23rd October

A Quoran had suggested shutting off the phone for 48 hours to detox oneself from information overload. Of late I have also realized that I automatically reach out for the phone and browse the same stuff repeatedly. I decided to do so for at least for 24 hours and armed myself with a notebook and a pen to keep myself occupied.

This blog is an account of that 24 hours.

When I got up the time was 5 AM. I did see my mobile since I was on the verge of getting 1 million views in Quora in the past 30 days. I did accomplish the feat and I smiled momentarily with an ego headiness and switched off the phone.

My wife and I decided as is customary the previous night that breakfast would be Alu paratha. The Alu was already boiled the previous night. Other tasks were needed. In the process of doing this I wrote this poem.

Alu Paratha Made Easy

Boiled the potatoes, skinned and mashed them as it were bhakts

Peeled and sliced the onions and in their memory shed some onion tears

Poured water into the atta, to the bhakts said Tata

Mixed the dough made into a ball, no bhakts will ever have the gall.

Cut some green chilly and in the doing of this I am not silly

Prepared the Alu stuffing, by this time I was puffing

All this with a purpose, just not willy-nilly.

By this time, it was six o clock and time to wake up my daughter for a cycling trip. I just thought to myself that our relationship also goes through a period of cycle as it is. Now it was time for bonding relationship over a cycle ride. The first hour had flown quickly.

Cycle trip

As we left the ITI colony and hit the Old Madras service road, a surprise was in store. It was as if the vendors had lined up with flowers to greet the early birds on a cycle who caught sight of the flowers. The flowers were mostly yellow yellow, dirty fellow. It was not of the McKenna’s but Mari’Gold’ Variety. One could also catch a glimpse of bag full of ring a ring a rose, but we didn’t stop for the poses.

When we returned home my daughter said we did 10 km in forty-eight minutes. A leisurely run I commented as we know that in the famous TCS Bangalore run many runners cover this distance under 45 minutes. Given the road and traffic conditions I consoled myself it is no mean time. Although I felt it was a matter to be debated if one needed to speed up the life cycle itself?

Yoga time

It was now time for yoga. Come on! Don’t remind me of PMji. I have been practising yogasanas even before I had heard of PMji. I learnt it two decades ago from Yoga Mandiram, a famous school founded in Chennai by Krishnamacharya and have been bending unlike Beckham. Here is a brief list of what I do for those who are curious and envious of my youth.

6 times Sheetali pranayama

4 times Surya namaskar

3 times Trikosana

3 times side ways stretching while lying on back.

6 times Pavan muktasan so that you less inflict your gas upon others.

5 times back roll. So that you don’t get a stiff upper back unlike the British.

1 minute of Sarvangasana.

1 minute of Halasana

5 times Setu Bhandasana (not the mythological Ram Setu)

1 minute of plank. So that one’s centre doesn’t go forward.

6 times cat stretch. Helps you becoming a smart cat.

1 minute of body twist left and right in sitting position. Keeps your spine centred.

6 times another pranayama.

All this with no yoga mat or yoga attire. Just in shorts and tees and a soft dhurrie. Yoga is indeed a poor man’s way to good health.

Crossword

Then for a while I took up the challenge posed by Deccan Herald and crossed swords. The Saturday challenge is extra cerebral. Solution for the clue ‘Dodged’ me. I felt outraged when I could not find the word for a “scandalous clue.” I felt as if my brain had drained. Since the mobile was switched off, I took the help of a pocket dictionary, but I didn’t feel smart with out my phone. The clues were hanging over my head like the Damocles’ sword.

Now it was time for the much-earned breakfast of hot Alu parathas which was made by yours culinary, my wife. The parathas tasted a lot better with a bit of AMUL butter. When I was relishing my parathas I heard the shrill call of the kites, who nested on a pine tree across our balcony in the little park in the apartment meant for children. They grew a family last year but also pecked the President of the apartment on the head who was already hen pecked. As if to do gender justice wife was also threatened by one of the kite couples. So, the tree got hacked and the height reduced. But the kite couple were a determined lot and once again started the nesting business. This time one of the kites swooped on to my wife and scratched a bit of her eyelid when she was watering the plants in the balcony. Luckily no damage was done to her eye and a tetanus shot and anti-biotic cream did the trick.

On the ground we have cat menace too. ‘Too many litters spoil the garbage’ goes the apartment saying. We have residents who are for and against cats. Some feed them. Some complain they open the garbage bins and make a mess. Whether the rats are on the run in a race we don’t know. But of late one does not come against complaints that rats have eaten the wires of the car beneath the bonnet. Anyways who will bell the cats? Is a question that has not been answered yet!

My daughter appeared from her room. When I suggested that she could also try the detox from phone she said ‘not interested’ and went back to her refuge of her room.

News headlines

With the brain having been drained, I moved away from the cross-word page. A sub-headline caught my attention. It read “you will run out of space for the buried” warns VHP leader in Karnataka. He was sabre-rattling condemning the attack on Bajrang Dal activists. Our own CM Bommai (high command ‘doll’ in Tamil) infamously declared “moral policing occurs when moral values in society diminish.” In south, Karnataka makes an exception when it comes to following the diktat of the saffron brigade. Just a few days ago, the rising sun of the Karnataka and a MP successful launched a vituperative twitter campaign against Fabindia Ad for what he called misrepresenting traditions of India. Fabindia had to withdraw the ad. Not to be left behind another erstwhile cabinet dropped ex-minister complained to a tyre company honcho about ‘Hindus feeling unrest’ because of a Khan doing some advertisements for their product. With UP and Gujarat election in the next year communal cauldron is on the boil and I wonder what or who will be cooked? A very tacit and uncivil obedience quit India movement is on the rise led by the unsaid father of the nation!!

The time has become eleven o’ clock. The body atrophy has begun following the circadian rhythm that the body follows. No wonder someone discovered the idea of elevenses, time for a mid-morning snack accompanied by a caffeine booster. But with Alu parathas still sitting pretty in the stomach I skip the snack and continue with the pen.

I am a Quora writer. So, my life doesn’t remain a Quora kagaz but gets filled by words. That is what is called the hinglish humor.

Caste in India

I am now sitting with an open note book when I see the maid of India. My thoughts drift back to what my wife told me about her story. Her father got murdered one-year ago in a land dispute at the hands of upper caste men in their native village near Vellore. The case came to a close a week back when the two of the perpetrators were sentenced for life. It was a quick disposal considering how the wheels of justice take its own time in our country. I also wondered had it been a northern state in the cow belt whether the wheels would have come to a stop.

Women power

Talking of Tamil Nadu brings me to Priyanka who seems to have seen the film ‘Thalaivi” and taken a leaf out of Amma’s pages. Her campaign is brimming with ideas to kindle women’s power what with 40% reservation for women in the forthcoming elections and freebies galore Amma’s style. I can almost hear her singing to Sonia “Amma, dekh dekh dekh” about her campaign. Considering Yogi’s misogynist diatribes, I can only hope the women power comes into fore in the elections and Yogi can take his express way to oblivion.

Modiji lets his side kick do all the dirty talk why he himself acts as if he is above all this petty politics. With the inauguration of the Kushinagar airport he is trying to build bridges (not Ram Setu) with the Sri Lankan Buddhist especially and hopes to help the country in her far-east look policy.

T-20 Diplomacy

With T-20 match of the World Cup between Pakistan and India I’d rather that PMs of Pakistan and India agree that whoever wins will have a final say in the matter of Kashmir dispute. Let the best eleven man (sorry, that it’s not a mixed team) from each country compete and decide the future of Kashmir and her citizens and put an end to all the mutual animosity and the nuclear bomb threat in the sub-continent. Imran can, but can Modi?

It was then I decided to come out of my anti-social quarantine and decided to call upon a couple. I told my wife to check if we can drop in on them that evening. The husband got Covid and badly got affected but seemed to have recovered well. Unlike the PM who decided to break his quarantine by flying to US using his modern pushpaka vimana (seemingly a whopping Rs 8000 crore only), my visit didn’t have any implications for anybody except the couple who are going to be visited. After effect of PM’s visit was that India has now become part of the sQUAD and hopefully can count on the American eagle and the kangaroo in her fight against the dragon. Not that the fight against dragon was expected to finish easily. But if it drags on the green shoots of the economy would die again without getting shot.

Science in New India

One thing good about PM Modi’s speech on India completing the 1 B vax challenge is that he said that vaccination drive was based on science. To quote him “science born, science based and science driven.” Lord Ram didn’t have a role to play and I am thankful to Lord Ram for that. Modiji had a precise message and no bull (or cow) shit or mutras. For this alone the PM deserves a Nobel Prize for dissemination of science-based values to one-sixth of humanity in the world. Please join me in the Twitter campaign Modiji_forNobelprize.

If Gandhiji freed us from the British rule Modiji has freed us from the Covid control. That too deserves a twitter campaign #Modiji_Fatherofnation.

It is already past lunch time now. Much has been written. They say writing is on the wall. In my case it has happened in my note book. Post lunch usually I take a siesta. I shall resume after my siesta.

It was afternoon when Sun from the west side invaded the bedroom and spread a glow. I woke up from my siesta. There were times when I woke up into a zone when words flowed like a gushing river. Now a days it doesn’t. Not the one to give up, like the proverbial spider, I continue my siesta daily hoping that I wake up onto the zone and would glow with words.

Just after a bath to get ready to proceed to my friend’s place, there was a lightning strike.

Drowning in the flood of my own words

Caught up in a word pool

Forgot my grammar, didn’t know where to put the full stop.

In a ‘coma’ of sorts, a verbal diarrhoea

‘Colon’ became cata'po’strophic, fully in motion

A prisoner of own mind.

‘Hem'med in my way

Like the old man and the sea

One man in a boat

I, G. Raju, became g. rome.

The visit was usual in the sense we caught up with stories and it also became a case of meeting to eating. My friend said his company has been taken over fully by Reliance. They bought up all the investors. I thought that was what was wrong with Indian economy. Too much Reliance on Adani though it is not time to say good bye to TATA.

Our trip back reminded us that pre-COVID days normalcy has come to roost in Bangalore. We crawled in traffic for nearly one-hour and my right knee was pleading for mercy. Light dinner and a movie watch to bring closure to the day of my own experiment with truth.