Mayank Chhaya Daily

Why do some machines fix themselves when you punch and kick them?

Penury has a million manifestations. For instance, you go to an auto repair shop, when it is raining hard, to fix a wiper that wipes only 20 percent of your windshield; that too on the diver's side. 

You are told it would cost you $35 just to check it out. In case, the wiper blade or the whole wiper mount requires replacement, it would be more. It could easily cost you upto $70. So you leave the shop with a hangdog look letting lose a series of choice invectives under your breath. You curse both yourself and your penury. "मैं और मेरी पेन्युरी ये अक्सर बातें करतें हैं," you say in a sorry attempt to amuse yourself out of the pathetic jam.

Then you reach the car and look at the wiper with disgust and ponder what you should do. If you were me--actually you here were always me--you clench your fist, punch the blade mount on the saddle hard. Twice or thrice depending on your disgust and anger at penury.

You get into the car and start it along with the wipers. And bingo! The wiper on the driver's side begins working perfectly well. 

I have not been able to understand why so many devices, including the transistor radio in the 1960s and 70s, television sets in the 1980s and 1990s and perhaps even now, respond so favorably to a punch or a kick or two. This is almost a universal phenomenon on the planet. Old machines in particular are known to fix themselves, at least for a while, when kicked and punched. I am not fit enough to raise my leg and kick the windshield wiper. Otherwise I would have done that too. 

I know exactly what happened in the particular case of my wiper. The saddle had bent in such a way that nearly 80 percent of the rubber was not touching the glass. After I punched it in its face it flattened making the whole rubber come into ful contact.

I can see so well in the rain now that I even see things that do not exist. 

Remembering Indira Gandhi's first glimpse

On her 40^th death anniversary today, I would like to reminisce about Indira Gandhi purely on the basis of my first glimpse of her as a 13-year-old.

My enduring image of Indira Gandhi is most likely circa 1974 in Ahmedabad. As frequently happens with my memory, it is entirely visual.

Any prime minister visiting anywhere in those days was a largely joyous event for children. Since she was the prime minister throughout my formative years (1966-1977 in her first stint) I thought Indira Gandhi and prime minister were synonymous. I used to think she was born as a prime minister.

If memory serves, it was sometime during peak summer in 1974 that she visited Ahmedabad. As school children we were taken to stand along the path of her convoy from the airport to wherever she was headed. I think we were told to dress impeccably for the morning. I did not know what that meant because we had school uniform of blue shorts and a white shirt and shoes. Perhaps they meant to starch and iron our uniform. I don’t think my mother Snehlata did that, but they were freshly washed. I had a pair of canvas shoes—we used to call them tennis shoes—which were blue with white toe cap and other trimmings. I remember having applied Blanco on it. It was much later that I found out that blanco in Spanish meant white. In this case it was a shoe polish brand name, I think.

We were given the Indian flag to wave when Gandhi’s convoy drove past us. It is cinematic in my mind 50 years hence that she rode in a ceremonial white and blue Impala standing with her head covered. She was dressed in a blue cotton sari and wore Jackie O sunglasses. The convoy went past rather quickly but left an indelible mark on my mind. Eight years later I became a journalist in Bombay and two more years after that I reported the aftermath of her assassination in the city, particularly the targeting of some Sikhs.

On the 25^th anniversary of her assassination, I had written the following post on my blog.

October 31, 2009

It is strangely ironic that the 25^th anniversary of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31 falls on the watch of India's first Sikh prime minister. This remarkable coincidence is unlikely to be lost on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as millions of Sikhs. Gandhi, who served as India's prime minister for 15 years in two separate terms, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.

Journalists are suckers for such landmarks because they give them a perfect opportunity to reclaim some of their own dwindling relevance and once again assert their own place in history. The Indian media is already coming alive with reminiscences and retrospectives to mark the upcoming anniversary of this staggering murder that fundamentally altered India's polity.

Seen from the perspective of the elaborate security apparatus that today guards leaders around the world, and particularly in South Asia, Gandhi's assassination appears remarkably easy. Beant Singh, one of her two Sikh bodyguards, walked up to her with his .38 revolver and fired three shots into her abdomen. He was followed by the second bodyguard Satwant Singh who fired another 28 bullets giving the 66-year-old Gandhi no chance of survival. That the assassins fired 31 bullets on October 31 was dismissed as a mere coincidence.

Initially, the bodyguards made no attempt to escape. In fact, Beant Singh was reported by Gandhi's faithful assistant R K Dhawan as saying in Punjabi, "We have done what we needed to, now you can do what you have to" as he put his revolver down. But a while later he was shot dead by other guards as he tried to escape. Satwant Singh was hanged five years later.

That Dhawan did not suffer even a cut during the killing inevitably aroused suspicions about his role. His accusers made a specific point about his change of guard duties at the last moment. However, a commission of inquiry exonerated him.

If on November 1, 1984 someone had predicted that India would witness the rise of its first Sikh prime minister barely two decades after Gandhi was killed in the midst of such intense animus among the Sikh community it would have been treated with disdain. And yet adding to the list of ironies, the woman in whose lap, namely Sonia Gandhi, that Indira Gandhi died on way to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, went on to take her political position. Not only that, she appointed the country's first Sikh prime minister.

Hey Nefretiti, Were you really so pretty?

 

I love the serene stillness of museums. I feel especially animated in front of statues, utensils, implements, handicrafts and other objects representing thousands of years of human history.

On a short visit to Urbana, I went to the Spurlock Museum. It is a small but charming collection representing various world cultures.

I came across a plaster cast replica of the famous limestone bust Nefretiti. The accompanying description says their copy of the plaster cast came to the Spurlock in 1948 from Lorado Taft’s collection. It was displayed in 1933 at Chicago’s World’s Fair.

I stood in front of the cast for several minutes imagining Nefretiti’s era some 2300 years ago.

She was the chief wife of Pharoh Akhenaten of Egypt (ca. 1353-1336 BCE).

In August, 2015, the news broke that Nefertiti may be in Tutankhamun's tomb along with the speculation that she was his mother.

On reading the new, I made a few quick sketches of Nefretiti and wrote this poem.

Hey Nefertiti

Were you really so pretty?

It is hard to tell

From your antiquity

 

Were you Tut’s mother?

Tut as in Tutankhamun

Always hiding behind

His cherished historicity

 

Perhaps it is time

For you to rise

From the dusts of history

And reveal your authenticity

Hey Nefertiti

--Mayank Chhaya

Of a lifelong daydreamer

 

जो ख़्वाहिशें हक़ीक़त में न हाँसिल हों

 

क्यों न उनको ख्वाबोंमें जिया जाये

 

Desires that cannot be fulfilled in reality

Why not live them in dreams

This verse was born in Hindi/Urdu on my morning walk today. I can tell you the precise time it was born but what would be the point of that? (Since I may have piqued your curiosity, it was born at 6.38 a.m.)

As a lifelong admirer and advocate of daydreaming, I have lived considerably in that realm. I regard daydreaming as real as what the world calls real in so much as its main consequence is genuinely experienced joy for a few moments.

My logic is that while the goings-on in my daydreams may not be real in the popularly conceived meaning of real, their result is a truly felt joyous experience in real life. And in any case, how do we know that what we call real is not our collective dream from which we never really emerge?

It is best not to distinguish between reality and daydream for a limited period of time. I say limited because unfortunately our base reality does dominate our existence where you have to pay bills and fart from time to time. I grant I have bookended reality strangely between paying bills and farting, but you get my drift.

The most remarkable feature of daydreaming is that it can be as fantastical as your imagination would allow. It is free of any value judgment. You do not have to explain the events in your daydreams to anyone at all. You do not have to mitigate your indiscretions or offer extenuation for your transgressions. Daydreaming costs nothing other than a few billion neurons in your brain. But then you do not have to earn those neurons because they are already in your brain.

I am aware that many in the “real” world consider daydreaming foolish as if what is unfolding in real life all the time is not foolish enough.

I am reasonably convinced as a lifelong daydreamer that in the end there is next to no difference between what is real and what is not. For instance, the other morning as I looked at the resplendent full moon, I could not tell whether I was imagining it, or it was indeed there. Even our so-called objective collective conclusions about the universe flow from our subjective intelligence.

It is a wonderful thing to daydream as frequently as you like. For instance, when I get a hospital bill that is unmanageably big, I daydream that it is the hospital that owes me, and I intend to forgive them the debt. Foolish? Perhaps, but for those few moments that I daydreamed the fantasy I felt joy. That joy was real at the baser level.

I have built castles in the air and lived in them for a bit. The trick is to be able to toggle between the two realms without getting attached to either.

A very short piece about #TaylorSwift and #DonaldTrump

A 78-year-old man says he hates a woman less than half his age. I am talking about former President Donald Trump, 78, and current pop superstar Taylor Swift, 34. 

He said on his social media platform Truth Social "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!"  He said it in all caps which means he must mean it. Also, he added the American punctuation obsession--the dreadfully superfluous exclamation point in case it was lost on you that he really HATES Taylor Swift. It seems as if it is not bad enough for him to hate someone who is younger than his daughter Ivanka, he has to do so in the upper case with the exclamation point.  

Where is Sigmund Freud when you need him? There is clearly a deeper pathology here which is not really hate but profound attraction. But then who am I to psychoanalyze? I am just a hack.

Love in this case is spelled Hate. Imagine a scenario where Swift had endorsed him instead of Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump would have been pirouetting on cloud nine.

On a separate note, this election season continues to out-crazy itself. Trump's post was at 10.44 a.m. on September 15. Less than three hours later in a wholly unrelated development an apparent second assassination attempt against him was thwarted. This was less than three months after the first one. 

If as a novelist I created a plot where a 78-year-old former US president says he HATES perhaps the world's most beloved pop superstar and then faces a second assassination attempt publishers would have thrown me out of their offices for being ridiculous. And yet, this is going on in real life.

I don't know what Swift might have felt when she heard about it. Perhaps she chuckled at the sophomoric moronity of it. 

It is because the two people involved here are improbably famous that this becomes news. Otherwise, minus the fame, I wonder anyone would have paid attention a random 78-year-old saying he hates a random 34-year-old would have made any news at all. Fame is the fuel that fires up our  flames. 

Farewell to my boots

I have worn these Kenneth Cole boots for over 20 years, which is a third of my life. They deserve both my respect and gratitude as I am about to trash them. If I were in India, I would have got them repaired but here in America the repairs cost nearly half its original price of $250.  

I do not get attached to things. Trashing them will not cause any separation anxiety. At the same time though I do think about their journey. Once upon a time its upper was part of a cattle’s hide. That means enclosed within that was a living animal which too was some cow or buffalo or pig’s baby in China. My boots were made in China.

It is impossible for me to find out whether an animal was killed just for the purpose of obtaining its hide or the makers sourced it from carcasses. In either case there was once an animal inside that hide. If I add up the various periods in the boots’ cycle the particular animal likely lived some 35 or so years ago factoring in the average age of cattle.

In the last 20 odd years my boots traveled tens of thousands of miles, taking me to numerous events, many of which helped me earn my livelihood as a journalist. That in turn helped me support my family.

Speaking of family, very recently these boots were worn by me for my son Jashn’s wedding. I even danced vigorously in them. I am sure some guests noticed how completely torn the right boot had become. It is quite likely that some guests were either embarrassed or amused or both by the sight of the groom’s father in torn boots. I could have, with some effort, purchased new shoes. I did not. Instead, I chose these as my final tribute to them by wearing them at my son’s wedding.

Like all well-worn shoes, these too were like home. They had become accustomed to my feet, their shape, the angle and speed of my walking and so on. It is perhaps silly, but I do tend to respect inanimate objects as much as I do animate. Like I said, the boots’ leather once covered an animate lifeform.

If only boots could talk, mine would have so many stories to tell. Always at the bottom of my existence they were witness to so many events. Not once did they squeak in pain in the muscle memory of an animal they once enveloped.

Now that they are being thrown away, I feel selfish and even cruel.

Was that duck being a dick?

This is a story from the non-human sentient world. On a scale of events that can change the world, what happened this morning on my walk was not even laughably irrelevant. It might as well not have happened. Billions of such events unfold every minute on our planet without making the slightest alteration to anything other than those involved.

What happened this morning involved only a duck and me. It is a routine sight to see ducks and geese crossing roads at their own leisure, forcing cars to stop. Being birds they can fly across but for whatever reasons—most likely to preserve energy for their long flights—they choose to waddle at infuriatingly slow speeds. As fellow lifeforms which share this gorgeous planet with us it is as much their right.

I saw some 15 ducks, including babies, cross the road without any particular hurry since there were no cars. However, one duck got left behind. As it prepared to cross, a black Toyota Corolla appeared. The driver saw the solitary duck waiting at the edge of the sidewalk. He came to a dead stop allowing the bird to cross. The duck was confused. It came down a couple of steps and then turned right back. The Corolla driver waited a little longer, but the duck would not venture again. So, he drove away.

I was watching the duck watch me, perhaps sizing up if I posed any danger. I was about 10 feet away from it. Not to add to its anxious uncertainty I just stood there, waiting for it to make up its mind. And then suddenly, it took off and flew across to join the fellow ducks.

“What a dick!” I said out loud. “You could have flown earlier.” (This bit is true.)

I am reasonably sure the duck looked back at me and said, “You mean what a duck!” (This bit is just a joke and hence not true.)

Sometimes I get the sense that these birds choose to walk while crossing streets only to annoy humans. With next to no knowledge of ornithology I am guessing here. I think when birds, especially long-distance fliers such as geese, are on the ground they do everything to preserve and enhance their energy.

It is not as if a duck likes to be a dick by holding up traffic by waddling across roads. It is just that their routine often clashes with human routine. We ought to coexist peacefully. Of course, occasionally birds should also fly across a street rather than just saunter across.

The story of a solitary swan

This is the story of a solitary swan. It is a story as imagined by me and not narrated by the swan. Swans, as we all know, do not tell stories the way we understand them.

They just glide on often swampy waters of creeks with no identifiable purpose. Purpose is a human preoccupation. Attributing purpose to things in the universe is also a human preoccupation. I do not look for purpose. I just glide through life the way a swan does.

I have been observing this solitary swan for several weeks now. On my early morning walks it is there in the sometimes algae-laden and sometimes clear water of a creek near my house. I am not a particularly brisk walker. The swan's serene inactivity makes me even slower. I make it a point to look at it for a few moments before moving on. Occasionally, I take pictures. I doubt if the swan knows it is being photographed. 

Not being an ornithologist I am not well-informed about the various habits of swans other than that they clean their plumage from time to time. More often than not this particular swan just floats with its craning neck looking straight ahead at nothing in particular. There are some sudden moves when it twists its long and slender neck into what looks like an early version of a pretzel.

I am not sure about its gender but going by its generally large size, it is male. That means it is a cob as opposed to a female which is a pen. I am equally unsure about its status, as in whether it is single, married, separated or divorced. At this point I can crack a silly joke and say that going by its calm demeanor, he is not in any relationship; certainly not married. I have never seen a companion with it. Perhaps it is at an age where it leads a celibate life. I can ask the swan directly but like I said swans do not tell stories in the way humans understand. 

I make no attempt to befriend it because it is almost always 20 to 30 feet from me in the creek. Also, I see no point in actively befriending fellow sentient life. Of course, if an opportunity presented itself, I would pet it a bit. 

As is the case with aquatic birds, their bodies look completely steady and still above the water surface even as underneath they often paddle quite feverishly. I have not seen this swan paddle feverishly. It moves around ever so imperceptibly that I feel as if the water has moved even while it has remained stationary. 

I do not know where the swan goes at night and how it sleeps. It has been at least two months, if not longer, that I have always found the swan in the creek in the morning. I am sure it flies away as the day progresses. It is the only swan among a clutch of ducks and geese, which are quite loud in registering their presence, especially geese. It stands in a blur of greys and sandy browns of the geese and the ducks for me. In that sense the swan has great charisma.

One day, this swan will die unheralded as will I but little more remembered I suppose. 

So that is my story of the solitary swan.  

President of the United State of Denial

President Joe Biden, center, with First Lady Jill Biden (White House photo)

Democrats are going passive aggressive on President Joe Biden as he refuses to budge in the face of a rising discordant chorus for him to step aside. The prime example of this passive aggression is none other than the grandee of the party, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi. 

“He’s beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision, not me,” Pelosi said on “Morning Joe, adding, “I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is.”

What he decides to do? Really? He has already said that he has decided to stay, short of the almighty telling him not to. As we all know, the almighty is not known to be so hands-on. Ask Sahir Ludhianvi. He would tell you "Aasman pe hai khuda, Aur zameen pe hum. Aaj kal woh is taraf, Dekhta hai kum." (God is in the heaves and I on Earth. These days he does not pay much attention to us.)

In case her passive aggression was lost on Biden, Pelosi said "time is running short" for him to decide. Decide what, Madam Speaker? That is her way of saying that even though he has decided already, he needs to decide some more, meaning decide of his own volition to quit the race.

Another lifelong democrat going passive aggressive on the president is the actor, director and eternal handsomeness George Clooney.  In an op-ed in The New York Times, Clooney writes, "I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced. But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can."

"This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president," Clooney, who is among the biggest fundraisers for the Biden campaign said.

Across the board, Democrats are saying things by not saying much. As John Lennon said memorably, "Everybody is talking but no one says a word."

Right now Biden is the president of the United State of Denial. It is clear that age-related vagaries have gripped him. Even his address at the 75th summit of the NATO, which was supposed to reestablish him as the vigorous leader of the free world, was woefully short of that. Ageing is not a crime, it is an inconvenience. 

The 84-year-old Pelosi is essentially telling the 81-year-old Biden, "I am glad you think have decided but really, decide now."

Objectively, Biden is a depleted figure after decades in public service. He has much to be very proud  of but stands to tarnish his legacy permanently if he chooses to stay on despite such overwhelming rejection. As a last ditch attempt to convince America that he has what it takes, he was set to hold a rare solo news conference today. As of writing this post, he was scheduled to do it at 6.30 p.m. EST at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center near the White House.

Irrespective of how he performs one good news conference is not evidence of anything in the face of such recognizable decline. 

 

Of a solitary swan and serenity

The solitary Trumpeter swan in a creek near my home this morning. (My picture's resolution is not sharp because I had to use the optical zoom of my phone camera.)

It was several days ago that a solitary swan showed up quite unexpectedly in a creek near my home in Naperville. During my nearly 18 years in Naperville, I do not remember having ever spotted a swan. I am sure they are there. It is just that I had not seen one before this one. 

I have next to no knowledge of ornithology but from the looks of it, this is an adult swan whose wingspan could be five feet or more. A quick reading tells me that the one here in the photograph is the Trumpeter swan. They prefer open habitats and shallow water bodies of the kind the creek is. 

On my morning walks, I do frequently stop just to watch this solitary swan. It is a remarkably serene experience because oftentimes it is completely still with its long neck curled up on its back. When it glides over the water, it creates lovely ripples which distort the reflection of maple trees on the shore of the creek, making it look like a Claude Monet painting. In fact, I do no think of Monet when I watch this swan. 

I also think of Kalidas and his reference to the 'amorous cries of swans*". Of course, unlike the swans of Kalidas's poem 'Sharad', which glide in the "rivers drifting like wanton women" (As wonderfully translated by the Indian born British poet Usha Kishore), this solitary swan of Naperville is in a generally stagnant and sometimes foul-smelling creek. The presence of the swan somehow makes one momentarily forget the smell. This creek does not drift like a wanton woman but stagnates like an old print journalist.

It is always a charmingly reassuring start of the day to see the swan for me. It is a glorious reminder of the non-human sentient worlds that live in parallel to our own often wracked by conflict. 

I am curious to see for how long would the swan keep coming to the creek. However many days it does, it will always bring a stillness to my mind with occasional ripples around it.