Someone bought me

 

Just now I received a call on my mobile phone. It was in chaste Hindi. I roughly translate the same here for you.

Caller: Namaskar Mahoday (sir) I am XYZ Dwivedi calling from Allahabad

I: Yes, what is it regarding?

Caller: You know a lot is happening in the commodity market

I: Let it happen, why Should I be bothered?

Caller: I have an opportunity for you

I: Who told you I trade on the commodity market?

Caller: Your number has been purchased along with our data!

I: Sorry I am not interested

Caller:  Fine sir (Call ends)

I thanked the heavens. What would I have done if he had said “Mahoday, I have purchased your number and I have an ownership over you”?

Years back when I joined a company in Mumbai from a remote town of south India, I was handed a neat envelope with a SIM card. I happily used it for years and that number became my identity in Mumbai. From Gas connection to Bank account to local grocer, everyone identified me with that ten-digit number. Sort of a “Kaidi” number in Indian prisons. Years later, to my surprise, I was told to surrender that number when I decided to move on. But even after a decade, it has not been erased completely from my “personal profiles” of many stakeholders in spite of my repeated requests.

That day I decided to buy a new SIM, a personal number in addition to the official SIMs handed over to me by my subsequent employers. Alas, today I am shocked to hear that the same number has been “purchased” by an unknown person from the holy city of Allahabad, the city of the Kumbh Mela, which I longed to visit but not been able to do till date.  

I remembered a story of the righteous king Harichandra in Hindi taught to us in school. The story goes like this. King Harichandra donated all his wealth and kingdom to the sage Vishwamitra. When the sage asks for Dakshina (Honorarium) along with the donation, the king sells his wife to a Brahmin. The Brahmin while taking away the queen (as slave), asks her son also to follow him with a comment “When the cow is bought, the calf follows her”

Though I have never read the fine print while signing up for social media accounts and other apps, it is a fact that those companies have access to all my personal data including the contacts, fotos and all my behavioural traits.

One day, I was sitting in front of my son’s class teacher in the mid-term “open house”, I received a message from a coaching centre offering 50% discount on fees for the subject in which my son scored below average marks. Cannot be mere coincidence. I am aware that not only by personal data but my movements too, are being tracked.

I am really scared every time my door bell rings. Who knows if someone appears at my door and ask me to follow him applying the logic from “Harichandra” story? “Mahoday, when your data is purchased, you automatically follow!”  

Picture Source : DNA India, Internet 

Be Positive

Many years back, my mother was hospitalized for sudden breathlessness. It was her first hospitalization in life and our family, experiencing for the first time such eventuality was totally clueless. The hospital, one of the best in the locality had to urgently shift her to a ventilator. I, the lone bystander 24 x 7 loitering around the hospital was told for the next one week by every doctor visiting her that she is “Stable on support”.

Like the discovery of water on the moon, the news of some fluid found in one of her lungs on the 8^th day brought smile on our faces. Our well-wishers explained to us what a ventilator is and consoled us that it is not the end of the journey of life.

Positivity is not always absolute. It could also be a ray of hope or silver lining in a dark cloud. The presence of an infection in the lung is not at all a positive news but the discovery of the same in a patient on ventilator for a week definitely is. It is not the news itself but our perception about it that makes it positive or negative.

It is said there are lies, damned lines and there is statistics. We all have been watching, reading and listening to different statistics, predictions and prophecies about the current and future situation of Covid infections, deaths and recoveries in India. Socially, geographically and culturally, India is so diverse. It is incorrect to compare India with any other country of the world some of which are smaller than many states or even districts of India. Even the Social Determinants of Health are different across the states of India.  

Any political party in India is or made out to be self-serving. This coupled with the lethargy of the system has always been the bane of the country whose first preference is not always the welfare of the people.  But it is found that during these testing times the central and state governments, irrespective of their hues and political ideologies have largely worked in unison. Of course, the situation is unprecedented and there are no ready templated solutions. Nevertheless, it is always easy to pinpoint the shortcomings.

Adversities are sometimes good. It makes us pause, take a deep breath, re look and take corrective action. It is said, if you are not a part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Let’s be positive and be a part of the solution.

After discharge from hospital, during a follow up, the doctor once commented. Though we did everything possible to save your mother, it is her sheer grit, optimism and the relentless urge to bounce back to life aided her recovery!

Mothers are always unique. No matter whether she is mine, yours, mother India or Mother Earth, whatever be her suffering, all she can return is pure love. Her days on ‘ventilator’ are limited and she will bounce back with her full vigor.

Did someone say year 2020 is bad? Listen to the words of Mirza Galib by one of my favorite singers Late Sri Jagjit Singh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ZusnFG1bg

My Possessions

Thoughts ceased to be random long back. Now they are triggered by the day to day events. A message shared by an old pal last evening is the current trigger. 

The message listed those twenty things that people who grew up during 70-90s in middle class families would cherish and identify with. The Phantom & Mandrake comics, the Bellbottoms, Camlin geometry boxes, the HMT wrist watches, the 36-exposure film roll, Abba & Boney M et al.

No sooner did I receive the message I went on a mission to search my prized possession, the hand wound HMT watch with date named ‘Tareeq’ (Pictured above), my father’s gift on securing ‘First class’ in 10^th Standard.  Lo! Here it is in one of those boxes on the attic.  Surprisingly it still works! Shows time same as my Smart watch!

Those were the small possessions we had at a time when we didn’t even 'owned' the houses where we lived. Seldom were the houses locked and if at all locked for a specific purpose, the key would invariably be available with the neighbour. The houses were small but not the homes and hearts. 

We even had a cat at home. A pet that we never owned. It used to frequent us for the regular doze of milk. The children in the family were no different. No one ‘owned’ us. The neighbourhood was our playground and we used to have food from any home whenever we felt hungry.

Times have changed. Now a days we always look at this world from our own perspective. Our lifestyle, possessions, habits are a by-product of how we perceive this world. Nothing wrong in having a perspective but problems arise when it contradicts the nature’s perspective. 

The cities we built, our houses and apartments, the malls and vistas and the residences that we own now are built with scarce regard for the nature. We even have pets, fat and plump in our 400+ Square feet condominiums well fed on the best packaged nutritious foods available. We fail to accept the fact that the ‘Bird’ never appreciates a cage though made of gold.

The prevailing lock down has in fact incarcerated us. Our collective efforts are unsuccessful in fighting a particle a few nano-meters in size.  All our possessions lay abandoned not even able to abate the hunger of fellow humans. All over the world, the inhabitants of this nature (minus humans) are enjoying our possessions. 

I am awakened by the chirping of birds, the murder of crows who congregate in the garden downstairs in an unpolluted, noiseless serene environment at a time when we are forced to follow social distancing. They are probably reclaiming their lost habitat long expropriated by the human race.

An old mechanical wrist watch is materially nothing in comparison to our expensive possessions of today.

Thank you, dear Sunil, for the thought-provoking message. Who wants to be identified with their possessions!

 I would prefer people identify me based on how I relate with this world I live in.

Empty Streets

These thoughts are neither random nor nostalgic. Rather they are daunting and haunting me for the last few days.

My generation is lucky enough not to have experienced any national adversities in life. We were born in an independent India which was growing and fast building her national assets. Though limited, there were opportunities for education and livelihood. However, our parents were not that lucky enough. They had to go through the bitter experiences and the after effects of the wars India fought. One of the major impacts of the same was always on the lunch table. We children were proscribed from wasting food. We were taught अन्नम् परब्रह्म (Food is God) and “Not even a grain of food should be left out in your plate“ was the fiat!

Though we teach our children not to waste food, we are not as forceful as our parents. The reason is simple, we have not experienced the scarcity of food. “Master chef” papa (Please read my earlier blog For the Foodie at Home) locked down within the four walls of home would otherwise have been an opportunity for my teenager to gorge on sumptuous recipes. Not this time. It is the time of pure austerity. Prayers, simple life and just eat to survive for who knows how many in this world are starving today?

Till last fortnight, from the comfort of my AC car, I used to ‘curse’ the aimlessly criss-crossing pedestrians, the ”all traffic rule flouting” autorickshaw drivers and the crowd on street. Unlike us who migrated to this city for better career opportunities or to realise our dreams, many of them probably migrated for a livelihood. I find them all along, the drivers, hawkers, salesmen, attendants and all those who toil just to make both ends meet. The frail woman with a baby, selling cloth bags down the Bandra flyover, the guy who sells peanuts, the book seller at traffic signal, all dared the sun, rain and pollution and survived in this otherwise normal metropolis.

The lockdown was the proverbial bolt from the blue. I am paid for working from (for?) home, what about those who call the street their home? As if someone pushed the switch and they are all gone. The roads, shops, markets, temples, churches, mosques are all abandoned. Does someone know where they all have gone? Does someone know who feeds them? If really food is God, then probably the God knows whom needs to be fed!

I checked my door bell which has not been ringing for the last one week. It indeed is working for a door bell can chime only if someone pushes the switch from outside! Occasionally I rush to the balcony to see the world outside, but to my disappointment it is still. 

All of them whom I “cursed” while on the road are not to be seen. I wish I could meet them today just to ask a simple question भैय्या / बेहन आज खाना खाया क्या? (Brother / Sister did you have food today?)

The Train Journey

Thoughts are not always random but at times nostalgic too. The trigger this time was the recent train journey to Pune after a long time. In today’s busy schedule, train journeys have become a rarity for many reasons. Life has become faster; air travel has become more affordable and the average speed of trains have not caught up. But still a short train journey is always enjoyable. When travelling alone, you get more ‘cave time’ to spend with yourself, read, write, sleep, listen to music, introspect or just see the outside world through the window.

The recent train journey was not exactly to Pune but was a ride on the time machine to the past. It unwound all the nostalgic memories associated with train. The 48 plus hours long journey to Bombay from the southern most tip of India with family was one such when my father used to avail the quadrennial LTC to spend the summer vacations with grandmother. Filling the water cans from the station drinking water taps is something the current generation can never imagine. The taste of vadas and idlis from station stalls still lingers in memory and who can forget the much-awaited plate meals at Kadappa, Raichur and Solapur stations!

The hawkers, tea vendors, gypsies and the singers who boarded the train were the real entertainers who added a little spice to the otherwise boring journey. It is hard to explain or difficult to believe for the millennials, the camaraderie we shared with the fellow passengers. At a time when telephones were a luxury, rarely one would have written a letter to the train compartment mates whose addresses we invariably noted down on back of the tickets.

Once in a Job and the periodic travels to home town led to a different train experience. “Dryness Fraction” of the coach was something every bachelor was worried about before boarding the train. Oh no! it is not about the availability of water but a term coined for the presence of peer age unknown female passengers in the compartment. I am sure every one of my age those days would have scanned the reservation charts pasted outside the bogies to check the same.

How do I explain the air and temperament of the people who behaved as if “I am not one among you but just travelling on a train because I didn’t get a flight ticket“ were real fun to watch. The uncles and aunties who changed to suits and sarees before they alight at the station, often received by their relatives never missed an opportunity to argue with the coolies.

Probably we are in an age where the destination has become more important than the journey itself. The destinations keep arriving and change every moment. Train was only an anecdote for the journey of life! People came in and people went away but the train kept on running with the same zeal. Those who enjoyed the journey really enjoyed life and those who waited for the destinations still keep on waiting!   

You can read all my blogs at https://sateeshbhat.blogspot.com/

Just Another Day !

Good Morning Papa!  That was my teenager wising me early this morning. It was a surprise gift at dawn to reclaim my position as ‘father’ and no doubt I was excited. Till last night I was just a banker when he needed money, a driver when he needed a drop at school and another old-fashioned Gen-X guy at home when he said, “Oh Papa you don’t know anything”.  It was only a start and I was in for more surprises!

Forget the age old Suprabhatam, a typical day in this third decade of the millennium start with the beep, tings and jingles of messages, the bank debits, good mornings, FB posts, tweets, and responses of all and sundry to all national and international issues. Thank God, today, everyone has an opinion! Had the ‘Night mode’ not been there on the smartphones, they would not have allowed me to sleep! All absent today.

The above mentioned ‘Hero’ at home who usually checks with Google whether the rain gods will oblige for a holiday at school is busy reading Newspaper! Alexa, who can play any genre music from anywhere in the world is surprisingly silent.  YouTube, the source of all recipes is in no mood to give any cooking tips.

I could feel the aroma of age old, long forgotten delicacy for breakfast that my mother used to prepare when I was a teenager. Of course, my mother would have been the happiest today, up there, seeing my better half dust off the recipes from her memory and attempt them. Overall it was a great start for the day.

Childhood days, I have seen village drunkards, intoxicated and lying along roadside but the scene in today’s cities is not quite different with people of all ages lost in their mobile phones, abandoned everywhere oblivious of their surroundings roaming around. “Twalking” or texting while walking, Soliloquy, talking & laughing while walking is all around, everyone continuously in action.

Oh no! disciplined roads. No cross driving, less of honking to shoo away the pedestrians midst the deafening decibels. However, the major difference was the music playing in the car. An old classical number lying somewhere in an old CD or pen drive, probably a holiday at Amazon for the Prime Music. I did pinch myself just to ensure that I am not in deep slumber! 

Of course, I am awake, it is just another day. Only difference being, due to the ongoing CAA / CAB protests, the Internet is down in the city and, people are up!