Hotel for Poor and Hungry

Walking near Teen Darwaza in Ahmedabad you may witness the rare occasions where Indians make and respect queues. Lines of people, males females children, different religions and ages, sitting down, waiting for their turns. I was here because my father had missed three of his roza for the month of Ramadhan: one of the less frequent reasons you may be required to give away a part of your property, liquid or illiquid. More often it is the compulsory Zakat.

Zakat is one of the pillars of Islamic life. It is a duty to Allah that obligates every wealthy individual to share with the needy a portion from his/her wealth. It is a very important institution for the individuals as well as the society in general.

http://www.baitulmaal.org/us/donate/about-zakat#Q2

The word 'wealthy' in the ab0ve definition has a very low bar. The affect is that there is a culture of gifting money, clothes, feeding people, and such like in the culture I grew up around (not strictly 'in'). 


A few enterprising people in Ahmedabad have turned this doing good into a business opportunity. Growing up in Ahmedabad I saw these 'hotels', (in Ahmedabad a hotel is a place for eating out) go from being a place for a cheap non-veg food place to full time hotel for the poor. You can feed someone a whole (unlimited) meal for Rs 20 or a fixed meal for Rs 10. 


Anonymity is a prime concern in making such gifts, and these hotels present a good way to quickly move in, pay the cash, and leave. I am not sure if the people who line-up to eat at these places will strictly meet the definitions of 'needy', and investigation about these kind of things before giving zakat is as important as giving the zakat. But if someone is willing to be considered a beggar they are needy enough for me. Loss of hope, self respect is as serious as loss of a limb. I should know.


It is indeed a good business. Making a living while doing good work, god's work, work deemed great across religions and cultures. And all this while you have more customers. I have often eaten at these places (as a self financed customer). The food is not bad at all. Of course its being non-vegetarian restricts who it caters to, but I feel that hungry and destitute may not refuse a hot fresh meal.


The fact that even in the present difficult global financial circumstances, the business thrives and customers have low waiting time, says something about the people of Ahmedabad. 



A related newspaper article with a picture (2009):
http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article&sectname=News%20-%20City&sectid=3&contentid=200903282009032802283964463306406
It should be noted that prices have doubled since 2009, in line with many food items. 

P.S: I tried to interview some of the hotel owners, but they were hesitant in being interviewed or talk about their business. Possible reasons can range from tax to my dubious apparent religious affiliation, Gujarati Muslims still feel insecure. Total personal failure at reassuring my subjects is the prime suspect. 

On Memory

In the musical History Boys, Hector said to Posner - "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."*


The first few lines from Rabindranath Tagore's book My Reminiscences#: 
I do not know who painted the pictures of my life imprinted on my memory. But whoever he is, he is an artist. He does not take up his brush to simply copy everything that happens; he retains or omits things just as he fancies; he makes many a things small and small things big; he does not hesitate to exchange things in the foreground with things in the background. In short his task is to paint pictures, not to write history.

His task - is to paint pictures. Not write history.

# Available online, click the link to read the book

* History Boys, written by Alan Bennett. Credit: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_History_Boys

Unyeilding

Mosaic
(like a tile mosaic, this one is by making each individual colour tile)

Naseeb Or Being the Fourth Person in a Shuttle

When I say shuttle I mean auto rickshaws that run on a sharing basis. They carry more than the legally permissible three passengers, sometimes up to seven. Four people sit in the back of the auto. Three in front, besides the auto driver - a performance that needs balancing skills of an acrobat. And courage.

An Autorickshaw (this one is in Delhi)
Photo Credit: http://www.thebeigeroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/autorickshaw.jpg

Shared Autorickshaw
Photo Credit: http://www.travelpod.com/

I am a unusually gifted person. And according to the Universal Law of Gifts in Large Number most gifts will find their way to the exchange counter. This particular gift makes my backside (and other sides) endowed with more than average space and matter. I am still working on exchanging this one.

When I take one of these shuttles, as a second person or the third person, I am okay. Apart from the smiles and a small smirk, and brief, one word jokes, shared among the inmates. But when I am inside, and a fourth person comes... all of the above is magnified to slap-stick scale.

I, of course cannot and thus, never sit in an auto where I am the fourth person. When I am the fifth or sixth I get to sit in the front, on the side of the driver where I can perch a tenth of my backside with all my dignity and locomote safely away from the ridicule, one slip away from a mangling road accident. But I have often wondered what do the people who  come in fourth think, why do they put up with it? Instead of say waiting for another auto in which they are not the fourth or insist on being the fifth or the sixth. Like I do. 

"I have a problem with sitting in the back seat" , I told the auto driver [strategically skipping the words fat and backside], when I had insisted on skipping being the fourth for the first time. "Shuttle main problem to hote hai nay [Of course there will be problems in a shuttle]" shared the driver in his modified Gujarati-Hindi to me. 

"It's naseeb bhai, " explained an older person who was sitting very uncomfortably another day;  "some days you have to put up with it, other days someone else," he went on jovially.

Naseeb is a great way to come to terms with the harsh realities most of my co-travelers in shuttle deal with. It is a great way to keep their self separate from the circumstances, keeping hardships and failures in perspective, moving ahead in life with endurance and effort. Sadly it is not a part of my internal philosophy. 

I have often tried to skip being the metaphoric fourth person in life. But the times I have not been able to avoid it, I gave in and became the fourth person, unable to get off the shuttle between fear and inability. 

But before I could  continue my humorous self-censure, the part-time pragmatist, who keeps passing through me, barges in, without even a polite knock - 

The economy of the 6-7 people taking autos, some for shorter distances, works really well for everyone involved in the trade. On the supply side, the auto driver can move continuously between two fixed places (hence the name shuttle) making a little more than the metered fare for the same distance each trip. On the demand side, the alternative option for transportation for customers are public buses which are much less frequent, charge almost the same amount, and are also crowded. This illegal set-up fills a large gap.

The Race

Outside IIM-A, a bypasser, I,  see
a woman washing the only bowl they own
while watching over her toddler
who is crying, that his elder sister
is running too fast
for a race he thought he could have won.

-Arshad Mirza

Happy Republic Day Indians!

The Wicked Postman

Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, mother dear?

The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all wet, and you don't mind it.

Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother to come home from school.

What has happened to you that you look so strange?

Haven't you got a letter from father to-day?

I saw the postman bringing letters in his bag for almost everybody in the town.

Only, father's letters he keeps to read himself. I am sure the postman is a wicked man.

But don't be unhappy about that, mother dear.

To-morrow is market day in the next village. You ask your maid to buy some pens and papers.

I myself will write all father's letters; you will not find a single mistake.

I shall write from A right up to K.

But, mother, why do you smile?

You don't believe that I can write as nicely as father does!

But I shall rule my paper carefully, and write all the letters beautifully big.

When I finish my writing, do you think I shall be so foolish as father and drop it into the horrid postman's bag?

I shall bring it to you myself without waiting, and letter by letter help you to read my writing.

I know the postman does not like to give you the really nice letters.

- Rabindranath Tagore

The Master. Educator, Artist, Poet. Visionary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
http://poemhunter.com/poem/the-wicked-postman/

Dabbling with Photoshop

Door - my first drawing completely drawn on Photoshop

Bournville Advertisement: Colonial Ideas Glorified

This is one of the things I am not an expert at, um, that would be a class called Everything. But look at this advertisement, and you will agree that one does not need to be an expert to get hurt.

  

A white man is buying cocoa in Ghana. He has come in a large SUV which is standing out side the mud hut, with a well dressed black person I am assuming his chauffeur. Two of the village people, assumed village elders, are sitting opposite to him. Other farmers are standing in a huddle behind these two. The white man is wearing his suit, while the natives are wearing their not so attractive grey and faded yellow/white clothes. The light makes sure we don't pay much attention to the clothes of the natives. While the bright light behind the white person gives a sheen to the suit of the white man. And finally, the white man has the tools of civilisation: a mono-lens and a pair of forceps.

The only animated person in the native group is the elder in the orange brown shirt. Others have a blank stare. They are looking over each others' shoulder instead of for example finding a place on the side of the table.

The white man is the expert and the final authority on cocoa, not the 'native' farmers who grow the cocoa. When he decides a cocoa bean is "nothing" the bean is doomed forever and starts crying. The white man only says apologetically, "tell him, I am sorry," he doesn't speak the native language. One of the native farmer decides that a bean rejected by the expert does not deserve any sympathy and brushes it right off the table.

And this advertisement is aired in India (maybe all over the world): reinforcing any popular and ignorant ideas we have about the "dark continent". What the advertisement is saying about Ghana is very different from what this website is trying to say: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/

You don't just buy a Bournville: you earn it. And apparetly it will take the natives in the advert maybe a few more centuries to be "earn" their Bournville.

2012-01-15

*updated* Hindi "Sure Thing"

Credits:
This play was written by an American writer David Ives.
This play was translated jointly by Irfana Majumdar and I, to be performed at Nirman Theatre Studio.

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Khan Saab Ki Shifa Medical

Dust. There was no dust in Shabbir's 8 month old medical store. That is the second thing I noticed when I was at his place day before yesterday. The first thing was the beautiful green Styrofoam structure in front of his shop.

He was not there when I reached "Khan saab ki Shifa Medical." I went into the shop and looked around. Everything in the store was neatly piled, alphabetically organised and clean. Then I noticed the tall backed swiveling chair which looked very much the kind that my father had in his veterinary dispensary.

In 1991. My father had just opened his dispensary and was looking for an all purpose handy man. A boy of the age 15 or so turned out to be the man. My father noticed him when he used to deliver tea to the dispensary guests and my father. Shabbir had a way with words and charmed and made friends easily. He used to go to school then, I think, or he had just dropped out of class 7, but he could read Gujarati and enough English and Hindi for my father's work. My father offered him a salary higher that the tea-stall. Apart from general cleanliness and helping my father in operations, Shabbir was responsible for prescriptions and maintaining a stock of medicines. That was the first step in Shabbir's pharmaceutical career.

My father had an eye for cleanliness and taught Shabbir to keep the office sparkling clean. Including my father's glass covered table and the long backed swivelling green chair. When my father was not around and we (sister and I) were, all of us (Shabbir, sister and I) would take turns for swivelling on that chair.

My father's sense for office cleanliness was not matched by his business acumen. Before we left Jungadh the drug trading agency next door, Pharmachem, purchased my father's dispensary . They also decided to take over the human resources: Shabbir was hired as an office boy. But the trader soon realised Shabbir's potential and promoted him to a salesman. For 17 years since then, he was responsible for managing the sales all around Saurashtra. Two years ago he got married and rented himself a new room in the same chawl as his father. He had plans to change his life after marriage.

While he was a traveling salesman all these seventeen years, his sight was set higher. He saved a lot spent his money very stingily, eating only once a day on tours, and denying himself the simple comforts he could afford. He also worked many hours in the shop of a friend in another city, to learn the business. Around the time his daughter was born, he rented his own shop space with his savings and registered it as a drug store. Second-hand furniture had to be found, repaired and beautified to his taste while he worked his 12 hour shifts at Pharmachem. The work also kept him out of Jungadh for 3 days a week, so everything was going slow, but he persisted, working bit by bit. When his daughter was 8 months old, he had the whole set-up and was ready to quit the sales job.

"When I started this shop there were no doctors here. All the neighbouring shopkeepers told me there is no way a medical store would run in this low income area. But by the grace of Allah, now there are four doctors in the neighbourhood: three allopathic and one barber", he holds a hand forward for a clap.

Many people come to him with a prescription other come with a box of a hair colour as a sample of what they want. He has 'arrangements' with all the doctors (and the barber): they tell him what medicines they will prescribe and he stocks these. "The branded drugs and cosmetics I keep for service. The biggest margin is in generic. This one I buy for 70 paisa each and sell for 2 rupees. You are good at math do the margin." He sells his medicine by daily doses one or two pills at a time, which fits the pockets of the daily wage workers, auto drivers and small shopkeepers who are his customers. He has a simple and effective system of small tags which he staples on the medicine as reminder: time of the day and before or after food.

He takes care of his customer's needs. Sometimes he will open his shop at midnight on a phone call. "I sell anything that other shopkeepers around here don't. There is no margin in branded products such as hair colour. But I keep it so that people come to my store, once they visit my store they become friend even girls and women: they will never think of buying anything I sell from anywhere else."

He is amazingly gender neutral when it comes to selling his products. He shows respect to women and he charms them! A group of five young women were surrounding the counter and a few spilled inside the store. This was his free education session, "creating customers" as he puts it. He was explaining what the different bottles on the cosmetic cupboard are for, many of them had pictures of women on them and he was explaining, "This one is for hair, it makes your hair shiny. You don't need this, your hair is so nice anyway, but your friend here may want hair like yours." A discussion about the alleged nice-hair-girls' hair ensues. "That over there is for making your breasts fuller," all the girls giggle on cue, "your chances of getting married increase," he says with a hush tone and a conspiratorial wink which is met with another large uproar of giggles.

"The largest selling product here is Viagra," he tells me. "It's all hush hush, but the margin is very high. People buy Viagra on weekends, everyone wants to have fun." What about condom sales, they must be very high too then, I wonder aloud. "What condoms? Very low! Apne miyan bhai kahan manne wale hai?" (Our Muslim brothers are never going to understand.) 

"I make enough to run my store and home. I save in the post office. That is how I bought this shop. I have insurance policies in wife's name and mine. It will become Rs. Y each in 10 years. What is the value of Rs.Y which will come to me in 10 years? But it helps us save," he hits me with his intuitive understanding of time value of money. I explained how he can find that value using an approximate interest figure and his desk calculator. He asked me other questions about taxation and bank loans for housing (which I was not able to answer). "Before my daughter starts going to school, I want to have a house of my own Chintu Bhai, that is the next thing!" he says swiveling like a boy in his tall back swiveling chair.

see also: 2012-01-15

2012-01-03

Unable to view clearly? 
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Coming to India

I finally reached India after one and a half years! Ah my own people. My land. I was so excited!

Until I reached the immigration...

The guy looked at me. His smiled got wiped off. He looked like a seagull. A seagull with a tan. 

He called another, a fat black-ish (Indian), guy. They spoke in low conspiratorial voices. 

Then they asked me go with the Penguin... (See I was still sleepy and dreamy)

The Penguin made me wait for what seemed like many hours.

After a few hours I asked him "what am I waiting for"

"Shut up and wait"

"Oh okay, thank you"

A few hours passed. 

"What am I waiting for?"

"Shut up. And if I have to tell you one more time I will kill you" 

"Oh okay, thank you."

Then I saw an in-mate. An Afghani. Mansoor. Nice guy. Was coming on my flight too. 

I had a conversation with him. In exchange of a cigarette (in jail we use that as currency) I let him use my laptop to charge his I-phone to get the phone number out of it. To call someone and get the address. Frankly I think the penguin thought he was Al-Quaeda. Anyway we told each other our life stories. And we became good friends. 

Still many hours later and 30 minutes of real time, the seagull came back. "You have a name that matches with a terrorist," he informed me with a smile."Sorry for the trouble, let me help you with the bullets they fired in your self-respect by mistake. The wound will heal in a few decades."

ATM Blues

I made it to Columbia University for a graduate program. And as happy as I sound, I am not. Those of you who know about Columbia graduate programs FEES, know why I am not. The Applied Sciences and Engineering bastards, will not get the irony in that joke, they get scholarships.

So here  I was a boy from Acher slums, going to Columbia in NY, NY, USA.
A word about Acher Slums: when I was in Ahmedabad recently in Aug (2011), auto rickshaw drivers still look at you twice when you mention that place. Those that agree to take you there, quietly hide all the cash from their wallets and pockets into the small locker place in their autos.
"You never know. He looks like he works in an office. But You Just Never Know with THEM."

Anyway so here I was, laden with bank loans, personal loans, hand outs, charity and loose change from my childhood piggy bank...
I am lying.
my father took all my piggy bank money when I was 10.

Those of you who have been to NY, or seen enough hollywood movies, know about Harlem. Columbia University is smack in the middle of Harlem. It's like a puss filled abscess on a black body.

Anyway so here I was in NY going to an ATM. Covered with a thrift-store coat, and all my pairs of pants. My wallet is safe at home with all my important stuff. My ATM card is stuck in my socks, small amounts of cash in shoes and hands free to save my face if there was a gun shot.
...Yeaahhh, that was my defense strategy.
"If you hear a machine gun take off take your hand like this and cross them in front of your face,
...and if by god's grace, the attackers are vampires, they will start burning."

So I am walking to the ATM Machine, a poor student living on a dollar slice pizza and ramen for last 6 months. No time for exercise. Or showers for that matter. No money for shampoo,
...and then as soon as I enter the ATM kiosk, WHAM.
They have a mirror.
A few times I turned around to see who is that other fat ugly Indian standing behind me.
[Turn look behind. Turn look at the mirror
Turn look behind again. Turn look at the mirror again]
Ah I am getting fat.

I swipe my card, enter my pin, and the ATM machine displays a summary of my account(s). WHAM^2.
I am not only Ugly, I am Poor too.

Where did the money go? Check the transactions.
Skype credit bought in Taiwan!
I know I walk in sleep sometimes, but Taiwan...


Snow is falling with a vengeance outside the kiosk. Wind making horrible threatening noises.


So I am ugly, I am poor, and I have just been e-robbed. I am fuming angry!
...and the ATM machine is going on with it's plastic smug smile: "What can I do for you Today?"

And then there is an advert in the corner:
"Take some loan from us Today. This young, handsome, well-exercised guy in the picture has a house, do you?
He has a wife and a child. He is smiling, in sunny California suburb.What about you?
Changed your mind about that loan?"

Other Transactions
Enter the Code Again
F-0-A-K-7-0-U

I take the money and look into that mirror once again,
...and I see right behind me a group of three innocent looking teenagers. [Wind sound stops]
black leather, bandanas, tatoos,
Creative Facial Hair-dos.

6' 7"    
6"5"
and 5' 3". Every gang has a clown

Temperature inside the kiosk rises a few degrees. And I feel a sense of NIRVANA. Tao Zen dawns inside me. My Kundalini has awakened.

What did I come to this world with?
Nothing!
What am I going to take with me?
Nothing!
Nothing out of this ATM kiosk anyway.

Why Honk? Why Not?

Disclaimer: This is a satire.[1]

My Mumbai parents have jumped a few economic classes. They have done this in precisely three ways:

1.  They never take public transportation. They always take their car wherever they have to go.
2.  They never drive the car themselves. They have a driver to do that.
3. They never go anywhere where they shouldn’t be going in a car. They shop in malls and big huge stores who call themselves Bazaar, instead of um... well, going to bazaar.

Well these three are the major ways. There are other subtle hints of their class: ornate deep blue and deep red furniture, dark brown drapes with gold trimmings and gold framed pictures on walls.

According to the Agreement of Class Change condition no. 2 they need a driver. So they have to put up with one.

Now this driver is a very nice guy, until he starts driving. When he starts driving he becomes a bad guy, the lord-forgive-them-they-don’t-know-what-they-are-doing kind. He yells at people who are wearing helmet of thorns carrying heavy crosses on their backs. Figuratively speaking of course. He doesn’t yell, he honks. A lot. All the time. Unceasingly. Unreasonably.

Yes, unreasonably. On at least 2337 occasions, in one trip, I have seen him honk at lamp posts, police barricades, road dividers, and old politicians. No reasonable person expects old politicians to move to the side and give way to others.

So I asked him, “Why do you honk so much?”

“Arre, when I honk, people move away and make place for the car.”

“But on the narrow roads in Mumbai and especially in a jam, there is nowhere for them to go. And traffic signals? Lamp posts? Have you noticed most of the times you honk nothing actually happens, nothing changes. Don’t you think you ought to try not-honking sometimes?” I reasoned.

“Arre bhai, you don’t know anything. You will never understand anything.”

“Ah haan. Please do go on.”

“Arre, you are a foreign educated man, what do you know?”

“Ah haan. Please do go on and talk about honking please”

“Arre...”

“Let me guess, I am too young, I don’t know anything; I have not lived in Mumbai long enough, I don’t know anything; and (against my best knowledge) I am a rich guy, I don’t know anything. That about settles every difference between us, let’s talk about honking now. ”

“No, there is another big difference: faith.”

“But I am a [religious group], same as you.”

“What does religion have to do with anything? Let me tell you a story...”

Once there was a king. He had an evil minister. One day another wise man came to the court, travelling from far away. This minister got insecure about the wise man taking his job, so he decided to pre-empt the guy into a battle of wit and make him look silly. So he asked the king to challenge the wise man. The king agreed and asked the wise man if he will accept the challenge. The wise man agreed.

The minister asked his questions first: “Is there a god?”

“Yes” the wise man replied.

“If there is a god, where does he live?”

“In our hearts” the wise man replied to much applause in the court.

“Is that so? Now, I want to see your god,” The minister said with an evil grin. He thought he had won.

The wise man took a stick[2] and started beating the minister[3].

“That’s crude!” I interjected.

“You may think so,” the driver replied, “but listen on.”

The minister started crying, “Stop! Stop!” The wise man asked why should he stop. The minister replied that he was in pain that’s why, silly bugger.

“And then the wise man must have said I don’t see any pain etc. etc. I get it, I get it.,” I was getting impatient.

And then I saw it.

There was an unmistakable golden aura around his head, a silver halo on top of it, and an inner glow. An across-the-mythologies-and-religions wise man! How had I failed to see this? A prophet was in front of me all this time, dressed as a driver. I was so ashamed, I did not dare meet his eyes.

“So you see,” he continued, now his voice was coming from many directions, from every honk on the road, “not everything is based on your worldly logic of cause and effect. Not EVERYTHING[4] can be tested and verified. Just like the existence of pain and god(s).”

“Yes Honking Baba! I have utilised the fact since childhood for bunking school with the world famous pain-in-my-stomach excuse.” I could not hold back and shed a tear. “Indeed! I now see why, whatever it may look like, honking must be the invisible force that clears up jams and moves other vehicles out of the way. Faith can move mountains, what are lampposts, road dividers and police barricades[5]. All of this has been happening around me I just did not have the eyes to see it.”

I learnt many more lessons for living a spiritual life based on faith from Honking Baba while he was with us. But one day my mother threatened him with a salary cut for not coming to work without prior notice. And after the next salary, like all great wise souls he vanished from the face of earth, without warning or a forwarding address. All that was left for us was the dust of his feet on the floor of the car – a rather generous amount of it.

Oh! How the world misses him. Now I am chronicling his teachings to spread his wisdom far and wide. That is what he must have wanted me to do. That is why he chose an unparalleled excellent writer as myself to share his secrets. If you agree with Honking Baba’s message, honk! Honk away.

Jai Honking Baba ki!

---

[1]That means it has been processed in a fact workshop where facts are twisted, shaped and coloured. Some small facts are also fabricated for making other facts fit together. For those readers that may not have the minimum level of sense of humor for reading satires, as recommended by the Indian Medical Institute, should refrain from reading ahead. The author(s)^1a do not take any responsibility for incidentally instigated mobs, riots, or misinformed mass conversions to unknown religions.

^1aAs if I don’t know how many people wrote this.

[2] At this the driver started looking around for one. Sensing what was coming, I urged him to continue the story without a demo

[3] Phew!!

[4] A loud SUV honk

[5] A careful reader will notice that I did not breach the matter of old politicians in front of the enlightened driver. You can’t faith that problem away.

Dabbling with water-colour