"Without Reserve" is the inhouse quarterly magazine published by the Reserve Bank of India. In the first half of the 90s, when I had last seen them, they used to be lean and lanky like the Indian economy. Yesterday Amma brought home the July-Sept, 2011 edition when she returned from work. 'Without Reserve' is unreservedly flashy now. And like the Indian economy, the size has boomed.
The magazine is a generous mix of Hindi and English articles. It used to be thesaurus-inspired 'Wren & Martin'-perfect British English articles written by folks who made up for their rejection by The Hindu's sunday supplements. The writers delighted in ensuring that the readers did not understand every other sentence. The pinnacle was to make every other word obscure. Sesquepedalian Orgasms! As if to make up for this onslaught, the magazine would have a few "contributions" from employee's children.Much has changed now. The edition begins with an excerpt from the Nobel lecture by Octavio Paz. Brilliant as expected. Paz talks about the first sense of alienation coming upon him while seeing a news photograph of soldiers returning from war. Suddenly his home, garden, trees, fruits and library lose their reality. The war and the outside world reported in news becomes real. Poetry becomes his attempt to recapture that lost reality of the present.
Contributions from employee's kids, photographs of overachieving Chunnu-Munnus & Aruns and the hurtfully retiring staff are still included. But the glossier paper, elegant photography and enough articles to read for the whole quarter makes this magazine a collectible.
Mammootty, the superstar, was in the city yesterday to inaugurate the new showroom of Pothys silks. Pothys has been running a 30 second, flush TV as with Mammootty and Jagathy pretending to be old Venad King and Minister with two models dressed as queens, in a sumptuous palace set. The newfound nostalgia for monarchy among the local population after the discovery of the temple treasure is being tapped into. Very soon Venad kings will be enlisted to urge students to go to particular medical entrance exam coaching centers which "have been training royal physicians for centuries" or to buy cars designed by engineers tracing their lineage back to the royal horse feeders.
Pothy is not content selling silk. The new showroom even sells vegetables.
'Balance of the Keralite family sent back by the bibliothec (9)" was the 10 Across clue on today's crossword. Caste invades even this sacred grid!
This morning Achan and I spent time sorting old books, files and papers to be given away and those which are worth preserving. Several old "progress report cards" from school will continue to stay. Achan had held on to the few and far between letters and emails I sent him from IIT. There was one written in the final year saying I was tensed about not clearing a couple of job interviews and not hearing back from the various American universities I had applied to. It was followed by another one asking for some money to give a treat to friends after I had landed a scholarship from A&M. I had specifically written that mentioning this to Amma will only lead to angry shouting!
Among the electronic antiques in the house are a "National" audio cassette player and radio that lived before the time of FM , a late 80s joystick based video game console, a handheld view-master and slides and an envelope filled with rather floppy discs. All except the last item listed above were gifts from mallu uncles in 'the gelf'!
In today's archeological dig, we found the "radio license" issued by the government in my uncle's name for that "National" instrument.
I had mentioned in an earlier note about co-writing an article on Onam for the Delhi edition of the Times of India newspaper with Seenu. She had couriered a copy of this paper on 8th. By this morning, I was convinced that it had gone missing in transit. Even the slowest passenger train from Delhi gets to Thiruvananthapuram in 5 days time.
But then! It arrived this afternoon. My afternoon riverie with the one-liners and couplets of Kunjunni in the rocking chair was broken by the loud repeated striking of the drop bar onto the latch of the house gate. Loud enough to rise above the perpetual din of the masonry and carpentry next door. Cacophonic enough to stand apart.
"Courier aayirikum," (Must be the courier) I shouted to Achan who was at the vantage point upstairs to put an end to the unmusical abuse of the gate.
"Kayari varu" (Come inside) Achan told him from the balcony. This must be the way devotees hope to hear the voice of god, from above, when they franctically ring those temple bells.
I went downstairs to sign and collect the post. The courier man, emerging through the gate after that resounding entrance like a Kathakali character from behind the traditional curtain, must have been in his early forties. Light brick color full-sleeve shirt with sleeves rolled up to elbows and khakhi pants. A man of action. While I signed at the two designated places, he smilingly justified, "pattiyundo ennariyathathu kondanu gate-il ninnathu" (I didn't know if you had a dog, that's why I waited at the gate). "Entha courier servicesinte peru?" (what is the your courier service called?)
"Blaze Flash," he beamed. Blaze and Flash are in the name only. Damp Dim is the delivery that takes 8 days to get here from Delhi.
While collecting the courier, noticed some images of burning vehicles on the neighbor's TV screen. Curiously turned on our own TV to find out that "situation was tense" in the city. The protest march by some left-wing outfits against the hike in fuel prices had turned violent. This is the 9th time the price has been hiked in the past one year. All the 8 times previously, similar violent protests had happened just to destroy some public property and to add to the misery of the common man. The prices kept going up.
Today, the protesters had pushed against the police wall. Stone-throwing ensued from the university college campus which is a stone's throw away from the administrative center, Secretariat building, of the city.
Police responded by throwing grenades into the campus and storming the class rooms with lathis.
Protesters met violence with more violence by burning a police jeep and a government car.
They've also called for a 12 hour hartal in the city tomorrow. That means no shops and vehicles in the city from 6 am to 6pm.
To achieve what end? For whom?
A lot has changed about the body of this city in the past decade. But the head, at the top, the "leaders" of the people, continue to be mostly uneducated thugs and uncouth barbarians who have no place in a civil society of the 21st century.
I was watching the scenes of firemen struggling to contain the blazing vehicles with more flash news of sporadic violence scrolling at the bottom of the screen, when I remembered Octavio Paz from the morning. My unease and frustration, the alienation, coming through the media into my living room. I had the power to turn it off and return to my own reality. The red button of the TV remote is my blue pill.
After turning off the television, I went to the backyard to inspect every leaf of every plant of my own reality. On the fresh leaf still unfurling on the top end of the young vine of long-gourd that had begun twirling onto a support stump, there sat a worm.
A living symbol of avarice and decay.
With a flick of my finger, I despatched it.
The demise touch.
Pity we can't get rid of the pests who sit gnawing on top of this society so easily!
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