By your leave, grandma

A delicate voice at the other end of the long-distance line said “Sir, today my grandma passed away. I won’t be coming to the office tomorrow – and perhaps the rest of the week”. Now, I am a believing man and I believe her and “god rest the departed soul in peace” and all that sort of things. However, this is a line which I have heard so often, in contextually varying flavours. that try hard as I might, the mind declines to fully accept. While my assertion is not backed by a carefully targeted opinion poll (these days it’s a risky business!), I can say with the authority of my experience that most people have heard this line: “my XXXXXXXXXXXX passed away”. Replace the xes with ‘grandmother’ (the overwhelming favourite), ‘grandfather’, ‘grand uncle’, ‘mother-in-law’ (this is normally accompanied by a certain amount of subdued glee), ‘father-in-law’ and it will most likely ring a few bells. This statement could be followed by a leave plea or a petition to be excused from a promised task. I remember this incident from during late eighties. A friend was in the process of applying for an entrance test to a professional course. He was investigating whether he qualified for any of the many quotas and found that his blessedness stopped just short of that. Then his eyes fell on a question in the application form asking “is father deceased?” Without hesitation he penned a vehement YES as answer and looked at me, his eyes twinkling with hope, “who knows, there could be a quota for the children of ill fathers!” Obviously, the poor sod did not know the difference between ‘diseased’ and ‘deceased’. I enlightened him. After a bit of pondering he said, “who knows, there could be a quota for the children of dead fathers”, this time with a more violent twinkle in his eyes. I pointed out the only flaw in this scheme, “but, your father’s still alive and in extraordinarily robust health”. He brushed aside my protestations indicating what he thought of me and my ideas in a few crisp unprintables. He did not get the hoped for admission. Then, there was this itinerant beggar who had seen at least sixty summers if one. My mother once asked him when he came to our house to beg, “why do you beg?” She did, from time to time, belabor under the belief that she could reform such needy by asking pointed questions. To this, he replied with a disarmingly straight face, “my parents are no more”. I put him down as an eternal hoper. At the age of sixty he was aggrieved that his parents, who – had they lived – would have been not a day less than eighty, had gone off and died leaving him high and dry and without the nurturing and nourishment that was clearly his privilege! I have zero doubt that he was telling the truth about him being an orphan. 

Apart from these two stray incidents of an offspring trying to benefit from the death (real or conjured) of a parent or more, I have not really come across any other episode where direct parents are rested in peace. However, when it comes to grandmothers, there seems to be no bar. They are ‘fair game’. In fact, it seems a major function of grannies is to pass away frequently and time it conveniently. Many a corporate think-tank and human resource punditage has carried out productivity analyses of the enslaved denizenry. Such scrutiny have generally focused on impact on work of marital disharmony, traffic travails, alcoholism (or teetotalism), number of children, food habits, clothing habits, meditation, art of lying and others. I even remember one study that showed incontrovertible proof including authentic statistics certified by a major management consultancy that persons within the age band of 31 and 40 years would carry out their duties more satisfactorily if they owned dogs rather than cats as pets! However, I am yet to come across an impact analysis of the granny phenomenon on office work. Anyone who takes a step in this direction is likely to uncover astounding facts. For example, I’m aware of at least eight cases when grannies were done away with on either side of long weekends. Two such cases related to the same employee. When questioned, he pointedly reminded that a person is entitled to at least two grannies and he was bent upon exercising this fundamental right. A common refrain these days is the crumbling of family values. While I would readily chip in with my two dimes in favour of this lament, I can’t help noticing that this can only benefit the granny slayers. With divorces and remarriages of parents, children come into sudden and unforeseen grannies, the way American fortune seekers used to come into windfalls during
Klondike days. There could yet come a day when an entire department would collectively celebrate, in the most convenient watering hole, bereavement of the same granny. Family run organisations, by their very nature, would be more vulnerable to such attacks. This is perhaps another compelling reason why nepotism does not make sound business sense!  There is another – a more subtle – utility that derives from doing away with grannies. Sympathy can be harvested in abundance if a GB (granny bereavement) is handled appropriately. A young boy or girl wanting to grab the attention of his / her opposite number could resort to the bereavement of a loved grandmother. Handled appropriately – again – the perp could prevent the opposite number from instituting inquiries through the local gendarmerie to ascertain the truth of the matter. To be sure, such tactics normally yield only sympathy but those in the know know that it’s but a small step from sympathy to stronger emotions. Indeed GB generated sympathy can be sought by persons other than the starry eyed Laylas or Romeos. There was this ex colleague with a rather more than pedestrian affinity for fermented liquids. He normally blamed his state (which was that of a boar that has won a bet by spending a major inheritance during the short happy hour at the local pub) on various grannies and their tendency to bid farewell at the slightest pretext. Once he stood in front of my desk looking at his watch intently. When I couldn’t ignore him any longer, I asked him what the issue was. He responded gravely “my grandmother had a heart attack and ~sob sob~ she is likely to die any minute now”. Being a self-proclaimed meticulous man, he was intently watching the minutes pass. Apparently he wanted to record in his pickled mind the precise minute his granny would call it quits. Later he could claim that at that moment he was checking his watch and wondering about the granny. He then took my leave and left the office, having inveigled yet another half-day leave, ostensibly to make funeral arrangements. Since I was new there, it did make me feel mildly sympathetic towards him while wondering why no one else in the office showed overwhelming emotions. This sympathy compelled me to go to his house that evening to offer my condolences in a more formal way. I found him in a pair of striped pajamas gaily humming a ditty about a large number of semi-nude women and well into his 3^rd (or 4^th) bottle. He was delighted to see me. He waved me to a chair and proceeded to tip a generous amount from that bottle into a chipped glass and thrust it into my hands. If the atmosphere was funereal, I utterly failed to notice it. In fact, it was like I were suddenly transported into a slightly vulgar one-man carnival. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I asked him how his grandmother was. He appeared confused and I had to remind him of his count-down of that noon. After some effort he seemed to connect but then, he asked me “wharrofitt?”, rather petulantly. A few more such back and forth sallies and I made him realize that his grandmother is (probably) dead and he should actually be mourning rather than behaving like a sailor on shore leave. To this he remarked “she warsn’t relly my gramma but she warr like my gramma and anyway, I last seen her 12 years back. For the life of me I can’t even recall her face” Well, the state he was in, he couldn’t recall his own face if he had seen him pass in front of him. This was clearly a case of abuse of the GB factor. Personally I have never had to resort to the GB trick. Now it’s too late. I lost one grandmother just as I got out of kindergarten. The other was in such a frighteningly vigorous health that I can all too easily imagine she could have sought to take the day off “because a grandson has passed away”. When she did finally pass away peacefully at the ripe old age of 89 on a Sunday, she had seen not just grandchildren but also their children – but never came close to allowing any of her progeny even the mildest chance of taking a day off on her! Postscript: The lady from the first paragraph actually returned to work the next day. Hers was one grandmother who did really pass away. I hereby tender my sincerest apology to her for ever doubting her – if I did. May the departed soul rest in peace.

Bed-time story

“Daddy, tell me a story, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase”.

“What type of story do you want?”

“Tell me a story of yourself when you were small”, yeah! ‘small’ – not young. Although not intended, I can’t help feeling conscious of my somewhat protruding midriff.

This is a daily litany. Nivedita, my eight year old daughter starts it around 9 PM and it goes on for a few minutes till I relent. After all, there are not many who would voluntarily want to listen to how I (the main character and the hero of my stories) and friends toppled a bucket of water (dirty water – water mixed with cow dung to be more graphic) on my third standard class-teacher’s head. Once I start my monologue, Kavita, two years Nivedita’s elder, joins in. She prefers Niv to do the dirty work of pestering me.

I wonder what do today’s children have against the tribe of teachers? There has never been one case where I have recounted a debacle suffered by my numerous teachers (they are all without exception remarkably unlucky in a slap-sticky manner in my yarns) that did not have K & N in stitches of laughter. Admittedly, quite a few of these stories are exaggerations, if not downright fabrications. Children love exaggerations.

One of their favorites is this story about how I (in actual fact it was someone else) threw a slipper at none other than the headmaster. Also, it’s one of the few 100% true stories. Trust me.

It all happened when I was in the 10^th standard, that great watershed year in every boy’s life in the nineteen eighties. Mine being the oldest and the largest municipal school in the area, there were eight divisions in each class (A – H). I was one of the stars of 10 A, AKA the ‘remand home’ or the ‘borstal’. If there was a school rogues’ gallery, inmates of my class would have tripped over each other to make it to the top. Boys that had failed in the previous years (and there were plenty) were herded into the A division. Consequently, there were a few boys older than 20 years of age. The rest were the ones on whom their families had given up. ‘Good for nothing’ and ‘rascals’ were only two of the milder adjectives employed by our venerable teachers when referring to the denizens of X A. The main task of the 20 pluses was to swagger around the school with unlit bidies hanging from the corners of their mouths (lit beedies were prohibited!). They were really good in it. I can’t help think that they wasted their talents on the ramparts of the school. They could have made a fortune in the Tamil film industry and given Rajnikanth a solid run for his money. They were also quite useful in intimidating the umpires when we played the annual cricket match with the other high school from across the town.

Next door to our class was X B. This was made up of local prodigies and geniuses. They always scored most marks and always got pats on their backs from teachers while we practiced the art of brushing aside teachers’ foot marks from our posteriors. Since the average age of X B was a good few years lower than that of X A, X A always came out tops in any physical encounter. Indeed, the delicate scientists from X B tried their best to avoid the blacksmiths, stonesmiths and assorted hoodlums from X A, as if they were snakes.

It was the beginning of the year and time for elections. I have always felt that the most practical education imparted in an Indian municipal school is elections. This was the only part of the curriculum which was taken in all seriousness by the students of X A. After all, we were X A, I mean, A! The seat of school general secretary was ours by right. We may not win ranks or accolades for building models of the solar system. We were definitely not destined to win spelling bees (it perhaps shows in this composition as well) or adept at helping the old and infirm across the road but, we were going to get that post of general secretary, even if it meant eating grass (had it happened earlier, I would have claimed that Z A Bhutto copied our motto when he said ‘we will have the bomb, even if we have to eat grass’).

We pooled our meager resources, some in the form of money and some in kind. We printed flyers – in order to fit more (flyers) in less (money), we had to print them in the size of a slightly large postage stamp. The fact is we printed flyers when no one else did and they flew! We made speeches – in the town square (until the peon of the municipality shoed us away). We visited homes of other students for door to door canvassing. We stooped low, so disgustingly low that we even behaved in civilized manner with the runts of X B. Hand sketches of our candidate leered at the general public from electric and telephone poles with a strong Kannada legend urging one and all to ‘vote and elect’ him for the good of the mankind. It was inspired performance by all of us.

Then came the d-day. We all assembled at the school ground at 6 AM for a council of war. The more radical among us advocated booth-capturing. This was overturned for two main reasons: One, there was going to be only one booth. If we captured it, the entire electoral process would have come to a complete stop, rendering all our efforts at getting our candidate to win null and (as they say) void. Two, fear that cops may beat us up (there were rumors that some spoil-sport teachers had asked for police bandobust). Then a crafty classmate suggested that we provide chocolate éclairs to the electorate on the sly. This was accepted, grudgingly, for our resources had run almost to ground. One of the more optimistic guys offered to sell his Camlin pen to raise the necessary funds. A few more followed his lead and we were able to acquire enough éclairs to bribe the first batch of around 100 voters.

The voting started amidst unprecedented security (there were three baton wielding cops) at 9 AM. Chappies with cheeks full of éclairs, our éclairs, entered the voting booth and emerged soon after throwing sly winks in our directions. We knew we could not lose. The last bit of unpopularity of our candidate (there was quite a lot of it when things had started) had been eradicated with the help of those sweets.

Came 12 noon and voting ended without a single incident of violence. We all dispersed for lunch. The results were to be announced at 4 PM.

At the appointed time we congregated at the venue again. The mood was one of jubilation. Most had brought some or the other musical instrument for later celebrations. After all, it was a foregone conclusion. We could not lose.

Announcements started. As is the (rather irritating) practice on such occasions, in the beginning, winners from lower classes in the class representative race were announced. Listening to 48 such names (six classes with eight divisions each) was rather trying. We all grinned and bore it with fortitude. At the end of what seemed like an eternity, the announcer was ready to announce the one verdict that mattered, the general secretary. After the usual hmmmming , hawing and clearing of throat, he got round to the pre-amble. (In Kannada) ‘Now we announce the name of the person who is going to lead the entire student body for the coming year, the general secretary………..’. He went on for a few more minutes explaining the duties of the GS elect. There was palpable excitement in the crowd. Then he announced the name.

Something happened. The buzz of excitement of one moment earlier was replaced by a deafening silence. We tried to rerun the announcement in our minds again. One of us even asked the announcer to repeat it and the announcer obligingly did. No, it was not a silly mistake. Our candidate had lost! Further, like rubbing salt on wound, the candidate from X B had won. As it eventually turned out, our candidate had polled no. 7 in seven candidates and the gap between him and no. 6 was rather wide.

Some of us ran back home. Some covered our faces in kerchiefs. Some just sat there stunned beyond words and I heard that a couple of us even shed tears!

It took the best part of a month to overcome our sense of humiliation. What had gone wrong? After all, it was the tradition. The GS was always from X A! This year we had let down the glorious tradition of X A. We had FAILED our seniors!! I could imagine some of those seniors sitting on clouds with halos around their heads wagging accusing fingers at us (the school was more than hundred years old then, presumably many seniors had made cloud tops their permanent dwelling). We had no explanation, not even a fig leaf to hide behind.

As expected, the resultant fury found expression in overt hatred towards X B. Their candidate, the three foot nil inch weasel had bested our 6 footer. We wanted revenge.

In the coming days, this feeling vented itself in the form of wicked caricatures of the winner and graffitis on the walls of the school. X B was heckled endlessly. The GS came round to the opinion that he needed protection before venturing out. However, none of this gave us full satisfaction.

That was, until our collective wisdom showed us the way. The first brainstorming session I ever partook in produced a brilliant solution to this vexing problem of redeeming our prestige. We started befriending our brothers from X B.

It took us nearly a week to win their confidence. At first our efforts were met with suspicion and then wariness. Finally, we did manage to win their confidence. Then, on the appointed day, six of us (including me), strolled across to X B and engaged six of their brightest in an absorbing discussion on chemical bonding of different elements (for this, we had actually studied the subject – just goes to show how badly we wanted revenge!). During the course of this discussion, we steered the unsuspecting lambs towards our classroom. The GS was my responsibility. At the end of five painstaking minutes, we managed to get them inside our class to ‘seek their advice on a particular issue’. No spider ever invited a fly into its parlor more convincingly.

The moment all twelve of us entered, all the four doors were closed by other soldiers who were hiding behind them. The six of us kamikazes moved away from the enemies and the entire class of nearly 70 students started raining shoes, slippers and an assortment of other kinds of footwear on them. We had planned it like a company commander would plan his battle. We had gangs to retrieve the ammunition for re-use and supply chains to transport them to the last line of artillery.

The barrage went on for a few minutes until, a door suddenly opened and in stepped the head master. For his misfortune, he entered through the door that was directly ‘in the line of fire’ (I use this phrase with due apologies to a certain general across the border). Before he could assimilate the facts and take evasive action, a particularly foul smelling slipper smote him squarely on the nose. Then, in front of our eyes his blood boiled – or so it seemed. He grunted. I have personally never heard a wild boar grunt in anger. Maybe they do not. However, a grunt aspiring wild boar would do well to learn from our head master (RIP). That froze the frenzied action inside the class. Chappies who were about to release their projectiles dropped them – more to avoid culpability by showing empty hands than out of fear.

The headmaster held up the offending slipper and moved into the crowd. He, being a logical man, had deduced that all he needed to do to catch the hand behind ‘his’ slipper was to locate the guy who had its twin in his hand or feet. Approximately the same instant, the marksman (I will not name him here, for obvious reasons), being a shrewd student of military matters, had also deduced the same thing. He knew he could not afford the luxury of being caught with his foot in the ‘slipper’. So, he just took it into his hand and (aided by the fact that he was shielded by his colleagues), hurled it at the headmaster and wrote off the pair as casualties of war. The second slipper also found its uncanny way to the ever suffering nose bridge of our venerable headmaster.

There were repercussions. Punishments were handed out to all and sundry. We took it without flinching. Our pride was restored. The GS from X B was left a mere shadow of his former (feeble) self.

At this point, I noticed that neither Nivedita nor Kavita had slept. Further, their mother had joined them – can’t recall at what stage in the story, perhaps quite early. It was well past 10 PM, their bed-time. They were all wide awake and listening with rapt attention.

I told them somewhat harshly to close their eyes and go to sleep and they promptly started feigning sleep. My wife asked me ‘is that true?’ I gave an emphatic ‘yes’ for answer and rolled over to catch my forty.