Happy birthday, Papa

Dear Papa,
It's your 70th b'day, and you can look back on a life well-spent.
God bless you with good health and good fortune.
Thank you for all your love and support.
Many many happy returns of the day,
With all my love,
Simi
PS: I'll writing a lot more odes, enjoy !

An Ode to Papa: Book 3

My home has always contained books. My parents loved books, non-fiction. They loved newspapers, and current event magazines. Film stuff was an absolute no-no. Music was classical, ghazals. Everything that leaned towards depth and layers of meaning.
Back to books, and my father's collection. Well-thumbed, and never dog-eared, copies of Penguin classics; the gamut running from poetry, plays, to what is considered classics. Papa is a post-graduate in English literature, but his love of all things books comes from his deep respect for any kind of intellectual endeavour.
I found a writer called Saki (H. H. Munro) on my father's bookshelf when I was in my tweens. I read a dark, extremely funny story about a boy and a mythical animal, and I was well and truly in love. I also found Moby Dick, Camus, Nietzche, and best of all, To Kill a Mockingbird. I would sell my soul to the devil several times over to have written that book !
I also found sketches, some of nudes, done in pencil. I don't know why and when Papa started drawing, and why he stopped.
There were also copies of Span, the Illustrated Weekly, the stray National Geographic. (My parents would rather commit hara-kiri than get rid of the printed word). There were letters received from his loved ones, my mother, some friends and so on. There were a couple of diaries, but I didn't peek.
I am told that I opened my eyes and started reading. Anything that fell into my chubby little hands. It's no wonder, really, I was brought up by people who loved books. Books were not just friends in my house, they were family.
Papa loves reading history, and can probably tell you what has been happening in the world since 2 secs after the Big Bang. He has a gift for analysis, and when impassioned, a gift for communication.
Papa would be the happiest person in the world if I wrote, a book, an article, anything, and if I were published. He thinks I have talent. Thanks, Papa. I'll see what I can do.

An Ode to Papa: Book 2

I have inherited my father's stubborness. A grim-faced, complete bloody-mindedness, and absolute refusal to yield ground in any way, on issues that we feel we are right about. I have also inherited his tendency to cold and silent anger, which reaches its flashpoint ( and God help bystanders when it does!) somewhere down the line. People may call it pig-headedness, but I like this streak in him and me. It smacks of strength. I consider character and intellect to be the deepest aspirational values, and Papa has oodles of both. He marches, in these matters, to the tune of his own internal piper.
At the same time, Papa is deeply conservative, in his adherence to a particular decorum, particularly in public. He can be surprisingly playful in private. All in all, a complex man.
I respect my father very much, because of his character and intelligence. He is a self-made man, and well-made too.

An Ode to Papa: Book 1

My father's name is Surendra Mishra, and he is going to turn 70 on Jan 27. He lives in New Delhi, with Ma, my brother Rohit, and Rohit's wife, Meeta. Papa retired from the IAS in 1999, and has since worked for himself in the areas of management consultancy, and now, real-estate, housing finance, and so on. He loves cricket, with a depth of passion and intensity, seldom found even in cricket-crazy India. He also loves football, tennis, current events and reading on a vast variety of subjects. After Rohit met Meeta, Papa has become a big follower of Hindustani classical music. Meeta is a well-known exponent of the Gwalior gharana.
Most of all, Papa loves people. He doesn't always show it demonstrably, but he is a huge champion for humanity in general. He has no difficulty in putting himself in the other guy's shoes; in fact, his attitude could be called apologist. Whatever the label, there is no doubt that the world can use a lot more of his brand of understanding.
Papa grew up in Birapurushottampur village near Puri in Orissa. He was the third son/child, but might have been the eldest in terms of his own sensibilities. He was and still is extremely close to all his siblings; when we see them together, they are like a bunch of kids. It's just wonderful.
Papa is a great guy, and this is something I have heard all my life. From people he has worked with in Orissa and in Delhi, from neighbours, from the junta at large.
And believe me, my dad's no angel. He can nag like you won't believe, he just doesn't let things go at times. But people still love him, because he is polite, caring, kind and fair.
This post and the subsequent posts are my way of sharing my feelings towards Papa with the rest of you.

Created this blog 10 days ago, but being extremely ignorant about all things related to computers, couldn't find my way back to it.

Have been researching details , often embarassing, of the sex lives of people very different from those I meet normally. All to understand better how to prevent HIV/AIDS. All I have managed so far is to feel extremely confused.

I am writing this in BBSR, the capital of Orissa. I have not lived here since I was a very young person. At that time, I thoroughly disliked this place. I didn't feel wanted or accepted here. Apparently, I didn't dress or look the part of a good Oriya girl. Well, I didn't want to. I found all things Oriya to be boring in the extreme.

I realise today, however, that that reaction was that of a sulky child. Sambalpuri saris are simply beautiful. As is the detailed carving of the stone statues of the proverbial 33,000 crore gods/goddesses of the HIndu pantheon. And Jagannath, of course. He is a gorgeous yantra, and he always looks like he is having fun, looking wide-eyed at the sexual antics of the good Oriya boys and girls - often middle-aged - around him. And don't get me started on chena pod pitha (or CPP, as my little brother, Rohit and I call it!). Seriously good.

I suppose the best way to appreciate a place is to go away, to get the space between yourself, and the location that you left. In my case, that distance was 1700 kilometres, a straight line between New Delhi and Bhubaneswar, that might as well have been the distance between two planets. I can honestly say that when I left BBS, I didn't think about it. I cetainly didn't miss it. When I heard from friends here, a part of me thought - 'how can they live in that hole. The whole town is wrapped up within 4 main roads. Everyone sleeps in the afternoon, and every other time they can. BBS Club is the hotspot. ???????????'

Then the conversation would end, and so would BBS for me. There are many reasons why I cut out this place where I spent my childhood, so completely from my life. I know those reasons, and they are all sad reasons. This is the place where I learnt about rejection in the cruellest possible ways.

More on that later. I am back here, and completely unable to understand how I feel about this place. I work all the time (14 hours sometimes, not joking), researching sexual health and HIV/AIDS. I travel by autos, whaich I haven't done in ages. The auto guys look at my face, and ask me for my monthly earnings to transport me for a distance of 5 km. Hell, 10 kms in BBS is considered worthy of a day's planning. But a film ticket here costs only Rs. 60, although you can never hope to see a non-Bollywood film on the day of its release. And you share the hall-space with local Oriya guys, who I last encountered in college. They are still local. I look and dress conservatively in salwar-kameez, although my Crocs have their own fan-following ! I have been to parties in private homes, which could be a farm-house in Gurgaon. Almost everyone speaks to me in Hindi, even when they know that I am from here. I am also world-famous in BBS, due to that fact that a lot of my relatives are working as bureaucracts, politicians, or are among the hoi polloi. Nice, isn't it ? I ignored this place for 20 years, and when I came here on work, I strolled onto the proverbial A-list. Thanks, Ma and Papa; you must have been popular.

Big Bazaar is probably the most loved location in town. Mayfair Lagoon, and a horrid little place called TDS, are the in spots. Bemused is a mild word for the way I feel about BBS, most of the time. It's like watching your conservative middle-aged aunt, on vacation at a beach somewhere, using sunscreen and squeezed into a swim-suit. It boggles the mind, to watch BBS and its denizens, at times.

The real denizens, not the Bihari imports, the students, and the Infocity chaps ! The Oriyas - the Brahmins who take one look at my face and know that I am a Mishra, that most exalted of Brahmins - Kaanyakubj, no less. : ) The Mohantys, who will see themselves as Mohantys always. The IAS/ex-IAS guys, who talk fondly of how I recited a poem when I was five, and how my mother adjusted to life as an Oriya bahu. The people of Punjabi origin, who have never forgotten that they came to BBS with nothing. And all the people who knew my parents way way back, and still remember them; they say - Kirti ra jhia, na ? (Kirti's daughter, na ?)

But I understand that my view may be simplistic, and so very coloured by my own refusal to take BBS seriously, as anything other than a sleepy place, a town with no personality whatsoever.

The other day, I answered a friend's call as I was about to enter IG Park at 6.30 pm. (IG Park is home to druggies, prostitutes and homosexuals after sunset.) When I told him where I was, he asked me to leave forthwith. Me being me, I argued, but left eventually. That night, he called me reckless for having gone to IG Park that evening. He also said something very telling; he said that 'every town had its nuances'.

That kind of sums up how I feel. In a way, the nuances are within my grasp, because, thanks to the work I do, I get to visit all dimensions from the old-moneyed to the new-moneyed, to the visitors, and to the under-belly. But I don't get the nuances, because I perhaps don't want to. I choose to see BBS as essentially harmless, a town that still preens in its own self-importance, a town that exists in no other consciousness but its own. Am I right, or am I wrong ? I don't know.

Thought of the day

Today is New Year's Day, the first of the year, the day to start afresh and make new resolutions. Why, I ask? Are the old resolutions so bad, or did they serve us so poorly? Or is that this day sanctions us to start afresh without having to look back and admit that things were wrong before, that we fell short, that we lost face, money, love, friendship, and ourselves in the process? Unpleasant looks back at a less than desirable reality - what does that achieve? Introspection is always painful, in that we are forced to accept that every other perspective is as valid as ours.