EARLIER COLUMNS

Kiss and kismet October 30, 2004

Food fads and filmi gods October 23, 2004

Yesterday once more October 16, 2004

Bose smart, Nehru smarter October 9, 2004

Exploding myths October 2, 2004

Candid confessions September 19, 2004

Return to the hills for verse September 18, 2004

The power of doubt September 4, 2004

Trouble with the truth August 28, 2004

What makes a perfect evening August 21, 2004

Kasi yatra August 14, 2004

Eat, drink and be merry July 24, 2004

THE best time to watch antics of politicians on the make are elections: before names of candidates are announced by the parties, during the campaign and after results are announced. To start with, aspirants swear by their undying loyalty to the party: I am a disciplined soldier and will abide by my party’s decision etc." If he or she does not get the ticket, he or she will go into a sulk, do his or her best to get the party nominee defeated, or join another one. If the party nominee wins, in all probability, he or she will return to it. The following couplet by T.N. Raz of Panchkula sums it up neatly:

Break up the party, rejoin it, break it up again, I say I am sure your opportunism will bear fruit one day.

Go down the length and breadth of the country and you will find party hoppers in every state of the Union who made it good: Amarinder Singh, Bhajan Lal, Bansi Lal, Kalyan Singh, Ajit Singh — I could go on and on with my list but will end with Sharad Pawar, the rolemodel for Aaya Rams-Gaya Rams, the paradigm of party-hoppers who has made it better than any of his kind. The reason behind the success of party-hoppers is that the two major political parties of the country, the Congress and the BJP, have a lot in common. So changing loyalties when the situation is favourable does not cause much soul-searching or bad conscience. The one exception is the communists. Though split into two, they have definite commitments to their ideals which leave less scope for bargaining. To the best of my recollections, the only two card-holding communists who switched over to the Congress when the opportune moment came were Mohan Kumarmangalam to become a Minister of the Central Cabinet and Rajni Patel to become head of the Congress party in Maharashtra.

I am not quite deaf but getting more hard of hearing by the day. Friends are too polite to draw my attention to my growing infirmity but members of my family are more outspoken. My wife who has been dead over three years never spared me when I asked her to repeat what she had said with a question hain? She would snap back and exclaim: Dora! Why don’t you have your ears examined?" Now everytime a stranger calls on me, my son, if he is around, tells him or her" "Speak a little loudly. My pop is hard of hearing." And the other day my daughter asked me, "Aren’t you thinking of getting a hearing aid?"

There are pros and cons about hearing aids. I had a Canadian friend, a well-known art critic who had one connected to battery tucked into his front pocket. I asked him if it wasn’t a nuisance. "No" he replied firmly. I have it switched on when I am out on the road; so that I can hear cars hoot to get out of their way. I also have it on when attending musical concerts. Its only in parties when people begin to bore me I switch it off and switch on a smile on my face to appear as if I am all ears."

Satish Gujral had lost his hearing as a child but he taught himself to speak

Two of my friends have acquired hearing aids: Prem Kirpal, now 96, got one from Paris at the enormous price of Rs 1.5 lakh. He hardly ever uses it. When I asked him why, he replies naively: "the battery will run out and I’ll have to get another one from Paris." Bharat Ram who is the same age as myself also uses a hearing aid but has to cup his ears to catch what anyone is saying. The artist Satish Gujaral lost his hearing as a child and was more than able to cope with life: he was able to teach himself to speak in English without being able to hear what he was saying. Then he found a living hearing-aid in his comely wife, Kiran, who has taught him to read her lips and hand gestures. He gets over his handicap by doing most of the talking and reducing what he has to hear to the minimum. Some years ago he went to Australia for ear surgery which would restore his hearing to normal.

For some months he kept up the pretence that he could hear sounds he hadn’t heard before. Actually the surgery did nothing for him. He is back to his more reliable hearing aid — his wife.

I am not yet a gone case. I can hear people sitting close to me without much difficulty. I have problems hearing people who speak too softly, go on at the speed of machine-gun fire or go on interminably mimi, mim, mimi. Then I assume the mien of the smiling Buddha and occasionally grunt to indicate I am following what is being said. My only fear is that the person might ask me a question. I answer it with a benign smile. I also have problem answering telephone calls. Young people, mainly girls, get awed as if they were talking to an ogre and say what they have to at a breathless speed. I have to admonish them "Please speak slowly and clearly as I am hard of hearing. It would be better if you spelt out what you have to say on paper. I can see better than I can hear."

So far I have got away with it. I still enjoy classical music on my satellite radio, follow news and comments on TV channels. If I am hard of hearing, it’s other peoples’ problem, not mine. But use hearing aid to help them out? No, I often wonder if deaf people are cremated or buried with ear-plugs and batteries or sent to the other world as deaf, as they were on the day they died.

"Doctor, my wife has acute insomnia. She very often remains awake until two o’ clock in the morning. What shall I do for her?"

Doctor: "Go home earlier."

(Contributed by Reeten Ganguly, Tezpur)