The generational divide is never more apparent than when someone above the age of 65 wants to get in touch. This is how it goes. My cell rings. When I don’t pick up, it goes to voicemail. The person may or may not leave voicemail…if he does, he will wait all of 3–4 minutes for me to respond and if I don’t…he will call again. If I still don’t pick up, within the next 3–4 minutes, I will get a call from him on my landline…he just won’t stop till I come on line.

Similarly, when his landline or cellphone rings, a senior citizen will drop everything and dive for the phone. It doesn’t matter whether he is having a conversation with someone, or is at the dinner table or in a cinema house…he will pick up and answer the phone, whatever the situation!

My explanation? Today’s senior citizens come from a generation when telephone lines and phone calls were rationed. In the 70s, one or two apartments in a building were lucky enough to have landlines and every phone call was considered to be a matter of life-and-death and had to be answered, irrespective. This same telephone angst seems to have carried on to the present day…or it simply may be that the older people get, the more impatient they become.

This is for all those (young and old) who can’t seem to let go and untether themselves from their landlines and cellphones!

1. There are many ways of communicating. A phone call is just one of them. It is acceptable not to pick up every call you get and you should get used to the fact that people may not answer your call.

2. To repeat, a phone call is just one more means of communication. If you call me, I will pick up if I am free. If I am with someone, having dinner, in a meeting, running, in the gym, writing, reading, or on a time-out…I will not pick up and nor should you. The only exceptions are when my children, parents or wife call.

3. If it is urgent, I expect that you will leave a voice-mail or text. If you are family or a close friend and it is an emergency, you will anyway know how to get in touch with me.

4. If the other person does not pick up, wait…patiently. Or text and leave a message. Don’t keep your thumb pressed on the call button.

5. Text, text, text. And text. Again…text. Or email.

6. Conversely, if I call you, you don’t have to pick up instantly. And if you couldn’t pick up the first time, you don’t have to apologize and explain. I don’t care and I don’t want to know and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for not picking up. Just as I don’t owe you an explanation for not picking up when you call.

7. Don’t get upset if I don’t pick up your phone. It is not personal and definitely not an ego thing. The situation I am in when you call is probably more important or requires undivided attention. I will return your call once I am done and am free. That’s all there is to it!

Seriously…chill! It’s just a phone call! Definitely not worth all that angst that people also seem to share with the act of answering doorbells! But then that’s fodder for another piece. 

I am not sure how embellished this story is, but I did hear it from the horse’s mouth. A doctor friend of mine told me about an 82-years old patient of his, who had suddenly become drowsy and had to be admitted to a local nursing home. He needed to be investigated and shifted to a larger hospital under a senior consultant. The patient was being looked after by some relatives, who themselves were old. They were unwilling to do much for him, given that it looked as if he wasn’t going to survive much longer…my doctor friend was a little upset, because there are many transient (temporary) causes of drowsiness that can be cured…the relatives were just not keen on doing anything.

My friend gave them the names of a few senior physicians to choose from and then asked them to call him back. A few hours later, he got a call from one of the relatives, who told him that they had spoken to Dr. Michael Pinto. My friend doesn’t know any Dr. Michael Pinto and thought the relative was mistaken and tried to correct him. The relative continued to talk of Michael Pinto and it was only a little later that my friend finally figured out that they had called Michael Pinto, the undertaker firm, to arrange to have the patient transported to his native place so that he could die there in peace. Obviously, the person at Michael Pinto refused…they only transport bodies, not live, living people!

What a tragedy! Imagine if you are old and alone and sick and the only person your relatives can think of calling…is the undertaker.

And this is not an uncommon problem!

There are many who are old and living alone. Some are lucky to have support systems…friends, cousins, neighbors or children who are able to drop everything and come to their help at short notice. Many though are not that lucky…and are totally dependent on help and other relatives…relatives who themselves may not be in a condition to help or even if they are, may not want to. And since our entire healthcare system sucks and is built upon the hope that there is always some relative or friend around to do things for the patient…when those relatives or friends or attendants are not around, things go for a big toss!

With due respect to the Coen brothers, ours too is not a country for old men (and women). Despite all the paeans we sing to “bhartiya sanskriti”, which in reality is just limited to folding hands and touching feet, our entire social system is structured to not care for our elderly and infirm. Our local transport system, our pavements and roads, our trains and even for that matter our airlines…it is not a good thing to be old and infirm and on your own in this country, especially in a city like Mumbai.

I wonder how many old people we lose, simply because there is no one to take the trouble to investigate minor ailments and nip them in the bud before they escalate. And the stupid pride that so many of the elderly have, also prevents them from reaching out in time to those who can help, when the problem could be solved in an easier manner than when the issue has become more serious.

Clearly, if it is only Michael Pinto that people can think of calling when you are sick…you might as well start saying your good-byes!

It took about 10 odd minutes, but finally the credits ended…and the post-credit scene did appear…for about 30 seconds. We then all walked out.

I first chanced upon a post-credit scene during a DVD viewing of “Captain America”, when I forwarded the credits by mistake instead of pressing the stop button. The scene shows a bewildered Captain running out onto Times Square in New York, accosted by Nick Fury, who then explains to him that he has just woken up from a 70-years long sleep.

By the time “The Avengers” hit town, we knew the game, and we patiently waited and caught the post-credit scene. The ones we had missed (Iron Man I, II, Thor and Hulk), we checked out on YouTube.

Roger Ebert calls these scenes a “Monk’s Reward”, because it takes a monk-like devotion to wait till all the credits are over for one short scene.

Who but a serious geek would do this! But people do wait and the body language of the cleaners and the 3D glass-collector boys implied that they were used to people like us.

My wife and I, after each episode of “The Big Bang Theory” (BBT), wait for Chuck Lorre’s vanity card that shows up for a second, at the end of the credits. They are sometimes funny, sometimes silly, but always worth a read. I chanced upon their existence when I failed to forward the credits once and found myself staring at a white card with a number and some writing. We haven’t missed any since.

BBT attracts a special kind of geek. Almost all the issues (e.g. Star Wars versus Star Trek) discussed in BBT are projections of the nerdy/geeky brains of Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. A true geek is one who can discuss the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek for hours on end, hold forth on the post-modernist feminism of a girl like Buffy chasing monsters rather than the other way around, has seen every episode of Firefly including the film Serenity and continues to watch a Star Wars film in the auditorium while his pregnant wife sits outside because she does not want the noise of the gunfire to upset the baby growing inside her.

Growing up, it was difficult to find like-minded people to share all this with…and I was lucky to find them.  Today it is mainstream to be geeky (thanks to Harry Potter and the Twilight series)…and it helps to have kids who are turning out to be just like you!

These days though it’s all about Danerys Targaryen and her dragons kicking ass!

Sometimes it is best not to have read up about the place in advance. Virtually all reviews mention that the taxi-drivers in Beirut as in most other countries charge whatever they want, once they know you are a tourist. While that may be true to some extent, the fact is that you have to be careful with cab drivers wherever in the world you are, including Mumbai. The first one we met was jovial, a little too talkative and came on so strong about wanting to drive us around the city that we instinctively said no…eventually we found out that he was going to charge us the same amount as the others…we were just prejudiced from the beginning!

Beirut is still re-building itself and for us Indians, is extremely affordable. The buildings are a mixture of the old and new, but unlike our rent-controlled decrepit ones, even the old buildings here show signs of care. Most importantly, the roads are well maintained despite whatever issues they may have, the surroundings are clean, despite the occasional homeless person or beggar and the Beirutis are proud of their city and country. Here and there, we still see the after-effects of the Civil War that ravaged the country from 1975–1990, but people seem to have put this behind them to quite an extent.

Because of the French influence, the city is an amazing blend of modernity and conservatism. Tight clothes, but fully covered, extensive make-up, but with head scarves and a lot of French, along with Arabic.

Some things make you feel at home…the traffic and the insane driving, but with a little less honking, and people crossing the road wherever and whenever they feel like. And yet, like in so many other cities including poorer ones like Nairobi or equivalent ones like Cape Town, the squalor is minimal, the roads are clean and the people are polite to a fault.

I have never tried to equate Mumbai with other major cities in the world like New York, London, Singapore or for that matter even Shanghai. It would be like comparing chalk to cheese or apples to oranges.

The problem with Mumbai hits you when you land up in cities that seem comparable but despite their financial constraints, manage to remain clean and the people by and large, polite.

So what is it that makes us continue to throw garbage out of the window, food out of the car, spit on the streets and urinate and defecate everywhere! I do not want to sound like a stuck record in my column revisiting this issue again and again. Yes, we have poverty and over-population and infrastructure constraints. But that’s not the issue…even other cities like Nairobi for example, have similar problems, but somehow are cleaner and neater.

There is something intrinsic in us that abhors cleanliness around us. I don’t know what it is, but it is cultural and hard-wired into our genes. The behavior can be changed as happens when we migrate abroad, but when in India, whether we are locals or NRIs, we revert to our original state.

Is there some sociologist or geneticist who can shed some light on “why we are like thees only?

The real issue is…why was there a line in the first place!

Run with me here!

When you are invited to a wedding reception (unless you are part of the family or a very close friend, in which case this line of reasoning doesn’t apply), it is because the invitee wants you to bless the newly wedded couple.

Think about it! You have been invited to bless the couple. In other words, the couple has asked you to come and shower your blessings on them…so that hopefully they will get to their 2^nd or 5^th or whatever milestone is celebrated these days to mark a successful marriage.

Then…why in hell should you have to stand in line to give your blessings? You stand in line when you want to be blessed by your Gods and Ganpatidadas. A wedding reception perhaps is the only time when the blessee is so blessed that the blesser has to stand in line to bless the blessee. Seriously! What sense does this make!

Which is why there is dinner (and sometimes hopefully booze as well) during receptions, isn’t it! To compensate you for the time you have spent standing in line to give your blessing. In other words, the blesser here is being bribed with an offering to patiently wait for his turn…while the other blessers are being recorded on video or stills for posterity.

Which effectively means that you can cut the line, but then you can’t really have dinner because you haven’t earned it. If you are going to have dinner, you have to stand in line. The worst sacrilege is to have dinner and then go away without blessing the couple…I have seen people go up to the stage, look at the watch, say hello to the parents or whoever has invited them and then just coolly walk away…after having had dinner and ice-cream and if available, the whiskey!

If you still don’t want to stand in line even after having had dinner, because you truly believe that your blessing is worth way more than one measly buffet plate, then the smartest way is to cut the line without seeming to cut it. I like the “ambling” method the best. When you see a long line, you ask your spouse to stand in line and then “amble” along the line up to the stage, as if taking a short walk to loosen your limbs in anticipation of the blessings that you have to bestow. You then “find” a friend or relative you haven’t seen in years, start chatting him up, all the time moving along in the line, until you suddenly “realize” that you have reached the stage. When you apologize and try to move away, your friend will insist that you accompany him up the stage…at which time you can ask your spouse to join you.

Don’t you then just love Christian weddings, where you sit at a table, drinking, eating and making merry while the couple takes the trouble to come and seek your blessings?

Hopefully one day, everyone will start doing the same! Until then, there’s the dinner plate on one side and the line to the stage on the other! And you can’t do one without the other!

What an era that was! Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mohd Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh and to a lesser extent Talat Mehmood, Manna Dey and Hemant Kumar! Thirty years of Hindi film music dominated by five-eight singers. Matched by an equally small number of amazingly talented composers and lyricists, who too you can count on the fingers of your hands.

They gave us many phenomenal songs. But it is also a fact that we didn’t have much of a choice. The songs we remember, the songs that make us feel comfortable and nice, are the best among the ones created.

I have a hard time convincing people that while there is no question of the vast treasure of terrific music we have from the past, the vibrancy, the variety and the complexity (and simplicity) of today’s music is better. Because of the increasing choice of composers, lyricists and singers and the ability to find the correct voice for the right song, we have equally or perhaps even better songs than in the past…songs that a generation from now, we will be (at least I will be) happy to listen to during live performances.

Just take the last couple of years and the sheer variety. “Raabta” in all its versions from Agent Vinod. Or Kailash Kher’s unplugged version of “Tu Jaane Na” from “Ajab Prem Ki…”. Or “Khuda Jaane” by KK and Shilpa Rao or “Nadaan Parindey” by Mohit Chauhan, or Shalmali Kholgade belting out “Pareshaan” from “Ishaqzaade” or Deane Sequeira helping Mohit Chauhan with “Bezubaan” from “ABCD”…and the list goes on.

I asked around. Anand Desai, an extremely knowledgeable music aficionado gave me some explanations…and we both agreed that while the music of the past was simpler and more “real” than today’s computer generated and engineered sounds, if the same variety and choice that we now have, had existed in the past, the music would likely have been much much richer. In those “dark ages”, there was little innovation, limited variety and a virtual lid on new talent. Preeti Sagar sang one great song…imagine how many more terrific numbers she could have sung, if she had just been given the chance.

There is a limit to the number of great songs and compositions an individual or group can create in one’s lifetime. Some lyricists and composers have just one great song in them, some ten, some 100. But there is a finite number. And the larger the base to choose from, the better has to be the quality!

Another friend Ramnath believes that a lot of this change is due to one person…A R Rahman and his experimentation with “uncut” voices that finally ended the monopoly of the few. In the end though, I believe that the quality of music in this decade is better than any other similar decade in the past 120 years, our golden, mellow memories not withstanding.

And, we have the next few decades to find out!

1983. We had just finished a brain-squeezing exam and 30 of us wanted to leave those brains behind and watch a “bad” Hindi film. Himmatwala playing at Badal/Bijlee was the perfect choice. Mr. Jeetendra was a joke those days. No one had heard of Ms. Sridevi. Mr. Kadar Khan and Mr. Shakti Kapoor were also pretty much unknown. The director was some “Madrasi”. How could it fail to be bad!

And what fun we 18–19 years old had! It started with our first view of Ms. Sridevi and her thunder thighs…and from then on we just went berserk. Himmatwala was a bad film. But it was and still is perhaps the best of its genre…a great “bad” film.

When I read that Mr. Sajid Khan was going to recreate this good “bad” film, I promised myself I would see it the first weekend itself. In anticipation last month, I re-watched the 1983 version of this cult film. I was quite confident that Mr. Sajid Khan would do something terribly nice with this material, based on the awfully successful tripe his previous work has been and the couple of  “remake” genes he probably shares with his sister, Ms. Farah Khan, who made a reasonably entertaining Om Shanti Om based on Karz.

On Tuesday night before the Holi holiday, I was out with some school-friends. I told them how much I wanted to watch the new Himmatwala and we made plans for the weekend. I explained why this film was so important and what a landmark the original had been…it had spawned a whole generation of terrible “Southie” masala films like Tohfa, Justice Chaudhary, Masterji and the like, which for quite some time changed the dynamics of the Hindi film industry.

And then it all unraveled. The kids had exams the next week and were not going to be free. I had to travel over the weekend and could not make it with my school-friends. I thought of catching the Friday night show after work, but the cousins I went out for dinner with were not interested.

By Friday evening, the first online reviews started rolling in. And instead of the good “bad” film it was supposed to be, it turned out to be a bad, really bad, “bad” film. No one, not one person seemed to find anything redeeming. Then came the mainstream reviews on Saturday morning. And by Saturday evening, the feeling of wanting to watch Himmatwala 2013 was gone. Squashed…the scales fallen from my eyes…the way you feel after the girl you have proposed to not says no, and then looking at her again, you wonder why you asked her in the first place!

A similar letdown happened when Mr. Ramu made his version of Sholay. I was excited about the re-interpretation, but couldn’t make it to the theatre the first weekend and then never had the courage to. A few months back, shored up by some Macallan, I finally inserted the DVD…I couldn’t watch it beyond the first 30 minutes, despite the wet, woozy, emotional support of the single malt. One day in the future, I will similarly try to go through Himmatwala 2013…and hope it will be a shade better than RGV Ki Aah, sorry Aag.

This is the ultimate sacrilege! Reviewing a film without even having watched it! But then, a masochist, I am not!

Journalists rarely carry articles against fellow journalists even though they constantly bitch about each other “off-the-record”. It is rare for a doctor to testify against his colleague in court, though in private he will massacre his reputation. Despite infighting, tribes or guilds tend to take care of their own, often insulated from the perception of the rest of the world and actual reality.

We have witnessed this last week in two separate incidents…it is amazing how “out-of-touch” those who live in protected environments can sometimes be!

Some members of the legislature thrashed a traffic policeman for having stopped one of their ilk for speeding. The policeman apparently was rude and has been suspended for his behavior, while two MLAs were arrested and then released on bail. From the public’s point of view, there isn’t even a debate. Even, if the policeman behaved badly, the fact is that the MLA was speeding and in the wrong…and there is no justification for violence in the legislature.

But the legislators have closed ranks as if they are the ones who have been wronged…they believe they have the right to take action against and punish those who have crossed their paths whenever and wherever they want and feel entitled enough to believe that the laws of the land do not necessarily apply to them.

The public perception of them and their actions is completely the opposite of what they believe…and despite condemnation from all quarters, our insular elected representatives just don’t get it!

 The second incident was the sentencing of Mr. Sanjay Dutt. He committed a crime and though delayed, has finally been handed a punishment for his actions. And unbelievably, an entire section of society, predominantly the film industry, and those associated with it, have closed ranks, wanting clemency for Mr. Dutt.

This tribe too appears to be completely out of touch with public perception. Yes, we have all heard and read the arguments that have been made in Mr. Dutt’s favor…none of them makes any real sense! Moreover, there are few individuals shedding any tears at Mr. Dutt’s fate…unless those people are part of the celebrity machine or the legal profession.

Mr. Dutt in the meantime has decided not to appeal his conviction, a decision that also lays bare the shallowness of his own tribe’s thinking.

Self-important guilds and tribes invariably become delusional, the delusions further fuelled by people and fans outside the tribes. Hence when patients call doctors, “Gods”, many doctors actually start believing this rubbish and behave as if ordinary rules no longer apply to them! Or when fans place actors and actresses on high pedestals, these celebrities actually start believing that they have evolved into homo-superious and can get away with everything from hunting endangered animals to killing pavement sleepers. And while there are many privileges that do come with being at the top of the pyramid of a closed tribe or guild, the associated sense of entitlement cannot confer immunity from the law of the land and expected societal behavior norms.

The world is imperfect. Sometimes, people do get away breaking rules. It is possible that nothing further will happen to the MLAs who were responsible for the incident. But just because a few are able to wriggle out of bad situations, does not mean that everyone who has “pull” is allowed to walk away without paying his/her dues.

The punishment should fit the crime. But wanting the punishment to go away, whether it is the legislators’ or Mr. Dutt’s cases, is the typical delusion of “entitled” tribes!

When I came home that evening, my children pulled me into their room and excitedly showed me this news item. The elder boy, Jason had been in the same class as my son.

For the last three days, I have been trying to understand how it must be for a 13-years old to be told that one of his friends, someone he has been studying with for the last few years, has suffered a violent death and is no more. I don’t remember having had to face something like this during my years in school and this is not a situation that our teachers or schools are geared to handle or have prescribed textbook or guidebook answers for.

The kids in his class were devastated as was the teacher. The next day a counselor came to “calm their minds” and many of the kids were encouraged to speak about their relationship with Jason. My son told me that the first day felt like a surreal dream and the fact of Jason’s death hit him only the next day when the counselor came to class. We sat down with him to make him understand the situation and to tell him that what had occurred was an anomaly and that taking one’s life or another’s is clearly not the solution to any problem. We need him to understand that this is not normal and we have tried to discuss with both my kids the possible reasons for this incident.

But…

It’s difficult to get inside the minds of 13-year olds, especially boys, to know what exactly is going on there. How much do they understand of death! How much does it sink in that they are never going to see that friend again…ever!

And…

You wonder what kind of scars such events will leave on young, impressionable minds. A friend is killed by his own father in a suicide pact…this cannot be an easy fact to digest.

We brought this up again when some friends of mine came over for dinner, to make the kids understand what could drive someone to such extreme steps. Mumbai is not an easy city to be in, and when you don’t earn enough to pay for the place you live in, it can take its toll. And yet, of all the millions who have to worry about their next meal, it is just a small fraction that even thinks of taking its own or others’ lives. Perhaps there has to be some pre-existing emotional or psychological issue that drives someone to such an extreme step. I hope my children and the others in his class understand that this is not normal behavior, but an anomaly that should never be emulated. And I assume that all parents will take the time out to suitably counsel their children.

Many of the kids have put up a class photo on their Facebook profiles that has Jason sitting bang in the center. My daughter wants to turn detective and find the killer, convinced it was a murder and not suicide…she can’t understand why parents would ever think of killing their own children. A couple of the kids still cry everyday in school. Exams have started. Syllabuses have to be completed. And the rituals of daily life help divert their minds from darker thoughts…hopefully.

Standing outside, I still wasn’t sure it was the same CCD that we all know…my doubts were dispelled the moment I entered and saw the familiar cutlery and menu as well as explanatory literature that described the origin of coffee in India and CCD’s role in the scheme of things, along with tins of Dark Forest on display for sale.

I was quite impressed.

CCD’s growth story is amazing. In the short span that it has been around, CCD has pretty much become perhaps the most trusted and ubiquitous retail brand in the country, snapping up as many corner storefronts as possible. Last month, while shopping in Ahmedabad, I wanted to buy a bottle of water and despite the presence of other shops, went into a CCD outlet, simply because of the comfort and trust levels the company generates. You know what to expect in a CCD, irrespective of the part of the country you are in.

Jingoism apart, the fact that CCD has now gone international is extremely heartening. I felt good going in, ordering a cup of mocha, getting served, and eating some local Viennese dessert with the coffee. Service was faster than in Mumbai and quite pleasant. Interestingly, it also has alcohol on the menu and beer on tap.

CCD seems to have a strategy of being low-key. If you go to a local outlet in India, you would never know it has gone international. Even their regular website www.cafecoffeeday.com has nothing on the international front. It is only when you dig a little deeper that you find another website, www.coffeeday.com that has links to its five divisions that include the CCD retail chain and the other coffee related businesses of the parent company. The header has a tiny link saying “International” that takes you to a site called coffeeday.eu, which surprisingly only lists its Czech outlets.

In an era where even a small new thing international (including 3 second cameo roles in Hollywood films by our local actors) is blown up all over the place both in print and social media, this self-effacement is amazing. The coffeeday.eu site does not allow you access to the Vienna locations and aside from a Wikipedia mention, there is no other way to find anything more about the Karachi and Dubai locations. There is one web page on the four Vienna CCDs, but it only shows up via a Google Search. Or…perhaps someone in the company is just not managing the website(s) properly.

There does not seem to be anything much to be proud of these days; our boxers, celebrities, politicians, the male sex in general…everyone seems to be screwing up and around. CCD is one of those nice silver linings…a local brand that is growing internationally and more importantly keeping kids off the streets, off drugs, off smokes and off alcohol…I honestly don’t care how much time kids spend in CCDs and gyms…these are far better than the other alternatives!