Confessions of an unfaithful spouse

Advertising was my childhood sweetheart.

I’ve known her since I was a kid. She would always be around, either singing “Tandurusti ki raksha karta hai Lifebuoy” and “Happy days are here again, Thums Up, Thums Up”, or saying things like “Bhala uski kameez meri kameez se safed kaise” and “Coldarin li?”, or cracking puns with the Air India maharajah and the Amul girl.

I was quite fond of her then. But I only began to grow close to her when I hit my teens and discovered her again in the pages of magazines. She would look very pretty, sitting coyly in between pages full of words, beckoning me to get to know her more.  I started noticing the little things about her, that tiny key number just below the hemline of her skirt, those exotic Indian words she used to spout like Ulka and Chaitra and Trikaya.

I tried to resist her charms. She was flirty, quirky, alluring. Not the kind of girl you introduced to your parents. And my parents were keen I pair up with this other chick called Engineering. (To please them, I even went out with her for a few years. We were very stiff, very awkward with each other. Despite the years we spent together, I never got to know her well. When I finally decided to break up with her, I felt a surge of relief.)

Meanwhile, Advertising and I continued to meet behind Engineering’s back. Her songs were more seductive now. “How are things with you? Do I see a welcome in your smile?” “Mile sur mera tumhara.” “Hamara kal, hamara aaj.” She was persistent in her pursuit. And so, much against my parents’ wishes, who after my break-up with Engineering wanted me to get into a match with MBA, I got married to Advertising.

Seven years later, I fell out of love with Advertising.

Around the time I fell in love with Advertising, there was this other girl at the periphery of my vision – FTII. There was something attractive about her, but also something forbidding. She was artistic, creative, philosophical – and way out of my league. I felt inadequate and never approached her, though I desperately wanted to. I feared being rebuffed. Her rejection would be devastating.

But the years I had spent with Advertising emboldened me to seek her out. I asked, and she accepted. An intense, all-consuming relationship ensued. It was fraught with long periods of self-doubt, introspection and self-discovery. And short bursts of exhilaration and ecstasy.

She made me a better man.

But all good things have to come to an end, and so it was with me and FTII. We parted, but it was amicable. We still remain good friends.

The affair left me drained, and for succour, I returned to Advertising, like a philandering husband who keeps coming back to a forgiving wife.

But the rapprochement was short-lived.

Right after my affair with FTII was over, I had wanted to move in with her cousin, Documentary. FTII had introduced me to Documentary in the early days of our affair, but Documentary and I really began to hit it off only when I was in the final throes of my relationship with FTII. But Documentary was idealistic, principled and demanding. And after an exhausting relationship, I wasn’t ready for another just like it.

A few months into my restarted relationship with Advertising, I realised it was not working out.

I was missing Documentary.

I called it quits with Advertising. Again.

Documentary and I moved in together. We lived on little, just love and fresh air. We were living a dream. Hanging out with her friends – Cinema and Art and Literature. Meeting new interesting people like Anthropology and Philosophy.

And then, I met someone else. A human, this time. And the three of us couldn’t co-exist.

I reneged on my commitment to Documentary. 

I needed someone who was supportive of me and at the same time, blind to my indiscretions. And so I went back to Advertising.

But Advertising had changed. Or I had.

Her songs no longer sang to me. “Har ek friend zaroori hota hai” and “Dhak Dhak” did nothing to reawaken our romance. Her lines now sounded trite and banal: “What an idea, Sirji!”

But I did what she asked me to do. My needs were more important than my desires. At times, I felt like a gigolo, fulfilling her demands in return for her money.

I’ve spent another 7 years with Advertising. But this time in a loveless marriage.

I feel ripe for a fling. Perhaps with that homely girl I’ve been ignoring for far too long – Television. Or with Films, that desirable siren who’s ruined the life of many a man. Or with Teaching, even though I don't think I have the patience for her.

Or maybe, I should just go back to the comforting arms of my Documentary.

Happy Teacher's Day, Miss Lumena

If I can credit someone with changing the course of my life, it’s Miss Lumena, my 10^th Standard English teacher.

I think she barely noticed me in class during the first term, and I too didn’t do much to attract her attention.

At the beginning of the second term, we were given our corrected exam sheets of the previous term to inspect. We were supposed to go through them, point out errors by the teachers like an answer marked incorrectly, or a totalling mistake, or an answer left unmarked, and get them rectified.

As I went through my English exam sheet, I noticed a note in the margins of the essay I had written: “This deserves to be published in the school magazine.”

My instinctive reaction was to leave it at that; I didn’t think it was such a great essay.

But something in me made me go up to her and ask her about that note in the margins.

She began to notice me after that. Invariably, I would be made to read out what I’d written in class – compositions, essays, even answers to the questions at the end of the text.

Eventually, the term was up. The preliminary exams ended, and before we took a month’s study leave to prepare for the Board exams, we had an Open Day for parents and students to meet teachers and discuss our strengths and weaknesses in their subjects.

When I went to meet Miss Lumena, our conversation turned to what I planned to do after school. “Engineering,” was my pat reply.  Till then, if you asked me what I wanted to do in life, the reply was always engineering. I loved Maths, and my role models – my maternal uncle and an older cousin – were both engineers.

“But you should do journalism,” she said. “You write so well.”

The idea appealed to me. I broached it to my parents. “Nothing doing,” said my mother, “journalists get killed.” I was given a choice of four streams to make a career in – Medicine, Engineering, Chartered Accountancy and Law. I chose Engineering.

But the thought that I could make writing a career had been planted in my head.

Happy Teacher’s Day, Miss Lumena, wherever you are.

(Illustration of Miss Lumena by a fellow student of hers – Anil Damodaran)

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Parsi Surnames

Want to know the origins of your favourite ‘wala’? Voila!

1. Sodawaterbottleopenerwala? There’s no bottle opener in it.

Sodawaterbottleopenerwala is a fictitious surname. But Sodawaterwala is for real.

Google/Kaevan Umrigar

2. My name is Jeejeebhoy Jamshedji, the Parsi guard of the GIP.

Via parsisinjhansi.com.au

A lot of Parsis used to work in the Indian Railways, which explains surnames like Driver and Guard.

3. No butcher, no baker, no candlestickmaker

Via bppvoterslist.org

But we have a Billiardmaker, a Watchmaker, a Cabinetmaker and a Bobbinmaker.

4. We are more British than the British.

Via Wikipedia

Which explains surnames like Forbes, Crawford, Cooper, Baxter, Nicholson, Morris, Spencer… The list goes on.

5. Hell, sometimes we’re even French.

Via bppvoterslist.org

Vraiment!

Tarapore: A Parsi heritage village?

My first thoughts on visiting Tarapore were, hey, I have to shoot my film on India’s dwindling Parsi population here. My very next thoughts were, why can’t someone preserve this place as a heritage village?

I had come to Tarapore after a month or two of exploring small towns and villages in the state of Maharashtra where Parsis had once flourished but lately had been reduced to insignificance. All of them were places where the Parsis had followed the British – either the army or the railways – in search of business and employment. In these places, I would find a fire-temple (usually with a lock on the door), one or two surviving Parsi businesses and little else.  But Tarapore was different.

Tarapore is just south of the Gujarat coast where the Parsis first landed in India. It probably was one of the early Parsi settlements (Sanjan, the site of the first landing, is barely 50 km away). What I found here was missing in the other places I visited – a Parsi character.

Tarapore was home to 300-400 Parsis till the 1930’s. In the 1970’s, the community there was still surviving, albeit in drastically reduced numbers. The 1980’s sounded its death-knell. The tower of silence fell into disuse. The fire-temple would function only sporadically. Older residents died, younger ones who had migrated to Mumbai and elsewhere has lesser reason to visit frequently. Houses remained locked up, either to crumble away or be encroached upon.

When I visited Tarapore in 2005, I found the Parsiwad, the village’s Parsi quarter, almost deserted. The tower of silence had been vandalized with lewd graffiti. The fire-temple and the dharamsala, the Parsi traveller’s rest-house, though had been renovated and were functioning.

It struck me then, that in a distance of a kilometre or two, the village had all the artefacts to showcase the traditional Parsi way of life to visitors. If a conservation group got together, restored the houses, the fire-temple, the tower of silence, the rest-house et al, it could become a living museum, and with Mumbai just a two-hour drive away, even a tourist attraction.

It was just a passing thought at that time. Four years later, I visited the Skansen museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Skansen is an open-air museum. On exhibit are Sweden’s traditional homes and villages, actual structures transported brick by brick before they are lost to posterity. A stroll through Skansen is a walk down centuries of Swedish culture.

Tarapore could easily become something similar.

Yes, it will take some effort. It will require the co-operation of community trusts in the village (they manage the community properties) and the heirs of deceased residents (they now own the homes). Restoration will be expensive. And making the heritage tour a memorable experience (like Skansen) will be a challenge. But Skansen shows us that it’s possible. All it needs is some will.

It’s now 10 years since I made my film on Tarapore. But one thought persists. Why can’t someone preserve it as a heritage village?

Educating Hana

“The parent is a client, and the child is a product.”

(From 'When parents pay for international schools what do they think they are getting? And is it paisa vasool?' by Margot Cohen)

I studied in a school with wide open windows that welcomed in fresh air and sunshine. It had vast grounds to romp around in. Sure, we learnt by rote, but we managed to learn to think for ourselves by ourselves all the same.

My daughter will soon be of school-going age, and we are looking for a good school close by home which will not rein in her curiosity and creativity. An international school not too far away was being talked about a lot, and I went to attend an introductory session there to see if it was right for her.

The experience was bizarre. I sat through a corporate presentation delivered by a power presenter who called herself an Admissions Officer (a euphemism for Sales & Marketing, I'm sure). That put me off. Educationists should run a school, not marketeers. I was willing to forgive that, though, since the school came recommended by people who I know and whose opinions I value.

But the school tour decided it for me. The classes were air-conditioned, no sunlight or fresh air streaming in. In the recess, the kids were running around in the corridors despite strict admonitions by the teachers (the school doesn't have a ground, sports periods are on the terrace).

It felt like an office, not a school.

I'm sure their teaching is great. My friend's son who studies there is 6, and knows more than what I did at his age. But...

Hana will now go to a standard school a block away from home. She will look in awe at sunbeams breaking in through the windows while her teacher drones on and on. She will wait in anticipation for the breaks so that she can get out of her stifling class into the open. And she will run home with joy when the bell rings.

And somewhere in between all that, she will learn to think for herself, by herself.