Manneys and I.

There was a time in my life when every visit to Pune included a visit or two to Manneys. Before the old Manneys set in a sprawling and dilapidated colonial bungalow on the Moledina Road in the Cantonment area was renovated in mid-80s, it had a charm all its own. You could lose yourselves for hours in the rows of shelves browsing to your heart’s content without anyone bothering you. In the late 60s and early 70s, I bought quite a few books there. Many of them are still stuck in my memory. One of them was a hardcover copy of Napoleon’s Book of Fate & Oraculum for which I must have paid not more than rs.70/-. (Today, the on-line bookshops are charging around Rs.1000/- for a paperback copy of it. Pity, I lost my copy. I could have got a bit of money for its antique value.) I cannot remember the titles and/or authors of a couple of memoirs of lesser known American ad professionals that I picked up there in my zeal in those days for knowing more and more about advertising. One of my other finds from there was a collection of humorous fiction and essays of the British-Canadian writer, Stephen Leacock, in a rather elegant hardcover Bodley Head edition in an offwhite slipcase. http://bit.ly A2CWzY Unfortunately, I lost all of these books somewhere along the way. I never spoke more than a few words with the proprietor who, according to the various articles about Manneys, was always very helpful and forthcoming. Were I to muster all the nostalgia at my command, I still cannot say that the closing down of Manneys will leave a dreadful void in my life. I’m sure it won’t.

Sign of madness.

Ujwal has been telling me that her mother used to say talking to oneself was a first sign of madness. If that were so, I wonder, what about all the Marathi playwrights of yore who used to make their characters talk to themselves or in asides to facilitate plot development? I'm sure this device is used by writers elsewhere even now. I remember in my childhood reading what used to be called natyachhata in Marathi, usually one-page monologues that unfolded a complete story, usually ironical and humouous. In other words, it was a sort of a capsule sitcom. Diwakar (Shankar Kashinath Garge), the pioneer of this dramatic genre, used to work as a clerk in Baroda. Later, he became the headmaster of the Depressed Class Mission's primary school in Pune and, afterwards, worked as a teacher in Pune's well-renowned Nutan Marathi School. http://tinyurl.com/6mo27t. One of his pieces was called Pant Meley, Rao Chadhley (When Pant died, Rao got promoted) told the story of a head clerk's death, the promotion of one of his subordinates to his post and the subsequent change in the latter's attitude and behaviour. In another little masterpiece, Wordsworthche Phulapakharu (Wordsworth's butterfly), the poet's fan waxes eloquent about the little creature's beauty but doesn't hesitate to promptly burn a bug he catches. In Eka Natache Atma Natya (An actor's soliloquy), the protagonist talks about the tragedy of an actor's existence and kills himself by swallowing poison. Similarly, Phatato Patang (A kite gets torn) is the dirge by a tattered kite of which the career ends when it is literally soaring at its zenith. Diwakar was a friend of the poets Keshavasut, Madhav Julian and Yeshwant. I remember studying their poems in school. He was also a member of the well-known poetry circle, Ravi Kiran Mandala. Apparently, Diwakar, a keen student of English poetry, found inspiration for his new genre from Browning's poems. Diwakar was a master of spoken everyday Marathi. There was nothing artificial or stilted about his language. Perhaps, Tukaram's abhanga "Words are the only jewels I possess, words are the only clothes I wear, words are the only food that sustains my life, words are the only wealth I distribute among people" aply describes Diwakar's contribution to literature. (I wrote about Tukaram's abhanga earlier here: http://tinyurl.com/663s3c.)

Are you what you eat?

Hmmm. Good existential question to flag off the 251st post of Pop Goes the Slop, eh? Time out, if you please, to let me chew the cud a bit before answering. Having ruminated to my heart's content if such a thing is possible, let me confess I don't know. But then when I was a pampered kid growing up at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 in the late forties and early fifties, I used to be a very fussy and whiny eater. I hated almost all vegetables and loved mutton and fish. I guess in that respect I had taken after my mother. She too used to hate Mondays when we used to be vegetarians by her choice. By contrast, my father was not too bothered about what he ate. In fact, the ultimate imbecile who then was officiating as our family physician made him give up meat and fish and even advised him to have all his teeth pulled out in order to cure his urticaria. The net result? My father was left with his urticaria, a denture and a bland vegetarian diet for the rest of his life. Coming back to my own dietary eccentricities, there was an oft-told family tale about how I fell ill for no other reason except that my body could not tolerate the vegetarian-only meals at the hotel in Mahabaleshwar where we were staying one summer. Our usual hotel had no vacancy. Anyway, the upshot was that the family had to cut short the vacation and motor down to Pune. There, so goes the story, I had a hearty non-vegetarian lunch in the station's dining room run by Brandon & Company, if memory serves, and my health as well as my disposition were miraculously restored to normal. It was only in later life that I learned to eat vegetables with equanimity. Now while I enjoy mutton and fish immensely as before, the occasional vegetarian meal does not faze me. Given the food shortage that is staring Planet Earth in the mouth http://tinyurl.com/6mg2ln & http://tinyurl.com/69ca6f, I reckon we should all learn to eat frugally whatever we get and be grateful for our good fortune in getting it. Also, we must put an end to all the gourmet razzmatazz forthwith. Water to grow rice is surely more important than water to grow grapes for wine.

LOL. In the good ol' days.

Chi(ntaman) Vi(nayak) Joshi (1892-1963) must have been quite a brilliant man. Televiewers all over India came to know him as the progenitor of Chimanrao. This middle-class protagonist from pre-Independence Maharashtra made his debut on Doordarshan in the late 70s (1977 - 1979) in the epinomous Marathi serial. A week back, I was fortunate enough to pick up seven of Chi Vi's books from the Peoples Book House, Cawasji Patel Street, close to Flora Fountain, at what I thought was a bargain price. Chi Vi was a Professor of Pali and a student of the world-famous Pali scholar and associate of Gandhi, Acharya Dharmanand Kosambi http://ddkosambi.blogspot.com/search/label/Dharmanand%20Kosambi. He had worked for quite a long time in the erstwhile princely state of Baroda. What's impressive about him is that not only did he write excellent humourous prose but also he could cogently explain the theory of humour. In fact, the introduction to his book, Na Maro Pichkari (= Don't splatter me with colour/Don't spew betel juice on me), first published in 1960, is about the types and origin of comedy/humour. What also impressed me about Chi Vi's humour is that it is based on his keen observation of social phenomena and his perceptive commentary on what he has seen and experienced. While reading his Aamchaa Pan Gaon (= We too have a village), which turns the popular simple-honest-villagers-versus-crafty-venal-city-folks paradigm on its head, I was a bit surprised by something he wrote on the topic of cottage or home industries in the village, Harangaon (= Deer Village?). One of them, a hand-operated grinding wheel, was run by Saloobai, a low-caste widow. The time of the narrative was 1941-1943. Mumbai and Pune were then believed to be under the threat of Japanese bombardment. A lot of the residents of these cities had decided to migrate to their villages until the peril passed away. Anyway, Chi Vi wrote that Saloobai's was the only grinding wheel left in the village. I found it a bit odd because I clearly remember that, at home, i.e., at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/07/morgue.html, we used to have a grinding wheel in daily use till as late as the mid-50s. That was in Mumbai, a metropolitan city. Given his accurate observation and reportage, though, my guess is he probably was stretching the point a bit. The other thing he mentioned that triggered a wave of nostalgia in me was a shopper at the weekly village bazaar planning to buy a tiny bit of opium for her child. I remember my father once nonchalantly offering me and Ujwal a miniscule black ball wrapped in a translucent tracing paper to help either Ashu or Abhi sleep. That we did not put it to medicinal use is another matter. Apparently, it was an acceptable practice to him. For all I know, I may have been an unknowing opium eater as an infant. Interesting thought, that. Two more things I remember about Chi Vi were two Marathi comedies, Lagna Pahave Karun (= Try getting hitched) (1940) and Sarakari Pahune (= State Guests) (1942) both based on material from his Chimanravache Charhat (= The long-winded tale of Chimanrao), first published in 1932. Both were directed by Master Vinayak http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0898521/ and had the cross-eyed Marathi comedian, Damuanna Malwankar playing Chimanrao and VS Jog as his body-builder cousin, Gundyabhau. I vaguely remember watching them either at Central Cinema near the Girgaum Portugese Church or Roxy Cinema near Royal Opera House.

Less travel. Less waste.

I cannot believe it. I was born in a family that used to migrate every summer either to Matheran or Mahabaleshwar and, besides, travelled at least once a year to Pune as well. This was while I was very young. In fact, probably in 1944 or 45, I even attended with my family MK Gandhi’s prayer meeting in Panchagani, where he was summering. (This is the hill station that has quite a few residential schools and is quite close to Mahabaleshwar.) Later on, too, I travelled far and wide on work. In spite of all this travelling background, I have come to believe of late that travel is a waste of time, effort and money and certainly not all that it’s cracked up to be. In the olden days, they used to say that travel broadened one’s outlook. You met new people, made new friends, learned about new customs different from what you were used to, saw new places and added to your knowledge. When I travelled on work, people envied my lot. Well, in those days, travel was probably necessary to deal with distant clients and suppliers. You could not really do it on telephone. Today, with the Internet and teleconferencing, frequent business travel has become unnecessary in quite a few instances. A few months back, I took a taxi to go for a meeting in Dadar and was caught at the Walkeshwar traffic signal in a traffic snarl because the Prime Minister or, maybe, the President was going in a long cavalcade to Governor’s House. He had come to inaugurate something or the other. Sitting in the taxi twiddling my thumbs for half an hour, I wondered why they couldn’t get him to inaugurate whatever he was supposed to via teleconferencing and spare us all the traffic jams and the delays. Think of the time and energy and inconvenience it would have saved, apart from exposing the VVIP to risk in transit. My opposition to travel also extends to holidays. I’ve come to believe that holiday travel doesn’t really help you to relax. The unearthly check-in timings, the delays en route, the ever-worsening terrorism scenario and the rest have added too much stress to holiday travel. I know a lot of people continue to go on holidays. My theory is, they do so because everyone else does. Also, they want to boast that they’ve been to such-and-such a destination and stayed at such-and-such fancy resort and so forth – and bask in the green glow of envy. Furthermore, they want to bore us with their out-of-focus holiday videos. If you want to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you can do so peacefully and leisurely in the privacy of your own living room by logging on to one of the several websites that has its pictures. In the process, you will have saved yourself so much bother and money and stress. You can eat your fill of pasta at the nearest five-star restaurant at a fancy price, if you are so inclined. Few of us can tell real pasta from fake, in any case. Teleconferencing can easily take the place of transnational meetings. All this is not such a bad idea because we will be conserving precious fuel, reducing pollution and the risk of exposure to terrorist threats as well as the peril of flying aircraft well past their prime staffed by underexperienced and unfit crew. I know everybody and his uncle and aunt will call my thinking goofy. I’m sure to be hugely unpopular with the travel and tourism lobby. I still feel, travel if you absolutely must is a good rule of thumb as of today.

Midnight cowgirl.

The estranged daughter of the Midnight Cowboy walks amongst us. Correction. Last sighted, she was riding in a scooter rickshaw in downtown Pune, hotly chased by paparazzi out to shoot her. Reading about her reminded me of the insanely funny moment from her dad’s debut movie when Ricco Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), better known to the world as Ratso, and Joe Buck are almost run over by a New York cab and Ratso bangs on its hood to declaim: “I’m walking here.” What cheek! Just like riding in a rickshaw in broad daylight and tempting the shoot-at-sight fraternity, eh? Why the sight of a celebrity triggers the intense desire to shoot in paparazzi is a mystery to me. Once you’ve seen Angelina once, you’ve seen her once for all as far as I’m concerned. What’s more, I’d rather see her as Lara Croft in reel life than as Angelina in real life. Show me every time something or someone I’ve not seen before, boys and girls. Talking of midnight, I cannot understand keeping a round-the-clock vigil just to catch a glimpse of someone – a trait shared by both paparazzi and star-struck fans in equal measure. In my books, it’s okay to hang around in a hotel lobby if you’re out to cover a war or a revolution. But a celebrity? Gimme a break. Also, what the unrelenting pursuit by paparazzi did to Lady Diana comes to mind. Come to think of it, though, you cannot really blame paparazzi for what happens to the celebrity who happens to be the target of the moment? The poor guy is sticking his nose and his camera lens in celebrity goings-on because the readers of his rag or the watchers of his TV channel expect to see the beloved mug over and over again wherever it happens to be in Paris or Pune, never you mind. Complain as they might about paparazzi attention, the celebrities need their stalkers as much as the latter need their ‘victims’. It’s mutual interdependence, I reckon. For the celebrities, it’s if you’ve got it, flaunt it and catch me if you can. For paparazzi, it’s I’ll get you sooner or later even if I’ve to risk my neck and my expensive camera. For some people, it’s always midnight, as someone so wisely said.

Rub your eyes. Clap your hands.

Believe it or not, this happened in front of my eyes one night in the eighties. To begin at the beginning, though, back in the fifties, a lapsed chef and cooking stove salesman from the UK started his own agency in the US. He then went on to become a Legend and a best-selling author. His famous book spurred me on into advertising. Many years later, in the late eighties, I saw him making a massive nuisance of himself one night in the elevator of a posh Pune hotel. I was there for a seminar hosted by the ad agency I consulted with. The Legend was there for a similar reason and was trying to needle his Indian colleagues into making mincemeat of the agency I worked for – very, very loudly. I was the only odd man out in that elevator crammed with the Great Man and his team mates totally oblivious of me and my reason for being there. Fortunately for me, I must emphasize. Or, I may not be here to tell you the tale, who knows? But then you couldn’t really begrudge the Genius – and “the world’s best known advertising man” by his own insistence – his carefully cultivated and widely flaunted little eccentricities, could you? An amusing and beguiling capsule biography is here: http://www.gandalf.it/m/ogilvy2.htm.