The Perfect Vacation

"The Perfect Vacation" is a construct as phantasmal as the elusive Sasquatch.  I have addressed this idea previously as well, and every vacation we undertake seems to only vindicate this hypothesis.  It is particularly uncanny how minor inconveniences quickly devolve into major impediments when on a vacation.  

Why this kolaveri, you ask?  Lemme tell you...

9:30 PM

We checked into the highway-side hotel in southern West Virginia.  The kids were still wide awake, so we were able to actually walk through the lobby, into the elevator, down the hallway, and into our room like regular humans, as opposed to our usual MO of skedaddling through the concourse like two kidnappers with two napping kids.  We entered our room and turned on the light.  The room was smaller than I had imagined, but it looked alright.  Pavana threw her customary what's-that-smell glance at me and I appeased her with my all-is-well expression.  No complaints there.  We quietly began unpacking for the night while the kids began their usual I-know-this-is-a-bed-but-I-will-pretend-this-is-a-trampoline jumping activity.  All certainly was well.  Up until 9:35 PM...

9:35 PM

It all started with a bathroom visitation.  You know how when you see a ball-type doorknob on the bathroom door, you automatically expect it contain a built-in lockset comprising of a lock button on one side?  Well, this doorknob had no lock button.  It looked exactly the same on both sides.  Not a big deal, I thought to myself, and came out and appraised Pavana of what I considered an insignificant shortcoming.  

That's when I received my first eye-roll.

9:50 PM

After substantial badgering and hounding, Medha finally decided to do us a favor by using the restroom and brushing her teeth.  When she was done, she came out pulled the bathroom door shut behind her.  Two minutes later, Pavana tried to to open the door.  It was locked!

"I need to pee", said Pavana irritably.

"So do I", said Medha.

Pavana and I looked at Medha, then at each other. 

"What did you do in the bathroom two minutes ago?", Pavana began interrogating Medha.

"And how did you lock the door before closing it behind you?", I added.

"Amma...", Medha began in her signature howl, "I was first trying to wash my hands but I couldn't find the soap.  Then I was looking for my toothbrush, but I couldn't find it.  So I came out to look for my toothbrush.  You never gave me the toothbrush and paste..."

"So you didn't brush either?"

"Amma... you..."

This wasn't going well.  Both of them had ignored the real problem.  I interrupted with: "Let me call the front desk".

I received my second eye-roll.

10:05 PM  

The receptionist was in our room inspecting the bathroom doorknob.  "There should be a hole for emergency unlocking...", she mumbled as she felt the doorknob.

"There's none.  I checked", I said, "and the inside didn't even have a lock button".

"That's not possible", she said.

"Lalit", Pavana interjected, "Mira needs to sleep.  It is late".

"Let me see if I can find the maintenance guy", said the receptionist.

"Please do", I said, "and please tell him that the doorknob has no lock".

"That's not possible", she said again as she walked away.

I received my third eye-roll.

10:20 PM

The lights in the room were off now and Pavana was trying to make Mira sleep.  The maintenance guy, the receptionist, Medha, and I were huddled around the doorknob like a bunch of evil scientists watching their guinea pig sprout a third ear or something.  "There should be a hole for emergency unlocking...", said the maintenance guy, feeling the doorknob.

"There's none.  I checked", I repeated and added again, "and the inside didn't have a lock button".

"That's not possible", the maintenance guy and the receptionist chorused.

"Lalit", Pavana called out from the darkness, "I'm trying to make Mira sleep.  Medha needs to sleep too."

"Appa, I need to pee", Medha joined in inaptly.

This disruption seemed to flip some switch in the maintenance guy's head, for he instantly produced a giant flat head screwdriver from somewhere, jammed it between the door and doorframe, and basically just muscled the door open like a barbarian.  I half expected him to start beating his chest and start shrieking in triumph, but instead he returned to his meek self.  "Here you go", he said and began walking away.

"Wait...", I called, "how do we lock the door?  There's no lock button!"

"That's not possible", chorused the maintenance guy and the receptionist again.

I sensed a fourth eye-roll cut through the darkness.

11:00 PM

By this time Medha was asleep, snoring softly like a cat.  Pavana was humming Mira's preferred one-note lullaby song into her half awake ears.  The white noise machine roared in one corner of the room.  The receptionist was long gone.  The maintenance guy however was still in our room, huffing and puffing, trying to install a new doorknob with a conventional lock-set.  It hadn't taken me more than a few seconds to convince him of the absence of any kind of lock mechanism in the original doorknob, but it was taking him forever to install the new doorknob.  By the time he had finished installing the rosette and the latch bolt, I had lost all patience.  The actual knobs on both sides were yet to be installed and for some reason he was sweating and gasping for breath.  The doorknob of Room 226 was clearly taking a toll on him.  Lest the dude should collapse under the intense strain of doorknob installation, I asked him to leave it half installed as is.  The dude cautioned me saying that since the spring loaded latch was installed without the doorknob spindle engaged, it would be impossible to open the door once closed.  DO NOT close the door, he warned.  We'll manage, I said impatiently.  He left.

10:00 AM the next day

"Front desk?", I yelled frantically into the phone, "my wife is locked inside the bathroom!"

Reasonably Foreseeable Misuse

When it comes to the toddler toys in our home, reasonably foreseeable misuse usually happens at the highest possible occurrence rate, causing the manifestation of hazardous situations that are unforeseeable to even the most experienced toy manufacturers.  Somehow, toys too are designed in such a way that our kids invariably misconstrue their intended uses and use environments.  Videlicet, this stroller, which is the most awkwardly sized baby buggy known to mankind.

This stroller belongs to the loot obtained by dint of Pavana's conquests on Facebook Marketplace, the nonpareil of the Marché aux Puces de internet based commodity economics.  The principal purpose of this stroller was ordained to be that of a simple playtime diversion for Mira wherein she would be expected to place members of her collection of stuffed simulations of little animals and humans in the stroller and wheel them around the house.  The amusing thing is that Mira used the stroller according to its intended use literally once.  Since then the stroller has only served purposes necessitated by other unrelated games.  For instance, last Friday she loaded the stroller with a small plastic duck, three magnet-tiles and some rocks from her rock collection (originally from our landscaping, which has been long decimated), and left it on the deck.  The poor stroller endured the weight of all these objects and stood quietly on the deck for two full days, weathering the harshest of suns and heaviest of rains.  On Sunday morning, Mira decided to bring the stroller back into the house, all wet and mucky.  She threw her choicest tantrum to convince us to not only let her ruin her outfit by sitting in the stroller amid all the muck but also have Medha ‘stroll’ her around the house like a politician being driven around on canvassing rounds!

Eight Minutes of Horror

“Are you sure?”, I asked under my breath.

“Dude, shut up…”, he retorted in a harsh whisper, “just follow me.  No one is gonna know!”

“I’m nervous…”

“Shut up!”

The two of us tiptoed up the last flight of stairs leading up to the roof of the school building.  Our eyes darted around anxiously as we climbed onto the roof.  We proceeded one step at time, making sure no one was watching us.  What made our covert operation seem all the more iniquitous was that it was being carried out in broad daylight.  Sweltering sunlight, to be exact.  But we had no option.  It had to be done.

It had all started the previous day.  With the school annual day function just a day away, one of our Std VII classmates had recklessly spilled two fat drops of water directly onto the school tabla dayan, the tonal head, thus bringing the pitch down unevenly.  The prudent thing to do at that juncture would have been to report the incident promptly to one of our teachers.  However, our tabla player, who was my partner and the fearless leader in the above covert operation, had made the executive decision to not report.  “काही तरी करू आपण (we’ll figure out a way)”, he had said.  The three of us had then put our heads together and tried to come up with some idea.  After a few minutes we had hit ourselves up against what we had thought was a brilliant scheme, viz. leaving the dayan under the afternoon sun because the water-spiller, who incidentally was also our harmonium player, had heard from somewhere that ‘उन्हात तबला चढतो (the tabla goes up in pitch under the sun)’.

“What kind of a traitor is he?”, I whispered loudly to my leader as I gingerly closed the stairway door on the roof, “this whole thing was his idea, and he chickens out now!”

“One more word out of you and I will tell Madam that it was your idea… now shut up!”, the fearless leader hissed back at me.

“Okay, okay…”

We found a sunny spot next to the water tank, placed the dayan there, and ran back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as we could.

Later that evening, when everyone was getting ready for the big event, the two of us, all dressed and neat combed etc., went up onto the roof secretly to retrieve the dayan, and lo, there it was!  Disaster staring at us right in our faces!  A gaping hole ran right through the middle of the dayan, bisecting the syahi (the black spot).  It turned out that our double-crossing water-spilling harmoniumist was absolutely right about the sun’s ability to tighten the head of the dayan, for it had tightened it enough to crack under the tension!

Once we returned, the fearless leader intercepted the water-spiller backstage and said certain things that I cannot type here (yes, Std VII kids are old enough!).  I stood about 10 feet away, my heart racing.  20 minutes later, the three of us were on stage.  We were all sweating.  The water-spiller leaned over and asked me the one question he shouldn’t have been asking on stage, especially after having practiced together that whole month: “Which Raag are you singing?”

I gave him a stern look and said in my mind all the things the fearless leader had said 20 minutes ago.

“अरे tension आलंय… समजून घे (Dude, I’m nervous… please understand)!”, he said.

All nerves, I started my alaap in Raag Bihag.  The water-spiller was so nervous that he couldn’t play anything constructive.  Instead he just held down Sa with a trembling finger.  Not the worst situation from a performance standpoint, I solacingly said to myself.  I managed to complete my alaap successfully.

Then, it began.

The moment I started the bandish Kaanhaa Jaa Re Jaa Re in Madhyalaya Teentaal, the fearless leader launched into a totally irrelevant Drut Ektaal on the cracked tabla.  I glared at him in horror.  Our Madam, who was standing in the wings slightly downstage from us started making hieroglyphic gestures toward us.  The severe look on her face sent a shiver down my spine.  There was no doubt that she had noticed the injury the dayan had endured.  The fearless leader, not so fearless anymore, panicked and suddenly changed the theka to an ultra slow Madhyalaya Teentaal.  As I was trying to decipher the weird sounding bols emanating from the cracked tabla to figure out which matra he was on and adjust the bandish line I was singing, I suddenly heard random notes coming from the direction of the water-spiller.  I quickly turned to him and found him frantically searching for the right key to play on the harmonium.  I had no idea what had happened.  Maybe his finger had slipped and he had forgotten where Sa was?   Madam had now gone beet red in her face and looked like she was about to explode.

The performance ended up being a painful 8 minutes of sur searching, bol searching, and soul searching.  The longest 8 minutes of my life without a doubt, not to mention the proper dressing down the three of us received post-performance!

For the next few days, I kept wondering why the water-spiller had played those ridiculously random notes during the performance.  It took me a good couple of weeks to finally learn that the water-spiller had extemporaneously come up with the brilliant idea of matching his Sa with the weird sound of the cracked dayan, and was trying to locate the note while the performance was going on!

Sports and Me

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Have you heard this adage?  The issue with such adages is the lack of measurability.  I mean, how far is the apple allowed to travel before the adage becomes void?  Is this distance a function of the prowess of the tree?

My mother, was quite the sportsperson in her day.  She participated in college cricket, basketball, and competitive rowing.  And from what I hear, she was quite good.  In other words, a tree with hefty prowess.  On the other hand, I, the apple, turned out to be quite the antithesis.

It was summer 1992.  Wimbledon season.  I had just turned 8.  Everyone was sitting in my grandparents' living room watching a nail-biting tiebreaker between Andre Agassi and Goran Ivanišević in the finals.  While everyone was intently discussing Ivanišević's killer serves and Agassi's energetic baseline play, I was busy sketching.  By the time Agassi thrashed Ivanišević in the fifth set, I had sketched the entire match in the form of a comic book.  I basked in my family's praise that entire evening.  Everyone probably thought that the match had ignited a passion for tennis in me and that they could now have me learn and start playing the sport.

But that never happened.  

A couple years later, when my parents realized that I was reluctant to play any sport, they decided to sign me up for badminton classes, which I ended up attending for all of two weeks.  I remember prancing aimlessly on the court with a bunch of wiry kids, much taller and stronger than me, as part of a dreary warm-up routine.  I also vaguely recollect getting yelled at for not being able to grasp (pun intended) the correct racquet gripping technique.  A couple months later when I was strolling nonchalantly down a busy street, my mind badminton-free after having quit the seminary, I unfortunately spotted my badminton tutor in the crowd.  She was buying tomatoes or something from a street vendor.  Having seen only her authoritarian form hitherto, it was weirdly unsettling to see her in the midst of a worldly task like vegetable shopping.  Needless to say, I panicked, turned, and bolted!  I could hear her call after me, "अरे, तू खेळायला का येत नाहीयेस…? (Hey, why are absconding from class…?)".  I did not dare to turn around!

Cricket, I have to admit, was a slightly different story.  Just like any other Indian kid, I was deeply deeply passionate about the sport.  It was pretty much the only sport I actually wanted to play.  Unfortunately I sucked at it.  Our apartment building, just like every other apartment building in India, had a bunch of prodigious cricketing talents; we had a 12 year old Kapil Dev, a 9 year old Steve Waugh, a 10 year old Sachin Tendulkar, and a 13 year old Vinod Kambli.  I, however, was Bhaichung Bhutia.  Because, I would panic when the 12 y.o. Kapil Dev bowled the tennis ball at me, and would end up kicking the ball instead of striking it with the bat!  My cricketing story is so pitiable that while my passion for the sport made me one of the organizers of my high school Std VIII cricket league, I was the worst player of the lot.  I was ignominiously known as a "wide-ball slow medium" bowler in high school cricketing circles.  My run up resembled that of a fast bowler, sort of like Allan Donald's run up, but when I released the ball, all the fielders would brace themselves to catch the ball even before it reached the batsman, because no one, including me, knew which way the ball would travel.  Every time I walked back to the top of my run-up with my head down in disgrace, I would wish I had somehow missed the match like RK Narayan's Swami!

Now that this apple has fallen fairly far away from the tree, one wonders about the fate of the next generation apples.  Thankfully, Pavana played competitive sport when she was younger.  The word on the street is that she was a track and field champion in her day.  I made the mistake of playing table tennis with her while on our honeymoon.  She crushed me.  Absolutely crushed me.  The hope is that Pavana's sporting aptitude somehow rubs off on Medha and Mira!

Bhima and the Clean Kitchen

A radiant youth of immense strength and beauty, possessing the magnificent aura of his father Vayu Deva dwelling in the foothills of Mount Meru and boundless might second only to his older brother Lord Hanuman, approaches King Virata of the Matsya kingdom and stands before him with a cooking ladle in one hand and a chef knife in another, illuminating the ambience by his splendor like the sun illuminating the world.  He is none other than the powerful Pandava prince Bhimasena, disguised as the cook Ballava as decreed by his brother Yudishthira against the backdrop of Agyatavasa, their 13th year of exile to be spent incognito.  King Virata astonished by Bhima's magnificence says, "O mighty gentleman, who art thou?  What doth thee seeketh, pray tell me!"

With the poise befitting a Kshatriya price but with the humility befitting his disguise, Bhima replies: "O righteous king!  I am a cook by name Ballava.  I am artful in preparing delicious dishes and seeketh employment in thy royal kitchen."

The surprised King states: "O Ballava, it does not seem like cooking is thy office.  Thou shineth in my presence like a thousand suns as if it be true thou were a mighty warrior prince!"

Upon hearing this, Bhima responds thusly: "Do not doubteth me, O King of Kings, as the great King Yudishthira himself has relished my food.  Whilst it be true there is no one equal to me in strength, pray be assured that I am thy cook and servant first."

"Very well!", says King Virata, "I appointeth thee as the superintendent of the royal kitchen.  Just be sure to weareth FDA approved latex free vinyl gloves whilst cooking!"

Praveen Kumar Sobti as Ballava the cook in BR Chopra's Mahabharat

Had the Mahabharata happened in the Kali Yuga instead of the Dwapara Yuga, this scene from the Virata Parva might have very well unfolded in this manner.  If you have perused some of the comments under cooking videos on Facebook these days, you wouldn't disagree with me, for there seems to be an unreasonable profusion of the hygiene police trolling the comment space of pretty much every cooking video and declaring that they wouldn't touch the food prepared in the video with a ten foot pole because the chef in question hadn't worn gloves.  To think that there is an entire population of trolls that has made it its vocation to textually articulate its collective abhorrence of gloveless cooks!  I mean, what kind of a preposterous fixation is this?  

Coming back to the Virata Parva, it is said that the ill-tempered Sage Durvasa once paid a surprise visit to the Matsya kingdom when Bhima alias Ballava was employed as a cook there.  Being unable to prepare a grand meal to appease the great Sage on such short notice, Bhima decided to improvise with whatever he had.  He threw together little bits of vegetables and prepared a new dish that became an instant hit.  This new dish was christened Avial.  Now imagine if the dangerous Sage Durvasa, the one who had cursed Goddess Saraswati Herself to become a river and Lord Indra Himself to lose all his powers, had somehow discovered that Bhima had not worn gloves that day while preparing the Avial, we wouldn't be celebrating this dish and serving it at weddings today!