Expect nothing and live frugally by surprise

My parents do not have a conscience anymore. Thanks to Alzheimer’s. They do not hesitate to say it all; saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that conscience keeps most people from saying. With experience, I have come to terms with the fact that when people who know their condition do not give a damn, why would others. And this, of late, has upset me. So, of late, I am confined to my house and do not visit anyone or do not encourage anyone visiting home. With all the chaos at home, I no longer know - is home the place we run to or is it the place we run from. But this time, I had to fulfil a long pending visit to one of my father’s childhood friends. It was with the exact same fear, that I decided to visit him. But what unfolded there was a totally “Ok Zoomer” moment for me.

To give you a bit of background, Subbanna uncle and my father are friends for 60+ years now. They were childhood neighbours in a small town, grew up in the same locality, went to same school, same college and started working at the neighbouring PSUs in the same town. There was this disconnect when my father got transferred to Bangalore in the late 70s, but they still managed to keep up the friendship until last few years with a couple of must do annual visits. Fast forward to post covid era and they both have their own health concerns bothering them. With a lot of preparation and hesitation, I took my father to Subbanna uncle’s home yesterday.

After seeing my father going through his hallucinations often, it was a totally different, sane and happy version of him that I got to see yesterday. There was a momentary air of hesitation. But once they opened up, they spoke at length on the time they spent together in their childhood, the cinema they watched together and the books they read. I came to know only yesterday that my father had written a play which they enacted in one of the cultural events in college! They made a few phone calls to their other friends and planned another possible meet-up. Vishvanath uncle joined on phone, Subbanna uncle’s brother, Ramu, who is 88, came over with the help of a walker and joined the conversation. I so wanted to include him also in the pics I clicked, but couldn't ask him to get up and move again. They spoke on their gang's nick names and he recalled how my father was called as "Walking Dictionary" in office in those days. He recalled my father’s impeccable writing and asked if his handwriting was still that legit. They recalled watching movies at a nearby talkies and their club visits, my granny’s culinary skills and many other topics. I was really happy to see my father enjoying the company. I think this visit was precisely what my father wanted – A wing of change to socialize with real people.

Subbanna uncle had spoken to his brother who is a Neuro specialist, about my father’s condition and had gathered some tips to give me to take better care of my father. He was so confident that my father’s condition can be reversed or the progression be delayed, to say the least with those Dos and Don’ts. From Music to Medicine, every word of advice he gave me was echoing the concern he had for my father. I could recall him exclaiming to me at least 20 times, “See – He remembers!!”

I was silently witnessing all this, seeing a momentary happiness in my father’s otherwise lonely, deaf and hallucinating world; my mind comparing Subbanna uncle with all the people I reached out to, for help, to overcome my situation and the naive reasons they gave to abstain and the pretense they displayed. This was the “Expect Nothing.. Live frugally by surprise” moment for me. I’m so contented that in tonight’s dreams, the very Alzheimer’s disease, will sing to me, a rhapsody of illusory marvel that lightens up my heart and fill my brain with an intoxicating amount of dopamine, healing all the wounds of a man who is witnessing his parents deteriorating right in front of him.

I realized one thing today - When you keep up meaningful relationships in life, it can have benefits beyond lifting your spirits. The benefit of true friendship is really immeasurable.

I started my car only to see that even with all the difficulty to walk, Subbanna uncle walking up to us, stood beside my car window, shook hands with his old friend for good ten minutes and said goodbye. On a normal day, I’d yell at everyone for delaying boarding the car stating fuel price, but today, I wanted the engine to roar silently for a few more hours!

An open letter to Insensitive Intellectual Idiots

 The peace that prevailed all these years at my home, has slowly withered away. It was my mother first and now, my father too has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. My dad’s elder sister too is a victim of Alzheimer’s. My grandma had this. So my entire family is slowly waking up to the fact that there is genetics at play. My parents’ health is deteriorating every day and unfortunately, I have no other option than to be a witness for it. Of course, I am going that extra mile to ensure their wellbeing is always a priority. I often tell myself that the most fundamental element needed to sail through this difficult time is patience. But it been easier said than done to inculcate it.

The shenanigans of this bad ailment is such that more than the patients, it directly impacts the serotonins of their family and friends who are dealing with it first-hand. I’ve been embracing my fear of losing them, their faults, their uncertainties, their immaculate behavior; all by myself. A very few close friends know about this, but this is a very challenging time for me. Consequently, there have been some lapses on my commitments. This has led to a few verbal duels with my wife. It, in fact, has gone beyond this and we can now be called a mildly battered couple, thanks to two Alzheimer’s patients at home.

Trust me, impaired cognition is not so easy to deal with, especially when you know there is no change coming in, ever. You have to deal with it as long as they are alive. The situation will only get worse over time. I am not even going into the details of my father’s auditory hallucinations. The very fact that it is irreversible is enough to weaken the dependents emotionally. On top of it, being a middle class family, there are financial and societal implications that you have to deal with. While figuring out things on all these fronts, a few duels happened. I have had regrets on the way things were going, especially with the battered couple tag **winks**, but with god’s grace, life is back to normal. Honestly, I am repentant and have come to terms with how I should not repeat it. I have learnt to cope with the situation now. But what I am not able to cope is the presence of insensitive intellectual idiots (i3s) around me who do not even know what the disease is, but lecturing me on how I should cope. Argghhhh!

Some came home, spent 10 min with my father and gave me hour long lectures on “why have we reduced the food quantity”, “why should I buy him more shirts” and “how often should I take him to barber”, “GPS based tracker for my father” and what not! One one hand, my father is finding it difficult to operate his own cell-phone and TV remote, but my uncle wants my dad to do all the ironing of clothes, so he is occupied. A married couple in their late 30s who never even dreamt of having kids are lecturing me on my son’s upbringing. The worst of them all is this: A relative of my wife, who neither knows A of Alzheimer’s nor my parents name, thinks I have lied about my parent’s condition. She has written a long message to me on WA stating that I’m trying to cover up issues with my wife by lying about my parents’ condition. And that karma will catch up with me **duh**. There are specimens who have started doing Yoga just a couple of years ago and consider themselves spiritual icons, giving me lectures on DOs and DON’Ts of my life. I wanted to tell the person that my spiritual guru has been guiding me since the time you had not even reached your puberty.

I got curious and dug deeper to understand why there are so many i3s (insensitive intellectual idiots) who cannot shut up, to say the least, if not empathize with my family. My father’s Neurologist gave me the answer. Although Alzheimer’s is highly prevalent in the west, people in India, by large, do not know about this disease. Average Indian Life span used to be 65-66 years a couple of decades ago. But due to advancement in medicine and Human Development Index going very high in the metro cities of India in the last decade, life expectancy of Indians has gone up to 75+ years. This had led to surfacing of alarming number of Alzheimer’s patients in India. In other words, very few have known & dealt with the disease in past. Suddenly there is a buzz with a lot of cases and people yet to assimilate. Doctor is confident that people will learn to deal with it, I am not!

I am at that juncture of my life where I am not at peace to tolerate such nonsense. It is a challenging time for me and I do not think of consequences when I speak/reply. My mind is currently a jumble of inaccuracies and my responses might make you very uncomfortable. How can someone say I am lying about my parents, goddammit! I know I am bad at expressing my emotions in public. But saying that I’m lying about my parents is a blaze of akhand chutiyapa. Please give your thoughts some food before being an insensitive asshole. Reform your own lives before judging somebody else’s. See if your own mother is happy before passing insensitive comments on others. Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down. There are better things to look after than lecturing how many times my father must shave his beard! Don’t let me grab you by the shoulders on another blog post. Educate yourself on this degenerative disease; how it impacts the caregivers, its emotional paradigm. Empathize with the caregiver and their family and help them lead a more contented life.

If not, at least, SHUT THE F*** UP!!

Image credits: Google Images

Single screen theaters in Bengaluru - A lost legacy

Gaurav sent an early morning news snippet in our Friends WA group. It said “Cauvery” theatre will be shut down and it will make way for a commercial complex”. The post received a sad emoji from all of us and was active after months of silence. My friends pulled my leg (I'll talk about that later) and we all recalled how we went to Cauvery theater to watch Kaante, but ended up watching a Saikumar starter Kannada movie, missing to check what was running for Morning show😊.

For a moment, my mind wandered through two decades of my pensive reserves of the happy association I had with Cauvery theatre.  Of course, this is not a new trend in Namma Bengaluru, we’ve been used to Individual theatres in the city shutting shop since a decade now. I’ve written in past about many of the once prominent theatres like Adarsha, Kino, Uma, Symphony, Plaza, Galaxy and many others on KG road.  But Cauvery is a special case for me. It is close to my home, my school, college and hence to my heart! If you’re a movie buff and you’re a proud namma Bengaluru resident since early 90s, then you’ll have a fair idea on what our city has lost on the entertainment front.

Cosmo culture

If you think Bangalore has turned multi-ethnic after the IT uprising, then you are off beam. Bangalore’s cosmopolitan culture dates to early and late 80s. While Hyderabad and Chennai play vernacular movies to a greater extent even today, Bangalore has been offering a rich, diverse and extravagant movie experience from ages. Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu and even Bengali & Malayalam movie fans have cherished their moments inside a Bangalore theatre. Remember, those were the days, Mallus and Bongs were not flocking to namma Bengaluru in search of jobs and their numbers were very limited.

No Language wars in our talkies

Unlike today, the Sandalwood movie industry’s cries that “we don’t get screens for vernacular movies” were just non-existent; because those were the days where Kannada movie industry was at its peak. Those were the days when Kannada movies ran to packed houses for one to two years and were remade in all other Indian languages, thanks to rich Kannada literature adaptations, great musicians, directors and lyricists. I fondly recall how my dad narrated his movie watching chronicles; Annavru’s Veerakesari was the first ever movie aired in Navarang and how he had bunked college to watch it, only to be caught by a neighborhood uncle next to his seat.

Cinema - Now and then

Along with movies, our movie going experience also has seen a radical makeover. Thanks, but no thanks to OTT! Those were the days where movie going was merriment. It was exciting for every middle-class family. The reason was very simple: It was the ultimate sort of entertainment for us. There was no internet; no IPL and no 200+ entertainment channels on television. And there were no mobile phones to be hooked onto for 10+ hours a day. If I tell any millennial kid that I have watched English movies in Sangam, they might get judgmental. But, yeah, true story! I still remember the ecstasy of watching English Movies like Jurassic Park, Jumanji, and a few other sci-fi thrillers in Sangam.

 Just like movies, the movie theatres were also equally special. Not just because of movies, it would also mean a bunch of other things followed by a movie. A good movie in the KG road/Majestic area would be followed by Lunch @ Kamat, if it was Urvashi, it would mean, lunch at MTR, movie in Navrang would always be accompanied by a visit to uncle’s place and so on. My favorites were Galaxy and Symphony because it’d be followed by ice cream at Lakeview, MG road and a chance to play in lifts at dad’s office. I still recall those movie going experiences because of such small pleasures. This is one of the reasons why I still remember watching movies in Puttanna in Jayanagar, Geetanjali in Malleshwara or Uma theatre. I got introduced to Rajni saar’s fandom in Kino, watching Arunachalam! Oh man, I can go on and on!

Cauvery memory

Talking specifically of Cauvery, for me, 2nd show movie meant only Cauvery. Watching movie at Cauvery was affordable compared to paying heavy parking fee at any of the Multiplexes. A torino (Remember “The Only” soft drink of yesteryears?) shared between me and my sister was, by far was more enjoyable compared to pre-booking nachos and Popcorn combos in PVR. My dad getting tickets to home and taking us was more exciting than today’s booking tickets online. I can never forget my first movie date disaster with my college crush **winks**. It was Hrithik Roshan starrer Aap Mujhe Acche Lagne Lage, was again in Cauvery theatre. When I drive through today’s eternally jammed Windsor-Mekhri stretch, I recall how Cauvery junction, without the BDA's engineering marvel called Magic box underpass, had traffic jams only when a movie show was just over and people would come out of theaters.. Be it Bollywood movie with Wife and friends or Puneet Rajkumar’s family entertainer with family, the preferred cinema hall was always Cauvery.

Cauvery Theater

Even to this day, all my school friends prefer individual theatres to watch a movie because we enjoy audience’s satirical comments in an individual theatre like Cauvery more than our corporate audiences’ silence in multiplexes. This post is incomplete without mentioning theatres of KG road. While Sagar played Hindi blockbusters like DDLJ and Hum Aapke hain Kaun, Tribhuvan played English flicks. Plaza, Adarsha, Swagath, Lido, Shanti, Pallavi, Kino, Nanda and so many other theatres appear in front of my eyes if I think of movie halls in Bangalore. Today, most of these have succumbed to the real estate roar.

Storylines and narratives in movies of today have changed, the city is changing and so are the movie watching experiences. From watching an early morning show for fans to Netflix and chill, a lot of things have changed. But the fact remains that in the necklace of Bangalore’s cosmopolitan entertainment, so many pendants are missing and many others are in the verge of getting lost.  Alas, a true Bangalorean will miss them forever!

The Return of the King

    It was just another lazy weekend and I was busy browsing OTTs, with an indecisive dilemma running an infinite loop on what to watch. Sudhindra ji’s call brought me back to senses and I realized I’d have, as usual, wasted at least 30 min trying to find something to watch that would interest me!

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing important. Watching something interesting” **duh**

“Tej, I need a help. Lakshman ji is injured and we need a known old face in the colony to accompany our folks to distribute Sri Rama’s Phala Mantrakshate that has arrived from Ayodhya.”

With zero determination, I said Okay”. Sudhindra ji described the Do’s and Don’ts for a few minutes and disconnected. With a subtle cry of confusion, I met the other RSS Karyakarta in my locality, who was assigned to distribute the Mantrakshate that has arrived from Ayodhya, to all the houses in the colony. I thought it would just be another “visiting my homies” event. But what happened over the next four hours was a boomerang of emotions! At the end of it, I was feeling totally elated with all the varied emotions people displayed. All the insightful interactions, the stories, their belief, betrayal they experienced back in 92 and how people have been waiting for the return of Sri Rama in Ayodhya; It gave me a real picture of how big and collectively congenial this event is for Indian Hindus! One thing was very evident - Bhaarata is witnessing its first mega divine event since 1947. Read on.

An uncle, on hearing why we are there, got fully teary eyed, wiped his tears and recalled the story of how he, in his mid-30s, dared collect funds in the Muslim majority neighborhood to buy 50 bricks and sent it to Ayodhya for the reconstruction of Sri Rama Mandira. He took us to his Pooja room to show us “how he has been reciting Rama taaraka mantra” every day for the last 32 years. I, for once, thought, I may not have not seen the pious disposition of humility of Shabari from Ramayana, but this uncle’s faith is no less. Faith can indeed move mountains!

Another entrepreneur that we visited enthusiastically said that he has declared 22^nd Jan, Monday, a holiday for his enterprise and wants all his employees to celebrate the return of Sri Ram Lalla to Ayodhya. He urged us to bunk offices that day and do a grand Pooja at home. He also said that a Live telecast of the Prana Pratishtapana event has been arranged in the temple’s hall and we can gather together to celebrate there in large numbers!

I could feel the restlessness in the old lady, who said, my sister in Chennai phoned that she has already received the mantrakashate and I was waiting for you guys since yesterday. The Old lady’s husband lauded our efforts of doing this and called it a divine work. We could see him feeling fetter when he expressed his inability of not being able to join us due to a knee surgery that he had undergone recently.

Another doctor couple explained how the estrangement in the neighborhood grew with other faiths post the babri masjid demolition incident and how their love thy neighbors failed to look at things beyond the lens of religion. He further said “It has been 32 years now, I don’t care anymore and will happily celebrate on 22^nd Jan, welcoming Sri Rama, come what may!” He said “A meteoric rise is inevitable after a fateful loss and we all will witness that rise now in our country”.

Some offered monetary help assuming we are going to Ayodhya on 22^nd for the Prana Pratishtapana event, which we casually declined, while others happily agreed to at least lamp a few diyas on the day of consecration of Sri Rama. Some also showed us the stock of firecrackers to be burnt on the consecration day. Of course, there were some Haider Hindus, who shooed us away without even being courteous, but it is not even worth talking about them here.

While it was not surprising to hear many showering laurels on the man who made it happen – Our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, I was indeed very surprised to see families taking selfies with us, clicking pictures of us handing over the phala mantrakshate to them, offering sweets, coffee, fruits and displaying all forms of sweet hospitality. I couldn’t recall when was the last time people waited, took selfies and lauded strangers visiting their houses. I was glad to read similar stories on Social media as well. I could clearly see that this Return of the king event is re-igniting the penultimate dreams of billions of Indians; restoring the Rama Rajya in Bhaarata!

Indulgence in this activity is something I was glad I did not miss and will definitely remember for the rest of my life!  I came back home with a sheer satisfaction of happily exclaiming #JaiSriRam more than 1000 times.

And the old lady’s words are still abuzz in my mind - Raama Banda... Rama Rajya noo baratte (Translates to “The king has returned. The core ideals of virtue, morality and justice will also return to India).

Cant stop recalling Tolkein’s Poem from the Return of the King

 "From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.”