The humble kingfisher that patiently posed.

Acre after acre of parched dugouts. Once these were wetlands where birds flocked from home and abroad to roost. Food was aplenty, life was good.

The bird sanctuary at Bharatpur brings tears to my eyes. Over the weekend we visited the wildlife park there despite repeated discouraging noises from friends and relatives.

The Keoladeo bird sanctuary is bald and dry. The park authorities battling disaster have bravely been pumping groundwater into small patches just to ensure the golden duck, the Ibis from faraway Egypt, ducks from Mongolia and the humble local kingfisher still get to peck at something or the other.

Despite its sorry state, the park draws a healthy crowd of enthusiasts, some interested in avian life others out to make merry. It is the latter category that infuriates. They raise a din as they shatter the stillness in the air startling and disturbing the wildlife.

The park, a UN World Heritage site, is now a pale shadow of what it was when the great Saleem Ali took up its cause and persuaded the then Bharatpur Maharaja not to hunt the rare birds that come calling.

Away in the sweeping wilderness abandoned stork nests are still perched on skin and bones trees. Once when there was water all around, birds nested here. Entry to the park is for a nominal fee. Cyclerickshaws are freely available, so are bicycles.

Rickshaw-pullers at the sanctuary are simply amazing. The guy who showed us around, a young Sikh boy, seemed to be an authority on birds, their eating and nesting habits. He and many others like him have undergone training sessions.

Sharp-eyed, he picked up dozing owls in the bush, a shifty warbler or a stately heron from a distance and rattled off all he had in store about them. Thickets line the black-top road that cuts through the sanctuary on either side.

Birds weren’t very many – at least not as many as there were some years back – when the park was one big marsh with tall thick grass and humps from which trees jutted out. But spotted deer and Neelgai grazed freely. Packs of jackals howled in the distance somewhere.

Boats now rotting, brittle shells their paint flaking off, stood immobile in the shallow wet patches fed by a pump that monotonously stuttered away in the background.

At the end of the black-top road, where the ride into the sanctuary ends, is a watchtower. Years ago, when all this was water, it must have been a heavenly sight from up there. Marshlands all around, water everywhere, lots and lots of birds of myriad hues. Uninterrupted silence.

Below, on a large wall is a roster that tells the gruesome story of who emptied how many bags of ammunition at the park. It’s an impressive role call — from the Raj gentry to Maharajas to the more recent.

I came away from the sanctuary wondering why and how we brazenly spoil gems such as Bharatpur. Why are we as stupid as this?

I haven’t been writing. It’s been for a while. Why? Has there been no compelling thought, nothing strong enough to drive me to banging the keyboard?

I have always been a fits and starts writer, not one who has compulsively documented every thought. My writing urges have surged from the gut, like hunger. Both needs have been spontaneous and had to do with the complicated play of hormones within. The only difference: hunger and sleep are everyday needs but my want to write isn’t yet.

But I am at it. Believe me. Writing is a wonderful experience, very engrossing and personal – one of those things I do with a degree of competence. It has health benefits, unlike smoking, chewing gutka and drinking.
Secretly, I have always wanted to be a writer. Pretty much like my furtive childhood desire of being a bus conductor (only classmate Anirban knew of it) now, at age 42, I have been fancying myself as a writer. But I am being guarded about the whole thing. Let me tell you why.

In the first place, I am not sure anyone will read what I write. After all, I write what I like (cerebral, intellectual and heavy content) not what everyone would like reading. I can’t figure out why anyone should read Johnny-come-lately Kingshuk Mukherji? Second, writing is a matter of discipline. Writers, I am told, do it like breakfast, dinner and lunch. They are always with their creation, mental hermaphrodites with the ability to give birth to myriad characters. Sadly, I am not one. I can only write about the few real-life people I have seen or been with. All my efforts at writerly procreation have come to nought thus far.

Till I fell ill some months ago, I was a diehard wannabe, a writer in the works. Keyboard banging was a daily affair. I made time for it. My blog was my page and platform. It was an exercise to acquire a healthy addiction at the cost of smoking, chewing gutka and drinking. It gave me a different kick. I imagined an ever growing tribe of eager readers, beaks wide open, little wings flapping agitatedly, clamouring for feed. I felt committed to my keen, imaginary readers bawling in hunger for my daily thought-feed.

I told them stories of all kinds — of my growing up days, what I thought of politics and personalities, my many travels. I basked in the satisfaction and glory of my creation. This wasn’t reflected or induced — one that wouldn’t vanish with me quitting a newspaper or an employer kicking me in the butt. Blogosphere gave me an identity and in reality a thin but robust daily reader count of one or two. Days when the reader-tracking worm climbed south or refused to stir out of its ground-zero nest, I felt the sadness of being ditched by my fictitious tribe of impatient readers.

But on rare occasions when the worm walked into double figures, the happiness was overwhelming. I remember uploading a post early one morning and someone from Sydney almost immediately leaving a comment in my mail box. That was heady stuff — very inspiring. If words could pinch as hard as to provoke a lightning reaction, there must be some poison in me thoughts.
Revolutionary stuff!! Next day, the worm stayed home. Revolutionary thinking got deflated. I was devastated. The blog was an eye-opener.

I realised people love reading simple, sweet stories, those about every day, commonplace experiences or uncomplicated childhood experiences. The guy who reads me, I realised, must be frazzled of media stuffing down his gullet weighty nothings on human achievements, failings and sufferings. My poor chap is in desperate need of liquid diet. He has an upset tummy. So, I let him be with Royda tales, compounder Mahapatra’s antics and driver Shankarda’s tough driving lessons.

I have poured my desire to pontificate into the gutter and ripped up the gyan-dispenser tag. Between you, me and the doorpost, I still strive to write. This is despite the increasingly infrequent posts. To the millions of my (imagined) readers who’d give their right hand to read me, here is an apology for being such a letdown over the past couple of months. Won’t happen again. Will connect every day. I swear to be simple and junk gyan forever.

Maa KKassam!

A rare smile

For better or for worse, Jyoti Basu was the man two generations of Kolkatans have known as their chief minister. He was always there. They have grown up seeing him call the shots at Writers’ Buildings. He was the man who ran Bengal.

He spelt changelessness and a strange status quo. He stood for continuum, unbroken, staid and seemingly endless.

For 23 long years, the newspapers wrote about him every day, his images in black and white and then in colour featured routinely on front pages. Such was his grip that all problems that seemed unsolvable were instantly resolved when he stepped in. Yet nothing seemed new. For 23 years, there was a sense of sameness all around.

The one new thing that seemed to be happening was the Metro rail, a project the late B C Roy had started. Many city dwellers say they were in Class II when the first big Metro digs blocked roads. By the time smooth black tops replaced them and the first trains rolled they were into their first job.

The faceless multitudes who only got a ringside view of the government’s workings saw it as painfully slow in Basu’s Bengal. Yet, there was great pride in the man who ruled from Writers’. He was upright. He was sophisticated and a raashbhari neta—a leader with gravitas and a standing that everyone in the country respected.

His government’s constant gripe was the centre’s boimatrik (step-motherly) treatment. Everything, from the endless power outages of the Seventies and the Eighties to the crumbling industries of Bengal was blamed on this. Perhaps these claims were true. Perhaps they weren’t wholly correct.

But whatever they were, even in this there was an immediate association with Bengali pride. Jyoti Babu stood his ground and backwardness was a spin off you couldn’t avoid. Election after election governments changed all around. Existing dispensations bit dust. But in Bengal, Basu it was. Someone replacing him was inconceivable. Basu’s dominating personality drowned out the opposition’s loud protests against rigging. The opposition looked so flimsy.

Every morning, journalists crowded in front of his offices at rundown Writers’ Buildings and Basu strutted by looking straight ahead, seldom would his gaze stray. All his life, this barrister from Middle Temple wore a starched dhoti and kurta. A pair of shiny black pump shoes covered his feet. His cold fisheyes surveyed the world through a pair of big square glasses.

Journalists quaked and fumbled asking him questions or even clarifications for answers he had so peremptorily or dismissively given. And they often had many to seek, especially since Basu’s delivery were inevitably punctuated with innumerable oder (their) and tader (them). At the end of a presser reporters often ended up wondering what the chief minister was talking about – a raped minor or a calf slaughtered somewhere in the districts.

There was reason for such deference. Basu was more a wise elder at home. One who everyone – be he the Burrabazar Marwari businessman or the Rajabazar daily wage earner or even the elite Ballygunge resident – looked up to. He was the tallest figure in the political landscape and worthy of great respect.

Bengal was poor, everyone derisively called her a dead state, a graveyard of industry but she was definitely not a state of turncoats and opportunists. The tag of being poor never mattered. Honour did. At the cost of everything Bengal marched on her own steam, or whatever little it had. Basu led this march.

A man of erudition and fine tastes, Basu’s years as chief minister overshadowed his days of struggle when he was a firebrand trade unionist. Few in Bengal even stopped to reflect on the truth that the man’s unbeaten stint as chief minister had come after years of backbreaking struggle in the merciless sun. The man came to occupy the high office only when he was 63, an age many of us plan retirement.

When he opted to bow out in 2000 after his health began to fail him, everyone asked if Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee would sit in his chair. Bhattacharjee did not. Perhaps, he knew it would be difficult to match the Basu magic, which was so different and difficult to define.

For, his touch was actually dissimilar from what we see in contemporary politicians. Always reticent, Basu seldom smiled, was neverflippant and never courted the media. His political speeches were dead serious and conduct dignified. There was nothing catchy or snappy about this man. Para (neighbourhood) lads and opposition politicians alike referred to him with courtesy. Always Jyoti babu.

He came close to being prime minister of India and Bengalis rue the fact that he did not become one. His party came in the way. Not because of anything else but here was a man who had always taken a stand, good or bad didn’t matter, and Bengali pride was associated with him. He deserved to occupy a higher chair.

Basu, though, he called his party’s decision a historic blunder didn’t seem personally bitter about missing out. He had his regrets, but that was because the communist movement had taken a beating. His reaction was always so different from the run of the mill. The Kolkatan took great satisfaction from the fact that his counsel was always sought in times of national crises. Even in his defiance he had kept his impoverished state relevant to the national discourse.

Even in his twilight years, Basu didn’t lose his mind. He will forever remain part of the Bengali consciousness.

What’s so great about Three Idiots? It is another film, zippy and theatrical, that puts on celluloid all that is part of the daily parent-child discourse in any average Indian home.

Don’t we all live with dilemmas such as these everyday? So what’s revolutionary and utterly enlightening in saying don’t pressure kids? Let them pursue their dreams. Engineering is no big deal. Acquire knowledge, not degrees.

And worse, it takes a most uncharitable view of parents who go to any extent – beg, borrow, steal – to get their children going in life. This is the one aspect of Three Idiots that leaves me cold.

A fun take on grinding poverty, a paralysed father bound to his bed, an unwed sister turned down and humiliated repeatedly for a Maruti-800 dowry, a mother’s labour to give her son a good education – is taking things to unacceptable limits.

True, the three men in the centre of it all pull off commendable performances. Aamir Khan impresses, so do Madhvan and Sharman Joshi. But the lines they speak and their melodramatic response to situations strike at the very base of the reality that’s India.

Rushing a crippled man who had just had a stroke to hospital sandwiched and splayed between the rider and the pillion on a scooter makes you burst out in laughter. Seconds later the feeling gnaws – isn’t this in poor taste? The hero pulls off a brilliant, filmy stunt but it’s at the expense of someone helpless on the threshold of death.

I haven’t read the book on which this film is based and it’d be interesting to know if the makers of Three Idiots actually pumped up the text to create this amazingly raucous and at times over-the-top movie.

Raju Hirani had directed Munnabhai MBBS but that film had treated human suffering with sensitivity and care. A young cancer patient on the deathbed hadn’t been stripped off his dignity. In fact, Munnabhai was such a hero because in his unique street smart way he had ensured hospital patients were names and faces, not numbers and cases.

Boman Irani was wonderful, quirky and intense in Three Idiots. The actor did his bit. But I thought it was a shade unimaginative of the director to pick Irani for the role. At curtains I was left wondering hadn’t I seen someone similar before?

Irani is a fantastic player of roles but even he gets cramped for variety when you ask him to play yet another character whose loudness and idiosyncratic ways drown the sum and substance of what he sets out to convey.

The screenplay and dialogue writers have done a wonderful job. After all, it’s the jesting and electric repartees that make the flick tick. Ranchhoddas Shyamaldas Chanchar is a class apart— with a special take on everything. He can silence all and convert many to his way of thinking.

Even when in deep waters, he pats his chest takes a deep breath and says all is well. He finds a way to wriggle out of every situation. He is irreverent and stumps his teachers with commonsense queries. He is also one who works with simple solutions.

Sample his logic: All you need to attend school is a uniform, not fees. The solution is fascinating but staggeringly impractical and an oversimplification. It can serve as a nice punch line in a fast-paced film, little else.

He has the presence of mind of a genius and the nerve to play midwife with medical advice over the webcam and the ability to modify a vacuum cleaner to make a difficult delivery happen. Do such people exist in real life? Great if they do. Jugaad (Indianese for application) is the next big thing happening to our land and here’s the man putting it all in action.

He’s not one to get trapped in ethical issues. He looks for a way forward, a pathfinder who has the ability to turn every adversity into success. As for the other two Idiots, they have issues and Rancho unshackles them with easy, homegrown solutions.

I am sure Three Idiots is a great box office grosser. Sure, it scaled new heights in cinematic excellence. But it didn’t leave me any wiser. That’s because I continue to remain fettered by the practicalities of life. I still can’t pat my chest and say all is well and pronto find a way out when pushed into a corner.

I sweat. I worry and I ponder.

I have often wondered why I can’t keep track of dates. Why is life such a blur? One sunrise melts into another seamlessly — an incredible continuum.

The only plausible explanation for this could be it’s the same road traveled each day. The same routine followed. It’s this sameness that glues one day to another.

I rise every morning, eyes burning. Sip bland black tea out of a mug and flip through the papers. Breakfast is regulation, a bath and then the generally-uneventful drive to work. Wade through a must-happen snarl at ITO, hit CP and six km downstream pull into an underground parking space.

Was it always like this? Probably. That’s because I have never lived an extraordinary life. For plain people like me this is necessarily the road travelled. You spend a lifetime waiting at the traffic lights, drive down known streets, meet usual people and go back to doing the things you did yesterday, the day before and the day before.

Surprises come, but rarely. That’s why they are out of the ordinary. You remember them. There are good and bad surprises. They take you to cloud nine and also devastate. I have had both variants in my life.

Even these fade. The colours, the words spoken, the circumstances pale like an old photograph buried in a box under discarded brittle clothes. Surprises get moth-eaten; their corners flake and wear a dull sepia tint.

Life going round and round in circles like a potter’s wheel, days dissolving into a haze, weeks zipping past unexcitingly, pay cheques serving as reminder of months ending.

As a child, left to fend for himself in a Calcutta house where all rooms barring two were empty, I banked on inert instruments to talk to me. Even then the calendar was a sheaf of papers dangling by a thread from the wall. I went to school and came back.

In this friendless existence, I was my best friend and secretly creating different people out of myself – a spin bowler who could tweak the ball any which way, a stylish batsman who smelt the turning ball, a singer who knew every high and low of a difficult song.

A Philips transistor talked to me. A black-and-white Sonodyne TV set showed me whatever it wanted to. An HMV record player sang to me.

Every evening, I picked up my books and sat at a table in the TV room ostensibly to study. Studies never happened. How would they? My eyes were invariably glued to the TV screen. I cheated with finesse seeing everything from Krishidarshan to Kids’ World.

This was life — placid and mundane. Dates mattered only when exams drew near and I realised I hadn’t turned the pages of my textbooks in months. Examinations were the only upheavals in my otherwise flat life.

Much later when I went to college, dates mattered. I was fortunate to study the subject I loved and remembered important lectures, or a trip to the National Library at Alipore. Listening to a great historian was interesting. A day spent at the library was rewarding.

Four years later I joined work straight out of college. I had always wanted to be a journalist and became one. Ever since, life has been an interminable haze, a long journey through a tunnel.

I remember the newspapers I have worked for and how long but can’t recall the dates of service. How do I keep going? Only through constant reapplication. A new piece written, a new turn of phrase learnt, a wonderful front page designed. Little else. This won’t end in some time. There’s no point looking at dates.

Just keep sailing.

The message is nice. Business is about human beings. Figures, bottom lines come later. The anti-hero in Rocket Singh, a hardnosed, tough talking boss man signs off: Never try to be a businessman. You’ll pay through your nose.

Rocket Singh is a fine film. It has Ranbir Kapoor playing a rookie salesman who learns the ropes the hard way and goes on to spawn a successful computer assembly company through quality service and excellent client relation.

Ranbir in fact comes as a revelation. His controlled understated acting is effective. His boss, an irascible Poori saab, tears into him mercilessly. But Singh, a Sardar with a character and integrity, stands his ground with his stoic silence. He’s derided as a big zero. But he shows zeroes put in the right places bring success.

The makers of the film must be commended too for picking such an appropriate theme. It talks of the cut-throat world of selling. Even those playing bit roles in the movie as toughened sales professionals are real. They add to the film’s texture and feel.

These are people whose souls have gotten sapped dealing endlessly with unrealistic targets and protecting territories. Jaded and forever insecure, they guard their turf like tigresses nursing cubs. Any transgression is met with a burst of invectives and a resounding rebuff. Salesmen are like high-jumpers forever trying to spring higher than the bar that keeps getting pushed up, up and up.

Rocket Singh has a racy narrative and dialogues have been crafted with care, designed to drive home the point that even in the difficult world of business and selling, caring and winning trust are most important.

Prem Chopra is not the celluloid villain he always has been. He’s a darling, a gentle god fearing grandpa who doesn’t understand the ways of the world he lives in. He mumbles in utter confusion. He too had a job but never as demanding as his dear grandson’s. Chopra impresses.

It’s his warm presence that makes home a refuge for the young salesman who is battered, rundown, humiliated by unkind colleagues and bosses.

Singh himself shows character, an admirable ability to fight it out his own way. Every single hour he spends at work he’s pushed and heckled. In fact, after a goof during his first client call, he is bombarded with paper rockets. His desk is full of them.

Cornered, he is nearly overwhelmed, snowed under by snide remarks and super harsh treatment. In this extreme adversity something snaps. He resolves not to give up and uses his ingenuity to open a door. The rockets flung nastily at him inspire him to name his venture Rocket Sales Corporation.

As he struggles to find his feet Lalwani, a hole-in-the-wall hardware shop owner, gives Singh mother boards on credit. The saucy telephone operator in office, who fields client calls, is a storehouse of information and leads, chips in with support. The slippery, porn-addict software engineer joins hands with Singh. The tea/coffee man turned-amateur computer-assembler comes on board. Finally, the matter-of-fact, crafty sales team head adds the cutting edge to Rocket Sales Corporation. It is a cracking success.

Singh has a lesson in inclusive growth. He embraces all who want to join him and is constantly reassuring, keeps telling his clients he is there for them 24/7.

The director sticks to a taut narrative, even if it gets a tad over simplified. Credit to him for not losing sight of the headline — Rocket Singh. It’s about him and his business-with-a-soul venture.

K Chandrasekhar Rao (nom de guerre KCR) is no extraordinary man. He talks simply and dreams only Telangana. I met him some five years ago at his palatial Jubilee Hills home.

They had told me he breathed fire. His tongue was a whip and sent crowds across Telangana in raptures as he made mincemeat of his rivals.

Evidently, expectations were high. He’d make fantastic copy. My colleague and I climbed a flight of stairs leading up to a wide verandah anticipating interesting conversation.

A couple of men in white, baby pink scarves around their thick and dark necks, ushered us to a cavernous drawing room. It was painted white and had expensive sofas. In fact, the Telangana champ dashed in minutes later speaking animatedly on the phone.

With an exaggerated wave of the hand, half a bow and a perfunctory smile, KCR asked us to sit. We sank into the comfortable sofas as he continued on the phone.

That’s Telangana Telugu, my colleague whispered in my ear — earthy and hyperbolic. Not that I immediately spotted the difference. It sounded the same, just a tad more modulated, singsong and loud at times.

KCR’s stocks were rising. He had emerged as a force. Reporters trailing his livewire campaign were writing about responsive crowds wherever he went. He was connecting fantastically well.

His outfit the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was young but KCR still had a helicopter to fly him around. He had got it over from Singapore.

He sounded mighty pleased about the machine. Why wouldn’t he be? TDP boss man and then chief minister Chandrababu Naidu had one at his disposal. Rajasekhara Reddy hopped on to another whenever he wanted to. Our man was in that heli-hop league.

Must be frighteningly expensive, I asked. KCR stumbled on that one, peppered his response with several I thinks. He sounded sure Telangana would be formed. In fact, five years ago he had a timeline ready. He’d have his state in six months’ time.

KCR occasionally broke into Hindi, which though accented was largely correct. He talked of his early years when as a faceless political worker he had spent months in Delhi. This was during the heady Sanjay Gandhi days.

The Telangana hero wore white, a starched and ironed shirt falling around his wiry frame like a cape, short sleeves standing on creases. As always he had slippers on. A shocking pink scarf he had thrown around his shoulders hit the eye.

Why pink, I had asked him. Isn’t that too loud, a bit feminine and out of place? KCR had defended saying that was his party colour, insisting it was just fine and definitely not effeminate.

We spoke to KCR for close to an hour and were about to leave when he insisted we must sample Telangana hospitality. In the adjoining hall a sun-mica topped dining table stood lined from one end to another with biryani, meat and fish dishes, deserts of the Hyderabadi kind.

There’s no way we’d even reach the centre of that elaborate spread, we protested. But the host wouldn’t give up. Try a bit of everything, he insisted. Two men fussed around serving huge helpings piling our plates with mounds of biryani, chicken and fish.

Full on Telangana and overfed on biryani, we left KCR’s home.

Who could have imagined Dubai would ever land in a financial mess? Some months ago, I happened to stop by en route to Morocco. My eyes are still smarting from the Emirate’s razzle-dazzle.

I had heard and read volumes about Dubai’s opulence, how no one would compromise on grandeur and money was never a constraint. If you were building a Burj Dubai it had to tower over any such anywhere in the world.

If you had to create an Atlantis, even the one that went under an unknown sea, it mustn’t rival. It was the city with everything A-class, from roads to cars to civic amenities. If it was Dubai, it only had to be the best, no matter how mad it appeared.

How else and who else could have even thought of something as preposterous as the Palm Jumeirah? A manmade island created on sand scooped out of the seabed and rocks trucked from far off places, this jewel in Emir Al Makhtoum’s crown had left me awestruck when I got a glimpse of it as the flight from Delhi had touched down.

The Egyptian tour guide who had shown us around town said he had spent more than 12 years in the Emirate but remained as starry eyed as if he had checked in at this land of plenty only an hour back. “I go home vaarry vaarry rrrarely. I like it herre,” he had proclaimed as he peered out of the windshield and pointed to the marvellous Emirates Airways headquarters.

He waved at Burj Dubai – that almost needles the heavens – as if it were his own. “Wonderrful. Have a look,” he exclaimed. “An Indian bizzinessman has bought the top floorr. What will he look at – cllouds?”

Don’t ask me which Indian honcho has dared to bite into that amazing piece of pushing-the-skies engineering. I have no clue. I don’t even know if his information was authentic. But given that my country cousins make up nearly 43 per cent of Dubai’s population, it was but natural for him to think of an Indian.

He knew more about Shah Rukh Khan than me and wondered if we had time to see where the Indian star had bought property. “Grrreat actorrr. He own properrty in Dubai.”

And then for some strange reason he seemed to believe I lived a block away from Khan. “You know him? You see him?” he asked. “Not really…Only in films — that too rarely. He’s not my favourite.”  His eyes popped out. “Not favourrite?”

Deeply wounded by this revelation, he decided to surprise me with another smart one. And this time he did. As the van pulled up at a filling station, he asked if we wanted to buy water. Yes, I told him and fished out what he asked me to. He came back with a couple of bottles, held them up showing the price tag. “See petrrol cheaper than water.”

That was quite something. Coming from a land where every litre of petrol costs more than Rs 40, this really was staggering.

What struck me as odd was that even as our van made the rounds of Dubai I didn’t spot a single man or woman who appeared to be a Dubai native. I saw Americans, Japanese, Koreans, loads and loads of Indians but no original Dubaiwallah. I had only seen a couple of them at the airport immigration counter. The guys at the hotel reception desk were from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The elegant woman at the travel desk was Jordanian.

Probably the real Dubai resident, necessarily a sheikh, is so affluent that his feet rarely touch the streets. Probably, he only zips past in tinted glass SUVs. So you don’t see them. “Emir Al-Makhtoum is grrreat maan,” Mr Guide informed reverentially. “He drrrives on road like orrrdinary man.. no securrrity,” he eulogised.

Great piece of news. Where can we see him drive, I asked. “Anywherre… Herrre. Therrre,” he threw his hands around him, pretty much like holymen back home when you ask them where you can find God? I wasn’t in luck and didn’t catch a glimpse of the great Emir who owns it all. No raajdarshan for me.

The hotel we were put up in by the airline company served buffet lunches and dinners. And each one of these feasts was memorable – because of the quality, taste and variety of food served. This was no fancy hotel, only a modest one with three stars. Yet, it served the pick of fruits, fantastic prawns and what not.

From what it appeared, those I met were happy making a living in Dubai.  They seemed to have a certain standard and comfort of living. Everyone seemed to have a share in the pie. But all this was before the crisis clouded the Dubai skyline. The dazzling Emirate was a picture out of a glossy travel magazine. It was real and yet faraway – unreal and cosmetic.

Exactly a year ago, 26/11 was a Wednesday. The day had ended early and I had taken the family out for dinner at a neighbourhood restaurant.

Home after a sumptuous meal and relaxed, I had as a matter of routine switched on the TV news. Grainy visuals of a hotel facade came on screen as the newscaster reported breaking news of a bloody gang war in Mumbai.

In no time, he was struggling to keep pace with a sequence of quickly and unpredictably unfolding ghastly events. Firing at Café Leopold, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the stupefied newsreader declared.

Even as he was reporting these incidents and trying to link up with his field reporters, the scrollbar was ticking faster than usual – taxi explosions, Cama Hospital attacked, firing reported at the Trident. People reported dead at the Taj Mahal Hotel. He wasn’t getting time to catch his breath.

For a fair bit, he talked of a gang war — raising fears of a possible D-Company strike. An hour or so later the contours of what would be the biggest ever terror offensive against us began emerging. India was under attack.

Staccato automatic fire was ringing out on the streets of Mumbai, people were being mowed down all around – at CST, in the wards of a government hospital, thousands had been held captive in two five-star hotels. Worse, the Indian state had been caught flatfooted, desperate, scrambling and at great pains to put an end to the outrageous dance of death.

The TV visuals were telling. A posse of men in khaki on all fours clutching clunky 303 rifles, inching towards the Taj and beaten back by bursts of gunfire. Police officers putting on helmets and strapping on bulletproof jackets, preparing to walk into the eye of the rapidly gathering tornado never to emerge from it.

For 72 hours, every Indian was in Mumbai agonized, shaken and bruised by 10 Pakistani terror merchants who had brazenly held us to ransom. An entire nation had been caught unawares.

We floundered and fumbled and finally came up with a response, which some say was credible others have questioned it saying it was slow, clumsy and far from being nimble-footed.

Big terrorist strikes are meant to shock and awe and they do. The 9/11 attacks in the US left the world dumbstruck. But the redeeming feature was the US response – clinical and efficient. Leakages were identified and sealed with resolve. Those who had taken body blows or had lost near ones were comforted. Every answer was measured. The political leadership showed character, there were no loose cannons shooting from the hip.

I am no political analyst, only a wounded Indian. A year after 26/11, I remain skeptical as ever. The leadership hasn’t convinced me it has done all in its power to plug holes, reached succor to those who bled or lost sons and daughters that day. They haven’t converted me into believing they will studiously desist from scoring brownie points over this national tragedy.

Our policemen, no matter what anyone says, are ever ready to die for us. But they can’t be treated as cannon fodder. A tragedy of the scale of 26/11 deserved a mindset change. Resources, competitive salaries, equipment, training, good working conditions — everything should have been made available to men who are tasked to protect us.

Instead, those visuals of anti-terrorist squad chief Hemant Karkare strapping on a leaky and perhaps substandard bulletproof vest to go into his final battle continue to haunt me. I saw policemen in similar clunky protective gear marching on to take on Naxalites in Lalgarh nearly a year after the 26/11 horror.

The National Security Guards, state commando forces, the Coast Guards, Marine Police — each one of these units deserve to be looked at and looked after on a priority basis. But are we committed to this?

Public memory is short, particularly in India. Villains are forgotten and forgiven. Heroes die unsung deaths, national honour winners sell their medals to meet ends. True, we are a nation of 1.17 billion people and need to erase our hard disks in order to carry on with life.

But that doesn’t mean Captain Vikram Batra who famously proclaimed Yeh Dil Maange More before falling to Pakistani bullets in Kargil and heroes such as Ashok Kamte and Hemant Karkare who bravely walked into a hail of bullets would be consigned to history books this soon.

These men live in my memory. They should inspire change. They inspire us to care, make sure another policeman doesn’t die because he has a dud bulletproof jacket strapped on or a gun that’s rusted and won’t fire.

Having said this, it’s easy to blame everything on the government and politicians. But how responsible have we become? Why do we still find ways of bending rules we give ourselves for our own safety? Why do we invariably put off registering our new tenants? Why won’t we hesitate greasing palms to hasten passport delivery?

Fact is, we owe it to ourselves to be safe.

When I was in school, my uncle had once jibed me about my disastrous maths scores. This was at a get-together in full public view in a room full of invitees.

The query had struck me as intrusive and a tad insulting. I had retaliated and told him — rather rudely — it wasn’t his business. My response was impulsive, angry and rude.

An onslaught from him had followed immediately. “Don’t dare talk to me like that. Everything you do or don’t do is my business,” he had shut me up with that rebuke. I had gulped down the affront realising nobody in the gathering would stand up for me. My eyes firmly fixed on the floor, I had suffered in silence.

Most relatives then, uncles and aunts in the extended family, appeared — and still come across — as nosy and unfairly curious about the goings on in my life.

Many years hence, I studiously keep away from some of these uncles and aunts determined not to burden them with my bothers. But at the end of the day they don’t seem pleased for not being updated even on an angry boil on the thigh or a bout of flu I was down with recently.

Try to reason with them and they’re angrily dismissive saying I am not to cut them off from my life. The standard line: “You think you’ve grown up, but that’s not how we feel. You need counsel.”

Simply put, that would mean they continue to have an opinion on every twist and turn of my daily existence. They want to participate. Which, I grudgingly conclude is a fair demand.

Fair, because our elders live their lives through us. They see us as their extensions and vice versa. “If I can rush to you with every little problem I face, why can’t you? I am not that outdated, irrelevant and have self-respect,” the same uncle who had hauled me up as a child, recently rebuked me.

I gather this has a lot to do with relevance and self-respect. “We are not parasites. More importantly, we don’t have blinkers on. We are extremely aware of everything that’s going on around us and know the complexities of modern living,” mom reminds me every other day.

And why not? Truly, the core concerns of routine existence remain pretty much the same as they were say 50 years ago — education, jobs, healthcare, relationship glitches, hiccups in daily social interactions. The issues are the same, though their manifestations have changed.

More importantly, the Bengali poet’s famous line — “Amaar shontaan jeno thakey doodhe bhaatey (let my children have the very best)” — remains ageless. Times have changed, but our elders haven’t got out of this groove. Thank God for that.

An Indian scientist who works in the US recently wrote a book in which he sought to explain why we in this country don’t feel the need for counsellors and psychiatrists as much as they do in the West.

In this country, he wrote, there’s someone in the family constantly interested in your ups and downs, highs and lows. On days I am glum and forlorn, I have an army – wife, daughters, father, mother — pestering me and teasing bits of information out till they are convinced they know why I am depressed.

This has therapeutic value. The mechanics of how this actually happens is set to a pattern and explains why the experience is so relieving. Those at home know every little twitch on your face, every frown. That’s because they’re so interested in you and care.

If they sense something amiss, they begin with the standard ki hoyeche (What’s wrong). I resist stoutly determined not to vent. With every passing minute the grilling intensifies. Diffident, you snap and bark asking them to lay off. But they are relentless. Such is the badgering that the wall cracks and the floodgates open.

That done hours go into finding a way out of the problem — which again is irksome. But more often than not, I have emerged wiser and better equipped to confront a crisis.

In a way, I am now convinced that there’s reason in what my uncle said years ago.

A word of caution. Even in this, there’s just as much need to understand that caring doesn’t mean overstepping. Privacy is primary. One must know where to draw the line. Discretion must be used and sensibilities kept in mind.