The Year that Was

2014.

I have written about this before. As a child, I had been used to standing on the shore, at times dipping my feet into the water that spilled onto the beach while my mother firmly held on to my hand. This time it was me who had the death grip on a colleague’s hand, as she guided me into deeper waters. As a large wave approached, I lost my grip and went under. Breathing brought water into my nose and ears and for two seconds I was more scared than I had ever been before. The wave subsided, and somebody found my hand. I was safe again, but this time less scared of any oncoming wave.

Very frequently this year, I cribbed, I bitched, I was unhappy.

But this was by far, the most interesting year of my life. It was my first year as a real adult, and I think I found my way through, armed with some deep insight into growing up.

There was Goa.

Then there was the first visit to Bhutan, the trek to Tiger’s Nest. That point in the trek, when for the first time I didn’t second guess myself. I absolutely knew what I wanted to do, and did just that. The first time I wasn’t just happy, I was in bliss.

It was also the first time I was at my unhappiest, and alone. I didn’t have friends to cheer me up, I didn’t have my parents fussing over me, my sister telling me it would be okay. But I managed to pick myself up. I broke down on the way, but I wasn’t embarrassed about it. Alone wasn’t the same thing as lonely.

There was the first visit to the Maldives where I learnt that binge-watching MTV could be incredible fun. And that Sidhharth Malhotra was hot. And that I was capable of washing bed-sheets and scrubbing denims clean.

There were the second visits to the two countries when I realised I felt safer there than in India. Where I realised I was capable of random conversations with strangers. When I realised that I was more parochial than I thought. But I was still less parochial than others. Floating lights can lift your mood. Old people do not find happiness in the small pleasures of life. They crib more. I might revel in being alone, but want my parents to be with me the next time I go to the Buddha Statue in Thimphu.

And along the way, in Delhi, in Bombay, in Shirdi, in Nasik, in Kolkata, there were a host of other things I learnt, about me and the world.

I oscillate between naiveté and shrewdness. (When did I forget the difference between having fun conversations and being friends?)

The average woman matures faster than the average man. It’s true, not a sexist conspiracy.

There is no person in the world I love more than my sister. But I don’t want to be like her.

As people grow up, they make compromises in their lives, which were unimaginable when they were younger.

The most unlikely people can surprise you. The auntyji-ish colleague can be a tennis aficionado and Agatha Christie groupie. The quiet, mousy colleague could have had a love-life that could be the stuff of movies.

It’s important to say no.

Manoeuvring social obligations is a bitch.

I can’t spell ‘manoeuvring’ without the help of a word-processor.  

I look back at my Hindu college days through rose-tinted glasses. I realised this by watching a video of old photos which ironically, was designed to make me feel nostalgic. Or maybe I am emotionally stunted.

I can go to great lengths, sometimes stupidly, to save 700 bucks.

We often allow people to hurt us, and don’t hit back.

I can write soppy blog-posts.

Of old friends

Manu da sat across the room from me, at the door of the balcony, under the sun, rifling through the newspaper supplement. Every ten minutes or so, he would look up to stare at his shut bedroom door and sigh wistfully. He had a mug of tea at his side, yet untouched. I sipped mine in silence. I had winced at the first taste, and shot an accusatory look at him. He had orchestrated an elaborate bow at that indictment of his culinary skills. Then reverted to his ritual of staring at the bedroom door. Malini di was getting ready inside, before they stepped out for a winter afternoon date on a Saturday. The door had closed exactly hundred and two minutes earlier. I knew because I had begun dressing at exactly the same time, and emerged within ten minutes.

“How much more will we have to wait for her? Should I just go?” I asked half-heartedly.

“What time are you supposed to meet them?” he asked.

“Half an hour back”, I drawled.

He smiled. “If you had any talent, you would make a wonderful artist. Reclusive and people hating. The media would love you”.

I protested. It wasn’t people I hated. Just the stepping out to catch up with people I knew long back in school, and who had gone all weird on me.

“Weird, how?”

“One of them got married.”

“That is the worst”, he dead-panned. “The other?”

“She is an MBA. All ambitious and everything. She is probably earning pots of money”.

“So, you are jealous?" he wondered out aloud, his eyes narrowing. (I could see them because he had recently got a haircut, so the famous curls didn't cover them anymore.)

 "Well no”, I answered. “But she will wonder what happened to me, how I lost all my drive”.

“So don’t tell them the truth”, he answered, matter-of-factly.

“What do I tell them?”

“Whatever suits you”.

He was right, I thought to myself, as I made my way to Warehouse Cafe in CP, an hour later than planned. The place was dark, there was loud music and I missed my step and stumbled. A waitress came to my help but she said “Ma’am” in the disapproving tone my mom adopted when two minutes before the school bus arrived, I would start a frantic search for ‘chart paper’ for the SUPW class scheduled that day. It was ominous.

I spotted them at a corner table, both fashionably thin. I walked towards them and both saw me at the same time. And then something happened that I hadn’t for a minute thought out in my head. They spontaneously called out my name while breaking into the happiest of smiles and I mirrored them. And while we hugged and talked at the same time, I was glad to be there.

As it turns out, you don’t mind when school friends point out that you have gained weight (maybe because they don’t worry that it will hurt your chances in the marriage market). You can call them snobbish and forgetful without hurting their feelings. You can say elitist trash that comes to your mind, which you would filter out in different company. Everyone gets less ambitious and less serious and less intense as they grow up. Marriage does not cause personality makeovers. It might actually help people open up more. You can be honest about your career plans with your school friends. They knew you before you started understanding yourself better, so they understand what could make you happy. They ask about your family, and you genuinely care about how their kid siblings are doing. You want to know about what their old colony friends are up to, the ones you used to hear about all the time. Friends’ husbands don’t necessarily have to be people you don’t like. When they walk you to the metro station before they leave, it can leave an incredibly nice feeling in your stomach (especially after your relentless independence). And even though you are now more different from each other than you ever could have imagined, you know that you still have some solid friends.

I want to move.

I am a selfish bitch.
Someone got raped on Friday. Someone like me. A young career woman on the way home after an evening with friends. And all I can think about is I have done the same. Tons of times. I did it last Friday. I didn't take a cab home, I rode on the ladies compartment of the Delhi metro. Apparently separating the sexes is the only way to keep women safe now. That is, till the next case. Maybe next time it will be the Metro. Maybe that's the next way my freedom will get curtailed.

I want to move to a different country. Where women in public spheres are not seen as aberrations or threats. Where religion is not a polarising force. Where national leaders don't express the need for a 'holy book' for the country. Where people from the majority community don't peddle crap like 'We have taken enough'. Where donor agencies are not welcomed with open arms to make the country more 'business-friendly', especially when their ulterior motives are known. Where young educated women don't have to give up their dreams and careers to have happy family lives. Where different points of view have the space to be heard without being branded sickular or sanghi. Where people question and debate, don't believe and accept. Where the family elders don't bemoan cultural pollution when the young embrace their rights to choice.  Where people forget who or what the 'other' is.

In Which I Explain The Blog Name (and get new room-mates)

Some people, whose mailboxes I may or may not have flooded with links to my blog, have enquired why my blog is called what it is.

If you took it literally, you wouldn’t be off the mark. Fish is always preferred. To everything. (Except maybe chicken.)

However, “Fish Preferred” is also the name of a book by Wodehouse. His other titles include “Aunt’s aren’t Gentlemen”, the “Code of the Woosters”, and “Uncle Fred in the Springtime”.  As the titles suggest, Wodehouse wrote heavily about family-batty cousins, battier aunts, and even battier uncles (besides prize pumpkins and award-winning pigs). Since I have an enviable collection of these (batty relatives that is, not pumpkins and pigs), I decided their misadventures would make for fantastic writing fodder. Of course, it didn’t pan out that way. Half of the posts on the blog have me cribbing, a fourth have me gush about movies/t.v. shows/ authors. In two years of blogging, only two posts featured relatives-one cousin and one aunt.

 Part of it has to do with the fact that I cannot be physically dragged into a family re-union/ function anymore. So I just don’t meet them that often. The rest of it has to do with me finding a relative I can bring myself to like. Who I wouldn’t have found unless the rest of the brood-actually only Malini di-had not existed.

I wasn’t feeling so charitable towards her that day though, when that call came. It was about 1 o’clock on a wintry Saturday-only late morning for me. I had been snuggling inside the quilt, reading, and the phone had been lying in the living room. I tumbled out of the bed, and failing to locate my slippers, had to run barefoot on the cold floor, towards the ringing mobile. It was only to be expected then, that my “Hello” to Malini di didn’t sound too enthused.

She asked me how my life and I were. I replied I was great. She decided I was joking and laughed a nice, polite laugh.

“I am in the city. Do you want to meet up? Get a bite?” she asked.

I hesitated a little, before replying-weighing the benefits of free food against the costs of stepping out in Delhi on a winter evening. Plus would the food even be free? I did have a job now, however little it paid…If we met in a nice, up-market restaurant, would I be expected to foot the bill? But she is older…surely protocol dictates that she pay…

“Or maybe we could come over to your place? I’d rather not be out in this cold”, she said before my inner voice could allow my real voice to answer.

“Sure”, I replied. Then wondered what level of familial censure a “no” would have caused.

Meanwhile she fixed the time. Then tried to make small talk but I stopped her mid-sentence to remind her that we were meeting later anyway. I was depending on talk of the weather, the fog, the traffic, and the upcoming Delhi elections to take us through the better part of the evening.

*              *              *

I looked down from the balcony when I heard an auto honk below. I could see the top of Malini di’s head, as she struggled to pull something out of the auto. It turned out to be a rather large suitcase. My inner voice shrieked in horror. Malini di seemed to hear that for she immediately looked up. I waved half-heartedly, and she gave me her famous dimpled smile. I saw that she had gotten fringes now, which seemed like an age-inappropriate choice. I decided to let her know that, if she threatened to stay with me. She looked towards the auto once again from which a bag was half-protruding out. My heart skipped a beat, as I realised someone inside the auto was holding it out.

“Or maybe we could come over to your place?”

We, she had said.

It suddenly dawned upon me that Malini di had gotten married since the last time we had met. Some painter-Dhrittimaan Chatterjee or Mukherjee or something. Or was it Ray? I saw a curly head of hair get out of the auto now.

                                                                                *             *              *

The curly head of hair was attached to a rather thin, wiry body. That of my new brother-in-law, who sat squatting on the mattress in my living room, dipping a glucose biscuit into the tumbler of tea I had offered him. I could see the biscuit crumbs merrily fall on his tiny French beard on to his green oversized kurta, which he had worn over a pair of faded jeans. The curly hair fell over his eyes which he kept flicking away periodically. The unmistakeable signs of aatel, I noted with some satisfaction. 

Malini di sat beside him, sipping from her glass. Periodically, she would adjust herself, and then look around the room, a pained look crossing her face, every time she did. It could be the newspapers strewn about the floor, my disbelief in the idea of chairs, or the bitter taste of the tea that was causing her, her consternation.

 “So mashi said you don’t have a roommate”, Malini di said, once she realised that I had registered her facial expression.

“Yeah, my roommate left, because she thought there were bed-bugs in the house”, I lied.

 Then I started painting her a picture of the terror the bugs had unleashed, but my brother-in-law interrupted to say that he wanted to use the bathroom. I indicated to him the one inside my room, and then resumed my gory narrative. She almost let out an audible sigh of relief when he returned, and gathered the tea tumblers to take them to the kitchen.

I heard her turn on the tap in the kitchen. She had begun washing the tea utensils. If I hadn’t known that it was a ruse to avoid conversation with me, I would have been touched.

Meanwhile, the brother-in-law had positioned himself on the mattress again and was smiling vacantly at me. I smiled back.

Then he outstretched his hand, at a 90 degrees angle from his body, and grunted noisily, while waving the hand. I leapt in surprise. He laughed at my shock.

“It’s an elephant, no?” he asked stupidly. Then repeated the action to show me that he was acting like an elephant. Apparently, this was regular behaviour from him, because Malini di kept up the utensil washing. Either that, or she was still studiously avoiding contact with me. And her weirdo husband.

“Yes, very nice,” I finally said, deciding he wouldn’t hurt me if I patronised him.

He laughed, then pointed at the luggage.

“That is the elephant, in this very nice room.”

I shook my head, believing that to be a neutral action, to which no meaning could be attached.

“So can we stay? We need a place for about three weeks. I have an exhibition here. We were going to stay with friends but that did not work out”.

I started mumbling. I was beginning to like him.

“We can take the spare room with the bug infestation”, he smiled. A pleasant smile.

“And you can say no. Even if this ambush seems to suggest otherwise”.

I couldn’t say no.

It’s been 11 months since the first meeting. My first meeting with my current room-mates.

What I Learnt in the Month Gone By

The answer to the burning question of what I like better- mountains or the sea.

Bhutan-Relaxing after a morning walk

Maldives-Sneaking out for a mid afternoon break

Mountains FYI. Hands down.

A young person's love life is everybody's business.
I got asked by a thirty something globetrotting professional woman whether I wasn't getting too old for marriage. And whether my parents were not introducing me to suitable bachelors.

It's probably not love if a muffin can help get over heartbreak.

I don't hate dogs. Not a lot.

I shocked myself by going 'Awwww what a cute doggie' at a random stray in Bhutan. Also, fun fact: there are no dogs in the Maldives. Not one. (Maybe not such a fun fact for dogs).

I enjoy teaching.

Or having a captive audience, at any rate.

Adam-teasing is a thing.

A shop girl would break into a Hindi film song every time a male colleague would visit. One of those times, the song was 'Husn hai suhana, paas mere aana' (yes that forgotten gem from Coolie No. 1).

Unnecessary beautification is not just something CWG obsessed Indian administrators do.

Ghastly ornamentation in Bhutan

Still better than this:

Ghastly ornamentation in Delhi

Young lovers the world over desecrate public property.

See, just the names change

Indians are world famous for circumventing queues and bending rules. And being unapologetic about it. Even in the emergency ward of a government hospital named after a former Indian Prime Minister.

All the hoopla about 'Ghar ka Khana' is justified.

You can have all the fish maru, grilled tuna with salsa, Kerala style fish curry, Bengali restaurant style fish curry in the world. But your mom's homemade curry that spills from one end of the plate to another is still the best.(Now if only the moong ki daal and the daily bhindi could be avoided).

I am more Bengali than I get credit for.

It's not just about the food. I have rarely heard a Bengali say, 'Valentine's day is an import from the decadent West'. It's more common to hear them say that we have Saraswati Puja for that anyway.

A Uniform Civil Code is not a necessary (and certainly not a sufficient) condition for women's empowerment. The senior management of the Central Bank in Islamic Maldives is all-women.

There's a pleasure in the world called Kit Kat ice cream.

There can be no reasonable justification for this being denied to an average person in post-reform India.

They are not paying me for this, I swear

Just ruminating

I wrote a poem when I was eight that got published in a a really dull children's magazine (no, not Champak). It was about a cat that chased rats and sat on  a mat. That's how far my poetic instincts ever went. May be excepting something insincere about world peace/ poverty/ despair I wrote in middle school. And my benchmark to judge poetry was simple-I liked them as long as they rhymed.

But then recently, late one night, when I was moping alone about how I was too old to be this clueless about life, I stumbled upon these lines:

"These paperboats of mine are meant to dance upon the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination."

And this simple line written by a white haired gentleman many years ago, uplifted the mood of a person born four generations later.
I know I have these vague ambitions of making a difference in people's lives. But can anything I do (as an average economist, consultant or government servant) match the kind of a impact a poet can have?

Forget Tagore.

Think of how happy the average Bollywood lyricist can make you.

Feeling daunted by work or life?

"Mitti ke parato ko nanhe se ankur bhi cheerein....
Suraj ki kirano ko roke yeh salakhen hai kahaan; sapno pe pehren de, yeh aankhen hai kahaan"

Or the more prosaic,
"Tension vension kya lena maathe pe bal hote hai
Beparvah muskano se hi masle hal hote hai"

In love?
"Lena dena nahi duniya se bas ab tujhse kaam hai
Teri ankhiyon ke shahar mein yaara sab intezam hai
Khushiyon ka tukra mile ya mila dukh khurchane
Tere mere kharche main sab ka ek daam hai"

Stunned by nature's beauty?
"Aasman ke chhat pe hain apni duniya
Khilkhilati jismein hai apni khushiya
Chaand ki chalni liye
Taare chunte hai hum
Jadui hai yeh jahaan
Hai nahi koi gham."

Of course this is not to deny that the same sentiment could be described by
"Yeh blue hai pani pani pani pani
Aur din bhi saaanny sannny saanny".

Budget 2014-15: A stronger case of cooperative federalism?

Honestly, this does not deserve a separate post-at best a comment on the Firstpost page where this article was published. But if you are a regular visitor on the website (does it say something about me that I am?), you would know how the regular commenters there are...how do I say it politely...moronic.

Anyway, the facts stated in the article are accurate enough. That is, as Jagannathan notes, there has been a  "...massive transfer of fiscal implementation power to states in just one year. In P Chidambaram’s last fiscal year (2013-14), states got Rs 1,19,039 crore out of the Rs 4,75,532 crore plan outlays; this year (2014-15), they get a huge Rs 3,38,408 crore from the total plan kitty of Rs 5,75,000 crore."

Essentially, there are two ways in which states can receive funds- Centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) and Central Assistance to State and UT plans. CSS schemes come with certain strings attached. Namely, states have to make proportionate expenditure contribution to the scheme if they are to access CSS funds. On the other hand, Central Assistance comes in two forms-Normal Assistance and Additional Assistance. Additional assistance funds are scheme-based. However, Normal Central Assistance are not tied to any specific schemes. Transfers to states depend on the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula which uses criteria like population, per capita income, fiscal discipline and special problems of the state to determine how funds are to be transferred. Once received, states can work with these funds in the manner that suits the state, on schemes that are tailored to the states’ specific needs.

However, the writer is being disingenuous when he says that,

"The one-cap-fits-all approach of the UPA years, dictated by dynastic and centralising feudal considerations, is now being whittled down by a former state chief minister who is now prime minister."

In fact, the almost three-fold jump seen in Central Assistance to State and UT plans (and a corresponding decline in allocations under CSS as reflected by the Gross Budgetary Support to States) under Jaitley's 2014-15 budget, mirrors the allocations made by Chidambaram's interim budget of 2014-15. He, of the party "dictated by dynastic and centralising feudal considerations". To be fair, the budget document itself does not claim to reversing any trend of "de-federalising a federalising trend that had begun earlier in the last decade". Rather, it maintains that it is continuing with the restructuring of CSS, as suggested by the B K Chaturvedi committee report.

Just goes to show that media coverage needs to be taken with a heavy dosage of salt.