Ode to Bovines, Donkeys, Egyptian Donkey Trainers & Corona Virus

 

For a long time, Preeti had not written on cows — not that it was her favourite animal — but definitely it demanded attention. Then she saw this picture on Facebook of an Indian bovine looking introspectively into an empty bus and putting a foot forward as if to amble into the vehicle for a ride. Then she saw another picture of a cow gazing into a car –maybe to ask for a ride too? She knew now the time had come for her to pick up her pen and write. Both were brown female cows because they lacked humps. She recalled the book she read to her son in kindergarten — about a camel called Alice having five humps. Female camels could have humps but not cows. Only bulls had humps.

This time she found fodder not on bovines, as they had become a source of controversies, but on donkeys. Remember, from Preeti’s earlier story — she lived in countries that were not cow friendly in their outlook but served veal for dinner.

A friend of hers had invited her home and cooked a scrumptious dinner. She was regaled with the story of a donkey ride in Egypt during the meal. These friends of hers did not eat veal, mind you, they were friends from her own country.

Then another friend of a friend who was a ‘pure’ vegetarian and ate rasam to battle corona virus, repeated the same story — a trip across the desert to a temple on donkey back… and unaccompanied. So, it seems this is what happened — to both the friends. (Preeti has decided not to disclose the name of the temple as it could deter donkey owners’ businesses in Egypt — and Preeti was a kind soul.)

It was truly necessary she wrote about it before it became a populist trend like denigrating a country for starting an epidemic.

Friends, non – veg and ‘pure’ veg, went with separate groups at different points of time to check out temples in Egypt! They met some enterprising guides who offered them the choice of donkeys or jeeps to ride to the temples. Preeti could not figure out if it were the same guides. Both the parties opted for donkeys instead of jeeps — the reasons could be various, saving petrol, keeping the environment clean or maybe just pure fun and adventure — the reasons were not disclosed by both friends to Preeti.

They went to the donkeys. The donkeys did not have a proper saddle, but quilted cloth folded and placed on their backs. The tourists had already paid — so there was no backing off.

They had to climb the donkeys on their own. Only a four-year-old child was helped by the parent. The donkey trainers trained the tourists to turn the donkeys left and right by tweaking their ears (or was it their mane?) — Preeti had forgotten. And then the trainers gave a sharp whack to the donkeys back and the four-legged wronged animal started off at a trot — slipping on the desert sand occasionally. The only person having fun was the four-year-old — the adults were all in a state of panic because the trainers stood behind and watched the fun as they explained the donkeys knew the way.

The donkeys even took them across a highway with speeding cars and trucks and buses and more… without trainers…

Preeti did not satisfy my curiosity completely because she did not tell me about the donkey ride back from the temple — she forgot or was too polite to enquire! Or, had she been laughing too much?

Culturally, donkeys had been a part of the Egyptian civilisation from the Maadi period, 3500 BCE. They were tamed and used as beasts of burden and for rides. Despite that, they were not depicted much in Egyptian paintings of yore because they were said to be lacking in class and wealth — though they helped generate wealth! That was a time, long before man and animals encroached into each other’s territory, long before SARS or Corona Virus skipped over to human territory

In those days, the donkey or the Equius Asinus was a load carrier, plougher — much like bullocks in India— and transported people in Ancient Egypt. An Old Kingdom tomb-chapel relief depicts an official sitting on a wooden box hung between two donkeys — sounds almost like a bullock cart, except, the bullocks pull the carts that even now every now and then dot the highways of India.

A biography of the Sixth Dynasty reports that 300 donkeys were used as carriers across the desert…. Preeti always thought it was camels, but her research zoned in to the fact that Egyptians could not have done without donkeys as current day Indians without bovines. Further readings in Brittanica said that donkeys were first tamed in this region

 “The donkey, which was the principal transport animal (the camel did not become common until Roman times), was probably domesticated in the region.”

And yet, the unsympathetic ‘pure’ vegetarian and non- vegetarian friends of Preeti laughed and slighted the donkey and the donkey trainers— though when they were on the animal backs, they confessed they were praying for their lives. The donkeys were after all not cows from India, who needed to be venerated.

The importance of the donkey can well be understood in Egyptian cultures because when they don’t have zebras in zoos, they paint donkeys to look like zebras. A BBC report said so in 2018.

Preeti says they probably got caught because her research showed that the Zebra always has a black snout and parallel stripes whereas a donkey has a nose in keeping with the colour of his fur — so it could be brown, white or black or whatever. If I had to paint a zebra of a donkey, I would have chosen a black one or at least one with a black snout and then done the stripes. The other thing is donkeys have larger and more pointed ears. I do not know how one can solve that issue! But then, would one have a Zebra’s ear- dimensions near at hand to make a comparison? I would not know. Neither did Preeti — maybe, the Egyptian zoo owner did! I cannot think like an Egyptian zoo owner because I do not own a zoo in Egypt.

The other thing is donkeys can be found everywhere. Preeti had a friend in Italy who worked in a donkey farm and often posted pictures of donkeys on Facebook. Once, I even saw a donkey grazing under the Great Wall in China. He focused on the green grass, oblivious to the excitement he was stirring in my children’s heart so much so that my then four-year-old wanted to pull his tail. They had always lived in big cities where donkeys were uncommon, unlike cows in Delhi or Mumbai which can block traffic for miles on end if they decide to park themselves in the middle of a road, which they do occasionally. Donkeys on the other hand are not that common a site in Delhi or Mumbai. But one has to admit that donkeys are truly cosmopolitan— they have found a home in probably majority of the countries, eventhough they cannot easily be spotted in big cities.

What of cows and bullocks and camels?

Talking of camels, their South American cousins, llamas, have no humps and, according to Tin Tin comics, can spit if you tickle them under the chin and say kili-kili-kili (like Captain Haddock). I had seen llamas in California — they almost looked meditative like the Tibetan lamas as they gazed at a distance. They did not spit at us because, I guess, we never intruded on them and watched them from a distance, which brings me to a strange desire of Preeti’s — she wants to explore Egypt on camel back even though they came in as human helpers only in times of Romans, around 30 BCE. She does not know what it feels like to be on camel back — I did have a ride with my then four or five-year-old in Rajasthan. While my son was delighted, I felt my innards ride up to my neck and we swayed like a swing. I was wishing myself off it as soon as I sat on it. I told Preeti.

But Preeti is adamant and she won’t listen to me. She has now decided to postpone her Egyptian trip till the donkey trainers find camels to ferry visitors — though if they think of leaving the visitors alone for a tête-à-tête with the taller ship of the desert, I wonder what would happen!

 

 

Where has all the laughter gone?

Published in Modern Literature

 

There was a time when limericks and humorous poetry made us laugh, when ‘Laughter is the Best Medicine!’ brought tears of merriment to multiple readers of Readers’ Digest, when PG Wodehouse was digested by youngsters by the dozen and when everyone loved a good laugh. There were no laughter clubs. There were no sleep clinics. There was spring and happiness and childhood…

That is how we grew up back in the 1970s and 1980s.

That was the time when bell bottoms were in fashion, people still listened to Beatles, Carpenters and Julio Iglesias; Agatha Christie and Perry Mason were mystery fare and people read only books with pages.

Then with internet revolution swinging into action, things changed. Things changed in a way that made living more challenging! On one hand communication was eased; on the other the tech savvy and the non-tech groups replaced simple divisions of caste and class. For some time, people could say what they liked across all borders drawn by mankind. And then power brokers made rules to regulate the flow of thought in the guise of curbing negative output online. Some of it was necessary, especially where people were inducing riots with Facebook exchanges, but some of it created borders in communicating ideas.

There were alternatives that crept up and people still found ways of communicating across borders with blogs and social media, though some governments banned even those. Voices were raised… but the tone had changed from one of happiness to one of darkness and challenge.

What was bad kept coming into focus over what was good. Laughter dissipated!

Limericks gave way to haikus reflecting the darkness of existence, which were rare earlier because people and ideas could not travel across borders easily long, long ago… fifty full years ago…

The span of time like our focus has shortened. Reading what others write has become a luxury. Writing what one has to say and publishing in social media has become the norm. Yet reading evidently creates an empathizing individual, an individual who can emote on behalf of others and spread kindness and smiles through the world. A research by Kingston University in London highlighted how readers make better and kinder friends. The report states: “Specifically, when broken down by genre, they (the researchers) saw that readers of comedy were the best at relating to people. Romance and drama lovers were the most empathetic and most skilled at seeing things through other’s eyes.”

Sukumar Ray’s sketch

Perhaps, dwelling on the results of the research, we should look for not stand-up comics on you tube but for books that make us laugh, whether in English or some other language. I still cannot stop laughing at the nonsense verse of Sukumar Ray ( film-maker and writer Satyajit Ray’s father) and those are verses I have been reading for the last forty years or limericks or stories by Wodehouse. And yet, they seem to be rather out of fashion now. In today’s world, we are all writers and readers in the landscape of social media. Presidents ‘tweet’ as do Prime Ministers and Ministers! Social media has gone viral as did American Idol and a bunch of programs that cropped up around it in the early 2000s.

An article in The Atlantic explains: “Yet in many ways Idol … was ahead of the pop-culture game. It was one of the first shows that understood both the emotional nerve that connects people to music, and people’s innate desire to see others succeed despite enormous odds. It excelled at creating a personal link between artists and viewers, compelling the latter to take action by calling in and voting…In this sense, Idol foreshadowed today’s social media-driven society, where fans have the power to mobilize and impact the pop-culture landscape…”. Huff post came up with the heading “American Idol Made Us All Critics”.

 

Click here to read the rest in Modern Literature.

 

Baboo and Sonia

 

The person Sonia most wanted to tell the news to was Baboo.

He had been so scared, so apprehensive when he had first heard.

He had called up all his friends in a state of panic.

Baboo was what Sonia called her father. He had been a doctor, a well- known and prominent one in his own field. After retiring far from the city to revel in Himalayan grandeur for the rest of his life, he became a widower. That is when Sonia first started interacting with Baboo on a daily basis. Everyday she would call up and they would talk.

“ How are you Baboo?”

“ Today my blood pressure was normal. I had coffee and Sita made me some mushroom soup with oats in it.”

Sita was his housekeeper. She cooked, cleaned, looked after him. In fact, her whole family who lived in the outhouse helped take care of him. They were a hill family, from Nepal. They had no identification or money when they had come to Baboo and his wife for work. Sita and her husband were illiterates. Their children started school as they worked in Baboo’s house. Their children learnt to read. Eventually, Baboo had them register for an adhar card (identity card in India) and had seen to it that they had a bank account when the prime minister initiated the bank wave for the downtrodden.

“The papayas have ripened in the garden. And the mali (gardener) harvested a few kilos of litchi… I will give some to Jaya Das and Captain Singh,” he would go on to say.

Jaya Das and Captain Singh were his friends.

Sonia would just listen.

Another day would be full of complaints.

“ I do not want to live. I feel very alone… very lonely without your mother.”

Sonia would listen with a wringing, helpless heart.

“Do you want to move back to Delhi like Saurabh suggested?” Sonya would ask. Saurabh was her cousin in Delhi and the person she felt closest to in India.

“ I cannot afford it. And physically it is impossible you know. I cannot walk.” Baboo was fiercely and proudly independent. He would not allow anyone else to spend on him, not even his daughter and son-in-law or his nephew.

Sonia would say, “We can organize everything for you.”

“ How? While sitting in Singapore?”

Sonia lived in Singapore with her husband and two children. She had moved back from Bangkok two years after her mother died. Sonia and her husband had been out of India for more than two decades, shuttling from one country to another.

“Saurabh said he would do everything…”

“Impossible! Impossible!” Baboo would shout into the phone. “I came here for spiritual succor. I do not want to move. You will not understand because you do not read Ramakrishna or any of the scriptures…”

Yet at some other times, he would complain of high blood pressure, dizziness and sometimes, he even said he fell down.

Sonia was worried. She did not know what to do…

She spoke to his doctor friends. They recommended scans. But he refused to go for scans and tests. He would say: “I just want to die.”

One Sunday, Sonia had acute pain in the stomach. Her husband rushed her to the hospital. They found a growth in her kidney. Probably cancerous, the doctor said. They did not want to do a biopsy for the fear of infecting other parts with the deadly cells.

Baboo had to be consulted because the urologist spoke of removing the affected kidney. Baboo agreed that was the best option. But he was scared. He did not want to outlive his daughter. He did not want her to die.

In five days, the surgery was performed. Sonia’s brother- in- law, her husband’s younger brother, flew in from Nigeria to be by their side. Friends poured in. At a point, the nurses grumbled because there were ten people in Sonia’s room the evening after her surgery.

But Baboo, he struggled with his emotions alone. He wanted to be by his daughter. Physically, it was impossible. He could not walk because of the huge fibroid on his spine. He felt shattered and helpless. He had called up his grandson during the surgery. His son-in-law had spoken to him later to reassure him. But not his daughter!

At last she spoke to him. He wanted her to rest and recover.

Sonia felt she was doing well.

Two days after her surgery, Sonia sent birthday wishes to an old school friend. They had all crossed fifty. He too was a cancer survivor. And the next day, she discovered, the announcement of his death on Facebook.

That stunned her a bit! She sent her condolences.

She still remembered the date 18 th August.

Sonya had drifted into nostalgia… recalling how in high school, they had all travelled to Almora and had a whale of a time during their school trip… and suddenly, he was gone. She had a surgery but he died. Strange were the ways of God!

A few days later, she heard her one of closest friends from University had died of breast cancer. She had been so out of touch with her friends that the news came to her as a shock. Whenever she went to India, she was visiting Baboo or her mother-in-law who was a widow. She had no time for friends. She spoke to her mother-in- law too every other day. She did not tell the old folks about her friends’ deaths. They would just get upset!

When Sonia returned after the surgery, Baboo spoke to her for long.

“ It may not be cancer you know. After all, you had no symptoms till the pain. And cancer is normally not painful…”

Two weeks later, the doctor met Sonia and her husband. He confirmed the tests had shown the growth to be cancerous, “T2 stage with a focus on T3” read her report. However, the cancer had not spread anywhere else by all parameters tested. The doctor urged her to send the report to her father so that he would not worry anymore. Of course, she would have to do PET scans for the next five years. The pain had been from another intestinal infection which had been treated by antibiotics during her hospital stay.

Sonia returned home jubilant that she was going to be fine. But Baboo could not let go of his apprehension… what if… his child died? His mother had died. His wife had died and now his daughter…

Sonia tried to convince him on Skype.

“Baboo, I am not going to die. I have been cleared off cancer. I sent you the report. You yourself have seen I will be fine. Many people live for years with one kidney. I am a survivor.”

Two months after the surgery, the ‘survivor’ went for a walk at night with her husband, she again had an acute pain. This time, she noticed a lump near the wound. The next day the doctor sent her for a scan and a hernia was confirmed. It seems there had been a rupture in the mucus membrane when the doctors moved her intestine to pull out the bagged kidney during the partial laparoscopy. She would need another surgery four months later. They needed to give six months time for the wound to heal.

Baboo was furious. “All this would not have happened if they did an open surgery. I had told you to tell the doctor not to do a partial laparoscopy. It is entirely the doctor’s fault…”

Sonia had no choice but to agree to go through the surgery. She could not fight medical decisions. She was at the mercy of the doctor’s scalpel. She did not even want to get into the blame game. The doctor put her state down to her obesity. Sonia had more than doubled as had her chin in the last almost three decades of happily married life.

This whole medical journey had been stressful for her whole family. But she was proud of the way her children and husband had handled it, making her feel cherished and wanted at every point, yet not weighing her down with a sense of helplessness or fatality.

Sonia just wanted to get well and be out of the hospital.

“I just want to get well doctor as fast as possible,” said Sonia during her pre-surgical visits. “I have no time to die.” The doctor was amused.

Baboo continued inconsolable. He felt he was being punished for not having stayed by his mother as she breathed her last. It was retribution, he said. He still remembered her crying and begging him to stay back. But he had to take his wife back to Dehradun. He had always chosen his wife above all others, but he had not attained moksha (freedom from cycle of birth, a Hindu belief) and now, he had the additional burden of worrying about his daughter. He wanted to die, to die before his daughter… He was scared that cancer would creep through her entrails to snatch her away from him. She was all he had!

Baboo wanted to die but most feared death.

He always worried about what would happen after death. He tried giving detailed instructions to his daughter when she exclaimed in exasperation, “In my current condition, I am more likely to die than you!”

That day Baboo was very sad and worried.

Sonia insisted Baboo come to her every year for a couple of months so that she could look after him in her own home ever since he had become a widower. It was impossible to move him out of India at eighty permanently, given all the health issues and his attitudes. (He liked to tell the doctors what medicines to give him without conducting any tests and hated to be crossed!) This was the best she could do. Baboo had his passport renewed and tickets in his pocket when he flew to Delhi.

Sonia’s surgery was done and she would be back home in a couple of days. It was a big surgery with thirty per cent of her guts sticking to the wound. Two hours is what it took for her to be out of the surgery, which was still lesser than the five hours that she faced during her last surgery.

Baboo had reached Delhi. He was fine.

Sonia had asked her Indonesian housekeeper to buy three kilos of fish as Baboo loved fish and would be with her in a couple of days. She felt elated. She was being released from the hospital that day. She was going to get well! Her father would be with her as she recuperated and all would be well soon!

And then, a call came from her uncle. Her father had collapsed!

Sonia’s happiness collapsed!

Baboo was staying in the hospital he had made in Delhi to get his medical check up done. The night after he reached Delhi, he was found senseless on the floor by a senior matron. The doctors said severe septicemia. They tried to revive him. He spoke to his daughter when he could. His family, largely in Delhi, cooked his favorite foods for him. They stayed at his bedside as did his friends and staff. Everyone loved him, adored him and cherished him… He spoke to Sonia… she said she would come… as soon as she could.

Baboo collapsed again. And then he was in the ICCU. Sonia flew down with her husband, three weeks into her surgery… there he was. She had been given three days by her doctor — three days to see her father.

She tried to talk to him, to wake him up. But he just lay there with all the pipes sticking out of him — once he opened his blue grey eyes but there was no acknowledgement in them. The doctors said that it was a reflex. Sonia felt she saw a glimmer.

Did the pipes hurt him, especially after they drilled a hole into his neck to pump out the phlegm? Was such a procedure necessary… the desecration of his body? Would he want it? Sonia wondered.

After those three days, Sonia had to fly back to care for herself. She did not know how much longer he would linger… or maybe, recover… If he were well enough to come back to his senses, what would they do to the hole in his neck, the pipe inserted by tracheostomy? Could he live with that? How would he talk to her on the phone? Or talk to anyone?

As the airport staff in Singapore, wheeled Sonia on the wheelchair, she checked her what’s ap. There was a message from her cousin, “ Baboo has passed on peacefully.”

Had the cycle come full?

Sonia was not there when he died as he was not there when his mother had died. Had he been scared? Did he know he was dying after the last collapse?

Three months after the second surgery, the doctor announced Sonia cancer free following a PET scan. She still had four more scans to go… but she was sure she was a survivor.

But where was Baboo the person who should have been jubilating her cancer – free results?

 

 

To tweet or not to tweet…

Earlier, when one spoke of tweets, one thought of colorful little birds frolicking on trees, gardens, flowers and nature. One visualized flowing rivers and meadows and picnics and walks…

Now when one talks of tweets, one thinks of Donald Trump, blue eye shadow and “ A Merry Christmas but a Happy New Year”. Social media has reduced the twittering of birds to twittering of words across electronic devices to connect or disconnect minds, great or small across the oceans and into the jungle of cities, wherever Internet has cast its intricate web.

I have never taken to tweeting because, one, I am not a bird and with my enormous weight cannot be mistaken for one. Also, I have a passion for words… many words not a few. I believe tweet was earlier limited to 140 characters. Last year, it was doubled to 280! Such succinct conversations leave the wordy speechless!

Talking of speechlessness, Instagram has altogether done away with words… unless it is the speech in videos. It was started to share photographs by what I have understood less than a decade ago. Last year, it stretched its limits to a ten-minute video. Again despite appreciating good photography, I have not had the pleasure of experimenting with this mode of social media. Many, I believe, cannot live without these… I still breath, eat and live happily.

And then there is of course the grandparent of all social media, Mark Zuckerburg’s baby, Facebook, which started in 2004 as a way to connect Harvard students. Fourteen years down the line, as of January 2018, it had 2.2 billion active users! The world population is 7.5 billion, of these some may not be able to read and some may have eluded the web woven by social media altogether as they might be living in areas beyond the reaches of internet transmission and hence have become non users of social media. Of course, there are certain adamant non-users who refuse to use social media despite having access to the internet. Some of my closest friends belong to this category, I discovered.

However, I joined the cadres of Facebook users to keep in touch with old schoolmates. That happened and more. Facebook keeps updating itself! There are some updates, which came as unwelcome surprises. One day, as one scrolled through the Facebook on ones mobiles, videos sprung to life. Imagine, how embarrassing it would have been if in the middle of a speech to keep oneself awake, one scrolled on the Facebook and it voiced out a puppy barking or a person singing or an advertisement for slimming pills or green coffee! People would turn around and stare. Of course one could have the alternative of turning your phone to silent and reducing the voice level to zero… but these are things that one thinks of in afterthought. Now, I know you can change settings so that the video does not start singing in the middle of a speech.

Then, there are those who regard the Facebook as a substitute for newspapers of the juicier kind… sometimes a new thing called ‘ fake news’ (a triumphing Trumpian term popularized by the current media) finds it’s way to the heart of Zuckerberg’s baby. Sometimes, people post content that one would rather not see… political rallies, violence, pictures of diseases, partisan information, hate videos… one can report them but why would you want to see them in the first place? A disconnect from negativity does help one’s peace of mind. Why would people share pictures of a diseased body or a malnourished child or a dog crushed by a car or a prejudiced, partisan banner or poster or video?

To maintain my peace of mind, I prefer taking a walk, reading, talking, playing a game of Sudoku or Scrabble now to surfing the Facebook. I have become vary of posts that create a sense of disharmony.

Then there are posts by women whose posed pictures on Facebook could put Elizabeth Taylor or Meena Kumari, two most beautiful actresses, to shame. That makes me wonder… how beautiful are we on the outside and inside? Is it enough to look beautiful in a picture? Some Facebook users have taken to sharing their children’s outstanding results in exams… perhaps for blessings from their friends but what about those whose kids or who themselves have not aced in exams? Perhaps, the FB posts by now would have desensitized them and helped them reconcile to a more philosophical approach.

Of late, Facebook seems to be evolving a life of it’s own! Not only has it opted to choose to turn on videos if you do not change your settings or suggest posts and FB friendship birthday videos (a concept that did not exist back in the good old Facebookless days), it also has taken to deciding firmly what photographs it will publish with your post. A blog with pictures linked to FB does not have the option of choosing which visual can go with the post. Facebook with it’s own mind decides on the picture. Even if the blogger wants to highlight another visual, Facebook in it’s unique style, decides what is good for the blog! This does sometimes cause distress among bloggers… but they are fewer in number than the majority and therefore not important.

While social media has taken over socializing across a coffee table, people in a metro, a party or a bus no longer chat. They sit with eyes glued to their devices, chatting only on social media or scrolling the Facebook and distributing their emotions online with emojis( which some fear will affect the use of language), likes, loves and hates!

Are we moving towards an impending reality of isolated existence? Will Asimov’s Solaris become a reality where there is no human interaction but only interaction through screens under robotic supervision and tweeting in dictionaries will first highlight social media and somewhere down the line, an archaic usage for bird calls…?