For Necessary Action

The letter was really intriguing (i.e. interesting and confusing). The writer had found a solution to the problem of climate change. He stated that he had been researching in the dense forests and had studied the impact of climate change on changing color of the frogs. He had also analyzed its effect on the decibel level of their croaking.

After listening to the data for twelve years and feeling it on a handmade supercomputer made out of completely organic ingredients, he had derived a formula to reverse the climate change. The only thing he needed now to hand it over to the government was a small appreciation letter from the Prime Minister of India and twenty one lakh cash. Since he felt that foreign secret agents were behind his life, he had refused to divulge any further details.

So there I was, sitting as usual in the first hour my office and doing my most important job, seeing the ‘Daak file’. In simple terms a Daak file is a file that keeps the Daak or the ‘correspondence’. Every day I get scores of letters which I skim/read/try to read in the first hour of office. The above mentioned letter was present in the same Daak file and I had already given it two minutes, twelve times the usual 10 seconds allotted to a usual Daak.

I get anything between 50 to 500 letters a day and two minutes to a single letter was certainly extravagance. For a moment I felt that I held the future of humanity in my hand. Pictures of huge melting glaciers with white polar bears flashed in front of my eyes and I decided to act in a conclusive manner. I tried to think hard to decide the various alternatives.

I could have forwarded that letter directly to the PMO and asked them to act upon it. I could have written to the science and technology department. I could have additionally sought funds to further research upon the matter. I could also have called a meeting of all college professors to discuss the issue. In case I wanted to deal conservatively, I could have sought advice from my district magistrate.

I also thought about making a round paper ball from that paper and throwing it into the dustbin. Alternatively I could have tested my memory by trying to make an aeroplane from that sheet of paper. I could have additionally sent a doctor to examine the mental status of the writer.

The pressure became huge and I felt exactly as Arjun would have felt in the battlefield when he said “Mind is restless Krishna”.

And then I realized the solution was simple. What had I to worry when I had the most efficient phrase invented by the bureaucracy. In fact what Sachin is to cricket, this phrase is government; only more consistent and match winning.

I marked the letter to my deputy officer and wrote ‘for necessary action’.

Capturing Life

That was the first time I was wearing a suit. It was my class 12th farewell and the idea was to imitate the elderly; ladies in saris and gentlemen in suit. I carried a mustache at that time and hello……how thin I was. I was invariably smiling in all the pictures and looking at that I can tell that I was not very comfortable.

So in the fits of cleaning my house, I rediscovered a bag full of pictures; pictures that captured life, pictures that captured past. Each one of them extrapolated an event and started telling a story. The time frame was not continuous and stories started coming randomly; just with a turn of a page.

And suddenly I was a girl. I was three years old and my mother had made me wear a frock. My father was helping her and the camera captured all three of us. It was festive day as Bhagwat uncle had come to our home with his new camera. So all of us got clicked myriad times; in different poses and in different dress; and that day continues to live on as representative of that age.

I had always liked her. She looked gorgeous in her cream sari and was the first woman I had a crush upon. And there she was; looking gorgeous as ever; sitting at the center of fifty of us; Class of UKG Section B. For me she never grew old and that snap took her from this world and pasted her that picture forever; at least for me.

The picture was clicked for finding her a perfect groom. She was Bhatnagar uncle’s daughter and had entered marriageable age. She was wearing a sari and the photographer made her cheeks look extra pink. Her eyes were expressionless, and after six years when she committed suicide those eyes kept haunting me for days. We never knew why she did that but that marriageable girl with extra pink cheeks is still alive in that album.

I was sitting on a boat, and I tried to look smart. I was not smiling and neither was I serious; and I had tilted my head slightly tilted towards the left. It was our trip to Varanasi and at least a score of us had gone there. Whenever any relative came to visit us in our suburb, we dutifully took them to some of the places around and such excursions were my window to the world. I in fact jumped from that window and eventually saw the world, but the joy never matched the one of that boat ride.

And then there was a generation leap. I was not even born and my parents were getting married. My father wore bell bottom pants and my mother had a big stylish bun on her head. I wonder why people of that generation comment on our fashion sense. My father had mischievous eyes and I always found it hard to believe that even my parents could have been so young.

Sometimes I wonder if I could go back in time carrying those albums, and then tell everybody what future has in store for them. I could have told my gardener that a storm would destroy his flowers that season; I could have asked that girl to be positive towards life.

But then I realize that I am mortal and put these questions to rest.

The Second One: A Lady

After that incident life continued as it was. The strange thing is I still do not know how I should have felt. I was not at all scared but something had changed. My mom always told me that human beings are survivors. Keep us in any conditions and we will come out stronger. I involved myself in the studies and started running with life.

It was the first day when we were taken to a morgue for dissecting a human body. It was cold inside and was the room was dimply lit. The wall contained small rectangular boxes with rounded handles, and each of them contained a frozen dead body.

The unnerving thing about a morgue is that you start become philosophical once you see dead; made of same flesh and bones as you are. The frozen bodies also have frozen expressions and it looks as if there was a sudden pause in life, similar to the ‘Statue’ game we played in childhood. Many of us vomit or faint there but at the end of the day you take a big knife and cut it straight across the chest.

In no place you can feel so closely what mortality of mankind means.

From first day in college, we had been hearing of stories that seniors lie there as dead and try to scare the juniors. I was ready for that but I did not anticipate what actually came for me.

All of us were being shown a dead body and we were going to start the dissection of it when I found somebody whispering my name. At the entrance of that room, there was a lady who was signaling me to come to her.

While walking towards her, I noticed that she was fat and was dressed in complete black. She was wearing a distinguishing large bindi on her forehead and had all sort of strange ornamentations, somewhat similar to those of hermits. Her appearance sent chills down my spine but it was too late to turn back.

Her voice was polite and without introducing herself she asked, “Vandana, how does one donate her body to the medical college?” I looked taken aback not only at her question but also as if asking her how she knew my name. She just smilingly gestured towards the batch that I was wearing.

I explained to her all the formalities and sent her to the relevant office. After a week we again had a session at the morgue. Last time we were told how dissection was to be done and all the external features that had to be marked before touching a dead body and today was going to be the day when we were to cut open a dead human body.

I was completely relaxed and got my instruments issued. Everything was normal and then I shrieked. On my table, staring right into my eyes with calm frozen expressions, as if trying to soothe me up, that same lady was lying……..dead. I felt as if I have forgotten how to breathe and I became dumb for a minute.

After that I shrieked and shrieked and my friends took me out of that room. Later on I found that that lady’s death was completely natural and her body had been shifted to the morgue just that morning.

I took a break and went home for some days. There while turning some family photographs, I found pictures of last days of Sharmila aunty. Under the influence of some hermit, she has started wearing black and when she was being taken for cremation she almost resembled the lady that had come to meet me in the morgue.