The African Safari

Having grown up on "Chander Pahaar", how can I not romanticise about Africa? Alright, it is South Africa, but it is the continent that matters and so since I am in the continent right now, how could I go back without doing a Safari. Ok, it is not Kruger, but it is a game safari for heaven's sake! 

The Aquila Game Reserve is a two-hour drive from Cape Town along the Karoo Mountains in the most picturesque Renosterveld and Mountain Fynbos landscape close to the Touws River. This private game reserve is a resort with multiple options, doing a day safari being just one of them and with a high probability of meeting the big 5 - Lion, Leopard, Rhinoceros (both black and white species), Elephant, and Cape buffalo! Well, I was short of time and hence, a day safari is all I could manage and what a day it turned out to be! And no, I did not get to see all the 5 but whatever I saw was a "first" for me!
 

How do I write about it? A safari is hardly an experience to put into words, but yes, having done the same back home at the Corbett National Park, the one difference that I could very easily decipher was the distinct difference in the landscape. The region is a part of a semi-desert natural region with stretches of the Savannah grasslands. This meant lesser tall trees and more bushes or shrubs. Strange how the giraffes survive here without being able to stretch their necks further up! Well, as we realized and as the guide shared, they stretch their long legs to bend their necks down, resulting very slowly to shorter heights. 

The safari took about 3 hours and we travelled through various parts of the reserve area encountering Hippos, Ostriches, Rhinos, Elephants, Giraffes, Elands, Zebras, Wildebeests, Springboks, and or couse Lions. And no, I had never seen an untamed free lion from this close, EVER! 

And God, it was cold! I mean, yes I know it is winter but how the hell does it get soooooooooo cold! So, if you ever plan a winter visit to South Africa with a safari planned to any of the reserves, be prepared! The wind can kill! 

The best part was something I noticed on my way out. Incidentally, they randomly put up flags from various countries along with the South African flag and for some strange reason, the Indian tricolour was fluttering that day! Well, once an Indian, always an Indian. And to think this was the weekend before Independence Day! The little joys of life!

Johannesburg – An introduction to South Africa

Well, here I am, and it has already been a week! Seems liek yesterday when I was rushing to complete my handovers and pack my bags! And what a week it has been in this beautiful and intriguing country!

We are a group of IBMers selected for the month long Corporate Service Corps assignment in Cape Town, South Africa, officially known as CSC#ZA20! So, we all finally met in person on Saturday morning after three months of having met each other virtually! And as it is generally the case with every deployment group, it was like "hey, long time! How have you been?" It was like meeting people not for the first time, but just after a while! We have a most amazing team and we cover 4 out of the 7 continents (Well, Africa, because we are already there, Antartica, because ...well, I am not sure if IBM has an office there!). One Autralia or New Zealander, and we could have them all! And what is most fascinating is that we bring together a cumulutaive of over 170 years of experience, as Sydney, IBM South Africa's Corporate Citizenship Manager pointed out at the kick off with the stakeholders.
 

You can’t be in Johannesburg and not go to the Apartheid Museum and Soweto! So, before catching our flight for Cape Town on the evening of 12^th August, we all went there for a trip and what a trip it was! On our way, we crossed the Calabash FNB Stadium, renovated for the 2010 Soccer World cup. Interestingly the stadium is shaped like a Calabash bowl used widely among the local people of Gauteng to brew local beer. It even has the froth right on top! 

The Apartheid Musuem is a must do for anyone who visits South Africa! Every exhibit and every structure out there tells a tale of the journey of a race and the struggle an entire nation went through to eliminate racial discrimination. There has been and will always be societal discrimination in every society because we civilized people essentially form our own cohorts based on a lot of economic and social conditions. But to turn an entire population into second or even third-class citizens based on their ethnicity and skin colour, is sheer CRIME!

South Africa, like many other colonized countries, managed to put years and years of sacrifice and protests to be able to change the condition. And the Apartheid Museum is a storehouse of all of those protests and a race’s unputdownable effort to prove their true claim to the country! Led by one man, a country managed to emerge from the darkness of an oppressed, exploited colony to one of the most thriving economies in the sub-continent! Ah! Madib’ omde (Xhosa for Hail! The tall Madiba!)

The next phase of our day tour took us to Soweto (another must visit if you are in Jo’burg). Established in the 1880’s with thousands of people from around the world and South Africa, flocking to the new town offering labour and money to add to the “Gold” industry, more than 50% of the population in Soweto is black, mostly living in multi-racial shanty towns around what had been the actual “GOLD” mines! Located in the Gauteng (most appropriately meaning “place of gold”) province, Soweto could be projected as the face of New South Africa, caught between prosperity and squalor on one hand and poverty and misery on the other hand. Known widely for the Soweto Uprising in 1976 when the community rose against the government’s policy to enforce education in Afrikaans instead of the native tongue. And it is right here in Soweto, on the Vilakazi Street that you come across the houses of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It is known to be the only street that has been home to two Nobel Laureates.

It is not really easy to stop talking about either Mandela or Soweto when you come to know more about the history and the society here in South Africa. But I can only write this much for the interest to sustain!

The first lesson...

My son, who loves cricket to the point of obsession, recently had his first tryst with the real field, far away from the secured nets, simulated learning conditions, and friendly matches. His first real experience of the competitive cricket match, that was to teach him that being a player is not about playing IPL matches and success, but about toil and hard work. 

I have been pretty much in love with cricket (and cricketers) since childhood, as my undying love for Sourav Ganguly proves. I even stopped watching cricket for quite some time after he retired. Thankfully good sense soon prevailed and I was back in front of the TV to watch the game that so fascinates millions in our country and across the world. My brother, a deaf cricketer, has represented India in cricket from his team and has been known, as long as he played active cricket, as a "mighty good player". So, when my son's interest geared towards cricket, I was a happy soul. 

And he, true to his passion, has worked hard and in a pretty short span has managed to catch the eyes of the coaches as a potential future player. We were proud parents when we were told that he is to play a match on the 30th April and would have to get his documents for age proof. Having been familiar with the cricketing circuits while my brother was a player, me and my husband were super proud of our little boy being chosen to represent his club. After all, he is the youngest to be selected for the playing XI! I had of course spoken to him about how to deal with it even if he is not in the playing XI! I know he would have been devastated, but he was told me "So what if I am the 12th man. It is also a type pf learning to sit and watch a match". I am proud my son can say that! 

Well, fortunately for him, he was there in the playing XI, and like a proud doting mother, I captured moments of his bowling and batting (not that he emerged a hero in any of those, but he was playing in the first XI!!!), thank god for high powered camera mobiles!

The first match started off well for their team but was washed out due to rain. It was the second one that taught him his first lesson in being a sportsperson - you win some, you lose some, but unless you lose, you will never realize the true worth of a win. Yes, their team lost. Not a disastrous loss but one that would probably haunt them for a while. This isn't a match report, so I wont go into details, but they lost because winning friendly matches against weaker teams is hardly success.

Rhiju was heart broken and was silently crying at the end of the match and I had a hard time trying to make him understand that he alone could not have changed the reality unlike what he has seen on the TV. Looking at matches on the TV and seeing cricketers pulling off last minute wins with majestic shots was his notion of a match! I was glad though! You might wonder whether I am normal, but to be honest, I did not want him to be over confident. I did not want him to think that he is too good for his shoes. Like all mothers, I too want my son to win, to be able to fulfill his dreams, to be successful in what he wants to achieve, but not easily and not by becoming over confident. I want him to learn that the path to success is not smooth and you can't reach there in a day.

My process of making him a better sportsperson and a better human being started with the match that he could not win and I know I, along with my son, have a long long way to go! Rhiju, luckily, has started to realize that the road is long and arduous and not exactly an easy one. I am hoping this will make him a better human being, not just a good sportsperson. I am hoping it will make him a team player, not an individual sportsman, for it is in learning to be a part of a team, no matter how insignificant your role, that we truly emerge as true professionals. I love the way the team huddles after the fall of every wicket. I love the way they stand by each other and not blame each other, if one of them fails. I love what Rhiju is learning and the way he is learning!

Somehow, in today's world of rapidly decreasing tolerance levels, I hope to teach him a bit of humility and tolerance, even if that does not make him a "public" hero! He will be my hero, and a true one when time comes, if he can manage to inculcate these smaller intricacies of life and be more tolerant, more open, less biased, and better human being! 

Congratulations! You are dead!

Dead! Yes, you read it right! You are dead! I am dead...we, as a race are dead! Dead and decayed! I write today not to complain, not to crib, not to vent my anger...but to vent my disappointment for not being able to do anything about anything! To vent my fear of being dead! Dead is what we are or what we are fast going to be!

How else do we justify a mother smothering her two-month-old girl child to death and stuffing her in a washing machine? A MOTHER! For heavens' sake! And we were being bothered about bus conductors, PT teachers, school staff, uncles, stepfathers, mother's boyfriends! A species where a mother kills her child for being born a girl... and we are still claiming to be alive? We are still sending beautiful "Good Morning" messages to each other over WhatsApp...We are still going out to watch movies...We are still going out to party and eat and drink and be merry!

"Well, you are getting a little dramatic" you might tell me...Life can't stop because one deranged woman behaves abnormally! And it hardly means the rest of us should give up on life and start mourning! But I don't mourn the dead infant. I mourn the mother if I can call her that, whose soul is dead! I mourn the dead souls of the two "teachers" who did not hesitate to satiate their lust by sexually abusing a 4-year-old child! I mourn the decayed soul of the man who chokes a harmless mentally challenged child by force-feeding her milk at 3 am in the morning! I mourn the man who ruthlessly opens fire at gatherers in a church for no real reason! I mourn them for they are and what I can be any day...after all, I am but a part of the same milieu! 

Our souls are dead! We have become so hateful, so vengeful and so shallow in what we do, what we think, how we think that the soul can no longer be held responsible for our being! 

We are all zombies...going about our work, our lives, our pleasures, our joys but devoid of any capability to actually feel any of it. How can the dead feel, after all! And we raise our angry voices wanting to punish "sick" "inhuman" people! Where did these sick inhuman people come from? From amongst us! We, the educated, ambitious, selfish race that is so proud of controlling nature! 

Some insane thought makes me feel if this is nature's revenge on us...by making us more and more deranged, selfish and sick! Somehow, this entire human civilisation of today reminds me of Midas...the way his ambition and greed had made him lose everything he held dear, we are doing the same. And one day, even the air we breathe is going to be so full of filth emanating from our hateful and vengeful souls that we will physically fall down dead! The day the offenders, the ones giving verdicts, the judges, the victims will all fall down dead for the final time! Never to rise again...never to be able to hurt or kill again! 

Ramblings

You know, I am weird, at times extremely so, when I stare at people in busses or in public places because the face or the personality pulls me strongly towards it...I want to know what this person does when he or she is not playing the "role" of a "perfect whatever" that we are all expected to be. What does the person eat? What does he or she like to wear? What are his or her interests? But most importantly I want to know if a situation comes for him or her to stand up for something, would the person be able to do that? Because that is what we are missing nowadays, almost in every sphere - The culture of standing up for something, the culture of expressing an opinion, the culture of having an opinion! 

Oh sorry, perhaps I am wrong! We DO express our opinion now...and we have a huge platform - the Social media! Use Facebook, use Twitter (Sorry I am limited to knowledge about just these two) and you will have a following that you never thought you could have, had you spoken about it somewhere! 

Having an opinion is fashionable. You need to express your solidarity with everything from the Indian Economy to Priyanka Chopra's disrespectful dress while meeting the much revered Prime Minister of India. And we have to either be on this side or on that - there is no space for a moderated view of things.  

In fact, expressing an opinion has never been easier! We have a huge list of topics ranging from economy to culture to movies to religion to just about anything under the sun. All we have to do is to select the correct category and then take our pick from a spread of "opinions" thereby determining our stand. If you are worried sick about the credibility of these option of "opinion" offered, rest assured. Each topic and their corresponding "opinion" are carefully prepared by specialist groups of people employed to offer the most comprehensive set of "opinion". Now since these are well articulated and supported by visuals and videos, they are sufficiently equipped to influence and convince us about the absoluteness of our choice. 

So, we have to have an opinion about everything starting from Ryan International School to how handsome Justin Trudeau is! We have a say about whether or not Deepika Padukone should be beheaded for playing a role that is supposed to be maligning the image of a fictitious queen from some part of Rajasthan. We have a say in why Mamata Banerjee wore chappals while walking down to the Vatican while Mother Theresa was being anointed a saint. We have a say about whether or not Sonia Gandhi deserves to be a politician in a country she had internalised years ago. Hell, we even have a say about whether or not Rahul Gandhi is matured enough to be a politician!!! We have a say about how India could have played the Sri Lanka matches more tactically to manage and win all of them, without playing a single match in all our lives or never having stepped into a field. We have a say about how to handle the "enormous amount of black money" that has been generated thanks to DeMo(di)netization. 

If there is one question that bothers me about all this "say" on social media, it is about the ability of regular people like you and me to "think"! We might all be running against time, but thinking is perhaps not so dependant on time after all!  Could we actually think about "forming" an opinion, not picking one from a tailor-made set of options? And most importantly, could we stop being rigid about the "opinion" we select to the extent of being fanatically inclined to trash all other views. Could we actually try and be a bit more "open" to others' opinion? Could we try to be a bit more humane?

Diary of an exasperated mother - Part 2

And so as soon I enter the house, the lady taking car of my little one starts about how the helper in the bus complained about him having hit somebody and how he has instead of saying sorry to the other kid has turned his face around and said "Bolbo na"!!!!!

GOD! How I feel like picking up my laptop bag again and going back to the the stupid office and stay there the night long! I have at least three deliverables tomorrow, and calls till 9 starting in another 20 minutes. Boys have fights all the time, so what????? And to top it all, tomorrow I have to take him to the bus stop and face the kid's obsessed parent who would be out to prove that their child is an angel! So I try to look stern and angry and call for him (who is conveniently hiding in the other room, knowing jolly well what he is to get once I am home) and very reluctantly he comes and stands in front of me, eyes down. And here is the conversation that follows...

"Did you punch Ainesh"?

"Ami toh...ami toh...Ainesh na..."

"Did you hit him or no? Yes or no"

"Yes" (very slowly)

"And why? Didn't I ask you not to hit anybody the last time when they told me you hit a girl?"

"Sorry Ma" 

"What Sorry? And why did you say 'bolbo na' when she asked you to say sorry to him?"

Silence.

"I want to know why you hit him and why you refused to say sorry"

"Sorry Ma. Galti ho gayi. Maafi de de na maiya"...

Not in Bangla, not in broken english, my son throws at me a hindi dialog in perfect grammar, picked right out of Krishna and Kans, his favourite DVD. 

And what do I do to control my anger mixed with the laughter at the way he handles me and my temper? Sit and stare as he comes, gives me a hug, a kiss on both cheeks and says "Kal Sorry bole debo, pakka promise"...

Oleander Girl - A Journey to Remember

I have always been a big fan of Chitra BD's books. I just love her style of writing - subtle yet extremely complex; descriptive, often to the point of being easy to visualize and yet shrouded with the human characteristic elements. When I read about Oleander Girl being on offer, it took less than a moment to decide on buying it. And there it was delivered to me within a day and in perfect shape with all the pages intact, very good condition (it was definitely not a defective copy) and a wonderful cover.

It took me about 4 days to complete the book. And...my respect for Chitra BD increased manifold. True, she has a style, a typical flow, a whole lot of complexities in her style of writing, but isn't all that present in each and every one of us? The dualities, the contradictions, the extreme emotional challenges that she subjects each of the characters to, and of course the very typically "Kolkata" flavour, with a dash of America. The beginning, the description of the house appears similar to her presentation of the Chatterjee Household from Chitra BD's other major book Sister of My Heart. But that is as much similarity as can be drawn between anything written by Chitra BD or by anybody else.

Korobi (A very beautiful and unconventional name to start with) is a child bought up sheltered by her strict grandfather, Bimal Roy, a lawyer by profession and almost by nature. With a knowledge that her father died before child birth and her mother during it, Korobi grows up, to find one fine day that he father was not the man she had known to be and might not be be dead at all. He was probably an American, nestled merrily in America, oblivious to his daughter. Urged by her desperate bid to find the person to whom her dead mother had so lovingly written a half finished letter, Korobi takes a chance of her life and sets out for America to find a man about whom she knows two facts - His name is Rob and he was in Barkeley around the time Anu, her mother, was there.

Her grandmother Sorojini, a stoic lady, who spent all her years in accordance to her husband's wishes, almost believing that he cannot be wrong, ethically at least has sheltered Korobi all her life till Bimal Roy expires suddenly and leaves her with a host of challenges including monetary ones caused by a history of hidden skeletons in the cupboard. It is after Korobi leaves for America that Sorojini is left all alone to face a bundle of troubles left to her including handling Rajat, Korobi's fiance, out of sheer love for the boy and chalking out a probable rescue plan for her husband's ancestral home.

Rajat Bose, a young and dashing almost-lost-and-came-back-on-track man who is fighting against all odds to make himself worthwhile to his family and to the girl he has found to be his good luck charm fights ghosts from the past, his jealousies and insecurities concerning Cara (his own personal name for Korobi), a failing family fortune, and his own self. His parents Jayasree and Shanto Bose are a rich-and-yet-aware-of-their-realities couple who swing through their own crises to support their children and their decisions. Pia, Rajat's little sister is a delight to everyone around, including Sorojini.

Chitra BD maneuvers deftly through the ups and downs in the lives of each of the characters mentioned above and also of side characters like Vic (Assistant and nephew of the American detective employed by Korobi to search for her father), Desai (The American Detective), Asif (The family chauffeur of the Bose's who regards Pia as his younger sister and loves her as much), Shikha (Mrs. Bose's personal secretary - in more ways than official), Sonia (Rajat's ex-girlfriend), Rob Lancey (Korobi's lost and finally found father), Mitra (The man taking care of the Bose's American Art Gallery), Bhattacharya (the shrewd and conniving politician who suddenly has a change of mind thanks to Sorojini and the old and famous Durga Mandir at the Roy Residence) and a host of other small characters. And what has always been appealing in Chitra BD's writing in the typically Bengali and Kolkata flavour that she retains in some way or the other. It never appears forced, nor does it ever appear incongruous. 

Thanks Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni for a wonderful experience.