Author: Swati Sani

Wrong and Right

“Uncle, Numair has hit me unnecessarily. He is a very bad boy”. The complainant was a 6 year old child – about the same age as my son Numair. It had been a tough day at the office for me. I had been intercepted by this gang of children as I was walking back home after parking the car. Numair stood in the background, sulking. I could not help but feel a sense of déjà vu as I surveyed the scene before me. I was transported back 40 years to a  time when I had been in a similar situation.

As a child, we used to play in a small ground behind our home in a small city. One of those evenings, all 6 years of me got into an argument with a neighbourhood kid. 40 years down the line, I cannot recall the actual reason, but the passage of time has not diminished the righteous feeling in me that my premise was more correct! Well, we tried to resolve our arguments like any other sane and rational 6 year olds – we whacked each other. Whilst our whacking bout was on, my dad came back from his municipal school where he was a teacher. My opponent ran up to my dad and vented his anger whilst I sulked in the background. Dad surveyed the scenario, slapped me twice in front of everyone and walked away without uttering a single word. A dumbfounded and very hurt self tried to hold back my tears, my cheeks red and stinging. Apart from the physical pain, what really hurt was the feeling of being punished unjustly and in front of everyone by my own dad. I can still hear the jeers of everyone as I walked back home – hurt, angry and alone.

At home, dad explained that he had hit me to keep the outward impression of impartiality intact and dismissed the issue. Impression at your son’s expense? – the child in me cried silently. That night, all alone in bed, I was quick to absorb the lesson of this twisted middle class morality. The impression of others was more important than that of your near and dear ones. Cursed with this sick logic, I grew up making the interests of my family and near and dear ones subservient to the ‘impressions of others’. Imagine living you life with this kind of morality – sacrificing your own interests for the sake of others at all times. Pleasing others became more important than the happiness and comfort of self, family and my dear ones.

Did my father ever realize what he did that day? No, I don’t think so. In his defence, I must hasten to add that he was probably too busy keeping the wolves away from our doors, to make sufficient money to pay for our education. Life was a struggle, dependent on the goodwill of others to survive. The only people willing to stand by you and suffer for you were your near and dear ones…………  

I jerked back to the present and called out to my son. As Numair came close, I put my hands protectively around him and told the other boys “All of you are old enough to sort this out amongst yourselves. Don’t be sissies and complain”. I believe I finally corrected a 40 year old wrong.

Varun Gandhi’s Doublespeak

During the last few days we have been treated to the spectacle of Mr. Varun Gandhi’s speech in his constituency and his clarifications thereon, ad nauseam.

As a cynical and passive observer of the Indian political scene, I feel amazed at the flagrant doublespeak of Varun and BJP. If the errant scion of Gandhi family did not deliver the ‘alleged’ speech, why couldn’t he set the records straight in unequivocal terms stating that those are not his convictions? Instead, he chose to clarify parts of that rabble rousing speech which were particularly offensive whilst retaining the core essence of Hindutva ( I am a proud Hindu etc). His clarifications were a juvenile and amateurish attempt at refuting the legal charges for Election Commission’s consumption, placating the media and people at the national level to appear moderate whilst retaining the Hindutva essence of his speech for the grass root workers in his constituency.

Varun Gandhi is just following the classic ruse adopted by BJP as a political entity. At the national level, the party projects a moderate face whilst at the grassroots level; it still promotes divisive communal politics for garnering votes. Isn’t it interesting to see that the only BJP leaders of national stature who have condemned the speech happen to be of Muslim origin! And I daresay they did it not because they are decent people but because they are worried about their vote bank. Others including Advani have conveniently kept quiet or sidestepped the issue. Isn’t it time our political leadership dealt with real issues like economy, growth, terrorism, infrastructure etc rather than play footsie with vote banks?

Lest anyone brand me as a blogger of left/centre/ right leanings, let me assure you that I have no love lost for the genre of politicians – be it of any hue and colour. I am a firm believer of the fact that the country has been badly let down by our political masters right since we gained independence. And if the political leadership has let the country down, a major portion of the blame lies with the middle class and the intelligentsia – THAT IS YOU AND ME for not participating actively in the process of democracy. We have deluded ourselves to think that we are too busy or the process is below our stature to get involved in!

From Incomplete to Finished!

It was one of the lazy weekend afternoons during the early nineties. I had reported to a Mumbai based coast guard ship on deputation from the Indian Navy. Keen to get acquainted with my new shipmates, I changed and went to the Ante Room. The bar was open, the atmosphere was relaxed; the lights dim with Enigma blasting from a futuristic looking stereo system. I went around introducing myself. Vikram was sitting in one corner, ensconced between two pretty girls. “Please call me Vicky” was his laconic self introduction as he went back to the animated close quarter discussion with his girls.

Vicky was the ship’s Medical Officer or in civilian parlance, a doctor. He was suave, smooth and urbane. An extrovert who loved interacting with people and a compulsive party-goer, Vicky was also good at squash and Bridge. Grapevine said that his list of Mumbai girlfriends was a mile long. Vicky was ruled by his impulsiveness. I remember an occasion when we took the ship’s Gypsy on the Marine drive at midnight after drinks onboard and tangdi kebabs at Bade Miyan. The dare was to touch the highest point on speedometer in the stretch between Nariman Point and Chowpatty. Needless to say, Vicky won; the runner up not even within 10 kmph of Vicky’s top speed. There was this air of controlled aggression around him, of someone who would charge at the enemy without batting an eyelid and enjoy the plunder of his victory with equal aplomb. Vicky could very well have been a swashbuckling buccaneer but for the fact that he was living in a different age.

. Within a month of my joining, the ship was shifted to Chennai and deployed in Palk Straits. The mission was to prevent LTTE using Indian soil as a sanctuary from Sri Lankan Army. We did a cycle of 15 days deployment in the area followed by 15 days rest and recuperation at Chennai. Over the next one year, Vicky and self became the best of friends. During our stay in Chennai, we used to paint the town red – getting drunk, smoking pot, listening to Enigma and doing all those delightfully sinful things bachelors do when deployed away from home port. We purchased a life size stuffed Pink Panther which we took along with us everywhere we went. This Pink Panther was our passport to striking interesting conversation with pretty girls. I recall a particular episode when we went to Chola Sheraton for dinner and deposited Pinky with front desk for safe keeping. While retrieving him, Vicky also managed a date with the pretty thing at the desk. Vicky’s philosophy of life was a tad radical and futuristic even by today’s standards!

After a wonderful year together, we were posted out to different units in different cities and lost touch with each other. My life took a predictable if staid path. I got married, had children and became a domesticated husband albeit a wee bit reluctantly. After almost a decade, I was posted to Kochi. During settling down, I came to know that Vicky was married and was also posted at Kochi. Wise to the reality of so called marital bliss and aware of the havoc it causes in the psyche of a hitherto free individual, I was perversely eager and curious to meet Vicky and his wife. I had visions of a very modern woman who matched Vicky’s cavalier and devil-may-care attitude.

So I took my bitter half with me that very evening to pay Vicky a visit. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by lady dressed in traditional Kerala cotton sari, a huge bindi on her forehead, oiled pleats and a mangalsutra around her neck. “Hi! Vicky in?” I asked cheerfully.

“ Vikramji has gone for a detachment to Goa. He will be back in a week’s time” she replied. I looked past her shoulders into the traditionally furnished house with the bust of Gods and Goddesses. I could smell the whiff of incense sticks lit in the Puja Room…. I said that I will meet him when he comes back and left.

My wife, who had been a mute spectator to the entire conversation, chuckled and summed up the situation by borrowing one of my wisecracks “A man is incomplete before marriage. After marriage, he is finished”

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!        

Covenant

Eons ago, a covenant made between us so true,

In every life and form, our meeting was to be due. 

Meet, befriend, love and be together in every life,

But this time you chose to be someone else’s wife.

Through different times we have nurtured this pact, 

And met in different lives, that’s an irrefutable fact.

For you my beloved, I have fought glorious wars,

And our name and fame had spread wide and far.

You were a princess and me an infatuated slave,

Contrary to the royal decree, for you I did crave.
Our covenant held true and when you  came to me,

Killed for love in that life, we were destined to be.

And once, a poor farmer I was who tilled the land,

Everyday you brought me lunch, fed me by hand.

Together we eked out a living from the fertile soil,

Happy and content, the whole day we did toil.

Throughout this life I have sought you far and wide,

Now that we met, by our covenant you must abide.

You are citing reasons, limitations and obligations,

And breaking our covenant without real justification.

This life is different, my endearments you don’t brook,

Violate all vows of togetherness you and I once took.

Covenant, promises, love, eternity don’t mean a thing,

You only look for security and comfort this life can bring.

Grant me a wish, let us meet once again I pray,

Let us keep the covenant even if only for a day.

Joining National Defence Academy


“Can you help me with the venous system of the frog?” The question was directed at me by a pair of emerald green eyes in the Zoology Lab. As a 17 year old, I could feel my knees go weak, my heart fibrillating and the face flushing. I did help her – every neuron short circuiting, the blood cells whooping and dancing in the arteries, pumped by a heart now afflicted by tachyarrhythmia, the olfactory nerves surrounded by the ions of Havoc perfume she was wearing. The spear eagled belly-up frog in the dissection tray shot the Cupid’s arrow and within a month, I was proposing to the Colonel’s daughter. Proposal accepted and feelings reciprocated, we sat down to contemplate marriage, parent’s reaction, career and all other issues which two 17 year old in a make believe world could possibly contemplate. Its amazing how as a 17 year old, I was absolutely confident of my wisdom – a trait which I no longer possess at 46! She produced an omnibus solution for all our problems – real or imagined. “Why don’t you join the National Defence Academy? That way, you will be in Pune and have a better chance at asking for my hand.” The Colonel’s daughter advised.

That single sentence changed my life. She finished her Board exams and went off to join Fergusson College at Pune whilst I aimed for the NDA exams. The Board results came – I I managed decent marks and was eligible for admission in the local REC for engineering but my heart was set on her. And the path to her traversed through NDA. My parents advised me against the folly of changing my life’s goal on a chance teenage remark, my friends ridiculed me. But I had recanted my life’s ambition of joining Indian Institute of Science for Nuclear Physics. I now wanted to graduate from NDA, get married to her and live happily after. No one – not even a distant cousin – in my family had served in the Armed Forces. The brighter lot became Doctors and the not so bright became teachers. Now the brightest amongst them had just turned into a renegade and was doing the unthinkable. The family elders called a council and ordered me to be present. I was made to sit in the centre and advised, threatened, cajoled and blackmailed to give up my obsession. But love is steadfast in adversity and so I remained stubbornly committed to my goal. There were mutterings about my dad not bringing me up properly, about me becoming the black sheep of the family etc etc but I just did not give in. So, NDA it was – I had prevailed, our love had prevailed!

So, on 23rd of January 1981, a romantic me arrived at Pune railway station with eyes full of stars. Prior to reporting to NDA Wing, my primary task was pilgrimage to Fergusson College to meet her. I walked across the gravelly path to meet her in front of the Stats department. She was looking so heart stoppingly pretty in a dark brown harem trouser and a white kurta…… “Let’s go and grab a cup of tea at Vaishali” she suggested. We settled down at one of the table and ordered tea and samosas. She kept her books aside, opened her bag and extracted and envelope. “I am getting married. Please do come for the reception” she said as she handed me the wedding invitation card.

Retrospection!

Like cats hissing and spitting in an alleyway dark,

Or dogs who snarl, growl and at each other bark.

With a feral, ferocious, unholy intensity we fight,

Trying to annihilate each other with all our might.

Of what use is this fierce battle, this pointless war,

                      Where both you and I are the losers by far?