AN ODE TO BIRTHDAY BOY

Mrigank (Mick) Das

Well I don’t know when I joined the DMS group… I think sometime in the fall of 2013… I knew some people of course…but some rather vaguely. Today I can say safely I know all fairly well, and some I know more than fairly well… despite the fact that earlier in life I might have walked past them with nary a thought… The key takeaway from today however is we have to recognize the singular, persistent and herculean effort by the one and only Subhasis Panda…who has a plethora of sometimes endearing, sometimes sarcastic and sometimes jocular nom de plumes: admin, havildar, bapu, panda, Ed Hardy model, subu and subz…    who brought us all together from various parts of the globe…and even conceived a variant of love called LOU that has proved a hit.  In addition he often has absorbed the crossfire from some maddening skirmishes and had the patience to play peacemaker, judge, jury and arbitrator to people in their late forties with a great degree of restraint despite some verbal punches that might have landed on him as collateral damage by uncontrollably irate combatants :)

The other sacred institution that he has established is converting his own home into the modern equivalent of an old friends’ club du jour, where frequent parties are organized that lets grown men (and women) to mingle as old friends with bonds that even Father Time hasn’t been able to crack, and then heartily partake food and beverages that often violate every rule in the medical websites’ well meaning advice for good health and anti-aging panaceas and still feel more healthy and vivacious in spite of it.  

We all run to Whatsapp to check out photos right after we hear of the House of Panda playing host to a party; the coming together for good times or a haven for the sufferers of temporary (or permanent) ennui, personas seeking escape from mundane and non-mundane angst,  the seekers of Utopian fantasies induced by adult beverages or just the escapists from the professional treadmill looking to release the stress from their bloodstreams and then jibber jabber their way into the wee hours of the night with a smile on their face and the joie de vivre of a kid.  

In all cases, LOU prevails… and everyone leaves happy, and even the spouses are fairly forgiving partly owing to their personally favorable experiences, often opting to ignore the slightly irregular gait and the telltale odor of fermented and aged Scottish hops wafting in the air in the interests of the three letter variant of cupid’s potion.

There of course is his hospitality in offering his home for stays by visiting friends, helping friends in need of various and sundry things, like moving stuff,  or needing a priest for last rites, or just staying a few days with him,  including those stubborn friends that hide his favorite beverages :) , or those that have had some significant adverse circumstances going on, definitely underscores his humanity. There is some great fortune that we must be thankful for, as it takes some selfless soul to take it upon itself to explore, locate, enlist and grow this DMS 83 community and then act as an ongoing peacemaker to keep the various branches of this tree from growing stronger and not falling apart…

There ought to be some extravaganza tonight, with different Glens of Scotland contributing their own variant of liquid ambrosia (albeit in a controlled manner and small, skinny portions) plus a smorgasbord of meat, seafood and veggies(don’t forget those veggies) to ignite a wild, no-holds barred party for the Panda…. cheers!

DOWN POUR IN MUMBAI BREAKS ALL RECORDS FOR AUGUST IN 10 YEARS

Pushpamitra Das 

The doorbell rang – I heard it thrice and finally opened the door in a sleepy state. It was 5.30 am. It was the car cleaner who comes daily to collect the keys. I promptly handed over the keys and went back to sleep.

I was woken up at 7.45 am to have my bed tea… I suddenly realized that it's a day declared as a holiday for all schools, colleges and some Govt offices too as we have a cyclone warning even today and all have been instructed to remain indoors... my mood immediately lit up and I started feeling more lazy...

That's when I peeped outside the balcony, looked up, checked the weather, it isn't raining any more, sky looks relatively clearer than yesterday, I wondered will the cyclone come today? I could then hear the normal Mumbai buzz of the local trains (as my home is not far from the railway tracks) over speeding auto rickshaws rushing the passengers to the stations at peak hours ...

Our cook, Priya who comes from a nearby low lying area had already started cooking breakfast and cutting vegetables for lunch and she rushed to open the door as the doorbell rang, it was the tender coconut vendor who comes to deliver 2 tender coconuts every morning.  I asked Priya how were the rains yesterday, she said she couldn't make it to her home as it is still flooded with water and her family stayed at her sister’s place. Yet she was here on time.


It was just 12 hours back - I took almost 3 hours to reach home which otherwise is a 15-minutes’ drive. Till 1am I was watching the news channel viewing the submerged Mumbai, stranded commuters due to the torrential rains, people struggling to reach their homes as the public transportation system has come to a grinding halt, roads were flooded with 3 to 5 feet water, bikes and cars were abandoned in the roads and people walking distances of 20 to 40 kms to reach their homes... buildings collapsing and rescue operations underway... anything that could go wrong had gone wrong.

All temples, gurdwaras, churches, masjids, Ganesh pandals, and individual homes had opened their doors to stranded passengers... Communities and NGOs had sprung into action offering first aid, water, food – vada pau, tea, biscuits, poha, Sheera, to commuters.... The best was Mumbai traffic police joined the locals clearing up traffic by pushing cars out of the water and guiding public. Humanity was at its peak... no religion or caste difference. The only language spoken was humanity and help... looked like god was residing in each such individual.


Come morning, it's a different environment, seems like you have been transported elsewhere, yesterday has become history, the Mumbai spirit is back, seems like nothing had happened or whatever had happened is long forgotten, all are back to work – it is all normal, no one thinks about the cyclone prediction, be it the car cleaner, dog walker, watchman, visiting maids, newspaper vendors, milk man, or driver... all have reported to their respective duties, after the horrifying experience just yesterday. Today is a new day... it's a new beginning.

Vanita (my wife who works with a Bank) was busy calling up all her team members yesterday night checking their whereabouts, status, and ensuring their safety and head count. She is now receiving calls from them seeking approval to operate from a nearby branch of the bank or condoning 60 to 90 minutes for late arrivals to office as they have reached home ranging from 11 pm to 4 am. No wants a leave even for a day... no one is tired enough not to report to work.

Looking at the spirit of these people at times we also muster courage within ourselves to get up and keep moving. I must admit, I was in two minds whether to leave for my work or not... I don't think I have a choice to make – honestly, I am ashamed to choose staying back.

Hats off to the spirit of this city. Mumbai may drown but not the spirit of this city, the zeal of Mumbaikars whatever be the nature of adversity... floods, riots or bomb blasts... the spirit never dies. I sometimes feel it is like a wheel which does not stop or give up rotating and anyone who gets into this wheel becomes a part of it left with no choice – it goes on and on and on.

Random thoughts on new years.

Prelude: 

I began with these thoughts on the second day of the calendar year in currency. The idea was to put it up for scrutiny and criticism at an appropriate time that would justify the mood of the moment; but sadly, the moment has passed, falling prey in various proportions to circumstances and distracting compulsions that promote procrastination. Had it been put up for display, say, in the second week of the year, when people were still going through the motions or just getting out of them, readers might have felt an echo of the text in their bones, so to say. They might have related to it at an emotional level- which is desirable in this context- rather than at the mental level where it will be, no doubt, processed in a way an editor processes the random materials brought in by a frivolous freelancer.

Now, as always with the passage of Time, I am left with the receding trickles of that initial flood of inspiration and try as I may, I can't seem to recreate all the dynamic dimensions and delicate details of the season. Consequently, the reader may feel a difference along the way, where the latter addition carries the article into its finality; perhaps like a change in texture. 

It is, thus, put up to the reader, as an exercise in analysis,  to make out what was written at the outset and what has been added later to complete this article.
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                                                                         Part-!

 The significance of stepping into yet another Year of Mankind's inexorable march into the future cannot be allowed to diminish by unhighlighting the first letters of the latest calendar event celebrating human history in the making. So bright and festive is the general mood, so positive the outlook and so, so predictable the behaviour in that first week of January, that it becomes a social season for just one reason- the advent of (yet) another man-made year; a symbolic, convenient and regularly occurring milestone that is only reserved for Homo sapiens with total disregard for any other biological thing in this universe. 

Which is where I disagree. The advent of another year does not induce enough enthusiasm in me to qualify as anything more than a sceptic to my average fellow-beings. In my support, I say that I find no difference between 31st Dec and 1st Jan, if you ignore the hangover. And I don't find the workload any different from the non-fancied days of the rest of the year. If anything, the wishy-washy bubbling mass of humanity unsettles me and makes me wish I was elsewhere. I sometimes seek refuge in the peaceful solitude of my car, which is probably the only place on earth I can truly call my own.  

So, as a token of my protest against this peculiar obsession all around, I have reduced the aura of the two words by reducing them to lower case.

The ritualistic celebrations surely bring in a sense of camaraderie among the average urban socials, who go around spreading the Happy New Year largesse with a sense of urgency. Grudges, grievances and gripes are kept aside for fear of defiling the glorious gushes of greetings and good wishes. It is difficult not to get caught up in the wishing frenzy, particularly for the upwardly mobile, highly ambitious, lower-rung aspirant who perceives a certain competition in the process and diligently plots a course of action to get the attention of those who matter. In such occasion, speed is of essence and timing means everything. Those who are denied the moments-after-midnight slot must strive for the first-thing-in-the-morning alternative. Latecomers may disguise their failing with a didn't-want-to disturb-you line. Soon the ether is buzzing with innovative posters and video clips on the HNY theme. And then there are messages, mass produced, guilefully constructed to appear personalised, exhaustive in their scope to include every nice thing possible and beginning with 'May'. Mobile phones get cluttered and prefer to hang themselves. Repetitions, although not intended as such, get the better of your mood as you lose the struggle to maintain sanity while attempting to choose which ones to reply to. Then there are the phone calls and the resultant auditory stress.

The other set of enthusiasts do not have this ulterior motive in their wishes. They are the Social Watchdogs. It is their bounden duty to tick off their list to check whether they have inadvertently omitted to shower their wishes on anyone featuring in it. It is also a time to keep a tab on who has participated, who has reciprocated, who has made inroads and who is out on the roads- in other words, the sub-social laggards (different from anti-socials, un-socials or non-socials). They are harmless, although exhausting.

When you arrive at work on the first working day of the latest year, you brace yourself for hundreds of handshakes with your colleagues. Is that such a bad thing? Not if you consider the variety only from an academic point of view. There are the firm ones, as handshakes are recommended to be. However, the amount of pressure to be exerted on the Wishee's hand (by the Wisher) to convey and transfer that overpowering sense of HNY joy into it, is not an exact science and many enthusiasts have been known to cause injury on delicate or osteoporotic recipients. Then there are the limp ones, half-hearted, sometimes wet and slimy, quite like something the fishmonger puts into your extended hand, as a sample from his stock, for inspection. If you try to shake them, they move as if they are no longer attached to the parent body and you may be inclined to hold on to them lest they accidentally fall off from your grasp and get damaged. But the most dangerous are the ones that appear the most innocuous - until they disengage after the niceties, wipe off the nasal fluids dripping out of their nasal orifices and stalk off, with the stuff smeared all over their palm, to find and infect their next victim with their wet, pet virus. It's all academic if you are a casual bystander observing human behaviour, but if you are their doctor you cringe at the thought that they must all converge on you by and by, and offer you their besmeared plates while you offer yourself condolences. The number of physicians suffering from some sort of -itis around their nose and throat by the third week of Jan is statistically too high to be ignored.

In the days gone by (school days), there used to be cards from various desks in various institutions, as well as from friends and relatives, all delivered by the postman between the last week of last year and the first week thereafter. They were used in decorating every available horizontal display space- and occasionally strung out overhead- for the better part of Feb. 

All the personal cards from family and friends could be grouped into three categories: 

A) The Bland Ones - "Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for a Happy & Prosperous New Year", 
B) The Flowery ones - with elaborate cursive writing, with intricate, syrupy wishes and 
C) The Cartoon Ones - the kids' favourites. The Bland Ones, however, had the best illustrations of wintery scenes with plenty of snow and snow-activities that we Children of the Tropics could only wonder about.

The Greetings Card industry would begin to intrude upon available road-side space at regular intervals, in the form of makeshift stalls, by mid-November. It was a time when almost each household that I knew of had someone in the USA or Going to USA or Preparing to go (to the USA). There were other parts of the world, like England, that had already been colonised by relations. Then there were places like Japan and Australia where people hardly went and lost contact if they did. The Middle-East (in the context of my own experience) was passe. Asia was India. South America and Africa were like Antartica - places on the map where no one went. The GC industry understood all this - and the fact that it would take considerable time for postal delivery across the seven seas - and solved the issue by opening shop well in advance. A visit to a stall was quite like a visit to some art gallery; they had so many varieties and assorted sizes- but they all fell into three economic categories - small, medium and large. We had great fun trying to find the right card for the person in mind and it was curious how we sometimes had two or three choices, each backed by a supporter, for the same person. 

After the cards were addressed, it was my job to paste the stamps and post the envelopes. I had a Happiness ratio arrived at by dividing the number of cards received by number of cards sent, and the higher the figure, the Happier the New Year.

The best ones to be sent, in my consideration, were to people in the armed services. You just wrote : To, so-and-so, c/o 56 APO. That's it. It would reach even without postage stamp, which the govt would grudgingly bear for the sake of it's soldiers. Later, when I was at the receiving end of such postages in the Air Force, I had this quiet satisfaction knowing I was simply c/o 99 APO.

After they were dismantled, I would store them up safely, for they were very handy on occasion. Those were the days when people visited you with their entire retinue, including the fidgety girl and the cantankerous brat. After a while, they would be handed over to me (as I was the eldest) for baby-sitting, while the elders talked endlessly over tea and biscuits. I had found it easy to manage even certain difficult types by innovating some kind of game with these New Year greeting cards. You can't do that with kids anymore. Not only are there no paper cards around for playing games with, but, also, there are no kids who would play with paper cards. And they would rather do other stuff with the cellphone than rummage through the inbox and spam mails for any New Year wishes. The days of the Greeting Card are well and truly over. One gets this neglected feeling that is not assuaged by noticing them on the cellphone notifications.  

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Interlude:

This article was not about New Year cards although it drifted there. It was about making Much Ado about Nothing. However, New Year cards did stand up as a symbol of our transit from the old year to a brand new one. And the emotions and feelings it conjured in individuals was varied in range and content. That's the focus of this article - What makes it such a special occasion?

Today is 31st Aug 2017.

My 50th birthday. It is a day in my lifetime that can be easily defined or referred to. It has an independent entity to it. It becomes so important that I could easily be blamed for spoiling it, if I'm not extra careful in avoiding the usual pitfalls that spoil any day. And, although only a few knew about me the day I was born, there are now so many around the world wishing me since yesterday that I have trouble fishing for the right word to say that it is no big deal.

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                                                              Part-!!

So, I have decided to bring the first part to it's conclusion by saying that the second part is just an extension of the first. A year measured from Jan to Dec, or from b'day to b'day, is still a year. But the transition from one year to the next is always in a single day. and nothing changes on D-Day minus 1.

But, just as in January, we must go through the ritual of wishing birthday boys and girls and making them feel that the world would have spun differently without their eccentricity to balance it.

So, are birthday celebrations necessary? Yes, as much as the birth was. Otherwise, you don't have a reference in time and things wont work well for you in the carefully administered world we live in. You are reminded of all the nice things that you have done, undone or never done. 

However, birthdays differ in their scope to excite people beyond the predetermined limit of one day. These days, what with modern technologies in time perception, that limit is strictly implemented from one midnight to the next. Whereas, the New Year fervour stays on for up to a month (as brought out earlier).

That is probably the best thing about a birthday. You can safely expect it to go away the next day. Why is it so bad? It isn't, when you are with friends who know your true value and the quantum of your worthlessness. Or, if you are convinced about your own greatness and worth. But, if you are introspecting and mentally visiting a few areas in the past which could have been better handled, you might not be amused if a horde descends upon you at office with a measly bouquet from the main lobby and keeps up the cheers until they have been sated with a dose of tea and biscuits. After all, you feel you have been made to pay for for an unworthy cause.

Indians have devised a method to beat this danger. They have multiple birthdays. The Official Birthday is the one in your office records and all other records. It is so ubiquitous that it inspires no excitement. It is the most convenient excuse to hide behind; after all, would you host parties out of occasion? I get a load of messages on a certain day of Feb, mostly from people who take my money for something or the other. These can be happily ignored with no twinges in the conscience. In fact, most Official birthdays in our time were different from the real ones because every parent did their own calculation on how the child's future career would benefit with a deft change in date. So much so, that in one school, the father of one student was hauled up by the Headmaster and asked how he had furnished a birth date that preceded his marriage date!

The other way out is to quote your lunar calendar 'tithi' as your celebration day. You can say a line like,"We always follow 'tithi's" and he who disbelieves is deemed unholy. 

Birthdays are also essential in calculating all age-related things like waist size and insurance premium. 

But, notwithstanding my acerbic views on the subject, birthdays are important milestones for most. For one, it requires absolutely no skill, effort or technique to get from one birthday to the next. People in solitary confinement do it as effectively as the hard-working, ever-struggling family man. In fact, unless you are up in the graveyard shift, waiting for it to occur like some celestial phenomenon, if happens automatically while you sleep. You are 49.999 tonight and you wake up as 50 point negligible with a Golden Glow. Therefore, most people celebrate the day and party at night simply because, if left unattended, the occasion merely passes on into the next day and you have missed the bus. You have lost your time in the lime light and that is not going to arrive for another year unless you struggle and achieve something else for the same attention. 

For the powerful, rich and famous, it is the obvious occasion to show case their social growth curve and underline their current status, to invite and hobnob with the Who's Who and to work out the What Next?! There is a parallel world of food, beverages (both alcoholic and otherwise) and entertainment that caters to these celebrations. Birthdays are serious business for many entrepreneurs and probably the introductory platform for starlets to convert to stars. But that is neither here nor there. 

Simply put, birthdays are nothing but a collective state of mind. It is something remembered by all who matter in your life, including yourself, with the onus on yourself to make the best of it, and end up celebrating what till yesterday was an average year 

Birthdays are Karmic. They are fun in the right company. They are a drain on the budget. And they are as significant as a National Holiday, and quite as iconic at a personal level.

Despite people like me, happy new years and birthdays are here to stay.