The black and white television

 It was almost a milestone in the village history when Father brought home a small 18 inch, black and white ET&T TV set. There were just three or four TV sets in the entire village. The unfortunate bearers of these TV sets were under real assault on Sundays for the weekly movies because people seamlessly barged in despite all protests. Once the room was full and the door shut, the rest tried to catch the action by hearing dialogues from outside.

A kind TV owner thought of larger good and put his coveted item in the street for a public screening. The entire street got jammed to a long extent with the kind of crowd that you see at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station in Delhi presently. Then someone threw a pebble that landed dangerously close to the precious item. The owner shouted profanities that would surpass all the nasty jeers of all the villains in the film industry. The show went off.

The TV owners turned very guarded and suspicious after this incident. It was then Father decided to get us our little black and white television set. Doordarshan was kind enough to give us Wednesday chitrahar and Sunday movie. An antenna looked like a crown of the house. A house with television antenna was held in high esteem. Thank god, the village was monkeyless during those days. The frequency was slippery. Little elements of wind and clouds had the capacity to spoil all entertainment. Holding the antenna in an ideal position was a big challenge, almost an art in fact.

Then the path-breaking serial Ramayan started. By this time there were about two dozen television sets in the village. So the pressure per TV set had eased a bit. But the electricity would go off, leaving people in a puzzle if life was really livable anymore. I remember it was a much anticipated episode, maybe Lord Rama’s marriage with Mata Sita. The entire village looked up to celebrate the marriage. A day before the episode the electricity transformer gave sparks and got blown out. The village went into mourning. But there was a glimmer of hope.

Father had stealthily smuggled in a rechargeable battery with enough voltage to play the tiny television set. The news spread throughout the village. Our house was attacked. Never ever I will see so many people in a small house. The people got  onto whatever perch they could manage. I saw heads almost touching the ceiling. Potatoes were crushed. Some of our old brass utensils still bear the marks of that assault. The house would have burst out that day.

An old woman who could not squeeze in went lamenting through the street. She knew where Grandfather spent his days smoking hookah in a gathering of elders in a chaupal. ‘You smoke hookah here, but when you will go home you will walk over its rubble,’ she howled and hollered. Grandfather was around eighty-five at that time. He ran on his rickety legs to save his house. Then he gave the all-time best performance of his life in both words and action. He threw bricks, clods, sticks, fists, kicks amply accompanied with suitable tongue-lashing to clear off the door and continued throwing whatever came in his hands. Heavy brass utensils came very handy as weapons. His old-age burst certainly made it a war scene. People must have thought he was haunted by Ravan’s spirit that day. But full marks to Grandfather’s spirit. He created a stampede and forced the crowd to run away from the scene. Our small humble house bore the look as if a few bulls had fought inside it. And there he stood, fuming, but proud to have saved the house. ‘If you people go like this, you will find yourself on the open road one day,’ he admonished. That day Father had to be on the back-foot and Grandfather gave him a big load of advisory, admonishing hearing.

The law of reciporation

 

It was dreadful in the trenches during World War First. Millions of soldiers waited in anticipation of death or killing. There was a kind of no man’s land between the trenches of the opposing armies. Across a slowly smoldering front between the German and the allied troops in Europe, a German soldier was reputed for his stealthy prowl. He would stalk the enemy fleas like a predatory lizard across the buffer zone and preyed upon some lone soldier, disarmed him and forced him to crawl back to his side. He had completed a dozen such successful missions. On one such  mission in the dark of night, he overpowered an allied soldier. The allied soldier was eating bread. The initial impulse is to resist your enemy. Had he done so, his fate would have been like others who had been kidnapped by the German soldier. As the German soldier started to disarm him, the captive allied troop offered his bread to the enemy. If you offer something to someone, you put that person in an obligation, almost indebted to you. You feel like paying back. This law applies to all cultures and is one of the basic laws of human society. The German soldier found himself detained by the subtle chains of this law. He spared the soldier and returned empty ended.

My cricketing days

 India won the cricket world cup in 1983. The entire country got so inspired that millions of childhoods and boyhoods in the 80s and 90s of the last century were almost hijacked by the cricketing spirit. People walked, talked and ate cricket. We did the same in our village. It was more or less hit-and-run cricket on the uneven stubbed ground. It was all about wild swings and weird heaves. It hatched shocking and dramatic events sometimes. Farthest from any cricketing technique, the chance factor was the real master of the game.

Anand decided to be the fastest bowler in this part of India. I was maybe in eighth class then. He ran in from the bunchgrass shrubbery, beyond the boundary line, and would throw terribly unpredictable deliveries. He was concerned about speed only, so any direction, height, width, line or length hardly mattered to him. In any case these were very fast deliveries. Add to it the fact that it was a cork ball, almost double the weight of the usual leather ball, uneven pitch and the completely unguarded batsman (almost naked from the cricketing gear point of view). No wonder the equation turned almost disastrous for the poor batsman. In such conditions the bowlers were demons and they ruled the game. We played six or eight over matches. It was all that was needed to chuck out the entire batting lineup. The entire team’s score would be usually in measly twenties. Someone going into double digits was equal to hitting a ton.

I was facing the crazy speedster that day. He ran in like a rampaging bull from the edge of the pond and threw it with so much force that it came almost parallel and hit me on my left cheek. I instantly collapsed. I envisioned surreal crystallizations of night-sky constellations in broad daylight. Helmet, pads, guards were the things which most of us hadn’t seen even once in life. Still most of us dreamt of playing for India one day. Vow, the innocence of childhood! They lifted me and put me on a greener part of the ground. Very caring on their part I have to accept. It was terribly painful. But full credit to the bowler that he had hit it so perfectly, nicely we can say, at the luckiest point on my cheek that my jaw, teeth, tongue and bones cannot complain at the memory. There was no damage. A slight deviation in angle or positioning would have shattered my jaw. Yes, the cheek muscles can complain a bit because I carried a big laddoo on my cheek for many days. Our science teacher Master Surest chuckled with glee whenever he saw me. He hated any kind of game or physical exercise. Science and mathematics was all that meant to be the focus of cosmos to him. Looking at the laddoo he seemed to have drawn satisfaction that at long last the art of game was defeated by the art of science.

Bhindo also used to try fast bowling. Imitating Anand, he would also run from the boundary line. But he was so fragile and weak in limbs that his delivery arrived as a perfect spin ball and I would usually hit it to the fence. He possessed a very big calculating mind in a small body. Maybe chess was good for him but he stuck to cricket. I was the one who symbolized an all-encompassing rival to him, almost equal to an enemy in the childhood world. Only God knows why there was such proliferation of antagonism in him at my merest sight. Whenever I hit him for a four or six, he would cringingly walk down the pitch and would gnash his very cute buckteeth like a stinging rabbit, ‘Ma kasam, I would hit you for a six on your first ball to me!’ So trying with an incisive longing to keep his kasam, he got bowled by me on the first ball itself. Actually seething with anger and hate he blindly ran down the pitch and it was easy to scatter his wickets when he lowered his guard so madly. His kasam lay tattered with the wickets. The world slipped away from under his feet. His heightened sensitivity hitting a tornado, we found him crying profusely behind a heap of bricks. His eyes were red with tears and the unkempt kasam. I had to say sorry to save his life. Clean-bowleding such guys is almost like stirring a proverbial hornet’s nest. Who knows such crazy boys might run into a speeding truck to save themselves from the unbearable pain of defeat. I loaned him a few comics which he never returned; maybe as a revenge to settle the scores with me.

Bhindo was junior by a year to me in the school. A very hardworking student, he would mug up the content like a parrot and reproduce it on the answer sheet to lay claim among the first three in the class. Once during the exam, Bhindo was heard sobbing very painfully. It was already ten minutes since the paper started. Many students had started with a writing sprint like the athletes shoot off like a rocket in 100 m race. But Bhindo was caught in a logjam. He had forgotten the first line of the answer. He got nervous and more so as he saw his nearest rival, a serious and self-contained guy, scribbling away his answer at a smart pace. Every passing second was acute and upsetting. Sobbing and tears running down freely from his big male goat’s eyes, he was heard pleading to the rampaging rival, ‘Randhir, Randhir, don’t be so bad. Kindly tell me the first line!’ He could garner some sympathy for all his tears. A kind teacher had to stop his piteous sobbing by telling him the tormenting first line. Bhindo stood second that year. ‘If not for that pagal first line I would have beaten you fair and square!’ he congratulated the boy who had scored over him.

I was a slightly build boy but others held the view that I possessed stamina and strength normally expected in a hefty boy of that age. Acknowledging the energetic verve in me, the kabbadi boys would sometimes include me in the game. So I sometimes participated in kabbadi games as an extra. Bhindo felt crestfallen. Egged on by the simmering flame of competition, he also had to be a kabbadi champion, if I was taken as an extra by the muscular boys of that game. To be honest it was incredible audacity on his part given his fragile body. He didn’t know the risks of this game of raw strength. He nearly died under a heap of burly ruffian kabbadi boys. There he came out stumbling and floundering, the stems and stalks of his pride almost uprooted by the rotund boys of kabbadi. He cried piteously and blamed me for hatching a plot to break his bones.

If he saw me running, he would declare that he would break the national record in running one day. And he carried his vendetta with his growing years. When I cleared the UPSC mains and got interviewed for the coveted Indian civil services, a visibly shaken Bhindo paid me a visit. ‘Subhash Chander Bose had cleared this exam! How can you do it? I cannot believe!’ he threw it in my face. He declared in full honesty that I was spreading lies. I showed him the interview letter. He read it with shaking hands. The paper literally got burnt under his malevolent stare. He crashed into a chair with a heavy gasp, completely muddled and passive. I had to offer him a glass of water to help him overcome the shock.

To me it was light and entertaining. In the jolly backdrop of such mild skirmishes our roller coaster adolescence brought us to the threshold of youth and its serious matters about career and job. Thank God he got appointed as a government primary school teacher and I’m just a non-descript village-based writer. This at least gives him a semblance of solace that life is worth living at long last. 

Defeating death with a joke

The legendary Indian soldier, Field Marshal Sam Makekshaw, fought as a junior officer in the British Indian Army during the Second World War. In a daring endeavor to catch a strategic hill in Burma, bravely leading from the front, he was hit by a light machine gun burst. He had nine bullets lodged in his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. His orderly Mehar Singh lifted his injured boss on shoulders and walked fourteen miles to reach a military field hospital. His torso ripped apart and bleeding like flooded rivers, the young officer seemed sure to die.

From the look of it, only death seemed a reprieve for the injured officer. The British senior officer, fully aware of the Indian junior officer’s brave fight, tore his own Military Cross (one of the most prestigious military awards) and put it on the chest of the apparently dying soldier saying, ‘Military Cross is given to only living soldiers. So hereby I confer it to you while you are still alive.’

The Australian surgeon, heavily burdened under the big tasks with limited resources, thought it wastage of time and medical supplies to attend a definitely dying soldier. Sam had a few traces of consciousness at that time. ‘What happened to you?’ the doctor asked ironically. And the legendary soldier’s answer would later change history, not just for India but for Bangladesh as well. ‘A mule hit me,’ Manekshaw joked, a weak smile emerging from his messed up body. The Australian surgeon was shocked. ‘If someone can crack a joke even in this situation then his life is worth saving!’ he said. He operated upon the soldier and extracted the bullets from his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. It was a bloody operation; a major part of Manekshaw’s intestines had to be cut out. But bravest are the ones who can smile and joke even in the face of death. By cracking the joke with death staring at his face, Sam had already defeated death.

The rest is history. Sam Maneskshaw not only survived but went onto play important roles in all the wars including Pakistan (1947-48), China (1962), ending with Bangladesh war (1971) when he was the army chief.

He was as much famous for his bravery and military strategy as he was for his sense of humor. If not for this sense of humor, the Australian surgeon won’t have even considered treating him. If not for this sense of humor, Sam would have died with a borrowed, consolatory Military Cross on his chest. With this sense of humor, he retired as a Field Marshal, living to the ripe old age of late nineties, holding the proud baton of a perpetual soldier who is entitled to a salute from the highest of the high in the country as long as he is alive. I think this unbuckling sense of humor won him the toughest battle of his life by defeating death.

So keep your sense of humor dear readers! Keep it alive! It’s precious because it defeats even death sometimes.

LOVE

There is abundance of love around, of family, of nature, of birds, of animals, flowers, everything in fact. When hate vanishes, love blooms and you soar high with such love instead of falling. You love all simply because you don't hate anyone. Love for a man or woman is the first step on the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, but don't just stop at the point. It's just a beginning. From particular to the universal. The limited love is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, universal love. So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

Love you all!