Month: February 2009

Travails of D’Cracy

Romanced by great Indians, by our Mahatma conceived,

Lady D’Cracy by others has been cheated and deceived.

The Lady has become the rich and powerful Indian’s keep,

Born 15th of August 1947, her status today makes me weep.

Her adoring but naive suitors have been fooled and ravaged,

Her beauty, her ideals, her concerns torn apart and savaged.

Every 5 years there has been a chance to set the things right,

Restore D’Cracy to her rightful status, ensure a destiny bright.

But her innocent and foolish fans, they have ignorantly slept,

Whilst corrupt fingers on her pure innocent soul have crept.

This time around, we all must wake up and stop her plunder,

Realise that to leave her in corrupt hands would be a blunder.

Close Encounters with the Fairer Sex!

This one goes back to my junior college days in a small town during the late seventies. The draconian regulations of the school had just been superseded by the lax discipline of college life. I had recently joined the Rotaract Club of Nagpur. It’s always the neo converts to a cause who are most fanatically zealous! So Rotaractor Nadeem Sani was the first to arrive for all projects and dumb enough to be saddled with the most inane jobs.

As part of its activity, the Club annually organized a charity film show wherein the proceeds were donated to a school for underprivileged children. During my first year at Rotaract, the charity movie was ‘Close encounters with the Third Kind’. As a zealous guardian of faith, I promptly volunteered to sell an entire booklet of tickets. Selling an English movie ticket amongst college crowd at an inflated price in Nagpur of seventies wasn’t really easy. I had to cajole, beg, request, threaten, call in past favours and pull out my entire repertoire of emotional blackmailing to sell those tickets. Amongst the dubious deals for selling tickets struck was one wherein I was to sit and watch the movie with Miss Specko – the buyer of a premium charity ticket. The general opinion of the class put her as an ideal candidate for a mental asylum but if the Knight Templar could ride halfway across the known world as saviour of Faith, I could definitely risk watching a movie with the girl-off-her-rocker for the cause!

So, on the movie day, I waited outside the Liberty cinema in my best pair of threads. Thankfully, she came on time and we sat down to watch the movie. After the initial period of being on the tenterhooks, I relaxed and concluded that Miss Specko is not going to spring a surprise today and concentrated on the movie. But girls and destiny have this cruel habit of unpredictability. Post intermission, Miss Specko failed to reappear. I waited for a decent amount of time and then went outside to check. She was no where in sight. Little alarm bells started tinkling in my mind. I went to the Rotaract President and whispered my predicament; all the senior members were dragged out to help. One of the girls checked the Ladies Toilet – no sign of her. It was now 30 minutes past intermission and the alarm bells started to clang loudly. There was a barrage of questions, advice, chastising and angry abuses hurled at me. And the pundits of doom started muttering words like abduction, kidnapping and what not. Thousands of very scary ‘what if’ scenarios ran through my mind. My imagination was working overtime with visions of parents, teachers, and policemen as major actors in the next 24 hours. After about an hour of searching, we formed a posse and extended the perimeter of our search to nearby lanes. This again proved futile. By now, I was a nervous wreck and cursing my luck, the girl, Rotaract and the world. The movie ended and the theater disgorged its occupants.

The whole of Rotaract club was mobilized and we had a hurried war Council as regards our next course of action – parents or Police? I died a thousand deaths thinking of the consequences. It was decreed that we contact the girl’s parents first and then take the campaign forward depending upon the situation.

We reached her house and I was expected to inquire about the whereabouts of Miss Specko from her parents. I had my first experience of what it must be like for the infantryman to charge through a minefield   towards enemy position, little knowing which bullet has his name on it! I rang the bell and probably broke the world record of holding the breath. It was opened by a sleepy eyed, tousle haired, pyjama clad Miss Specko. She looked at me – I looked at her and we all looked at each other. There was a lot of looking around during that couple of seconds. “How come you are home?” I finally managed to croak. “I was bored during the movie, so I left” she replied angelically.

Years later, a wiser me had a whirlwind courtship in Bombay with my (now) wife, hitting all the high spots of Bombay together. She still wonders as to the reason I never ever took her to the movies during the courtship.

– Nadeem Sani

The Old Pier at Port Blair!






I wondered at the magnificence of the pier in eighteenth century made,

And thought why its beauty with passage of time does not seem to fade.

The pier stood proudly with iron legs embedded in waters oh so blue,

And the docks below came alive, spoke to me and offered some clue.

“Glorious ships, men and action I have seen” to me the old pier spoke,

Heroes and beautiful ladies as well as dastards who went plain broke.

My heart holds enchanting tales of success and defeat, sorrow and joy,

Many untold stories of romance and grandeur, of the great days gone by.

The grand and splendid memories of yore make me evergreen and gay,

The reminiscences of yesteryear act like magic, keeping old age at bay.

– Nadeem Sani

Bartimaeus – The Genial Genie!

Recession is biting! And amidst home budget belt tightening, the mistress of the house decreed that my extravagant book buying budget is to be slashed to zero with immediate effect! Funny thing this globalization – some wise guy in Lehman Brothers attempts to subvert the system in America and poor me is deprived of books to read…. Being a wise and domesticated husband, I did not dare ask my wife if her exorbitant cosmetic budget had been pruned.

Reading is an addiction. Deprived of my daily fix of mental stimulation, I reached out in desperation to the children’s stack of books. And, in the process, stumbled upon a trilogy by Jonathan Stroud about this genie and his young master. The books are ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’, ‘The Golem’s Eye’ and ‘Ptolemy’s Gate’.

I have happily avoided reading all of JK Rowling, smug in the self –belief that children’s book are juvenile. My idea of kid’s book stemmed from the Enid Blyton’s I had read eons ago. ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ was a pleasant surprise. To begin with, the language used by Jonathan is crisp, elegant and lucid. The second part I liked is the sheer simplicity of the plot – good is good and bad is bad. No moral dilemma to judge, no grey areas to navigate gingerly about. The best part about the book is that it seamlessly blends the myths and fairy tales of yore with the contemporary world. The hero is a minister in UK government. This modern setting does not make you feel that you are reading the typical archaic children’s book of hero–slays-the-fire-eating–dragon type.

The most amazing character of the series is Bartimaeus, the genie. The story about djinns and how to control them is a central part of oriental folklores. As a child, I remember being told all about drawing a circle in a graveyard and staying within it for 40 days and night to be able to exercise power over djinn. In Jonathan Stroud books, our young magician hero has control over thousand year old djinn called Bartimaeus. The genie’s character is sketched out very nicely – naughty, with a great sense of humour, wicked and a tad sentimental. Aladdin’s djinn is servile whereas Bartimaeus has a mind of his own. His ranting and raving, his humour and benign wickedness are amazingly original. The book is narrated in first person in parts – some bits by the genie and some by the hero. This helps the reader in identifying with the character very well.  I can very well imagine Eddie Murphy as the quasi cartoon character of Bartimaeus in a Hollywood movie. After a series of sinister plots, our young magician hero emerges victorious with the formidable help of his genie friend.

There can be sober parallels drawn between these stories and the real world but I deliberately desisted from this intellectual exercise. The books are meant to be enjoyable reading by children and I wanted to enjoy them at that level. After a series of rather drab, brilliant books by award winning authors which leave you drained at the end, this one keeps you riveted by its action, simplicity and comedy. In the end, it leaves a warm, fuzzy glow and the positive feeling that heroism and romance is not dead. A must read for all adults who have got accustomed to a cynical, descriptive, blurred morals diet. These books are fun with no pretensions about dealing with a broad socio- historical canvas or depicting depressing reality. And no – I am NOT regressing with age!