toilets - precious as gold

You have to pay the price for everything - even for a pee. This morning when Meher and I landed at the hospital for our meditation session both of us "had to go". So Meher led me to this room on the second floor with an attached loo which we normally use during our visits. Till recently there was a patient staying there who used to not mind us using her bathroom but today the room was empty. Maybe the lady was discharged.

Anyway I went in and as I came out of the bathroom I heard the hospital ayah telling off Meher about our using the loo, and that she didn't want every Tom, Dick and Harry using it. Bathrooms are a real problem in India - possibly its worst feature. Clean loos are more difficult to find than gold. Meher started to pick a fight with this rather tall, hefty, officious woman in a white sari. I told her (Meher) to shut up and not to waste her energy. As we got into the lift to go downstairs to the playroom where we were to conduct the meditation, we could still hear the ayah ranting and raving away upstairs. Poor thing, she must have been having a bad day.

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The Movement for Peace and Justice (MPJ) is organising a morcha tomorrow against "rape, dowry and alcohol." Rape and dowry. OK. I can see that nobody would want to support things like that. But alcohol? How does it figure in the same category? Alcohol in reasonable quantities is not a bad thing. It can help you to relax, and it said to be good for the heart.

Alcohol abuse is quite something else. Wanting to ban alcohol per se is like wanting to ban sex - because sex is the cause of rapes. Or banning money because money is the root of the dowry problem. Why dont they just say they want to ban greed, violence and irresponsiblity? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. As if morchas are going to help bring about any change in society.

Thursday Massage

Uma Mary was here early in the morning to give me my weekly massage. What a habit! When Charmayne first suggested it a couple of years ago I wasn’t at all keen and kept fobbing her off. But C. insisted and Uma Mary bounced into our flat one morning and since then (predictably) I have got addicted to her weekly visits.

Uma is her real name and Mary is what her husband’s people call her. She is a Maharashtrian married to a Catholic from Madras. This is her second marriage. Earlier she was married to a Maharashtrian who died, leaving her with two daughters. Now she has two more kids, a son and daughter, by the second husband, who according to Charmayne wears a gold chain and leaves his shirt unbuttoned almost up to the waist. Apparently he didn’t like the two daughters by her former husband so she packed them off to boarding school. The older daughter is now married.

Uma Mary is incredibly cheerful and bouncy. You would hardly expect that from someone who lived in a slum till recently and whose home was razed to the ground by the police and utensils and a lot of her belongings simply confiscated. That was some months back and about the only time I saw her a bit down. Then with Charmayne’s help she and her family moved into a one bedroom flat in Nala Sopara, so I guess now she really has something to celebrate.

Lunch with Asha

Lunch with Asha yesterday. She came huffing and puffing about half an hour late, grumbling about having had to wait over an hour for the bus. Then she apologised for having brought only karela sabzi and chapatti for me for lunch from home, which I didn’t mind since I love the way she prepares karela.

We sat and ate, watching one of my favourite lunch time serials – “Bhabhi” which has recently been fast forwarded so that we are now watching what’s happening twenty years later. Bhabhi, a pretty young thing who still looks and behaves like she’s twenty five, specialises in “making eyes.” The best part is when she registers feelings like shock. Her eyes bulge to such an extent you feel they might drop right out of her head and start to roll on the floor. There was a lot of eye-popping in yesterday’s episode because Bhabi’s daughter is turned down by her husband-to-be, right in the middle of the wedding ceremony because this “bad woman” (I think she is his mother – I haven’t been watching the soap in the last couple of months) has told him that his fiancé is carrying another man’s child. (All false of course but nobody believes it).

After lunch we lay down a bit and chatted. Asha says the next couple of months are going to be very busy for her, what with several weddings ahead. Her sister’s daughter is getting married. How old is the daughter, I asked her. Twenty three, Asha said very authoritatively. I said, Oh. Then how old is your sister? Asha thought about that a bit. Around thirty, she replied.

So I say to her, then your sister must have had her daughter when she was seven years old. Asha finds that hilarious and says, no. No, possibly the sister is a bit older than that, so maybe she is around thirty five. OK, I say, so then your sister had her baby when she was twelve years old. Asha says, what the hell, how am I supposed to know how old she is? Thirty, thirty five, forty. It’s all the same to her. Asha only knows that she herself is definitely fifty two years old and she knows it because she was born the year her family and the entire village converted to Buddhism after Ambedkar’s speech. That was in 1953.

Horse back to Thane

Devesh enjoying his manchow soup

The road to Thane from this side of town is so full of potholes that you feel more like you’re jogging in a saddle than riding in your car. Bumpitty bumpitty bump bump. After swerving every which way to avoid hitting some biggies Raju finally got us to Cine Wonder on Godbunder Road where I was to meet Devesh and there he was, waving and grinning away as soon as he spotted us. Devesh is a friend who put together a very nice group towards the end of last year, for whom I conducted a series of sessions on "stillness and listening."

We had lunch at a restaurant called “Lemon” owned by a friend of his. It is a nice rustic place, open air and covered with a canopy (wonder how they manage with the rains!) Along one side is a row of alcoves furnished with low tables and mats on the floor. Very informal like. You can even get a hookah so D and I decided to try one. Apricot flavoured. It was much stronger for some reason than those I smoked in Turkey. The food was not bad – we ordered Chinese. (Okay, the usual Punjabi Chinese it was, Manchow soup, fried rice and Manchurian chicken).

The reason for my going to Thane was to meet Mahendra and his students. He was at the Sri Guru Akademy of Art. (Hope I got that right!) It was close to where we ate, about five minutes down the road in Hiranandani Estate. I expected a modest middle class venue but this one turned out to be real swanky, with shiny marble floors and I loved the nice clean toilets. What took me aback a bit were smiling garlanded portraits on every wall of old Sri Sri. I always get suspicious when I see portraits of smiling gurus. Guru stuff makes me suspicious anyway and the big smilers make me even more nervous than the normal looking ones. It’s like Big Brother is watching you – even if it is with a smile. And of course you know the smile is conditional …

About thirty odd students had turned up for Mahendra’s lecture and he was pissed off with them for not doing their homework, which was to observe and draw a window. Any window. A window in a car or a house or anywhere at all. About two out of the entire lot had done what they were supposed to, and we discussed their work.

After the lecture I wandered through some of the other rooms where art works by the students had been displayed, right from the eight and nine year olds to the adults. These are mainly students of Vijaya – Mahendra’s wife, who is also an artist. They were terrific. Especially the ones done by the youngsters. Very vibrant and colourful.

Mental Prisons

One more hospital visit with Meher. It is so sad to see the apathy which grips this country. The counsellor in charge (she likes to be called “Doctor” although I don’t think she is one!) was sitting on the bench with her patients languidly looking around her. She didn’t bother to greet me when I walked up to her. We were supposed to start the session at 10.30 but by 10.40 we still didn’t have the key to the playroom and half a dozen of us were hanging out listlessly in the little patch of garden outside the building. Finally the counsellor (who doesn’t seem at all interested in even knowing what our work is about, Meher’s and mine) sent us the key to the room with another doctor. (Maybe he really was a daakter, I don’t know. Well, they all wear white coats).

There were seven patients today and we worked with them for about an hour. Several of the ones who came last time have been discharged and there were two newcomers this morning who claimed they did not know why they were in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Two of the patients are there because they are drug addicts.

Meher told me that two of the patients D and S have been in the hospital for six months. Actually they have already been discharged but their families don’t want them back. So they continue to hang out in the hospital, in the chocolate brown hospital tunic, which makes them look a bit like convicts. The focus seems to be on medicating these guys to just about the level when they cease to be a nuisance to society. There is absolutely no interest in anything more positive than that, in helping them to develop as individuals.

Retreat in Marve

The guys

Returned after quite an in-depth journey with six others including Pankaj and Vijay, at Marve. The theme of our workshop occurred to me quite spontaneously a few days before we met and probably had to do with a sort of dissatisfaction I was experiencing in myself. The question I thought of exploring with the others was, what do we mean by “quality” and how does it relate to us? Quality, as in quality of life, quality of our relationships and so on. How do we experience it and do we really want it?

It is amazing how, at a deeper level most of us feel the same. By and large all of us agreed that quality rested on honesty, on being authentic. A difficult thing because honesty is often embarrassing, especially in view of the fact that we are always trying to please each other. We are not honest because we are afraid to “destroy” a relationship. We seldom realise the fact that by not being honest, the relationship anyway goes for a six. Either it results in conflict or it goes dead over a period of time. The battery runs out.

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Marve is great during the rains. It poured off and on while we were there, and I thought about July 26th and whether we would be stranded in getting back home. Meena, the cleaning woman told me, that during the time of the Big Rains, the whole area around the house was like a lake. There was water up to the top of the front steps and the garden was drowned under several feet of water.

Raju, our tried and trusted caterer whose shack is down the road, and who provides wholesome veg thalis for Rs. 30, had locked up shop the day we arrived. So that evening, Vijay, Pankaj, Ganesh and I made do with tomato and cheese sandwiches, Khichdi made with pure ghee, which Ganesh had brought along, prepared by his mother. And there were plenty of fruits. Panky painstakingly peeled the apples and pears and we ate those and small yellow bananas and chikoos. The hungry guys – Venky, Sharat and Sanju went out for dinner to a nearby restaurant and returned shrugging their shoulders. “It was okay,” they said though Sharat found the food terribly spicy.

Luckily Raju was back the next day so we were able to order Upma for breakfast. But our dinner failed to arrive. We had ordered for 8 PM and when there were no signs of it by nine, Panky and Ganesh drove down to see what was up. They found the cook and the odd job boy sitting in the shack, totally drunk. They had forgotten about cooking our dinner but were prepared to do it even at this late stage. “Just that we have to go to the bazaar to buy the veggies,” they apparently told Panky and G. So they returned empty handed and we ate the remainder of the khichdi and bread and cheese and tomatoes. Quite a healthy weekend on the whole. My stomach which had gone for a six the previous day returned quickly to normal.

A Cousin Visits

Caught up with my cousin Shiv yesterday. We sat out on the balcony of my grandmother’s flat in the evening, testing out a unique cocktail which Shiv mixed for us. (Shiv puts his heart and soul into experimenting with cocktails). So – hold your breath. This one had a gin base, a bit of kokum syrup, topped with pineapple juice and soda and I asked him to throw in a slit chilly into my glass. Hmmmm. Strange all right, but well, not bad.

We talked about a lot of things, about what his life has been like after he opted to retire a year ahead of time. Shiv is increasingly involved in community work in Bangalore and we both felt sorry about how city people are just not inclined towards community. I mean we talk of it longingly from time to time but the drive is lacking. Everybody lives in their own cocoon. We complain about the degenerating quality of life but are not much inclined to work towards it. One of the things I feel is, that we are not aware very much, of the basis for true community. The fact that community grows out of relationship. Where the energy and the feeling between people is right, something like community will bloom. So the fact that it is not happening surely means that we have to look at our connections with each other and why we are somehow …so blah … about everything, so bored with life, blasé, or running around like chickens with our heads cut off. (I used the word “we” for that last bit too although I’m not one of the headless chickens! But know plenty of them.)

Those of you haven’t met Shiv for a while might find him changed. I told him yesterday that I found him a lot more pleasant to be with, more energetic and alert than I have known him to be for years. He says his wife tells him the same thing.

Wednesday's Music Meditation

Sometimes, even when you’re in the midst of “lively company” you feel lonely. I’ve figured out that this happens when our basic feeling of loneliness is denied. So not only do you actually feel lonely but on top of that you have to try and prove that you are not and that you are having a good time. This was one of the topics I brought up at yesterday’s music med, which Meher and Charmayne attended. (The rest were either busy/indisposed/found it too much of a problem attending from far away).

What I reaslise is that even after being with each other in this group for two years (some of us know each other longer than that) we are not really able to be quiet with each other and need to fill up all available space with chatter. How tiresome. I don’t know how you guys feel, but it gets me down. In fact I realize that very few people are able to be still and at ease being still – not just sitting silently and fidgeting inwardly because they don’t know what to say. Among the few are the people I visited in the “Swiss community” this summer. It is so peaceful there and yet far from boring. You can say what you want to, and keep quiet when you wish and there is absolutely no need to prove anything. I can imagine that some people would feel uncomfortable with that sort of thing because they are so used to talking their heads off and silence makes them feel something is terribly wrong.

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A strange dream last night in which I find myself traveling with my grandmother, the way she was about, say thirty years ago. Active and fit. We are in France and at some point I’m up in a helicopter with Sushama (my friend in Delhi) and we’re hovering over a lot of islands in the middle of lakes, filled with chateaus and quaint houses. All the time I wonder what will happen if Sushama forgets how to operate the helicopter or we run out of fuel. At the same time I do want to get a closer look at what I see down below and as if she can read my thoughts Sushama does something to the engine whereby we simply hover in the air without moving forwards and I am fascinated at how she does it!

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Lalita ... Lalluji!

The phone rings. I'm in the middle of writing something and answer it with a bit of a grimace. "It's me, Lalita," says the voice at the other end and this announcement is followed by a long and merry giggle. "Lalita?" I'm about to say. "I don't know any Lalita!" Then it hits me.

Meher! So it turns out she had just read the piece about her (using a pseudonym) which I had posted on the basicindia site, in which I had described her breakdown and she wanted to tell me it was perfectly okay for me to use her real name. Well that makes it a lot easier for me and anyway you guys in the group knew it anyway.

In the coming weeks I am sure you will hear more about Meher's and my adventures at Masina Hospital (that is, if they allow us to continue our visits. You never know!) and how the music meditation turns out.

Immersion day!

Today is one of the big Ganpathi immersion days. This festival makes me so aggressive, the way it brings everything to a standstill for the entire period which is more than 10 days. The fridge, eg., at my grandmother’s has conked out and I know that nobody from the company (WHIRLPOOL!) is going to even come and look at it – those engineers are probably going to be sitting at home doing pooja. The sadistic part of me wants it to really pour this afternoon about the time the processions set off. Then everyone can have fun!

They make Ganpathis out of just about everything these days. Out of Glucose biscuits, aluminium vessels, out of sweetmeats and now I read that there’s an idol somewhere put together out of over 300 clocks! Anyway, it might sound sacrilegious but it seems such a waste to put those idols together and to then go and drown them in the sea or some lake.

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Read some stuff in the Times today that would definitely interest Sharat. It seems smokers can offset the damage done by smoking, to their lungs by swallowing 500mg of Vitamin C every day. (Listen Sharat, this was just for your amusement - I wouldn't really buy the theory!) Unfortunately there is no such antidote for the over consumption of alcohol.

Music for the mentally disturbed

I am apparently not the only one in Bombay who gets paranoid at the sight of gray skies. The July 26th episode seems to have really shaken up people in general. Now, if it rains for fifteen minutes, Raju, the driver asks if he can go home in case the roads get flooded. The last couple of days have been rather wet, though not overwhelmingly so. Yesterday I decided to visit Anuradha in Powai – a drive of at least an hour and a half from where I am, if not more, depending on the traffic.

Parvati, my grandmother’s maid, was most adamant about my not going, because of the drizzle. By noon it had cleared up though, and since this visit to Powai has been pending for months, I decided to set off. When I told Paru I was going anyway, she flapped her hands grumpily and responded in her usual "Mala nahin mahit" fashion. Then she ordered me to phone her as soon as I returned home, however late it might be, which I duly did. I think Parvati is now gradually taking Nalinima's place. She even phones in the morning to find out where I am and what I am doing!

Yesterday morning Meher and I conducted our first music meditation in the psychiatric ward of Masina hospital. Talk about organizational problems! Meher had spoken to the counsellor in charge who was supposed to be present. We had been offered the use of the play room downstairs, which Meher said would serve our purpose well. But when we got there, we discovered the counsellor was not going to be there after all (blame it on the rains!) and the nurse in charge refused to allow us into the play room because there were some older patients watching TV in there and according to Sister Mean Mind, only Parsees were allowed in this room.

So Meher and I finally decided to conduct the music med in the passage on the second floor, outside the ward. Yes, well. Imagine what that was like, with ward boys and nurses coming and going and shouting loudly and trays of tea and biscuits being transported upstairs and downstairs and people chatting or just gawking at us throughout. In spite of all that, the session went off well and we actually managed to introduce some stillness in the vicinity of our work!

Meher is really very good. I didn't do anything, just played the music and got the individuals to be still. She got them to dance and move. They respond very well to her. In the beginning they were shy and hardly moved but towards the end they really began to enjoy it.

Last night I think our cat Mishi, had a bad dream. She was lying as usual at the foot of my bed at night. At some point I woke up to hear her squeal and I sat up. She was looking around, rather sleepily. I stroked her and talked to her and after that she was quiet and went promptly back to sleep.

The ouch in life

There are a couple of things, the thought of which makes me really wince. 1) Visits to the dentist - and 2) what Asha calls "Payshuls". (Facials). Actually my present dentist is a good guy and can make even root canal work seem relatively painless. These days I sail through the normal check ups and cleaning. Still, I suppose the memory of all the hours spent as a kid and a young adult in the dentist's chair, not to mention a dentist with a Don Martin look bending over you, and working with old world instruments that looked like miniature scalpels, and having to spit out tons of blood every time you got the tartar scraped off your teeth is embedded in your brain cells and you cant help the "ouch" that involuntarily arises at the thought of your next appointment.

As for Payshuls. Sunita - Asha's daughter - came over to give me one this morning and for the umpteenth time I wondered why one needs to go through with all of it, with being kneaded and poked and having blackheads tweezed out of the side of your nose. But a couple of years ago when Sunita was a student at a beauty parlour at Kemps Corner, she would come and practise on me and in a way it's become a habit I suppose and I am getting used to the idea. At least when I am eighty seven years old I will be told by people that I dont look a day over eighty.

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Our post lunch conversation, Asha's and mine this afternoon: she asked me which side of her body her heart was. I told her. She said she supposed that if she ever felt pain in that region she ought to run to the doc. I said well, it could also be gas ("gase" according to Asha) but she wasn't buying it. There was this young man in the chawl, who lived in the room next door, she said. Recently, one night, he woke up with a pain in his chest, thought it was gase and rubbed some ointment all over his chest. The next day as he was standing in the post office queue to send a money order to the gaon, he collapsed on the floor, clutching fifteen hundred rupees and the money order form - and died.

"Well, of course," says Asha Bai, "if you have to die you have to die. If I really have to die I dont mind."

Rain - and last rites

Though I wasn’t here during the time of the Big Rains and the July flood, I have become slightly paranoid about the situation. Any hint of grey skies and even a little drizzle is apt to make me feel a bit panicky. I feel like cancelling appointments for the day and staying home, curled up with a book or with my computer. Beset by images of roads flooded neck deep with gutter water and open drains down which you could find yourself being sucked. Being drowned in your own car. Ugh.

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Vishnu recently mailed me saying he and Peg were coming to India in Feb and if I liked he could help me immerse Nalinima’s ashes. I told him I would have to consult Tukaram on that – deputy manager of flat no 11 Rewa Apts. (Mum’s the chief). When I asked Tuks he was delighted. Said it was the best thing that could happen, regarding my grandmother’s spiritual development. In other words it is good to have a son or grandson to immerse your ashes and conduct the last rites. (I got a glimpse at this point into the Indian mania for sons!) Women are not the same. Like they might be nice (eg me) but all they’re good for is to cook and bear and raise children etc. Considering I do none of that, I don’t know what Tuks really thinks of me. One thing is, he thinks I am terribly untidy and tells me my room is in an appalling state. Then we both agree that something should be done about it. This has been going on for a few years I guess.

Off to Vijay's place for lunch. Because of my internet connection being down the last few days I have been going there to check mail and it is a nice ritual involving ginger tea provided by Jagannath, and intermittent chatting with Vijay who when he is not talking to me is busy with the phone, hanging around in his pyjamas or shorts.

The internet has just come alive again but since we both settled on lunch I thought I would keep the appointment. Besides it is not raining!