Our Mummy. And her tryst with destiny.

On the 15^th of August 2021, a little after the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world slept, my aunt awakened to eternal freedom, elsewhere.  

Did I say aunt? Sounds strange. I called her mummy. All we cousins called her mummy. By the time she passed away, half her universe was calling her mummy. Indeed, she was everyone’s mummy. 

Post her death, in their condolences, most people describe her as an angel. Some say she couldn’t hurt even an ant. Others say they have never seen her angry even once. I smile and say nothing. 

I had grown up with her for the first four years of my schooling, away from my parents, in our ancestral house headed by mummy’s husband – daddy.

The fact that I can’t remember missing my mom or dad even for a day, shows mummy and daddy played mom and dad to me, to perfection. 

But moms can never be angels. 

I have seen the darker side of mummy. She has punched me when I was late to school and pinched me when I got my spellings wrong in English dictations. Once, she even poured a glass of coffee over my head when I had refused to drink it. 

She can be very unforgiving of people who have rubbed her on the wrong. Literally.

At the Guruvayur temple in front of the sanctum sanctorum, where people stand with eyes closed in divine bliss, mummy once felt a man’s hand on her hips. Was it accidental nirvana or intentional groping, we’d never know. But that man surely got a rude awakening: “Keep your hands to your body!”

“As a sister, she was a big bully,” says my mother. Big sis mummy would run her finger across a candle flame and claim to be God’s special child, forcing her younger siblings to do deeds for her.

“She was quite a rebel deep inside,” says one of her cousins. Little mummy had once defied her father’s diktat and sneaked out of home, walking all alone through the streets, jumping railway crossings, only to join a sea of people gathered to watch Queen Elizabeth drive past in her convoy.

“She was a fearless champion,” says an old friend of hers. There was none to beat her in athletics or academics in school. She so badly wanted to go to college and compete at higher levels. Had her father not got her married off at 16, she would have gone on to do some remarkable things in life, say many who know her from then.

She might not have competed on bigger tracks, turfs or careers, but her life was no less compelling. 

Mummy was just 36 when her husband, our dearest daddy, died in a car accident. 

Our joint family broke up, and all of us went our own ways, into our own nuclear homes. Mummy stayed back with her mother, daughter and son.

Our big ancestral house that had, at the best of times, hosted more than fifteen people, suddenly became too big, too empty and too quiet for four. 

Thankfully, every year, during our summer vacations, all we cousins would return to that old house. We’d refill it with noise, chatter and laughter like it always had been.

Mummy evolved to become the pillar around which the extended family would rally around – eat, play, fight, laugh and bond together. 

Those get-togethers became super fun. Impromptu trips to the theatres, beach and for ice-creams were commonplace. About eight of us, all in our pre-teens, would cram ourselves into a black rickety Fiat driven by mummy, and go wherever we wanted to go.

At the theatres, we’d fill up an entire row, almost. We would jump and prance around in excitement, exchange seats, troop in and out, and generally make life miserable for the others. 

On one such outing, a harassed lady came up to Mummy at the end of the show, and asked, “All these your children?”

Mummy just smiled and never explained. That lady’s expression was priceless. 

All of us would even today pick those vacations as some of the best moments of our lives. Not once were we made to wonder how she ran that household or managed her finances. 

Much later in life, I once asked her about this. She smiled her famous smile, cupped her hands and pointed them heavenwards and said, “I have no clue. God is great!”

Through the next 30 years and more, mummy saw all of us grow wings, migrate, marry, settle down and have children. In all, she had about 14 grandchildren – including grandnephews and grandnieces. And now, six great-grandchildren. I am sure all of them would be referring to her as mummy.

She was present in the labour room for most of those deliveries. And was perhaps the first to handle all those babies, apart from the medical staff there at that time.  

My wife, who had had a caesarean, remembers being wheeled out of the theatre and the anaesthesia wearing off. She says mummy was peering down, beaming, with her voice echoing: “Mole, it’s a boy! All his limbs and features are fine.”

Mummy became this lucky charm for all of us. So much that she was called for deliveries outside the immediate family, too. 

As we grew older and our families got bigger, our get-togethers became more passive – more of sitting around and chatting. But thankfully, the atmosphere always remained extremely immature. Any outsider would term it lunatic. There is still a lot of loud noise, stupid chatter and aimless laughter whenever we meet.

That’s largely because our elders, led by mummy, have remained child-like. 

Mummy grew old but never became old. She was always ready to dance, play, laugh and talk rubbish.

In fact, every time the topic veered towards the forbidden subjects, she’d perk up and go overboard. Sometimes, saying things that would make the rest of us go red in our faces.

I still remember the note that she wrote to her grandnephew for his wedding night. It left nothing to imagination. I still don’t know what his new wife thought of our family that was headed by such a woman.

Most of our get-together jokes were about Mummy. She was always sportive and game for it.

One of our favourites was to try and guess what mummy’s actual likes and dislikes were. No one can really tell for sure. 

She was often too diplomatic to reveal her true feelings. None of us even today know if she likes AC at night. We have heard her say that she can’t sleep a wink without the AC at full blast, just because the person she was sharing the room with asked if it was okay to switch on the AC. 

We have also heard her say that she’s allergic to AC and gets an asthmatic attack if she slept with it at night, when someone had asked if it was okay to switch it off. 

With mummy this was how it was when it came to personal choices. She hated to trouble anyone. 

The classic example that none of us tire telling is how she visited a friend’s house where they served the world’s worst apple pies. Everyone was looking for ways to trash it into empty vases or chuck them out of the window when the host wasn’t seeing, and there mummy was, finishing the last crumb of it and even remarking: “I have not had a better apple pie in my life ever!” 

We kept chiding her about it all her life after that. She would hopelessly try to argue and convince us that the apple pie had actually been good. 

We would find her helplessness too cute.

If all this makes you think mummy was a sucker for emotions, think again. 

Many many years ago, her son’s first film had bombed miserably at the box office. He returned home frustrated, and announced rather dramatically that he had hoped his flight back home would crash and he’d perish. 

If he thought mummy would get all sentimental and console him, he was in for a big shock. 

Mummy’s unexpected retort was immediate: “But why kill the other passengers?”

That was mummy. Nonchalant and practical to the very core. 

But strangely, every time the topic of religion and spirituality came up, she would go silent. 

The fact is, she knew very little about these things and was hardly well-read when it came to scriptures or spiritual theories. 

During such conversations, we generally ignored her. She sat there yawning and often dozing off on the chair with a fixed smile on her face. 

It’s much later in life that I realised, she might have had very little to say, but was the only one among us who was actually practising most of it. 

She was the lesson we were seeking. Her attitude to life was the only ritual that we needed to adopt. 

In fact, her entire life was a demonstration of how to play the cards that fate deals us. And even win over it. 

She was in a way showing us how it isn’t necessary to get lucky to win. All we have to do is simply refuse to be defeated. Just like she did. All her life.

She was surely no angel. She was as human, as fallible and as flawed as any of us. And that’s why it’s not impossible to aspire and become like her. 

April 2022, would have seen her turn 90. 

We had got her to agree to do four things that she had never done in her life, on that day. To drink alcohol, cut her hair short, wear a sleeveless blouse and apply lipstick. 

As the date neared, poor soul, she tried her best to bargain and wriggle out of this deal. We refused to budge. She pleaded endlessly to at least spare her from the torture of drinking alcohol. We told her we’d see when the time comes. But she left us much before that.

I wonder if it was only to avoid doing those things that she had once vowed never to do in her life. 

She won. We lost. 

That extra Yes in Excesss!

 

A doc is no astrologer, y2k techie, falling-meteor tracker or doomsayer.

When he predicts the end, it does end.

So when the doc attending to my friend’s father said it was only a matter of hours, none protested.

“Should we take him off the ventilator?” he asked.

“No!” came the instant recoil from my friend.

“Give us a few hours,” said my friend, in a tone that reminded me of pink-slip recipients in offices.

When the doc and his entourage left the room, my friend turned to me and asked me if I could stay there for a few hours as his family needed to sort things out at home.

I agreed without thinking.

In ten minutes, I found myself alone in that hospital room, with a dying man.

They say mountains and big banyan trees make you ponder about the meaning of life.

Maybe. Haven’t climbed a mountain or sat long enough under one of those trees yet.

But I know one thing for sure.

A hospital room does make you ponder about the meaninglessness of life.

In the four hours that the family was gone, I sat there anticipating the impending gloom delayed only by hope-support systems.

God versus gadgets. Nature versus science.

Hardly an even battle this. At best, just a token resistance.

Amidst these battles raging in eerie silence broken only by the hisses and beeps of machines, I sat there, a mute spectator recollecting my only meeting with that man on the bed.

I remembered the conversation I had had with him over lunch at his place on that day, many years ago.

“Yes is more dangerous than No!” he had said, as lunch was being served.

I had at first laughed it off as a better conversation starter than ‘Today is hotter than yesterday!’ and a better ice-breaker than ‘So, what do you do these days, son?’

But when he continued and said, “One of the greatest lessons you can learn in life is to say No,” I realised he meant more.

I looked down at my plate. It was overflowing. I had been saying Yes to those generous servings.

I let out an embarrassed chuckle, and caught my friend glare at his father.

But the old man was in no mood to stop. He seemed to have a full-blown thesis on the subject ready, and had decided to premiere it on me that day.

“No is definitive. It gives a finite end to things. But Yes is infinite and invites continuation.”

“Isn’t No negative and Yes positive?” I asked, while trying to even out the pile on my plate to make it look civil.

“Maybe the first Yes is positive,” he said. “The second could be ambition. But the third is definitely greed or foolishness.”

I had five Yesses on my plate that afternoon. That’s why what he said cut like a sword.

The leftovers of the old man’s sermon through lunch that day are still fresh in my mind.

Yes is the flag-off to all excesses in our lives. Be it food, money, power, love, relationships…anything. All our problems are a result of us not being able to say No at some point in time.

We are steeped in a culture that says ‘The more the merrier’ instead of ‘Enough is enough’.

Plenty means prosperity.

Which is why glasses have to overflow. Pockets have to be stuffed. Wallets have to bulge. Bags have to burst at the seams. Love has to be unconditional. Emotions have to be unbound. Relationships have to be forever. Life has to be eternal. And we have to be immortal.

Basically, we believe happiness is about having everything unlimited.

And Yes is the floodgate to excesses.

“Excess of anything is poison,” he had summed up and concluded his sermon and lunch.

I said a meek No to a second helping of desserts that day.

That sermon might not have changed me. But it did make me more aware.

Now every time I have a problem in life, I can trace it back to a Yes that I said or to a No I didn’t.

 

The family was back in the hospital room. They all looked pleased at having sorted things out. Tensions and worries on faces were gone, though nothing had changed for the old man on the bed. Doctor and his entourage walked in for a review again. And repeated their hopelessness.

“So do you guys want to take him off the ventilator?”

Even before he had finished I heard most of them say, “Yes, Yes, Yes!”

The first Yes can pass off as inevitability. The second Yes, maybe, practicality. But the third?

It betrayed their excessive eagerness.

 

 

 

2017: Sort of sorted

 

It was the first hour of the first morning of 2017.

I was staring at my pathetic reflection in the bathroom mirror. My special shirt, trousers and jacket were soaked in vomit. In spite of my best efforts to shoo it away, the first thought of the year came into my head: “Why am I here?”

It was the same question that my friend had asked me just a few minutes ago. I was carrying him back home midway from our NYE party, struggling up the stairs to his bedroom, when he tapped me on my shoulders and asked the same profound question: “Why am I here?”

His speech was slurred, but the inference was absolutely clear.

Doesn’t matter if you are sober or drunk, you remain clueless about some questions in life. In fact, if you are drunk, you can vomit and sleep away a problem. But if you are sober, it will fester inside and nauseate you.

So there he was, cozily curled up in his bed, blissfully snoring. And here I was, in my bathroom, drenched in his vomit, pondering about the purpose of life.

“Why am I here?”

They say this was the first question that the thinking man thought to himself the moment he acquired the ability to think. That makes this question as old as man himself. It has a long and tiresome history from the Stone Age to today’s Stoned Age. Through all these years, man has discovered Nature, created civilisations and invented tools, but hasn’t managed to answer this. (Nor has he learnt how to drink alcohol responsibly.)

The story of the question that has defied all evolution has got to be told. And who better to tell it than its latest victim.

So, here’s one version of what must have happened as man evolved from Adam and Eve to my friend Zaheer and me:

Adam must have been wandering aimlessly in Eden thinking “Why am I here?” when he was probably attacked by a beast, or had fallen into the sea.

“To survive is the purpose of life!” he must have then thought.

But once he learnt to survive and once he met Eve, priorities changed.

“Love,” he announced was his new-found purpose. And she blushed.

But Love ends where hunger starts.

“Food!” And soon, “Good Food” became the new purpose in life. His and hers.

Not long, though.

When Eve grew a tummy, they at first blamed it on all the apples and berries they ate. It was only nine months later that they realised the culprit was his fig leaf that she hadn’t spared.

Adam and Eve had unwittingly introduced pregnancy and children to this world.

“To create, to protect, to populate and to care for each other!” they felt was what life should be all about.

Cute babies soon grew up to become bawling children and difficult teenagers. The loving wife became a nagging mother. And the romantic husband became an angry father. The world’s first family was complete.

What one can’t escape, one learns to accept.

“Peace. Detachment. And Nirvana. That should be the ultimate goal in life!” they thought, while meditating.

But the world around them was getting increasingly crowded and chaotic.

Soon, there were more Adams, more Eves and more communities. With more people, came competition. And with competition came the one word that has been singularly responsible for much of the modern world’s ruin- Success.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” said someone and elevated success to life’s most enduring be-all and end-all purpose.

Through might, if not, through money, success became all about attaining victory, fame and power. Once attained, it became all about retaining those at all costs.

Life became messy. The world, a horrible place.

One day, amidst all this mad rush, without any warning Adam and Eve died.

Suddenly life’s gains and the world’s progress seemed hollow and meaningless.

People were confused.

“Why are we here?” they asked. This time in chorus.

Collective questions get collective answers.

“There must be a Giver up there!” they said.

“The one who gave us this life must also be The Giver Of Death!”

There was a collective sigh.

“G.O.D!”

“The One who knows everything and does everything from up there!”

People looked up but saw nothing.

What one can’t see, one must hear about.

Someone got up and narrated a story.

Stories became myths. Myths became scriptures. Scriptures became hymns. Hymns became prayers. Prayers became rituals. Rituals became religion.

And the storytellers became its new messengers, priests gurus and godmen.

They introduced more Gods, superior religions, bigger promises.

Faith makes you blind. Absolute faith makes you deaf, too.

But you can never be too deaf to that voice in the head.

And that voice in people’s heads never stopped asking:

“Why am I here?”

In a bathroom, these voices resonate even more.

I stood there face-to-face with my reflection, that question still damning.

I took a deep breath.

A deep breath is to the mind what flush is to a toilet, or what alcohol is to one’s morals.

I took another deep breath and was about to flush that niggling question away in a moment.

Had I done that, mankind would have been doomed to remain as clueless as it has always been about “Why am I here?”

But I didn’t. I was distracted by a moving line of ants on the wall. They looked so purposeful. And that ticked me off.

I committed 2017’s first cruel deed. I ran my finger across that line breaking their community into two. There was pandemonium. The ants ran helter-skelter. Their purpose was gone. Their orderliness vanished. I was viciously pleased to have reduced them to my state.

But that was short lived. To my utmost surprise, I saw the ants regroup, exchange notes and disperse around, with a new-found purpose. Within minutes they were back on the trail. The moving line was restored. No great reunion or celebration. Simply back to the old purpose of going wherever they were going.

That’s when the word struck me.

“Sorted!” That’s what they were in their heads.

Ants have got to be the most sorted creatures on this earth.

In fact, most creatures other than humans are.

I suddenly remembered what I had read somewhere long ago.

“Life has many purposes. But a moment has only one.”

To understand the purpose of this moment, to pick and do what’s best that can be done in it, wholeheartedly, is what getting sorted is all about.

Ants do it so well. I had just seen a demonstration of that.

No worrying, no brooding, they are always doing what needs to be done from whatever that can be done.

“Think like an ant!” I screamed at myself.

Do I want to go back to that party?

No.

Do I ever want to use these clothes again?

No.

Then the only thing left for me to do was strip, discard the soiled clothes, have a thoroughly soaped, scrubbed bath and get into some fresh clothes for the night.

Simple. I did that.

As I tucked myself into the bed cozily, I heard a feeble voice inside my head ask: “Why am I here?”

I smiled faintly.

“To sleep, snore…”

I was asleep even before I could complete.

Don’t solve, resolve!

 

The fight was as unequal as it can get.

They were four. And I, alone.

After they had brutally slayed the others with me, I had been running through the lonely streets of the night looking for escape routes that were just not there.

I ran through the lit and the unlit zones of the street, created by its nightlights.

Alternating between hope and gloom.

Sometimes feeling safe standing in the whiteness of the light. Sometimes seeking camouflage in the blackness of the dark.

After an hour of mindless running, I gave up.

I fell to my knees in the middle of a narrow lane, gasping for air.

I could sense their long shadows slowly creep up on me. I looked up.

One of them took a step forward into the light, as he drew out a blood-tainted dagger from his belt. Unhurriedly, unnervingly.

Almost instantly, I heard my friend’s voice from behind his man.

“Check!”

After giving me a meaningless moment to think, he completed the inevitable.

“And mate!”

The game was over.

That was my eighteenth successive defeat to him. It had become a routine every night. He comes over to my place. We play long, intense chess.

He wins. I lose.

He goes home. I sulk.

At the end of it all, I hear a mouthful from my wife for the much-delayed dinner.

That night was no different. Except that on his way out, he unusually turned around and gave me a piece of cryptic advice.

“You know what your problem is, Ramesh?” he had asked.

“You are preoccupied with your queen. Stop trying to solve your problems. Start resolving them!”

I was hoping he’d elaborate, but he turned around and left saying, “Call me only when you are absolutely ready for the next game!”

Now, that’s the problem with these wise dumbos, these intelligent idiots, these evolved misfits. They expect others to be as wise, as intelligent, as evolved.

What does he mean by “Don’t solve, resolve”? Aren’t they the same?

I lay awake all night thinking about it, replaying that night’s game in my mind, without involving my queen too early.

I fared no better even in imagination.

In the small hours of that morning, I jumped up from my sleep and sat on the bed, staring into the darkness outside. The sun was just beginning to rise.

Out of nowhere, I remembered my school, and an incident in Class VII.

Jha sir, our maths teacher, had asked me and five others to step out of the class for copying in a test.

Just as we were wondering how he came to know, he pulled out the answer sheet of Shamar, the only one to get a zero in that test. He raised it as an example, and read out the only five lines Shamar had written in it:

Sorry sir. I don’t know any answer because I have not studied. But I don’t want to copy like my friends Ramesh, Sunder, Kumaresan and Hamid. I will start studying seriously from today. I promise you sir, this won’t happen ever again.

“It’s not just his honesty, but his attitude to problems that I want to appreciate here,” lectured Mr Jha. “I want you all to see the difference between these useless fellows and Shamar. Not studying is not a sin. But while these idiots are looking for easy solutions, here’s a boy who’s looking to resolve it permanently.”

 I wasn’t really listening to those words then. I was boiling over with rage.

That day after school, we waylaid Shamar and thulped him for being a sneak- black & blue.

Shamar went on to top the school in 12th. He joined IIT after that, and later worked for one of India’s finest infrastructure companies for 20 years. Ten years ago, he quit, and today runs a startup that’s already valued at $7.5 million.

And every night for the last 18 nights, he’s been thulping his old friend in chess- black & white.

“Don’t solve, resolve!”

I wish I’d learnt at least this one formula in school.

Solve. Resolve.

I spent the next four days thinking about these two words.

Slowly, they drifted apart as meanings, as philosophies of life.

One emerged as immediate, temporary, instinctive and shallow.

The other, enduring, permanent, mature and meaningful.

I contrasted Shamar’s life with mine, and the differences between our approaches to problems became even bigger and clearer.

I had always been a solutions guy, while Shamar had always been about resolutions.

A million examples came to my mind.

I distilled them to these two learnings:

Lesson 1: Don’t take symptoms to be the disease.

It’s the most popular mistake in life. We solve the wrong problem.

I should have learnt in class VII. The problem was not about scoring marks in the test, but about understanding the principle and application of the formulae.

Shamar had been quick to realise it.

Later in life, when Shamar’s daughter turned a teen, he was faced with a perpetual battle at home every weekend- daughter’s request for a night-out with friends, wife’s flat refusal and his silly excuses to avoid permission.

In his own words, “My wife and I made the mistake of trying to solve the problem of our daughter’s requests for night-outs, when our actual problem was her safety. The moment we addressed that, we discovered permanent peace at home!”

I had missed this lesson then:

Solutions tackle the symptoms. Resolutions tackle the disease. That’s why solutions are temporary reliefs and resolutions are permanent cures.

It seems so simple now.

Lesson 2: Solutions are about anticipating the best. Resolutions are about preparing for the worst.

“Even before I began my first startup venture, I had prepared myself for its failure. That’s why when it did fail, I didn’t go down with it. I knew exactly what I was going to do. And then, when I started my second venture, I was all prepared to fail again. Fortunately, it clicked. We are always ready for successes. It’s the failures that catch us off-guard.”

That was Shamar in a recent interview to a local TV channel. Missed its essence then. Now it seems so clear:

Solutions are about preparing for the right, hoping it won’t go wrong. Resolutions are about preparing for the wrong, hoping it will turn out right.

Suddenly, I felt ready for the nineteenth game with Shamar.

Promptly, I challenged him the very next day.

Two hours after the game had begun, around 11 in the night, I resigned. He had again won.

“I had addressed the problem. I didn’t bring out my queen until mid-game. And yet I lose,” I lamented.

“Your problem is not the queen on the chessboard!” he said and left without adding more.

This time it hit me instantly.

Of course, he had all the while been referring to my wife! The queen off-board!

He had sensed that I was preoccupied with the game dragging on past dinnertime, worried about upsetting her and her routine every night.

It was perhaps showing in my game.

I had discovered the root of the problem! And had to now resolve it.

This morning, I told my wife that we were shifting the game to six in the evening so that it could get over by dinnertime. She was thrilled and even offered to serve high tea.

I don’t know if it will help my chess, but surely it’s a valuable lesson for life.

We are playing our twentieth game tomorrow. Six in the evening. Should get over well before dinnertime.

I am going into the game, fully prepared to lose, but hoping against hope to win.

 

 

Today’s Brand New. Tomorrow’s Grand Old.

 

31^st December is the day I feel completely out of sync with the rest of the world.

Yesterday was no different.

The whole world was looking ahead at 2016. And I was looking back at 2015. Everyone was drunk on hope. I stayed stupidly sober with nostalgia. People were talking about next year’s resolutions. I was talking about last year’s.

Basically, I fail to understand why people celebrate a year that’s yet to happen.

I think the New Year is the only event in our lives that’s celebrated even before it’s begun.

“Aren’t celebrations about successful completions? Shouldn’t we be evaluating the year gone by instead of celebrating the one yet to come?” I ask, like I do every year.

“Let bygones be bygones!” they reply, like they do every year.

Of course! Why wouldn’t they want bygones to be bygones!

Mr. Ashok Jain hasn’t returned my Rs. 53.45 that he borrowed in July.

Mrs. Sharma’s Labrador peed in the elevator 275 times through last year.

Capt. Nair has reminded me that I’m losing hair and gaining weight, every time we met.

Some others have cheated on their spouses.

Many others have lied.

Most have failed to change their annoying habits.

So why wouldn’t they want to forget 2015!

Just like they forgot their 2014, 2013, 2012…

No wonder people drink until they can remember nothing of the previous year.

I’m okay with that. What I can’t digest is how in that drunken state they go on to make tall new promises and lofty new resolutions.

“This year, I’m going to buy my wife that long overdue Platinum neckpiece!”

There’s applause all around. His wife blushes, and gives him the warmest hug and longest kiss.

The stakes go up as one by one each husband announces his plan.

And comes my turn.

I have a 100% record of keeping my new year resolutions, so I stay realistic.

“I’m going to buy my wife a Gucci handbag!”

There’s the biggest applause of the evening, as it came unexpectedly from me. My wife’s expression of surprise was genuine as she moved towards me for the hug and kiss.

“But it will only be in July because I’m told there’s going to be a 40% clearance sale at the fake market in Linking Road!” I competed my promise honestly.

The applause stopped. My wife froze midway. Her smile, now a frown. Then rage.

Honesty comes with a huge price tag. Bigger than Gucci’s. No discounts. No fakes.

But I’d rather pay for honesty than bluff.

That way, at least, I’ll be the only one on 31^st December with the courage to talk about the year gone by.

I have noticed that a few news channels do this very well. They play their goofs and NG takes alongside their best stories of the year.

Isn’t it fun to look back at our failures and successes, our bad moments and good moments.

Isn’t it how life should be lived?

Making today a memorable yesterday.

Isn’t that a nice guideline to how we should spend every day of our lives?

I believe when my mother delivered me, her midwife used to pour steaming hot water on her belly during her bath. My mother would scream and curse that old lady. That lady would then go on to give my mother the most painful back massage, and say, “One day, many years from now, when all women of your age complain of backache, you’ll wonder what that is. That day remember to thank this old lady!”

So true it turned out to be.

Similarly, my swimming coach told me on the first day of class, “One day you’ll look back and laugh at how petrified you were to even step into the shallow end of the pool.” Suddenly my fear had turned into a fond memory, and I stepped in.

I remember using this technique on my son. He was only seven then. We were at a crocodile farm. As part of the tour, they gave us a hatchling to hold for a photo op. He simply refused to hold the baby croc. When all persuasion and assurances failed, I told him that it would make a great snap, which if posted on facebook would get maximum likes. He instantly agreed and did it. We still look at his expression in that snap and have a great laugh.

Another instance was when I asked a 70-year-old why he was training for the marathon.
“To look good on the postmortem table!” he had said.

And, when asked why she was working her butt out at the gym, an office colleague had once said, “To look good in rear view mirrors!”

But the philosophy really sunk in when I went to buy a new phone some years ago.

“Switch to a brand new smart phone, uncle!” said the salesgirl at the counter.

“I’m not at an age where I can experiment with these new gizmos. Give me the same old model,” I insisted.

That’s when she clinched it.

“Uncle, I agree it’s going to take you months to get used to the touchscreen. Months of fidgeting, clumsy calling, messed up messaging and full of funny incidents. But at the end of it all, it’s going to give you a lifetime of new experiences to talk about and many many memories to think back on.”

She was so true.

Play for the playback!

Because today’s brand new is going to be tomorrow’s grand old.

So spend 2016 the way you would like to celebrate the next 31st December.

Looking for what’s not there. And missing what’s there.

Now that I think of it, maybe my wife had been waiting at the door for long, expecting a beaming smile and a warm hug from me. But at that moment, I was seething with rage at our building watchman. He had gone missing just when I wanted someone to help me carry my overloaded bags from the cab to the elevator.

I was probably frowning when I got out of the elevator at my floor. Maybe that’s why she sacrificed the idea of a warm reunion, and settled to holding my bags instead of me.

“How’s mom?” she asked, as I entered our home muttering curse words at the watchman.

“Mom?” I shot back irritated, as I roughly kicked the bags in, as if they were the watchman. “What about her?”

There was silence.

I looked up and saw her glaring. It struck me only then.

My mom’s health, of course! That’s why I had rushed from my home in Mumbai to my hometown off Chennai, a month ago!

Why do intelligent men become stupid husbands!

There’s nothing like good old humour to cover up your goofs. Provided it’s funny. So, I tried.

“Oh, yes! Motherland is safe! Enemies- Sugar, Potassium and Sodium have been pushed back to their normal levels,” I said, gesturing and sounding like a General who’s made enemy troops retreat in a battle.

When I didn’t hear her laugh, I turned around to see if she was at least smiling. She was glaring.

Where humour fails, intellect works. Mostly.

So I dumped on her all the medical gibberish that the doc had thrown at me, without really knowing what they meant and hoping she wouldn’t ask for explanations.

“Come on Rum, what I want to know is whether mom’s back to being herself,” she stopped me mid-way, countering intellect with emotion.

“Is she sleeping well? Eating well? Smiling again? Is her sense of humour back? Has she become her ruthlessly frank self, calling a spade a sword? Has she begun to fight with the gardener over her favourite plants again?”

I stared blankly.

Suddenly, I felt regret plunge into my heart, like a dagger.

“Er…I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

“Ok, at least tell me if she has begun to laugh the loudest at her son’s insipid jokes?”

The dagger sank further in.

“Umm…I forgot to joke with her this time,” I said, rather dumbly.

My wife stopped and stared intently at me.

“Then what did you do there? A full month with your aging mother in a home that you spent all your best childhood years! Don’t tell me you just wasted the opportunity away! Surely, you created some wonderful fresh memories this time?”

Every word made me bleed more. How on earth did I miss to see this as an opportunity!

In fact, things had begun well. So very well.

I had reached the hospital only to be told by a cheerful doc that everything was fine and my mom could go home in a day or two. I had felt happy, and relieved enough to joke.

“Ah, are you telling me I came all the way here for nothing! False alarm, eh?”

All silences that follow jokes are terrible. This one was deathly.

It was an ICU. Grim patients stared back at my insensitivity. My mom glared through her Oxygen mask. And the cheerful doc lost his cheer and walked away.

My wife’s right. My jokes are good. Just that they are told at the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people.

Soon, my mom and I were back in my childhood home. For the first few days, I was obsessed with her medicines, bland diet and postures of sitting, walking, sleeping. All I was talking about was her illness.

Now that I think back, she did make feeble attempts to make me see beyond that.

She had asked for our old albums and home videos. But I dismissed them with some careless remarks.

“Oh, they are dusty. They will start you on a sneezing bout!”

“Oh, they are heavy and in the loft. The last thing we want is a sprained back!”

Every time she started a conversation about my childhood, I’d say, “Oh come on, why do you strain yourself talking. You have told this story a million times before. Get well. And we will all come back to listen to your old stories, see those albums and watch those videos together…some day.”

Never pausing to think: What if that some day never comes?

Or: Why can’t that some day be today?

The only time I came close to making the most of that stay was when one evening she and I took a small stroll around the house. I saw mango trees laden with mangoes, flowering plants in full bloom and a jackfruit tree braving the weight of three massive jackfruits.

Memories of my brother and I running around those trees when they were much smaller, flooded me. We had played cricket there, broken flower pots, got yelled at, seen snakes, counted birds, chased butterflies, listened and giggled at mom talking to her plants…

I yelled out to mom wanting to remind her of those days. We could have spent the next couple of hours talking and laughing about it, and probably set the tone for my whole stay there.

But it was not to be.

As she walked cautiously over dried leaves and pebbles to where I was, I spotted a bare stalk on the jackfruit tree. Clearly, someone had cut a jackfruit from it.

In a matter of seconds all that nostalgia and emotion were swept away without a trace, by anger. By the time my mom came near me, I was all worked up.

“Someone’s stolen our jackfruit!” I said.

She stared back at me, looked up at the tree for a few moments and explained, “Some branches grow barren.”

“No, I have been seeing jackfruit trees for 54 years! I know,” I argued.

“And I for 76!” she said, trying to clinch it with experience.

“I know people better than you do,” I was in no mood to give up. “I’m sure the gardener stole it when we were in the hospital.”

“Look, he would never do that. And even if he did, it’s after all a jackfruit,” she tried to bargain human values with economic value.

“No way. Today it’s this, tomorrow it will get bigger!” I tried to scare her into acceptance.

“What? The jackfruit?” she joked, hoping I’d laugh. (Like son, like mother!)

“No, his theft,” I explained.

Logic is a bigger joke-ruiner than silence.

“How can you blame someone without being sure?”

“It can’t be anyone else. I’ll prove it to you.”

That’s how my next twenty days with my mom in my childhood home was wasted away.

All I could think and talk about was the missing jackfruit. All I did was try and trap a thief who was no thief.

I left the three fully grown and ripe jackfruits in the tree as baits, and spent many sleepless nights peering into darkness through small openings in windows. I threw crisp dried leaves around the tree and ran at their slightest crackle, only to see a snake slither away or a squirrel dive in.

Couple of nights I even made my recuperating mom take turns and stay awake.

Every time I spoke to the gardener, the words were laced with stinging innuendoes. Not that he got it.

But at the end of it all, I had to leave without solving the whodunnit.

The jackfruits left as baits rotted in the tree and fell off. I spent a whole day plucking all the mangoes even before they were ready, so that none would be left to steal. As my mom was advised not to eat ripe fruits, I packed all of them in my bags and carried them to Mumbai- even paying a huge amount for the extra baggage on the flight.

“Ramesh sir was not his usual self. He was cold and preoccupied throughout. He behaved quite strangely this trip. Maybe your illness had upset him,” the old gardener told my mom after I left.

Back in Mumbai, as I now sat on my bags full of mangoes and contemplated on the stupidity of the whole thing, my phone beeped a message.

It was from my mom.

It said: “I was the one who took that ripe jackfruit on the tree, one afternoon when you were asleep. Sorry it ruined your stay here. But honestly, the jackfruit was so so good, it was worth it!”

I felt like crying. But ended up laughing out loud at her joke. For the first time in months.

I sent her an LOL. But how I wish she could’ve heard me.

I called out to my wife.

“Nothing to worry. Mom’s back being her sarcy self!”

Love is about hate

Five days ago, when a friend called to say that a couple we know very well were separating after 11 years of marriage, my wife said, “How could that be true? They were so much in love! Why did this have to happen, that too on Valentine’s Day!”

I responded with three loud, shocked OhMyGods.

The first one was because I realized it was Valentine’s Day, and I had forgotten it yet again.

The second one was because I realized it was going to be a year since I wrote a post. The last one was about forgetting last year’s Valentine’s Day.

The third and the least shocked one was for the news.

Surprised by my over-the-top anguish, my wife said, “Terrible, na? What to do! Unbelievable, they were such a lovey-dovey couple.”

“I’m calling off all my surprise Valentine’s Day plans. Really not feeling like it,” I said, shamelessly using a friend’s plight to my advantage.

“Yes, of course. Can’t think of a celebration right now. But I’m so glad you remembered!” she said and went out of the room to let me mourn in peace.

Not that I was heartless. Just that I had been expecting this a long time now. Here was another couple that made the crucial mistake of evaluating love with love. Wishes, gifts, surprises, occasions, cuddles, kisses are all great, but are no barometer of reality. The gushing answer you get to the well-timed “So honey, how much do you love me?” asked on a Valentine’s Day candle-lit dinner, can be so self-gratifying that it hides all the lurking dangers under the table.

“Love is not about the million things that you like about me, but about the really few that you dislike about me,” I had once told my wife. “They are like those small insignificant worms on some of those flowers in paradise. They are often missed in the beauty and magnificence of romance. But trust me, they have the potential to grow into anacondas and swallow the whole relationship.”

“You know what I dislike about you? Your idea of a conversation about worms and anacondas on a Valentine’s Day dinner,” she had said.

I never brought this up with her ever again. There are things that one can’t talk to one’s spouse, but can talk to the rest of the world. This is one such.

Honestly, even if I were to keep the creepy analogies aside, the fact remains this-

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Love isn’t about celebrating all that you love about each other, but about overcoming the dislikes, the uncomfortable zones, the irritants, the disagreements. Those are the weak links that snap at the wrong time.

It will do us good to remember that relationships are built by love, but always- always- broken by hate.

What’s true for love and relationships is also true for everything else in life.

Peace doesn’t depend on those who practise it, but on those who break it.

Goodness is never about how good a person is, but about how bad the person is capable of being.

Spirituality is not about how you live in the belief that there’s God, but about how you would live if there was no God.

Happiness is determined not by how you react to the good times, but by how you overcome the bad ones.

Power is not the influence you have on others, but on yourself.

Respect is not about how people treat you when you succeed, but about how they treat you when you fail.

I put down these thoughts and read them out aloud.

I let out three surprised OhMyGods, again.

This time, the first one was because I realized I now have a post! Finally!

The second one was because I realized how far I am from imbibing all the above.

The third and the most important one was because I realized my wife was standing behind me, hands on her hips, listening to the whole thing.

I grinned sheepishly.

She said, “You know what I dislike about you? You are so profound when romancing and so silly when philosophizing.”

This. Is. Silly?

In love? With love or loved one?

Here’s the thing about my wife and me.

After 22 years of our marriage, we might not know when to say what, but we know very well when not to say what.

So, five days ago when my wife asked, “Shall we go out for coffee?” I instantly said, “Yes, why not.” It should logically have been, “But why?” because both of us hate the coffee at coffee shops. We believe we make the world’s best coffee at home. She, hers. I, mine.

But that’s the way it is with us.

It’s never about what’s said, always about what’s unsaid.

So, for no said reason, but for a very big unsaid one, there we were, last Friday evening, walking up to the coffee shop down our road.

“Sorry sir, you need to have something red on you. There’s a dress code for today.”

I was stopped at the door rudely, like an immigrant without a passport.

With a WTF expression, I turned around to look at my wife beside me, as if she owed me an explanation to this nonsense.

She wasn’t there. She was already in. A red stole that I had never noticed before, now prominently draped around her neck. She rolled her eyes that left the “I have given up on you!” unsaid. She took out a red handkerchief from her handbag with a flourish that one only sees in magic shows, and I was in.

“Ah, so you knew the code?” I asked sheepishly.

“No, I knew the date,” she said as we proceeded to the counter.

“Today isn’t 9^th November, so it can’t be your birthday for sure!” I said and laughed at my own joke, like the smiley people insert after messages.

“Even if it were, my birthday would only be tomorrow,” she said.

“Oh yeah! 10^th November! Slip of the tongue,” I said, biting my lip.

As we waited at the counter to get our order right, I glanced around for our seats.

The cafe was almost full. Filled with gushing, giggling youngsters- couples in love. Most of them barely as old as our children. The whole cafe was an overdose of red, hearts and mush. For a moment it seemed that the whole world had abruptly turned love-struck and young. Until, I caught my distorted reflection in the glass window. It assured me that life wasn’t a fantasy.

When done, we chose the first available seats. Usually, I choose the one facing the TV and she chooses the one facing the people. Not because I love watching TV, but because she loves watching people and I hate people watching me.

“Aren’t you wondering what all this fuss is about?” she asked looking around, as soon as we settled down.

“Oh, it’s just a marketing gimmick,” I said. “Youngsters are suckers for atmospheres. Create one with loud music, psychedelic lights and suffocating smoke, and everything illegal becomes a hip thing to do. Create one of love and romance, and people are more than willing to go all lovey-dovey. The occasion becomes so overwhelming that most people are overawed by it and go about like cupid zombies. It makes them do stupid things. Like proposing. Worse, accepting. Look at that,” I said pointing to a table.

A boy had just then gone down on his knees in theatrical fashion and proposed to his girl, extending a rose and then flipping a ring under her nose.

We watched the girl blush on cue and pretend to have been completely surprised by his love, this proposal and the gift. With eyes welling up- with tears of joy I presumed, and not with the disappointment of the rock turning out to be smaller than she had imagined- she uttered a yes, and it was his turn to show that this was the most unexpected answer.

They hugged and kissed. We were the only ones watching. The others were busy with their own acts of romance.

“How could a grown up man- okay, grown up boy- go down on his knees and plead: Will you marry me? And how could anyone say yes to a beggar of love. Love can’t be asked for, it needs to be earned, elicited, evoked, made to feel. The problem is that people fall in love with love more than each other. In love, like most things human, people miss the soul and hold on to the frills that come with it.”

“How would you know! You never proposed to me.” she said.

“My dad did,” I protested.

“Yes, to my dad. And after they said yes to each other, do you know where you took me out for our first date?”

“There were no coffee shops around those days,” I said in my defense.

“Maybe, but surely, there were beaches, gardens, malls and movies? Of all the places, you took me to the Automobile Association of India’s office. There we sat at untouchable distance from each other on a rickety old wooden bench, cobwebs dangling from the ceiling threatening to fall on our heads, in an office full of dusty files and bored clerks on the verge of retirement.”

“Ah, you remember all of it, so vividly,” I said trying to bring a little glee to the proceedings.

“How could any girl forget such an experience,” she said.

Did she say forget or forgive? I wasn’t going to ask for sure.

“Tell me, do you also remember our marathon call that would put all these What’s Apping youngsters to shame?”

“Of course, from 10 in the night to 4 in the morning. I was on the phone when my dad went to sleep and I was on the phone when he woke up in the morning. It sounds so romantic, but do you know, I was yawning away at the other end? Because all you did for those 6 hours was describe your family tree- a large one at that. Who was who, and why the whos were so special. In such detail that by the end of it, I could have written biographies of them.”

“And what about my love letters to you,” I asked excitedly.

“Love letters? Where was the love? I remember every word of all the letters you wrote in the four months between our engagement and wedding. The most boring ones any man could have ever written to a woman. I’ve preserved them for posterity. One day they would make a great book titled What To Expect From Life After Marriage.”

“Are you serious? You still have my letters?”

“Yes, all 37 of them!”

And for the next 45 minutes, all through our coffee and our trip back home, she narrated parts of those letters. Agreed, they were terribly unromantic.

But even after 22 years they made her laugh, tease, ridicule and talk for that long. And I played along, like I have all these years, in the know that I have made this Valentine’s Day, unforgettable for her, in my own unique way.

I don’t know if the boy and the girl at the cafe that day would remember that cafe or the readymade card they exchanged, or the gift he gave her, 22 years from now.

But I am sure on every Valentine’s Day, they would be dressed in red, sitting at some fancy place that has hearts strewn all over and soaking in the perfect atmosphere for love.

I only hope it is with each other.

Feel. Think. Act.

 

“I am waiting for a knight in shining armour to come riding on a horse, sweep me off my feet and ride away into the sunset.”

Why is it never in a flaming-red vehicle with alarm bells ringing?

“As she stands on the edge of the terrace atop a skyscraper in flames, I want to be the one- mask in place, cape fluttering in air, swooping down from the sky and flying away with her, as a million onlookers gasp, “That’s him, yet again!”

Why is it never a helmeted, blue-uniformed man on a snorkel?

“Doctor!” “Sports hero!” “Movie star!” “Rock star!” “Soldier!” “Teacher!”

Why is it never a fire man?

Ever wondered why the fire man is missing from all our lists, conversations, books, comics, movies and everyday lives, except, of course, when the context is a fire accident?

Fifty-two years in this world and twenty-five years in Mumbai- the most densely populated city of the world’s second most populated country- is enough time to have bumped into all kinds of people that exist in this world. I have met billionaires, beggars, aliens, angels, gods, godmen, pimps, transexuals and a terrorist.

Yes, a terrorist.

Even a terrorist. But no, not a fire man.

Why is he so elusive?

Why is there no fire man in anyone’s family, or extended family or extended extended-family?

Why is he never a bridegroom at the weddings we attend? Or the stranger we bump into at a party? Or at a dentist’s waiting room? Is it that he finds toothache too mild a pain to go to a doc?

Why do we never find him sitting in our adjacent seats on a bus, train or aircraft? Is it that he doesn’t ever travel in any other vehicle other than the fire engine?

Is he for real?

Or is he that kind of a superhero who appears only during a crisis and disappears after that? Could he be our local barber or that innocent school teacher or that bored postman, who shrugs off his clothes in a phone booth or dark alley, and turns into a superhero in a crisis?

I have gone around asking everyone I know where I could meet him.

“At the fire station, of course,” was the most popular answer.

“Why go in search of him when you can get him to come home in no time? Just set something on fire,” a friend had joked.

“No, I don’t want to meet him professionally,” I had said. “I want to meet him at a coffee shop or a restaurant, where I can talk to him.”

“But why?” was everyone’s unanimous response to that.

Why?!

“Why shouldn’t we? How can we afford not to meet him?” was my thinking.

“He and only he has the formula for our life’s problems.”

As a kid I thought it would be the maths teacher, because she seemed to have a formula for everything else. But soon, I realised that no mathematical formula can ever solve life’s equation of X + Y = Z, where X, Y and Z are unknown and varying all the time.

A little later in life, I thought parents must be the ones with all the answers.

But by the time I was a teen, I knew that parents are very good at telling us what not to do, but terrible when it comes to being right about what to do.

That’s why, sooner or later everyone turns to god. Even I did.

The problem is that god does such a good job of camouflaging himself that I ended up asking my questions into emptiness, in the belief that he was somewhere around and listening. Not even an echo came back. Even if I assume that he had indeed listened and also answered, then those surely were so well-coded and encrypted that I hadn’t even realised they were meant for me.

That’s why I had in my forties turned to godmen- the self-appointed interpreters of god’s coded answers. The problem was that their interpretation was always the same: “Pay me, and all your problems will vanish!”

All that vanished were my hard-earned savings.

My search for the one with the formula for life’s problems continued without success.

It was only recently, when I was going through the copies of my old resignation letters, that an overused corporate phrase in one of the lines, struck me.

“All we seem to be doing here is crisis management- fighting and dousing one fire before moving onto the next.”

Fire fighting!

It suddenly seemed to me as the best way to describe problem-solving.

If problems are like fire and solving them is fire-fighting, then the man most qualified to tell us how to do it has got to be the fire man, right?

Simple.

That’s how my search for the fire man had begun.

After almost two years of scouting around, I found a friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s cousin who had a neighbour, who he believed used to be in some way connected with “fire, water and all that”.

So, the biggest meeting of my entire life was finally set up.

I least expected what I encountered.

There sat an eighty year old man in front of me. Watching him struggle with the glass of water in front of him, I wondered if he was indeed the man who could have walked bravely into infernos and rescued lives, or just handled those enormous turbo water-jet hoses.

But as we got talking and he began to narrate his experiences, every fictional superhero began to seem like a kiddy character in a Pixar film.

Here sat the real super hero of the real world, in front of me.

To those who say, so are teachers, doctors and soldiers, I say that it’s easy to rescue people from ignorance with a cane, save lives from a heart attack when you don’t have to go through one yourself, or protect one by killing the other.

In contrast, the fire man has to willingly walk into the jaws of death to save those already in it.

I let him say all that he wanted to say. It took a while before he finally dried up.

It was then that I asked him the question for which I’ve searched answers all my life.

“Is there a formula to fight and douse life’s fires?”

I thought he would flinch and it would take me a few more hours just to explain what I meant.

But his answer was instant, as if he had been preparing for it all his life.

“In my experience I have found the mothers the most difficult ones to rescue. They are like heavy emotional sacks, refusing to budge without their kids, their husband and their belongings. But once done, they are so emotionally spent that they become one of the quickest recoverers from shock and trauma.”

I couldn’t understand the relevance, but listened.

“However well meaning they might be, the onlookers are a big hindrance in every rescue. But they are the only ones with objective opinions in that hour of crisis. Being relatively uninvolved and unemotional, their cold logic and suggestions have often provided the breakthrough we were hunting for.”

He ambled on. I was clueless where he was heading. Had he heard my question wrong?

“The reason why I spent forty years of my life in fire service is because there’s nothing in the world as noble as this rescue act. Running into a raging fire without knowing who you are going in to save, or whether there’s anyone in there at all, is not driven by instinct like most other rescue acts, or emotion, like most human kindness acts. It’s driven by just one thing- purpose.”

Interesting, but I was not there to make a biopic on him. Impolite though it might have been, I had to remind him what I had asked.

He simply chuckled.

“Every time we got a call and were rushing to the accident site, I used to follow a simple routine. I used to sit there in the van, eyes closed and feeling all that I wanted to feel- worry, fear, anxiety, shock. It was my way of draining all emotions out of my system. By the time I reached the spot, I felt nothing and was ready to study the problem like an onlooker would. Ideas come easily then. Once we had our plan A and Plan B and Plan C, I stopped thinking, and rushed in to execute the plan like any possessed fire man would. Not result, not emotion, not instinct, it was the plan that became our purpose.”

He paused to sip his coffee that had gone cold already.

“To feel like a mother, think like an onlooker and act like a fire man is life’s formula for its problems. Ironically, I had mastered this routine for forty years so successfully, and yet never ever thought of using it to tackle my life’s many economic and relationship issues. Had I, how simple life would’ve been, I now wonder!”

He continued to speak, but I was no longer listening. I shut my eyes to concentrate on my thoughts. My mind was frantically recollecting all the problems that I, my family and my friends had faced, and was beginning to fit this formula in, to see if it works.

It did beautifully.

Every example of great handling of a problem had, in a way, maybe by instinct than knowledge, been the same formula.

Feel. Think. Act.

And strictly in that order.

Because if you FEEL any time other than in the beginning, you will end up as an oversized emotional baggage; if you THINK any time other than in the middle, you will end up as a nervous wreck or a grumpy brooder.

I was convinced.

This was not just the simplest, but the only way to deal with life’s problems.

I don’t know how long it had taken me, but when I opened my eyes, the fire man had left, his chair was vacant, his coffee cup was empty and there was a note for me under it.

I read it.

“Dear Friend, I knew you were going around searching for a fire man and an answer. The fire man you might have found. But the answer you would never have. Because life’s answers don’t come to us well-worded. Instead, they lie buried at our work place, our homes, our lives. And anyone who lives as long as I have, and faced as many problems as I have, is bound to have come across it many times. Problem is, we don’t recognize it. Thanks for making me do it. And sorry, I am no fire man, just a poor old man! Thanks for the coffee.”

In shock I rose to leave, when the waiter stopped me.

“Sorry sir, you forgot to pay!”

Good, by failing to be bad

Can you run a race while singing a lullaby?

Can you climb a steep ladder while changing a baby’s diapers?

I couldn’t.

At just 32, I was running a vicious rat race, climbing spiral corporate ladders and desperately vying for the world’s best husband award, all at the same time, when the nurse interrupted to announce, “It’s a boy!”

Until then, bundles of joy had only meant cash incentives at office, to me. Until then, babies had meant only baby girls to my wife- how could Barbie be a boy!

But that announcement changed everything.

Nothing mattered anymore, because our minds were doing synchronized cartwheels in celebration. Perhaps, a bit prematurely, for we were unaware of what was to follow the first child.

No, not a twin.

Parenthood.

Ever figured out why there are no training institutions, personal coaches or holy scriptures for parenthood- a job that puts the future of this planet at stake?

Or why, in a world where we can’t drive without a licence, where we can’t build a bridge without a degree, and where it’s illegal to even heal a dying man without qualifications, it is perfectly okay to be responsible for the birth, growth and life of a human being, with no prior experience, qualification, assurance or expertise?

Look for help, and you’ll find more books about making babies than about bringing them up.

Ask the much-experienced for tips, and you will get absolutely polarized views.

If one says, “Spare the rod, and spoil the child,” the other says, “Use the rod, and lose the child.”

In an environment that was as unsupportive as that, my wife and I began learning to be parents based on Trial & Error- an obsolete methodology that has for long been discarded from every professional set up, now practised only in lucky-dips, lotteries and marriages.

Nineteen years and two sons later, I realized we had committed so many errors that I could easily fill a book bulkier than the Bible with What Not To Do In Parenting.

A few months ago, on a particularly bright enthusiastic day, motivated by my wife’s “Let the world benefit from our blunders” plea, I made the cardinal sin of blogging an abridged version of those Don’ts.

I started by stating the golden rule of parenthood: Do the exact opposite of what you think is right!

As an indulgent writer, I even went on to explain that.

When my older son was around cola-demanding age, we thought it right to blanket ban cola from our home. We thought we had won the cola war, until we discovered that our boy had been going on a cola binge at family gatherings, birthday parties, neighbours’ homes and everywhere out of our home. It was by then too late to correct him. Today he can be classified as a colaholic.

For the second one, we changed strategies. We never said no to him. We gave him an overdose of cola, so much of it that we hoped he would get fed up of it. We waited for that day when he would throw up at the mere sight of cola. We waited and waited for years. That day never came. In the process, he has grown into an incurable cola junkie today.

Only bright spot of our failed experiments in parenting is- offer the kids cocaine and cola, and they’d any day choose cola.

I never knew the world had so many parents waiting for a new post with a parenting tag every day. The response to my post was fast and furious.

“Dear doctor,” wrote one, “I have been bringing up my kid for the last 10 years exactly the way you have asked us not to. I am now a nervous wreck. Am I creating a Frankenstein? What should I do? Is there an antidote? Please advise.”

Why do people assume that books are written only by experts? To sound less like a trained child psychologist and more like a clueless dad, I changed that title to: Ramblings of a hapless dad

It didn’t help. From a dad I knew, came this comment: “Dear Ramesh, I have brought up my daughter exactly the same way as you have advised us not to. And I am proud to say that she is the one who has topped your son’s batch this year.”

That’s when I realized how difficult it is to generalize parenting.

One man’s Dos are another man’s Don’ts.

That would have remained my first-and-only attempt to warn would-be parents about parenting, had I not gone for a recent family function and met my niece’s husband.

He is an engineer. He lives in Mauritius. He enjoys good food. He plays chess. He loves cricket. He misses no movies. And yes, he is on the verge of fatherhood.

Of all those common interests we had, he chose to pick my weakest, “So, Ramesh uncle, any tips on fatherhood?”

Now, uncles can be bald, fat, grey, boring, clumsy and terrible to converse with, but they just can’t afford to be unwise. Ever.

“Tips? Of course, plenty!” I said, pretending to prepare for a long and tiring sermon, in reality, hoping that it would scare him and give him enough time, reason and opportunity to escape.

But he is a sincere fellow. He didn’t, and I was forced to begin.

What started off as gibberish, somewhere in the middle picked up steam and started becoming relevant, and finally when it ended, I don’t know about him, but I was mighty impressed with myself.

Pardon my lack of modesty, but I today consider it as the best treatise on parenthood that I have ever come across.

Judge for yourself.

Here it is, in full:

Parenthood can be divided into 4 stages.

1. Correcting their wrong (0 to until they walk):

Only babies have the privilege of doing the yuckiest things and yet be termed chochweet, cute and adorable. They will pee and shit on the bed and on us, and bawl to wake us up at unearthly hours. Good parenting is all about becoming sleepless zombies, mastering the art of changing diapers and soiled bedsheets, while singing a lullaby and feeding the baby.

2. Preventing their wrong (Until they talk):

Once they are mobile, their wrongs extend as far as their hands can reach. Good parenting at this stage is all about prevention, about out-thinking the baby or simply being faster on the draw. So, fish tanks go one shelf higher as wobbly legs learn to stand on their own, glass bottles disappear in the nick of time before chubby hands reach them, electric sockets get plugged to avoid little fingers completing high voltage circuits, and sharp edges get cushioned by palms just before baldie bangs on them.

3. Explaining their wrong (Until they balk):

Babies become kids when they begin to talk. Their wrongs are now beyond correction and prevention, and require a change of heart. Good parenting becomes all about the skill of reasoning, and the ability to hold a one-to-one conversation with someone you share no logic with, and whose attention span is 4.05 seconds- the average time between two Facebook alerts.

4. Discovering we were wrong (Until the end):

When children become adults, every deed of theirs- good and bad- becomes a rude reminder of our follies and stupidities. Everything we thought was right would have gone wrong, and everything we thought would go wrong would have turned out right. Basically, we would have gone wrong about both the right and the wrong. Good parenting here is all about graciously accepting life’s biggest goof up.

Exasperated with the anticlimax, my niece’s husband simply asked, “Ramesh uncle, in essence, what are you saying? Is there no formula for bringing up good children?”

Now, anything that sounds impressive in longform can sound hollow and empty when summed up in a line as an essence. Does “Jesus Suffers, Jesus Saves!” justify the Bible?

However, there are days when you just can’t go wrong. That day was one such day.

In a sudden fit of inspiration, I said, “Those who starve are prone to binge!”

His eyes widened as if he had just seen a halo appear around me.

His silence told me that he was expecting a halo-befitting explanation, which at that moment, I didn’t have. But in the next, I magically got.

(I discovered that I think better not while thinking, but while talking.)

“Goodness by constraints and restrictions is no permanent goodness.” I thundered forth thinking.

“For no will is strong enough, no resolve fierce enough, to stave off all the world’s evil for a lifetime. Pent up evil is like a volcano waiting to erupt. Sometime in life, it will and how. That’s why, very often good children grow up to become terrible adults, and terrible children grow up to become good adults.”

I took time off to drink a glass of juice that passed by, so that I could end well what had started well.

“The basic mistake is, we as parents assume all children are born good, and thus spend all our lives to protect them against the bad, to keep them away from the evil. We forget that it can never be done for too long, never too well. Instead, if we assume that all children are born bad, all our efforts would go into luring them to goodness, and making values desirable. If we succeed in making them feel good about being good and bad about being bad, the job would be done. For, only those who become good because they failed to be bad will remain good forever. The goodness that comes from the failure of the evil is the real goodness, the only permanent goodness.”

As I finished, he rose and touched my feet to seek my blessings. As I was blessing him, through the corner of my eye, I spied my kids at the bar. They were having an argument with the bartender, drunk on cola.

Thank God, the father-to-be was too bent in devotion to notice.