There has been a bit of to and fro on this issue whether Coronavirus originated from wet market or was it synthetic, that is , manufactured in a laboratory in Wuhan. However, there seems to be some credence to the latest claim by someone who has become quite popular after she chose to be a whistleblower on the issues relating to pandemic.

Dr Li-Meng Yan fled to the United States over safety concerns. Appearing on a show from a secret location, the virologist has claimed that she will soon publish her findings. Chinese virologist Dr Li-Meng Yan has claimed that the novel coronavirus was made in a government controlled laboratory in Wuhan and asserted that she has scientific proof to back the claim.

I am not going into the merits or demerits of the claim, nor do I have the qualification to validate the claim, which even the mightiest of the agencies have not been able to do. I have no love or respect for our northern neighbour given it’s expansionist motive. However, I doubt whether the world’s most populous nation will go to such an extreme as to unleash a mutated virus strain that affects almost the entire world and that it timed its spread around Chinese new year to ensure that travellers seed this virus in all the natives of the places they visit!

There are certain nations that have come in possession of nuclear weapons and they constantly flaunt their power! However, what’s several times more dangerous than the nuclear arsenal is chemical warfare. We heard that Iraq possessed chemical weapons, leading to US attack on the nation that resulted in the death of Saddam Hussain. Whether US forces found cache of chemical weapons is not known or at least publicly revealed, but what appears certainty is North Korea possessing chemical weapons. One of the Pakistani Ministers recently claimed to be in the possession of technology that would ensure that only non Muslims get killed when that nation unleashed its weapon power on India, though it was later clarified that this Minister was known for his “tongue in cheek” remarks not to be taken seriously.

Why Corona virus was synthesised in Wuhan lab? It’s like every nuclear power claiming to be using the nuclear technology for peaceful pursuits only. May be China was experimenting on some drug for human welfare but the controlled environment inside the Government lab was probably not safe enough. If one such contagious strain that probably was not aimed at causing destruction, has unleashed such savagery on mankind, what devastation can an arsenal of deadly nuclear and chemical weapons cause, I shudder to even think about it!

Like the entire world has come together to fight the pandemic and extended cooperation to each other, the world community must also come together to neutralise the very real prospects of a chemical or nuclear warfare, especially with some of the none too reliable nations and their regimes possessing this capability.

Corona pandemic is teaching a new lesson each day to the mankind. It’s up to us to imbibe these lessons and save our planet earth for our future generations.

My mother’s music teacher was a paan aficionado and it was my duty to go to the neighbourhood paan shop to get a paan filled with 90 number tobacco packed for him for a princely sum of 10 paise. I used to look forward to this daily duty, because the paanwala would give me a free paan filled with rose leaves paste ( gulakand).

For years, I travelled by local to my office and would pick up my daily copy of The Economic Times from a particular newspaper vendor. Did he give it for free or lower price? No rather I’d occasionally leave some change with him; I would go to him because he welcomed me with a smile and gave me my copy without I having to ask for it.

Travelling by DTC bus to office in the morning peak hours is a pain no less than the Mumbai local. Not for me though for I’d take a particular bus whose conductor would acknowledge my presence, leave his seat for me and was unbelievably courteous.

At the barber shop, I sometimes choose to wait even for an hour for a particular hair stylist to be free, for he receives me with a smile, knows my requirement and gives me a free 30 seconds of head massage.

Reliance retail, Amazon, Flipkart, D Mart can become billion dollar companies and drive the grocer next door out of business, but what they cannot provide is the personal touch! When someone receives you with a smile, understands your requirement without you having to tell him, be large hearted to let you sample a product before buying or give a small chocolate to the child accompanying you, these are typical examples of personal touch that’s so unique to our country. This is part of our basic philosophy of athiti devo bhava or a guest is god, customer being a guest for the seller, which is different from the relatively newer philosophy, “ customer is king”, which is followed by the large retailers and e trailers, by providing choice and competitive pricing under one roof.

Air conditioned comfort and so much to choose

Or Amazon’s sale and loot as much as you can loot;

Place order on your smart phone and receive goods sitting at home

To go searching for a thing in sun and dust, those times are gone

But I am a little old fashioned, personal touch matters to me

My free paan and personal touch I value, and rest doesn’t matter to me

As it is, current pandemic times are being termed as one of the darkest periods after world war 2 and on top of it, if there’s an added dosage of negativity on the personal front, it’s like adding fuel to the fire.

However, as also mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, the divine has a way to provide solace even in the darkest of the times and there have been several friends and well wishers who have stood by us in these difficult times, inspiring me to composing a few lines to express my gratitude to all of you. It’s titled – “Who else but you!”

When the dark clouds hover over the sky

And the dark tunnel seems endless

Under such grim circumstances, the mind thinks of

Who else but you!

When driven against the wall

With no respite in sight

In such times of trouble, the mind visualises

Who else but you!

When the solitude becomes unbearable

And loneliness starts frightening

The only thing that calms the mind is

Who else but you!

It’s not that times are always grim and dark

And that there’s no happiness in life

Even when it’s time to celebrate, the heart thinks of

Who else but you!

Lucky are those

Who have people like you as fall back

Divine also operates through individuals such as

Who else but you!

If those times didn’t last

These will also fly away

And when the heart will yearn again to meet a dear one, it will be

Who else but you!

Hope you like the above this has come straight from my heart 🙏

I am a born Delhiite, having spent my growing up years in Delhi. Mumbai always seemed fascinating from a distance as it was all along “Maya nagari” that was also the house of Bollywood, an industry selling dreams to millions of Indians.

It was much later in life that my first visit to Mumbai materialised. A short official visit, I was totally mesmerised by what I saw! Swanky red BEST buses plying in their lanes, shining metalled roads, traffic following lane discipline and a general openness about everything that were amiss in other parts of the country that I had been to. I immediately set my dream of coming to stay in this city one day. Little did I realise that not only my wish would get fulfilled, I would actually end up choosing the city to be my permanent home.

While it’s true for any megapolis of 20 Million plus people, Mumbai is like a cultural melting pot, which is much like pav bhaji, city’s favourite fast food. All of potatoes, tomatoes, beans, capsicum and host of other vegetables are used, but they all lose their individual identity when mixed in a melting point and what emerges a totally new stuff that has its unique identity called pav bhaji. Similarly in this cultural cauldron, Marathi, Tamilian, Kannadiga, Telugu, Malyali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bihari, Bengali, Oriya, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, male, female, atheist, non atheist and even foreigners melt and what emerges out of the pot is Mumbaikar, a unique individual who leaves behind all his/her prefixed notions, beliefs, dogmas to pursue the dream to fulfil which, he/she has made Mumbai one’s home.

We cannot be complaining about it’s creaking and badly needing an upgrade infrastructure or traffic on its roads, distances, housing problems, water logging et al, which are not unique to Mumbai but common to any megapolis that was not originally planned to inhabit such large populace. Similarly, maintenance of BEST fleet and its punctuality non might have gone down, Metro network may not be at par with Delhi, Airport may be losing its numero uno position, the fact is that spirit of Mumbai and that uniqueness of Mumbaikar cannot dilute or dissipate. We do see some regressive actions once in a while, but these don’t have approval of the ordinary Mumbaikar, who is free spirited and who values this freedom that’s not accessible to the residents of many other cities of not only India but the world over !

Mumbai has remained a progressive city and should remain so in future too to show the right path to other cities and towns so that the progress is not confined to isolated pockets but to the entire country.

I love you Mumbai meri jaan!

We saw him dying each day once we came to know that his cancer was untreatable as it’s origin was undetermined. We knew him as a reserved, shy and reticent person, but he was strong willed and there was no doubt about this quality of his. For most of the times, he took his terminal condition in his stride, which was, in any case, openly discussed realistically amongst his sisters, wife, children and mother.

But he had his weak moments when he clearly wanted to live and not die. He was especially attached to his collegiate daughter with whom he would once in a while share his “ Man ki baat”. So, he readily and willingly agreed to undergo extremely painful chemotherapy and radiation in spite of doctors clearly declaring his strain to be incurable. He underwent alternate therapies that came along with extremely restrictive food regimens. For months he gave up his favourite foods to be on the recommended diet.

And then as unlockdown started slowly, he went back to his native to wait for the inevitable. He deteriorated much faster than expected and after battling with cancer for close to 15 months, he succumbed during the auspicious Ganpati festival. Ganpati, also knows as vignaharta or remover of all vignas or obstacles or problems, whatever you may call them, bestowed deliverance upon him, ending his pain, misery and bodily life. The only solace in this entire agonising moment was the presence of all those who mattered to him by his death bed.

Anand by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and starring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan in lead roles is one of my favourite movies. Here Anand, a last stage cancer patient comes to Mumbai to stay with Dr Bhaskar Banerjee on a common friend’s recommendation. And both of them are different like chalk and cheese – Anand is boisterous, friendly, outward types while Bhaskar is serious, silent and inward type. Anand, knowing full well that his end was just a few days away, tried to live life king size and in the process taught Bhaskar also the art of living life. Towards the end, of course, Anand develops a deep bonding with Bhaskar and doesn’t want to die! And the scene of Bhaskar’s disenchantment in his ability to save Anand is heart rending.

The protagonist in my Anand also comes to Mumbai for his treatment, knows that he only has a few days to live and faces all the realities with great strength and aplomb. Of course, he’s not open like Anand but reserved like Bhaskar, but nonetheless he has inner strength like Anand and zeal to live life just before dying.

Only difference is unlike Anand of celluloid who is a fictitious character, the protagonist of My Anand is a real life character, whom like Dr Bhaskar, I helplessly saw him dying each day but not before he taught me the meaning of life!

As they say good stories are those that come out of real life experiences. Hope my readers like My Anand.

The woman in the picture with a smile is Salwa Hussein..! The woman without a heart 💔 in her body, a rare case in the world, as she carries her artificial heart in a bag. The British newspaper “Daily Mail” reported that Salwa Hussein, aged 39, is the only one who lives like this way in Britain. She is the mother of two children, the bag that carries her heart is in her lap, its always with her with a device with two batteries weighing 6.8 kg, which is an electric motor and a pump, The batteries push the air into a plastic bag in the patient’s chest through attached tubes, for blood circulation in her body😔 By God Grace all our personal problems and worries are nothing infront of her confidence and her SMILE.

While wishing Salma all the best for a long , happy and healthy life, the incident actually opens a floodgate of emotions and myths attached to various human organs. Image of heart in hand is associated with charity, whereas Salma actually has her heart in hands and there’s nothing charitable about it . It needs motors and battery to run it and pump and purify blood. Another feeling associated with heart is wearing heart on one’s sleeve, which is representative of a true romantic. We all must have heard of from the bottom of my heart, eat one’s heart out, have a heart, my heart bleeds, I have lost my heart to you, you stay in my heart, heart of gold, heart to heart talk, to know something by heart, pour your heart, with a heavy heart et al. So much romanticism, symbolism and glorification of an organ that’s vital to survive yet ugly to look at- like any other internal organ – gory, bloody, beating and ghastly- is more to do with human’s thought process and poetic leanings and nothing to do with anatomy or actual physical constitution.

Privileged are we who lose heart to our beloved, eat our heart out, have heart to heart chat, have a heart in adversity, have a bleeding heart on seeing human misery, pour our heart out to give vent to our emotions. For Salma, the challenge is to keep her heart in hand perform it’s basic functions non stop and take care that battery is always sufficiently charged and motor operates defect free. And if she can smile at the life, we, to whom heart offers so many other emotional options, should be celebrating each day with gratitude.

A true romantic wears heart on his sleeve,

Pouring one’s heart out reduces one’s peeve;

Eating heart out is a bliss,

We pray so that heart beat is never amiss;

Such a little organ and so many emotions,

Exercise and eat healthy so that heart never loses its motions!!

After a hiatus of couple of days, when it seemed that monsoon season for the year was going to be over, we have woken up today to dark skies and lightening and thunder. It’s as if rain is saying, “don’t get complacent; I am not going anywhere too soon. Let the mankind, the nation and the city quench their thirst for water as much as possible.”

And it’s true that we are having another season of bountiful rain and farmers are rejoicing by making use of this bounty by bringing more and more land under sowing. In fact, in these dark Covid times, farm sector is the only sector making positive contribution to the country’s GDP and keeping its wheels moving. God bless the farmers of this country and let’s also express gratitude to heavens for their generosity by giving bountiful rain in what otherwise could have been even a more difficult year.

There’s an old poem that my daughter use to sing in her nursery days that read –

Rain rain go away

Don’t show your face again

Little Johnny wants to play

Rain rain go away!

Today, while we don’t mind rain staying for a few more days, but wish that it should take Covid away with itself. Like it cleans mother earth of all its dust and dirt, making it verdant green, let it also clean this earth from this pandemic that’s assuming monstrous proposition. With a count of 80000 being added each day, india overtaking US to be the biggest affected country does not seem too far away. More frighteningly, Covid that first entered the country, then city, then locality is now entering home and family i.e. getting too close for comfort:

Covid Covid go away

Never show your face again

Nation wants to grow again

Covid Covid go away!

गुरुर्ब्रह्मा गुरुर्विष्णु र्गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः
गुरु साक्षात परब्रह्मा तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः

So everything is changing. The status given to Guru in our ancient scriptures, where a Guru is equated with the Trinity of the creator, the preserver and the destroyer in the form of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh respectively no longer holds good. And I would say fault lies on both the sides – Guru, the giver of Jnana or knowledge as also the shishya, it’s recipient. And to stretch the point further, the fault actually does not lie with either but with the objective of gaining Jnana or knowledge ! Today knowledge is not acquired for becoming a better human or to understand the deep nuances of the reality of this world , but to acquire quickfix bookish knowledge for material gains! When the entire objective is materialistic, it will be inappropriate to view this entire issue from a spiritual angle and hence the lack of relevance of the above mantra in the context guru shishya parampara or tradition.

If there are no Guru Dronacharyas, where are the Eklavyas? If Ravi Shankars are not being born, where are Baba Allauddins? In fact, the electronic music seems to be gaining so much popularity that in near future, we may not see a pianist, sitarist, violinist, guitarist but only one playing synthesiser, who with the touch of a button would reproduce sound of any of the aforesaid instruments. In sum, today the only thing that counts is the convenience factor and people want to acquire everything – money, status, sedan, house as also skills – professional or artistic- overnight! And we expect Tapasya of Eklavya or Ravi Shankar kind or the patience of Dronacharya or Allauddin kind!

And thanks to our social media, creativity really runs very high in thinking through posts that range between outright hilarious to ludicrous! So we are receiving posts with a garland around a bottle of Teachers whiskey as also an incense stick and a coconut offered to the biggest new age guru – Google! No doubt Google has made all information available at a click of a button, but I don’t know why do we mix up information and knowledge. Mere obtainment of information is not knowledge; imbibing or emulating that information in our day to day lives is salvation, for which Google baba is not competent and we may either run to our scriptures or to Sri Sri, Mahatria and Shankaracharyas ! And the teacher of the bottled variety offers salvation only for that evening, making us wake up with a big hangover the next morning!

We all know that each individual is a unique divine creation and the acts of kindness by the God almighty actually get executed through one of his divine creations only, who comes to us as a manifestation of God himself when we are into neck deep trouble!

While the above examples of Guru Shishya tradition and lofty goals of salvation are far fetched, all our day to day benefactors are our Gurus. From whomsoever we learn or get solace or gain anything from material to spiritual, they are worthy of being our Gurus. And he or she need not only be a teacher or parent or a superior authority. All ordinary mortals qualify to be our Gurus who touch our lives positively in any manner and these could be our juniors, peers, seniors, guides, mentors, benefactors et al. In today’s dark Covid times, who can be the bigger guru than Corona warriors- our doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, police, public transport operators, armed forces etc all working tirelessly and selflessly to keep us safe.

Let’s bow before all these gurus!

Happy Teacher’s Day!

How often do we all use the above phrase that represents or is reflective of dilemma! The best example is the chicken and the egg story – which came first – the egg, who laid it if the chicken was not there – the chicken, how it hatched without the egg? And there are number of examples of this dilemma, the popular lore being a candidate appearing for a job that required work experience! He was flummoxed, “ If each job giver has this precondition, how will I gain work experience?”

The inspiration of this blog has come from eponymous book of the same name that was penned by Joseph Heller in early 60s, but that retains its popularity and interest till date, lining it up along side classic works. In fact, as the story goes, the author could have named it anything and actually originally coined it Catch 18 to finally name his book Catch 22 at the suggestion of his publisher.

As aforesaid, catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations that’s best described by the following flow chart:

The entire book that’s 450+ pages is a satirical take on wartime politics, where number of combat missions are continuously increased and those who want a break find themselves in a Catch 22 situation.

It’s a difficult book to read. To prove the point, I started this book 10-15 years ago, but couldn’t go more than a few pages, and if you look for personal reviews of this book, many readers have echoed similar experiences. It’s not sequential, is repetitive, entails use of very complex words et al.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a blog on Hollywood blockbuster Saving Private Ryan that was a gory and macabre take on world war 2. Coming close on the heels of the above classic movie, the classic book is a satire on world war 2. However, as also observed in my aforesaid previous blog, the individual soldiers sacrifice their lives and attain martyrdom, but there are so many under currents that are not necessarily in the similar serious vein. This is tragic. In the matters of sacrifice for the nation, all stakeholders must demonstrate the same sincerity, seriousness, valour and chivalry that our troops facing the enemy demonstrate. At least in such matters of supreme national interest entailing supreme sacrifice, no stakeholder should shortchange and this is one of important learning from Joseph Heller’s classic.

Like the start of April is associated with April Fool, the onset of September immediately brings to mind that classic Hollywood movie “Come September “ starring ever handsome Rock Hudson and ever charming Gina Lollobrigida. And who can forget the every popular “Come September” signature tune composed by maverick Bobby Darin that’s played to date by wedding bands and orchestra.

There’s another song “Come September” whose theme is rather sad, but it’s catchline says –

Come September
Everything wrong gonna be alright
Come September

In these dark Covid times, can there be anything more soothing than the line “ Come September, Everything wrong gonna be alright?”

Actually, September has its own significance. It heralds start of autumn after sizzling hot summer and muggy rainy season. The climate takes turn to be more pleasant, with nights becoming cooler. Earth awashed by departing rains is green, clean and beautiful. Festive spirit starts manifesting itself in the atmosphere. In short, there’s hope all around.

Let’s dance to the evergreen Bobby Darin’s tune “ Come September” and sing the above lullaby that assures that all wrong are going to go away, once September comes!

Come September

Everything is gonna be alright

Because this dark and gloomy Covid tunnel is coming to an end

Leading the humanity to shining bright light!

Come September

Even the season is undergoing a change

There’s no reason whatsoever

Why Covid will not go out of our range?

Come September

Man has survived flus, plagues and catastrophes

Don’t show him covid

He knows all the tricks and all the ropes!