Watching the working class on the ground giving their views on Prime Time channels on the problems faced by the ‘mango man’ is way more convincing than the sanitized and expurgated versions continually offered by  the anchors and the party spokespersons in heated TV debates and which garner great TRPs for reasons difficult to comprehend !

However, in Mumbai we have a better way of getting our ground reports on the affairs of home state UP by simply engaging in conversations with taxi drivers, majority of whom belong to districts of Eastern UP and warm up to people from that area. They may have left their homes to ply taxis in Mumbai ‘shahar’ but remain connected to their roots.

Yesterday, I had personal work in the familiar Fort Area in SOBO (‘South Bombay’, for the uninitiated !) and afterwards hopped on to a taxi to return to Churchgate station. In my customary way, I politely asked the taxi-wala ‘Dada, kahan ke hai?’ and the reply expectedly was ‘UP’. I said ‘UP mein kahan ?’ and the answer came with a hint of pride – ‘Ayodha’ ! Soon we were talking of the ‘Bhavya’ and magnificent ‘Ram Mandir’ with it’s construction on in full swing for its grand opening slated in January next for the public ! According to him UP was in great shape, under a strong administrator. But, of course !

Our man was curious as to why I was in Mumbai though I hailed from Lucknow and I gave him brief highlights of my travels and transfers across the country while serving in a PSU Bank. Reacting as if to say ‘Hail Fellow, Well Met’, he informed he worked as a driver in a PSU Bank for 17 years after which he quit, not getting promoted as a clerk. I joked that in my Bank, the GM’s Driver was a powerful person and carried some clout.

His grouse was that the Driver of the Big Boss had perks but the hours were long and erratic, sometimes going into late nights. Branches could close no sooner the Day-end was completed but in Administrative Offices, meetings and discussions went on & on. I protested that I had worked as Branch Head and in the early 2003-4, there was ISBS system which few knew about and I’d once spent a night in the branch doing Day-end ! He knowledgeably agreed that those days of ‘migration’ were really tough for branches.

By the time we reached, we had recognized we were ‘bankers of the same feather’. As a fraternal gesture he gave me a discount of Rs.2 on the fare. A real professional there !

‘Your views, suggestions and ideas are welcome’ (some even add the term ‘valued’) are often appended to articles, reviews and posts basically eliciting laudatory comments but not quite expecting critiques or perspectives that’s contrary to what’s been propagated. Opinions might differ person to person, but these aren’t welcome by those seeking it !

That said, one thing old timers have in common (apart from post retirement blues !) are loads of time, old stories of their life and times and ready offering of sage advice to the gen-next & next-next, depending on who’s available on hand. But who is listening ? Yet a few decades ago, it was given that seniors (read parents and grand-parents in the joint family system) would rightfully ‘lecture’ off-springs including close nephews/nieces on do’s & don’t’s  and on ‘Sanskar’, even after their being married &  with own children.

Thanks to those practices we got more educated, were married off early by elders to the one considered right for us and started families soon in keeping with family traditions. There was pattern in the ‘family way’ ! No one could retort when family elders spoke on decisions to be taken. Those who did were considered badly brought up and rebellious.

I recall my Grand-mom telling my 45 year old Uncle ‘There’s no need to hide and smoke, your Dad knew of it some 20 years back’ ! She was giving permission to him to smoke in public but Uncle wouldn’t. Question of having beer with Dads was generally unheard of, unless father and son were both from the ‘Fauji’ Services. Exceptions proved the rule ! Archaic as it may sound, none of my friends nor I, smoked, drank or used cuss words in presence of our parents (till much later). My Dad smoked and liked to swear at times !     

But all that seems a very long time ago and parents today listen to children more than they do to them, given the pressures of professional life and social media on our kids. Celebrity veteran actor, Anil Kapoor was asked in an interview (in the presence of his young actor son, Harshvardhan) if he gave advice or tips to him, Anil’s response was ‘I prefer giving advice to children other than my own- because they never want to listen to me’. His son laughed it off saying his Dad wasn’t so much at it, as was his Mom, Sunita !  

In the Netflix’s latest hit, four part tele-film called ‘Lust Stories-2’, the first story has an irrepressible Granny (Neena Gupta is superb !) who talks about importance of physical relations in conjugal bliss to her granddaughter who’s just got engaged. Granny candidly enlightens the girl on her own ‘birds and bees’ stories, much to the girl’s amusement and embarrassment of the mid-aged Son & his Wife, since such talk is taboo in the family !   We may ask ‘Will today’s liberated youth ever need this kind of guidance from elders?’      

A Tribute to the Language ‘Gurus’

On ‘Guru Purnima’ its time to respectfully remember those who imparted knowledge and wisdom to us (to whatever extent possible !). The realistic list is quite illustrious – parents, family elders, our school teachers, great seniors in service life and old friends who we grew up with. But, if we were to talk of communication skills, most of us would credit our language teachers of our early school days for grinding in us the fundamentals of good writing and basics of the spoken word. It was due to their mastery over the subject (the language) that we found some of our brighter classmates becoming proficient in both Hindi and English (in hometown Lucknow)

In the English medium schools, imbibing good proficiency in English has always been stressed, which many argue remains a hangover from our colonial past. Due to the fact that quite a few have regional languages as their mother tongue, many of us, could be reasonably comfortable in finding the apt expressions in English but flounder to find the right words in Hindi for, as one of my teachers said ‘You will express yourself best in the language that you think’! I, for one, had a tough time with my Hindi Sir who tried his best to ‘sanitise’ my Bengali laden Hindi for a first few years.His efforts bore fruit and with time my grammar and ‘Bhasha’ improved.

Coming back to English, I recall that teachers in school would invariably choose words which would not only sound alien but wise. The pronunciation, at times was tough to follow if word ‘maximum’ was spelt ‘yum ya yax I yum yu yum’! Yet learning from them was fun, new lexicon, idioms and phrases and their usage were discovered, names of great books exchanged among us friends and consulting the ‘dictionary’ for difficult words was encouraged. I had once used the word ‘ecstasy’ in one of my school essays and our Sir was a bit surprised. He inquired where I had learnt this word from and asked ‘do you know what agony means?’ There was a knowledge sharing but no admonition for trying to explore… and were all on a discovery trail !

In one of our school elocutions, a speaker started his speech with a nursery rhyme and then went on to connect the threads therein. This became such a big hit that even the established speakers emulated him later. In College debates, funny repartees and punch lines were introduced and rebuttals gave birth to great witticisms, some on the lines of Oscar Wilde’s classic quote ‘nothing to declare except my genius’. Certainly those times were very different, quite shorn of state of art technology, Google and apps but what we got in return from our teachers and education was immeasurable. They taught us how to communicate & even add new languages to our armoury !