Condensed Greed

A random rummage in the refrigerator can be very rewarding.

Stumbling upon an unfinished can of Nestlé Milkmaid, for instance, means you can beat your children to it and be reminded of your childhood at the same time. And that’s what happened, the other day…

My brother and I grew up in Calcutta, often on Milkmaid, the can that was always there always there in case the milk supply failed or the milk itself turned sour (not an uncommon thing in those days). For our mother, it was the quick-fix substitute to making tea. Expensive, but efficient, provided you could get through the sealed can.

I have vivid memories of holding the can with my frail fingers while either parent would pull out a rusty can-opener and try to pierce the first tiny hole so that the hook of the opener could get a grip and start cutting the lid open. Sometimes, a hammer or the mortar (of the pestle jodi) would be called in as reinforcement and the tiresome process of opening the equally rusty can would begin. The opener would slip, a finger would be cut, Dettol would be applied quickly and we would resume the operation: what lay within was way too delicious to be abandoned because the worst part of the product was its packaging.

Once opened, the brother and I would stand aside and salivate. A teaspoon would go into the tea being boiled after which it was our turn to dig into the sticky, sweet condensed manna-like milk. Those were days when we didn’t have a refrigerator and the can was too expensive to be finished in one go; so, it would be stored away in the hope that red ants wouldn’t discover it and that it wouldn’t spoil. On many occasions, both have happened but usually a plate with water on which the can would be perched, sufficed.

Puritans will swear that the best way to enjoy Milkmaid is to let a tablespoon glide down your gullet with nothing else accompanying it. However, I had some other concoctions that made it even more irresistible:

• A slice of fresh bread with Milkmaid smeared on every millimetre. Or, on Thin Arrowroot biscuits.
  
• And then with Bournvita sprinkled on it to give it a chocolaty-crunchy topping.
• Pieces of Cadbury Dairy Milk (the only chocolate available then) dipped into the can and slurped while a trickle of condensed milk threatened to slip away down your shirt.
• Grapes or almonds dipped into it.

And once these were done, licking the can empty with the fingers being applied to good use made for the most satisfying spells on an otherwise boring day watching the pelting rain from our verandah.

All of this is still very doable. And thanks to Nestlé making the can easier to open with a tab, accessing the condensed milk is so much easier. Storing it still requires an improvised cover but if you’re as greedy as the kids and I can be, you won’t have much left to store.

Now, to try it with a dash of coffee and bitter chocolate…slurrp!

Spread the Warmth

January 2nd, 2013, was the coldest day in Delhi in 44 years. Maximum temperatures have dropped to sub 10°C and the minimum is below 4°C. 

And while many of us complain about getting ready and coming to work in the mornings, there are thousands who are homeless and surviving the bitter cold in makeshift shelters including public toilets. Already, some news channels and NGOs have launched a drive to collect blankets for these Delhiites who have neither a roof nor a heater.

But, if you really want to help someone, and don’t have the time to donate blankets, here’s something we practise at home and you can do today:

1. Go home and empty the wardrobe of clothes that are lying unused.
2. Pull out everything you can spare: shirts, t-shirts, trousers, socks, shoes, saris, petticoats, salwar-kameezes, shorts, jeans, skirts and, of course, woolens of any kind (including caps, gloves and mufflers). Do this with every cupboard and every family member’s clothes. (Chances are you have plenty and can spare some without really missing them. Chances also are that you will discard them anyway to replace them with new, more fashionable stuff at the next sale. So, why not give them away today?)
3. Once you’ve pulled everything out, sort them into bundles with at least one top (a shirt for example) and a bottom (trousers) in each. Then add the smaller items – caps/socks/mufflers etc. – to these bundles. Your goal is to create a bundle for an individual so sort out the clothes separately for adult males and females and for children.
4. Now, scout around for pillow covers, towels, bedsheets, shawls…the larger items. If you find some, add these too. Also footwear, if that’s available.
5. Chances are, you will have at least half a dozen such piles by now. Or more. Take these and stuff them into individual bags (not plastic but the disposable cloth ones) or simply knot the clothes around each other and keep the bundles segregated.
6. Then, carry them in your car when you leave home. Keep them handy next to you, not in the boot.
7. Look out for people on the road, at construction sites, bus stops etc. Pull over and call them over: grab a bundle and hand it over to the person. He/she may be surprised at first, but will smile and be grateful to you.
8. Drive off and look for the next recipient of your generosity.

Go ahead, spread the warmth: it’s easier than you think.

 

 

 

 

 

A Collision of Contradictions

There is a strange collision of contradictions happening around us.

For, perhaps the first time since 1947, urban India is resurrecting hope from the ashes of fear. The candle is in transition from being synonymous with power cuts to romantic dinners to silent, tearful protests. Young India is coming of age, they say. From vacuousness to vigilance.

We’re seeing the death of an unnamed young woman give life to a second freedom movement that has engulfed even the most sceptic Indian. Suddenly, ‘rape’ is not just a shameful, four-letter word that tears apart lives; it is the very vocal rallying cry for all of society.

In this paradoxical point in time, parents who had hoped a child named Ram Singh would live up to the name of the god he had been given, cannot fathom how he chose, instead, to do just the opposite. He became a Ravana. There are two significant moments in the naming of a newborn: first, when his name is thought of and, then, when he is actually named – all in the illusionary hope that he will be what is called.

And there are two defining moments when a life is lost: first, when Death punctuates existence with the finality of a full-stop; and then when the physical remains are consigned to flames. Another set of parents, who had named and reared so lovingly their child, watch in disbelief how she goes out of this world and makes it to every conceivable form of media that exists: she is both famous and unknown. Unprecedented but true.

There are policemen, often corrupted and corpulent, but now driven to action and accountability. Once feared and interrogative, they are now faced with questions that will change their future – for they are seeing power slip out of their hands. When you take away their batons, tear gas, barricades and water cannons, you will see dread on their bewildered faces: the uniform is just a mask and the façade is now exposed. Strange, it is, that a political party once at the forefront of the non-violence freedom movement had its back to the Lutyens’ walls of Delhi, armed against its own electorate. Such is the dilemma of democracy. And such is the demonstrably galvanising power of truly social media.

And, finally, the men who plundered her await their own – almost certain – death. Men who, like beasts, ripped apart a loving couple with the brutality of drunken lust. And whose fall into instant insanity will now lead to prolonged legal logic as an inevitable drama plays itself out.

So many contradictions created in just a couple of weeks. So many years of frustration manifested into fury.

But, amidst all the questions that remain unanswered, of this one is certain: the second sex will now be the first.

Be not proud, Death. For, you gave birth to Nirbhaya. 

 

 

 

Bondfall

I grew up on 007. On Sean Connery first and then Roger Moore. And the result of every film was a child’s belief that he could grow up to be a superspy.

But annual bouts of malaria, typhoid and jaundice can put to rest the best-imagined plans of spies in the making. Add to that a quack who overdosed me on quinine and caused my heart to stop beating when I was 10. Death was temporary but true.

And, having been born again, I know what resurrection can be like. Ditto for James in the magnum opus released today.

So, when Sam Mendes decides to conjure up something Ian Fleming would never have dared, he’s playing a high stake game. One that drove me to catch the first day’s first show at DT Mega Mall here in Gurgaon (not a patch on Shanghai though where some of the film is set). With not even an hundred people in the hall, the film started to scattered applause and plenty of anti-smoking warnings. If we were on the edge of our seats, however, it was because of the damp seats in the hall (evidence of a clean-up act the morning after last night’s show, I suppose).

Adele notwithstanding, Skyfall is a let-down. That’s the blunt truth. It isn’t crisp. There’s no real femme fatale. The villain is a wimp. Q is a geek who claims gadgets are passé and M is sentimental. Mr Craig is ageing and not seductive enough; doesn’t once ask for his trademark “shaken, not stirred Martini” though he does get it at a casino.

But there is the original Aston Martin. There is Scotland. Memories of Bond’s parents. And there is Tennyson in full flow. Saving graces for a traditional Bond loyalist.

Should you see it? Of course.

Except that you’ll now pay the premium weekend rate instead of the morning price of Rs 150. Go ahead…you only live once anyway!

Of Times Past

Every morning, I have a date at eight.

(And, no, this isn’t one of those rhyming couplet thingies.)

I wait at a traffic light near my house in Gurgaon like a roadside Romeo, with a Mac on my back and lunch in the bag, shooing away auto drivers, stray dogs and flies. I wait for Pooja to turn up in her Accent and pick me up en route work…eight is early for me but better than nine, which is when another colleague, Rohit, sets off.

This has been my routine for the last two months ever since my mouse-like driver – paradoxically named Ganesh – disappeared to get his sister married off in Nepal and hasn’t turned up since. After the marriage of his sibling, his father died, tragically. And then his mobile phone died, happily. And with it, died any hope I had of recovering the eight thousand rupees he owes me. So, I became dependent once again on kith, kin and colleagues to drive me around. Why I don’t drive is matter for another mindless post but, for now, let’s come back to where I started…

Pooja is punctual. She’s also a lady. And, for reasons that cannot be shared socially, she’s usually hyper (unlike Rohit who is the most relaxed human being I have seen). All of which means that I cannot keep her waiting. So I have to reach the pick-up point at least two minutes before she does. It takes me four minutes to walk from the gate of the building to the signal. But the wait for the elevator in the building can take 30 seconds or three minutes – and, if there’s a power cut halfway down the four floors, add another two minutes. So I need to set out by 7:52 to make it in time. What’s life without a little precision, I say?

And no matter how fast one shaves and showers, breakfast must be gobbled, vitamin swallowed, watch, wallet and pen grabbed, wife waved goodbye…all of which will take precious minutes. Something in this routine will be forgotten occasionally.

That’s how I forgot the watch yesterday. For, perhaps only the second time in 34 years since I was gifted an Anglo-Swiss by my father. I’ve been a keeper of Time ever since though, sometimes, I think Time kept me. I’ve slept with a watch around my frail wrist; even perched it on a narrow ledge next to me so that I could see the time whenever I awoke at night (not that I kept any record of the wakeful moments all those years). Somehow, one felt naked minus a watch.

And so, over time, the watch became more than a teller of time, it was something to be worn – not as an accessory which is what it is for most people but as a teller of tales. Every watch I own (and there are seven) has a story behind it. Be it the Titan Moonphase that Shovon and I won during an Ad Club Quiz in Calcutta despite Derek trying very hard to ensure we wouldn’t win it for the second consecutive year. Those days, Derek was at his prime, non-political quizzing days whereas today he’s the one being quizzed by news channels. Or the HMT (yes, good old HMT) that was created during Contract’s 10^th anniversary in 1996…it still tocks, sorry ticks! Or the commemorative Tintin Swatch I gifted myself in Paris on a lonely birthday in 2008 2006…its strap may be frayed but the character remains.

I don’t look at a watch to see the present; I see the past.

Most people, however, wear a watch as a pure fashion accessory and glance at the mobile phone to see the time: did Nokia kill HMT? And that’s a pity because no matter how smart your phone may be, it’s unlikely to have any deep, meaningful associations of people, places and events from another life.  It’s cold, plasticky and detached; quite unlike the blend of soft, worn, warm leather and cold metal around the wrist. Somehow, a changing digit on a phone doesn’t quite mark the passage of time like the revolving hands on a watch.

But then, I’m probably in a dying breed of watch-watchers caught in a time warp while a very mobile world flits back and forth into a fickle future.

Time to go, I think.

Nothing

There are times when you need someone to do nothing with.

Someone to just be there. Not to speak with or listen to. Not to touch or be caressed by. No whiff, no whisper, no kiss, no comforting… Just nothing.

Nothing more, nothing less.

But it isn’t easy to do nothing. Programmed as we are to continuously engage in social activity, we look for films to watch, books to read, links to share, friends to hang out with, calories to burn, beer to guzzle, tweets to type and statuses to update…try nothing for a change.

Nothing is a noun, not a verb – so inaction is inbuilt. ‘Do nothing’ is a paradox.

That’s it for now. Nothing else.

The Future of History

There was a time when Egypt conjured up three stereotypical images: the Pyramids, the Great Sphinx and Mummies. But that was before the country jumped out of textbooks and was thrust on to news (and new) media that have succeeded in pushing back those enduring images and replacing them with those of angry young men confronting a strangely silent army on the streets of Cairo. Strong, soundless monuments have given way to volatile, vocal and violent mobs. And to vulture-like vicarious newsmen who wait for that defining moment of either a fall or a photo-opp that will turn a lensman into a legend. Suddenly, there is no sign of ancient Egypt: almost as though history has been shrouded by present-day flags and banners of protestors.

Clearly, a country known for its history stands at the threshold of a new, albeit uncertain, future. The problem with “a million mutinies” (as Sanjay quipped on Facebook) is that it has no single, unifying leader. So, while there is unanimity in demanding President Mubarak’s resignation and exile, there appears to be no one who is popular – or capable enough – to take charge of a country of 80 million people. It may be good to rebel and have a goal in mind but once that is achieved, what next? After the fall, a country needs someone to rise and take charge before anarchy takes over. The longest-serving president of Egypt brought, if nothing else, stability.

The dissent against him, however, is not new. It’s just that the manner and speed at which it has exploded that defies all logic at one level. In October last year, on a vacation, Egypt came across as a placid but simmering nation. People were, by and large, unhurried and our local tour operator, Mahmood, attributed it to the heat. Though with the kind of crowds one saw in Cairo and with petrol being cheaper than bottled water, there is no way that a car can hurry on its streets any way. Besides, the ubiquitous sheesha with its intoxicating agents, added to the languidness of the locals. I have tried calling Mahmood to check if he, his young wife and two children are well but his phone goes unanswered: I can only hope that he is busy (though there are no tourists around) and not part of the madness that seems to have swept Cairo. It was Mahmood who first let on that Mubarak had allowed things to slip (by that, he alluded to inflation) and that the forthcoming elections were sure to be a sham. He even joked about the President being a modern-day Pharoah, though far less benevolent. The Pharoahs were actually extremely forward thinking and had created a Nilometer that measured the level of water in the river that is Egypt’s lifeline (even today) before determining the rate of taxation on their people. Very high or very low levels of water indicated floods or famines and led to lower taxes that year – incredibly simple, incredibly people-friendly and way ahead of its time like so much else the ancient Egyptians did.

And so, Egypt was all about long, lazy, liquidy cruises on the Nile; treks around and into the Pyramids, crawling into empty tombs in the Valley of Kings, coffee at Khan-el-Khalili and the Mediterranean allure of Alexandria. In the course of covering geographical milestones, history was being experienced just as it should be on any voyage. A long time ago, in another avatar, working on a documentary film script for the Indian tea industry (with the ever-suave Kabir Bedi as the protagonist) I had written “Khazana toh khoj mein hai” i.e. in the journey lies the treasure. Egypt was just that.

Except for one niggling feeling that persisted: as a tourist, you never experienced the same sense of awe and pride from the locals in their historical treasures as we would perhaps do with our Taj Mahal and Red Fort and Gateway of India (Pinku-loves-Tinku graffiti, spitting and public urination being ignored for the moment). The locals who depended on tourism for a living were out to take you for a ride (there is no standard pricing for anything that one buys – including water or juice or colas) and were there to literally cash in on tourists. (Yes, yes, I can hear friends like RP Kumar and Vikas Mehta who have lived in Cairo exclaim “Just as we do in India!”) Even the museum in Tahrir Square, now the epicentre of dissent, was unkempt and disorderly and, having seen Nefertiti’s bust in Berlin and many Mummies in the museums of Paris and London, one didn’t want to pay extra for the Mummy Room here. Every ancient temple you visit will have a horde of shops and street-hawkers at the exit so that you are assaulted with cheap, unlikely-to-last souvenirs that kill the grandeur of long-standing edifices.

Why is it that the temptation of the transient takes precedence over more permanent things? Why is there such a hullaballoo about the banning of the Internet in Cairo when we should be worrying about where Egyptians are getting their food? Why gloat about the role of Twitter when schools and offices are shut and the entire country has ground to a halt? Have real priorities given way to the virtual? Is the medium taking over the message itself?

Perhaps this is the way it is meant to be. Perhaps Egypt has stood still for far too long and is now trying to rush ahead to meet an uncertain future. The dust – and there is plenty of it blowing in from the Sahara – will take time to settle and its chronicles will probably be written, and rewritten, several times in the next few weeks. But as long as its people realise that their tomorrow lies not in looking back and merely cheering about today’s face-off with an army that refuses to fight back (strange yet sane)…

History, as the cliché goes, will never be the same. Nor will Egypt.

Perhaps a leader will emerge from the marching millions and the Pyramids and Sphinx will come back on to your television screens soon.

Perhaps history will find its future again.

Of Startups and Soccer

No one would dare call the Dutch football team a minnow. But nor did anyone expect five-time champions, Brazil, to get booted out in the quarters of this year’s FIFA World Cup.

To borrow an epithet from the more fashionable sport that seems to have caught most of India by the b*lls, such are the glorious uncertainties of football.

Did the Dutch play better? Did Brazil lose it when they had to send one of theirs off the field and play with a depleted team? Or was it just the foot of God yesterday which decreed that one South American team would go through to the semis while another wouldn’t?

It matters not, I say. What does strike me is that 11 well-oiled people – like the avenging Germans in their match versus England – will triumph if they play as though they have nothing to lose and everything to win in 90-odd minutes. Almost as a young startup would.

Startup? And soccer? Mohitoz is finally off his head, you say… a self-goal, you twitter.

But humour me and consider a startup as a team of footballers.

People who have come together with nothing but passion to bind them, a hunger to win and a goal in clear focus. Coached by VC-like gurus who celebrate and critique from the sidelines, pushed by established competitors who have ruled the field, egged on by a roaring crowd of prospective investors, every football team has the genes of a startup. Or so it should be vice-versa.

And like most startups, the leader can be either aggressively upfront – a centre-forward – or a goalkeeper who defends and determines the course of play from a vantage point. In the former’s case, the startup CEO is the face of the company; the marketing and sales spearhead, so to say. He’s the one who leads by example, the strategist and the tactician, rolled into one dynamic ball of energy. And, in the latter – the goalie as CEO – he’s the man who prefers to stay out of the limelight but controls the quality of the product or service, looks for niches that can drive wedges into the competitor’s gameplan and relays it up the line to the men in front. And, when attacked, he’s the one who takes the pressure head on because there will be moments when startups stare at near failure as a wounded competitor strikes back: that’s when the goalkeeper keeps his eyes only on the ball and has a split second to separate debacle from defense, shame from pride.

Football, unlike cricket, calls for men of fervor, stamina and courage. It demands that you set aside long-term pleasures for quick wins born of agility. Every move up the field towards the other goal is akin to a battle in the sales arena, but a battle from which there is no rest. Regardless of whether you score or not, the team that wins will be the one who experiments and attacks unendingly. Startups, too, need endless reservoirs of adrenalin to keep them going because investors’ funds, like minutes on the referee’s watch, are limited.

Go watch a match before you decide to take the plunge to start something on your own. Do you have it in you to chart a course and yet be flexible to swerve and tackle and fall and get up and charge again towards the goal you swore to meet?

Eleven Dutchmen did it and sent half the world into mourning yesterday. Sure, they had Lady Luck as their 12th player as well but doesn’t every successful startup have her too?

Go kick a ball or two. Even if you don’t actually start up, you won’t end up any poorer either.

The Squirrel and the Pussycat

The jogging track encircling the park is a misnomer: it’s more of a walking path for pot-bellied middle-aged men in scruffy pyjamas or salwar-kameez clad women with sneakers. Some older folk, of course, turn out in their kanjeevarams (I kid thee not) because the recently-relocated son has warned his parents against stepping out of the house in anything that will make him look “low” before his high-rise neigbours. Incidentally, have you noticed that the first to hit the park are also the oldest in the community? Of course there are the yoga regulars, the young man jogging furiously, the tiny but powerfully-built dynamo of a young lady who stretches her sinewy self even as she sways to a beat on her iPod (or is it a music-enabled phone tucked away in her tracks?)… these are regular sights that greet you every morning in the condo at Gurgaon.

Today’s going to different though.

The placid rhythm of the surprisingly cool morning is suddenly broken by a dark flash that streaks by and barely catches the eye: it is Pepper, the tabby cat so named by the kids in the building because of his grey striped coat, tiger-like gait and angry gaze. Pepper is chasing a squirrel (no rats thanks to pest control, I guess) who is running like the blazes and scurries up the nearest tree. Pepper jumps in an incredible leap that would make Jonty Rhodes proud and reaches halfway up the trunk, barely inches below Alvin (the squirrel who should no go unnamed). Alvin streaks up and Pepper hisses. A crow and two meandering mynahs have swooped down on the tree-tops, voyeuristic and vulture-like waiting to see if the cat will win and whether they can get any of the mangled entrails of little Alvin. But Alvin isn’t one to give up: nimbler and faster than Pepper, he rushes even higher and miraculously finds a branch that allows him to jump onto another tree. And then he’s gone!

Pepper, and his bird-mates, will have to wait for breakfast today.

The excitement’s over and the two other fellow-joggers smile at this five-second thriller and move on. But I can’t help thinking that the fear of death is the ultimate adrenalin and, were it not for the squirrel’s desperate need to survive, he would have succumbed to the cat. So is it too with the rest of the world; especially when competitors gun for each other’s market share. The hunted has to feel it’s threatened with oblivion to pull out every last reserve of fighting spirit even if investors and stockmarket speculators hover around. David proved it against Goliath and so did Alvin today. May he live happily ever after.

Law of WHO

Mohitoz’ Law #210

Health is indeed wealth.

Or: Swines will make a killing out of the Flu.

Star Trekked

Growing up in Calcutta in the ’70s, climbing up to the rickety roof of our ancient home was a regular feature. The fragile aluminum antenna connected to the Televista TV set was prone to swinging in the wind much like a weather-cock and needed tying down periodically. Over time, with help from my surprisingly-sure-footed mother, I’d perfected the art of pointing the antenna in a direction that would enable it to catch not just Doordarhan’s signal but the stronger Dacca TV station. In those days, we spelt the two cities this way and not with the harsher K’s as they do today.

Even though the TV set was a black & white one, American serials like Dallas, Dynasty and Star Trek kept my brother and I enthralled: it was also our only other glimpse to the ‘promised’ land – apart from the Westerns and war films we saw at Globe or New Empire or Lighthouse (none of which exist as movie halls today). Dallas and Dynasty precluded Ekta Kapoor’s soaps (I have to endure at least one episode of her prolific productions someday) but it was Star Trek that came closest to giving me a high. Much like walking out of The Guns of Navarone, ready to take on the world, Star Trek would open up the teenage mind with the possibilities of “going where no man has gone before” and conquering both space and time. I fantasised in vivid detail about inventing ankle-strapped rockets that would allow me to fly and steely-eyed stares that would help enter the minds of evil villains and defeat them without lifting a finger. That’s the great thing about willingly suspending disbelief for a couple of hours and sitting in a dark hall to escape life. My fragile body didn’t mean I didn’t have an active imagination in which I would single-handedly defeat every crook as I flew through the air wearing my underpants over my tights (that, after all, is the signature of all superheroes).

So, this evening, I decided to relive those moments and made my way to a movie hall here in Gurgaon to watch JJ Abram’s version of Star Trek in solitary splendour. Like an excited kid, eager to catch every ad and trailer, I sat through the preview of the forthcoming Harry Potter fantasy and settled down as the Paramount mountain and stars formed on screen… I was back in Calcutta in the ’70s again! Geo-chronological barriers had been crossed.

Only, this time, I was disappointed. If they make Star Trek and it doesn’t leave you exhilarated in the clichéd victory of Good over Evil, it ain’t Star Trek. It doesn’t even come close to Star Wars. Sure, it has more grandeur and special effects but it left me cold. Perhaps Morgan Freeman as Admiral Pike would’ve helped? Or Bruce Willis as Kirk? Leonard Nimoy’s fine as Spock, though except for one teeny-weeny problem: he doesn’t say “Beam me up Scottie”. Nor does anyone else.

Let down, I was. Unlike how I’ve felt watching any of the Star Wars sequels or Die Hard or Armaggedon…

One hundred and twenty-seven minutes later, munching a Galaxy chocolate (appropriate huh?) I trekked back home over the crumbling pavements of unlit Gurgaon streets, wondering whether I’d be mugged by drunken louts emerging from the many ‘Government-approved drinking places’ this city has. There were no stars to be seen because a dust-storm came without warning, making me wish I could enter a time warp and transport myself away.

As Spock Sr says in the film, I’d like to have the best of both worlds. Only mine wouldn’t be those of logic and emotion. But of fiction and science.

For now though, I’ll settle for some red wine followed by yellow daal.

Cheers!

The Wordsmith Behind the Cairo Speech

While the world’s been applauding President Obama’s speech in Cairo earlier this week, has anyone patted his speechwriter on the back? Ben Rhodes is the man we should be raising a toast to…what say?

Currency of Kindness

In a world where currencies fluctuate wildly, moods swing like crazy and most people don’t behave like humans any longer, thank Absolut and a lovely lady (who wishes to remain uncredited for finding this) for this!

Nursery Rhymes R.I.P?

A college friend and confidante, now a schoolteacher in Calcutta (strange how most of the college gang started working either as teachers or journalists or in some form of the communications industry) sent this SMS last night:

Remember lines from Daffodils? Kids insist on writing: “A poet could not but be ‘a’ gay in such a jocund company…”

I owe her much of my sanity for she was the one who stood rock-solid by my side at the most turbulent time of my life – way back in the late ’80s. Am not sure I was there for her when she went through an even-worse calamity almost a decade later but we’re still there for each other when we need to be… that, however, is not the point here!

A few days ago, I’d stumbled on the fact that, while I remembered every line of almost every nursery rhyme I’d read over 40 years ago, I was aghast to discover that my children – 10 and a-week-away-from-nine respectively – couldn’t remember Humpty Dumpty or Hickory-Dickory-Dock or Twinkle-Twinkle… I could’ve cried!

But something told me that something had changed: children, these days, don’t learn as much by rote as we used to. More important, they’re exposed to so much more, that inane nonsense like “three bags full” is quickly transferred to the mind’s trash folder.

The not-so-gay schoolteacher from Calcutta confirms this but it does leave me wondering whether another literary genre is headed for extinction.