We Are Like That Only

A month back, Uncle G was visiting with us. Uncle G is Appa’s ( late FIL) brother, who has settled down in the US. He had flown down on hearing about his elder brother’s demise. He is the same uncle whom I have referred to in my ‘Kick-starting on Self Motivation’ blog. Yes, the one who derisively hooted with laughter when I claimed to cover 3 laps of the park in 45 minutes; he did 7 rounds in an hour.


Uncle G has settled down in the US and I don’t think he will ever return to India except on brief visits. His family is there, they have all become American citizens and Indian roots are slowly being snipped off. In fact, though there are still a few helixes and coils of ‘Indian-ness’ (politically, he is a staunch conservative) in his DNA, it is pure ‘American-ness’ that courses freely through his blood.

While we were talking about the people who frequent the park, he remarked that people in BDVT are so unfriendly… they do not smile at strangers, they do not greet ‘fellow –walkers’… why they hardly recognize the regulars or acknowledge their presence.

“ Why can’t they smile at one another or greet a person whom they have seen frequenting the park’s pathway, every day?” he asked. Back home (Virginia) perfect strangers smile at you and greet you with a cheery ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Good Evening’ as you meet them on the way.

He had a point there. Folks at Bhadravathi can hardly be termed overly friendly. Their way of saying Good Morning is, “Coffee Aayitha?” or Thindi Aayithaa? Or Ootta Aayitha? ( Have you had coffee? Have you had breakfast/ Have you had lunch?)

I have noticed this too. Very few people smile at you when you smile at them. Even ladies look at you with a suspicious stare when you smile at them. In my 2 months of morning walks only 3 or 4 people acknowledge my existence. One, an old gentleman, Appa’s (Late FIL) acquaintance, another, a student of S. Aunty (S Aunty teaches music ), and then a lady who thought I was some officer in some govt. office or private institution who asked me to get her a job as an ayah…( whose smiles are waning after not getting the right response from me!) That was about all. And to think the park teems with 2 to 3 dozens of the denizens of Bhadravathi.

It is not that bonhomie and camaraderie are extinct hereabouts. There are coteries and twosomes who exchange gossip and debate issues even as they pant and palpitate their way around the park’s worn path. But I guess it as difficult to enter their fold as it is to get a membership in the country club.

Somehow, Uncle G’s words mad me feel that I live in the outbacks where civilization is yet to dawn and I decided to do my bit to bring about a sea-change. I am going to be the quintessential jovial walker who is going to flash friendly smiles at all those compatriots of the early hours, till it becomes second nature to everyone to smile at everyone else, I told myself.

So the next morning, I fitted some billion dollar smiles ( like all those genial Americans in Virginia who smile at Uncle G) inside my cheeks and got ready to flash it at the unsuspecting multitudes in the park.

First, I smiled at the short lady in pink sweater and red scarf who stared dourly at me. One billion wasted. Next I smiled at two gentlemen who were walking towards me very busily talking about somebody in some office…who ignored my beaming face - another billion dollar smile wasted.

There was that tall gentleman with the Vodafone pooch that stakes his claim of every tree by peeing religiously at their stumps… Since I would have to crane my neck up skywards to smile at the guy, I smiled at the pooch instead… (Perfect logic, for when you smile at a baby, the mother will smile back at you…) but I need not have wasted another of my precious smiles. The man ignored me and pooch the snootily hoisted its hind leg and went about its business. I hurried along.

A man and his wife were hurtling towards me… I smiled at them and the man smiled back, but as soon as I passed them, I heard her hiss, “Who is she? Do you know her?” I suppose they were still arguing about me by the time I passed them the next time, because he looked the other way.

Then came a tallish gentleman…around my age. I was, by now toting just a million dollar smile, having lost millions in futile investments earlier. So at eye contact, I gave a half a million dollar smile and got one big smile in return. Aaaaah! Welcome Civilization! I thought. Then I realized that it takes patience to cut through the tough veneer of people. Like Robert Bruce, I had to try, try, try again, if at first I didn’t succeed. During my third lap, (817mx3) I saw the same gentleman approach me. Before I could radiate my countenance with a smile he flashed a set of 32 at me and murmured something… “Good morning to you too,” I muttered as an after thought after he had passed by. One friendly soul, I thought.

During my last lap ( 817m x 4) , I saw the guy walk towards me and I was poised to smile at him again… when…

HE WINKED AT ME! THEN FOLLOWED A LASCIVIOUS SMILE AND ANOTHER WINK!

I quickly swallowed the leftover millions of dollars worth smiles. “Idiot!” I muttered to myself.So much for my attempts at being friendly! Did I get across some wrong message to him? Did I actually see what I saw? Did he actually wink? And that smile… it was definitely not the kind of friendly smile I expected… How do I know? Come on… a woman knows… And this woman certainly doesn’t like such business.

Now, I whenever I see the man approach me ( I walk in the clockwise direction and he in the anticlockwise), I stare stonily ahead…carefully wiping any trace of smile from my face.

I am just like all the other residents of BDVT now, minding my own business as I walk briskly, not even smiling at the cows and dogs who loll about, watching the mad humans go round and round, huffing and puffing.

Next time Uncle G asks me why we don’t walk an’ talk… or smile or greet one another, I’ll tell him, “ We are like that only!”

Kick Starting On Self Motivation

I am one of those rare creatures whom God created without certain genes… like, those genes for being enterprising, for taking initiative and for self motivation. When He created me, he filled my blood with a lot of ambition but forgot to supplement that with drive. He fitted my eyelids with a microscopic ‘dream machine’ that churns out dream after dream after dream whenever I blink but he forgot to connect that machine to that part of my brain which will activate the right enzyme that will help me realize those dreams. So I have lived on this earth for almost half a century with lots of ideas and thoughts and plans that die a premature death inside me and leaving a graveyard of dead ‘what could have been’s inside me.


The death in the family and my subsequent relocation to ‘nowhere-land’ has forced me to at least rebel against His grand scheme for me on this earth! I decided to connect my dream machine to my brain and realize my dreams one by one…


Project one is whittling away all those layers of adipose that have gathered around me in a ‘waistful’ manner! Unwarranted and unintentionally unkind observations of kith and kin may have induced me to take this drastic step…. May be subconsciously I am trying to pay homage to the memory of my Appa who always, rather kindly, used to tell me ‘reduce or you will face the music’… maybe I am trying to just pass Time which crawls like a snail that has undergone knee replacement surgery…. Whatever the ignoble reason, I have started walking…


Whoever invented the euphemism ‘kickstart’ had me in mind, I suppose. Every morning I kick myself mentally out of bed, kick myself into donning my walking shoes and kick myself into climbing down the steps and out of the house towards the park in Bhadravathi which has a worn out walker’s pathway which is 817m long. Initially I trudged along half asleep while men and women decades older, briskly overtook me. After a couple of days, shame started coursing through my veins and I made my steps brisker to at least keep up with all those geriatric folk who seemed to throw scornful sidelong glances at my sedate pace as they overtook me.


With each round, I’d mentally calculate 817m X 2 = Enough For the Day…. And then it became, one fine day, 817m X3 in ½ hour = A lot of sweat , stiff calf muscles, a little palpitation and a lot of satisfaction.


But my arch enemy at home continued to jeer at me…The weighing Scale refused to acknowledge the buckets of sweat that flowed off my body, or minus it from my (colossal) weight. My BMI ( Bloody Massive Index) remained loyal to me. A very frank uncle hooted with derisive laughter when I told him I walk 3 laps of the park. He did 7 rounds in an hour… Just like all those oldies in the park…I consoled myself … retired… with nothing to do… So what are you? My conscience asked me. You don’t work… You have nothing to do… I had to concede defeat to such logic that slapped me on the face! I decided to add more laps to my morning rounds.


Easier said than done! The day after I decided that, I went for my customary walk. Waking up and donning the shoes have become robotic and routine, but the moment the third lap got over the legs automatically turned towards the turnstile at the entrance of the park. I could not even coax it back to another lap. The next day, I was armed to teeth ( to my throat) to fight this urge to quit. I had to forget my loser legs and the whimpering they do when I finish my third round. I decided to drown that whimper in music.


Now I can imagine the shock the public would get if I broke into a song while palpitating and panting. So I decided to have a mental Anthakshari session. When I started the third round, I’d start thinking of a song and then challenge myself to continue the game… Voila! Success… at the end of the third 817meters, my legs forgot all about exhaustion and Hurray! I did a 4th round. I didn’t want to push my luck and called it quits after 4.

The next day, I started chanting all the prayers instead of musing on the gait and mannerisms of fellow walkers from the first lap itself. But by the third lap, I was out of stock, in addition to being out of breath. I also realized then that my steps had quickened with the speed of my renditions. Now one can not dawdle while reciting ‘Aiyigiri Nandini’. Probably, it made me march brisker than normal. I hadn’t noticed the change in my pace due to my concentrating on getting the verses in the correct order. The same with Vishnu Sahasranamam…a la M.S. mode ( is there any other kind for a Tam-Brahm???) The problem with Sahasranamam is, I need a cue at certain points or I would end up chanting some verse that I have already chanted…. Or skip a few dozen namams here and there… my version ending up with a ‘satam’ or ‘dvisatam’ less than ‘sahasram’!

I decided to brush up again at home to jog ( no pun intended) my memory… But my prayers would come for only 2 and ½ rounds and in order to keep my legs entertained and preoccupied, I returned to my Anthakshari games… when the reservoir of slokas ran dry.

But I noticed one thing, Everyday, I would start with an old Raj Kapoor -Vyjayanthimala song “ Bikhraake Zulfein Chaman me na jaana”. I have not yet analyzed why.

When ordinary anthakshari became monotonous, I started with a tougher version. Instead of sounds, I had to start with the last word of the ending line…. This kept me active for a week. Next I started singing ( in my mind) duets. First a Raj Kapoor – Vyjayanthimala number ( you guessed right…Bhikhraake Zulfein…) then a song pictured on either R K or Vyjayanthimala with others … say, RK and Mala Sinha…then Mala Sinha- Manoj Kumar… so on and so forth!

Soon I tired of that I tried playing in vernacular, but I got stuck even before I did 50 meters… I am terribly out of touch with Malayalam and Tamil film songs…

I started thinking of my blogs and tried to think of and store ideas that would inspire me to return to active blogging…. But no….Bhikhraka Zulfein would intrude and there would be nothing but static when I tried to tune in to ‘Vividh Blogathi’ …

Though I am far…far… far from slim waist and hourglass figure….and still sport a ‘family pack’….and am still mad at my weighing scale for being uncharacteristically stubborn with me… and frown at my Mirror as it makes me look XXX large… and though my BMI is still stuck between ‘Overweight’ and ‘Obese’… I see a silver lining in this particular dark cloud!
I have started enjoying my morning walk!

Now all I have to do is persuade my brain to send the right signals to my legs when I increase my duration of morning walk! When? Soon…Soon… Let me memorize my Vishnu Sahasranamam once more and recall all the old Yesudas, P. Susheela and S. Janaki numbers I used to sing when I was young… and thin!