The Gallant Bhaus from Majhas

The gallant Bhaus from macho Majha
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

Don’t go by their somewhat pejorative title: the “Bhaus” are as macho as they come. In fact there’s a theory that does the rounds of Punjab’s university campuses, where there is usually war between the “Kakaji” (Malwai) group and the “Bhau” (Majhail) group, that this epithet was coined by a disgruntled Kakaji.

You can spot a “Bhau” by the set of his square jaw — it’s their signature feature. Clothes, footwear, etc don’t matter, because they wear their attitude. Their ideals light up their gallant hearts, and their hearts; well naturally, they wear them on their sleeves. Flamboyant and quick tempered, they can be braggarts who love to show off but can morph into passionate crusaders and even visionary statesmen of which Kairon is a luminous example. Their tragic flaw is that they think with their hearts rather than their heads.

Majhails live in the shadow of the border. The daily strutting and shadowboxing of troops on either side, a la Wagah and Hussainiwala, sustains the fear psychosis of border life. This cocktail of fear and excitement imbues the Bhaus with the restlessness and craving for adrenaline, which is almost a part of their DNA. They have a fatal fascination for causes.

With so much angst, repressed energy and idealism at large its not surprising that almost every meaningful movement or cause has originated in Macho Majha. The Bhaus have always been the strong, zealous crusaders at the forefront of these, fanatically committed to whatever cause they subscribed to at the time.

Most adults living in Majha have seen the screaming sirens of at least two wars and the subsequent cold war ending with the Kargil faceoff. Many have seen their lands cut off in the process of cobra fencing by the BSF to secure the porous borders. Several have actually sneaked across the border and engaged in some clandestine smuggling of contraband and opium. Many a prosperous trader family has at least one Blackiya or smuggler to thank for the infusion of capital into the family business.

Land holdings in the Majha are shrinking and lack of meaningful investment in industry has meant that jobs are scarce. The young Bhaus seek education as a means to a professional career, preferably in the uniformed services.

Considering that even little ones as young as 10 are taught to hold a gun and aim straight at the Dushman, that’s not too difficult. Many an illustrious soldier of the Indian Army, police and the BSF can lay proud claim to a Majhail Bhau’s heritage.

Good food and drink is the key to the Bhaus’ simple rustic hearts. Bhaus are known to have stomachs lined with steel and can drink anyone under the table. Barrels of homebrewed liquor and contraband are washed down with gallons of lassi and milk the next morning.

But that’s back home in the Village. In the cities they bring business to the Paranthewala Dhabas. Not for them pizzas or KFC but Kake da Chicken. On campus, the Bhau is the Sir Galahad, offering to do chores for the fairer sex who are uniformly and respectfully addressed as Behenji (sister) and the men as Bhaji (brother).

This invokes the wrath of the Kakajis who have coined some dirty rhymes to jibe them.

The Bhaus stick together when out of their home territory but back home they can fell a brother over an argument. Tough, uncompromising yet conservative they are truly the Punjabi Knights, trying to preserve their own Camelot.

Love Stories by the Lake

Love stories by the lake
Punam Khaira Sidhu

WHAT is it about a water body that attracts lovers by the droves to its sides? Think of a love story and the picture that flashes on the mind’s eye is that of couples walking arm-in-arm by the Seine in Paris, the Thames in London, the Muskova in Moscow, and closer home, by the beautiful Sukhna.

The Sukhna Lake lies nestled in the foothills of the Shivaliks. For as the eye can see, there is uninterrupted greenery. At its outer edge, the sky vaults over to meet the lake at the horizon. The sky is like a huge concave mirror reflecting the waters of the lake, mostly a glorious palette of blue and gold. When it rains, the waters can turn muddy and the smooth surface of the water, becomes a mass of waves lashing the sides. As raindrops drizzle gently, an occasional rainbow, fractures the dull grey of the sky, connecting the heavens and the horizon.

The Sukhna by moonlight is spectacular. On a clear night, you can see the lights of Shimla, Barog and Kasauli in the hills. The streetlights cast long shadows over the waters. The stars spangled across the sky wink with silver reflections in the lake. There are hooded lights, mellow piped music and comfortable benches dotting the periphery of the lake. Do you wonder then that Love is definitely in the air by the Sukhna morning and night?

On my daily walk by the Sukhna, I dwell on the people thronging its sides. As I look around for the lovers by the lake, I mentally group them into four broad sociopsychological categories: the young uns, the newly-weds, the householders and the silver anniversarians.

The young uns; school and college going youngsters, are easily identifiable. Their interactions hurried, yet tentative, their eyes and heads bent furtively to avoid recognition, as they explore forbidden relationships. They are the ones who sit on the benches late into the night, their silences speaking louder than words ever can.

The newly-weds are identifiable from a mile. The young woman’s choora invariably a give away, as much as is the possessive air of her male escort. There is no furtiveness here; they are legally wed. Their gestures are open and articulate as they forge their conjugal bonds in the balmy ambience of the Sukhna.

The householders are the married couples where some years of togetherness have taken the shine off the conjugal bond. These couples are few and far between. Read at a psychological plane, love appears to wane with time and marriage. The men and women in this category come separately; there are hardly any couples. Spouses either do not have the time or the inclination, or else parental and professional responsibilities keep them apart. Couples in this age group, sitting or walking by the lake, are usually there to resolve differences. Husband’s counsel and assuage complaining wives, trying to defuse stresses generated by or in a joint family/family set-up. In either case most wives and husbands go about their constitutional separately.

The silver anniversarians are the older couples, most of whom would have celebrated or would be celebrating their silver anniversaries. Advancing years appear to yield to a comfortable companionship, a mutual inter-dependence. They walk together regularly and peacefully by the shimmering expanse of the Sukhna. They stop at intervals, to exchange greetings with their friends. There’s a warm aura of friendly companionship, an easy unspoken understanding between these couples where, as we put it in Punjabi, an akh da ishara is all it would take to convey the others intentions.

In this category falls my favourite love story by the lake. This silver grey haired couple drives up together in a vintage Fiat. The man puts out her wheel chair, then lifts her out of the car and settles her in it. He arranges her clothes, straightens her bindi and then wheels her out to the waiting vistas of the lake. Sometimes they just sit and talk, and other times he leaves her sitting there, watching the thronging crowds, while he completes a quick chukker. There’s radiance that surrounds them, a peace that transcends the noise, the bustle and the mundane realities of every day life. Its love at its best, “.....in sickness and in health, till death do us part”. Amen.

Guano: The Magic Ingredient

Guano: the magic ingredient
Punam Khaira Sidhu

IT’s the season of “guano” or bird droppings. A popular toothpaste starts the day with the bland colourless toothpaste presumably of its competitor. As the model sticks his bleary-eyed face out onto the balcony, there’s a “splat”, as a generous quantity of bird dropping lands somewhere. The message is that the competitor’s toothpaste is indistinguishable from bird dropping; not so its own, dressed up in technicolour stripes of blue and red.

A popular softdrink manufacturer spoofs its competitor’s campaign with a derisive mock-up of its kite-flying and paper boat racing multi-starrer commercial and looks skywards for rain but all they get is a “splat” of bird dropping “all taste no gyan” goes the byeline.

Cut to another cola war, where the protagonists in the advertisement add various ingredients to make the “grown-up drink” but find something missing in the taste until “splat” and the drink is proclaimed perfect with the addition of “toofani anda”.

Every season has its special leitmotif. The summer of 2002 will be remembered as the season of bird splat. Surely, a fitting symbol for falling standards in advertising and a Sensex that’s falling through the floor amidst dark threatening war clouds.

Before starring in Indian TV commercials, bird droppings have long been known to be an excellent fertiliser. In the Quichua language of the Inca civilisation, guano means “the droppings of sea birds”. On the rainless islands and coast of South American Peru, guano deposits collected rapidly. The Inca discovered their value as a rich nitrogenous fertiliser. Chosen caretakers were allowed access to this treasured soil fertiliser. Anyone disturbing the rookeries faced punishment by death.

Guano became a very important part of the development of agriculture in the USA. In fact, in 1956 the US Congress passed “an act to authorise protection to be given to citizens of the United States who may discover guano, under which any citizen of the United States was authorised to take possession of and occupy any unclaimed island, rock or key containing guano. The discoverers of such islands were entitled to exclusive rights to the deposits thereon, but the guano could only be removed for the use of the citizens of the United States.” Desperate measures, to ensure supplies of a valuable soil enricher for US farmers.

Today “guano” refers to both seabird and bat manure. Bat guano originates in the southwest deserts of the USA and Mexico. It is high in trace elements and nitrogen. Since it is so fast acting, it makes a great potting soil mixer. Today, those practicing Hydroponic agriculture are finding that guano and water are a natural alternative to chemical solutions. Evidently, there’s more to bird droppings than being the magic ingredient in cola wars. Perhaps we could offer Pakistan a lifelong supply of guano for a lasting package of peace.

Bureaucrats and Meetings

Always in a meeting
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

Call any bureaucrat on any given day, during office hours and chances are that the PA will tell you that the public servant is in a meeting. On one occasion, a friend recounts calling at hourly intervals to be given this stock reply every time. The business of government is evidently run through meetings and if the average babu is not attending one locally, he is off to Delhi. More business liaisons are forged in the Shatabadis connecting Delhi with State capitals than in offices. Political leaders, babus, all under one Shatabadi roof, break bread with businessmen, literatti and chateratti/causeratti, in the serene comfort of the Executive Class. Warmed croissants and paneer cutlets are downed over business plans and orange juice. Meanwhile, the all-important PA naturally informs the public that the ‘Sahib Bahadur’ has gone for yet another, yes you guessed it: ‘important meeting’! All this while, decisions affecting peoples’ lives and livelihood remain in animated suspension.

All-India heads of departments meetings are occasions for batch reunions and networking that can help plan great LTCs. Several days and many meetings are spent preparing for these meetings. It would be safe to say that if such a meeting were cancelled it would probably be more productive in terms of savings effected from the cancellation, than any item on the agenda. Savings would include expenses incurred on air fare and TA/DA claims, electricity, rentals for Vigyan Bhavan, mineral water, working lunches and the stationery: slip-pad + pen combo given away at these dos.

The latest set of meetings involved free travel, free board, lodging and local sightseeing, where the bureaucrats for a change, were placed higher in precedence to even the all powerful Ministers, i.e. as Election Observers. The results of the general elections were evidence that the observers played a vital role in ensuring that the elections were conducted both freely and fairly. But significantly, several airlines bottom-line should have received a healthy boost with EC’s “watchdogs” criss-crossing across the country to take observer meetings.

There is a Westminster joke that in meetings politicians take hours while bureaucrats take minutes. Hence back to home base, after the meetings, there are the “minutes” to record and circulate because, “He who keeps the minutes calls the shots”. Post meetings there are implementation and status reports to monitor, but only until the next ‘review’ meeting. It helps that bureaucrats work for an employer without a balance sheet. No other organisation has an inflating debit side without any corresponding addition to topline or bottomline: partly the reason why most States have yawning budgetary deficits.

Theodore Zeldin (1994) said that an opportunity is wasted every time a meeting has taken place and nothing has happened. But bureaucracy can make even business “best practices” come a cropper. That’s why, it is still believed that an opportunity is created everytime a meeting takes place!

Three Generations of women

Theme for a dream
Punam Khaira Sidhu

MY grandmother is 80. She lost my grandfather when she was 45 and has since raised and settled seven children, and 15 grandchildren. One might think that she has done her duty and deserves to live life on her own terms. But no; we expect so much of our elders. We expect them to devote their sunset years to helping us to achieve our goals, without ever asking if they too have a dream, pending fulfillment. My grandmother’s life is, selflessly, focussed around our lives. Her days are filled with prayers for our well being, she phones in to ask after all her children and grandchildren, and is always available to help us out of tight corners. Is she happy? I don’t know.

My mother is 60. After we, her three children, left home, she went through a severe case of the ‘empty nest syndrome’. She had been a housewife and kept a beautiful house and garden, and looked forward to my father’s retirement. My dad, thus far refuses to retire. He looks forward to going to work each morning with a bunch of vibrant young men and women. Of late, my mother has come to terms with her circumstances and her emotional needs. She is an active member of her several social clubs and kitties and often plays Mahjong from 9 to 5 with a set of ladies. The house, and garden, are efficiently run but not the focus of her life. She is working towards self-actualisation and tells us not to be judgemental of what she is doing. Dad was alarmed initially and told her that a woman’s place was at home and not as he put it in his Majhail slang, to wander like a guachi gaan (lost cow). Mom laughingly told him that she had always done what was expected of her and now it was time for her to do what she felt like. After all, isn’t that what he did?. Score one for my mom, the enlightened Indian woman awakening to her own aspirations. She deserves to have some fun. Is she happy? She’s getting there.

While observing the changing power equations in my paternal home, I saw the delightful movie Calendar Girls on a DVD loaned from the British Library. The movie, is based on the true story, of the residents of Kettlewell, a small village in the English County of Yorkshire. It tracks the efforts of the local WI (Women’s Institute) members to raise funds for a leukaemia charity by posing for an artistically nude calendar. The movie is heartwarming as it details how the endeavours of the women impact on their families and relationships. The women beautiful in their wrinkles and pearls and far from perfect bodies, find themselves unlikely celebrities. They are even invited to Hollywood, receive lucrative endorsements and collect over 578,000 pounds to fund a new wing of their local hospital and leukaemia research. Later they are back to WI’s boring routine and politics. But each one fulfilled with their fantastic achievement and the fun they had doing it.

After seeing the movie I recommended it to my mother who also works with a cancer charity. I also laughingly suggested that the volunteers could perhaps raise more money through something a little more adventurous than selling greeting cards. The dressing down I received still has my ears burning red.

Whether they recognise their own aspirations and follow them my grandmother and mother are my real ‘Calendar Girls’. My generation would not have tasted the fruits of education, careers and financial freedom without their steadfast support. One can only exhort them from my privileged position to go ahead and paint a picture or learn to sing or dance or even to swim or sky-dive or just go do what they want and have some fun doing it. Because in the end as the Yorkshireman who died of leukaemia and to whom Calendar girls is dedicated said, "Women are like flowers, every stage of their growth more beautiful than the last but the last phase always the most glorious, before very quickly they all go to seed...

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On the Wings of Family and Faith

On the wings of Family and Faith
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

It is not unusual to have rambunctious arguments in progress, in a home with one teenager and one 11-year old. Real acrimony is generated when I ask my young ones to assist me with some religious custom. My sons usually want an answer to what its nexus is with their everyday existence. They will usually retort, “Mom, Science tells us there is no God.” “Know why India cannot take her rightful place despite all the IITs and IIMs and riding the BPO wave? …..Because our socialisation drags us right back into the dark ages with puja and path.” “Where else will you find a society that worships machines (Vishkarma) rather than productivity? Having expended his teenaged angst, my son will usually do as he’s told but in weathering that little storm, I reinforce two important Indian values, family and faith in the almighty.

In time, the boys will appreciate that it is not the degrees or IQs of the doctors, engineers and the ubiquitous NRIs that has scripted many a “India Shining” global success story, but the EQ ie the Emotional Quotient of these Indians. EQ rooted in the time honoured Indian values of family and faith imparts the winning edge to all these players. Witness the Gujaratis, Marwaris and Banias’ legendary business families and the unique Indian business model: the family owned, professionally managed, corporation. Family and faith are the “It” Indian values.

Prayer binds the Indian Family. Much before the dramatic Tele-Mandirs glittering with icons or the ‘Tulsi worship’ in Balaji Telefilms sumptuously crafted ‘Saas’ serials there was, in most homes, a small mandir placed on a cupboard shelf or a tiny puja room. The family gathered in the morning and evening to pray. It was a ritual for some and a deeply felt expression of faith for others. But it was a practice that set the tone for the day. The family collected together, automatically reinforcing family ties. Arguments, tantrums just melted away as everybody joined in the recitation of the holy scriptures followed by “tilak” or “prasad”.

Even as the Left parties dwell on the absence of a security net for Indians, it would not be out of place to observe that life even below the Poverty Line in India is infinitely preferable to that in a country with superior development indicators. Employment, Roti, Kapda, Makaan, and capital for business, are all provided by the family. A family, where children have both parents, the sage influence of grandparents is a security blanket that no welfare state can provide.

Even as a new government takes over the reins, increasingly the average citizen is coming to terms with the realisation that if civil society is to flourish and we are to check the corruption associated with an all-pervasive State machinery, then every Indian has to rely on himself : Self-reliance rather than “Sarkar” is the secret to “India Shining”. And self-reliance is the temple built on faith and family.

Kool Kakajis from Hot Malwa

Kool Kakajis from Hot Malwa
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

LIKE the “Yuppies” and the “Puppies” the “Kakajis” are a very typical genre of the Malwa region of Punjab. You can spot them a mile off, tall, bearded and clad in snowwhite “Pathanis” paired with Nike or Adidas open-toed sandals. They sport bling-bling gold “Karas” and the very latest in toys for boys; iPods, Handhelds and Mobiles.

The colour of their turbans is usually indicative of their political affilitiation but that’s only until they don golf caps to tee off at the Golf Club.

Sartorial preferences apart, they have a very distinct lifestyle too. They are raised on vast farms in the Malwa heartland, in large joint families, by surrogate Mothers-cum-Nannies who, usually survive several generations and call both the Grandfather and the Grandson by the same euphemistic epithet: “Kakaji”.

Raised in large joint families, Kakajis are the quintessential boys who never grow up. Responsibility is dispersed; hence its not a sought after trait. Life is simple and easy as only inherited wealth and largesse can make it. Schooling is typically in the hill boardings, Sanawar and Doon being particular favourites.

It could be followed by the occasional degree in Commerce or Law, usually in the royal division. Education is not a priority, but a certain savoire faire and some old school ties and networking skills are desirable. After all, someone has to manage all those “killas” (acres) back in Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktasar et al.

Kakajis are usually into a lot of male bonding rituals such as “Shikar”, cockfights and “kabutar” (pigeon) flights etc. While they may not actually get down and dirty, they are responsible for introducing some of the most enlightened and modern agricultural practices in the country. They also display a natural flair for affairs of the State and that’s where the colour of their turbans and their old school-tie affiliations come in rather handy and make politics the next logical progression.

They typically have three homes, one back on the Farm, one in Chandigarh, where the wives take turns to attend to the children’s education or even just catch up with the city life and, of course, the mandatory summer cottage in the hills, to escape the vile Malwa “loo”.

Their cars now truly reflect both their preferences and bank balances. MUVs for the farm and the long dusty commutes from the Malwa heartland, and spiffier cars for city driving. They switch with facility between “thet” (colloquial) Malwai,Punjabi peppered with the choicest expletives to the Queen’s English, each language spoken with the perfect accent. But the same proficiency cannot necessarily be attributed to their written word in either language.

This is the season when the Kakajis flock to Chandigarh. You can see them in their signature “Whites” on the Sukhna Lake, in multiplexes, and in the clubs, accompanied by their little Kakajis who are back home for the

summer vacation and enroute to the Cottage in the hills or for the Sanawar/

Doon Founder’s Week. They are gentlemen of leisure who have travelled the world, but their food of choice is still “Kukkad”, whether its served up as butter chicken with “Nans” or on pizza a la Pizza Hut. So when you hear them call out to each other as “Baiji”, you’ll know it’s the Kakajis at work @ killa.network.