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. 

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.

New, Improved Nature! Almost.

 

Thanks to stories, lies and the unbound imagination of a child, nothing in our heads at that age are absolute truths. They are either pure fantasies, or facts liberally mixed with fiction.

What a wonderful hub of creativity that little head is! A potent mix of ignorance, innocence and imagination.

Unfortunately, most of those early scripts that we write and co-write in our heads, fade away with that terrible destroyer of all, called age.

Some are reasoned out by the rising influence of intelligence. This tyrant is merciless on the illogical and the unproven.

But a lucky few myths escape detection and remain. They grow and evolve. Mostly in disguise, just to survive the surveillance of wisdom.

Peer carefully into your head. Some of those beliefs you cooked up years ago would still be around masquerading as dreams.

Recognise them?

I have.

Most of them are too silly and stupid to discuss in such an evolved forum.

But if you promise not to laugh, I might muster enough courage to blurt out a less embarrassing one just now.

Let’s see…

Give me time to warm up, okay?

This one is particularly close to my heart. It has grown with me, become bigger and more elaborate through the years.

It was seeded in my head around the time when I was eight, when someone told me that Nature had a huge office from where she runs her daily operations on a 24-hour shift.

Understand, eight in 1969 was a gullible child, not who he is today. So, I imagined a huge Government Secretariat kind of office with dusty files, creaky furniture and bored people, simply because that’s the biggest office I had seen until then.

No cyclone or famine by Nature, shook me. After all, it was most expected from a chaotic office like that. In fact, I thought of it as a miracle how Nature managed to get the other million things correct daily.

As the world around me progressed, the little myth in my head kept pace.

That eight-year-old’s Nature’s office is today a master control room on the lines of NASA. The 5-floor atrium is a mind-boggling visual of highly sophisticated and complicated monitors, controls and instruments. The kind of place that would boast of 99.99% efficiency.

So, the cyclone and famines?

Well, I now know Nature’s classified truth! Shh…don’t tell anyone, they aren’t accidents! They are deliberate undercover deeds, like any evil that big corporations and nations perpetuate for “the greater good of humanity”.

See how over time, a child’s fantasy gets mixed with an aging man’s cynicism.

But the thing with half-sleep is that it doesn’t recognise your age.

So, the other day I was this rebellious teen on a mission to discover Nature’s Control Room, and maybe even infiltrate it.

Yes, Hollywood is right. Such places are always somewhere in the snow-covered nowheres of Siberia.

There it was, Nature’s NASA!

One look, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get into that heavily guarded fortress.

But again, by now even a child knows how to avoid searchlights, duck laser beams and go about in the dark, muffling, slitting, decapitating each of those highly trained guards, one by one.

By early morning I was in, wearing the uniform of the insiders, moving around like one of them.

On the way to the coffee machine, I sneak into the strongroom and open vaults that contain classified information.

How so easily, you ask?

You can crack any code by putting an ear to the door. And all locks in the world click open if fiddled with for a few nail-biting seconds using a hairpin.

As for the doors that open only with passwords, well, don’t even dream of getting it right in the first try. If it allows only three attempts, go directly to the last attempt without wasting any time.

I do that.

Now, the third and last chance left. Think hard, the password will have to be something someone once told me, and didn’t make sense then. Think hard, think fast I can hear footsteps!

It has got to be something Nature would think of. Something that symbolises her work. Feminine. Promising. Beautiful.

Ah yes, Rose Bud!

I key in xxxxxxx.

The door opens.

Thank you, Orson Welles!

There I am, inside the control room that runs this Universe!

What now?

I take out a long list from my pocket. It is a list that I have been carrying since childhood.

That’s a list of things wrong with Nature, that need to be corrected.

Here are 12 of them from that list in random order:

1. Sun to rise in the West and set in the East. Why should we Easterners wake up first always?
2. Roses not to have thorns.
3. Tornadoes and hurricanes to die down when they come within 2 km from a living being.
4. Seas to part for every man and woman, not just for Moses.
5. No life on other planets. In fact, no planets, stars and galaxies except the Earth. Maybe even Venus, if it is true that women are from there.
6. No father or mother or child to die. The rest can go to hell.
7. Every night to have full moons. Romance can’t be once-a-month affairs.
8. Frogs to have no voice; porcupines, no spines; and men, no nostril hair.
9. Women to not gain weight or age after 22.
10. Men to be slowly phased out.
11. Ocean bed to be raised to diveable depths and made walkable. Seas will be made crystal clear.
12. People to be born educated, knowledgeable and with the ability to snorkel, ski, swim and dance. And do mental math.

However, before all that, there’s something far more important that I wish to change.

It is said that childhood is wasted on children, youth on the young and wisdom on the old.

What if I find the controls for those and change it around?

What if I give the old’s understanding of life, to children?

Wouldn’t they learn to enjoy and make the most of the wonder years, rather than just waste it away bawling and protesting- first for milk, then against milk?

What if I give the young, the innocence of the child?

Wouldn’t they stop ruining their lives with an overdose of sex, drugs and violence?

What if I give the old, the optimism of the young?

Wouldn’t the fogies stop being so pessimistic about everything in life, and not write such posts?

Perfect, you say?

Great.

Here I stand, amidst the power that can change this world in an instant.

And then the truth hits me!

That’s the problem with half-sleep. They can get real when you don’t want them to.

Standing in front of what was the largest console that I have ever seen in life, I realise that I have always had this phobia for gizmos and am quite an illiterate when it comes to technology.

How the hell is someone who hasn’t learnt to type, use remotes, play PlayStation, or understood all the functions of his phone yet, ever going to figure out what, where and how on this console?

I stand and wonder as the footsteps get closer. The siren sounds a security breach!

Damn, it is the Pressure Cooker.

Dinner is over-cooked! And my wife will be back in 10!

I strike out Point 5 from my To-Change list.

In search of a smarter God

(39 days ago on this blog, I had done an open evaluation of God’s performance thus far. The results were appalling. As a consequence, the CEO of Universe, Inc., Mr.God, had to be sacked, and as its self-appointed Chairman, I had promised you that I will find a better alternative soon. So, here I am.)

Honestly, I didn’t know it would be this tough. I had foolishly assumed that it would be easy to pick a God from the many that exists in this world already.

“In the extreme case of none befitting my high standards, how long would it take to create a new one!” I had even boasted to a friend.

“It would certainly be easier than creating babies, though not as pleasurable!” I had joked.

“After all, I didn’t need a partner for this, and didn’t have to depend on her not having a headache!” we had laughed.

I was so so wrong.

Clearly, finding a common God has got to be the toughest job in this Universe.

Compared to this, God’s Creation of Man seems like kindergarten stuff- which he made a mess of, by outsourcing its mass production to Adam & Eve with absolutely no quality checks in place.

Ever since then, man has been trying to recreate his creator. It led to theories, stories and trouble. What started off as plain curiosity, soon became an obsession, then a business, and later a convenient excuse for the cunning.

But hopefully, we are past all that muddled religious times, and are ready for a more homogeneous and meaningful belief, starting now.

Yes, I have good news in this context.

(You may now rise, and get ready for a standing ovation as the announcement follows.)

Ladies and gentlemen, our eons-long search is over. I have found a new God; not just for me, but for you and for this Universe.

A more capable, proven and result-oriented God.

Someone you can touch, listen to and talk to.

Someone who will answer your prayers, guide you and correct you in real time.

Someone who will encourage no religious fundamentalism and terrorism, and make everyone accept the theory of One World One God.

A God who will be not mine, yours or theirs, but ours.

(Applause here.)

I am as proud of the process as I am of the result.

In keeping with the democratic traditions of a civilised world, I had asked all the people I could meet in January this year for their best choice, for the Universe’s top post.

By simple computation, I arrived at the winner.

And then, true to the traditions of the developed world, I vetoed it, to nominate a God who I think will be better than the popular choice.

Before I say who it is, let me, in classic reality show style, announce the results starting with the bottom choice first.

In the fifth position with merely 3% votes is The Saint!

Shocking, how he, who I thought would be the most obvious successor to God by virtue of being No.2 in the pecking order of divinity, has been unceremoniously relegated to the bottom of the pile. Perhaps, making the blind see, getting the lame to walk and parting the seas no longer impress the generation that has been brought up on astounding special effects.

Also, how long can people keep watching saints perform miracles on others?! The message from them is loud and clear- “Miracles are useless unless it is happening to us. Until then, it is just a magic show.”

In the fourth position with 7% votes is this never-say-die creature who has the knack of popping up in any poll- The Politician!

That he features in this list, is no surprise. That he features higher than The Saint, surely is.

It is a hint that the job of God is a political one.

God’s tact of fueling faith through hopes and promises, and keeping that belief intact even in the face of his colossal failure and pathetic performance, is an art best practised by the politician.

“If that’s so, why not get the professional for the job?” a few seem to suggest.

In the third position with 10% votes is The Corporate Honcho!

Coming to think of it, he is actually a politician dressed in business suit who communicates through PowerPoint presentations.

He features higher than the politician only because he has turned greed into a virtue and made it a result-oriented business science.

Also, unlike the politician, the business head converts detractors into accomplices by sharing his loot with them, and respectfully calling that shareholding.

So, a vote for the businessman is a vote, I suspect, for a share in God’s profits.

In the second position with 12% votes is The Superhero!

He is everything you want your God to be. He’s there whenever you need him, to save you from distress and the world from annihilation. To add to it, there’s mystery around his real identity that adds to the aura.

I guess the only reason why he didn’t become the top choice is because it is difficult to imagine a batmobile traversing the narrow and overcrowded bylanes of Mumbai or Bangkok. Or the Spiderman answering an Arab’s call for help in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Where will he swing his web from?

And Superman? Well, it is kind of difficult to have faith in a God who wears his undies outside, no?

Finishing in the first position with 68% votes, ladies and gentlemen, is my poll’s winner, The Individual!

This one was the most unexpected. But I should have guessed. After all, who is going to miss an opportunity to vote for himself as the most powerful dude in the Universe?!

But in a way, this reiterates what the world’s most ancient philosophy says: “Your search for the greatest and the most powerful will take you all over, and finally bring you back to yourself. For, there’s no one who can change you, protect you and evolve you better than yourself. You are the best God there could ever be.”

I agree.

But as its self-appointed Chairman, I can’t have 7 billion CEOs for this Universe.

I need one.

So, I vetoed the poll verdict and continued my search.

The answer of all important searches in life is always at the last place you look for.

I went looking for a common God all over the Universe, when it was actually in my hands- in our hands.

Not figuratively, literally.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the new God is an App!

The new temple is the Smart Phone!

It is as individual as it can get and as mass as you want it to be.

It has unprecedented universal acceptance, and is today the world’s fastest growing religion.

With the youth as its evangelists, it surely is only going to grow wider and faster.

But does it play God?

Of course, it does.

It’s omnipresent, staying with you all the time. Always accessible, always responding to your requests.

Isn’t “Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall be provided!” truer of your app-loaded smart phone than of any God you have known?

If God’s job is to keep you away from evil, then don’t you think that the phone has done that in double good measure?

I don’t have statistics, but I am certain that since the advent of the smart phones, the youth have lesser time and interest in other things. Parents will vouch for that.

If there’s still drugs and crime in this world, it must be thanks to those who don’t have smart phones yet, or those who haven’t loaded enough apps yet.

I am not saying it is all there. But it surely has the most potential.

Imagine an app where you could feed the values you want to adhere to. Such a smart app can actually prevent you from all things evil.

So, as you talk, the app can beep your cuss words, distract you when you lose your temper or warn you when you write a nasty message.

An app that will automatically dial a number in your phone book after a pre-fixed number of days, just to keep you in touch with each other. So there’s no drifting apart in relationships ever.

An app that will have no ego in sending out a “I am sorry if I hurt you” message to someone you have had a silly fight with.

It’s a God who will make tangible changes to our lives.

It’s exciting, entertaining and very personal.

But you know what really makes it the best new God of this Universe?

It just doesn’t inspire fanaticism.

No one’s going to wage a war in the name of an app. Or blow himself up just because you criticised it.

It needs no priest, no saint, no middleman.

Across caste, colour, creed and gender, there would be one app.

One World, One App.

Nothing called children of a lesser app.

It is everything God and religion were meant to be, but weren’t.

Get converted. Go download.

Powerful, na?

WordPress blocks Rameshrabi

 

Dear Subscriber,

I believe that my post Losing is the new winning has not been delivered by mail to you. I am told that it is ‘too long’. I don’t believe them. I think it is a conspiracy to silence me. Did I hear you ask by whom? Well…let me think…umm…maybe the US? Maybe they think I am a Julian Assange in the making? But hey, I’m no ass and mine are not weaky leaks! Maybe it is Hollywood, not wanting talent to blossom in Bollywood? Maybe it is the Red Cross, to help those suffering? Maybe it is the Human Rights Commission, to stop atrocities on innocents? Maybe it is PETA…oops, sorry. Whatever it is, I think I need to fight back. We need to fight back. The post is available for you at www.rameshrabi.wordpress.com. Do visit it, like the millions of others who do it every day…okay, like the three others who do it once a month. I promise you, it will be better than receiving it by mail. The blog is airy, green and much more spacious than your cramped, crowded inbox. (I can’t imagine my post fighting for attention with all those meaningless forwards you receive every day.) Also, the experience is far better. It’s the difference between watching the Super Bowl on TV and watching it live, in the stadium; the difference between watching a movie on dvd and watching it on the big screen. So hoping to see you at the blog. And yes, bring your popcorn along, it is one long read.

I am keeping this short, so that this gets delivered. (Never written anything this short since I quit advertising.)

Thank you.

Rr

Let them in. Get them out.

 

Life’s basic questions start with a simple What. (My first post was titled that. Remember?)

Whats are basic, simple and, often, the easiest questions in school exams. Children who keep asking What, get report cards from teachers that say: ‘An inquisitive and curious child. Always eager to learn anything new.’ (But comments from neighbours are likely to resemble Mr. Wilson’s on Dennis the Menace.)

What is necessary. But it has its limitations. It lacks the ability to take a conversation ahead. Had the world stopped with What, there would have been no discoveries, inventions, progress and even life.

Here are three examples to prove that.

Eve: ‘What are the apple and snake doing in Eden, dear?’

Adam: ‘I believe they are here to make us have babies.’

Eve: ‘Oh, how exciting! Let’s sleep early. We’ve got to wake up to bawling babies, don’t we? Goodnight, honey!’

Adam: ‘Goodnight, dear!’

*  *  *

Mom: ‘What are you staring at, Isaac?’

Newton: ‘An apple just fell on my head, mom!’

Mom: ‘Oh my baby, hope you didn’t get hurt. Move away from that stupid tree, baby. It keeps dropping apples for no reason.’

Newton: ‘Sure, mom.’

*  *  *

Archimedes: ‘Eureka!’

Wife: ‘What happened?’

Archimedes: ‘Water just spilled out of my bathtub.’

Wife: ‘You idiot! That’s the new bathroom rug that you just drenched!’

Archimedes: ‘Oops!’

*  *  *

That’s why the big Q. What after What?

How about How?

How is what makes the earth spin, hearts to beat, planes to fly. If What is theory, How is practical. If What is a seeker, How is a doer.

The Whats in exams carry 1, 2, and 5 marks. They will at best take you to 20%. It’s the Hows that come with 10, 15 and 20 marks, and have always failed us.

Even in life, Hows are the most difficult questions to answer. Here are three examples.

Wife: ‘What do you think, am I as fat as your colleague?’

Husband: ‘No way! She’s much heavier.’

Wife: ‘Really? (Deathly pause) How do you know?’

Husband: ‘Umm…er…that…she…’

(Way out: Solitaire?)

*  *  *

Boss: ‘What should we do to increase sales?’

Employee: ‘Simple. Sell more, sir!’

Boss: ‘Excellent! How?’

Employee: ‘Er…I will…I mean, we will…’

(Way out: Monster.com?)

*  *  *

She: ‘What is the meaning of LIFE?’

He: ‘ Keep laughing until the end!’

She: ‘How?’

He: ‘Huh…ha ha ha…I guess…’

(Way out: Read on?)

One day, a few years ago, I had travelled with my wife and kids within Kerala. Our day-trip started from Thachambara. We drove to Pattambi and back, halting at Ellamalacherry, Mannarghat, Guruvayur and eight other stops for reasons that varied from family visits, biological needs, mechanical faults, political protests, religious faith, touristy acts and, mainly, calming the maniac driver.

Kerala roads and drivers can convert even the staunchest rationalist. By the time we reached Guruvayur, all I wanted to do was fling myself at the feet of the Lord, to thank Him for the trip so far and to pray for the one back. But I couldn’t. Here’s why.

At the entrance of the temple, one of my biggest paranoia at security checks came true. The alarms went off. My wife and kids had passed peacefully, but I failed. So there I was, surrounded in no time by the local version of the NSG, clad in sacred threads and dhotis. I had suddenly become a bigger spectacle than the Lord inside. Even today I haven’t forgiven my wife for the look on her face as she turned back to see me being whisked away. It was a look that said: ‘Rum, you a terrorist? All this while? And I didn’t know?’

Actually the whole drama was just because I had simply forgotten to take my shirt off. That temple allows no shirts, no trousers and no cellphones inside. They believe that the temple is no place to differentiate between the branded and unbranded, the expensive and the discounted. Noble thought. But tell me, how does nakedness be a leveller? Far from it, I think it is the biggest differentiator. Even half-nakedness can be extremely discriminating. Well-toned torsos vs. Roly-poly ones. Hairy chests vs. Clean-shaven ones. Sweaty armpits vs. Well-sprayed ones.

By the time I stripped and got in, the men’s queue was estimated to take me two hours to get to the Lord. That’s longer than it would take me to fly back to Mumbai.

I gave up. I stepped out feeling rejected by the Lord. It was this guilt that made me do a mad act. I dropped a thousand-rupee note into the bowl of the first blind beggar I came across.

Without waiting to see him overwhelmed, I made a quick exit. Only because I didn’t want onlookers to wonder what ‘grave sin’ I might have committed that warrants such a ‘redemption’ with ‘ill-gotten wealth’. Petty things can assume huge significance in small towns. I for sure didn’t want the local newspapers to carry it the next day: Mumbai Sinner Seeks Redemption In Guruvayur!

I had barely taken a few hurried strides, when I heard him shout out for me. I thought it was to make me his Lord. Little did I realise then, that in the next one hour, it would be the other way around.

“Please take this back, sir,” he said, freezing me mid-way. I didn’t want to be the world’s first man to beg a beggar to accept alms, or start a reverse bargaining of sorts with, ‘Please accept at least 500, okay 100, how about 50?’ I snatched my note back and was preparing to flee, when he spoke again.

“Sir, will you do me a favour? Will you take me to the kulam (Temple pond)?” he asked, ruining my second getaway.

I hated this. This was becoming a mega charity show for the idle onlookers. But I had no choice. ‘Beggar Refuses Sinner’s Money, Prefers A Walk’ reads better than ‘Beggar Drowns In Kulam After Devotee Refuses To Help’.

So I held his hand and we walked towards the Kulam.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Your big note would have destroyed my ability to be thankful for the one and two-rupee coins that drop into my bowl everyday, and to be thrilled with the occasional five-rupee coins. Happiness is such a bitch! It never comes to us. We need to pursue it, you see.” He laughed a full-throated laugh. “And mind is such a monkey! We will have to train it to be happy on command.”

‘How?’ I asked instinctively.

The sermon that followed until we reached the kulam is the best I’ve heard, read or understood. The only one simple enough for me to try and practice.

The problem with remarkable experiences is that they become so only in hindsight. I wish I had the foresight to know what was coming. I’d have recorded it. Nevertheless, here are the highlights of whatever I could retrieve from memory.

He on Mind: “Spirituality is not about turning our mind into an impenetrable fortress or an emotion-proof metallic ball. It is about imagining our mind to be a simple, porous bowl. Letting everything pass through, but retaining nothing. Greed, hatred, envy, grief, desire, ego, ambition, anger…let them all in, get them all out. If we let them remain, they cause stains. Stains mean guilt. And guilt is the big, bad Devil- the only one.”

He on Karma: “Anything that passes through our mind smoothly is Good Karma. Anything that causes turbulence and leaves a stain is Bad Karma. Even charity can be Bad Karma, if it is a symbol of pride, righteousness, generosity, magnanimity or patronage.”

He on Prayer: “It is the worst clog of mind’s pores, the cause of most permanent stains. Prayer is nothing but a cunningly disguised plea for miracles, an attempt to change the rules and policies of this universe in our favour. At the core of any prayer is absolute selfishness, favouritism and an attempt to influence power. It is a close cousin of greed.”

He on Faith: “Unshakeable faith, whole-hearted dedication, selfless devotion to anyone or anything are the best known cleansers. When done without an eye on results or an accompanying request for miracles, they work like high-pressure water jets to clear mind’s pores and remove all stains. These should become our daily rituals, our life’s religion.”

He on Happiness: “Happiness is not ecstasy, laughter or smile. It’s contentment. It’s the ability to keep our mind’s bowl empty, unclogged and stain-free. Often described as a state of nothingness.”

He on God: “When mind celebrates its powerlessness, and doesn’t try to wield any influence on the happenings in life, it becomes omnipotent, omnipresent. Mind becomes God.”

“So as you can see, God is nothing but this clean, empty, porous bowl of mine!” he said, flashing his begging bowl at me. He laughed his full-throated laugh again. “Thank you, sir. I’ll go my way from here. I’ll starve today so that I can accept a one-rupee coin tomorrow with child-like glee.”

I let go of his hand. He walked away. I stood there long enough to see if he vanished, like they do in religious films. But nothing of that sort happened. He groped, stumbled and walked on.

On our more-peaceful drive back home, my wife asked me, ‘So did you get a good darshan of the Lord?’

‘Yes, I did.’ I said.

Advertising needs better advertising

 

Here’s a campaign that says what it takes to be in advertising. As always grossly exaggerated.

It was done with Vikas Malhara, a dear friend of mine, many years ago to get talent into advertising. Guess we failed.

I’m back, but how!

Anj aana

Here’s an example of another Money-Mani confusion- The Hindi movie Anjaana Anjaani’s Kerala version:

In Malayalam, it means 5 elephants, 5 nails!