he shared some of the eclipse diagrams from the answer sheets with the rest of the class. The only common point in all the papers were three circles- standing for the sun, the moon and the earth. Mr Lawrence added a 4th circle to mark a 0 for the answer! In some papers, the circles were of the same size-  the student had forgotten to bring 3 separate coins of different denominations and was stuck with only a 25 paise coin. In another paper, the sun also got a chance to swap places. After all, it was at the center of the solar system. It could very well have the moon and the earth on either side! Sridhar tried to be over-smart by drawing the sun as a huge semi-circle spanning the whole page...with the earth and moon as tiny dots because of their relative sizes in space.
Mr Lawrence called out Mehernosh. He was still busy sharpening the pencil that had turned to a tiny stub.  Mr Lawrence held him by the ear till his ear and face turned red. Mehernosh had labeled the sun as "Dinesh" and had added "football" in brackets for clarity!

Shantanu, Kapoor and sons!

The Mahabharata is a complicated story. There is a main storyline which we are all fairly familiar with. The devil is in the details. The problem starts with the lineage. Every adaptation of the story begins from King Shantanu and his son Bheeshma.
The central characters are of course the Pandavas and the Kauravas. The problem is connecting these dots. How does the lineage travel from Shantanu to the Pandavas? Bheeshma took the oath to be a bachelor all his life. We remember this point. It is here that the family-tree gets confusing. Most people are completely blank  when asked this question. It is as if, they have never thought about it. If the person is a little more informed, he throws a few names- Satyavati, Vichitravirya, Amba, Ambalika, Dhritarashtra and Pandu. Still, he cannot piece the puzzle together. The more he tries, the more he ties himself in knots. As far as the listener is concerned, he is now even more muddled than before. He wishes he had not started the topic at all. Finally, we give up with words of wisdom- why worry about these non-essential details? We should never try to trace the source of a river...or a sage- “nadi-moolam and rishi moolam”! They may have had a past, but we do not care. All we care about is the present! With these parting words, we extricate ourselves from this topic.


If you thought this lineage is tough to understand, wait till you get to the Kapoors. Like Shantanu, the lineage starts with Prithviraj Kapoor. He is the patriarch. That part is clear. We are also sure about the present generation- Ranbir and Kareena Kapoor. The trouble is in connecting these two with the patriarch. We are suddenly faced with too many pieces in this jigsaw puzzle. Somehow, you have to fit all of them correctly. We have Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor. And some other Kapoors we have heard of- Rajiv Kapoor, Karan Kapoor and Kunal Kapoor. And the women- Karishma Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor. And yes, Ranbir Kapoor. Without consulting your favorite computer search engine, if you try to trace this family tree, you will go nowhere. Suddenly, the mind completely shuts down. It cannot recall whether Rishi Kapoor was Raj’s son or sibling! Many a mighty film connoisseur has had mud on his face when faced with this most elementary question. The more we struggle, the more exasperated we get. It is as if this whole world is filled with only Kapoors. We’ve drawn an elaborate family tree on paper, with several corrections and end up with Ranbir as Prithviraj’s father! And each time, we’ve forgotten one Kapoor, and in trying to fit him, the tree has to be redrawn once more. Seeing us tied in knots, someone has a bright suggestion- What about Tushar Kapoor and Anil Kapoor? We react sharply at the person- “Silly! They do not even belong to this family tree! Don’t think I have such a poor Kapoor memory!” 

Lineages are tough for the human mind. It is not designed to make sense out of them. It brings back the scars of childhood and that blank moment in the History exam when it could not recall whether Aurangzeb was Babur’s son or father! We prefer English History for one simple reason. At least, King George V was after King George III. We wish all naming conventions were that easy!