Swings & Roundabouts

Kiran Manral

Unless you have been living under a virtual rock, you cannot but know that one of our own, blogger and uber Twitterer Kiran Manral, is now a published author and her first book, The Reluctant Detective, is now available in all bookstores. She is doing various book reading sessions across the country – she is at Happy Planet, Powai on 29 January and in Gurgaon on 4 February. She is also planning to come down South to Bangalore and Chennai! Before she starts whizzing around the country, she happily answers a few questions for my readers.

Read on!

First of all, congratulations! How does it feel to see your name on the spine of a book?

The second Kay story is with the editor to decide whether they want to publish it or not. I’m working on a third book which is about a young working girl in Mumbai, living alone. Also in the comic genre. And there’s a dark story about two sisters I have half written which I keep going back to, which no one I’ve shown it to likes, but which I seem compelled to keep writing.

Yes, planning to come to chennai. Dates being finalised.
All the best, Kiran! On behalf of my readers, I’d like to wish you the very best of luck and hope your book becomes a massive success!

I met my oldest friend yesterday. Oldest not in terms of her age but  in terms of how long we have been friends! I met V when we were in II standard, at the ripe age of 7. And we have been friends since. Cool or what?

I don’t think we have ever been the “Best Frnds 4 Eva” kinda friends. Throughout the years, we have survived growing up and the random shuffling of students that left us alone that we remained in the same class year after year. When her dad, who worked as a bank manager, got transferred in the summer hols after our VIII standard exams, we figured it was the end of things as we knew. I went with my brother to say bye to her, her younger sister and her parents and we promised to remain in touch. Little did we know that we would! We sent proper snail mails to each other regularly, month after month. It was from one of her letters I learnt the expression “in the pink of health”! We met a few times afterwards, when she came down to Chennai to visit her grandparents. Then with email and phone, we continued keeping in touch. When I got married, she travelled down from Bombay just for my reception.

Unfortunately I couldn’t go for her wedding because it was 4 days after the birth of P, in India. She then moved to US, doing a PhD and becoming a professor no less and became a mum – twice over! Throughout, we kept up with each other’s lives and finally, thanks to me living in Chennai now, our hometown and where her folks have retired to, we met each other and our children.

It was priceless, walking into her parents house, her dad telling me I look the same even as he touched my head and silently blessed me. An emotional hug with her mum. A room full of our children. Her parents telling stories from our school days. Pushing our daughters on the swing set even as we jabbered away.

Good times. Oh and as the old saying goes, old surely is gold!

After wanting to do it for years, I finally managed to stay in Auroville for a few days after Christmas ’11. I had wanted to go to the Windarra farms, pick fruits, attend the jam making sessions and take part in the various classes and basically, just chill. Though my stay was quite different to how I had envisaged (purely due to personal reasons), I quite liked the place. There was a serenity to the place that is hard to come by these days, especially in India. The calm early mornings reminded me of the quiet solitude that wrapped itself around me on my morning walks in Brentwood.

But there were couple of things there that made me question myself.

I had booked for rooms for us via their website over a month back but as it is their busiest period, I wasn’t left with very many choices. Especially as I wanted a guest house that was open to families with children. I finally got rooms at New Creation guest house and had requested for “GOOD” category rooms. The one we ended up with had a ways to go before calling itself that. As the room originally allocated to us was being cleaned when we arrived, we chose to go into town and return later. When we did, it was dark and the stairs with no banisters weren’t child friendly. So, when we were offered a downstairs option, we jumped at it.

But you know what they say about looking, before leaping, right? Well, let’s just say we didn’t look hard enough.

The room was pretty basic – quite small with two table fans and the bathroom was seriously meh, festooned with cobwebs and a mirror that was years from its prime. But what took the cake was that once the lights were out, a massive roach came out to play! We’d asked for extra mattress for P but as the main beds were too narrow for me AND the Mint, we swapped beds. As a result, much of the night I spent with my hand on my torchlight, waiting for the roach to party on my face! S was totally put off with our stained and holey sheets and the fact that we had no hot water, and complained to the main guy the next morning. Who was, truth be told, so apologetic about the roach and the stained sheets that he reduced Rs 200 off our bill.He looked so woe begone that I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the second roach that visited us the following day.

Throughout our stay, we both were trying on our best game faces. “It is Auroville, after all, not a fancy resort”, we kept muttering to each other. But what made me question myself is this – had I gone to a non-resort type establishment and booked rooms there, and the rooms turned out sub-par, will I hesitate in complaining to the management and demanding better service or will I just suck it up? How much of our not throwing a hissy fit at the general state of things was awe at the brand that is Auroville? Is it part of the collective unconsciousness of the Indian race that we are on our best behaviour in front of the white man? Would I have been half so easy-going had the manager been Mr Karumuthu and we’d stayed in Hotel Sathguru?

Edited to add: I forgot the best bit – remember the upstairs room we said no to cos of the banisters, the one that was better than the one we stayed in? Guess who got to sleep in there? Our driver! He had asked the guy who handed our keys the way to the restroom and got given the keys to that apartment and told to use the loo in there and bed to sleep, if he wanted! To be fair to the gentlemen in charge, they didn’t slap us with the bill for that room too, though I half-thought they might!

How has the new year been, so far, my dear Reader? I am so sorry I have neglected you – I simply lost the will to write, it was as simple and as shattering as that. I read so many books to see if that will spur me on but not much luck there. Life has just been overwhelming me to such a great extent that I could no longer frame meaningful sentences.

I hope that 2012 marks a turning point in my writing career and I actually WRITE!

A quick recap of what’s been happening my end: my son, despite not liking it very much, has been doing rather well at school. He has been scoring well, did well in his Grade 1 ABRSM violin lessons and passed them, played decent enough football for the coach to tell him to stay back for practice, won a few prizes in various internal competitions and has managed to net a speaking part in his upcoming school play. Not bad eh?But his health had been worrying us in December so we are keeping an eye on him.

His sister, on the other hand, has been breezing through play school. She sings, she dances, she prances, generally has a rollicking time of it – but still makes us go through the “waah I WON’T go to school!” at least twice every week. She needs to be moved to a Big School come June and I am not looking forward to that!

What have you been upto?

With her brand new bike!

We said bye bye to terrible twos yesterday. Yes, the child turned three. For the first time, she and the mama with whom she shares her birthday with were in the same place and time and we made the most of it.

We clubbed the birthdays with a curtain raiser of the new apartments we (us and the mama) will be moving to – food was prepared in mum’s and gran’s houses and transported to our new apartment for lunch. We cut her cake there, relaxed, talked and just sat down, enjoying the lusty sea breeze that blew through the apartment in the afternoon. Then trooped in a group for coffee to my brother’s new place a few streets away.

There we had coffee and yet more cake – his birthday cake, which he cut with his greedy niece’s assistance. After which, the noisy kids were dispatched to the truly awesome park next door while us adults continued our chinwagging sessions. We rounded off the the day’s events by a trip to the beach, which is literally a stone’s throw away and finished off with the temple by the beach.

The Mint is one lucky birthday girl as she got some truly amazing birthday presents – my dad got her (and her brother) some great bicycles so they can get to mama’s house easily; not to be outdone, mum got granddaughter a very pretty pair of gold earrings. Mama and maami got her this truly rocking rocking horse – in pink, of course! She also got some puzzles, new outfits and lots of lovely cash, from the rest of the family.

The true comic moment of the day happened earlier that afternoon while we were preparing to leave the parent’s house to get to mine. As it was hot and my grandparents cannot walk far, we had hired an auto and were busy loading it up. My brother had rung earlier, asking me to stand outside with the keys to my apartment, as he had got something for the birthday girl that he wanted to place in the new house. As I was standing in the agreed spot, my dad and bro’s FIL got bored of sitting around and decided to just walk it and took my keys with them. The phone rang and I was talking to hubby, missing all the action in far away England, and The Mint ran out to grab the phone from me.

Who should whiz past us then by the maami in her Scooty, with the mama at the back, holding this massive PINK rocking horse? She was grinning, he was signing for keys, while I was trying to distract The Mint from catching sight of them while furiously signing that the apartment was open – oh it was hysterical!

The day made sense to my R2I, with the sib and the child enjoying their day together and my dear gran walking around the new apartment, saying “it is beautiful!”

She had last visited me when my son was born nine years back – I had never thought she’d get a passport and visit me in England but she did! I was also doubtful she would ever visit my house again – but I am so glad that she could, so easily too!

As my son rightly summed up, what a difference from the previous birthday party!

… just about sums up my current situation. Chennai life has caught me by the throat and I am barely holding on. The difference between life in Brentwood and life in Chennai can be compared to crossing a street via a zebra crossing (complete with signals and push buttons) and crossing a busy four-road junction and peak hour.

I am not exaggerating.

The number of things that need my attention and input have shot up dramatically and as the sole exception to the ‘all women are multi-taskers’ rule, I am struggling. Plus, this temporary single parenting lark is not easy, I tell you, despite having an abundance of people around.

Let me quickly bring you up to speed regarding what I have been up to in the past month.

1. Kids’ schools – P had couple of more exams to deal with. One was a smallish affair but starting today are his Summative Assessments and I am not exaggerating when I say he is scared shitless, poor mutt. He also had some Cyber Olympiad and a trip to a local amusement park, for variation. M’s school, on the other hand, is one long trip. They had a rocking Janmashtami celebration, complete with bhajans and story from ISKON and a handi breaking for all mums!

2. I have been running around the town, trying to find a suitable apartment for us and then getting it kitted out. That process is still happening. And with most of it dependent on flighty vendors who never turn up when they promise to, the process is a long drawn out one.

3. On a major plus, my brother and SIL arrived in town three weeks back, dramatically impacting my social life. Since then, we have been attending Onam sadhyas, weddings, movie shows, even cookery contests with gusto! We even got our mugs on a local paper for our efforts! And, Women’s Web did this lovely feature on me – did any of you read it?

My list of pending items seems never-ending – getting a new violin for P, locating a veena class for me, sorting our holiday (yayy!), getting a phone line, broadband, gas connection and other assorted stuff sorted for the new apartment and actually MOVE. I cannot wait for my holiday to begin – my lovely hosts should be warned that I intend to park butt in their guest room and collapse.

Whatchu been up to, my lovely readers?

Robin, in the prime of his youth

The family’s last male dog, the adorable Golden Retriever Robin, left for the Heavenly Kennels up above on 4/8/11. He was 11 years old.

For more than a decade and a half, my parents have raised dogs, dachshunds mainly. Into this sausage dog land, walked in Robin, the golden boy, as a year old pup. The first of the dogs to enter the fray after I moved to England, he was ‘rescued’ by my dad after he was abandoned by his owners and his new owner, dad’s friend, couldn’t look after him. I still remember the e-mail a cousin sent me: “Appa singa kutti onnu eduthindu vandirukka!” (Translation: Your dad has brought home a lion cub.)

I fully expected it to be true and in mild panic cross-checked with my brother who said the pater had brought in a Golden Retriever – and he was a beauty! I was then sent pictures of him, with his gleaming mane of hair and he most assuredly was gorgeous. I couldn’t wait to see him!

When I finally met him a year later, I found him mildly suspicious of me and P, who was a year old then. He slowly got used to us, though the baby’s attempts at pulling his hair made him hide under the table and growl menacingly. He had the most expressive eye brows I have ever seen in a dog, apart from Gromit. With the merest movement, he will communicate his wants. Towards the end, he could just move his eyebrows wanly a few times.

I have taken him for a fair few walks during my trips home and have always found him stubborn and determined to pull my arms out of the sockets. Every time, we will start the walk, waging a tug-of-war and return in fits of bad temper. He was like a little boy, wanting to sniff here, to wee there and generally, these places coincided with people’s gateways and I used to have the devil’s own time dragging him away.

He was also extremely playful. On one memorable occasion, as my brother returned home late after meeting up with his friends and was ready to hit the sack, our granny, who was staying over, sent up the alarm. Robin has escaped! Wearily, the brother wandered the streets in the dead of the night and Robin led him a wretched dance for almost 30 minutes! Another time, he went missing in the middle of the afternoon. For two hours, the pater walked the nearby streets, shouting ‘ROBIIINNN!’ to no avail. Finally, a gentleman hailed him and took him inside his house, asking quiveringly, ‘is he yours?’

There he was, camped underneath the dining table, his face firmly turned away from his irate owner. True to the Tamil saying, thirandha veetile naai nuzhaiyara maadiri (Translation: Walking into a house like a dog), Robin had sauntered into the strange house and parked his butt under the dining table. The owner of the house, who was quite scared of dogs, tried to cajole him out of his house by giving him some biscuits. Robin calmly ate the lot and refused to budge! The poor man was at his wits end when he heard someone calling out a name, went out to investigate and much to his relief, found the owner of his unexpected guest!

Robin has always been sickly – one of the reasons for his abandonment, we thought. Over the years, his shaggy coat caused him problems during the sticky summer and had to be cropped off, to offer him some relief. He looked more like a shorn sheep, than the Golden Retriever he was! In hot Chennai, the chap would burrow into the cooler ground, trying to cool himself down, and ended up with worms burrowing under his skin, causing him untold pain!

With assorted ills, he became a familiar face at the vet’s. And last week, his kidneys and liver failed, making the end inevitable. Still, the decision to euthanize him, so as to save him from needless pain, was a gut-wrenching process for the mater. After much thought, she wordlessly agreed to do it Wednesday night and blow me if the ol’ boy didn’t rouse himself out of his stupor and show the first signs of life in a week! He raised his head, drank some mouthfuls of energy drink, wagged his tail feebly and totally raised mum’s spirits, who called off the needle.

But after a night of pain, the vet was summoned first thing in the morning to put him out of his misery. And at 14:03 hours, the medicine stopped his heart.

********

I am glad that I arrived when I did and the kids, especially The Mint, spent time with him. For some reason, he saw her as an adversary and would be most annoyed if she was given a plate of food. He’d literally jump up and down and bark his head off till he was given a morsel of the same! One time, this included even pizza! Even before the kids realised, he’d know if I had made eggs for them and would loudly demand his share! He is the only dog I have ever known to relish dosas and mangoes!

It sure feels strange not to have this overgrown teddy bear sleeping in his usual spot.

Goodbye, old boy. You will be sorely missed. Rest in peace – or as much peace as you can manage, lying next to your former arch rival Xeno for eternity!

Robin, towards the end

Let me tell you a Mint story. This happened when we were reading a book on counting. But before we get into the meat of the story, a little bit of introduction to make things easier to understand. Mum has three dogs, Robin, Kappi (whom Minty calls Kuppi!) and Dino.

Now, the story. Minty and I are reading this book about numbers, counting etc. For number 3, there is a picture of 3 birdies, birdies of a particular kind.

Me: Do you know how many birdies are here, Minty?
M: 3!!!!
Me: YES! DO you know what these birdies are called? Robins!
M: wowwww! Wahbinn!
Me: Yes! Next, do you know what number this is?
M: 4!!
Me: Well done! Do you know what these are?
M: Kuppis!!!
Me: !!!!!!!!!!

It has been 7 weeks since I moved back to Chennai. In that time, I have come across some fairly ludicrous situations due to language problems. While most of these situations were pure comedy gold, some grated my nerves mainly because of the attitude of the main protagonists.

Let me explain by means of some imaginary scenarios.

Imaginary Scenario A

A Tamil woman walks into a juice stop in Allahabad and orders a lime juice. At the juicing counter, she approaches the boy making the beverage and says “Uppu add pannunga!” (Translation: Add some salt)

The boy blinks. She repeats, a bit louder this time. After the third time, the old man standing next to her butts in with a “thoda namak dal dean!”

The boy rushes to comply, while the girl turns to the older man and gushes her thanks. “Thank you! Language is such a big problem, no?”

Imaginary Scenario B

A man gets out of his car in front of a roadside veggie shop in Lajpat Nagar. He points to the various vegetables and states how much of each he’d like. The vendor packs them up accordingly and when the man is done, tots up his bill and gives him the final tally. The man looks at his wallet and says, “En kitte 200 rooba thaan irukku, sayankalam vandu meedhi 50 rooba tharen!”

The vendor, typically, scratches his head and asks a question in Hindi. The man repeats his earlier statement, punctuating each word with a long pause and increasing his volume of delivery. The vendor shakes his hand and says “No Tamil“.

The man gives him Rs200 and then mimes “50 evening, ok?” The vendor grudgingly pockets the money, muttering to himself.

Imaginary Scenario C

Kanpur. A tailor’s shop. It is evening and the shop is full of patrons queuing up to collect their clothing. In that pandemonium, this nattily dressed gent waits calmly for his turn. He is busy talking in his mother tongue with a friend. After the crowd has dissipated, he shows his collection chit and the tailor’s assistant, a boy who looks about 13, rushes to look through the bundles inside, deciphers the hieroglyphics and hands the correct packet to the man in a plastic bag. The man eyes the thin plastic in distaste.

“You are charging Rs.1500 to stitch 4 sets of uniform but you can’t even provide good quality plastic bags? What is this?”

The boy, who clearly hasn’t understood a word of the tirade, looks blankly and says “no Inglis”.

The man tuts, shakes his head and says, “get me another bag.”

“Huh?”

“BAG! BAG!! ANOTHER BAG! THIS ONE… ONE MORE” he shouts and points to the one in his hand.

The boy hands him two more and the man walks out, complaining to his friend about the quality of the hired help these days.

What strikes you the most about these scenarios?

The jarring fact that the people in each did not use the correct language to interact with the vendors. In every case, they spoke their mother tongue or English in places where the prevalent language was something else. Hindi, to be exact. So what will be your reaction? What would you tell these men and the woman if you happened to come across them? ‘Speak the local language, stupid!’ Right? Maybe you wouldn’t have said the word ‘stupid’ out loud, but clearly you would have thought it in your mind, remarked upon the idiocy of not speaking in Hindi to the sabziwala and others, expecting them to understand your English / Tamil and respond in a similar manner. Am I correct?

Chennai is one of the few cities in India where you cannot get away with speaking in Hindi. Hindi and English are taught in the private schools, that’s it. Even in Kannada speaking Bangalore, you can easily find auto drivers that understand Tamil and get away with not knowing Kannada easily. But not in Chennai.

I have seen the above-mentioned scenarios in slightly varied formats almost on a daily basis in Chennai. Every time, the individual in question would confidently walk up to a local menial worker, who clearly hadn’t seen the inside of a school and thus had no chance of learning any language, and start conversing in Hindi.

The time when I butted it and told the juicer boy in Tamil to add salt, the bloke that had shouted ‘namak! namak!‘ till he was practically blue in the face, turned to me cockily and said: “Uff! It is so hard to make oneself understood, no?”

I felt like slapping him but consoled myself by answering tartly, “Next time try saying salt, at least!”

Many moons back, when an uncle of mine got a bank job that meant a transfer to Mandhya Pradesh, the first thing he did upon submitting his application form was sign up for a Spoken Hindi course. Granted, he had the advance notice but the point I am trying to make is this – when you move to a Hindi speaking area, you do not expect anyone to speak in your local language, do you? So why is it when Hindi speaking folk when they move to non-Hindi states think they can get away with speaking their language? And please do not pull the ‘but it is the NATIONAL language’ crap. This national language is taught in CBSE and other such schools. Tell me, is the average menial worker likely to have gone to a good private school? If he had, why the hell is he still playing go fetch to the local tailor?

Of course, I have nothing else to say to those idiots that speak English – ENGLISH, A TAUGHT LANGUAGE – to the hired help.

But I tell you what gets my goat big time, in relation to this language problem? Those that have lived in a place for YEARS – possibly, generations – and still do not speak the local language as if they are too cool to be caught speaking it. I was in college with this whole bunch of girls from Sowcarpet, an area of Chennai that is home predominantly to those that have settled from various Northern states. During the three years we shared bench space, I have never heard one of them even utter a word in Tamil. It was always Hindi or nothing.

After living in England for years, where the average English tourist expects to survive holidaying abroad by speaking English loudly and slowly, you’d think I’d be used to such atrocities.

No.

So yes, go ahead and call me names, tell me I am over-reacting. But please do it in Tamil or English. Mujhe Hindi nahin maloom.

I am reasonably sure one of these days someone is going to show up at my doorstep and aim a swift kick up my butt. I moaned and groaned, whined and moaned some more about how the hell is my son going to cope with the madness that is India and since then, I have been writing post after post about what a card he is and how awesomely he is doing.

What to do? We are like this wonly