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