An Evening with the Shiv-Shahir

The time was 4.00 PM. We had just been led to our seats after being welcomed at the gate with a ‘Shiv-shahit tumche swagat aahe’ (we welcome you to the Kingdom of Shivaji). The two typically Maharashtrian ladies at the entrance looked lovely in their brightly coloured ‘nav-vari saris’, their bejewelled ‘naths’ shining on their noses.

I looked at my watch. We had landed up one hour in advance to occupy our seats as expressly advised by the lady who had sold us the tickets. And fortunately so. Within minutes, the entire ground had filled up.

There were all kinds of people. From the genuinely interested/ inquisitive ones like us to the frankly bored variety who were there purely on a social/ political obligation. And then there were the ‘pseudo’ type for whom attending such a function was more of a status symbol-affair, something to brag about at parties, over cocktails and canapés.

At 5.15 PM the excited chatter of the audience was overshadowed by the tumultuous sound of the ‘Tutari’ (trumpet), drums and the loud shouts of ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Raje che Jai ho’. We all stood and turned to look. Evidently our guest speaker had arrived.

Shiv-Shahir Babasaheb Purandare, the world’s foremost living authority on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, stepped out of the Scorpio Jeep. He was assisted by two boys dressed up like ‘Mavlas’ (Shivaji Maharaj’s soldiers).

I began to evaluate the man as he walked slowly towards the stage, smiling at the young children who were showering him with flowers.

I am generally sceptical of famous people, wary even. Most famous people today in my view are pretentious, over-rated and generally not worth their salt. For the simple reason that most famous people that we hear about in today’s world really fit that description. I wondered, could this man be another example of the same breed?

As I watched this man, especially his eyes (for he was not too far from where I stood), I came to the grave conclusion that nothing could be farther from the truth. For one, his eyes lacked the smug ‘I’m famous and I’m meant to be worshipped’ look that most celebrities have when they walk into the crowd. His eyes conveyed confidence, a quiet confidence that bespoke of his vast knowledge. And more importantly, those eyes conveyed a humility that said, ‘I know a great deal, but that knowledge is greater than me, and not the other way around’.

The audience waited in hushed anticipation. Everyone wondered what he was going to say or do. The first thing he did was to offer obeisance at the statue of Shivaji on the stage. Then he faced the audience and greeted everyone with a namaskar. The next thing he did was to dispense with the ‘Wedding Reception’ issue gaudy, red-and-gold armchair that was set up for him, and settle into a simple ‘Neelkamal’ type plastic chair. Then the ‘Master of Ceremonies’ began the introduction of the Guest Speaker.

Being the Marathi-illiterate person that I am, I had just vaguely heard of Babasaheb Purandare as a historian, his field of interest being the great Maratha King Shivaji Bhosale and the writer of the most authentic biography on the same. I also knew him to be the author of the revolutionary 300-cast, drama ‘Jaanata Raja’.

What I did not know is that this man had given over 14,000 lectures till date and had re-traced ON FOOT, the actual routes taken by Shivaji during his life, amounting to about 200,000 km! Including one from Agra to Pune!

Mr Purandare had dedicated the better part of the 86 years of his life absorbing every single fragment of information about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and knew him intimately as he knew himself.

The said gentleman waited patiently for the rhetoric to end. He had either heard it all many times before, or he did not genuinely seem to care. Or both.

The introduction ended and a couple of people appeared on stage, paid their respects to Mr Purandare and tried to impress the audience how well they knew Mr Purandare.

They withdrew and Guest Speaker was left alone on the stage. Something that the Guest Speaker appeared to be looking forward to.

There were a few moment of silence.

Then he cleared his throat once, and began to speak.

It was not only the tales of Shivaji that he narrated; it was the way and the intensity with which he did it. He began with a voice that had an astounding thunderous quality for his age, one that would put a youngster to shame. It would rise in a crescendo, and then fall, only to rise again. His age, his infirmity was long forgotten as he launched with a passionate fervour into his tale. His eyes would look searchingly into the distance and find a particular event, and then he would re-create it for us. He spoke of people of yore, Sardars, Kings, Noblemen, their women and their children… Like he knew them personally, almost as if he met them everyday.

And he took us back with him, back into that era…We could hear the clash of swords, the screams of the Mughal soldiers as the Maratha soldiers bore down upon them, the triumphant notes of the bugles and loud cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ We could even see the saffron flags fluttering atop the mighty forts!

And sometimes, he would return to the present. With deep sadness in his voice, he would point out, how times have changed. How everyone today is merely using the name of that great Maratha King to serve their ends, while ignoring the values that Shivaji actually stood for. He mentioned how it would really serve our society to read, assimilate and imbibe the messages in Shiva-charitra (biography of Shivaji). By doing so, he opined that while every family may not bring forth a Shivaji, at least it would bring forth a good citizen!

In the context of naming everything after Shivaji and building statues of Shivaji in every nook and cranny, he narrated an amazing experience of his own in England, way back in the 1960s. He had befriended an Englishman who used to study Maratha history alongside him in a Library in London. Mr Purandare had expressed his surprise to the Englishman about how he was not able to find a single statue of Winston Churchill in the entire city of London. While one could not walk a couple of hundred yards in Mumbai without coming across the name ‘Shivaji’ somewhere or the other. How could they do this to a magnificent, brave and noble personality like Churchill? Did their countrymen not want to remember him? Whereupon the Englishman first laughed, and then gravely told him, “We don’t need statues of Winston Churchill……Because Winston Churchill lives in our blood!”

Mr Purandare was left shocked and ashen with regret at the implication, that Shivaji did not, in ours. And it was true, as it is true today. Most of us wouldn’t care a dime about who this Shivaji was, or what he meant to India.

Mr Purandare mentioned how the first work on Shivaji was formally written by an Indian, Mr Vishnupant Aundhkar, in 1905, almost 300 years after Shivaji fought and successfully defended this land against the invading Moghuls. He mentioned the Englishman Mr James Douglas, who in his books written in the late 1800s, cried out to Indians in horror, “Where are your writers, your novelists and your historians. Where are your Walter Scotts and your Shakespeares?! Is there no one who has written about this Great Man (Shivaji)?!!”

I was impressed by another facet of Mr Purandare. There was not a single ill-reference to other communities; something that today’s followers of Shivaji feel obliged to do. Nor was there any hint of English language-bashing in his speech. Indeed, he quoted from books written by English authors with equal aplomb, and with excellent diction. This Man was a true scholar and patriot.

Mr Purandare regretted, very deeply, that there are no men like Shivaji living today. Like all stalwarts of his class, he lamented that such great men who created history just simply did that. They created and remained a part of history. There is no one in today’s world who has the mettle to create history and be remembered in that way.

The lecture ended. The noise of the warriors, their galloping horses and their bugles faded away. The pomp and splendour of a bygone era melted into the darkness and we soon became aware for the first time, that the evening had become night, that we were hungry, or feeling cold, or had to go to the loo, or that the mosquitoes were biting…

And other such trivial events that make up our trivial lives.

As I walked home, I wondered for the nth time, how many personalities like Mr Babasaheb Purandare and Chhatrapati Shivaji has our country produced.

And indeed, how little we care….

A Morbid Gym Story…. (Humor)

Last year, a friend showed up unexpectedly at my place.

"Did you know? There's a new gym in town. I think you should join it." he panted.

"Why?" I retorted, disgruntled. We environment-friendly chaps are known for our strong views on unnecessary expenditure of energy, especially on extreme physical activities.

"You could do with losing some weight. And guess what? The gym instructor is a female. And she's supposed to be really good looking!" he gushed.

That opened a new line of thought. No; not the fact about the good looking gym instructor. It takes more than the allure of a full-figured femme fatale to initiate us staunchly inert ones into a muscle building scheme. What made me consider the proposal was the fact that the Wife had since recent times, been dropping subtle, tactful hints about my widening waistline in a way only a diplomatic, sensitive wife can (e.g. "you look pregnant with twins!", "I bet you can't see your toes!" etc.)

I decided to take up the challenge.

History has always witnessed great men making crucial decisions impulsively and on the spur of the moment. And often not without regret. As I made my way towards the gym in shorts and T-shirt, tightly clutching a bottle of water, I realized I was about to join those very same great men.

Some consolation.

The beginning was acceptable enough. I was welcomed by the gym instructor, a genial personality with a figure like the Barbie doll. She showed me around the gym which had all sorts of complex equipment more resembling that seen in a hardware & tool factory. The thought that I was to be subjected to all those devices gave me the shudders. I clutched the water bottle even more tightly. With a nervous laugh, I pointed out to her that doing all those exercises would be as bad as dying a dog's death.

On that count, I was totally wrong.

It was much worse!

Whether it was seeing the readout of my weight on her weighing scale that inspired her, I do not know, or whether it was as a concession to her general attitude, but the next one hour was devoted by her in an enthusiastic and concentrated effort to try and fuse all my abdominal and thoracic viscera into one composite mass AND separate every muscle in my body from its parent attachments; all in the name of exercise!

The word 'rest' seemed to be unknown to her and it pained me to think that an elegant girl, with so much finesse can suddenly metamorphose into the slave driver of the Roman era who used to whip the slaves working the oars on their ships.

The first session left me battered, bruised and wondering if I should return home or go straight to the hospital. Dr MorePain (as I had dubbed her) told me however that I had done pretty well.

The next few days were repeat performances of the first day. My gym instructor's good looks went largely unappreciated by me, a view concurred to by my other male inmates. You see, it's kind of hard to focus on the female form, when one is gasping for breath, trying to lift billions of kilos of iron weights off one's chest and limbs.

All those visions of gymnasium scenes like those seen in Baywatch, where attractive men and women comfortably exercise away while engaging in pleasant chitchat, were dashed to the ground.

My inspiring motto of ‘Gym, Pori, Gym’ (in marathi) turned to ‘Gym, Pori, Gym, KAPALACHA GYM!

I will not burden you any further with the gory details, but it'd suffice to say that I huffed and puffed for the next 1 month and Lo and Behold! I developed a body like Hrithik Roshan and six-packs like Shah Rukh Khan.

No, I just made that up. But now at least my body can be ascribed a shape and I can look in the mirror without flinching.

The tragic end to the story is that the Gym-Instructor got a modeling assignment in Mumbai. The Gym shut down and I have returned to my previous generous proportions. And that’s the morbid part of this Gym Story…

Of Bag Thieves and Gila Monsters…..(Humor)

My friends back in Mumbai keep wondering why my wife and I ever shifted to small town like Dahanu. They ask us how we must pass our time in a sleepy seaside town and we retort that we get opportunities to do many fun things.

Like getting robbed.

Yes! It happened one day, in the middle of the night (yeah, I know it sounds odd….day-night) Anyway, I was fast asleep dreaming pleasant dreams of Bipasha Basu and me in a luxury Spa and…um…..well… whatever….. And I heard a soft click. At first I thought it was the sound of the door opening and my wife entering the spa with a gun…THAT woke me up.

And then I realized that someone had just closed our bedroom door. I checked my watch and found my wife and kids fast asleep. Well, I was half asleep and I assumed the breeze must have closed the door. So I went back to sleep.

Well, the next morning we woke up and my wife suddenly pointed out the closed door. I told her about the previous night’s event (minus the dream).

“We’ve been burgled,” she screamed, the woman in her promptly exerting herself. In response, the man in me smiled patiently and told her not to worry and that the breeze may have closed the door. Then equally patiently, she pointed out that the breezes in Dahanu had not yet become capable of releasing the latch which keeps the door open against the wall. Always the Practical One, the wife.

This opened a new line of thought. So I sprang from the bed, opened the door deftly and immediately flailed my arms and legs about in a series of scary du-so-ku kung fu moves. This was partly because I was expecting an armed burgler.

It was also because in my hurry, I had tripped over my own pyjamas and almost fallen on my nose.

So then we got around trying to work out the more important but less exciting aspects of the burglary like what was missing and how he entered the house. Apparently, our man had sawed a hole through the metal grill of our balcony and entered the house. And guess what he stole.

Bags. Yes, four empty bags. We were scratching our heads about this until the next day when we heard that a gang of thieves had broken into 3 or 4 houses in the same area and made off with a lot of loot. Like morons, they then discovered that they had left home on their expedition without the necessary bags to carry the loot in. Maybe they had thought they could always pick up some at the local Walmart or something. Then they hit upon this bright idea that we would instead, kindly supply them with the same for free. Talk about luck.

Anyway, the incident made us realize how slip-shod our existing grills were. It also made my wife go into some kind of acute paranoia. She then started suspecting all movable and non-movable entities of wanting to enter our house and loot us. And the comments by ‘friendly, sympathetic’ visitors about how those dacoits could have killed us all in our beds before looting us didn’t help.

She then decided that as regards our house, more like Fort Knox, the better. Heads must roll, she opined and so the existing grills, she said, must be disposed with on an immediate basis. Plans were drawn to replace them with new state-of-the-art grills made of metal rods of so-and-so thickness, welded at exactly so-and-so points to leave exactly so-and-so space so as not to allow the smallest sized human head to get through. 98.62% of our daily conversations involved grills (the other 1.38% involved other possible security measures) Soon I started seeing Grills in my dreams and I started getting worried that my wife will leave her Anesthesiology practice and take up the Grill Business.

She had even started considering electronic burglar alarm systems but I reminded her gently that we have power cuts in Dahanu and we could always consider it later, after the grills were made. Just as I was considering placing the order for the night-vision glasses and laser-sighting self-loading automatic machine guns, the Grill-Man reported that the grills were finally made and that he would come and fix them up.

And so ladies and gentlemen, now all the windows and doors of our house (about 10 in all) sport brand new, rock solid metal grills totally weighing…..guess……believe it or not, 1000 kg! That’s ONE TON of cast iron hanging on to our external walls making me wonder whether all that any aspiring burglar would have to do in future would be to just gently pull on those grills and the walls supporting them will simply collapse outwards with its weight.

On the burglar.

Now guys, a question. What does an ophthalmologist like me who is inane enough to leave the Big City (Mumbai) and its attractions and set up shop in a sleepy, rural town thirst for? Give up? OK. It's Variety & Diversity. Now when I say Variety & Diversity, I mean challenging clinical cases that will slosh the old cerebrum around a bit in its brain-brine and shake it out of its somnolence. When I say V. & D. what I don't include in its scope is ..........MATCHMAKING!

I can hear you recoil in horror. I recoiled exactly in the same way. As a kind hearted man myself, the thought of being an accomplice in a crime which will deprive some unsuspecting brother of his freedom and award him the Life Sentence, gives me the guilty goose pimples too! And yet I was an unwilling accomplice in this heinous act!

It started innocently enough with the main schemer of the crime, a good looking young woman (N.B. "all that glitters is not gold!") calling on me at my OPD. She told me that she had not come for a check up, but for some 'advice'. Furtively, she indicated that she wanted my assistant to leave the room.

Sensing danger, I casually felt for the Magnum 007.3 gun that normally hangs in its holster somewhere near my armpit and tickles me. Not finding it in its usual place (damn that cleaning lady), I nonchalantly opened my desk-drawer so she could get a view of the fake syringe that I normally use to scare small kids into eating their vegetables.

Anyway, I observed with bated breath as she slowly pulled out from her purse, a small ....no, not a gun, but a photo! I took it in my hands to have a look.

It was a male, that much I could tell; no self respecting lady would allow herself to get photographed with THAT MUCH hair on her forearms. And face.

But what a face! Each feature was a definite nominee for the award for the most grotesque eyesore, the one that took the cake was the pair of bulging, bullfrog like eyes glaring belligerently back at the observer, conveying a feeling of profound animosity at the photographer in particular and at the world in general. I was tempted to ask for a copy. The National Geographic Channel would have paid a bundle to have this photo in their possession.

My guest explained that this was a 'shaadi ka rishta' that had arrived for her younger sister.

I stared at his coarse features in fascination. I also found myself admiring this guy who, with a mug like that, actually had the guts to go out into the marriage market and then expect to come back with a trophy!

I realized that the lady was drawing my attention to his glasses. She told me that the matter had almost been finalized, when an alert and observant relative of the girl had pointed out that he wore glasses. The point had been noted and deliberated for hours among the wise elders in the girl's family and they had very astutely concluded that the boy was completely blind.

I was tempted to point out that in a face resembling that of a Gila Monster, they had but noticed only his glasses. That left me somewhat confused as to who was actually blind.

The story gets more interesting. As we know, Gila Monsters are also God's creation and for every male G.M. crawling around, there often lurks around the corner, his female counterpart. Something about this reptile-man had made its impression on my visitor's sister and she was convinced that this was her long awaited soul mate and as an aspirant for this post, he stood alone.

The bright, budding bride had argued that the glasses didn't look thick enough as to render him completely blind. But The Elders were convinced of the contrary and had remained adamant on their stand. Tempers had flared and Dark Clouds of Conflict had gathered overhead. Both parties had threatened dire consequences. Then somehow wiser counsel had prevailed. It was decided to defer the matter to the appropriate authority with experience in the field and I, being the 'Family Ophthalmologist', was the unanimous choice.

Since I was married, AND to their known knowledge, I did not have any personal interest in the girl, they probably felt that my impartial judgment could be relied upon. So here was I, acting in the capacity of an authority, endeavoring to make a judgment on whether the bozo in the photo was indeed visually handicapped enough to be unable to deliver the goods (no pun intended!)

I asked her if she could get him to me for a checkup. She replied that as the matter was a delicate one, that would not be possible.

So it was up to me and all those years of hard, rigorous training at Mumbai’s KEM and Sion Hospitals, to make that decision.

I wore a grim expression on my face and examined the photo from all angles, all the time mumbling 'Ah, hmmm, aha' and making similar intelligent sounding noises. All the facts about pathological myopia, amblyopia, retinal detachment, rectal haemorrhoids, priapism and other God forsaken diseases raced through my mind. After some minutes of intense brainstorming, EUREKA! I had the diagnosis!

It had dawned on me that if this specimen was capable of focusing on the camera taking his photo, he probably had at least enough vision to be able to recognize his would-be wife and her demented relatives from at least a short distance.

I triumphantly shot my cuffs and pronounced the verdict, "He's OK". I added the necessary disclaimer about my inability to give a confirmed diagnosis until I had examined him in person, a possibility which I hoped would never arise.

And so ladies and gentlemen, thanks to yours truly, a Mr. and Mrs. Gila Monster are honeymooning somewhere in nuptial bliss.

Disclaimer: All of the above facts are imaginary and bear no resemblance to any human or reptile, living, dead or in hibernation. So don’t go trying to finding a way to come here and confirming the truth of the story.

And if you do come anyway, relax, for you will be welcome at our house.

As long as you don’t pull on the grills.