Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 8: Kolkata . . . Oh Calcutta! Part 3 ... A Story of a Lady and 3 Idiots!

The Imperial Calcutta:  The Legacy of the British

2012:   A recent status update by a lady on my Facebook friend list caught my attention. As she and her husband got into a taxi in Kolkata they found a Nokia Lumia  cell phone lying on the passenger seat. She tried checking the last call made on it to try find out the owner’s details. The cell phone battery had run down and the phone was shut. She initially handed it to the cab driver to take care of it. Then realising the driver may or may not be responsible and the phone owner may lose it for ever, She took back the phone. Next day as she could not get the phone battery charged as it needed a special charger, She took the initiative to walk down to a Nokia dealer and get the battery charged. Then calling on the last number recorded in the phone she actually got in touch with the owner’s mother in Bangalore! Her South Indian son was in Kolkata on some training. The lady finally got the details of the phone owner and handed over the phone to him. Hats off to the magnificent initiative and social responsibility shown by the Kolkata lady. And the lady flushed with the act’s blessing shared her story on Facebook.

The incident happening a week or so before August 24, Kolkata's Birthday, will trigger among the Kolkata readers of this blog a rerun of oft-repeated updates in Facebook of   " . . .  while other metros may have money or power or both, Kolkata has a SOUL  . . . " ( I think a quote by Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times).  But the above story of the lady is not about Kolkata’s soul; it’s about the lady's education, care and Soul. It is incidental that she is from Kolkata. She would have done the same even if she came from any other part of the country or the world. Kolkatans, in general may not have done so just like a general  Mumbaikar or a Delhite may not have . The lady’s act is not a usual behavior of a Urban person too preoccupied living one’s life and its demands. Though not all finders may be dishonest enough to keep the costly phone for self, many would feel they have done their duty by handing over the phone to the cabbie. Any fool who disturbs their urban routine and puts them into a civic responsibility situation, especially with such a costly item, deserves to lose the item! The lady’s act therefore is a rare gesture in today’s world and deserves an applause by us. And emulation.

Such acts may be rare but bring a blessing to the receiver which has no monetary compensation but may be worth a life-long remembrance. I personally have been receipt of two extraordinary such receipts of help, beyond the call of duty, which I will recount below. In return I then resolved to help in a difficult situation whenever I will come across others needing help. And I HAVE . . . at the risk of once or twice almost becoming a victim to the infamous Bengal’s mob violence. But I had to CONTINUE the chain of such acts as a THANK-YOU to my saviours. Many of us receive some disgusting chain mail shit on social networks involving religious salvation or success if we pass on the chain messages, while it should be this social chain of care, intervention and follow-up which is more required to be involved with and encouraged. I believe the above lady’s act is a Karmic continuation of such a magic chain!

If ever Calcutta had some soul, and it did have it I admit, Kolkata has lost most of it if we go by the recent happenings there. And if I am able to notice it it’s because I left Calcutta in 1982 and returned to Kolkata in 1997 after a long stay out and the change and deterioration in the soul was very clearly visible. (as it is visible for Bombay now. What that is another story!)

But first a digression to making a self-defence. Recently after a couple of blog articles of my life in Kolkata and about Bengal in general, a student of mine during a online chat congratulated me on my articles and went on to say something to the effect that  “these people should be exposed". . . Catching his trend I had to remind him that I was writing about Bengal and Kolkata as a insider and not a outsider;  Bengalis or Kolkatans meant people who stay there and not necessarily whose mother tongue is Bengali. And this includes him and me too. But the cut-short conversation did momentarily made me squirm if I will be seen as a outsider making such racist comments or worse a deserter who was now getting  even. But the fact that my largest number of students (and the erstwhile big fan following) have been Bengalis; and even today, after my retirement, they are the largest number on my Facebook friend list gives me the confidence that MOST will not see me as a bigot but a insider critic, who had a caustic tongue as a mentor &  guide and now is a caustic ejaculator. And his mother tongue being Punjabi is a biological event if not a accident. As a person born, "bread and buttered “ in Calcutta and worked for the last 15 years in Kolkata, I was more a Bengali than most Bengalis. I have played serious football at the level of college, university, and organisation, that too as a " officer" ; loved more Bengali women than a Punjabi or a Tamilian or a Marwari ; possessed more of a intelligent and creative brain than just being a ‘Punju’ brawn. Credentials established, I now can continue with my version of remembering Calcutta, now Kolkata, on its birthday.

Calcutta's Two Icons together:  Amitabh Bachchan padded up for a charity match at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, India circa 1980

Following is the chronological narration of some Magic events in my life as a part of the larger Karmic continuation of  a Magic chain mentioned earlier.

1.     1979-80:    A Help I could be.            @ Calcutta
 I had returned home (Calcutta) on a college vacation and went to the College Street to browse and buy some books. (The obsessive love for books I picked up in my life is another proof of my being a Calcuttan!)  As I reached the spot bang opposite the famous Presidency College, I noticed a crowd near a book stall on the opposite side of the street where mostly school books and test guides are available. Curious like any Calcuttan, I came closer to the group to see a young boy being beaten up by a man , a stall owner,  on account of stealing a book from the stall. The man was mouthing the choicest expletives and landing blows on the hapless boy. It seemed a injustice that the boy should be so mercilessly beaten up for stealing a exam guidebook costing hardly Rs 10 or so. The boy appeared belonging to a ‘good family’. Confused and pained on the aggressiveness of the shop keeper bordering on violence, I was about to move away when the boy’s wails for help and his innocence stopped me.

In schooldays, I was a shy person and restricted by my mother from mixing with others and mostly my playing network was with myself or my two sisters. It was only now staying away from my dreaded mother (who I rebelled against finally in class 12) in the freedom of a residential hostel of a engineering college, I had started learning to open up a bit and also see on close quarters the topsyturvy life of students when they all get freedom from their parents once they arrive enmass to a residential campus. And the resultant madness, defiance and manipulation of authority in those 4 years. Especially in a college like ours with a reputation! But one good spin off of it was that made me lose fear of a mob or crowd collecting as it was a routine scene in the campus. THAT gave me the strength to do what I did next seeing the boy screaming for help.

My intuition was telling me that something was not right in the whole thing. I pushed my way into the crowd of inert onlookers, which is a regular happening in Kolkata, and asked the shop keeper to stop beating the boy and tell us what the issue was about. And then the true story came out as the pause in beating help the boy to move away towards us. He had a argument with the man on the price of the book and not getting the discount he wanted he tried to move ahead. The man insisted that the boy had wasted his time and MUST now buy the book. On refusal the boy was assaulted and as the inert crowd collected he lied that the boy was a thief and the bloody idiotic crowd stood watching. As simple as that.

By now all of us had moved to the other side of the street right in front of the Presidency College gate. Suddenly as if the spell was broken, the crowd moved forward chasing the shopkeeper down the Hindu College lane and a few of us consoling and tending to the poor boy. A couple of old fogeys who earlier were mute spectators and now leaders thanked me for taking the lead in helping the boy. It was first time in life I had been accused of being a leader. I felt embarrassed and shaking hands with the boy I slipped away as the remaining crowd was still busy chasing the shopkeeper down the lane baying for his blood!

As I walked back home I felt elated having trusted my intuition and saved the boy from being lynched not only by the shopkeeper but by the bored crowd who would have just gone along with the lies had I not intervened in time and broken the spell. But as a resident of Calcutta where I had always said in its support that Calcutta people come to one’s help on the streets if required unlike the impersonal Bombay, I was now as a growing young adult confused.  Do the Calcuttans really come to help the right people in need or do they just need some excitement and a vent to their tensions and can be manipulated by somebody if one wants to. Recent events in my personal  life, entwining different generations and times, have convinced me that more likely it is the second reason more than the first. People just want some excitement or some gossip or some scandal about others to spice-up their boring routine life. Truth be damned. It’s so boring and painful trying to understand the truth. What if the boy had been harmed. And he was a Bengali!

Ek tha Royal Bengal Tiger: Famous Man-Eater Tiger at Calcutta - Killed 200 men, women and children before capture - India 1903

2.   1988-89:    Allah -o- Akbar aka  A  faceless ‘Sunny Deol of Damini’ in My Life after a intervention of mine goes horribly wrong.              @ Calcutta

 I was back in Kolkata briefly after working in Bombay and had joined a seemingly creative job here. My cousin had a 1-room flat vacant at Saltlake in a colony bang opposite the Stadium where the Hyatt Hotel stands. Saltlake was just coming up and by 6 pm streets would get deserted and hardly any shops open in the area; a torture for a single man who always eats out. So I would finish my dinner in Kolkata and then catch a bus to Saltlake. There were hardly any buses plying to Saltlake those days and the bus number S23 was the savior for people travelling after 8pm though a long wait was inevitable. And I was waiting for it at the Exide Crossing where now there is a ‘Haldiram’ eatery. Then it was a semi-deserted bus stop after 8 pm. 4 – 5 people were waiting including me and a mother- daughter duo ahead of me.

Suddenly a white Ambassador car slowly takes a turn from the Chowringhee Road side and briefly stopped in front of us. A short man, visibly drunk, leaned out and stared at the two women. There were at least two more persons in the car along with the driver inside.  One of them, a tall burly man, seating in the front seat next to the driver. It was a very shocking sight for me having returned to Calcutta after a long time and where one didn’t expect such a blatant behaviour and that too on a main and very busy traffic crossing. And the men did not look like common criminals but more like government employee types ( Please don’t ask me for a explanation for such feelings!). The two women too appeared disturbed and moved back a bit. The Ambassador slowly meandered ahead and  STOPPED.

The short man who was leaning out of the window and the tall burly man in front got down and started moving towards us!  I was flabbergasted and had a hunch something bad was about to happen.  The two men crossed me and moved to the two women who by now were standing just 4 feet away from me. The short man whispers something to the older woman who protested and pushed the younger woman behind her. The short man did not give up. The burly man by now was standing right in front of me behind his ‘boss’  but not taking part. The older woman again protested and tried to move away. I could not believe my eyes. At Exide, near a busy traffic crossing, two men blatantly harassing  women with indecent proposals. And then anger. 10 years ago I had intervened and saved a boy. This was a worse situation. I moved ahead and tried to shoo away the sort man. He was definitely drunk and he abused me. I tried to be calm and asked him why was he disturbing the two women who don’t want to talk to him and to leave them alone.

That’s it. The next 5 seconds are a blurred memory till today. In a foggy slow motion I remember the burly guy next to me grabbing my collar with a iron hand. I was shit scared even though those days I was a well-built tall person and known, by my football and other colleagues, as a tough nut to crack. But something in that iron grip not only told me that this guy was much stronger than I but a pro!  That scared me and I regretted my intervention though it was too late. I looked around frantically hoping I will get the famous Calcutta crowd coming to help. The 2-3 other men waiting for the bus had pushed back to safer distance; the 2 women I went to save were walking fast down the street away and away! With no crowd around I noticed a lone traffic policeman atop the stand in the centre of the Exide crossing busy guiding the moving traffic. I tried to scare the burly guy by threatening to call the policeman to complain. The guy with a malicious grin tightened his grip on me and said : ”you want the policeman ...I will take you to him”. He dragged me across the busy traffic towards the busy policeman!

Picture Perfect:  Wish the Kolkata of today was as beauty full of sights!

As we reach the cop I screamed asking him to help me. The cop turned towards us, his eyes met mine and then that man’s; I thought  I saw some recognition between them, and then the cop, to my horror, turned away ignoring me. In a slow motion it struck me that I was in deep trouble. That car was most probably a cops’ car! And they were cops! But how come the cops were doing what I saw them doing? Till today I have no clear-cut answer. Only that the burly man was virtually enjoying my wide shocked looks. He slapped me across my face. My glasses went flying down the road, tears rolled automatically down my cheeks at the really heavy-handed slap and I saw 20 -30 people had by now collected at the kerb corner to WATCH! It was a reverse situation of 1979-80! I was on the wrong end and I needed a savior. In the slow-motion event of the next few seconds millions of thoughts raced in my mind. Will I survive or will he do a encounter of mine? What will my family think when they read the news of the encounter tomorrow morning? Will they know the truth or read the cops’ false implants? Will I see tomorrow sun rise? Or was this my last sun set?

The goon humiliated me further by tearing my shirt down the front till the belt. Thankfully those days I had not become a recognizable face as a future Teacher so the fear that some students might be seeing me in this state had not yet come. In desperation I started screaming just like that boy years back whose screams gave me the strength to save me. Now I hoped somebody will believe me and come forth. Nobody did as they stood and watched. Cars were whizzing past around us on the busy road.

And then magic! A emaciated-looking muslim man, in a torn shirt and a lungi, coming from the Kidderpore side of the crossing, stopped his bicycle next to me and asked me in Bengali what happened. Those words are still etched in my memory. Somebody not joining in a mob madness but stopping and actually asking what happened??!!! Same what I had done years ago as a shy undergraduate. The blessings were coming back. I screamed, and with tears streaming down, the face aching and the eyes half blind, I blurted out the summary of what had happened. The goon was still laughing and slapping me as he smirked and abused me further. The emaciated man got down from the bicycle and parked it in the centre of the road. The goon tore my shirt further, the cyclist came closer and I had this vision I was going to be lynched. I will die not in a encounter now but mob lynching. Memory came to me of the horrible mass lynching and burning of the Ananda Margi priests and nuns on the Ballygunge Bridge.

The Muslim man was very close to me now. And he did something which actually surprised and disoriented me further. With a huge swing of his thin arm he hit the rogue cop across his face and kept hitting him and again. The rogue cop was taken aback, staggered a bit, and then with a growl lunged at the emaciated muslim. I was numbed; now the encounter was assured but of two persons. Newspapers will scream, remember there was no TV media then and the Statesman still made money!, that two criminals from Kidderpore were shot dead by cops at the Exide crossing. And then my nightmare ended. Suddenly the 20-30 men watching the show woke up and raced towards the rogue cop screaming the famous or infamous words of Bengal mobs:  “…Maar Saala ke maar…. Mukh fatiye de… Ghar bhenge de…..”

As a educated Calcuttan I have hated these words; feared them not only from uneducated rickshawwallahs or political cadres but from educated elite who momentarily forget their upbringing --  in the campus when mad seniors would attack juniors who dared to oppose them; smash a poor professor’s house who gave them less marks etc. BUT right now, as I saw the rogue cop sprinting down the street towards his waiting Ambassador with scores of mad Bengalis after him with my Muslim savior leading the charge of the brigade, the words seemed to me like a azaan call from the top of a mosque or a life-saving mantra recitation. And then the hero caught the goon. Dragging him by his collar he was brought to me, trying to put back my glasses at the right spot, and he asked me to slap the rogue cop the way he had done to me. The crowd roared its approval. I almost got carried away. But the sight of my torn shirt and how I was going to ride a bus back home, if they will allow me into the bus, was troubling me. I refused to hit him. Remembering the poignant  words of the wife of a assaulted professor in the campus who did not identify a student culprit in a culprits’ ID parade but just whispered to the student to remember that her husband also has a family and children who saw their father being beaten up, I just said “... see divine justice still exists, if not the police one …”. I heard a couple of the agitated crowd members abuse me for being such a letdown after all the drama. They did not mattered. The person who mattered was standing there having landed a few extra blows on the rogue cop. The cop taking advantage of the break in action turned and ran towards his waiting car and the car sped off. I murmured some gibberish to my savior. He waved it away, picked his bicycle and pedaled down the horizon never again to meet me again. May Allah bless him.

The New Hooghly Bridge: One Architectural Beauty which is not a British Gift to Calcutta

3.   2003-04:   I am still so bad in thanking the good Samaritans.   @ Kolkata

I had returned to the now Kolkata in 1998.  Made a name for myself.  If the above incident was to happen to me now chances were one of the two things may happen. Either  I will be recognized by some students on the road who would rush to help me or that I will be recognized by some students on the road and they would slink away to gossip about of Mr. Kapoor’s criminal antecedents or character that he was seen teasing some women on the streets and the cops really hammered him!

But what a student (not even knowing me) did for me is the third and the last story of facing the blessings of the human chain I talked earlier. In 2003 having left IMS for the first time after 3 years of fame and colleagues’ games, I was forced to start a MBA Prep Classes of my own. Another proof my Bengaliness:  I was more happy teaching at a big institute than running a business of my own. But many have always thought that being a Punjabi I was a born businessman. Talk about the stereotypes!! Anyway I was lucky in the very first year of my classes in 2003. About 100 students enrolled and I was the sole trainer for all the skills: Quants, Verbal, DI, RC and GDPI. Not a bad start for a reluctant starter.

One day I had gone to Saltlake in a cab to meet somebody. Saltlake had changed majorly since 1980s. I actually got a cab ready to go to Saltlake with multiple transportation options also now available. And next morning I realized with horror that I had lost my card pouch somewhere on the way, if not pick-pocketed. The pouch had all my cards. PAN, Debit, Credit, Driving License etc. It was a major loss and a danger of misuse by the finder. I spent the next day making calls and suffering the international-level customer services of Citibank, HSBC etc as I frantically tried to get my cards blocked. But the car-driving license and the PAN card renewal were going to be a horror with I totally busy with my classes and impossible to take out time to kiss the backsides of the government employees to get them reissued. I decided to not think about it for the time being.

I would get out of the house, then in North Kolkata, and race to my South Kolkata Triangular Park Classes for the 7 am class and return home late after 10 pm most of the time. With Lizzie all alone the whole day. And the neighbours (those days they mostly were the non-Bengalis in the building) in the best traditions of the middle class busy character-assassinating a Single person and his madness, not even aware of my achievements and fame in my profession!!

A few days later after the cards loss it was a Sunday and the rare one where I was free. I wanted to get up late and spend the remaining time caring for Lizzie. At 5 am my 4^th Floor flat’s bell rang. It was still dark. I thought I was dreaming when the bell rang again! Cursing the disturbance early morning, I flung the door open with Lizzie barking madly too. There stood a smart formally-dressed young man at the door. The first thought was that I was getting so successful in my classes that a enquiry was landing up at my residence at  5 am for joining!! So though very sleepy and irritated and progressively embarrassed realizing I was almost naked, I blinked and said yes? The young man asked if I was Mr. Rajan Kapoor? Bloody Idiot … seeking a famed guru and asking him his name? I nodded wearily as I tried to look around for a towel to wrap around. He fished out something and asked if it was mine. My Card Pouch!! I snatched it from him and checked inside. All the cards were there. And then I remembered him and forgot my towel. “Where did you get it” I asked. It turned out that he entered the cab after I left it at Saltlake and found it lying on the seat having dropped from my pocket. Opening and seeing the contents, as a educated person he realized the importance of them to the owner. So he decided to take responsibility and hand it personally to me. Those days the cell phones had not yet come in or were a very expensive service and not very common. The land lines were the mode of communication. He saw my residence address on the driving license. He even came over to my building  in some week day to hand it over to me personally and did not find me there. The typical middle class Saas-Bahu combos who normally haunt the Indian homes in the day time, on his ringing the neighbouhood homes bells, said something to the effect that  “Woh toh thoda paagal insaan hain; kab jata hain or kab aata hain kuch nahi fixed!! “. They didn’t bother to help him and he did not bothered to leave the pouch with them!

Imagine ‘respectable’ neighbours, who possibly lecture their children about Izzat, Morals and Responsibilities, busy gossiping about me with a Stranger and the Stranger showing incredible responsibility and civic commitment by refusing to hand over the critical documents to somebody else. He was not obliged to come all the way from his Saltlake residence even once to find me and give me personally the cards. But he did and then realizing that I am not available in the day decided to come again at 5 am so that he WOULD find  me at home as he had no idea where I worked!!!!!

Magic was happening once again. Nature how many miracles YOU have given me in this turbulent life of mine and I am busy finding faults with life. By then my sleep had vanished, my shame acute standing there almost naked, and a strong affection to hug this young professional. I could not express properly the last time with that emaciated uneducated Muslim Saviour of mine; and now a upper middle class Saltlake young man was doing it. I weakly murmured  –  “I don’t know how I will be able to thank you enough ever for the extra-ordinary care, responsibility and maturity you have displayed for a stranger …. God bless you….. errr please come in  …. ( shit !I don’t have any thing at home to treat him!)…errr...”. He saved me my blushes and confusion by saying that he had to leave as he has a flight to catch to New Delhi. He was a first-year MBA student at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM). I was amazed he came over to take care of a stranger’s cards at 5 am so that he could  find me personally even when he to catch  a flight in the next few hours. I have not seen such professional training or Personal Upbringing in most Gangs of wASSiimpurs or XL-sized hot bags. I let go of my coyness and hugged my saviour even though I am sure he now believed my neighbours’ gossip that I was a “thoda paagal...”. Or more!!!

I have never met him again ever. But I did write a email to the LBSIM Director narrating the act of the first year student of his and that the student LIVED the principles of Lal Bahadur Shastri the best.

 Epilogue:  I have over the years both as a Trainer, a Mentor  AND as a person tried to go out of the way to help people as much as I could beyond the call of duty and earning money was never a primary motivation for me. This way over the years I have hoped to payback and propagate the magic of Strangers in my life who came from the various strata of society, both educated and uneducated.  It didn’t stop their magic on me. Some students, and  many of my office associates, used me many times to misuse my care even telling me sob stories to fleece me emotionally and financially. They have thought they were smart. I let them be because that was the only blessing they had in their life. Every time I got angry at the misuse I remembered my life’s lessons. The best friends of mine were Strangers who chose to remain so. The Magic of Strangeness. Readers enjoy your life, make love, make careers, make families: BUT do not HURT Strangers. If you don’t like them ignore them. BUT don’t  JOIN IN / BELIEVE the vested interests in harming  a person whom you have no idea of …. or even if you do!!! 

I WISH THIS SMALL BUT A POWERFUL CHAIN OF STRANGENESS  CONTINUES. NAY SPREADS. KOLKATA WILL GET ITS SOUL BACK.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Calcutta - My Twin mother city along with Mumbai.

© Rajan Kapoor 2012

Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 6: Ranjan Bhattacharya: A Visit to Past.

Ranjan Bhattacharya is dead. He died by lung cancer in 1987. The following is a remembrance I wrote weeping after his death for the Company newsletter, though not as uncensored as this version, where both us then worked. I didn’t want to write a hypocritical obituary; it should be as it was. Today as I go through it I am awestruck by, in the words of Steve Jobs, the connection of dots looking back.

WE MEET

Five years ago (1982) I had been to the Company A’s interview at The Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta. I had been shortlisted as a Officer Trainee, through a national level Entrance Test (very similar to CAT) conducted by IIM Calcutta on behalf of the Company A. Here was a leading company of India, with an American Multinational past and still enduring culture, a blue-chip Company as a career prospect for a graduating Chemical Engineer like me.

All the prospective Officer Trainees had come nervous and ready for a cut-throat 30 minutes Group Discussion (GD) followed by a Interview. The panel came in and explained the ground rules of the GD. The topic given was: Presidential System Vs Prime Ministerial System of Governance in India. I silently swore at the staid topic and decided to play a smart game! I would grab the delivery of opening the discussion, keep rambling for a couple of minutes and then let others handle the baby. I was sure none of us would come up with a fruitful discussion on this boring topic. So I planned to spend the remaining time nodding and smiling energetically (pretending to be thoroughly involved and understanding) and then pick up the lead in the last few minutes and sum up with a flourish all the points which others would come out with!

The discussion started aggressively. The lead from me was followed by a raucous medley before Number 5 - a plump, fair guy, with an unruly mop of hair, having as many pimples on his handsome face as I had on my ugly one. In impeccable English he began methodically listing the points in favour of the Presidential System.

Immediately I sensed ‘danger’. My confidence (which tends to be in excess) took a jolt. In a few minutes this articulate speaker was stage-managing the whole show. I decided to play safe and avoided a direct confrontation with Number 5 – to stay in the run for selection, Others tried to match him. Number 5 demolished them with his speech, content and a most disarmingly charming smile!

In the last few minutes I was desperately seeking to sum up the discussion to show  “Leadership Qualities” to the Selectors watching us. I somehow grabbed the lead, murmured something about time running out and the need to sum up – and then I realized I did not know what to sum up!  Panic engulfed me. My God I am caught in my over-smartness. And then I played a dirty trick in desperation. With a flourish of a dramatic act I said: “… though I favour the present system of Government, I request Number 5 to sum up today’s discussion for us. Thank You!”.  Number 5 blinked for a while, realized I was passing the buck to him; He recovered and flashing the same disarmingly charming smile went on to make a superb summary of our discussion. That was my First Meeting with Ranjan Bhattacharya. A smart Chemical Engineer from the Jadavpur University.

WE MEET AGAIN, RANJAN

Some months later I was surprised to get a joining letter from Company A! In the days, when jobs (mostly IT) in the 3rd year like today's engineering colleges was not a norm and we all had to mostly job hunt on our own. I packed and got ready for the City of Gold. Initially we were put up at the St Xavier's College Hostel, Bombay where the Xavier Institute of Management was to coordinate our 2-month residential Company Induction Programme. As we stumbled into one another in the balcony of the conference room, the first thing I got to hear was some curious juxtaposition of English, Hindi and Bengali gaalis for the dirty trick I had played on him during the GD time! Then we became friends. I asked him what or who the heck was a “ croak” or something like that he had kept talking in the GD that day. Ranjan showed a grimace of a superior intellect-possessed Entity, then went on to correct me with a condescending smile- “ arrey Baba, not a croak…. Howard Roark!”. I still had no idea what he was talking about but the embarrassment of admitting my ignorance, even though I thought I was a “well-read” person, I changed the topic.

Ranjan, I liked your sense of humour more wacky even by my standards. You would out-match my feeble attempts at witticisms. You had a full-throat laughter that went on non-stop for at least 2 minutes and sounded something between a thundering cloud and a screeching automobile. But it was infectious!  I was awed by your well-read intelligence. You finally explained about Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, which I had to read 5 times before I understood it and it went to become a gospel for me. What You found in me, God only knows; but we soon became inseparable friends.

(Author's Note: It is remarkable how many instances of The Fountainhead  have repeated in my life till today  as I look back albeit in a more real-life versions. Do we start copying our gospels or is it a beyond-our-understanding happenings?)

 
We would go to restaurants, and while others sipped bottles of beer on getting the first salary, we gulped glasses of ‘lassi’ competing to finish the largest number of ‘Lassis’.

We were a “Unity in Extremity”. You spent the time impressing the visiting faculty at the Xavier’s classes, I spent the time impressing (or trying to) the girls in the class. When I fell head over heels in infatuation for a girl, I thought I was great; You called me a fool. You were right. Where she went I have no idea!

Suffering your “I told you so”s after that, I took my revenge  by winning the 2^nd prize in Public Speaking in the finals at the Taj Hotel, Bombay ballroom where You lost. In the evening we went to the Leopold Café and drank beer for the first time the whole night, and then walked drunk on the deserted streets of Bombay till dawn, when it dawned on us that we had not informed the Xavier’s Hostel of our night-out and we will have to pay a severe penalty for the same.

Skinny Dipping!

The Induction over, we were happy to know that we were getting the company accommodation in the Officer’s colony, in a 8-room Chummery, two in each room. Walking daily to the Officer’s club which was a bachelor’s den mostly, we would ogle at the Aunties and their daughters and whisper about our fantasies! Every evening after work we would go to the Chembur Station Area and ogle at many more girls and drink our mandatory Lassis. Naturally, to attract women we had to make a ‘body’ to attract them. So we joined the local Talwalkar’s Gym. I joined first. You left first.

We would dream of making a Writer-Cartoonist team which would generate comics better than Goscinny- Uderzo’s Asterix comics. My great idea was about a hero  HanuMAN - the Original Superman! It never materialised because we could never decide which one of us was a better writer or a cartoonist. (and today people have cartoon series on Bal Ganesha, Bal Hanuman, etc!!) We decided to break our ‘virginity’ of drinking hard drinks in the coming Officer’s Party. We lost it totally that night and spent the next day trying to prove each other more drunk than self. Till the next Officer’s party when it would start again.

Cheers. Typically I am 'down' and Ranjan, formally dressed even for a party, busy eating!

Even for the following 8-month around-the-departments training we were together in the same sub group. During the day we would try to out-smart each other in influencing the department manager who among us was the more intelligent one; the evenings we would rip apart the concerned manager in the most irreverent terms. In 1983 after the training we got posted in different departments. You in Operations and I in Technical Services. Typically, we wanted each other’s department!

WE QUARREL

Then something unbelievable happened. We fought. We stopped talking. We did not talk for weeks. Abused each other behind each other’s back. It looked we would never talk again. And then one evening as I alighted from a car lift back home I saw You waiting near the gate. I pretended not to have seen you and was surprised as I crossed you that You called out my name. I turned and then seeing your face I knew something major was up. You asked me to help You.  When I heard the problem I was shocked and also pained that You of all people would have done it. But it was not time to talk about morality. You were scared of the symptoms and feared the worst. We quietly slinked out of the colony and caught a cab to the nearest Government hospital. I chose a government hospital for anonymity versus if we went to a private doctor. As I sat near you I grimaced and trying to not let you know I had shifted away from your touch. Who knows if it was infectious. 

In the cab You confessed that during your visit to Kolkata on holidays You had gone out to drink with your friends and got badly drunk and landed up in a ‘coloured’ area. On waking up You realized what You had ended up doing. And now you were afraid if you were infected. I was flabbergasted. Ranjan not You. Man not only we are virgins, we with all the pretences were supposed to remain so….. well at least not lose it with such a person! You looked so crestfallen and made me swear that I will not tell anybody. I said I won’t but shifted a few more inches away from you as discreetly as I could.

In a queer way having listened to you, Ranjan, I felt proud it was I you thought of to take help from even when we were not talking. I took it as a endorsement of my trustworthiness.

I didn’t know which dept. to take you to. So using my bookish GK I sneak to a matronly looking nurse sitting nearby and whisper – “Ma’am where is the STD dept.?”. That bitch screams and say “… Kya bolto…. STD dept. pahije?”. Hundreds of heads in a crowded government hospital  turned towards ME and then jumped back!!!! Ranjan had already melted into the crowd. And I felt like a idiot standing there as sniggers abounded around me making fun of me and commenting on the wayward youth. WTF!!  In horror I leaned further towards the matron trying to gesticulate to her to tone down. It only spurred her to continue in loud shrieks giving me the directions and then as I tried to bolt she came out with the lightning…..” Kya kiya hai tumne, eh?”. I must have run my fastest 100 metres of my life from her to try and melt into the crowd and then finding in horror the crowd running faster away from me.

Finally the STD department is reached. Another bulldog-looking matron is sitting there. Wiser, I go and whisper to her that, “ I have come for my FRIEND’s problem; please take care of us by not speaking loud”. Her logic was impeccable. “ Kay ko Sharmane ka…. Sab yahi bolte hai!  Aur tum yeh STD department mein aaya hain toh sab ko waise hi maloom ho gaya!!! Just bolo kya hain?”.  I turned back with a murderous look to find Ranjan hiding behind a pillar and asked him curtly to come over and tell her. A doctor was due so we were asked to wait. The doctor came accompanied by a dozen of medical students, young men and women, and went into the chamber. We both looked at each other with white faces and were on the verge of getting up and running, when the bulldog matron called Ranjan in.

After a long interval Ranjan came out looking totally devastated. I was gearing up for the worst. He caught my arm and we both sprinted out of the hospital. In the midst of the run I realized  he was holding me!!!!! Vision of having the worst sufferings of my friend’s indiscretions flooded my brain. But was it too late anyway? As we stood under the shade of some thick trees outside, He told me there was nothing to fear. It was a minor temporary thing and it would be all ok soon. Gosh. Then I asked him why was he looking so crestfallen coming out of the doctor’s room. He hesitated and wanted to change the topic. On my persistence that I’m there to help him and I should know all….Ranjan confessed. He would have been happy after the check-up if it had not been done in front of all the dozen interns, with his pants down, and having to wait till a long academic lecture to students ended on his affliction!

The good news and the now hilarious once-in-a-life experience coupled with the pride I felt that he came to me for critical help was exhilarating. I thought we will never fight again. We did a few months later. May be it was because of some doubts about secrecy or may be our great friendship was too much in glare. Ever since from 1984 we have never talked to each other (though we did make some feeble indirect attempts). AND NOW FROM 1987 onwards WE CAN NEVER TALK.

Over the next 3 years from 1984, You went on picking  new friends with your varied activities and zest for life. I went on picking up new enemies with my active tongue and rigid mind.  I talked about trekking, You went to trek. I talked about adventure sports. You went mountaineering and skiing. I dreamed about becoming a glamour photographer. You actually clicked!  I became a laughing stock with my Bullet motor bike accidents. You beat me in it by having the largest number of scooter falls in the shortest period of time.

Yes Ranjan. Whether we talked or not, it was always a game of One-upmanship between us. You one-upped me on the first day we met in the GD; You one-upped me in all types of adventures; Ranjan you were one-up even in our bloody names! (and to rub it in Bengal they always wrote my name a Ranjan!)

And now You are ONE-UP by leaving this god-forsaken world.

With You no more around, Friendship will never be the same word to me again. I envied You when I saw the photographs clicked by you. I envied you when I read and published your diary extracts & sketches on trekking in the Officers’ Colony Magazine. And I envy You right now sitting UP there, with a smug look, in Heaven while I fret and frown through life in this wilderness of world.

You have WON, my friend; as usual as you have won. Heads You win, the Tale is of my loss.

Au Revoir!
 © Rajan Kapoor 2012

Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 5: My Greatest Love and Live-in Companion: LIZZIE!

Lizzie is not there when I need her the most in my worst time. Its 5 years since YOU went to the Heavens. 

I remember the day you came home. Though I cant remember the date. February 1999?
I had a year back,1998, returned to Calcutta. Every night I would return home to a empty home tired but happy teaching. The Day's hustle bustle at the Institute, the incessant interaction with students:

• explaining the concepts

• listening to their problems ( I had no choice... the problems ranging from Permutations to their Love-life to their non-understanding parents...)

•  relishing their adulations, flirtations & crushes (I am not boasting.... just a fact of my life. As a male teacher it is a not bad thing for his ego to get a bonus: flirtations & crushes from young women, but after  having seen more than 45 Summers in one's life, one also knows to TRY not to take them seriously.....)

And then the return home: ...... the TV always open, the mind always fatigued and the mandatory glass always  filled .......



I have always had man's best friends bow-bowing around most of my life before engineering studies when I had to leave home for the first time. They were the best friends for a person whose uncaring father had left home in school days, whose hated mother had been rebelled against by age 17, and whose religion had been dispensed with before adulthood.

1974

Pinky, a brown terrier, was the first best-friend coming in my life in middle school days and has been the most intelligent one of them all without any training. Once She stood at guard for 15 hours at the house door, left mistakenly open by us on departure,  and didn't allow anyone to come close till we returned. And she was just 1 year old. She could sense my father's car returning and start barking excitedly when we had not even remotely heard or seen the car. She was loving, caring and part of all games and masti my sisters and I did at home or out. She was very jealous of the injured pigeon I adopted to take care and would have killed her for getting my attention. For years she was mine best friend and even though she hated my suffocating hugs she condescended to have them. And then my family decided to move to Bombay.

I had to stay back with my aunt's family as I was in class 9 and would have my ICSE next year. I was the first batch of India of the new 10 + 2 + 4 education format. My Aunt's family had never kept pets so Pinky was sent to another Uncle's home to stay with his dogs. I went to Bombay after ICSE for class 11 and Pinky went to the heavens at my uncles. R.I.P.



For class 12 I returned to Calcutta knowing that we will not be a complete family any more and as a gift got a white Pomerian best-friend, from my uncle, whom I named  Django!  He was the most trained friend of mine. In the age of no internet, just by reading some books in the British Council library I taught him a lot of tricks. The cutest one which brought the maximum applause was the one where he would roll over and play 'dead' on the command. After a year or so I had to leave to do my Bachelors in Engineering and in those 4 years our interactions became lesser and then became zero when I graduated and went off to Bombay to work. Never got to meet Django again. R.I.P.

Django doing a stand-up show while I doing a "Judwa" effect with my TLR camera before the world had access to computers and Photoshop! (1977)

 After another 4 years of work I decided to again, in moments of personal downtime, turn to man's best friend. In the Bombay home of a unemployed textile worker, whose old wife had been ill-advised to start a dog breeding business to earn some money, were about 10 ill-cared Doberman pups looking very uncared and not in best of the health. As I approached the creche most of them stood up and wagged their tails hoping I will choose one of them, if not all, to take home. But one black pup sat unmoved and sick in the corner not even trying to come closer. It seemed resigned to the fact that one of his more fitter siblings was going to get a father. I TOOK HIM. He was Mad Max who turned out to be active and healthy with the vet's help. 6 months later I resigned from my secure good job for personal reasons with no idea what I will do next. I left / sold a lot of personal things, including my new Maruti car, but took Mad Max with me back to Calcutta. I stayed again with my Aunt.

The 'Debonair' Centre-Spread!

And here Mad Max soon grew,in a couple of months, to be a strong and BIG best friend whom I, a footballer & a sportsman, had much difficulty in escorting on a leash when we went for a walk. But he was the least trained one as I was busy looking for a living and had just started working in a interesting new job. One day I come home to see a mother's magic in action. Mad Max had not been home-broken properly. That eve my cousin said look what Aunt has done!! A little later Mad Max gets up, walks down to the bathroom, nudges the door open and does the necessary inside. I am both amused and surprised how this training happened. The matriarch of the house had done what she does so well with any small child's potty training. She caught him by the ear when he tried to be indisciplined in my absence, gave him some earfuls and took him to the bathroom. As simple as that!! Mad Max knew where to go henceforth when I was not around to take him for a walk.

1988

And then a problem happened. My aunt had not stopped me from bringing a dog along, that too a Doberman. But now a new baby was born in the family and the family feared Mad Max's presence. With a heavy heart I decided to give away Mad Max.   A animal-lover bengali bachelor who lived nearby all alone with snakes, dogs, cats, birds.... became his next father. And I never ever went after that to look into the eyes of Mad Max, the sad pup whom I had picked when he thought no one would.

10 years or so after that I was alone without the best friends' company while evolving as a teacher, among many more things, back in Bombay. A lot of topsy-turvy things happened in life, I making the mistake of mixing my personal problems with professional commitments, some totally hatke job opportunities, some miracles, and mostly troubled by the so-called educated & professional middle class. The most dangerous class .


Back to the new Kolkata, 1998    .....The day's business & adulation, the night's return home:  the TV always open, the mind always fatigued and the mandatory glass always filled .......


Based on my desertion of Mad Max I didn't want SIZE to become a issue for a Single parent! I decided to go for  a laptop version of a best friend. A daschund pup. A doctor's ad for such pups made me take off from that day's classes and taxi it from North Kolkata to far off Behala. After surviving a maze  of cacophonic traffic, I reach a old traditional Bengali house , in a narrow, convoluted lane , which is actually a 'bungalow'. As I open the outer garden gate and walk in, there comes barking a thin but active black pup. It is so small that I take care not to step on it as it happily sniffs my trousers and happily wags its tail. The host takes me over to the creche - 5 happily sleeping obese male pups are tucked in oblivious of the visitor with only this slim and active pup around my shoes.

I had come clear in my mind that I wanted a male child and not a female one who may end up with  others' buns in her oven!  Not that the idea of multi pups in my home was a unwanted image, just that as a single person it would have been a disaster for me to take care of them when I could hardly take care of myself. I am one of those Single persons who can't cook. My last 33 years or so the food has been purchased all the 3 times of a day.

The host on realizing that I wanted a male pup started highlighting the advantages of the only female pup (the one near my shoes wagging her tail and barking happily). I realized his game. Males will be sold easily and with a premium! He desperately highlighted lots of reasons for a female pup, but I willingly got conned by the real reason of all of them. While the bulky males were all lying stoned in the warm mattresses, she was the only one up and very active.  I took her home and named her Lizzie (after Shekhar Kapoor's then in news Movie 'Elizabeth'.  It was winter times, Feb 1999?, as I took my daughter home in a cab. She sat snuggled in my lap and wagged her tail every time I coochie-cooed to her. She took all of my life ever since. In the early years she had to be fed 4-5 times in the day. I would cab it back home between the classes to do so and then rush back in time for the next class and even get to scream at the late-coming students!. She very early realized there was no one else at home and her father would be out 'hunting' most of the day. She never complained and like me became a independent child -- when in India humans cling to their parents even after 'adulthood', under the pretext of family values , when the truth is they are spoiled kids most of them.

 

Wish I had done her 'Kanyadan'- (2000)

I would go to Bombay, now Mumbai, once a year or so in off-season time. I would take the train always not only because it was cheaper than air travel but also because I loved those 2 nights travel sitting near the window seeing the different regions of India as the train hurtled by. The sounds, the smells, the ambience. But to take Lizzie by the train was a torture for her. Ever since She came into my life, I always travelled by air . I would tell her many times,  "....  who says a dog's life is bad. You have travelled your entire life by Air , unlike me...". Lizzie would appreciate and lick me a couple of times extra as a Thank-You!!

Lizzie is the most endearing, loving and loyal live-in companion of my life . The only one who stayed with me her entire life. She was with me in my best times; she was with me in my worser times; she was with me when my lovers came home to 'make love' to me. Her demeanour would be a disdainful one towards them knowing very well they wont be there in my life too long; that most of them were to use me for their needs than fulfill mine. And that after the 'bitches' were gone home She would get the best hugs & kisses!!!

She also was there when the 'Chosen One' came home to live-in with us. The Chosen One could not be in Kolkata all times but Lizzie loved it when it happened, feeling very happy in the get-togethers, over almost 5 years. First time Lizzie chose somebody else's lap to snuggle in and snooze on. Then Lizzie's intuition told her that not only the 5-year fairy tale won't last but that soon AFTER  a Black Witch will attack this home of her father in December 2009 onwards.

Lizzie, a true daughter, a true life-long companion and a true well-wisher LEFT this world in July 2007 refusing to watch the future. The Chosen One moved ahead in 2008; the Black Witch entered in December 2009.


I LOVE YOU LIZZIE.  My Best Friend, My permanent Live-in Companion, My Daughter. Thanks for the fatherhood You gave me to experience. Even though I was a bad father. I am sorry I let you down even after the sacrifice of your life you made in 2007 to try and protect me from the coming Doomsday 2011-12!!!!!

Lizzie is not there when I need her the most in my worst time. Its 5 years since SHE went to the Dog Heaven.

© Rajan Kapoor 2012