Shouri (a son's memories)

(written 15.04.2024)

“Shouri”, “Showrie”, “Shourie” — that was the name he was called at home, and by those who knew him well. My infant tongue could only manage “Thouduli”; my children called him “Dui”, sometimes adding “tata”. That a man of such distinction and achievement would happily let everyone, of all ages, address him so casually speaks of his self-assurance and inner confidence. He rarely talked down to people, no matter what their standing, treating even young children as equals when conversing with them.  

Paradoxically, this man of letters had a reputation for reticence, choosing silence over empty talk — if he was a man of few words, the words were carefully chosen. But when he was with his close friends, especially those from his college days, his conversation could be sparkling with witticisms and anecdotes.

To this day I miss the twinkle in his eyes that would show when he was enjoying something — food, music, a movie, a joke, a work of art, or the company of his grandsons. I never heard him raise his voice. I recall one occasion, when he was being rudely badgered on the phone by a junior colleague, his voice became extremely soft as he even more calmly and gently put the person in his place.  

Very early in his life did he seem to give up having expectations of people, which I supposed saved him from the toxin of resentment. He instinctively avoided confrontation and argument While he was an excellent teacher, he did not try to change people, especially if they did not measure up to a task, but just didn’t engage too much with them. If he came across as aloof or indifferent to some, it was perhaps for this reason.  

He had two workplaces at home: One was the round dining table with no fixed seats, where he read the newspapers marking them with a blue pencil, and ate his simple meals — vegetable-rich pulusu- or chaaru-annam, perugu-annam, or chitranna, with vegetables on the side. He was no autocrat at the table, and for him eating together was a way of communing. The other was his study table, to which he went when he needed the solitude to craft speeches or write articles. He also had an amazing ability to multi-task: listening to classical music, playing Scrabble with Kamalamma, doing the Herald Tribune crossword, or reading through the latest book that had come out. Despite his punishing work schedule, he managed to read through, and often review, at least a handful of substantial books a month, fiction and nonfiction.  

What amazes me to this day is how he, who lived as busy and demanding a work life as can be imagined with a fair amount of travel, seemed to squeeze time out to not only write very regularly to his parents, siblings, and a vast circle of friends, but to spend quality time with us. On weekends or holidays, he would drive us (and any visiting relatives and guests) to different historical sites across Delhi and take us to music concerts and art exhibitions, dog shows, libraries, public gardens, as well as regularly visit close friends and relatives in different parts of Delhi. He had an intimate and natural knowledge of all his hometowns — Bengaluru, Mysuru and Delhi (and possibly Bombay as well -- I never went there with him)— and the buildings, the history, the soil, the flora and fauna — trees, flowers, birds. This knowledge was not the kind that came from study and research, but was somewhat innate (like that of his dear friend Shivarama Karanth). 

Shouri and Kamalamma were both steadfastly self-reliant — washing their own clothes, doing the dishes, cleaning the car, dusting the house with its countless books and artefacts, cooking. This was very unusual in bureaucratic Delhi, with its absurd hierarchies. Kamalamma, of course, complemented Shouri with her expansiveness — she was lively when he was quiet, she was passionate where he was equanimous. Housework and word games — and dancing the kolaata — was how they bonded. (When Kamalamma passed away, a dear family friend sent me a most eloquent 1-word condolence message: “Scrabble”). 

Shouri’s love for his family was not demonstrative at all. Rather than expansive hugs, except perhaps to the grandchildren, his affection was expressed in the little things he did for us, or how he recalled small events from our childhood. His love for his mother ran very deep, his eyes welling up on seeing her photo just days before he passed away. Towards his father he had a sense of duty and a protective instinct. And he loved his siblings — which they reciprocated with sheer adulation towards him. Not that he was not cognisant of the foibles of all of us in the family, but he seemed to accept us for who we were. 

Shouri lived a simple life, making few demands on the world and people around him, caring deeply for his environment, but without any overt show of this innate concern. And yet that very simplicity embodied an elegant minimalism, an aesthetic exercise of choice — for the functional form, abjuring meretricious — in his writing, his clothes, his food, his manner, his values.

Books read in 2026

The Strange Library (Haruki Murakami) -- more a work of graphic art than a story.  The story is of a young boy who disappears into (for what may be a few days) and eventually escapes from a municipal library.

Flesh (David Szalay)  -- this review intentionally left blank

The Lazy Burglar (George Simenon)

The Hunchback  (Saou Ichikawa) -- story of a severely disabled but rich woman living in an assisted living facility who dabbles in pornographic writing, posts on social media.  Her strange desires.  Told from different viewpoints of the who the narrator may be. 

Desire  (Haruki Murakami)  -- a collection of short stories, 

• The Second Bakery Attack (Jay Rubin) -- quirky
• On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (Jay Rubin) -- what may have happened
• Birthday Girl (Jay Rubin) -- What will be will be?
• Samsa in Love (Ted Goossen) -- imaginative
• A Folklore for My Generation: A Pre-History ofLate-Stage Capitalism (Philip Gabriel) -- poignant

Utensils

Plates

My parents’ stainless steel plates for every day (almost always South Indian) meals. 

The one on the left with the rim was my father’s. At the end of the meal he’d lift his plate and pour any fluid left over (rasam,sāmbār or the whey from yogurt) into his mouth. 

The one on the right, slightly deeper and rimless, was my mother’s. She’d run her right hand across the rim to scrape off any food sticking to it, and then scoop that residue up with her thumb into her smacking lips. 

I hated both “rituals with victuals” then. Now they are endearing memories of my parents. How time changes our perspectives. 

Glasses (or tumblers)

These are the two stainless steel glasses my brother and I grew up drinking milk or water out of. Every day.

The one on the right has a small dent in it. (Perhaps accidental, perhaps due to an outburst), By some unspoken convention in the family that glass was assigned to my brother. I once drank over-boiled milk from it, which tasted like
(brinjal/aubergine/eggplant) to me, so I henceforth would never drink from that glass. 

The one on the right has a little notch in its lip. This was mine. I swear I didn’t nibble into it to make up for some iron deficiency.

More tumblers

These were the ones my parents used. My father the marginally larger one, my mother the very slightly smaller one. To pour water, buttermilk, and other liquids, including hot fluids, into their waiting gullets.

Delhi Rape Stats (Written in 2014)

Following the December 16 2012 gang rape of a 23-year old woman (whom I will not call Nirbhaya or Damini, names concocted to protect her identity),  Delhi was branded in the media as the Rape Capital.  Politicians, including one in whose official residence a rape had taken place several years ago (let me clarify that he was not involved), were quick to latch onto this epithet.  That particular crime was horrific, and quite naturally caused outrage among our citizenry.  The media trotted out shocking figures of the number of rapes that occur every day/month/year in Delhi.  

In analysing crime statistics (as opposed to a particular crime), especially those such as rape  which raise emotions, what ultimately matters is not absolute numbers, since a large city is more likely to have more crimes committed than a smaller city. So it is sobering to take into account the numbers per 100,000 population.   To understand these in the Indian context, here is a link to an article that informs us about various urban centres in India, and what their rates of rape are:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-datadelve/article5071357.ece

The December 16 2012 crime remains imprinted in our memory, and has served as a catalyst for reforms in crime against women, rape in particular. One positive outcome was the reformulation of the law, under the sage advice of the commission headed by the retired CJI Justice Verma.   Another positive outcome is that the reporting of rape and the registering of cases of rape since then has increased several-fold. Here is the situation for the year gone by:

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/in-97--rape-cases-accused-known-to-victim-police-data-reveals/1213573/0

It is a gut-wrenching read, and one which hold many lessons for us as citizens who wish our city to be safer and more secure, specially for women.  But one thing that seems to come out is that the December 16 rape incident is NOT the typical rape that happens in our city.   Which is not to say that we can ignore it -- it should always remind us of the horror of the "gang rape" (a base act of utter cowardice).

The truth is ugly.    Rape clearly is a crime of violence, the sexual nature of which is not primary.  It is often committed opportunistically, but always seems to involve an exercise of power.  And very often a betrayal of trust, very often of minors, and very often by a family member or a  friend or acquaintance.   Also very revealing is the socio-economic profile of the victims. (The Indian Express December 31 2013  article had an accompanying table in the print version, which showed that the victims were primarily lower middle class women, and upper middle class women formed a miniscule fraction.  We should also perhaps be sensitive to caste/minority demographics, which weren't given.   There was however a table  regarding the ages of the victims and perpetrators, but with the < and > signs mixed up).

What the figures in the article above also reveal is a shade of grey:  In nearly 40% of the reported cases, the victim was in a consensual relationship with the accused (and in about half of those, the victim made the complaint after eloping or being in a live-in relationship with the accused)  A friend who works extensively with gender issues and violence against women in a variety of contexts also remarked that in her experience, many young women believe that if a consensual relationship does not progress towards marriage (betrayal of trust) then it constitutes rape.

There is another issue that bothered me with the debates in the media when the Justice Verma Commission report came out regarding victims of rape, and whether the crime should be called sexual assault or rape. Some very passionate gender activists and lawyers whom I respect categorically that it should be defined as a gender-specific violent crime against women, and it should be called rape.  

I agree that it is gender-specific, but not in that of the victim, but of the perpetrator -- who seems invariably to be male. Spare a thought for the numerous victims of a violent act, which in all respects is exactly the same as the new definition of rape, but who happen to be male, especially hapless minors. 

(c) Sanjiva Prasad 2014 

Babur ki Aulad

 Babur ki Aulad

(An incomplete note from early 2011)

In mid-December 2010, I took an early Indian Airlines (Air India now) flight to Chennai to attend a conference. After tumbling out of the plane with the one backpack I was carrying, I boarded a rickety bus, the doors of which were hurriedly shut before more people boarded it.  Seated near me was the only other occupant, a serious-looking man, white hair but thick black brows over his glasses, wearing a blue suit.  A small briefcase lay at his feet .  A vaguely familiar face, but not someone whose identity I was absolutely certain about, especially when I was still groggy.  He sat there straightening his suit, setting his face for what seemed to be a hard day's work involving people who were not his type.  As we stepped off the bus a couple of minutes later, a single bush-shirted flunky greeted him with folded hands, and dextrously thrust an unremarkable bouquet of flowers into his hands and grabbed his bag from him.  The bouquet was quickly handed back to the flunky.  At this point, I ventured to ask the gentleman if he was Salman Khurshid.  Yes, he answered in a quiet voice (very graciously I must say, for a Cabinet Minister).  I introduced myself, saying that I had met him when I was much younger and he had for a brief period been a colleague of my father.  He spoke warmly of my father, saying he (my father) was someone he greatly respected and admired.  He asked if I worked in Chennai or in Delhi.  I told him I taught at the IIT in Delhi, and he wrote down my contact details.

A couple of months later, one of his aides mailed us an invitation to the staging of his play "Sons of Babur", starring Tom Alter as the last Mughal Bahadur Shah Zafar.  We went to see the play the other day.  The play is written with an imagination and a sensitivity to history and the human condition.  While the acting may not have been all stellar, Tom Alter plays the role with a flourish but without overwhelming us with histrionics, lending a sense of poignancy to the life and death of the last Mughal.  

An Indian who made us proud

 An Indian who made us proud

(Written in September 2012)

Some days ago a 90 year old man passed away.  A legend, who created national institutions, and who made us feel proud of being Indians.

Twenty years ago (April 1992), while my parents were confined to a hospital in Ahmedabad after a horrific road accident, my wife and I got away for a day to visit her alma mater at Anand.  IRMA was an institution that Verghese Kurien had created, and we spent a pleasant morning there, with my being shown around a well-maintained campus, and my wife being warmly greeted by her professors and invited into their houses, while I tagged along.  

But the high point of our visit was in the afternoon, when we went to the Amul Milk Plant.  We were met in the lobby by a young man, who welcomed us warmly, but told us that we would have to wait at least an hour (or more) for a tour of the plant.  Meanwhile he had to accord priority to another group.   This Very Important Party turned out to be a busload of village women, children and a few men,  the families of the Milk Producers who gave life to Amul.  The shareholders.  I was delighted.   Here was a place where we English-speaking, non-resident rootless cosmopolitans (*) had to make way for those who were the real stars of the Amul show.  Among all the wonderful things about Amul and Dr Kurien with Tribhuvandas Patel and HM Dalaya, this was another little gem.

Our young host, concerned about our having a long wait ahead of us, asked if we might be interested in joining the group, but warned us the tour would be in Gujarati.  We agreed immediately, and attached ourselves to this excited crowd.  While the gleaming machinery and the processes of pasteurization and churning and dehydration etc were interesting to see (at least to the vestiges of the engineer in me), it was far more fascinating  to feel the thrill in the air, to observe the excitement of the children on their tour of a local version of Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory.  Here they were with their parents and aunts and uncles, rushing to see the tins of powdered milk being sucked up a chute, sealed and dropping down another before being stamped, wrapped and packed.  I don't think I have heard a happier sound in our country than that of the women chattering excitedly as they observed the journey of the buffalo milk which they had supplied, through the various vats and tubes and tins and packs, transformed into a variety of dairy products and sent on their way to market, to market.

--

[(*) in '92, I was an NRI, and had lived more years of my adult life abroad than in India; Hindi didn't trip off my tongue easily any more, so I was indeed  at that time a "bezrodniy kosmopolit"]

If I were a Carpainter

Outside a market in a south Delhi locality is a signboard announcing the services of a handyman.  “Car panter”, it reads, leaving us guessing whether he  carries a hammer and saw or a spray painting kit.

M F Husain and his painted Fiat.

I was perhaps 5 when I first met M F Husain, well before he had become hugely famous, though by then he was a local celebrity in Delhi.   It was at the house of our dear family friend, the well-known architect Mansinh M Rana.  Husain was a close  friend of the Rana’s, and was often at their house.  He was a gaunt bearded man with a big smile, shabbily attired and without footwear.  He used to come in his Fiat Millecento, which was painted in his imitable style, different colours on each side.   We children were welcome to tumble in and out of the car.

Mansinh Rana in his living room.

Mansinh Rana had an endearing trait of befriending everyone — from the famous and powerful to the young.  I was his special friend.   On his birthday (September 1), we would always be at his house.   It was perhaps 1967 or 1968 that on his birthday Husain gave him a wonderful canvas.   Innocent that I was, I too pulled out a watercolour of a windmill I had made for my dear Rana mama (on the card sheet that comes in the packaging of shirts), with a “I too have made a painting for you”.  Everyone had a hearty laugh, and Husain, with a twinkle in his eye, ruffled my hair calling me "the little painter”.