Ho jaata hai baba...

I always thought my Clients would kill me one day. Yesterday they almost did.

I have this Parsi client, who is trying to battle encroachers on to his humble ancestral property at Malabar Hill. The Parsi has been living with a Gujarati for the last 40 years, ever since they studied together at undergrad. Thereafter, they roamed about all over the world and now stay together at Malabar Hill. Neither of them are or have been married, and they are now pushing 70. They have never discussed their sexual orientation with me, and I have never asked. Of course, they've never given me any time to bring up the subject because the Parsi is, as all Parsis are, obsessive, and he is compulsively obsessive about his case.

Coming back to the incident at hand, after completing a Court hearing, the Parsi pulled out his Maruti 800 while the Gujju and I waited at the curb across from the Court. When the car pulled up, the Gujju insisted I sit in the front, and I complied while the Parsi sat and muttered a check list of things to be done. The Gujju took his time moving the stuff at the back, so that he could sit. The Parsi, having finished his update, pressed the accelerator to move.

Only, the Gujju had only one foot in the car.

Initially I thought that only the door remained to be closed. Then I stuck my head out of the window, and saw the Gujju running to catch up with the car. He screamed the Parsi's name, and the Parsi seemed to take this as an indication to go faster, and to my utter horror I saw the Gujju fall and tumble several times, I heard glass break and the screams of other mortified onlookers. This entire scene just took a split second, in case you are wondering how long it took me to react.

"ABC!" I screamed, "STOP the FUCKING CAR!! XYZ has FALLEN!"

The Parsi slammed the break. And my head went right onto the dashboard.

Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to put my hands on the dashboard so that they cushioned my headbang. Still, there was some impact. I sat there, with my head resting on my fingers, dreading to look up to see that the Parsi had made a Gujarati Chutney out of his boyfriend.

The Gujarati was intact, but hopping mad.

"ABC, what the hell are you doing, huh? What the hell?" He fumed, throwing the backseat clutter with an energy which can only be channelized fury.

"Arre bhai, sorry na, ho jaata hai baba..."

"What sorry, huh? Every time same thing same thing and then sorry sorry. What is this? You don't care about anyone else, you are not bothered..." and some abuses in Gujarati later: "What sorry?"

I was right in the middle of a gay domestic squabble.

I excused myself on the ground that there was some work in court that I needed to do, picked up some ice and a 10 rupee cotton napkin, and flagged a cab as I pressed the icepack to my forehead.

On a seemingly unrelated note, on our way to work A and I were discussing the "thin line" between the end of the "honeymoon period" of a relationship and just not caring. We all know that relationships do not enjoy the same feverish level of involvement as they do in the beginning, but does that mean that we should allow them to settle into a world where everything is taken for granted? Do you think the Parsi also never called the Gujju when he should have, that he forgot birthdays and anniversaries, never noticed a new haircut, and then finally, running over the Gujju was just another "ho jaata hai baba" in their relationship, 40 years down the line?

I agree with A when she says that there never is a perfect relationship and there will always be problems. I guess, in time, people should stop being naive about being taken for granted. Isn't the entire point of a relationship the fact that you can take someone for granted? You don't need to call on that one day you're swamped with work, you don't need to shave your legs every day, you don't need to go to the most expensive places to get a drink and still, you won't get dumped, and you can still have a person to call your own. But is there a line which shouldn't be crossed? Or is the secret to a successful relationship not running over each other?

Anyway, this has given me at least one day off from work - so what if I can't move!

Observations of the world around us

Some observations of the world around us from the weekend gone by:

1. Sunday: Just in case you weren't thrown off by the real random happenings and bad acting just 10 minutes into the movie, the item number should be enough to get you walking straight out of the theatre. Any movie which uses Tushar Kapoor as an item boy should not be allowed a release on grounds of humanity. As if that wasn't bad enough, in a flashback scene, they insist on replaying Tushar's introductory footage. The only good thing about the movie is Arshad Warsi and Irfan Khan. See, its movies like Sunday which make me think that some movies should only be released on DVD and not in theatres, sort of like a committee of brave souls which watch the movie and say. "Well, now that you've put in all this effort and come up with this piece of shit, let's not torture people too much, shall we?". So you can watch the movie with the luxury of fast forwarding the real crappy parts. Have you heard that if you watch Sawariya on 4x speed on DVD it can actually be a meaningful piece of cinema?

2. The possibility of there being too much of a good thing: Or how my enthusiasm over writing for the food blog has given me indigestion.

3. Sometimes no rent can be a bad thing: It's nice to live in your parent's flat and not have to pay rent in a fuck-all real estate place like Mumbai, but it's kind painful when they drop in and you find out that they haven't done return tickets.

"I'm the master of my time", says Dad, stretching out on the sofa.

Hmm.

4. Long Distance relationships: Work for very few people. For the people who make it work, let me tell you, it is a complete and utter bitch. I am now convinced that the only feasible long distance relationship is with your parents. Come to think of it, any other relationship with your parents is unfeasible.

5. Mumbai weather: If someone tells me about tropical climates, I might hit them. Yeah, it's cold in Delhi, I know, but its cold in Mumbai too - and it gives you the shivers because you're not ready for it at all - almost like a snap test for 5 of those 20 marks which were part of the murky "internal" component of the board exams, and flunking this test could mean messing up a possible 10% of those 20 marks which, back then, was the end of the world.

6. PMS: Is certainly not the recommended frame of mind to be having, however, I welcome it with open arms. It's wonderful how a bad mood and water retention can sometimes put a lot of things into perspective.

7. Peer pressure: Never really ends, it just gets you to do new things. So I was on the "ha ha I lived my childhood without peer pressure and look at what it got me so what if i was a fat kid with bad skin and braces with no social life at least i'm not like the cool kids I studied with who now work for Barista" trip for a long time. Now suddenly, as I lay awake one morning (see point No. 2) I realized that a lot of things I have been doing are not because I want them, but because they seem the right thing to do by my peer group. I have been forced to place a ban on conversations with people who a. are getting married b. are quitting their jobs c. are trying to lose weight because I am tempted to get all gung ho about doing things I do not particularly want to do. This has to stop somewhere. After all, the world cannot possibly handle 80 unemployed, married and anorexic Law School graduates.

8. The secret to alleviation of all potency problems: I was forced to have a discourse on sex with my Boss when I was working on a case in which a guy allegedly raped a woman 6 times in two hours. I went into his room, hesitatingly, to tell him that this allegation counters everything I knew about sex from biology textbooks (yeah, right). I never thought saying "multiple orgasms" in front of my Boss would be that difficult.

"Rape connotes only penetration," explained Boss. "Not an Orgasm. He penetrated her six times, and the entire act went on for two hours."

This put things into an entirely different perspective. You see, the first half of my sexual partners (taking a broad definition of sexual) have suffered from, well, deficiency. Of course, this was a rape case and I had sympathies with the victim. Also, my curiosity was not reflective of my present sex life, or rather, the lack of it. This was a purely academic interest.

"You mean," I asked. "TWO HOURS?"

Boss smiled, like a smug lecturer who deliberately leaves out a detail and says "I knew this question was coming..." and said words which would help women claiming sexual deficiency on the part of their partners all over:

"He was coked out of his mind"

I downloaded Clapton and listened to it while reading the chargesheet:

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; cocaine.

Dont forget this fact, you cant get it back; cocaine.

She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; cocaine.

The Numbers Game

I walk into the little lane that leads up to my office to see that the local newspaper and magazine vendor has erected a poster of the latest filmfare with Kareena saying: "Who gets love bites on your back?"

Somebody can use a little imagination in the bedroom, what says?

The power-couple of Bollywood, or so they would like to believe, should be banned from appearing on the Cover of ANYTHING, even a can of sardines. If Khalid Mohammad places Kareena on the cover of HT Cafe one more time, I might be provoked enough to swallow my pride and go back to ToI. As for Saif Ali Khan, well, he will now be immortalized as the first cover boy of Rolling Stone India. What, are we completely out of photogenic men able to pose with musical instruments? Of course, all good Indian rock musicians are actually Pakistanis. But surely, something better than Saif is manageable?

Then again, its better than Shah Rukh Khan, airbrushed 6 pack and all, holding a violin.

Bombay, I'm back. As you can see, Bombay has made me suitably crabby and I sulked the entire commute to work. It's this city, I tell you.

Yesterday, as I was waiting to clamber into the train, I got a call. Excitedly thinking it was my boyfriend, I whipped the phone out, only to find that it was "Ajay" calling.

"Who's that?" asked Dad, noting my obvious irritation.

"Some random guy", I said.

"Then why does he have your phone number?"

Good question. This goes back to one day in the Metropolitan Magistrate's Court at Bandra, when I was supposed to appear in a Colleague's matter. A fair, young guy was standing next to me, and I was in need of making my stupid sarcastic quips to someone, and he seemed to grasp basic English, so there we had it. He also helped me on a few tactical tips while appearing before this Judge. Everything was fine. He told me about how he was practicing with some guy who was a Professor at his College (talk about Campus placements) and was based out of this Court. After my matter was over, he then asked me for my phone number.

You know what? It's easy to say "Well you should have told him that you don't give your numbers to strangers... that you don't have a phone... that you would rather eat yourself whole, starting from your toes, than exchange contact numbers with him...". But when someone a guy asks a woman for her phone number, especially in a professional set up, denying it is not so easy. If you're a lawyer, exchanging phone numbers can ensure that Clients are referred to you, that you have some trusty soul to keep your matter on hold while you are stuck in traffic, that you have someone to consult for a quick tip on advised course of action before a particular Judge. Socializing was a necessity, created by rules made by the male bastion. In those days, there were only two female criminal lawyers. One was a majestic Parsi Lady whom no one would mess with, because in Bombay you never messed with a Parsi. They'd probably wind up being your landlord. The other woman was about 6 feet tall, 4 feet wide and with teeth which jutted out from her mouth like a coconut scraper, if you know what that is. Anyway the standing joke about her was created when a new whisky in the market was rated by the Bar Association (not pun intended):

"After two pegs, you can see Mona Lisa smiling. After four pegs, even *** smiling looks like Mona Lisa"

Sad, sad. But that's the Bombay Bar for you.

What I'm trying to say that the rules created by the male bastion never figured the possibility of young, unattached women in practice, desperate men, and the SMS phenomenon.

That evening, after exchanging numbers with the seemingly harmless Ajay, the barrage begins.

Good night messages, good morning messages, good afternoon messages, "look at the bright side of life" messages, "forward to 25 people or else you will drop dead of diseases you never even thought existed" messages - the works.

A few days later, he even called. And even more surprisingly, I picked up.

"Hi Ajay", I said.

I don't know why people do the whole "hello? who is this?" on cell phones to people whose numbers are saved on their phone. Thanks to my moving with the mobile times, however, I robbed him of 2 lines of conversation.

"Hi. How are you?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Fine." silence.

Why on earth do people call for no reason when there's absolutely nothing to say to each other? It's different when of course you have an existing relationship and you call to say "Hi." In the course of conversation there's every chance that something new will trump up, like "Guess what? I'm getting married!", which is the reason why I have stopped calling up people "just to say Hi".

Idiot that I am, I actually try and make conversation.

"Well, I got your message..." he had sent me a message, about 10 minutes before the call, with lots of asterisks and dollar signs which are supposed to look like some tangible object, to the trained eye. If the Rorschach Inkblot Test Blot test was replaced with SMS artwork, I'd probably be strait jacketed and sent to the loony bin.

"Yeah..." he said.

"So, what's been up?"

"Nothing. Practice. You tell?"

This was obviously not going anywhere.

"Okay. I am out with friends. I have to go."

Perhaps it was my distinct and subtle disinterest, but the chronic messaging stopped thereafter. Except, of course, the Christmas message (I'm still wondering if it was a Christmas tree or a Santa Cap), the "wishing you a happy new year before the phones lines get jammed" message on the 31st, and the "Happy New Year" message on the 1st.

I was reclining on my diwan, having been sent home early on account of rumours that Bal Thackeray was dead. Sipping a gin and tonic, I was curled up with laptop on belly warmer mode and halfway into Season 4 of Sex and the City when my mobile beeped.

It was a message from Ajay.

"I have been trying to call you for the last half an hour. I am waiting outside your house. Please Come outside."

I sat up. He knows where I live? How does he know where I live? Who told him? Nobody knows where I live. Is this something you can find out from 28888888?

Now that he's standing outside, will he come ring the doorbell? Damn all those boyfriends and home deliveries, now the watchmen let bloody everyone in.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Disturbed as I was, I somehow had the presence of mind to scroll down.

And down, and down, and down.

"MY NAME IS MOON

I jus wanted to say gud nite!"

AAARRRGGHH!!!!!!

So I'm still wondering what to do about this serial SMSer. Surely there must be some Bharti Mittal Clinic for people who just can't get enough of their cell phones? The problem is that I cannot scream at him or accuse him of sexual harassment or get the CBI on his arse (perks of the job) or anything because there's a thin red line between frandship and harassment and he hasn't quite crossed it yet.

But I'm waiting. And when he does, he's definitely not going to get an SMS warning.

Foodie alert

My ever expanding waistline is finally being put to good use: John has roped me in to write on his food blog http://foodwatchblog.blogspot.com and I've been stuck in bed nursing my wisdom tooth and writing about food I cannot chew. Please check it out and suggest some good stuff to write on.

Don't you wish you get could paid for doing the things you love?

Just (not) married

My peer group, officially, is now divided into two. Those who have gotten married, and those getting married in the foreseeable future.

Initially it was one classmate. Then it moved to four. There were the cousins older than me. Then it became the cousins younger than me. Exs (all but one of them), school friends, new friends, office colleagues, former roommates, clients – you name them, I name the date and venue.

And then there was me. And a few other trusty souls, of course, like A, M, Lax and the boyfriend. At least, that’s what he tells me.

I was living in a world where marriage was something obscure, something that would never happen to me, like making a full house at a Bingo game. I never saw myself wanting it either – I didn’t quite see the “value add” of marriage in my life. Come to think of it, I still don’t.

In about 40 days and 40 nights, I will be 25. I will reach an age when things that happened 20 years ago will be in my recallable memory. I already find myself making statements like “Oh, but that was 10 years ago” and doing a mental double take. Still, it’s not that old. Not when you think of the fact that I’ve been in college till age 23 and the last 1 ½ years have passed in an entire blur.

According to my relatives, however, I should be receiving pension.

In my community, women are married by my age, partly because of the dwindling size of the community and the rare commodity status of the single ‘decent’ saraswat boy. Luckily for me, marriage talk in my house was non existent. Nobody ever uttered the M word – my Dad only addresses personal issues through my mother, my mother is still disgruntled over her own early marriage and the amount of compromises it forced her to make, and that was our own little universe.

****

I met my old pal SS for a drink and red snapper at Viva Panjim, one of my favourite restaurants. Being a divorcee, SS was not only at the bottom of the feeding pool of Saraswat arranged marriages (he claimed one woman he was referred even looked like a catfish), but he was also an expert on the subject of societal relationships.
We discussed the marriage disease. SS had boycotted the arranged marriage mela on the ground that he was being unfairly discriminated against on grounds of being a divorcee, with attempts to being set up with women who he’d have to “…fuck from behind, because if I saw their face I’d puke”.
Alright, so he was shallow.
I was amazed at the whole concept of arranged marriages. How did the information that you got about a person in a few meetings suddenly amount to enough to go through an entire lifetime with them? How did you ever know if they were “the one”?
SS exhaled harshly. “Do you think people really think about all that? Look at Pooja.” Pooja was a girl who worked in my old office, who had had a relationship with a guy in her college about 10 years ago which included trysts at the shady London Hotel with a pool table and rooms for rent, wink, wink. She had paid for the hotel room – the guy had receipts to prove it. The relationship never lasted but the London Hotel jokes certainly did. Pushing 30, she married a guy from a Karnataka based Saraswat family, far away from the google news engine that reared its head up everytime an arranged marriage proposal came about.
“She wears her mangalsutra on the outside of her kurta, flashing it around like its some kind of fucking Bharat Ratna. She gets so excited at the thought of performing the silly rituals – like applying sindoor and kumkum on other women’s foreheads, distributing those little matkis at those haldi kumkum parties.” [Haldi kum kums were the religiously ordained kitty parties of my community] “You have to understand. Marriage is the priority. The guy is only secondary. Marriage, apparently, makes you culturally complete.”

Which was true. Amongst Saraswats, for example, the first religious ceremony that a woman was allowed to perform was her own wedding ceremony. After the thread ceremony, a man was allowed to worship the idol of his kul-devta as and when he pleased. A woman was only allowed this privilege after she was married. I had been observing married women for decades (ha, ha). When a married woman came to our house for the first time, my mother would make her sit on a chair, the lady would spread her pallu on her lap and my mother would place a coconut, a blouse-piece, a envelope with some cash and lots of rice in it. Then my mother would put kumkum and haldi on her forehead, and touch her feet in blessing, no matter what her age was. It was the blessing of a “savashin”, the vernacular term for the Married Lady. Any married woman coming home would not be allowed to go without applying haldi and kumkum to her forehead, and in turn she would do the same to my mother. Women would fast on hartalika, the day before Ganesh Chaturthi, to get a good husband, and after marriage they would fast to secure him for the next seven lifetimes. When someone was getting married, during the anointment ceremony, he or she would be blessed by 5 married ladies who would anoint him or her with oil. And of course, the presence of one savashin was required at every pooja conducted.
A small fringe benefit, considering all the pain they had to go through.

“SS, come on. Getting a cultural identity can’t be the only thing that drives these people…”
“I’m not saying it is. There’s also the license for sex, and of course the fear of dying alone. Parental pressure nothing but a force propelled by these reasons.”
Parental pressure is also what got SS married. His initial uncertainties were dismissed by optimists who said that “you’ll feel attracted to her, don’t worry”, and “you’re just nervous” and “this is what your destiny has ordained.” Six months later, SS found himself impotent – in every sense of the term. The annulment followed soon after.
“Arranged marriages,” he continued, after a refill on his RC – Coke, “are the safer bet, because these reasons are always a constant. They will never change. Love Marriages, on the other hand, are even more skewed because all everyone is trying to do is arrange their own fucking marriage.”

****

The next day, I found myself at a family get together this evening, and when I reached down to touch my uncle’s feet, he asked, to no one in particular: “When are you getting this girl married?”
Note please how the question was not even “When are you getting married?” Note also how the question was asked in the same tone of voice as “When will you put the trash out?”
As the question was not directed to me, I decided to shut up.
His wife chirped up 5 eligible bachelors whose parents had even politely inquired about me. Matchmaking was kind of her thing.
Again I smiled politely.
Uncle goes on “I don’t see the point really to this delay. What is her problem?”
My mother volunteered: “Well she is planning a lot, she’s practicing now but she might want to go abroad to study…”
“Whatever it is, why can’t she do all this after marriage? Who says she can’t study after marriage?”
“Well then she needs a guy who will understand that!”
“So what are we there for? We’ll find her a guy who understands! Who doesn’t understand? Everyone understands!”
Another aunt chirped up “This is unacceptable. This is not any way to behave anyway, leaving her like this on her own.”
Holy cow! Alone? Hell, I could take better care of myself, albeit not financially, then any of the men I knew.
The other aunt began trumping up boys who lived abroad.
As the subject of this brewing storm, I decided to speak up and make the crucial mistake of attempting to use a little humour.
“Anyway, mama, I think getting married before the age of 25 is child marriage, don’t you think?”
The family gasped collectively.
“Who says?”
“It’s a new law!”
My Uncle stared. “The law is 21 and 18. There is no 25 age limit now. There is no such law.”
My aunt squawked. “Unmarried till 25? This is ridiculous.”
My mother intervened. “Nobody did me a favour by marrying me off early, for sure.”
The indirect vent at her elder brothers patriarchic stance went unnoticed by all, except me, even while I was mentally noting that my sense of humour must have definitely come from my Dad’s side.
“What law is she talking about?”
“I was JOKING”, I smiled.
My mother’s sister cleared her throat: “How can you be joking at a time like this? Don’t you realize how serious this is?”
My eyes widened. My mother’s brother, who had started this whole hellhole, was recovering from a gall bladder operation that he had put off for 2 years and it nearly killed him, or whatever it is that a bad gall bladder can do to you. And now suddenly I was the one with the emergency status?
The matchmaking aunt decided to be helpful. “Maybe she has someone?”
Now shouldn’t this question have been directed to me?”
“Hayn!” said Mom, the Konkani displeasure word, shaking her head violently.
“What someone? How can she have someone? We can’t be having some outside brought in!” screamed my mother’s youngest sister, the aunt I loved the most.
Suddenly, I imagined all of them taking out stones and pelting me to death, for refusing to get married by age 25. Everyone thinks Goa is progressive because you can walk on beaches topless. Well, if you are a Saraswat, you’re no better off than a Pashtoon tribal lass.
“I just need some time.” I said.
“For what?” boomed everyone.
“To figure out my sexual orientation”, is what I should have said.
“What’s the big rush anyway?” I asked, irritated.
“It’s something you have to do.” said my uncle.
“You won’t get a boy later on,” said the matchmaker “besides, you have to start looking early. You’re very well educated, and also, you have a bit of a height problem.”
I am 5’2”. The shortest guy I had ever dated was 5’9”.
I opened my mouth to say this, but then I thought about the stones.

On the way home, I was amazed at how suddenly, I was four again. I could talk, but other people were asking questions about me to my parents. Remember “She’s so cute…what’s her name?” Twenty years later, life comes full circle. Your opinion still doesn’t matter. You still don’t know what’s best.

As I stepped out of the car, my aunt warned me:

“You have to get serious about this now”

A phrase I hadn’t heard since my Board exams.

When you’re a kid in the throes of adolescence, everyone is out to keep you juvenile. You’re brought a dairy milk every time a relative comes over, at birthday parties you’re made to wear the party hat and stand along with the other kids and sing “Happy Birthday” in return for the party favours bag, and all you want to do is sit in a corner and sulk like you see all the adults do. And when you’re all grown up and you realize that all you want to do is savour the moments that you have and live your own life, all everyone wants you to do is grow up and take responsibility, and more importantly, get married. We all are expected to, as Russell Peters would say: “Be a Man. Do the right thing.”

And my friends wonder why I just don’t sit around in Goa and chill.

Being Bhatkar

The problems typical to Gaud Saraswat Brahmins [GSBs] are rather typical to every small caste confined to a small area. Everyone knows everyone, everyone knows the livelihood of everyone’s forefathers, and so there is never a dearth of material with which to get people down. As a result, or perhaps incidentally, GSBs never hesitate from using such illogical arguments.

GSBs, and for that matter, all Goans, are divided into the classes of the “Had” and “Had Nots”. The wealth and standing of a family is usually more contingent on what they could claim to have had rather than what they have now. I don’t really know why this strange class distinction exists. But it has deep roots in Goan Society.

I was sitting around at Dad’s office the other day when a young man and his father who walked into his office one fine morning. The father wore a thin cotton shirt, light brown with white faint checks, and trousers, slightly frayed at the ankles. The boy wore an FCUK (China Bazaar near Hotel Rajdhani, Panaji, 99 bucks) t shirt which betrayed a slight paunch. The soft spoken middle aged gentleman had an offer for my father – he had heard that Dad had spent a huge amount of money for a plot in a certain area.

“So?” asked Dad’s silence while he surveyed the pair.

“So, we were wondering if you wanted to buy a part of the adjoining plot.”

More silence.

After a pause, visibly dejected by my father’s lack of enthusiastic questioning, the old man laid his cards on the table.

Apparently he owned the adjoining plot, which was worth 3 crores at current market value, and situated as it was close to the upcoming international airport, it was just going to go through the roof. After a few queries and initial title inspection (Dad wasn’t about to accept the offer. He had to make sure that this land was not being acquired for the airport, which is exactly the fear that had brought the men into the office that day) it was time for a round of personal questioning. The father had just taken VRS from his Nationalized Bank Job. Dad then looked at the son.

“So, what do you do? Are you studying?”

The son looked appalled at the question.

“Haav Bhatkar”, he replied, defensively.

Proclaiming “Haav Bhatkar” or I am a bhatkar [landlord], is still considered to be a career option among Goans. Thanks to elitist schools ICSE private schools, there are now Bhatkars who can appreciate Shakespeare, so it’s not like all is lost. As my father, who has moved from Professional to Bhatkar will argue, however, sometimes, being a Bhatkar isn’t a professional. It’s a frame of mind.

Bhatkar superiority, which, like all angst between the proletariat and aristocratic classes, can be traced back to the times of strife, like during World War II, when provisions in the Portuguese Colony of Goa were limited in the open market. Bhatkars owned the land and the produce of the land, and so were self sufficient, and there were some things even money couldn’t buy, as most moneyed individuals in Goa, like mineowners and Sashtikars (shop owners) were learning to find out. Bhatkars got money from sales of produce and other means but amazingly never had to spend their money, except of course, for their daughters weddings. The money could be out to good use often, for instance, for lending.

Smaller land owners would offer their plots as collateral for moneylending to bigger bhatkars, the only source of financial stability, the loan sharks of the pre banking era. The money would go unpaid at times and the land would remain with the big bhatkar, making him an even bigger bhatkar, and provide fodder for tales for further generations – how one cruel moneylender ‘ate up’ the land of another, or how one patriarch mortgaged his land and blew up all the loan money on gambling, depending on whose side you were on. Bhatkar families have rosters of all the people who once came to their “daar” (door) for help to be pulled out in times of need – whose grandfather had come to whose grandfather’s door and never repaid the money but hey, hey, we are all mature adults here and all that is way behind us. These stories are particularly popular while playing the Devil’s Advocate during arranged marriages.

Maintaining your Bhatkar stamp was crucial. All over Goa, dozens of people have entered into fruitless litigations just to establish themselves to be Bhatkars, litigations which have been going on for decades at Civil Courts. But for some reason, even such a ridiculous tag has still commanded so much of respect in the Community. Bhatkars did everything differently. A bhatkar bride would receive the heavy gold bangles – ghot and patli, by her family for her wedding, and in turn her mother in law would adorn her with a surgawaisar, or gold braid, to wrap around her hair bun, and a bazuband on her arm.

The ultimate test of social status in Goa is the fish market. Secretly, everyone has an eye on what everyone else is buying. Bhatkars ate only certain fish – nouveau delicacies like flounder, squid and tuna are still looked down upon in most families, despite their spiraling prices in 5 stars – my mother is often not even offered availability of these species, and as a bhatkarni she is expected to pick up kingfish, pomfrets and mackerels instead. A bhatkar forced to buy cheaper fish, whether out of taste or financial constraints, would meekly ask, “Give me a few sardines for my cat” and not maintain eye contact with any of the other bhatkars examining the gills of Snappers.

Concepts like Naxalism don’t really perturb the common Bhatkar. There is unending faith in the strength of custom, family honour, a bottle of beer and a plate of prawns. Susegado, or ‘chilling’, was never the prerogative of the landed, and perhaps that is what kept the lopsided societal arrangement intact.

Till then, I sip my Bacardi breezer and await my lunch of clams and prawns :)

Depression

I personally hate it when people crib. There is just too little time on hand, and all everyone wants to do is whine. However, in the very recent past, a little too recent, in fact, I have come to realize that sometimes, there really is nothing left to do.

Imagine you working on University applications. Maybe a lot of you have. Remember the anxiety, the pressure, the thinking up corny lines to open your personal statement, the repeated spell checks (not relying on Microsoft word, because we all know that "Bomb" can suddenly become "Boob"), the pleading for recommendations and the suppression of hints regarding the 'special lines' you want put in, the fights with college authorities for transcripts, the nailbiting rush to beat the deadline? And the huge sigh of relief when you walk out of the Courier Office, receipt in hand, it's over, finally, it's done.

And then the courier tumbles out of the delivery bag, somewhere in the US heartland, just like that.

Welcome to my world.

DHL University Express has single handedly ruined my happiness. And not only that, they also have the most socially inept person on their customer care panel to handle my case. Most of my efforts with DHL, when not focused on tracing the application, was to get my customer service in charge changed. Finding no success while even complaining to the higher ups, I started bitching about the girl to her herself.

"And then they keep this completely insensitive and incompetent person on my case. Fancy that!"

"Yes Ma'am, yes ma'am, I completely understand"

Finally, now that my application has been certified as lost and now that the University has kindly agreed to look into my case, I now have to run around recompiling all my material. Not to mention, redo a 100$ draft for Admission fees.

Which brings me to ICICI.

My salary cheque is very dear to me, as regular readers (all two of you) of this blog will know. It is not much, but it keeps me alive. Barely. My Boss gave me a cheque which was more than two months pay this time, whether this is a bonus or in anticipation of heavy poverty for the next 6 months, we shall never know, but it was given to me, 31st December, and duly deposited.

10 days later, my account was still severely depleted.

Thinking that this was most certainly a Boss fault (insufficient funds, varied signature) I pestered Boss for his chequebook, and found that this cheque had been debited from his account on 2.1.2008.

I stomped into ICICI, all set to file an FIR for misplaced funds.

For the next 15 minutes, I sat aghast as I was informed that the money was sitting in a "suspense" account, as the name on the cheque differs from the name of the account holder. The name on the cheque was spelt correctly. My name, on my ICICI Account, was spelt wrongly.Not only wrongly, but in a way so as to make it completely unpronounceable.

"Ma'am, are you sure you spelt your name correctly on the form?"

Of course other cheques, in my CORRECT name, have been deposited into this account with no problem. At least I hope so. You see, ICICI cannot trace which of your cheques are sitting in this suspense account, unless you provide each cheque number. Of course I am assured that if a cheque was placed in suspended animation, ICICI would send me an SMS or snail mail to my permanent address, none of which was done in the present case.

"Oh Ma'am, I sincerely apologize for that."

So within 8 working days, the amount will be deposited in my account, after they check the account details, you know, just in case, in a moment of severe insanity, I might just have spelt my name in a German kind of way.

As a result of the cheque fiasco, when I got to check Boss's account books, I also found out something else. The same "bonus" amount was also paid to Poo, another associate in the office. Normally I would not object. However, Poo was on matrimonial leave for the past 2 months and I was the one doing all her work.

I was crestfallen - the kind of disappointment you hear when despite yourself and your hang ups you get all comfortable with the idea of getting into a formal relationship and meeting the parents and then finding out that your boyfriend's mother is looking for a girl for him who is the exact opposite of who you are and who you will ever be.

Oh, wait a minute, that was yesterday.

And today, I check my balance, which is still hovering around minimum balance (and I have a zero balance account, mind you), and walk into the house dejectedly.

And find out that Reliance has sent me a notice of disconnection of power supply due to non payment of bill.

A bill which I have been walking around with for the past month - which I haven't been able to pay because I just didn't have the time, and when I had the time I didn't have the money. Looking at that notice of disconnection, I realized that I had never felt so irresponsible, so poor, so dejected and so depressed ever before, at least not on looking at a piece of paper. The Ambanis might have made a lot of people cry, but this might have been their most bizzare yet unintended success yet.

I am trying hard not to say that it could get worse, because it always can, and in fact I already know a few ways in which it CAN get worse.

And perhaps this is a rather sad way to vent, typing out my woes on a public forum and not sharing it with my loved ones, but then again I've lost my voice.

I'll keep the wisdom tooth for another post :)