I PRESENT BUDGET

‘Speaker sir, honorable members of parliament…’ I coughed a bit & started my budget speech. I spoke for almost two hours amidst applauses & desk thumping from the treasury benches & expected uproar & sloganeering from the opposition. But I kept reading the thirty eight & half page neatly drafted brief budget speech reaming conscious of the gazing eye of the camera on me. Through which the whole nation was observing me & more so the leading economists across the globe & yes of course the ever volatile stock market.

Actually it all started with lengthy, cumbersome & exhaustive exercise. Being leader of the small group of MPs I remained adamant on the FM post. And to gain it, house arrested my fellows in a posh hotel, a regular phenomenon. Since second in line is FM just after PM, of late HM has lost luster, if you observe. ‘Prepare a financial dictionary & its easy meaning immediately’ I ordered my under secretary the moment I sat in that powerful, soft cushioned brown leather revolving chair. Actually the chair was black I got it in brown my favorite colour before I sit into. Under Secretary was rather prompt in handing over the dictionary to me by that afternoon itself. ‘How nice you are too prompt’, I comforted him taking him into confidence. ‘It’s alright sir, I just had to search of it, and the present incumbent didn’t require it. Earlier were dependent on it only. We were updating it time & again’. The fellow made me feel at home in the chilled air office. ‘And why so my predecessor didn’t require…?’ ‘He was from LSoE sir’ before I finished the sentence the man jumped in with abbreviation. I decided to shunt him to military accounts from central revenue, I never like the abbreviations. ‘And what is LSoE?’ I asked him looking straight into his eyes, as I wanted to convey him that I was the boss behind that half round fifty square feet mahogany wood brown coloured glass covered table. ‘London School of Economics sir’. I bode him farewell.

‘What’d you like to have?’ cuddling my wife that nights being her FM husband I whispered into her ear pulling her close in my arms. ‘Actually I was longing for Switzerland trip, shopping in Hong Kong …’ her list was lengthy. ‘Well I mean from the forthcoming budget’ I got her down to our soft cushioned bed. Immediately she moved a bit away from me. ‘What a normal woman would ever want from any government?’ Being a typical woman her answer has to start with a new question, I kept patience. ‘Cheap vegetables, cooking gas, kerosene, petrol, diesel, availability of continuous power, water,’ she had easily entered into ‘no men’s zone unknowingly. I could hardly slept that night & coming some thirty plus nights every time I happened to meet those industrialists, leaders of various NGOs, members of opposition, representatives of peoples’ groups, economists, etc. If that was not enough I had a series serious of meetings with the PM, took his guidance, my collogues from various key ministries including rail minister, various stalwart secretaries etc. To not to leave any stone unturned summoned half a dozen spiritual gurus & babas. ‘Why don’t you understand it is my endeavour to keep my impression on the Indian politics’ I was trying to pacify my wife who had grievances of my not reaching home timely, disturbed sleep & developing anxiety.

The dictionary handed to me was my reference book those days. Yet, it was not seemingly futile. You touch any one figure the whole scenario was supposed to change or disturbed just like in hooked Excel Sheet in good words I realized. ‘How’s your work going on?’ my old friend called on one day in the Sunday morning. He was least bothered of any thing & self content man I’ve ever seen, plus finest writer he’d work as professor of literature for living. I requested to meet me. Poor guy came on, ‘Why don’t you copy earlier budget?’ He just spoke jokingly.

‘All is well set by predecessors, why take a chance to ruin it?’ I diplomatically put my views on budget to the PM the very next morning. The man spoke none, yet next morning he called me on to give a go ahead. ‘Fill in the blanks’ I asked all my secretaries, ‘with the fresh details’. I didn’t forget to mention the punch line.

My professor friend drafted the whole thirty eight & half page budget just nicely in record time of three days taking stock of those voluminous details & tackling all those seasoned public servants & their egos. With the help of some twenty nine thousand five hundred words he’d painted national economic picture of the future year. He did just as I said. Two Hundred & thirty words on poetry, quotes from scholars. One thousand words on pinching opposition, & a bit more hailing on my own regional party & the main party of our combine. Rest was dedicated on eloquently written dry desert of all those subsidies, revenue, expenditure, direct & indirect taxes, deficits & various proposals which may help fill the gap.

All that worked which I took pain for. The fresh coloured jacket, the newly bought golden framed glasses which showed me perfect studious & sincere, wrist watch from state owned HMT, facial & hair cut done early in the morning. And yes of course, I’d shown prudence in announcing that the forthcoming budget won’t just be goody goody yet meaningful in the primary school gathering a fortnight back.

It all went fine even the post budget meeting summoned by FICCI & CII. I took my secretaries along with. They’d answer the difficult question & I’d make face as if it was the simplest one.

That night, I hugged my professor friend. He needed just that. I indeed had much to offer him, just more than feelings.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

DIET

‘Look, first thing is you got to eat nutritious food…’ gazing at me he lamented wiping the run over milk from his chin to neck downwards after gulping it from the big earthen pot. Coal dark complexioned, hundred twenty kilogram weighed, and heavily built muscular bodied wrestler the owner of the nearby gym & a stable where I’d gone to help build my paper thin body.

Actually I was sick of my personality, it was my fault not others, how on earth somebody can ever get impressed with my forty three kilogram weighing five feet nine inches tall body? ‘the wrestler is right, if you don’t want to get flown away with a blow of wind do as he says’ my five kilogram heavier friend advised on seeking his “second opinion”. Even my mother decided to spend that extra to see her thin son becoming somewhat thick.

Two liters cow milk, directly taken from the stable itself, in the early morning instead of a cup of steaming tea with Parle biscuits. Then at seven thirty two hundred gram almonds soaked in cow milk last night with equal quantity of raisin. In the afternoon I was supposed to eat minimum of five rotis nicely smeared in cow ghee with home made butter & jaggery. In the afternoon two dozen ripend yellow banana with milk & sugar. Night half kilogram rice with one liter of lukewarm cow milk. Then I was supposed to sleep at eight, otherwise when I leave home that time to get back in well past midnight, in the night to get up four in the early morning, at which time my sweet dream would start otherwise. To digest the food I’ve eaten & to build muscle I was put directly under the wrestlers’ younger brother who was just five kilogram lighter than his big brother rest all the description matching with him. He’d put me to three hundred sit ups, two hundred pull ups & five miles running just for warm up sake. He had brighter plans so as to impress his big brother as how much his disciple has progressed & the trust he bestowed on him was not undue. As the big brother had caught him bellowing smoke with his thin friends behind that old temple one day & since then he was grossly upset with him. This was a nice opportunity for the younger brother to get into his good-books.

But, this was not going to happen! Wrestler brothers had chosen a totally wrong person in me. On second day of my exercise & excursion of five miles & diet had sent me to hospital. With my thighs badly swollen the precarious condition of back & inflated tummy as if balloon is filled with gas. As such my weight had increased to fifty three kilograms. I needed three days to get back to my normal weight & another three days to collect myself from the not so pleasant experience of gaining weight.

By the stroke of time the weight gaining experiment faded from my memory disc, I agent visited the nearby dietician. ‘Nobody takes note of me, see I’m so thin. Suggest me something so I might look little bit fleshy’. I narrated my state of mind on my state of physique. ‘The whole world is mad after shedding weight & bringing their bodies to shape, you are just nice as you are. Get back & enjoy eating whatever you fancy. Forget your weight!’ She almost ridiculed my purest wish of gaining weight.

‘They eat just as much they use it up, you know that?’ My wife was updating my knowledge on diet. She told me so many things that my views towards her GK totally changed; so far I was thinking myself better informed than her. Without having diabetes they have sugar free tea & coffee. Sweets strictly totally no no, no oil, no meat, no deep fries, no junk food, no spices as well. It was not easy to digest as an idea itself, I swear.

All of a sudden I found my wife eating cabbage, beet & radish to get filled stomach feeling. With whole fruits like oranges, grapes, watermelon not their juices even to get that extra benefit of fiber. Doing her daily exercise starting with three kilometer jogging to get her body more to shape. Daily checking up her intake of calories & weighing herself everyday just to cross check. And getting cautious of not taking any more calories than required. She surprisingly shunned her all time favorite dry-fruit ice cream too; forget about all those chocolates, pastries. She even started avoiding even uttering words called fats, calories, obesity etc. I was shocked at dining table that morning when I saw her taking her daily tea even without milk.

‘Do you know one thing’ she was looking at skies in her gym suit that morning when I just went up to terrace to see whether she was really exercising or just trying to fool me by giving me complex. She continued, ‘just imagine what a quantum of calories the sun god must be having daily, just seen how much he is emitting.


By

Vijay Yelmelwar

SLEEP

‘Cadet! get up, will you?’ our instructor at the NDA (National Defense Academy) was banging his knotty cane on the desk I was sitting. ‘No no sir, I never slept…’ fumbled I was trying to convince him, with not knowing when the guy reached my back corner desk which I chose so meticulously, the thick mustached heavy built tanned instructor who must have dealt with thousands of second lieutenants aspiring to be generals one day like me. And he must be well aware of the technique we aspiring generals learn of how to sleep while keeping eyes open in the class. Lifted the seven kilogram rifle in my hands up onto my head & I headed for ten rounds of the parade ground while I must sleep. A little more dialogue with the instructor & I might have ended up with twenty rounds, thirty rounds or whole night running with the rifle in hands & the instructor sitting in the middle of the ground with his bottle of rum inspecting me.

‘You’d never know the value of sleep’. My easy sleeping father once told me while I was trying to mock his snoring. He’d sleep the moment his back touches the bed & start snoring. Well I can sleep with least trouble or little trouble in the moving train. I may be lying on the berth hard or soft or left without reservation sitting at somebody’s feet leaning in the back in forty five degree. Even in moving jam packed bus sitting in one position for eight hours or many a times even standing while adjusting to lean as comfortably as I could to the middle standing pole or to the side bar of adjacent seat. But definitely not in the same room my father is sleeping. As the moving train or the moving bus would develop sound, movement or disturbances with regular intervals. May be I’ve no other option but to adjust with the situation I can sleep there. But sharing the same room with my father was not at all possible. He’d snore in varying sound notes sometimes there would be pin drop silence with his mouth wide open just sucking air inside his high capacity lungs. A loud roaring sound would then suddenly burst resembling snoring tiger or yawning elephant you can not exactly compare with. Sometimes just lungs full of air would gush out from his open mouth reminding hissing of anaconda. I’d feel pity on mother, yet she’d got acclimatized herself with his peculiar snoring. Rather if he’s not snoring, she would wake up to see if he’s sleeping or not. Once while we’d gone to our relatives’ early morning their neighbors gathered to know if “everything was fine?”

With a faint inkling of moving cat some people get up hastily as if the bomb has exploded onto their head. They call them having cautious sleep, I call them suspicious sleep. Sleeping can’t be called so if they don’t need to pour water onto you to wake you up untimely. ‘Sound sleep is the biggest blessing bestowed by the god on us, sleep tight till you wake up’ my like minded friend always says with his constant sleepy eyes. I so far could not gauge if he’s just finished his sleep or going to sleep, as his always dropping eyelids & reddish eyeballs keep me confused.

I even slept in the bone chilling icy winter of the Siachin bunkers welcoming ever engulfing sleep & red hot killer bullets from across the border. ‘Sleep takes you over like speeding car on the express highway’ yet another “sleepy” friend quipped ‘yet can’t afford to be sleepy at the wheels the deep sleep would take you over in lieu’ he didn’t forget to complete his sentence. Still, you can not sleep in the moving loaded truck in its cabin as you might snore disturbing drivers’ sleep.

‘Looks so fresh as if she just took a nice bath’ I whispered in my fellow cadets’ ear viewing as closely as I could to visiting guest who was a leading film lady. ‘Must have had tight sleep for two days’ my fellow cadet, who was ever deprived of good sleep, shot back. He’d always dream of sleeping & sleep in dreams. I always doubt his favorite deity must be Kumbhakarna an ever sleeping giant demon in Ramayana.

It was my first sound sleep after my marriage & I yes me myself got up in the middle of night just to realize that the moving train in my dreams was whistling in reality. To my amazement my newly wedded wife was snoring resembling whistling of the train. Well, her whistling was hardly audible out of our bedroom which I instantly checked up. Yet, while bolting the door back I was sinking within as I’d to listen to the music whole of my rest of the life.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar

ROMANCE

‘Perhaps I’d have accepted him’ she said in deep voice looking down to avoid eye contact, pushed me aside & vanished in the crowd & I remained froze on the spot. She was consecutive winner of our Miss College contest for five years & my friend her classmate was mad after her. Just to get her glimpse he’d go to any stretch. Just longing for her he’d literally cry if she doesn’t turn up to college that day. ‘You are wasting away, why don’t you go & just propose her’, I advised him every time I saw him longing for her as alcoholic would do at the sight of any bottle, not necessarily only of liquor. ‘You are fool, you don’t know, if she refuses’ he’d shot back & my answer would be, ‘excellent, once she refused you these shit things, your yearning for her will end at once for god sake’. But the fellow never yielded. On their last day at college before the annual exams we juniors bade them farewell. I took the chance to get her to the corner & asked her about her feelings towards him narrating his love for her. ‘Had he proposed you?’ & her answer literally froze me. But it was too late, her father was transferred to another city & she was to get married soon too. I’d then seen a heart break for not speaking out.

But all are not unlucky like this friend of mine. Another category is rather abundant in the college campus during our time. One of our friends would have betted & wined even Vasco-the-Gama on his constant heroic endeavors. He would always sport black eye or red chick since he never held himself back on proposing girls he thinks love-worthy. Every morning & evening he’d do so at the drop of a hat & come back with his reward on his face. His constant swollen red face would remind me of Phantom leaving his famous ring mark of skeleton on the jaws of his victim.

On the contrary my case was rather tragic. Like an idiot I followed a good looking girl who was rather inviting till her home not knowing it was. She frisked inside & I kept waiting for her outside. Within two minutes a guy came out three times heavier than me & well built with a cricket bat in his hand. First thing he did was, he smashed his bat on my forehead without saying a word to me & I experienced pitch dark under the red hot sun during clear day light. Later when I opened my eyes I was laying on the milky white hospital bed with beautiful nurse leaning on me dressing my forehead wound. She was definitely great looking than the girl I was following. ‘He was her brother who smashed you down with a single stroke of bat’ my friends who gathered to see me added to my already vast pool of general knowledge.

Knowing girls’ date of birth, address, her likings, more about the girls’ family especially about her sister & hard hitting brother if any. Such information used to be considered as the precious information & could be exchanged at appropriate cost depending upon girls’ face value. Say a small treat at college canteen to a nice dinner at some nice hotel along with first day second show film of Amitabh Bachchan with Rekha. Some of us have even changed college & joined the college the girl had joined, many a times even the specialization only to get her see. Writing letters disclosing real name or keeping anonymity, whistling etc. used to be the regular arsenals in our stock. But none of us could ever convince any girl to fall in love with any of us.

We used to fantasize about the most beautiful girl in our class while longing for her. Dreaming that one day she’d be standing at zebra crossing to cross the road with one hand holding a torn cotton bag full of grocery & vegetable, a kid in her arm, one holding her finger, hairs not well kept & wearing just ordinary sari. At the same time one of us, say myself stopping by her halting my fresh new car with screeching tyre sound, roll down the glasses & offer her lift along with her kids & baggage of grocery & vegetables. She’d initially refuse but then sit inside thinking of saving money otherwise she’d spend on auto-rickshaw or city-bus. While traveling looking at me she’d definitely repent on not accepting my proposal that time now undergoing hardship. But later coincidently I came to know that the same girl married to some heart surgeon who owns Mercedes-Benz C Class. And I got anxious of not being spotted by known eyes at some zebra crossing pushing my broke down Bajaj Super scooter with hefty bag weighing ten Kgs plus sporting my pharmaceutical company logo onto it & she’d come in gliding her black Mercedes-Benz C Class offer me lift. She’d definitely look at me while traveling thinking she took just right decision then.

Like all others me too married in due course of time. ‘Thank God I married to my wife, otherwise what would have happened to me?’ my rather demanding, genius & successful friend quipped of late during our small business gathering. The same type of emotions I heard from all those Romeos during our college time including me.

I hear my emotions from deep within when I’m just broke, fed up with the mundane world or smooching the heaven of happiness, feel great of myself my wife is just besides me every time. I just can’t think of me without her.

By
Vijay Yelmelwar

POWER

‘Power troubles’, my guest took a pause to sip hot cold drink at ambient temperature of forty five degree Celsius inside the hall of my flat. ‘Be it political power, money power, muscle power & of course electrical power’ everybody gathered for the party laughed, being host I too cracked my lips to show my yellowing teeth piteously. I’d called them the relatives & family friends for the party that summer evening. Even that evening power went compelling us to go for candle-lit dinner, off despite having vanished during its regular load shedding hours.

I decided to look into the problem of power right from the grass root level, got buried myself into the books & net. ‘Dad, its simple’, my fourteen year old daughter tried to sooth me since my patience might have lasted longer than before. As, every time I stumble at something I try to know more about it. say stray dogs, on pathetically running before them & having saved myself while my maiden endeavor on jogging at the newly built jogging track. Clogging drainage, on finding whole flat drenched in water spilling over the basin as the tap was left open by my baby late evening. Pushing sulky broke down car, on exploring about the causes of car braking down during night while driver is alone inside, …. ‘Look’ she applied break on my thought process, ‘power generation is very simple, you burn fuel to get steam. Direct the steam on turbines to make them revolve & the mechanical energy gets converted to the electrical energy. This runs through the wires, cables to us, so simple.’ She chuckled in the chicks, looking perfect winner. And I, like a fool was trying to find out reasons why this power could not be generated if it is so simple.

I folded the book put it back on the shelf, opened another rather familiar book the cheque book to write a cheque in the name of power suppler. As I’ve target to pay them before due date since they are so prompt in cutting of the connection which otherwise too rather reluctant in flowing power to run our fans, TVs, ACs, fridges, lights & geysers & so on. But you see how can you sense & feel importance of something if it doesn’t troubles you when you need it the most. Say otherwise half kick starting scooter, ever yielding & friendly clerk at the teller, otherwise non demanding daughter, obedient maid.

What is the fun if power doesn’t vanish just when you are ready to leave for party & searching for the door keys; boss has called to be party for the foreign delegates early in the morning & just then it goes off compelling you to take bath in bone chilling winter; to enjoy your favorite TV show for which you’ve already made all the arrangements like bribed son & daughter with chocklets, diplomatically kept wife busy in the kitchen or sent her for shopping & just at the end of title song TV automatically switches off reducing to a light spot in the centre putting full stop to your mirth & waiting & leaving your heart filled in shame with sense of fooling ignorant wife.

But you see many a time I thank the power cut from the bottom of my happily overflowing heart. Like, it makes us leave early as the machines are stalled due to want of power, mobile phone gets dead as could not be charged leaving me beaming as I’m saved of the sin of putting it off to save myself from answering it anytime & yes anywhere. Sometimes, power cut comes as blessings since my family then plans camp fire in our flat & take happy candle-lit dinner. Kids then slip with utter joy having saved off from the torturous homework with greatest reason on earth for not doing so.

However, how can one live deprived of all that once used too? I wrote to our local corporator on the power cut who promptly answered me that by next week all will be fine. I heard his home was wired with special three phase connection his home alone looks finely lit among our hundreds of flats filled in darkness. I then wrote to local MLA who too wrote me back two A4 type papers neatly typed citing reasons on how to save power & pay the bills in time with not a single word on cut offs & measures to avoid them. Despite wife holding me back I wrote to MP who called me on & offered a cup of coffee. He discussed at length on power crises & assured me on finding solution during his forthcoming four nation study tour to US, Brazil, China & Switzerland. Later I came to know that his son had to get admission in Okalahoma University, later he flew to Switzerland in search of some bank. I still persisted, wrote to Chief Minister, Cabinet Minister for Power & Prime Minister. Yet to receive any communication from them.

To save myself & be an ideal to others, I fitted my flat with inverter but the next day I realized it needed to be charged on the same power which is scanty. As I was not going to give up easily, I decided to go for solar panel to light up my thousand two hundred square feet flat in summer, to keep it lighted even in winter I’ll go for wind mill, in rainy season I’m going to use the might of torrential rains with technology just they use in hydroelectric power plants. My baby daughter is tutoring me on. I’m hopeful!

By

Vijay Yelmelwar