WATER

‘Earth is the water planet, it looks blue from the deep space’ my friend was telling me with great curiosity, reciting whatever she heard & seen on the Discovery Channel last night. While we both together were filling carefully every drop of water trickling down from the rusted municipal water pipeline behind our respective homes at four O’clock in the early morning. Our husbands had taken great trouble in digging the soil below the ‘T’ opening the supply line which should otherwise carry our share of water inside our home. But it doesn’t in eight out of twelve months of the year, during rainy season as such we can not go out to collect the trickle since rain god is blessing us with his showers which we collect before they meet mother earth.

I’d made it very clear to my father that I must not be married in the place where water is scarce. I don’t mind if my husband earns less but can’t compromise with less water than requirement. Bowing to my persistence my father had taken me to my would be husbands’ house to make it clear that the home is delivered with continuous water supply. I married my husband despite he was not all that great looking yet his main plus point was his home was water surplus though money wasn’t. In the first year of our marriage itself the ward was rearranged. During the municipal elections the party which came to power our new corporator elected belong to that party. So all the water went to our adjutant ward which was lead by the independent corporate. How on earth any ruling party can afford to deprive of anything of independent supporting corporator? Since then we’ve water just enough to drink daily, just enough to take our bath on weekly, just enough to wash our cloths monthly & just …. While I traveled all those days & years in memory lane & mine & all my friends’ husbands were sleeping tight with our kids perhaps those corporators too.

‘Why water is so scarce to us?’ I innocently asked my ever paper reading or TV watching husband, if he is at home. He smiled in his moustache, I thought he found my question rather amusing but he didn’t open his same moustache covered lip for next two minutes. I gauged he was reading something more amusing in the paper & my question never fell on his ears. ‘But see, XXX was telling me her nephew gets enough water even to take bath daily, water their garden, wash their vehicles even every morning & evening they wet their surrounding with pressured water hose’ I persisted while holding his hand & trying to snatch his remote attention. ‘Look you are worried of water for your home I’m reading & worried about the whole state of Tamilnadu. Their water has caught fire & you ….’ He chose to keep mum & made me sink in shame. My husband is worried of the whole state whilst I was disturbing him of our home of nine hundred square feet carpet area. ‘Look at this, the Sardar Sarovar in Gujarat, shifting manufacturing units due to scarcity of water, ….’ He just kept talking unstoppable while I’d to rush inside to clear my doubt on paying heed to kitchen noise of perhaps my daughter tumbled her full filled glass of the same precious water.

‘Don’t worry sweetheart, I registered our grievances with the water supply department & yes due to global warming just in a century or two the polar ice caps are going to melt, so any way we are bound to get ample water’. He held me close & tight in his arms that night typical of any husband since that is when they remember their wives & talk as sweet as any body from male kingdom can. Same with wives too, it is their turn to yield most from otherwise non yielding or non listening husbands. To reduce my labour in the early hours daily, he promised me to get a quarter hp water pump.

I saw a very nice & soothing dream that night I swear! We’d water & plenty of water. All our vessels were filled, I just didn’t pay attention even my daughter fell her glass full of water on the ground. I was seen watering our small kitchen-garden & my husband was washing his scooter with the water hose singing his favorite film song.

At the destined time early in the morning I got up. Perhaps my body clock too got synchronized with the water supply departments’ valve man timing. Again to collect the trickle from the rusted municipal pipeline. I yelled at my early morning friend who was doing her early morning ritual as I was. ‘My husband has written to water supply department for proper water supplies & you know what, the polar ice caps….

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

ON LIFE

‘Let us speak something on life!’, I was shocked to hear this as I never heard such words from mouth of a person who’d otherwise open it to eat spicy, hot & junk food, drink water, hot steaming tea & cold drink which is no less hazardous than insecticides, snore to sleep happily & kill others’ sleep, read aloud something written only on hotel menu card & speak sheer ‘humbug’. Even if Miss World is passing by us while we’re enjoying our ‘onion-bhajia’ at Anand Bhuvan he’d concentrate on the bhajia, to hell will Miss World. Or for him ‘living’ is eating right & sleeping tight. Five minutes before the exams when everybody is mugging up the most important answers, praying respective gods & goddess to seek their blessings, rehearsing copy pulling from their various hide-outs etc. This guy would be invariably seen at the college canteen sipping his tea at ease as if whole day is free ahead. Well, if he passes every time in the exams then no problem but he’s studying to make schools, colleges, & universities rich by paying fees for his never ending supplementary exams. He’d vowed to not to pass in first attempt in any paper at any cost & he’s unruffled by any results. Perhaps God has forgotten to embed ‘tension wrinkle’ onto his forehead I always doubted.

Years later in the same ‘Anand Bhuvan’, ‘What’s it?’ I said with ice cooled voice sipping hot steaming tea, with him & for him I’ve learnt to live ahead take no tension. ‘I plan to have a baby girl’ he spoke leaning on the table moving close to me, perhaps ensuring I only listen him. ‘But that is you & your wife to decide, what can I say on this? Further having girl or boy is not in our scope’ I was trying hard clutching laughter within my teeth at the same time trying to keep my face as dumb as I could. ‘No no not like that, I’m planning to adopt a girl child’ he made it rather crystal clear. I was stumped, stunned and aghast I just kept looking at him. Not far from then I heard he then really adopted a girl child.

Just like he kept giving me shocks by announcing he quitting his permanent government job, starting his own hardware shop, visiting pilgrimage places barefooted, taking police head on for their allegedly misbehavior with someone he doesn’t even know yet witnessed the episode. Last I heard of him was he was testing waters to join politics. So far I’d enough of his experience, yet joining politics was not our cup of tea. Yet, I chose to keep quiet. He got elected from his ward, I congratulated him. He was same as he used to be some thirty five years back. ‘Lets’ have tea & how about ‘onion-bhajia?’. He said with twinkling eyes. He spoke none yet took ‘U’ turn towards our ever fresh ‘Anand Bhuvan’. As I was readying for another shock from him I noticed a small saffron coloured spot on his nose just below forehead where otherwise bridge of spectacles rest. ‘What is that tikka?’ I was getting restless. He spoke none till he ate the last of onion-bhajia from his plate unnecessarily stretching my patience. ‘Life is full of paradox, whatever we achieve; in the last is something we can’t take along with us. I’m going the spiritual way’ he spoke all this in one breath chilled voice. I broke the wooden chair of ‘Anand Bhuvan’ that day & got myself hurt in the hips as the shock he gave came to me like an earthquake. ‘Soon he’s going to Himalayas’ I ate my words before they passed through lips.

It was tremendous metamorphosis even he’d put butterfly to shame. For one day he reached my home in the Sunday afternoon with long beard mixture of his black-gray hairs, long saffron shirt & saffron dhoti. Multiple rosaries of various size & shaped ‘Rudraksh’ dangling in his neck & tied with his wrist where once upon a time he used to tie his wristwatch. My wife immediately went inside to get a coin to offer him as visibly she’d not recognized him even a bit. When I reintroduced him to her she was about to faint. As he was the one who actually got us close in the college & even arranged all those things like car of our common friend to kidnap my then fiancée, selection of distant temple, the Pooja items including Brahmin for our run away wedding & even had spent a night along with me in the police lock-up post our marriage. As my father in law was a senior police officer & I dared to kidnap his only daughter & marry her.

‘He’s wasting away’ I spoke to my wife who was almost sunk & shocked like me while looking at him walk away from our home in his wooden slippers. He’d definitely washed our brains during his stay of two hours on spirituality, took nothing we offered but only glass full of hot milk without sugar. ‘You must learn to control your organs. Why eat spicy & hot food while we can fill our stomach with normal cooked food at home without onion & garlic?’ I’d got used to his shocks; rather I became so confident now days that I was dreaming of catching live wire of 440 volts in bare hands like a rotten wooden stick. We discussed ourselves & decided to do something.

His home was almost converted into temple we’d to gulp our saliva to acclimatize ourselves with the drastic change. Bells were dangling with brass chains every feet of the ceiling, touching to the ceiling there were hundreds of frames of various deities each decorated with sandalwood garlands with incense sticks burning converting the white ceiling to black with its soot. The whole family was clad in saffron clothes. ‘They pray round the clock’ their visibly irritated neighbour whispered into my ears. It took us long & lot to convince them all. Lastly they agreed.

We bade them farewell on the cruise boat while they’d departed for the world tour for ninety days. We’d financed their tour just a small gift from us; somehow we were trying our bit to partially pay our respects for his deed in uniting us. While they were out we refurnished their home.

‘It is sin to convert a temple to house…’ the Masson talking to his helper I overheard & ignored.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

AND WE ARE SERVED

‘Excuse me, hello!’ this time I’d pressed my lungs rather hard to increase my wind power and experienced the effect of sound energy. My NCC (National Cadet Core) day’s memories were green still. Actually I’d taken my friend to a good hotel for snacks, who came to me for the first time. And the waiter had kept us waiting on the table for so long that meanwhile to amuse my friend I even coined meaning for waiter that is ‘one who makes us wait’. Light shuk – shuk, mild hello, and little hard ‘waiter!’ had remained unyielding so far. The waiter seemed in charge of our row of table was conveniently turning blind eye & deaf ear towards us. By passing every minute I was getting restless as it was a matter of my image too since I’d bragged about the quality of food & prompt service of this hotel to my friend. Frenetic reminders from the empty stomach was equally disturbing why deny that even? As normally expected no sooner you sit at the table than the fellow should arrive with a tray of glasses of water & menu card.

With my lungs power at the best, the one who had taken us for ride & other two waiters, man at the cash counter came running to us. And yes the table occupiers of the entire hotel started trying their best to take my glimpse. Also, the sound had percolated through the kitchen it seems as few unseen ‘men in dark’ also started peeping out to search for the source of the sound. There was a glass braking noise I heard from my back. As the girl seated behind me dropped her glass as the sudden noise near to her ear had caught her unnoticed. And I started reining my select few words for the forthcoming incidence. We were served with utmost promptness then onwards, with we having no guilt in our mind for even not paying TIP to the waiter, wiped our palms to the paper napkin, put grains of mouth-fresheners in our mouth & came out of hotel as victorious warriors.

‘Waiters shouldn’t let customers wait at the table, for they get restless & if they stay around more time, we get deprived of more customers’ my hotelier friend was lecturing his men. As I’ve bred my body more on hotel food than on home food my frequent visits has made me endear to many of the hotel owners. I’m sure, it is due to die hard customers like me only those hoteliers have progressed from two centuries old marble & half century old wooden table & unseen yet leaving their presence deeply felt on the normally unseen place nailed wooden bench with unknown origin to posh sun mica covered tables & cushioned chairs. Also, the hoteliers have got rid of those snotty kids in torn half pants & button less shirt who would arrive to you with wiping their ever secreting mucus with the back of left palm, with carrying yellow aluminum glasses with spilling water while dipping his all the five fingers of right hand in them. His glimpse even is enough to kill the hunger otherwise, yet I’ve taken that as the gods’ wish & have eaten missal with double paav along with turry & still living.

‘Yes sir, may I help you’ star waiters from varied star studded hotels too I’ve unfortunately came across. Who put on three piece suit with bow tied to their neck, immaculately dressed with light refreshing perfume sprayed on their coat. Their dress is classes above mine even their manners, language, their well manicured fingers with their style amaze me or rather give me a complex, why lie? They get the same tea yet the worth is multifold that what I’m normally used to pay, on the top it needs to be made. By the time I put in water, tea bags, sugar, lemon drop or milk & stir the whole combination arrives at the room temperature leaving the fun in tasting tea far far behind. I in the last leave the posh place paying hefty tip which itself could quench thirst of my tea for coming three weeks.

I normally do not intend or afford to take enmity with any waiter whether he is the snotty waiter in the roadside shade or better dressed than mine in star hotel. He feeds me after all more than I’m fed at home.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

FRIEND IS SOMEONE

‘A friend is someone who knows all about you’, like number of holes to your baniyan, colour of your underwear, drinks you gulped last evening, money you borrowed vowing to return by same day noon but didn’t till now, his Louis Philippe shirt you are using whenever he’s gone out, feeds expensive ice cream to his girl friend behind him; ‘& still (he) loves you’. Friends are like that!

You make a note to return to your room not before mid night just managing to walk somehow with the help from your like minded & like behaving other friends. Whilst your friend is waiting for you but he won’t make a bed since it is your turn to make a bed, he is still dozing in the hard sit chair. You come to room fully loaded, make bed & fall onto it. If not vomited remaining night your friend is lucky. He’s is man of words, he’d make it a point to get up three in the early morning or say in the night & roll off the bed & again shift to his hard sit chair to doze. Since it is as per your agreement one would make bed & the other would roll it up next morning. You, not realizing continue to roll on chilled floor, thanks to warmth you gained from last nights’ drinks.

You are a busy man. You’re managing the mess uncle to still let you feed by carrying forward your last three months’ balance; he then puts his weight behind you. He’d assure mess uncle for payment this time, else he’d pay. You, offer him a chance to keep his word, to mess uncle, literally. In volley ball or badminton when you need to get entry he talks to the coach who is also maths professor. Being his pet student the professor would let you in. He’d be the happiest person to see you out not only out of the team but out of this college too, which he’d declared in front of full class room on revealing your miraculous score in the maths exams. You’d take his girl friend to Benhur only for the sake of getting tickets alibiing, ‘girls get tickets soon’, while he’s preparing exam notes for you. Under the guise of compensating her favor you’d then make her see the film with you which turns out to be Dirty Dancing. Friends are like that only.

We planned to reduce at least some of sins of our miser friend who wouldn’t let friends like us even breathe in his room. I only had to convince him that he was simply great, all others are fools & I’d like to follow him, take his refuge. For next six months he sponsored all my expenses, till he realized my plot & I find my next victim.

What if, I borrow something from my friend would he harass me for that & take it? If I use my friends’ brand new expensive jeans & tear if off should he ask for a new? If I bang my friends’ twelve hundred CC bike on the wall should he ask for the compensation? Forget about all those Wadas, Idlies, Pizzas, Burgers, Cokes & drinks he has been sponsoring. After all god has created friends to take care.

We grew up in age friendship remained frozen there only. During my recent visit to Detroit I met my old buddy coincidently. He hadn’t forgotten me even a bit, he offered me his fag, shirts, pants, suit, car all that he had even opened his corner bar he maintained at his flat for me. We’d fun that day, I innocently asked about his college girl friend to whom I’d taken for Dirty Dancing. He shook his head in dismay, ‘we’ve forgotten each other at the happy ending note, she bade me farewell with this present’ he spoke in sunk deep voice showing the gold photo frame with photo of him, her & in between me. ‘You got married?’ I asked him in heavy voice even I was moved. ‘Leaving by tomorrows’ flight he said, ‘for engagement with girl recommended by parents’. ‘Even I’m leaving lets go together even my engagement is due next week’, I said.

In the wee hours we got down from the jumbo to our motherland our fiancées had come to the airport to receive us with their parents. I was ashamed to show him my face as he was aghast to note that my fiancée was his former girl friend who’d once came with me see Benhur & I showed her Dirty Dancing. With my skills I’d fooled her & him.

It took long time, trouble & lot of perspiration for me to convince my true friend to marry his girl friend whilst I offered to marry his fiancée if she wishes so. I was trying my way of doing friendship. After all god has created friends to take care.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

AND THE FEAR GRIPS ME

Later I came to know it was just conjunctivitis. The fear of getting blind had gripped me otherwise that morning. I was terribly shaken as it took some while to see the daylight & opening eyelids took a stress on eyelids. I get up, since then, open only one eye then close it, open another to judge both the eyes are working fine. Slowly sit on the bed to see if I’ve lost balance, and then walk two steps slowly to ascertain. I then spit into basin to clear my doubt of throat infection, internal bleeding or say mouth cancer, if I spit blood. While brushing I use normal toothpaste & strontium chloride based toothpaste alternately for saving my forty years old teeth from getting sensitized & saving money too. Take milk not tea or coffee, delivered by our local milkman. I don’t trust the packaged milk what they remove & add to it I doubt if it is the same milk which cow or buffalo produces. For every alternate week there is article recommending or shunning use of coffee or tea. And the fear grips me of unknown disease just in seventies or eighties exactly when I wanted to live more.

‘Mind you if you are not afraid of death how will you survive in battle, it is fear which makes you to wear armour on your body’. I was trying to justify my regular use of helmet while on two wheeler & seat belt on cars. But you see, guys feel otherwise till they bang on something & learn the safety lesson only when they find themselves with hand tied to their neck & legs to the hospital bed midair. I never cross zebra crossing till I’m sure the last bicycle rider has deserted the road. Last I rode bike when I realized it needs to put your foot down to save yourself from falling on stopping the vehicle. Even in this age I bought my new ambassador for the safety reason only, it is iron cage. The RTO forbids else I was planning to weld the hardened steel grills outside the ambassador from all the sides. For long drive I’ve kept helmet ready which I wear inside the car. I don’t trust drivers’ skill, drive on my own. What is the point if you kill yourself by not taking precaution, you won’t get time for repentance too then. I travel with reservation without which I don’t keep foot inside the train; buses are out of question I don’t take bus otherwise too. Even with reservation I prefer an additional travel ticket, if I lose the reservation then? It so happened that, on VT station I’ve lost twenty five paise coin in 1971 the memory is still live here in my mind, who knows …?

I’ve taken due care & instructed everybody at home not to get any tame animals no cats, dogs or any birds. Rabbis is the incurable disease I know, birdflue too is not less deadlier. Well there is notice I’ve kept at my gate for intruders to get them beware of dogs. Any outsiders come & can be potential disease carrier & the fear grips me. Every year there is news in the paper people die of drowning in the swimming pool itself. Why on earth we the terrestrial mammals have to take dip in water? We take bath, drink water with food, make tea & coffee with or mix with liquor, isn’t that enough? I prefer piped cooking LPG gas no cylinders please. There is circuit breaker for each room in my home. Both the doors opening out have quadruplet locking system with additional bolting. For safety reason last year I bought two hockey sticks too which I keep behind the opened doors. Kept money & jewellery at home if burglars still intrudes in they shouldn’t get frustrated on getting nothing & kill us, the fear grips me.

My both the sons & baby doll are pierced with all those vaccines to save them even the disease which caused a death in south central Canada. Since my sister in laws neighbors’ friend live there, who knows…? On reading there is hole to the atmosphere up above on Australia which lets disease causing sun rays penetrate the earth I constantly use Ray ban sun glasses, coat myself with sunscreen lotion & use umbrella while entering & exiting my yet to grilled ambassador.

Of late I over heard, ‘sugar & salt are white poison…’. I’ve decided to quit sugar & salt immediately, milk & milk product causes cholesterol, oily & fried foodstuffs can’t be called foodstuffs, shunned outside food, meat & fish are abandoned. Increased my frequency of total body check up to monthly basis from yearly, bought a weighing scale, treadmill & roving cycle at home.

I’ve made the blunder of my life, however. They say every millionth year a big enough astride strike the earth vanishing everything existing. Smaller one keep banging earth every now & then. I should have at least taken care in building my home in RCC (reinforced cement concrete) than load bearing. It gets me wake up several times in the night to see if the ceiling is cracked somewhere? The fear grips me….

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

JUST ONE MORE

‘Drink is the sea actually, you can sink all your worries & revelries into’ on Sunday evening my not so normal friend uttered while trying to stand on his feet after his nip of rum before going for loo. We looked at him aghast by then he slowly turned himself & started walking towards lavatory. Perhaps mid way he came back as he went again after finishing his earlier statement, ‘…& yourself too’ he took longer time now to come back & left us pondering on his punch line. We were about to fall off our chairs this time not under alcoholic influence but listening his philosophy. The guy never spoke anything worth something during his whole life of forty years as he hardly tested the might of drinks. ‘fool turning into prophet for the first time I’m seeing’ another friend who got his senses under control with his philosophy quipped, ‘otherwise this turns prophets into fools’ he finished his glass with raising it bit to make us note that ‘this’ means the liquor. ‘Just one more’ I ordered the waiter for another round as with all those philosophers one normal guy got to accompany & live into reality.

But, I normally make my drinks appointments with friends who are in varied walks of life. With architect & contractor relieves me of not being dry like cement & brick & of course homeless, with readers & thinkers I feel at home as getting glasses before forty, over a glass of whiskey made me think I read more. With salaried friends I get to enjoy myself more than drinks does as they are under pressure of getting to work next morning anyhow even after a couple of pegs & I can allow myself skipping from work next day. With doctors, it assures me of my longevity, otherwise why any sensible doctor would drink? One of my professor friend too joins me taking due respect & after follow ups. His company amuses me of saving myself repeating the same shit things years after years. Yet, I envy him for his lifelong exposure to colourful greenery around in the college & his chance to speak to any of them at his will. Finance guys are my regular invitees & hosts. Their company never let me think of me getting bankrupt. One of them has pet line of his sweet wish, ‘I’d like all my friends to get millionaire, and I’ll get so automatically. Since likeminded only sit to drink’.

‘If drinks are so bad, why they say a peg a day keeps heart attack away?’ my friend who failed to become doctor & thinks he knows more than doctors do says with utter conviction. ‘Look you never stop at that a peg & progress to more ending yourself a stooge’ I tried to pacify him. He wouldn’t budge I know him top to toe. Anyway, drinks are drinks as fetal as a baby cobra if you take limited or a mommy cobra if unlimited. Saved yourself this time from its fangs lucky enough, yet luck may not come your way always.

‘I’d be nuisance if I take more…’ one senior civil servant from Australia was trying to hold his friend across the ocean I overheard during a cocktail party. It moved me. Pressing or compelling one for more is making him uncomfortable or killing him in short.

‘If you ask me’, I spoke to my friend over our discussions on the spirituality & religion on the moving station wagon wherein the driver is carefully chosen as non drinker in the summer night under twinkling stars. The drinks were being served & an enjoyed discussion was in progress. Outside it was fun the cool breeze from the open windows was touching not just the skin yet the soul. Suddenly the driver stopped the vehicle to inform us there are hundreds of deer grazing at the side of road. We peeped out to see them. Their beauty moved us. ‘The god has created them & this too’, I whispered lifting the half full glass. ‘If you kill them it is sin, if you kill yourself with this it is sin again. Enjoy both!’

This time it was my turn to wonder at myself, how could I get philosophical? The god is great!

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

MODERN DRESSES

‘Bikinis are the best’ my rather outspoken big mouthed friend expressed his inner desire on our debate started on some unknown issue. ‘Look even at the beauty pageant they make all those cuties to wear bikinis’ he was not retreating from his point though all of us agreeing to him yet due to embarrassment could not openly support him. ‘You can not put on bikini all the time or travel in train like that’, I tried to collect courage to stop him. ‘That would be still better…’ he whispered which we all heard without raising our ears. We concluded there only.

I drove home after that conversation; it was festive evening looking at the crowd on the street & their clothes. I felt if not exactly bikinis the female kingdom is definitely getting closer to that only. Being member of male kingdom I felt pity on them I mean us, we that is male kingdom, must need to observe more constraints in public life apart from rash driving, drinking, smoking, talking aloud & so on.

Poverty used to be judged by the clothes worn by the subject in good old days. Poor people were deprived of sufficient clothing to cover themselves. Kings & queens used to wear more than their bodies require & the left over would sweep the roads. Now, to keep oneself as naked as possible has been fashion statement, don’t trust me, switch on TV & get yourself satisfied. Have you seen cock picking up grains on the ground along with his family of five to ten hens & their chicks? How wonderful they look; even the cats, dogs, cows, and buffalos without any clothes on them they look just nice. Lovebirds, macaws are just splendid even the tigers, snakes simply great. We have rather lately discovered the strength in keeping ourselves as naked as possible.

You get to get exposed and what else one wants? We are rather constantly struggling to get exposed. I mean to the sun for that free vitamin D from its rays. Exposing enlightens one about his or her health. Good muscular body with cuts can make anybody get attention. To get attention if one is resorting to yoga, exercise, diet control then what is bad in it anyway? For health reason I’d support exposure.

There is fashion in exposing. One needs to be rich & great looking else who will look at her or him? I marvel why people went after Mahatma? He was poor, not good looking, spectacled, old & half naked. Either people then were not aware of strength of exposure or their meaning for exposing was just different.

Exposing has become an industry or I’d say it needs a separate ministry called exposure ministry. See, it is very simple; people go to see tennis as they love tennis is normal. If people, not knowing why those two on either side of the net hit the poor ball so ruthlessly, to go to see tennis & even get glued to their TV is exposure what can one conclude? One must be able to observe the stitch on tennis players’ innerwear & logo in blue of sponsor there. It is fun, rolled into beauty, into business, into skill of cameraman, into view & idea of sponsor, into crowd catching mechanism, into tennis players’ skill in flowing the skirt while shooting service or smashing volley. Why tennis we even get glued to TV to watch sports as swimming, sprinting, boxing…. The world sports society has decided, it is learnt, in sports if one needs exposure one must expose since it is sacred not obscene. Whomsoever thinks it is obscene he or she is scared.

Films, film gatherings for their various awards’ ceremony right from the Shivaji Park to Kodak Theater, public swimming pools, beaches etc. etc. are under the exposure ministry. They have excluded today’s hospitals as nurses around there are wearing skin tight dresses for their patients’ wellbeing it is considered sacred & does not fall under entertainment.

Well, all said & done if you dare you do what else? We on the banks stay mute & observe constraint watching you swim as we scare to get drowned.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

ON SCHOOL

‘Memories all those ten poems by next Monday, else…’. I just can not write our teachers’ threat explicitly in this liberated era where in to punish the pupil for their own benefit can cause havoc. Our teacher than will make his threat true to every extent of his capacity to all fifty five of us small small tender & delicate boys in khaki half pants & white half shirt. We’d pray to our own respective beloved gods & goddesses who may, we felt, will grant our wish of not permitting Sun god to rise that Monday, head master to give us off, the teacher concern to fall ill seriously & the wish list is long. Yet, to my knowledge god never paid heed to our demands. Later I knew god has so many men & women in the world to look after he too has his own priorities. How can he intervene in our internal school matter of his own incarnation in devilish teachers & us the angel of love & tender feelings?

Those years of boyhood are full of fun, revelry. All those butterflies on flowers, kits in the air, paper boats floating & sinking in rain water, chocolates, and ice-cream are the treasures of boyhood. But for one or the other reason, this happiness is diluted & only then let percolated into our tender lives. I call this elders’ & teachers’ jealousy towards us kids since they can’t enjoy themselves like us. Now a day these elders have planned to keep us busy round the clock & by the time we get time we are dead tired to fall on bed to sleep. Just left with no time for enjoyment.

Like all those great souls I too strongly feel one should learn to just understand which five rupees bill is & which is ten, twenty or hundred & there is no four rupees note neither thirty nor forty. Frankly speaking even during school days I strongly felt of having wasting my life. Well, my views on learning earned marks on my both chicks & on the back; my earnings on both the palms in school are bonus, the reason was same.

If learning is meant to earn living then, why study wasting your golden boyhood years of life in studying something never going to be useful in future. For knowledge purpose one can read Shivaji, Auranzeb, Akbar for Indian or Hitler, Roosevelt, Lincoln, various Georges from England, Czars from Russia for world history. Down load Googal search for world geography, Wren & Martin for grammar, what is there in English other than Shakespeare? Nothing beyond BhagwadGeeta for philosophy. Reading Einstein, Raman, and Bohr for physics etc. etc. This all & much more can be read in a years’ time period then why waste those entire valuable ten, eleven or thirteen years unnecessarily I don’t understand.

I learnt zoology the difference between you & I are, I know domestic cats are called Felis-domesticus & Rana – tigrina for frog just that much. This much I can learn & much more taking a years’ sabbatical. That too this learning would be fun than fear. This fear of exams has always haunted me falling me sick in the face of exams increasing my mothers’ blood pressure. She would always fear of whether her son would appear for the exams at all or what?

My VIth standard son is busier than I am. Before I wake up at eight o’clock early in the morning he’s gone taking his bath, brushing teeth, breakfast & duly decorating himself with his school uniform tying his tie to shoe lace in chaos of his hot dialogues & difference of opinions with his own mother & with my own mother. When he comes back from the school by quarter to three in the mid noon I’m taking my happy nap after heavy lunch. He takes his lunch plays for ten minutes with his pets & younger brother marches for his tuition with another knapsack. By the time at six o’clock in the evening when he comes back from his tuition along with his friends I’m either watching my TV programme or reading some novel. His homecoming starts with my preparation for my outing in the evening. We exchange our views for a moment or two if he is free while taking his milk & biscuits. By the time I reach home nine o’clock plus in the night my future incarnation is either fast asleep or in process of so watching his cartoon network on the idiot box. Yes certainly not before completing his school home work.

I visualized school to be held under the big banyan tree with teachers teaching all those required by each of us as per capabilities & necessity to live. Not dump the brains with unnecessary & unwanted information. What does a clerk do studying rotational period of Pluto or Neptune around the sun, their composition, mass, temperature & their average distance with respect to earth for exams sake? He better should know averages, debit, credit, sundry creditors, sundry debtors, balance sheet, profit & loss account, various entries & their tally. If he wishes to go through the space, solar system & mysteries of universe he can any day taste that, why waste his years’ learning for that sake? As I did for mathematics; all those limits, differentiations, hyperbolas, parabolas, ellipse had eclipsed my life then.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

INVESTING IN STOCK MARKET

‘There are three ways you can invest in stock market’, man in perfect formal in front of the big computer screen was steering his auto loaded cassette through his tongue with polished & meticulously chosen words. ‘You buy a good stock & keep invested, ride on tips for medium periods & buy certain stocks or their derivatives & try your luck, do intra-day as well’. He spoke a lot on F & O, call, put, hedging, liquidity, technical analysis etc. etc. I got familiar with grades of stocks like A to Z & many more, their face value etc. But by the time I knew their meanings up to certain extent I resolved to bid farewell to stock market as one of my friends at the bolt rightly said, ‘futures has ruined our future’. Bolt they say is the rightly chosen word for it, it is bolt indeed.

As one never knows when he slips into medium term investor from his regular long term investing virtue & when to intra-day gambling. Stock market is just behaves like a cat, absolutely uncertain, looks gorgeous, small & mewing into your legs candidly till you takes it up in your hands only to cuddle & not to feed. It’d leave a scar on your face with its not so delicate claws. If somebody has left his spectacles at home & mistakes lion for cat then he has it. Even I’ve left my spectacles few times at home yet I’m not so myopic but got a scar as I’d mistaken Ocelot for domestic cat & once I took a cub into my hands. From then onwards even at my home I’ve taken due care to keep the home cat free as the mosquito netted door & window are automatically serving the purpose.

My earner friend from the stock market, a rare breed of Homo sapiens, has even made a lot of money in last ten thousand sensex scam of stock market & his uncle suffered paralysis attack that stays below him in the same building. I’m tough bodied otherwise how could I digest & assimilate IVRCL, Titan, IDBI, India Cement… You sometimes love to forget all those ailments which once took you to the brink of hospitalization, few will still strongly love to forget their such ailments which had taken them to the brink of death.

Few things I’ve no answer for, it is shame to ask for doubts in the stock market since either all are shameless or everybody is drowned in doubt. During colossal rains more than half of capital was below water, stocks were yet soaring. Sneezing PM or even FM sends shiver to the spine of stock market otherwise. Even the best of quarterly results of bigwigs of stock market as Infosys, RIL, TCS, SBI etc. market slides on their result day. Market goes on correction mode who decides that? Shit stocks over subscribe to 90 to 100 times & the gold mines bite dust on their IPO adventure. Who gets that inside information or ‘call’ & who decides that is inside or true. Why all those Pundits don’t hide their faces on getting their calculation one plus one is not eleven but two? What decides to buy or sale?

Being a experienced looser in stock market I’ve few tips for aspiring losers. Thou shall not short if the market seems sliding down, as you’d be last one to short since from that point market will come in bullish mode. Thou shall not long if the market seems zooming up, as you’d be last one to long since from that point market will slide down as a brake failed car would from the top of mountain. Thou shall not sale considering it was the best sale, same day within half an hour the stock you’ve sold will kiss the upper circuit. Thou shall not buy considering it was the nadir of that scrip, same day it will crash like glass vase hitting lower circuit twice in the same day.

There are other devils I mean derivatives too to taste your courage. Buying or selling a future may suggestive to bid farewell to your future. Buy or sale put or call by last Thursday of that month will make you drink like fish even it were your fasting day of the week. Well all is not that bad at the bolt; millions are blown at a click of mouse. Here only mouse outwits cat.

Of late on learning the strength of cat & mouse in the game of bull & bear I realized it is fun of cannibalism. You just can’t win & stay away neither loses & stays away. I remember then the word of investment.

Now a days I’m keeping quiet, otherwise too I can’t do anything. Brooding on those scrap stock to bounce up, I once bought them for quick gains. I & one of my friends who is equally loser I mean adventurer in stock market have solved a million dollar question. Staying away from buying, selling, intra-day, futures & options has saved us lot of money since betting money oops getting money from stock market is losing money.

Well, well I’m not professing doom. But good stock at any price you feel right, sale them at any price you feel right. Period between buy & sale is immaterial if the difference is gain.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

SOME MORE MONEY

I still remember while going to school during my IVth & Vth class, bus fare used to be ten paise. Mother used to give exactly twenty paise for to & fro fare, sometimes even she had tough time in getting the change. On those fortunate days I used to get twenty five paise coin. Remaining five paise would be my sole property for which I never used to give any account to my mother. But by the time I get the coin I used to be under tremendous stress as what to do with that money in the recess. To buy ice candy or boiled salted jujube or dried jujube powder or toffees or try my luck wait for five more paise to come my way & buy a top. Suppose I decide on saving five paise, wait for five more than till then I had terrible time in handling my priced possession. As if I have stolen the Kohinoor diamond & hiding it in my pocket. Rather tough job!

Years later when I got my first salary cheque of fourteen hundred twenty five rupees I immediately got it encashed from the bank. Carrying that money in the pocket on my rattler the Luna on the busiest & riches street of the city I felt like sailing through seventh heaven. I blew off all the money by the time I reach home getting something for all at home. I was just happy then. My happiness from those five paise & fourteen hundred twenty five rupees can not be compared with millions now. Long after I started my small business. On getting my first four figure cheque I bought a wall lamp for hundred & fifty bucks. Truly speaking I felt like becoming a rich man, though the same evening I cooked rice on kerosene stove & ate half burnt half boiled rice with curd while wife was away.

My neighbour a genius works day & night earns like hell, we all envy him for that tons of money he mints daily. Gets up early in the morning, driver comes to him in the wee hours takes him & drops him not before midnight. Sometimes he walks through the car; otherwise driver supports him to his door. Travels across the country in plane, posh cars lives rich, spends rich. Wife at home brags of her husbands’ achievements, in tender moments weeps even in public of having herself & kids to wait for to get his glimpse for days & months together. ‘Kids have forgotten how their daddy looks’ she says weeping. ‘Each time he comes with toys, sweets, imported dresses & articles, kids grab them & vanish out to show to their pals, for them father is money earner & entertainer by virtue of getting goods’. During his first hospitalization doctors said, ‘the heart is getting weaker, he must rest a bit’. I met him to convey & try to convince, he had full of future plans for earning big bucks. I came back keeping my words behind my tongue; he was a big man for me. He was right perhaps, we all love our families yet few can’t spend time enough with them. Living isn’t just working for living.

Fish eagle at the banks of Nile, I’ve seen, catches a fish enough for his days’ diet in a few minutes. Brings it back clutching in his claws on the top of rocks, dissects it & gulps it up. Rest of the day it just spreads its huge powerful wings & flies carelessly in the air, sometimes for fun sake frightening monkeys, rabbits, rats etc. on the ground. However powerful it may be eats just required & roams in air, enjoys itself.

Who knows who is right & what is right. There are men & women building empire out of scratch. Live in big cities which make them men to money minting machine. They stand in queue for everything in their lives, even after their death they are in queue to get last rituals. Few others live on the banks of rivers, in the small village & in small towns. Work at places, come home in the evening, have their share of mirth & sorrow. Yet the crazy spectral greed for money hasn’t come to their way. I’d say they live life just like fish eagle.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

TRAVELLING IN TRUCK CABIN

I’ve traveled through truck cabin to save myself standing stranded on the road in the rainy night, in the scorching sun, terribly tired, to save myself from dieing of hunger & thirst. Yes sometimes I’ve traveled in truck cabin to save money as well.

From outside you just can’t notice the world inside the small hot cabin, neither just peeping inside can. Cabin is the kingdom of the truck driver his is the last word there. In the centre of the cabin there is huge truck engine covered by the big iron plate shaped into peculiar cone held with rubbery holdings. It depends if the truck is old the rubbery holdings may be replaced with wire, thin rope. The cover must keep on banging on the floor metal sheet while the truck is on the move. You can not keep any item on this cover neither your feet. This covered is one the most sacred items inside the cabin. The deck is made up of local carved wood with so many holes to it. They are used to stuff the scented stick which bellows the scented smoke to the upper dangling photo of some deity. Inside deck there must be hollow to fit cassette player tied with thin nylon rope or stuffed into the thermocol packing to keep it safe from the vibration. So far the truck engine is on, the cassette player must be on I dare not say it reproduces songs sung by Mohammad Rafi, Lata, Asha, Kishor etc. etc. since no voice matches with these singers I can ignore to notice the bombarding sound can be called as male voice or female voice even. There is secret hollow as well besides this; this socket is mainly dedicated for cigarettes of lesser known brands, bidis, match box, nip of desi tharra etc.

Given a lift you are made to sit on the long bench behind the drivers’ seat. In the middle of the seat there is way made for the gear shaft to reach to the gear box down. Care must be taken to have due regard for this ever vibrating gear shaft, you can not touch it while sitting there keeping it between your thighs as you never know when the driver will pull it up of push it down. You can not even sit erect since there is parallel berth running just above your head kissing your scalp with each pothole on the road you are loosening the berths’ nuts & bolts with banging your head. On the berth there is valuable property of the driver & cleaner (‘kinner’ as he’s called) which includes dal, chaval, vegetables, kerosene stove, dangled half dried underwear, loongi etc. etc.

Anything & everything inside this world is dirty, dusty & hot which you’ll notice if & only if your nose stops working or you’ve not got fainted. Everything inside stinks, few lesser few more yet the sole effect of foul smell are truly terrible. You dare not put hanky on your nose to express your displeasure, else you may be politely (of course drivers’) asked to get off from the truck reeling the ghat at snails’ speed with great trouble.

The driver, wiry hairs on his head, beard, chest etc., his baniyan & loongi of unknown original colour & black dusty present colour, wearing a thick kada or tied some thread in his right hand, & the whole body stinks. His lieutenant the cleaner deserves the equal description yet he must be dwarf than the driver, thin & small haired. He must be ready to obey any & every order issued to him by his master the driver. Be it shifting flat tyre, oiling the ailing engine, washing dirty wind screen or whole truck, tying & untying the ropes onto the material covered on the truck, preparation of the food, getting tharra from local bhatti or gutta etc. etc. And yes he too sometimes gets fortunate to sit at the wheel to turn the truck, reverse it & forward it so that it can be convenient for loading. It is their world where in driver is the king & his assistant general or general assistant is his kinnar oops, cleaner.

Once I’d been to Kerla on industrial assignment. On loading the truck driver had came to security cabin to get the last ritual done of getting papers noted there. The destination on invoice was read some ‘Railmajra’. I innocently asked the king of truck where is the place located? ‘I don’t know sir, it must be in Punjab or in Hariyana I’ll find it out, no problem (koi gal nai)’ he moved on with papers in his hands. I kept looking his tall six & half feet figure walking strongly towards his kingdom the truck in satisfaction that at last he’s leaving. Who knows how much distance he has cover in the truck with maximum speed of forty km/hr., how many potholes will give him jerks, how many times the age old truck will harass him, how much road dirt & dust will find its place on him, how many cities he’ll cross over, how many policemen he’ll encounter, how & what he’ll eat and so on.

He’s his family of wife, children, parents, brothers & sisters. For them he’s crossing long distance for peanuts. The stinking man in dirt & dust somehow or someway helping me too. While getting out that world putting my foot carefully on the huge four feet height tyre he’s holding my hand helping me. It still humbles me when I try to pay more he’d refuse politely saying, ‘itnahi kafi hai paaji (this much is enough sir)’ he only knows how much is enough.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

WIFE & GENES MAKING HER SO

Receding hairs in few or balding in the centre in others is the miracle of certain genes when a person reaches certain age. Till then these genes remain in dormant condition. My friend who is well unknown geneticist has discovered many such dormant genes which trigger off their effect mainly in Indian women only after their marriage. I was truly amazed but he showed me & convinced me his theory. After all science is truth.

These are few of those genes which make wives so.

As the marriage progresses into its ten plus year wives know more about their husbands than perhaps they themselves. Before I, enter into kitchen on Sunday afternoon, my wife can not take her happy nap that day since I’ve, weekly off’, she proclaims, ‘cold drink is over don’t open the fridge’. Just looking at my stressed face she knows it is time to fry bhajia. A slight smile on my face thins my wallet by few hundred rupees; if the bigger smile is caught by her, wallet may get thinner by few thousands even. Since over a period of time she’s gained wisdom about my moods. She realizes this is time to raid his purse.

As the marriage progresses irrespective of its period in years her erstwhile aerodynamic or to be specific her dynamite size of 32-24-32 changes & can progress up to 32-64-32. Sometimes even more & fewer times still more & still fewer times, I’ve heard, they need engineers’ measuring tape. This progress suppresses the yet dormant genes in her counterpart further. The chap regresses which may cause him to weight himself on ‘for children only’ scale.

As the marriage progresses, in directly proportional to its number of days of marriage number of saris in the cupboard or in the trunks increases. Invariably causing reason to buy another cupboard sometimes in the second to third year of marriage. Few husbands are more fortunate, they may require to buy the cupboard in the fourth or fifth but certainly nobody is more fortunate that this. After all, there is limit to fortune as well.

As the marriage progresses, the peculiar gene present in dormant condition in wives triggers off or so to say explodes off. This gene provides wives the third eye or sixth sense which enables her to x-ray her husbands anytime she wishes. The gene makes her pick up his one by one mistake, fault, error, and wrong doings. This prime & valuable data comes in handy in the troubled time so nicely that every time the battle is won even before its start. The same gene is said to be present in husbands as well. But its presence is yet to be proved my friend postulated, I fully supported him. After all science is truth.

As the marriage progresses, among the Indian wives the solitary gene starts showing its presence rather prominently. Even the girl before marriage is staying in joint family along with her four sisters, five aunts, five uncles, two dozen nephews etc. her solitary gene shows off. This gene compels wife to compel her husband to part away from his parents, brothers & sisters. My geneticist friend further says why the world of women’s sport can only shine in tennis, mixed doubles & not in doubles. Same with disc throw, javelin throw, archery, swimming, sprinting but not in football, cricket etc. Like two cat, two women in same home can not survive peacefully. My geneticist friend was rather convinced & thus adamant on his discovery.

As the marriage progresses, among the wives the dormant gene responsible for the ‘feeling of ownership’ gets stronger & stronger. After certain period of years, wives start strongly feeling, he is my private property. The genes’ presence is felt in both husband & wife as well. But, it is seen that during initial years of marriage, the male gene is stronger & active & as the years progress it gets more & more inactive. After some period, the gene gets so dormant that my geneticist friend fears that in the next generation the gene may never appear at all. On the contrary the same gene present in wife works exactly the opposite. My geneticist friend is not truly sure yet he confessed to me in private, I’m breaching the untold yet understood contract of not revealing the contents, that the same gene is responsible to make stateswomen across the globe. Why go to globe. At home, he postulated, ownership tussle starts with the moment her son marries his wife. The war goes on & gets murkier as the marriage progresses.

Actually, my geneticist friend has discovered many more such genes. But I preferred not to listen him more as, ‘there is bliss in ignorance’ one must not ignore that. The information was getting more & more explosive & not at all good for the married man like me, perhaps for you too.

Well, one more thing I forgot to mention, I’ve used I & my above. Actually it isn’t I neither my. It is the person in question in general. I’m not afraid of my, now my, wife at all (till she reads this).

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

AT FORTIES

Got in to get out with spectacles on the nose & the world looked not all the different yet there was some change. On the back of tablet blister when I couldn’t read even the MRP or the constituents, I’d tough time in chewing abuses along with tongue under my teeth. I could read the headlines but needed to put on lights even in the morning to read the news in details. Typing font had slowly progressed from 10 to 12 hardly making any note inside my gray matter. At forty I already became myopic.

I’d became a subject of mockery already at home. Car keys, newly acquired spectacles, wallet, mobile, hanky were the regular items of evidence of my forgetfulness. Prolonged family serials on TV prompted me to take stroll after dinner; family members termed that as my endeavour in keeping fit. But whatever they name it I’ve never taken them seriously, perhaps this is also effect of forty’s. Twice checked up my cholesterol, thrice blood pressure & six times urine & blood for perceived diabetics. ‘Emotions triggering you to undergo all these check is forty’s effect’, my friend who is at the brink of forty was telling confidently.

But the biggest & worst forty’s effect I perceived & that is when ever the girl I’m gazing sensually brings me down on the hard rock by her calling me ‘uncle’. I just hate the very word uncle. Recently I offered lift to a good looking alone girl standing on the road opposite college. I opened only the front left door making her sit besides me; keeping back door locked, thanks to central locking system. She tried to open the back door but couldn’t & sat on the front door only at last. I kept gazing at her as possible as one could while driving on the busy main street at twelve in the noon under scorching sun for five kilometers. She got down, smiled nicely, and shook hand till now it was excellent, why on earth did she say, ‘thank you uncle’. I needed to take up a bottle of Limca to cool me off, I prefer pesticide instead otherwise, & drove back all those five kilometers which I drove for her sake. It was sheer loss. Loss of petrol, time & more important loss of temper.

Well, my hairs have started receding, but you see I’m blessed with big forehead by birth if you don’t trust see my boyhood photo. Perhaps forty percent remaining hairs are gray but see, you must consider my truthfulness in not dyeing them. I’m still fit & fine. Even my coat & pants stitched at my wedding still fit me well, which I don’t to avoid being labeled as miser. Eat spicy even fish, chicken & mutton & digest easily. Take a drink or two in a week or two yet sleep tight on my bed not elsewhere. Work for eight hours yet get home smiling.

Yet, at forty I’m myopic. Perceived few good & bad things & this will take long to change them. Recently taken up religious & spiritual readings. My wife is pulling my legs, says ‘you are getting old who would bury himself in James Hadley Chase otherwise now chasing Yogi Arvinda & Ramkrishna Paramhansa’. But, I’m not giving up, pop up pills & go out in cold, get cold water bath, eat less to keep still fit, skipping fried & spicy items. Resolving every morning to get up early next morning to go for morning walk.

May I tell you, just between you & me, while shaving I perceive the skin I used to have is no more, false seven teeth start paining at the mention of forty. I even remember what I used to do looking at what my son is doing.

To truly note the change within, I take a wink at my mother just twenty years older than me. If at forty its new game we play once again, she’s twenty years old & I’m just born.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

IN THE HOSPITAL

‘You first of all get these medicines, get your mother admitted at once & get biopsy done on her throat lump, get it tested by Tata Memorial at the earliest’ the surgeons’ each word sunk my father deep & deep which I could fathom from his depressing face. We all came out of his cabin with heavy heart & as if tons of iron tied with our legs. My father asked me to get the medicine from local chemist who made my father turn every leaf in our government quarter for each penny, borrowed remaining from neighbour to buy medicine.

My father remembered that his friend who was compounder in the nearby hospital had been to Bombay for some work. He phoned him to get appointment in Tatas’ for biopsy. The fellow asked him to wait till he comes back & let him investigates my grandmother on listening which doctor examined her. ‘You fool, I got my mother checked by MS, FRCS doctor you are just a compounder how on earth you challenge him’ my father just got furious with him. However, his friend got him calm down & succeeded in holding him till he comes. Next morning the compounder came he checked the hard lump on the throat of the old lady. He gave a small tablet & convinced my father to let her pop it up. As such the surgeon had indicated she has cancer since getting biopsy tested in Tata Memorial Hospital means that only, what a small tablet of a jawar size can harm her. Grandmother took the tablet with some warm water as suggested by the compounder & slept. By noon the lump was disappeared as if it was never there. The confident fellow again came in the evening to see effect of his medication. My grandmother was then sitting outside with her friend & discussing at length on her pet subject of grievances against her daughter in law. I later had big trouble in convincing the chemist to make him take the medicines back & pay me cash.

‘They don’t have anything other than antibiotics & surgery’ my homeopath friend was arguing his point to the top of his lungs against allopaths. ‘My father lived ninety two & never took a single tablet’ another added. ‘I’m more worried of the side-effects than the main disease’, I put forth my genuine concern. ‘He’s clear & discharged’ many a time’s doctors give fitness certificate & shake hand with the cancer or such dreadful diseased patient smilingly. Next Sunday patients’ son calls him to convey his fathers’ demise. He hasn’t died of cancer but the medication he took to cure the cancer took toll of his life. He could not sustain the side or ill-effects of medication.

Many a times I carry on with paining tooth but the tablet to suppress the pain give me hell. I just can not stand, perspire heavily, head gets unclear, and urinate frequently. Getting admitted in hospital sends shiver to my spine. However all is not so bad & not so depressing as well there. The nurses zoom across in their skin tight, half an inch below or above the knee, milky white uniform are the major respite to us patients. Yet, the real pain or sin is they make us call them ‘sister’. Being a true person right from the bottom of my ailing heart how can eyes speak truth & lips untrue? I’ve been calling them nurse instead. Taking pills is nothing even getting pierced deep inside the flesh through their delicate hands sends smile on to my lips. Getting well is not acceptable sometimes. I’d then take the doctor in confidence asking him to keep me ‘under observation’ for few more days.

Shoe store sales man is trained to remove customers’ shoe the moment he enters. This locks the customer mentally & the sale is confirmed sort of. Just like that hospitals have learnt marketing. I’ve been searching for Philip Kotlar through many of their anatomy, physiology, and endocrinology etc. books on the shelf. Perhaps it is their trade secret to not to show that they’re adopting marketing tactics. Yet for a seasoned marketing man like me they can’t just escape. See, they’d locate the vein & pierce view flow needle the moment patient admits in it solves duel purpose of injecting various drugs with least pain to the patient & more importantly the patient wouldn’t run away without paying his dues. Hospitals send him through various tests to put the machine through use & sometimes patient’s health demands them. They keep the hospital clean & glowing not only due to health requirement demands it but neatness attracts the customers, oops! I mean patients. They’ve been advertising too for various health check ups & like with a cute looking nurse, not sister, with an injection holding in her neatly manicured hand.

You see, the hospitals are changing. Giving life to the dieing patients at the same time making them more religious & spiritual since they’ll having nothing with them to observe.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

TRAVELLING ON TRAIN

‘Does it go to Thane?’ I yelled at the top of my voice to the local train motorman just before it moved from the VT station, Bombay now CST, Mumbai. ‘Kurla – Kurla’ he yelled back. ‘But Thane, I’ve to go to Thane…’ before I asked him in the top of my lungs capacity in the thick of mob he jumped into the cabin giving me depressing look & next second it moved on. That was my first day in Bombay. Later I realized there are locals, fast & slow. Fast aren’t so fast & slow aren’t so slow they just skip few stations & others stop at each of them. So also all the locals do not cover all the stations neither originates from only VT. I was stunned.

Before I reach the destination station, I always doubt about my selection which invariably starts with unreserved travel ticket, departure time of the train, platform, the boarded train itself & of course the Ups & Downs with their numbers. Once I get down at the destined station, read the station name in black in yellow then only my heart beats to its normal. Railway platform is the place where you can test your self confidence to its ultimate levels. You are left like a stray dog there hardly anybody to guide you as each one is in great hurry. Rail reservation slips are pinned five minutes before its actual arrival on the platform. Announcer lady for local languages is imported from 287, 71st floor, Kingsley Mansion, 3rd lane, Windsor Castle, London. For English another lady is called on who was just resting from the nearby goods wagon loading grape cartons on daily wages. All the announcements get me closer to build my self confidence & pump my thighs for more foot work.

All the bogies look same; numbers written with chalk piece has already been rubbed off leading to your opportunity of quarrel with fellow passenger. Now most of the time I’ve experience I’m the looser biting dust at the end of hot dialogue. S 10 berth no 71 isn’t S 10 berth no 71 which I felt or the adjacent bogies. I’ve to walk through three to four bogies to get my destined berth bulldozing standing & sleeping passengers on the way. Doing so, slang-match & abuses heard & used during school & college days come handy. I even get amazed at my own vocabulary & memory. Reaching to berth 71 reveals I’m facing the toilet with broken door visiting passengers there freely. Water is finished and the smell compels me to go back to my college chemistry laboratory where once I smelt ammonia rather deep & fainted on the floor.

Memorizing my own science background, I gather courage & try to sleep only to be wakening up by travel ticket examiner (TTE). On whose seat somebody had prefixed L making it LTTE bring him closer to his profession. ‘There are only four railway employees on the train’, the TTE told me. Till I get sleep again I tried to make the man in black speak. For thousand passengers’ only four employees, I realized the inspiration behind the first English film “The Great Train Robbery”. Of course the robbers must have taken the inspiration much before the director of the movie.

I’ve seen & all Indians have seen the biggest hoarding in ten meter height font somewhere even bigger, everywhere on the railway station & inside railways. That is ‘DOWN WITH SANITATION & DOWN WITH CLEANLINESS’. But hats off to the sustainable & robust health of every Indian. I bet, even doctor may issue sickness certificate, one should travel through train for two hundred km eat & drink everything on the way still ok, to hell with the certificate.

Every train carries same no. of passengers inside & on the top of it still the Indian Railways is said to be loss making. They say to earn hundred rupees they spend hundred & two just two rupees more. Why so fuss then? After all they have run a whole train carrying its minister in charge alone with his rights & lefts, lay new lines in his constituency even if the yearly turnover of passengers is more than thousand passenger & less than thousand two. They have to let morcha burn off their bogies sometimes with passengers inside. As every morcha can not be said to be successful without burning a train. They have to recruit kith & kin of MLAs, MPs, Ministers & their kith & kin. They have turn blind eye on bribery under their nose it may cause insult to the boss, to the politician, to the minister & to the nation. After all, they have to think of the poor people of the nation, the voters. They have to let the voters travel thousands of miles without ticket on their leaders’ birth & death anniversaries & otherwise too. After all one has to observe the principal of democracy in letter & in spirit, ‘by the people, for the people, of the people’. Rail just fits the prescription aptly than anybody around.

I love traveling in train because it gives me more than just carrying me to my destination.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

HAVING A BABY

‘Great! Heartiest congratulations on having a gorgeous baby’ neighbour was wishing me on arrival of my baby. It was tough time to get the governments’ permission before conceiving a baby. The local birth control commissioner quizzed us for two weeks on our back ground, property, bank balance, interviewed our employers along with their spouses, any hereditary disease if at all we carry, if we are carrier of any disease & has ability to transform to our progeny, if we have any previous baby, any miscarriage so many things he crosschecked. The existing law which allows only thirty percent of the couple let conceive baby fortunately we were lucky amongst them. Lastly he permitted us to conceive a baby.

It was a nice job on the part of the government & I fully supported for birth control sanctions/regularities observed by the government. It was necessary for if we are entering into twenty third century we’ve to take care of our rapidly depleting resources & restrictions on sharing equally our earth with other animals too.

Regular rituals had to be started before conceiving a baby. we booked the school corporation which would be taking care of baby. The care would extend till its masters or doctors & the occupations based of its aptitude & liking. The school corporation governors’ appointment took three months in the school corporation city two thousand kilometers away from our work place in south central Africa. The panel of selectors took our interview & verified our identity along with the permission from the birth control commissioner.

Having done admission to our yet to born baby we deposited our share along with the governments’ for the future education. I remember we stressed neither on our kid to live here on earth, neither underwater in pacific nor on Mars, Jupiter’s Io or Europa however friendly it might be. My friends’ daughter went to Europa got settled there & now she meets her parents over photo-phone only. Whatever developments our love for kids’ remains.

I was on the seventh heaven having a girl child. When the neighbour asked for her genomap of our daughter. ‘Did we have to do it?’ I asked innocently. He looked at me as if I was the biggest fool around. ‘I don’t know’, he continued with low depressing tone as if he was telling me my biggest mistake of life, I’ve done it. Our yet to born son is genetically engineered. He rested slowly on the couch, I was shaken. I just could not fathom the gravity of my mistake as I was miserably, foolishly unaware of the recent generation though I was living in twenty third century. Had own flat on nine hundred & seventy third floor with fly-car parked outside our flat at fifteen thousand feet above ground level. I was moderately rich with cash of thirteen zillion bucks in bank, three hundred square mails of sea bed in deep pacific for human underwater colonies, had own flourishing business of hydrogen refilling in the fly-cars mid air.

‘Look buddy, I won’t say you have done any mistake but I’ve done something for my yet to born son’ he spoke in deep voice. Whatever he’d told me listening that made me sunk into couch. Neighbour had genetically engineered his son. The genes were going to reveal their true colours as per their designed & destined engineering. His son on attaining twenty three years of his age would be seven feet three inches tall, wheatish-white in complexion, his eye sight would be as clear as thirty three giga-pixel camera would give that is ten fold clear than the extinct eagle of twentieth century. His weight shall be close to hundred Kgs, he’d have no facial hairs, smallest external ears, his intelligence quotient would be fifteen times more than normal man, and he’d be genetically safeguarded from thirteen thousand diseases with inbuilt antibiotics in his blood. He’d need three times less oxygen than normal man, three hundred times more muscular heart & most important I heard is, he was designed to live not less than three hundred years.

I had thrown party on the occasion of arrival of my new daughter. It was on my floating helipad converted for giving party to my esteemed guests near Indian Ocean closed to once & now sunk Lakshdweep islands. Everybody in the hall were busy enjoying the party, I was depressed with the thought of how my baby doll will survive with the plastic men & women.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS

By seconds’ arm tickling near to the XII on the wall clock, the lights go off for another second & everybody start greeting others on the top of their throat capacity chanting ‘happy new year’ in all the rhythms possible. Remaining in their glasses, schooners & bottles are than emptied into their greedy throats, smoke still bellows from their liquor stinking mounts. Hips swirl with boobs & waist at rhythm of some filthy English song & the party carries on through the chilling wintery night of thirty first December of every year. Every passing year witnesses more & more booze, smoke being passed through the rotten throats with emptying their purses & slipping morals down & down. This is the way I enjoy & welcome the New Year, how nice. I thus welcome the New Year so much that on the first January till evening I’ve to sleep tight. Without dance, party, booze, swirling hips & boobs how I, the modern man of the country, can go near to the polished society of west?

Remembering fun of the party last year I started early in mid November only. Caught hold of an agent to get into the party of the top notch in the town in top class hotel. He arranged for girl dance partner, the pool side table, twelve year old champagne for the beginning, to get real high in great way he recommended for the genuine scotch, special new year eve costume, dancing shoes, perfume, imported mouthwash etc. etc. I’m not a miser to count this all in rupees yet, for account sake I’d jot down it all cost me twenty three thousand only for a night. Later I noticed, my other friends had got hold still better party which cost them fifty plus, however how can one ignore the fun?

Back in the past I used to have my own resolutions say writing diary, keeping daily expenditure account, doing daily exercise, getting up early for morning walk, quitting smoke, booze & what not. Somehow nothing of these sorts did happen for past so many years’ even decades. Rather irregularity has remained the mainstay.

Any new year is like earlier year, yet there is difference. The difference of good & bad events. Our local corporater got elected from our ward, good event for him; next five years were bad for all of us. To change our destiny we forced another guy for fresh election next time the coming next five years were worse for us ward members. It was memorable experience for all of us at home when my son went to his lower kindergarten nursery. He’d realized in future the next more than decade of his fun in childhood was spoiled by his own parents, grandparents, uncles & aunties. Now, I say with grace that I passed my bachelors or masters in this year. Yet, when I turn back & memories those moments, it was nightmarish to have completed the studies & flex muscle to make money. Parents were more than happy as their kid has done something & now ready to jump in the real world. Whilst I was scared like hare, I say those initial few years were literal hell, every senior would come & bang me reducing me to drum. In the name of gathering experience I meekly took all that shit.

However this year the world has seen how important it is to twist arms of the weak nation, even hang their administrator in Saddam Husain for obvious control over their oil. Set one more loud & clear example of jungle-raaj on larger scale is what all is needed. Or even for the bigwigs even on reading sentence of punishment given time for taking care of their dear ones. Killers can got away with free hand, scammers got clean chit, advocates spoke lie & utter lie to save their clients from gallows …. No other resolution, I’ve decided to gain muscle & money power. ‘Cowards only die brave men never’, I’d add from myself to this quote is, ‘Cowards only die cunning men never’.

I write with all the might on my resolutions in my diary, the same resolutions keep me away from the diary for the whole New Year till it becomes the past. This time I’ve decided to keep the diary clean with no resolutions. Let me see if the diary remains written or clean as I left on the first day of the year, even without those regular resolutions.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

RIDING A BULLET

Bullet, how one can ignore it on the road? See it’s raw built; it’s cherishing charismatic firing, its powerful 350 cc robust engine & its terrific grip. Bullet has been my dream bike since childhood.

Well, my journey from bicycle to bullet wasn’t smooth. I had my share of blood, bandages, scars; fractures while riding two wheelers & also while others riding theirs too. Yet, fun in riding bullet has never changed. It must be given due regard you can not take the bullet for granted. Even the manufacturers must have realized it otherwise how can they try to reduce its weight? Not only weight, they have changed its break paddle to right, gear paddle to left, push button start, introduced electronic ignition etc. etc. I didn’t like any of these. I just like the old & regular standard model of bullet. Bullet is bullet; it must be different from other ponies on the road. How can you ride non black bullet with its humble firing, less weight, right side brake paddle, push button start, you are demeaning Rottweiler to Pomeranian.

Few misers have apprehension on its low average, so what? You get to ride bullet; better take bicycle & start paddling otherwise. Long back I’d observe keenly when our neighbor would wash his bullet every Sunday. He used to wash bullet so carefully that I always doubted whether he takes baths so keenly. He was coal dark in complexion, sweating in winter even, with stinking if you reach within distance of a foot from him. He’d take moist soft cloth to wipe off the remaining water from bullets’ body & rub with polishing wax to polish it. Even the spokes would be shined. He’d then push the kick lovingly with adjusting the compressor & give a little hard kick igniting life into the monster. Then ask me to sit back & we’d then ride the giant for some time through the potholed roads with great ease. I’d feel like wondering into the heaven then. He asked me to try it once which I immediately accepted, learnt the trick to start & tame the huge one & glided on the road. Once being careless & while trying to show off I took sharp turn putting right leg on the ground. It took a month to bring back my right leg to normal shape from its swelling which caused during due to jerk of the hundred & seventy kg bullet. You can not undermine bullet.

There are other small small small & still small motor cycles too zooming on the road. They are painted in various colours few even in double & in triple colour combination. But, if you ask me they are just weak transporting machine their sporty look & eye catching colour has been tried to supplement the power. But, I am never amused with such powerless ponies any way. Well, they boast of the average, low price but who cares after all? Even a toddler can kick its paddle, start it, ride it with ease zoom through the narrow lanes full of potholes. But I never liked it.

Look, if life is journey one must enjoy it while journeying, isn’t that right? Why on earth one shouldn’t enjoy riding bullet. There are still mightier, heavier & bigger driving machines around. But you see, I may not afford or they are not easily available, repairable. If all goes well, I may go for 1200 cc Harley Davidson one day.

Cars apart my dame now a days is my bullet 350 cc.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

FILMS

Hema Malini has been my most favorite heroine & I repent of not being of her age. I took birth rather late; this basic mistake has been followed by so many & many more mistakes for which I’m not responsible any way. But somehow I’ve been penalized of all that. Say, having good face is by birth, which paves ways to films; my mistake is I don’t have good face to shut doors of films on my face. Else it would be heaven to be in films.

Born terribly poor or filthy rich, study under the lantern on the footpath or from Harvard, hero is hero. Yet the commonest happening in the films for the hero is he gets the great looking girl in least possible clothes somehow or the other. How he gets the girl is the main story in almost all the films. Then he fights with double of his own weight, muscle power, body, height villain where in hero succeeds with least trouble. In the end puts his arm around the girls’ waist, grabs her & walks away. In between the films, for smokers’ delight, there are songs. Length of the songs is such that during that time one can puff off a cigarette, one should not lit the cigar. Hero makes a dozen of films a year & gets away with fat package in his pocket. I repent on my mistake of not getting good face. Otherwise what else hero needs? Anyone can build good body, sport the muscles in every other shot, keep the face as wooden as possible being a man no expenditure on glycerin too. Fight like a bull fighter, dance like a gym teacher, speak like a news reader & walk like a robot. However, how can anybody stop me loving & enjoying the movies?

Heroine must be a damsel, great looking, and dancer. Her face & body value is all that matters. Like hero her looks must compensate her acting. She must wet herself in the spring if budget approves or in the rains even if that is not possible in the bathtub whilst wrapping in the thinnest & smallest possible cloth not clothes. If she dares to walk wet in so till the temple & the bang the bell there lifting her hand, the picture is hit. She can then carry on like that discomforting her image for long, if possible in the next movie she can enact tortured daughter in law. Yet, while mopping the already clean floor she must sport her cleavage as deep as possible. Now a days heroine has stopped crying too how can producers ignore the huge female (not so huge) audience? Also, the heroines have done great injustice with the erstwhile cabaret dancers like Helen. Perhaps the cabaret dancers are shying away with main heroine since they expose better than them. I strongly feel, medical students & upcoming artists like painters, sculptors must see the movie. This is just for their better understanding of the anatomy which comes with bit of entertainment too.

Villains are the character I admire the most. Perhaps I fail to be hero, the jealousy might count here. Yet, they get to perform all so well be it acting, fighting, drinking, smoking, abusing, raping & what not. They get to live rich in films they don’t shy away eating rich food too hero is deprived of which otherwise in the films. Villains handle bombs & babes with utmost ease, I just envy them. So also, unlike hero they have freedom in getup too. My favorite villains are Pran, Ashok Saraf etc. But, if professional boredom is something as Amitabh Bachchan too plays villain, comedian play hero, villains play character actor, heroines play villains …. Sometimes the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th lead man or woman steals the show on their skill which is now skillfully ignored, remember yesteryears Vinod Khanna, Mumtaz.

Stars, they called as are mightier than the real stars. Their star power is greater than our sole star the sun since the sun shines only day time. These stars shine during day time & in the night they shine with more vigour. They can build or burn not only on the silver screen but also in reality. Be it Regan, Schwarzenegger or MGR, NTR, Jayalalitha freaked on screen & in reality easily. You need good face to be a hero. To be good actor you need facet not just face, remember Naseer, Puries, Ashok Saraf etc.

Alas! Face apart, I’m waiting to be called to be a villain at least. Money apart there is fun in acting villain you get to act there. Though on screen you lie looser on the back in the last.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

PROCESSION & I

‘You’ve done well, how could you study so much?’ one of my live hearted friend complemented on my passing the civil services & enquire about my study. ‘Nothing secret about it’ I lamented with utmost ease, thanks to processions. I stay just a stone throw away from the MG road. Any procession if not passed on to MG road, it can not be called as procession neither would have its coverage printed in next day’s news paper. ‘Daily or to be specific nightly processions hailing somebody or dismissing somebody keep us awake whole night’. I continued with more stressed on my utilizing time, ‘mother would then ask to fill the water in kitchen which invariably comes in the night & father to study, as such I can not take a wink. I did both, built muscle power & excelled in exams, became nocturnal human being is the side advantage’ I quipped. Thanks to processions which got me into civil services.

The day I take over as district collector, I’ve vowed much early in my life, not to hold any application for holding processions & bog down any pressure asking me doing so. How people will get their photos, names printed in news papers otherwise? How news papers will fill their pages otherwise? How will the local free & ‘good for nothing’ souls will earn their daily roasted flesh of rotten goat, nip of desi-daru? How their bosses will try their luck in ever-reaching politics?

Having my deep knowledge in processions one day my wife asked me on, ‘why don’t you do your Ph. D. on processions?’ I immediately accepted her idea, well later I realized she was trying to pull my legs. However any husband, if promised anything to his wife must fulfill her wish, I took to writing. They say you got to go through plenty of reference books, travel a lot, take numerous interviews, apple polish your guide & what not. To complete the Ph.D. which despite takes at least three years to complete.

I took to writing & within a week I’d my complete write up ready on my table. Wife was aghast with my prowess, my image in her mind if dented during so many years of our togetherness certainly got whitewashed. I did nothing to write anything special, just remembered all those sweet memories of waking up till wee hours to wait for uproar of the processions turned into lengthy speeches & clamour & of course water. To pass the time I’d take any study material & read. While writing exams, I did not remembered what I read but what I listened in the processions got correlated with the study material, numbers, phrases & key words got me through. Thanks to processions, they got me so far.

I wrote in my Ph. D. thesis, actually I should not reveal it as there is always danger of it getting copied or theft by somebody. Yet, I’d produce here that processions have no specific agenda common people interested in. Be it inflation, poverty, caste based reservation, power shedding, water supplies, precarious road conditions, slums … Nothing has power which can be cause of processions. To turn the available mob to procession or hire trained man power for processions has bigger & better reasons like birth or death anniversaries of leader, statue defamation, forthcoming election which keep on coming round the year & years after years. Or winning in the ward election to winning in parliament election. There are other processions too which never became subject of my interest like marriage processions, morcha on the local police station against police atrocities, processions lead by some spiritual guru since all these processions lack the life of procession in them. Processions must consist of gullal, dance, sticks, sometimes use of those sticks, stone pelting, burning buses & trucks, looting, ransacking, absentee of police, shut shop-doors, terrorized common people…

Processions are of great importance. They make people walk on the road, they’d sit motionless before TV otherwise, they make read news papers, make & mar leaders, burn public & private property to make government & people buy new this causes rolling of the economy. Processions are of great importance, they make person like me a civil servant who’d let processions take place in days & years to come.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

CRICKET & I

People used to look at me with deep negligence & hatred as if I’m a dead dog thrown in the garbage box. Till I became familiar with gully, silly point, forward short leg, off, on, slip etc. etc. These are running within every boy & girl on the street along with blood. Bolds & centuries are raising & dipping their blood pressure & cricket has become not only the national pass time but the national issue of great importance. Winning Indian team on the play ground has become synonymous with India winning on the battleground & vice versa.

Being clever since childhood I grasped the power of cricket rather late in my life. It is truly a great game of patience of concentrating on small, heavy, leathery stitched red ball by at least fifteen men on the ground & fifteen millions if not more out of the ground. Players in white used to keep hitting the ball for three – four days, got exhausted, earn money & got back to their places. Interested people used to see them, applaud them someone more interested would talk of them, feel sorry on loosing his favorite team & forget them. How boring it used to be. There were players like Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar, Viv Richards, Kalicharan, Vishwanath, Botham, Gooch, Gower etc. etc. poor fellows. They batted, bowled, made runs, took wickets, caught & lost catches, chased balls to stop it they won & they lost too. How boring! They played, earned money, those who liked them got some recognition on attaining age when they themselves realized that it is silly to stay at silly point, slip in at slip, can’t throw from the border, get run out often they retired & lived peacefully like any other man. How boring! It was the same old dignified way of opting out no politics, no columns after columns filled gossips by so called experts in the sports pages, no intervention by the ex sportsman & neither discussions on the sports channels by cute & hot filmy babes along with ex he-men of the games. Truly boring.

‘Who’s’ that guy holding the shaving razor in his hand?’ I innocently asked my twelve year old son without looking at him while both of us were sharing the same TV screen fortunately. He looked at me with great depression as if he wanted to say, ‘that’s why I don’t sit with you to see the TV, and you just can’t keep pace the world’ that is xxxx he spoke with great stress as he wanted me to never forget the name & face ever in my remaining life. How can I afford to not recollect such a familiar face? But what on earth made him hold the gigantic shaving razor, whose shave he is going to do for any way? This time I asked my wife this question in lower tone. She just gave me her peculiar glance which I’ve been getting since our marriage, whenever I talk ‘truth & only truth’ referring to my honorable in laws. I kept shut that time, no choice!

That wasn’t my first brush with the cricket. Earlier too, hearing their pay packages I was stumped. That was nothing, I was told they gain in many folds from the advertisements, sponsorships, many ‘gods of cricket’ work in films all this to earn money. I never knew they were so poor that despite earning all that money they resort to betting. But anyway the whole thing is for better & getting still better.

The cricket coach is better know person than the national security adviser to the prime minister and more gossiped person than the secretary of the hottest Hollywood or Bollyood actress. Players once played amass enough for their next hundred years both money & fame. Cricket control board is so rich that, I read in a thirty five year old fresh newspaper that they can bail out any state out of the debt burden & turn the fiscal deficit balance sheet to surplus. Given a choice to become prime minister or chairman of BCCI I’d opt for later, no worry for him its players who perform, non performers get kick performers kind, you just take a nap before breakfast, after breakfast, before ….

All are benefited, managers, cricket control board, pitch makers, bookies, players, viewers, channels you name them. I recently overheard the discussions of ministers of defense, finance, home, agriculture, commerce…. That the government is keenly considering ODI or tests as the best remedy for any issues, problems facing the country. Be it, peasant’s suicide in Vidarbha, Naxalite outbreak in Andhra, mercenaries’ intrusion in north & west, floods in Mumbai, whatever. Being in the coalition I even heard they are thinking of matches on the face of left movements in left controlled West Bengal or Kerla or even to appease Mulayam, tame Jaya & Mamta etc. etc. Yes, they don’t think they need to worry of opposition since the top duo like films anyway; they have plans to arrange ‘Lagaan’ in the parliament auditorium. I heard….

By
Vijay Yelmelwar