What is friendship to you?

The day before yesterday when I was about to finish a quiet dinner with a friend of mine at a corner table in a not-so-crowded restaurant, a new-age reporter with a camera in one hand and a Rode wireless microphone in another rattled me by asking this question. They were creating content for the hotel which is organising an event for Friendship Day.

I was unprepared.

Not because I didn't know what it was to me, but because I was at a loss how to capture this enormous multi-dimensional variegated feeling that we all have been living with since our adolescent days in a few casual sentences. I chose to dodge.

But it kept haunting me.

There are friends and there are experiences with friends - two different things. My analytical mind dissected the players and the experience which emanates from their interactions.

We all have the experience of having friends.

If there was one best friend during our school days, we would have lost touch with him after we got transferred. Met new people and made new friends. Some of them would have become our best friends with whom we would have liked to spend most of our available time with. Few of them would have chosen to walk away, and a few we would have liked to drop for whatever reason best known to us. We would have let a few down, and a few would have let us down - bored us, frustrated us, betrayed us, hurt us, disappointed us. In our lives, we see dozens of best friends. So, one can quickly identify who is the current best friend but can't describe all the best friends by giving one overarching definition for all of them.

So, friends are just another relationship - strong, fragile, temporary, and temporal.

If it’s challenging to define friends, it's equally difficult to determine the gamut of feelings a deep friendship offers in one umbrella definition.

We border on the danger of using the words which describe our expectations from a friend as the feelings of friendship. Words like, trust, transaction, dependency, joy, and so many are the human expectations of a relationship - not the feelings of friendship.

But then what are the feelings of friendship?

The answer to this can be found by observing the feelings that we experience with the friends we are currently engaged with?

To me, it's some kind of intimacy that attracts us to spend time with each other in either a physical or virtual way. We are attracted to share and interact on issues that are personal, social, intellectual, recreational, spiritual, of shared interest, or which are our common goals. It's gender, age, and status neutral. It can be between two lovers, between a husband and wife, a mother and her daughter, and two different unrelated people who would have met just a few days ago.

It's that state when you connect a dozen times a day, and keep each other informed about the mundane things happening at that moment. You laugh and giggle forgetting the worries around you.

It's about finding a universe of joy in that moment.

How can there be any relationship if two people don't enjoy being with each other? How pleasant was the experience? That's the beginning of every human relationship smaller or bigger.

What is yours?

Ode to Monsoon

By the beginning of June after enduring the harshness of the hot and humid Indian summer season from March, the nation starts looking skyward for the rain clouds to appear. The parched earth and roasted humans in utter despair go to their Gods, weathermen, and astrologers to hear the good news of the arrival of monsoon.

Their huge errors in predictions in the past don’t stop the hapless populace from dabbling with the discussion over rains even if it’s just in the discussion. The pain and hope behind this trepidation are like the hopes of one of the lovers in a broken relationship for the other to return.

The arrival of the monsoon on the Kerala coast is the most awaited event in the month of June.

Why not, when most of our rivers are rain-fed and agriculture is mostly dependent on timely and adequate rains and most of our festivals follow the agrarian calendar? Government and economists prepare themselves for the consequences if it doesn’t rain. Our lives directly or indirectly are dependent on monsoons. In certain years it's timely and adequate and in some it's scarce and so more that it calls for national emergency response. This annual climatic event does something so magical to everything living and non-living who dwell on this vast sub-continent so routinely that all have learned to dance to the tune of it.

I am not the first one who has chosen to write about it nor will be the last one to do so.

With the first monsoon rain humanity erupts into joy. The postings of pictures, videos, reels, and songs on social media by the citizens indicate the magnitude of joy that they are experiencing. Tomes of literature have been written on the monsoon. In the movies, rain is used as a metaphor for ecstasy, blessings, and love. Not only the peacocks are seen serenading their potential mates, but heroines also break into song and dance to celebrate the spirit of the season. 

In the novel Train to Pakistan, Khuswant Singh while describing the most violent episode of the subcontinent’s history couldn’t stop himself from pausing the narrative to describe the first rain of monsoon. He uses three pages to describe it and I am sure he would have held out to the editor’s request or pressure to truncate it. It’s the best description of monsoon I have ever read. Go through the best three paragraphs of his narrative.

“The dust hanging in the air settles on your books, furniture, and food; it gets in your eyes and ears and throat and nose.

This happens over and over again until the people have lost all hope. They are disillusioned, dejected, thirsty, and sweating. The prickly heat on the back of their necks is like emery paper. There is another lull. A hot petrified silence prevails. Then comes the shrill, strange call of a bird. Why has it left its cool bosky shade and come out in the sun? People look up wearily at the lifeless sky. Yes, there it is with its mate! They are like large black-and-white bulbuls with perky crests and long tails. They are pied-crusted cuckoos who have flown all the way from Africa ahead of the monsoon. Isn’t there a gentle breeze blowing? And hasn’t it a damp smell? And wasn’t the rumble which drowned the birds’ anguished cry the sound of thunder? The people hurry to the roofs to see. The same ebony wall is coming up from the east. A flock of herons fly across. There is a flash of lightning which outshines the daylight. The wind fills the black sails of the clouds, and they billow out across the sun. A profound shadow falls on the earth. There is another clap of thunder. Big drops of rain fall and dry up in the dust: A fragrant smell rises from the earth. Another flash of lightning and another crack of thunder like the roar of a hungry tiger. It has come! Sheets of water, wave after wave. The people lift their faces to the clouds and let the abundance of water cover them. Schools and offices close. All work stops. Men, women and children run madly about the streets, waving their arms and shouting “Ho, Ho,”- hosannas to the miracles of the monsoon.

The monsoon is not like ordinary rain which comes and goes. Once it is on, it stays for two months or more. Its advent is greeted with joy. Parties set out for picnics and litter the countryside with the skins and stones of mangoes. Women and children make swings on branches of trees and spend the day in sport and song. Peacocks spread their tails and strut about with their mates; the woods echo with their shrill cries.”

When David Attenborough in one of his documentaries describes the Himalayas and Monsoon in his calming, soothing voice …“. Warm winds from India filled with moisture are forced upwards by the Himalayas to cool which causes clouds to form thus monsoon is born…” the background music and the dramatic time-lapse video beautifully captures the drama and the magic this phenomenon creates over this vast geography.

It almost seems as if God is manifesting himself before humankind.

Early humans realized early how closely nature is intertwined with its existence and chose to respect and worship nature. No wonder very early humans conceptualized God in his role as the creator, nourisher, nurturer, and destroyer by looking at the same aspects in various natural phenomena. It’s only a few hundred years back from the present era, humans as a departure from their earlier convictions saw mother earth as a resource to be exploited for its insatiable greed triggering what we now know as Global Warming and Climate Change.

We are witness to the changing patterns of rain.

Rains have become erratic. Slow drizzle over weeks which was good for farming and absorption into the soil has become non-existent now and what we witness is a cloud burst-like situation over a limited area for a few days which erodes the most precious commodity of the nation - top soil and causes flash floods and immense human misery.

If the rich soils and monsoon rains have been instrumental in developing us from our settled agriculturist days into a civilization of 140 cr to recon with because of our literature, and wisdom; how a changed monsoon pattern triggered by climate change stands to change us is a matter of grave national concern. 

To my kids on Father's Day

If I was instrumental in bringing you into the world, certain things came along the deal which I'm responsible for; you better know about the roles I'm going to play in your life.

As the Protector:

My primary role as a father is to give you physical, emotional, social, and financial protection to the best of my ability till you become an adult. It's also my role to provide you with exactly that much protection which will prepare you to be independent and autonomous and not make you dependent on me for life. Don't expect me to protect you when you are wrong; I'm not your private bouncer. But when you fall, betrayed by your love and the world, I will be there to provide the safety net and a launch pad to swing you back into life.

As the Provider:

My role is also to provide the resources which are needed for you to develop into an educated, sensitive, emotionally stable, well-mannered, and respectful human being with values and principles who can provide for himself and lead a small but honorable life. It will start with my being the example of all of it. I'm not here to give you a luxury lifestyle, foreign vacation, and admission to fancy foreign universities. You have to earn it yourself. Don't try to make me look deficient as a father because your friends' fathers are breaking their backs trying to live up to the expectations of their wives and children. Period!

As the Disciplinarian:

If I'm doing the above two things well, be prepared for the third. My job is to discipline you, your thoughts, and your actions. I am here to set standards and instill values and principles in you. Breaking you in is no easy job and I don't want you to love me for this. You can run to your mother, and grandmother to cry and complain against me to release your angst. I want you to remember my face when you do anything wrong and fear the consequences even if I am not around.

Your Gen Z friends will say that your dad is old school, controlling, orthodox, and chauvinistic but digest that and do as I say.

You will remember all the things that I did to you as discussed above when you become an adult and have your own children to raise. You will remember me and appreciate the hard choices I made when you would be falling and rising and successfully navigating the obstacles of life. But by then I would be history; not around to know your appreciation of my role in making you.

That's a dad’s life.

Those Old Toys

They were stowed away and forgotten for close to 15 years till we discovered them while clearing the cupboards yesterday. But as I look closely at each one of them, flashes of memories come rushing back.

From the day they came into our house - either bought or gifted, how my kids played with each of them, how many kilometres they travelled with us, what all the places they visited with us, and how many times they suffered being smeared in Cerelac and how many times they had to suffer the washing machine and the tumble dryer to the mountains of joy they brought into our kids’ lives. They were living beings with individual personalities and identities in the chaotic circus we called home.

They were on our beck and call working untiringly along with us to raise our kids.

The children outgrew them years back and when their role as their emotional support started dwindling, we wrapped them in a polybag to declutter our home. When we met them today, one of them had lost an eye, many had lost their lustre, and some wore tattered jackets. Logic says that the time to say goodbye has come and let them go as they neither are needed by our children nor by us.

Now, they are like the nanny we had but don't need her anymore.

Now even after they were conveniently forgotten for 15 years; they look as happy as always - ready to make us joyful again.

Should I let them go or can I let them go rather? Kids will leave us one day, but can I ever let go of the memory of their growing up phase and the awkwardness of ours as untrained parents and those million experiences. These lifeless stuffed toys are the objects around which these precious memories are woven.

Will know by this evening.

22nd May 2023

Different Strokes

In another few hours, the deadliest train accident of our living memories will be 52 hours old. Hours will be days, days will become weeks, and weeks will become months.

Life will go on but those gory images of dismembered bodies, strewn body parts, and the sound in our minds of a huge mass of metal hitting another at great speed, wailing of people crushed under the metal carriages crying for help will keep playing in a loop and haunt us a lifetime. As many times its memory would visit us, that many times our hands will rise in prayer for this not to happen again. If the macro picture of this tragedy was unsettling, micro tales of personal tragedies that will roll out one after the other will leave us devastated emotionally in the months to come. 

After the Super Cyclone, Odisha registered itself at the top of one more list which no one wants its name on.

When an incident of such tragic proportions happens, baser minds like ours get tempted to ask the unseen - why? What were his plans? Why did he orchestrate such a sanguineous drama to destroy hundreds of innocent lives and leave behind ten times more people scarred for life?

The exact number of dead is not known yet. 288, 295+, 175, and 1000 are the numbers flying around and each source has its own method of counting and each will stick to their number. We thought human beings were countable but now we realise that dead bodies are not.

The response to the accident was straight out of the disaster management textbook. This is what we get to see in American movies. Well-drilled professionals were cutting through the chaos with the precision of a surgeon.

Before the agencies could arrive the locals came in droves and started rescuing people using locally available crude tools and ladders. The picture of them pulling out people alive, injured, maimed, and dead was so moving and heartening. The people from the nearby towns came in hundreds to volunteer and donate blood. For them, the world was a binary. The ones who can help and the ones who need help. Every life mattered and every minute was precious. Balasore rose above faith, regionality, language, and economic divide and set a benchmark of what civilians can do sans power and resources.

The scale of the tragedy though caught various state agencies unaware, the alacrity, efficiency, coordination, and cooperation among them showed no sign that they represent three different governments ruled by three different political parties who are known for their differences. No one was blaming anyone, no one was trying to steal the limelight, and no one was trying to gain political mileage in the time of this monumental crisis facing humanity. In their mind the same binary played. The ones who can help and the ones who need help.

But the scene in the virtual world of social media which didn't stand anywhere near lending a helping hand was in stark contrast to what was on the ground. The grief and outrage of people were painted with political and communal colours, people who generally wore the garb of decency didn't bat an eyelid to shed it and turn vituperative and personally abusive, and many pandered and fuelled conspiracy theories against a particular section of the society. No one wanted to miss the opportunity at hand to grind their personal axes of hatred and divisive politics.

Behind the cloak, some were seen with a pair of wings of goodness and ready to take humanity to the next level and some were seen carrying a dagger to slit someone's jugular.

Incidents like these throw us to our bare selves, exposing our core values and intentions - wings and scabs.

 

Being Odia

Being an Odia in Odisha whose fate is tied and tightly coupled with the whims and fancies of another Odia would speak of another Odisha which it never was or should be.

For centuries we have proved that we make very good servants, sincere, loyal, and honest; efficiency was not expected from the one who just has to guard the post to protect his master's interest. From being the Balasore Bearers to a Babu in the highest office and now as waiters and security guards in metros we have done every role because the lure of risk-free, easy, and secure life is hard to resist. It's time we resurrected that dormant gene that made some of us kings and emperors.

Though after seeing our current practice of servility and the way it gets rewarded, it fills me with doubt if the kings of the past were bred and raised here or were imported.

Let's stop stealing from our master's warehouse and treasury to build our riches and also stop managing his business well and wait indefinitely for him to give us the reward and certificate of good conduct; let's build it on our own. Both share the same easy path to a secure life, differentiated only by honesty. Stop behaving like a king with his power of attorney in your hand; because he can annul it anytime. Great servants never build great nations; they live off it.

Let's build the courage to do something new, hit the monolith with a disruptive thought and idea, design a different method, a product, break new grounds, shake the status quo at its base, and push our art, language, and endowments to the next level by creating things anew, be an employer and not just aspire to be a very civil servant as the symbol of our collective and ultimate aspiration if we want our state to regain its past glory.

Stop being delusional about our past when the present doesn't promise a glorious future. Let's help each other to do things that are different.

My Utkala Dibasa thought.

Bhubaneswar – The city which adopted this nomad.

Vividly remember that Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1974 when Baba drove us to a plot he had recently acquired.

After crossing the last human habitation with some rickety unimpressive houses at Acharya Vihar, we were on the highway towards Khurda. After about a kilometre plus he turned right to a barren geography with no shrub in sight. New roads were being demarcated with mounds of aggregates dotting the sides of stormwater drains. Our Jeep rattled on it and stopped at a point where the road ended and overlooked a valley. We were asked to get down and Baba proudly showed us his first material acquisition after struggling for a decade plus to raise his 4 children.

 

Maa, as a forest officer's wife was too used to living in mini estates and was least impressed with this postage stamp-sized plot. To her, plots are measured in acres, not square feet. She sarcastically suggested that ideally, he should have bought some land a bit ahead which would have been easier for us to take care of cultivation at our ancestral village near Chilka. With the ego of the man of the house punctured, the drive back can only be expected to be in uncomfortable silence.

 

That was IRC Village then. Can't tell about others, but a part of me stayed back at that exact spot constantly beaconing me to return.

 

Born into a nomadic life because of constant transfers of Baba, we were to hop from place to place every two, or three years, get attached to that setting and agree to a willful separation and strike root at an unknown place. This perhaps gave me a stronger heart to drop people and deal with future disappointments and breakups.

But while living that peripatetic life, my mind always wanted to come to that spot someday in the future and settle down.

 

Another chance transfer in 1986 made us denizens of this city which I had longed to be a part of since 74. This place has seen our family of 6 grow to 18 at its peak and with all the life's dramas - the birth of my children and the death of my father. Never thought of leaving it even once and I'm sure this place will witness my final journey.

 

At times I ask myself what drew me to this city. I came here with zero friends and no relatives to speak of and with no dreams or ambitions - I just wanted to be here. Was I running away from my past? No! Then?

 

The words of two people partially answer my question.

 

Baba used to say that it's in the soil. He jokingly attributed the color red to the blood of his ancestors who had valiantly fought off invaders and staged mutinies. And of Priyadarshy Dash Bhaina when he said, he agreed to a lesser pay package while opting for a shift to Bhubaneswar because he would get a few lakhs worth of free breeze every evening to make good. Its appeal and magnetism perhaps lie in its air and soil.

 

This city which has housed us and shaped our lives and nurtured our dreams has completed 75 years today and at 75, two things still look beautiful, the city you love and your mother.

 

It's on us how we together shape its future.