Ravi Shankar, Where Are You?

You’ve no reason to know Abhimanyu Srinivas. So his sixteenth birthday last week has no meaning for you. But it meant a lot to me because I just stumbled upon his father – my ex-colleague almost 15 years ago – through Facebook, the most popular online social network a fortnight ago. Madhu and I have lost touch after we drifted apart. At the insistence of a few of my friends I rolled up my sleeves to plunge into Facebook.

That’s where I came across Madhu’s profile in some other acquaintance’s wall and was doubtful whether it was the same guy whom I had known, because his photography was grainy and lacking sharpness. What’s the harm in checking out? So I pushed a message through Facebook with the subject line reading: “Are u the same Madhu?” and wrote the short catchy Tamil song which I used to recite to his son whenever he had visited our Delhi office. Also, included an apology in case he was not the actual person whom I imagined him to be. Bingo, he replied confirming my suspicion and interestingly completed the Tamil song that I had sent and casually mentioned that the little kid –Abhimanyu – will be turning sweet sixteen in March first week. But for Facebook, you know what!

Well, Madhu is not the only resurrected old friend. Vitusha Oberoi, another friend dating back to early 1990s, is another surprise find. Though we worked and lived in the same city – Delhi – for more than 15 years, seldom had the chance to meet up. Once again, she resurfaces in a friend’s wall with an address in Toronto, Canada! The same Madhu routine is followed and we are back in circulation. Once again, Facebook is the bridge that helped us to reconnect. Even my daughter found me on Facebook and added herself as my ‘friend’ and a few are wondering how father and daughter can be ‘friends’. Why not?

There are some funnier moments too. While registering I left my marital status blank inadvertently. However, I changed it “married” status later. Needless to say, I was flooded with congratulatory calls and messages on my ‘new status’, though I am wedded to the same spouse for the past quarter century plus!

Do you know that women interact with more contacts than men on Facebook? According to Cameron Marlow, the ‘in-house sociologist’ at Facebook, the average size of friends on Facebook is 120. Of course, there are some who boast of 500 plus contacts. An average man responds to just seven contacts by posting messages on walls while an average woman’s tally is 10. Even in an e-mail or chat mode, men respond to four as against women’s six!

What’s interesting is that the time Facebook took to reach the first 150 million users is phenomenal: from its launch in 2004, it touched that magic figure in five years – in January this year! You will understand the speed when told that iPod took 7 years to reach the same goal of 150 million users. Forget iPod. Take cellphones which required 14 years; the ubiquitous TV, 38 years. And what about telephone? 89 years between 1876 to 1965. Uff!

24-year old CEO Mark Zuckerberg is glad that his baby is catching up fast with the 40 plus age category: the likes of me! He says that this means that Facebook is user-friendly and not meant for ‘cool kids’. Hurray! Like Lev Grossman wrote in the latest Time magazine, ‘we’re not cool, and we don’t care’. By the way, I am trying to trace Alladi Ravishankar (1976 batch B A Economics, Vivekananda College, Madras, India) to ask him to return my personal copy of P G Wodehouse’s Joy In The Morning that he had borrowed! Ravi, where are you?

THIS piece appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 9 March 2009 edition

The weather is supine and the mood is divine. Though it is the month of March, there is still chillness in the air and one feels like singing. Add the chirping of birds on the trees around four in the morning and you know what I mean. I stop in my tracks near the Azaibah roundabout when I hear the unseen birds – because it is dark and the sodium vapour lights are insufficient to figure out the contours of the birds on trees! – joyfully cooing and cawing. They have sensed the imminent arrival of daybreak and are getting ready for their flight into daily grind, perhaps. Same like yours and mine: wake up, get ready for work. For what? To earn one’s daily falafel and kawha. What else?

As I cross onto the newly laid four-lane carriage way connecting the Chedi with Seeb – the new parallel road to Sultan Street – there again, birds are active on the tree-lined avenues. Luckily there is less traffic and therefore the birds’ vocal chords get extra mileage. Definitely they are saying something, though I could not figure out what it is. All of a sudden, a few birds gently slide down from the trees and gently walk on the road scouting for some grain or fresh worm, I presume. Are they darkish brown or jet black? I am unable to distinguish in the early morning darkness. Zack, my dog, tries to extricate itself from my clutches and wants to dash across to the birds. Playful or prey-ful, I don’t know. No doubt, the birds fly away sensing trouble. Their alert mechanism is very sensitive definitely.

Birds are on my mind as I walk into the chambers of Amir Ali Sultan, director of J W Towell & Co in Azaibah. What do I see but sketches of birds framed and hung on the walls where his personal secretary operates from. Honestly, I could not identify even a single bird by their actual name. I keep gawking at them while we wait for our host. No sooner did I step into his office, what strikes me is the plethora of miniature bird statues – made in plaster of paris maybe – all around. “Yes, they are falcons,” he responds when I enquire. He is an avid watcher of winged creatures and used to go for bird shooting once upon a time. Does he host falcons even today? “No. They are difficult to be maintained in city atmosphere,” he clarifies.

Birds are nothing new to me. I had two cute little birds back in Delhi – named Teena and Meena – till my family shifted to Muscat five months ago. My daughter kept them in a wired cage for three years at least. Like Zack, these two white birds with red beak were also part of my family. We used to talk: I mean I used to share my joys and worries with them and they used to listen with rapt attention. Who does not like passive listeners? Once while cleaning the cage, Meena flew out into the ceiling and refused to budge. Short of calling in the fire brigade, my daughter and her friends mounted a rescue operation lasting close to an hour. Needless to say, Meena received a barrage of scolding for such an ‘unruly behaviour’. It’s all in the family, you know.

A fortnight ago, my daughter called up to say that “Teena is no more.” I knew it the previous evening itself since her friend – the new guardian of our birds in India – had already intimated my wife. Our throats had gone dry and eyes welled up for some time. May her soul rest in peace.

Tailpiece
Received the following SMS from Pooja Sharma:

Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones. Try a different one each day. After all, variety is the spice of life!”

THIS piece appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 7 March 2009 Edition

“Ensure you don’t eat fish,” sounds my better-half on a cool mid-February Thursday night as I step out for tasting food at Marjan, the sushi restaurant at Grand Hyatt. My constant companion Rajan is ready with his camera to shoot and taste everything under the sun and sea. Though many of my fish-loving colleagues are more than eager to join the sushi trip, the weekend acts as a dampener because they want to spend time with their respective families and not to be seen pampering themselves alone at five-star niche restaurant. However, fish-loving Trisch Varela – a blue-blooded Goan from India – waits for me at the hotel lobby to embark on the gastronomic journey. Thank God, here’s someone who will eat fish and convey his feelings to me so that I can give shape to his verbal outpourings.

Genieve a.k.a. Jenny, in her mossy green overall, greets us at the entrance to Marjan and hastily assuages me with a “not to worry. We will take care of you” message. I could not fathom what she has in mind. “We have been informed about your vegetarian fetish. Our sushi chef has some surprises for you,” she adds thus relieving me from any further suspense.

Without any loss of time, sushi chef Yudi, from Indonesia, takes charge of us. Leading us by hand into his kitchen kingdom, he gives a brief history of sushi and the important ingredients: sticky Japanese or Californian rice, seaweed base converted into a thin paper roll, raw but cleaned fish, crab meat, diced cucumber, carrot, tomato, mayonnaise, square bamboo mat for rolling sushi etc. He rolls an urumaki which is nothing but sushi rolled with rice on the inside and sea weed outside. That is, sea weed acts like the outer cover holding the rice, crab, fish or whatever inside. Once it is tightly rolled by the bamboo mat, the green sturdy stump is taken out and cut into small spherical pieces for easy bite. When the process is reversed with sticky rice as cover and sea weed inside holding crab, fish or vegetables with mayonnaise, it is called udamaki. Trisch is all ears and keeps bombarding questions to whet his appetite for knowledge!

If Yudi is to be believed, women are not permitted to prepare sushi. Know why? “Because their blood is warmer and that would impact the preparation”, pat comes the reply. Remember sushi means everything raw! Even a bit of warmth would alter the constitution of the Japanese delicacy. Thus goes the argument. What a way to monopolize sushi chef profession as an exclusive men zone? Anyways, who is worried about scoring brownie points. Varela is waiting to bite into yummy food.

No sooner are we seated in a cosy corner but closer to the base kitchen, Trisch and Rajan are advised to go for Nigri sushi – two pieces of sushi placed on a ball of rice. Rajan tries to read the sushi menu but gives up midway because he could not resist attacking the food on his plate. What they feast upon is maguro nigri sushi – that is, tuna wrapped around sticky rice.

Yudi walks in with a plate and places it in front of me. My suspicious eyes scan for anything remotely linked to fish, crab etc. Honestly speaking, if Yudi decides to hoodwink me by serving fish and crab but swears it is vegetarian only, I would have believed him cent per cent. Everything is innovatively dressed up – rather decorated. Except the rice, everything else is in raw form. So no cooking at all, one can say. So, how to compensate for all non-cooking drama? Go for dressing, perhaps. My vegan sushi plate consists of cucumber-stuffed urumaki, cashew-stuffed urumaki, carrot and tomato-stuffed udamaki and a special rice-covered cashew ball tucked inside a bulb-like formation. Eye candy! Hungry or no hungry, all of us attack with a vengeance.

What about desserts? “Try thombura,” advises Yudi. An eager Trisch rushes to the base kitchen to get a close look at what’s cooking. Yes, thombura desert is nothing but bread wrapped around vanilla ice cream which is frozen for two nights and then deep fried. When taken out, it is served with wild berry sauce. We compete with each other to finish off our portions. Marjan is packed to full capacity and Yuri and his crew are busy dishing out whatever is ordered. Before we take leave, we literally pull the sushi crew – and of course, Genieve – out of the kitchen for a group photo. Like trained stars, they flash a quick smile, pose and once Rajan completes his job, they rush back to work. Trisch excuses himself from joining our journey back home. I had a sneaking suspicion that Trisch is still not satisfied and wants a second helping of whatever is still left on our plates. As the cab moves out of Hyatt portico, I keep looking back for any sign of Trisch in vain and try constructing tales to brief my fish-scary better-half.

This article appeared in MIRROR, 4 March edition

"Azisi snesu lensu ban noiti
I feiku imagine nandu nice choice
A feka laisu yan va corda tu
Sun tandu one tu sua gona tei fois”

I never heard this Portuguese pop song till Alina Bielak sang exclusively for me at John Barry Bar a few days ago. Before I could recover from the spell cast by the twenty-something singing diva from Argentina, she smoothly slipped into regaling me with a Swahili number, ‘Malaika, me coo pe na Malaika, Malaika, me coo pe na Malaika’. Again, this song was only for my ears! Not a public performance.

It was an enchanting late Thursday evening as I sit in the well upholstered sofa with a bowl of giant-sized, saltish green olives and a tall glass of orange juice for company. Of course, Alina mesmerizing me with her soulful ballads in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Swahili from the platform hardly three meters away from where I am seated. Suddenly my eyes well up when I realize that Alina will pack up and leave Muscat in four weeks’ time for Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina on the expiry of her six months contract with Grand Hyatt. No doubt, another team will fill the vacuum. But Alina? No. She won’t be here.

“Nine months ago, we formed ‘Cool Blue’,” informs Amadeo Gallardo – Alina’s guitarist and base player husband. Though they have known each other for more than six years back in Argentina while playing for different bands, they got into wedlock when they met in northwest Spain less than a year ago. Originally, they worked under the banner of Blue Velvet but changed to Cool Blue recently. “Nothing special,” explains she while adjusting her bangle-sized ear rings. Uneven, but curly hair, black collarless jacket with a matching pair of black trousers and a white spiderweb shoulder cover for contrast. That completes her appearance. Hubby Gallardo sports flaming red shirt and a pair of black trousers.

As the evening wears off and connoisseurs begin to walk in, Alina’s nimble fingers dance around the black and white piano keyboard while Gallardo strums on the guitar strings. Listeners’ requests are promptly played and regular rounds of applause rent the air.

Forty-five minutes into her first break, she walks up to where I am seated to resume our interrupted conversation. “Music is my life. I don’t know what I would have become,” says she in broken and halting English. Alina began singing when she was around sweet sixteen. Six days a week she has been singing at John Barry Bar. On Fridays – their weekly off – the couple cycle down the streets of Muscat ‘just like that’. Gallardo, more proficient in English, plays tennis to pass time while the Argentinian crooner-cum-pianist soaks in the pool.

Close to midnight, the venue is packed to full capacity. At times, the decibel level of loud conversations overrides Alina-Gallardo’s efforts. It appears none seems to be paying attention to the mellifluous song and musical atmosphere. Actually, her performance is the background everyone uses to conduct their life and business. She does not mind, of course. I walk up to her and Gallardo and shake hands. Then, quietly utter, “buenos noches” and exit. I thrust a fiver into the hands of the cab driver as he drops me back home. “What happened to you? Why five?” demands my daughter. Just two would be more than sufficient, says she. Do I care?

This piece appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 4 March 2009 edition

"PAPA, HOW MUCH YOU PAY for getting your hair cut in Muscat?" demanded my daughter as I entered home with a new hair-do.

"One Rial, 500 Baisa," I responded.

"Jesus!" she chortled.

"That means, 185 Indian Rupees!" was her quick repartee.

This is the problem with expats. They mentally still live in their homeland. Convert everything – income and expenditure - into their home country currency and conduct a comparative study and find expenses are multifold! However, conveniently forgetting that they get paid Muscat salary, not Indian one!

Forget about my daughter. My better half is no different, who joined me in Muscat hardly a few weeks ago. Every visit to Lulu or Safeer for groceries or Muscat City Centre or Centre Point for other things is a pain. Bar-coded items create the biggest headache, where the actual price is invisible. How many times, you can run to the barcode reader installed at selected places within the premises to figure out the actual price and help her conversion exercise?

That's a diversion. Let me return to the 'salon' issue. Until Oman inflation crossed the double digit a few months ago, I used to pay my hair stylist – you will agree that there is a lot more dignity in this than the conventional 'barber' word – just one Rial when it was exchanging at Rs.102 or thereabouts. No doubt, it was way ahead of Rs.20 I used to pay in Mehrauli, New Delhi – just behind the 12th century Qutub Minar. For the same service, I would pay Rs.60 in a slightly upmarket salon. Only once I got my hair 'styled' at a spanky five star deluxe salon, but it was a free service from a friend whose wedding I was attending. So, no idea how much it would have cost me two years ago.

In fact, Jawed Habib is a personal friend. Jawed's grandfather and father used to style the sparsely haired Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first Indian President, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister of Independent India. Even Dr Abdul Kalam, the most popular President of India until recently, was their customer. It is altogether a different matter that Dr Kalam settled on someone else during his Presidency! But I was fortunate enough to avail the friendly – yes, totally gratis – service of Jawed. His card rate in the beautiful salon in South Extension, Delhi is nothing less than Rs.800 (plus 12% service tax!) for a single sitting lasting maybe 30-40 minutes with mellifluous music flowing from some hidden speakers and English speaking hair stylists (both men and women) pampering your hair.

If my memory serves right, I had paid just a 25 paise for my hair cut way back in 1962 – when I was six years old – to a bare-bodied hair-cutter on the stone steps of Mylapore temple tank in Chennai, India. And my hairy grandfather had given away a princely 75 paise to get his hair done! Wife and daughter have just began to scout around for beauty clinics for women in Muscat. Hope they are not shell-shocked on reading the card rates!

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 24 January 2009

THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS, shouted a colleague while we were trying to dock near Bank Muscat headquarters in the Central Business District area recently. It was around 12 noon. There simply was no parking space for love or money. We would have done at least three rounds between Supa Save and Oman Chamber of Commerce looking for you-know-what and an elderly gentleman came to our rescue as he decided to move out of the area perhaps after completing his business. A special prayer was sent out in the direction of Heaven for saving our souls. We were already late by 15 minutes for our pre-arranged meeting. We ran almost like half marathon runners. Luckily, the light breeze helped us to keep our cool. Thank God, it was not May, June or July? You are getting the drift?

It is no secret that the vehicular traffic has multiplied several fold over the past three years, but the volume of parking space has not kept pace. Result: traffic snarls and frayed tempers. Of course, the issue has not ballooned into something as life-disturbing as what obtains in Dubai or Sharjah. The meeting joint may be away at a decent 15 minutes driving distance under normal conditions. But, as we all know, normal conditions exist only on paper.

Factor in at least 30 extra minutes for on-road experience and an additional – yes, extra 30 minutes for finding a parking space near the meeting venue. Treat every appointment as if you are rushing to catch the flight! You can't afford to be late. If you are late, the flight will take off with or without you.
In a way, the government decision to give a month gap between two tests for procuring driving license is the right move. To that extent, the weekly deluge of fresh licenses and the resultant new cars on the already-crowded roads and the silent battle for parking slot is avoided.

The parking lot drama reminds me of my experience in Bahrain last year. Our vehicles have to be parked half a kilometer away from office if we reach late even by 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Area. Though there are several multi-level parking buildings in the crowded business district, finding an empty slot is a tough call. Even if you are lucky enough to find one, the parking tariff were stiff. Were you in sales demanding frequent potential customer calls on a daily basis, you had it. Park, pay, park and pay. The cycle is endless and a big chunk of paycheck will be spent on docking fee alone!

The parking challenge is unlikely to vanish because owning a car is a necessity in a place like Muscat where there is no Mass Rapid Transport System. There is no public transport to ferry passengers from say, Rusayl to Ruwi via Seeb, Azaibah, Ghubra, Al Khuwair, MSQ, Qurum, Hamriya etc. Honestly, many might not take out their cars from garage if big public transport buses are available. Who wants to drive bumper to bumper? Three years ago, the ride from Seeb to Ruwi used to take 30 maximum even during peak hours. Try out now and let me hear your record!

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 21 January 2009

AT THE CRACK OF THE DAWN, they arrive in a bus wearing lemon yellow or grey overalls and blue industrial caps, carrying tiffin carriers containing maybe some lentil, some Indian bread, some dry vegetables, some chicken/mutton. Can’t be sure. They get busy with completing the multi-storey building under construction hardly a few hundred metres away from my living room window from where I watch them almost daily. Most of them, I presume, come from the sub-continent and occasionally hear them talking in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil while passing them on road during the day.

What surprises me is the absence or minimal use of wood. Environment-friendly! Of course, there are scaffoldings, but they are made of steel rods and not of bamboo or casuarina tree stumps I am used to back in India. Another missing element is the ‘uplifting’ exercise of men and women construction workers physically transporting bricks, mortar in a human pyramid fashion from the ground level to the floors above. It was a sight to behold as men perched – precariously of course – on wooden scaffoldings diligently grab the items ‘thrown up’ from just below them. Well, there are no women workers at all.

Amazingly, I seldom noticed anything getting dropped in that tiresome physical exercise. Error-free, but risky. Mechanization has altered everything. Giant cranes lift iron girders, bricks etc to any level the building contractor desires these days. Thanks to helmets which are compulsory perhaps, there are less accidents at construction sites.

At times, I get a feeling that I am watching an industrial plant in motion – not a building under construction. Maybe the ‘uniformed’ approach. Maybe the lack of hurly-burly associated with construction in the sub-continent from where I hail. Plus the wooden-barricaded compound around the site that I am not used to. The work does not come to an end with the sunset. Powerful beams turn the night into daylight almost thus enabling non-stop work. Like there is a double or treble shift in operation, don’t know. I definitely miss the sound of mixing of cement, sand and stone granules that go into floors/ceilings in the site with the machine roaring, men and women dumping the ingredients into the revolving – either mechanical or hand-driven – mixer. The floor/ceiling ingredients come in pre-mix format and machines pump them to whichever level one needs. The only sound I hear is the ‘hissing’ noise of the driver sitting inside the huge glass-fronted trucks monitoring the whole exercise with the buttons console in front of him.

Yes, one thing I envy is the crane operator. He has a panoramic view of the surrounding even while he lifts building materials from trucks onto the site and the desired floor level. Don’t know whether his glass cabin is air-conditioned.

What time all activities end, I don’t know. By the time I switch off my bedroom lights around 11 in the night, they are still at work. When do they leave for home or whatever they call as their abode, I have no clue. Yes, but at the crack of dawn the next morning, they are there. As diligent and as they were the previous day.

THIS Column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, dated 19 January 2009

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I go for a morning walk everyday - between 4.30 and 6 a.m. - much before the daylight begins to creep from behind the hillocks (or the mountains behind the Grand Mosque). With my two-year old Zack (Lhasa Apso breed) and better half in tow, I trot at a brisk pace between Athaibah round about and the Al Maha filling station adjacent to the Ministry of Tourism offices situated in Al Ghubrah.

The only halt is at the Al Maha filling station where I get my hot cuppa and two cup cakes daily. Invariably I bump into the young lad - who rhetorically asks: “one coffee, one tea and newspaper?” I nod and collect the same. We have been interacting for more than two months by now, but it never occurred to me to ask his name. Nor has he asked what I do or where I work. An ever-smiling face. Every Saturday morning, he wants to know where I had been the previous day because on Fridays - no, I don’t give up morning walks - my route is different for a change. Nothing else. But one thing is common: I visit another Oman Oil filling station for my morning ritual of one tea, one coffee and two cup cakes. And, of course, a few newspapers!

My morning walk routine has not changed for several years. Until my family joined me in Muscat, I used to go for walks at 3 a.m. as well. Well-lit roads, constant flow of traffic and no fear of getting mugged were the primary reasons for such early walk-outs. I pick a stretch of say 4-5 kilometres with a petrol filling station somewhere on this route! After a brisk walk and sweat running down the spine, who does not need a good cuppa? However at the height of summer with the mercury in the near vicinity of 50 degree Celsius, I go for plain chilled bottled water!

Petrol filling stations have their own social role to play, I presume. There were occasions when I had noticed a small bunch of youngsters playing and singing Arabic songs at those early hours, unmindful of glances from passers-by, on the lawns of petrol stations. Again, I had seen youths drinking Mountain Dew from chilled cans while seated on the hoods of their respective cars and cutting/cracking jokes and laughing loud – again under the canopy of Shell, Al Maha and Oman Oil.

In terms of look and feel, Shell Select is my favourite. So also what it offers. Somehow, I am fascinated by the Yellow and Red combo of its décor. Next certainly is Oman Oil’s futuristic bluish tint. I admire this outlet as well. Eight out of ten times, I would steer my sayarati into a Shell petrol pump for my ‘refill’. There were occasions when I had been denied of my morning cuppa because the machine had broken down. Those were my heart-breaking moments as well. I may not buy a lot of stuff, but no visit to any retail outlet attached to the petrol filling station would be complete without myself conducting a simple guard of honour: nothing special, but a visit row-by-row! How about you?

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, dated 16 January 2009