The ones with the Tehzeeb

Dhanno ki Amma does most of our family shopping. And she likes to buy from places that have the best quality of merchandise, without caring much for what she has to shell out.  She buys our weekly supply of fruit from a hole-in-the-wall shop in our neighborhood. Laxman, who owns the shop, is an extremely enterprising young man. However, like most fruit-vendors in India,  he is quite selective in his manners.

When Dhanno ki Amma gets down from her chauffeur-driven car and spends a fortune on mangoes and lychees, without haggling about the price, she gets the royal red carpet treatment from Laxman. Most people, who walk in to buy a couple of guavas or papayas, would be lucky to get a nod from him. So, a few days ago, when my wife asked me to buy some fruit, and my driver was trying to find a parking spot in front of the fruit shop, I walked in with a shabby look, and an equally shabby shopping bag in tow. Laxman looked through me, and didn't even blink an eyelid.

In a few minutes however, as our car slid in to a space in front of his shop and he recognized me as the poor husband of the  rich woman who spends, he rolled out the red carpet to me. He picked my mangoes for me and smelled the bad ones out. He went "inside" to get me a fresh bunch of bananas, and he gave me a lychee to taste -- a privilege reserved for the most "esteemed" of customers. But, the way he offered me the lychee just bowled me over, because that is how fruit vendors would formally offer a lychee for a customer to taste --  in the India that I grew up in.

When a fruit vendor formally offers someone a lychee, it is first half-peeled, with the white flesh in the top part exposed. The peel stays in the part that lies towards the stalk. Then, he offers the lychee holding the unexposed part for "cleanliness". The customer, presumably with clean hands, can grab the fleshy part and enjoy the lychee. This "half-peeled handover maneuver", as some military-folks might call it, is a classic example of well mannered Indian customer service. And to me, it brought back memories of the small-town India of the yester-years, where such things did matter. 

A few lychees, with one ready for sampling.

 The lychee maneuver reminded me of another example of Indian Tehzeeb (culture) that many people are no longer familiar with. As is the custom, at the end of dinner, if you have to offer your guest a paan (betel leaf), what would be the best way to do it?  Tehzeeb says that the pointed end of the paan, should always be towards you. If it helps, just treat the paan like a sword, and remember that the paan is always mightier than the sword.

The right way to offer a paan.

You might wonder why Desi Babu has this sudden fascination with Tehzeeb?

In the last year or so, I have seen my country go to the dogs. If you tune in to any news channel, or open up the morning newspaper, all you can see are news stories about who else has scammed the government of boatloads of money. All the key economic indicators are down, and the India growth story has been written off as "told". The ordinary people are worried about their future. Things look bleak, very bleak.

In big cities, you can see people in a terrible rush, to get nowhere. People don't seem to have the basic courtesies that you would expect them to have irrespective of the value system they believe in. So, when I see random flashes of a bygone era, in fruit vendors and pan-wallahs who still seem to be preserving our culture, I get happy. Happy enough, to write about it.

There was one thing that was sweeter than the half-peeled lychee maneuver though. The lychee itself. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try one yourself. The first showers have almost come, it is only a matter of time before the lychees go away.   

Peanuts, Literal and Figurative

I saw him walking towards my car. He looked young and had a face that needed shaving for a while. He had a bandanna tied to his head that had a very prominent "om" written on it. He was wearing spectacles, and had the piercing gaze of an intellectual, fresh out of school, and still without a job. To me, perhaps, he would have qualified as a hippie, or a writer, or perhaps -- both.

But at the moment, he just looked like a homeless guy, looking for a handout.

This was not a good part of town, and I was planning to flee it as soon as the red light turned green. As the man came close to my car, and smiled expectantly at me, I rolled my window down. My wife used to caution me about giving money to homeless people, since they were known to blow it on drugs.

I had a nice large pack of salted peanuts on the front seat. I picked it up and handed it to him. He looked shocked. The conversation that followed was quite interesting.

"But these are peanuts!"

"Yes!"

"No man, you see, these are just peanuts!"

"So I see. Perhaps, I should know, since I handed these to you, right?!"

"No, no, you see, you don't understand. When I said that these were peanuts for the first time, I meant literally. When I said it for the second time, I meant figuratively. As in not much stuff, man!"

I always mixed up my literals and figuratives, and so, I smiled at him, and said, "Thanks for the education, I really need to improve my English."

"You might want to start by not trying to hire a monkey for a teacher, man!"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know! They say that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! And you sure don't want to learn from a monkey, man."

The light had turned green. I yelled, "Enjoy your peanuts!" and drove away.

After driving for a mile or so, I decided that if I ever wrote seriously and regularly, it would have something to do with peanuts. And, that once in a while, I would bring the monkeys into my writing.

Literally, and figuratively.

The water tweet

I went to a college in the middle of nowhere. And as engineering schools used to be, the student population was unusually skewed in favor of men. There were a few women in our graduating class, and during our days on campus, everyone knew who they were seeing.

On one particular Saturday evening, I went to a restaurant on campus, with a bunch of my friends. And there, as we looked around, all of us got the shock of our lives. On a table for two, a few yards from ours, was sitting the prettiest girl on campus. And opposite her, was sitting a friend of ours, who in these more modern times, would perhaps have been called un-cool. To say the least, that is.

They were engrossed in a conversation. So much, that they didn't even seem to notice the rest of us. In a few days, there was a rumor on campus that the two were in love. A few days later, when I met my friend alone, I asked him about the rumors. And, he gave me a curt  answer.  

"Oh, we were just making conversation in the restaurant. The chair opposite her was empty as I walked in, and all the other tables were taken. So, I sat down with her permission. And then, we talked. What else are you supposed to do when there is a pretty girl sitting opposite you?!"

A few days ago,  I was in a restaurant, waiting for my lunch. In India, in the cheaper restaurants that I seem to like, you don't wait for an unoccupied table, or, for a waiter to seat you. You walk in and find an empty chair. And then, you sit down to eat. It is quite efficient, and works well for most. So, I had walked in, and found an empty chair, which was opposite to a gentleman, who, with his emaciated look and unkempt beard, looked like a farmer. And then, as I looked around, I saw a pretty girl sitting a few tables away. The chair opposite her was empty. In just a few minutes, I saw a very handsome young man walk up to her table. He asked her if the seat was taken, and sat down.

They both looked like college students, and I suddenly remembered the incident from years ago, when a boring friend of mine had struck up an interesting conversation with a pretty girl. These two looked like a handsome pair to me, and so, my ears perked up for any interesting conversation that might float by.

To my disappointment, the young man pulled out a cellphone from his pocket. Then, he plugged in a headset and started listening to music, as he presumably surfed the web. Feeling completely ignored, the young lady looked out the window. If they were a few years older, they would have easily passed for a happily married couple.

Feeling completely let down by the twitter and facebook generation, I turned my attention to the farmer friend of mine, sharing the table. Although I didn't know his language, and his Hindi was passable, we had a pretty nice conversation. His district was going through a drought and he was in town to talk to some important people for help.

In the middle of our conversation, I heard a cellphone ringing. The farmer pulled out a phone from his pocket, and started a long conversation in the local language. From the tone, I could feel that he was joking with someone. And, he sounded very patronizing.

After he put the phone down, he told me that a young man had called him from the agriculture department trying to help him. The man had apparently offered to look at his soil report and using the internet, fix his problems for him with an SMS. The old farmer had asked him, with a twinkle in his eye, if he could SMS him some water. Given, that his district was facing a drought.

And that, was the end of the conversation.

I felt like cheering for the old farmer. Yes! There were more people like me out there. Those, who had a fair degree of skepticism for social media. SMS, Twitter and Facebook included.

Still elated, I looked at the table of the young and the restless.

The young man was still playing with his phone. The young lady had pulled out her own, and was busily tapping something into it. She had a full plate on the table in front of her. The waiter had forgotten to bring her water.

Perhaps, like my farmer friend, she badly needed some water. And perhaps, she was tweeting that to her friends on facebook, before sending an SMS to the waiter.

We were out of water too, and the waiter was nowhere to be seen. My farmer friend realized that yet another drought was imminent. And so, he reached out to the next table, and grabbed the jug -- to pour us some. If I had a Facebook account, I would have told everyone in the world that I knew, that it was simply brilliant of him to do so.