“Don’t bother too much about it.” I said as long as they are not hanging their dirty underwear.” Kasthis are another thing. Somehow they don’t ever look dirty. The pattern and the quality of weave takes care of it all.

I had several other calls from other friendly neighbours. “Someone is using your plot as a pathway for his bullock cart.” they said. “You must do something about it” .”

I called my brother in Chennai, who spends a lot of time in San Mathias having built a house on his property on the hill overlooking the Mandovi river.

“You must build a wall,” he said . “I will ask the guy who did the work for me. Solid stone wall with a nice iron gate. It will cost you just over a lakh, but worth it in the long run.”

What “long run” is he talking about I said to myself. With me batting on 83 and with my children, very sensibly showing no interest in ancestral property ?. How do I attach the ownership papers to the hearse that is carrying my not so immortal remains to the cemetery in Bandra? Or maybe the nearest incinerator, better known as electric crematorium?

It is not the cost, nor the attachment of the property papers to the hearse, but the fact that I just hate walls is what that makes me hesitate to venture into my brother’s proposed security measure.

As I write this, several walls in Mumbai have killed people. Crushed them to death or maimed them forever.

I was with the Indian Embassy in Paris, watching with horror the building of the wall that separated families and loved ones for 28 years and created martyrs in the cause of freedom that no walls can divide.

I was in Germany when the wall was demolished, surrounded by German friends whom I loved, and who I’m still in touch with, and who will read this piece and shed a few tears for old times sake.

Why am I writing about walls again. Because the latest shocking news is that following the 8 foot wall that surrounds the beautiful Sidddi Vinayaka Temple in the centre of Mumbai another 8 foot wall is being built around the Mantralaya where the offices of all the Ministers of the government of Maharashtra and all the bureaucrats are housed.

All it takes for this to happen is to discover a car that is carrying some RDX and bomb-making equipment, allegedly planted by the only people who benefit from building walls, namely the builders and the guys who sign the contract for the walls to be built for a certain percentage.

The pace of a course has been set by the filthy rich people in this city, including builders themselves who, not satisfied with surrounding themselves with gun toting security personnel, have also started to build walls around their homes. These are the same people who demand openness and transparency from the government., The same people who build walls between themselves and their employees and truly believe they can resolve the problem by shifting their offices and manufacturing units to another State, where dissent is dealt with gunfire.

Development will soon be concentrated on exporting do-it-yourself kits in building walls

But enough of anger. I need to pause and attempt to convert the anger against walls to constructive reflection.

Is there something really in a wall that makes me dislike them, or like Robert Frost “is there something in ME that does not like a wall”.

After all, a wall is something made of brick and stone and mortar. The wall will tell you if you can speak to it that it has a useful purpose. It has nothing against me in person. Walls can be made of barbed wire or bamboo or a whole lot of other things.

Its main purpose is to separate, to divide. Did I not during my corporate life, love the idea of a separate office and did not those who worked with me love the idea of separate cubicles? We all did. Privacy is such an important and personal thing.

The problem is with me. The problem is with my upbringing, with my value system and all my experiences that makes me love open spaces. Not just around me, but within me and in my relationships with other people.

Maybe I can share with my readers, part of a poem I once wrote about a passionate relationship during the time of the Berlin Wall

“We have our walls
The walls that we have built
With the barbed wire of our minds
The walls of self-invented guilt
The electronic fence of right and wrong
WE are the walls. We are
Grown ups in a children’s game … and
Our walls are worse.
They so separate our souls
That climbing over the top
We might destroy ourselves.
Because we lack the guts
Of common sluts
Our walls unclimbed, remain!”

It took less than a fraction of a second for us to make the choice. And before anyone could say “ooh la la”’ we packed our bags and headed for Paris.

In the many pieces I have written I have always avoided writing about some very difficult and ugly situations I had to deal with.

Now with crusader Anna Hazare encouraging ordinary people to expose corruption it is time to write about my tryst with the demon, in of all places, the Indian Embassy in Paris, specifically in the office of the Air Attache.

For the Indian Air force, France was a favoured son. The Ouragan (or Toofani), the Mystere fighter aircraft were our strength. More aircraft and above all a continuous supply of spare parts kept us in daily contact with Marcel D’assault and other providers.

There were three of us. My Boss the Air Attache, a Group Captain, another officer from the Accounts Dept who did not have diplomatic status and me as the Asst. Air Attache.

Types of corruption

Of the Soul. My boss wanted me to send my wife to “help”. at his weekly cocktail parties where he had an opportunity to inflate his entertainment bills. My wife saw no problem in helping the Boss’ wife.

When I went to pick her up I discovered that she was confined to the kitchen and not permitted to join the guests. My colleague had no problem with it. Sychophancy was his major strength

I told my Boss my wife would not be available as “kitchen help”. That started a very vengeful relationship.

To make matters worse I told my colleague that selling highly discounted petrol coupons and duty free liquor to friends from the aviation industry was both shameful and corrupt.

I could have become a whistler blower but that was an unfamiliar terminology in 1959, so I became “persona non grata”.

I was so used to standing up for my values and beliefs and facing the music and converting it as an opportunity to dance that Thecla and I, both good dancers continued to have a great time making a large number of friends with our fluency in spoken French. Some of these still communicate with us and have come and stayed with us in Goa

We were also enjoying making our first baby. Christophe’s god parents are French.Christianne and Bernard Wacquet. (Have sent you a pic)

From “personna non grata” I became an enemy with whom it was necessary to sleep with. I received an invitaton to join the “ten percent club of two”

When I declined I was told I would be repatriated to India in disgrace.

The then Ambassador was a wimp, an ex INA member and colleague of Subash Chandra Bose and was surely tempted by the ten percent on every consignment
despatched to India. I missed joining the millionare’s club but could sleep like a baby every night.

More excitement. A confidential report reached Air Headquarters saying “Squadron Leader George Menezes has become an alcoholic and should be sent back to India.”

See how the Lord works.

The report arrived at the desk of Air Vice Marshal Erlich Pinto, Head of Personnel. An old family friend, his first concern was my health, specially my liver. He wrote to the new Ambassador , the great Nawab Ali Yavar Jung.

Air headquarters was told of my sterling qualities and the Ambassador added that George is almost a teetotaler.

Enquires were conducted with military efficiency and the next Embassy fubction
found us bidding a not so tearful farewell to my Boss who was being repatriated.

Years later someone asked a question about my boss’s assets in Paris and he was “cashiered” out of service in disgrace.

One, of course, is my two granddaughters who fly past me at the Joggers Park despite giving me a generous handicap.

When I look back and don’t find them behind me I imagine, falsely as ever, that I have won the race.

I remember the time when I was invited to give the keynote address at the 75th anniversary of my old college in Dharwar

After the speech, tea and snacks were served to the invitees.

From a distance I noticed a man in a white kurta and pyjama, giving me a dirty look. He sneaked up to me and said softly “Mr George you have an outstanding bill of Rs.200 in the college canteen of which I am the contractor

I apologised, took him aside and paid the bill, tip included, turning around and quickly moving into the august company of retired vice chancellors with no bills to pay.

Another time, not too long ago, I foolishly decided to participate in a Senior Citizen mini Marathon around the residential areas of Bandra. At the end of ten minutes I was feeling faint and dehydrated and decided to knock at the door of a house whose nameplate seemed terribly familiar.

I rang the bell and asked for a glass of water. “You liar” said the lady who opened the door. “50 years ago you promised to marry me during the choir practice of St Joseph’s Church. God forgive you as I have done. Have a cold Pepsi, get back to your running and never return again”

I never returned. I do not want an angry spinster to smash my head with an aluminum crutch.

But let me tell you how even recently the past has come back to stare me in the face.

In order to do that I have to tell you about Janet.

As I write this I remember that this very evening I have to pick up Father Paul from the Retreat House to say Mass at Janet’s place because she’s celebrating her mother’s birthday which she does unfailingly every year.

I’ve agreed to do this knowing fully well that the 10 min walking distance will have to be covered by my car through the chaos of the Bandra fair to pick up Father Paul. I don’t do it everyday but I owe Janet a great deal.

This year is her mothers 92nd birthday and although she’s intermittently bedridden she has the same glow and brilliance in her eyes as she had when she danced the waltz on her 90th birthday and ready to dance again with the redoubtable Alan Noronha strumming his guitar and singing all the old-fashioned music in the world, enough to loosen the joints of all the septuagenarians and above, present at the party

And that is where one more time the past has come back to haunt me

You see Alan Noronha is a great admirer of Janet. I’m not sure where he stands in the long queue of Janet’s admirers but I know one thing and that is that he was recently looking for a gift to give her.

Alan, it seems, was browsing through some shops on the way to the Railway Station where some antiques and a lot of junk is sold. Looking closely at the things in a particular shop he saw a familiar face framed in expensive gilded wood.

It was a charcoal drawing of a man with a beard and a none too flattering nose.
“My god” he said “that is a drawing of our common friend George Menezes obviously done by a gifted artist and indicating that it was done in Paris in the year of our Lord 1985”.

I know how much Janet looks up to George, he thought to himself not realising that the looking up was merely because of the difference in height. That would make a good gift for Janet, he thought. So he asked the shopkeeper for the price.

“Panch hazar” said the shopkeeper. Restraining himself from hitting the shopkeeper on the head with his heavy duty guitar, Alan decided to negotiate.

“Woh antik hai” .said the shopkeeper trying to justify the price tag of Rs.5000.

“Arre baba” said Alan “woh antique nahin hai, woh zinda admi hai aur hamara neighbour hai.”

All this conversation has been related to me by Janet herself. Finally after suggesting that he would produce me personally for the shopkeeper to see, he apparently got a bargain, packed it nicely and gifted it to Janet.

“What a precious gift” she was supposed to have said to Alan before swooning at the thought of finding another place on a wall to hang it.

Finally, to cut a long story short, Janet brought the drawing to my house to check its authenticity and its background.

When Janet told me the whole story I suddenly realised what had happened and I laughed

From time to time the old girl, God bless her soul, took some drastic decisions to deal with clutter and also to confirm a genuine belief that we cannot take our material goods with us when we go no matter where we go, and therefore it is best to get rid of things we have not used for some time.

On the basis of such a philosophy she used to get rid of everything that she deemed “useless” and she did it once a year.

Once, while trying to search for my trophies and medals and sundry awards just to satisfy my ego, I discovered that they were no longer in the house.
A heated discussion revealed that she had handed them over to the “jalipuranawalla” or junk dealer.

In the course of a few years she had got rid of a whole lot of my precious books, bundles of letters from old girlfriends as well as photographs, including her own.

I suddenly realised that this painting done by an artist at the steps of Sacre Coeur church in Paris had also been one of the “useless” objects that she had got rid of with an innocent smile on her very beautiful face.

As I said before, some things come back to haunt me without warning.

That’s what I said to Janet as she stood precariously on a chair trying to hang a useless thing on her wall. Fortunately not on the bathroom wall.

Janet is and will always remain a precious friend. Except that she has poor taste in works of art.

Never mind India. My own personal life has turned all topsy-turvy.

First and foremost I get a personal invitation from the Additional Commissioner of Police inviting me to an interactive meeting with the Police Officers of our Ward.

Something fishy I said to myself. He is inviting trouble if a lot of people from the Ward turn up for the meeting.

Anyway, I decided to go. “Just to be seen”, kind of thing. It was a big mistake.

Hundreds of people had turned up, except the Assistant Commissioner who had invited us.

Senior Inspector Shaikh who has a good personality and is a very effective communicator took over the mike.

But the crowd was not willing to listen to the Senior Police Inspector explaining their grandiose plan of providing security to Housing Societies by making friendly visits to the Societies’ office bearers and owners of flats.

Every member of the crowd had come with his or her own agenda. Quite naturally I thought. Where do ordinary citizens get a chance to interact with the police without being intimidated?

In spite of the valiant efforts of the evergreen and ever volunteering Anita, our honorary traffic cop, to pass the cordless mike around, there was pandemonium.

Although I raised my hand again and again, almost on the verge of doing the hokey pokey dance, I did not get her attention

And when I got the mike nobody wanted to listen to my attempts to bring some order to the discussion.

If nothing else I learnt a lesson in humility. I realised I was a nonentity. A very old man, out of steam and out of sync. With the reality of today.

I sat quietly in my chair for the rest of the fruitless meeting and went quietly home. People no longer know me for who I am, and even worse, I myself do not know who I am.

If I can stay with this lesson, going to the meeting will not have been in vain.

If you think about it, it was at least an attempt by the police to provide some transparency. It is one of the things that are changing. Transparency is the buzzword.

No wonder then that I who had welcomed with open arms the Right to Information Act, received an RTI query the other day.

One of my relatives was asking me to disclose who that attractive girl was I was seen with at one of the restaurants in Bandra.

I think that is stretching transparency too far.

My life is always been an open book, especially because I write very personalised columns in the newspapers.

So I rang up the relative and told her “Betty” I said, “You know very well who she is. In fact she is related to you. And by the way, I could refuse to respond to your RTI query because the person is an elderly woman and not a girl as wrongly described by you”

“I will file another RTI query because I want an answer in writing” she said.

“If you have any suspicion about my will” I said “let me tell you that the meagre Rs.5000 I have in my bank I’m leaving to my Cook woman”

She banged down the phone as only frustrated relatives can.

So much for the transparency of the RTI Act.

Coming back to the public meeting with the police, I had some tea and biscuits on the police account and was walking slowly towards my car when I was accosted by a woman wearing an expensive and gaudy sari with gold jewellery to match.

“Arre, Shakubai” I said finally recognising the ayah who used to look after my kids.

“I become working in BMC she said in the kind of English that my daughter had taught her during her long stint with us.

“Kuch loan mangta hai ?” I asked. “No George sahib” she said “I having lots lots money. BMC wanting your training program”
“Pothole training?” I asked thinking of BMC’s latest crisis.

“No, no” she said “BMC wanting potty hole training for BMC people.
You and memsahib and ‘apun’ were doing this training very well for the children.”

We drove down to the Municipal office. She took me to the toilets.
I almost died with no hope of resurrection. The shit had literally hit the ceiling.

“Two solutions” I said. “All the junior staff should be given leave to go and do “their jobs” over the potholes on the roads. It will lessen the burden on your toilets and it will fill the potholes. Secondly all the shooters and archery Olympic medalists should be immediately invited to come and train the senior staff to learn to ‘aim’ properly.”

Finally the BMC people will be doing “their jobs” productively. I said to myself

“All this I am not understanding” Shakubai said. “Where all slum dwellers going to do their potty then? They will take out the morcha to BMC Office.”

“Don’t worry” I said as I stepped ankle-deep into some kind of stuff that gastro-pathologists are working hard to identify. There are lots of of potty holes still to be filled. Only tell them to wait till the first layer has hardened.”

“Meanwhile I take ‘Imodium’ she said waving her gold bangled hand as I washed my feet under a leaking fire hydrant.

Frankly I can’t tell a C minor from a John Major, one time Prime Minister of England. I don’t even possess a sound system in the house. But believe it or not, there is always a tune humming in my head.

Some lovely woman living in Toronto recently sent me a video that had the music of John Denver on it together with the lyrics.
As I write this, the music and the lyrics

“Come fill up my senses
Like a night in the forest,
Like a mountain in spring time,
Like a walk in the rain”

surround me with warmth and love which unknowingly I suppose gets transferred to what I’m writing.

I don’t know about loving, but I certainly like our Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, the first CM in a long while, who comes across as being open, humble and clean.

My heart went out to him the other day in the midst of the horrific Mumbai blasts when I almost heard him cry “where have all my good officers gone”?

Music once again invades my mind and I hear Joan Baez strumming her guitar and singing the Pete Seeger perennial

“Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone
Long time ago?
Gone to graveyards everyone.
When will they ever learn
When will they e-e-ever learn”?

I believe lots of people in Mumbai including myself are in a position to give our chief Minister appropriate information to his question “where have all my good officers gone”

Many of them have retired long ago. The Kanetkars, the Ribeiros, the Mendonsas, the Sahneys the Somans and so many others whose advice, if sought for, and implemented would help the CM a great deal.

Very many of them, men of competence and integrity are posted in places of punishment. Unknown an unheard of districts in Maharashtra where they are forced to live without their families and send their children to boarding schools because they are not willing to sacrifice their souls for thirty pieces of silver.

Let me tell our chief Minister that this dirty, filthy, dangerously unhealthy, almost unmanaged and life threatening city, has hundreds of really good people. I meet them every day and I get from them a daily dose of inspiration and the resolve to carry on my daily life with a smile.

An incredibly compassionate colleague of mine for 20 years, at the Corporation where I worked, has sacrificed all her time and energy and the use of her talents to look after her aging mother.

A regal, good looking woman in her 60s has given up her own needs both sociological, psychological and physical to care for her 65 year old mentally and physically challenged brother

Together with her brother, who never complains and always wears an angelic smile, they are both a source of great inspiration

You want to find a “good” place where serenity, faith and laughter refresh you like a sudden shower? Come to Shanti Avenda, the home for terminally ill cancer patients.

Say hello to my friend Christina. Warm and chubby like a large teddy bear, her beautiful black eyes lighting up a place where there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

She laughs at my silliest jokes, and when I sit at the side of her bed and massage her feet, as I used to do for my late wife, she sighs, gobbles slices of mango, juice running down her dress, and says “I am blessed to have moments like this”

I say to her husband who attends to her night and day “Dean, you too are blessed to be given an opportunity to serve a loved one. I have walked that road not long ago. Not everyone gets such an opportunity”

Yes, dear chief Minister, the city is full of “good” people, unfortunately, not many of them in the Police Force. And those who are there have been shunted to Training Institutes, Naxalite areas and other punishment areas where their goodness will be squeezed dry out of them sooner or later.

You are reputed to be a good man. Can you make your goodness, your openness, your rectitude become inspiring and infectious like the good people I listed earlier?

Can you tell your Congress bosses that the chief Minister will no longer continue to be a fund collector for the party?

You will either be sacked or good people will rally around you like they have done around Anna Hazare. Good luck and may the good Lord be with you.

I guess I’m hallucinating. How many people have the good fortune to be able to do so?

Hallucinate, I mean.

It is therefore not surprising that I do not own either a tie or a good and fashionable pair of formal shoes.

As I write this I have been chastised by my daughter in law for going to a dinner, down the road, wearing moccasins that I have been using for almost a decade

They are made of suede, once, long ago, nice mixture of blue and gray, but now an undetermined color and a shape that cannot be defined except to say that though they are not handsome, they are extremely comfortable.

Like my Marks & Spencer underwear, too comfortable to ever throw away.

But grand daughters are a species altogether different from daughters in law.

They wear you down. With their love.

I had absolutely to get another pair of shoes they said.

So I started my search for a pair of sturdy, extremely comfortable, no breaking-in period shoes with a weathered look. Stone washed or something similar.

When I lived on Pedder Road, that is before we came to Bandra, our shoe shopping was restricted mostly to Colaba Causeway and mainly shoe shops like Bata and Carona.

Today I can visit hundreds of shops that are shoe outlets on Hill Road and Linking Road.

So holding my granddaughter’s hand I started my shoe tourism with a vengeance.

You would be surprised to hear some of the things I discovered.

Did you know that Reebok, Adidas. Puma and Nike do not market sports shoes without laces? At least not in Bandra.

“I will buy only sturdy all purpose sneakers without laces” I said to the salesman

“I can tie the shoelaces in such a manner” said the salesman at Nike “that you won’t even know that the shoe has laces”

“No can do” I said firmly. “Sneakers without laces, if you don’t mind

“I’m interested to know why you want shoes without laces” he asked, his enigmatic smile suggesting that there must be something wrong with me

“I have an obsession about living in bodily comfort.” I replied “I wear Salman Khan vests even at my age, or maybe especially at my age, walk barefoot in the house, go everywhere and anywhere in my shorts and moccasins without having to bend down and put them on and take them off”

“Above all” I said “I need a pair that I can use to make a contribution to my country and my Jokepal membership”

“What kind of contribution” asked the salesman totally confused by now

I need to take my shoe off at a moment’s notice and fling it at a whole lot of hypocrites who are trying to make a fool of ordinary citizens like you and me

“Oh” said the salesman, as if recalling something he had watched on television, “I understand what you mean, you want to fling your shoe at politicians, bureaucrats, corporate honchos, god men and gurus who are destroying the fabric of our society. And you want to do it at the utmost speed”

He seemed struck by the enormity of the contribution an ordinary shoe salesman could possibly make to the country and its people.

He sat down and said in a sad voice “I am sorry, Sir I do not believe shoe outlets in Mumbai are selling Jokepal shoes.”

“What about your outlet in Delhi” I asked. “Sit down for a few minutes” he said sounding enthusiastic about my shoe flinging mission. He took out his cell phone and dialed a number. No luck in Delhi” he said after the short conversation he had had with someone at the other end.

“Thank you for all your help” I said looking down at the shoes I was wearing. “Do you happen to have a strong cleansing brush for the suede moccasins I’m wearing”?.

He showed me a brush which I promptly bought, more as a thank you gesture for his interest and help, than for its utility.

And so after dropping my granddaughter home I decided to reflect upon my unsuccessful shopping spree.

I walked down to Bandstand on Bandra’s glorious waterfront and sitting on my favorite rock watching the tide come in, I started to think about shoes.

I recalled that the great painter MF Hussain had been denied entry to an elitist Club because he was barefooted. Anyway, I said to myself, the great genius was such a peaceful man that he would have been incapable of flinging any thing at anyone even as a gesture of protest.

And I recalled a painting that I had seen of two people gazing wistfully at the window of a well known shoe shop. The well dressed businessman looking at the other window shopper who was on crutches and saying to himself “I cursed Allah because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet”

Walking home I wondered how because of colorful TV and media coverage about the Lokpal agitation and one incident of shoe flinging and constant flashbacks of other incidents of shoe flinging including one at President Bush, I had acquired this obsession of wanting to wear shoes without laces.

When I reached home my daughter Anjali‘s German in-laws were just arriving from their first trip to Goa.

“How did you enjoy your trip” I asked her father in law, Reiner Kelling. “Absolutely fabulous” he said “except that somebody stole my shoes outside the famous Mangueshi Temple”

“I’m so sorry” I said ” with laces or without laces?”

He looked at me in a manner deserved for mentally challenged people and said “what difference does it make?”

Despite all the efforts of the marketing wizards in the country I have not become addicted, like millions of others, to designated days for everything under the sun from Valentine’s Day to Doomsday.

But I love my mother dearly, always have. Maybe I never told her so or may be never enough.

All these many years I have written so many eulogies for people I have loved and people I have known and respected. Strangely it never occurred to me to write something for my very dear and beloved mother.

I believe I thought it was not necessary. I believe she did not live with such expectations. I believe that because she loved so dearly, so sensitively, so unconditionally it never occurred to her that there was such a thing as “reciprocity”. She just kept on loving. Not just her near and dear ones, but the whole world, as it were.

I guess I first met her in the warm, cosy, friendly and very chaotic place called “The Eugene Maternity Home” appropriately located in Love Lane at Byculla, Bombay. Actually in the delivery room, a slimy, placenta covered joyous encounter of mother and son.

When out of curiosity I drove recently to Byculla and parked in front of the Maternity Home it looked like a heritage site with some guy pointing to it and saying “You know this is the Maternity Home where Police Commissioner Julio Ribeiro met his mother on 10 May 1929″

“You are right” I said “I was there a month earlier” and I and quickly drove off before he asked me “and who are you buddy?”

We called her “Mae”. The seven of us. She lost the first one after child birth. And I took over as the eldest of the brood.

We were children of an incompatible marriage. My father was 6 foot something, a towering intellectual with an equally towering temper

My mother was 5 foot nothing, patient, soft-spoken and gentle as a dove.

When I knew her, she only spoke Portuguese and of course the Salcete version of Konkani spoken in the southern region of Goa, and she spoke both languages very well.

I love you Mae. Always did and always will. An 82 year old son stretching out a skinny hand to touch your chubby cheeks that made you look younger than the seven children you had.

I can imagine you now, up there, taking care of the Lord’s house with its many rooms like the bungalow in Dharwad with a “quarto de disordes” (a room for disorder) cleverly designed from the prying eyes of visitors, a room to chuck unwashed and unwanted things; a room desperately required for a wife and mother who needed a shift system of night vigils to care for children who took turns to be desperately ill on the eve of every exam.

I love you Mae and the yogic manner you dealt with the minor tantrums of your children and the major tantrums of your husband.

Remember the time Pae returned from college and screamed because lunch was not on the table?

Typically, he had forgotten that he had already had his lunch before he left for college. But you didn’t say a word and lunch was served once again.

Remember the time we were all sitting down for dinner and we were about to say “grace” and a rooster from our backyard flew into the room and quietly perched itself on Pae’s agnostic head and he wasn’t even aware of it?

Deftly you signaled to us, to control ourselves and keep saying the grace till the rooster finding nothing interesting on Pae’s head flew back to its resting place.

We rushed Into our rooms holding our stomachs and bursting with laughter and when we returned you sat as if nothing had happened and Pae was already tackling his favourite custard pudding.

I love you Mae for the values you inculcated in us, for leading us always close to Jesus by your uncompromising witness. Your daily uphill trek for morning Mass, your sometimes annoying insistence on our saying the rosary at sunset, and above all, the manner in which you looked after the hundreds of Pae’s students with food when they were hungry and money for bus rides to their native homes for the holidays. For your boundless charity that made the entire town call you “Mummy”

It was a conversation amongst a few young men in their late 20s about one of the local girls getting married. Nice young men some of whom went to join the Army and become Adarsh-living Generals, unless they were killed in battle, others who opted to join the priesthood and become Bishops or church bashers, and even some, who became entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

“She is getting married to a Pilot Officer, wow !!” said one of them. “Lucky devil” said somebody else. “She is the prettiest girl in our entire suburbs”.

“Lucky girl” said somebody else, “it is not so easy to catch a Pilot Officer. Blue uniform with gold decorations, almost 500 rupees a month in salary not to mention perks and lots of travel and excitement”.

“Isn’t it risky to marry a pilot officer” asked one. “Not all of them fly.” said another “There are common designations like Pilot Officer, Flying Officer, Flight Lieutenant and Squadron leader for even those in the ground services. He is a graduate officer in the logistics branch”.

“Only the most competent, the most skilled and highly trained become pilots in the Indian Air force. The citizens of this country can sleep in peace because the skies for our country are secured by our pilots and navigators backed by dedicated ground services

Fast forward to March 2011.

Final year college students sitting at the neighbouring coffee outlet “dude-ing” away instead of attending classes. I sit at the table next to them and over hear a conversation I am normally not used to

“So dude what’s the latest?” “Nothing new, dude except that I’ve applied for a pilot’s job”.

“Pilots job?” says another dude. “You haven’t even finished college. Pilots have to do years of training at a flying school, complete the specified number of flying hours as copilots, get certified by the flying school, work as a trainee pilot, get certified by the government appointed Civil Aviation Authority and go through a rigourous process of being selected by an Airlines.

“Which century are you living in guys” says the aspiring pilot. He opens a thick file full of documents. “See this” he says this is my graduation certificate.

I got it from the Xerox guy around the corner. He told me that if I was worried about the graduation certificate standing up to scrutiny, he would arrange for some smart guy to write the B.Com exam for me”.

“And see this” he said. “A brand-new certificate from the Katrina Flying Club in New Orleans, USA. It is not that easy” he continued “I had to wait seven months till their damaged aircraft were repaired. They had been badly damaged by another pilot aspirant from India, some woman called Gariba (garib as in poor) who it appears always landed without letting down the landing gear.”

“So how well did you learn to fly?” said a woman who had just joined the conversation “Not too bad” he said. I know what the nose wheel is and where it is located. I can get you that ILS stands for Instrument Landing System. I can tell a Piper Cub from the Pied Piper of Hamlin. I actually did three hours flying with the instructor. Except that they had to sedate me when I started screaming and threatened to jump out of the aircraft before takeoff. I had not told them in my application that I had a fear of flying.”

“It must have been tough” someone said. “Around 20 lakhs” he said. As a result my parents have become too impoverished to travel by air anymore. There are other reasons of course.

What happened to Gariba? they asked. She was thrown out of the flying school for damaging aircraft and she took it very badly. She said they would never do such a thing in India where her father was a top gun in the Directorate of Civil Aviation. We became good friends.

“She is now a pilot with our Rational Airways Undertaking”. “Never heard of it” ventured one of the smarter dudes. Why rational and not national?” Oh that’s simple”. Because they have an explanation or excuse for everything that rotten that happens. Undertaking was a typographical error which stayed. The PR department wanted to call it Rational Airways Undertaker but the directors shot the idea down”.

“We are glad for you” said the classmates. “I suppose your girlfriend Gariba with her connections in the Civilian Aviation Authority will organise a certificate for you to become a pilot.

“Well, why not”. he laughed “She owes me. I made love to her right through our stay in the USA. She was insatiable.”

The conversation was now getting hot and exciting.. “How did it turn out in India” they asked with one voice.

“It turned out to be a disaster” he said.” We were trying to make it at the Guest House of the Civilian Aviation Department near Sahar airport.

The bed collapsed in the middle of the act. Months later they discovered that the bed was a fake. The authority had paid 40,000 rupees not knowing it was made of firewood instead of teak wood. They also found out that the screws (no pun intended) used in making the bed were substandard.”

“So when are you ready to fly us to Dubai to find jobs for ourselves?” they asked mockingly

“I have one last hurdle to cross before I become a pilot” he said. “It appears that there are some interesting rules in making the appointment. You have to be certified by a relative. It is called some smelly, stinking thing called “potism”.

“So what are you going to do” they asked, greatly concerned

“No problem” he said. “My father has been able to get a fake employment certificate that he is an officer our Civilian Aviation body and, to be on the safe side, he has also got a certificate that he is a director Of Rational Airways Undertaking”.

Fast forward to Today.

I get a call that a relative in Goa, riding a bike without a helmet, has been run over by a dumper. I rush to the airport with my overnight bag and walk to the counter of Rational Airways Undertaking.

“Can you give me a ticket so that I can fly an unmanned aircraft to Goa.” I ask the woman at the counter. “You mean a drone” she asks with a fake but certified smile. “Yes” I say. “They only fly to Afghanistan” she says “and there is no return flight”.

“How do I get to Goa?” I say “it is urgent”.

“We have a flight that is leaving right now to Goa” she smiles. “The aircraft is on “auto-pilot”, the pilots are seated at the rear of their aircraft with their seat belts on. And there is no service. This is a no-frills flight”

“How much will it cost” I ask. “Not many people are flying these days. I will gladly give you a club class ticket which is fake in returned for a forged cheque from you.”

“When you reach gate B run right on to the tarmac and you will see a whole lot of their air-conditioned taxis taking you to Goa. I am not sure whether the drivers have genuine driving licences or not. Have a safe journey and if you still have doubts I would advise you to walk to Goa”

“Fake you” I said showing her my index finger