The Funeral

He was a quiet man. Never spoke much, but his eyes smiled when he smiled. The job he did was dangerous, to say the least. Blowing up bombs and unexploded ammunitions was his speciality, so much so, that he went to Afghanistan twice with the Air Force and came back unscathed.

Week and a half ago, on the thursday, he was on his last mission of the day. He and his partner located an unexploded shell with a GPS device and mark with an wooden stake so that they can later, use a controlled explosion. His partner ran to the Geep to get a piece of paper to write down the location while he hammered the wooden stake into the ground. The blast killed him instantly. He was forty six. Had a wife and three kids.

He had two funerals, the family one was supposed to be sombre, but in the end friends and family remembered him as he was. Quiet man with a wry sense of humour. The funeral was informal, funny and poignant. The Air force funeral was formal but with a deep sense of understanding of the family's loss. The occasion was important enough for the Prime Minister to be there along with all the bigwigs from the armed forces. His wife spoke about how he was her soulmate and his daughter talked about her father ending his life doing what he did best, blowing up stuff. He had a blast, she said. I thought that was a courageous thing to say, very non politically correct, but courageous.

Finally with the gun salutes, the bugles and the Haka he was laid to rest. We headed home and I couldn't but help thinking that if he had known, he'd have thought it was a huge fuss about nothing, smiling his usual smile.

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The Walk

I've been walking to work these days. For reasons unexplained, I always took the car to work and never thought that a cleaner, less hassle-some alternative was there, right in front of me. Few years ago parking in the hospital wasn't a problem. Car parking for the staff was easy and no matter when you come in parking space... no problem. But things have changed, and I was fed-up of trying to park on double lines and patient parking spaces.

Nearly two months ago, on a unusual warm and sunny winter morning, I woke up and decided to walk to work. Madam was worried, I'll be all sweaty and puffing when I reached there. The children were excited. "Good on you" the son chipped in.

The walk took me just over ten minutes and after the first day I decided I'm never going to take the car unless I'm really forced to. And since then the walk is the highlight of my day. These days, as I saunter out of the driveway, I see the delivery truck from the flower shop pulling in front of the shop. Fresh smell of flowers fill the air. Some times I catch the Chinese shopkeeper from the corner shop putting his advertisement placards outside, as he gives me a toothless grin and a wave.

On the main street, schoolchildren biking to school with their helmets bobbling on their heads and busy commuting cars, struggling to turn from the T junction and being honked by other cars. Mondays, I see the Recycling trucks swooping down on the street and the collection man collecting the plastic bags full of paper or plastic bottles like an acrobat on a trapeze, one handed, hanging from the truck with the other.

As I turn to the road behind the hospital, I hear the friendly yelp of the dog on the third house on the left, he knows I'm coming. The road goes up a gentle incline and I slow down a bit as I pass the now familiar houses on the way, The house with the wheelchair ramp with the blue gate, the house where the students flat with the boxes of beer bottles and cans left outside for collection and the house where the letterbox says no flyer or circulars, but is stuffed full with both. On a good day when the street's a bit quiet I can even catch the birdsongs, but being a ornithological ignoramus, just enjoy them for the heck of it.

By eight and a half minutes, I'm at the hospital gates and inside by ten minutes tops. But I can truly say, that I hate to drive to work these days and those are the days I realize, how priceless and stimulating my walk to work has become in my life.

Surprises

Few weeks ago, I had an epiphany. That I positively hate surprises. Don't get me wrong, over the years, I've done my share of looking at the last page of a of book to find out how it all ends and fast forwarding to the end of the movies to see the climax, but how far would you go to spoil it all?

To illustrate a point, two weeks ago I booked a special "Mystery Break" for Subarna for her birthday. Now, here's the deal. You book it through Air New Zealand by paying a fixed fee and they give you a booking number. That's it. On the day of journey, you turn up at the airport with an ID and they tell you where you're going. I was told that it could be anywhere in NZ and was asked by Kim, the very helpful AirNZ sales rep, that, is there anyplace we wouldn't like to go. I said Auckland, for the simple reason that we've been there so many times.

Now after a few days for no apparent reason, panic set in. What if they send us to Wellington? That's couple of hours from here and we certainly wouldn't like to go there. The deal was a flight to a domestic destination, airport transfer, one night in a hotel and return flights. But to fly to Wellington is thirty minutes and then what? We go to Wellington once every couple of months and there is nothing we can see or do there that we haven't already done!!

I went into my sleuth mode. They asked us to be at the airport at six-thirty in the morning, so I figured if I can find the outgoing flights after that time, I might have a crack at guessing where we're heading. It looked like the choice came to three places, Auckland, Christchurch or Nelson. Since I said no to Auckland, my guess was between the other two. However, many of the domestic flights fly out of Auckland, specially to Coromandel or the Bay of Islands. So in a way I was none the wiser. But at least it wasn't Wellington!!

The next day as we went to the airport and stood in the counter, they handed us an envelope. Subarna opened it...... and it was, Christchurch after all. Good on ya Air New Zealand!!

But the biggest surprise was for the Birthday girl. The hotel had put a nice bouquet of roses on the bed.

The Shriek she gave on seeing the roses really surprised all of us!!

The Human Jungle

Last night I saw ‘Jana Aranya’ again. Everybody else was fast asleep. I hooked up my small portable DVD player, put on the earphones, put the disc in and off it went. 

As a Ray fan, I hardly ever missed his movies, but this one came out in the mid 1975’s when I was ten, and this was a rare Ray movie with an ‘A’ certificate, 16 years or older. Why it got a adult rating escapes me because, the most “adult scene” in the movie would be a girl hurriedly covering herself changing as her brother comes into her room to tell her that people have been watching her through the open window. Other than that there are no kissing or bed scenes or even violence. True, the theme of the movie is very much adult and perhaps the most astonishing thing I discovered this time was a small piece of dialogue which I missed in my previous viewings. 

This is the only Ray movie where a character says a Bengali equivalent of a four letter word. If you don’t believe me, I urge you to see the movie again, the scene where Somenath goes to Sukumar’s house after earning his first commission as a middleman. Listen carefully what Sukumar’s Dad says when Sukumar taunts him.

I never understood the reason for calling this movie ‘The Middleman’ in english. I know Ray chose  carefully his english titles for his foreign audience, but Shankar’s story had the perfect name, and literally translated would mean the human jungle. That’s exactly the story was, a innocent human being slowly transformed into a primeval specimen for his survival in the corrupt business  world and finally even resorting to pimp his best friends sister for a ‘contract’. 

As we watch the movie we see gradually the downward spiral that Somenath takes and as the Rabindrasangeet ‘Chhaya Ghonaichhe Boney Boney’ plays in the background we know that the shadows of immorality have already engulfed him, and there is no way out.

To me, Jana Aranya is the darkest movie I’ve seen and probably the best from Ray.

The Hole in the Mountain

Sometimes something good happens on a really bad day. I was flying to Queenstown for a conference, and as soon as I landed in Christchurch for the connection, I knew things are turning to custard. Now, Queenstown is the place to be in the height of winter. It’s a flourishing tourist spot with wonderful lakes and mountains and is known as the adventure capital of the world. If you like crazy things like Bungee jumping and paragliding then you’ve to go there. Plus the ski fields are full of winter skiers and snowboarders. 

However, Christchurch airport was in chaos. People littered like a refugee camp everywhere. A look at the departure screen confirmed my worst nightmare, my flight to Queenstown has been cancelled, along with three other flights. Clambering up to the booking desk, I was told that there was low dense clouds in Queenstown airstrip preventing the aircraft from landing. No, they don’t think there will be any extra flights. Yes, they can cancel my booking and put me  on a plane tomorrow but the weather has been unpredictable. Bummer, I thought.

What’s my options, I asked them. They best they can do is provide a flight to Invercargill and from there by road to Queenstown. 

But I had no real choice, with some luck, I might catch the end of the first days sessions. 

So there I was, clamped between an American snowboarder, who’s probably hasn’t had a shower for a while and a giggling teenager who was constantly texting on her mobile. So I put my headphones on, turned on my iPod and started to enjoy the scenery.

And what a scenery it was!! The whole of the journey was through the Southern Alps winding through the valley. most mountains had snow on them, but the weather was brilliant, dazzling sunshine. I could see a few of the three thousand meter plus peaks including Mt Aspiring, gleaming ivory white in the sunshine. 

Then something strange happened. On of the mountains had only a snow cap and a dark grey expanse. But the funny thing was, there was a big hole in the middle of the mountain. One could see right through it. It was surreal. Now, I have seen hole in the rock formations in the Bay of Islands, and in the middle of the Sea. But this was a mountain with a huge hole in the middle. As the car changed direction, I suddenly realized that the hole in the mountain was an optical illusion. The hole was in fact a cloud, perfect oval shaped, stuck in the middle of that huge rock, like a perfect imperfection. It blended perfectly with the partly cloudy sky making the illusion so real.

I wish I had the opportunity to capture the image. But the funny thing is, I think it was better this way. This pure image should not be captured digitally with a camera. It should stay, pure and untouched in my memory. Sheer magic!!

The Cat and the fishpond

Billy, our cat has lost all interest in the fishpond.

When we moved house, he was so enchanted with the fishes, that he used to sit for hours watching them. Mind you, Billy is not the one to chase things and since we had him, when he was six weeks old and fitted almost in the palm of the hand, he has never killed anything. Not a mouse, not a bird, not a soul, zilch.

We think that he would die of starvation if he doesn't get his staple cat-food. Occasionally we see him chasing butterflies in the garden, but that's about it.

We inherited the fishpond from the previous owners and due to Madam feeding them regular fish-food, the fishes are thriving. We had about twenty odd fishes to start with but now it could be double the number. On a sunny day the fishes would come to the surface and cavort merrily.The biggest of them all, the white Patriarch (we believe he is male as he is too lazy to be female, at least that's what Madam thinks!)lazes around amongst his Harem and his numerous children, and eating the bulk of the food granules floating on the surface.

Billy, on the other hand would sit for hours watching these fishes. Occasionally he would put his white paw to to gently touch the water, as if to test the temperature, and the fishes would scatter away. Certainly the reflection of the cat did not scare them.

And there we are, Billy the cat, too lazy or too non-violent to catch fishes....we'll never know.