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THIS ABOVE ALL
We are noise-happy people
Khushwant Singh
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Khushwant Singh
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On the evening
before Dasehra there was a wedding in the servant quarters
attached to the block of flats in which I live. I had no
knowledge about it, but was informed of the arrival of the baraat
by a series of deafening explosions, which even pierced my
non-receptive ears. The families concerned probably could not
afford to have a brass band and do with a party of three
drummers. Between them they raised a din no brass band could
have matched.
It went on for
over 20 minutes, followed by more explosions before the marriage
ceremony started. "We are a nation of noise-happy
people", I explained to my guests. Conversation had to stop
because we could not hear each other. I could not help adding,
times I think my growing deafness is a blessing in disguise.
These explosions get muffled, and I am spared a lot of
bullshit."
All-night jagrans are noise-makers’ ultimate victory over all humanity
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The next evening
there were a few more bangs and some crackers. "Is there
another wedding?" I asked my servant Bahadur.
"No", he replied, "tomorrow is Dasehra." The
barrage of bombs and crackers was as deafening as the one on the
earlier evening. So it continued evening after evening till
Divali when most of the stored-up ammunition of patakhas,
phuljharis, sparklers and rockets was spent.
It continued for a
few evenings after Divali.
Loudspeakers have
enhanced noise-making ability to destroy other peoples’ peace
and quiet. One early dawn I reached Jalandhar by train. A waning
moon could be seen, and beside it the morning star. It could
have been a serene amritvela, the ambrosial hour. But
loudspeakers were blowing forth — Gurbani from
gurdwaras, bells from mandirs, prayers of maulvis
from mosques. We think nothing of imposing our faith on people
who do not follow it. To top all unwelcome noises, are all-night
jagrans. They are noise-makers’ ultimate victory over
all humanity; they will not let you sleep.
Bangladeshi poet
Shamsur Rahman
(born in1929) of Dhaka is probably the most admired Bengali poet
in Bangladesh and in literary circles of Indian Bengal. He is
lucky in having found an excellent translator in Shankar Sen of
Kolkata. Though I do not know Bengali, I enjoyed reading Sen’s
renderings as they sounded authentic, as if composed originally
in English.
Though The Best
Poems of Shamsur Rahman (J.J. Enterprise) was published
sometime ago, I read the book recently. I quote the opening
verse as an appetiser:
Look at me, look
well, look very closely;
My grey whiskers
are suffused with deep sighs;
I am often
afflicted by toothache;
My eyesight is
deteriorating day by day;
I am busy,
exhausted, with no respite;
I am like a ghost,
who returns;
Drained and
exhausted after a soiree;
And strolls
dejectedly on the balcony;
Yet even now I can
bluff with ease;
And upbraid a
friend with relish in no time;
The better part of
days if often spent;
In wishing the
deaths of close relatives;
You are hating me
a lot, aren’t you?
That is what I am
now;
The person you
knew has risen from within me;
And gone hiding
very far away;
Now, would you
please leave me and go?
Kamel kushtad
The one dessert
that has become popularly accepted all over India is caramel
custard`85 pronounced by most Indian cooks as kamel kushtad.
All Irani restaurants in Mumbai specialise in it. Now you can
savour it in most Indian eateries, including some fancy dhabas.
My cook does an
excellent job making it when he has run out of ideas. I had
assumed caramel custard was the legacy left by British memsahibs,
and that the word caramel was some sort of deviation of Mount
Carmel of Biblical times. I looked up my dictionary and found I
was wrong down the line. It is made of sugar heated till it
turns brown, or soft toffee made of sugar and butter. The name
is not derived from the Bible but from sparsh caramelo.
Fatal lunch
A Gujarati, a
Tamilian and a Punjabi were doing construction work on
scaffolding on the 20th floor of a building. They were having
lunch, and Gujju bhai opened his lunch box and said:
"Dhokla. If I get dhokla one more time for lunch, I
am going to jump off this building." The Tamilian opened
his lunch box and exclaimed: "Idli- sambhar again.
If I get idli sambhar one more time, I am going to jump off
too." The Punjabi opened his tiffin box and said: "Paranthas
again. If I get paranthas one more time, I am jumping,
too."
The next day the
Gujju opened his lunch box, saw dhokla, and jumped to his death.
The Tamilian opened his box, saw idli-sambhar, and jumped, too.
The Punjabi opened his lunch, saw the paranthas, and jumped to
his death as well.
At the funeral,
Gujju’s wife was weeping. She said: "If I had known how
really tired he was of dhokla, I would have never given it to
him again." The Tamilian wife also wept and said: "I
could have given him a dosa. I didn’t realise he hated
idli-sambhar so much." Everyone turned and stared at the
Punjabi’s wife. She said: "Don’t look at me. He made
his own lunch."
(Contributed by Vipin Buckshey,
New Delhi)
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