Wicked wicked ways

Many people want to know the income and such details of others to make comparisons and assess their worth, which in most cases is probably due to the kind of curiosity that killed the cat, and nothing more. For some, such information is useful to add another category to their address book – a kind of class system. Years ago I had a colleague, who had a list of people or acquaintances classified according to their social status, for which income was the main criterion. He married a socially upper class lady after rejecting a number of eligible girls and went on climbing the social ladder at a breakneck speed, so to say! For his frequent parties, he would very carefully choose the guests based on his classified list in which we ordinary mortals featured last. Because of his upward movement on the social ladder at breakneck speed I did not have a chance of attending his parties except once and that was on his wedding. For several years I had lost touch with him because my ascent on the social ladder was not in keeping with his pace. I met him some months ago after a gap of forty odd years and in the short time we chatted in the hotel lounge where I had gone on some business, I knew that he was making an assessment of my present social status. He talked about income tax slabs, surcharge on tax, intricacies of assessment of wealth, section 80C, form 15H and so on. Simply speaking, he could not hide his thirst for knowledge about my income!! I made sure that he did not become any wiser about my present status after talking to me!! Some times it helps to act dumb and not reveal your knowledge of things and outsmart the ones who fish for information. He has not changed very much, but he has come down several steps of the social ladder in his old age after two divorces in succession!

There was this man, a foreman in the tool room in the factory where I joined as a probationer only a few months after coming out of college. He was a well built, flamboyant Anglo-Indian of about 58 years at that time who had a very poor opinion of young engineers who, he thought, knew nothing and he with practically no education to talk about was knowledge personified. He was a good person with plenty of practical knowledge about machines because of his long experience in the factory and I would consider him a jolly good chap in most ways, but for his boasting of superior knowledge. He would ask us questions for which he would find our answers unsatisfactory and then pronounce the correct answer with great relish. One of his pet questions was to define a screw. He would find all our explanations lacking and then take a long breath to give a lengthy definition from the books which he had learned by heart!

A fairly well known classical singer of Carnatic music was one of the distinguished guests in one South Indian gathering in Mumbai. Many in the gathering were experts in Carnatic music and an animated discussion on Carnatic music followed. Some of the guests requested the maestro to give a rendition of the song “Saroja Dala Netri” and he obligingly gave a fairly elaborate rendition of the same, which was enjoyed by every one and the room exploded with thunderous applause after that. Discussions continued and after a little while, a prominent personality in the gathering raised his hand and requested the maestro to give a rendition in raga “Shankarabharanam”. Everyone in the room stopped talking and with a stunned look on his face the maestro told him that he had just finished the song “Saroja Dala Netri” in Shankarabharanam Raga and soon there were muffled noises of suppressed laughter in the crowd. The gentleman could have apologized for the mistake explaining that he meant another Raga or Song but unfortunately he did not know the name of another Raga and he looked very foolish and sat quietly until he left the room when others resumed their discussions. The gentleman must have really felt very small after the foolish fiasco!

Recently, a group of people, all from the same family (except one), formed a club for promoting ancient dance forms of Kerala. The inauguration of the club was done on a grand scale by a famous film personality and danseuse of South India. The office bearers, all of the same family, introduced themselves as great exponents of not only different forms of dance and music of Kerala but also Hindustani music and Western music and Flamingo too!! Their expertise extends to Astrology and Ayurveda too!! All this, they declared, they were doing for the pure love of the dyeing art forms of Kerala without any profit motive at all. To what extent one would go for the sake of publicity and popularity! One is reminded of Bernard Shaw’s Character Freddie in the play “Pygmalion” who poses and flaunts around as an expert in phonetics after learning bits and pieces of the subject from Prof. Higgins!!!

Moral dilemmas
Sivan Kutty, of 75 years of age lives, in Hyderabad. He is a retired man and spends his wakeful hours adding up the income from his various investments, and doing a five-kilometer sprightly walk followed by a short jog, to keep the heart pumping and the arteries clean. At sundown he sits before the TV with a carefully measured glass of Scotch whisky (it has been said of him that his price is but a bottle of IMFL), getting up only once to serve himself a treasured second drink. All through his life he has lived apart from his extended family, only on rare occasions meeting any member of the family. It is during these moments that his eyes become glassy, mulling over his achievements and failures of the past and often faced with a moral dilemma, whether to get into the act and save the souls of his wayward relatives of the younger generation or not? Some times these thoughts become too strong for him to dismiss them lightly and cause another dilemma, whether to pour out another valuable drink or not? But soon his accountant’s instinct tells him what it would cost and he dismisses the rabid idea and walks off to the dinner table.

Sivan Kutty was an accountant for 30 years in a British company. He joined the company in his early twenties, after failing to qualify as a chartered accountant in UK. He married a Scottish girl in UK and moved to India in early sixties to work as an accountant in the company’s Hyderabad plant. In the early days life was a struggle for him, having produced two children in quick succession and needing to maintain the wife of foreign origin. Life being such a struggle, he firmly declined when his mother asked him to send her a few hundred rupees for her maintenance every month (his mother, a wealthy woman, was now a little short of money as she had divided and given all her family money away to her children – Sivan Kutty and his siblings, of which you are to meet the sisters Janu and Sita soon).

Being free of such encumbrances, Sivan Kutty worked steadily and cultivated influential people for which his wife of foreign origin was an asset. Being an accountant he knew very well that a price has to be paid for every gain. If you knew the price and prepared to pay it, yes the gain is yours! In those days there was no moral dilemma! And Sivan Kutty crawled steadily up the corporate ladder to become a director by the time he retired with a comfortable savings and retirement benefits.

One day, his family ties got the better of his usual thrift and Sivan Kutty decided to have a third drink and also made the momentous decision to save the souls of his wayward younger generation and dialed the number of his dear sister Sita (who he had hated for many years but had now become an asset on his moral balance sheet) in Chennai. Sivan Kutty announced the decision to Save the life of their elder sister Janu who was living with her son Venu in Coimbatore………. Of Janu’s daughter Parvathy and her relatives I have written in one of my earlier posting “Bitching! Bitching!! All the way!”

Janu, Parvathy’s mother, is 85 years old, and was widowed over 30 years ago. She has lived the best part of these 30years with Parvathy in Mumbai or Venu in Coimbatore, as she felt unable to live on her own. The family property was sold and unlike Janu and her siblings, who had taken their individual shares from their widowed mother without a pang of regret, Parvathy and her brothers invested their shares of the family property for Janu’s use. Because of Parvathy’s thrift and resourcefulness Janu’s investments had grown sizeable in 30 years.

For Janu is lavish in her ways, being the daughter of a wealthy man and then the wife of a wealthy man. Janu is also easy to manipulate and financially illiterate. Despite this, Janu has been able to live a fairly lavish life as a widow, because she has lived with and been supported by her daughter or son, spending the income from the family property mostly on her lavish ways.

This situation has caused a dilemma for Janu’s sister Sita who I have in my earlier post referred to as Parvathy’s “wicked aunty.” Sita, who is also lavish like her sister, has frittered away her share of the family property, and continues to live lavishly on the largesse of her long-suffering sons.

But Sita thought that it was her bounden duty to enquire about (or interfere with) the welfare of her widowed sister and put several questions to Janu – innocent talk at first, acknowledging her good fortune to have such good daughter and son and daughter-in-law. Over a period of time, Sita’s questions became loaded, giving hints to Janu that she could certainly lead a better life (like herself) and not be a slave of her children (who ensured that Janu did not fritter away the family money like Sita had done). She incited Janu to take charge of her own affairs and handle her financial matters herself.

Slowly Janu, whose intelligence was below average even in her youth started to believe that her Daughter-in-law was not giving enough respect and attention. She became moody and querulous often and causing strained relationship with her son Venu, d-in-law, their children and Parvathy too. Parvathy always sympathized with Venu and his wife who were doing their utmost to make Janu’s life as comfortable as possible but Janu remained disgruntled all the time. Cunningly incited by Sita, Janu started attacking her son and d-in-law and daughter Parvathy too.

A little history first. Though it was very difficult for Parvathy to accommodate Janu in her small flat in Mumbai, Janu stayed with Parvathy for a good part of the first 15 years after her husband died. After Parvathy’s husband retired from service and her two daughters got married, Parvathy and her husband shifted to a bigger house in Bangalore. Due to health problems and advancing age both Parvathy and her husband were not in a position to keep Janu any more. So Janu has been staying with Venu in Coimbatore for the past 15 years.

Sita had convinced Janu that her daughter will not keep her because her husband may not want her in the house and that earlier they accommodated her in their small flat in Mumbai because they wanted to use her money. Janu was always used to be treated with kid gloves because her late husband was a highly respected person and she basked in his glory. Janu (at 85!) became emboldened by Sita’s machinations to tell her son that she wanted to live separately - which was not feasible, given her meager income and lavish life style.

This was the moment Sita waited for and when Sivan Kutty phoned her from Hyderabad she did a buck and wing and said to herself “Now the fun will start. The waiting was not for nothing!!” Sita immediately phoned Parvathy’s sis-in-law in Singapore (who hated Parvathy from the time Parvathy’s brother married her) and sang to her that the time has come to teach Parvathy a lesson. Soon the plan was unfolded – Janu was to quarrel with Venu and his wife and ask Parvathy to put her up in her house in Bangalore, knowing well that she has expressed her inability to do so.

Next Sivan Kutty and Sita would bring Janu to Bangalore under some pretext and accommodate her in a separate home. Then they would tell Parvathy that it was her moral duty to accommodate her poor mother who was living alone and Parvathy (worried about what others would say) would be forced to take her in. If Parvathy refused, they would ask her to transfer the capital amount of the family money which was held in trust by Parvathy to Janu under the pretext that Janu needed the money to run her separate house. Then it was just a matter of time before they could prey on simpleton Janu and scoot with the money!

A grand plan, but Parvathy stood strong and asked Sivan Kutty and others who engineered the whole plan to go to hell and look after her themselves. They threatened Parvathy with legal action to get the money from her. Parvathy did not budge. Nothing happened. By then, Sivan Kutty and Sita were getting fed up with Janu’s constant complaints and lavish ways. Quickly they took Janu back to Venu’s house in Coimbatore.

Moral of the story is that when you do not have any morals to speak of, you should not preach. Neither Sivan Kutty nor Sita ever bothered to look after their parents in their old age when they were in need and suffering but they had to preach ‘duty’ and ‘moral obligations’ to Parvathy who without anyone’s prompting had done her duties by her parents and others. But when pushed to a corner by scheming relatives she stood by her convictions daring them to take whatever action they wanted to take, and not buckling under pressure or threats.

Love and respect are not commodities that one can demand from others as a matter of right. Sometimes you earn it through hard selfless work. For some, by way of their personality and behavior, they simply get it. But if you go to bargain for it or argue about it what you get in the end would be the spurious stuff. There was a time when youngsters respected their elders – anyway, that is what the older generation keep reminding the youngsters all the time – but in those days too there were kings who imprisoned their fathers and elders, gouged their eyes, chained and beaten them etc for the sake of gaining the kingdom! But now ill-treatment of elders must have become rampant that the Government has to step in and bring in laws to protect the rights of the elders. Now with the new laws in place, smart aleck youngsters can no longer throw out their parents to fend for themselves in their old age. The intentions are good but how far the laws would benefit the senior citizen is to be seen yet. There are laws to protect women from harassment by the husband and his relatives for dowry etc, but they have made little difference to women. On the other hand there are many cases where the husband and his parents are harassed by scheming women out to take revenge on the Male species.

One should not take the senior citizen’s protection law (if that is the name given to it) too seriously and go on demanding more and more from the younger generation. Leave the young ones alone because they have to cope with a lot more stresses of the present day life style, than you ever had. What the older generation has to learn is to discard desires and expectations. Well then that is another discussion which will go on endlessly!!

Alamelu Ammal aged 82, traveled alone from the US and arrived at the new Bengaluru airport around 9 AM in the morning. Though her son living in Chicago had given detailed instructions to her on how to go about the new airport, the long flight played hide and seek with her memory and she was nonplussed and disoriented. She decided to wait for her son to come and pick her up from the air port and she sat on a comfortable chair and went to sleep! Deep sleep!

She woke up around 2 PM and went into a flutter. She thought that she was in Singapore air port and panicked. Some one helped her to call her son in US and talk to him. He told her to take a pre-paid taxi to go to the city.  The taxi left her at her apartment but she could not open the front door and therefore sat on the stair case for a breather. Again she dozed off until someone tapped on her shoulder and woke her up. She started asking for her son who, she thought accompanied her from US. She told the stranger that she took a taxi from Singapore airport and paid $600/- taxi fare. The stranger somehow opened the door for her and she went inside dragging the baggage. She could not stay inside for long because the apartment was locked for over six months and she could not stand the stink of dead rats in the house.  

The problem with Alamelu Ammal was that in her old age she had become crabbed. She was a widow for more than 18 years and living a frugal life on her husband's pension, when suddenly fortune smiled on her.  She sold her small plot of land with the shabby old house for about thirty million Rupees and that turned her life upside down. The sudden wealth made her insecure and crabbed. She thought that all her children and other relatives were after her money and became very quarrelsome with them. She went to US to live with her son but could not stand her daughter-in-law. So she fought with her and took a flight back to Bangalore within six months. In her old age she wanted all that she was not able to afford when she was young. She bought a diamond necklace for about one and a half million. She went on a spree of buying Kancheepuram silk sarees and expensive dresses which no one would wear at her age. She would eat all kinds of food from restaurants and become sick and so on. All in the hope of finding happiness! Because of her insecurity and suspicion of others she did not have any friends and even her close relatives shunned her!!

This is the case with many senior citizens today. Parvathy’s wicked aunt (about whom I have written in my earlier posting “Bitching, bitching all the way.”) is nearly 80 years old and she is on a binge. She is wicked and jealous of any one and every one including Parvathy. In her old age she has made her sons buy a luxurious house for her in Kerala which she has furnished and refurnished at least four times in the past eight years, each time after seeing some one else’s house better furnished! She wears padded bras and goes to the beauticians for facials. Till the age of almost seventy years she never went to a beautician or wore luxurious dresses including padded bras!! Though by nature she was wicked even during her youth, she has become more so in her old age. She caused rift between Parvathy and her brother by joining hands with Parvathy’s sister-in-law, who is even more evil than the aunt and was a sworn enemy of Parvathy from very beginning! Parvathy’s mother has also come under the influence of the wicked aunty who has fed her all kinds of wrong ideas about how to deal with sons and daughter and caused differences between Parvathy and her mother (86 years old) and spread all kinds of canard against Parvathy! It is beyond the imagination of all those who knew Parvathy that the very relatives for whom she has slogged for many years would turn to be serpents – her mother, her younger brother and his wife, and the wicked aunty!  

This is what happens when old people become power crazy and ambitious and wicked!! We hear so much about the large youth population in the country but very soon the oldies will out number the youth!! Already several brands of incontinence diapers and old age accessories are filling the shelves of super markets!!

In the nineteen sixties four figure salary was something every young man dreamed about. A starting salary of Rupees two hundred to four hundred per month used to be the norm depending on qualifications and luck. And it was a great achievement if one reached a four figure salary before thirty years of age. Matrimonial advertisements gave special mention of “four figure salary”. In those days it was just enough to mention the word “four figure salary”, and clarifications were never sought for because the expectation is never much more than the minimum of the range, for an eligible young bachelor!! The “K” word was not in vogue because of the limited scope of application in such circumstances! Much water has passed under the bridge after those days! Today it is indecent to mention a salary less than 100K per month!! What a change, my God!

My daughters exchange glances and suppress giggles when I talk about the “Liberty” shirt I bought for Rs.25/- for my wedding, and the hair cut which cost me just Re.1/-. The best pair of Bata shoes cost only Rs.45/-. And anyone earning income more than Rs.300/- per month paid income tax too! After the 1965 war against Pakistan, the Compulsory Deposit Scheme was also slapped on the poor tax payer!

Buying a car was an event in itself. Car production in India during sixties and seventies was much below demand and there was a waiting period of 3 years for an Ambassador car and over 12 years for a Premier Fiat. Fiat was much in demand especially in Bombay. The price of a new car was about Rs.20000 in early seventies but the premium for ready delivery was almost same amount as the price of the car. First time car buyers usually settled for a used car, cost of which would be about 80% of a new one if it was about 3-4 years old and in good condition. And petrol price was below Re.1/- per liter. But I remember the days when I was just a boy of eight or ten when my father used to fill up his Chevrolet’s tank at about Rs.2/- per gallon!! That is about 40 Paise per liter! I was fascinated to watch the tank being filled because, in those days, petrol pumps were manually operated and one could see the liquid gurgling out and emptying the glass container. Two one-gallon bottles fitted on top of the pump would get alternately filled and contents emptied in to the tank as the operator kept moving a handle to and fro! Quite some physical activity indeed!

Shaving blades were relatively expensive in those days and after each shave it would be carefully wiped of the moisture to avoid rusting because blades were not made of stainless steel as they are now. The blades were used for several shaves and before each shave the edges were sharpened using a rough concave glass surface. There was also a very innovative appliance (manufactured in England) available for sharpening the shaving razor blades. The appliance consisted of a frame and a carriage inside it. The blade is clamped in a holder which is placed inside the carriage. The carriage is moved to and fro within the frame and a whole lot of levers and cams allowed the razor edges to be softly rubbed against a leather-like substance and thus get sharpened. As a young boy, I used to find it a very interesting mechanism and played with it a lot because it was lying idle and no one was using it!

Most young men started smoking at an early age, as soon as they left school and joined college. I used to love the fragrance of tobacco a soon as the seal of a new cigarette tin was opened. And quite early in life I started pinching one or two cigarettes from my father’s 50’s cigarette tin. At the age of 18 I was a regular smoker.
There were no menacing warnings about the health hazards of smoking and no statistics waving Health Ministers going about punishing smokers in public places. In fact smoking was a fashionable habit and youngsters in colleges thought that it attracted attention from the fairer sex. One of the favorite places for indulging in change smoking for students was the cinema halls where smoking was not banned as yet. In Trivandrum, those days first class cinema ticket, equivalent of present day upper stall ticket, cost only 11 Annas (approximately Re.0.69) and a packet of Berkeley Cigarettes cost 5 Annas (Re.0.31). Thus in just one Rupee one could see a movie and smoke 10 cigarettes too!! With another half Rupee one could indulge in sumptuous refreshments too!!

India Coffee House on the Main Road (M.G. Road as it is called today) was a favorite haunt of college students in those days. Groups of students would sit around tables drinking cups of steaming coffee and on rare occasions eating potato chips or vegetable/mutton cutlets, furiously engaged in heated discussions on all subjects under the sun. The din of laughter and talking would sometimes reach such high pitch that the management would request the guests to keep the noise levels low.

In 1950, going to America was a rare event and when my father went to Canada on some fellowship it was a big event for our family and friends. I was about 11 years old and I remember how my mother was so unhappy about the whole matter because of the pending separation for over a year. My uncles and other well wishers consoled her telling her that one year would pass in a jiffy and after all the trip was so very important for my father’s future prospects in his profession.

Those were the days when people’s needs were limited and when my father asked my mother what she wanted him to bring from Canada she simply said that she did not want anything and that she was only looking forward to his return. She would have prayed that her husband should not fall into some white woman’s trap and return with one in his arms! Ever since her elder brother married a lady from Scotland where he went for his studies in Engineering she was suspicious of all women of foreign origin!

My father used to write long letters to my mother and the children, explaining the wonderful sights in Canada and the luxurious lifestyles of ordinary citizens, the beauty of the snow-clad landscapes, how he missed the home food and so on. He sent us a view master with dozens of inserts fitted with films for viewing and ball pens of different colours, which were all novel to us. Knowing that I was crazy about bicycles he wrote to me that he would try and bring one for me if he was able to save enough from his allowance. We children were shocked to learn from his letters how much a cup of tea cost him, and how he decided not to have bed tea, which he was so particular about when he was at home! So I had very little hope that he would be able to save enough to get the bicycle for me!!

About a week before his homecoming, a close friend of my father came and informed my mother that he received a cable from my father saying that he had lost his brief case in a department store in Canada, while shopping for home coming! The bag contained all his savings and even the return air ticket and the passport. In those days it was very difficult to send any money abroad and my mother was in a fix. I do not know the sequence of events, but some how sufficient money was arranged for his return. On his way back to India he had to stop in London for whatever reason I do not know and it was there he managed to buy a brand new Bicycle for me.

The bicycle arrived about six weeks or two months after my father arrived. It was a dazzling Raleigh Sports bicycle with gleaming sports handle bar and cable brakes,areo dynamic front mud-guard 5-speed drive, sparkling rolling bell, Dynamo and light, Etc. etc. A beauty!!
It came in semi knocked down condition and my father assembled it for me. For 10 years I used it, till I left Trivandrum. My father was a simple person and to my knowledge he did not buy anything for himself during his one year stay in Canada. Other than the bicycle for me, he brought hardly anything of much value. It must have been a great sacrifice for him to buy the bicycle for me considering that he was practically penniless when he came to London and had to wait there for few days to receive the money sent from India.

Many years later when I wanted some money for buying an apartment in Bombay, he had no hesitation to give it to me though he did not have a lot to spare. He retired as Chief of a large Govt department and had many friends and some enemies during his working life. All he had when he retired was his Provident Fund savings. During his working life he did not have a bank account. He always stayed in Government quarters or the in the house my mother inherited from her father. He did not acquire any assets or build any house, which most people in similar position would have done. Every month he used to bring his salary home in cash, which he handed over to my mother. I t was entirely up to her how she spent the money. His only indulgence was cigarettes for which he would ask my mother to send the servants to go and bring

My father retired from Govt service in 1967 but even now, 40 years after his retirement, old and new employees of his erstwhile department talk of him with love and respect. His greatest quality as I see was his fearlessness. Whatever he did was out of conviction. He had helped a lot of people to come up in life and there was gratitude for him from a lot of people. His adversaries sometimes called him communal when it suited them but some of his best friends belonged to other communities and castes. When He passed away 23 years ago, lots of people came to the house to pay their respects. One of them was a rich Christian contractor whom my father had helped disregarding protests from many quarters. He could not control his emotions and wept loudly to the amazement of many people who had gathered.

During his service he had sometimes refused to cow tow the political bosses and did only whatever was the right thing to do. Once, a contractor who was very influential in political circles came to see my father with a bag full of one hundred rupees notes for getting a prestigious contract. My father fumed and practically threw him and the bag out of the house and told him never to approach him again. Weeks later a Central Govt Minister approached him on behalf of the contractor but my father did not budge, which caused bad blood between him and the political class.

Immediately after my father retired the contractor made several allegations against my father and he filed a case in the high court against my father for causing loss to him and to the department. My father was unmoved and replied to every allegation in the court and the judge exonerated him and passed severe strictures against the contractor and some others who colluded with him to tarnish the reputation of my father. Those were very difficult and stressful times for my father but he was unmoved and fought to the end.

My mother had inherited some landed properties from her parents. For some years after my father’s retirement he took charge of these properties, which resulted in improved income from them. However, with age he became frail and he found it difficult to cope with the strain and we decided to sell the properties, mainly because all the children who were the heirs to these properties lived outside the State. In order that we get a good price for the land he arranged to develop the land into small plots suitable for building houses with roads, drainage etc. At this point an influential political person who was the head of the Housing Board approached him with an offer to buy the entire property for a price, which was less that 10 percent of its real worth. My father promptly refused the offer but the politician was miffed and he wanted to take revenge. As soon as a few plots were sold, the Housing Board sprang to action. They declared that all our properties and a few small properties adjacent to ours were going to be acquired by the Housing Board and therefore no one should buy these properties. It seemed to be a gone case and we all felt very despondent. However my father filed a writ petition in the High Court to get a reasonable price for the land acquired, based on the market value. The court ordered the Housing Board to give us the market price, which was based on the price of plots sold prior to the take over by the Housing Board. The Board delayed the payments and some officials tried to black mail for bribes. So my father filed a second writ petition and the court ordered immediate payment with interest.

The sales proceeds were given to the children as per their share holdings. He had no interest in the money. But he was not a puritan either. He was very fond of Scotch whisky, which his friends used to supply to him regularly, even long after his retirement. He was a very special person and an unforgettable character for those who were close to him.