Learning A New Trick

You can't teach an old dog a new trick. Perhaps true. But I am not an old dog, you see. I am an old human :-) So during the Covid19 lockdown in Calcutta I decided to teach myself a new rope trick. The crisscross style of jumping rope. This is something that I have always wanted to learn. All the boxers do it.

When I started skipping during the lockdown to stay fit that old ambition that was lying dormant once again raised its head. And I am happy to say that in a week or ten days, I have been able to quite get the hang of it and know the basics of how to do it. Now it's just a matter of time and practice before I can do it endlessly. This evening I did some 23 criss cross jumps at a stretch. My jumping rope is not the ideal size. It should have been at least a foot longer. That's why I do get stuck now and then but the important thing is now I know the basics and know that you don't have to be a Mohammad Ali to be able to do it. These youtube how to's are such a blessing.

There was a time when I used to think that you needed a really long rope to do a clean criss cross successfully. But even with a very long rope (I used a nylon rope that they use for lifting water out of a well), which makes a normal jump almost impossible, I realised that I couldn't do anything even close to a criss cross. 

So this time, being more determined, I decided to youtube it up and learn the goddamn thing once and for all. I soon discovered that the trick lied in crossing your hands at the elbow. I used to cross them near the wrists. This used to make the loop really small. But when you are crossing your hands at the elbow or even higher like near the biceps, the loop is much larger and it becomes quite easy to pass through it. 

Once I got this basic and fundamental thing corrected, it was a matter of few days before I discovered the rhythm and cleared the first one successfully. Oh the joy of doing it the first time :-) You feel like a little child. Regrettably I was alone then and there was no one to share the joy with. I was trying and trying and hitting myself on the legs and then it just happened. Did it really happen? Yes it did. There was no one to tell me yes it was perfect. I just had to assume it was perfect.

But I wasn't getting more than one successful criss cross at a time. Then I realised that my hands were not as free as they are for younger boys. They are stiff near the shoulder, particularly the right hand. So I had to cross the hands very consciously. I also did a few jumping jacks as a warm exercise to get the hands a little free. The shorter than the right sized rope does not help either (priority number one after normalcy returns is to get a proper jumping rope of the right size. The American Cross Rope brand costs upwards of $100). But you can compensate for the short size by bending a little forward. Then jumping with a forward bend of the body isn't very easy either.

Then there is thing to know also. You turn the rope with your wrist. Not your entire hand. Your hands shouldn't trace a circle. Only the wrist should.

There are two things that can be done with a criss cross. You can either throw in one of them every three or four times you do a normal bounce or any other step or you can do a continuous series of criss crosses. There is a yet third type where you keep your hands crossed and then keep jumping  continuously through the loop. I will need a right sized rope and something better than a plastic handle that I currently have. Because in that style your ability to turn the rope with your wrists held in the reverse direction is important and it is anything but easy. 

I quite like the boxer's steps also. I am practising that right now. I can do it but it is more of dancing than jumping. I need more practice. Right now I am doing three sets of 55 bounces each (started from 40x3) and then I spend some time to practice the new tricks. I plan to take it to 150 x 3. That is what I used to do every alternate day before going to Sandakphu a few years ago with Ushnik.

The next macho thing to learn is the double under. You jump up, turn the rope two times under your feet and then land. For that one certainly needs a proper sized rope of the right weight. Because you have to turn the rope two times with your wrist while staying above ground. I will do it as soon as I get the right rope.

May 3, 2020

Last evening the green rope with which I was jumping (the youtube video is with that rope) broke from the middle. There was a steel spring attached there that had broken some time back. This was  there to take the impact of the friction when the rope hits the ground and protect the rope. With that spring gone, it was matter of days before the rope itself broke into two.

I threw the broken rope out - a plastic thing - but kept the handles. I added my nylon rope to them. Essentially inserted the two ends of the rope through the handle. So now I have a new rope made of nylon but it is too light. So keeping its form intact while it is in motion is a little difficult. But the size being perfect I find it easier to jump with. Swinging it around is a little difficult. You have to swing it much faster, otherwise it will sag. Just a tad heavier would be perfect. Once markets open I will buy an electrical or telecom kind of wire from Chandni that has metal wire inside and a heavy insulation outside. I think that will make for a perfect jumping rope for me.

As of the last few days I am jumping 100x3 times every evening. I wish to make it 200x3 over the next few months. Let me see how long it takes. 

To Kill A Mockingbird

Ever since I learnt its name I wanted to read this book. I learnt about it pretty late in life though. American books weren't so well known in our school or college days except Harold Robins or Robert Ludlum (is he American?). At least I didn't know anyone other than Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain. I think I learnt about the Mocking Bird from one of those must read lists that they publish in various newspapers these days. I thought I would take this Covid19 lockdown opportunity to finish it. Mampu had the book. It is part of her English syllabus in class XII. So here I am. 

I have finished about a third of it so far and hope to finish it soon because I love it (I finally finished it on 2nd May, 2020 having not read the book for a few days in this period). It's a first person account of a young girl growing up with a widowed father and an elder brother in the American South of 1930s. It's a small town that has its prejudices and racial feelings. 

There are two reasons why I like the story. It reminds me somehow of my childhood. Particularly our  long holidays in our ancestral house in Deoghar which was also a small town where every one knew one another. I also love the values that the central character Atticus, this girl's lawyer father, stands for. There are certain sentences in the book that resonate so well with my sense of ethics and values. In fact those are the precise words that I want to tell many of my friends who I suddenly find are also bigoted Hindus - the Indian equivalent of "white trash". 

Let me write down some of those sentences, lest I forget later.

"The one thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person's conscience" - Atticus (page 116)

"Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something that I don't pretend to understand" - Atticus (page 98) 

I am sure I will come across some more as I finish the book and will note them down. I did find more such values expressed but the sentences are too long to be noted down here. (added after finishing the book).

The little girl Scout (she is about nine) and her brother Jem are taunted in school for their father's decision to defend a Negro (that is the word the author uses as it used to be a legitimate word back in the 60s when the book was published or during the time the story is set in. The word Nigger was taboo back then but racist trashes used it to describe Negroes and they had no qualms about calling them Niggers either. The word currently in vogue is African American. If I am not mistaken calling someone Nigger is now a serious criminal offence in America. If someone uses it it is referred to by others as "using the N word").

Personally, here in India I have been told very similar things for defending the Muslim community in various online discussion forums. The Finches were called Nigger-Lovers. We are called Sickulars. The intended insult or the hurt they want to cause is the same. But they don't understand that all these insults strengthen our resolve to fight their hatred. We know we are in a morally superior plane. 

On the whole I can identify with this family, except that we in our family had all the members of the immediate family alive. These children don't have their mother. Also I was younger than my sister.

Now that I have finished reading the book I must say this is one of the best works of fiction I have read in a long long time. I am not surprised that it is in every list of 100 must read books. It should be. It is a morally uplifting book. I am glad it is being taught in class 12 in India as part of their syllabus (I believe in American schools it is a must read). Someone could easily replace the Negroes with Muslims and set the story in a modern day Indian context.

But of course the Indian Muslim's situation is not quite as hopeless as it was for the Negroes in American South in the 1930s. The Indian Hindu Muslim relationship never had a slave and master relationship as it was for the Black and Whites in America. Also some Muslim communities in India are extremely well to do and hold considerable political and economic clout. The far right Hindus have a hatred towards the Muslims that is rooted in various complex historical reasons. It has to do with the 1000 years of Muslim rule in India, forced conversions, loot, arson and rape perpetrated over 1000 years and we all read about those in history books in school. Finally there is this partition of India that happened in 1947 that is a major contentious issue between the two communities not to speak of the various religious differences.

Coming back to the Mockingbird. It's a profoundly good book to read. I should have read it at least 30 years ago, if not earlier. But better late than never.

Letters From A Father To His Daughter

I finished this book last night. Essentially a series of some 24 letters that our first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru (he studied in Harrow and Cambridge and then studied law at Inner Temple Inn) wrote to his daughter Indira Gandhi between 1928 and 30. My mother had gifted this book, along with Discovery of India, to Mampu about six years ago. I had decided on the book titles on behalf of Ma. Mampu did not read it, as she found it uninteresting. To justify the purchase I picked this book up and finished it off in one evening that stretched a little into the night.




I must admit I had completely wrong impressions about the contents of the book. I had thought it would be his political observations and other philosophical thoughts that he shared with his only daughter. Last night I realised these letters were written by him when Indira Gandhi was eight to ten years old. She was in Mussoorie while he was in Allahabad. He chose to educate her through his letters about the world, how it came about, how human beings evolved and how societies grew into what they are today. In a sense this is a very basic and children's version of the Sapiens. I am not surprised that Mampu didn't find it interesting. 




I read it more out of curiosity and kept at it because I like anything written in good, simple English. In today's information driven world what he has written is old hat. In fact some of these principles are no longer valid and many new discoveries have happened since this was written. I did not really read it for what it tried to teach. I just wanted to tick this book off my reading list. This is more of a historic document today and would be of interest only to those who might be interested in Nehru or his erudition.




Nehru dwells a bit on his philosophies though expressed in very simple language fit for a child. I found it interesting where he wrote about patriarchy and kings and hereditary system of ruling and exploitation. Very ironical indeed. 




Old Man And The Sea

I read The Old Man And The Sea last night. It's a short story really. All of 100 pages in a small format paperback edition. So I finished it in one go after dinner. It is a profoundly touching and moving story of an old man in Havana who goes to the sea - after a long streak of unlucky days when he could catch nothing - and after two days of struggling with it he finally manages to catch and kill a huge fish larger than his boat. Being larger than his boat he has to tie it to the boat and try to bring it ashore when sharks attack the fish and eat all of it away, bit by bit.

Initially he fights them valiantly and alone but looses his harpoon and then the knife in the process of killing the firstfew.  So he has to abandon the fight and concentrate on getting back ashore, while giving up hope to save anything of the fish. After 3 days at the sea, eating raw fish and dolphin he finally reaches home with just a skeleton of the large fish, having lost it all to the sharks.

This is the gist of the simple story. But one has to read the book to understand that great writing is not just about the story. It is about how you tell the story and what it tells you beyond the immediate story line. You can draw various profound conclusions about life from such a story. 

Except the technical fishing and fishing boat terms, there is not a word that you cannot understand if you have a basic  and simple knowledge of English. This goes to show that you don't necessarily have to sound very erudite and use obscure unpronounceable words to get a Nobel in literature or create classics of enduring value.

  

My India - Jim Corbett

I had read a few stories from My India at different points of time in life. But this lockdown gave me an opportunity to finish this entire book in one go. The stories are all based on human beings Corbett came across during his life in India - in Kaladhungi and Mokama Ghat to be precise. Corbett had a special love for the innocent, hardworking, simple people of India. He respected them and trusted them and got back more of that from them in return without fail. The stories are about such people. 

The language Corbett uses creates a world of magic reality about a time in India that we have only heard about from our ancestors. It is a simple language. Almost like a lullaby that a mother sings to her child. 

Some of the stories are drawn from Kaladhungi, the Himalayan foothill village where Corbett lived. And the others are from Mokama Ghat where he worked. Though the stories are on individuals, their background has a strong element of nature in them. There is hardly any reference of hunting in these stories. This is a different Corbett from the one that killed the Man Eater of Rudraprayag. I think every Indian should read these stories to understand and appreciate the core value of its people. 

I finished the book really fast. Started in the evening of 12th and finished it in the morning of 14th. The Oxford Omnibus makes reading easy, with large font and good line space. The illustrations that go with the story are also excellent. They add to the old world charm of the stories. 

If you read the book make sure not to miss the "dedication" part written right in the beginning. He had dedicated the book to the people of his India.

Where The Indus Is Young

I read Dervla Murphy in 1989. In a quiet little village called Norbuling in southern Bhutan, by a kerosene lamp. It was Murphy's first book Full Tilt. A description of her journey on an ordinary cycle from Dunkirk to Delhi. It was a fascinating book that stunned me. I think I read it in one go. Norbuling didn't have any electricity back then. Computers, internet and mobile phones would have sounded like cock and bull stories that old men told their grandchildren.

Reading the book in the isolation of Bhutan I was left with just one though. What a woman !!! She rode through the winter in Europe and summer in Pakistan and norht India. This book was lent to me by my Irish neighbour Aisling to whom I am forever grateful for having lent me many books in that remote village. I never got a chance to read another book by Murphy. 

A few years ago I had met an old Canadian couple online who were coming to Calcutta, among other places in eastern India. Pamela Harris and Randal McLeod. The lady brought a few Dervla Murphy books for me as a gift. I think I had casually mentioned reading her and she brought a few of her titles for me as a surprise gift. These books, I must confess, were gathering dust for all these years until during the Covid 19 lock down I decided to go for one of them. Where the Indus is Young. I am yet to actually finish it but I am almost done (finished it on 11th April). 

Murphy went hiking in Baltistan, a very remote and disputed part on the Pakistan India border in 1975. We call it Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (naturally they call the other side India Occupied Kashmir). The journey was made in early 70s with her six-year old daughter Rachel and a polo pony fondly named Hallam that she bought over there. She used Hallam to carry her ration and her daughter and the pony became as much a part of the team as the two humans. The route follows the course of the river Indus and then Shayok (both originate from Manas in Tibet and flow through Ladakh and Kashmir before entering Baltistan). There is a rough hand drawn map given in the book that makes it easy to understand the area and the route she took. These places are not easily distinguishable on the Google map unless you know the precise names of the small towns like Skardu or Khapalu etc. 

I love Murphy's writing style as much as her courage and novelty of her destination. But that's not all that is there to the book. There is a set of human values that she holds very dear to her that comes out strongly in her books. These endear her to the reader. She admits where she gets scared though mostly for her daughter which makes her human like you and me. She does not project herself as a super hero (which many other self declared intrepid adventure writers tend to do). But when you read the book you are left wondering - my God did she really do all this? And all her stories are laced with that supreme understated sense of humour that makes reading her book such a joy. 

Her book is not a guide book - "How To Walk In Baltistan", though you could use it as one, if you were allowed to go there. It is about her travels, about her impressions of the people there and their life. She builds strong bonds with the locals and gets her readers involved in that journey into their bedrooms. It is a very sad sad life of the Baltis that is described in this book. The poverty, illiteracy and the general misery of the locals that she portrays is at times unbearable for a reader who has grown up in a sheltered atmosphere. Being an Indian, I am not new to poverty. I get to see it all the time and grew up seeing it from very close quarters. But I am not too sure if I would like to travel through an area that is so wretchedly poor and helpless. Despite their poverty they are mostly nice people. Very hospitable with whatever little they have and very honest too. 

I am intrigued by just one thing in this book that I find very odd. She seems to find eggs plentiful in this extremely cold and high altitude country. This is contrary to my experience on this side of  the Himalaya where I have hiked quite a bit. In the high mountains no one keeps poultry. I have always been told that they perish in cold climate. If at all you find eggs in high altitude places, you should know they are brought in from the plains. I wonder how Murphy managed to find eggs everywhere she went in this impoverished land in the back end of beyond. 

Another thing about the title of the book. The Indus in Baltistan is not so young really. I have seen Indus in Ladakh. There it is much younger :-) But if I had to sell my house to get a permit to visit that part of the world I would happily do it. I hope one day all wars and human animosity towards each other is settled and everyone is free to go wherever he pleases.

If you are an adventure lover, I would definitely recommend this book.

The Electrician

On Friday evening after work as I was driving back home with Monisha, I remembered I had promised Dhirenbabu that we would go to our house in Metro Park on Saturday. Dhirenbabu is an elderly electrician I employed recently. Getting an electrician these days is so very difficult that I had almost given up hope to find someone. Nishikanta, the caretaker of the building where we live, found him for me. This man, I didn't know, lived just behind our house in a slum. He fixed the fan in our bedroom and the geyser switch in my daughter's bathroom without much fuss. The fan had given up long ago and we could afford to ignore it as winter had set in. But Mampu's geyser couldn't wait.

Monisha and I felt like winning a lottery to find Dhirenbabu. We immediately decided to use him for repairing the electrical fault in our other house where we did not live any more. Certain particular electrical lines in that house were not working and it was important that we got them fixed. I asked him if he would go with me to the house next Saturday. I promised to take him there in my car. Though just 5 kms away people do not want to go there, as it is not on regular bus routes. He said, please inform me in advance so that I can keep myself free on that day. Looking at Dhirenbabu's dress and shoes you wouldn't think he was a very busy electrician but he preferred to be engaged with prior appointment. I agreed to give him the space.

There was a quiet dignity about the man that I liked. He didn't speak much and there was a certain  unstated pride in his work, though he didn't seem to possess a lot of tools. In fact I lent him use my drilling machine to make holes on a switch plate that he and I bought from a nearby shop for Mampu's geyser. Dhirenbabu used the drilling machine efficiently and with a sense of possessiveness.  Was it the first time he was using a drilling machine? I do not know. He didn't look like a mechanic who has worked in a very professional set up ever.

Dhirenbabu had a weather beaten face with white stubble on his dark sunken cheeks. He didn't smile or frown. He was completely expressionless. Looking at him you would know he had gone through a lot of difficult times in life. But it didn't seem he deserved it.

The country would observe a "Janta Curfew" on Sunday. There was this global pandemic all around and every one was afraid of dying. The prime minister had announced that the country would be locked down for a day on Sunday. And there would be a week long shut down announced by the state government. But for Saturday there was no restrictions on movement. Getting the fault rectified in our Metro Park house was important as the local utility was threatening us with disconnection for non-consumption.

The roads were particularly empty and driving was a breeze that evening. The Covid-19 scare had already hit Calcutta. Monisha and I discussed the logistics for Saturday. I planned to go cycling in the morning and sleep a little after that. So asking Dhirenbabu to come at around 11 am would be fine, we thought.

I phoned him after reaching home. He sounded like a surgeon giving his appointment for a consultation. "So I am not keeping anything for tomorrow morning. Right?" I said yes, that's right. I requested him to come after eating lunch because one never knew how long it might take us there. 

Early morning on Saturday I didn't feel like going out cycling. Most of my friends were talking about self lockdown. I chose to not go out cycling. How much of that was out of lethargy and how much out of fear of losing life and how much out of social responsibility I am not sure about. But I didn't go. After breakfast we started discussing about our plans for Metro Park. Monisha didn't seem too confident about going out. I couldn't understand how going to our empty house in our own car could pose any problem to either us or to anyone else. I didn't decide anything because I wasn't sure how Dhirenbabu would react to our cancelling the appointment. I wanted to see how the old man reactsed and then take a call. 

The old man rang the bell exactly at 11 am. When I opened the door he was standing there with his small cloth bag full of basic tools and looking totally ready to go. As he stood outside the door I told him, Dhirenbabu you know there is this fear about going out that seems to have gripped every one in the city. They are talking about a contagion. From his expression I knew he knew what was coming and said very quietly yes, so I have heard. I told him do you think it should be prudent for us to go today? Let us postpone it for now. Once this madness subsides we will go again. 

I was curious to see how he would react. This was the moment of truth. Would he throw a tantrum and complain about how he lost a day's business for me? I knew he didn't have any other work that he cancelled to come to me. But at the back of my mind I also knew that if he asked for his day's wage - work or no work - I would be ethically bound to pay him that. 

Dhirenbabu looked quietly at the floor. His jaws didn't clench. He didn't get angry as I had expected him to be. Quietly he said, okay then. Let us not go. Let me know when you want to go. I live just round the corner. He seemed resigned to his fate as all hard working, honest Indian daily wage earners do. The daily wage is an ephemeral thing for them. It is here today, gone tomorrow. They are not too attached to it.

As he was about to leave, I told him, here Dhirenbabu keep this money with you.  It was about a fifth of what he would have earned if he worked that day for me. He seemed a little hesitant. I said, keep it. We will adjust it against your wage when we actually go to Metro Park. He seemed to regain his composure with this explanation. He felt happy. There was a justification for him to take this unearned money.

For all one knows Dhirenbabu might have gone out and blown that money on country liquor that very day. Or he could have settled some old loan with the grocer in his slum. He could also have given it to his wife for her to buy something for his children. Or he could keep for spending in future. I do not know. All I know from that split second's hesitation is he was an honest, hardworking Indian who has not always got the chance to prove his honesty or utilise his hard work.

We have failed the Dhirenbabus as a society.