You say it all When you say nothing at all

To whom this may concern.
You say it all
When you pay
that migrant's train fare home.
You said it all when you were seen

concerned at the Vizag gas leak.
You say it all when you sit with them

in their villages over a kullad of chai.
Or when you ride that local train home.
Not in that enclosure
Where drones of flying footwear chastise
the chaste utterance of good sense..
You say it all
When you are the microphone
To Raghuram Rajan, Abhijit Banerjee
and other elevated minds

that slipped through their sieve.
That's when your voice comes shining through.

You're not you when you say it like him

And the other fellow. And the other.
Giving tit for ratatatat.
When you dribble clever lines dipped in vitriol

that can never match his.
Not because you cannot. No.
Because vitriol doesn't sit well on your tongue.

It doesn’t. That’s not you.
Stop forcing your tongue into his mouth.
Not nice. Not you.
Hold that tongue instead
In your hands
that reach out.
Put that tongue into your heart
Which we think is in the right place.
Stick that tongue on your feet.
Walk their talk as they say.
Good to have talkative feet.

You must know.
You're not Duryodhana's mace.
You're Krishna's flute.
You're not Goliath of loud voice,
            heavy armor, sword and shield.
You're David the shepherd boy
With your harp and lute.
And that innocent little thing called a sling
With those nice smooth stones
Of compassion, empathy, insight, earnestness, grit
That brought Goliath down.
Take aim with those nice smooth stones.
And then fling.

Don't step down
as some say you should..
Step up. And up. And even higher
Not to the throne. Not the pedestal.

Step up to the halo.
Like your mother did
When she refused the kingly crown.
Be the halo
round a good head
Democratically picked.
From all those fine minds.
You have many

With fiscal abracadabra beyond the charlatans of now.

Arjunas to your Krishna.

Young lions rarin to go.

Those with the gift of the gabardine tongue.

Those who are possessed of the DNA

Of a body we respect.
.
Forget the one that flew over
to a wishful gain.
Set up pedestals for those who  stayed.

Do it soon. Do it now.
Before this dusk turns to dark.

Corona Castor Oil

SILLY SONNET SEQUENCE

Corona Castor Oil 1

Mama Gaia is giving it to me
Not one table spoon as it used to be.
But aerosoled straight into nose and lung
Till that mournful requiem for me is sung.

Stay home, she says for all the world now fears
The flatulence from all those sinful years.
Let then, the privy of your conscience be
Privy now to yesterday's gluttony,

Greedily going after the golden grain
Now being flushed down that commodious drain.
And the carbon footprint you left behind
Is sure hurting where it should -- your behind..

Go gaga-google get that 5-G goo.
The Groaning Green now gifts those groans to you.

****

Corona Castor Oil 2

Is CCO working in unholy haste ?
Flushing out excess: keeping what we need:
A slimmer wallet and a thinner waist.
The purging of all venality and greed.

Is CCO singing that sweet ole song
"Mid pleasures and palaces you may roam,"
Keeping you locked indoors for just as long
As for you to know: there's no place like home!

And as you jaywalk on the streets today,
You make the highway your promenade.
All fossil fuels and fumes on holiday.
Keeping those promises you never made.

And when the price of crude cries down to zero,
It's not you but CoVid 19 the hero.

****

Corona Castor Oil 3

I'm counting now my days of purgatry.
Evacuating putrid poetry.
Will the bowels of my advertising days
Be ever cleansed by Gaia's ruthless ways.

Will Corona clean up all that gory
Thrust and parry that found its rightful place
In Capitalism's hoary story:
The bloody motions of the market place.

Will competition give way to courtship now?
Wooing target lover, not fighting foe.
That's what you're doing  under lockdown now.
Your brand' s now making love not war you know?

And if this be bullshit and upon me proved.
Ivan never writ. Shakespeare never loved.

Sacred Mischief

Crown of thorns.

Plays hopscotch on the map

To my peekaboo.

Masochist me

Chained to my immunity

Says it's okay.

Feels good, somehow.

Scourge me more.

It's okay.

See.

Blue skies up there.

Down here I see forever.

Look! paradise flycatcher!

Peacock on my bonnet.

Lion caressing asphalt.

Nice game He's playing, uh?

Sacred mischief.

Game or lesson?

We're learning.

Now The lotus speaks.

Shawl-wrapped utterance

Soft as the voice of an angel.

Lend me your weeks.

And then.

Some more of that please.

May Three Twenty Twenty.

Commanding mendicant begs.

Some more weeks.

And yet some more.

Masochist me.

More's okay.

See.

My man's on his knees.

Not on his qwerty.

Swabbing. Not jobbing.

Yippee!

Is Forever here now?

No milk today.

Spending's ending.

Ending spending.

Credit card sleeps.

The jingle jangles.

The fiscal smile curves

Down. Down. Down.

Laugh Out Loud.

LOL. Ello Ell.

Hello Hell?

Have some fun.

It's okay.

Now. Now. Now.

Fashion me those blinkers

So I will not see.

Will not hear.

Them who eat the daily sweat

Of brick over brick.

Gloves of grime.

The back breaking load.

That screaming hollow.

Hunger walks. Home.

Enter Bleeding hearts.

Fifty thousand at last count.

Conscience balm.

Caritas. Agape.  

Manna from heaven.

Thank you. And you. And you.

Feeling better now?

It's okay.

The Lotus speaks once more.

Soft as the voice of an angel.

Breathing a lesson unheard:

The Crown knows no religion.

No religion the Lotus said.

Unheard before. Hurrah.

No Kalki on white steed.

No Abramic ash from Gomorrah.

Forget the Garden.

Shaheen not Jallianwala.

Welcome amnesia.

Of all that went before.

CAA CAA Cacophony.

To inflamed ears.

The Crown sees no line.

Alleluia. Jai Hind.

A fair scourge.

Hate wiped clean by death.

Then hit me more.

It feels good.

Death with its gentle persuasion

Whispers a comforting word.

Return of the Piggy Toilet

You thought that the piggy toilet was a Goan invention. Right? That we in Goa could lay claim to inventing this environmentally friendly, dry privy, at a time when everywhere else in India, poor scavengers cleaned and carried this offence on their heads to places where they had to be dumped? Well. I thought so too, till I read recently that they found small replicas of the privy-pigsty in the tombs of Chinese royalty around 200 B.C. 

The pigsty latrine, sad to say, is not one of our inventions.

Most of us, however remember that revolting feeling at our sunrise ablutions just a few decades ago; fighting it off and giving ourselves up to thoughts of higher things by whistling away those sounds of grateful grunt. 

It is about this time, say a little before and after Goa’s liberation that a happy piglet family, whom we may call Leitao could be seen glorying in the abounding slush allowed them around the acreage of the reputed Patrao S’s property; partaking every morning of the offering laid out for them in the family privy. There were other piglet families, of course who partook of banquets from other well-to-do and influential Patrao families, all of them content in the belief that their Patrao was the best, providing them with sustenance and more. The piglets even spoke of a long line of ancestors who were reincarnated into that higher level of being called sometimes Vindaloo and sometimes Sorpotel that graced the Patrao’s table. 

In time these clever little porcine brains got cleverer and as they looked up at their dandy Patraos leave every morning in their fancy cars to their halls of assembly or wherever it was they went, they began to wonder why they had to be content with their slushy existence. They had heard a Patrao daughter read aloud the story by Anatole France in which a group of Penguins were baptized and were transformed into human beings. Why not us? They thought. If Penguins can do it, why can't we? And so the Leitaos, followed by the other piglet families went to the nearby river and washed themselves in a porcine ritual of self-baptism. 

It was not long before they were seen in the same halls of the Patraos, dressed in suits, wearing patent leather shoes and Rayban glasses. 

Disgusted with the sudden stink, manifested now in the language, diverse forms of gluttony and what they saw as shameless venality that now filled the hall, the Patraos slowly left the scene; over the years giving up their high offices to the well-shod, well-stuffed snouts.

What, you would ask did these well-shod piglets do for their sustenance in these halls, their new pigsty; how did they get their nourishment? Oh there were plenty of droppings from privies of various kinds: from contraband from across the seas, the booming real estate hurrahs, the rich take from under the table and oh so many sources. After all there is but a thin, translucent film between the fecal and the fiscal, isn’t there?

They lost no time in throwing parties, rollicking get-togethers of like-minded and not-so-like-minded snouts. They had a grunting good time moving from one party to another. Party hopping proved to be a perfect porcine pastime. Much, of course depended on the size of the fecal/fiscal offering. 

This indeed is an invention: the new elevated piggy toilet.

Rubbing its eyes in disbelief and impotence, the citizenry, with its modern flush toilets and septic tanks today wonders how this neo-piggy toilet came to pass, the stink now wafting into their homes; a lot of them confused and angry but not wanting to think the painful thought that it had to do with that little black spot on their finger.

Traffic islands

A silly spot of naughty verse)

Traffic islands of forbidden meat

Sacred speed breakers along our street

Disinfected evenly with goodly dung

For the many goodly ones among

Us who call her Mother

It’s a blessing no other

Nation or government may

Even hope for today

For what fancy roundabout

What designed pothole

Can stay that speeding lout

Or cleanse a greasy soul

Of that mortal sin of wanting

To get ahead. Flaunting

Our locomotive miracles

Be they Ferraris or bicycles.

Thank heavens for these

Our holy traffic police

Who sit around

And stand their ground.

A holy obstinacy

Of a sacred aristocracy.

Honk and abuse

It’s no use

Being irate.

Meditate.

That’s the salvific thing to do

For an eternal minute or two.

Then, if bladder and state

Of your mind cannot wait

Get down from your chariot and do

Obeisance. A worshipful “Shoo!”

That panchayat and govt. will not do for you.

 (See? My sillyverse

Is getting worse)

I better stop this naughty rant before

Mischief turns to malediction or more.

Politics and an old fart

True story. JWT in the 1960s.

He (I won't disclose his name) was always well turned out; freshly laundered shirts every day, red necktie (striped or checked but always red) and pin-striped trousers. He said he would have liked to wear a pin-striped suit to work every day, but that would be overdoing it, he thought.

Being well-dressed was not a vanity, he said; it was necessitated by his particular health condition. Flatulence. Vayu, he called it; of the most stubborn and aggressive kind. It was as if he was given bellows for bowels, he told us with head lowered as if to be modest about a rare personal gift. His ‘bellows’ worked continuously, at all times; something he could not control. Fortunately, he was blessed with a robust sphincter as well, which was able to regulate the velocity and decibel level of the ejected vayu. At home, when showing off to his wife or entertaining his two little ones, he could play it like a slide trombone, producing an impressive glissando from a resonant G on the bass clef to a nice thin C# two octaves higher. This was as told him by his musician neighbour.

He was most proud, however, of his ability to apply the sphincteral mute, if we can call it that, whenever he needed to, particularly in company. It was this talent he found useful every day in the first class compartment of the local train that took him to his office. From Vile Parle, where he had his one-bedroom apartment, he would take the Andheri Local, which would then return to Churchgate station. He needed to do this, because it guaranteed him a seat on an otherwise crowded train. He had to make sure that his carefully ironed shirt retained its creases the whole day.

The well-groomed look was important, because of his rare condition. He had to look like a sahib to handle his gift with respectability. At home, he read a Gujerati newspaper, but in the train, he would hold an English Times of India in front of him, generally looking at the classified columns and the art work of the local advertisements. The Times, he figured, lent him more respectability than his Gujerati newspaper.

The vayu would come unbidden, unstoppable, but our man with his sphincteral expertise, would mute it to silence. The problem, however was that while the vayu did not disturb the ear, it certainly did offend the nostrils. In fact, according to our gentleman sahib, the reduction of the vayu’s decibel level was in inverse proportion to its mischievous olfactory effects. But our man had learned how to handle the situation with aplomb.

Every time he ‘let go’, silently of course, he would lower his Times of India, turn his head towards the person sitting next to him and curl up an accusatory nose at him in disgust. Then he would go back to his newspaper. The rest of the compartment would quite naturally direct their glares towards the accused, who try as he may, with all his expressions of “I didn’t do it” would never be able to plead innocence. Nobody would pin something so vulgar on to a respectable looking gentleman as our man.

Brilliant. It worked always.

…..

This scatological reminiscence was triggered by a Times of India headline two days ago, which said that our man in Delhi was going on a fast with his party to atone for the ‘divisive politics’ of the Congress party!

Demonitization as spiritual exercise

Sacrifice. Mortification. Penance. Pain. All of that is good, we are told. Good for body. Good for soul. Good for you. Spritual exercise is cleansing; is salvific.

But then, who amid the urgent demands of duty and pleasure; of opportunity and insecurity, the slings and arrows and delights of life today can give time or even thought to the earning of this kind of salvation? Sure, there are those who will painfully contort muscle and limb in yogic poses and exercises for that desirable figure. Then there is that pious Catholic who will rise from the confessional with a prescribed ‘penance’ which he performs on his knees for absolution of his sins.

No. There is no time for all this.

But Heaven has its ways. Today we are witnessing that rarest of rare times in history when a nation and its honourable leaders are prescribing a formula for salvation. Penance for a collective sin. It is a wonderful opportunity for spiritual advancement.

Listen to this.

Two days ago, after attending the Litfest in Mumbai, we were getting into a taxi, when a man selling balloons on a bicycle approached us, and with his eyes sweeping the floor for shame, told us that he hadn’t sold a single balloon the whole day and that he had to take food home for his family. At most times I would have ignored him as just one of those street hoaxes. But then I remembered the demonitization. I felt the pain of this man (like our honourable leader often does as he ‘breaks down’ on the podium) and gave him a 100-rupee note. As we were entering the taxi, the taxi driver, switched of the ignition, reached into his shirt pocket, took out a 50-rupee note and gave it to the balloon man. His thoughtfulness was an expensive one. Cash was precious to him, particularly at this time, but he was ready to make that sacrifice..

At home, after briefing the carpenter on a job, we gave him his advance in the form of a cheque, saying that we had no cash. He took the cheque, and thought for a minute. He slowly took out his wallet and counted the cash he had. “I have 1500 rupees in 100-rupee notes,” he told us. “I can give you a thousand. You may need it for something.”

Demonitization was making people thoughtful. Unselfish. Charitable.

I have been hearing from friends how they have been doing without things: “The bank gave me this Rs.2000 note, which nobody would accept if they had to give me cash back,” said one. “So it was a useless piece of paper. I could buy nothing with it. I have spent nothing for so many days. And I am OK. Doing without!”

Mortification and sacrifice as a result of demonitization. This is a spiritual awakening!

Our foreign friends and relations tell us that we are unique. What is happening here would never happen anywhere else in the world: standing in line from dawn to dusk to be able get your own money; going through hunger, thirst, dehydration and fatigue; being witness to people fainting and some even dying... And then to go back at the end of the day empty-handed because there was no more cash in ATM or bank.

We are a special people. The favourite of the gods, surely. We are blessed with that fortitude, that resilience, that spiritual strain that few other people possess. We do these things because we have to, without asking why and for whose sin we are doing this penance (not ours personally, we know, but someone else’s) or to ask if this penance will in truth absolve the nation of that big collective sin they call Corruption, which is the real sin, of which the dark colour of cash is only a manifestation. We will not ask what is being done to exorcise this demon called Corruption instead of demonizing my hard-earned money. And please do not give us talk of all those many lakh crores that have been spent in order to mop up much less lakh crores of the coloured money. No price is too great for the rewards of this spiritual exercise. Please do not ask us to ask questions. The nation has made its collective confession and we will perform our penance because it is good for our spirit. It is salvific.

Let’s make the best of this spiritual exercise, the demonitization. We may not get this opportunity again.

Or will we?

The Good You Can Do With One Foot in the Grave.

SORRY, MIKE

 The day I fought with Mike Khanna


 1976. Mike was back from Delhi, trailing a fragrant path of success. He had done his thing there. Just four years ago that office was teetering on the edge. But now there was no looking back. He was here now in the Bombay office,
the largest, most visible HTA office, slovenly in the way it moved and not knowing where it was going, while Madras and Calcutta looked at least washed and ironed. Three of the four offices were doing fine. Bombay, the largest needed some doing. Subhas Ghosal’s mandate for Mike: Do the Delhi in Bombay.

 Mike thought it might help to have me brought back to the city. We had a good run together in Delhi. There was a chance it could continue here. But things were not that easy. Bombay had evolved some excellent systems and boasted some of the finest talent in the city. Sadly, much of it was lying fallow while a few other fine people had metamorphosed into prima donnas. Almost all copy was written by free-lancers, while six of our own good ones sat twiddling their thumbs. “We must change all that,” Mike said. And Mike did. Feathers got ruffled, but at least there was a flapping of wings.

Not easy, this flapping. I remember with anguish still one of the first meetings we had in Bombay. There arose a battle of wills between me, and the AV executive. A disagreement over the aesthetics and relevance of an AV treatment. Before I knew what was happening, the AVE’s resignation was on Mike’s table. Mike’s usual rational emollients did not work. He turned to me and said, “Ivan, now you listen to me,” to which I belligerently said, “This time, Mike. No.” He ended the meeting there.

I went home that evening as if walking on burning coals. I confessed my transgression to Ingrid, my wife and said that I had to apologize before the sun set. We went to Mike’s place. He heard my act of contrition and said. “Don’t apologize. You were fighting for what you believed. And so was the other fellow. We’ll meet tomorrow morning.”

The next morning saw resolution and handshakes. The audio-visual presentation went on to win awards. And that’s the way it went. Mike’s quiet gift was seen at work -- unravelling the knotty skeins of aggressive emotion and weaving them into sensible solutions. Confrontations mutated into rollicking, good professional stimulation; atrophied skills sprang to life, all of it leading to a great environment and ultimately to work that won clients and industry awards. Subhas Ghosal was heard to have said at an awards ceremony where HTA walked away with 24 pieces of metal, “Mike you have showered me with an embarrassment of riches.”

Mr. Ghosal was due for more ‘embarrassing’ riches when year after year Mike Khanna’s office showed growth that could only be reported with with at least some show of bashful modesty. When in 1985, Mike took over from Mr. Ghosal an agency, which the latter had polished to a shine that reflected his own refinement and professionalism, he knew that he was stepping into shoes that were not easy to fill. The eyes of the entire industry, many of them with the skeptic’s squint, watched as HTA hopped, stepped and jumped across borders to be counted among JWT’s top performers globally. Those shoes had morphed into sneakers, it would seem, as the agency sprinted ahead.

It was a seamless transition. Subhas Ghosal as Chairman Emeritus remained Mike’s mentor and chief cheerleader, his choice of successor more than vindicated.

Mike’s quiet and most often unfailing logic was a screen that hid a sharp insight into people and an intuitive grasp of issues that eluded more overtly brilliant minds. To some (like me) who tended to get blinded by the neon glare of corporate showmanship, Mike’s logical approach was a revelation and at most times a buffer to my own very fallible ‘creative leaps’. It made him an ideal counselor.

That is how he was able to create leaders who today are at the helm of the country’s most respected companies. Many of them openly admit their debt of gratitude for his role in their growth. To their litanies of praise and thanksgiving, I add my own, with the hope that it may wipe out the memory of the day I had to say Sorry, Mike.


This appeared in Cat-a-list, the Hindu Business Line. June 2015

Mike Khanna. Wizard without a wand

 The business world will toss numbers; will talk of the magical growth he showed in the time he led Hindustan Thompson, now JWT; first as head of the Delhi office, which bobbed up from No.7 in that city to No.1 in just one year of his taking over; he did the same with the Bombay office and finally as CEO of HTA, India, he walked the agency up a steep climb to the pinnacle; success following him like a poodle. And those who do not know him will have visions of a man like some others with similar achievements, men who draw attention to their success with big flourishes of the corporate wand and the abracadabra of individual style.

With Mike there were no flourishes; no conjurer’s patter, no abracadabra showmanship. He almost seemed like a novice with a pack of cards, slowly dealing them out, stopping to spit-wet his fingers when suddenly you would notice: he has dealt you an ace. And then another and another. You looked in awe. And there he was, unimpressed with his own magic, intent on just dealing you those aces.

But the aces we are talking about are not those numbers; of billings, growth, profit or industry ranking; facts and figures that even then placed him on the throne of the advertising industry. Oh there is much to be said about all that and the business world can talk about it at length.

 What ‘Thompsonites’ will talk about are other aces, their own personal ones, for which they will remember him most. From secretaries, studio artists and accountants to members of the executive committee, all have poignant stories to establish their personal relationship with Mike: of how on a bad day, he sat them down, got to the heart of the problem and sent them away with a new spring in their step; of how they came to him with clenched fists over an issue with a colleague and how a cuppa tea with him would end in handshakes all round. A creative director will tell you how, on the occasion of the global CEO’s visit, her presentation was delayed by an hour, and how Mike went up to her, put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Relax. This is not the end of the world.” “I could have kissed him then,” she said. “But I went about getting the job done.” An office manager narrates how on his wife’s birthday, he had invited Mike home for dinner, at which he demonstrated the five-finger-and-palm bhangra clap.

His manner was calming. He broke down difficult and high tension situations with his quiet, unbeatable logic to resolve both business and even creative crises. his intuitive feel for the moment, touched with humaneness, his ability to get down to the root of the matter at hand to help you with a problem and above all, his sense of fairness were among the aces up his sleeve. These were the aces he dealt around.

Early this morning, on the 7th of June, the mobile phones of those who worked with Mike were clogged with messages, all of them saying that they were still holding in their hand the aces that Mike had personally dealt them: the ‘can do’ spirit. The freedom to try and fail. A strong sense of self-worth. Fairness. Integrity. Leadership. Challenge. A sense of fun. Aces that they hold close to their chest. Aces that have led them to where they are today. Many are now happily retired and a good number are CEOs, chairmen of companies and leaders in their fields. They are all of them echoing one line,”I am what I am today because of Mike.”

 Blog:Excalibur: arthurivannoel.blogspot.in

Save the Parsi

With my arithmetic stuck between the digits of my ten fingers, I cannot risk a comment on Ms Heptulla's very advanced calculation that the Muslims, at 13-point-some percent are not a minority. Attractive, clever and convenient as the idea is, I will let that pass.

What really won my heart was her concern for what she considers the real minority -- the Parsis. We must, she said, make sure that their numbers do not diminish any further.

I am completely with the honourable Minister in this, her concern for the Parsis. With her I would hang my abacus upon the willow and weep if that disaster happened. Like Abou Ben Adhem, may their tribe increase, I pray.

What I am anxious to see in the near future is what steps the Minister plans to take to increase their numbers. I am sure she will consider all measures -- political, social, anthropological, legal, scientific, technological...whatever. Not easy, this reversal of the diminishing trend. Since Parsis are not allowed to marry non-Parsis (as a result of their promise never to convert) the problem is compounded. The progeny of a formal alliance of a Parsi with a non-Parsi is not considered Parsi. So every mixed marriage is anathema to the Parsi Book of Numbers. The mind races to all obvious possibilities: fertility departments in Parsi General Hospitals, a reduction in the marriage age for Parsis, exclusive Parsi sperm banks and a total ban on birth control and mixed marriages. Other more titillating and mischievous routes have been suggested; but of course, Ms. Heptullah will think of more and better solutions to this problem, surely.

            Oh how I love the Parsi. Right from school and college days, right up to my years in advertising, I have held the Taraporewalas, Dinshaws, Mistrys and all those affectionately called bawas close to my ventricles. Their Hindustani abuses, cutely yodelled, their readiness to laugh at themselves, their total lack of guile and the luminescent Parsi-peg they so readily offer to quench a little thirst I found endearing indeed.

Oh, yes, Ms. Heptulla. Save the Parsi, please.

            I have suffered a great loss in moving out of Mumbai in that I am not able to accept those invitations to an agiary for weddings and navjots. I am sure I am not alone in my partiality to this social treat. Who will not remember those occasions, when ears perked up for that call, “Jamwa chaalo” you made a dash for the gormandising arena only to find yourself in the third row, having being beaten by smarter legs than your own? And as you stood, gushing saliva onto your starched dress-shirt, you watched the cruelly teasing passage of chicken farcha, patranu maachi, Sali boti, dhansaak and the entire lagan nu bonu before your now half-glazed eyes. And when you sat down to the feast, your belt slyly loosened by two spaces at least, your Grace Before and After Meals, discreetly belched would be a silent “God save the Parsi.” Foreshadowing the sentiments of our gracious Minister.

            But dismiss me and my personal biases as so much hogwash. Who among us Indians has not sipped of that legendary glass of milk sweetened at Sanjan so many centuries ago? You may take for granted the industrial, commercial and economic sweetening of India by the likes of the Tatas and the Godrejes or the global flourish of aapro Zubin’s baton. You may invoke the memory of names like Dadabhai Naoroji, JRD and Homi Bhabha down to a more recent Russi Mody or your very own baug friend, Pesu. I ask you to think back to the nicest, liveliest, the most gracious, most talented and jocular people you have known. I can bet you a Parsi peg that if you have lived in Mumbai, most of them on your list would be bawas. Real “darrrlings”, as they call everyone else.

            Think about it. Where could you turn for migraine relief after that verbal chappal-throwing on a Goswami show if not to Bawa Cyrus Broacha’s mad Week that Wasn’t?

            How else would you take away the bad taste in your mouth left by all that biased, sensationalist and depressing reportage except by snacking on Bachchi’s kurkure columns?

            And who will interpret the law for us common folk without all that thorny legalese and with that honest Parsi intent we have come to trust but our familiar Soli Sorabjee?

Come to think of it, we have to say a quiet thank you too to my good Parsi friend on India’s Madison Avenue, Sam Balsara for helping to put a shine on our new Prime Minister. Oh yes, Minister, you need to save the Parsi.

In all this, we can be sure, under the promised certainties of the new regime, that in naming the Parsis, the honourable Minister is not displaying any favouritism merely because of all the endearing qualities of this minority that I have incompletely enumerated. In time, we can expect other small enough social groups to be included in this programme of national salvation. One might well include the Jarawas of the Andamans, who despite their poisoned arrows and robust penile displays could be worthy candidates for saving and for inclusion in our list of minorities. And then, maybe, she would know of some more. Like the Jews perhaps, who may come in handy in case of a needed Entebbe type operation in the future?

Others, such as the Christians, who count themselves as blessed minorities had better read the new arithmetic on the wall. Their percentages may look small but their numbers are a little too large for comfort. They account for a measly 2%. But in terms of numbers, you may find more practising Christians in India than in all of Europe. So there, you have it. By the same logic, not a minority. To qualify for minority status worthy of demographic salvation, you better dwindle down to a size where you cannot be any trouble. Like the Parsis. Or the Jews. Or the Jarawas.

In the mean time, the Parsis would do well to seize the moment. An opportunity of many lifetimes. The State that welcomed them to India way back in 1599 in Sanjan is now the model for the country’s governance and even the language that they speak (minus their own sweet musical grace notes) may well be on its way to becoming the lingua franca after the Messianic dawn of May 16, 2014. 

Sudhir Deokar

 

Sudhir Deokar

The 3-D Art Director

The early 60s. I was a cub writer then, Sudhir a young tiger. Every day I watched him roar, bold and resonant on his easel. And I cowered behind my table wondering what I was doing in a place like this? Tentatively I handed him a line for an Esso advertisement, expecting a growl of disapproval. He looked at it for a moment and with the salivary articulation of well-chewed paan, he said: “Tomorrow.” The next morning I glanced at his easel and grew a hundred feet tall. There was my line on his layout, for sure, but barely recognizable even to me.  Sudhir had made it resonate beyond the thesaurus.

            He did this always. He took lines and gave them roundness, movement, dimension, resulting in halos for copywriters, account directors, clients and their brands. He freed the Air-India Maharaja from the croquill’s ruthless line and caressed him with that soft roundness. He poured sex appeal into Haryana Breweries’ beer barrels, played mid-wife to both DCM and Wipro Data Products and placed Hamdard on the medical pedestal it deserved. Name any Thompson brand from the early sixties to the Millenium year; Sudhir has gilded it with his brush. He retired as Creative Chief of the Mumbai office of HTA.

            He worked his magic with 6-B pencil, croquill, Rotring, Indian ink, water-colours and his sable hair wand; conjuring up caricatures, cartoons, stylized drawings and life-like water colours; his 20-minute layouts often used as artwork. Artwork became works of art, clients having them framed and put up in their offices. His visualisation of human situations or tabletop was photographically perfect. When the final picture was taken in the studio, you might not be able to tell the difference between the photographed picture and the 20-minute wash drawing. Mitter Bedi, Obi, Salian and so many others would marvel at the lens that was Sudhir’s eye.

            For close to three decades he gave my work the visual sanctification of his brush, and I feel blessed. I know that many who came before and after me will echo my feelings. He had the bigness and breadth to work with most anyone – from trainee to guru. Many of his trainees are gurus now. I look with awe today at a generation that thrives on the digital evacuation of ideas, but I still thrill to the memory of those visual insights shaped by hand and eye by artists like Sudhir. He was loved by all – from the most cussed of executives to the most difficult of clients.

            Besides being my creative soul mate, Sudhir became a friend of the family. His passing is a deep gash that my soul will have to bear for ever.

Ivan Arthur. Goa

Ivan.arthur@gmail.com

           

           

This tribute was published in afaqs and Campaign

The Chakki Walla

 
-->

The Chakki Walla

            “Why in the world did I not know you better in HTA?”

            That was my friend, Ranen Basu, three days ago in an email, posing more or less the same question that Rajiv Desai and I have been asking each other (usually after our third drink) over the past couple of years that we have been meeting in Goa.

            I offered Ranen an offhand answer: The Chakki Walla.

            You remember this fellow, the chakki walla. I do. I would go every week, sent by my mother, lugging a bag of wheat to the local flourmill. He was there, this chakki walla banging his chakki with a metal piece in a convincing rumba rhythm to loosen the flour sticking to the insides of the mill. He was covered all over in fine white flour -- every micrometer of his body from head to toe – lips, eyelashes, the hair in his nostrils and ears all sprayed an even white. The only colour you saw on him was the reddish brown of his paan-stained teeth when he smiled and the black of his pupils in between blinks; the whites of his eyes merging with the rest of him. A marble figure in motion.

            I remember the day I met him on the street. He waved and smiled at me. I didn’t recognize him. He stopped and greeted me with a namaskar. Hesitantly I did the same. He could see that I did not know who he was and I saw the hurt in his face. “Kya baba. Pehchana nahin?Bhikubhaiyya. Chakki wala.” He was a complete stranger to me.

            I was seeing the chakki wala every week for years. I was meeting Bhikubhaiyya for the first time that day!

                        I spent four decades in that chakki called Advertising before I retired in 2002. I worked with the finest of writers, art directors, illustrators, strategic planners, media planners and client servicing directors; often through the night to meet those unreasonable deadlines. We banged our heads to the rumba rhythm of crazy concepts stubbornly sticking to the insides of our crania, sharing the labour pains of ideation, arguing and fighting over differing points of view as if nothing else mattered. We saw in each other the passion to grind out a grand idea. So then, we were covering ourselves over with that fine flour of our profession. We looked at each other through that powdery haze of admiration and awe. We saw all that brilliance, the tweaked madness, the energy, the feverish competition and the dogged ambition of some. And we missed the real person hiding behind all that advertising stardust.

            Right?

            I am not so sure. Maybe I am getting a little carried away by an analogy that’s seductive and certainly partially spurious because, to be honest, it does not apply to everyone with equal neatness. Friend, Mohan Lalwani is the same guy today as he was in HTA of the 90s. He slams you with the same embarrassing, shocking and intimately personal provocations as he did when he was Account Director on Lever brands. No amount of professional flour can hide that Lalwani mischief. Randhir Behl’s camaraderie is as hurtful when he slaps a hard and hearty “Hi!” on your back today as it was 30 years ago. I’d recognize him twenty years from now with my eyes closed and my hearing aid (if I needed one then) turned down. The Randhir you saw then is the Randhir you meet today.

            I don’t know if I might say the same of Rui Menezes, Deepa Kakkar, Sudhir Deokar, Prabhakar Mundkur, Anu Bhatia and a few others. Unchanged melodies? Maybe not. And what about Sheila Syed, Ketaki Gupte, Sunil Lulla, Albert Almeida, Rambha Mankame and, for that matter, yours truly. I have been meeting them over the years, some of them recently and I observe new facets of personality and character. I could say with Ranen, “Why in the world did I not know you better in HTA?” But I don’t. I know that it is not something that I missed seeing in them then. It is just that I see something new today – another talent, a new mellowness, another level of maturity, openness, conviviality or just a new demeanour added on by their life’s experiences, conscious personal development and age. An evolution.

            Time has become the new chakki.

            I discard too the idea that the more extroverted are the ones who seem unchanged, their projected behaviour and social interaction remaining constant at all times. I reconcile myself instead to a more obvious, less attractive explanation of the perceived change or constancy. It is simply a matter of the nature and closeness of our interactions then and now.

            For instance, Rajiv and I saw each other only at Executive Committee Meetings with backslapping hellos for openers followed by two days of earnest dickering over product, processes and profit. Evenings, dipped in overproof beverage fooled us into believing that we were letting our hair down. Perhaps some of us did. Rajiv and I had little interaction where day-to-day work was concerned, whereas Ranen and I also worked on some corporate and training assignments together. With our offices in the same building, we met almost every day; some of the time over work; most of the time over prawn gussi and fried fish at Mahesh.

            There are so many with whom I worked very closely; people I hold in great regard and much affection – In Delhi, Nikhil, Kamal, Ashok, Vandana, Denis Joseph, Alex Kuruvilla, Aman Nath, Pulak Biswas… and in Bombay, Claree, Warner, Sawant, Bawker, Bhagwan, Ananda, Anita, Sattar and Anwar Ali Khan, LVK, David Innis, and in the other offices, Srirup, Dharen Chadda, Chaks, Pops, Indu … and Oh so many! I have not met them for years. Of course, there are chances that we will meet some time in the near future; and when we do, I wonder if we will say to each other, like Ranen Basu: “Why in the world did I not know you better in HTA?”

            Or will it be: “Hey! You haven’t changed one bit!”

An East-Indian Dulpod

 

AN EAST-INDIAN DULPOD

            “Ivan, I need your help.” Mark, my jaam tree friend sounded more than a little excited. “My son is marrying a Goan girl. In Goa.”

            “That’s glad tidings, man!” I said. “Tell me, what can I do for you?”

            “The Umbracha Paani,” he said. “I need your help. Do you know if I can get a pimperi band in Goa?”

            Mark, to me was the quintessential East-Indian, a true-blue son of the soil -- the soil being all that land from the three hills of mango trees stretching from Oshiwara, across acres of rice fields, right up to Caesar Road and beyond, a place called Kevni Village in Andheri. This was in the late 1940s. 

            East-Indians owned every inch of land in Kevni and neighbouring Amboli, all the pretty cottages and the new bamboo-and-mud ‘chawls’, opportunistically constructed to house the new Goan and Mangalorean migrants; they owned too the free-roaming chickens, ducks, pigs and a few guinea fowl, the First Class graves in the porch of St. Blaise’s Church, and to all appearances, the very church itself. Before Bal Thackeray could mouth his famous “Mumbai amchi”, one could pick up faint strains of “Amboli amchi” from these sons and daughters of Amboli and Kevni.

            Mark’s family however was among the more socially inclusive; their doors open to ‘outsiders’ like me, giving me my first taste of mutton kuddi and East-Indian sorpotel, his grandmother even sharing with me stories of the plague and fascinating tales of Kevni’s often-vicious property intrigues.

            He was my first, closest and most durable friend after our family came to live in Kevni; Mark barely six and I, just six months his junior. We would climb up Mark’s jaam tree, perch ourselves on two adjacent branches and chat for hours, discussing in our teenage years, girls, teachers, the books we shared: from Erle Stanley Gardner, Edgar Wallace and Somerset Maugham to a later phase of Aldous Huxley, John Updike and the radical theology of Hans Küng.

            Until marriage did us part. We moved to other cities, other countries. A chasm of nearly forty years; guilt for losing touch and a longing to catch up. We did that catching up a couple of years ago in Goa.

            And now he, an East-Indian was asking me, a ruddy Mangalorean if I could help him with this very East-Indian wedding tradition of the Umbracha Paani in Goa!

            The Umbracha Paani is a ritual, celebrated in mock solemnity a day before the wedding, separately for bride and groom. The word derives from umber, the local wild fig tree, the roots of which give off a cooling and therapeutic sap. This was supposed to be used in the water with which the bride and groom would be given their cosmetic bath. Later, with not many umber trees to be found, the water was fetched from the village wells. The family danced all the way to the well, singing traditional wedding songs, accompanied on a gumat.

            Today, with not many people knowing the words of the songs, brass brands are hired to substitute the words with deafeningly loud trumpeted tunes. We used to call them pimperi bands, because of the raw tones they produced, rather like the pimperi flutes which children made from big, brittle leaves.

            “Can you find me a pimperi band in Goa?” Mark asked, sounding doubtful.

            “I’ll try.” I promised. “Should be possible. Scratch a Goan and you’ll hear music, you know.”

            “But a pimperi band playing East-Indian traditional songs?”

            “I’ll try.”

            I called my friend, Prof. Christo Fernandes of the Goa Institute of Management, an accomplished violinist and choir conductor. Christo put me on to a friend, who put me on to a friend, who put me on to Futusch.

            “Talk to Futusch,” he told me.

            “Futusch?” I asked this friend of a friend of Christo’s.

            “Futusch, re. Futusch. Francis. Futusch. Same thing. You don’t know?” He wondered how anybody could be so dumb.

            I spoke to Futusch, who turned out to be one of those “no problem” Goans.

            “No problem,” he said.

            “Can you play East-Indian wedding songs?”

            “No problem,” he reiterated. I was not quite reassured.

            “Do you know the songs?” I asked.

            “East-Indian songs, no, no, no. I am Goan, re.”

            “Then how will you play them?” I asked, confused. I sang him a couple of bars of Maaza Combda and Yeh garawari to give him an idea.

            “Ah! Just like dulpod, re. Six/eight tempo. No problem.”

            Nicely confused now, I asked him if it would be OK if I wrote out the songs and sent it to him. “No problem,” he assured me. And so, on hand ruled staves, I wrote out the music of a dozen or so East-Indian tunes and e-mailed the sheets to Futusch. For convenience I wrote them all in two/four time with instruction to play them in six/eight.

            There were six bandsmen at the Paani: Futusch on the cornet, a trumpet, two saxophones, a bass drum and kettledrums. That was no pimperi band. They sounded more like a refined chamber group. What I had written was the first melody. What they played was improvised counterpoint around the melody, their Goan musical instincts embellishing the tunes with impromptu triads and flowing obligato, an accidental fusion of musical styles. Yeh garawari melded with Undeer mujhea mama and I could swear that I could hear Cecilia mujhe naum in between the Ee pori konachee, the sound of mando and Chopin minuet in one. This was East-Indian music as I had never heard before. Fascinating.

            The dancers too caught my fancy. Ladies, married and unmarried, young and old moved their hips and feet to Futusch’s polyphonic East-Indian dulpod. Unfamiliar with the traditional half-pirouette of the kunbi-koli dance, they stepped across salsa, hip-hop, the twist and gangnam style. It was an exhilarating and creative performance – all stimulated by that improvised East-Indian dulpod. Brilliant!

            So, now. The next time you know someone who wants to do an Umbracha Paani in Goa, no problem. Just talk to Futusch.