FOUR-WHEELER

FOUR-WHEELER

My heart was set on purchasing that four-wheel scooter specially designed for handicapped riders – the perfect vehicle for riding these city roads. With advancing age, I am losing my equilibrium on all fronts and that vehicle symbolised stability. What better way to negotiate the craters that dot our moonscape. Up and down and away I go!

So I put it to the First Lady. The direct approach is the best approach. No point in beating about the bush. She said, “I know that you have lost your mind! No need to advertise that fact to the whole world!” Not very encouraging words, ladies and gentlemen, my spouse! At least she did not threaten me with divorce but that is because after all these years, where will she go?

She, in turn, put it to the boys. They, in turn, were appalled, aghast and threatened to disown me. “We will have nothing to do with you! What will people say?” said the gentlemen who live in my house without paying rent, eat my food, drink my beer and think that I am a walking ATM! “Well all I am buying is a four-wheeler albeit meant for the handicapped but all I want to do is get from Point A to Point B! I am not buying some tacky, hideous monstrosity on eBay! It’s not like I am buying a piece of toast with some vague religious image for a small fortune.” “Be that as it may, think about us. What will our friends say?” they cried.

I retreated for the time being but the idea just would not go away. This status business was getting me down. “What will our friends say? What will society say?” I did not care! Honestly. And then I decided to go to my two friends, Pooja and Lillian at the office. As these ladies appear for the first time in my written word, they need an introduction. These ladies are not just ladies. They are tough young birds and they are my bodyguards! No, they are more than bodyguards. They guard me against agitating employees, disobedient vendors and nagging hunger pangs! They put up with my rants and raves, my screaming and tearing of hair! But they are no gentle ladies! They can dispense threats with a smile (have you had your lunch?) that would make a four-year old run for cover and they can give younger guys a run for their money when it comes to marital advice besides describing with precision what women want!

Despite being all that, I was sure that I could depend on them for support, these are my friends. They were my rocks and like Peter upon these rocks my belief was built! I placed my intentions before this Board and expected the resolution to be passed unanimously. I was wrong, so wrong. My intentions were greeted with stunned silence. Pooja checked my pulse and wondered when I last checked my blood pressure. Lillian gave me that withering look that she reserves for her son when he has been very, very naughty. She was flabbergasted and disappointed. “No, no, you buy a car, sir!” she cried. “And please do not buy a Nano, buy an Alto.” I was relieved. At least she did not say “flaming red Ferrari”.

So in the end status is everything. When one is young whatever one does embarrasses one’s family. When one is older whatever one does embarrasses the whole world! Everyone knows what is best for you, everyone has a pretty picture of you in their minds. But the idea would not just go away. It kept running around my brain like a Bollywood hero running around trees chasing his elusive heroine. I was determined to get on with it and purchase my beloved four-wheeler.

Except that there was an unexpected development that made me drop my plans. My maid got wind of my intentions and she declared that she would leave my employ. “Main naukri chodke chale jaoongi!” or something to that effect not necessarily in chaste Hindi. That was the last straw! In this city you cannot let that happen.

Now you can earn the displeasure of your family, you can earn the displeasure of your friends but you can never ever afford to earn the displeasure of your maid. Or pleasure for that matter.

Even minor celebrities who have paid dearly for their passion play would attest to that!

QUORUM

As you grow older, keep an open mind, reserve your judgment else end up like the Quorum! Be warned!

QUORUM

Four middle-aged ladies decided the bus was the best forum

To convene a society meeting, they had adequate quorum.

They were fed up with the liberal-minded managing committee

Who did their own bidding, leaving them fuming on the settee!

          The conductor came around asking for the correct fare,

          They snarled; gave the poor man an unhealthy scare.

          On their agenda, they arranged their serious causes

          And proceeded with single-minded purpose, no pauses!

Agenda Item 1 – Swinging call centre singles

They should not be allowed to stay; they are pretty little things,

Who are always having reckless, senseless, naughty little flings,

Keep them out; give them a cold, nasty, hardnosed reception,

After all, we gave birth through divine immaculate conception!

Agenda Item 2 – Irritating pets

        Down with those who have this crazy pet fetish,

          All those canines and felines make us skittish,

          What is so fascinating about the four-legged variety?

          That gives them goo-goo eyes; must check their sobriety!

Agenda Item 3 – Careless water users

Some hose their homes down every other week,

Causing the false ceilings, of those below, to leak, 

We should charge them penalty and double tax

For displaying behaviour so disastrously lax!

Agenda Item 4 – Illegal flat extensions

And some seek to push boundaries, flooring, walls,

As if they plan to perennially host New Year balls,

Knock them down, pulverize every bit of renovation

Blow them to smithereens, destroy their innovation!

Agenda Item 5 – Brazen condom users

And there are residents, who sow wild and casual oats,

They just should not light fires; we must burn their boats,

As with all raging fires, they consume with voracious haste,

And from their windows, discard their infernal carnal waste!

Agenda Item 6 – Non-payment of society dues

And there are those, for favours, stand in queues,

It is criminal the way they do not pay their dues.

They should be pilloried, drawn and quartered,

After that, they should be racked and slaughtered!

 Agenda Item 7 – Other gossiping old ladies

They sit every evening in our verdant society garden,

Gossiping about all and sundry without begging pardon,

We are not like them; our minds are spotlessly clean,

Not like those old witches, vicious and mean!

Agenda Item 8 – Pesky children

The little rascals run untamed, wild and amuck,

Sometimes they give us the bird and think we suck!

Their parents should be jailed for their manners,

If we had numbers, we would march with banners!

Meeting’s conclusion

Four middle-aged ladies gingerly got off the bus.

The world is changing, that’s why they raised a fuss.

Back in the old days, they might have had a host of lovers,

But they conducted their business strictly under covers!

Four middle-aged ladies gingerly got off the bus.

A spent force with no more strength to cuss,

They understood New Age had upset the applecart,

They wished they could participate and take part!

Antonio

SOMEONE SNEEZED

Hi Guys, Enough of the dark stuff. Here's a poem to cheer even the most dour church-goer! Some of you may have received this poem from me  before I started this blog but fun and joy do not suffer in the retelling!

SOMEONE SNEEZED

Someone sneezed in church today, that someone was me,

The stained-glass panes rattled, it was plain for all to see,

It started deep within my nostrils and rose to a crescendo,

The explosion was loud but innocent, without any innuendo!

The little girl next to me began with a light series of chuckles,

Chortling merrily, passed the infection to dress full of buckles,

Who passed it on to the fat lady gurgling with delightful mirth,

And shook, shook within the last inch of her gargantuan girth!

Soon the giggles, chortles and sniggers filled the entire church,

Prompting the preacher-man to peer from his marbled perch,

This is not done, blasphemy, this is the devil’s doing, he cried,

While I wished unseen catastrophe so I could have sunk and died!

The surly usher took charge, sidled up, harshly he did mock,

Keep your unhealthy sneeze in your hanky or your sock,

Told him to take a healthy hike or go fly a kinetic kite,

And out of spite, in his box, I placed a miserly widow’s mite!

But the disaster, unlike lightning, decided to strike twice,

I fought the second one back, rolled on the floor thrice,

While the choir sang its hallelujahs and praised every lord,

I lay still for it was a strange way to worship god!

Bless me, father, for I have gravely and grievously sinned,

In church, sneeze I will not, no promise on passing wind!

Antonio

REMEMBRANCE

Some of my readers were wondering about my alleged obsession with death as evidenced by the last couple of poems. As a matter of clarification, I am just speaking an inevitable truth. More importantly, the subject of death should serve as a reminder to how we live our lives. 

Steven Covey quite appropriately sums up living life - to live, to learn, to love and to leave a legacy. Just finished reading biographies of Steve Jobs and John Lennon, two individuals I admire, who seem to have fulfilled all conditions of the above mandate albeit with all the frailties that go with human nature. 

To dwell on the last part of the mandate - to leave a legacy, how can we achive this? By touching people's lives and maybe starting with those closest to us - our families, friends - those who we take for granted and hurt. It is easy to feel emphathy for the beggar in the street, the sick in the hospital, the mentally maimed, so long as they are just that - people at a distance, far removed from any direct impact on our lives. It is tougher to deal with those closer to home. and therein lies our means to leave a legacy. You may say I'm a dreamer.......

So here's an ode to one who left a legacy.....   

REMEMBRANCE

(to Constance Uncle for all those childhood years)

Wonder what it's like?

Never remembering, always forgetting!

Where do happy memories go?

And the sad ones too?

Do they hover at the edge of the universe?

Only to hurtle into the ink-black void of nothingness!

No, they do not!

They live in the heart’s portrait gallery,

a nameplate of burnished gold below

Illumined by the brightness

of noble thought and nobler deed,

and stay there.

Always remembered,

Never forgotten,

Forever touched!

                                                            Antonio

                                                            (Bunu Boy)

BIRTHDAY NO. 46 & Buzzing Off

Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa! I missed  my Saturday deadline for two weeks in a row. Unforgivable and for those who complained about being denied their weekly fix ,here's a bonus - some poetry (expanding on the theme  set in my last blog ; written 13 years ago) and some prose (dedicated to  Busybee , the late columnist, and my friends). Back to school when we English Lit was referred to Poetry and prose. Do they still do that? I wonder? 

BIRTHDAY NO. 46

On my forty-sixth birthday

I stepped down from the train.

A morbid crowd had gathered

to watch with rabid curiosity.

We willed the train to move away

to expose the gruesome view to our sight.

He lay there on the tracks.

His head was a metre astray!

What were his last thoughts?

Did he dream of home and hearth?

Of warm welcomes, of tearful goodbyes,

Of insignificant battles won and enduring love lost!

On his wrist, Time carried on its restless march

Regardless of Life’s frightening farce.

His briefcase revealed the remains of his day

Now the debris of a life as on the ground he lay!

Lunch pail, calculator, notepad,

pens, pencils and eraser,

flat file restraining paper in the damp,

fetid air of unfinished business!

On the forty-sixth anniversary of my birth,

I encountered death!

 (End of Part 1)

  

Buzzing Off

       (Tribute to Busybee)

It was nearing bedtime and I was settling down with my favourite book of Busybee essays. The First Lady cast “that” look in my direction and queried, “Why do you waste time reading that man’s essays?”

“He is not “that man”, he is Busybee and he is one of my idols!” I replied.

“You have the habit of idolizing the wrong people. How will you become a writer if you pattern yourself along people who write the wrong type of essays!” she shot back.

“He writes topical essays that are relevant to our times. If you read an essay he wrote in 1987, it has the same relevance in 2004!”

“That is because our politicians have not changed. They are the same boring predictable people!”

“That may be true but he writes about other things as well.”

“What other things? You like him because he writes about the Matharpacady speakeasies that you frequented during the Prohibition era! About police raids and running helter-skelter through dark lanes! About Flora Fountain when it was called Flora Fountain and not Hutatma Chowk! About Bombay Hockey! And all those Irani restaurants that you used to hang out in your college days!”

“Of course! He enjoyed the good things in life as I do! And there were not that many police raids! Besides, in my college days there were no McDonalds or Pizza Huts. Even if there were McDonalds and Pizza Huts, I would not have been able to afford them. That is why I like Irani restaurants with their bun maska and chai! These children nowadays will not eat anything unless there is a brand name to it. I am fine with bun maska and chai which tasted as good in Kyani or Bastani or Light of Asia or Alice Restaurant or Roshan Stores or Gentleman Restaurant!”

“This is not about children and what they like; this is about the books you should read. What about all those books – fancy authors like Kafka and Faulkner and Salman Rushdie you have purchased from all those sales at Strand Book Stall and Oxford and Crossword. Are they just going to adorn bookshelves in our house so that people can come over and say, “My, your husband is so well read!”

 “I do not care what people say and if I wanted to buy books to adorn the shelves I would have bought those coffee table editions that rich people strew around their homes!’

“We would have been rich if you did not spend so much money on books!”

“Books are wealth. But you will not understand that because they do not translate into money like stocks and bonds. Besides, I just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude! In which he repeats those long South American names every time he refers to his characters! You know that they have names like Goan names! Lengthy sentences for names like my uncle, Tiburcio Joaquim Adauco Sebastian Miguel Rodrigues from Raia, Arlem, Goa! You see how easy it is to fill pages if you repeat names like that!”

“Isn’t that the fellow who won the Nobel Prize? You should aspire to be like him not like that Busybee fellow!”

“Yes, yes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize (not my uncle, Tiburcio Joaquim Adauco Sebastian Miguel Rodrigues from Raia, Arlem, Goa) and you know what he said. He said that he does not write for the man in the street or the elite but for his small circle of friends! Of course he had friends who settled for nothing less than four hundred pages in one book!”

“That is what I said. You should aspire to be like that and begin by writing for your small circle of friends!”

“That is exactly what I am saying. I have one thing in common with Busybee; I am never going to win the Nobel Prize. And another thing I have in common with him. All my friends have extremely short attention spans!”

Antonio

CHRISTIAN BURIAL

Hi Guys, 

Well, I thought enough of all that feel-good stuff and it was time to visit the dark side, if dark side it is. As one gets older, the subject of death does come into focus. As Christoper Hitchens so succintly puts it - "The disconcerting thing about death is not so much the fact that you are tapped on the shoulder and informed that the party is over but the fact that the party will go on forever and you will be absent from it."

So I say, lets focus a little on the ineviitable and look with wonder on the vibrant life around us, see the beauty in each of us, respect the differences and contemplate on the end! Read on:

This poem is dedicated to our friend Bob - long have we been the recipients of his homegrown philosophy and casual humour!

CHRISTIAN BURIAL

Another life lies still.

Another cadaver laid to rest.

Silent sobs, vocal tears,

A tsunami of emotions mingles

with the gentle breeze of memory -

love, hate, joy, sorrow,

pet peeves, weird idiosyncrasies,

petty squabbles, major disagreements,

resentment, acceptance, generosity,

laughter, anger, smiles, rants

differences buried

amidst the distant hum of traffic

carrying people to their humdrum lives.

The percussion of tossed earth and rock and wood,

the caress of fragrant rose petals, cascading,

tinny gospel music, gentle request

to lead souls to the promised land,

as the mourners wend their way back

wondering if tea and snacks will be served

with the promise of everlasting life!

Antonio

Tru Blu

I'm back after a long hiatus and I fell in love again in the US. Yes,yes, it happens to the best of us! But  do not judge me! Read on.....

TRU BLU

Dear Blu, our little love affair was all too brief,

But I know you will not wallow in needless grief,

Because you live your life from one meal to the next,

And will not bother to write, call, email or text!

When I looked into those deep pools, your soulful eyes,

I saw a world of honesty, there were no lies,

You had plenty to give and just a juicy treat to take,

As you lay on your blanket, serene as a mountain lake!

You wheedled your way into an old man’s heart,

Not knowing that we would soon have to sorrowfully part ,

When the titbits under the table caught the young one’s eye,

She firmly ordered you out, denying you, your piece of the pie!

You were my summer love in the winter years,

Again you will not bother to shed copious tears,

Be warned! Do not lick the mistress’ greasy spoon,

Or they will dismiss you as just another greedy coon!

Then that horrid cat scared you out of your wits,

The world rolled on the grass, thrilled to nasty bits,

But I knew you would rise above your unalloyed fears,

Turn around and be the first among your peers!

And opportunity arose in the shape of the charity van

You charged and barked and growled at the charity man

To protect Neighbour Annie you were duty bound

You proved to the world that you were not just another hound!

Antonio