I was leaving a building in Hyderabad’s Gachibowli area, the centre of Hyderabad’s outsourcing/ software world, with a Microsoft campus as nice as their headquarter in Redmond, Washington.    My day job at the time involved selling financial software to companies that did outsourcing work for investment banks (as discussed earlier in Part 1).  “Leave immediately” said the man I had gone to meet. He wasn’t throwing me out. He was telling me to rush hearing what time my flight back was. Cyberabad, as Gachibowli is apparently called, looked far nicer than Houston in terms of modern glass buildings, which might appear awful to a western eye, but to us on the wrong end of history when it comes to economic progress, a massive IBM and Accenture sign, instead of a goat on the outskirts of our cities, makes us proud. The roads leading in and out of them however are another story. That is, they aren’t there. There’s something in its place but it wouldn’t fit the traditional definition of “road”. Hence, his advice to flee to the airport with time in hand.

As I was waiting for the Thyssen Krupp elevator (a Dutch elevator company which seemed to be enjoying a boom thanks to our outsourcing), I looked at the names of other outsourcing companies.  BritMed, I assumed did something with prescriptions of old British people and I was comforted by the fact that a lonely retiree in Swansea would have a calm Andhra voice telling him what pills to take every night. There was ClubMed Help, which I assumed were packaged holiday makers screaming about missing a ferry or getting the wrong salad in a cruise buffet. DriveSeattle which I assumed were lost outdoorsy Americans from Seattle on their satellite navigation devices returning from camping holidays trying to solve the dual issue of guessing where the SatNav helper was and trying not to drive into a bear. Another said International Date Line, which had nothing to do with the actual nautical thing but I believe was some sort of dating helpline for London singles. I think if you were unhappy with a date or you believe the person lied on a website, you called this line to complain and patient citizens of my country heard Anglican romance woes and I guess either promised a refund or sent you photographs of cuter people.

All of these, it seemed to me, were fairly as expected.  Till I saw a sign on a glass door in what had to be the smallest office on that floor with a hand-written insignia. It read “Save American Lives. Interview today”.

I had to go in.

It was a small little room. Reminded me of a mid 80’s Air India waiting room in a town like Bagdogra or Agartala.

Seated, was a large-ish man who looked like a cross between a Punjabi army colonel and a secretary of Bangalore Turf Club.  He also had on a 70’s cravat (floral pattern), the deep smell of a forgotten YSL cologne and the kind of moustache only seen nowadays on retired people who own parrots.

He assumed I was there for the interview.

“I am the CEO” he said. “Come”.

He held up another hand-written piece of paper that said CEO.

Without warning, he broke into this monologue. I should explain the accent which I can best describe as American, only in the specific circumstance where America’s greatest actor Mr. Sylvester Stallone and our greatest actor Mr. Rajnikanth’s American accents were meshed in a blender. Which I foresee happening soon enough.

“See all these other call centres are doing what? Nothing.  Some phone call here, there, nowhere. Now what am I doing? Ask. No I will tell you. I am telling Americans who are going to kill themselves, don’t do it. Talk to me. That’s my company, SaveFirst. I have applied for an ISO certification and patent in US is pending also. See, the concept is this- if everything can be outsourced, why not saving American lives? I am going there this week, to US, as soon as I find a good candidate. Over there, it will take some convincing, I will get a customer. Marketing is my core niche. What is there in this actually? I used to be in home appliance repair outsourced on phone and that’s a problem area because repairing cannot be done on the phone and all these Samsung and all have their own call centres. So limited expansion. But with life and death? It is limitless. And now look at America? What is America? With all these Lehman Brothers and all. You think everyone will live? No. Some poor, some depressed, what is the first thing they do over there? Take a tablet? Next thing, call suicide helpline. Me, I am saying, I will do suicide helpline but from this office. Cut the costs by 80%. All those PhD’s, doctors, nurses, shrinks, whatever, fire them. I will say to them- what is your concern? Saving lives no? As long as that happens, you are fine. Then why keep all these things there?  Send them here. If driving help can come, travel agency and credit card and all, why not this? What do we not have that they have to tell someone, eh don’t be depressed, don’t die. Nothing. We have it all.  English is all you need to save lives no. We have that.  I’m telling you man, billion dollar business, we are sitting on a goldmine. This is the next Infosys. You can go home today and tell you parents you are the first employee of a new Infosys. So you have graduated?”

I made some feeble apology and ran. Not because I thought he was mad (which he clearly was) but because I was also mesmerized enough to buy into his argument. And more worryingly, I may have ended up working for him.  It seemed to me, insanity aside, he had a strong claim. That is, if morality were taken out of the equation in building a country entirely entrepreneurial trying to shed any vestiges of shy Gandhian socialism, this could be as valid a business idea as the Ford Motor Car or Tata Steel. That if we ignored the appalling deeper meaning of what he was suggesting and took it for what it was, why couldn’t the deeper psychological fears of a person be outsourced just like one would a petty clerical problem like car insurance or cell phone providers?

It raised all sorts of brilliant questions I didn’t have answers to. Was this man our new India version of The Great Gatsby? Was he what happens when you take Lalit Modi (the brilliant entrepreneur who fled the nation earlier that month), the teachings of business guru Arindam Chaudhury (whose books were on his table) and push their entrepreneurial drive a bit further than allowed? Clearly, when one looks at the building of a new India, a fantastic mix of brash optimism, carefully orchestrated oligarchy, the nearly superhuman manoeuvring around an established bureaucracy, ingenuity elevated to art, one can’t not think of 1920’s Fitzgerald’s America, where, as Woody Allen explained in Zelig, “The morals were loose, the money to be chased, the rhythms syncopated, the booze flowing and your reality far crazier than your dreams”.

I missed my flight but I couldn’t get this man out of my head. And his call centre. And if it became a success or a failure, how he’d look back and reflect. I wanted to create a business motivation book written as he saw the world and what we were living through. And through it, his philosophy, not just on life, business, money but something far more difficult that he claimed to stake everything on. The human soul.

1-888-Dial-India was my attempt to understand him, his ideas and the nation he wanted to build. And to see if in some way, it resembles the real nation we inhabit.  That comparison is left to people far cleverer than myself – you.

 A critic describes Anuvab Pal’s latest novel – 1888 Dial India- as
“A very funny satire on inspirational business books”.
It is  available here -
http://www.flipkart.com/books/8184001584

And reviewed here
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/1888-dial-india-about-india-and-its-follies/187944-40-101.html.

An excerpt here -
http://www.firstpost.com/ideas/the-call-centre-of-last-resort-1-888-dial-india-102227.html

And here is what Anuvab has to say about writing this book… 

There seems to be a lot written about outsourcing. Which is good. We are apparently leading the world in repairing things, giving driving directions, solving credit card logistics, even helping the West with personalized butler services (the English tradition has to continue somehow). Some people say this is not very good for new India’s service classes. That it creates essentially the telecom equivalent of the assembly line worker and leaves them disoriented, without skills, staring out at 3 am into a flood of Gurgaon neon.  People criticizing a very public economic phenomenon are also good.  That’s two good things.

The entrepreneurs who’ve built these companies, and now regular ambassadors of new India’s rise at various “Ideas conferences” on CNBC, defend by saying, we wouldn’t be growing at 8% if it weren’t for the west’s housekeeping work. That without their companies it would be the 1980’s all over again which sort of looked like this; Millions of college graduates lining up for a few thousand government jobs, fleeing to any American university, cast politics, or political manoeuvres  generally for all jobs, the far more difficult meritocratic goal of being IIT or IIM graduates which would lead to a marketing manager’s job in a multinational consumer durables company like Hindustan Lever (the ultimate) which in practicality translated to living in villages without electricity studying the soap buying habits of drunk farmers. And occasionally, accidentally, stopping inter-cast gang warfare.   It’s easy to see thus why these entrepreneurs are also good.

This is, however, not an essay on new Indian entrepreneurism. Pick up any business magazine, they write it much better and put photographs of people standing in front of whatever they are entrepreneurs of, smiling.

When I got out of reasonably middle-of-the-road college in the US in the late 90’s, I got  a job on Wall Street researching companies and filling out excel spreadsheets with financial data on that company. I couldn’t get that job today. As in, not because I am not smart enough (I wasn’t back then either) but because that job doesn’t exist in New York anymore. It exists in Bangalore, Gurgaon, Vashi, Powai, Salt Lake or any other satellite Indian town with glass and steel buildings, built on the outsourcing business, essentially functioning as a Wall Street back office. If the Occupy Wall Street Movement is to have any impact, they should begin where Wall Street’s numbers live now, which is Sector 5, Haryana for example. The only irony here is that everyone I worked with in New York seemed to be Indians and everyone that the outsourced jobs have gone to, are also Indians.  So for all the talk of American job losses, what I could see, in my limited financial outsourcing space, were job losses for us then back to us. Some of my US colleagues are doing the same job today in Powai and Gurgaon and Bangalore etc., phrases like “let’s cross the t’s and dot the i’s” being their only differentiator from the locally educated.

Most Americans I graduated with wanted to travel the world, smoke marijuana, listen to Dave Mathews, write a screenplay, then think about life. In hindsight, a far better career plan than joining an Investment bank three days after graduation or saying things like “I would like to be an investment banker” when no one had any idea what that meant. Except moving to New York City (ergo, nightlife, girls and such) which everyone wanted to do. Today, thanks to outsourcing, even that’s gone. I don’t see too many people saying “I want to be an investment banker and I am really looking forward to my new cubicle on Hosur Road”.

Being a kind of job nobody likes to do but it pays brilliantly, its perhaps no surprise that the essential core of the subprime mortgage crisis were bankers not studying the loans they were packaging. It’s not their fault. They were far too busy planning the Christmas India holiday, hoping to get laid at a wedding, and already thinking of ways to extend the vacation by killing off a relative (grandfather was always a favourite). I tried that once (my real grandfather had passed away when my father was three), the clever British man I worked for turned around and said, “You’re not the first Indian whose worked for me you know”. I have no idea why I wrote this paragraph or what it has to do with my new book.

Oh yes, outsourcing. Financial outsourcing. Again, just like credit cards, driving directions, switching phone companies, package holidays, same sort of thing, only not bothering British/American people on the phone, but doing complex Microsoft excel mathematics for Investment Banks. At half the cost. The essential idea being the same- cheaper labour. This correlates to the essential worry of outsourcing entrepreneurs in an increasingly expensive India, of cheaper labour in other countries. It takes days for a Gurgaon or Bangalore to disappear if Manila or Dhaka offers cheaper labour and polite English and excel stars. All we’re left with are ghosts of DLF buildings, internet cables and unlit Erikson signs.

Right, but that’s not my point either. My point is all this has been said by everybody else. And better. Someone said the world is flat which basically is another way of saying what I’ve said above but far more brilliantly. We knew it because it was happening here. We noticed. Certainly the guys that became billionaires noticed. I guess a book had to be written to tell Americans to notice and realize, “Ah, that’s whose been calling me”.  Films were made about outsourcing (cross cultural phone love being a natural plot); disillusionment of language, accents, identity got explored by all sorts of academics and documentary film makers. I watched John and Jane, a brilliant film on the subject by Asim Ahluwalia, and two of his characters stayed with me. One that came home after a night of working at the call centre and danced, alone. And the other, a Punjabi woman who got blonde hair and started imagining she was American, from Miami, and only wanted to marry another blonde American person.

Ok I need to shut up and tell you why I wrote a little paperback novel on outsourcing.

Which I’ll do in the next part of this blog.

Anuvab Pal is an acclaimed playwright and screenplay writer. His screenplays include the awardwinning The Loins of Punjab and The President is Coming. His plays, which have been performed at numerous festivals, include Chaos Theory, Fatwa, Paris and Life, Love, and ETIBDA. Anuvab has also written for the acclaimed sitcoms Frasier and Law and Order. He currently lives and works in Mumbai. 1888 Dial India is his novel published by Random House India in October 2011 and is available in stores for Rs 150. Find out more from the Random House India website. 

Recently, the niece of a close friend of mine, called to talk to me about the hows and whys of adoption. Like us, they are a DINK couple who wanted to adopt a baby girl. Since they are based out of Mumbai and Dubai, they had no idea where to go, who to talk to and what to do. So, they decided to talk to me and asked me everything from which agency to approach, how to get a handle on the new rules of adoption just released by the government, how long the process would take and what to do to prepare themselves for the baby. The long phone chat reminded me of the time when my husband and I were going through those same feelings of confused excitement. In a sense I relived those early days as I explained the new rules of adoption and the process that prospective parents now need to go through before they can take their baby home. Imagine my delight when the lady in question messaged back two months later to tell me that they had, in fact, become proud parents of an adopted baby girl.

Parenting is and always will be an intensely personal experience. But adoptive parenting has a community side to it which is crucial too. Given that there’s no set script to follow – unlike biological parenting where your mother or grandmother can tell you exactly what to expect while you are expecting and how to handle the baby once she’s born – in adoptive families parents need to borrow cues from other adoptive parents, who’ve been there, done that and can hand-hold you through the whole maddening, exhilarating and utterly amazing journey of parenthood. Often these discussions can also clear cobwebs.

A week ago, I had a long chat with a close friend on the issue of adoption fees. My friend argued that she’d never heard to anyone having to pay anything more than a small amount towards the legal fees and court charges and that included us. She had never heard of the newly constituted child care corpus fee which is now compulsory. She argued that as a single parent her friend would find it difficult to cough up the Rs 40,000 CCC fee and argued that the fee would probably be collected only by agencies in metro cities, not in smaller towns. I had to spend more than hour trying to explain to her that the rules had changed since we became adoptive parents and those rules were now standard and effective across the country, metros or otherwise. It was a difficult discussion because her financial situation would mean my friend’s acquaintance will probably not qualify to become an adoptive parent but getting to know the rules before you make up your mind is a good way to prepare yourself for the journey ahead.

An excerpt from Babies from the Heart:

Baby Comes Home

If the legal paperwork and to-do lists have left you huffing and puffing, take a deep breath. Things will escalate to an entirely different level when you actually bring the baby home. There is the infrastructure to set up and make functional, there are medical issues to deal with, there is the sheer amount of time to devote to the new addition to the family. Add to that the considerable paperwork that needs to be taken care of as the baby passes into foster care and the constant stream of friends and relations who will simply drop by to say hello to baby and you’ll have more than enough on your plate.

The biggest problem we faced before baby Kiki came home was the incredibly short notice the agency gave us to get everything in place. In our case, we got less than a week between the home study and bringing baby home, and most of that time was spent taking her to two sets of doctors for some basic medical tests. So rushed were we that we in fact opted out of a series of more detailed medical tests, which would have told us that the baby had a health problem. As it turned out, less than a month after she came home, we had a traumatic medical emergency on our hands.

Emergencies of different kinds can arise in the case of biological babies too, of course, but for adopted infants the level of preparedness on the part of the parents in dealing with them tends to be on the lower side for various reasons. Keeping a few basic things in mind can go a long way in preventing such situations or defusing them more promptly.

Setting up the Home for Baby

I still remember that completely crazy weekend in -February when I took time out of my paper’s Budget edition -preparations to shop for our baby. My husband and I drew up a list and we shared the items in an effort to do things more systematically. But with both my mother and mother-in-law stuck in Kolkata for medical reasons, we had no one to guide our frenzied shopping. Result: when baby came home, we realized we had simply bought the wrong stuff.

First-time parents do tend to go completely overboard while shopping for their baby. With so many brands and such beautiful stuff on display, it’s hard not to give in to your temptation to buy pretty frocks, colour-coordinated shoes, princess baby cots, and fancy strollers. Trouble is, a lot of that stuff may look pretty but they can be fairly useless for a small baby. Take baby Preeti’s parents Probir and Madhumita. Like us, they got barely a week between their first glimpse of the child and bringing baby home. And like us, they committed some retail faux pas. ‘When we went shopping for baby clothes, we picked up stuff that was completely unsuitable—like sweaters with hoods and jumpsuits,’ says Madhumita. Making an infant wear complicated clothing like hooded jumpers or rompers is the mother of all bad ideas. Babies don’t like being pulled and arm-twisted into fashion wear—in fact they have no sense of either fashion or wear. They burp, spit, barf, and pee constantly so it helps if you choose clothes—frocks, tees, jumpers, pants—that are easy to put on and easy to take off, preferably in instalments. That way if the upper is wet, you can change only that and so on. In other words, tops, tees, sweaters, or frocks should be front open, baggy with simple loop-on buttons, and pants should have drawstrings or elastic bands. Moral of the story: don’t go by those cute rompers and squeaky toys—get your basic infrastructure up and running first.

Given how badly first-time parents can go wrong, it’s always a good idea to involve friends and family in the preparation process. In Preeti’s case, she was saved by Probir and Madhumita’s wider circle of friends and family who ‘made the whole moment of the baby coming home easy’, says Madhumita. One friend sent a cot-load of stuff that her one-year-old had outgrown, including a Jerry mouse stuffed toy. Another brought some handknitted sweaters and a handknitted shawl. Still others brought home crucial paraphernalia like cloth nappies, cot sheets, vests, bibs—‘All stuff culled by expert mums who knew what we would need,’ remembers Madhumita.

In hindsight, that help is actually crucial. Not only does it make the child feel wanted and special—some of these handmade gifts endure and make for great babyhood -stories—they also help prevent boo-boos at your end. For example, we realized, after Kiki came home, that in our enthusiasm to buy pretty things for our child, we missed out on a crucial item of baby infrastructure—a flask. In Shonali’s case, it was her mother who came home armed with the humdrum items that first-time parents tend to overlook—two flasks, one for hot water, one for lukewarm, an electric kettle, lots of baby bed sheets, oilcloth, nappies, and a sterilizer!

Buying baby stuff also means you need to check if products meant for cooler climates work in India. For instance, we bought tins of diaper rash cream which simply did not work on our baby. Reason: the cream was too heavy for a muggy and hot climate like ours. Finally I took my mother’s advice and switched to coconut oil. Kiki never had a problem with nappy rash again, though the zinc creams sat on our baby shelf for a full year before we threw them out.

Similarly, some baby gels we bought in the UK proved too oily for India. And the princess cot we chose disintegrated after a year, when baby refused to sleep in it. Ditto for a stroller which could be turned into a rocking crib. By the time she was seven months old, and ready to go ‘out’, Kiki refused to lie down on the cradle stroller and we had to junk it for a lighter version in which she could sit up.

Many of these mistakes are made by biological parents as well. But for adoptive parents, the chances of such bloopers are more likely because we get very little time to get the infrastructure up and running. Biological parents get nine months to prepare themselves and the infrastructure, and the entire extended family chips in, knowing pretty much when the baby is due.

In Kiki’s case, we received some excellent help from the ped who gave us a list of basic baby medicines that we needed to keep handy for midnight emergencies. These included a paracetamol, a nasal drop, a colic pain drop, a skin ointment, and something to take care of vomiting. Besides, by the time my mother and mother-in-law came over, Kiki was old enough for us to also try some home remedies like basil leaf and honey for coughs or ginger and honey for nausea.

Having an older or more experienced relative—mother, mother-in-law, or even sister/sister-in-law—around can be the biggest infrastructure support you can arrange before or immediately after baby comes home. But getting good help—either domestic help trained in handling newborn babies or paramedical staff like ayahs recommended by the ped or the hospital to which he is attached—is equally important. If you have no option but to try out a nanny not attached to a medical establishment, you need to do a thorough investigation into just how skilled they are. For instance, we opted for a nanny highly recommended by our friends who assured us that she’d handled newborn babies before. But after Kiki came home, the nanny panicked saying her last assignment involved a pair of toddlers and she didn’t really know much about bathing, handling, burping, and cleaning a two month old. We fired her and took our paediatrician’s help to appoint someone from the hospital for two months by when I was more confident of handling the baby myself.

Unlike biological mothers, adoptive mothers don’t get help from the medical establishment on how to look after the baby once she is born. In Raising Adopted Children, Lois Ruskai Melina writes, ‘Learning how to care for an infant is built into the process of getting ready for the birth of a baby. Childbirth preparation classes focus not only on breathing techniques during labour, but on how to bathe and feed a baby.’ But adoptive parents don’t get this buffer and agencies focus on the process of adoption rather than childcare.

That’s also why preparing the infrastructure is so crucial for adoptive families. Remember, both the baby and her parents will need to go through a period of major adjustment before they ‘take to’ each other. And having expert advice or help around can help make sense of some of the muddle.

Though the biggest help can often come from fellow adoptive parents. For instance, Kiki’s first couple of days with us was a trying time—she was cranky and battling a slight cold and we were new to parenting, perennially exhausted, and wondering if all this was ‘normal’. It was only when we swapped notes with other adoptive parents that we realized the baby was probably used to different sights, sounds, smells in her nursery and the alien surroundings made her antsy, which made us confused and tired in equal measure.

Sometimes adoptive parents, in trying to do things their way, come up with novel solutions that work beautifully. Take Probir, a tech-savvy gizmo geek who turned his daughter’s daily routine into an assembly line. There would be bottles lined up, and nappies, toys, wipes, and bed linen—all close enough for the tired parent to reach out and grab whatever they wanted without having to look for them. The assembly line worked particularly well at night, when Daddy had feed duties. The baby’s feed times were measured and documented with meticulous precision so that Probir knew exactly when baby Preeti would cry for her feed and where he would find the bottle, water, and formula.

Getting Ready for Baby, Physically and Mentally

Infrastructure is only a small part of getting ready for the baby once you’ve cleared the adoption process. The much bigger and more critical element is preparing yourself physically and psychologically for the process. Parenting isn’t easy. It can be, and often is, mentally and physically extremely taxing. Given that many adoptive parents, like us, are older and therefore physically less agile than those in their twenties, the physical strain of parenting isn’t anything to sniff away. And yes, unlike -biological parents, adoptive parents don’t get nine months to prepare themselves for the baby. Typically agencies give anywhere -between a week and ten days to complete the formalities and place the child in foster care once the home study and profile match are complete. So be prepared for exhaustion, confusion, a feeling of losing control, fear, anxiety—in short, the whole nine yards.

I still remember how Kiki’s first night at home was spent bawling at regular intervals of about one–two hours. I spent the entire night rocking her, giving her feeds, and cleaning her up. Next morning, when my mother called bright and early to check on how I was doing, I was cross, sleep deprived, exhausted, and cranky. My mum chuckled and said, ‘You’re not the first mother to go without sleep at night. This too shall pass.’ My husband’s colleagues
offered examples of their own kids, many of whom
settled into a regular night’s rest only in toddlerhood.

The agency told us Kiki was on demand feed and was to be given 3 ounces of formula mixed with tepid water every three hours. Yet when she came home, she seemed to require more than that and I wasn’t sure if increasing her feed so quickly would upset her digestion. Adoptive babies often are hungrier than usual, not because the agency does not look after them well, but because a sense of security and undivided parental attention improves their appetite. Shonali and Arun, for instance, saw their -three-month-old baby demanding more frequent feeds almost immediately. ‘She’s one hungry baby,’ says -Shonali, wondering, like me, how frequently she should up the amount of feed. That’s also what Probir and -Madhumita experienced with baby Preeti. ‘She used to be desperately hungry all the time and would often hold on to the bottle with a look that seemed to say, “THIS IS MINE AND NO ONE CAN TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME!”’ says Madhumita.

In our case, Kiki’s improved appetite coincided with some colic pain and loose motions so I had to actually slow down the tempo and gradually increase both the quantity and timings of the feed. Getting the temperature right was another hiccup—it took us a couple of days to figure out just how tepid the baby wanted her milk to be. We also tried, desperately and unsuccessfully, to change baby’s sleep timings. The first month at home, Kiki would stay up the entire night and go off to sleep in the morning. Advice from parents and parents-in-law encouraged us to get her to stay up in the daytime so she would sleep at night. It didn’t work. Why? Because adopted children take a while to get used to their surroundings enough to change their institutional habits. Till they get acclimatized to their new home, they tend to cling to the routine they were used to. Eventually Kiki did change her sleep cycle. By the time she was five months old, she would sleep soundly through the night and wake up at six-thirty in the morning.

While going through those first couple of days of adjustment, I would often be wracked by guilt. I would wonder if the baby was crying because I didn’t know how to hold her or wasn’t doing something right. I was convinced I didn’t qualify for the job and so was doing it badly. Parenting is the only job for which you don’t have to take a test and flash a degree. But after a decade and a half of reporting and newsroom antics, I was convinced I wasn’t passing muster.

To be honest I did make many mistakes, some of them grave. For instance, I accidentally nicked baby’s cuticles while trying to clip her nail when she was five months old. And I think I allowed her to be taken to the park a wee bit early—at three months. I have also given her a way higher dosage of paracetamol when she had a slight fever because I took the instructions from the paediatrician on the phone. That last boo-boo scared me so much—we spent the entire night sitting up and watching her breathing—that I decided I would not take any instructions on the phone till I was confident of and attuned to her medical routine. Within a year, though, I was so used to what the doctor prescribed for basic problems—cough, cold, fever, tummy ache, loose motions, skin rash—that I would often give her a dose and then check with the doctor later who would simply say, ‘You know what to give her. Try that, if she doesn’t improve call me back.’

Adoptive parents do tend to go a little overboard with precautions. In a way it’s necessary because adopted children are often underweight and deprived of that biggest nutrient and immunity builder—breast milk. Also they take a while to get used to the new surroundings and sometimes even different temperatures and climate. Take baby Lily, Eron and Pritha Vaughn’s little girl. A sunny child, she quickly adapted to her new environs except in one respect. In the agency nursery, she had been confined almost entirely indoors so when she came home and was taken out to the garden, she was completely ‘blinded’ by the bright Delhi sun! It took her a while to get used to the idea of a sunny outdoors but when she did, the next step—getting used to a cold and snowy Washington DC when the couple moved—was much easier. In fact, she simply loved the snow.

Shonali on her part decided she would wait for a while before giving the baby her first bath at home. ‘I am not a very baby person,’ she says. ‘So I was really scared. I didn’t know what temperature would be right for her.’ This kind of dilemma, even in the smallest of actions, is typical of adoptive parenting. You simply don’t know enough (a) about parenting and (b) about the infant’s earlier circumstances. So both baby and parents take a while to get used to each other.

Psychologically, the sudden arrival of the baby can and does have an unsettling impact. Like me, Shonali, an independent, career-oriented person, had to grapple with the loss of personal freedom and choice once baby came home. In the first couple of months, the mother in particular is completely homebound—no gymming, no coffee with gal pals, no work, not even some me-time in the form of a favourite telly show or a book read. It can leave you exhausted, cranky, and guilty—all at the same time. What helps is if the couple make this a way to bond. In Probir and Madhumita’s case, that’s how it turned out. ‘It was all a first for us—potty, pee, crying ill health…’ Madhumita remembers, but with a hands-on husband who wanted to be a part of the entire process, never once grudging the loss of sleep or the exhaustion, it became a great joint effort.

In the process, the couple discovered their own means to handle Preeti—their first baby steps in parenting as it were. Probir got a baby alarm and Preeti would sleep when he turned it on. That, plus her favourite Jerry mouse toy, gave the tired couple the occasional nights of undisturbed sleep. In Kiki’s case a favourite pillow and a stuffed toy—christened Woofus the Bow Wow—did the trick and soon we realized it wasn’t difficult to get baby to sleep at the same time that we did. Similarly her tech-savvy brother-in-law got Shonali a baby monitor with night vision cameras that he connected to their laptop. That way, once baby went to sleep in the bedroom, the couple could take a break and watch a film or TV show in the drawing room with one eye on the monitor to check if the baby was lying on her back and if everything was okay.

Medical Records and Tests

One of the biggest complaints that adoptive parents have—and that includes us—is that the current rules in India do not make it mandatory for the agency to disclose the biological mother’s medical record. This can be a huge problem if the baby gets some infection that is dormant and does not show up in clinical examination, not to mention genetic and other disorders. Adoptive parents are typically given a basic health chart by the agency which includes HIV, TB, and a couple of other tests, along with birth weight and basic vaccines given at birth. But there’s no way of finding out, for example, if the birth mother or the extended biological family have any genetic disorders, psychological problems, inherited diseases like diabetes, asthma, or even a history of cancer. This is a huge lacuna in the process that can come up throughout the child’s lifetime as medical bolts from the blue.

Most adoptive parents face some form of medical scare—some not serious, others full blown. In our case, just a month after baby came home, she suddenly developed a form of virulent, raging pneumonia that required her to be put into neonatal ICU. The doctors tried a number of antibiotic families and wanted to know if the biological mother had TB or suffered a history of drug resistance. We had no clue. In the end, the treatment progressed through trial and error because we simply did not know whether the infection came from one of the caregivers at the agency or from the biological mother. In effect, the paediatrician and his team had to function with a medical blindfold.

That’s why it is very important to do an extensive -series of tests before the baby comes home. Many parents don’t get into that because they are rushed for time and feel it’s tantamount to some kind of screening process. In reality it’s necessary because that way you’ll be prepared for any medical emergency that may come along. If you know the baby already has some congestion in the chest, the doctor can start the treatment immediately and you won’t need to wait till it blows up into an emergency.

Take Preeti, Probir and Madhumita’s little girl. The test report that the agency handed out simply did not ‘look right’. The couple consulted a paediatrician of their choice who did all the tests—including TB and HIV—and got all the vaccine shots all over again. Like us the couple first went to a ped recommended by the agency but were not happy with his very basic clinical examination. Referring the baby to another ped threw up some potential hearing problems. The doctor suggested a BERA test to check if the problem was serious. The result was positive and the couple then spent the next several weeks going to a number of functional specialists, none of whom gave any conclusive diagnosis. It was only when they took the child to their family physician that the possibility of something as simple as ear wax came up. In the end it turned out to be wax but the anxiety derailed the couple’s personal celebration. In hindsight, Madhumita says that the agency’s fact file and the referred doctor’s medical certificate were both useless. In our case, we were hobbled for choice since the agency does not allow would-be parents to take the baby to a doctor too far away. Being Gurgaon residents, the doctors we trusted were too far from the agency for us to take the baby to them for a check-up.

Coming back to the medical angle, it’s a good starting point to repeat all the tests, particularly TB, HIV, Hepatitis B, BERA hearing tests, eyesight and -neurological tests, chest X-ray, a liver function test, and anything else the doctor may suggest. In Shonali and Arun’s case, the first baby they were offered had a congenital CMV infection for which the doctor suggested a torch test. Also, even if the baby is very small when she comes home, the agency gives a set of basic vaccines like BCG and polio drops. But it is always a good idea to repeat all vaccines. That way the parents know for sure what the baby has been vaccinated against and are prepared for any emergency. The best option is to quickly find a good paediatrician, preferably someone who has handled adopted kids before, and get him on board immediately. Once the ped takes over he can then make allowances for the gaps in baby’s medical history and treat her accordingly.

At any rate it’s always a good idea to get an opinion other than from the ped referred by the agency. In most cases, the medical examination is a proforma routine procedure and if you want more details you need to get an independent opinion. Eron and Pritha, for instance, took their baby for a thorough check-up to the Apollo Hospital instead of the clinic suggested by the agency.

The biggest worry that adoptive parents nurse is the fear of the unknown. Take Jayanti whose biggest fear after her adopted daughter came home was of losing her. ‘Doctors said these children come from deprived backgrounds so a lot of diseases are likely, including TB, HIV, schizophrenia, and my biggest fear was “Will I lose my baby?”’ remembers Jayanti. Like Madhumita, she too feels some degree of disclosure from the agency is critical and can save a lot of trauma both for the child as well as the parents.

Of course even the basic medical information that some agencies offer is way more than what is available in the case of abandoned babies. Children adopted from ‘homes’ or found abandoned in public places come with zero medical history. The adoptive parents won’t even know if the birth was normal or a Caesarean birth. They will have no means of finding out if the birth mother had any medical problems and what kind of infections the baby may have faced till she was adopted. Even the birth weight, in those cases, is unknown and if your baby’s circumstances are similar to that, it’s best to keep the ped in the loop from day one and let her take the baby’s treatment and care forward, including the diet chart and vaccine schedule.

Paediatricians say most birth defects occur due to -rubella or German measles, CMV, syphilis, encephalitis, parvo virus, and sometimes chickenpox. In obvious cases like Down’s syndrome, the defect shows up early enough for the doctors to be able to diagnose it. In some cases, such as metabolic imbalances, the baby may not ‘look’ in any way different but again a trained ped will be able to take a call. What the peds can’t track till the child is old enough to show behavioural changes are psychological problems and then too they may mimic teenage tantrums.

Battling Institutional Care

Most adopted babies are underweight. Partly because the mother may have faced some health or nutritional problems during pregnancy and partly because institutional care, no matter how good, can never substitute for the kind of single-minded attention the baby gets at home from her parents. When Kiki came home at two and a half months, she was tiny—weighing just under 3 kg. It took us around four months to get her to plump up.

Eron and Pritha had a similar experience. When baby Lily came home, she was really scrawny. But three months of concerted care later, she turned into a ‘Sumo wrestler’. The best thing to do is to trust the ped with the food chart and slowly increase feed times and quantities. Of course, if you’ve adopted a slightly older child, the weight gain may be slower because the baby takes longer to get over the undernutrition in the initial months. For example, though perfectly healthy, baby Preeti was never as chubby as Kiki became in her infancy and it took her parents some focused effort—including strict adherence to a diet chart—before she started gaining weight and hit the ‘normal’ weight range. Meanwhile her parents went through some tense moments particularly when her teething was also delayed. It took a jocular remark by the paediatrician—‘Have you ever seen a toothless toddler?’—to finally put them at ease. Later they realized it was more of a genetic trait rather than a health issue.

Adoptive parents need to be extremely patient with their child’s growth chart. The weight gain may not be rapid. The general growth may be slow. But as long as the baby’s metabolism is all right, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Rushing it could cause tummy
upsets and colic pain at best—something that we faced with Kiki—and liver problems at worst. Also, many adopted kids—like their biological counterparts—are born with some kind of jaundice and in the absence of breast milk, getting them to come up to scratch isn’t easy. Typically, very small infants can shake off their institutional routine within a month or two and quickly gain weight. With older babies, that schedule is longer though they too eventually shake off their institutional baggage. My experience is that introducing solids early on is a really good idea because (a) it relieves colic pain and other tummy problems; (b) it substitutes the nutrition that the baby misses out on by not breastfeeding. I introduced solids the day Kiki turned four months old and her weight gain happened immediately afterwards.

Maternity/Paternity Leave

Can adoptive parents expect maternity or paternity leave? Our experience as well as that of a number of adoptive parents in our wider circle of friends convinced us that this issue is typically handled by different employers on a case-by-case basis. Government employees are entitled to 135 days of leave if they adopt a baby ‘upto one year of age’, as per a Government of India memorandum dated March 31, 2006. According to this notification, adoptive mothers with ‘fewer than two surviving children’ will get 135 days of child adoption leave for adopting a baby of up to one year of age.The memorandum also says that ‘the maximum period of one year leave of the kind due and admissible (including leave not due and commuted leave upto 60 days without production of medical certificate) will be reduced by the age of the child on the date of adoption without taking into account Child Adoption Leave’. Which means if the child is two months old at the time of adoption, the mother can claim up to ten months’ leave while a six-month-old baby will fetch her mother up to six months leave and so on.

A further update issued in 2009 extended maternity leave for adoptive government servants to 180 days and offered 15-day paternity leave for adoptive fathers ‘within a period of six months from the date of adoption’.

Advocate Geeta Luthra says the Maternity Benefit
Act (1961) offers umbrella benefits to all mothers but there is still no specific enactment for adoptive mothers
in the private sector. ‘The government can, if it wants, -introduce relevant enactments covering both public and private sector, as in the case of prevention of sexual -harassment in the workplace,’ says Luthra. ‘But so far, nothing of the kind has been forthcoming.’

As a result, those working in the private sector often need to negotiate for their maternity leave. Some companies have a liberal policy under which parents—both adoptive and biological—get a certain number of days of paid leave. In my case, for instance, my employers were extremely considerate and allowed me the usual three-month leave and some flexi-timing till Kiki was about one year old. But there is no law that mandates maternity or paternity leave for adoptive parents. And the parents are often left at the mercy of their respective HR departments. Many companies do not have a special policy for adoptive mothers and sometimes, when a policy is in place, it is the result of individuals fighting for their rights.

Take the case of Madhumita, baby Preeti’s mother. When Preeti came home, Madhumita was working for a reputed consumer durables company with MNC salaries and employment terms. But it had no special policy for adoptive mothers. As a result, Madhumita had to be content with just forty-five days leave—an extremely short time to set up the infrastructure and allow the baby to get acclimatized to her new home. In Shonali’s case, her employer, a global IT giant, too did not have a policy till a colleague fought for and got her three-month maternity leave. Moral of the story: the HR policies of private -companies are privately driven and don’t come under government HR policy. So if your company does not have a policy in place, fight for it. And yes, don’t -forget to enlist the help of other adoptive parents in your workplace. Madhumita, for instance, is quite clear that though she couldn’t fight for her own rights, she would fight for anyone else in her organization who faces the same problem. So don’t think you’re alone—you never know from where you could suddenly get help.

When it comes to paternity leave, the policy gap is even worse in India. Though an established trend overseas, the concept of paternity leave, even for biological parents, is not common in India. However, here too
organizations can and do offer some leave depending on how liberal their HR policy is though nothing concrete is mandated by law. In our case, for instance, my husband got around fifteen days off which proved to be very handy for us. Either way, there’s no harm asking for leave and checking with your HR team if it is possible because adoptive parents need to take care of a lot of paperwork and other infrastructure issues, and bonding with the baby happens best when both parents are involved.

In most countries in the West, both maternity and parental/paternity leave for adoptive parents is mandatory. Paternity leave can extend from seven days to much longer, depending upon the country and the length of service. Hopefully, as the number of adoptive parents -increase in India, both maternity and paternity leave will become mandatory in our corporate culture as well.

Bonding with the Baby

In the weeks after Kiki came home I would often be wracked by feelings that had little to do with motherly love. The biggest constant was doubt—I would wonder if I, an independent and career-minded person, would ever be able to take to my baby ‘like a mother should’ and, more importantly, if she would take to me. I still remember that poignant prayer service that the sisters at the Missionaries of Charity (Delhi chapter) conducted for us in their chapel before we took our baby home. They sang some well-loved hymns—both my husband and I, being convent school products, it brought nostalgic tears to our eyes—and prayed that baby Ekta, as she was called in the agency, would be happy with her new parents. For my husband, it was a moment when his whole life flashed before his eyes. He was overwhelmed with emotions and couldn’t stop crying. As for me, I was scared stiff. I knew I would now have to look after this cherubic little creature and every action or word from me had the potential to enrich or damage her character. The enormity of it all hit me right between the eyes and left me completely gobsmacked. Oh God, I wondered, how will I ever be a mother. I don’t know how.

That feeling of being overwhelmed, of not knowing what to do and how to do things, of always second-guessing my emotions and wondering if I would have felt differently if I were a biological mother are all, I realized, quite normal. In fact, a lot of that jumble of emotions is faced by biological mothers too and not all those feelings are particularly motherly. So if you’ve just brought your baby home and are going through those same -emotions, -wondering just when that magic moment of perfect bonding will strike you and your child, relax. It’s all part of the parenting experience. And this too shall pass.

When I started sharing my feelings with other adoptive parents as part of researching for this book I was astounded at how many of them admitted to the same emotions. I realized I would have managed my feelings much better had I exchanged notes earlier. Like me, many adoptive mums I spoke to were perennially exhausted the first couple of months of parenting and sometimes felt angry with the baby for being cranky and keeping her awake all night or not allowing her even a minute of me-time. These feelings of anger and frustration are -immediately followed by self-doubt. ‘Am I a bad mother? Would it be different if my baby was biological?’

The truth is, biological mothers too face many of these emotions but often without the guilt that adoptive mothers burden themselves with. It takes someone like -Jayanti, who has both adopted and biological children, to put it all in perspective. Pronnoy and Jayanti’s biological son came three years after they adopted their baby girl. A late pregnancy, Jayanti’s experience was not quite the stuff of films. In fact she was so unwell that despite breastfeeding the baby, she didn’t feel any sense of bonding with him till much later. ‘It wasn’t a great -experience,’ she remembers. ‘I was tired after the childbirth, ill, -exhausted from feeding the baby all night and changing nappies. There was no time to bond.’ The bonding happened later, she says, when the baby was big enough for her to cuddle. In fact, she bonded much quicker with her adopted daughter. That experience with biological motherhood convinced Jayanti that the difference between -biological and adopted is more in our heads than anywhere else. ‘Who says genes come through the blood, they come -flying through thin air,’ she says.

Of course in many ways the adoptive experience is a little more difficult than the biological one even if one takes into account the pregnancy difficulties. The adoption process can be sudden enough to throw all your plans into disarray. Shonali’s first reaction, when the agency told her she could take her baby home was, ‘What happens to my pricey gym membership now…shucks, I just paid up.’ In hindsight, these small, irrelevant worries seem laughable but when you’re in the middle of it all, they seem important enough. In due course though, the bonding kicks in and nothing else matters. For some, the moment is almost akin to baptism by fire. For others, it’s less gut-wrenching. In our case, the bonding happened really and truly when our baby was in the ICU battling a galloping pneumonia. When we came back home from the hospital after she was admitted, it hit us that we would now give anything for another sleepless night of baby bawls and hourly feeds. In a sense that crisis made us realize how precious this gift was and we will never forget that lesson in our lifetime.

With baby Preeti and Madhumita too it was ill health that forged a special bond. As she rocked her baby’s cradle all by herself while her husband ran around to collect more test reports, Madhumita would often ask Preeti, ‘Where’s Jerry (her favourite soft toy)?’ Every time the baby looked up at Jerry mouse dangling on her crib, Madhumita would utter a soft hurrah—in her heart she knew her baby could hear her voice no matter what the BERA tests said.

Adoptive mums almost always remember their ‘moment’ when the magic actually kicks in. It can be something as simple as a grin from the baby or something she says when she’s older. For Shonali that moment was when her baby rewarded her with a gummy, toothless smile. ‘Suddenly it’s all worth the while and nothing matters—not the exhaustion, not the lack of privacy, not the total disregard for your personal well-being,’ she says.

For me, long after that gut-wrenching moment of truth in the hospital, came my personal reward when Kiki, now a toddler, suddenly gave me a hug one evening and said, ‘Mamma, I lub lou.’ Can anything beat that feeling?

  Nandini Sengupta is an adoptive parent based in Pondicherry. She is a journalist by profession and has worked with The Economic Times, first in Kolkata and then in Delhi, for fifteen years and is currently working with The Times of India. She and her husband adopted little Kiki in Delhi and moved to Pondicherry in 2010 in search of an alternative milieu for themselves and their child. Babies from the Heart is her first book published by Random House India this September and is available in stores for Rs 299. Find out more about this title- http://bit.ly/ury9po

Employees (machines of the twenty-first century)

Ten days later, we moved into our offices at the Prestige Business Centre in a pretty important part of Mumbai. Later, I told my secretary, Bhola—yes Bhola my cook—I promoted him, sent him to Anuradha Bhasin’s SPEAKEZYEE English classes, and he’s my PA now. He knows Microsoft, new India, social mobility…if you don’t know what that means, you should read Chetan Bhagat and learn. Anyway, I told Bhola, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter that we are four hours from Nariman Point. The point is that we are facing the west, towards the US, where our market is waiting to die.’ Bhola looked a bit confused but I told him that he’d soon understand.

Most call centres make the fatal mistake of hiring a lot of people at their inception. Look at Tata and ITC. Filled with thousands of 20 year old bastards right from day one without the customer base. I’m not into that. Very soon, you’re burning cash, and I don’t want to go back to Sarah, in my house, wearing my Armani night suit and say, deude, I burnt cash because my office is filled with young people drinking coffee and not enough Americans dying. I want to spend cash and get more cash. It’s a unique business strategy I know, but that’s who I am—unique. So I thought I would start as a specialist call centre.

I was debating between hiring either twenty-five people or just two people, and I decided on two. It’s like ordering at Mughal Durbar where you can always ask for more roomali roti. My first two employees would be the first two roomali rotis and then I’d get the others hot, instead of them just sitting cold. No, not in a…not sexual… Look, I know what happens to people who are into that okay. Alimony. Soon, they catch you with too much cologne in a four-star B town with thongs and a teenager from Uzbekistan. Or your wife finds some sms about some declined Amex payment to Miss Divine in Bangkok and you get truly fucked. I can’t be into that. I have equity investors.

So I put in a post on Monster.com. The fuckers charged me four thousand bucks for it. Bastards. I’m giving them business, and they’re charging
me money for it? Their customer representative, Parvati, tried to explain to me that that’s their business model—commission based—but who
do they think I am? Some old fucker who only
uses Gmail?

But finally it was up. The ad headline read, ‘Start-up Looking for Self-Starters in Mumbai.’ Clever, right, to use ‘start-up’ and ‘self-starter’ in one sentence? I want people to think that this is a fun place to work. Like Google. They can immediately see that the boss is a funny guy. He puns. And I wanted people to get that. If you don’t get subtlety, you won’t understand the US. Period.

They say our greatest asset is our hundreds of millions of young, educated middle-class. Then why did I get only twelve applications? Anyways, fuck that. I don’t care. I said, when we are bigger than General Electric, I will have twelve people just doing my human resource management. When you’re hiring, always look for how people respond to your ad. That way you immediately get to know who they are. No one will give you this insight. But take it from me.

I picked two to interview because I needed two. That’s a limited choice, you may say. In fact, that’s no choice. If you interview two, you have to hire two. But see, here’s the thing. I screened. I am a screener. Look like a hawk and then hunt like a deer, that’s my hiring tactic.

The first two emailed responses said, ‘Fuck you.’ Now while that might show initiative, drive and leadership, it already shows me that they have no respect for the company email. How would a lady in Utah feel if she got a ‘fuck you’ email just before putting her head in an oven? Not nice. So they were immediately fired. Then this female applicant wrote one little sentence, ‘Are you Sudha?’ This told me two things about the person. One, that she prefers to work for a woman. Two, that she’s using company time to chat with her friend Sudha. Disqualified.

The rest of the responses I couldn’t understand because they were in Telugu and said something about voting for Chiranjeevi.

Then I got to the last two. They really knew what they were doing.

Ramesh18999537@gmail.com said, ‘Sir, I’d
like an interview,’ and KoolKattRashmi@bsnl.co.in said, ‘Yes.’

I like her better. Precise and not wasting the boss’s time, even though I didn’t know what she was saying yes to. It didn’t matter. She had my attention with her briefness.

I called them in together early in the morning. 11 am. Always do that to candidates. It makes them nervous. And make sure they know they are both waiting for the same thing. You can tell them they will both be hired, no problem, but make sure they see each other. That’s the thing to make them nervous. They do it in Iraq. It’s called disorientation but the technical term is Russian Roulette.

Ramesh looked a little like a younger version of the great Hollywood actor Gulshan Grover but with a thin moustache. I immediately took a liking to him because I like Mr Grover’s body of work. Especially in the movie where he was the molester of an Olympic swimmer, played by the very talented actress, Pamela Anderson. In business, this is free association. That’s why when you think of Mumbai developers, you think thieves. Same.

I decided to fuck with Ramesh’s body first. Mostly his tongue. By which, I naturally mean his accent. Swami Vivekananda said if you mess with the body, the mind will follow. I changed the situation a little. In my case, Rashmi would follow.

‘Howdy. I’m Arun Gupta, CEO, 1888 Dial India. Who are you bro?’

‘My name is Ramesh.’

‘Fuck no.’

‘Sorry, sorry, sir, my name is Greg.’

‘And where do you live, Greg?’

‘In Mumbai like you, I…’

‘No bastard…’ I threw a stress ball at him that the guy from Airtel Broadband had given me when he set up the networks. What I was really doing was playing good cop/bad cop. Thing is though, I was both cops.

‘Sir, sorry, sir, I mean I was born in Texas and went to university there.’

‘Where?’

‘University of…Texas.’

‘And what do you do for a living, Greg?’

‘I am a certified healthcare professional trained by the state of Maharashtra.’

‘Phat.’

One word here. Intimidation.

‘Sorry, Pennsylvania, sir.’

‘Nice.’

‘And what makes you happy?’

‘Saving American lives. I like to protect my fellow citizens, sir.’

‘Do you know what this means? Aaj se tum kya ho?’ Never stop with the questions. Layer questions on top of questions without allowing the candidate to answer them. It’s like making a question cake that you can’t eat. My philosophy is that if you can’t eat it, no one should be able to.

‘Aaj se mein Suicide Watch ka employee hoon, sir.’

‘Chut.’

‘Sorry, sir, sorry, aj se mein American hoon.’

‘In English fucker!’

‘From today, I am American.’

‘And remember the company motto?’

‘This is not a call centre. This is a hospital with phone lines instead of beds.’

That was a trick question, as the Americans would say. We officially have no company motto. That’s just a line I wrote and put on the door under the name of the company on an A4 paper. I was going to get a plaque—some call it an insignia—but the bloody thing costs eight thousand rupees. I had to choose between a plaque and phone lines and I went with the phone lines because you need those in a call centre. And already with the shared bathroom fees at the business centre, really high, electricity, stationary, I’m already fucked. But the important thing is that Ramesh read it. Even though I wrote it with a marker and cut it and wrote over it.

‘Excellent. And do you have what it takes to be an American person? What do you have? Tell me…tell me.’

I keep a baseball bat in my office. Most other CEOs keep photos with prime ministers. I don’t. I was hitting Ramesh a little, shouting a little, I’ll admit. Whatever. It’s for character building. They do it in Guantanamo Bay and look at the results.

‘Yes, sir. I have watched Rambo. Means, I can
do anything.’

That was a good answer. A go-getter. Someone who goes and gets. I like that.

‘Welcome to the 1888 Dial India team.’

Now, before I interviewed Rashmi, I was pissed off with Ramesh. He took the keys to the bathroom and took almost seven and a half minutes in there. The people from the next cabin, Cairn Energy, could not go. And they had paid for unlimited toilet access. So the business centre said they would charge me extra for five and a half minutes (2 minutes was the free toilet time I had negotiated). I am usually a cool person, both in terms of looks and all that, and also in terms of calm. Yes, you guessed it—I know both meanings of cool. It comes from experience. But this time, I lost it with the second meaning.

What I am trying to say is that I lost it. First, I shouted at him but shouting is never enough. Mamata Banerjee shouts, the people of Times Now shout, but what happens? We go to sleep and wake up the next day totally forgetting about them. So I had to do something more powerful. I took his shoe and I told him that he couldn’t leave till he figured out some way of making it up to me. In business schools they give you case studies; this was somewhat similar.

Also, I understand the importance of drama. I am a keen observer of the movies of Mr Sanjay Leela Bhansali. He has a beard and uses the dramatic in drama. I am clean-shaven and use the dramatic in business situations. Same tool, two results. Wharton calls this double-value creation.

So when Rashmi walked in, I had just finished shouting at Ramesh. I was sitting at my desk, with a shoe in my hand. I told Ramesh to wait in the file cabinet. It must have confused her. Good. She was hoping to say hello but I got up and walked into the file cabinet. One word—improvisation. That’s what I was doing. And I said some gibberish to Ramesh loudly in the cabinet. Now they were both totally confused. Excellent. Two stones, two birds. You know what I mean.

But seriously though, that is the only way to keep employees on their toes. If they don’t know what’s coming next, or what came before or ideally, what’s happening in the present, you’ll get their attention. One is always prepared. That’s how you prepare the next generation. The Japanese auto makers can learn something from me.

I should mention that sometimes on my computer I click on iTunes and play music. And this was one of those times. That’s the latest way.

Another distraction for interviewee—audio. You
can see how I was combining visual distraction (shoe, closet) and audio distraction (iTunes) to create a holistic distraction. That’s the only way to test an interviewee holistically.

In the army, they would wake you up at 4 am
for a fake terrorist attack drill and there would be fake shootings and bombs are heard. Here, I was going around with a shoe and music was heard.
Same tactic.

I came out of the closet, went to my desk and shut down iTunes, How do I have the latest songs? One US credit card. (Don’t be impressed. I used to have five). Then I focused on the woman.

‘So, Rashmi, you’re married?’

‘No.’

‘Virgin?’

‘Um. Yes.’

‘Fuckin’ hell, wow. Young. Y-O-N-G. It’s okay with me. Conservative. Conser…vative. Family. In Hispanic, familia.’

I know quite a bit of Spanish. Today, business is global, and you have to speak many languages. If you don’t know what I mean, watch the HSBC ads.

‘Arranged?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Will you be sold in an arranged marriage?’

‘I will try to avoid arranged marriage, sir, but my mother is strict. My father is dead, and that was his dying wish.’

‘Small town caste bullshit. Whateverrr. I got no issues. BUT in your twenties, you should be out on the street in a micro-mini, striking guys out.’ I did a bowling gesture.

‘Sir, I have gone bowling. I understand you.’

‘So you know how to play the game, flirtittilation, you know…you know?’

I was obviously trying to connect bowling with flirting. Striking guys out meant guys would pass out seeing her looks. Honestly, no one would pass out seeing her but I was giving her a compliment. But she didn’t get it. Humour is such a niche thing.

‘In Andheri, there is Pleasure Lanes Bowling, sir. My last call centre had an offsite there with Bacardi sponsorship. I went.’

‘That’s good. You know what my term for that is? Open-minded. Open is better than closed-minded. An open family is non-veg. A closed family is a…is fucked up. All religious. What are your hobbies, chiquita? Wait, I’ll go first. I am Arun, I don’t want to drum to my own beat but I guess you could call me the boss. Because I am. My favourite movie of all time is Top Gun. Cruise controool, baby. I’m a beast at table tennis. Growl. In the US, it’s known as Ping Pong.’

‘I love Indian Idol, sir, on Star Plus.’

‘Fuck Star TV. No no, lady…you’ll need total westernification. See, Americans are individuals—that’s the main thing. What’s your main thing? That’s the thing, you need your own thing. The thing that sets you apart from the rest, makes you cool. Do you cook at home?’

‘Yes, sir. My mother makes…’

‘Stop. Cooking is done in jails only. Americans only eat Cup o’ Noodles. It’s like Maggi but white. For white people. What music do you like?’

‘Sonu Nigam.’

She started singing some rubbish. Honestly,
really bad.

‘Sonu Noganna work…noganna work.’ That was a good pun.

‘But, sir, you were listening to same song.’

‘Sshh. My computer’s defective. Listen, have you heard of a rapper called the Menimem?’

‘Huh?’

‘Neminems…I am the slim shaded…’

‘Sir, Eminem?’

‘Eminememem…listen to it. It will be important. You must know these things. He’s the dog’s balls, negro.’

‘Sir, I don’t know that sport but I am very keen on involving myself into all American things. I am very eager, sir. That’s my nature.’

‘I’m not convinced. Seduce me. Why convince?’

‘Sir?’

‘I mean convince me. Why suicide?’ Look, if you work the hours I do, sometimes you’re allowed to confuse your sentences. Work, jetlag…ask any pilot. Nobody’s perfect, even though I am almost there.

‘As you are probably into noticing…,’ She kept talking but I got up and checked on Ramesh in the file cabinet to see if he was still alive. He was. I had forgotten about him. ‘…I am having the American accent, so no training I’ll need. That’s what I am, a call centre person already. Ready to jump into it. In my current job, I am receiving underwear orders from Hanes His Way, and I’m bored. Now I want to do suicide.’

‘You are 100 percent sure?’

‘100 percent suicide.’

Underwear to suicide was not a big jump. Richard Branson moved from music to airlines. But it was a move nonetheless. ‘Chicmangalore, I like you, and when I like someone I don’t care where they are, like in jail or hiding from income tax. I don’t care if people say, “Don’t mix with him, he’s a criminal.” All I can say to them is “fuck you”. Fuck all of you who have no guts because I have a gut instinct about people. And my guts say that you need my pole.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

I pressed my bell. It’s under my table. My dad had it in his office at Mantralaya. And he pressed it, when, you know, he was accepting something under the table and he didn’t want the peon to come. Now I use it when I want the peon to come. See how India has changed. Business is transparent nowadays. It means God is trying to tell India something. ‘Bhola, pole lao…pole leke ao…accha se…dekh ke…thik se dekho…fan hain…fuck up mat karo…’

Bhola brought in the pole and put it down. It was my favourite thing. I turned to Rashmi and asked, ‘Huh…what do you think?’

‘Sir, it’s a pole…’

‘Yeah, yeah but a pole for what…?’

‘Pole…I don’t know.’

‘Pole dancing. See, I think a membership at Gold’s Gym or whatever those other rubbish call centres are offering is a waste of time if you have your own pole. Sexy dancing is the world’s best fitness programme. Forget diets. I know what you’re thinking, that it’s like sexual striptease. Like the Bangkok chicks but that’s where the world is mistaken. That’s where the
Customs guys were mistaken. That’s why I told them, “Yeh sex ka item nahi hain. Yeh exercise ka item hain. Isko sex ke list mein mut dalo. Isko sex wali list mein kaise dal sakhte hain? Yeh exercise ki list mein ana chaihiye.” See, there are two kinds of pole dancing.’ I pulled out a DVD for her. ‘This one is Carmen Electra’s Collection of Horny Music for exercising. And then there’s another one called Carmen Electra’s Dirty Lap-Dance. That’s the dirty one. This one is for housewives and college graduates.’

‘Sir, did I get the job?’

‘Yes. Why do you think you get the pole? Some places have a signing bonus. I give this to the deserving. They give five stars to US Generals. That’s small and made of metal. This is big and made of metal. Better “think out of the box…that has money”, that’s my recruiting philosophy.’

Sometimes people aren’t quick enough to be on my wavelength. I had hired her fifteen minutes ago.

Anuvab Pal is an acclaimed playwright and screenplay writer. His screenplays include the award winning The Loins of Punjab and The President is Coming. His plays, which have been performed at numerous festivals, include Chaos Theory, Fatwa, Paris and Life, Love, and ETIBDA. Anuvab has also written for the acclaimed sitcoms Frasier and Law and Order. He currently lives and works in Mumbai.

1888 Dial India is his latest book, published by Random House India this September and available in bookstores for Rs. 150.

‘What kind of man comes home from work with a full stomach?’ Alice Bhatti turns the knob on the stove and looks at Teddy with complaining eyes. He is leaning on the kitchen door looking sheepish, as if he was waiting to be scolded for coming back late. He even has a long story ready, a little present to give. He hadn’t thought about the consequences of the large meal he was forced to eat after losing not-Abu Zar. ‘I am really full.’ He moves his hand over his stomach, as if presenting a reliable eyewitness. He doesn’t know how to explain to Alice that in his line of work, kindness and cruelty are badly mixed up. Have you eaten? Eat some more. Now die.

‘Don’t do that,’ says Alice, coming towards him, then stopping a few inches away. ‘After eating a meal, if you touch your stomach, it grows and grows.’ Teddy laughs. His shoulders sag, as if he has just put down a large weight he was made to carry all day and was not expecting to be rid of so easily. He lifts up his T-shirt, grabs her hand and presses it against his hard belly. ‘Twelve years of lifting weights . . .’ He sucks in his stomach as Alice throws a couple of light punches at it. ‘I must have lifted this whole city in weight. This is not going to go anywhere. Even when I am old and dying in your arms.’

Alice runs her fingers over his stomach, counting the flesh ridges. ‘I want one like that.’ She can’t remember if she has ever made such a direct demand to a man. Or to a woman. Marriage, she suddenly realises, is a liberation army on the march.

‘It was not always like this. It was very difficult in the beginning.’ Teddy puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘I have never liked the taste of eggs.’

‘You have six every morning. Raw,’ says Alice.

‘That’s work.’ He taps his stomach. ‘Those yolks slosh around in my stomach till noon. But the omelettes that the inspector made me eat this morning, those almost killed me. Kindness kills me.’

‘I still want one like that.’ Alice pokes his stomach with her forefinger. ‘Even if I have to eat all those eggs.’

‘We can start right now,’ says Teddy, caressing her hand. It seems that for the first time in his life he has been asked for something he can readily give. ‘A woman’s tummy won’t become this hard. It’ll become flat, though. Actually it shouldn’t become hard.’

‘And why is that?’

‘You don’t want to suffocate the baby.’

Alice blushes, as if it has never occurred to her that their marital intimacy could lead to babies.

‘There is a special routine for women. It involves breathing exercises. Let’s try that,’ says Teddy.

‘You told me you never knew a woman before you met me, so how do you know these women and their special routines?’

Teddy lifts the hem of her shirt, runs his hand over her belly then grips the part where her ribcage gives way to the slightly protruding bulge of her stomach. ‘I know people who know people who know women. They make a living selling flat tummies. Now inhale.’

Alice takes a quick, deep breath. ‘No, not like that,’ he admonishes her and playfully pinches her flesh.

Alice is excited, not in a carnal way, but at the thought that her new husband is teaching her how to breathe.

‘You are a trained professional and you don’t know how to breathe,’ says her new husband, running his fingertips along the length of her throat, then slowly bringing his hand down between her breasts to her lower stomach, tracing the trajectory of air travelling through her body. She inhales slowly. He makes encouraging sounds. ‘Hold it there and count to three,’ he says, when she can’t take in any more air. He puts his hand just below her ribcage. ‘Exhale,’ he says, and she exhales slowly, feeling slightly dizzy as her lungs deflate.

Alice opens her eyes and sees that there is a look of intense concentration on Teddy’s face, as if he is trying to extract a bullet from someone’s head, someone not dead yet.

‘Now when you exhale, suck your tummy in, first inwards, then upwards.’ His palm pushes her stomach in, then upwards, as if trying to force it to retreat behind her ribcage. ‘No, no, as soon as you start sucking it in, start thinking of sucking it up, there should be an overlap halfway through. Women are supposed to be able to do many things at the same time and you can’t do two things with your own tummy?’ He pretends to be annoyed. Her ribs tickle and she bursts out laughing. ‘Look.’ Teddy lifts his T-shirt, tucks it under his chin and breathes in with his eyes shut. When he exhales, his stomach contracts and then disappears under his ribcage, leaving behind a steep concave that reminds Alice of the starving Buddha. Or was that Yassoo’s body as he lay in that cave afterwards?

   Mohammed Hanif is the author of the highly acclaimed A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and was the winner of the Commonwealth First Book Award. He lives in Karachi with his family. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is published this September by Random House India and available at http://bit.ly/o1ydTv

Desperate in Dubai: Oozing with men, money, and Maseratis, Dubai is the ultimate playground for the woman who knows her Louboutins from her Louis Vuittons. But for some, there’s a lot more at stake than a Hermes Birkin. Leila has been in search of a wealthy husband for over a decade. Nadia moves to Dubai to support her husband’s career, only to have her sacrifices thrown in her face. Sugar escapes the UK in an attempt to escape her past. Lady Luxe, the rebellious Emirati heiress, scoffs at everything her culture holds sacred. Until the day her double life starts unravelling at the seams.
Set against a backdrop of luxury hotels and manmade islands, Desperate in Dubai by Ameera Al Hakawati tells the tale of four women as they struggle to find truth, love, and themselves. Here is an extract…

Lady Luxe doesn’t mean to play mind games, but for some reason she just can’t help it. From a young age, every word she has uttered has held an underlying meaning—whether it’s negotiating for a new car, pleading for a new vacation, or asking for a credit card with a higher limit—she has always had to choose her words carefully to ensure the response she wants. Now, at twenty-three, it’s not just her father or her brothers she tests her verbal skills on. Every man (or boy) that comes in contact with Lady Luxe never quite knows where he stands, what she wants, or what she’s thinking. Most of the time, that’s exactly how she likes it, but occasionally she wishes that a guy would just read her mind and give her what her subconscious desperately wants: a stable, uncomplicated marriage. No cultural issues, no second wives, just love. But everyone knows that such a thing doesn’t exist. Not in an Emirati girl’s life at least.

‘Um, I hope so,’ he replies, his disappointment obvious.

She takes in his sandy blonde hair and dark brown eyes with appreciation, but then looks away. She’s not in the mood to continue playing with him no matter how attractive he is. It’s not worth the risk. No matter what she does in London—the bars she visits, the clubs she stumbles out of at dawn, the men whose bedrooms she finds herself in when the cold British sun seeps its way in through the cracks in the curtains—in Dubai, she is Lady Luxe, and with a surname like that, she just can’t afford to let her secret adventures become public.

She doesn’t care about tarnishing her reputation and becoming unmarriageable. However, what she does care about is risking her life. Honour killings may not make the headlines, or even trickle into community gossip, but after what happened to her cousin, she knows better than to flaunt her escapades. So in Dubai she continues her good girl façade when she has to, and when the cat’s away (in her case, her father) she plays. Hard.

It wasn’t easy for Lady Luxe to persuade her father to allow her to study Fashion at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, one of Britain’s most revered art institutions. It took her most of her life to make him accept that she wasn’t interested in business administration, and then a full year of cajoling, pleading, crying, arguing, and hypothesizing to make him agree to her studying abroad. Eventually both her mother and uncle had to step in, explaining to her father the importance of her learning about her full heritage, of spending time with her mother, the importance of studying at a prestigious, historic college rather than an unknown Dubai establishment, as well as the benefits of learning how to be independent.

Lady Luxe’s father was right to be concerned.

For three and a half years, his beloved daughter did everything she had only ever dreamed of doing, and more. Never particularly religious, God-fearing, or traditional, she utilized every minute of her freedom as if it were her last, knowing that eventually the time would come to an end and she would have to return home and continue living an unfulfilled double life.

‘Well, I would kind of like it if you would show me around,’ the Brit says hesitantly, the nervousness clear in his eyes.

‘Would you now?’ Lady Luxe replies, surprised. She had underestimated him. Against her better judgement, she pulls out a Mont Blanc pen, reaches over and takes hold of his hand. He freezes and she can sense that he has stopped breathing. She grins to herself. ‘Here you go. That’s my number. Call me if you need any help,’ she says, scribbling down her second phone number—the one that serves one very clear purpose—on the back of his hand.

‘Thanks. I will,’ he replies, staring down at the number as if he is afraid it will disappear before he has a chance to commit it to memory.

As the captain announces the descent into DXB, Lady Luxe untangles her folded legs and hauls herself off her seat. Ignoring the Brit’s bemused gaze, she scrapes her hair into a ponytail, rearranges her fringe and attaches a big, pink flower clip to the back of her head. Retrieving her Swarovski crystal encrusted abaya from the stewardess, she slips it on and loosely places her sheyla back on her head.

‘Bloody hell,’ the Brit chuckles, watching her in amazement. ‘You look completely different!’

‘That’s the point,’ she answers, sitting back down, this time folding her legs delicately, her gold Jimmy Choos peeping out from beneath the abaya’s long hem. She looks across the cabin and sees a pretty girl with silky black hair perform the exact same ritual she has just completed. Their eyes connect and they smile wryly at
each other.

Alighting from the plane, Lady Luxe says a quick, halal goodbye to the Brit, grabs her luggage that has been prioritized to come out first, and heads out into the humid Dubai night. The airport is freezing cold but the weather outside, despite it being the middle of January, is pleasant enough for light sweaters. Only in Dubai do you wear your jacket indoors and remove
it outdoors.

Enjoying the warm breeze and the familiar smell of petrol by the taxi stand, she looks around for the chauffeur driven white Bentley Continental that usually picks her up from the airport. Instead, all she sees are the beige taxis waiting to pick up naïve passengers who are unaware that riding a taxi in Dubai is tantamount to suicide.

‘Need a lift?’ The Brit is back lugging a large, new suitcase, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead as he is confronted with the warm winter’s night; his thick woollen polo neck and leather jacket completely inappropriate for Dubai’s stuffy climate.

‘Thanks, but I’m expecting someone,’ she says,
edging away from him and looking around quickly, hoping no one will notice the Emirati girl conversing with the foreign boy.

‘A boyfriend?’ he asks tentatively, taking off his jacket and slinging it over his suitcase.

‘No. My driver,’ she laughs, relaxing upon realizing that no one is looking in her direction.

‘You have a driver? As in, a chauffeur?’ he asks incredulously.

‘So?’

‘A bit precious don’t you think?’ He looks into Lady Luxe’s hazel eyes, amused as they narrow in annoyance.

‘You’ll understand in a couple of months,’ she says, a little peeved at his impertinence. ‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be catching a taxi?’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me? Fine, I can take a hint. It’s been a pleasure.’ Giving her no time to react, the Brit leans forward, pecks Lady Luxe on the cheek and walks away.

Shit. She looks around, ignoring the disapprov-ing gaze of the security guard, her heart pounding as she prays that her eyes don’t fall on anything white, be it a candoura, guttra, or worse, her car.

Then she sees it. A hundred metres away, a white Bentley is waiting for her. Her heart thudding against her ribcage, she waits for the driver to step out and walk over to her, praying he did not see her with the Brit.

‘Hi Mahboob,’ Lady Luxe greets the Pakistani driver with a shaky smile as he hops out of the car and relieves her of her Louis Vuitton luggage.

‘Salaam,’ he replies abruptly, loading her bags into the car.

Without waiting for him to open the door for her, she yanks it open and sinks into the plush red leather seats. She wonders if she should say anything to him, implore him not to mention anything to her father or brother, or if she should pretend that nothing happened in case he hadn’t actually seen anything. She opts for silence.

Mahboob skillfully manoeuvres his way through the lanes of traffic, over Garhoud Bridge and into Jumeirah—one of the most exclusive areas in Dubai, where only the nationals are at liberty to own property. Lady Luxe stares blankly out of the tinted windows at the blur of mismatched villas as they make their way to her sea-facing villa. It’s only when she feels the wetness on her cheeks does she realize that she has been crying.

‘Miss X, we are here,’ Mahboob states the obvious as the gates of the villa glide open and he drives around the fountain and into the garage lined with a fleet of glistening luxury cars. He opens the door and sees the tears rolling down Lady Luxe’s face.

‘What’s wrong, beta?’ he asks kindly, handing her a tissue, which she accepts gratefully.

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’ Embarrassed, she climbs out of the car and rearranges her sheyla so that it sits perfectly over her head.

Mahboob opens his mouth to say something and then closes it.

‘What?’ Lady Luxe asks, walking over to the huge Berber style front door and looking back at him, ‘I said I’m fine.’

‘I…’ He looks at her, his eyes filled with concern. ‘I didn’t see anything, okay?’

Lady Luxe says nothing, but thanks God silently for saving her…once again. Although she knows there will come a day when He will stop. And when that day comes, she doubts if she will be ready.

  Ameera Al Hakawati, the enigmatic author of Desperate in Dubai, has always known that she was born to be a writer. A natural storyteller, her career began at age three, when she told her very first story to her mother that explained the ‘truth’ behind the missing chocolate biscuits.
Numerous writing projects and a creative writing degree later, the twenty-something year old Ameera moved to Dubai from London. Inspired by the fascinating lives of the women who dominated the glamorous city, she put pen to paper and created Desperate in Dubai, a blog that soon became an internet sensation among the expatriate community in Dubai.
Desperate in Dubai is Ameera’s first novel published by Random House India and available in book stores at Rs. 299. Join in the fun at http://tinyurl.com/3w5cvrf and buy the book from http://tinyurl.com/3brhxs7

This week, find yourself getting addicted to the cult Urdu mystery series, the Imran Series, with an extract from The Dangerous Man by ‘Pakistan’s Sherlock Holmes’ – Ibn e Safi…

Imran’s coupe stopped in front of Hashim’s haveli. It was an old style building, but the front lawn was modern and the wall surrounding it, almost as tall as a man, also looked like a later addition. Imran left the car outside and walked through the gate. A garden path went straight from the entrance to the verandah of the haveli. As soon he stepped onto the gravelly red path, a huge dog appeared out of nowhere and stood before Imran.

‘I know,’ Imran muttered in a low voice, ‘how could the dominion be complete without you! Now, please step out of my way.’

The dog was very strange. He made no sound, nor did he move forward. Imran heard a voice calling the dog, ‘Raygi! Raygi!’ The voice came nearer and a man emerged from the begonia shrubs nearby, moving towards Imran. He was a middle-aged man with a strong build. A strange sense of desolation flashed in his eyes. He had a round face, devoid of any facial hair. The hair was a greying mess. His lips were very thin and he had a heavy jaw. He was wearing a pair of sharkskin pants and a white silk shirt.

‘Yes?’ he asked, staring at Imran.

‘I would like to meet Nawwab Sahib.’

‘Why do you want to meet him?’

‘I have to discuss varieties of manure with him.’

‘Varieties of manure?’ the man repeated in astonishment and then said, ‘But, pray, who are you?’

‘I am a news reporter.’

‘Again these news reporters!’ he muttered in a low voice. Then he said loudly, ‘Look, mister, I don’t have time.’

‘But I have a lot of time,’ Imran said seriously. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you whose corpse was it ten years ago? Will you kindly shed some light on this riddle?’

‘For God’s sake, please leave!’ he said, exasperated. ‘I don’t know anything about it! If I had known about this bizarre incident, perhaps I would have never bothered to return!’

‘I am utterly surprised,’ Imran said, ‘at how speedy your departure was, that you couldn’t get the news of your own murder!’

‘Look, son, I am very troubled. Come some other time when I’m not preoccupied,’ Nawwab Hashim said.

‘Okay, then at least tell me: how do you feel in these circumstances?’

‘I feel that I have gone mad! The police consider me dead even though I’m alive! My nephew has seized my property! I live in the guest room! My nephew says: “Indeed you do resemble my uncle but my uncle is dead; the court has accepted that he is dead, and there is no way for you to cheat me now.”’

‘Indeed this is a great tragedy,’ Imran said in a sorrowful tone.

‘It is, right?’ Nawwab Hashim said. ‘It means that you accept that I am Nawwab Hashim!’

‘Completely, sir. Hundred per cent. Everything is possible these days! In my newspaper report I will attempt to make it clear to people that this is indeed not inconceivable.’

‘Thank you, thank you. Come with me. Let’s have a talk,’ Nawwab Hashim said, moving inside. Imran followed him. They came to a room.

‘But I am surprised, why has your nephew let you stay here?’ Imran said as he sat down. ‘I mean, in this case he should have stayed away from you.’

‘I am surprised myself,’ Nawwab Hashim said. ‘His attitude towards me is not bad. He says: “You resemble my uncle to a great degree, that’s why I feel affection towards you. If you like you can live with me all your life. I will always serve you, but just don’t say that you are Nawwab Hashim.”’

‘This is very strange.’ Imran shook his head. There was a moment of silence.

Then Nawwab Hashim said, ‘But how will you prove that I am indeed Nawwab Hashim?’

‘I will try to prove this in every possible way, sir!’ Imran said. He was silent for a while, and then asked in a secretive tone, ‘You must have a few old girlfriends who still live in this city, right?’

‘Why! What does that have to do with anything?’ Nawwab Hashim glared at him, furious.

‘Oho! Just watch the fun! All you need to do is give me their addresses; I will fix the issue in an instant! Yes sir!’

‘I should at least know what you are planning to do.’

‘Wait! Just answer one question. Do you really want others to believe that you are indeed Nawwab Hashim?’

‘You are wasting my time!’ Nawwab Hashim was irritated.

‘I want to tell you, Nawwab Sahib, that if you are proved to be Nawwab Hashim, the police will come after you. In fact, I think that you might have already involved yourself with the police. It is obvious that the police will trouble you about the person whose corpse was taken to be yours.’

‘My God! What do I do… I wish I had known of these events beforehand; I would have never returned!’

‘But now you cannot go anywhere either!’ Imran said.

‘I too feel the same!’ Nawwab Hashim said, visibly agitated now.

‘But why did you disappear in such a mysterious way?’ Imran asked.

‘Just stop it! Whatever happens I’ll face it, I will see to it! I don’t want to become the talk of the town by digging up the past. And then, why should I even talk to you about these things, son?’

‘Okay, don’t tell me. But I know that shortly you will be in big trouble,’ Imran said, standing up. He began to walk out of the room.

‘Just a second,’ Nawwab Hashim said, standing up as well. ‘What will you write about me?’

‘That you are not Nawwab Hashim,’ Imran stopped and replied, but without turning.

‘I will sue your newspaper!’

‘Yes, only if the court accepts that you are Nawwab Hashim,’ Imran said calmly.

‘You can’t do that!’ Nawwab Hashim shouted.

‘No one can stop me!’ Imran shouted back.

‘I will shoot you!’ Nawwab Hashim was still incensed.

‘Let me see your gun,’ Imran replied. ‘One needs guts to kill!’

Gesticulating wildly, Imran began arguing with the Nawwab. The argument escalated rapidly and they almost came to fisticuffs. A gaggle of servants gathered outside. Then a handsome, large, well-built man entered the room. He could not have been more than thirty. He seemed quite agile despite his big frame.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked thunderously.

‘He…he…’ Nawwab Hashim said, pointing at Imran, ‘is a reporter for some newspaper.’

‘So! What’s the point of all this ruckus?’

‘He threatens to write an article against me in the newspaper!’

‘Why, sir, what’s the matter?’ He turned towards Imran.

‘You are perhaps Nawwab Sajid?’

‘Yes sir! But you for no reason…’

‘Wait a minute!’ Imran said, raising his hand. ‘I actually wanted to meet you, but this gentleman interfered. He tells me that he is Nawwab Hashim.’

‘Why, sir?’ He turned towards Nawwab Hashim. ‘I had warned you, hadn’t I, that you weren’t to talk such nonsense.’

‘Listen to me, Sajid, you will burn in hell for this. I am your uncle!’

‘If you are my uncle then I only have one piece of advice for you: leave quietly because if you don’t, the police is going to give you a lot of trouble!’ Then he looked towards Imran and said, ‘Right, sir?’

‘Certainly, certainly!’ Imran said, nodding. ‘In fact, most certainly, sir!’

‘Okay sir! Why did you want to meet me?’

‘Aha…actually the thing is that I wanted to exchange thoughts about dogs with you.’

Nawwab Sajid stared at Imran. He was a dog lover and no one in the whole city had more dogs than him.

‘It doesn’t seem from your appearance that you would be interested in dogs!’ Nawwab Sajid said after a while.

‘There is no doubt that I still look like a human being…but I know a lot about dogs!’

‘What do you know?’

‘That sometimes dogs start barking without a reason!’

‘Hmm! So you are from the CIB,’ Nawwab Sajid said, staring at Imran.

‘No, I am from the A to Z. Don’t worry about it, but I would definitely like to exchange notes about dogs with you!’

‘Of course, please do, sir!’ Nawwab Sajid said, sitting on a chair. ‘I’d like to know just one thing. Can you tell me how many breeds of hunting dogs exist? From your answer I’ll be able to gauge your knowledge of dogs.’

‘All breeds of dogs are extremely fond of hunting.’

‘By hunters I mean sporting breeds!’

‘Oh, then say that!’ Imran said, nodding. ‘Okay, count on your fingers…Basenji, Borzoi, Dachsh-
und, Greyhound, Afghan Hound, Irish Wolfhound, Beagle, Harrier…Foxhound, Otterhound, Bloodhound, Deer-hound, Elkhound, Beast hound, Saluki and may God keep you alive…Whippet… Yes, so tell me—would you also like to know their habits and their social and political inclinations? I’d be happy to shed light on that as well!’

‘No, that’s enough. You are certainly interested in dogs. Yes, so what would you like to discuss about dogs?’

‘I am actually researching extinct breeds of dogs,’ Imran said.

‘Extinct breeds?’

‘Yes sir! So what do you know about local breeds?’

‘Local breeds!’ Nawwab Sajid exclaimed, wincing in disgust.

‘Yes sir! Local breeds! Foreign breeds lord over local breeds even today! This is so shameful! You embrace foreign breeds and spurn local ones.’

‘Oh, are you the leader of local breeds?’ Nawwab Sajid said, laughing.

‘Okay, let’s leave it at that. As I was saying…’

‘Wait! I don’t know anything about local breeds,’ Nawwab Sajid said, standing up. ‘Surely, you must have other things you need to attend to.’ He left the room, leaving Imran and Nawwab Hashim still sitting there.

They both sat in silence for a few minutes. Nawwab Hashim stared at Imran strangely. After a while he said, ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I am Ali Imran—MSc, DSc! Officer on Special Duty from the Central Intelligence Bureau. Will you talk to me now?!’

‘Oh, then indeed my nephew is very shrewd!’ Nawwab Hashim said laughing. ‘Wait, I’ll call him!’

‘Hold on. I’m done with my enquiry.’

‘Friend, you would make a worthy associate…’

‘I am worthy of more, Nawwab Sahib! I can claim with certainty that indeed you are Nawwab Hashim.’

‘Another somersault!’ Nawwab Hashim laughed loudly. Then he became serious. ‘Go now or else I’ll be compelled to call the police!’

‘Thanks for the advice.’ Imran left quietly. While crossing the garden walkway his eyes happened to fall on the disorderly begonia bushes. It seemed as if someone was hiding in them. Imran immediately began walking faster. He walked out of the gate, got into his car, and began driving.

In the rear-view mirror he saw a car come out of the haveli and head in his direction. Imran suddenly swerved into a byroad. The car was still following him. At one point the car came very close, and at that instant the constable at the roundabout signalled the traffic to a stop. The car which had been following him was now right behind his car. He turned and looked behind. Nawwab Hashim’s nephew Sajid was at the wheel.

Imran moved his car forward. He stopped at another roundabout and looked behind him. Sajid’s car was still there. As soon as Imran looked back Sajid waved his hand and signalled at him to stop. When the traffic started moving again, Imran drove on. He didn’t seem to be in a great hurry.

A short while later Imran pulled over next to a restaurant. He stood at the door of the restaurant and watched as Nawwab Sajid got out of his car. He darted towards Imran like an arrow.

‘You seem not to have heard me,’ he said, smiling. ‘My throat is sore from shouting!’

‘It seems that you have seriously deliberated upon the abject condition of local breeds!’

‘Come, let’s talk inside.’

‘But the topic of discussion will only be local breeds,’ Imran said, entering the restaurant.

The two of them sat in an empty cabin. Imran called a waiter and ordered tea.

‘I eavesdropped on your conversation,’ Sajid said.

‘I know that,’ Imran said coldly.

‘So you really are a CIB person!’

Imran took out his visiting card from his pocket, gave it to Sajid, and said, ‘If he actually is Nawwab Hashim then you will have to wash your hands off a lot of property.’

‘Just on the basis of a resemblance? That’s nonsense,’ Sajid said.

‘Ten years ago when Nawwab Hashim’s corpse was found, who was in the haveli at the time?’

‘The deceased lived alone with a few servants.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I was studying at the time and I lived in one of the hostels of Maysur College.’

‘Who supported you?’

‘My late uncle! Ah! I loved him dearly and when I saw his semblance in that person my heart melted. If he stops saying that he is Nawwab Hashim, I would be happy to provide for him all my life.’

‘Can you tell me why Nawwab Hashim was murdered?’

‘I am not ready to concede even today that it was  a murder,’ Sajid said thoughtfully. ‘It was a suicide, I’m hundred per cent certain of that.’

‘But why?’

‘Circumstances, Mr Imran. The gun was found near the corpse and a streak of gunpowder was found on the face! If it were a murder case then things wouldn’t have been so. The murderer could have fired a shot from a distance. I think that he must have put the muzzle to his face and pressed the trigger himself.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Imran replied seriously. ‘You have clarified everything, but now we will have to find out why he committed suicide.’ The waiter brought their tea, and Imran waited for him to leave. Then he said, ‘Can you shed some light on possible reasons for his suicide?’

‘Oh! I think it was some problem related to a love affair and all of that stuff,’ Nawwab Sajid said, slightly embarrassed.

‘Good.’ Imran rubbed his chin in thought. After a few moments he said, ‘Can I have the address of his girlfriend?’

‘I don’t know her address.’

‘Where were you on the night this incident happened?’

‘In the hostel!’

‘Okay. Now if it is proved that indeed this person is Nawwab Hashim, what will you do?’

‘I will go mad!’ Nawwab Sajid said, visibly agitated.

‘Very appropriate!’ Imran nodded his head seriously. At that moment he appeared to be an utter fool.

‘What?’ Sajid became even more agitated.

‘I mean that now you should declare yourself mad and leave for a sanatorium. Return after ten years. Nawwab Hashim will be dead by then.’

‘You are making fun of me!’ Nawwab Sajid shot up in anger.

‘No sir! But both you uncle and nephew are making a joke of the law!’

‘You again referred to that man as my uncle!’

‘Sit down, sir,’ Imran said gently. ‘Now tell me…what is the real story?’

‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Okay, fine. Forget it. Let’s talk about dogs!’

Sajid sat down, but it was clear that he was quite worried.

‘I would like to ask you about that dog Raygi.’

‘It’s that man’s dog…’ Nawwab Sajid said.

‘What breed is it?’

‘He is a crossbred Beagle! He’s a lazy dog—had he been a thoroughbred, he would have been quite wonderful!’

‘Did Nawwab Hashim ever keep dogs before?’

‘No. He has always hated dogs.’

‘Why don’t you kick him out of the haveli?’ Sajid did not say anything. Imran looked at him searchingly. After some time he said, ‘You know what he is doing.’

‘I don’t know anything! But he seems to be a very mysterious person.’

‘As soon as he came to town, he met a superintendent of my department and showed him his documents.’

‘What kind of documents?’

‘He fought with the Allies against the Nazis for two years. He, meaning Nawwab Hashim, son of Nawwab Qasim. His rank was that of a Major. I mean, who can prove that those documents were fakes? Those have an international credibility.’

‘My God!’ Sajid said, wide-eyed in astonishment. He was silent for a while. Then he began talking rapidly, as though in a delirium, ‘Impossible…it’s wrong…it’s nonsense…he’s a fraud…I am going to kick him out of the haveli today!’

‘But what would that do? His claim still stands.’

‘Then tell me—what should I do?’ Sajid said helplessly. ‘I made a serious mistake by letting him stay in the haveli.’

‘What if you hadn’t made this mistake? Would that have changed anything?’

‘What should I do now?’

‘Find out the circumstances of Nawwab Hashim’s death.’

‘I have told you before, it was an affair with a woman!’

‘Who was she? Where did she live?’

‘I don’t know any details. My uncle wasn’t married but he knew a lot of women. One of these women was highly esteemed. She lived somewhere in Alamgiri Sirai. Once, my uncle had also picked a fight with someone because of her. However, all this is hearsay. I cannot claim with certainty that any of this is true.’

‘Alamgiri Sirai…’ Imran mumbled to himself. ‘But nothing can be deduced from this piece of information.’

‘Look, there is one more thing,’ Sajid said. ‘But I fear you will brush it aside.’

‘Does it have hair?’

‘What?’ Sajid stared at him in bafflement.

‘The thing that you wanted to tell me about.’

A hesitant ‘no’ slipped from Sajid’s mouth.

‘Then how can I brush it aside?’ Imran lowered his head and mumbled, perplexed. Then he raised his head and gently said, ‘Please say frankly whatever you want. We are not paid a salary for brushing things aside!’

‘Look, it is an absurd thing, that’s why…but I wonder—what if it is true.’

‘Even if it isn’t true I am ready to listen to it,’ Imran said frustratedly.

‘I know a girl from Alamgiri Sirai who greatly resembles my late uncle!’

‘Why are you telling me this? How is it relevant?’

‘It’s possible that she is my uncle’s illegitimate child!’

‘How old is she?’

‘Not more than twenty.’

‘She must have been ten at the time when he disappeared. But one doesn’t kill for a woman with a ten-year-old daughter. What do you think?’

‘When did I imply that he was murdered for that woman?’ Sajid said. ‘It is possible that it was some other woman, but I cannot be certain of that either! Look, this is my personal opinion; resemblance alone doesn’t prove that she is my uncle’s daughter.’

‘So you must be particularly intrigued by this girl?’

‘Only to the extent that my heart desires to gaze at her. But I have not talked to her and she doesn’t know me either. But I can give you her address.’

‘Ah,’ Imran said with a smile, ‘so you have been following her.’

‘What do I say, sir. When I look at her, my heart is involuntarily drawn to her.’

‘If your heart is really drawn to her then do give me her address…’

‘She lives in Alamgiri Sirai. There is a small yellow house near the half-minaret.’

Imran put down his cup of tea. He was visibly astonished: it was the same address Moody had given him just a while ago.

‘Are you sure this girl lives in that house?’ he asked Sajid.

‘Oh, I have seen her going there hundreds of times,’ Sajid said.

‘Okay, mister. I will try…’ Imran stood up without completing his sentence. He had already paid the bill.

‘If I want to meet you some time, where can I find you?’ Sajid asked.

‘My address and phone number are on my card,’ Imran replied and left the restaurant. Instead of going to his car he headed to a medical store. There, he bought a bottle of cholera medicine. The chemist not only recognized him but also seemed to know him very well; when Imran asked for a hypodermic syringe, he gave him one for free. Imran also bought a couple of ampoules of some medicine.

 Ibn e Safi was born in 1928 in Allahabad district. He began to write from the early 1940s and created two great mystery series, Jasoosi Duniya from 1952 and the Imran series from 1955. Both gained massive popularity and were translated into several languages. Between 1960 – 1963 Ibn e Safi suffered an episode of schizophrenia, but recovered, and returned with more bestselling novels. He died of pancreatic cancer on his birthday in July 26, 1980 in Karachi.

A Note on the Translator:

Taimoor Shahid is a writer and a translator. His other book-length work includes a co-translation of a novella, The Madness of Waiting: The Story of Mirza Ruswa, by Mirza Hadi Ruswa. He is currently working on the translation of a war account and his first collection of poetry, among other things.

The Dangerous Man comes after The House of Fear and is  a part of the bestselling Imran Series. Published by Random House India and priced at Rs. 199. Find out more - http://tinyurl.com/3t9kekm

On my third trip to the kingdom of Bhutan, I harbored two illicit items: a hand-me-down Burberry purse, donated by a well-heeled American friend for my brand-crazed Bhutanese friend who’d become enamored of luxury goods after hours of inhaling juicy episodes of Sex and the City.  And a 1-terrabyte hard drive jammed with a motherlode of Western music, donated by an anonymous friend as a gift to the staff of the country’s first private radio station, Kuzoo FM.

As an outspoken foe of piracy and as a “content creator” myself, I felt supremely guilty about the latter item.  The donor convinced me that no authorities could possibly begrudge this “sharing” of his music collection with the good people of Bhutan.  I dubiously assented.

Turns out, those Kuzoo deejays were more interested in the hard drive than the music; they fought over the coveted hardware.  They took greater pleasure in illegally downloading the tunes from the Internet, one by one, as needed for their programs.   Scanning through the drive’s contents was just too much tedious work; they wanted to choose their music themselves.

My brand-crazed friend, however, beamed with delight at the Burberry purse, while I cringed at indulging such crass materialism.

Ever since the fourth king of Bhutan opened up his country’s borders to tourists and his virtual airspace to television and Internet, there’s been a growing and twisted love affair between the place known as the last Shangri-la and my homeland of the United States of America.  Some might call it globalization.  I call it the “spell of the other.”

Like most Americans who have had the privilege of traveling to Bhutan, I became intoxicated by it the very first time I stepped off the plane in January 2007 to volunteer at Kuzoo. What could be more different than the United States, particularly the gritty, frenetic madness of Los Angeles I  call home?  A mysterious, faraway, once off-limits Kingdom steeped in ancient Buddhist tradition. A pristine landscape; gorgeous hand-loomed textiles giving a colorful, uniform attire to all.  Most mesmerizing of all was the royal commitment to the people’s Gross National Happiness over GDP.  For this cynical business reporter who’d fallen hard into a midlife malaise, Bhutan offered the perfect ingredients of an all-consuming love affair.

It wasn’t long before I’d meet others also entranced by the spell.  Fellow volunteers marveled at our good fortune to be working in this place that others spent thousands of dollars to visit.  At the airport home, tourists glowed as they sifted through magnificent digital photos on their pricey cameras.  While I’ve been on the road to promote my new book, Radio Shangri-La, people have waited for me at bookstores and libraries to whisper, knowingly, “kuzoo zampo” (hello) and share their photos and fondest memories of their journeys, more wistfully than most people share snapshots of their kids.

Over the last four and a half years since my first visit, I’ve been learning how reciprocal this love affair is.  Young Bhutanese are ga-ga for the US.  I’ve also learned the lengths to which many of them will go to get their feet onto American soil, in the belief that if they do, their very limbs will turn to gold.   As far as they’re concerned, the elders can keep that “Gross National Happiness” ideal, as long as they get a nice car and better handbag, or cash to build a bigger house (though the average Bhutanese house already accommodates a large extended family, and homelessness is hardly an issue in the kingdom).  “I’ll do any job you can get me,” begged the 20 year-old daughter of a Bhutanese friend.  “Taking care of old people, being a nanny, anything.”  (Would she do those jobs in her homeland?  No way.  Young Bhutanese recently enrolled in a nanny class in the capital city of Thimphu complained about the prospect of actually having to take care of other people’s kids.)

These days, the GNH ideals that proximity to family and a healthy, slower-paced lifestyle that allows time to breathe seem far more alluring to the country’s Western visitors than they do to young Bhutanese.

Now, there’s nothing new about “the grass is greener” syndrome.  People have always longed for what they don’t have: In the cities, we yearn for space and nature, to dig our heels into the earth.  On the farms, we dream of the comfort and ease of a desk job, of the glamour of dressing smart.  At the very least, curiosity about the other is just natural.

But in the case of the US and Bhutan, that curiosity seems often to swell to mythic proportions.  Citizens of the US fetishize the spirituality and underdevelopment of Bhutan, and take offense that the place might actually be imperfect.  “That monk had a mobile phone in a monastery!  What a shame.  What’s with all those discos and what do you mean there’s pollution in the capital city?” they exclaim.  “Too bad those villages are getting electricity.  Now what will happen?”  Let the well-to-do Americans live without their roads or cars and electricity or cell phones for a while and see how “off-the-grid” feels.

That citizens of Bhutan fetishize the land of plenty stands to reason.  Just watch a movie or TV show and you’d assume all Americans are rich, wallowing in abundance.  (My host during my first stay in Bhutan apologized that my apartment was so modest, and when I explained that it was actually the same size as my place back home, he exclaimed apologetically, “But that can’t be!  I’ve seen Desperate Housewives.”)

Another contributing factor to the love affair with the US: The American tourists who come to Bhutan are hardly typical, but the Bhutanese assume they must be the norm.  Few in the US can afford the two or three weeks of vacation and the many thousands of dollars it costs to visit.  (Lucky Indian passport holders need not pay the $200-plus a day tourist visa, and might even get a break on the typically $800 fare into the Kingdom on the government-owned airline.)

Young Bhutanese hear about their cousin who’s stowed away in New York and has landed a job as a nanny earning $500 a week, but they don’t learn the reality or economy of scale that in my country, such an income is equal to the poverty level.

I’ve learned many things during my association with and around the so-called happiest place on earth.  I’ve learned how to slow down.  How to appreciate what I have in my overly busy home city.  What I can do to make it a better place.  Sometimes I wake up dreaming of the days and nights I’ve spent in Bhutan, the magical privilege of having seeing another land up close and immersing myself in it.  Most often, I think of the kids I’ve met in Bhutan, in particular the ones in this video (http://www.youtube.com/user/lisajanenapoli?feature=mhum#p/u/5/BLWiLhzF-RY)  I shot in Mongar, Bhutan last October.  They’d never met a US citizen before, and I felt like Margaret Mead as I introduced myself.  They could find the US on the map pretty quickly.  They even knew who my governor was, but only after their teacher gave them a prompt: “Terminator Part One, Part Two,” he said, and they all nodded knowingly.  “Bhutan is just an ant,” one little boy mustered up the courage to speak to me.  Yours may be a tiny country I thought, but the power of interconnectedness is growing—and ultimately, far greater.   The rise in luxury goods consumption is one testament to that, but hopefully the power of Gross National Happiness turns out to be more powerful.

   Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a midlife crisis, cynical about work and depressed about her love life, when a chance encounter with a handsome stranger led to the adventure of a lifetime. Leaving behind her job in public radio and her cosmopolitan life in Los Angeles, she moved to Bhutan, the happiest country on earth, to volunteer at the country’s first radio station for the youth of Bhutan. In a country just beginning to open its doors to the modern world, which measures its success in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, she finds that the world is a beautiful and complicated place and comes to appreciate her life for the adventure it is.  Radio Shangri-La is available in book stores and priced at Rs. 399.

Find out more from- http://www.lisanapoli.com

Radio Shangri-la excerpt-

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47547372/Radio-Shangri-La-by-Lisa-Napoli-Excerpt

YouTube- http://www.youtube.com/user/lisajanenapoli?feature=mhum

Sitting in the Edrich Stand at Lord’s on a glorious first morning of the second Test between England and Sri Lanka, I took out my binoculars to watch Ajantha Mendis warming up. He didn’t make the final eleven – the sole spinner’s spot went, regrettably, to Rangana Herath – but even as he practised on a side strip, this brilliant young man seemed to embody the amazing journey of Twirlymen through the ages. 

First, there was the run-up. Charging in off eleven paces, he looked for all the world like he was destined to deliver medium-pace when he got to the crease. And, with his quick arm and snappy action, he did indeed deliver the ball at slow-medium at least. And yet, given he was snapping his fingers, and so imparting spin on the ball, he must also be classified as a spinner. The sports channels have no vocabulary for this double quality, and so unsatisfactorily call him right-arm off-break. The difficulty stems, it seems, from his conflation of different categories.

But why should this be unusual, and why should we have no vocabulary for it, when many of the greatest bowlers the game has produced adopted this very style: spin at medium pace? Sydney Barnes, the most complete bowler the game has produced, bowled off-breaks and leg breaks at around 70mph. He didn’t just cut it; he actually spun the ball vigorously, achieving considerable turn and, with his wrist slightly cocked back at the moment of release, like screwing or unscrewing a light bulb, tremendous swerve as well. Barnes took a record 49 wickets in a Test series, despite bunking the fifth and final game because England’s administrators refused to pay his wife’s hotel fee, which is my definition of heroism. Other great bowlers, from George Lohmann to Monty Noble and Fred Spofforth, were similarly medium-pace spinners. To the modern, myopic eye, Mendis may have fallen between two proverbial stools; but he is in fact merely re-awakening a dormant tradition that boasts many of the finest bowlers in cricket history.

Then there was the turn. Mendis is not a great turner of the ball but he can spin it both ways – and using all manner of techniques. His stock ball, to the extent that he has one, is the off-break, which spins into the right-hander. But he also bowls an unorthodox googly, bowled off his thumb and middle finger, which again spins into the right-hander but from a more parabolic trajectory. And he also has an extraordinary delivery called the Carrom Ball, flicked off the middle finger, and spinning away from the right-hander. It derives its name, of course, from the Indian board game, where disks are flicked by that finger. The analogy is remarkable; flicking carrom disks on a small board is one thing, but sending a hard cricket ball 22 yards with enough spin on it to trouble the best batsmen in the world? That is something else, and requires phenomenally strong digits.

When Mendis burst onto the scene two years ago, the world of cricket greeted the Carrom Ball as if it were rapture or revelation. They did not understand it fully, and so thought it entirely novel. But on this matter too, knowledge of history can remedy widespread ignorance. Just as the doosra, an off-spinner’s “other one” is wrongly thought to have been invented by Pakistani Saqlain Mushtaq in the 1990s, when in fact it was probably bowled by Australian Jack Potter in the 1960s, so the claim that Mendis “invented” the Carrom Ball is bunkum. Just as with politics, nothing is new in cricket, except the haircut of the spinner claiming otherwise.

And, ironically, the claim that Mendis invented the “Carrom Ball” can be disproved simply by looking at the bowler who edged him out of the side to play England. Herath didn’t receive a great deal of scrutiny early in his career, because Muttiah Muralitharan dominated Sri Lanka’s team so fully. But those who paid close attention will have noticed that, even back in the early Nineties, he was bowling a left-handed version of the Carrom Ball.

Mendis, then, validates a recurring theme in the history of mystery. Time and again bowlers turn up who claim to have invented a new delivery. And in each and every case, their claim to originality can be disproven. In spin bowling as in so much sport, all patents are fraudulent.

Partly because of his alleged originality, Mendis is considered a mystery spinner, one of those enigmatic characters who occasionally set the game alight. But surveying the vast canvas of spin bowling, it is clear that while mystery is temporary, mastery is permanent. Muralitharan aside, the greatest spinners, from Barnes to Shane Warne, have made themselves unplayable by mastering rudimentary skills rather than pioneering new ones.

My motivation in writing this book came in part from a strong sense that many of the above lessons have been neglected. As a result, when I was growing up at the end of the Eighties, spin bowling nearly died. Flat pitches, impatient captains, and the roaring magnificence of the West Indian fast bowlers nearly expunged spin bowling altogether. But that it survived owes much not just to Warne and Muralitharan, but to the endurance of what I have called the spinner’s spirit.

Twirlymen are the great eccentrics of the game. They are invariably intellectual, persevering, and capable of finding humour on the edge of a knife. They have survived because of their stamina, and because, as Arthur Mailey, one of the great Australian leg-spinners, put it, they tend to “meander through life as individuals, not as civil servants”. We should be grateful for their flourishing, because cricket is at its richest and most beautiful when showcasing their glories.

  Amol Rajan is Deputy Comment Editor and Columnist for the Independent, having previously been a news reporter and Sports News Correspondent for the newspaper. He grew up in Tooting, south London, and from the age of 11 played for Sinjuns Cricket Club (now Sinjuns & Grammarians) in Wandsworth, becoming the youngest captain of a men’s team when leading the Sunday First XI in 2002, aged eighteen.

Sharmaji is a senior officer at the Beggars Court at Sewa Kutir, in Kingsway Camp in North Delhi. His job is to catch beggars and have them tried and punished in court. Begging in the national capital is a serious offence, and under the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, the Department of Welfare can arrest all those ‘having no visible means of subsistence and wandering about, or remaining in a public place in a condition or manner, [that made] it likely that the person doing so exists by soliciting or receiving alms’. It isn’t just the alleged beggar; the law also has provisions for sending the family and dependants of the accused off to a remand home if the court feels they might turn to begging.

None of the men I know at Bara Tooti have any visible means of sustenance. If I saw Ashraf lying drunk on a pavement one evening, I wouldn’t know what to make of him. So how can Sharmaji tell a beggar from a working man who is merely poor?

‘You can tell by looking at the hands. The rickshaw pullers, for example, have rough calluses here.’ Sharmaji grabs my hand and points to the arc where the fingers join my palm. ‘It’s the rickshaw’s hard plastic handles. The skin first blisters, then the blisters become calluses and the calluses form little ridges.’

‘They also have big, bulging calves,’ Sharmaji adds as an afterthought. ‘And some of them sit funny.

‘Mazdoor hands are different from beggar hands. They have calluses too—but their nails are scuffed from handling bricks and sand. You won’t see a rickshaw puller with scuffed hands. Safediwallahs tendy to be tall and lanky and are usually sprinkled with paint dust. Carpenters are Muslims and usually carry tools. Never, Aman sir, never trust a man who travels without his tools.’

Sharmaji, raiding officer for the Department of Social Welfare and the source of these ethnographic insights, has rather soft hands himself—the sort that might be subjected to the occasional massage of Pond’s Cold Cream. But he has strong fingers and well-rounded shoulders: the anatomy of a man used to grabbing people and shaking them about.

‘Beggars don’t have any calluses. How can they if they never work? Also, a working man—no matter how poor he is—will always look you in the eye when he talks to you. But beggars? No, they can’t look me in the eye.’

‘Now take you, for instance.’ He shakes my hand vigorously, somehow managing to point at me with my own fingers. ‘No one will mistake you for a beggar even if you dress up as one.’

I try and imagine if I would look Sharmaji in the eye. He reminds me of a particularly feared mathematics teacher from school—a man who appeared reasonable at most times, but could be moved to violence by completely innocuous acts. My teacher too had a habit of grabbing students by the shoulder and jerking them about, an experience I found intensely disorienting.

This should be a period of frenetic activity for Sharmaji and his team; the minister heading his department has promised to make Delhi ‘beggar free’ in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Sharmaji’s department has deadlines to meet, beggars to deport, and cases to file. The target for the year is at least five thousand beggars. But the reception area is empty, save for the two of us, as are the small courtrooms.

Sharmaji’s raid vehicle has broken down, making it impossible for him to drive around the city chasing beggars. The wheels of the Delhi government do not move any faster for its own departments and so Sharmaji has been told that a new vehicle will arrive ‘in some time’.

‘Right now, the only beggars we have are those rounded up by the Delhi Police. But they don’t know how to read hands. The police can’t tell a beggar from a beldaar.’

Suddenly I am very afraid for my friends.

‘The police don’t even know how to catch them.’ Sharmaji is disconsolate. ‘There is a special technique. You can’t just stop anywhere and run at them. Now where would you go to catch a beggar?’

‘I don’t know. A traffic light?’

‘Wrong!’ he says with some satisfaction. ‘Correct but wrong. Don’t worry, it is a logical mistake to make. You may find them at a traffic light, but you cannot catch them at a traffic light. You see the difference?’ He grabs my wrist again.

‘We all know that beggars stand at traffic lights, but if you try and catch them, they often run off straight into traffic. The result? Accidents, traffic jams, and the public also gets upset.’

Instead Sharmaji and his team stake out at the major temples in the city. ‘It is the fault of our culture. If people spend lakhs of rupees in feeding the beggars, why would anyone work? All they do is sit and wait to be fed. This is not how you give discipline to the nation.’

At temples, the beggars tend to be more docile and less likely to escape through rush hour traffic. ‘Temples, train stations, bus stands. Here you will not only find beggars, but also be able to arrest them.

‘It is best to arrive after they have been fed. Mid-afternoon to late evening, when they are drowsy and there aren’t too many pilgrims around.’

Unsurprisingly, Sharmaji also has a photographic memory. ‘I never forget faces—never. I will never forget your face. It is stored in my brain’s computer.’ Since the Begging Act prescribes ‘Not less than one year and not exceeding three years for first time offenders. Ten years for repeat offenders,’ raiding officers like Sharmaji are often asked to testify if they had ever arrested the person before. ‘Obviously nobody gives the same name twice. So we have registers and registers of the same people—only stored under different names and addresses.’

Most departments would have buckled under the weight of such voluminous and apparently useless data, but not the Department of Social Welfare which has already begun to computerize its registers. Equipped with the latest advances in biometric technology, the Beggar Information System or BIS 2.1 is ‘like our own passport office’. The machine is designed to store the details of every single person arrested by Sharmaji’s team: name, date of birth, place of birth, photograph, and biometric fingerprint. Once registered, the information is stored ‘forever’, implying that recidivists will no longer fool the judge by claiming that they got off a train in Delhi, were robbed of all their possessions, and were begging to get enough money to go back home. Once arrested, the beggars will be marched off to the registration room, photographed, fingerprinted, and presented before the court. If convicted, they are taken to one of twelve prisons set aside for beggars and locked up for a minimum of one year and a maximum of three.

‘So can I see this system?’ I am eager to witness the information revolution at work. ‘Where is the machine stored?’

‘On the first floor.’ Sharmaji is unsure. ‘It isn’t really working these days. We have called the technician, but after a point he stopped taking our calls.’ Occasionally, the receptionist—who is on his lunch break—calls the technician from a different phone number from another department, but the technician has wised up to these tricks. ‘He says some part is missing and he shall come only when it arrives from the warehouse.’

‘I just want to see it. We don’t need to use it or anything.’

‘Come along then.’

Sharmaji turns the key, and there it is, under a shroud of white plastic dust covers: the Beggar Information System Version 2.1. It is a record of every beggar with the misfortune of crossing Sharmaji and his team. The machine is a rather bland-looking personal computer with little to distinguish it apart from a rather clunky-looking webcam and what appears to be a small plastic matchbox.

‘Is this it?’ I find it hard to conceal my disappointment.

‘Well, yes. To be honest, we were a little surprised ourselves. We expected something a lot bigger.’

‘So this is the biometric reader?’ I pick up the box and toss it in my hands casually.

‘Careful, Aman sir, careful. This is not a toy, this is a biometric device. The beggars place their thumbprint on the glass and the webcam takes their photo. That way we have full identification.’

‘So is the database searchable?’

‘There are a few small problems,’ Sharmaji says sheepishly as he fires up the machine. The designers had failed to read the tender document carefully. The tender, freely available on the internet, clearly asks for ‘an interface to identify the habitual beggars at the time of reception by scanning the thumb impression or keying in other relevant information to establish the identity’, but this crucial detail had slipped the designers’ mind. Instead, the firm (whose name Sharmaji coyly refused to reveal: ‘You are from the press, no? He he he’) had provided two separate interfaces—one for data entry and one for data search, thereby doubling the time required for registration instead of halving it. It was this particular software error that the technician appeared unable to fix till the ‘missing part’ arrived.

The other, more pressing problem lies with the scanner itself. Though the tender had mandated a ‘scratch-resistant’ scanning surface, the scanner—as befitting any high-tech gadget—was extraordinarily sensitive to dust. It worked best when recording images of clean, slightly moist thumbs that, when pressed down onto the glass surface, flattened ever so slightly to allow for a true record of the fingerprint in question. ‘But these beggars,’ the exasperation in Sharmaji’s voice is palpable, ‘their hands are so dirty, so filthy, that the scanner just cannot pick up the image.’ All they got were blurry smudges that the machine was unable to identify, let alone catalogue and search. ‘So we started washing their hands before registering them. But that took too long.’ The department also tried bathing them—but, after a bath, the beggars look ‘just like anyone else’. How then can the judge make his decision?

‘Now we register once manually before the hearings. And then again on computer in the evenings. That way we have complete records.’

‘But you can’t search them.’

‘We can.’ Sharmaji is quick to defend BIS 2.1. ‘It just takes some time, that’s all. In India, all everyone wants to do is criticize.’

As I get up to leave, Sharmaji points out three freshly bathed men leaving the reception centre. ‘The judge gave them a second chance.’

I catch up with one of them on my way out. ‘Are you a beggar?’

‘Of course not, I’m a snake charmer.’

‘So where’s your snake?’

‘Sharmaji asked me the same question. The Wildlife Department took it away.’

  Aman Sethi was born in Bombay in 1983. He studied chemistry in Delhi, and journalism in Chennai and New York. He is currently the Chhattisgarh correspondent for The Hindu. A Free Man  is his first book, published by Random House India and priced at Rs. 399 . Read more  from it at- http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story/970/A-Free-Man.html