conflicts everywhere, resolutions there

I do not know after 17 years of handling my little baby if I even understand her. My guess is that she for sure thinks we do not. She is simple and complicated at the same time. On the face of it, Jispa is extremely uncomplicated as an individual. She doesn’t get involved in many issues. She is not troubled too much by things around her and broadly she lives her life untouched by other people’s opinions.

On the other hand, some of her decisions and her mood swings we find difficult to predict or understand. I think 17-year olds everywhere are complicated people. And they have been so for ages. Its not an easy time. Even for Jispa.

I am also very conflicted on how to treat her  - adult or not. I am inclined to step off the pedal and Jasmine is inclined to stay on it. These causes a different set of complications. I think when you have one child the parental involvement in your child goes up and I think you are less likely to give more freedom to your child. We end up trying to control a larger swath of her daily life.

I have always been conflicted on this. Do I let her be and let her decide or stop her from hurting herself and doing silly things? Jispa is always fighting for her independence. I don’t know. Should we, should we not.

Every time I think we should let go, Jasmine says, that last one year. Lets just get her across the finishing line and we are done then. Why let go of it now after 17 years. Ya. It a valid argument. Our investment in her future is significant from an emotional standpoint. Surely she can handle one more year of us.

Her 18^th birthday is coming up this August. Man, after that its going to be a hell hole for us. Jispa is desperate to learn driving. I don’t know how good I will be as a teacher. How anxious I would be. Its going to fall on me to teach her. Jasmine will not be anywhere inclined to take up this task. This is going to be a severe test of my mental skills. The nest test is going to be equally fun. Would I give her the car to drive once I have taught her to? Oh boy oh boy. How is that going to happen? Which car would I give her? My bigger one or Jasmine’s smaller one. And how am I going to sit while Jasmine corrects her while she is driving.

Jasmine is a funny animal. She will be involved, want to be involved, itches to be involved but is so frustrated with Jispa that she will not teach her. Then little by little the pressure builds up and she uses a wrongly timed opportunity to speak up and then all hell breaks loose with Jispa. I predict this is going to happen in driving as well. It will be my job to teach and then suddenly once, Jasmine will start correcting Jispa and boom.

Not that Jasmine is wrong. Her observations are acute and very valid. Its her timing and delivery that is the issue most of the time. She will give it when she wants to and not when you ask for it. It’s a dark comedy that happens, which takes some maneuvering to either avoid or get out of.

Its so funny that when outside in you see, it looks like I am the aggressive one amongst the trio but as I have explained to Jispa many times, its Jasmine’s quiet aggression and doggedness that led Jispa to where she is right now, as far as her swimming, schedules, training and commitment goes. I would have slacked off way earlier if it were left to me.

These are some of the funny contradictions that a family lives with. There are so many weird combinations and complications that are best left unravelled. Right now, we have my mom staying with us. She has been staying alone for years now after she threw out both her sons. We went and set up our lives separately while she lived on her own. Over a period of time we managed to blow hot blow cold in our relationships and now we have reached fair degree of comfort in how we dal with each other.

When she threatened to throw us out for the umpteenth time, I had decided that from now on I will not fight with her come what may. So, over the years, I never ever fought, no matter what she did. Same with Jasmine. We realised there was no point fighting. We carried on and focussed on our life.

We built our house, our lives, our principals on our own. Its been a great journey. Its nice that in times like this because of how we handled ourselves, we were able to move on and get her over to live with us. That’s important. It’s a hell to be alone and quarantined like thus. Its nice to have your family together in such circumstances.

Again – its easy for me to get along with my mom and let bygones be bygones. I am amazed how Jasmine is able to handle that as well. Some of the stuff that happened was not pleasant from both our perspectives. I think its an interesting example for the rest and for our lives.

I think it is never correct to be bitter about anything and to rather have an easy disposition. You just accept and move on. You learn that it may not be the best for you at this time and that its ok. There is no reason to burn any bridges and be any bitter about your experiences. I think my mom is realising this as I am as well.

The only credit I give myself as I remember the moment years ago, as I had decided to leave the house, I promised to myself – I will not fight with mom. This one held on for years and it has still borne fruit. How do I do it to the rest of the world. I envy people who just refuse to fight any one anywhere in their lives. Cool calm people. I hate you guys. You guys by your mere presence make me feel like shit.

Its ok. I bring energy and life and action to my everyday life. My mom is also happy that while she is staying with us she is happily entertained. There is never a dull moment. I am talking, doing, fighting, boxing with Jispa, making fun of Jasmine – something or the other. She can’t believe how unlike each other; her two sons are. Placid lake versus raging storm.

There so many opposites – so much reconciliation.

perspectives

Long ago I too thought that the solutions to all traffic woes would be to build flyovers. As many as you possibly can, just build them and the traffic will simple cease. The simple logic being that if you don’t have halts you don’t have traffic.

Reading books by intelligent people gives you a perspective on life that is different than the average Joe. You look at life from different angles. That is the single biggest thing about reading. You understand that there are multiple perspectives and viewpoints for various issues. You also realize how much to trust propaganda and simplistic thinking. Also being in marketing you realize that you are not the center of the world. Most people (even in marketing) market to themselves and their own sensibilities. That’s not the right way to understand things. Just because you like it is no reason to have a pack design in a certain manner. Its what your core customer wants that’s important. I have learnt that India is not English speaking and we continue to throw English inside our communication. We marketer’s believe that everybody understands English. In offices in metros we think since we use English as the primary means of communication, that is the answer to everything. Of course you must understand English. May be earlier it would suffice as the big markets were the well-developed metros. But now as we look beyond the metros the vernacular languages need to addressed. The politicians and the film world have got it bang on. They are ones who have embraced the vernacular since time immemorial. But since we marketing people are based out of cities we forget the basics.

Simplistically as well, we think that the only spending on infrastructure we must do is the roads. So many people (very smart at that) have told me that the solution to Mumbai’s infra mess is more roads, costal roads, ring roads and flyover etc. No one seems to understand the huge amount of money being spent on what is a fraction of the people enjoying the service. Mass Rapid Transport is not about roads for cars but using bus and train services to connect people across the city. A network that takes a huge mass of people from one end to another. This opens out the city and flattens it evenly. People want cheap reliable mode of transport. The car is the worst thing for solving city woes. My argument has been rather simple here. My guess (only a guess) is that the amount of money the city spends on these massive flyovers can be simply utilized to do something else. Suppose we just take the number of busses on the road and triple it thus reaching far off corners and for good measure put air-conditioning to placate the office goers, the cost of which can easily be borne in lieu of the flyover constructed. Me thinks that with this kind of money you can even charge normal rates and give AC service. Ofcourse this is simplistic thinking. Flyover can last many years, far more than an average life of a bus. Plus no point having busses if your roads are jammed to start with. But the thinking is different. The point is to look at lakhs of people at the lower level than the few bums at the top.  

But it’s not easy to change habit. Over the last few years I have got the habit of travelling by car. First at kaliana and then at worli – my house is ill connected to office by public transport. It doesn’t make sense to travel thus. It takes far more time and is tedious. So I have the car habit. While I was in nariman point I used to take pride in travelling by train. This way I got my reading time as well. There is some loose talk that our office will get transferred back to Nariman Point. Jasmine and I saw it differently. I thought great - there is a new freeway from town right upto my building (literally – mine is the first building you get off to) and Jasmine said – great, now you can go by train and catch back on your reading. Oops. I missed that one. No body like change from routine.  I too am a victim of my own routine.

ding dong, oh baby sing a song

Music is beautiful. It can turn your mood to a different direction and it can also be used to reflect your mood. It’s beautiful. But I… I don’t listen to music. I have never been able to sit for hours listening to music. I can’t appreciate music for long. I don’t understand it. I love it when it plays. I can sing and dance along. But I can’t let it run for long. And I just can’t talk about it too much. Singers, musicians etc.. These are no conversations for me. Jasmine still likes her music. No she isn’t too picky but she still likes it. She can go to sleep listening to music and she can’t stuff her ears with the earphones and enjoy. I can’t do that. And ear phones for music… I can’t handle that as well. I feel it just separates me from the rest of the world. And I would like my sound system to be of a decent quality. But still even after all this I can’t spend money on listening to music. Concerts bore me after a point of time. I would love if someone tried explaining some of the music to me. I would be able to appreciate it better, but still not much beyond a point.

I think Jispa loves her music. Jasmine always has the radio on while driving and Jispa listens to a lot of radio. Now she has this thing for English music. Wonder where she picked that from. Jispa insists on listening to the English radio channel. I find that even more irritating. New English music has passed me by completely. My western music is limited to the stuff I heard in college and a few songs from there on. While driving, I feel is the best time to catch up talking with each other. So if Jispa or Jasmine is in the car then I don’t switch on the radio. I rather talk about something or the other. Music is a conversation restrictor. Earlier when I drove alone I heard the radio but since a few years I have listening to good podcasts and using that to further my readings. Sometimes this makes me feel like a completely fuddy duddy. I am hungry and have an almost insatiable appetite for knowledge and music becomes a faltu waste of time. And then it surprises me when sometimes I switch on the radio at times and love the music being played.

I love the music but can’t listen to it. What is this weird combination? In fact I feel most music listeners are highly pretentious. But then this I attribute to my own stupid judgment (or lack of). But I still can’t understand my behavior. If a song is stuck in my head, I like it. I can sing it again and again. Singing songs while batting have helped me improve it and I think highly of it. I sing so much that Jispa hates it and I a song is stuck in her head while swimming she blames me for it. She hates it when that happens. She feels irritated and I can’t understand why that is a bad thing. I love it. But I still can’t listen to too much music. I also never understood how people listen to music while studying or reading. I can’t do that as well. Today morning I tried listening to music while working or reading – it bombed as usual. I had to switch off the music.

It’s a weird thing. Music is so powerful and I have mentioned this incident before – I used to sing to a pregnant Jasmine. It was this one song and when Jispa was born whenever she cried I sang this song and it made her quiet. I completely believe in the power of music, but I can’t somehow get it to work hard on me. One song and at best two. Full stop. My mood is ok, now let’s get on with it.

Well, whatever. When I was marketing head for the wealth division, we used to have KK concerts organized for our clients. He was awesome and this song of his was brilliant. I loved it. I heard it today morning and I thought I could hear a few more. In fact I put his entire playlist to play from youtube and then I simply switched it off in 2 minutes. I can’t take more than 67 seconds of emotions. Brain fry ho jata hai J

For those wondering on what the title means - listen to this...

zoom

Last week I was in Udaipur for a personal leave. Jasmine and I have realized the value of staying put in as few places as possible during a leave. First we would go to multiple places in one leave. Like our honey moon, in which we did more than 6 places in 15 days. We covered practically the whole of  Kumaon region in Uttrakhand when we were there. Slowly slowly we were down to three places, then two and now we are at one place one week. The last two holidays have been just that. Reach, plonk yourself and if needed use that as a base to explore further. So this time, it was one week in Udaipur. This also affects the hotel choice. We end up taking a smallish but cute and clean hotel, that is typically family run. And this time for the first time, we deliberately went for a hotel with a pool in it. if you are there for eight nights and you might get a bit of hot weather, you need a pool. So we got, history, culture and relaxation – all in one vacation.

Another thing that we have discovered in India is the Golden Quadrilateral. The new highways of India. I have been hearing about how good. I used to try and get Jasmine to agree on driving holidays. The last time we had no option but to drive to our spot as it was pretty remote. The highways are amazing. These are segregated lanes with flower beds in the middle. And enough space to zip through. When I first drove on Indian highways, it was around 20 years ago. We had a Fiat premier padmini car. Here is a similar model. Ours was white as well.

My dad had bought it second hand. My mom had insisted on buying a car as my eldest sister was marriageable age and we must have a car to prove that we were well off. That we had two flats and that we had stayed in Dubai or whatever else was probably not too much of a show off value. So dad bought his car for around ninety five thousand rupees. A princely sum of course in those days. Must have been around in the year 1990 or thereabouts. The only thing we kids did not like about it was that it did not have an AC in it. We were keen that we have atleast an AC car. We wanted a Maruti but our conservative parents preferred this car, which we made do with. BUT NO AC? That was a bummer. But hell, we still loved that we had a car and as soon as we turned 18, we enrolled into a driving school and got our licenses. Dad actively taught our driving and soon enough we were driving on highways.

The highways. Oh the highways on a premier padmini. It had no acceleration to talk about. It was good for doing 60kmph at bets. Reaching any speeds beyond that required a large empty stretch of road and 90 would be around the best available speed. That too only if we got like a straight road with no traffic on the way. I must crossed that only once in my padimini. Add to that were the state of the highways in India. I was explaining to Jispa that the highways were just one road with one lane going up and another lane going down, with no segregation. The lanes were simply painted. So when you drive you have to be very carefull. For overtaking every time, you would have to tail the truck in front of you and then move little to the right and check for oncoming traffic. Then if you found the coast clear you would press the accelerator completely and hope to pass the truck before an oncoming vehicle came face to face with you. But that’s not enough similarly you have to constantly look for incoming vehicles that are overtaking by coming onto your lane. You would have to adjust your speed accordingly. I have been pushed off road one more than one occasions by a truck who has mistimed his overtaking. So I move off the road rather than get smashed into as pulp.

I was explaining this to Jispa and she found it quite amusing. The highway to Udaipur is around 800 km long and is one super straight drive. Only in one 50 km patch between Ahmedabad and Ghandinagar is the old style highway. I guess that is because it is the Ghandinagar bypass. If you go through the city then you get the segregated lanes all the way. This is like a shortcut. It helped to have it as it was like giving a live demo to Jispa. I talked to her while I was driving. See now I must overtake this way. Now I must look for this truck. She now found all it even funnier. All the cars waiting behind a truck and then suddenly all of them accelerating together and overtaking. Then she saw how we were stuck behind a truck at 40kmph waiting for a chance to overtake. As opposed to 100 -120 kmph on the normal highway, it felt like a hare waiting impatiently behind a tortoise waiting for an opening.

The superb highways made me think about my political leaning. The bridges in Mumbai which got much acclaim were thanks to the right winged group in power. The Golden quad highway project was a brain child of the same right winged combo in power at the center. The more secular party leans almost left and is a ‘welfarist’ at heart. While I think some of the legislation like the NREGA which guarantees employment may have much greater long term impact than what most understand, I need good roads and bridges now. No I am not talking like a spoiled brat who wants roads for a self drive vacation. But I see the benefits of good infrastructure.

Long ago in my naivety I had argued that India does not need so much infrastructure. After all we led the IT boom in spite of the no government support and in the absence of any backing. Adversity led to innovation. But I couldn’t have been more stupider. We desperately need it and the multiplier effect is for there to see. Good roads means better transport for goods and materials, we can now use large trucks on the highways, better trucks, better facilities for drivers, faster transportation. May be capital intensive in the short run but cheaper in the long run. Business comes up in and around the area and you definitely gain in terms of efficiency. It’s bloody important. So this time around if I vote right winged, it’s not that I love secular less, but that I love infrastructure more (sorry Brutus).

breathe easy drive easy

Driving in Mumbai is a harrowing task and even the best of us I guess grow horns. It affects me in many ways that I thought impossible. Normally whenever I drive and I see some one trying to cross, especially the old and the ones with kids, I stop my car and signal them to cross. Sometimes I am rewarded with a smile. I even do that to a few women who seem to be lost right in the middle of the road. So that’s my good bit.
On the way home, there is some construction work happening for the monorail. This place has slums on the left and the construction has left very little space for the people to move. The footpath is obviously non existent. So we have tons of people on the road. Kids, women men everyone. I went honking honking getting them to move off the road. Then suddenly I realised what I was doing. I was honking to get a guy on crutches off my path. That’s unacceptable. While I stopped honking but the deed was done. It’s been difficult to control your irritation on these roads. It’s been difficult to relax while driving.
Today morning there was a school bus behind us, honking away to glory. A car is obviously faster than the bus and the reason I can’t drive faster is that there is a truck in front of me. I roll my window and request him not to honk via a hand signal. I overtake truck. He comes behind and then starts honking all over again. This is the limit. If he honks once more I will stop the car. HONK! Ok you asked for it. I stop the car in the middle of the road and the famous Doshi anger comes out in full volume. My baritone is used to good effect. Loud Jaimit voice can wake up neighbourhood – old jungle saying. I have seen this Zeus energy used by my dad and sometimes by my brother to good effect. My dad was a little hotter than it was right and I have tried my best to control my own streak. It’s far less but even one is one too many.
I also called the school later and lodged a complaint. You can’t drive like that and if you are a school bus you have no excuses. Absolutely none.
I guess the next time I will simply stop in front and alight and not utter a word. Silent satyagraha might be a better option.
That way Jispa’s school is pretty cool. I have never heard them honking. Even if you are late they simply call up and figure if you are coming and then they silently and patiently wait. The attendant also waits silently. He never gestures to any kid to run faster, au contraire he gestures to slow down. There is no rush. The kids climb in, he closes the door and the bus silently shifts into motion.
Taking a cue from that and an ad that says that driving in the 60 kmph band will help you save fuel, I drove nice and easy today. Patting my horns back inside my head, breathing easy, I realised that driving can be a form of yoga.