Life After 60

I was trying to be polite to the online salesman. "It's not what I..I.. ordered," I stuttered in agitation. "But Sir, it's the best brand, very long-lasting and very comfortable," he said in a persuasive voice. "That's not it, it's, it's ....," I tried to interject. "We can send you another one, should you want one," he said pushing his point. "Another one...?" I asked, not liking where this was leading to. "Yes Sir, or a couple or even a dozen," he said persuasively. "A dozen...? " I howl. "You could even order two dozen Sir," he said smoothly. "What would I do with two dozen! .....Two dozen,  for god's sake!," I shriek. "Laying in a nest egg Sir, for the future, Sir," he said. "Are you a banker," I ask confused. "No Sir." "Then why are you speaking of investing?" I ask. "I was merely speaking metap

There is a middle distance one stares into when the mouth opens slowly and the jaw drops to the chest contentedly. There are many moments in life when this happens. There are some who are very gifted in the art. The head drooping also occurs on public transport in Kolkata. While you hang onto the bus handle as the man behind you pushes forward with his paunch and the chap to your left treads sadistically on the little toe, the person sitting on the right seems to go into a trance. You look at him fiendishly and wipe your brow for the nineteenth  time. The man remains thus even when you are unceremoniously ejected back onto the street. Then there are others who stare out of the bus windows at nothing in particular, except when their eyes alight on a pretty woman. You cannot mistake that look. It is the middle distance gazer at his best. He is unperturbed as you sway and get pummelled by fellow travellers as the driver tries to think he is in a grand prix. It’s not much

I wonder if the Lockness monster ever gets lonely. You find it prowling the deep keeping all to itself. At the depths that it swims around in, it can hardly have an active social life. Few creatures would take a deep breath and go down contentedly into the murky depths. Life can also be like that. There may be hundreds of creatures swimming around in the pool that is everyday life, but some find themselves always alone. Early in life I found that I lacked the joie de vivre when others were around. I would rather curl up with a story book. Playing football or such energetic games were I found not my cup of tea. I did like playing hide and seek, but those days when I enjoyed it were all too short. Since I disliked the rough and tumble of life, I grew a shell like a mollusc. Gastropods, I believe they call them.  But what it is in a name, I thought as the exterior hardened. School life, with a principal with bulging eyes and a swift cane that he employed in keeping th

The first camera that I used was a prehistoric box camera. The body was not made of metal. It was fabricated from stiff cardboard. It had lain forgotten in an cupboard at home until I spotted it and dug it out. I was then in school. I had no pocket money so buying film was a problem. I had to turn to my mother's generosity. She obliged me once in a while. The camera was very simple to use. It was an aim and shoot one. Sunlight was the best light to take pictures by. Only twelve photos could be taken. I realised that this equipment gave me power. I was in seventh heaven. There was a hitch though. How the photos turned out could only be determined after they were developed and printed by a studio.  From taking a photo to seeing the result led to the passage of a week. But it whetted my anticipation. After getting the photos I would examine and re-examine them lovingly one by one like a miser. It yielded hours of enormous satisfaction. I remember I once took the came

Cupid you must have heard of, the impish little fellow with a bow and arrow that is forever shadowing lovers. He has a cousin who is less well known. It is Boredom. He wields a blowpipe with which he wreaks mayhem, shooting darts at people who have little to do but twiddle their thumbs all day. The day came when the office was able to see my boots darken its doorstep for the last time. There was also a chorus wishing me a ‘happy retired life’. I nodded happily all around little knowing what I was letting myself in for.  At home I unpacked the goodbye presents and was thrilled to see that one was a microwave oven and another a dinner set. I also got a box of sweets. My elder daughter immediately confiscated them saying that it was too bad that I could not have them. She does not like sweets either, so I did not know what she did with them. The day after was glorious. The alarm did go off, but I put in on snooze. I put it back on snooze again after it rang. Then I switche

Middle Distance Staring into the middle distance is a great pastime for me in my idle hours. I am idle for hours on end or even weeks. In 35 years of earning bread I had little time to stare at the middle distance. I'm making up for lost time now. First let me speak about school. Penal servitude  is a mild word for it. My school was surrounded by very high brick walls painted a toxic red. From the outside it looked like what it was; a detention centre where a fixed tenure of 11 years was the norm. During such hard times there was no pastime as such. Books and more books were heaped on my shoulders making it seem like the proverbial last straw for the long-suffering camel. My spinal cord almost dislocated from lugging a heavy bag on a daily basis. In school, it was something akin to jail inmates glumly breaking large stones into little stones, with the prospect of indefinite tomorrows requiring more large stones to be broken. The brass bell eventually clan

It was a night when the moon was full. It was also Christmas Eve. The time was around 2:00 am in the morning. I was returning home after seeing off a friend, who thought nothing of dropping in on me at unearthly hours. I was going to midnight mass when I met this chap. He looked me up and down when I told him where I was going. He shook his head in disbelief and forced me to retrace my steps homeward.   After staying till the early hours he at last announced his intention to leave. I was relieved. The only catch was that I had to accompany him half the way to his flat. He insisted that he could not be refused and I reluctantly set out with him. I walked with him up to a point and wearily trudged back. I was also feeling bad that I had missed midnight mass, though I was not much of a church goer. A part of the road lay between two cemeteries.  It was a road that I was quite familiar with and had used hundreds of times. But it was the first time that I was on it so

I have never been very fastidious about clothes and dressing. It might be an influence of my schooldays. There was no school uniform though careless and shabby dressing was not allowed. Our principal, a lumbering giant of a man with bulging eyes, also saw to it that the pupils did not get sartorially ambitious.   I have heard from my seniors that he once warned a student not to sport a puff hairstyle, but the student ignored it blissfully. The principal caught him by the hair without warning and snipped off the offending puff with a pair of scissors and dumped it in the unfortunate student’s palm. Such instances were spoken of in hushed tones. Another thing that was not allowed was ‘drainpipe’ trousers as they were then called. The form fitting trousers were a strict no, no. Nor were pointed shoes allowed. If caught wearing them strict action would follow.  The students made it a point not to give offence to the principal as he was very handy with the cane. He took a sadi

He was a banker with round expressive eyes. But, what was remarkable, were his perfectly arched and manicured eyebrows. The eyebrows danced each time he made some point or the other.  All through that bankers ‘meet at which a lot of Englishmen were present I looked awestruck at the callisthenics that his eyebrows were continuing to do. It must have required years of effort and practice each morning after brushing the teeth. I could almost visualise his wife asking him at the breakfast table, “Did you do your eyebrow exercise this morning dear?” “Coo! I did, “he would reply tucking into his ham and eggs which are de rigueur for the breakfasting Englishman. That was my first lesson in bodily speak. There was the one man in office from whom others always kept as polite a distance as possible when he bored down  asking for the latest gossip. He would deliver a resounding pinch every time he made a point. He would seize a portion of his victim’s flesh between thumb and

Eve inveigled Adam, of Madam I'm Adam fame, to nibble the love apple and hey presto they were on earth after been sped on their way by the divine bum's brush. Now why in the world would she do that? The answer is simple. There were no shopping malls in the Garden of Eden, however elitist that address was. But then Eve has been much maligned by misogynists. Men retain in their genes the cave dwellers mentality of dragging the better half by the roots of the  hair to his dark cave. It was dark there as fire had not been invented. And, why did Adam do that? He needed someone to cook for him, wash his smelly clothes and keep the home tidy. In our times Eve has got her own back. She made men wrack their brains to invent the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, the microwave and sundry other utilities. This made men equal to women instantly. Men learnt to wash clothes, clean the carpet and curtains and also how to cook. So great was the zest for cooking among men that the