Category: Uncategorized

  • Pico de gallo

    They say half knowledge is dangerous. I say, not if it leads to a story. Last week I was in Campo de Gibraltar, a county of the province of Andalusia, Spain. I was there because my industry cannot accept I am retired, and neither can I. So, I take up occasional assignments and never miss an opportunity if it involves going to Spain. I have this misplaced self concept about being a semi fluent Spanish speaker! Nothing is further from the truth. But it is the self image – what you convince yourself about yourself – that matters. Secretly, I believe I could give Gabriel Garcia Márquez a run for his money, if only my grammar and vocabulary are improved.

    The Mexican restaurant where I had dinner one evening had a menu of some 50 dishes. Of these just two were suitable for vegetarians. A measly looking green leaf against each indicated they were meat-free. Appalling, this discrimination against vegetarians! But on the bright side, I had just two options to choose from and I went for the burrito.

    My order arrived just as I finished my beer. It was tasty but unlike a South Indian thali which has a multitude of mini dishes that one’s palate is constantly surprised with each bite, the burrito tastes the same beginning to middle to end. Bored with the monotony, I decided to brush up my Spanish.

    The description of the burrito in the menu began – ‘Con salteado de verduras y champiñones’ which I mentally translated to ‘With salted vegetables and mushrooms’. Wait. That can’t be right. Salted vegetables sounds so boring. My translation app quickly confirmed my suspicion – ‘salteado’ means sautéed and not salted. Confidence slightly shaken, I struggled along reading all of the ten items that made up the dish. I recognised some words like Guacamole and maiz while others had to be looked up. Then I stumbled on ‘pico de gallo’ which to my horror translates to ‘beak of rooster’! I was aghast. The green leaf on the menu was there in error or the Spaniards don’t understand the concept of vegetarianism. I felt like a pious Brahmin who was tricked into eating beef.

    Summoning the waitress, I protested in pidgin Spanish,

    “Me vegetarian. This burrito – it got chicken. No good, señorita.”

    What next – chicken feathers? I wanted to ask but didn’t know the word for feather.

    “I am so sorry sir,” she said, her face a deep crimson, “I will change it straight away.”

    She cast furtive glances at my dinner, scanning for the uninvited chicken. Then she picked up the plate and went into the kitchen at the other end of the restaurant.

    A couple of minutes later, she emerged – not with a replacement burrito but with my half eaten one. Looking neither embarrassed nor apologetic, her face said she had the answer. I guessed the chef was somehow involved in solving the conundrum. Pointing at my burrito, she asked gently but firmly,

    “Could you please show me the chicken?”

    Instead of rooting through the dish, I pointed to ‘pico de gallo’ in the description, tapping it with my forefinger for emphasis. The smile that lit up her face was that of a mother pardoning an errant child. What she then rattled off was beyond me but I got the gist – ‘pico de gallo’ is just the name of a Mexican salad containing tomatoes, jalapeno and other harmless vegetables. It has nothing to do with the body parts of a rooster.

    I finished the rest of the humble pie, sorry, burrito, and left the waitress a generous tip in compensation. The self confidence in my Spanish has taken a minor beating. Nothing that cannot be fixed with another trip to Spain. The cinema of my life continues.

  • The caves of Cheddar Gorge

    Clichés like ‘timeless’ and ‘time stands still’ are often used to describe places. The caves of Cheddar Gorge defy such triteness. Their near ethereal splendour can’t be measured in temporal units. They are today and yesterday and tomorrow. If you ignore their physical geology, you will experience the true essence of Time.

    The internals of the caves are carved into extraordinary shapes by the seeping water. They look like some post-modern sculpture, every nook and cranny uniquely formed and contoured, imbued with brilliant russet and pink and green. Time has neither stood still nor negated itself. It is everywhere, the dripping water of now, the stalagmites and stalactites of the past and present – a chain of events separated only by microseconds but strung together in millennia, and a future perhaps no different from the past – unpredictable, but with a trajectory well established. Time dilates and contracts at the same time, like some abstruse concept in quantum physics. An illusion of reality manifests in front of you, within your grasp one moment, and slipping out the next.

    You leave the caves of Cheddar Gorge, with a mind that is frantic in its effort to find its place in this vast continuum. You wonder if Time itself is the elusive God we argue about, the omnipresent and omnipotent, the everlasting, the merciful and the merciless.

  • Upper class travel

    There is a popular story in India about Sudha Murthy, the wife of the software billionaire Narayan Murthy and mother in law of ex British prime minister Rishi Sunak.

    The Murthys have retained their humility despite their immense wealth, endearing them to the Indian public. Once, Sudha was standing in line at the business class check-in for some international flight out of an Indian airport. As always, she was dressed in a plain, unassuming cotton saree. The person behind her is said to have told her,

    “Ma’m, the economy line is over there.”!

    So much for making assumptions and the symptoms of unconscious bias. But these things happen to everyone. It happened to me as well. My only excuse is that I was still a young lad of 19 at the time.

    I had gone to spend my Dusserah holidays with my sister in Kasaragod. Just like the students of today, the students of the 70s were also skint. We travelled third class and didn’t make a reservation just to save a few rupees. The journey lasting two nights and 3 days from Calcutta to Kasaragod in an unreserved third class compartment on an Indian train of the 70s was something else. If you were lucky, you could occupy the luggage rack and get some sleep. If not you perched with half a bum at the edge of a seat originally designed for three but usually occupied by six, sorry six and a half. If you got up you lost your seat. If you left your patch of luggage berth to use the toilet, someone else occupied it. The Railways went to great lengths to ensure the facilities were functional and devoid of any vestige of comfort. The seats were hard wood with no upholstery.

    So, imagine my delight when my brother in law surprised me by gifting me a first class ticket for the return journey to Calcutta. As I was boarding the empty compartment which proudly displayed my name among a printed list of privileged first class passengers, he advised me,

    “Don’t let all and sundry get into the first class.”

    First class and third class were like heaven and hell. As the inferior classes filled up, some people try to barge into the first class. My brother in law probably had this in mind when he advised me. But discretion is not an attribute associated with 19 year olds. I took his counsel to heart and decided to implement it without fear or favour.

    I was the only occupant in a coach that comprised some five or six spacious cabins with their own individual doors and plush cushioned interiors. Most cabins had four berths while some were coupés with two berths preferred by honeymooners and other amorous couples.

    The train arrived at Payyannur, approximately an hour later. I was walking the corridor determined to deny entry to anyone who tried. I noticed someone trying to open the rear door and promptly locked it from the inside using the heavy steel latches provided. A young gentleman with a very severe moustache looked quite puzzled and upset when he saw what I had done. He was accompanied by a whole bunch of soldiers in military green uniform and boots and all. Then he said with some urgency in his voice,

    “Please open the door.”

    The train was scheduled to stop there only for a short time. I simply shook my head. The conversation was monosyllabic.

    “No!”
    “No?” The soldiers joined their leader in a chorus of incredulity.
    “No.” I was firm.

    There was no time to argue. The gentleman and his platoon ran to the other end of the coach. They ran fast and in step. The sound of their boots on the concrete platform, loud and rhythmic, evoked visions of galloping wild stallions. I outran them but from the inside and locked the front door as well.

    “Open the bloody door,” the distressed passenger was red with all the running and uncontrolled fury. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t go to his own second or third class compartment. Nevertheless, I owed him an explanation, I thought. So I said,

    “Ayyoo, this is first class!”

    He replied,

    “Do you think only you can travel by first class? Open the door NOW!”

    The train was hooting, ready to depart. I let him in. He was a serving Captain travelling on a warrant issued by the Indian Army. He had more rights to first class travel than I did. He was traveling to Calcutta as well. We exchanged addresses before we parted.

    Only last week, my sister was traveling from London to Bangalore via Frankfurt. Her flight was late getting into Frankfurt and she was worried she was going to miss the connecting flight. She arrived at the departure gate and pushed through a large throng of people waiting at the counter.

    “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said as she inched her way frantically to the front of the crowd. Then someone in a wrinkled old kurta told her,

    “We’re all waiting for the same flight.”

    “But I am in business class,” my sister insisted.

    “We’re all business class,” said the kurta man! It transpired he was traveling with his wife, a famous Bollywood singer.

    So, the moral of the story is – I don’t know what it is, but I just love telling these funny stories! 😊

  • Deccan Herald 24 Aug 2024

  • Times of India 24 Sept 2024

    This is an abridged version

    To read the unabridged version click on the empty space below (if the link is not visible)

    https://gopistory.com/2024/10/30/british-etiquette-a-survivors-guide/

  • Speaking like a native

    Yesterday, I was asked to teach English to a student from the Middle East. He has good spoken English skills and so I asked him,

    “What is your final goal with the English lessons?”

    “To be able to speak like a native,” he responded.

    My first reaction was panic. That’s because I’m a very literal person. I take most things literally and often miss the figurative meaning of things. I nearly told him that I could certainly teach him to speak like a native but with an Indian accent.

    This is not a new problem. As a 14 year old, I opted for Higher Hindi in school. We had moved to Delhi from Kerala and the only Hindi I knew was to ask someone’s name and their age (तुम्हारा नाम क्या है? तुम्हारी उम्र क्या है?) The other option was to take Higher Sanskrit. But Sanskrit was taught in Hindi and my young mind decided that I would be dealing with a double jeopardy by opting for Sanskrit.

    How wrong I was! Hindi was an extremely hard language to score. Even the locals struggled to get above 50%. Sanskrit on the other hand was a doddle. The lowest mark anyone got was 60%. Anyway, my Hindi learning curve was so steep that I often fell off.

    The thing that got me was the concept of metaphors and sayings which make use of them. And there were several. One of them, ऊँट के मुँह में जीरा (‘oont ke mooh mem jeera’) or a cumin seed in the mouth of a camel, confounded me. Once we were told to make a sentence that illustrates the meaning of this saying. So, I made up this elaborate story about a Bedouin Arab and his camel sweltering in the desert heat for days on end until they reached an oasis whereupon he fed the camel a single cumin seed and the camel remarked with disdain, “a cumin seed in the mouth of a camel?”

    I got zero.

    There were other sayings like Gangaram went to Ganga and Jamunadas went to Jamuna which basically means (I figured this out after I had failed Hindi), everyone went his own way. I blush to remember the story I made up about that one with similar end results.

    Zero.

    It took me some time to understand the concept of metaphors. These days when people ask me to do little consultancy jobs but offer peanuts as remuneration, I say to them, “Are you offering a cumin seed to a camel?” Even non Hindi speakers instinctively understand me. All I can say is, some crucial part was missed when I was being put together.

    Anyway that’s water under the bridge, so to speak (you see I understand the concept now). But I must’ve taken my metaphors too seriously. Just the other day my friend Tom was describing a mutual friend,

    “I just love Dan,” he says, “he’s so sweet. Such a decent chap. Butter wouldn’t melt ..”

    The butter bit was new to me. Never having heard the expression before, I researched it and asked a few of my friends including a grammarian. The conclusion was that Tom was using the expression incorrectly. The expression, ‘butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth’ implies that the person comes across as sweet and decent but deep inside he’s a bit of a meanie.

    The next time, I met Tom over a coffee, I asked him,

    “You know the other day you were talking about Dan and how butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth?”

    “Yes?”

    “Do you know what ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ really means?”

    “Oh yeah. It means he’s a sweet chap.”

    “No, it means the opposite. Though I know what exactly you mean, someone else may completely misunderstand you.”

    Tom was not happy with me and accused me of challenging him and informed me that he’s been speaking English all his life and expressions have to be understood by the context they’re used in and so on. We argued a bit. I told him that with this particular expression he’s been using it the wrong way all his life, that figurative expressions relying on metaphors cannot be context sensitive because that would make the English language unusable etc. Tom stopped talking to me.

    Indians are quite sensitive about their English proficiency. You could correct someone’s Hindi or Tamil or any of the Indian languages that happen to be their mother tongue. But correct their English and you’re in trouble.

    ‘Don’t you know English?’ is one of the major insults you can inflict on an Indian. Colonial hangover, what else? But I never imagined an Englishman could get upset when his English is corrected. I had forgotten there’s no colonial effect in England. The Roman conquest was way back in the forgotten past.

    Coming back to my student, I will try and speak with a neutral accent but apologies in advance if I don’t teach you a posh accent. You will not speak like an Etonian but like an alumnus of Kendriya Vidhyalaya. On the brighter side, you’ll be able to communicate seamlessly with 1.4 billion Indians with the accent that you’ll imbibe from me.

  • Eden of my childhood

    There is a place I can’t visit anymore except perhaps by writing about it.

    Saturday morning- we set off in our black Hindustan on the 30 mile trip from Thalassery to Kunnoth. It is a weekly routine that lasts from the beginning of my memory until I was nine. Father drives, mother sits in the front, a child or two squeezed in between them. Assorted other siblings sit at the back, pulling my ears, or occasionally pinching me, just to pass time.

    We stop at Koothuparambu to visit my uncle, father’s brother. The brothers tell each other little anecdotes, their trademark laughter sounds like they are having wheezing fits. Father’s grey green eyes twinkle in delight and his face reddens as stuffed deer-heads on the wall stare down at us in indulgence. Their disproportionately large antlers mesmerise me with their elegant symmetry.

    The yellow milestones on the side of the road, the seven white furlong markers within each mile, the verdant moss and blood red hibiscus flash by as we resume our journey. Father stops the car after a few miles and gives a silver rupee to Bhaskaran who waits by the roadside in expectation of his weekly gift. His lifeless limbs, afflicted by Polio, are contorted in impossible directions. He smiles and waves goodbye dragging himself off the tarmac.

    The next stop is Mattannur, home of Kuttiraman the child who spent his life in servitude to our family.

    Kuttiraman was found standing at the gate when my brothers returned from school. This undernourished, semi-starved child wearing only a red loincloth was hired to look after me. I was almost the same size as him though several years his junior. Kuttiraman grew up with us, finally emigrating to America and returning to Mattannur to become a mini landowner himself. His story needs more telling for his is also the story of the velvet revolution of Kerala, where the world’s first Marxist government was democratically elected.

    No American dream though for poor crippled Bhaskaran. One Saturday, the last that I remember, a driver drives us to Kunnoth. Father is dozing and Bhaskaran, having recognised our car, beams in expectation of his rupee but the driver does not stop. I remember looking at him through the rear windscreen. His look of baffled disappointment still haunts me. The resentment of a whole people is distilled in his eyes. Why didn’t I wake up father? Why do I still feel as if it was all my fault?

    Onwards from Mattanur and across the bridge over the Iritty river. If you go there today, you will see a placid lake, the river having been dammed many years ago. But, to me it is alive: a wild galloping beast, furious, snorting iridescent sprays on to moss laden banks, raging ahead in tumescent turbulence as giant uprooted trees, like flotsam, cling to its deep silver mane. We cross the bridge and leave the roiling river behind.

    We arrive at Kunnoth and park our car by the stream that bisects our land: the stream where we catch tiny flame coloured fish with a Kerala thorthu (a porous woven towel) and gently release them, the stream on the banks of which bushes of pineapple and sugar cane proudly flaunt their fecundity. In contrast, carpets of tremulous touch-me-nots close and withdraw when we trample them under our wellingtons.

    Wellingtons are mandatory, even in the blazing hot summer. It is protection against venomous snakes. I see more of them in father’s vivid descriptions and never really in flesh. But stories about snakes are enough to make us keep our boots on. We tread on dead leaves and abandoned ant hills without fear. We are told never to poke a stick into any hole in the ground or on earth mounds because even a newly hatched cobra could slither up the stick and kill us faster than we could withdraw the stick or drop it. Such is the fear of snakes that a harmless water snake frightened the hell out of us. But serpents are part of every story and our Eden was no different.

    The tenants and labourers wait for father to pay their weekly wages. We slip away to cavort in the stream and climb smooth guava trees. We bite through the thick skin of sugar cane to relish its fibrous sweetness and finally return to the cool veranda of our thatched roof house. Banana leaves are placed on a ring of soft bark of the plantain tree and ripe jackfruit leaves stitched into conical shapes with the spine of coconut fronds, serve as spoons. Naranettan, manager and maitre-de, serves us hot rice gruel with delicious tapioca stew, whole black lentils and a melange of tender jackfruit with freshly grated coconut, and spicy pickles. A dollop of ghee from the milk of our own cows, couple of sweet little bananas, a piece of jaggery, and we are ready to go out again. Mother forces us to rest a while before we sneak out. All the used leaves and spoons are thrown into a huge compost pit behind the house. We rarely see or use plastic.

    In the evening, father takes us along on his inspection of the farm. We are accompanied by a few tenants and Naranettan. People seek father’s attention invariably asking for his help in what seem to us as trivial matters. A woman needs a few rupees to buy a cow, someone wants to dig a small channel to divert water from our stream to their tenured land, someone else wants a piece of land to cultivate some grains. I cannot remember the details or if the decisions were in their favour, but I see most of them go away with a smile.

    At dusk father sits on an easy chair on the verandah and tenants and others congregate in the compound below. The men stand ever so slightly stooped as a mark of supplicant respect, holding their customary thorthu turbans in their hands. The women stand to one side whispering softly among themselves. Father, his socialist disposition in conflict with his feudal authority, speaks kindly to them and I imagine metes out justice where required. He does not raise his voice at the tenants or even speak harshly to them. Or do we only remember what we want to and forget the harsher moments? I narrate this as I remember. The concepts of feudalism and the inequities of disproportionate land ownership do not register in my six year old mind. But there is a restive unease that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

    The weeks roll into months and years. Father shifts his law practice to the High Court in Kochi and our visits to Kunnoth become infrequent. Naranettan leaves under a cloud and is replaced by Jaleel, the brave-heart who chopped a deadly King Cobra in two with his machete as it stood on its tail hissing at him. Or so the story went. Kerala enforces the Land Reforms Act, one of the two Indian states that implements the federal Act. Most of our tenants become landowners. Kerala transforms from a poverty-stricken caste ridden plutocracy to a thriving egalitarian socialist state. The people of Kerala stand erect with their thorthu proudly crowning their heads.

    On a journey from Thalassery to Bangalore, you will pass Kunnoth on your left just before your car starts climbing up the Western Ghats. If you recognise the Eden of my childhood, stop your car and peep inside. If nothing else, you will see the shy touch-me nots. Touch them, but gently, on my behalf.