Writers experiencing loss and unbearable grief.

I am haunted by a hundred questions. Is it too early to write this? Is it too late?

Should I write about it at all? Should I share with my readers something that is so

private and personal ? The triumphant return of my old girl to a place of eternal

peace and serenity in the midst of the silence of green pastures; broken only by the

sound of running brooks?

I know only one thing with certainty. I must write or I will die!

Are you listening to me, my loved one?

In your passing on, God gave me two precious gifts. The gift of “never

living in denial” and the gift “of always remembering all that is good and beautiful

in other people”

Hey. come to think of it, you must have asked the Lord to transfer your gift to me.

You knew I would need it. You had that great ability to anticipate the needs of

others and to do something about it.

I walk through the rooms of this beautiful house like a tenant. Everything we have,

we owned jointly. Today you own the house by your absence. How we fought over

every purchase we made. The Rajastani dowry chest that became a bar, the carved

ivory figure of Jesus on the cross that you loved so much, the “dwarpas,” wooden

sentinels of temples that became our lamp stands. I touch them in passing and

each time the memory makes me “whole”, knowing always, that the beauty of our

home was never ever in its contents but your magical, caring, effervescent and

truly spiritual presence.

I remember a line I wrote for you in my newspaper column on our 50th Wedding

Anniversary. It was a description of seeing you standing in a motley group of young

Goans at the Saligao Ball.

”She stood there in her yellow dress, a wild flower growing astonishingly in a field

of cacti, bramble bush and wilted shrubs”

You had grace and presence which always stood out as, I remember, it did on

India’s Republic day function in the year 1961.

We were standing at the entrance of the Indian Embassy in Paris welcoming our

guests. Our Ambassador Nawab Ali Yavar Jung and ten of us, wives included, who

served as diplomats. You, my dear, stood out for more reasons than one. Not only

for the grace with which you spoke fluent French but also because you were the

only one dressed in an elegantly draped sari. The other wives were all non Indians.

The guests literally swooned over you.

I remember our first date. Blue Air Force uniform with gold stripes on my sleeve I

rode up on my motor bike to the YWCA where you were studying to be an

Executive Secretary.

We went to Leopold Café. We have had many explosive situations in our lives but

that was years and years before 26/11. In 1956 Leopold Cafe provided privacy for

young lovers. Not targets for terrorists.

It had those little cabins with half swinging doors like bikinis hiding the essential. If

you recall, we only talked and joked and laughed and every time you laughed the

waiter came rushing in with a dirty towel on his shoulder as if in response to the

ringing of some distant temple bell. Such was your magic.

Alas, when the bill for “falooda” and “khara” biscuits arrived I found I was short of

money. We stopped laughing and you quietly paid the bill as you have done during

most of our married life.

On our way back home my jaded motor-cycle stopped dead thrice and you had to

push it to get it going. When it stopped a fourth time you turned round and said”

Is this what I am going to do all my life?” “Yes” I replied “will you marry me?”

You jumped in the air like a ballet dancer and started to scream. The crowd

gathered on the pavement soon realized what was happening and cheerfully pushed

the bike right up to the door of your house and waved us a fond farewell.

If today I live “fully alive” reborn on beautiful memories of you, it is because all

those whose lives you touched, hundreds of them who overflowed on to the roads

at your funeral service, remember you with joy.

Let me tell you about something unexpected that happened the other day. A kindly

Bishop came to visit me. Anjali our daughter who had come down from London for

a whole month was still around.

“I was a contemporary of your mother” he said to Anjali. “She was the most

beautiful girl who came to the Mahim Gymkhana. We Mahim boys competed for her

attention and were very upset when we heard that she was getting married to

much older guy from Dharwad”.

“Dad was 27 and Mama was 20”, Anjali said authoritatively”

“Would you really mind if I saw the Wedding album?” the Bishop said sounding like

a helpful yet curious Income Tax officer on a verification visit.

For the next half an hour he was still looking at the pictures his face full of joy on

discovering that the lovely girl from his gang had married a dashing young officer in

a blue and gold uniform of the Indian Air Force, never mind his “unda-gunda” accent.

“What a nice gold crown Mama is wearing” said Anjali. I was about to open my

foolish mouth and tell her it was made of cardboard, but better counsel prevailed.

I realized that as usual you would have liked to keep your simplicity and austerity

to yourself.

People whom I do not even know wrote how you traveled with them from Chembur

to Victoria Terminus. Some one wrote that you had gifted her a German sewing

machine and two French copper-base pans which she is still using in the USA.

Colleagues from your office wrote that if you happened not to turn up for work,

there was no noise of laughter in the office.

As I read slowly, one by one, the eulogies piled up on my desk, I realize how many

people of all walks of life loved you dearly.

Did I do you justice, old girl? In my proverbial inadequacy, did I care for you enough ?

God help me. It is far too late to ask.

I feel that pain now, right here as I write

My mother saved Francis for long years with her prayers especially during his courageous and life threatening march to liberate Goa.

My Dad saved him and made him strong by not allowing “grace marks” to condone his academic failure although he was Under Secretary Education at the time Francis appeared for his Matriculation exam.

Ada, my sister saved him by harnessing all the power of her faith and converting it into beautifully candid and frank letters that she alone could write.

Armida my youngest sister who was Dean of Sion Hospital  saved him by her warm and competent presence in his every illness, big or small.

Louis, Ignatius and Lenny my brothers were there for him materially some rare times, siblingly most of the time.

And I the eldest, the “morgado” the loved one of the family?

Let me take you to a time when as kids we found ourselves playing on the edge of the river at “Vitagem”, a pier off the Mandovi river in our ancestral island village in Goa.

 We had come to watch the arrival of the “gazolina”, the deisel engine driven boat that made its daily trip to Panjim and back.

Francis dared the river as he dared everything in life that were obstacles to his road less traveled on his journey of self discovery.

He dared and he slipped and he fell into the swirling waters of the Mandovi. As he was being carried away I grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled him ashore.

Many years later, differences of opinion led to a slanging match between Francis and me which was never resolved and ended quickly when my mother started the family rosary earlier than usual.

He asked me later, very seriously, whether I had ever regretted saving his life, denying the great Goan river its genuine victim?

How could I? Could I deny the family, the community and the nation he so loved, years and years of stellar and unaccountable contribution?

Could I let a mere river take him away when the waters of the Arabian sea were inadequate to embrace him and  the mountains of the Sayadiri range could not prevent him from planting the Indian flag on the soil of Portugese governed Goa ?

Francis was and will always remain an enigma. His towering scholarship was at times so childlike. His brilliance was often misunderstood for stubbornness and for inflexibility by pygmy brothers like me who found him uncompromising in his goals and yet gentle when he tried hard to “suffer fools gladly”

Could I have been able to deny his community and his beloved mother land a maverick genius who gave a new meaning and purpose to sensitivity training and the holistic development of people?

A dreamer of his own complex dreams and a ruthless and uncanny interpreter of the dreams of hundreds of disciples who grew tall and strong and hoped in their great love for him that his “guruship” would never end

They were right. His reluctant guruship will never end.

As we watch in utter amazement, two yellow butterflies settle on two sides of his bier. I hear one say “What manner of men are these who see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower?”

“I will tell you” says the other butterfly.

“The poet Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy wrote about them”

WE are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;–
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

I have met several Gandhis in my life. Some of them I have tried hard to forget. One was a class mate and school bully. Imagine us calling him Gandhi. The boys called him  G****u, an expletive not to be found in the dictionary. Not even in the community developed encyclopedia, “Wikipedia”

Ironically many years later he came to see me after attending one of my  Management training  programmes. He had become mild mannered and was struggling to do well in his career as a Manager in a Pharmaceutical Company.

In some of the exercises we conducted I noticed that he was reluctant to push his point of view. He also had a high score on submissiveness.

Over a cup of coffee we chatted and laughed about our days at school. He confessed that he had lost two well paid jobs. He had realized that could not get away with bullying people at work.

In sessions the next day he was fascinated with negotiations skills. He was able to work out some “win-win” results in the simulated games we played.

He said Nelson Mandela was his role model.

Today we hear of the heated discussions taking place loudly and quietly in private and public arenas about the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi versus the other Gandhy, Kobad Ghandy from Doon School, St Xavier’s College, and a Chartered Accountant from London.

Most remarkably but not surprisingly the  discussion while it is subdued amongst  intellectuals, the elite, the leftists and human rights advocates, is loud and clear and unambiguous in the public domain of Government Departments amongst bureaucrats and Ministers including our mild mannered and revered Prime Minister.

It appears that our Government has informed its citizens that it will crush the Naxalites once and for all using all the force at its command. The plan is believed to be called “Operation Green Hunt” replacing the old and much discredited “Salwa Judum” where innocent tribals were caught between the fury of the Naxals and the fury of the State.

My information comes from news on television, the printed media and, most enlightingly, from a brilliant piece in the “Tehelka” by Shoma Chaudhury.

The news is frightening for a people already experiencing inexplicable levels and weird manifestations of violence.

I am traveling by train and sleeping on a lower berth in a coupe of four berths. All occupied. It is 11pm and the guy above me has put on the lights and is reading the news paper. The Army officer in the other upper berth requests the newspaper reader to put off the lights. He makes the request three times, the decibel level of his parade ground voice increasing with each request.

When the news paper reader does not respond the Army Officer pulls out his pistol and shatters the lights with a well aimed shot. Every one pulls their blankets over their heads and quickly goes to sleep.

The incident is not mentioned even when we reach our destination and go our individual ways as if shattering railway lights with a gun is expected behaviour and is recommended in some clause of our out-dated Railway manuals.

In Andhra an elected representative of the people finds he has not been invited to an inauguration of a project in his constituency and arrives with his followers and destroys the stone plaque with inauguration details and is feted by his constituency.

Relatives of patients dying at a hospital go on a rampage and destroy the place to which they had come for healing. Passengers are regularly thrown out of trains in the fight for space just as the occupation of road space by timid looking car drivers and muscle flaunting bikers lead to sudden death.

Fortunately we hear today that the Government is listening to saner voices. Influential people in the bureaucracy, the Armed Forces, their own political Party members and opinion Makers in civic life. Such people have learnt from past errors in Jammu and Kashmir, in Assam, in Manipur and from the lessons of other nations and from what they are watching in Pakistan.

The horror of civil war, the reality of understanding that we should not be fighting for territory but for the minds and hearts of disaffected people of our own country, our brothers and sisters living on the edge of despair because even a microscopic percentage of all the socio economic benefits of a prosperous India has not reached them all these many years.

Many years ago I had close encounters with another Gandhi. Rajmohan Gandhi. A grandson of the Mahatma. He was involved with the “Moral Rearmament movement” and I was invited to speak on my days as a member of the Laity Council of Pope John Paul 11, a truly great Gandhian.

In my speech I mentioned a special encounter with the Holy Father. He was receiving a delegation of young people from a South American country governed by a ruthless military dictator.

They told him of sisters and mothers raped, of male family members who had just disappeared, of writers, journalists tortured and maimed for life.

Of banned political parties and dissident student voices crushed under the boots of a ruthless Army. Of years of turning the other cheek, of internal and international attempts at dialogue all in vain.

Then they asked. “Holy Father, is violence and an armed revolution the only answer, now?”

Pope John Paul 11 knelt down, folded his hands in prayer and I could see that he was crying. In voice filled with emotion he replied. “What would Jesus have done in your place?”

Mahatma Gandhi may have replied “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” His context, though, was Capital punishment.

The Jet Airways strike hogged the headlines for over a week. So many questions. Should pilots be allowed to form a Union? Should pilots call a strike and create chaos for thousands of commuters who are exercising their legitimate right to fly from point A to point B for reasons that could even be urgent and compassionate? Can pilots go on mass sick leave?

No two people will agree on the answers. Our antiquated Labour laws permit “workmen” to form a Trade Union and manage their relationship under the “Industrials Disputes Act”

Broadly speaking a “workman” is an employee who is not accountable for the work of others except his own. He does not sanction anything and has no authority to make decisions as is the case of Supervisors and Managers.

Strangely, years and years ago, the Air India’s Pilots Guild was recognized as a Union. But then Air India was a public sector organization and Governmental appeasement was a well entrenched Management style of functioning.

As is well known Air India had to pay a heavy price for this bringing a truly great Maharaja flying on a magic carpet crashing, almost dying and needing bailouts from tax payers money.

In those days I used to write a column called “By George” for the Indian Express and later for “Midday”. I wrote a piece called “Pontius Pilot” in which

I also mentioned the pre-arrival scene of all the “goodies” including miniature bottles of alcohol being loaded into the bags of the crew, some part for family members but mostly for sale. The article was illustrated by Mario Miranda and depicted a terribly obese pilot with a big paunch struggling to get into the narrow door of his cabin.

Not surprisingly I received threats from members of the Guild and the Cabin Crew’s Association saying that if I ever dared to travel by Air India I would be chopped to pieces and served as mince-meat to the passengers.

Non vegetarian passengers, I presume. With a the contents of a raw egg to top it, making it into a French delicacy called “steak tartare”

If I did not ever travel by Air India it was not because Lufthansa offered discounts to German Hoechst Pharmaceuticals for whom I worked and Al Italia almost gave away tickets to members of the various Pontifical Councils of the Vatican, but because Air India became the most unreliable Airline in the world !

Let me say categorically that I am not against trade unions. I have worked with them successfully for 25 years including with the late Dr Dutta Samant. Hoechst Pharmaceuticals whose Human Resources I managed did not have a single day’s work stoppage, including before my time and after it if I may say, honestly and modestly.

The scenario has changed drastically. Globalization, market driven economies, the demise of internationally powerful unions, and recently one of the most frightening recessions in history.

By no stretch of imagination, at least today, would a pilot earning an astronomical salary and having leadership roles in critical decision making for the comfort, safety and security of his passengers and crew be defined as a “workman” and therefore entitled to be a member of a “trade union”

But I strongly advocate that all groups vulnerable to the idiosyncrasies of Management decisions, especially in the area of fairness and justice, should band together to be able be a strong, collaborative stakeholder and partner in the Organisation.

Mr. Goyal who manages his power equations with so many stake holders so admirably would surely know that his Pilots and everyone of his Managers are vital stakeholders and sharing power with them must become his top priority.

In the final analysis all relationships are governed by the sharing of power.

When a party loses power a vacuum is created. The powerless seek the help of outsiders (non stakeholders) to restore the balance or it uses they use unconstitutional means, including violence, to restore parity. No one is more dangerous than a powerless person.

Your son or daughter, ill-treated or neglected, run away from home in an act of such powerfulness that you have to shamefully advertise “Come back, all is forgiven” or “Mother serious, return at once”

Humiliate your wife and wonder why she is having an affair with your neighbour.

Remember the frail, old lady who was changing the tyre of her car when the jack collapsed? She was pinned under the car on a lonely road. Utterly powerless she called up all the energy she had and with one mighty heave got out form under the car.

Remember the teenager villager confronted by a tiger in the forest? Totally powerless, with his back to the wall and the tiger with its paws on his chest, the villager summoned unknown resources of strength and choked the tiger to death.

Think of our Naxalites. Think of the Palestians deprived of their Statehood and the land that rightfully belongs to them

Nothing generates violence as much as powerlessness

Powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely!!

But I still walk the Bandra waterfront. Carter Road, Bandstand and the Joggers Park, come rain or shine. But now I walk slowly, deliberately preserving by breath as well as my footfalls as if the treasure God has gifted to me for “caretaking” might suddenly disappear.

And I walk early in the morning or late at night insensitive to lovers sculpted in their own personalized embraces, oblivious to sleeping watchmen, stray dogs and a rare “expat” walking his “German Shepherd” with the right implements for collecting his doggie’s poo.

“Why can’t the other pet owners do likewise?” he asks

“Because”, I say sadly and softly to myself, “we locals walk our dogs but do not walk our talk.”

As he goes out of sight I hear a gentle voice calling me. “You and I need to talk” the voice says. I sit down on the promenade’s retaining wall and look towards the sea. The voice seems to come from the crest of each rising and falling wave.

I am a great conversationalist. Mostly one way. I talk. Others hopefully listen. But the voice I hear now has a ring of urgency. I decide to listen.

“Okay” I say “talk, I am listening”

“Do you see the 18 hole golf course with the English style Club House on the hill ? It was called the Danda Green” I turn to look behind me and see nothing but hideous doors and windows jutting out of masses of concrete structures. I shake my head in dismay.

“That was the time” says the voice “when I had the privilege and complete freedom to wash these shores, foray deep into the uncluttered land dotted with pretty little bungalows with large gardens and orchards that were rented for as little as Rs.30 a month”.

“I have read and heard about how really beautiful Bandra was” I reply, “wrapped around by the glorious blanket of your clean and transparent waters. They tell me people walked to what is the Mahim Causeway to take the ferry to the city”

“That was the real Bandra to celebrate about. Not the one you are celebrating this fortnight” the voice says. Now no longer quiet and gentle but shrill.

“Walk down from The old fort , past Bandstand , Joggers park and down to Carter Road and find a stretch of sand where you can lie down and talk to me leisurely as your previous generations did not long ago”.

“I see couples sitting on the rocks” I say “but I cannot find a stretch of sand even to sit down”.

I hear a roar from the voice and a crash of waves.” The beach has disappeared; sand has been carted away in a million trucks. Mangroves have been destroyed as a result. The cottages have gone. Tall ugly buildings have replaced them”. The voice is getting angry.

I hang my head in shame. We need to stop mocking the sea, I say to myself. I am suddenly afraid. Another day, another time the sea will reclaim the land that was once her own. And our grand children will no longer be safe on the water front.

I try to find a piece of beach to sit down and wet my feet. Through the skeletons of the mangroves festooned with plastic bags and other indefinable waste I spot a stretch of beach. I creep through the mangroves and sit on the sand.

“I have found a tiny spot of beach to sit on and talk to you at leisure” I say to the voice from the sea

“There is much we can share” says the sea.

“After the Tsunami some years ago”, I say, “I am afraid to run carefree into your warm and wet embrace as I used to once in Gorai and Goa. Even the tip of your tongue caressing my feet as I sit here scares me”

“No more Tsunamis please.” I beg “Thousands died and were rendered homeless that 26th December 2004”

“Homeless?” The sea screams back at me. Have you city folks ever given thought to my homelessness? For centuries my playing fields have been dredged. Hundreds of shacks and massive hotels have plundered my territory and made me a prisoner in the home God gifted to me at the time of Creation. The nurseries and cradles of my fish have been desecrated by the destruction of mangroves. You have driven away myriads of birds that once dipped their silken wings upon my breast.”

“God gave you the planet in caretaking. In your greed and arrogance you have ambitions to become the planet’s owner.”

“Don’t take this personally.” The voice continues “I appreciate you for the time you were beaten up trying to stop sand from being taken away from the Gorai beach. I appreciate your friends who are working so hard to save open spaces in Bandra.

“Do not worry about me. Time will heal my wounds. I have powers to heal myself and to rejuvenate. There will come a time when I will reclaim my territory. It will be a time of my choosing. I will select those whom I will destroy and those whom I will save. The Old Testament will be revisited and Celebrate Bandra‘s Space ship will replace Noah’s Ark”

“Tell your grand children and your friend’s grandchildren to come and play on the endless beaches and my wholesome, transparent waters and really celebrate the awakening of a new dawn”

Invariably they start with “Chaos reigns…..”

Chaos reigns in the on-line admissions to college.

Only a year ago, students had, despite all its defects, a pretty stable system in which students were free to apply to colleges of their choice, submit themselves to cut-off percentages and reservations of different types depending on the colleges and get quick responses on which college they would get admission. Either their first choice, second choice or whatever.

The important thing is that they all knew where they would be admitted and the colleges started their classes on the due date.

My son got admission to St Xaviers in the first list. My daughter who wanted to study French for her BA did not get admission to the same college because French was not taught at the SSC level at her boarding school in Panchgani.

I was, at that time, post retirement, Associate Director of Xavier’s Institute of Management and a word from me would have resulted in a waiver of the requirement which, ironically, I had obtained for a friend’s daughter the previous year in similar circumstances.

My daughter Anjali went to Elphintsone College, did extremely well in French and went on to obtain French citizenship.
But she never forgave for not putting in a word to get admission to a college of her choice. In this piece I ask for her forgiveness. She is an open and understanding person. She will understand.

Today the academic year will never start. Thousands have no college to go to. Hundreds of colleges are woefully short of students. The mess is complete. It takes one Education Minister to paralyse an entire system and not be accountable for the chaos. He will be back next year having learnt no lessons.

Chaos reigns in dealing with the swine-flu pandemic. It took four solid weeks for the Health Minister and his Ministry to react to the information that we had our first swine-flu patient. And when they did all hell broke loose. First t Minister had to apologize for insensitive remarks about the death of our first casualty. Then our irresponsible media ensured that their ability to generate panic had not diminished since the 26/11 terrorism coverage.

In the midst of a life threatening situation we had to witness with shame our business community fleecing our panic stricken citizens either by the well known hoarding technique with the result that face masks were either not available or sold at astronomical prices.

At Government run hospitals doctors handling swine-flu cases were not supplied with masks and the crucial Tami-flu drug was in short supply or not available due to distribution goof ups or was being stolen by loaders of our national airline.

I write this on the day we our celebrating the 62nd anniversary of India’s independence.

The Road that I live on since 1993 is a noisy road. When I bought the flats the road was so quiet that I could not believe my luck. Only later did I realize that there was no traffic on the road because the road was closed at one end for several weeks for repairs.

Today on Independence Day people living on the Road have assembled in large numbers to hoist the national colours. In the compound of the building in which we live.

The Road Association, ALM 102 (Advanced Locality Management) works very hard to keep our area green, clean, secure and safe.

If the road is in top class condition with the whole long road being paved with paver blocks and the footpaths also done similarly. All from the funds of our elected representatives.

We have a wonderful relationship with our Corporator, MLA, our MP and the Municipal Corporation and the Police.

The Flag hoisting is the highlight of our activities bringing diverse people together to confirm our secularism and our pride in being Indian.

Chaos did not reign. But it “rained”. A show drizzle preventing the lighting of the traditional lamp and delaying the hearty breakfast we share on such occasions.

Chaos did not reign because citizens understand good management of their organisations the value of cooperative interventions in civic, social and political life. Because citizens rise above a level the governments seem to find impossible to do.

“He was an excellent player” he said. Could he play for our team?” You have to be an employee of our Company” I said with a laugh. “I don’t mind being an employee of your Company” he said seriously

We took him on board in the packing department.

I look back today at my own recruitment into the Indian Air Force in 1950 and later in 1962 into Hoechst Pharmaceuticals.

The Air Force recruiting was intimidating. Six guys wearing blue uniforms, gold stripes on their shoulders and medals on their chests.

“Why do you want to join the Indian Air Force?” someone asked me. In a moment of temporary insanity, which I have experienced often in my life, I said “You have such wonderful funerals, the national flag over your coffin, “bugles playing the Last Post”

“You have to be dead for that” said the Presiding Officer. “I don’t mind” I said
“No more questions. Come aboard” they said unanimously.

1962 was another matter altogether. I was a Squadron Leader returning with my wife on an Italian steam ship after a four year posting with the Indian Embassy in Paris.
On the ten day journey we shared a table with Karl Schutz and his charming and elegant wife. They were very nice people and we got along like Frankfurter sausages and sauerkraut with a jugful of apple wine.

Karl was returning to his job in Mumbai as chief of the Hoechst Pharmaceuticals factory in Bombay after a holiday in Germany. He loved India and Bombay and the hard working and skilled Indians working in his factory.

On the last day of our sea voyage the Captain had organised a Fancy dress Ball.
Thecla and I dressed up in Chinese clothes and held a long string between us on which we hung some underwear and the words “McMahon line”. It was the time of the Indo Chinese War and as everybody knew, the McMahon line was the artificially drawn line on the map between India and China.

We were delighted when Thecla and I were declared the winners and the captain came to our table to hand over the prize. “Very clever, topical and creative” he said.

Much to the embarrassment of his tall and gentle wife Karl Schutz shouted and jumped around as if he himself was the winner. “If you are ever looking for a job please call me” he said, handing over his visiting card.

Three months later having resigned from the Indian Air Force forfeiting all my benefits which come only if you complete 20 years of service and finding that industry considered a Squadron Leader only fit for a Security job, I knocked at Karl Schutz’s Factory door.

He gave me a German handshake and appointed me as “Administrative Officer” of a state of the art factory that employed around 300 men and women at that time.

Karl as head of a very productive factory run with typical German efficiency was different from the man I knew on board the ship. Most of the Managers feared him.
It was said that when he walked into the Analytical Laboratory you could hear the sounds of broken glassware, chemists used to drop flasks from their trembling hands. He was a hard task master but he had a high regard for justice and merit and led by example.

Even when he arrived from an official visit to Germany at 3 in the morning he was at the factory at 8am sharp.

I had my first problem with him when he asked me to get rid of a self appointed godman who was squatting on a large plot owned by Hoechst behind the factory earmarked for staff quarters. He had buried a statue of a Hindu deity and claimed it had been there for centuries.

“I want him out by tomorrow” he said. “You must be in possession of your Air Force pistol. Use it if necessary”

I went back to my cabin, rang up the Mulund Police station and went out to meet the Inspector in charge. I told him my predicament. “Don’t lay a finger on him. Don’t take the law in your own hands. I will register your complaint and deal with the matter” he said.

I reported this to Karl Schutz in the presence of an architect who was sitting in his office. Karl turned red and called his Secretary and asked for some medication. He then stood up and called me a coward. “Either the godman goes or you go” he said

I suddenly knew what I had to do. “Give me the order in writing, Mr. Schutz” I said and I will carry it out” He calmed down and asked me to see him later.

Meanwhile the architect had spread the word around that the factory that they would get a new Administrative Officer.

The next meeting with Karl was a strange experience. He offered me a cup of tea and said. “I am canceling your probationary period. Your services are confirmed
from today. You are not a coward. If fact, unlike most of my Managers, you have guts. Most Germans appreciate subordinates who stand up to them and challenge them to think differently”

Karl Schutz passed away a few days ago. I owe him everything I am today. When he hired me he took a big risk. Between him, his deputy much loved Johannes Schmidt and his successor, the exemplary leader Dr Hans Wagner they encouraged me to obtain my Post Graduate Diploma in Management, sent me for a three month German language course in a beautiful school outside Frankfurt, helped me to acquire a second hand Volkswagen and later learn the nitty gritty of Psychological testing at their enormous factory that owned the harbour and railway station and the town of Hoechst. Some years later they gave me paid leave and fees-reimbursement to attend an Intensive Lab in Human Behaviour at the National Training Laboratory at Bethel, Maine, USA

Above all I learnt the values of hard work, discipline, fairness and justice and integrity.

When I retired as Director of Human Resources after 24 years of service Business magazines hailed Hoechst for its values and for not having a single day of work stoppage in a quarter century.

Karl Schutz and his successors must take credit for their encouragement of strong internal trade Unions and their ability to share power.

It took me 80 long years to really experience being operated upon. I have been inside a hospital lots of times. As a Management consultant, to conduct training progammes , to donate blood which is no different from Management consultancy with a little difference. In the case of Blood donation you know or hope some one will benefit.

In the case of Management Consultancy for hospitals I will really never know if any one has benefited from the painful donation of my report or whether it has been consigned to the dustbin or the dark recesses of a cockroach infested file. As a first time patient I had anticipations and anxieties.

Could employees have read my report and be waiting to retaliate? Would it happen to me like it happened to friend of mine who had criticised the watery soup he was being served every evening.?

“Our Chef is very proud of our soup” said the Catering Assistant. It is his mother’s recipe and no one has the temerity to refuse it. My friend did and realized that the soup was served to him via a scalding enema.

As it turned out no doctor or nurse or Ward boy had heard of me and my Management report. Praise the Lord. It was a frank, honest and somewhat critical report.

All went well the only mystery being that after 80 years of good health I had to have 3 surgical interventions.

First some of the unused stones meant for street fighting, mainly North Indian bashing seem to have found their way into my innocent gall bladder.A simple enough operation that would have been over and done with considering the skills of our surgeons . Unfortunately one of the stones who must have felt left out of the fraternity of stones slipped away and lodged itself in the bile duct and had to be removed via an endoscopy and the bile duct blocked with a stent.

All is well I thought to myself except on being discharged it was discovered that I needed a prostrate surgery.

“Continue your chopping” I said to the surgeons. Not so soon they said. We send you home with a catheter and operate after a month.

I was getting used to getting by body being butchered, but a catheter for a month was a new experience. How does one hide a plastic urine bag from the gaze of the rude and scoffing multitude?

A family conclave came up with many ideas. My grand daughters suggested that they would paint the bag….surrealistic art, bright, permanent colours and I could hang the bag round my neck. Brilliant I thought’ till I found that the weight of the urine was cutting into the back of my neck and no amount of deodorant spray could take away the “sulabh” public toilet effect.

We finally settled on my daughter-in-law’s idea of tucking it cozily into one of those long strapped cloth bags, carried over the shoulder by priests, nuns, social workers and poverty stricken artists who were expensive “Kholapuri chappals”

It worked wonders allowing me to lead a normal life including attending a party where I danced with females whose perfumed bodies did not give my urine bag even a momentary chance of recognition. Hurrah I said almost tripping on my partner’s floor length gown.

Happy to announce that with initial regrets there is always a flood of joy.

The other good news is from the devoted wife of an actor who swears that women are equally capable of rape as men are.

I tend to agree. Some years ago in a moment of misplaced charity I gave a lift to young woman waving frantically from the pavement. When the time came for her to get off she asked for five hundreds and told me bluntly that if I refused to pay a she would started screaming “Rape….Rape !!”

I opened the door of the car in front of a crowed bus top, gave her a fifty rupee note that I had, and told her my age. I am no Charlie Chaplin.

I therefore have no rational explanation for almost rarely watching television. I prefer good old reading, walking at the Joggers Park conveniently located near my residence, swimming or actually fooling around the pool watching mothers of different shapes and sizes teaching their kids to swim. I am not so sure which.

The old girl watches the IPL matches and thinks I am mad not to join her.

I have been a professional cricketer and hate the way cricket has been desecrated, commercialized and milked dry of every joy it had to offer.

But wait a minute. Suddenly and without warning I have started watching television a great deal. Ever since the Elections were announced and all the political parties realized that they had nothing to offer the voters except some great entertainment.

I call these shows “the great laughter crusade”

Let us start with the most hilarious of the lot. Here we have a young man who is actor, producer and director and audience rolled in one. I have spent hours watching his antics. There is so much authenticity in his role as actor. He screams that he will cut off the hands and legs of members of a community that he dislikes completely.

That dislike is flexible and deniable whenever the Chief Minister of the State in which he is contesting threatens to dismember him secretly in a local jail. The real laugh is when we discover is that this macho foul mouthed hero is nothing but Mama’s boy.

And Mama, mind you, won’t allow us, normally compassionate citizens, to harm an animal, bird or bee. Not even swat a fly.

Realising that he destroying his Mama’s lifetime agenda he switches to his late father’s magnificent obsession. Reducing or may be controlling India’s population that is neutralizing every gain we make. So he becomes over night the champion and ardent promoter of sterilisation.

What next? The TV programme tells me he will be soon a Member of Parliament. I start to weep until he announces that his 500 and odd colleagues would be the first to be sterilized. Pure entertainment. I fall off the chair laughing.

We also have a great deal of Bollywood type of entertainment. Several shady characters secretly visiting several fat women at separate times and different places asking them to reveal their Fronts. Which of course they don’t, leaving the shady characters salivating.

Although there is none of the usual chasing the woman around a tree till you get giddy nor the dip into a river to come out wet and “just about” revealing behind 12 yard saris that fat women wear, the suspense is unbearable since the vote counting has not yet started and Front cannot be revealed.

As I write this the counting is over, the results declared, the fronts discovered to be “falsies” big size no doubt. The entertainment is over with the common Indian voter having the last laugh.

One such “aam admi” told me a story that I need to share with you.

At a conference of surgeons the participants started to share their surgical experiences.

“I love to operate on accountants” he said, “you open them up and everything is numbered”

“My choice” said the second “are electricians. You open them up and every thing is colour-coded”

“My favourite patient is the librarian” said the third surgeon “you open them up and everything is in alphabetical order”

“Hold on” said the last one “you have forgotten the politician, especially in these election times”.

“They are the easiest to operate upon. You open them up and you discover that they have no guts, no heart, no spine and no brain. What is more they have only two moving parts. The mouth and the arseole. And mind you, they are both interchangeable!”

Let us hope that the U PA with a massive mandate will include in its programme a good deal of transplant surgery so that we start getting political leaders with a heart, more spine and guts and always with integrity and sonographic transparency.

The country has to be saved. From our neighbours. Not neighbouring countries but from ourselves. Our  neighbours down the street. The unlincensed driver who mowed down an 82 year lady standing on the pavement.

We have to be saved from defrauding bankers and criminal policemen. Professors who rape and rapists who profess high connections and get away to rape another day.

 We have to be saved from such frightening wanton freedom that nobody, just nobody ever has to pay for a crime . Not politicians, sons of politicians, Corporate honchos and  their kith and kin, not  self appointed moral policemen, nor high profile drug-doers.

And mind you not even a new avatar of a violent, hate spouting, minority baiting ahimsa-renouncing, completely “chakrified” Gandhi.

Indian Citizens are running scared and quite rightly are grouping together to respond to zero inflation, tumbling stocks and crumbling markets and bankrupt Insurance Companies using bail out money to bail out the life styles of their top people.

 There has never been witnessed such blatant criminality by those special people into whose hands we simple citizens have entrusted our rights, our freedoms, our security our very souls, only to be shamelesly betrayed.

And now with the next round of electing our “netas” citizens are saying that they will not taking it lying down anymore.

Witness the multiplicity of  unbelievable groups of people getting together to try and stop the rot in the coming elections.

 Lead India movement, Loksatta, Group of Groups, CitiSpace, AGNI, Citizens for Change, Commmunalism Watch. Just go to the net and sign in or better still attend their meetings .

Yet those of us who are octogenarians have gnawing doubts.

People say “What is the sense of our small effort?”

They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time

As Eknath Eashwaran of the Blue Mountain Ashram in California says “It is repeated acts of unkindness that make us unloving and repeated acts of kindness that can make us loving. How do I become patient? By trying to be patient every day, little by little, poco a poco.

We shouldn’t expect to go to bed one night the most impatient man or woman in the county and get up in the morning flooded with patience. Every day, every night, it takes continuous practice, continuous striving. If you are doing everything to be patient, you are going to become inexhaustibly patient. If you are struggling everywhere to become loving, you are going to be unfailingly loving.

In the gradual development on the spiritual path, it is better to concede that most of us start with a good deal of inertia. This shows itself as an attitude of avoiding challenges, shutting our eyes to the problems that confront the world. This inertia is slowly transformed into energy, just as ice when heated becomes water that flows – which can be used for irrigation and harnessed for any useful purpose that we approve of. In the same way, all of that locked-up energy can be released. But it requires steady effort, one step at a time.”

The change will come. Revolutions take a little longer. Be patient and do your bit.