Bijli chali gayi

This is neither an epitaph nor a tribute, as words can never hope to capture the effervescence and sheer liveliness that characterized Nupur—my chirpy and sparkling cousin, who, with her ready repartee and infectious laughter, brightened up any gathering, and succeeded in bringing a reluctant smile to the face of even the most serious souls.

But why say ‘bijli chali gayi’? Nupur’s dazzling complexion made her the cynosure of all eyes, and simultaneously, the envy of all the numerous cousins in our larger-than-life family. (In fact, it was during one such family wedding, that she earned this befitting sobriquet.) Coupled with a bubbling personality and an irrepressible zest for life, it led to her being compared to ‘bijli’ in more ways than one. During any family wedding, she would flit around the wedding arena, dressed in a bright pink or dark purple lehenga, laughing, joking, and pulling the leg of many a hapless individual. No sooner would the wedding procession led by the bashful groom arrive, than she—with the rest of us hovering around like coy companions—would greet them with the lively folk songs that characterize a typical marriage in Bihar.

The word ‘Nupur’ means the tiny bells on an anklet. And the gracefulness, with which she did the bamboo dance for Sports day in College, proved that Nupur had not been wrongly named. Her nimble footwork and agile steps enthralled all—so much so, that our Principal sought her out and specially congratulated her on her performance. This singular honour would have gone to anyone’s head, but Nupur, with her characteristic simplicity, just took it in her stride.

Basically, she was one mischievous kid. The nursery school she attended included, among other examinations, a test on how neatly a child ate his or her food. Nupur, all of six years old, was the first to finish her food, and, angelic smile firmly in place, shyly accepted the teacher’s compliments. With her trademark grin, later she confided that she had gently brushed aside all the remnants with her foot, so that they were found below the table of her unsuspecting neighbour.

As children, our main activity was to do a vanishing act at critical moments, so as to avoid getting caught for the mundane and humdrum household tasks, which are the bane of any summer holiday. This involved quick thinking, and Nupur was a master in that. Mysterious disappearance in the morning, and a silent reappearance in the afternoon, when Chachi was asleep, was the winning formula. Nupur would creep in quietly and smuggle out two large mango pickles before she was noticed and uncomfortable questions asked. If we were caught in some naughty endeavour, her quick-wittedness extricated us from the sticky situation and concomitant ire of a heavy-handed relative.

The mischief did not give way to sobriety even after she became an adolescent. My mind goes back in time and space to one classic occasion when she was traveling on rickshaw with her father, a professor by profession and a strict disciplinarian by nature. The rickshaw almost overturned on one horribly potholed stretch, and Chacha exclaimed angrily that she had almost knocked him off. “Papa, don’t give me ideas!” was the saucy rejoinder, vintage Nupur style.

Nobody could remain angry with her for long or even indifferent. Though during her illness, the sparkle was subdued, traces of the old Nupur surfaced every now and then, and one felt that nothing had changed much. If you were burdened with worry, she was ready with a smile and a joke to lighten up the moment and make you believe that this too shall pass.

  

It is now more than seven years since Nupur decided to leave us to our earthly pursuits. Her passing, for me, is the passing of an era--of laughter, of childhood pranks, of enduring innocence. Like a bird, she has winged her way to the eternal blue skies, while we grapple with the unvarnished truth—that there will never be another like her.

                                     

You've got to be Dillogical

She had always had an unblemished record of efficiency but over the years, age had taken its toll. She no longer inspired confidence and looked worn out, even imbalanced, as though one shoulder was higher than the other. Worse still, there was a distinct asthmatic wheeze which escalated into a rattling cough, when performing the smallest task. It was all very distressing but everyone glossed over it, not wanting the question to be raised, as to why at all she was still around. 

But sooner or later all hell was bound to break loose. The irritant became a full-blown crisis one day, when she seemed to have had a complete breakdown. What was appalling was that she had even forgotten all the instructions given! ‘A classic case of short term memory loss’ I joked to the spouse as his brows drew close in a familiar frown. The line, which normally never failed to evoke a smile, fell completely flat and he left the room muttering something about not putting up with the situation any longer. I thought this was it—finally. My mind went back over the last several years of our association. The children had been so delighted when she first joined the household. How had the deterioration taken place to this extent that we were now forced to move on?

I decided to try and reach out to her one last time. With infinite patience, though that has never been my forte, I tried to coax some response. My efforts seemed to be stonewalled initially, but I persisted, my confidence growing by infinitesimal bits. There was one faint positive reaction and then the final breakthrough. The problem was nothing more than slight fatigue in coping with additional physical burden, and some amount of memory slippage. I announced triumphantly to the spouse that the secret was to be patient and not start banging your fist on the table, upsetting the fragile balance even more.

That was the only understanding the old lady had craved, but we were too impatient and busy to read the signals correctly. However, empathy had won the day and declared me the winner. It was a Eureka like discovery in terms of diagnosis and treatment, and ridiculous in its sheer simplicity—keep only one sheet of paper in the paper tray and give a command to print only one page at a time. Armed with this sure-shot formula for victory, I printed out the 60 pages of my daughter’s assignment, well in time. The pages came out crisp and without a crease, with every line in sharp focus—a very smart looking document in all.

And thus will our grand old lady, the HP DeskJet printer live on, to teach many an impatient younger generation about being intuitive rather than only analytical—and more importantly, that the old are more than worth their weight in gold.

At sea on the road

It is better to travel than to arrive is a trite statement most of us use when in a philosophical mood. In Delhi, one recites this like a mantra whenever out on the roads as a sort of chant to ward off the evil eye, namely, the skyrocketing blood pressure. A mundane thing like venturing out on a dinner invitation often makes one feel like the original intrepid explorer. Dozens of vehicles all anxious to clear the traffic signal obligingly clog the free left lane. Buses growl and cars blare shrilly at each other. Ladies driving their cars are gainfully employed in checking out their make-up in the rearview mirror; the male drivers, with fists balled up, are more than ready with a string of curses. Should you miss the ‘cut’, you’ve to battle with one-way roads as hostile as enemy territory, feeling totally at sea quite like the ancient mariner. Finally you arrive, triumphantly shouting ‘Eureka’, by which time the harried hostess has served dessert. No, there’s no food at home; I’ve given the maid off, you hiss to the spouse who seems determined to head for the exit.

Traffic pangs have, however, the proverbial silver lining, in the form of empathy-laden conversations between the most incurable wallflowers. Tongue-tied souls lay bare their emotions about life in general, and this dinner invitation in particular, being nothing but one long journey. Determinedly cheerful hostesses trying desperately to enliven the desultory conversation, look gratefully at garrulous guests warming to the theme of the ubiquitous Ring Road. One has personally found the Ring Road a singularly uninspiring topic quite lacking in passion and romance, but is in an absolute minority here, as even the archetypal men of few words wax eloquent on the subject. A guest arrives inexcusably late but launches into an impassioned explanation about how he took a wrong left turn. The ladies don’t much care for it; they are anyway busy looking daggers at the latter’s wife who obviously took a detour via the beauty parlour.

The men react as one to the red herring about the route; there is a cacophony of voices, as two chaps point out the way with vigorous gestures and almost put the hapless fellow back into his car to do a replay following their directions. It’s all a question of perspective, states an opinionated gentleman taking the discussion to the realm of the abstract. Another Good Samaritan takes the lucky object of everyone’s attention aside and after writing his memoirs on the spot, proceeds to give him some inside information for the return journey. The guest is by now heartily cursing himself for not having made a beeline for the bar instead. Just then the last latecomer arrives and history repeats itself. The host joins in the fray, hospitably digging out a few dog-eared maps for good measure and the party truly begins to rock.

Fear is the key

Today’s hectic life demands that holidays also have a killing schedule. Art is long and time is short, so I chalked out a thrilling itinerary, wherein the children and I visited monuments at a break–neck pace. By the end of the second day the girls had become rather querulous, and finally lapsed into glassy eyed silence. Faced with the prospect of a mutiny, I was finally forced to wave the white flag in the form of a query as to whether they were interested in going to the Mall. The effect was magical. They discovered afresh the qualities of the aged relative which had hitherto been hidden under layers of history. Within no time, we were in a crowded Mall peopled by youngsters wearing impossible clothes. The object of the kids’ attention was the ‘Scary House’ show being touted as an experience to remember, so I bought four tickets—for my daughters Tanvee, a sedate youngster if ever there was one, Jayati five years her junior, and for Jayati’s bosom pal, Upasana, who had already seen the show and was therefore doubling as our friend, philosopher and guide.

We entered the dim interiors, heartened by Upasana’s whisper that it was going to be such fun. A ghost leapt at us with a blood-curdling yell—Jayati’s equal and opposite reaction was to bang on the door and scream to be let out. So we left her outside the entrance and came back in, with markedly less enthusiasm than before. There were some faintly lit stairs to be mounted and as we neared the top a mummified hand brushed across our faces, causing Tanvee to drop her spectacles and do an undignified jig around, screeching all the while. I told her to stand still and not crush the sole pair she possessed. Thereafter the thrills awaiting us had to be put on hold in favour of some more mundane business, namely, rummaging round on the floor. Finally, I located her spectacles and put them inside my bag, because something told me there would be repeat performances.

Determined not to be shaken by these developments we carried on and came up bang against the wall, so Upasana squeaked ‘which way do we go?’, to which a ghost, disgusted at having been pre-empted, said in as menacing a whisper as it could manage, ‘turn right.’ We turned the corner and there it was—a corpse, hanging by his neck and swaying gently from side to side. Tanvee let out a horrified shriek, slipped her hand into mine and then with another piercing yell, demanded to know whether the hand was mine or of some ghost that had crept up behind us. These chilling notions made the intrepid Upasana tremble with fear and she said ‘Aunty, please hold my hand as well.’ I gave both a brief lecture on how monuments had been far more enjoyable than this.

And thus we crept forward, with ghosts hissing sibilantly all around, until we came to the high point of the whole affair—a dead body on a cot which shot into you the moment you stealthily inched your way towards the exit and freedom. The ghosts luckily, had by now become unnerved by the prospect of getting a dressing down from this scolding adult and meekly let us go when I said sternly that enough was enough. Finally we were out, the two girls a quivering mass of nerves blithely greeted by an enviably cool and composed Jayati. Needless to add, we spent the rest of the holiday visiting museums and admiring objects d’ art sedately confined to glass cases. In management jargon, the takeaway from the experience was a distinctly reduced admiration of the redoubtable Harry Potter as it had been keenly felt by all that meeting up with ghosts on a one-to-one basis was a lot less than fun.

Ring, ring, why don't you give me a call

The excitement in the air was palpable whenever the telephone rang. This was the dinosaur era, better described as P.T.D, or Pre-TV Days. No doubt All India Radio was alive and kicking but it only occasionally broadcast songs, probably believing strongly that students should study in preparation of the infernal exams, and elders should meditate in preparation of their inevitable passing on. So radio programmes were either informative or spiritual lest the captive audience fall prey to the lures of vulgar entertainment. A critique of the simple living high thinking days of yore which made most people such crashing bores, is only too tempting a subject; one somehow drags oneself back to the topic of the ubiquitous telephone, our window to the world.

The shrillness of its ringing tones notwithstanding, there was an instant sense of anticipation as to who the lucky object of its affections would be. We would fall over ourselves in trying to reach the jangling instrument pronto, each mentally rehearsing the casually sophisticated tone in which ‘Hello’ would be essayed. However, the greeting was invariably a breathless one, the underlying note being one of triumph at having outpaced the siblings and reached the finishing line first.

The P&T department had generously allowed the consumer to choose any colour as long as it was black. And so, unprepossessing black instruments, quite frog-like in appearance, had pride of place in every home. This pompous bearer of tidings smugly looked down its nose at its humble companion, the sofa-cum-bed. Like rice on the dining-table, the sofa-cum-bed was the staple diet of every household since house guests tended to outnumber the host family at any given time. But the selfsame piece of furniture, though sedate in appearance like a quintessential aged relative, played its double role with élan.

One had never been the sociable, gregarious kind, and tended to retreat into the interiors of the home when guests descended. But the ringing tones of the phone were like Lorelei and drew one out like a magnet. Even at the risk of having to converse with the eagle eyed aunts of the colony, one dashed out in time to pick up the receiver and drawl a cool ‘Hello’. There was no caller ID or mobile phone screen to give a clue, and the anonymity of the caller added to the excitement. Was it a class-mate, friend, or—palpitations here—an admirer? Of course, it could very well be the neighbour, asking if we had any extra milk, or simply wanting to share the intricate design of the violently coloured sweater she had just knitted.

The suspense was always killing.  More often than not, the calls were from the control room, giving the lowdown on the transformer and frequency situation, and one mutely held out the receiver to Papa. Temporary setback no doubt, but it never deterred one from making the fifty metre dash next time round too. The very idea of Someone Calling Up made the most stoic heart go pitter-patter and the laziest feet, clitter-clatter.

But God forbid if you needed to place a long distance call through the telephone exchange. Subscriber Telephone Dialling had made its first, tentative forays only into large cities, and we had to content ourselves with booking trunk calls. So one’s stroke of luck started with any of the staff being present in the exchange to take note of the request. The average pleasant morning/ sunny winter afternoon were your determined rivals for their attention. Chatty ladies exchanging notes on recipes were apt to pick up on your fifth attempt and inform you helpfully that all lines were down since the past week and if they had their way,  for the foreseeable future as well.

I vividly remember the time I was expecting to get the results of one of the competitive examinations I had appeared for. The phone rang; I grabbed the receiver and held on to it with clammy hands. The gentleman at the other end proceeded to establish first that I was neither spy, alien nor criminal- in- the- making. He then melted sufficiently to ask me in tones of extreme friendliness whether I had decided to sit for a certain bank recruitment exam—‘Intehaan diye the ka’ is what I recall. Throat dry, I managed to croak a ‘yes’. He then said Papa had asked him to convey the result telephonically as the direct lines weren’t working.

My heart was hammering so hard I could barely hear him. Just then a long awaited ‘Shukla ji’ apparently decided to drop in, so Mr. Singh, my friend, philosopher and guide, decided to clarify the position on various sundry issues that had been niggling his conscience for a while. I was by now contemplating wrapping the dratted telephone cord around someone’s neck—no prizes for guessing whose—when Mr. Singh came back to the subject in hand with much reluctance and said ‘Haan to phir hum bata na rahe the, ki aapka ho gaya hai’. Whew! I had almost passed out by the time he imparted the news that I had been selected. But then I guess that’s why it’s all so fresh in the mind even after almost twenty-five years have elapsed since that momentous day.

Kaleidoscope

Mummy often narrated instances from our childhood. Each one of us had been blessed with a gregarious nature; singing songs and telling tall tales was our forte. Manoj, all of four was once narrating a story about a king. With his mop of curly hair and angelic countenance which quite belied the naughtiness within, he was everyone’s favourite story teller. ‘Raja aur rani ek din jungle mein ja rahe the. Jaate, jaate…’ He paused here and everyone waited with bated breath to learn about the lion which suddenly pounced on the brave king or the enemy’s army which had them surrounded from all sides. Taking a deep breath, our hero continued ‘jaate jaate…unko bhookh lagi’. You didn’t need a crystal ball to divine that so early in life his priorities were very clear--Food was hero number one in every action-packed melodrama.

I’m sure this pragmatism is a family trait. As a child, Bhaiya was fond of singing ‘ek pardesi mera dil le gaya’. Instead of the nebulous ‘gham’ he preferred the realistic ‘aam’, because to him it made more sense that a person would give a mango rather than an abstract notion like pain. So the second line, as per his rendition, went, ‘jaate- jaate meetha- meetha aam de gaya.’ I always sang ‘dar badar ki khaate hain thokar’ with a lot of feeling. Despite the melancholia inherent in the song, the audience could be seen stifling a smile or two, as I would bang my head on the nearest wall every time I came to ‘thokar’, to ensure that there was no room for doubt in anyone’s mind about the singer’s plight.

During family get-togethers, we used to have full-scale programmes, comprising plays, songs and the like. On one such occasion, Jiji and her band of sincere cousins were presenting a song about a boat rowing out to sea-- ‘kishti chali re, daan sambhalo re’. The lyrics were serious, exhorting all on board to ably man the vessel. Though the tone, tenor and tune made it sound suspiciously like a poem being recited, the enthusiastic girls had rehearsed it for hours, with unabated vigour. Sadly for them, at the finale Manoj decided to sit on the steps and present his own version, with actions to match the words. The audience was thoroughly captivated by the cherubic performer and hardly noticed the group warbling onstage.

And then there was the magic show. An upturned table was kept on the stage, its four legs draped with a sheet, below which Manoj sat, concealed from view. The sheet had a hole in its middle. Bhaiya, the conjuror, dramatically plucked out flowers and such stuff from thin air, the items being passed up through the aperture by Manoj. Thunderous applause greeted the performance and with graceful bows to the highly appreciative audience, the magician withdrew from the scene. His assistants—perhaps smarting over the damp squib of their group song-- were clumsy in removing the table, and a wail rent the air. ‘Bhaiya, chot lag gayi’ said a quavering voice from under the sheet. Before the assistants could get their act together, the disembodied voice was followed by Manoj clambering out, tears et al. The cloak of invisibility was not so invisible after all

Manoj may have earned sympathy here, but he sure got on the wrong side of Mummy the next time round. Sweety Jiji was supposed to wear his bright red outfit in her role as the postbox, but he kicked up a huge fuss. He wasn’t going to lend anything to anyone he said, and did his usual song and dance to drive home the point. One of Newton’s laws of motion unfortunately swung into play and Manoj’s actions had an equal and opposite reaction. Mummy the disciplinarian was not standing for the tantrum, no way. The doting aunts tried to step in and suggest a via media but Mummy’s mind was made up. The lad was put into the safe custody of our faithful retainer and he missed the entire show. The rest of us youngsters, if at all harbouring notions of mutiny, decided to be model children thereafter.   

All the World's a stage

Bhaiya and Jiji were keenly involved in dramatics, and during the vacations, would regale us with stories of the plays they had acted in. Papa surprised us one day by saying that he had a flair for the theatre too. Now Papa was the quintessential man of few words. Even discounting the fact that opportunities to get a word in edgeways were few and far between, he was basically the strong, silent type. So, a statement from him on his penchant for acting had us all slack-jawed. A rare hush descended on the family. Then the questions flew, thick and fast--when, where and in what? It emerged that when he was studying in BHU, IT, he had acted in the play, ‘Baiju Bawra’. Again, open-mouthed wonder and stunned silence in the room.

One has gracefully omitted mentioning that though we were all reasonably good at singing, there was one notable exception—tunefulness had given Papa quite a wide berth. In such a situation, the very idea of him acting in a play, where the interlude between one intricate song of Baiju and another, was one complicated song of Tansen close on the heels of the last impossible one, had us dumbfounded. He described the play scene by scene, building up to the dramatic moment of the historic contest between the two maestros. “And then”, he said with a flourish, “I come onto the stage responding to a clarion call of ‘Sipahiyon, Baiju Bawra ko giraftaar kar lo’, being one among the posse of policemen who drag Baiju away.” 

My own tryst with acting commenced with our presentation of Snow- white and the Seven Dwarfs. Jiji was going to be Snow- white, while Manoj and I were among the seven dwarfs. The roles were being hotly debated when one budding talent--probably the wicked stepmother-- acerbically commented that since Manoj was fairly plump and rosy-cheeked, he’d be a good choice for ‘Greedy.’ Well, I may have called him that any number of times, particularly in the context of toffees which invariably turned out to be the last of a vanishing breed, but I wouldn’t stand for anyone else implying the same. A cold war broke out then and there which almost jeopardised the whole thing. Anyway, the upshot was that Manoj was cast as Sneezy and I was Grumpy, while some new recruit, blissfully ignorant about the connotations, was ensnared into the role of Greedy. Manoj's lines comprised an awful amount of sneezing; I had to look and sound quite sullen, which was alien to my generally sunny disposition, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely all the same.