Domestic issues

The state government recently issued guidelines for recommended wages to household domestic s. I am afraid the mandarins in the secretariat were ignorant of the ground situation when they fixed a rate of Rs 224/- per eight hour day. This constituted all work including taking care of a child. I reckon they did not consult any housewife before making the decision.

For several years we had one maidservant who practically handled all activity. Unfortunately she pushed her luck a bit too much with her boss, my wife which resulted in her being given the pink slip. Since then, my house has been overrun by a bevy of female domestics. We have a 24 hour maid; a morning maid; an evening maid; and a cook. Obviously, this has played havoc with my routine and I have been confined to my study most of the time.

A couple of months back when my wife and I were on an extended holiday in London, politics reared its ugly head in a so far peaceful household. Thanks to her superior designation, the cook had become the self-appointed head of the worker clan and she was also giving the general work orders. Somewhere down the line, the morning and evening maids seemed to have had a conflict-of-duties disagreement that simmered till our return. The morning domo who had her lunch at our place for the last two years also seemed to suddenly have developed a dislike for our cook’s creations and decided to eat at her afternoon employer’s house.

On returning, we could sense coolness in the overall atmosphere of our employees. Panicking at the situation, my wife followed an age old corporate formula and declared a ‘loyalty bonus’ to all of them, plus some gifts from London. Peace reigned after that.

That men in our family have problems with domestics also has a historical perspective. After my father retired from service and settled down in Mysore there was a need for a cook. Based on recommendation, an old lady came on board. Unfortunately, she happened to have served in my father’s household when he was still a youngster. She took this old connection rather seriously and made herself at home, including having her afternoon siesta on our drawing room couch. However, what bugged my father was her regular commentary to my mother about the episodes from his younger days. At an opportune moment he found a valid excuse and packed her off.

My wife is always on tenterhook when one of our staff will defect, as there is a big demand in our apartment complex and cases of poaching with enhanced lucre are quite common. Further, she may need to find a substitute for our morning maid who has recently got hitched to a guy whom she claims is a ‘parantha expert’.

In this nebulous situation, as the only male member in a household of seven, domestics included, the only loyal associate I have is my computer. Somehow we manage to go through the day.

Click.Buy.Pay.

I am in trouble. Deep trouble. I have been diagnosed with an incurable disease called ‘onlineshopitis’, and it is becoming worse day by day. But, this is not something that happened overnight.

As a teenager I used to see advertisements released by two correspondence course institutes in a well-known, but now defunct, weekly. Without bothering about the consequences I cut the enclosed coupons and posted it to the colleges. About ten days later the postman brought two big bundles containing the prospectus and application forms. A couple of weeks later a further letter came inquiring about my application. This continued for some more time with the institutes wanting to know whether the fees were too high and offering me a concession. By now I was in a blue funk expecting the authorities to land up at our door step. Luckily, the institutes soon gave up on me.

Soon after I got a job, I seemed to have got on the mailing list of a well-known monthly magazine. I started receiving direct mailers from them saying that I was in the shortlist to win sweepstakes worth crores of rupees. Who was I to fight fate. With the sight of currency notes floating in front of my eyes I subscribed to the magazine. Well, I presume someone somewhere must have won the sweepstakes, but definitely not I. But did I learn a lesson from this? Definitely not. Soon I subscribed to a weekly where I received a shoddy toolkit. Then another one where the promised bag looked nothing like in the picture. Now I am awaiting a car bottle cooler that also has a radio. Meanwhile there are a lot of unwanted magazines in my house.

The internet has been my final downfall. It makes things so easy. I discovered this well-known American online apparel store. I started by ordering a pair of suede shoes. Then another. Now I have a whole lot of them in different hues and textures. But my ultimate purchase is something called all-weather clogs. These will keep me in good stead in case of a snowfall in Bangalore.

Now my sights are on the Indian e-commerce sites. My purchases have made the owners attract mind-boggling valuations. I mean which self-respecting, red blooded individual will let go the opportunity to receive five shirts for only Rs.999/-, when the original cost was nearly Rs. 10,000?The shirts are still lying unused in my cupboard. Then there was this mobile phone for just Rs. 2500/- that was an ‘exact’ replica of that iconic brand named after a fruit. Our dustbin bears testimony to the early demise of that instrument.

Today, I am well-equipped to face any eventuality of a breakdown of equipment in our house. Wireless routers, mobile phones, cameras, watches, Bluetooth speakers. My latest discovery is this site that sells spectacles. They are even offering the first frame free. So under different identities I have hoodwinked them and ordered reading glasses, distance one and even tinted glasses. One should never be caught unawares without specs!

Is there a cure for my disease? Let me check it online.

Indians everywhere

My wife and I have been ensconced in London for the last one month bonding with our 3 years old grandson.He and I have been discussing various important issues in life.He in his pure Brit accent and I in my multi-city Indian style.But with all that,we do share a liking for one item which he must have inherited from my genes:curd rice.

I have come across people of Indian origin  living in places far away in the midst of alien culture.It is not just the IT professionals and people who went for their higher studies, but ones from all walks of life.All with just one aim,how to create a better life for themselves and their family.Tales of Indian labourers being taken to Malaysia,Fiji,South Africa and the Caribbean in the early 20th century are quite well- known but you will  find our countrymen in other parts of the world,too.

Last year when my wife and I were in Hong Kong,the doorman at our  hotel was a young Sikh from Moga in Punjab.His father- in-law had moved to mainland China 40 years back and wanted a son-in-law from his own community.Now this doorman and his wife work in the same hotel and speak in Punjabi with one another.At home their children speak only Mandarin and wonder why their parents speak in such a 'difficult' language.

In Mauritius we found that some parts of the capital seem to be transplanted from the villages of Bihar.Most of the staff in our hotel spoke Bhojpuri albeit with a bit of a French accent.Many people from there regularly visit India to trace their roots.One of my Bangalore golfing friend's relative ran away from Palghat in the 30s and ended up as a priest at an Indian temple there and married a local girl.So now my friend is on a mission to trace out his overseas relatives.

My colleagues and I were in Shanghai some years ago and were soon struggling with the food. To our dismay the local restaurants had no clue what Gobi Manchurian was! By accident we traced out  a modest Chettinad restaurant. It was like manna from heaven drinking hot garlic rasam.

In 2011 we had gone on a trip to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk in the UK.My daughter-in-law had made the hotel booking on the internet.It was a pretty well known one with a typical British name.When we went to register on our arrival we were surprised to find that it was owned by a Punjabi family that ran a popular chain of Chinese restaurants in Delhi.Further,the steward was a Malayali boy who originally came to Britain to study nursing.

One of the interesting offshoots of this migration is the phonetic adaptation of Indian names. So we have Naidoo,Ramgoolam,Coomarasamy,etc.Imagine, if I had been one of those immigrants my name would have been spelt Narine!

Influence peddlers

One of the problems most of us have is that we do not consider a direct method of achieving our goal. Instead, we look at taking an intermediary’s help to solve our problem. Recently, I had to get a long-pending file to be moved at one of the government departments. I was told it would be more effective if I went through ‘contacts’. Obviously,that would come with a price tag.

In the USA they have legitimatized this process by accepting the concept of “Lobbying”. In fact there is a lot of money to be made, hence we have many out-of-office  American politicians also getting on to the bandwagon.

I have been exposed to the concept of ‘contacts’ over several decades but it varied from city to city. Delhi is the ultimate city for this activity thanks to it being the seat of government. Everybody and his uncle claims to have influence with the powers to be. Even for the Republic Day parade, contacts are invoked to get a pass for stands closest to the saluting base. However, the ultimate recognition is when one gets invited to soirees at foreign embassies. One story my mother would relate was the time my father was invited for dinner at the American Embassy and she got to shake hands with the 6ft 8 in tall Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith.

Newspapers are full of stories of how senior bureaucrats and politicians refuse to vacate their sprawling bungalows in Lutyens Delhi.The fact is that there is a lot of 'effort' that needs to be put in to even get the allotment at that prime location in the first place

Hyderabad has a different ‘contact’ culture altogether. There it is either the politicians or the big business families. For some unknown reason I was thought to be influential within my organization so I  used to get calls from even Ministers requesting for jobs for their relatives. I asked one of my colleagues how one gets perceived as being influential. He gave a simple explanation. If I was standing next to my Chairman in our head office portico and I said something and he laughed, it was immediately construed that I was close to him. It is immaterial that the conversation may have been only regarding the quality of food in the cafeteria.

Bangalore has more an ‘I couldn’t care less’ culture. Thanks to the large migrant techie population, the need for any influence peddling becomes redundant except when some land sharks need rules changed for their pecuniary benefit. However, once a year there is a mad scramble to invoke past relationships and favours done. This is when signatures have to be collected for club membership application forms.

Now that I have retired I am off the radar for anyone wanting any help. Putting it another way,I think people know that there is no point in approaching me as I am no longer a ‘contact’.

I bet...

Recently I was observing the antics of two of our building kids. Obviously, even at the young age of eight they seem to be in a competitive mode. One of them said, “I bet I can run faster than you.” I am sure people would remember in their childhood how as a natural reaction they would come out with the words “I bet…”. “I bet I will get you out first ball. “I bet my handwriting is better than yours.”

Notwithstanding the brouhaha over match fixing, everyone has sometime or the other indulged in betting.

In our engineering college hostel, small time betting was a daily occurrence to while away our evenings. It could be on anything. We had a classmate, nicknamed Moshe who specialized in dismantling any piece of machinery. We would then have bets on how quickly he would assemble the item back again. Even then there would be some sort of skullduggery. One interested party secretly added a couple of extra components to a disassembled table fan. Poor Moshe went almost crazy wondering where to fit the extra elements. In the process the perpetrator of the crime made some money.

The other bet was on lighting every stick of a matchbox with one stroke each. It sounds easy but as the friction side of the box gets worn out the sweat starts forming on the face of the participants. In most cases the match ends with a matchstick sliding off the side without lighting up. Being from a middle-class government servant family my participation would be limited to that of a cheering spectator.

My earliest exposure to the sins of betting came from watching Hindi films of the sixties and seventies. Invariably, either the father or brother of the unfortunate heroine would lose his shirt at the Mahalakshmi race course and had to be bailed out by the hero. Thanks to an invitation from one of my friends I did get a chance to attend a derby in Bangalore some years back. I decided to be adventurous and put in a bit of money on one of the races. I had no clue on how to select the winner and decided to go by the attractiveness of the name. Unfortunately, Silver Streak did not really live up to its name and ended up last. That also ended my career as a punter.

PG Wodehouse had a whole list of characters who indulged in what would be described as ‘having a little flutter on the side”. My favourite was The Great Sermon Handicap where betting took place on the length of the sermon delivered by various vicars at village churches. The plot included all the ingredients of a horse race, including probable starters and handicaps and also inside information about the health of a ‘runner’.

The deep-rooted influence of betting at a tender age was brought home to me recently. While having lunch my four year and something old grand-daughter suddenly burst out, “I bet I can eat faster than you.” Touché.

Thank you,Hippocrates

One person who gets invariably intertwined throughout our life is a Doctor. The medical profession has come a long way since the days of Hippocrates. Today, thanks to swanky, hi-tech diagnostic centres no part of your body is immune from scrutiny. Unfortunately, a recent study states that doctors are increasingly treating lab readings instead of the patient. This is when you appreciate the role of a family GP.

At our GP’s clinic I used to enjoy watching his ‘compounder’ (alas a dying race) working. Based on the prescription he would reach out to various bottles on the shelf and crush the contents using a mortar and pestle. Finally, this would be poured into a standard bottle with a liquid agent. The compounder would then paste a strip of paper in a continuous diamond pattern to indicate the dosage. The end result would be a pinkish-red liquid which was referred to as ‘mixture’.

As a youngster I felt envious whenever I saw any friend with a hand or leg in cast after a fracture. There was something romantic about such an accident because it meant that the person was doing something ‘brave’. My envy would get compounded further when the cast was covered with autographs of friends and relatives.

My journey to become a potential doctor lasted all of two days. Toward the fag end of high school we could select Biology instead of Geography. With great expectation of one day wearing a stethoscope round my neck I enrolled for the former course. But I soon found out that studying Biology was no cakewalk. Further, I was put off by the sight of creepie crawlies in bottles of chloroform. I decided that learning about equinoxes and fjords was an easier option.

People have all sorts of reasons for preferring a particular doctor or hospital. My wife insisted on giving birth to our first child in the air force hospital on the old airport road. Her preference had nothing to do with anything medical; as a youngster she had loved the cutlets served there. Anyway, as her mother was the doctor who handled the child-birth, for me it was ‘free home delivery’.

An uncle of mine is a well-known paedritician. Naturally, both my sons were treated by him (free of charge!). He had a unique filing system. For every patient he had a sheet of paper with the name and date of birth. He would fill in the diagnosis during each visit. All the records would go into an old bag. He and I discussed several times about computerising the records but nothing progressed. Recently my son took his daughter to him for a check-up. Based on my son’s date of birth he waded in to the bag and took out his old record. It seemed that over 30 years back my son too had been referred to him for the same illness.

I go once a year for a review to a venerable old physician in Jayanagar who has a hospital in his name. His no-nonsense approach suits me perfectly.

A Madrasi in Lutyen’s Delhi

A few years back I saw a movie titled  “2 States”. A telling statement by the mother of the hero concerned the lifestyle difference between  North Indians and “Madrasi”( an all-encompassing word  used in the north to describe people from the south of the Vindhyas).It set me thinking about the life of a South Indian in the Delhi of the 1950s and 60s.

I lived in Delhi almost from my birth for over two decades. There was dichotomy in my life as at home it was pretty south indianish but rest of the time I was a typical Delhiwallah with all the brashness that came from dealing with the outside world. This behavior is still inherent in me in spite of having lived in Bangalore for several years. Just to give an example: A southerner will ask an autorickshaw driver whether he would ply to Hauz Khas. The driver will disdainfully ignore him. A Deliwallah will just get in and order the driver to take him to his destination.

The term ‘Madrasi’ has several origins. One of course is that most of South India came under the Madras Presidency in the British era. However, my research has a different take. Just after Independence there was a sudden requirement of clerical staff and officers at the central government. Thanks to their education, people from the south were in great demand. At that time the main train to Delhi from the south was the Grand Trunk express from Madras. So thousands of people arriving by that train began to be referred to as ‘Madrasi’. My father took a more exotic route and flew to Delhi by the night mail service Dakota that had a transit halt in Nagpur.

As it happens in most migrant population, Delhi ended up having sanghas representing each of the southern states. Our highlight was the monthly get together at the Delhi Karnataka Sangha. Once a year we had a Yakshagana performance. As a youngster I remember also seeing a special screening of Rajkumar’s ‘Bedara Kannappa”. But within the southern community there was subtle class differentiation. The ones in South Delhi claimed supposed superiority over the ones who settled in Karol Bagh.

Naturally, with more and more south Indians migrating to Delhi, availability of ‘our’ food became a priority. As usual the Keralites were the first to kick off and set up what were called ‘Nair messes’. These were a boon to bachelors. Then came the iconic Madras Hotel in Connaught Place. In spite of its name it was run by South Kanara Brahmins. Sunday morning breakfast was the wrong time to visit this restaurant as it would be full of north Indians who relished the sambar. A little more sophisticated place was the South India Boarding House/Sunny Coffee House also in Connaught Place. Of course, Karol Bagh had its own share of south Indian restaurants. Provisions were bought from Madras Stores on Baird Road.

Today, Delhi and surrounding suburbs are full of second or third generation ‘Madrasis’. They seemed to have blended pretty well with the locals.