MAd aβ¤uŦ MaR©h

March is here and it comes accompanies by the familiar hoopla. When I was younger, March was the month before Bihu (spring festival of Assam) and I used to look forward to the Bihu holidays. Now March has become the financial year-end, heralding the time for individuals setting investments in order, filing I-T returns, organisations compiling their statements and planning for the year ahead. So chances are that whether you are a part of a family or a salaried employee in some organisation or self-employed, you are feeling the March blues cos this month necessities you taking decisions with far-reaching consequences, planning ahead and getting your life in order.

All in all, depressing stuff for most – avoided till the last minute.

The breathless insurance companies beseeching you to ‘secure’ your life and the FMCG and auto companies conspiring to offload their excess inventory and project an inflated profit by extending ‘discounts’. Repeated calls to your banker and accountant who resort to incomprehensible jargon. Yes, March is upon us.

Spare a thought for Niaz da who has a PCO-cum-photostat-cum medical shop near us. I enquired after his business and he cursed March saying that his trade always comes down in this month. The reason he came up for such slow trade is that people tend to hold onto their money and spend less - a theory entirely at cross-purposes with all these companies promoting their products/ services with limited period only offers. Niaz da is pissed too that he has only till the end of this month to return the expired drugs in his stock to the pharma companies.

An auto-wallah told me that his business suffers in March everytime cos people do not want to travel too much in this month. Huh?! I presumed that with all those people buying ‘discounted’ stuff, ‘securing’ their life, filing returns and everything else, a lot of rubber must be getting burned.

We have let the calendar take control of our life, March madness being just one symptom.

“Those whom the Gods love”

It is quite commonplace that the news of a person dying in infancy/ adolescence/ youth is usually accompanied by comments like, “Tsk tsk, but he/she was so young”, “its not fair”. Yet when it happens to someone with whom you shared some moments of life, fairness, age or any other consideration to “decide” who should die and when, are gone. You just feel….numb. I felt the same on 27th February, 2010 when I heard that Sayak was no more.

Sayak Sarkar was my MBA batch mate with whom I shared a room wall for 1 year (he lived in the hostel room next to mine in the 1st year and we lived in different hostel blocks in the 2nd year). He was strictly not a friend but just a batch mate

who shared the same curriculum, same professors, same assignments and the same bland canteen food as me. I was always mindful of what I considered was his overbearing and opinionated nature. But Sayak being the person that he is, I could not help being drawn into his plans for monthly incursions into CR Park for fish and debates about what is best for our batch’s placements.

You see, Sayak was one of those people you meet who had an enduring interest in social good (in this case, our batch), lengthy discussions and ……..food. Yes, he was a true food aficionado – the sort who cultivates an extensive interest in cuisines, especially all fish preparations and also not averse to trying out new dishes. He also possessed an indeterminate interest in advising people about how they should plan their life. Being unknowledgeable of how these bits of advice worked out, I was surprised that some other batch mates did actually consult him for help. It is a measure of how meticulous he was regarding his own life too; he still is the only person I have met who plans his vacation in Microsoft Excel with columns for “Day”, “Activities to undertake”, “Time Allotted”, etc. I was dismissive of these traits and of the person too, at that time.

Yet when I heard that he died on a highway inside the gnarled remains of a car, I felt sadness in the most profound sense. Although we lived and worked in the same city for one odd year, I had met him only twice. Alongwith his family, other batch mates, his colleagues, I too went to a police station in a town in Maharashtra whose name I cannot remember now, retrieved Sayak’s body from the local morgue and went to Pune to cremate his mortal remains.

Afterwards, I found myself thinking of him and googling his name many times and visiting the links that came out. Being indifferent to him when he was alive, I was now reduced to trawling through the net to acquaint myself with the digital vestiges of all that is Sayak’s. And I found unexpected stuff; my MBA batchmates are not the only people who benefited from Sayak’s advice, his Orkut account has loads of scraps from old friends to this effect. He had been quite active in platforms which discussed European club football and online games; I saw so many snaps which he had uploaded in social sites, snaps of his friends, of the places that he had visited, of his good memories. Before February happened, it seems he had real plans to go to South Africa for the FIFA World Cup 2010, being the avid fan that he was of the game.

I can only be sorry now that I had closed my mind towards Sayak in an effort to safeguard myself. So, I pray now for his peace.

(Sayak died in a road accident on 26th February 2010 around 9 am. He was driving with some friends on a trip to Goa. They had hardly started out when it happened just an hour’s drive away from Sayak’s place in Navi Mumbai. There were 2 casualties; Sayak who was driving and his friend who was in the co-driver’s seat.)

As strong as a dove.

This post is a new beginning in many ways; so here goes.

It was no accident that one-third of the ancient world lived and died under the gaze of the eagle-headed vexillum of the Roman empire. It was only natural that the conquering Romans chose to embark upon their expeditions with their eagle emblem in tow because then as is now, the bird is an enduring symbol of power, grace and resolute determination to rule the skies. Lions, tigers, crocodiles, elephants et al even the humble bovine have found their way onto family crests, national emblems, decorative tapestries and even into scrawly drawings that small children choose to embellish their books with.

This fascination with adorning collective insignia and even personal possessions with the images of animals stems from the fact that they seem to represent certain ideals that we aspire to. It is perhaps important that when it comes to aspiring, we should observe and learn from both the predator as well as the hunted, from the eagle as well as the dove.

This is a short tale of a dove which started one wintry evening when my friend Kaushik, on returning from work was informed by his mother that an injured dove had been rescued by is father. It was raining outside and this bird had sought shelter under their car where it was seen and brought inside. On inspection, the dove was found to have a broken wing and bleeding from a few bruises. It looked like it had been attacked. Kaushik warmed the wet bird by a fire, applied some lotion which his doctor father provided, and kept it in their store room. All the while, the dove lay unmoving.

Kaushik tells me now, “I thought then that the bird would not live cos it was so still and if it was not an adult, it would find it very difficult to survive that evening’s ordeal.” The next morning when it was provided with broken rice and water, it started pecking at the grain. This showed that the dove was indeed an adult bird cos otherwise, it would have had a hard time tackling the (comparatively) big grains. The next 3 days, the dove contentedly partook of the grain and water. Everyday Kaushik would apply lotion to its broken wing twice – once before leaving for work and then again, after he returned. This whole time though, the dove would stay put at one place and not shift its roosting place inside the store.

On the 4th day, when Kaushik went to inspect the dove in the evening, he found a broken egg beside it. The dove was evidently a female, and been roosting in that one spot cos its egg was about to hatch, and now that new life inside her was gone.

On the 5th day, when Kaushik came home in the evening, his mother told him that another dove had stationed itself just outside the store room by the window sill and been cooing for quite a while. When he went inside the store, he saw the dove fluttering its wings and trying unsuccessfully to take flight. It had recovered sufficiently to leap and tap the windows with its body.

For the next 2 days, the other dove which was obviously the mate, kept on coming outside the window in the mornings and take up its cooing. The one inside cooed back. During this time, the female dove inside had regained its strength and was flying erratically round and round inside the store, leaping onto the windows and ventilators but there was no way out.

Finally on the 7th day since they had rescued the dove, Kaushik decided to let the dove take its chances. Early morning, the male dove had taken up its customary position outside and Kaushik held the female and took it up to their terrace. The male on seeing his mate, immediately flew up to the terrace of their neighbour’s house. My friend wanted to release the dove in the presence of its mate believing the sight of him would enthuse it to push its newly-healed body further and fly.

He placed the dove on the terrace and moved away. Seeing this, the male came onto the very edge of the neighbour’s terrace and then 2 things happened very quickly. The male flew directly overhead and the female took off in its mate’s wake. Together they flew away to another nearby terrace, stood there for sometime looking in my friend’s direction. Then the pair took flight together and left.

My friend tells me, “When that pair flew, my heart spouted wings alongside – I felt so happy and blessed.”

All it took was 1 man, 7 days and 2 doves. Devotion, resilience, attachment – they mean broader things to my friend and me now.

"So dark for April"

When I was younger, Life was very simple……things were either good/ bad; you either ended up doing something or didn’t. Not so simple now…

I do things that I know I shouldn’t do; end up saying stuff I know shouldn’t be said…endure pain which is not mine, but I take it anyway & complain. Am right now at the threshold of something…..momentous?! I don’t know about that but I know this for certain that the current order of things has to change. It has to…

18th of April 2010 passed by quietly, as most of the other days in the last 2 odd years have…hardly creating a ripple, not disturbing the inertia….not doing anything. So, I have to now create ripples, start disturbances, overthrow the current order & leap….with FAITH

These are grand words –