Opportunity Cost is the Opportunity Lost

... so we were told in High School Economics class. How many times do we stop to ponder over foregone opportunities, wondering what may have been if we only had seized that moment back then? One consoles oneself later with matter-of-fact pop wisdom: What matters is what is and not what could have been, so essentially get on with life. Makes sense. Also it’s perhaps the only option when there are no certain answers and no ways to ever find out. But for all its worth, it helps to recognize when these moments of indecision and self-preserving restraint have indeed gotten the better of you, leaving you with little more than regret, self preservation and, yes . . . pop wisdom. You hope you’re more confident next time you’re in such a predicament and know better than to be too coy.

If only it truly always did work so. Here I am stuck in another should-I-shouldn’t-I situation, and time may well run out before I may do anything to address the dilemma.

One particular vacation a few years ago, when I was back in Delhi from university, and had gone out one evening with a friend for shopping in CP, a rather prominent incident took place. There I was doing my own thing, feeling cold, bent over a Janpath footpath and looking right, inspecting its display of ethni-kitsch wares. And then along came this fine gentleman. I smiled at him whole-heartedly all by instinct, and to my surprise he did too. He was in a dark blue shirt and despite the twilight reducing him to a little more than a silhouette, I could tell his striking features. And that million-watt smile! My head turned from light to left as he passed by me, and now with me still bent over, and he standing to my left looked me straight in the eye, stretched out his hand firmly and mumbled something like a name. Overcome by the suddenness of it all, I busied myself with a closer inspection of those embroideries, and then quickly looked in the other direction and called out to my friend…

What a rude snub it would seem if I were at the other end. I would feel shortchanged at the unrequited hand-stretch/name-mumble after somewhat initiating the thing myself with flirtatious smile. And here I was being a coy, timid self; smug in the security of not talking to strangers, equally unaware of the number of times later I would later wonder what if I’d only…

And now these days… On my first day of work at the current job, I was surprised at how huge the organization really was, how engrossed everyone was in his or her own worlds. I wouldn’t probably ever get to know anyone outside my immediate team, I deduced. On my first break from work that day as I was getting back from the quick walk in the Lodhi Gardens, there stood at the gate this gentleman we shall refer to as Doctor. Having just about seen him on the same floor as my office earlier in the day I recognized him and smiled. He returned the smile, introduced himself and asked about me. After a pleasantries-exchange, we walked off in different directions, me hoping that many more such conversations with this Tall-Dark-Handsome-with-disarming-smile Doctor would follow. Of course that’s the maximum we have ever spoken till date. I know his name, I know his department, I know where he lives. I have befriended the lady with whom he shares room at work, and subtly quizzed her about him. The impressions and pedigree don’t disappoint. I’ve used his desk while he was traveling (we’re allowed to if we don’t have an assigned place which I don’t). He’s meticulous, and works a lot I could gather, though his handwriting, telling from post-it reminders on his desk, could do with some improvement. On the days I have seen him at the office, I find some necessary work to visit the administrative section, which is right outside his room. Usually the door is shut and I hear perfectly enunciated words being spoken loudly, presumably over a faulty hotline connection to the international headquarters. On other occasions, he geekily stares through those reading glasses into his monitor, unaware of me being around, or notices me and offers a perfunctory smile/wave. Months have passed, we always say hello when we pass each other in the office, but not much else. I don’t know if he’s married or single, of a certain disposition or not, but even so, I’m a little nagged by my aloofness. My chatty self, which has otherwise lent much help in creating a social circle at work, beats me when it comes to him. I mean how hard is it to drop a quick “Hey! We haven’t really ever chatted, so was wondering if I could join you for lunch?” at the canteen? Or feign some official purpose to speak with him and after some convincing pretense-talk, unleash the chatty Cathy and see how he responds? It’s no undying crush, there are no great stakes involved, but increasingly I feel this uncharacteristic shyness has to go. If the previous instance left me with regret for not shaking that outstretched hand, I hope this doesn’t become a foregone opportunity to seize my turn to extend a hand.

No one may be counting, but the opportunity cost probably does add up sometime?

Happy Birthday Ms. Bhutto

“It was your great good fortune to be born on the longest day of the year, Pinkie; even the [military] regime couldn't make the sun set early on your birthday.”

Thirty long years since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said this to the then naive but still steel-willed Benazir who was only beginning to take up the cudgels against the military dictatorship that had by then imprisoned her father, and would go on to execute him and torment Benazir and her fold for long years thereafter. It’s June the 21st again, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s metaphoric prophecy seems eerily, ominously wrong.

And yet as a new sun hopes to rise again in Pakistan amid worrying premonitions of its many previous false dawns, the vacuum left by the celebrated and yet enigmatic Ms. Bhutto seems onerously hard to fill. On her 55th Birth Anniversary, I consciously refrain from pondering over what we may have lost in her death, but instead think about what she leaves us with.

It’s ironic that Pakistan’s greatest stalwart of representative democracy, was least representative of its larger demographics. Benazir belonged to a wealthy and respected aristocratic family in a largely poor, feudal country. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford in times when literacy rates posed a big challenge for her country, especially for women. Outspoken, candid and firm even as most women in Pakistan were still struggling for voice and an emergence from the purdah, Benazir seemed to be everything that the people she represented were not. Few characters in democratic history may claim such distinction.

This Daughter of Destiny was never a “goongi-gudiya” struggling to emerge from her deceased father’s shadows. With a mind and will of her own Benazir evolved her own leadership identity, consciously but never openly avoiding her father’s scathing and arrogant demeanour (remember he led his delegation out of the UN security council after its resolution on the 1970 Bangladesh War in a dramatic huff generating more heat than light). She instead brought words like reconciliation, dialogue and flexibility into her political lexicon. Reconciliation remained Benazir’s cherished ideal, and hauntingly her final memory, as the title of her last book released posthumously. While clearly seeking to extend her political agenda, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West gives a clear insight into issues close to Benazir’s heart: understanding, dialogue, democracy and the need for systematic reform of the current terms of political intervention by the West. With an astute academic as well as real-politik grasp of policy and strategic issues, friends, associates and supporters in power circles across the world, Benazir was able to situate her politics in the context of the larger forces and issues at work in the world at large, and engage with it in a kind of optimism, focus and drive unknown of most politicians globally.

When an enthusiastic Pervez Musharraf, serving then under Madam PM, narrated his grandiose plans of invading India from Kargil and capturing Srinagar, it was Benazir who struck the idea down, grilling the battle enthusiast right till she made clear that the plan was flawed and would be struck down by a condemnation at the UN Security Council asking for a unilateral withdrawal. Precious advice, which Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf himself could have later benefited from.

Towards India, despite being severely antagonistic and rhetorical during her second term as PM, Benazir was the original proponent of the idea of a South-Asian economic and cultural exchange block, introducing and ratifying the SAFTA, declaring support for the composite dialogue process being undertaken with India by the military government and recognizing the need for Indo-Pak dialogue not to be held hostage to specific sticking points. Much credit must go to BB for expanding the India-Pakistan agenda beyond the territorial dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. In the case of the Afghan mujahideen supported by Pakistan and the US to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Benazir had remarked to George H W Bush as early as 1989 that “ . . . [W]e have created a Frankenstein that will come back to haunt us”, long before the world community took notice of the threats lurking in the region. She had been on record in the Pakistani Parliament, as leader of the Opposition calling for the government to snap ties with the Taliban regime.

Foresight, statesmanship and courage apart, Benazir remained compromised in many ways. Her terms in office were marked by antagonism with the Presidency and Intelligence agencies who consistently sought her removal. Corruption charges tainted her image and that of her husband who spent 11 years in prison without any conviction. The albatross of those charges remained firmly around her neck well into her last triumphant return to the country where her confrontation with the regime was, as many claim, blunted by the need to cover up. Yet, as she would eloquently argue, the corruption charges were part of the larger propaganda to malign the Bhutto name to keep the PPP away from power. She often asked compellingly; after 11 long years, where is the conviction?

Despite my evident biases, it always surprised me how much Benazir would be slandered for not living up to an ideal scenario. The media-savvy BB probably allowed an encouraged a chance to defend herself and claim the moral high ground, I feel sometimes to her own slight disadvantage. While she was quizzed at every stage during her exile, Nawaz Sharif struck such a deal with the military regime which insulated him from the public glare, erasing memory and allowing him to position himself as a champion of democracy.

Her relevance to and importance in Pakistan’s current and future political environment cannot be over-emphasied in these precarious times. And yet, to the extent that her life of struggle, triumph and courage continues to push her agenda of moderation, reform and reconciliation, her contributions live on. One of Benazir’s last photographs taken before her assassination is strongly etched in my mind. Having delivered a fiery speech Benazir looked very happy, waving triumphantly at her supporters. Bright eyes, in a wizened, pale face. The world as she saw it from that final podium was steeped in fear, misery and insecurity. Yet one knew instinctively that Benazir remained undaunted, and that her eyes saw through the darkness to that new order which must come, and of which, she is the symbol.

Love Thy Neighbour

Witnessed a gruesome accident last night. Was walking back from a neighbour-friend’s jazz concert at one of our in-the-neighbourhood nightclubs, down one of our nicer, wider crescent colony lanes when we (another friend, a non-neighbour and I) spotted a couple trying to yank open their Santro with spatula, ruler and so on. Stopping to offer help, entirely by instinct and out of the goodness that shamelessly parades itself even when incompetence abounds (I have no clue about car mechanics and tricks), I make small talk with the young couple. Suddenly we heard a screech more animated than believable and I caught, in the corner of my eye, a silhouette being flung into the air and landing with a thud, muffled only by the amplified screech of a White Toyota Innova. A few seconds later it’s clear that someone’s been badly hit by the racing vehicle and the few people around at that time in the night collect around him. I send my friend to have a look, frustratingly conscious of my many episodes of fainting at the sight of others’ blood and injuries. While people rush out and collect around the injured watchman, I speak with one of the family members and talk about ambulances and distances to the nearest hospital. Private hospital we agree, and aunty (presumably mum to the young man in the couple) assures me all will be fine as they are a family of doctors, young man included and that “Uncle” will also go with him. Meanwhile friend reports that he is taken care of, is bleeding but there are people around and that the Innova driver has also stopped and is part of the (at)tending crowd. I use my phone to ring ambulance, unsuccessfully trying to ring the Fortis toll-free number, trying Max instead after that. Also make suggestions like “bring towels”, “get ice” and say a million silent prayers all the same. Friend whispers into my ear suggesting that we leave immediately as the guy is taken care of and this could be a police case and we’ll get involved unnecessarily. “NO”, I snap back at him, staring daggers, “This is where I live! You can leave if you want to, I’m going nowhere”.

Uncle ji rushes down (the family had been communicating with each other through the intercom at the gate), pulls out his own SUV and takes injured, culpable and young couple along. As they zoom away, I introduce myself to Aunty ji as someone living “just down the road Ma’am”, offer to leave my number with her to get in touch if she needs any help/ running around. “Nahin Rajé”, she reassures in indulgent Punjabi, “we’re all doctors and he’ll be fine. But thank you very much!” I half-smile, ask her name, and wish her and the rest of the family goodnight and walk homewards. Between the quick mumbling of prayers, mind wanders to my incompetence at these blood and gore situations and I feel sick at myself. Disappointed and shamed too. Am also cross with friend for suggesting the innocuous escape, and a little surprised by my immediate loyalty to the unknown doctor family’s watchman. “This is where I live”.

I love the location of my house. The area is among the nicer parts of Delhi, conveniently located and rather self-sufficient. Tree-lined boulevards criss-cross its length and breadth, and the inner lanes circumscribe rather beautiful and well-manicured ornamental parks. I brag to my friends about how I often wake up to the cooing of birds, and have had numerous sparrows and cats make our house their own. Our streets boast a variety of beautiful flowering trees: The Amaltas that marks the onset of summer, the Gulmohar weighing heavy in bloom all of autumn, the Raat-ki-rani shrubs that make the after-dinner walks such a joy, and the Jamun trees under which one always liked to crush fallen fruit on the walks back from school, looking back to see one’s purple trail.

Except for certain spells of living outside of Delhi, I’ve lived in this neighbourhood most of my life. Went to pre-school here, run by an enterprising, in fact revolutionary for the late 1980s American lady; where apart from A B C and token rhymes (mummy and papa taught me more than they did, and read me ALL fairytales by age 5!) we made pancakes in the park and vegetable block-prints in class, painted Easter eggs and saw magic shows and displays of a goat’s liver and heart and kidney (no swooning back then surprisingly). I had many friends my age in the few houses nearby, and we played all day. The greatest fun would be on Holi, when we joined forces to take on one “Tinku bhaiyya” and his cronies as far away as the other end of the street! My first confrontation with blood and gore was also here; when as a three-year-old I slipped on a neighbour’s staircase we were climbing to play with toys in “Bua ke ghar”. Neighbour uncle, brother to the Bua in question, was the only one to possess a car on the whole street and drove me to doctor’s as I cried my heart out in horror. After a hiatus of a few years (over which we lived in a few cities papa was posted in, brother was born and mum passed away) I returned and discovered the abundance of embassies in our area. Over the next few years I would walk into almost each of them, citing a school project and asking for “information on your country please” and hoping for glossy brochures, maps and flags. These would then be gladly showed to the teacher and students in class, and regardless of smirks that occasionally came my way, be treasured for what I then thought would be forever! The neighbourhood club bore witness to numerous mornings and afternoons of tennis and summer days that were spent in the club library and reading room, sheepishly completing holiday homework. The welfare association organized Holi, Diwali, Lohri and New Year’s get-togethers, to which I owe all my knowledge of North Indian festivals and customs. Later years would witness my stalking a semi-celebrity crush involving chasing him discreetly as he walked dog, writing him an 8-page letter and hiding outside his house till late hoping for him to arrive and see him picking up the letter. Of course, the mandatory walk through the neighbourhood on the day of the first monsoon showers in the city, wading through muddy ankle-deep water is an old tradition now, as is the Holi evening post-siesta and by-the-full-moon walk, inspecting the extent of pink and purple tinge on concrete drive-ways in different houses.

But I digress… So yes, back to, “This is where I live!”

The sense of almost personal concern for a fellow-inhabitant of the residential area, marginally more than what I’d certainly feel for humanity in general, caught even me by surprise. I believed that my sense of neighbourhood and community, if at all, is defined specifically by the people I have known personally and that the sharing of space is a fanciful myth in terms of its role in creating social identity. Well, in my rather snooty, snobbish and uptight neighbourhood at least. I remember distinctly the times we lived in smaller cities in apartment complexes. Everything was community and neighbourhood-centered: water and cable connections, Garba and Dandiya nights, dealing with the 1992-3 curfews, and mourning at Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. As children we found only great joy in finding all our neighbours just a shout away from our balconies. Birthday parties and Holi/Diwali brought us all together, and occasions like papa’s occasional promotions were announced by my delivering mithai to ALL the residents of the building complex. The women gathered every evening discussing their children, mothers-in-law, and whether or not to take “cable TV” while we chased frogs and girls away. Mummy’s death brought EVERY family of the entire residential complex to our house; and they genuinely offered all help, logistical and emotional that we needed to keep us from falling apart. My lasting memory of leaving our last small city lived in is when I looked out of the car and up when finally leaving to find everyone in their balconies looking down and waving at us. We came back to the Delhi house and the by-then hazy memories of our Delhi neighbours was soon refreshed and renewed. I came to Delhi not knowing a word of written Hindi (and very basic spoken), and our next-door Amma ji tutored me to near-perfection in Hindi vyaakaran over the next many years. I finally topped my school in the CBSE exams in Hindi, an accomplishment for which I owe much to Amma ji. She will always be an integral part of my childhood; least of all for the many hours I spent talking to her about her days at Allahabad University kavi sammelans with Bacchhan, or her long years of integrating into Delhi life as the city itself embraced its post-partition destiny. She served us aam ki chutney with as much energetic enthusiasm as with which she chased away marauding cats and scolded the water department officials for whimsically changing the water timings. Then there are close friends nearby: jazz musician alluded to in the beginning and journalist who inspired my trysts with blogging. Met them during Maths tuition classes in senior school, and a few years of scant communication aside, we now meet and chat and so on ever so often. There’s my first tennis mate (now quite the lawyer of town) into whose house I still walk for a glass of wine, National Geographic magazine, books, relationship advice, work frustration venting, small talk, dinner, rides to North Campus and occasional badhai mithai (not necessarily in that order). The familiar faces from the tennis courts, walking buddies, parents’ friends, the odd school/college friend and familiar strangers complete the sense of neighbourhood.

The familiarity of the space and its inhabitants though, seems increasingly as though it’s slipping away. Far from assembled audiences waving goodbyes from their balconies, the ivory-tower complex that the area is transforming into precludes much contact with or even knowledge of the next-door. I remember a rather flippant comment made by a neighbour-friend’s mum when I said that it’s a pity we don’t step out too much and it would be good to see more of their family in the neighbourhood that “This is what affluence does to you, isn’t it?” I hehe-d out of that situation, curbing the instinct to snap back, “No, it’s what you do to affluence”. As our brand of urbanization redefines space and community, life and living are changing in the process as well. As kaagaz-ki-kashti-baarish-ka-paani style nostalgic as this piece sounds thus far, I clarify; I don’t mean to be all apoplectic about the fall of social values and the decline of culture. The convenience of friends being a shout away wouldn’t strike me as much as the complete lack of privacy, were I to now live in an apartment complex with the neighbours’ balconies staring into my living space. I do not for a moment gloss over the inconvenience I felt on many occasions of receiving unsolicited advice and feedback from more hands-on neighbours, and for that reason and more, am glad that my exposure to such invasions is much lesser now. I was always annoyed at the neighbours in our Jaipur house who’d always peek from their kitchens to see who/what I was bringing home. The very legitimate qualms with the older forms of neighbourhood association must be acknowledged, especially because of the more liberating and independent and less subjugated and conformist values we eschew.

And yet, there is a very clear feeling of missing out on a sense of belonging and reaching out to someone other than one’s immediate friends and family. As the mithai plates stop exchanging hands across the partition munder (wall), Holi becomes a rain-dance-at-the-club affair and activity centres make way for toys at “Bua ke ghar” where Amma ji brought us aam ki chutney on hot summer mornings, there is a perceptible sense of loss all the same. While social networks may change form, their function may hopefully still remain intact. Our modern living allows us to break barriers of time and space in ways unimaginable to old school (my grandmother never saw her best friend Kamala she went swimming with at the Benaras-ghats after her marriage, while I’m stuck with faces I wished to have let gone of in my pending Facebook invitations). And yet, while we Skype with our migrant friends in foreign lands to get road directions in Delhi, we are hesitant to smile at the new face a few houses down, to the extent that it breeds serious insularity, if not complete distrust. Therein lies a possibility that I find far too alien and unfamiliar to our cultural psyche and that I am uneasy with. As we negotiate space and time in “modern living”, I wish we did so with a little more concern for those around, or at least taking some cognizance of them to begin with. There is, to my mind, a deep urge in all of us to reach out and surround ourselves with familiar and comforting company; and as much as new living breaks physical barriers to such company, it should not become an excuse to disregard the physical spaces and environments we inhabit. Immediately driving the injured watchman to the hospital was as reassuring as it (ideally) should be expected. Going the extra mile however, could for baby-steps, begin with a hello, an offer to carry some next-door aunty ji’s vegetable load from the Mother Dairy to her house as we lug back our own, or a joint petition against the felling of trees to widen the outer ring road, for the more utilitarian motive!

At a friend’s welome-back-to-civilisation (from the Andamans, after a year) party recently, as I sat around meekly witnessing the dance floor revelry, along came this set of green eyes in matching Anokhi block-printed short kurta. I looked again carefully, and yet ever so discreetly… quirky hairstyle I note, friendly manner; looks like he’s here alone, I deduce. I raise my perfectly-held-by-the-stem, white-wine glass, flash a half smile and immediately look away… be friendly but not too inviting, turns people off, especially Europeans, I remind myself. It was enough though; a few seconds later, I find tall man in short kurta next to my set of sofas, perhaps hoping to seem nonchalant. Smiles turn to pleasantries to disguise-discreet checking-out glances, and before I can say “manifestation”, we’re all comfy and chatty amid the loud echoes of a well-tapped-to Mauja hi mauja. Gentleman speaks in a clear, annoyingly un-accented English, like Tony Blair’s, with great eloquence; tells me he’s a dancer, and knows the host only briefly, and no one else in the room…yet, he adds, thoughtfully. Name gives away his French identity. “Vous-etes français?” I enquire in surprised anticipation. Reticent “Oui”. “D’accord! D’ou en France venez-vous?”, I carry on, hoping for more indulgence and some inquiry about how I speak the smattering of his language. I get neither, as I’m told in plain English, “Yes, I’m from such-and-such place, but have been in India for 15 years now so I’m not really connected”. How quaint, I think, reminding myself there may be more to talk to him about than the scanty displays of language I could put up on occasion. Sure enough, but a mild disappointment it was nonetheless; the snub more than his reluctance to speak French I suppose. Conversation moves to dancer-man’s trysts with academics (he has a PhD on Indian caste politics, after completing which he surrendered to the calling), broadway/bollywood gossip, the weather of late (I complain, he disagrees), anokhi and their block-print sourcing in Rajasthan and token mentions of my work, life and interests. Over dessert we swap numbers, and agree that it was “nice meeting you” and we should “definitely stay in touch”. I meant every word of it. The believed novelty of meeting “interesting people” by design, or friends playing cupid is no match to the comfort of conversation that one can strike by chance. Appreciative looks exchanged as we shake hands, the male equivalent of frivolous air-kisses.

A pity we didn’t tittle-tattle in French. Honestly, that was my second ulterior motive behind the enthusiastic interest. No, it’s not an Indian fascination for the white skin, just for some of the languages. Especially so, when the next morning there was this grand “test de passage”, a rite of passage disguised as an exam (you can study all you want, they’d ask you something you either didn’t know, or ought to have known anyway) and practiced French conversation skills could rid me of the guilt of ignoring the exam and tapping away to the nakara-nakara beats instead. So yes, foreign languages…German and Dutch etc are all ikht and tikht and tackth and isht and fenshter sounding words… such blood curdlers, I’d pass on them. Spanish… fascinating, but the last time I correctly pronounced “Chorizo”, a delectable sausage, succulent and spicy, I was accused of “speaking with a lisp dude”. Finnish, Norwegian, Flemish etc…. don’t cut ice; there must be at least as many speakers of a language as there are Delhites for it to be worth learning. Chinese, may have been a prospect was pursuing a China-based love-interest, but much water’s flown down the Hwang-Ho now. The Sorrow of China indeed.

So French it had to be, when I was contemplating choice of learning a language this time last year. Mind you, not by elimination alone, there were 3 long years in middle school spent in devoted study of the language, with keen attention to pronunciation, accent and idiosyncrasies from those early days (A joke went around in class about me correcting a classmate, “Its hrrrhh not rrrrrrhhh!”). And then there was this week-long visit to Paris mainly for the women’s semifinals matches at the French Open 2006, and a very hospitable, and even dearer friend to live with. Although I could still read and understand basic French, I couldn’t hold a conversation to save my life; imploringly instead inquiring, replete with American twang, “Paarlay Aaahng-lay?” Dismissive, or even pitiful glances from some of the snootier Parisians made me trade in the twang for sheepish smiles, and firmed the resolve to return to the language, when time permitted.

May 2007: heartbreak, accident and general boredom with (the now previous) job precipitated the need for a new life plan. The new improved me went into overdrive; driving lessons, neo-liberal Bhagwad Geeta study group in Def Col (incidentally under Parisian friend’s half-French mother’s tutelage), tennis with a vengeance, extra research moonlighting for a former Prof, more academic research/writing/field trips in the hill villages, periodic therapeutic shopping, and yes, French classes. The regularity of classes reestablished familiarity. It’s been pure indulgence; to see yourself struggling to construct a simple sentence to the effect of “Sorry madam, I don’t have anymore of these (say, tomatoes)” (Je suis desolée madame, je n’en ai plus) after spending a long day making sense of regression coefficients and the most esoteric “Econometrica” journal article (more like not making sense of…, but spending the day trying to at least). Intellectual snobbery apart, it truly is refreshing to keep the mind working and active in more ways than one or two (analyzing economic interrelationships graphically and armchair agony aunty-ing oneself for example). I once heard of this Finnish woman who spent the first 2 years after retirement learning Japanese and then the third living all over Japan, using the previous two to full effect. Even if that’s a fable, it’s the kind of myth you’d want to be inspired by… such zeal and drive at the ripe Scandinavian retirement age. What’s my excuse? So trot away I do, even on weekend early mornings in rickety auto to Lodhi Road, without much complaining, and instead replying to bemused questioners, that waking up early actually extends your weekends. It truly does.

The intellectual snobbishness of juxtaposing sentence construction with regression analysis apart, there’s great joy. You get half-insights into lives of people you’d otherwise not know. One of the “coolest” people I have met and befriended is a 14-year-old classmate: phenomenal maturity, quirkiness and appetite (literally, not for the zest of life kind of things alone, but equally for the bruschetta-types at the Big Chill). There have been dentist/ chemistry teacher/ English teacher/ BPO employee/ fashion merchandising house employee/ fellow development scribe unified in their aim to learn French: a desired immigration to the land of milk and maple. Then there was this (cheerful, almost chirpy) government department scribe-type who put me on the bus to Dilli Haat on one occasion, and insisted I start taking buses as the autos would “eat up your whole salary”. The teachers are noteworthy too, friendly always, quirky often, inspiring on occassion. This south Indian lady (a neighbour too, we discovered eventually) displays typical dignified simplicity, and has the most stunning handloom sarees collection. Regaled us with stories of how rickshaw drivers/pullers in Pondicherry were puzzled when she spoke with them in French instead of the Tamizh they expected from a dharmavaram cotton/ kanjevaram silk and big bhottu-sporting amma. That’s for the small talk. The classes have also helped bring Bruni-Sarkozy tales closer home while the assignments helped name Alain Delon and understand Cézanne. Moreover, it’s been a humbling experience to see that confusion at conjugations and tenses can often be enough that two people can share in common to be friends, and that all your other theories of compatibility and common interests and common emotional patterns may not amount to very much.

I’m only at an elementary level, and cannot speak of how knowing French has opened a whole new world to me. But to the extent that the rigmarole of life currently allows, it does wipe some spots on the window. Roland Garros has never been the same for me since first having been there, and this year would make it special on another count: I’d hope to understand more than just the scores being announced! There of course, always is the possibility of a tête-à-tête over hushed conversations, that won’t even make the dinner-table candle flicker, instead festoon the ambience with flirtatious jibes and heartfelt but measured laughter, with words like “magnifique”, “amour” and “coup de foudre” being thrown around like confetti at the Elysees1 on July the 14th… unless of course the person in question may still prefer the Queen’s language!

Sentiments and Smiles Long Overdue . . .

… So went the dedication on the book, scribbled hurriedly during the long, but thankfully air-conditioned taxi ride to Faridabad; assorted pastries, books and (concerned) grimace in tow. Meeting people on their return home after a most unexpected hospital tryst (severe cigarette-induced-asthma-induced uneasiness) can be as unnerving as it may initially seem relieving (seeing people AT the hospital instead calls for feigning a braver façade). The patient being an old flame/flicker makes extra demands on composure and dignity; you have to make sure you seem neither too distant nor too vested, concerned and not paranoid; friendly, but not too familiar. For the long months that Atlas Shrugged sat pretty on my bookshelf, waiting to be added to the Ayn Rand-obsessed ex’s collection; I wondered if I indulged him too much. An off-the-cuff mention of his fascination for the Fountainhead, and off I went picking the next in the Rand collection, determined to pass it on to him as testimony of (the times of) my pure joy at his presence in my life, even as he changed status from (ambiguously) potential/prospective/current to (unequivocally) “ex”. It was our first planned meeting since the telephone breakup two years ago, and the opportunity to finally pass on the fondly picked-up book didn’t in any way lessen the concern at this latest deterioration in health.

Fortunately, he was in much better condition than I had imagined (he’d shaved earlier in the day, and I certainly had as well), leaving little to inquire about medicine courses, the recovery regimen and so on. Small talk ensued . . . some salvation something party, haircuts in Delhi salons, facebook photographs, Istanbul, the Delhi – Faridabad commute . . . The high-maintenance pet forced digressions from time to time. With a dog like that who needs a cat, I muttered under my breath, surprisingly to no offence taken. Between the half-smiles and generous servings of cut fruit and jeera-sprinkled nimbu-pani, I made myself at home. Is a knee on the bed too familiar, or should I sit straight and very “I-have-only-come-to-inquire-about-your-health”? Knee is ok, I decide, suddenly feeling less uptight. Am tempted to help myself to the get-well-soon chocolate I brought him, but desist.

Short visit it had to be, and when his friends who called were told that he was “busy with people who have come over to see me only” and therefore couldn’t “meet before late in the night dude”, I sensed it was time to leave. Exchanging pleasantries and half hugs (fearful that my Punjabi hug-instinct doesn’t get the better of a recovering, feeble body), I made a dash for the taxi.

The long drive back home was spent in sombre contemplation of the months spent waiting and hoping for a full-circle moment, when walls would break and faith be reposed. Is the archetype of the respected and “good friends now” ex a self-indulgent fabrication? Are the causes that brought about the end of a bond once shared and cherished ever sandpapered away, enough to establish a new sense of normality? Does caution linger on after heartbreak and an unfed ego, much like antibodies do after a draining viral attack?

I thought about the long month of recovery following my road accident outside Jaipur this time last year, much of which was spent wondering if the ex’s perfunctory-seeming (seeming = give him benefit of doubt) chat-window enquiry of my health would be followed with a more personal phone call? Was this my moment of benevolent retribution? Of demonstrable magnanimity?

Truth be told, my lasting impression of this meeting remains the first sight of him walking to receive me at his gate, reassuring that he is well, and shall recover soon. The relief I felt then, and the detached anger later at seeing him scramble for cigarettes in his bag confirms that my intentions, in a very convoluted way, were pure. Was I overboard with attention/affection/get-well-soon mementos when their absence wouldn’t arguably being noticed? After all, magnanimity can go full circle, and sometimes lead you to question if it is prompted by pettiness. I don’t know if my gesture was too strong or unnecessary, but anything less would seem too contrived and curbed. Restraint has been a problem area for me, I’ve been told; but I wonder why to make exceptions in behavior for those relationships that leave me more high-strung than others? Perhaps for a rational self-preservation self-interest; or simply because I am capable of it; or even because tweaking one’s natural behaviour for someone else is sometimes less about ceding ground as it is about accommodating? But that, for another day.

Regardless of what he may have made of the “with smiles and sentiments long overdue” dedication in the book (to stroke his ego with impressions of my lingering and unexplained fondness for him), unlike the Atlas on the cover, I surely felt a great burden off my shoulders. It wasn’t the book, so much as the power ceded to him to affirm or reject, which is the bigger burden I have found to have let gone of. When that attachment is chiseled away, the disappointments don’t matter; and neither do the strands of vindication. Good sense and pure instinct prevail, and to the extent that they are not strained by over-examining, life goes on.

Khuda ke Liye . . . In the Name of God

The auspicious beginning, the shubharamabha (my sanskrit's been brushed up since returning from Orissa!), with the name of God, indeed in the Name of God.

I wonder if it was the appeal of something as exotic as a Pakistani film (most we're told are bad, but I've always liked Pakistani plays we'd watch on video cassettes rented from the "video parlours" as they were called back in the day) or its theme of the clash of moderate and extremist versions of Islam that caught my attention. Filled with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the cinema halls, I coaxed and cajoled the (whom I thought to be) faithful for company, only to encounter apathy and disinterest. Finally, a more pliant friend agreed, so off I went to the Patel Nagar Satyam Cinema, deliberately trying to find the auto ride novel, brushing off traces of last years memories of daily trips to those Ridge-lined parts of town.

Awful acting, a melodrama of extreme happenings, almost deliberate irony and a porous story line, Khuda Ke Liye still manages to disturb and confront all at once. A story that brings together the mixed realities of the Pakistan that stretches from Lahore to London, and New York to the NWFP, through the geographical setting of the lives it chronicles and caricatures underlines the complexities of understanding this country as its stands today. By attempting to spread the canvas wide enough to capture them all, Khuda Ke Liye immediately forces the outsider to look in not at the image that suits him best to associate with, but the entirety of a society coming to grips with its situation in a vortex of contradictions; on a terrain marked by the fault lines demarcating moderation and extremism. Where the movie disappoints is in its treatment of the two, failing to talk about the complexities, and what makes one traverse the buffer space between the two realms. One sees the younger brother's tilt towards the more extremist and militant manifestation of Islam, without even the slightest insight into what caused an otherwise yuppie musician to seek acceptance and validation in dogma. On the other hand, a most exceptional circumstance is created to show how moderate Muslims, as the older Mansoor represents, bear the brutal brunt of stereotyping and prejudice. Skewed patriarchy is shown to magnify itself in the micro-culture mentality, demonstrating the simultaneous westernisation and fossilization of the country's Diaspora. The valiant defense of moderation in Islam and its compatibility with modern times and its freedoms seems text-bookish, trite and undeserving of the eye-opener value it was shown, and certainly hoped to create. Haven't we heard the moderate middle pronouncements too often to believe them by now, forgive our prejudices and focus instead on what keeps them alive? Isn't there too much of an almost apologetic justification, and very little confrontation of the larger forces and issues that sustain a militant order in the name of God?

The eloquent Naseruddin Shah may have at best well-researched and aptly referenced his rebuttal of fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, but is there anything new in what he says? Haven't our long-standing shared traditions of Sufism, interviews of Benazir and the mumblings of the Pakistani intelligentsia time and again established not the case, but the fact of Islam's liberal outlook? The film fails, again, to focus on the causes for the survival of those who preside over a system that keeps the extremist lobby alive, active and accommodated. This is in fact again conveniently (and of course correctly in part) deflected to the America-sponsored arming of the Afghan Mujahideen to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The film refuses to draw attention to the politics that create space for the extremist forces to rule the roost. Surely enough the censor sword, if not a bullet… oops sun-roof wound is potential threat enough to anyone who seeks to tread this space!

The film has its gripping moments. The baseless and open-ended persecution of Mansoor by American intelligence agents, however extreme an example, compelled you to question the preoccupation with America as the fitting democratic model one must aspire to be. The interrogating officer's mocking Mansoor for having the temerity to suggest he could only read but not understand Arabic (a fact very understandable and known to many of us with close enough exposure to sub-continental Muslim cultural practice) came to me as a poignant reminder of the west's occasional inability to comprehend matters outside their familiar rationality. The contradictions of assimilating in a foreign culture while still hoping to keep the umbilical cord intact are no more stark than when the young Sarmad says that his (Lahore-based) parents would never consent to his deceitful marriage with his cousin (ensured to maintain her purity as a Muslim, lest she marry her British Christian lover) which he had hatched along with his Londoner uncle. The instant and matter-of-fact suggestion of the Pashtun women to let Mariam run away when the men were gone, knowing (unlike the obstinate menfolk) that she was not cut out for their kind of life, nor could come around to, was as amusing as unexpected. On a lighter note, the musician brothers, through their jamming and their songs reminded me why on many a long night spent in cold England, the Karachi crowd was often much more engaging,and entertaining than some Bombay bores, for instance ;-)