Universal Adult Franchise

Another first today - I cast my vote! 

As a teenager, I had always waited to become 21 - the age then for Universal Adult Franchise, we read it in Civics. But there was so much more to elections that Calcutta taught me. The excitement the city would whip-up during the run-up to elections was almost equal to the run-up to Durga Puja. If you know what Durga Puja is to Calcutta you will know what I am talking about. 

Months before elections one would see myriad party candidates visiting homes, distributing pamphlets, with benign faces and folded hands. Para (neighborhood) dadas (older man, not goon) would make their follow-up visits after the candidates and explain the good things about their leader and a gossip or two about others. 

I can't forget those (mother of all) rallies with miles of party supporters in endless queues. I learnt later that the 'supporters' would be paid two meals and some toddy, takers for which were abundant in Calcutta. And from the hinterland they would board local trains - ticketless of course - to arrive in the city, walk in endless lines flags in hand, to that humongous patch of green in the heart of the metropolis called Brigade Parade Ground. Brigade cholo was the slogan like it was Quit India in 1942. Then there were those passionate speeches, legendary traffic jams and endless frustration that Calcuttans suffered. The din was unmissable!

And of course, there was public art on ANY available spot. Your bad luck if you had just re-painted your house a virgin white. But credit where it's due, the posters and graffiti were unique with art, satire, humour, caricature, historical allusions, brilliantly appealing to the entire spectrum from subaltern to intellectual. There was something about the visuals, they were very Soviet-esque. 

On election day there were banners, festoons, pamphlets and party workers in their Sunday best. And of course, my parents getting ready early in the morning, for their walk with the neighbours to the polling booth. Later, they would tell us who they voted for. Their vote was always split. Then we would take sides and have a loud debate about who we should support when we grow up. 

I left home for NDA at 18, three more years for Universal Adult Franchise. The year I turned 20, with a year to go, I learnt there was a legislation which reduced the voting age to 18. What a pity, I thought! 

In the IAF years that followed, I turned the divine patriot, the chosen one, above the rest of them civil servants, the babus, of whom I was cynical, but they ran the system, hidden envy for that. For politicians I held special hatred. I was loathe to associate myself with elections. To me elections got us back the same folks with different faces. 

I held that belief and still do faintly, but my 40th year has been one of change. Improbable as it may seem that one vote makes a difference out of hundreds of millions, I embraced the possibility. This year I exercised my vote. And to be honest I felt that I contributed.

Besides friends who exhorted me to get up and vote, there were some more reasons. Firstly, India to me, had moved on. From those days of badly designed Ambassadors from Hindustan Motors, to Toyotas andand more. Earlier, privileged Oxbridge elite would hold our nation in rapturous awe to speeches about trysts with destiny. Like a mute herd, uneducated and unaware, a nation listened and clapped. While the political class and their cohorts skimmed off and stashed away for their descendants. Today we have an economist PM, and his Cambridge tag may inspire respect but not awe. A million educated Indians can not only eyeball him but also beat him in a debate. And he'd rather not make speeches about trysts because that will not get the masses to exult. The masses now look for results and don't get excited by floral speeches and platitudes. 

It was the time for action I thought, and if I did not vote for change, I must not expect change to happen. 

(DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS FROM 2008)

Music in my life & the new laureate

Music was my first love and it stayed. Can’t say if it came from the family: parents, older brother and sister all music lovers, plus, the larger family full of singers and musicians. Or Calcutta where I grew up. So many things about the city was to do with the practicing and preaching of music, the exact word in many Indian languages, charcha. Neighborhoods at dusk would resonate with evening riyaaz, often cacophonous. Music was part of every child’s initial curriculum, a pursuit abandoned should they fail the litmus test. And those who abandoned it (parents included) became fans in the neighborhood of the ones who persisted. And so some of us who did persist not because we were prodigies but just possessed the initial sparks, were adored in the para (neighborhood). That was encouragement. 

And I was there playing my piece in the evening symphony on tabla, sometimes accompanied by RamDa who would play Chandrakauns on the harmonium, and sometimes with my brother on sitar. All my other interests - a multitude drifting in and out at various points - are now only a faint memory. Like making catapults from the y of a tree's branch and strips of cycle tube, or flying kites or painting clay pots or collecting stamps and first day covers. Music survived my ADHD. 

As a pupil of one of the best tabla Gurus then I may have had another reason. Plus with parents who sang along and encouraged everything musical, Hindustani classical, film music, even the stuff we listened to. And then of course there was The Beatles, mentioned last for reason. Who without any doubt occupied the singular spot for the favorite, a permanent answer to if there is one band which one would it be.

Music also got me friends before I hit my teens. Friends with whom LPs were exchanged and much time spent listening together. These friends stayed and conversations with them to this day gravitate to music. Those days if there was talk, it had to be music trivia. By the mid teens, we had to know all the facts. Like Joni Mitchell wrote Woodstock and also illustrated the jacket of CSNY's So Far, the album with their cover of her song. We collected rare LP s. A friend had a Blue Album that George Harrison had autographed, with a large Om below the signature. That was worth a million, it still must be. Am sure SG has kept that. Would like a selfie with it someday!

The stereo and turn-table were important possessions. Cosmic was an expensive brand. Sonodyne was cool to have. Both were Indian and produced the decibels you needed to deliver to your neighbours. Phillips was a tad inferior. Of course the more resourceful ones had Sansuis, Sonys and Akais. Few, whose fathers globe-trotted, had spool decks and fancier stuff. Cassettes came later and were difficult to manage. They somehow became mainstay despite the tendency to get flicked (a word in our dictionary then, for stolen) easily and the regular watch one had to keep against humidity and fungus attacks. By the time we were leaving school, CDs had appeared and were aspirational. My first one was a gift from my sister, a collection of Brahms produced by Polydor for the Festival of the USSR in India, in the mid-eighties.

Then, there was music one could select and curate from rare LPs in Calcutta. Piracy in today's language. I remember buying my first collection of John Mayall, Robert Cray and other British blues artists from AC Market on Theatre Road, circa, 84/85. They would let you select songs from LPs. BASF was known for the best blank tapes, next was TDK. The quality of the recordings were good.

One thing though. I bothered less for the lyrics and more for the music. It had to sound good to the ear. I was probably slow. I sometimes couldn’t fathom the lines, but that did not matter. The music just had to be rich: the vocals, the instrumentals, the composition. And so the love for all the Jobim, Gilberto, Joao Bosco, Pavarotti and Placidos of the world. Closer to home, Mehdi Hassan remains to be comprehended to this day, i.e., Mir or the others whose ghazals he sang. At home there was one LP I loved of Rafi and Begum Akhtar. A classic, specially the mellow and glorious Urdu of Kaifi Azmi between the songs, narrating as Ghalib in 1st person the events of 1857. 

And so it stayed that I never got past the first 10 seconds of Bob Dylan, read his off-putting nasal whine. I still struggle.

In my later years, with weed, thinking it might help, I ended up particularly liking neither. Rather, I developed a dislike for both: his music and weed. So I chose never to collect Dylan’s music in spite of the poetry and always smirked in the inside mixed with amazement, when some friends would gush over him. To me there was more and better music to explore. But here’s the twist. I did collect AND love not his but covers of his songs by others, example, the 40 odd versions of 'All Along the watchtower…’ from Ritchie Havens to DMB. Speaking of which my favorite still is Hendrix's, where the raspy guitar opening and sharp drumming can wake up a neighborhood. That opening transformed the song and was adopted by Dylan himself. It packed more kiloton than Joe Cocker's cover of With a little help. So here's conceding basically that I did love Dylan, the lyricist and composer! Maybe some rearrangements by others shone more brilliantly and sounded better to my ear, but to be fair those were all covers!

Therefore here’s also a belated toast to Robert Allan Zimmerman and fans of his I know who have loved him a 100% in spite of his nasal whine. @Shouvik Gangopadhyay, @Bhaskar Khaund, @Sandeep Talwar: wherever you are, you probably rejoiced his Nobel and it is most deserved. I raise my glass to your (our) laureate! 

Am also off now to collect his stuff, at least grab copies of his lyrics and explore him better. A bit like when every time someone I’ve never heard of wins a literature Nobel, I get a copy of their work. The better part is this time I will read the literature. Read by listening to the music (his own and the glorious covers). And yes I am not the literary type, so I cannot argue about who wrote better, specially after I hear that another Dylan deserved the Nobel more!

A fine Samaritan in Bangalore

On the verge of falling asleep a few nights ago, I was shaken awake by my wife. A colleague had called, he had a flat tyre, he was very close by and needed help. His car's tool kit was no good for some reason and I had to lend him ours.

'Why do I have to be woken for that? You know where it is, hand it over!'

"It's very late at night, besides, I don't know how to use our kit, he too may not know..."

('He's your colleague all right but he is a guy, he WILL know') 'I can understand late at night but firstly, all tool kits are the same, if he does not know how to use our tool kit, he is not fit to drive'

"That's very mean, if you don't help people in their time of need, no one will help you ........!"

'Yes yes I know!...'

Cursing the night, I stepped out half asleep.

The Tata Indica tool kit did not have a spanner that worked on his suped-up alloy wheels. I cursed Tata Motors and the owner of the car under my breath.

'How could anyone change a critical part of the car and not have the tools to maintain it?'

I offered the one I had in our Hyundai. That did not work either. Nor did any other contraption or combinations thereof, applied with our combined mid-nightly scientific intelligence.

In an effort to end my agony I concluded that the car be left at our place and he sleep over and fix things in the morning. But he said that was not possible. For some reason I don't remember now (I didn't register then either), he was not sleeping over! He was taking his car home (a good 20 km away)! It was 2.30 am, the breakdown service would not answer the phone. I cursed the maker of the alloy wheel for pushing non-standard products in the market. 'Must have brought it in a container from China with plastic flowers, fake barbies and me-too-Ming vases. Must have cost a hundered rupees each, cheap Chinese import!'

I was readying to curse again, when I saw the lights of a car turning into the road. This was the third or fourth one by. Every time that happened, we stepped away and stood behind the Indica. One never knew midnight drivers. We were about to follow SOP and step off when this red Alto pulled up and stopped.'What does he want at this hour, we didn't flag you down?'

The man was fair, short, round and wore a red shirt. He was in his mid forties, had a pair of thick black handlebars and did not reek of alcohol. Benign! He lit a cigarette, walked up and asked what the problem was. We told him it was a flat tyre and our spanners won't fit, whatever!

In something like a grunt, he asked his companion, Or driver (also short and round but a very dark version of Redshirt) to get something. (Driver Or bodyguard, I couldn't say, but theirs was a relationship poised in true harmony. Where communication had the nuance of a touchscreen and onomatopoiac monosyllables got seamless responses). The dark man produced a small briefcase like box that hid a whole assembly of tools. He took a quick look at the flat tyre and got on the ground to unscrew it. A few attempts later he gave up. Nothing from the briefcase would fit!

Redshirt, by now, had finished his cigarette. He stubbed it the classic way (under his toes, heel swinging sideways) went over to his boot and pulled out another set of tools. He then rolled up his sleeves, squatted on the road and got down to business. Like magic, the tool worked this time! He then handed over the rest of the work to his bodyguard or assistant (at which my wife's colleague took over), lit another cigarette, discoursed on the merits of alloy wheels, offered us information on the best places in Bangalore to get them and some more free tidbits later, it was all over. We were now saying our thank yous and goodbyes.

The business card said he owned a restaurant down the road (Ohhh, the steak place, of course I knew it! But I used to never visit because it did not serve alcohol!). He was going home with his driver. He knew the neighbourhood well and stopped to help someone in distress.

The assistant or manager got behind the wheel this time, and they drove off leaving us in a daze, over the shared smoke, wondering. Who would stop at 3 am, volunteer to assist, then squat on the road and fix your flat for you? That night I could not decide if I would ever do this, help a stranger at 2.30 am. I still am not sure. All I can say is God bless his tribe!