The Help

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a woman of African-American heritage refused to obey the driver’s order to give up her seat to a white passenger. For the Civil Rights movement in the United States that action was as pivotal as Mahatma Gandhi’s making salt without paying the salt tax on the beach at Dandi, on April 6, 1930. Behind each of those acts was the history of oppression that had brewed and simmered till one valiant person took it into his or her hands to say ‘No.’

A few years ago, Kathryn Stockett, a writer born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, who was brought up by an African-American maid, wondered what the woman who raised her thought and felt about life. Kathryn’s thoughts led her to write the Help, about African-American maids working in white households, in the early ‘60s.

Her book which was initially rejected by 60 literary agents, according to one article, finally got published in 2009, and, has been on the New York Times Best Sellers list for 53 weeks now, selling, reportedly, over 5 million copies. The book captures the social ethos of the South in the US, particularly in regard to the lives of the women working in homes of white people, providing a peep into the world that led Rosa Parks to refuse the order to vacate her seat on the bus.

The book was made into a movie which was released in 2011, and is an ensemble piece about a white woman, Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan, played by Emma Stone, and her relationship with two African-American maids, Aibileen Clark, played by Viola Davis and Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer. As we now know, Octavia Spencer won the 2012 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her part as Minny Jackson/ Viola Davis was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar this year for this role, and, I was personally surprised that she did not win it. The movie itself was nominated for Best Picture. Skeeter who wants to become a writer, decides to write a book from the viewpoint of the African-American maids and the racism they suffer as they work in white households of the South.

Understandably the maids are initially reluctant to share their stories, for fear of losing their jobs. However, an initiative by Hilly Holbrock, one of the white woman in the film, to build separate toilets for people for colour since, ‘they suffer from different diseases …’ prompts Aibileen to start sharing her experiences.

‘The Home Help Sanitation Initiative’ that Hilly Holbrock sponsors is straight out of the sets of what could be a modern day Nandanar Charitram. The telling scene in which Minny Jackson is unable to use the outdoor Help’s toilet because of a tornado storm, and, loses her job for using the house toilet, is all about human tyranny. Of course, Minny gets her own back in a way that I will let the reader watch the film to know. Too powerful for me to steal the thunder of the scene in the movie.

In a way the movie sadly reminds me of the way household help often gets treated in India, even today. Scenes like where the Help lavishes loving care on the children of the households they work for while their own children grow up fending for themselves.

Again the scene where Yule May Davis, played by Aunjanue Ellis asks her employers for a loan to send her two children to college, is refused, ends up stealing a ring and is arrested as she tries to pawn the ring to raise the money, could all be scenes out of an Indian movie, or, if truth be told, real life… As I watched the Help, I was reminded of the White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, a book I read at one sitting returning from India a few years ago…, and, its scenes of how servants get ill treated

The white upper class portrayed in the movie have the same values and attitudes of the upper class in almost any society. The snootiness, the exclusivity and class-colour consciousness is set in the Southern US of the ‘60s, and, could easily be transferred anywhere else in the world at any period of time.

The movie also tellingly portrays the stereotypes that existed (and continue to exist in places) about women, work and what they could do and not do. The ‘interview’ Skeeter has with her Editor, Mr Blackly, played by Leslie Jordan, speaks volumes about attitudes that prevailed towards women at work … The only column Skeeter gets to write is Miss Myrna’s Household Hints column, which actually gets written by Aibileen, since Skeeter doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to prevent tears as you cut onions … see the movie to know how to do so, as per Aibileen.

Like Nandanar Charitram there is an intense religiosity woven into the movie and one gets glimpses of the faith that stirred Rev. Martin Luther King, and, also the ‘acceptance’ that seems to be a part of the ethos of a community struggling, like Nandanar and the Aibileens…

A definite watch if you are concerned about those sort of issues…

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Khuda Hafiz, Nawab Saheb

The death of the Nawab of Pataudi, known in later years by his plebeian name, Mansur Ali Khan, brings into clear relief the sepia tones of my life.

We first heard of the Nawab somewhere in 1961 or 1962, when I was just getting into high school. The Nawab saab, the son of an equally famous cricketer, the Nawab of Pataudi, Sr, Iftikhar Ali Khan, had met with a car accident in England, and, had lost his right eye, which was replaced with a glass one...in the years that followed, we would hear of his role in the Indian cricket team, scoring a century here and there...till when Nari Contractor got injured with a hit to the head (no helmets in those days) playing in the West Indies the Nawab of Pataudi, Jr., stepped in as captain.

In those days, cricket was still a gentleman’s game, played in white, with the players earning the equivalent of $10 a day. Test matches were for five days, and, as India’s top cricket commentator, Harsha Bhogale has pointed out, if rain washed out one day, they got paid for only four days. The million dollar sponsorships that the cricketers of today get were to wait another twenty five years. In those days, the only decent living they could make was to ‘work’ for the State Bank of India, where they got paid, irrespective of whether they came to work or not (sponsorship of a sort, one could say).

The first time I got to see the ‘Tiger’ Pataudi play, I had to line up at 5.30am outside the Corporation Stadium in Madras, listening to the early morning passenger trains screech their way into the nearby Central Station. The match started at 10.00am, and, if you went to take a leak, you lost your place in the line...so you always took a friend along to hold your place, or, did something which you do only on the streets of India. Tickets were Rs 5 (cannot be translated into a dollar equivalent, so infinitesimally low in today’s equivalency) but cost me my full month’s allowance...but, those were the days my friend...we lived for that...if we were not at the stadium, like the rest of India, we spent the five days of any test match with our ears glued to a transistor set...

One of my women friends correctly remarked today that any girl who lived in those days had a crush on Tiger Pataudi...the other hotties were ML Jaisimha and Abbas Ali Baig...between the three they had all the girls in India covered, leaving the proletariat, like me, to cook up fake autographs of these cricket stars to get the attention of the females

A particularly attractive Brahmin girl I knew in those days had this almost fatal infatuation for Tiger Pataudi. Her caste origins are being intentionally mentioned as the later part of this story will show. She would make her brothers and father take her to every spot the Tiger had visited and spent the day before a picture of the Nawab praying that he would bestow his glance on her. It so happened that one evening when the Nawab was in town, her orthodox Tam Brahm family was discussing possible names for an expected new arrival. The Vishnu Sahasranama which gives the thousand and one names of the Hindu God Vishnu was pulled out and a short list was being prepared. Our sixteen year old damsel felt that the most appropriate name for the coming child, should it be a boy, would be a Muslim one, Mansur, after her then heart throb. Needless to add when she articulated this to the gathered assembly of Tam Brahm uncles and aunts they did not appreciate the spirit of national integration being displayed by this teenager. One aunt promptly came up a cupful of detergent soap and made the young lady wash her mouth for having uttered such a sinful thought. Her doting grandmother administered her the only resounding slap that she ever gave her (methinks that more of those administered early enough may have helped, but, that is another story). Moral of the story: good cricketer or not, names for Tam Brahm boys can come only from the Vishnu Sahasranama.

The only occasion I actually got to see and talk to the Nawab was in 1964 or 1965 when I tagged along with another female friend who was part of the social elite of Madras (her knowing me was an exception to the generally elite company she kept) who knew the Nawab. After waiting a few hours in the foyer of the Oceanic Hotel sipping a Coke I got ushered into his presence. The wicket keeper Inderjitsinhji was also there, and, I spent about ten minutes in desultory chatter with the Nawab. I remember trying to figure out what made him so attractive, but, soon realized that I could never think like a girl...

The Nawab dealt a body blow to our fantasies when he married the super attractive heroine of the Indian film screen, the one and only, Sharmila Tagore...a distant niece of India’s mystic poet Rabindranath Tagore, Sharmila is not just a pretty face...she is a tremendous actress too...together, the Nawab and she have grown and have graced many an occasion in India with their celebrity presence. Two of their children have also acquired a name in the Bollywood arena, and, their potential daughter in law, is also a Bollywood star.

The Nawab was all that was classy about the ‘60s and ‘70s in India...the shadows of the Raj were growing longer, and, the brightest jewel in the crown was shimmering its way into the sunset and a new dawn...70, these days is too early an age to die, and, I hope the Nawab did not suffer much from the lung disease that took him...Khuda Hafiz, you are with God now, Nawab Saheb, we wish you continuing peace and happiness as you rest in the arms of the Maker...

Civilization catches up with the Langur monkeys

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article800682.ece?homepage=true
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article801118.ece
The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to start next week in Delhi, and, the papers have been full of stories and pictures about the preparedness or the lack thereof. There are pictures of pan-stained wash basins and much else. But, that is not what caught my attention today…the Hindu ( a major Indian newspaper) has a lead story on how the CWG authorities are ‘employing’ trained Langur monkeys to keep away wild monkeys from the games’ sites. Civilization, I chuckled to myself, is catching up with the simians too…

I can quite imagine the conversation in a Langur family…”Our Chottu, you know, has got a good job now ?” Mama Langur would be telling her friends sitting on the mango tree outside the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, “Civil service ki naukri mili hai, Chottu ko…” adding, “…ab tho contract ka naukri hai…magar Games ke baad permanent ho jayega…” (A job in the government civil service. Right now it is a contract job, but, it will become permanent after the Games)

Aunty Langur whose son Mottu did not get the job because he was overweight pipes in saying, “Of course that is what they say…that they will make him permanent after the Games…my cousin who was recruited for the Asiad Games in 1982, is still on contract…and this time, they told him that he was too old for the job…”

“Maybe Chottu will do so well that the Canadians will recruit him and he can go to Canada” Mama Langur piped in, already having dreams of visiting Niagara Falls once Chottu goes to Canada…

Aunty Langur could not get that go past her…”You know these Canadians are big chors (thieves)…they tempt our boys to apply for immigration to make money…and when the boys go there they tell them there are no jobs for them because they do not have Canadian experience…in any case what will a Langur do in Canada, there are no wild monkeys to chase away at the Air Canada stadium when the Blue Jays play” Aunty Langur chipped in, showing off her superior knowledge of Canada…Aunty Langur added, “You know Sarala’s son had to come back after paying 10,000 bananas for his immigration because he could not find even a circus job in Canada…no Canadian experience”

As this talk was going on among the women, Dada Langur ambled in, scratching his paunch…Dada Langur was the grand old monkey of the lot…he was grizzled from several fights he had over bananas, peanuts and yes, women in his days…he had wandered to different orchards and claimed that he had sat on a tree in Birla House at one of Gandhi’s prayer meetings…

“What are you women gossiping about ?” Dada asked as all the women monkeys covered their heads with the approaching alpha male…Walking into the assembly, Dada Langur fondly patted Sharyu, a thirty something year old curvaceous Langur, making it look avuncular, but, everybody knew his thoughts and intentions…

Mama Langur told him, “Dadaji, the Commonwealth Games are starting next week…” “Of course, I know about the Commowealth Games…" Dada Langur replied, "you must remember that I am almost as old as the Commonwealth itself…Did they finally get those toilets fixed ?”

Mama Langur who had to get in the news of her son’s selection to the Civil Service job cut Dadaji short, “Our Chottu has got a job with the Civil Service for the Commonwealth games…right now it is contract but will become permanent…”

“What job has Chottu got ?” Dada Langur asked, reaching for a clump of bananas…

Before Mama Langur could say anything, Aunty Langur chipped in, “He is going to drive away all our Langur brothers and sisters who will be visiting the stadiums from the villages…” Since Mottu hadn’t got the job, she needed to show the job in a bad light…

Dada Langur listened to Aunty Langur and swallowed a few more bananas…

“You know, they say the British left India, but, their practices never left the country…this is true not just for men and women, but, also for monkey dom…” Dada Langur started saying…

“During the salt satyagraha,” he continued, “whom did the British use to assault the satyagrahis…not British constables…the British sergeant stood with his sola topee on and ordered Indian constables to attack…the Indians had been trained on how to hit their brethren…the British sergeant stood by and gave orders…the Indian constables did the dirty work…”

“Of course, the Indian constables got special privileges…in fact, when the British left they took many of them to Bilayat (Bilayat means Overseas, the root word from which the word Old Blightey comes) with them…I remember, my cousin’s friend, Gilbert…his real name was Gowrishanker and he changed his name to Gilbert…went to Bilayat the year the British left, married a white girl and settled down…”

“So, Girls…” the patriarch continued, “things don’t change…civilization is catching up with us monkeys too, sixty years later…Mama Langur, forget marrying off Chottu to your brother’s daughter, Bitiya…get ready to welcome a Canadian memsahib as bahu in a few years’ time…” Dada Langur gave another avuncular pat to Sharyu and limbered off into the trees near Jawaharlal Nehru stadium

Coming home...btw, where is home ?

Though physically I reached Canada around 6.30 in the evening on Sunday last, my body has only today reached Europe on the way back from India and the mystic East. With about thirty landings and take offs in a period of twenty or so days and a time difference, at its peak, of twelve hours, the body is still figuring out where in the Universe I am. Over the past week, I was getting back from work around 6pm, going straight to bed, and, waking up around 11pm, cooking, doing the dishes etc., doing some meditation and going back to bed around 2am. Today I got up around 2am. Europe has a six hour time difference with Canada, and, so, since 8am is a a reasonable time to get up on a Saturday, I say, the body has reached Europe.

As I look back on the wonderful holiday, perhaps the most wonderful in years, I realize that most of my time was spent visiting temples. Not planned that way, but, that is how it worked out. I realized this, on the last day of my trip, as I wandered into the Hare Krishna temple in Mumbai’s Juhu area, while waiting for the vegetarian restaurant, Govinda, attached to the temple, to open. Sitting in the temple I saw and heard the young American Hare Krishna devotee put his heart and total being into a beautiful rendering of a bhajan (somewhat like a Gospel hymn) on Ganesha (it was the festival day of Ganesha, the God who removes all obstacles) and end with a rendering of Hare Rama, Hare Krishna...Outside the temple, Mercedes Benzes and BMWs jostled their way for parking to be in time to get seating as Govinda opened at 12.30pm.

Nowhere else in the world could one see this absolute integration of the divine and totally material. And that is India...now I realize why we Indians say Apna Bharat Mahan (our India is the greatest)...we can so well integrate the divine and the material that no one will see the difference...unlike other societies that trample tradition in their quest for modernity, as in material success, India does not...and that is what makes it unique...takes more time to get wherever you are going, spiritually or materially, but, you respect what has gone before....the journey is important, not how soon you get there...

Travelling around India, I could see that notwithstanding the modernity that the urban economic boon has brought in, this ability to integrate stays unchanged. It is not the orthodoxy of the fundamentalist of whatever religion, though there are evidences of that, occasionally. It is the willingness to accept the duality and ambiguity of life, something only the lateral mind can accept.

Seldom does one see, these days, a young woman in anything but Western clothes at workplaces ...but, catch the line at Mumbai’s Siddhi Vinayak temple on a Tuesday morning and you will see the same young women in traditional attire and a bindi (the red dot on the forehead)...Gods demand proper attire, and, an unflinching centuries' old dress code...

The centuries old temple at Guruvayur still demands that all women come dressed in a sari and men take off their upper clothing as a mark of respect to God...this is the only institution that I know of that sent the all powerful Empress of India, Indira Gandhi, packing to put on the correct attire and come back in the prescribed dress code to worship God...

In a similar vein, the statues of Gods and Godesses that are in every nook and corner of Bali have their lower limbs covered by a cloth, and, everyone who enters a temple must cover their legs with a sarong...

A statue of a God in Bali with the lower limbs covered




There is a beauty to this dichotomy that the linear mind will find hard to accept...Schizophrenia of the collective consciousness, or something Jungian like that, they will say...the reality is that is that it is this seamless ability to switch between the’ divine’ and the material that keeps that seething mass of one billion plus people in some sense of balance as the country goes through change...as it has been for thousands of years, invasions of different foreigners, integrating them and yet maintaining a distinctiveness...thus, there is no conflict in the pickpocket starting his day by offering his first takings at the local temple..and that is what keeps the balance when Mumbai’s twenty first century street planners struggle with removing a century old temple or mosque that comes in the way of a new express super highway...detour the highway...

Eastern mysticism pooh poohs the passing tranquility of a few moments that come in meditation with the same vehemence as it denounces the transitoriness of material comfort...which is why Theravadan Buddhists consider the Hindu attempt to incorporate the Buddha as the ninth avatara of Vishnu somewhat of an insult...the Buddha they say is beyond all this pain-pleasure equation, the Buddha doesn’t come back, Vishnu keeps coming back, they say, which reminds me of two siblings fighting over which one of them is more loved by the parents...

A friend of mine asked me on Monday as to what was my most significant experience on this trip...I was too jet lagged to respond then. As I reflect now, with the mental fog clearing, two experiences stay uppermost... the first was the Sagar Manthan (churning of the Ocean) images from Hindu mythology at the entrance to Angkor Thom...for those, not familiar with this story from Hindu mythology here is the abbreviated Reader’s Digest version...

Devas (gods) and asuras (demons) fought as most siblings do. Amrit, the divine nectar that would give immortality could only be obtained by churning the Kshirsagar (Ocean of Milk), where the asuras had dropped it when they wrested it from the devas. The devas and asuras both sought immortality and decided to churn the Kshirsagar. With the devas on one side and the asuras on the other, the Sagar Manthan commenced, the churning of the ocean of milk. Vishnu incarnated as Kurma, the tortoise, on whom was placed a mountain as a churning pole, and Vasuki, the great venom-spewing serpent, was wrapped around it and used to churn the ocean. A host of divine celestial objects came up during the churning. Among these, importantly, was Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity, and the daughter of the king of the milky ocean . The last to come up was the Amrit. With this, the avatar of Kurma, the tortoise, ended. Vishnu then took up the form of a beautiful maiden (Apsara, you will find statues of millions of them all over Angkor Thom and Wat) to distract the asuras and gave immortality to the devas.

Sagar Manthan, represented at the entrance to Angkor Thom

The Sagar Manthan is symbolic of human existence, the constant churning, the constant activity, the myriad searches for peace, prosperity and all that...the churning is the expression of desire: but for desire there would be no human life, and, it is so beautifully caught in the representation as one enters the ancient capital of the Khmer kingdom, Angkor Thom...


And, then, the second significant memory...

A few steps away from Sagar Manthan is a representation of the Avalokateshwara Buddha, the being who can attain Nibbana and cross this pain-pleasure equation, but, who refuses to do so, till every sentient being can make the same journey...the Avalokateshwara Buddha (some regard the Dalai Lama as a manifestation of the Buddha Avalokateshwara) smiles without baring his teeth, the calm, realized smile that comes from the heart as He/She waits for each being to be ready to come with Him/Her...not a smile of victory or success, but, one of compassion and deep awareness...

The Buddha Avalokateshwara at Angkor Thom

And, as one stands before the statue the Buddhist chant rings loud and clear in the mind

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammasam Buddhassa

To such exalted Beings, I bow in deep reverence and humility
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The Shadow Princess

It is two thirty in the morning, not an unusual hour for me to be awake. But, I have been awake for over an hour, and, in a larger sense, awake for several hours now, reading with tremendous absorption this book I stumbled upon at the local library yesterday.

Being one of the first ‘holiday’ Fridays of this year’s summer, I had gone to the library in search of Shashi Tharoor’s “The Great Indian Novel.” I had stumbled upon it on the net, and, had read portions of it, in the style that the free Google reader would allow, with in between pages blocked out. Not willing to invest money in buying the book, yet wanting to read it, I had stopped by at the local library to see if they had a copy. They did not, but, as I neared the door, my eyes caught sight of the red lipstick lined lips and Indian ruby jewellery on the hands of the model on the cover of a book...what else is needed to catch the eye of an ageing Indian male salivating for the scents and scenes of India, and, yet not willing to live there...

I picked up the book and the opening pages were about the Queen Mumtaz Mahal in labour, as she gave birth to her last child, the Princess Goharara Begum. Not exactly the sort of stuff that fascinates the male mind, but, the allure of the red lips and ruby jewellery persisted, and, I borrowed the book.

I came back home and continued reading “the Shadow Princess.” And as I did so, images of my school days came back. The first was the story of the tomb of the Itmad-daula, the father of the empress Noor Jehan. I had heard first of this tomb from my brother, a writer of several books on Indian history (KRN Swamy, "The Peacock Throne" and other books). The tomb of the Itmad-daula (Pillar of the Empire, a title given to Mirza Ghiyas Beg, by the emperor Jahangir after Jahangir married Mehrunnisa, and, also overlooked the fifty thousand rupees that Ghiyas Beg had swindled from the royal coffers) was the Baby Taj.

And that took me through several wanderings of the mind as I had grown up.

The book captures so beautifully that strange dementia of the mind that overtakes a man when he loses the woman who absorbs him so totally. As I read about the madness of Shah Jahan at the death of Arjumand Bano (the given name of Mumtaz Mahal) my mind went back to the first time I visited the Agra Fort, two years ago. I remember pausing for a moment at the small mosque-room which is supposed to be the room from where the imprisoned Shah Jahan would gaze out in loving madness across the Yamuna to catch a glimpse of the Taj, where his beloved (too weak a word) obsession lay buried. What a strange madness and how it posseses almost everyone of us...how we struggle and fight with it, and, yet succumb in some way or the other...we are taught to deny it, yet, it is what brings us to life...

The writer, Indu Sundaresan, has done a tremendous amount of research into history, and, done an even more splendid job of weaving together the stories into such a brilliant narrative. The intrigues of the zenana (the harem) and the struggles of the princesses in their search for attention and affection (what’s new about that ?) are told so well. Hadn’t heard of Indu Sundaresan till yesterday. Went to her web site and read about the other books she has written. “The Twentieth Wife”, the story of Mehrunnisa (later named Noor Mahal by Jahangir and as his madness grew for her, graduated the name to Noor Jehan) sounds interesting.

The tales of Dara Shikoh’s Theosophist like explorations into integrating religions is interesting, as also the antics of the Jesuits as they strive to catch his attention. Akbar tried such things before and even in the twenty first century we have these all faith attempts...a bit of an oxymoron...since the word faith, by definition, excludes any other belief...what we perhaps really need is an emergence of total lack of faith to explore freely and without limiting ourself through fear

I am now at the point where Jahanara, perhaps the central character of the book, has a meeting with the exiled Noor Jehan, in the exiled, former empress’ palace at Lahore. The writer has so imaginatively and wonderfully captured the spirit of those days that one would wonder whether she was an ‘embedded’ reporter in the retinue that followed the Padshah, and, all set in language that the twenty first century (and readers in North America) can understand.. .Listen to this advice given by the ageing Empress Noorjehan to the young nineteen year Jahanara exploring her own raging hormones and her need for Mirza Najabat Khan

“Only one last word, my dear,” Mehrunnisa said wearily. “If your Bapa will not allow you to have a legal alliance with Mirza Najabat Khan, you must find another way to do so. Guard your personal happiness carefully, Jahanara; no one else will be willing to do it for you...”

Looks like Dear Abby has been around for some centuries...

Hahvahd

I first heard of Hahvahd (Harvard) somewhere in 1967 or so. My cousin had joined this newly minted School of Management in Western India, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and he told me about IIMA and Harvard. Never heard of Harvard till then, though I had been good at quiz programmes…Yale, yes…Harvard, no…

IIMA had been set up in collaboration with Harvard Business School (HBS) and not many people, in those days, knew what they taught out there. In fact, some of us, even forty years after we graduated from IIMA, don’t know what they taught. My cousin gave me the Institute handbook and I remember not understanding a word of the course outlines (Management of Change particularly foxed me. I thought that Management of Change was all about what to do if one had a hundred rupee note and needed a couple of fives and tens in change)…

When I asked my cousin as to what they taught he told me, “Don’t worry…you will get a salary of at least Rs800 per month after completing this course…” Considering the fact that the IAS (Indian Administrative Service, cream of the crop civil service career) probationer of those days got Rs600 per month after going through an arduous selection process, I thought that was enough incentive to embark on a course of studies that I did not have the vaguest idea about. Unlike today, the number of applicants to the IIMs was fairly low, and, so I got in.

There is another theory associated with my entry into IIMA. IIMA had just invested in a mainframe computer and all applications were processed through the computer…for those of you old enough to know these things, the earliest computers processed data using punched cards…the story is that a young girl (punch card operators, they called them) wearing stiletto heels stepped on a card that had my details, resulting in a combination of punch entries that admitted me to the Institute…I am the strongest supporter of this theory…having seen the high levels of academic brilliance among my classmates, there was no other way I could have made it…

I remember the first morning landing at IIMA in Vastrapur. Suddenly out of the desert that lay just beyond the what was the seat of the Gujarat Government in those days, one saw a clump of seemingly unfinished buildings with no exterior plaster…they had paid good money to this Amriki architect, Louis Kahn who designed the place, and, the story is that when they ran out of money to pay him, he just packed his bags and went back leaving the exterior unfinished…all that you have heard about the IIMA campus being modelled on the style of Nalanda is an after thought…

In those days, everything and everyone had to be approved by the alma mater, Harvard. All course material came from there, and, very early in my stay there, the name Soldiers’ Field, MA, etched itself into my brain as the address blurb on case material.

There were still resident white professors from Harvard, and, any desi professor who joined was packed off to the International Teachers’ Program (ITP) for baptism. So much so that when Chandulal, the barber who had set up shop under a tree within the IIMA premises, was away from his post for a few weeks everyone said, “Chandulal, ITP ma gayo…” “Chandulal has gone to do the ITP (at Harvard)…”

With this strong influence of Harvard I had always wanted to see the, what I call, (alma mater) ², alma mater of my alma mater…though I have lived in North America for several years now, this opportunity did not present itself to me till last week…when I went visiting my niece who lives close to Boston…

On the appointed day, after offering prayers in the fashion of a believer doing the once in a lifetime pilgrimage, I set out…Leaving my car at a local subway station, we took the Red Line to Harvard…

Getting out at of the subway, we got our first touch of what is essentially the characteristic of a University town…a middle aged man wearing a track suit with the words “Harvard Business School, Information Technology” saw us looking at the street map and said, “Can I help you ?” We told him that we were in search of the Holy Grail, Harvard Business School, and, he told us, “Over the bridge and to your left…”

Harvard is the quintessential University town…I saw more middle aged men wearing corduroy jackets and walking around in Harvard than I have seen in any other town in North America…(I now have the courage to defy my son who has stopped me, till now, from buying a corduroy jacket on the grounds that they are not ‘smart’)…I did see a few business suits as we walked through HBS, but, the per square mile density of corduroy jacket wearers in North America is perhaps the highest in Harvard…

We crossed the river Charles and came up to the road that had been etched in my mind from reading the address blurb on case material, Soldiers’ Field…I stopped for a minute as a mark of respect before crossing this road…

And then, I could see for myself the tower of the Baker Library building which we had seen on the cover of innumerable editions of the Harvard Business Review (HBR)…I have never visited Oxford or Cambridge in England, but, as I walked through the roads leading to HBS I had the distinct feeling that Oxford or Cambridge was where they got their inspiration from…interesting that so much cutting edge 21st century management thought seems to be being born in a town that has the ambience of a 19th century English university town…

Also I thought of the many young Indian professors who would have come here for baptism in the ‘60s…Seshan, Bala, Vora are some of the names that came to mind…how different the non diverse world of HBS must have been then…and what it must have taken to make the positive mark that they made…

After doing a parikrama (circumambulation, generally done of any temple) of HBS we went to Harvard Yard, where the statue of John Harvard sits…as you go near you will notice that his left shoe shines more than anything else in the surroundings…this comes from the belief that rubbing that left shoe fetches you luck, and, a lot of students must be using this approach to make up for the time spent partying when they should have been studying for their exams…

There is an unofficial tour of the Harvard campus conducted by students (the tour is called Hahvahd), and, I shall conclude with this story that the charming young girl who was conducting the tour told us standing at the feet of John Harvard…

Harvard has the practice of naming the buildings on the campus after the Harvard University Presidents…the word House is added to the President’s last name…so you have a Langdon House, a Quincy House, a Holyoke house and so on…the only exception is the President who was in office between l672-1675, Leonard Hore…try adding his last name to the word House and you will see why…

Of Jean and Jhumpa

When I first came to Canada some eighteen years ago and started doing road trips to the US, one thing that petrified me was missing an exit on the highway…and sometimes even when I did not miss the exit the equally petrifying problem was that the exit could be closed for road repairs or some other reason…

I remember a few months after coming to Canada making my first road trip to Pittsburgh to the Balaji temple there…coming back I missed the exit and landed up in a somewhat seedy looking town…with all the stories I had heard about shootings in the US before I came here, I was petrified driving around the town at dusk with bharya priyaa and two kidz in the car, searching for the route back…and then, one day coming back through Buffalo in the winter, I again missed an exit and experienced hell with freezing rain (different from the proverbial fires of hell, though just as fearful) trying to find my way to the Peace Bridge…

All that is now a thing of the past with the lovely Jenn perched between me and bharya priyaa, in the car, as we go driving in the US now…now, just in case some of you are wondering whether this is some ménage a trois that this ageing couple are getting into in their old age let me reassure you that Jenn is all satvic…she is my trusted GPS…

From the moment I switch on Jenn, I know I can trust her implicitly…in her lovely, reassuring voice she tells me ‘Keep to the right and exit ramp in one point five kilometres…’ and as I near the ramp and see that exit is closed for road repairs I do not panic anymore…I just calmly drive on pass the exit, and, the lovely Jenn waits for a few seconds after I have passed the exit and in a calm, measured voice almost like my mother talking to me after I missed a Math exam at school, ‘Recalculating…’ and like my mother again, in a few seconds, Jenn has found a solution, “Go seven point five kilometres and exit ramp left” she takes over and guides me back on to the correct route…and, if I decide that instead of going to a temple, as originally planned, I shall go to a mosque Jenn has no problems…I just need to tell her ‘find nearest mosque’ and all she says is ‘Recalculating’ and like ‘Open Sesame’ in the Alladin story, Jenn solves the problem…

Driving over eighteen hundred kilometres over the Easter break all around North Eastern US I never got the heebie-jeebies missing an exit…I remember how in the early days of my existence in the land of milk and honey (as it was then), the US, I would have to order ‘Triptiks’ from the automobile association and whoever was in the passenger seat would have to navigate…all that is gone now, bharya priyaa sleeps and/or puts on Mohammad Rafi’s songs on the iPod...all thanks to the lovely, Jenn, and, Jenn is one woman that bp (bharya priyaa) is not jealous about…

A large portion of my time over the Easter break was spent on the I90, aka, the New York State thruway which runs over 800 kilometres (somebody in the US please translate that into miles) from New York, NY to the Pennsylvania state line…talking of kilometres and miles, on this trip I got stuck because of a traffic accident and decided to phone our relative telling them that we would be late…when the relative at the other end asked me “How far are you from here ?” I, Canadian-conditioned that I am, said, “about a hundred and fifty kilometers away”…a somewhat quizzical silence at the other end…having lived in the USofA for over thirty five years, the only country that I know of that still uses ‘miles’ to measure distances, my relative could not figure out how far away I was, and, I, being quantitatively challenged, could not do the mental math to translate it into miles…realizing the problem I said, “about two hours away” and all was OK…

btw, the lovely Jenn can give her instructions in either miles or kilometres…you just have to tap her appropriate button…

Coming back to the I90 it is one of the more unexciting roadways I have travelled in my life…no buffaloes, autos or trucks as in the Motherland to keep you awake as you zip along…however, I now notice that all the service stations have Wi-Fi…so, I could regularly connect to the web through my iPod and catch up on the latest emails as I stopped at the service stations…cool, eh?

Sitting in Lakshmi’s aunt’s house waiting for bharya priyaa to get ready (the story of my life) I happened to notice a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ lying around…Lakshmi’s aunt is an avid reader and also reviews books for several North American journals…started reading the book for ‘time pass’ as the Bombay train hawker would say…

‘Time pass’ turned into interest and absorption as I worked my way through the story and I was totally fascinated with the accuracy with with Jhumpa has captured the middle class immigrant ethic in that story…a sixty something man loses his wife of thirty some years when, totally unexpectedly, she does not come out of anaesthesia after a minor surgery…the suddenness of the event is caught so poignantly by Jhumpa…

And how that shakes up everyone’s life…how we take everyone who has been there for so long as granted…like most of us in that age group, the bereavement leaves the man stranded mid stream…the aloneness comes through and how his daughter struggles with her own feelings…what does she do with her mother's two hundred and eighteen saris, for example...the daughter wears only western clothes but she finds it difficult to throw the saris away...

We have all heard or read of such experiences through stories set in India and this is the first one I have read set in the immigrant ethos of North America that captures such an incident…and, then enters Meenakshi (Mrs Bagchi, no known relative of our Evergreen Hero) into our protagonist’s life…no, I won’t give away the ending…read the book to find out for yourself…

This was the first time I was reading Jhumpa (I saw the movie ‘Namesake’ but did not read the book)…I found so much of myself in Unaccustomed Earth…as I was driving up the Garden State Parkway I kept thinking of how I would respond if someone close to me were to suddenly die, and, what would be the response from my children…she made me get in touch with my feelings, and, that was good…