BRING BACK THE OLD VALENTINE’S DAY

{A sanitised version of this blog appeared in my weekly humour column ‘Urban Bourbon’ in The New Indian Express. If you’re the sort that gets easily offended, I’d recommend you read the newspaper version. Thank you. Jai Putin!}

I know it’s a month since Valentine’s Day has come and gone. But I have shit tons of shit work on my hands and I haven’t been able to convert my newspaper columns into blogposts. But here’s the thing. A month has gone past since Valentine’s Day, and I wanted to crib about it here.

Now, I’m no Bejan Daruwalla, but I can confidently assume that you spent most of the day finishing work, and looking at funny reels about Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day – the whole day and all the fanfare around it has become a joke. Memes and tweets and stories – self-aware, sarcastic takes on the tradition. This year, cities were not draped in red, and plastic cupids weren’t trapped at the entrance of malls. On social media, I saw more memes and reels on the ‘V-Day’ than any real messages of love, outpourings of feelings.

Honestly, I find it all quite boring. 

It appears that India has gotten over the concept of Valentine’s Day. Independence Day and Diwali have become more marketable occasions to brands. But back in the day, Valentine’s Day was a rather wonderful scam orchestrated by brands and advertising agencies. In those years, scams were more socially accepted phenomena. Chief ministers and Defence ministers would get embroiled in scams. Newspapers were crammed with fodder scams, stamp paper scams, stock market scams and telecom scams. But the one that affected the youngsters of middle-class families the most was the Valentine’s Day scam. 

Every Valentine’s Day featured a practised routine. About two weeks before the day, brands would expand their advertising budgets. Hoardings, malls and restaurants would deck themselves in red. Every single brand – from Vodafone to Nagarjuna Cement would cajole you to spend time with your loved one. Chocolate brands assured you that they could feel your lips, on their fingertips. Toothpaste brands implored you to get closer with confidence, as Sona Mohapatra crooned ‘Paas Aao’ to two random European looking youngsters. Even pen brands would have taglines like Likhte Likhte Love Ho Jaaye!

Television channels would telecast recent romantic hits on loop. Just as the President addresses the nation every Republic Day, Shah Rukh Khan delivered his yearly Valentine’s Day speech while peddling fairness creams, cars, or biscuits. While Capitalism was doing its bit, other stakeholders were also at play on Valentine’s Day. Every Valentine’s Day, the red of the balloons were accompanies by the saffron of religious groups, who would warn of dire consequences if the day was observed. 

Growing up in a small town like Bhubaneswar, the threat was real. If you were unfortunately caught by these groups, they would either thrash you, or forcibly marry you to your partner, before featuring you in the annual local news shaming process. I knew a guy who was caught on Valentine’s Day. He was a soft-spoken guy who had no ‘bad’ habits. He would ride his bicycle to the college and return home after the evening tuitions. On the fourteenth of February, he took his girlfriend on a date. Being a man of culture, he shunned the parks where bushes served as covers. He went instead to the planetarium in the city. The day went by blissfully, but when he was stepping out of the planetarium, he was sighted by a group. They began to crowd around him, and our valiant hero ensured the girl could escape from the scene. When he narrated the story to me – as I smoked by 2 rupees Chhota Gold Flake, it was a genuine fear for me.

And so, the youngsters in my town adopted their own strategies. The general consensus was to avoid public parks, or any establishments with red hearts, for these spots were prone to vandalism. Girls covered their faces with their chunnis, and the guys practised short distance sprinting. Theatres were also targeted. Back then, Bhubaneswar had ONE pub, and the ownership of the place changed every time I visited the place. On Valentines’ Day, the members of VHP would make a beeline for the place and shout slogans. Panicked teenagers would be rushing the fuck out of the place, as news channels reported all of this live. Every year, the same pub, the same story, the same headlines.

Since I have studied Commerce for five years of my life, I try to unnecessarily add economic angles to everything. And so, I have one such thought about the sudden emergence (and gradual death) of Valentine’s Day.

The phenomenon of Valentine’s Day was clearly targeted at youngsters in a post-liberalised India. An American capitalist idea credited to a Roman saint, the hallowed St. Valentine’s the saviour of young lovers (or whatever it is that bullshit story is).

And since I was the first one from both sides of my family to ever go on a date, I fell headlong into the Valentine’s Day scam. The first time I ever spent the Valentine’s Day, I saved up money from my call centre job (the salary was all of 3200 rupees). And gifting was a legit industry (like DVD rentals and puncture shops). Entire stores were devoted to gifting – like Archie’s and Hallmark – brands that have completely vanished today. I had the option of expressing my teenage love through a greeting card – where my deepest emotions were conveyed in the generic words of an underpaid copywriter. Chocolates were accepted too, as were keychains with the lady’s name on it. For the musically inclined, perhaps a CD featuring favourite tracks. For those musically inclined but financially unstable, one could always BURN a CD, tear off the “1000 Himesh Songs in One” tag, and present it to a girl. A meal at a restaurant, or a movie in a dark theatre. If you went out with someone, didn’t embarrass yourself, and avoided getting forcibly married or thrashed – it was a good day. 

In many ways, Valentine’s Day was a video game. You had to save up money, use them efficiently, make a few intelligent choices, and avoid physical harm through the day. Today, Valentine’s Day is spoken of in a sarcastic, ironic manner. As a nation, I can only presume that we have moved past the ideas of a day dedicated to expressing love. The entire idea seems rather cringey, an obsolete blunder from the wonder years. Through an economic lens, brands have now moved to digital sales on e-commerce sites, and the marketability of Valentine’s Day has taken a hit during the pandemic. But this is all boring, self-aware shit that I have had enough of.

Bring back the Valentine’s Day of yore. This modern, sarcastic version of Valentine’s Day sucks. I want the older version back. The one with red balloons, greeting cards, and the goons chasing youngsters from public parks!

*****

REVIEW: Break Point

Up until the year 2000, every sport in India had a token superstar. Their pictures would feature on the top of magazines like ‘Competition Success Review’, or railway magazines like ‘Wisdom’. For athletics, there was PT Usha. For chess, there was Vishwanath Anand. For badminton, there was Pullela Gopichand.

Unless you read the Sportstar, of course. As a magazine, Sportstar featured detailed cover stories across sports. Which meant that I knew a little bit about various sports. I followed the rivalry between Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen. I read about Davor Sukor and Ronaldo’s (not the dude who kissed Bipasha Basu!) exploits at the FIFA World Cup. I followed Oscar De La Hoya’s domination in boxing. Sportstar gave me a peek into various sports.

But when it came to tennis, it was always about the two Indians – Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati. It’s hard for today’s generation to imagine two Indians dominating a worldwide sport back in the 90s. There was barely any infrastructure, exposure, or private tournaments. India wasn’t doing great even in cricket, with our biggest cricketers throwing away matches like it was a dice game in Mahabharata.

Which is why Leander Paes’ bronze medal in Atlanta 1996 Olympics was such a big deal. It came out of nowhere, and immediately magazines began to feature the flashy, dark-skinned kid across their covers. In a few years, the combination of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati would be a regular in interviews, hoardings and even cameos in movies. The iconic chest-bump, the massive hoardings for Adidas, and the almost homo-erotic ad where the two posed shirtless.

Lee and Hesh in an ad that would give our politicians a heart attack!
(Picture Courtesy: India Today, Clicked by Bandeep Singh)

Funnily, I had never stepped on to a tennis court, or even touched a tennis racket up until then. The first time a few of us stepped on to a tennis court, we pretended to be Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes.

Break Point, streaming on Zee5 is a rare exception. Indians aren’t great at making sports films, or documentaries. What we end up making instead, are hagiographies. Mary Kom was an embarrassing film that featured a Priyanka Chopra looking playing a Manipuri boxer. Saina featured a Parineeti Chopra who seemed to share a passion for both badminton and gajar halwa. And the film Sachin: A Billion Dreams – had so much god-worshipping, I was half-expecting a pundit to pop up in the middle of the screening with a hundi and begin asking for chandaa! We Indians are too scared to rake up sticky issues, and too black-and-white in our narrations of sportspersons’ lives.

Which is why it is wonderful that the documentary is director by the director couple – Nitesh Tiwari and Ashwini Iyer Tiwari. They are no strangers to sports dramas (Nitesh directed Dangal), or stories of triumph against extraordinary circumstances (Ashwin Iyer directed Neel Battey Sannata). But more importantly, they bring with them a body of work as tellers of unique and gripping stories.

And there couldn’t have been a more juicy story than the two boys who were called ‘The Indian Express’ across the world. Two young boys playing against the leading ‘goras’ of the world. Money, friendship, and a rumoured love triangle causing a rift between the two. A brain tumour, public feuds, and substantial scoops of Bollywood thrown into the mix. In fact, the two of them fit right into the Jai-Veeru prototype of Hindi cinema. One was explosive and boisterous, the other silent and brooding. It was a story that had all the makings of a Bollywood potboiler.

If a documentary is supposed to help us get to know a person better, Break Point certainly succeeds in painting interesting pictures of the two leads. On one hand, you have Leander – boy genius (he won the Junior Wimbledon in 1990) who played with swagger and bravado. The one with the wild shots and funky hairstyles, the dude who dated a number of Bollywood stars. The guy with enough courage and belief to make Bhuvan seem like a backbencher.

And then there was Mahesh Bhupathi – the silent South Indian who looked like he’d lost his way from a vipassana center. Solid in his game, but rarely flashy or exuberant, Mahesh Bhupathi was the brooding sort who seemed content to be the less-spoken about among the two. If Leander was the alpha, Mahesh was the gamma.

But more than just the two sportspersons, the filmmakers paint a picture of the players’ roots. The Tiwaris also introduce us to the duo’s parents – both sportspersons in their own right. Both obsessed with the success of their sons, both willing to sacrifice so that their children fulfil their dreams. Remember, this was the time when it was impossible to take up a career in sports unless your parents undertook a Bheeshm Pratigya to make you a sportsperson.

But the documentary (which features in 7 parts) succeeds in its pacing. It wastes no time in setting up the characters’ childhoods. By the end of the first episode, the duo have already begun competing in international events. Their characters have been established, and the seeds of the rift have already been sowed in the relationship. Instead of meandering about, the film focuses solely on the ‘meat’ of the story – the ignominious split between the two, and the rift that made the world sit up and take notice. There is speculation, and tidbits of gossip. It is a sports documentary, but it also feels like watching a gossip update on the ‘Zoom’ channel.

After watching the documentary, my curiosity led me to googling the two athletes. I was surprised to find that the both of them have dated/married Bollywood stars. I learnt that Leander won lots of Grand Slams with other partners, as did Mahesh Bhupathi. And also that while they were going through their most successful years, they were barely speaking to each other.

The documentary does a good job with finishing every episode with cliffhangers, and presents a climax and denouement that is at once satisfying and emotional.

If anything, the documentary leaves you with questions of ‘What if?’. What if the two had spoken to each other and sorted their issues out? What if they had continued to have a long partnership, as is the wont with doubles tennis? Would there legacy then not been that of ‘what ifs’, but of ‘what else’?

Break Point is a satisfying watch if you grew up in the 90s, and happened to follow the ‘Indian Express’ through their Grand Slam victories. It makes you wonder how two Indians rose to the top of a sport in which India had no real global superstars.

As it stands, Break Point is a satisfying watch, probably the best Indian sports documentary I’ve watched so far.

***

Of Amul Surabhi and Kinetic Luna

Long long ago, before television became about quarreling women and fake reality stars, television was a much saner experience. Adding most of the sanity to the hallowed rectangular box was a programme called Amul Surabhi.

From 1993 – 2001, Amul Surabhi acted as the window to the world for middle class Indians. Presented by Siddharth Kak and Renuka Sahane, the show presented well-researched segments on history, cultures, science, sports and music. It was a show that the elders of the house wouldn’t miss for anything in the world, and sitting down to watch the show would earn children some brownie points for the immediate future.

This was the age before SMS, call, like, share and subscribe. The only way to reach out to Surabhi was through post, by writing a letter to the show. There was a sense of belonging that Amul Surabhi brought in to television viewing. People would send in artefacts created by them. Sometimes, letters of appreciation would be read out, while at other times, errors pointed out by viewers would be graciously acknowledged.

I was watching one episode where a girl named Shazia writes to the show. So inspired was she by their section on underwater life, that she had decided to research on it. Renuka Sahane immediately announced that all the research material that the show had collected on underwater life, along with the footage, was being shipped to Shazia!

While such moments brought warmth to the heart, there was another reason for which I watched the show. Surabhi being among the most popular shows of the time, their weekly contest was much coveted for. And what prizes they were!

Trips aboard the Orient Express – the luxury on wheels train, stays at premium hotels in travel destinations from Rajasthan to Kerala, goodies worth 1000 rupees (in 1993, mind you) from Amul. And in case of the bumber prize, a fully paid trip to South Africa, Greece, and other such exotic locations!

You can imagine the dreams they triggered in us. Every week, someone in the family would be allotted the responsibility of noting down the question (‘No, you give it to her. She can write fast, na’). While there was general excitement about the question, I had been possessed by dreams of my own. My hopes were pinned on the one item –

Kinetic Luna.

Kinetic Luna was generally the 3rd prize, but it had captured my mind in a way that the magnificient palaces of Rajasthan, or the lush backwaters of Kerala coudn’t.

I had seen advertisements for Luna on television, and had been suitably impressed. It didn’t seem intimidating (like the Rajdoot and Bullet), appealing to the slim and let’s just say, agile like me. I had also seen a number of Lunas on the road, and the humble moped had acquired decent street rep in quick time. It was supposed to give you good mileage, and it was easy to ride. It had pedals, so if you ran out of petrol, lalalala you could always cycle your way back home. And then, it was very handy for carrying luggage. In fact, if you loaded up a Luna to its maximum capacity, people might mistake you for Nadir Shah, returning home after ransacking Agra.

Also, I knew some relatives who had not one, but three-three Lunas at their home. What freedom, what joy! I envied them as they rode by themselves on Thursday evenings for bhajans – the wind in their hair, vibhuti applied over the forehead – coolness was made of stuff like this!

Having decided that it was the Luna that I aspired for, I had my task cut out. I had to find the answer to the weekly question. The only problem was that the questions weren’t dumb, like the contest questions of today: What do you need to score a girl? A: Axe Effect B: Tax Effect C: Wax Effect. Screw you.

Amul Surabhi’s questions were dug out from the deep pot of knowledge that appeared in the promos. Unearthed from this great treasure, was a question that required you to run around, to pursue its answer with passion and perseverance.

There was no Wikipedia, no internet. One had to remember the question, and spend the next few days hunting for the answer, a knicker-clad Indiana Jones bustling about in every home. One had to request to be taken to a library, or heckle a knowledgable relative, or go to a Book Fair in quest for the answer. You had one week to send in your answer, and parents were lending their support like typical 90s parents. “Arey, you can’t trust this postman-vostman fellows. You better send it in 2-3 days, what if there is a strike?”

After spending a few days finding the solution, one had to scribble down neatly write down the answer on the yellow Competition Post Card (sold at the nearest post office), and send it to Sawaal Jawaab, Amul Surabhi, Post Box No. 2453, New Delhi – 11.

Having gingerly dropped the post card in the shiny red box, the rest of the days were spent in flights of fantasy. My Luna!

My green, shiny Luna that I would ride on. Zipping through the streets like Jackie Shroff in his youth, charming one and all with my daredevilry. Riding on it into the sunset like Alexander the Great, my faithful Luna, that I would use to rescue people in distress. And sometimes, if my friends requested, I would even let them ride pillion behind me (but not all the time, for one doesn’t want them to get used to the luxury).

And then, in two weeks, it was time for the results to be declared!

The lights would be switched off, and the melancholic signature tune would float out of the magic box. Renuka Sahane and Siddharth Kak would smile, and inform us of all the wonderful things they would tell us about on today’s show. Interesting snippets from history, an exciting new excavation that sheds light on our glorious ancestors, and the beautiful apple gardens in Himachal Pradesh. And all the while, I’m fidgeting on the floor, thinking ‘Yeah yeah, India is a beautiful country, now let’s talk about the prizes’. And three rounds of advertisements, and a good number of nails on my fingers bitten off, Renuka Sahane would smile and say, ‘Now it is time for the weekly contest’. My back would stiffen.

Voiceover: This week, we received 48,986 letters in total (accompanied by footage of men carrying letters in suitcases). ‘Out of which, the number of correct replies were 4,756’ – shot of the letters being sorted out, cut to Siddharth Kak and Renuka Sahane sitting in front of a huge pile of yellow, 15 paise post cards, with names, addresses, and middle class dreams scrawled on the back.

‘We will choose four lucky winners for this week…’ and as Renuka Sahane slipped a delicate hand into the heap of letters, I handed over a quick mental prayer to all my favourite gods. My Luna was the third prize, so I waited with bated breath…

And the winner is, (Renuka Sahane would pick a post card, show it to the camera, the camera would zoom in…)

“…Random Kumar, from Nashik”.

My heart sank, but not for too long.

“…cos now it’s time for this week’s contest question…”

I would run to grab the notepad and Reynold 045 Fine Carbure. Another question, another expedition for knowledge, another date with the Luna.

*
I never won the Kinetic Luna.

In fact, I learnt to ride the bicycle quite late in life. In Class 3, while my classmates were zipping around in sleek, red BSA Mongoose bicycles for the annual cultural event, I was put in a dumb drill called ‘Horse and Stars’. Which involved running around with a plastic horse head attached to a stick, in between one’s legs (10/10 for symbolism), AND gigantic golden stars stuck on both of one’s palms.

Even today, when I see a Kinetic Luna zipping about carelessly on the road, laden with bags, vegetables, and fruits, I feel a tinge of pain. But then, I notice the cop whistling at the Luna and asking him to pull over, and I feel alright.
*
Amul Surabhi. Kinetic Luna. Simpler days with simpler daydreams.

Even now when I watch episodes of Amul Surabhi on YouTube, nostalgia often gives way to some pain, hidden in remote corners of the heart. I put my faith in you, Amul Surabhi, and you never returned my love.

You never chose my letter, Renuka Sahane. And Siddharth, you can suck my Kak.

*
(Crass jokes such as the above would never feature on Amul Surabhi. It was a classy show. Just saying)

My 10 Book Challenge

BOOKS.

For a long time, the word held a special place in my heart. At times, it signified a sinful indulgence, at other times, flights of fancy. And Facebook being Facebook, the recent 10 Book Challenge was sprung at me regularly.

For someone who talks a lot and writes quite a bit, the limited space on Facebook felt claustrophobic. How does one fit in all of what one feels in such a small space? How does one talk about the fantastic covers of the books? Or the smell of the pages that transported you into your own world? Or the smug feeling of satisfaction deep in your heart – when you sit through a Math class knowing you’re going to go back to your room.

Also, most lists seemed like an affirmation of sorts – Enid Blyton, Sherlock Holmes, Paulo Coelho.

Which makes me think, did we all read the same books as children? The entire nation, circulating a few books across each other?

So, here’s my list of 10 books.

Not all of them are great books, but through a combination of chance and scarcity, ended up shaping me in whatever way they did.

 

1. Chacha Chaudhary

The first book I ever got was a comic of the Beagle Boys.

It’s one of the earliest memories of my life. I must have been about four, and the comic came from a Book Fair that was held near my house. I remember sitting on the bed, staring transfixed at the pages. The colours, the lines, the words – they were all too much for me to make sense.

Till a relative explained the key – follow the speech bubble. Whoever the speech bubble points to, is saying the line. My world opened up after that.

I read the comic over and over. I read it while sitting, and lying down, and having lunch, and watching television. In a few months (or a year, perhaps), I was introduced to Chacha Chaudhary.

I had joined my boarding school at Class 1, and it was the winter holidays. My father and sister had come to take me home for the month long vacation, and brought along with them a Chacha Chaudhary comic.

This time, I was prepared. I was given a quick intro about the characters – of Chacha whose brain worked faster than a computer, and Sabu, who was from Jupiter. Since Jupiter was the largest planet, he was much larger than us earthlings.

I read Chacha Chaudhary comics like a fanatic. I read them on the way home, and while coming back to school. I read them in English, and in Hindi, spending half an hour at the shop, going through the covers (all of them in brilliant, blazing colours), sneaking in a few pages of every one of them before I was rapped on the head and told that the train would leave.

Chacha Chaudhary comics remained a feature of my journeys to home for the next five years. They were also the beginning of my days as a storyteller. Since I was among the few students who read comics, I would begin making up stories of my own to my classmates. As long as the stories contained Chacha and Sabu, my friends believed everything I said.

Once Tingu Master goes to Chacha and says ‘Chacha, I want to win the skating competition, but I can’t skate fast. What do I do?” Chacha says ‘Hmmm, let me think….Ok! I will keep your skates ready for you, come and collect them on the day of the competition.’

On the day of the challenge, Chacha gives Tingu Master the skates and tells him ‘There is a button on the skate. Once the competition starts, press this button. You’ll definitely win.’ Tingu Master starts the race, and then bends down to press the button. From inside the skates, hundreds and hundreds of cockroaches start coming out. All the other skaters scream and fall down, and Tingu Master wins the race.’

Now, the story above was like any other Chacha Chaudhary story. There was very little logic involved. The stories were generally irreverent towards science and common sense, and yet, I devoured them. The addict had gotten his first fix.

 

 

2. Fairy Tales

Around my third standard, I felt grown up. I had had my first erection, and the shared knowledge with few of my friends proved that there was a world beyond the one I knew. A world where boys and girls meet and fall in love, hold hands, and get married to each other.

It was around this time, that another transaction from the National Book Fair brought another book home. A collection of fairy tales, the book contained the Who’s Who of the world – from Cinderella to Rapuzel to The Sleeping Beauty to The Little Mermaid.

The book had illustrations on one page, with text next to it. I spent much of my vacations going through its contents, and imagining the same stories with my crushes. If there was a girl with long, luscious hair, I would close my eyes in the afternoon, pretend to be asleep, and imagine her to be Rapunzel. While everyone teased her during class, I would run up to her and tell her I knew of her secret. She would then climb up to the girls dormitory and let down her hair to the second floor, through which I would climb up.

We would then sit and talk about life, love, and food.

The wondrous escapade was cruelly cut short when my mother locked the book up. ‘It contains all love stories’, was her reasoning. I never had it in me to read a fairy tale ever again. The memories of unfulfilled love made it just too painful.

 

 

3. Hardy Boys

By the time I was ten, books had become a villain.

They were the epitome of all evil, and somehow could bring destruction to the house – among other things like playing chess, not washing your feet after using the toilet, and sleeping beyond sunrise.

The Hardy Boys were a little more serious than The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, whom I couldn’t take very seriously. How can you be a crime-solving group when one of your members is a dog? A dog? Seriously?

But Hardy Boys gave me the requisite boyish bravado that only pre-teen years offer. By this time, I had begun reading books on the sly. Hiding it from teachers at school, the ayahs at the hostel, and my folks at home.

Every book had to be read while keeping ears out for intruding adversaries. The Hardy Boys didn’t change the course of the world with their adventures, but they didn’t need to. Since I was at an age when I couldn’t probably handle sex, the timorous flirting of the Boys was enough for me.

Girls, you see, in Hardy Boys, did not form the crux of the story. They flitted in and out of the narrative, to keep the boys going. Much like the role girls played in my life back then. I never spoke to any of them, but went about my life, stealing a few glances every now and then.

 

 

4. Sherlock Holmes

 

I remember the day like it was yesterday.

The gate to the school was opened a little so that my father could walk in. Along with a few magazines (Cricket Talk, Sportstar), he handed me three thick books. Each of them had a similar cover, a silhouette of a lanky man smoking a pipe.

I was tired of the Hardy Boys sort of adventures – nobody really died in their stories. The evil people were arrested, and the town felicitated the Boys for the good work. And along came Nancy Drew and the Boys were now wrangling with her while solving cases -it was all too indigestible. I wanted the real thing – blood curling uncertainty, actual crime-solving skills (not the regular ‘Hey, there are some tracks. Let’s follow them….oh! Look, there’s a dead body – Fuck that!)

And that is when Mr. Holmes walked into my life. I read The Hound of Baskerville on a train, looking out of the window every once in a while to check if there was a creature pouncing out at me.

Since he was famous, nobody could admonish me for reading his books, even if the sly remarks continued unfettered. It is difficult to explain the effect Mr. Holmes had on me.

This was the age when strange things were happening to our bodies and minds. Dark, evil thoughts were brewing, bubbling up into thick, frothy evil that formed pimples on our faces. Mr. Holmes helped me wade through such turbulent times with his skills. I would look at a classmate and try to guess where he was playing in the playground. Look at the mud at the back of his feet, he must be playing near the Boiler on the girls side. Sissy fellow!

In the event of a heinous crime (a stolen book, or someone writing ‘You Love Nandita Sister’ on another’s notebook), I used whatever Mr. Holmes taught me.

 

 

5. Sidney Sheldon

 

He looked at the hair strewn at the bottom of the shower. Pubic Hair. It belonged to a man. He knew that men had curlier hair down there than women did. 

When I first read these lines, I knew not how to react. ‘Are people allowed to write stuff like this? Don’t they go to jail?’

For a long time, I assumed Sidney Sheldon was a woman. Only a woman could write in such a way, I thought. I was in Class 8, and well past the Sherlock Holmes stage. I mean, the adventures were thrilling, but Mr. Holmes was a tad clumsy around women. And this led to rare meetings with women, excepting the times when Mr. Holmes sat on his chair and moped about ‘her’. I wanted a little more, a little…ahem…more.

We used to go to the temple in the ashram for prayers and bhajans every day. For three hours, we were expected to cleanse our minds from all evil, and sing and clap and pray to God, hail his benevolence in creating the world, and pray for redemption from sins.While my brethren sang, prayed, or picked their nose and slyly rubbed it on the mats, I filled my mind with evil.

We were allowed to carry school books, and spiritual books to the temple. If you were caught with a novel, your ears would be pinched till you felt like Evander Holyfield. In such trying circumstances, I chose to carry Sidney Sheldon with me. I wrapped the book in newspaper, made sure it fit snug, and then slipped the book inside my shirt. I made sure I walked with my back straight, to avoid looking like I was to give birth to a paperback.

The books were passed on through an underground circle of novel-readers. I remember being pissed off when a senior flipped through a book, tore off a page, and then gave it to me. ‘You should not read those pages. They are very bad’. I never did that to my friends or juniors, though.

I got caught on a number of occasions, of course. The teachers were adults, and they’d met thousands of guys like me. But I had my days too. If I had a friend who was studious, I would beg him to carry the book for me. And once the item was successfully smuggled in, I had to race through it to ensure I didn’t have to smuggle it in the next day too.

Sidney Sheldon was my first exposure to sexuality. Since every book had an attractive female character who often indulged in wild sexual escapades, for a long time, I thought it was the norm.

 

 

6. Harry Potter

 

 

Class 9. I had been reading about Harry Potter in the Literary section of The Hindu. There were pictures of fat British kids standing in line for days to get their hands on the books, and glowing reviews of every one that came out.

But I had read Sidney Sheldon. What use would I have of such kiddy trivialities like magic brooms and flying witches? I smirked at anyone reading the books, walking past them towards the bathroom so that I could spend quality time with Lara Cameron.

I had fallen sick, and was required to spend a few days off school, lying on the bed in my room. I spent one day eating the bland food, listening to the prayers and recitations from the school building, bored out of my mind. It was then that I ventured out to ask a junior if he could lend me a Harry Potter book.

It was The Prisoner of Azkaban. I was reading it with hidden contempt, of course. But pages turned, into chapters, and as I read on, I slowly turned into a maniac. I devoured the book in two days, hiding it under my bed when a teacher walked in. I extended my fever by a few more days, going on to read the fourth book. I went back to the first and second, and then again to the third and fourth.

Harry Potter was the first time I felt the magical flights of fantasy that books could take one into. Agreed, I was a tad older than the target audience, but what are such trivialities in a magical world?

 

7. Letters to Penthouse

 

 

Summer holidays. Ladybird bicycle.

I had discovered a set of shops near the railway station that sold sinful books to innocuous teenagers as me. It had happened after I had run through all his books, shaking my head in disappointment as the many colourful, glossy covers failed to entice me.

It was then that the man nodded, and asked me to get into his shop. I crouched in, while he looked around nervously, and slipped his hand into a hidden chamber, and pulled out a set of books – Letters to Penthouse. 

These were sinful books of the sinful category. There was no going back from these, and you couldn’t even cloud your conscience with the fact that they were just portions of a larger story. Letters to Penthouse left no scope for imagination or redemption. And I had to read a book on the terrace, ensuring sweat (and anything else) doesn’t spill on to the already seedy pages. I then had to rush back to the shop near the railway station, give him the book, an additional 100 rupees, and another session on the terrace.

Dear Penthouse, 

I have been wondering if I should write to you for a long time. 

My name is Mary. I am 33 years old, with blonde hair, and…

 

 

8. Kafka on the Shore

 

 

Years passed, and books had become a staple in my life.

They didn’t thrill me in the manner that they did back in teenage. Books at this age were a part of my personality. It is unfortunate that by the time we get into college, we are unofficially segregated into two categories – book readers, and non-book readers.

I fell into the first category, spending many a day convincing friends to start reading. Read this book – Five Point Someone – it will change your life. No, really. I swear.

Books were no more an escape into a magical world, they were an excess. A luxury amidst the dust and grime of the world. I wish I could say I read a lot of books in this gap. But I didn’t. I read whatever was selling like hotcakes – from Dan Brown to Archer to Coelho. But none of them shook me up in the real sense.

Till I came across Kafka on the Shore. For those of you who haven’t read Murakami, it is difficult to put into words what he does. So I shall not venture into it.

It was the time I had gotten my first smartphone – a 3.2 inch piece of shit called HTC Explorer. When it wasn’t getting hung, it allowed me a few luxuries. One of them was Aldiko, with its bare basic graphics.

Kafka on the Shore is about a journey, and that is how I read the book. Travelling from Hyderabad to Kurnool, reading it in bus stands, railways stations, smelly buses, and back-breaking back seats.

As soon as I finished the book, I felt dark clouds of sadness. As we grow up, very few things move us. And you can tell when you have completed one such experience.

 

 

9. The Mine by Arnab Ray

 

 

By now, I had a blog that was fairly popular. I ha begun nurturing ambitions of writing a book myself. But I couldn’t bring myself to write about love and friendship – the two reigning forces in our literary world today.

I had begun reading Greatbong’s blog, and it was liberating to see another creature of the same species. Greatbong wrote precisely about the things I cared – crickets, films, politics, Gunda, et al.

And so when he announced that his second book was to be in the genre of horror, I was intrigued. This genial Bengali chap, who wrote about fluffy things, could he pull off a horror?

And boy, was I surprised. The Mine is a delightful book because it plays to no galleries. It is horror for horror’s sake, and yet it isn’t the creepy manor in eerie cottage sort of American horror.

The Mine, apart from keeping me glued, gave me some hope for Indian writing. And I don’t mean the posh-ass Amitava Ghosh, Vikram Seth writing. I mean the ‘Oye, that gandu is writing a book, it seems’ sort of writing.

The Mine is a bold book, and one that gave me confidence to think beyond a campus, a girl, and a love triangle.

 

10. Xanadu Nights by Hriday Ranjan

 

 

 

My albatross.

The one thought that is a ripple of pleasure, and a pang of guilt.

The one struggle I plan to get rid of by the end of this year.

Please buy the book (when it does eventually come out).

Sorry for the KLPD.

I hope you understand.

Growing Up in the 90s: Cricket

I have a friend who says that the one reason India never really played any other sport, is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The guy was so good, that he hijacked the imagination of an entire generation of children.
He said this after we grew up, of course. Because if he had said it back then, someone would have slit his throat. Or worse, burnt his collection of Trump cards.

I don’t fully agree with what he said, but there is some truth in the fact that we were obsessed as a nation. And never again, in my opinion, will that level of obsession be replicated. For two reasons:

1. There was hardly any other sport. Sania Mirza had not debuted yet, and Vishwanath Anand would feature in Sportstar frequently, but we would skip the pages till we reached the interview with Venkatpathy Raju.
2. Cable television had just been born, and unlike our earlier generation who depended on the papers and radio, we could actually watch our heroes in action. Which catapulted even bored children into fanatic worshippers.

All this led to a nationwide obsession with one sport – cricket. Your knowledge of the sport surpassed any ranks you scored in class, and the lack of knowledge on cricket, or an interest in it, brought about a social leprosy that was cruel. I have had friends who didn’t like cricket too much complain to me about it. When they would tell people they didn’t really follow cricket, people would gasp, as if they had said that they have only one kidney, or no heart at all.

We played cricket at school, and then returned home to play some more cricket, and then played some cricket in our fantasies. It wasn’t surprising that cola companies would come up with lines like ‘Eat, sleep, breathe cricket’ to promote their unhealthy crap down our throats. Now, cricket in school was a civilised affair. The school provided the bat, the ball, the stumps – thereby negating any favouristism or nepotism in the process. There would be a toss, and the game would be played in spirit of the game.

Or in the fear of the PT sir.

The PT sir would be overseeing the action, and so everyone would behave themselves. Which basically meant not reaching for each others’ throats at the slightest provocation. If the ball went out of the wall, we would all request passerby to throw us the ball, the bell would ring, and we would all go back to class, smelling like a bunch of obstinate buffaloes. Very civilised affair.

Not so civilised once school was over, though. Here, it was a Game of Thrones. You had to conquer a pitch, stake your claim over it by digging holes and drawing the crease. You had to build your army of soldiers, those who would be willing to sacrifice their home work to play a game with you. One of your army reached the ground early and put the stumps in place and dutifully waited for the others to arrive.

You played on the pitch, fighting among yourselves like hooligans. But once there was an external threat, you bonded like blood brothers to fight for your pitch. Finding a place to play was the major source of worry, especially with the bindaas lives that dogs and cows lead in our lives.

And cows came with their own set of worries – horny bulls who wanted you to learn Life Processes – 2 much earlier than your scheduled day of enlightenment. You scrounged the nooks and corners of the earth, to find that perfect spot to lay your stake on, and then drew the crease and put the stumps in place.

Of course, once your land was marked, and you had a thriving civilisation of cricket fanatics, your pitch would be the cynosure of evil preying eyes. The elder boys in your area, eyeing your pitch. The college going gang who just wanted a place where they could sit in a group and talk and laugh – the morons. And cows who wanted to sit in the middle of the pitch and ruminate on the larger questions of life. Who would choose exactly the middle of the pitch to drop a massive dump of dung – cow graffiti for ‘I was here’.

Unlike the cricket at school, playing cricket at home was a sordid affair. You fought for it with your life, and held it close to your heart. But the struggles didn’t end there. After you had vanquished the demons outside, you had to deal with the politics of your own army.

Every pack of kids playing cricket will be witness to three broad categories of players:

1. The Franchise Owners: The franchise owners would be the ones who owned the bat, and thus, the game in entirety. The owner of the bat wielded an enormous amount of clout in the scheme of things, considering that his possession – the bat – made the key difference between a set of boys playing cricket, and a set of boys hanging out with three sticks, one rock, and a rubber ball. The franchise owners generally called the shots in the game. And even when the merely defended the ball, they would call it an exquisite shot.
2. The Enthusiastic Gamers: These were the guys who would be instrumental in the day to day running of matters like the pitch and the space. These guys wouldn’t be great at the sport or anything, but made up for that with sheer enthusiasm. They would arrive first and leave last, and generally did the rounds, calling you out from your house when your mother was trying to stuff food inside you.
3. The Icon Players: Every league of galli cricket would have these icon players. These guys didn’t own the bat, but they owned the game. The franchise owners couldn’t do anything to these guys, thanks to the latter’s superior cricketing skills. Also, the Icon Players would be pivotal to things when challenged by other leagues to a cricket match. They had to be humoured, else they would drift away to another league.

Every galli cricket league had these three types of players. Each of them ensuring that the game ran along smoothly. Of course, if you owned the bat, were enthusiastic, and were the icon player – well, there was no stopping you. You were the Lalit Modi of the league, and anyone who objected to your actions would be sent a 10,000 page reply, in four cartons. But the process did not end with securing the rights to the pitch. There were the other nitty-gritties to take care of.

Firstly, the ball. Now, it is a well established fact that India is the only country where people play cricket with a tennis ball (Okay, may be Pakistan and Bangladesh too). But what is not mentioned is the number of tennis balls that were used to play cricket. When you are a younger child, it is always ‘Soft tennis’. Since there is more money in the league when you’re younger (since your parents are still trying to pamper the apple of their eyes), soft tennis balls are popular. They came in shiny, fluorescent yellow and had the name of the company written in bold black letters. A soft tennis ball would often provoke ridicule among the elders; the users of the Hard Tennis ball.

Quite simply, the Hard Tennis ball was a tennis ball that was hard. The ball itself had two colours, yellow-red, or yellow-pink. The market leader was ‘Vicky’, and to lose a Vicky hard tennis ball, was tantamount to banging your friend’s car into a tree. The hard tennis ball could hurt if you got hit on the nose, and care should be taken to avoid injuries. By batting all the time.

Third, and a poorer cousin of the tennis balls, were the rubber balls. They were simple rubber balls, the kinds that Dronacharya used to make Pandavas and Kauravas play with. Through all these years, it went through only one type of evolution. The makers had made the effort to add fake rubber stitches to make it seem like a cricket ball. The rubber ball was used when funds were really tight, since they came cheap.

On the flip side, they lasted for a maximum of three days, and if an Icon Player was knocking the ball around, it could crack in half. It was only much later, when your innocence was robbed off you by the Biology teacher, or the video rental store nearby, that you started playing with what was called as ‘Cork ball’.

Cork ball was made of some sort of synthetic cork material. It never broke, but did cause considerable damage to people’s noses. If parents got a whiff that the cricket was being played with a cork ball, there would be hell to pay. But the larger repercussions of using a cork ball were that the bats would crack.

You needed adult cricket bats for this. Not the ones that had a picture of Sachin Tendulkar, with the words – ‘For Tennis Ball Only’ written in small letters below. Setting up a new league entailed going through the grind each and every time.

And just when everything was set – you had a pitch, a bat, and a Vaanar Sena of your own. You found an ideal location for the stumps and drew the crease. The crease was measured by putting the bat on the floor and measuring it till the handle, and then adding the length of the handle only, to draw the final line. This line, of course, existed merely in the mind, as it would be erased, tampered with, and redrawn on numerous occasions through the game.

PC: futurehope.net

But for now, you had found an open space, and there were a few cows grazing in the distance, pretending they aren’t interested in your superhuman batting skills. But then, there would be other obstacles on your way. The ball would fall into the gutter, go into a house where a pissed off aunty wouldn’t return it to you, or God forbid, to a group of seniors who were playing at a distance. Now, I don’t know why, but if a ball goes into the pitch of seniors playing, they would either hide the ball, throw it in a drain, or throw it so far off that it would take half an hour to find it. When I was younger, I used to think the seniors near my house knew that we were better than them.

But when we grew up, I realised we did exactly the same thing. Perhaps it was a sign of growing up. Of being tough on the streets. Or something like that. But what did one do when the sun had set? When you couldn’t play cricket anymore because there would be drug pedlars who would give you chocolates and kidnap you and take out one of your kidneys?

You started playing cricket indoors. Corridors, garages, houses, dormitories – if there ever was a league of indoor cricket, India would kick Australia’s ass and become the king of the sport. Not only did we take our obsession with cricket indoors, we also enacted new rules that could be adapted to the change in scenario. Like the Hong Kong Super 6’s, indoor cricket had its own set of rules:

1. One Tup Out: Since you were playing indoors, you couldn’t dive around as you would normally in the ground. So the rule here was that if you caught the ball after it bounced ONCE, the batsman would still be declared out. The One Tup Out required Bradmanian skills if it was a small enclosure, and general public apathy towards the rule gave birth to the second rule.
2. One Tup One Hand: This rule said that you could catch the ball after it bounced once, but to be fair to the batsman, you could only catch it with one hand. The One Tup One Hand rule would have larger repercussions on real cricket much later, when rules like one bouncer per over were drafted in to benefit the batsmen.
3. The Three Miss Out: This rule said that if you missed touching the ball with your bat on three deliveries, you could be ruled out. Critics have pointed out that this rule could be inspired from baseball, to which the makers of the rule nonchalantly pointed out that it was called ‘three miss’ and not ‘three strikes’, and hence it was merely an inspiration. Indoor cricket was great for afternoons, when elders either went to work or took a nap. It could be played without making much noise, and the only risk was breaking a few things in the house.

Indoor cricket, some would say, required a lesser amount of cricketing skills, and sometimes turned out to be more enjoyable than the game outdoors. Here, there was nobody picking on you, no need to put your hand in a drain, and the ball rarely got lost.

But what if you did not have access to a bat or ball at all? Like in school, when you were forced to study? Of course there would be a way out!

“The absence of a bat and ball do not stand as obstacles to the obsessed” – Anonymous.

The chewing gum scene back then was just turning bright. For years, we chewed on Big Fun, simply because they gave cricket cards free with each pack. It was a different matter that the bubble gums themselves felt like scented tails of pigs. But we chewed on, since there was a cricket card to win. Somewhere along the line, came Center Fresh.

Center Fresh produced chewing gums that were actually enjoyable. For once, a chewing gum didn’t seem like the necessary penance to achieve something else. There was a nice jelly in the middle of the gum, but best of all – they provided cricket cards. Bright, colourful cards that had no spelling mistakes, factual errors, and the pictures were bright and clear.

Not like the Big Fun cards, that looked like the receipt of a weight checking machine at the railway station. Of course, there were the cricket cards that were available in the market. You could simply buy a pack and laugh at all those people who were chewing gum like maniacs to collect the entire pack.

Cricket cards of that era seemed to be frozen in time. I remember the numbers changing just twice in all the time I played with them. The statistics were pretty simple – Matches, Runs, Highest Score, Batting Average, Wickets, Bowling Average, Best Bowling. There were a few Trump Cards in the pack, but you could still beat a Wasim Akram card on the basis of batting, and a Mohd. Azharuddin card on the basis of bowling.

There was a sense of fairness and justice in the entire process. There were WWF cards too, but rumours had begun to float that the matches were all fake, and seniors at school would sometimes snigger if they saw you with WWF cards (or snatch them away, depending on their IQ).

But since cricket cards were based on actual facts, and you could actually see the matches on TV, and read about them in print, they were considered holy. Possessing a good collection of cricket cards automatically meant that you social standing would shoot up, people would generally invite you to their discussions, hoping that you’d decide to bring out the cards. However, cards came with their own set of risks.

If you were caught playing cards in class, you were screwed. The cards would sometimes be thrown away, or torn, or simply confiscated. Numerous trips to the Staff Room to find them would prove futile, and it would be the end of your prized collection. Also, some of us had spiritual parents, who thought that playing cricket cards is the gateway to more sinister habits, and we would grow up to be gamblers who would blow up all their hard earned money. Making cricket cards a considerable risk, on occasions.

What did one do if their cricket cards were taken away from them? Give up on cricket? Hell no! There would be other options, obviously. For those who had access to neither bat, nor cricket cards, there was Book Cricket.

I remember feeling grateful to the person who invented the game. It was an ingenious concept. You held a text book in your hand (preferably of the subject of the ongoing class), and opened a page randomly. You then looked at the page on the left. The last digit of the page number denoted your score. For eg, if you opened page no. 54, your score for that delivery would be 4. If you got a page that ended with 0, you were out.

While purists preferred the Test match method where every player was allowed to play ten batsman, those with lesser patience opted for a limited number of book openings, and the total score was accumulated. Agreed, it did not set your pulse racing, nor did it come with ups and downs of playing a sport. But it could be played right in class. You needn’t even speak to each other, and if a teacher arrived, you would look like two kids looking at a text book and making notes.

After the Drona Award and Arjuna Award, if the government decides to award innovation in sports, probably name it the Ekalavya Award, then the inventor of Book Cricket should win it.

But teachers in our school eventually got a whiff of our nefarious activities. They probably saw a long list of numbers and wondered why the guy was practising basic addition in Class 7. But Book Cricket was busted too. And now with Book Cricket out of the question, was there anything else I could do?

How could I contain all the enthusiasm for cricket that was bubbling in my mind, threatening to spill out? I devised my own way. I realised that there was something that no one could take away from me. Something that was deep within me that only belonged to me. My dreams.

We would be asked to sit for hours at a stretch to meditate, and I had a tough time reining in my mind, that was running like a wild horse towards Raveena Tandon. I started daydreaming about cricket.

So when everyone would be asked to close their eyes and meditate, and I was done with my customary meditation for Raveena, I would start daydreaming about cricket. It would begin with me bumping into Debashis Mohanty randomly while playing cricket at the local Shahid Sporting Club. Just a regular ‘Hi-bye’ sort of a meeting, not for me the falling over and taking pictures. I was cool.

He would be talking to a group of (less knowledgable) kids about cricket, when I would barge into the discussion and spell bind him with my vast and expansive knowledge of cricket.

We would strike an instant connection and sow the seeds of a deep friendship. Later that day, when he would bowl to me in the nets, he would be surprised to know that I was quite a talented batsman too, with my flowing drives and booming pulls over mid-wicket. Later he would call me to his house for lunch, as we would sit and discuss, like two brothers, everything from W.G. Grace, to why swing bowling needs to be promoted if we wanted to win more tours overseas.

This would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and when India would play a home series, he would write to my school asking for permission. Permission for me to join him while he was preparing for the series. ‘He has got a deep understanding of cricket and we in the Indian team are of the opinion that we could benefit from his inputs, and together bring unending glory to the nation. Hence, we kindly request you to let him accompany us.’

Who would deny a letter written like that? Our Headmistress would let me go, and I would join the boys in preparing for the tour. I would have chats with them on specific tactics for specific bowlers (‘Sachin, you need to be a little careful while playing Cronje, he’s gotten you out a few times earlier).

I would also advice Srinath run in hard for the first few overs, since he was our best bet to take early wickets, and my friend Deba could come in as first change and look at causing further damage. Venkatpathy Raju, whom I never liked much, I would barely talk to.

I would spend hours in my dream land. When I would walk, I would be either practising a shot or doing my bowling action. At home, when I was asked to sweep the floor, I would practice some drives (was never really good with the sweep shot, only cowards play that shot). It reached a stage where I would be doing the bowling action even while walking for lunch, or coming out of the assembly. And so would a lot of other classmates of mine.

Finally, the class teacher announced that no one was allowed to do the bowling action. If anyone was found doing the bowling action, they would be banned from going to ‘Games’ on that day (she obviously knew little of the other methods we had devised). Once when I got caught doing the bowling action, I was tempted to explain that I was doing Shahid Afridi’s action, and technically it wasn’t really a bowling action, as his action had been called for scrutiny by the ICC. But better sense prevailed. I quietly accepted the slap on my cheek, did not show my other cheek, and left.

 

*

 

Cricket, you see, was not a game played on a ground, with a bat, ball and sticks.

Cricket was in the heart, the soul, in the blood running in our veins.

Cricket was in the mind.

Growing Up In The 90’s – COMICS

When I watched V For Vendetta, I was surprised that it was adapted from a graphic novel. While the film didn’t shake me up so much, reading the graphic novel was a different experience altogether.

It shook me and stirred me. Not so much for the content, but for the form. That a graphic novel, after all just a fancy word for a ‘comic book’, could be an experience like that. I moved on to ‘Watchmen’ and the lesser known ‘Lost Girls’, and while they were two different genres, I am still bowled over by how much a comic can do.

I started reading Asterix around Class 9. It would of course take a few more years to understand all the puns. Everytime I reread an Asterix comic, I seem to understand something which I am sure I wouldn’t have understood the last time I read it. It’s like a Treasure Hunt in a book.

Tintin was always easier on the mind. I started reading Tintin in Class 7. They were beautifully crafted and every comic took you to a different place, like a magical journey.

But of course, like Coca Cola, these were foreign imports that came into my life much later.

Because you see, comics were just things that were bought while travelling on a train.

 

******************************

 

Whenever I would leave for my boarding school, my parents would buy me a Chacha Chaudhary comic. You can snigger at the amount of respect they gave to my comic reading habit, but you wouldn’t laugh if you saw the girl who was travelling with us. Her parents always bought her the 5 Rs. ‘Wisdom’ magazine that had a picture of a creepy smiling kid on the cover.

Those Wisdom magazines, like the name, had pearls of wisdom strung together with toilet paper and terrible pictures. The entire book looked a dull maroon, and there was just too much information on it, with too few pictures. There were anecdotes, facts, information about places, every page had a quotation at the bottom of the page. I always found the magazine stifling – like an adult is trying to shove some food into your mouth. Large morsels that you couldn’t swallow and hated in the first place.

No wonder the girl next to me cried.

But my parents bought me the Chacha Chaudhary comics and sent me to the school. After I had fought off tears so that my friends did not think of me as a sissy (“Ah! There’s something in my eye, let me wash it and come.”), the time to leave would arrive.

The train would chug off from the station, and after crossing the station, would be near the smelly slum next to the station. People would be shitting behind their huts, which was right in your face. Which made looking out of the window a little difficult. So I would settle down and open the comic.

And what shitty comics they were!

You know how we romanticise nostalgia? How everything that was a part of our past is glorified as ‘Those Magical Days’ and ‘We didn’t Have Video Games, We Played Real Games’ and all that?

I think some of that is bull.

Like, for example, I am glad we have other comics now. I was glad that Big Babool came into the market, ridding us forever of those 50 paisa coins that were so bad that when our teacher told us bubble gums were made from pigs’ tails, we believed her. They had to be, they were that bad.

Similarly with the comics. The comics I used to read were terrible, and I don’t even know where to begin.

First of all, the terrible illustrations. Every Chacha Chaudhry comic would have a cover that would somehow entice you into buying it (Like Sabu hitting a cricket shot), and then you would open it to soak in the disappointment. The cover had a brief introduction about the creator – Pran – and how he had won this award from Indira Gandhi for creating this outstanding comic.

Now, I am sure as adults they saw something deep and stimulating in the comics. Because as a kid, I didn’t see shit.

The illustrations were terrible. All the people looked the same, and their arms, legs, expressions, even their bloody chins looked the same. And the hands!

Pick up any Chacha Chaudhry comic, and notice- The Hand.

The Hand will be like that no matter what is the story, character, or scene in any page of the book. Character sitting on sofa? Creepy hand comes into play. Character bowling in cricket match, the hand will be there.

And it wasn’t just the illustrations, the comics screwed with my head. I remember reading them in Class 2, and feeling all warm and fuzzy when I read that Sabu is from Jupiter.

My science teacher in school, however, had other notions. She taught us how to mug up the names of nine planets so that we could vomit them in our examinations (My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets). She went on to tell us that there was absolutely no life on any planet (even Jupiter). But Chacha Chaudhry comics had stories where they went to Jupiter and everyone there is a giant like Sabu. I was confused, and shocked.

Now, I understand comics are supposed to be taken with a stretch of imagination. If it was possible for a young boy to go around the world solving cases with his dog and an alcoholic sailor, why was it unbelievable that a man from Jupiter lived with a man and rid the world of evil?

I am fine with that. Its just that the comics were terribly pieces of work. Everytime I finished reading one, I would feel crestfallen. Like a crack addict who is disappointed that he fell for the temptation again.

The comics neither had a great plot, nor any interesting twists. I remember stories where Chacha Chaudhry would outwit the opponent by pointing behind him and saying “Look!”. The person would look, and Chacha would hit him on his head and take his gun*.

[* Chacha Chaudhary’s brain works faster than a computer ]

When all the while there was this giant next to him who could pick up the culprit, dip him in hot oil and eat him up.

It was just bad comics – badly written, and badly illustrated.

I read the comics for a few years. There were other characters in the Diamond Comics stable too. Billoo, Pinky (who incidentally had a comic called ‘Pinky’s Pussy’), and Agniputra Abhay. The last one about a man who had every power known to man and his friend Abhay – a man who had a talking motorcycle that he called ‘Princess’.

Yes, things were that bad.

Fortunately or not, my mother had weird interpretations of the teachings of Sai Baba, whom we worshipped. She would listen to a discourse and infer that he was asking his followers not to wear jeans. In another, she inferred that comics were bad for children.

There was a blanket ban on comics. Those evil things that could encourage violence among children. Little did she know that it wouldn’t even encourage Garfield to pick it up and swat a spider with.

Comics were banned, and I could read nothing on the train. In those desperate times, I even contemplated getting a peek into ‘Wisdom’ magazines. I needed my fix, my next hit.

And then, peeping in from the darkness, came the ray of colour and shine.

Any guesses what they could be?

 

(To be continued)