(This article appeared in The TOI Crest edition)
by Ashutosh Pathak and Chatura Rao July 2, 2011
Zindabad. Zinda. Abaad — a life, a house. With a clenched fist and a winning smile, Shabnam Vakil Khan bids goodbye. She manages a 10x10 sq ft life, propped up with corrugated sheets. Two kids, a makeshift kitchen, an uneven mud floor covered with a plastic sheet, a decade of memories and knickknacks , and a stubborn black chicken, are shuffled constantly in this grid, leaving little room to breathe. Shabnam’s hut is one of 3,000 crammed into 21 acres of Annabhau Sathe Nagar, a slum in Mankhurd.
Annabhau Sathe Nagar falls in M-ward , which locals call Mumbai’s dumping ground — for garbage and people. According to a Human Development Report published in 2009 by the Ministry of Housing And Urban Poverty Alleviation, the maximum number of resettlement colonies exist here. It has the highest illiteracy rate in the city, as well as a child mortality rate of 66 per 1,000 births.
Since Independence, there have been a number of schemes to redevelop slums — Indira Vikas Yojana, JNNURM, Slum Rehabilitation Act (SRA), Rajiv Gandhi Awaas Yojana. The SRA, championed by the Shiv Sena in the early ’90s, comes with the cut-off date clause, whereby, if you can prove residence before January 1, 1995, you have the right to a one-room flat in a rehabilitation building nearby. If you don’t possess a voter’s ID or an electricity bill dating back to pre-1995 , you leave with nothing.
Explains activist Simpreet Singh, “The system is so corrupt that if a person can shell out anywhere from Rs 8,000-15,000, he can purchase proof to show he’s been a resident of this city since before 1995. But this cut-off date rule erodes the dignity of thousands who have to scramble around to prepare proofs of their right to a basic necessity.” Fear for their future drives the ‘apaatra’ or ‘ineligible’ to adopt corrupt means to ensure they get a house. This gives rise to a black market within the crumbling slums that facilitates bribery, forgery and extortion. Besides, a date-based parameter can only make sense in a scenario where slums are considered unwanted parts of a city to be swept away with a broom.
Shabnam’s Annabhau Sathe Nagar and nearby Mandala are illegal settlements. They cannot be redeveloped under the Slum Rehabilitation Act (SRA), because they came up after 1995. Instead they have been demolished frequently since the ‘Mumbai-Shanghai’ clarion call of the Vilasrao Deshmukh government in 2004 when over 80,000 hutments were torn down across Mumbai in a matter of weeks. A resistance movement is gaining strength here. At the front are men and women who laugh easily but have spent hours and days battering against the closed doors of Mumbai’s slum policy that deems them ‘apaatra’ or ‘invalid’ .
“They ask for an identity to give you an identity,” Santosh Thorat, 39, grins. “I’m standing here, I tell them, flesh and blood. I have cleaned the sewers, built the roads, worked on construction sites for 20 years. What more proof do you need?”
“I have two children,” says Jamila, 26. “In 2004, they came and broke down my home. They beat us and kept us in the lock-up till three in the morning. After they released us we saw that we would have to fight for a house. But first we women had to figure out where to set up a stove, where to find a dry shelter for the children to sleep, where to shit.”
Jamila and many men and woman like her have become activists. They attended and spoke at the Jan Sansad (People’s Parliament) organised by the National Alliance of People’s Movements, held at Deonar in March. Spoke up for their right to water, toilets and a home.
Shabana Khanum, from nearby Chikalwadi, also attended the Jan Sansad. For the first time in her life, she marched with others from slums across Mumbai, calling out slogans like ‘Ladenge; jeetenge!’ (We will fight; we will win!). As Mumbai expands inland, chewing up soil, spitting out towers and mini-cities , the dirt and debris from slums demolished to make way for these is brushed under flyovers, piled on the sidewalks, tucked along the cracks of a pipeline or the swamps of a wasteland. The scenes from a documentary film by Anand Patwardhan made in 1985 are also scenes from Mumbai in 2011. If these questions have been asked before, why has little changed?
Chikalwadi, next to the Deonar dumping ground, is built on a swamp. When people moved here, there was no vacant land so they filled the swamp with what they call ‘cutting’ — remnants of rubber soles from a chappal-making factory that arrived at the landfill as trash. The ground wobbles when you walk on it, because the rubber cuttings go only a few feet deep. Sometimes the water from the swamp below rises and seeps into the houses. People here sort and sell the reusable plastic that comes from various parts of Mumbai to the Deonar landfill. A family, children included , contribute their labour to the city, and earn between Rs 80 and Rs 100 in a day. Chikalwadi and the nearby Sant Nirankari Nagar have been facing repeated demolitions in the last few weeks.
In early 2000, people who couldn’t find a place in the city came to these distant suburbs. Local ganglords or small-time politicians gave them ‘permission’ to stay on the land in exchange for money. “I sold my wedding jewellery to buy this bit of land,” smiles Shabnam of Annabhau Sathe Nagar. “I have two small children. We had to have a place to raise them.” People bought mud for Rs 1,000 per truck to fill up the swamps and marshes, and gradually set up a community. These transactions gave them the assurance of being legitimate within a system that otherwise ignored them.
“The politics of the poor is street-level politics,” explains Amita Bhide of the School of Habitat Studies, TISS. “When the poor ‘buy’ slum land from the local land mafia (which is affiliated to various political parties — note which flag is flying over the slum), is the land the local mafia’s to ‘sell’ ? If you look at the struggles of the poor to gain a foothold in the city, all of it is illegal. It is a parallel system at work. But if you look at it in the context that there is no legal solution to the problem of housing for the poor, then this is the only way for them to stake a claim to a house, which is a prerequisite to working in the city.”
Slums in Mumbai, as per the city’s development records, began in the 1940s with the need for additional housing. Today, this need grows at a rate of 90-95 ,000 houses per year. Two per cent of these are for migrants, but the rest of the demand is attributed to natural growth. The city’s families expand, the children grow up and start their own families. The demand for 60 per cent of these 95,000 new homes come from the low income group. Since 1985, the state has almost stopped constructing homes. The middle and higher income groups depend on the market for housing. But who addresses the needs of the poor?
“My aunt came from Jalna district over 40 years ago when there was a drought there and they were starving. She and her people provided the labour that built the airport,” says Shobha Uttam Mule, 46. Her home in Ambedkar Nagar flanks Mumbai’s domestic airport. It’s a torturous climb from ground floor to the first, the ladder so narrow and steep. “Santa Cruz was a swamp,” she says. “No one asked us to leave when we cleared it. We have jobs. Our children and grandchildren go to school here. We don’t want to be rehabilitated in Vidya Vihar far away.”
The BMC plans to move the evicted to the treeless rubble of Mankhurd. The question is: What is to become of the livelihood of these people? Slum-dwellers work in road and building construction, as plumbers, carpenters, peons, rickshawpullers and taxi drivers, in delivery services, with the police, as domestic and industrial workers. They run small, profitable businesses . They work as lightmen, storyboard artists and assistants in Mumbai’s film industry. Six out of 10 people in Mumbai are slum-dwellers , and they do the innumerable jobs that keep this city dynamic.
People from some of the post-1995 slums across Mumbai, under the guidance of the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, have been lobbying for an alternative to the SRA. The NGO re-educates the landless about their legal rights and the correct way to go about asking for them — this prevents them from being exploited quite as much and begins to empower them. It also fulfils the critical role of keeping the peace in potentially violent situations.
These people have been working systematically towards a redevelopment scheme which will include them in development. So now in Mandala, the BSUP (Basic Services for the Urban Poor), having been approved by the Centre, is a few formalities away from being passed by the state government. This scheme grants a flat in exchange for a standing house, no proof required. It also makes the slum-dweller pay a percentage of the cost of building it.
On March 23, over 20 slum residents rallied outside Mantralaya to ask for the Rajiv Awaas Yojana (RAY) to be applied to the redevelopment of their slum. The RAY has no eligibility cut-off date. It also allows the granting of land rights to the slumdwellers . “The community can play an active role in the development of their slum,” says Simpreet Singh. “It won’t be just builder-led …besides if residents get land rights, it will halt the bulldozers, putting an end to the agony and economic losses of demolition drives.”
In 2010, official projections showed that about 90 lakh or 9 million Mumbai residents live in slums. Mumbai provides them with a livelihood, and they in turn provide the services that fuel the city. But when they ask for a home they get the bulldozer and the lathi. ‘Humanism’ and ‘activism’ , in polite circles, have become taboo words — the responsibility of the other. Unless they become ours once again, the need to stop violent evictions and the problem of economy housing will not be urgently addressed.
While children from slums that range from bamboo-and-plastic Chikalwadi to concrete Golibar are growing up with the daily threat of dispossession, their parents — even the illiterate ones — are educating themselves with the ideals of a crucial piece of text: the Constitution of India. They are trying to re-trace the law to its origin. They find hope in the pixillated print of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s face staring back at them and a simple sentence in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law.”
And in the spirit of the law, the Right to Life includes the right to a life of dignity.
(Inputs by Faiza Ahmad Khan)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Sunday Rat
The rat stood stiff as a statue in the middle of the crowd that jostled to reach him. He was a huge silver fellow with standing up ears and a collar around his neck, also in silver all beautifully carved with flowers and birds. “Like that makes up for having to act like a statue day in and day out,” Mooshaka silently grumbled. “And then there is that business of Wishes. Here it comes now!”
The silver rat stood stiffer than ever as the first devotee of the evening elbowed everyone else out of the way to reach him. She was a fat lady. She leaned over his back, putting her great weight across him as she shut his right ear with her plump right palm and whispered loudly in his left:
“I want my daughter to marry that Patel boy. Make sure it comes through properly. And we cannot afford the dowry they’re asking for, so mind that—“
“Move over aunty, you’ve had your turn!” A red-haired young man was nudging fat aunty aside.
“Okay, okay. Young people these days always in a hurry,” aunty grumbled, waddling towards the sanctum of the orange Ganesha.
“Holy Rat, India has to reach the Super Eight of the Saucer Cup,” the boy said. “I’ve bet 20,000 rupees on this happening. So make it happen.”
He then sauntered over to fold his hands before the orange Ganesha. Now Orange, as the orange Ganesha was popularly known, was the main deity of this temple. However Mooshaka, the silver rat, was as popular. This was because Orange was hard of hearing and only the rat could squeak in a frequency that Orange would understand. So every night as Mooshaka bore his master back to Mount Kailash to sleep beside his divine parents, the divine rat had the long and tiring task of conveying the devotees’ wishes to his master. A master who was often incredulous.
“WHAT?! The Patel boy! O Shiva, father in heaven, why would anybody want to marry her daughter to that pot-bellied wart?!” Orange would exclaim. “Not that a big belly is such a problem,” he would mutter, lovingly stroking his own.
“And India reach the Supersix? Super What? Supreight? That isn’t even as poetic as Supersix. Anyway, even if Superman played cricket for India the team would not reach the Super Six. How am I supposed to grant impossible wishes? Just the other day, a man asked me to give him a grandson. The man has neither a son nor a daughter to begin with. Ha!” For a god with a hearing problem, Orange talked rather a lot.
Mooshaka would shrug and simply carry on listing the devotees’ wishes. He hated them. The devotees had no sense and were greedy and… and their armpits often smelt like socks when they leaned over his ears! Still Orange insisted on hearing all their wishes and even tried to grant about half of them.
All Mooshaka wanted was a break. Conveying the wishes was one thing. The other (worse) thing was that his master was getting almost too fat to carry over the cold clouds to the distant peaks of Mount Kailash. Orange would have to hire a camel soon if he didn’t stop pigging out on the laddoos every night. Mooshaka wanted to take no more requests, just run away to where nobody recognized his divine squeaking powers and silver carved collar. He just wanted, for once in his life, to enjoy life as an ordinary rat.
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“I won’t.” One Saturday Mooshaka crouched under a bench in the empty temple after closing hours. “I simply won’t. I’m on strike. Dukaan bandh.”
He was a rat of few words, and Orange who actually really loved him, immediately sat down to negotiate slave rights. “Hmmph,” he blew through his elephant trunk. “You want to take a holiday. But where will you go?”
“Somewhere fun. Send me.”
“Kulu-Manali for white water rafting? Auli for skiing?”
Mooshaka shook his head: “Where do the devotees go on Sunday?”
“The shopping malls.”
“What are they called?”
“Infinite mall, In Orbit mall, I forget the rest…” Orange said, racking his elephant memory, but he just couldn’t recall more because he was poor at names the way he was hard of hearing.
“Send me to In Orbit mall. I would like to go into orbit for a day. Should be divine,” Mooshaka said dreamily.
Orange almost pointed out that Mount Kailash touched the stars and was divine, but he was a kind god and of course, granter of wishes, so he just nodded. “Tomorrow you will be transformed into a human being and will find yourself at the entrance of In Orbit mall. Sleep well.”
Orange whistled sharply. A camel appeared before them swimming a few inches above the ground, his legs waving slowly, hump quivering, mouth contentedly chewing the cud. Before Mooshaka could be properly stunned, could properly realize that Orange can actually read his mind, the god boarded the camel’s back. The camel’s eyes widened at the weight. He looked despairingly at Mooshaka, beast-of-burden to beast-of-burden, who smiled slightly and waved goodbye. Orange sunk his heels into the camel’s back, yanked at the reigns and called “Hurrrr.” Then Orange and the camel disappeared.
Mooshaka lay alone in the dark and wondered what kind of human he would be transformed into tomorrow.
He awoke the next day to find himself standing on the long and shiny steps of the In Orbit Mall. Someone was holding him by the hand. Someone taller than he and fatter too. It was the plump aunty who visited the temple every Tuesday! She looked tall, and then Mooshaka looked down at himself. He was a very short boy, about 10 years old, and he was plump. He had a twitchy long nose and a bit of a moustache, actually hair on his upper lip. His teeth were protruding, though he wore braces to correct them.
Mooshaka looked down. Red shoes, blue pants and a white shirt with a buttoned up collar that had designs of flowers and birds. A collar, even here. His heart sank. “Oh Orange Devtaa, why can’t I be free on my one holiday?” The top buttons of the tight collar promptly popped off and free he was.
“Come, come, my dear grandson,” fat aunty said, yanking him up the steps. “Let’s have fun in our usual Sunday way.”
“Our usual way?” Mooshaka ventured timidly.
“Yes, dumb chokro!” aunty exclaimed. “Eat eat eat. Play play play. How can you forget our favorite motto?”
“Eat and play? Yes of course I remember,” said Mooshaka leaping up the stairs in excitement. He dragged the huffing-puffing aunty behind him. “I had forgotten on account of studying so hard all week!”
“Studying? You?” aunty gasped with laughter. “That’ll be the day!”
They took the elevator up to the second floor which was the food section. Here aunty suggested Mooshaka have a pizza, while she ate chaat. The rat-boy nodded eagerly, his plump chin bobbing. He was hungry for his breakfast, which was usually upma or poha at the temple.
But when the pizza came Mooshaka was transported, you guessed it, to high heaven. He was a rat who had never tasted cheese! Never ever. He had only ever been fed laddoos and other sweetmeats by the temple devotees, upma/ poha for breakfast and daal, rice and cooked vegetables once a day by the priests before they sat down to eat the same lunch.
The pizza was covered with thick, warm, stringy cheese. Mooshaka ate it quickly and asked for one more, but aunty, who was his grandmother in this scenario, just would not buy him another. She said that he had diabetes, and that strange word rung a bell. Three Tuesdays ago at the temple, aunty had whispered in Mooshaka’s ear that her grandson, Jignes, had juvenile diabetes and to please make him well. “So that is who I am!” Mooshaka realized. “Jignes Patel, the juvenile diabetic.”
Well who cared about the fellow and his problems? Mooshaka was on his first holiday in 2000 years and he wanted cheese! “Gimme more!” Mooshaka shouted in his mind, knowing not to say it to the fierce fat aunty. So, indicating that he had to visit the Men’s Washroom, Jignes-Mooshaka slipped into the kitchen of Pizza Palace. He scurried about in rat fashion, knees bent, his hands hooked in front of his chest, nose thrust forward sniffing. He did not notice how the cooks stopped to stare at him like he was crazy. And then he came upon it: A fourteen-inch pizza with layers and layers of cheese melting on it, still warm from the oven.
Outside in the restaurant of Pizza Palace, fat aunty was starting to worry. Where was her grandson? It was ten minutes since he said he had to go to the Men’s Room. That too he had indicated by pointing to a place roughly below his tummy and then pointing to the glass of water. Then he had poured the glass of water in a trickle on the floor. Really! Jignes’ language skills were getting from bad to worse. “I will just have to have to take this up with Rupa,” she said huffily to herself, Rupa being Jignes’ mother. “She does nothing but go to kitty parties all day. What will become of the boy? He is not fit for human company.”
Dhaam dhoom! Pisk-Posk! Clang BANG! Sounds of bloody battle from the kitchen interrupted her thoughts as well as the happy munching of other pizza eaters. “Su che?” Fat aunty started to say in her native language, but was shut up by an awful sight at the kitchen door.
Jignes, on seeing the cheesy pizza, had rushed towards it. In his path were two cooks, one with a plate of chopped capsicum and one with a big bowl of pasta sauce. For Jignes these did not count as obstacles so he barged straight through. The chef at the other end of the kitchen, who was keeping a stern eye on Jignes, walked into a steel tray of spaghetti, which slipped into a pile on the floor and made a waiter (also busy staring at the boy nosing around the kitchen) slip and fall against another, who fell against another, until all the kitchen help had gone down like skittles in a bowling alley.
The pile of moaning and cursing cooks were dusting themselves off and trying to get up, when Jignes passed among them like a young God passes through the muck of the world. He lifted up the pizza of his dreams and had messily gobbled half by the time he reached the kitchen door.
So the sight that greeted his grandmother’s eyes was that of plump, diabetic Jignes pigging out on layers and layers of crusty, forbidden cheese. “Orange! O Lord! Save my grandson from his madness!” Fat aunty shouted.
Orange, who was at this moment reclining in his temple eating a huge modak after his huge mid-day meal, heard her prayer. You do remember that he was hard of hearing and needed Mooshaka to convey his devotees’ requests? Perhaps he had been fooling himself all those years, for he heard her quite clearly. Uttering a few magic words which sounded like “Clang BANG” to the uninitiated (and unimaginative), he transformed Mooshaka into…
Zweeep Vion VIONN! Mooshaka was at the bike racing video game. He had become Tejasvini, the video game whiz kid. Teju was a chewing gum addict too, so she was not interested in eating anything at the food court. She was instead busy winning game after game. Until Mooshaka became her. Then Teju suddenly assumed a posture like a jungle rat caught in the headlights of a car, and froze at the video game controls. Her onscreen bike went out of control and crashed into the railing of the race track, throwing the driver off and beginning to catch fire.
“Come on, Teju!” “What’s the matter with you?!” Teju’s cousins Sunil and Misha screamed. Mooshaka-Teju came to her senses. She wildly pressed the controls until she saw her screen self run for the fallen bike, right it and jump on. Then Mooshaka-Teju raced it better than the real Teju. Even better, because being a divine rat, she always knew what was going to happen next. She knew when the blue bike would swerve into her path and she knew when the yellow bike rider would pick up speed and catch up with her to kick her bike down. So she did not allow these pre-designed moves. She beat the video game, thrashed it, winning races one after the next, losing no points at all. A crowd gathered around Mooshaka-Teju with her hair flying out behind her as she attacked the game board at a crazy speed. Then the video game monitor suddenly went black and the machine began to wail loudly, like a monster baby crying.
All the kids around her and at the other games jumped in horror at the sound of the machine giving up the fight. The wail sounded like an enemy plane was going to bomb the gaming centre, and parents came up to Teju, gave her stern, suspicious looks, and dragged their kids away. The gaming manager was there in a moment, his fingers stuffed into his ears.
“What are you DOING? You cannot upset my machine this way! I will lose my contract with the mall if the machines wail like this.”
“But I won,” Teju said calmly. There was a short silence as the Manager unplugged the sick and sad machine. “Fair enough,” he admitted. “Choose your prize from all those at the counter. Take anything you want. We’ve never had such a good player here before, so pick the best and biggest prize. But after that, LEAVE!”
Teju sauntered over to the prizes counter and picked the biggest thing there was. It was a red and pink teddy bear, about four feet tall. “For Orange, my dear friend,” Mooshaka said to himself. “To play with when nobody is about in the temple.”
--------------------
Meanwhile Orange, who was giving himself a ghee-massage on the legs with his trunk, sighed. It had been four hours since he had seen his best friend and he sure missed him. “Do you want to come back now, Moo?” Orange asked Mooshaka. He spoke in his mind, of course. Mooshaka heard it of course.
The divine rat sensed Orange’s loneliness. Besides, the Mall was becoming more crowded and noisy by the minute and Mooshaka’s head was beginning to spin with the bright lights and children running this way and that. The adults were no better, constantly screaming and chasing after food and things and their kids. They bumped Mooshaka with their elbows and big shopping bags. He was used to a bit more respect and reverence and thought longingly of the quiet at the temple, which would certainly be closed at this hour for the god’s and the priests’ afternoon nap.
“Yes,” Mooshaka whispered. “I want to return home.”
The next instant Mooshaka reappeared in the silver rat statue within the temple. Frozen in his old pose, Mooshaka showed his surprise at being back so suddenly, only with the slightest twitch of his whiskers.
Orange raised a soothing eyebrow at him. “Every Sunday,” he promised his faithful rat with that one gesture, “I will send you Into Orbit. You can go in the disguise you choose and spend two hours eating what you will.” Mooshaka subsided into a happy little grin. Then he pushed his silver tongue out a bit at a time, so no human would notice, and calmly licked off the bits of cheese that were still stuck to his whiskers.
The next Sunday and for every Sunday ever after, Mooshaka returned to In Orbit mall for his rendezvous with cheese. He went in the form of a small rat, no aunties attached. This was so he could explore the delights of the mall’s kitchens in peace. Soon he was sampling cake, cotton candy, hot dogs, idli, samosa, kachori, Chinese fried noodles and all manner of eatables. But his favourite food of all time remained the double cheese pizza.
Occasionally he transformed himself into a kid in the video game section so he could stun everybody with his speed and skill. The priests at the temple often wondered where all the stuffed toys were coming from, but Orange absolutely loved them. He used them as pillows and foot-rests and belly-rests. If he was in a rough mood he sometimes punched the toys or kicked them like footballs. Often he tickled Mooshaka’s tiny ears and paws with the smaller furry toys, just to make him squirm.
On Sunday evenings, both Orange and Mooshaka would contentedly burp their way up to Mount Kailash. In silence, because as Mooshaka reminded the garrulous Orange, on Sunday even the Gods rested.
The silver rat stood stiffer than ever as the first devotee of the evening elbowed everyone else out of the way to reach him. She was a fat lady. She leaned over his back, putting her great weight across him as she shut his right ear with her plump right palm and whispered loudly in his left:
“I want my daughter to marry that Patel boy. Make sure it comes through properly. And we cannot afford the dowry they’re asking for, so mind that—“
“Move over aunty, you’ve had your turn!” A red-haired young man was nudging fat aunty aside.
“Okay, okay. Young people these days always in a hurry,” aunty grumbled, waddling towards the sanctum of the orange Ganesha.
“Holy Rat, India has to reach the Super Eight of the Saucer Cup,” the boy said. “I’ve bet 20,000 rupees on this happening. So make it happen.”
He then sauntered over to fold his hands before the orange Ganesha. Now Orange, as the orange Ganesha was popularly known, was the main deity of this temple. However Mooshaka, the silver rat, was as popular. This was because Orange was hard of hearing and only the rat could squeak in a frequency that Orange would understand. So every night as Mooshaka bore his master back to Mount Kailash to sleep beside his divine parents, the divine rat had the long and tiring task of conveying the devotees’ wishes to his master. A master who was often incredulous.
“WHAT?! The Patel boy! O Shiva, father in heaven, why would anybody want to marry her daughter to that pot-bellied wart?!” Orange would exclaim. “Not that a big belly is such a problem,” he would mutter, lovingly stroking his own.
“And India reach the Supersix? Super What? Supreight? That isn’t even as poetic as Supersix. Anyway, even if Superman played cricket for India the team would not reach the Super Six. How am I supposed to grant impossible wishes? Just the other day, a man asked me to give him a grandson. The man has neither a son nor a daughter to begin with. Ha!” For a god with a hearing problem, Orange talked rather a lot.
Mooshaka would shrug and simply carry on listing the devotees’ wishes. He hated them. The devotees had no sense and were greedy and… and their armpits often smelt like socks when they leaned over his ears! Still Orange insisted on hearing all their wishes and even tried to grant about half of them.
All Mooshaka wanted was a break. Conveying the wishes was one thing. The other (worse) thing was that his master was getting almost too fat to carry over the cold clouds to the distant peaks of Mount Kailash. Orange would have to hire a camel soon if he didn’t stop pigging out on the laddoos every night. Mooshaka wanted to take no more requests, just run away to where nobody recognized his divine squeaking powers and silver carved collar. He just wanted, for once in his life, to enjoy life as an ordinary rat.
--------------
“I won’t.” One Saturday Mooshaka crouched under a bench in the empty temple after closing hours. “I simply won’t. I’m on strike. Dukaan bandh.”
He was a rat of few words, and Orange who actually really loved him, immediately sat down to negotiate slave rights. “Hmmph,” he blew through his elephant trunk. “You want to take a holiday. But where will you go?”
“Somewhere fun. Send me.”
“Kulu-Manali for white water rafting? Auli for skiing?”
Mooshaka shook his head: “Where do the devotees go on Sunday?”
“The shopping malls.”
“What are they called?”
“Infinite mall, In Orbit mall, I forget the rest…” Orange said, racking his elephant memory, but he just couldn’t recall more because he was poor at names the way he was hard of hearing.
“Send me to In Orbit mall. I would like to go into orbit for a day. Should be divine,” Mooshaka said dreamily.
Orange almost pointed out that Mount Kailash touched the stars and was divine, but he was a kind god and of course, granter of wishes, so he just nodded. “Tomorrow you will be transformed into a human being and will find yourself at the entrance of In Orbit mall. Sleep well.”
Orange whistled sharply. A camel appeared before them swimming a few inches above the ground, his legs waving slowly, hump quivering, mouth contentedly chewing the cud. Before Mooshaka could be properly stunned, could properly realize that Orange can actually read his mind, the god boarded the camel’s back. The camel’s eyes widened at the weight. He looked despairingly at Mooshaka, beast-of-burden to beast-of-burden, who smiled slightly and waved goodbye. Orange sunk his heels into the camel’s back, yanked at the reigns and called “Hurrrr.” Then Orange and the camel disappeared.
Mooshaka lay alone in the dark and wondered what kind of human he would be transformed into tomorrow.
He awoke the next day to find himself standing on the long and shiny steps of the In Orbit Mall. Someone was holding him by the hand. Someone taller than he and fatter too. It was the plump aunty who visited the temple every Tuesday! She looked tall, and then Mooshaka looked down at himself. He was a very short boy, about 10 years old, and he was plump. He had a twitchy long nose and a bit of a moustache, actually hair on his upper lip. His teeth were protruding, though he wore braces to correct them.
Mooshaka looked down. Red shoes, blue pants and a white shirt with a buttoned up collar that had designs of flowers and birds. A collar, even here. His heart sank. “Oh Orange Devtaa, why can’t I be free on my one holiday?” The top buttons of the tight collar promptly popped off and free he was.
“Come, come, my dear grandson,” fat aunty said, yanking him up the steps. “Let’s have fun in our usual Sunday way.”
“Our usual way?” Mooshaka ventured timidly.
“Yes, dumb chokro!” aunty exclaimed. “Eat eat eat. Play play play. How can you forget our favorite motto?”
“Eat and play? Yes of course I remember,” said Mooshaka leaping up the stairs in excitement. He dragged the huffing-puffing aunty behind him. “I had forgotten on account of studying so hard all week!”
“Studying? You?” aunty gasped with laughter. “That’ll be the day!”
They took the elevator up to the second floor which was the food section. Here aunty suggested Mooshaka have a pizza, while she ate chaat. The rat-boy nodded eagerly, his plump chin bobbing. He was hungry for his breakfast, which was usually upma or poha at the temple.
But when the pizza came Mooshaka was transported, you guessed it, to high heaven. He was a rat who had never tasted cheese! Never ever. He had only ever been fed laddoos and other sweetmeats by the temple devotees, upma/ poha for breakfast and daal, rice and cooked vegetables once a day by the priests before they sat down to eat the same lunch.
The pizza was covered with thick, warm, stringy cheese. Mooshaka ate it quickly and asked for one more, but aunty, who was his grandmother in this scenario, just would not buy him another. She said that he had diabetes, and that strange word rung a bell. Three Tuesdays ago at the temple, aunty had whispered in Mooshaka’s ear that her grandson, Jignes, had juvenile diabetes and to please make him well. “So that is who I am!” Mooshaka realized. “Jignes Patel, the juvenile diabetic.”
Well who cared about the fellow and his problems? Mooshaka was on his first holiday in 2000 years and he wanted cheese! “Gimme more!” Mooshaka shouted in his mind, knowing not to say it to the fierce fat aunty. So, indicating that he had to visit the Men’s Washroom, Jignes-Mooshaka slipped into the kitchen of Pizza Palace. He scurried about in rat fashion, knees bent, his hands hooked in front of his chest, nose thrust forward sniffing. He did not notice how the cooks stopped to stare at him like he was crazy. And then he came upon it: A fourteen-inch pizza with layers and layers of cheese melting on it, still warm from the oven.
Outside in the restaurant of Pizza Palace, fat aunty was starting to worry. Where was her grandson? It was ten minutes since he said he had to go to the Men’s Room. That too he had indicated by pointing to a place roughly below his tummy and then pointing to the glass of water. Then he had poured the glass of water in a trickle on the floor. Really! Jignes’ language skills were getting from bad to worse. “I will just have to have to take this up with Rupa,” she said huffily to herself, Rupa being Jignes’ mother. “She does nothing but go to kitty parties all day. What will become of the boy? He is not fit for human company.”
Dhaam dhoom! Pisk-Posk! Clang BANG! Sounds of bloody battle from the kitchen interrupted her thoughts as well as the happy munching of other pizza eaters. “Su che?” Fat aunty started to say in her native language, but was shut up by an awful sight at the kitchen door.
Jignes, on seeing the cheesy pizza, had rushed towards it. In his path were two cooks, one with a plate of chopped capsicum and one with a big bowl of pasta sauce. For Jignes these did not count as obstacles so he barged straight through. The chef at the other end of the kitchen, who was keeping a stern eye on Jignes, walked into a steel tray of spaghetti, which slipped into a pile on the floor and made a waiter (also busy staring at the boy nosing around the kitchen) slip and fall against another, who fell against another, until all the kitchen help had gone down like skittles in a bowling alley.
The pile of moaning and cursing cooks were dusting themselves off and trying to get up, when Jignes passed among them like a young God passes through the muck of the world. He lifted up the pizza of his dreams and had messily gobbled half by the time he reached the kitchen door.
So the sight that greeted his grandmother’s eyes was that of plump, diabetic Jignes pigging out on layers and layers of crusty, forbidden cheese. “Orange! O Lord! Save my grandson from his madness!” Fat aunty shouted.
Orange, who was at this moment reclining in his temple eating a huge modak after his huge mid-day meal, heard her prayer. You do remember that he was hard of hearing and needed Mooshaka to convey his devotees’ requests? Perhaps he had been fooling himself all those years, for he heard her quite clearly. Uttering a few magic words which sounded like “Clang BANG” to the uninitiated (and unimaginative), he transformed Mooshaka into…
Zweeep Vion VIONN! Mooshaka was at the bike racing video game. He had become Tejasvini, the video game whiz kid. Teju was a chewing gum addict too, so she was not interested in eating anything at the food court. She was instead busy winning game after game. Until Mooshaka became her. Then Teju suddenly assumed a posture like a jungle rat caught in the headlights of a car, and froze at the video game controls. Her onscreen bike went out of control and crashed into the railing of the race track, throwing the driver off and beginning to catch fire.
“Come on, Teju!” “What’s the matter with you?!” Teju’s cousins Sunil and Misha screamed. Mooshaka-Teju came to her senses. She wildly pressed the controls until she saw her screen self run for the fallen bike, right it and jump on. Then Mooshaka-Teju raced it better than the real Teju. Even better, because being a divine rat, she always knew what was going to happen next. She knew when the blue bike would swerve into her path and she knew when the yellow bike rider would pick up speed and catch up with her to kick her bike down. So she did not allow these pre-designed moves. She beat the video game, thrashed it, winning races one after the next, losing no points at all. A crowd gathered around Mooshaka-Teju with her hair flying out behind her as she attacked the game board at a crazy speed. Then the video game monitor suddenly went black and the machine began to wail loudly, like a monster baby crying.
All the kids around her and at the other games jumped in horror at the sound of the machine giving up the fight. The wail sounded like an enemy plane was going to bomb the gaming centre, and parents came up to Teju, gave her stern, suspicious looks, and dragged their kids away. The gaming manager was there in a moment, his fingers stuffed into his ears.
“What are you DOING? You cannot upset my machine this way! I will lose my contract with the mall if the machines wail like this.”
“But I won,” Teju said calmly. There was a short silence as the Manager unplugged the sick and sad machine. “Fair enough,” he admitted. “Choose your prize from all those at the counter. Take anything you want. We’ve never had such a good player here before, so pick the best and biggest prize. But after that, LEAVE!”
Teju sauntered over to the prizes counter and picked the biggest thing there was. It was a red and pink teddy bear, about four feet tall. “For Orange, my dear friend,” Mooshaka said to himself. “To play with when nobody is about in the temple.”
--------------------
Meanwhile Orange, who was giving himself a ghee-massage on the legs with his trunk, sighed. It had been four hours since he had seen his best friend and he sure missed him. “Do you want to come back now, Moo?” Orange asked Mooshaka. He spoke in his mind, of course. Mooshaka heard it of course.
The divine rat sensed Orange’s loneliness. Besides, the Mall was becoming more crowded and noisy by the minute and Mooshaka’s head was beginning to spin with the bright lights and children running this way and that. The adults were no better, constantly screaming and chasing after food and things and their kids. They bumped Mooshaka with their elbows and big shopping bags. He was used to a bit more respect and reverence and thought longingly of the quiet at the temple, which would certainly be closed at this hour for the god’s and the priests’ afternoon nap.
“Yes,” Mooshaka whispered. “I want to return home.”
The next instant Mooshaka reappeared in the silver rat statue within the temple. Frozen in his old pose, Mooshaka showed his surprise at being back so suddenly, only with the slightest twitch of his whiskers.
Orange raised a soothing eyebrow at him. “Every Sunday,” he promised his faithful rat with that one gesture, “I will send you Into Orbit. You can go in the disguise you choose and spend two hours eating what you will.” Mooshaka subsided into a happy little grin. Then he pushed his silver tongue out a bit at a time, so no human would notice, and calmly licked off the bits of cheese that were still stuck to his whiskers.
The next Sunday and for every Sunday ever after, Mooshaka returned to In Orbit mall for his rendezvous with cheese. He went in the form of a small rat, no aunties attached. This was so he could explore the delights of the mall’s kitchens in peace. Soon he was sampling cake, cotton candy, hot dogs, idli, samosa, kachori, Chinese fried noodles and all manner of eatables. But his favourite food of all time remained the double cheese pizza.
Occasionally he transformed himself into a kid in the video game section so he could stun everybody with his speed and skill. The priests at the temple often wondered where all the stuffed toys were coming from, but Orange absolutely loved them. He used them as pillows and foot-rests and belly-rests. If he was in a rough mood he sometimes punched the toys or kicked them like footballs. Often he tickled Mooshaka’s tiny ears and paws with the smaller furry toys, just to make him squirm.
On Sunday evenings, both Orange and Mooshaka would contentedly burp their way up to Mount Kailash. In silence, because as Mooshaka reminded the garrulous Orange, on Sunday even the Gods rested.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Story of Smells
Once upon a time there was a planet that was ruled by three gods with a monkey for a secretary. The place was vast, with plenty of rolling hills and valleys, fields and rivers, trees and plants and animals. A lot like our earth. Our earth, in fact, but ten thousand years ago.
The three gods who ruled the land worked as farmers. You’re probably thinking, gods don’t work, they just solve people’s problems (if they feel like and if you’ve made a nice food offering). But that’s nowadays. Ten thousand years ago, after the gods of old had fought and wiped out evil, the ones left on earth became farmers.
They planted vast tracts of land with good sound crop like potatoes, rice, cabbage and beans. They grew tough and hardy plants and trees which would survive the violent prehistoric storms.
These farmer-gods had no use for fruit like leechi or flowers like sweet pea which are merely tasty or smell pretty. They planted only things that when you ate, built muscular and physical strength. This is because the gods were the mighty warrior gods of old. Their names were Zeus, Osiris and Kali, and in their young days they had fought many other mighty warriors from our earth and the skies, in order to gain control over this fertile and beautiful land.
Of the three ruling gods, Zeus was Greek. He always wore white and was the god of light and skies. Osiris was the god who had conquered death and carried a scary and impressive scepter, a carved staff which has magical powers. Kali was a fearsome female goddess with a chain of human skulls around her neck and a red tongue that lolled out all the time she was awake. Actually these three gods had ruled the earth so long together that they had become quite alike in the way they looked and behaved. They were all inflexible, didn’t have a sense of fun, and were wrinkled like old people, although still powerful and not balding a bit. Only Osiris had a trace of baldness which he secretly worried about.
I mentioned a monkey in the opening line of this story. The monkey that served them like a sort of secretary, had never seen a war. He was young (about a hundred years old but that’s young as compared to a god’s age) and an intellectual. You know what that is? An ‘intellectual’ likes to read about and understand things. A bit like you.
The monkey’s name was Manny. He was taller and less hairy than any monkey you must have seen. And he wore magnifying glasses fixed into spectacle frames, because he liked to see the words on a page in giant size. If he did not, then his masters who liked to give orders, would interrupt his thoughts all the time and Manny would never be able to get his reading done.
The only thing that he liked as much as he liked reading, was farming. Manny liked to grow things, although these days he was bored with planting potatoes and rice and wheat, having done the same planting every crop cycle for about eighty five years.
One afternoon when the gods were busy at their siesta and the monkeys who worked for them were also dozing in the trees and haystacks, Manny came upon a strange word: ‘redolence’. The sentence read this way – ‘The redolence of sandalwood made the king remember his beloved queen.’ This whole sentence was unusual; in fact this whole book was unusual, because the only books that were available explained the art of war and how to grow food, make useful pots and weave clothes and baskets. Yes, boring. The gods approved of these topics, because things like love and flowers, fine clothes, jewellery, and painting had given rise, they felt, to greed and jealousy. These had led to the wars on Earth.
This line about a king and his beloved was in a book called ‘Love Story’, which a frog had discovered at the bottom of a disused well. He had found it and humbly submitted it to Manny, not knowing how to read himself. Half the pages of the book were green with rot, but still Manny read what he could, so much did he love reading.
There were not many words that the monkey did not understand, he was in fact making a list of words and their meanings. He thought long and hard about ‘redolence’ and its possible meanings. He decided to ask Zeus.
Zeus was the mildest of the three gods who were his masters. Despite that, Zeus was not the kind of guy you’d go to for a simple chat or even to ask the meaning of something. He lived in the sky, floating along in a permanent cloud castle. He was writing a book of memoirs, that is an account of his life so far. It was already a huge book and was going to get even more staggering by the time Zeus finished. Manny, however, could not wait to get his hands on it. He wanted to know all the juicy bits about Zeus’ life that had been kept hidden so far. He was sure that Zeus would write it all down, seeing as he told nobody about it and everybody needs to tell their secrets to somebody.
“Zeus, Mighty God of the Heavens, forgive me for interrupting, but what is the meaning of redolence?” Manny asked, his voice shaking. Zeus had an awful temper. Zeus frowned and clouds gathered above the earth. His eyebrows bristled, and the clouds immediately became black and heavy. A cold wind rose. Manny trembled so much he thought his tail would fall off.
“It means ‘smell’,” Zeus replied in Greek. “Get my other toga ironed and get me a new nib for my pen.” Manny scurried off, glad that his tail (and the planet) would live to see another day.
Zeus read a page of what he had recently written in his book. He smiled. The sun zipped out from behind the clouds and the sky turned bright blue.
Manny went back to his favorite tree, an old oak, and pondered this. “The redolence of sandalwood made the king remember his beloved queen”. Can a particular smell make you remember somebody? The monkey tried to remember his mother. She had gone to the regions of the netherworld about ten years earlier. Died, I mean. Much as he tried, he could not really remember her sweet hairy face. She had been the nicest lady monkey, but he could not remember her clearly. His memory was stuck like a hung computer. It made him sad and frustrated. As night fell, in his desperation he hit upon an idea.
At new moon when the sky was dark, Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, walked the face of the earth. Osiris’ soldiers stand guard at the river that you have to cross to enter the netherworld. So he’s in charge of who goes in and out. At new moon Osiris came above ground and hunted large animals if he had a mind for meat, or he caught up on the gossip of the world with Zeus and Kali, whoever was awake. Tonight neither was, so Osiris was sitting by himself in a grove of banyan trees.
“Great Osiris, O Great Osiris, psst!” Manny whispered from behind a tree. He had been spying on the lean, dark god for three hours now, and his cramped legs gave him the courage to speak.
“Who dares interrupt a God’s game?” Osiris hissed. The head of his sceptre turned into that of a huge serpent. The birds in the grove bundled up their sleeping babies and crept away to other groves. Osiris had been playing chess by himself, playing both sides in turn. He’d been playing the same game for two thousand nights now, and neither side had won, so he was understandably cranky.
“I will put iron weights on your ankles, you who disturb me and prolong my game!”
Manny plucked up every last bit of courage and stumbled forward. “Osiris sir, if I might, the black king goes there, and the white pawn here. Black side checkmates white and in the next move, finito, khattam, auf wiedersehen, game!”
“Eye of Ra! Why didn’t I think of it?” Osiris scratched his balding head. A school of spiders ran out of his hair and down his neck. “I can finally start a new game. What do you wish to ask of me, monkey?”
“The impossible sir, and yet I know only you can grant it.”
“Yes, I can indeed grant things that old Zeus and Kali cannot,” Osiris sniffed. The netherworld is a lonely place and the gods that guard it are not your friendly neighbourhood types.
“I want to see my mother,” Manny said boldly.
“She is on the other side of the dark river, so no. And don’t ask again. I have no time for idiotic requests,” Osiris said coldly.
“I want to smell her, then,” the monkey said quickly.
Osiris frowned irritably, and a tree in the grove that he sat in, wilted and slipped to the ground.
“I helped you finish the game,” Manny fearfully reminded him.
“That is true. I am not an ungrateful god, so I will summon your mother’s smell from the underworld. Just for a second. Enjoy. (aside) Monkeys. Quite crazy. Possibly dangerous. Must ask Zeus to write down the description so other gods can be more careful.”
Then he waved his skinny black arms slowly in the direction of the ground. His fingers wiggled and a fragrance wafted up into the air above the ground. Manny took a deep breath and WHAM! a picture of his loving mother slapped him between the eyes. Clear as day even on a dark moonless night. She did indeed have the best smile in the world. Besides she had been doing something interesting that Monkey had all but forgotten since she had passed over. It was the smell that made him remember.
Mother Monkey, Mira, had been cultivating something amazing before she died. Something small, black, round. Something that had a sharp smell that poked your nose like a stick, if you sniffed it too closely. It made you sneeze, it made your eyes water. It did not build muscular strength. It just made food really interesting. Pepper!
Manny thought long and hard in the days that followed. His mother had frozen and stored the seeds in the Arctic Circle. The seeds of all ‘useless’ plants had been stowed away there by Diana the moon god and Dionysus the wine god before they left Earth. Zeus and his ilk thought these plants too useless to even bother to destroy their seeds. Now Manny was determined to revive pepper. It would recall his mother’s face whenever he wanted to see it. And would make the potatoes taste decent. He could not do it without the support of atleast one god. But who?
“Lya lya lya lyah!” Manny heard a voice go. The squirrels and other small animals huddled closer to each other in their beds. It was Kali singing, very early in the morning. So early it was still dark. That was her favorite hour.
“Ma!” Manny pleaded after he had lain at her feet and groveled at her huge black toes during which time she polished her gleaming silver knives and continued to sing with her tongue out.
“I want to plant pepper. Please. It is for your greater glory.”
“My glory needs no greatifying,” Kali said, rolling her eyes at Manny’s stupidity.
“Your grammar sure needs help,” Manny said, to his own horror, aloud.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Kali boomed. She brandished her favourite knife and furiously lolled her tongue.
“Pepper!” Manny yelled desperately as the sharp blade nudged his throat. “It will recall you to everybody who smells it, every time they use it in their cooking, each time it touches their tongue! Easy recall. You are Kali, mother of the world, and pepper is… is Kali Mirch, your own special Black Chilli. It’ll greatify your power. Betterfy you over Zeus and Osiris!”
“Hmm. Lya lya lyah,” the god was calmed by Manny’s idea. It addressed a certain need that Manny was not aware of. You see Kali is a warrior god who commands a fearsome army. Her troops had been hanging around in Africa for a thousand years now, living like nomads, and they were restless, spoiling for a fight. Pepper might be the answer, thought Kali. She too was sick of peace. The days and nights stretched endlessly before her. Peace. Ho hum humdrum. She would use pepper to bait Osiris and Zeus into a war situation.
Kali gave him her blessings and Manny began skillfully to plant pepper. Soon other monkeys were also cultivating small patches. One breezy day, Zeus in his cloud castle sniffed the air. Interesting smell, he thought. Sharp. And when he trained his thoughts to the smell, Zeus realised that treason was afoot. The food laws had been broken, and Kali was behind it.
He called an emergency meeting with Osiris that night. Manny was there to serve them food and beverages. He had made bean and potato sandwiches with a thick layer of mustard paste. They were served with hot coffee. The gods were hooked. They hadn’t had mustard and coffee in centuries and oh how these things teased their noses and played with their palates. These tastes made them recall other gods they had feasted with, laughed with, fought with, and loved.
‘Redolence’ had them so hard by the nose, they could not escape it. Still the gods could not ignore their own laws or even change them immediately, so they staged a few wars over spices and smells. A hundred years of mock fighting passed. Then, over gulps of ginger tea and mouthfuls of peppery pakodas, Zeus, Kali and Osiris drew up new food laws and a fresh peace accord. “To tastier times,” they toasted.
According to the new laws, Manny and the monkeys could plant whatever would grow on Earth. The food with the best smells you had to offer to the gods first to taste and enjoy. After that you’d be free to plant on, sniff on, feast on!
Those are the laws that Manny passed on to our generation. If you want to confirm them, go to a library and look up a big book called Manny-smriti. The story is all there, all true. Just made more interesting with a smattering of spice. Pepper, if you want to be specific, Manny’s favourite.
Once upon a time there was a planet that was ruled by three gods with a monkey for a secretary. The place was vast, with plenty of rolling hills and valleys, fields and rivers, trees and plants and animals. A lot like our earth. Our earth, in fact, but ten thousand years ago.
The three gods who ruled the land worked as farmers. You’re probably thinking, gods don’t work, they just solve people’s problems (if they feel like and if you’ve made a nice food offering). But that’s nowadays. Ten thousand years ago, after the gods of old had fought and wiped out evil, the ones left on earth became farmers.
They planted vast tracts of land with good sound crop like potatoes, rice, cabbage and beans. They grew tough and hardy plants and trees which would survive the violent prehistoric storms.
These farmer-gods had no use for fruit like leechi or flowers like sweet pea which are merely tasty or smell pretty. They planted only things that when you ate, built muscular and physical strength. This is because the gods were the mighty warrior gods of old. Their names were Zeus, Osiris and Kali, and in their young days they had fought many other mighty warriors from our earth and the skies, in order to gain control over this fertile and beautiful land.
Of the three ruling gods, Zeus was Greek. He always wore white and was the god of light and skies. Osiris was the god who had conquered death and carried a scary and impressive scepter, a carved staff which has magical powers. Kali was a fearsome female goddess with a chain of human skulls around her neck and a red tongue that lolled out all the time she was awake. Actually these three gods had ruled the earth so long together that they had become quite alike in the way they looked and behaved. They were all inflexible, didn’t have a sense of fun, and were wrinkled like old people, although still powerful and not balding a bit. Only Osiris had a trace of baldness which he secretly worried about.
I mentioned a monkey in the opening line of this story. The monkey that served them like a sort of secretary, had never seen a war. He was young (about a hundred years old but that’s young as compared to a god’s age) and an intellectual. You know what that is? An ‘intellectual’ likes to read about and understand things. A bit like you.
The monkey’s name was Manny. He was taller and less hairy than any monkey you must have seen. And he wore magnifying glasses fixed into spectacle frames, because he liked to see the words on a page in giant size. If he did not, then his masters who liked to give orders, would interrupt his thoughts all the time and Manny would never be able to get his reading done.
The only thing that he liked as much as he liked reading, was farming. Manny liked to grow things, although these days he was bored with planting potatoes and rice and wheat, having done the same planting every crop cycle for about eighty five years.
One afternoon when the gods were busy at their siesta and the monkeys who worked for them were also dozing in the trees and haystacks, Manny came upon a strange word: ‘redolence’. The sentence read this way – ‘The redolence of sandalwood made the king remember his beloved queen.’ This whole sentence was unusual; in fact this whole book was unusual, because the only books that were available explained the art of war and how to grow food, make useful pots and weave clothes and baskets. Yes, boring. The gods approved of these topics, because things like love and flowers, fine clothes, jewellery, and painting had given rise, they felt, to greed and jealousy. These had led to the wars on Earth.
This line about a king and his beloved was in a book called ‘Love Story’, which a frog had discovered at the bottom of a disused well. He had found it and humbly submitted it to Manny, not knowing how to read himself. Half the pages of the book were green with rot, but still Manny read what he could, so much did he love reading.
There were not many words that the monkey did not understand, he was in fact making a list of words and their meanings. He thought long and hard about ‘redolence’ and its possible meanings. He decided to ask Zeus.
Zeus was the mildest of the three gods who were his masters. Despite that, Zeus was not the kind of guy you’d go to for a simple chat or even to ask the meaning of something. He lived in the sky, floating along in a permanent cloud castle. He was writing a book of memoirs, that is an account of his life so far. It was already a huge book and was going to get even more staggering by the time Zeus finished. Manny, however, could not wait to get his hands on it. He wanted to know all the juicy bits about Zeus’ life that had been kept hidden so far. He was sure that Zeus would write it all down, seeing as he told nobody about it and everybody needs to tell their secrets to somebody.
“Zeus, Mighty God of the Heavens, forgive me for interrupting, but what is the meaning of redolence?” Manny asked, his voice shaking. Zeus had an awful temper. Zeus frowned and clouds gathered above the earth. His eyebrows bristled, and the clouds immediately became black and heavy. A cold wind rose. Manny trembled so much he thought his tail would fall off.
“It means ‘smell’,” Zeus replied in Greek. “Get my other toga ironed and get me a new nib for my pen.” Manny scurried off, glad that his tail (and the planet) would live to see another day.
Zeus read a page of what he had recently written in his book. He smiled. The sun zipped out from behind the clouds and the sky turned bright blue.
Manny went back to his favorite tree, an old oak, and pondered this. “The redolence of sandalwood made the king remember his beloved queen”. Can a particular smell make you remember somebody? The monkey tried to remember his mother. She had gone to the regions of the netherworld about ten years earlier. Died, I mean. Much as he tried, he could not really remember her sweet hairy face. She had been the nicest lady monkey, but he could not remember her clearly. His memory was stuck like a hung computer. It made him sad and frustrated. As night fell, in his desperation he hit upon an idea.
At new moon when the sky was dark, Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, walked the face of the earth. Osiris’ soldiers stand guard at the river that you have to cross to enter the netherworld. So he’s in charge of who goes in and out. At new moon Osiris came above ground and hunted large animals if he had a mind for meat, or he caught up on the gossip of the world with Zeus and Kali, whoever was awake. Tonight neither was, so Osiris was sitting by himself in a grove of banyan trees.
“Great Osiris, O Great Osiris, psst!” Manny whispered from behind a tree. He had been spying on the lean, dark god for three hours now, and his cramped legs gave him the courage to speak.
“Who dares interrupt a God’s game?” Osiris hissed. The head of his sceptre turned into that of a huge serpent. The birds in the grove bundled up their sleeping babies and crept away to other groves. Osiris had been playing chess by himself, playing both sides in turn. He’d been playing the same game for two thousand nights now, and neither side had won, so he was understandably cranky.
“I will put iron weights on your ankles, you who disturb me and prolong my game!”
Manny plucked up every last bit of courage and stumbled forward. “Osiris sir, if I might, the black king goes there, and the white pawn here. Black side checkmates white and in the next move, finito, khattam, auf wiedersehen, game!”
“Eye of Ra! Why didn’t I think of it?” Osiris scratched his balding head. A school of spiders ran out of his hair and down his neck. “I can finally start a new game. What do you wish to ask of me, monkey?”
“The impossible sir, and yet I know only you can grant it.”
“Yes, I can indeed grant things that old Zeus and Kali cannot,” Osiris sniffed. The netherworld is a lonely place and the gods that guard it are not your friendly neighbourhood types.
“I want to see my mother,” Manny said boldly.
“She is on the other side of the dark river, so no. And don’t ask again. I have no time for idiotic requests,” Osiris said coldly.
“I want to smell her, then,” the monkey said quickly.
Osiris frowned irritably, and a tree in the grove that he sat in, wilted and slipped to the ground.
“I helped you finish the game,” Manny fearfully reminded him.
“That is true. I am not an ungrateful god, so I will summon your mother’s smell from the underworld. Just for a second. Enjoy. (aside) Monkeys. Quite crazy. Possibly dangerous. Must ask Zeus to write down the description so other gods can be more careful.”
Then he waved his skinny black arms slowly in the direction of the ground. His fingers wiggled and a fragrance wafted up into the air above the ground. Manny took a deep breath and WHAM! a picture of his loving mother slapped him between the eyes. Clear as day even on a dark moonless night. She did indeed have the best smile in the world. Besides she had been doing something interesting that Monkey had all but forgotten since she had passed over. It was the smell that made him remember.
Mother Monkey, Mira, had been cultivating something amazing before she died. Something small, black, round. Something that had a sharp smell that poked your nose like a stick, if you sniffed it too closely. It made you sneeze, it made your eyes water. It did not build muscular strength. It just made food really interesting. Pepper!
Manny thought long and hard in the days that followed. His mother had frozen and stored the seeds in the Arctic Circle. The seeds of all ‘useless’ plants had been stowed away there by Diana the moon god and Dionysus the wine god before they left Earth. Zeus and his ilk thought these plants too useless to even bother to destroy their seeds. Now Manny was determined to revive pepper. It would recall his mother’s face whenever he wanted to see it. And would make the potatoes taste decent. He could not do it without the support of atleast one god. But who?
“Lya lya lya lyah!” Manny heard a voice go. The squirrels and other small animals huddled closer to each other in their beds. It was Kali singing, very early in the morning. So early it was still dark. That was her favorite hour.
“Ma!” Manny pleaded after he had lain at her feet and groveled at her huge black toes during which time she polished her gleaming silver knives and continued to sing with her tongue out.
“I want to plant pepper. Please. It is for your greater glory.”
“My glory needs no greatifying,” Kali said, rolling her eyes at Manny’s stupidity.
“Your grammar sure needs help,” Manny said, to his own horror, aloud.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Kali boomed. She brandished her favourite knife and furiously lolled her tongue.
“Pepper!” Manny yelled desperately as the sharp blade nudged his throat. “It will recall you to everybody who smells it, every time they use it in their cooking, each time it touches their tongue! Easy recall. You are Kali, mother of the world, and pepper is… is Kali Mirch, your own special Black Chilli. It’ll greatify your power. Betterfy you over Zeus and Osiris!”
“Hmm. Lya lya lyah,” the god was calmed by Manny’s idea. It addressed a certain need that Manny was not aware of. You see Kali is a warrior god who commands a fearsome army. Her troops had been hanging around in Africa for a thousand years now, living like nomads, and they were restless, spoiling for a fight. Pepper might be the answer, thought Kali. She too was sick of peace. The days and nights stretched endlessly before her. Peace. Ho hum humdrum. She would use pepper to bait Osiris and Zeus into a war situation.
Kali gave him her blessings and Manny began skillfully to plant pepper. Soon other monkeys were also cultivating small patches. One breezy day, Zeus in his cloud castle sniffed the air. Interesting smell, he thought. Sharp. And when he trained his thoughts to the smell, Zeus realised that treason was afoot. The food laws had been broken, and Kali was behind it.
He called an emergency meeting with Osiris that night. Manny was there to serve them food and beverages. He had made bean and potato sandwiches with a thick layer of mustard paste. They were served with hot coffee. The gods were hooked. They hadn’t had mustard and coffee in centuries and oh how these things teased their noses and played with their palates. These tastes made them recall other gods they had feasted with, laughed with, fought with, and loved.
‘Redolence’ had them so hard by the nose, they could not escape it. Still the gods could not ignore their own laws or even change them immediately, so they staged a few wars over spices and smells. A hundred years of mock fighting passed. Then, over gulps of ginger tea and mouthfuls of peppery pakodas, Zeus, Kali and Osiris drew up new food laws and a fresh peace accord. “To tastier times,” they toasted.
According to the new laws, Manny and the monkeys could plant whatever would grow on Earth. The food with the best smells you had to offer to the gods first to taste and enjoy. After that you’d be free to plant on, sniff on, feast on!
Those are the laws that Manny passed on to our generation. If you want to confirm them, go to a library and look up a big book called Manny-smriti. The story is all there, all true. Just made more interesting with a smattering of spice. Pepper, if you want to be specific, Manny’s favourite.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Hello people,
My friend, Sandeep Mohan, convinced me just now that i must have a web presence which is more than google chucking up sites that sell my books. And that I must make a space that the kids i write for can write to, should they want to ping me :-)
So hello. Here you'll find (by and by) the poems and stories that trees haven't been cut down for (read stuff no publisher wants to touch!)
Words that haven't seen the light of day, will appear here. TADAAA!!
My friend, Sandeep Mohan, convinced me just now that i must have a web presence which is more than google chucking up sites that sell my books. And that I must make a space that the kids i write for can write to, should they want to ping me :-)
So hello. Here you'll find (by and by) the poems and stories that trees haven't been cut down for (read stuff no publisher wants to touch!)
Words that haven't seen the light of day, will appear here. TADAAA!!
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