My wedding day

Right around the time I got married, it was raining.  Cats and Dogs, as the saying goes, if I remember right.   The problem is, I  don’t remember much of the details about the day I got married.  But  I don’t think that’s abnormal.  The amnesia seems selective and is like a biological coping mechanism. Quite soothing for a troubled soul.

Im not sure why the heavens opened up that day – It had been bright and beautiful,  if a little warm until that day right uptil half an hour before the nuptials. But then who can fathom Gods ways.

A little while before, Marriage had been far from my mind. But the die was cast in college.  I fell in love and I had to choose between love and marriage! I chose marriage!

How did it begin? Ah that is  a good  question.  It was prettly little thing’s bday. And like our childhood days, she distributed chocolates, little éclairs wrapped in a  differently colored paper  with optimistic words written on them like, like hello, hi, good morning, smile, don’t cry, etc,  Initially all of my classmates picked from a plate, that she was taking around, but as she neared me,  she started picking out the chocolates handing them over. She did the same with me. And when I looked at it, I was shocked.. it had written on it the words “try me” . From there to my wedding was a long journey, but she was a good driver .

I managed  to get to the church on time, but  I stepped into  a puddle as I got down from the car as I was pleading with the heavens, when my feet touched the ground.

It was mid afternoon, and the nuptials were slated to begin at 3.30 PM,   and I was feeling sleepy, after a boisterous party the previous night – the last one I was told, before I joined the ban wagon.

My friends ribbed me no end – After downing a couple of toasts, they  raised one to me,  and said impossible things like Brian If  you want to be happily married you must understand every word your wife does not say.   

I wondered if I heard right? Understand what she does not say?  I reflected on it for a while,  but soon gave up, because my understanding of what she actually said itself during our courtship, when each of us was on our best behavior, was not upto the mark – her mark , and often led to  what people call gently, mis understanding. That, she was not on those occasions – Miss understanding. 

As I alternated between excitement and anxiety, all my friends could do to rid me of my apprenshions  was bathe me first in traditional coconut milk and then hose me down with the garden hose  which literally blew of my  underwear. 

It was a long night ahead of what I hoped would be a long marriage.

3.30 in the afternoon. It was the wrong time to get married I thought.  But it was the only available slot.  Oh God, with my sleep wrought anxious mind, I was hoping |would get the ring on the right finger on her  left hand and utter my vows clearly and without ambiguity.

 I had not been married previously and my bride would not allow me to rehearse either the ring action or the vows.  She said, Brian, when you say “I do”, I want it to be the first time you say it to me in front of everybody, but remember it must not be your last.

 It’s when the wedding car went to pick up my bride that it stopped raining, why, again I can’t fathom.  She arrived in splendor that only a bride can arrive in.  She was cynosure of all eyes, mine included, for she was truly beautiful  like an angel in white. She joined me at the altar and gave me a coy look from under her veil. It was time to test her offer of  try me!

The nuptials began and soon the time came for us to exchange vows and rings.  I didn’t miss a beat, coz I only had to say I do to what the priest said, but it was then that I recalled what my bride to be had told me -  that I would have continuously use those two one syllable words quite often in the privacy of our home.  The ring went on to right finger on the left hand, coz she guided me in the right direction, as she would continue to do in future.  

And thus were declared husband and wife in the eyes of God.

 It was time to make merry. At the reception, hosted in our honour by our parents, were all the people we loved,  those who loved us and some whom we hated and were hated  by in return. But all differences were set aside as we stood in front of the three tiered wedding cake.   My wife held the knife, and I placed my hand on top of hers and we were about to cut the cake the emcee interrupted the process.  Brian, he said,  that’s the last time you’ll have the upper hand. Suddenly there was deep gash on the wedding cake!

As we headed home that night, my bride, now my wife turned to me and said sweetly, here’s my wedding present dear, and handed me a single chocolate – on the wrapper was written “Try me”!

Destiny’s Design or Designer Destiny

In the mid-nineties, he started penning stories out of financial need. Now, within weeks of each other, two of his films have made more than $100 million.

K V Vijayendra Prasad is the 72-year-old scriptwriter of Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Baahubali—two of the biggest blockbusters ever made in India.  He is a grandfather. Prasad has a son and a daughter—and three grandchildren.

Prasad—who started his career in Tollywood, the Telugu film industry—is from Kovvur, in Andhra Pradesh, but spent most of his life working as a farmer in Karnataka. However, he wasn’t able to make enough money to look after his family. In the mid-eighties, he moved to Chennai to try his luck in regional films. “That’s how I entered films,” Prasad said. “It was out of a struggle for existence. I didn’t have any livelihood then.”

After a decade of odd jobs and an unsuccessful attempt at directing a film, Prasad took to writing in 1994. Besides these two back-to-back successes this year, he has contributed to Indian cinema with more than 15 hits.

“That’s because I have a flair for telling lies. A story is nothing but a series of lies. And I can lie very beautifully,” he said. And ladies and gentlemen our lives are our stories. 

So what’s the lesson I learnt reading this story and many like his including that of JK Rowling – which he failed and then succeeded. He drifted, and then he sailed. He failed and then he succeeded, and he did it all on his own.

Was  it by design or destiny or was his destiny a design  of a greater power. It’s a question that has haunted me and must haunt u too.

 My story is different from yours, as is everyone’s from everyone else’s  – each of us has a unique flavor, and the emotions that go through me as I narrate it will be different from the  emotions that go through you as u hear it! I want to touch upon a few important things that have led me to some philosophical conclusions, which Ill come to in the end.

 As Julie Andrews said, Let me start at the very beginning a very good place to start.  Let me start with life itself.

I was born second, and as I realized later, I was the last of the Fernandes family. Not the second last as they say in colloquial English. I didn’t know it then, obviously, but was told later, but was born in Southwell hospital Ahmadi, an American run hospital in Kuwait and when the news was conveyed by a nurse to my father, his reaction was, and I know this will cheer all the girls here, “Oh hell, another boy”.  He’ed always wanted a girl, and I landed up not being his favorite child! That was my first tryst with destiny!

As I grew up, I was a paradox – not brilliant, but reasonably studious, personable but not overly handsome, not hardworking but not unduly lazy, not athletic, plump, but enjoyed playing both indoor and outdoor games and played them reasonably. I had flair for reading novels and writing poetry, and while not unsociable, was not an extrovert. . I always had my superego competing with my ego,  and my unlimited inhibitions fighting with my limited talent

With such a paradoxical personality, my school life,  as u can imagine was uneventful. It’s when I reached those interesting teenage years that sparks began to fly… My voice changed and so did I. I sported a beard, which made me look older to match my voice,  played truant from class, formed a group of friends with similar thought processes and worked on the principle of  enjoy with responsibility, with a twist – Responsibility was as we defined it not our parents and generally enjoyed life.  Money was not hard to come by, as my friends played in a band, while I emceed functions professionally. It was as easily spent on variety entertainment, but all in good taste.

It is with these friends of mine that I had my second and third tryst and possibly the gravest ones with destiny.

I live midway down a lane that slopes steeply to end in a wall that acts as a barrier to a drain that runs about 8 to 10 feet below. Its now been encroached and covered.  I used to travel by cycle in those days and one occasion my cycle had a puncture and I had to leave it at home. A friend, rather on the plump side offered to drop me home on his cycle and I sat  and on the bar. As we neared my place, the brakes failed and like Humpty Dumpty and his side kick  we down the lane gathering speed and screaming obscenities that I cant repeat, due to TM rules. We hit the wall, at pretty good speed and went over landing on our backs with miraculously nary an injury except for a minor fracture of my left hand. He was unhurt but the cycle was a wreck. A second tryst with destiny.

Once I had learned to cycle, the world was my oyster. I would cycle all over town, via the back roads up the hills and down the valleys and then egged on by my friends and my own laziness, I would hold the hand of a friend riding the bike – he was the only friend in my group who had bike then, the age old precious yezdi, and would circumnavigate the town, often at speeds exceeding 50 kms an hour.  One fine day a pot hole almost broke me I left his and jammed both the brakes. The cycle stopped in its tracks but I didn’t – I tasted the atmospheric pressure and the quality of the asphalt all in one fell swoop. Luckily for me I didn’t break any bones. A third tryst with destiny.

Still on the set of the movie, where bikes were a star. I was sitting pillion with another friend and he was driving. It was a java then. I was relaxed, reading the headlines on the newspaper. We were on the way to a friends place. Near the tandoor bar and restaurant, at Shadi gudda,  oh and by the way we had not stopped there on the way from my place. My friend, the rider, was a vigilant rider, rather fast, but always vigilant, he saw an electric cable (not charged fortunately) angled across the road loosely tied opposite. He ducked. I was still reading the headlines when it glided across my neck across my chin and we were through. Suddenly my neck was bleeding and burning, but I could swallow, and breathe – both my pipes were intact. We carried on to my friends place and found the cut was not very deep, except at one place and I was very very lucky. It healed in due course. A fourth tryst with destiny.

Which brings me to my hypothesis – I am designed by my destiny, programmed accordingly and let loose in the world.  I don’t and cannot design my destiny.  Even self made men or women, successful men or women, outstanding toastmasters are all designed by their destinies. They act and pursue that destiny accordingly – Take JK Rowling and Stephen Hawking for instance or our very own ND Modi.

The other question that needs to be answered then is who does this architecture… Well the answer to that question, might be the subject of a future blog, but  until then…

Rationalists Murders: A case of fundamental irrationality

Three icons of our liberal and secular democracy were murdered in a span of two years, and yet, these incidents do not move us to action or empathy. Rather, we are all gripped by the Sheena Bora saga that is unfolding on every media platform for the last couple of weeks.

 Three murders, in the span of two years, two in Maharashtra and one in Karnataka, of people who held views that contradicted ‘accepted’ views, executed professionally and prima facie by professionals, allegedly hired by fundamentalists opposed to their thoughts that questioned the very foundations of traditional rituals.

August 20th 2013- Dabholkar (65), a rationalist and social activist, was shot dead by two unidentified persons on the Omkareshwar Bridge near Balgandharva auditorium in Pune, while he was on a morning walk, around 7.15 am on August 20, 2013. The gunmen fired three rounds and fled on a two-wheeler. Dabholkar received one bullet in the head and died instantly.

Dr. Dabholkar, a doctor, was at the forefront of the anti superstition movement, through his 1989 established Maharashtra Andhrashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti. Dabholkar was also the editor of Sadhana magazine and travelled across the state and country for his anti-superstition campaign and faced severe opposition from a variety of social groups

February 16, 2015- Two motorcycle-borne men shot at Pansare (84), also a rationalist, an author, with an alternative view, and a left wing activist, and his wife Uma Pansare while they were on a morning walk near their residence in Ideal society, Sagarmal in Kolhapur, around 9 am. A bullet hit Uma’s head, causing a fracture in her skull. She survived but suffered from paralysis. Govind Pansare succumbed to his injuries on February 20.

August 31st 2015- Kalburgi (84), also a rationalist who questioned several religious practices, especially idol worship, was killed around 8.40 am on Sunday at his residence in Dharward. One of the assailants waited on a motorcycle while the other went up to ring the doorbell of Kalburgi’s house ostensibly as Kalburgi's student. Kalburgi’s wife opened the door. When Kalburgi came, the assailant opened fire at him and fled with his accomplice on a motorcycle.   The two assassins remain identified, and the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, sensing a possibly unsolvable hot potato, quickly referred the matter for investigation to the CBI. 

 In none of these cases, have the assassins been identified as yet, though, in one case two years have gone by and in another six months. The police and the CBI are clueless so far.  Kalburgi and Pansare knew each other, yet they didn't make common cause. However, there were lots of similarities, in the activities and thinking processes of the persons targeted, the modus operandi of the killers and the cluelessness of the law enforcement agencies. It clearly points to a conspiracy, either emanating from a single person or a group, which though, is not clear as yet.

 What is clear, is that the group or the individual mastermind, is now emboldened by the cluelessness of the law enforcement agencies, and the killing may not be at an end. It's not really clear, if it is the lack of evidence that has slowed down the investigation or whether it’s been obfuscated by powerful forces. It does not even get the media mileage it deserves, which is more interested in Page 3 controversies like the Sunanda Pushkar affair, the Lalit Modi affair and now the Sheena Bora case, than cases that affect the progress or regress of democratic India. Sadly, such is the hold of TRP's and advertising over the media, and voyeuristic nature of readers and viewers in India.

Rationale and logic seems to have flown out of the window with a clear nexus between celebrity culture, politics and irrationality evident in all discourse. PK, the Aamir Khan film that exposed the miracle men, that are currently the rage in India, was also condemned, - luckily for the fair thinking common man, it was not banned, like many other things in India – It was a bold attempt to bring some rationality to the discussion, that is fixated on Miracle Men and Women from Radhe Maa to Asaram Bapu and Ram Rahim, the Messengers of God, who are perhaps more accepted than rationalists with logical and realistic alternatives.

It’s been evident in India for some time now, that political and social discourse is moderated progressively by rather right leaning groups, which draw their power from political and religious leadership, their numbers, and more often, these days, just plain fear, brought about by organized mobs or individual intimidation. This is apparent on both sides of the religious divide, be it the case of Salman Rushdie or Perumal Murugan, who merely commented on existing practices, as did Shoba De, and the four secular bloggers, who dared to air a different view, and were hacked to death in Bangladesh.

Wikipedia is what it is because it is constantly improved by contributions from many in society and that is why it has stood the test of time and is one of the most referred encyclopedias on planet earth. Even the oxford dictionary adds new words to its lexicon year after year, and democracy and society can only be enriched by an alternative discourse that brings new insights.

Sadly now, all indications are that dissent will die an early and untimely death, much like the rationalists, before it. The intellectual mafia is already at hand. The ban culture has already taken over, and the mistrust of dialogue, has created a need among intellectuals for self censorship to continue living itself, forget about contributing to the democratic discourse. The legal system, while it has tried its best, to uphold these democratic values, has not been equal to the task, in the absence of political will, to do the right things rather than always doing things right. Dissent is at first, tolerated, then suppressed and finally eliminated.

So are the fundamentalists and ultra conservatives insecure, afraid or overly sure of their position in society that they have to kill both, the alternative discourse and the source of it? Being insecure, would mean that they believe that the rationalists can win over a substantial majority of the traditionalists, while being afraid, means that they believe that they would lose their hold and influence on society that they have ingrained to think the way they are told to think, with not a thought beyond. I would suspect it’s a combination of all the three- insecurity, fear and a pricked ego.

All media reports about the murdered activists, referred to them as controversial. What is the message? That controversy is bad for our democracy, for our society and for our future? 

 You be the judge.

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