Jersey island

 In an earlier post (DVD of 2 April 2022) I had mentioned the old dvd series Bergerac which was very popular on BBC two decades ago. It was shot on the island and there were many shots of the ferry bringing passengers and locals to the island.

It all came alive in my mind last week but for the wrong reasons. There have been two instances of bomb blast and fire in Jersey in the last fortnight. The locale seen on television has not changed at all.

Male libido and French connection

 The Times of India had reported from Bangalore a few years ago that the Indian wife of a French diplomat had filed a case against him with the police for abusing her daughter. The lady had explained that she was heavily pregnant and when her daughter of less than two years had complained to her that 'Daddy hurts' she had ignored the child. Later her maid reported that 'Sir' used to take his daughter and lock the door for long periods. Then she became aware, scared and started noticing. Her husband took cover under diplomatic immunity and fled the country as soon as he got wind of the police complaint.

Feminist groups have always maintained that women are not always safe at home. There was a big jump in cases of domestic abuse during the recent two Covid lockdowns in India. The right glorifies home and hearth for women but reality is otherwise.

Two days ago I was watching a French movie on TV Monde Asie channel on TV. It is a free channel and I like French movies and their whole approach. The movie was already on when I started watching it. A young woman is admitted to a mental hospital and is not allowed to visit her two young daughters. Her charge that her husband is abusing them is not accepted even when she had managed to get a video of one such act. Her parents in law decide to look after their granddaughters. One day, when accidentally the grandfather goes to the bathroom when the elder granddaughter is in the bath, she cries out. The grandfather immediately understands although the grandmother keeps denying and pressurizes him to consider the consequences. The grandfather was aware of his son's tendencies in the past and had always known but thought that the son was now reformed. He is disturbed and he calls the daughter in law.

Again I do not now what happened in the end but probably the outcome was positive. What has stayed with me is the aggression and duplicity of the son. Others must also be like him.

The more I think of what children, especially girls, go through in life, I shudder.

The French movies are bold. They portray life in all its aspects, warts and all. With us, when Ghashiram Kotwal was to be staged in the then east Germany, a dominant opposing voice was that blemishes in our history should not be advertised. But then how will progress be possible?

Reading list

I recently read an article by a 70-year old lady in The Reader's Digest, Asia (October 1, 2022) Her circumstances of birth and later, marriage, prevented her from pursuing higher education but she had an innate strong desire for learning and for bettering herself. She describes the day in school when her teacher distributed copies of a long reading list of 150 books. The teacher knew that most of her students would not be in a position to go to a university. She wanted them to continue their learning and so painstakingly, over a long period of time, she had compiled the list.

The writer of the article took up the list whenever she could and get - from local libraries, old bookshops and later outright purchase - the books in it. She began at the beginning and is nearly through the list now. After her domestic responsibilities were reduced and after she retired, she could finish 3 or 4 books from the list in a year. She also read them thoroughly, even when she could not understand them fully. For example, she described Das Kapital by Karl Marx as a very boring, rambling book.

The writer is proud of her own work. It was her higher learning, she says. The reading allowed her to get into different situations, perspectives, aspects of life, reasoning, laying bare of emotions etc. etc. and to enrich her understanding and her personality. She is grateful to her teacher and is even more proud of her.

The article got me thinking. I am also a teacher and hundreds of students have passed through my hands. Well, not exactly because there was always a huge gap between students and teachers in a college. Still, I can think of so many who would profit today from a dip into literature. Most of them would be settled in their careers and would have time on hand. At least some would have begun to grapple with thorny issues of meaning of life, our place in the world, purpose of existence, what to do after job, family and money etc. etc. Perhaps my small reading list would help some of them.

I have made a small list of 25 books, 15 fiction, 10 non-fiction. All of them were with me at different periods in my life and I vouch for them. They are an eclectic mix.

I am refining the list right now and soon, I will put it up.

A student, part two

    I decided to go with him for a lark. At the appointed place and time early morning, he was waiting for me. We crossed Katraj ghat and took Bengaluru highway. Then, a short distance from Pune, we turned right and proceeded towards Gunjawani. I had never travelled here before. We had to climb and it had rained very heavily the previous day. I drove with a lot of trepidation. At one point, villagers cautioned us to not go ahead because of accumulated water but to take a short detour. Finally we reached his friend's basic farmhouse. We went to the river from there, had lunch prepared by the caretaker couple. The student had promised a meeting with the villagers but it did not transpire. On the way back, I forced the student to drive so that I could relax. I came back home in the evening.

   It was an outing planned by him to butter me up. I asked him to visit a research library and prepare a bibliography. He prepared the latter without visiting the library. Google search was all that he was willing to do, apart from his talk about visits to different districts and farmers in them.

   He took a long time to prepare a synopsis for his pre-Ph.D. interview. I made him revise his note 7 or 8 times. His presentation of the note was horrible. He had made no preparation. The research panel suggested some changes in the research outline. He could not understand them and I had to help him with the corrections.

   By now I had become wise to his ways: all talk and no work. I came to the conclusion that he was a fraud. It also became clear that his was not a permanent post and often he did not have enough money with him. His schoolfriends helped him out. Once he asked if he could come over to my house and I served him sumptuous Diwali 'faral'. He ate like a starving person. Next time he called, I offered only tea and biscuits at the behest of my mother. His face fell when he saw that. I felt bad and also realized that he was used to cajoling people and extracting invitations from them. There was no progress in his research.

   My retirement was fast approaching and because of some new rule, I could not even continue with guiding my existing students once I retired. I happily offloaded this student to another guide from our college.

   I learnt later that he managed to get a job in a new commerce college. There were prospects of getting the right pay-scale and becoming permanent, provided his work came up to expectations. I do not know if that has happened or not.

   The student continues to message me and greet me on Teacher's Day, new year and Diwali etc. I return his greetings but say nothing more. 

   Whenever I think of him, I feel sad about my own gullibility.

A student, part one

    He was my Ph.D. student. Unlike my college colleagues, I had neglected the work of guiding research students till the very end. When it transpired that for becoming a Professor, one had to have at least one or two Ph.D. students, I woke up.

   The procedure for becoming a research guide and for guiding students was a long, bureaucratic one which had no academic value. It showed distrust of guides at every possible juncture and its assumption seemed to be that guides were in a mad rush to have as many research students under them as possible. Learning the procedure was humiliating and a waste of time.

   Once I became a guide however, students started approaching me and I foolishly got taken in by their claims. I said yes, I would be their guide. I just forgot that commerce faculty's academic standards are very poor. These students were already in touch with touts in the market who promised to do statistical and quantitative analysis for topics they themselves suggested, for a fat fee of course. The students had happily decided that they would have to shell out money but the return was a secure path to academic progress: becoming heads of departments, principal, subject experts on university panels etc. etc. All these things were gleaned and pieced together by me bit by bit as time passed. No student was interested in any topic; nobody genuinely felt that s/he must explore a certain area to know it better. They had no puzzles of dichotomy between what the books said and what was happening around in their mind. One Assamese girl who had studied and who taught economics was the sole exception.

   Among the rest, one stood out for his smooth talk. He was a fair fellow with curly hair. He had good manners and had the gift of the gab. My colleague Shaila who shared my room was charmed by him.

   So this fellow came and chatted very nicely. He was teaching in an MBA institute. He had failed his SET examination. He was simultaneously preparing for it and for Ph.D. He said he was familiar with agriculture and so I suggested a topic related to agricultural marketing. He held forth on organic farming, indigenous seeds, evils of APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) and online marketing tools for farmers. He appeared to be knowledgeable.

   He talked about a land-owning friend of his who was experimenting with organic food and online marketing in his village in the command area of Gunjawani dam in Pune district, Bhor taluka. He invited me there. I said yes perfunctorily to fob him off. However, just two days before the promised outing, he phoned to remind me. I was touched.

   

Goodbye to Chitale milk

 It was an essential part of middle-class life-style when we came to Pune fifty years ago. It appeared that its quality and the fat content were beyond comparison. Chitale Bandhu Sweets, a shop of the same people, was another Puneri hallmark and long queues of customers formed in front of the shop since early morning on festive days. The sweets were fine but expensive and the very idea of spending so much time for them was too much for us. My father always ridiculed this obsession with Chitale milk and sweets. 

We abandoned the sweets but my mother stuck to Chitale milk. Boiling it, keeping aside the cream, making curds, making buttermilk from the special curds from accumulated cream, keeping aside butter and finally making ghee from accumulated butter - these time-consuming activities were a part and parcel of her kitchen work and she was very proud of them. I followed in her footsteps and did it all when she was not around which was rare.

With old age, my mother started finding it difficult to keep up and father advised her to give up Chitale milk. We could buy readymade butter and ghee, he suggested. Sacrilege, she thought and stuck to them. He gave up after repeated attempts to reduce her workload failed.

The quality of Chitale milk has worsened now. The milk is fatty but curds and buttermilk are full of casein. During the rainy season, milk quality goes down. Market grapevine says, they have scaled up and they use automatic machinery to get milk. Their marketing, helpline etc. remain poor.

In the month of May, Chitale milk which I was boiling on the gas stove suddenly turned sour and something snapped in me. I said goodbye!

For the next two and half months, I made trips to an Amul shop I found out nearby, every fortnight and bought 5 or 6 liters of Amul milk in plastic pouches at a time. I also bought cartons of milk. I found that Amul Gold was even more fatty than Chitale milk. It had few takers in our locality. Everyone preferred Amul Taaza, a low-fat variety. Amul shop had lots of milk-based products such as buttermilk, curds, ghee, flavored drinks, ice-cream etc. However, their supply was never assured.

We are used to getting milk delivered at home every day. This man said, Amul was not available with him and he had no substitute for Chitale milk. Amul has its own distribution and selling system and it does not cater to people like him. I had heard of milk delivery apps. I searched and found out that they  served Amul Gold or cow's milk or expensive organic milk. Complaints about their delivery were legion.

I realized that the market for home delivery of milk was imperfect.

I contacted our delivery man and asked him to supply Katraj milk every day. Katraj is our local co-op milk collection and delivery dairy and its milk is highly popular among common people. It is not possible to make proper, thick curds or buttermilk from this milk but many brands of these are available in the market. I have started buying them now. I have always liked the taste of Katraj curds though.

Surprisingly, my mother has supported me in this transition. She does not talk of Chitale milk now and we are happy. There is less work in the kitchen and what my father wanted has come about fourteen years after he passed away.

Epiphany

 In my novel Empire, I have drawn a character called Emma Macmillan. I have made her a liberated woman who is far away from the stereotype of the indolent memsahib. Emma establishes a school for native girls in Calcutta and then, after her marriage, takes to promoting Indian textiles to improve the lot of highly skilled Indian weavers, impoverished due to cheap Manchester piece goods.

I made Emma travel to different parts of northern and central India in search of special textiles and I have also shown that after a visit to England, Emma gets a brain wave of making standard readymade frocks and dresses for women who otherwise must stitch their garments on their own or get them made which was expensive. The year is 1886.

Emma's character is rooted in history so far as her school is concerned. After that, it was only my imagination.

Imagine my surprise when I came to read something similar that actually happened in 1889.

It is described in Outliers, the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

In chapter 5, lesson 3: The garment industry and meaningful work, Gladwell describes the journey of Louis and Regina Borgenicht, Polish immigrants to America in 1889. Louis has worked in a garment shop and Regina is a skilled seamstress. When they come to New York with one child and one more on its way, they have money to last for just a few weeks. Louis starts looking for work and notices that readymade garments of all types are available in abundance there. He realizes that they greatly add to the convenience of customers and are easy on their pockets. Readymade garments are the most important commodity he says to himself. He finds that readymade aprons are not available. So he and his wife start making them and selling them. One thing leads to another and both become manufacturers and suppliers of garments in due course of time.

Gladwell states that theirs was not an isolated story. There were many other Jewish immigrants who were similarly skilled and who became successful in American garment industry at around the turn of the 20th century. Being there at that time was the essential ingredient in their success.

What Gladwell has said about success and its prerequisites is riveting read of course.

Let me however, right now, gloat over how close my ideas about garments were to what actually happened. Of course, I had imagined India and Great Britain. Gladwell wrote about East Europe and USA. Still, the common thread made my day!

DVD

 Quite late in my British Library membership days, I stumbled upon a collection of old DVDs. They were much borrowed and viewed repeatedly. Yet the quality of most was alright.

I started with Bergerac - a police detective in the Jersey island. He is in and out of the police force and has a powerful local magnate for a father-in-law. John Nettles played the detective. He has two loyal buddies in the force and his chief is against him but Bergerac manages to crack cases. I must have watched seven seasons of the series with each season 7 or 8 episodes. The series is old but was wildly popular on BBC TV in the 1990s.

Then there was John Mortimer's Rumpole. Again old Bailey world by itself. All these DVDs had subtitles. Without them I was lost. 

There were a few hit movies. Goodbye Mr. Chips had Peter O'Toole in the movie I had watched in theatre. This one was older, longer and more charming.

Then inevitably Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series.

There were others too. When Corona began, our library was shut down and a year later, I had to shift to digital membership. It is better in many ways. Two old DVDs remain with me as there was no way to return them when my old membership was over. So I gather that the stock of DVDs does not survive anymore. That makes me nostalgic. Even in these days of OTT and web series and streaming, I would love to go back to those DVDs.

My possessions

 Hi,

Can you scroll down to the bottom of the blog and see the photo there? Some of my possessions are seen in it.

Let us start from the right. My hat is hung over my big handbag. Next to them are two velvet coat hangers. All the three objects are from U.S.A. Hangers? Yes, why not? They fitted into our capacious bag. I had not seen good hangers like this here. Since then I have and have instantly marveled at my stupidity.

The hat is regularly used as protection against the Sun. The handbag can hold a lot of things and hide them really well. It has a big pocket on the outside besides several inside ones.

These three things are hung against the backdrop of a favourite quilt made of home-made fabric rolls. I prepare four separate rectangles and then joined them together. I had only a very basic, rough plan in mind about distributing the colours and patterns of fabrics. No perfect symmetry here but the overall arrangement is pleasing to the eye. The four panels were glued on paper and the paper was later removed.

Then there is an electric heating pad. It is indispensable to my mother in winter or when she develops a body-ache. However, initially she was very reluctant to use it.

Then there is my helmet in magenta colour. It has been sparingly used. The Corona epidemic has made me a home-bound person and my outings are few now. This helmet is tight and I have to wear it first and then wear my spectacles and so its use is even more restricted.

The big wooden dome is of our 55-year old Singer sewing machine. It won't be retired, come what may. The workman who had come to repair it a few months ago, was not impressed with the life of the machine as he has seen Singer machines that are more than a century old and still working well.

Every day when I sit down on a sofa with a cup of morning coffee, I look at these objects. They are a part of my life.

True story

 Newspapers reported it a few years ago.

A family of poor migrants went to Sangli. They found a comparatively deserted spot and put up a small hut there. Next day, mother and daughter in the family went to the river bank to wash clothes. Men in the family had gone in search of work. The son, hardly 11 or 12 years old, wandered a little away from them, found a nice spot and put his feet in water there. So much water was undreamt of luxury to them.

Suddenly a big crocodile sprang up and pulled the boy in the water with half his body in its fearsome jaw. The boy, the mother and daughter cried and shouted. The croc kept coming back to the bank and it flogged the body of the boy repeatedly. Only after some time, the croc's fury abated and it withdrew.

The horrified women ran and brought some nearby people with them. The boy was dead and his corpse had vanished. They were told that there were crocodiles in the river; it was their mating, breeding time and they were awfully aggressive during this period.

What misfortune! What an end to an upcoming, innocent young man!

Have I ever pondered over this aspect of poverty? Migration is necessary as your own place cannot support you. Some word of mouth from known persons takes you to a strange place. You know nobody there. Everything is alien. The place, topography, seasons, daily temperatures - nothing is known to you. You have no money, no contacts. You will just get by and eke out a living. Or you won't because of accidents like this one.

The news may or may not reach others. In any case, how much time will be given to the death - howsoever gruesome - of a stranger?

Everything is stacked against the poor.

Old age home

 Full five years into retirement. Covid has forced a change in lifestyle. Home-bound, sedentary life. The world has changed and how!

Well-meaning relatives are suggesting that I book a flat in a senior living facility. Many of them are coming up now and are quite popular too. "You don't have to move in immediately. Get the flat now. It may be difficult later." I am told. Sound logic and there is also the possibility that after ten years or so, I may not be able to handle property transactions properly.

So I got down from my high horse and paid a visit to one facility. It was a part of a gated community that was coming up over a very large area nestling in the hills. The eleven storey tall towers looked incongruous. Signs of prosperity everywhere. Inhabitants were well-off, educated and cultured people. But my reaction was entirely negative. I just cannot summon enough enthusiasm to go forward even an inch with this proposal.

Why?

My personality. Company of others is largely superfluous now.

Cannot bear the idea of leaving my present house. From acquiring it, furnishing it and habitating it - I have done everything here. The house reflects my personality and I am familiar, comfortable with each inch of its space. How can I leave it? How much time will I take to get acquainted with the new place? Will I breathe easy in it?

I guess I am the type of person who draws comfort from familiar surroundings, set patterns and old things. New things remain alien for a long time. The surroundings of the house are also so familiar. That includes all the landmarks and the people who live here. I am not friends with them but I know they are around. I am in thrall to nature - the rising and setting of Sun and Moon, the large army campus in the front of my flat, the tiny wood at the back, their trees and their seasons, the terrace garden and the time spent each evening just gazing at things - the sky, the breeze, lights from the road and nearby buildings. This is my world. How can I just abandon it?

It would be far better to have a companion here during the day time and may be a cook. They should be available provided they are paid adequately.

And the best would be a peaceful death at the age of 80 or so. No bed-ridden existence, no loss of memory or mind, no dependence on others.

Having played around with life to actualize all my wishes, the only wish now is for a dignified exit.

Hilarious

 I have a public provident fund - ppf - account. For saving income tax, it has proved to be very convenient. I opened it in 1990 and continue to use it. An account runs for 15 years and after that, extension for 5 more years is possible. There is no upper limit to the number of extensions.

I transferred the account to my bank from State Bank of India to make operating it even more convenient.

My bank's staff has always had some trouble over this account, I don't know why. I have been able to persuade them to paper things over because there is nothing wrong from my side.

A few months ago, I had this bright idea of withdrawing funds from this account and investing them in shares for getting better returns. PPF currently pays 7.9% annual interest and bank fixed deposit rates hover around 5.4%.

Regular withdrawal from ppf is possible and there is a formula that is used to work out the withdrawal amount. I went to the bank two months ago and found out how much I could withdraw.

Recently, on a trip to the bank, I enquired about a withdrawal form. They did not know and told me to use the ordinary withdrawal slip for regular bank accounts. I filled it in but on presenting it, I was told to wait. They made enquiries with the zonal office, were told there was a separate form but they did not have any. I was asked to go again the next day. To my relief, the concerned officer phoned me to say that the form had arrived.

I trooped down with revenue stamps and my passbook. I was told to withdraw a small sum, a round amount.

"There is some problem with your account. In one of the years, you did not make any payment."

"Not possible. I have been religiously using the account for depositing money."

"Our computer says it is so."

"Is there some problem? Withdrawals are common."

"This is the first case of partial withdrawal I am handling."

I rolled my eyes.

"Because of the alert on our screen, you will have to close down your account."

"Look, I have checked with my investment advisor and he has confirmed that an account can be extended any number of times. There is no ceiling."

"No, that is not correct."

"Who says so?"

"I am saying so. You just wait."

I did and I could see two officers consulting each other gravely. After a while I was told to submit my completed withdrawal form. Had it been account closure, the amount would have been double of my withdrawal. So the officer had tacitly taken back his words. He said he would carry out the transaction.

"Thank you. When will I get my passbook back?"

"It will stay with us." He punched it and filed it.

"How come? I still have a large amount of money in the account. The passbook is my record."

I came back home. After 4 hours, there was a message and a phone call saying that the withdrawal had gone through and I could collect the updated passbook. I promptly pocketed it.

It is my hard-earned money but the bank appears to have some claims over it!!

Gardener

 He is punctual. He comes once a week. Any change in his schedule - these are frequent - is notified in advance. In the old but stylish T-shirts of one of his bosses, he cuts a smart figure. He used to come on a motorbike. It has now been claimed by a son. He uses a ladies bicycle. As soon as his work in our house is done, he goes to the common toilet on the ground floor. He usually has his earphones on then. They are attached to his mobile phone. Many a time, they are in place while he is at work in our tiny balcony garden. While leaving our premises, he cheerfully waves out to the watchman. If the maid is in, he invariably talks to her. Proper gupshup. Unfortunately, their timings do not coincide. Once out of the yellow arch, he turns to the right and stops. The wine shop beckons. He quickly picks up a small bottle. It is wrapped in black plastic. He puts it inside his trouser pocket and is off.

The work rarely lasts beyond 15 minutes. He likes to prune the foliage and water the plants. Once in 3 weeks, he digs up the soil at the bottom. Anything more must be explained to him carefully. He hates it when we suggest rather drastic pruning. It sometimes involves chopping off branches which bear buds and then he is distraught but has now learnt to curb himself. On his own, this is all that he does. In the past, he used to take out the soil from the large cement pots and rearrange it. That is now stopped. He does not buy new saplings because he does not go to nurseries. He used to but not anymore. He follows our instructions and on his own, he applies manure once in a year, sprays pesticides about 4 or 6 times in a year and colours the pots in a dark shade of maroon brown before the rains come.

"I should have retired long ago. My children keep asking me to stop the work." He has told us more than once. His manner is that of a long suffering fellow who is doing us a great favour. I once asked him to plant the saplings I had bought in the society garden. He made a face and said, it was not his work. "Society finds it difficult to get a gardener. You only have to plant the saplings and the society will pay you." I told him and then he reluctantly did the job.

He is fond of stretching the achievements of his children and their possessions. I don't need anything now, his manner suggests and then quickly he asks my mother for an advance against his wage for his visit to his village.

I once picked up a nice orange dahlia bush in an exhibition. At home it did not grow properly. It bore just flowers and then it wilted away. After the plant died, the gardener showed me a small plastic cup that had been put under it in the pot. That cup had prevented any growth or root formation.

"This is what big nurseries do nowadays."

"I did not know. It was an expensive plant. Why did you not tell me before?" I was angry.

He became evasive.

"It is your job to attend to these matters. Why did you not take it out from its pot and plant it in one of ours? Or at least, you could have taken out the small cup from its pot." I elaborated in anger.

No reply, no reaction. He was completely unruffled. 

Addendum

 I should only add that the project involved writing letters to Dr. Pocock on the part of the respondents. That meant a lot of trouble that was put up with cheerfully!

Mass Observation Project

 The Economist Christmas issue of 18 December 2021 contains a delightful article on the above.

The project in question is a research project started by Prof. David Pocock, an anthropologist (specialization: Gujarati community)of University of Sussex, UK and it has continued after his retirement and even his death in 2007.

The objective of the project is to preserve for posterity the lives and views of common people. It also aims at tracking in microcosm the effects of political, economic and social changes in society. Prof. Pocock announced in New Society in 1981 that he was seeking correspondents from all walks of life, the more humdrum, the better. "The more ordinary people think they are, the more interesting their experience to us...All that is required is a willingness to write to us both about personal experience and things seen and heard in daily life."

Other professors raised questions about the lack of a sampling frame, questionnaires and context. Not rigorous research, they felt. Dr. Pocock ignored them. He was convinced that the material he would collect would help future historians to fill the gaps left by other studies and surveys and draw a full picture of our society and our times. He got very enthusiastic response from people.

Dr. Pocock would issue directives or topics for writing. He began with inflation and expanded the scope of subjects. He did not touch sex or intimate relations, however. An inmate of a prison - he had committed white collar crime - wrote regularly and he eventually became a prisons correspondent of The Guardian!

The university library has created special place for the archives of this project and other faculty members regularly bring their students to go through the letters. University of Sussex is known for its innovative and proactive approach to academic life.

Dorothy Sheridan who was Dr. Pocock's library assistant has continued the project and has expanded the scope of subjects or directives. About two-thirds of the writers are now women who write freely on topics considered taboo. During Covid 19 lockouts, the response went up considerably. 

MOP has been continued after the retirement of Ms. Sheridan. Respondent's interest has not abated. The idea that they are making or contributing to history tickles them and the archives keep growing.

Is this not better than the dry-as-dust sample surveys and number crunching in them that goes by the name of research in our universities? Nobody looks up the theses save an occasional PhD. student. They have no worth beyond the degrees they helped confer.