Even in my dream, I knew it was a dream. No cellphones. No sales people. No Sonia Gandhi. I snuggled into my dream.
The telephone exploded. I fell out of bed and grabbed it.
"Hello," I croaked groggily.
"Good afternoon ma'am. I'm Raju from _____. As you're our valued customer, we're offering you a free SIM card..."
"Dear Raju from wherever you are..." I whispered half asleep and then fell into bed and right back into Dreamland. Karnataka had a government. Everyone understood Mamata Banerjee when she spoke. Britney Spears had finally grown up. Newspapers ignored Paris Hilton, Tom-Kat, and the Beckingham Palace. People admitted all they did in Davos was have fun. George Bush was hiding...the phone screamed again.
"Good afternoon ma'am. Are you Aparna Muralidhar?"
"Who wants to know?" I yawned.
"Ma'am, Aparna Muralidhar has won a trip for 2 to Malaysia in a raffle."
"What raffle?"
"Are you Aparna Muralidhar?"
"I am now."
"Congratulations Ma'am! You've won a trip to Malaysia!" he squealed.
"Okay okay, no need to get excited," I said irritably. "How did I win?"
"Are you married?"
"Not that I'm aware of..."
"You visited the exhibition at ______ with your husband where you filled in..."
"Shoot! I missed my own wedding," I muttered.
"...a form for a lucky dip on the 6th of this month at 10 a.m..." he prattled.
"I did not. I was at work."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm not sure. I suffer from Alzheimer's. I'm never sure of anything. When can I go to Malaysia?"
"Err..uh...ma'am are you Aparna Muralidhar?"
"I'm not sure," I said distractedly, "look what you've done... you've confused me," I said and hung up.
I curled up under the covers once more. Reader's Digest was a great magazine again. Music was not recycled. Paper was. I was 18. Deccan Air stayed in the air. State buses crunched only gravel. Everyone had a last name. The BJP was young and was now called Batty Jatty Patty. The phone was ringing....THE PHONE WAS RINGING.
I groaned and snatched it from its cradle.
"Hello?"
"Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Amit from ______ bank. We're offering you a personal loan..."
"Great!" I yelled into the phone. "I need a loan right now . I have Alzheimer's and I'm going to Malaysia with a husband I didn't know I had," I tried to sound as hysterical as possible.
"Hello!?!" he said perplexed.
"You can call Raju and check..." I yelled. Amit hung up.
I went back to bed.
I'd barely tucked myself in when the phone shrieked.
"Hello?"
"I'm calling from ____ insurance. We have a wonderful package..."
"Great! I'm going to Malaysia so I need travel insurance. Can you give me your number? I'll call you back."
He gave me his office number, his mobile number, and his home landline. Bingo and big mistake.
I took the phone off the hook and slept till 12 a.m. I woke up at 12 a.m., dug out Mr. Insurance's home landline and dialled.
"Who is it?" demanded an alarmed voice.
"I just wanted to say I'm not going to Malyasia and I don't want insurance," I said sweetly and hung up.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
What about the children?
Along with Iraq, Pakistan is now officially in a free fall. Everything that can possibly go wrong with Iraq and Pakistan, has. In Iraq, tragedy is now bordering on the ludicrous. On Jan 1, 2008, a funeral procession for a bombing victim, was bombed. A year after Saddam Hussein was hanged by a kangaroo court and many years after the world woke up to the fact that Iraq never posed any sort of threat to anyone, Osama Bin Laden, the object of George Bush's desire, continues to cock a snook at him. Whatever his faults, Osama has proved a far better human being than Bush: at least, he's hiding.
Pakistan has been running with the hares and hunting with the hounds a long time now. Her embattled President, framed within many a rifle's cross-hairs, is not a man you can loft on to a horse and hope for a ride-into-the-sunset goodbye. After years of feeding him cookies under the table and patting him on the head, Bush now finds himself staring not at the loyal Poster Child he'd hoped to find purring gratefully. With Benazir Bhutto's death - which has been greeted with a convincing show of outrage around the globe - the beleaguered General has marched his nation to the edge of the abyss; in fact, where he is now, the abyss must look pretty inviting to Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan doesn't know who the enemy is anymore; worse, they
don't know who's whose enemy which is more than a little alarming for a nuclear power. Typically, America has stopped the cookie-under-table arrangement overnight and has now queued up behind the Lal Masjid clerics, the Pakistani public, the Pakistani Army, the ISI, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, the Taliban, and a handful of assorted tribes and warlords across Pakistan and Afghanistan who make up Musharraf's distinguished list of enemies.
Then, there is Afghanistan (though barely) where the Taliban continue to have a free run despite (or 'because of' depending on your political leaning) Hamid Karzai. Karzai, Musharraf, and Nouri al-Maliki (the Iraqi PM) all have a common nemesis: George Bush. Only Bush could've accomplished such unmitigated disaster with such cheerfulness. His foreign policy (like him) is ultra simple: Get oil. But make it look like you're getting Osama. And get out of my way (toss grenade over shoulder). Famed as much for his brain and his tongue being in different time zones as for his juvenile rhetoric, Bush has demonstrated how much a sleepy conscience and a me-cowboy smugness can accomplish. Tripping on countless bodies and body parts while supposedly chasing Osama around the globe, the trail of destruction he has left in his wake now spans 3 countries that have plunged into a desperate humanitarian crisis. It is now officially accepted that every Iraqi family has lost or knows someone who has lost at least one person to the war.
Think about the trauma of a long-running war on the children. Their childhood snatched from them. No education. No play. No employment. No future to look forward to. No hope. And the cycle of violence and death playing itself out incessantly in front of their young eyes - all the essential ingredients to incubate assembly-line suicide bombers.
We should stop pretending this is "their" problem - it's now "our" problem. Children know no barriers of geography, race, religion, or colour. They are children of the world.
Will 2008 be the year that we give our children a reason to live and not a reason to die?
Pakistan has been running with the hares and hunting with the hounds a long time now. Her embattled President, framed within many a rifle's cross-hairs, is not a man you can loft on to a horse and hope for a ride-into-the-sunset goodbye. After years of feeding him cookies under the table and patting him on the head, Bush now finds himself staring not at the loyal Poster Child he'd hoped to find purring gratefully. With Benazir Bhutto's death - which has been greeted with a convincing show of outrage around the globe - the beleaguered General has marched his nation to the edge of the abyss; in fact, where he is now, the abyss must look pretty inviting to Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan doesn't know who the enemy is anymore; worse, they
don't know who's whose enemy which is more than a little alarming for a nuclear power. Typically, America has stopped the cookie-under-table arrangement overnight and has now queued up behind the Lal Masjid clerics, the Pakistani public, the Pakistani Army, the ISI, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, the Taliban, and a handful of assorted tribes and warlords across Pakistan and Afghanistan who make up Musharraf's distinguished list of enemies.
Then, there is Afghanistan (though barely) where the Taliban continue to have a free run despite (or 'because of' depending on your political leaning) Hamid Karzai. Karzai, Musharraf, and Nouri al-Maliki (the Iraqi PM) all have a common nemesis: George Bush. Only Bush could've accomplished such unmitigated disaster with such cheerfulness. His foreign policy (like him) is ultra simple: Get oil. But make it look like you're getting Osama. And get out of my way (toss grenade over shoulder). Famed as much for his brain and his tongue being in different time zones as for his juvenile rhetoric, Bush has demonstrated how much a sleepy conscience and a me-cowboy smugness can accomplish. Tripping on countless bodies and body parts while supposedly chasing Osama around the globe, the trail of destruction he has left in his wake now spans 3 countries that have plunged into a desperate humanitarian crisis. It is now officially accepted that every Iraqi family has lost or knows someone who has lost at least one person to the war.
Think about the trauma of a long-running war on the children. Their childhood snatched from them. No education. No play. No employment. No future to look forward to. No hope. And the cycle of violence and death playing itself out incessantly in front of their young eyes - all the essential ingredients to incubate assembly-line suicide bombers.
We should stop pretending this is "their" problem - it's now "our" problem. Children know no barriers of geography, race, religion, or colour. They are children of the world.
Will 2008 be the year that we give our children a reason to live and not a reason to die?
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