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The Travails of an Air Passenger

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , , , on August 7, 2023| 8 Comments »

All kinds of studies done by brainy coves the world over keep telling us that our well-heeled denizens are gradually becoming even-better-heeled with each passing year. Thanks to the capitalistic theories propounded by such experts as Milton Friedman, the concentration of wealth appears to be going up for a tiny segment of the society.

One of the off shoots of the increasing concentration of money power is that of air travel becoming more popular by the day. Manufacturers of commercial airliners, overjoyed at receiving bulk orders for delivery of shimmering new aircraft, are laughing all the way to their banks. New airlines are springing up at a rate which would put many a mushroom-growing enthusiast to well-justified shame.

But it is the hapless customer who appears to be getting increasingly short-changed over time. Here are some of the typical blues which she faces while daring to travel by air.

Pre-flight Stress

For first-time flyers, or even infrequent flyers, the challenge starts right from the time they start twiddling their thumbs trying to squeeze in whatever they desire to carry while keeping a sharp eye on the dimensions as well as the weight of their bulging suitcases. With each passing year, following the advice dished out by their finance honchos, airlines keep reducing the baggage allowances, bringing in additional charges while offering apparently juicy deals for cheaper tickets. While the algorithms of our search engines keep highlighting airlines offering the best deals, the overall cost of travel keeps galloping at a pace which would make Potato Chip (of Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen fame) sit up and take notice.

Some countries like Japan and Switzerland have already kick-started campaigns to persuade travellers to pack less and reduce the airlines’ carbon footprints. Skiing gear, helmets, insulated wear, caps, snow goggles and many other mountaineering-related items are now available for rent upon arrival at major airports. Many airlines have already reduced their check-in baggage allowance from 32 kgs to 23 kgs, leaving many a passenger from countries like India carrying a year’s supply of toys, garments, spices, pickles, and other items of daily consumption fretting and fuming over the changes. Many airlines have already started charging for cabin baggage as well. Very soon, there could be additional cuts in allowances and handsome rewards for passengers who practice a size-zero policy for the baggage they carry.

Luckily for customers, many airlines are yet to wake up to the revenue-boosting potential of charging higher fares based on the gross weight of the passenger herself. Air New Zealand appears to have already started this practice. I suspect the day is not far off when many airlines across the world would start following a similar practice.

All clouds have a silver lining, and the practice of linking fares being charged linked to a passenger’s Body Mass Index could usher in a new craze of Homo sapiens’ desire to be leaner and fitter. World Health Organization would have us believe that by 2021, worldwide obesity had nearly tripled since 1975. Well-endowed passengers would start sweating it out merely to ensure that they do not get overcharged for travelling by air. Fitness experts like Ashe Marson (Something Fresh) and gym-owners like Chimp Twist (Money for Nothing) would surely enjoy higher levels of prosperity.

The Triathlon at the Airport 

The Challenge of Checking-in

The requirements for online check-in vary not only from airline to airline but even from airport to airport, leaving many a flyer baffled, bewildered, confused, disoriented, fogged, flummoxed, mystified, nonplussed, perplexed, and puzzled.    

With a rapid increase in those wishing to take to the skies, the challenges of navigating through milling crowds at the airport merely to reach a check-in counter could leave a passenger disgruntled, disappointed and dejected. The earlier norm of reporting at least three hours prior to the departure of one’s flight is no longer valid. Cost-saving measures introduced by many airlines have apparently ensured a drastic cut in the number of ground staff operating the check-in counters. These days, just to reach one, it could take up to two hours.

Upon reaching the counter, you may get greeted by someone cast in the mould of Florence Craye. While you may be trying to check out her willowy profile sideways, her sharp eyes would already be checking out your baggage profile and weight. Anything exceeding the limits prescribed, and she will pounce on you to extract an extra pound of flesh. She may or may not extoll the virtues of the Types of Ethical Overloading but is bound to demand some extra money you have to part with.

Gone are the heady days when one could keep the check-in baggage within the stipulated limits but could carry overloaded cabin baggage, hoping that the smartly dressed ground staff will indulge the hapless passengers and turn a blind eye to bulging hand-carried items. You will be asked to insert the cabin baggage into a super-tight metal box, and should you fail in doing so, or get noticed for overly exerting yourself to somehow shove it into the size-zero box, monetary consequences will need to be faced. Ukridge would have surely come up with a betting racket linked to whether a certain passenger would get away with an oversized baggage. Shylock himself would do well to undergo a crash refresher course conducted by ground staff of this kind. 

Of Security Blues

The security guys and gals leave no stone turned to further fray the nerves of a passenger. If milk being carried for bonny babies gets thrown into a dustbin, so do some objects as small scissors and any precious gifts made of such material as wax, etc. Some kind of footwear and accessories invite a jaundiced eye, leaving the passenger praying for mercy. The process of taking off one’s belts hastily wound around by someone who faces Pear Pressure in office has left many a passenger de-trousered, shocking the on-lookers.

If your cabin baggage gets singled out for a detailed scrutiny, that too at the hands of someone of the stature of Roderick Spode, you feel as if you have just been found pinching an umbrella belonging to him. You only hope that he does not wish to jump on you with size eleven boots and see the colour of your insides. Too many traditional medicines carried by the elderly in bulk could arouse the worst suspicions. Even a silver-coated set of spoons and forks purchased by you for a loved one may have to be parted with.        

Emigration and Boarding

Another long queue awaits you next at the emigration counter. Someone in the mould of Madam Bassett will ask you a perfunctory set of questions and then only do you get to hear the loud but reassuring noise of her having stamped your passport.

When you land up at the boarding gate, you often realize with sudden horror that the boarding is not through an aerobridge. Instead, you have to trudge down a flight of stairs, take a bus, brave the elements, and then huff and puff back up the aircraft boarding stairs. This is what management experts allude to as a win-win situation. Your heart gets some well-deserved exercise, whereas the airline saves the cost of engaging an aerobridge at the airport.

Long queues at the boarding gates are now a norm. Some airlines in the USA practice a policy of laissez faire, helping the flyers to maintain a high level of physical agility and fitness. The moment the gates get thrown open, a race down the aerobridge to grab the best possible seats begins, putting many an Olympian sprinter to shame. All those who, like Bingo Little, have allowed their sporting spirits to drive them to the races at Ascot and have keenly watched the winning tactics of racing horses stand a far better chance of securing seats of their choice.

Of course, you can have a seat of choice as well, provided you are prepared to shell out some more green stuff for the privilege.

When Reality Hits One

Finally, the passenger heaves a sigh of relief, squeezes herself into the narrow seat, fastens her seat belt, and looks forward to a time of rest and repose. But wait, some more excitement is on its way.

When she looks around, she starts feeling empathetic towards the sardines which get mercilessly compressed into a tiny tin/aluminium box. A realization soon dawns that the seats have been designed by expert ergonomists who have squeezed every square inch of the carpet area of the aircraft. 

A Sudden Jump in the Blood Pressure 

The security drill starts. She suddenly realizes that she is destined to travel by an aircraft which happens to be a Boeing 737 Max. She shudders to think of all the 346 passengers who had lost their lives many years back while travelling in the same model. Her blood pressure suddenly shoots up a few notches. She silently prays to one’s Guardian Angels that the same fate may not await her during the flight. She starts wondering if she had, like Aunt Dahlia, ever committed the sin of breaking a few infant Samuel figurines at a nephew’s lair, and Fate was now sneaking up from the back with a lead pipe in hand.   

Of Tissue Restoratives and On-board-meals

Thanks to the over-zealous Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of airlines who keep advising their managements on how to keep cutting down the operating costs and boosting the inflow of the green stuff, no initiative is good enough.

Forget the midair supply of such benign tissue restoratives as tea or coffee, even plain drinking water gets served with a flourish, only to be followed by a much-dreaded card payment gadget. Forget also the juicy and not-so-juicy meals which used to be part of the airfare many years back. There are no free lunches anymore. Be prepared for being not served any nourishment even after having made an online booking for the same.  

The days are not far off when one would even be charged for using the washrooms aboard the aircraft, fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitutions of many countries be damned.   

The Short-haul Sprints

The question of getting served anything on a short-haul flight does not even arise. By the time the seatbelt sign gets switched off and one starts soaking in the glory of nature while marvelling at the white cushion of fluffy clouds below, a short opportunity of getting a cup of tea/coffee may present itself. However, even before one has sipped half the cup that supposedly cheers one, the aircraft is already preparing to land at your destination, leaving one feeling cheated and disgruntled.

In the days to come, passengers may even be allowed a hefty discount on short-haul flights provided they consent to travel in a standing position, holding a velvet-covered handrail above, while being duly strapped to a safety belt dropping down upon one from above, duly herded like a flock of subservient sheep into a separate bay at the back of the plane. We may find them behind the privileged and seated passengers who would perhaps be enjoying their bouts of snootiness, casting supercilious glances at those having a standing ride, much like the kind they themselves are made to suffer at the hands of business class passengers!  

The Horrors of Long Marathons in the Sky

Even the trauma suffered by those who travel on a long-haul flight is bound to increase in the days to come.

The Stiff-Upper-Lip Passengers

I wonder why and how airlines keep attracting passengers who follow a strict stiff-upper-lip policy while interacting with their co-passengers. Their faces and their body language carry an invisible ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. Forget a tentative smile. Abandon the thought of a handshake. Eye contact, if any were to happen, may take place only when the guy in the window seat has to visit the rest room and expects one to get up and make way for him to attend to the nature’s call.    

Those from the emerging economies who are always used to a friendly exchange of notes with the person seated next to them on, say, an eleven-hour flight across the pond, are left disgruntled at the singular absence of a human interaction, howsoever inane it may be. A wee bit of ‘What-ho’-ing is summarily ruled out, curdling whatever little milk of human kindness may still be coursing through one’s veins. This is one of the many perils faced when one undertakes a long journey on an airliner. Ashe Marson had a similar experience while traveling with Joan Valentine from London to Blandings in Something Fresh. The latter had held a magazine before her as a protection, so as to avoid making any conversation. Thanks to Covid, in-flight magazines have all but disappeared from the seat pockets in front of us. Thus, the modern woman today cannot be blamed for being found riveted to a screen in front of her.   

There is a limit to studying the safety instruction card, the menu on offer, and the inflight purchases you can indulge in. Pretty soon, the only option left is that of perusing either a book or a downloaded movie or two or latching on to the movies/series on offer on the screen in front of one. Of course, the last mentioned would work only if you are willing to pay for the earphones you would need.  

The Absence of Beauty and Amiability

It seems incredible that in this age of progress steps have not been taken to either improve the standard of looks among air travellers or even attracting those who have an amiable nature.  Time after time I step on board, full of optimism and feeling that this trip at any rate my fellow-passengers will be at least semi-human, if not human. And every time I stagger back with a hand over my eyes, shaking my head in disbelief.  

Perhaps, a reserved kind of nature is taken as a sign of maturity and wisdom. As to looks, I accept that it is not their fault that most of them look like what either Webster or Augustus might have dragged on to the plane. You see an exhausted looking aged lady devouring a literary tome in her wrinkled hands, peering through her horn-rimmed spectacles, and wearing a ghastly necklace of artificial pearls. Across the aisle, you notice a pot-bellied business honcho feverishly working on the tablet in his hands, ostensibly preparing plans to persuade his customers to part with some green stuff while buying whatever product/service his company may be offering. A sudden commotion draws your attention to a bunch of noisy and weepy tiny tots, with a much-wearied mom who has given up all hopes of reining in the noise pollution.

There is no beating the game. When the aircraft hits a stretch of turbulence, the seat belt sign gets promptly switched on, making you give up your brief saunter down the aisle and rush to your assigned seat.   

The Invisible ‘Do Not Disturb’ Signs

Even if you have the good fortune to be seated next to some moderately attractive passengers, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is invariably switched on for the entire duration of the flight. The charm, if any, starts waning soon after the crew starts its in-flight service.

Hope of a friendly chit-chat, if any, in your bosom, starts evaporating like water would in the vast Sahara Desert. Within the first hour of the journey, if I had imagined that someone would look over at me in a not unkindly spirit and say to herself “Ah! Jolly old Bhatia, the fan of P. G. Wodehouse, eh, what? Capital!”, I would be proven to be wrong.

By the end of the second hour, she feels that she may have seen me before somewhere and that I am not nearly the thing of engage-worthy intellect she had imagined me to be. My fascination begins to wane.

By the end of the third hour, a sort of nervous irritation floods over her as I sink into my seat and start going through a book of Plum’s. Half unconsciously, she begins to wonder if, like Bertie Wooster, I happen to be mentally negligible. She starts marvelling at the weird parental affection which kept my father and mother from drowning me in a bucket as a child. My rapidly balding head gleams at her in the overhead reading light, prompting her to wonder if I happen to be a distant cousin of Sir Roderick Glossop whose head is said to resemble the dome of St. Paul’s. More and more does she resent the vacant stare of my infernal eyes behind their spectacles. The way in which I shove some nourishment down the hatch seems to her proof of a diseased soul.

After an interminable stretch of time, when the eleventh hour finally arrives, the sheer relief at the prospect of release from a confinement in a metal tube cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet above the ground, imposed upon me by a stern-looking beak, ends up inducing a sort of grisly geniality. However, it gets partially reciprocated only by the crew at the time of exiting from the aircraft.

The journey does end up boosting my respect for Albert Einstein who had postulated something somewhere about the speed of time slowing down when we approach the speed of light, even though the speed at which an aircraft travels is but a mere fraction of the speed of light. He surely knew his stuff.      

A Censor Board for Air Passengers?

To return to the matter of improving the standard of personal beauty and amiability amongst air travellers.

The Role That Governments Can Play

Governments the world over would do well to start screening the passport applications presented to them to weed out those whose looks do not meet prescribed norms for beauty as well amiability. Since decades, the authorities have been insisting on non-smiling and morose-looking photos from the hapless applicants. This, I daresay, has eliminated the sheer pleasure of international travel and made all of us look like carrying the burden of the Homo sapiens on our slender shoulders. In fact, they should hand over such delicate tasks to their respective Ministries of Happiness, if any. The screening personnel should be ardent fans of someone like Plum, encouraging people to look good and smile when they get themselves clicked for a passport application.

Whereas the assignment may be easier for those screening applicants from the tribe of the delicately nurtured, there would be severe challenges while attempting to screen those from the tribe of the so-called sterner sex. Other than spotting three chins and a visage which reminds one of Stilton Cheesewright, those wearing horn-rimmed spectacles may have to be shown the door. Ears that stuck out at right angles would surely earn a black mark and would have to be made up for by singular beauty in the nose and mouth. There would be a standard measurement for foreheads, and it would be easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a camel than for a gold tooth to win its way across the aerobridge when the passenger has trudged his/her way up to the boarding gate.

In any case, it would be fatal if the Board of Censors contained men and women of hasty and impulsive judgment. They would need to be cool, canny persons, with educated eyes. They would be people who would have nerves of chilled steel and who can peer at a face and brood over it for some time before hitting the delete button on their computer monitors.

So, all the authorities need to do is simply to take a firm line and refuse passports to all whose photographs fail to pass a Board of Censors specially created for the purpose of dealing with this matter. After all, we have many censors – formal as well as informal ones – these days. When I publish my thoughtful blog post on Management Lessons from Kama Sutra, those who follow me on social media lose no time in registering a strong protest, making me withdraw an excellent scholarly piece from circulation, thereby depriving a part of humanity from improving their intellect.    

Some of the members of this screening board should be disciples of Sir Roderick Glossop, who can summarily reject applications of those whose Looniness Quotient does not match the requisite standards, and instead encourage those who have a very high HQ (Happiness Quotient, for the uninitiated) to acquire a well-deserved passport. Such denizens, whichever country they travel to, will be sure to spread some light and sweetness there, at least partially dispelling the gloomy darkness the local citizenry may be exposed to. Such persons would be the true brand ambassadors for their country of origin. The Happiness Index of countries which have the most exotic tourist destinations to offer would soon register an uptick, thereby keeping the government-backed public relations agencies busy.  

What Airlines Can Do

Airlines could also pitch in and join this crusade. Those revealing a toothy grin on their passports could be offered discounts on air fare, besides some other privileges like priority in boarding, free water, and tissue restoratives, and the like. On long-haul flights, some group activities and competitions could be organized, so friendships have a chance to blossom and even some browsing and sluicing could take place.

The CFOs of airlines need not lose their beauty sleep over proposals of this kind. I am certain that the losses incurred would be more than offset by the jump in airlines’ revenues when passengers start coughing up fares which are linked to their body weights. Being an astute observer, the reader may already know that obesity levels are only going up the world over.   

A Global Initiative

The International League of Happiness would do well to incentivise countries which aggressively promote humour amongst their denizens and prioritize passport applicants with happy and smiling faces affixed on their travel documents.

All is Well that Ends Well

After a long and gruelling flight, if you are entering a highbrow developed country which suffers from delusions of grandeur, the immigration process is designed to keep your nerves in a high state of entropy. A stern-looking officer cast in the mould of Dr Doctor E. Jimpson Murgatroyd who has sad, brooding eyes and long whiskers, welcomes you. His resemblance to a frog which has been looking on the dark side since it was a slip of a tadpole is apt to send your spirits right down into the basement. He is bound to give you a censorious look and ask you all sorts of unpalatable questions. After an interrogation which would be akin to a Scotland Yard detective enquiring into your life, you will sigh with relief only when you are excused for having disturbed the detective’s time to relax and unwind and are finally ‘accepted’ into the country.   

Much elated, you then rush to meet your friends or relatives waiting for you outside. Whatever the nature of trauma suffered by a hapless passenger, it gets forgotten. Till, of course, it is time to return to your base camp!   

Notes

  1. Illustrations for representative purposes only; courtesy Esther Robles.
  2. Inputs from Suryamouli Datta are gratefully acknowledged.

Related Links

https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2017/10/12/an-invitation-from-the-international-league-of-happiness/
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/romancing-the-trains

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A visit to the Dulwich College, the Alma Mater of P G Wodehouse

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , on July 29, 2023| 6 Comments »

By no stretch of imagination can I be held to be an expert on cats. In any case, I have no clue as to how a cat which has been fed too much of cream would look like. Perhaps, having temporarily overcome its snootiness caused by the belief that in Ancient Egypt it would have been worshipped as a god of some reckoning, the milk of feline kindness would be coursing through its veins. Coming across a healthy mouse, it might just have shrugged its tender shoulders and decided to skip its quota of vitamins for the day. A wide grin would surely be adorning its visage.

Anyone who had spotted me coming out of the hallowed portals of Dulwich College recently would have noticed the wide grin on my not-so-handsome countenance. She might have seriously suspected me to be a member of the feline species which had just gorged on a diet full of rich cream duly enriched with fat-soluble vitamins. The spotter would have been left twiddling her thumbs trying to figure out the singular absence of the morose look which usually adorns the face of the spotted, making her wonder if the latter had just put in his papers relinquishing his position as the honorary Vice President of the Global Morons’ Association.

She would not have been off the mark. My cup of joy was indeed running over. The sky was bluer. The grass was greener. The air was more fragrant. In short, God was in heaven, and all was well with the world. Peter Mark Roget, had he been around, would have described me as being blissful, chuffed, delighted, elated, ecstatic, glad, grateful, gruntled, pleased, happy, and satiated. At the time, the heart was overflowing with unalloyed joy.

The cause of my having attained this state of blissfulness was two-fold.

One, Dulwich College had turned out to be a treasure trove of Wodehousean memorabilia. A place where brainy coves who happen to admire the Master Wordsmith of our times could settle down to drink deep from the joyous waters of his works and his methods and dish out some scholarly research papers brimming with erudition of the first order. They could even soak in the ambience of his own study, a recreated version of the one at his home across the pond at Southampton in New York. After his death in 1975, Ethel had donated the same to his beloved Alma mater.

Two, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude pervaded my mortal frame. I was, and continue to be, amazed at the affection, care and conscientiousness with which Dulwich College has built up and maintains multi-faceted records pertaining to Plum. Besides his books and their translations or pastiches in very many languages of the world, one could peruse his academic report cards, cricket score sheets, records of singing and theatrical endeavours, duly embellished with some juicy comments from the Rev. Aubrey Upjohns of his life while he was there from 1894 till 1900.

Sample this specimen:

He has the most distorted ideas about wit and humour; he draws over his books and examination papers in the most distressing way and writes foolish rhymes in other people’s books. Notwithstanding he has a genuine interest in literature and can often talk with enthusiasm and good sense about it.

(Dulwich College report on Wodehouse, 1899)

It is well known that in addition to his sporting achievements, he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian.

It may be of interest to note that Plum’s six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life. According to a statement made by him:

“To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven.”

Perhaps it was this sentiment of Plum’s which rubbed off on me when I had the privilege of visiting the college, guided by Calista Lucy, the Keeper of the Archive.

The college was founded by Edward Alleyn in 1619. Since then, many of its alumni have made it proud of their achievements in different realms of human endeavour. A few other celebrities who have passed through its hallowed portals are the writers Raymond Chandler, Graham Swift and Michael Ondaatje, the banker Eddie George (Governor of the Bank of England), and Anand Panyarachun (Prime Minister of Thailand).

The buildings have obviously undergone several additions since 1900, when Plum ended his sojourn at Dulwich College. We entered through the North Cloister, a corridor which was open to the elements during Plum’s days. It was a place where he would do his Larsen exercises.

A grand staircase, adorned with portraits of various patrons of the college over time gazing benignly at us, led us to the Great Hall which is used for school assemblies and examinations. When Plum was at school, he and others would have eaten in the hall.

On the Honours Boards, one could see the name of Armine, Plum’s elder brother, who was also at the college. While the brother could subsequently gain admission to Oxford University, Plum was unable to do so owing to the financial difficulties faced by the family then.

We passed by a well-stocked library of the college, named after Plum. Seeing the reconstructed study of his was a sheer delight. His working table, the chair that he used, two typewriters of his (one manual and another electric), his reading glasses, his pipes, the paperweights, a small figurine, and first editions of several of his books make the room come alive.

Calista was grace personified. She invited me to sit on Plum’s chair. Out of sheer reverence for the great man, I was hesitant, but than gave in to the temptation, merely to feel the vibrations of this genius humourist. The experience was something beyond words to describe, if you know what I mean. A signature in the Visitor’s Book was duly affixed.

What followed was a perusal of his personal collection of books, Dulwich College report cards, cricket score sheets, and his correspondence with various other luminaries and friends, all lovingly catalogued and preserved. The icing on the cake was surely to be able to go through his comments on a manuscript of his own, mostly in red colour. Such comments as “Good,” “OK, but needs to be improved,” and “Not funny enough, rework on this,” gave a sneak peek into the kind of perfectionist he was when it came to dishing out his uproariously funny works.

Passing through a hall which had a bespectacled scholar working on a research project, we came across a room full of translations of his works in many languages and an array of books inspired by Plum’s works and published by authors of different hues, ethnicities, and nationalities in their native lingua franca.    

By way of a token of gratitude, I took the liberty of presenting my own compilation entitled “The Indian Curry Dished Out by Sir P. G. Wodehouse,” which is a long essay on various references to India in many of his works.

After expressing sincere gratitude to our gracious host for the time she could spare for us, I and my companion took leave of Calista and the college. If Lewis Carol had then described me as a Cheshire cat, albeit with a benevolent grin on my face, I would have taken the comment in my stride. The heart was aflutter. The world appeared to be full of joy, laughter, light, and sweetness. The everlasting value of the blissful cocoon left behind by Plum for Homo sapiens was driven home, yet again.

I also felt grateful to my Guardian Angels who had felicitated a trip to the Alma mater of P. G. Wodehouse by creating a concatenation of circumstances which had enabled my first ever trip to the United Kingdom.

If Plum and Ethel were then looking down from their cottage in heaven, I am reasonably certain that you would have noticed them both having a twinkle in their eyes. Perhaps, they might even have been waving at me!

Notes

  1. Most of the photos here are courtesy Dominique Conterno, my host in the UK.
  2. A few have been taken from the Dulwich College website.
  3. Caricatures courtesy Suvarna Sanyal.
  4. Plum at Dulwich courtesy the world wide web.
  5. Inputs from Calista Lucy towards giving this article a better shape are gratefully acknowledged.

Related Post

The Indian Curry Dished Out by P. G. Wodehouse

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About P G Wodehouse being a satirist

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , on July 7, 2023| Leave a Comment »

ashokbhatia's avatarashokbhatia

When someone of the calibre of Arunabha Sengupta decides to wield his pen (oops….keyboard!) and dishes out something Plummy, die-hard fans of the Master Wordsmith of our times rejoice. The sceptics make feeble attempts to punch holes in the arguments put forth. The fence-sitters suddenly realize that there is more to Plum than meets the intellectual eye.

The rest of humanity, comprising those who remain not-so-blissfully unaware of the blissful works of P G Wodehouse, continues to trudge through life, sans the succour which low-hanging fruits of eternal wisdom offer on the streets of Plumsville.

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Some funny episodes from Plum’s ouvre: Guest Post by Mr. Subbaraman

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , on June 26, 2023| 3 Comments »

If you ask a Wodehouse fan to quote the funniest situations in his works, he/she would have a tough time in choosing, because there are so many of them. Let me cite a few that come to my mind right now. (I am quoting purely from memory):

  1. The exchange of telegrams between Bertie and Aunt Dahlia in the early part of ‘Right Ho, Jeeves’. Those from the favorite aunt, although full of the choicest derogatory language that can be used against an irritating nephew, always end with the word ‘Love’.
  2. In the same novel, Tuppy glossop, overcome by hunger in the middle of the night (because he had returned the dishes at dinner, on Bertie’s advice, in order to impress his estranged fiance, Angela) goes to the kitchen, takes out whatever there is in the fridge and starts eating. His host, Tom Travers, his wife Dahlia, and their daughter, Angela, roused by the sound made by Tuppy, come into the kitchen and see him. Angela makes a pointed reference to a python.
  3. In the same novel again, the fully sozzled Gussie Fink Nottle, when the Head Master (the bearded bloke) first mis-pronounces Gussie’s name and after being corrected, says “I should say Mr Fink Nottle”, says “Of course you should, you silly ass ” and is loudly cheered. The author says ‘that someone should be public spirited enough to call their Head Master a silly ass went straight into the simple hearts of the scholars of the Market Snodsbury grammar school.’
  4. Towards the end of his famous speech on the occasion, Gussie notices Bertie standing in the back row and starts attacking him for being a pessimist and having tried to stop him (Gussie) from coming here to distribute the prizes, lest his trousers split at the back when he bends to give the prize. As the embarrassed Bertie tries to leave, a freckled kid in the row in front of him turns round and asks for his autograph.
  5. In ‘Summer lightning ‘, the Private Investigator, Percy Pilbeam, is all smiles after receiving a telegram about ‘big robbery’ at Blandings Castle. However, after Lord Emsworth’s secretary, Hugo Carmody, calls on him a little later to inform him about his services being required to investigate a pig robbery, not only is the bubble burst but the detective feels it an affront to his dignity that he, Pilbeam, should be called upon to be on a case like this! He tells Carmody so in no uncertain terms.
  6. In the same novel, Lord Emsworth’s younger brother, the dapper and sprightly Galahad Threepwood,(who has no right to be in the pink of health that he is in , in his fifties, after the type of life that he has led) tells Sue Brown (whom he looks upon as his own daughter) about how he hates tea, which he calls poisonous stuff, he himself being a life-long advocate of alcohol. He speaks of a friend of his “I told him with tears in my eyes not to drink it (tea) but he did not listen. He died within the year (run over by a hansom cab )”!
  7. In the same novel again, Hugo Carmody and Lord Emsworth’s niece, Millicent, who were out on the grounds in the evening are caught in a sudden rain and take shelter in the game keeper’s cottage that was at hand. It soon grows dark. After some time, the frightened girl says “There is someone here. He spoke in German”. Later it turns out that the sound Millicent had heard had been made by Lord Emsworth’s prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, which was hidden in the cottage by Ronnie Fish, Emsworth’s nephew.
  8. In ‘Heavy Weather’ (sequel to ‘Summer Lightning’), when it was discovered that the manuscript of Galahad’s memoirs, pilfered by Pilbeam and hidden by him in a cottage, had been eaten by the Empress of Blandings who was in the cottage unknown to Pilbeam, Lord Emsworth, instead of feeling sorry for the loss of his brother’s literary labour, feels worried about the effect of the ink on the Empress’s health.
  9. In ‘Money in the Bank’, the cross examination of Lionel Green by his former school mate, Jeff Miller, the young lawyer, in a case where Green is a witness for the prosecution and Jeff is the defence lawyer, Jeff asks “Is it not a fact that we used to call you stinky at school and on the day you took bath, a half holiday was declared for the school?” When the judge asks Jeff what relevance all this has with the case, he says he wants to shake the reliability of the witness.
  10. In the same novel, the eccentric peer, Lord Uffenham, asks Jeff “Do you know how you can tell the temperature ?” “Look at a thermometer?” “Simpler than that. Count the number of chirps a grasshopper makes in fourteen seconds, and add forty”‘.
  11. In the golf story ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert’, the celebrated Russian novelist, whom the members of the local literary club have been fawning upon, expressing his opinion: “Tolstoy and Wodehouse not bad; not good but not bad. I am the only novelist that counts.”
  12. The effect of Mulliner’s Buck-u-Uppo on the frail and timid young curate. It was actually meant for taming elephants in India but his aunt sends it to him by mistake and the effect on him after he imbibes one single does is nothing short of spectacular.

About the Author

Mr. Subbaraman is not unlike the ‘Oldest Member’ in Plum’s golf stories. He has already clocked 94 circumambulations around the sun. However, the dark clouds of wholsesome pessimism which often engulf a person at an advanced age are yet to hover upon him. He has been reading Wodehouse from his school days. Thirty-three years of slogging it out in the Archaeological Survey of India by assiduously tending to such world-famous artworks and monuments as the mural paintings of Ajanta, Lepakshi (A.P.), Brihadeeshwara Temple, Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu), Bamiyan Budha statues, Angora Wat of Cambodia etc., has failed to dull his passion for the works of the Master Wordsmith of our times. He has lived in Rome for nearly a year, studying art restoration. He has travelled in Europe. He has also studied in British Museum Research Laboratory, London. During 2023, he was honoured by the Government of India by a Padmashree award. His permission to publish this compilation of his here is gratefully acknowledged.

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The Office Secretary – a vanishing breed

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , on June 22, 2023| 2 Comments »

Here is a delightful post which speaks of a breed which has become almost extinct in our offices.

sureshsubrahmanyan's avatarSuresh's Corner

No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary. Robertson Davies.

Let me declare at the very outset I had no idea who Robertson Davies (1913-95) was, when I came across that quote, and like any diligent writer I looked him up. Evidently one of the foremost novelists, playwrights, journalists and poets to come out of Canada; if I had not heard of him, that is down to my ignorance and no reflection on the man’s reputation. His relevance to this piece is his quote on the office secretary which I came across quite by accident, and the subject on which I was spurred to expound. Now the curious thing about that particular pearl of wisdom by Mr. Davies is that in the context of the present day automated, mechanized world in which we live, it could so easily be flipped, with much relevance, the other way…

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My First Experience of Watching a Movie: Guest Post by Suryamouli Datta

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , , , on June 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Ahoy there, my dear readers, gather around and let me regale you with the tale of my first encounter with the bewitching world of cinema. It was a sweltering summer day, the kind where even your sweat sweats, and I found myself being herded by my good mother into a dark hall which reeked of human sweat and stale tobacco. A set of noisily whirring wall-mounted fans were unsuccessfully trying to dispel the stuffy ambience inside. I was but a wee lad of about five summers then, not yet ready to face the world on my own, and so, like many other youths of my age and station, I clung to my parent’s skirts for dear life.

As we plopped ourselves down onto our seats, my imagination ran wild with thoughts of dashing heroes and fair maidens in distress, of swashbuckling adventure and sizzling romance. And what did we get? A paltry provincial flick that was as perplexing for a five-year-old as someone studying in the 5th standard trying to grasp the laws of quantum physics.

It purportedly bore some resemblance to the tale of Romeo and Juliet, although I can confidently declare that the Bard himself would have been scratching his head trying to figure out what the hullabaloo was about. From what I could gather, the movie was an incomprehensible cacophony of adults bawling in some alien tongue. And yet, a few scenes still stick in my noggin to this day.

For instance, there was one where the protagonist (or at least, I think he was ‘the one’) was getting pummeled by a bunch of goons, crying like a banshee. I couldn’t help but wonder why the fella didn’t just give them a good thrashing like a bona fide English gentleman – and then it dawned on me that he was probably too busy wailing like a newborn babe to do anything else. He would have done well to undergo a crash course in martial arts under someone like Roderick Spode.

Then came another scene where the leading lady was being implored to partake in some grub, and exasperated with the incessant pestering, she chucked the plate across the room like a discus thrower. I must admit, even at my tender age, I was mightily impressed by her spunk in the face of such adversity. She sounded like Minna Nordstrom throwing tantrums and insisting upon being offered some meatier roles on the screen in the days to come.

Needless to say, the film might as well have been the first production of the Perfecto-Zizz-baum Corporation, the leading movie studio headed by Mr. Schnellenhamer, envisaged at a time when he might have been having an odd disagreeable feeling, caused by what Roget’s Thesaurus would describe as agitation, fury, violent anger, wrath and similar emotions listed under the heading ‘Rage’, that too of an impotent kind. Discussions with his team of directors, script writers, music composers, yes-persons, deputy yes-persons, junior yes-persons, nodders, and trainee nodders might have led to a rather patchy outline of the movie.

What was on offer was a mere collection of moving images on a screen. However, despite my befuddlement and general indifference, I maintained a stiff upper lip and remained mum throughout the entire affair – a feat that earned me many a pat on the head and back from those around me. I suppose I had already honed my cinema etiquette from my prior dalliances with the proverbial idiot box, where I had already been spending quite a few jolly hours watching Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

But fret not, my companions, for the yarn doesn’t conclude just there. As soon as the film rolled to a halt and the lights flickered on, my dear old ma and I trudged along the sunny byways of Kolkata in search of refreshment for our weary souls. And lo and behold, we chanced upon a confectionery – Kamola Sweets, it was named – that promised to satiate our whims.

Picture my rapture, dear chums, when I first laid eyes upon the wondrous delicacies being served at this place. There were samosas as colossal as my noggin, chock-full of spiced potatoes and peas and dripping with oil – the kind of fare that’s more precarious than a boomerang sharpened to a razor’s edge. And then, there were the gulab jamuns, those pillowy globes of khoya (highly condensed milk) soaked in syrup and served piping hot – a dessert worthy of gods alone.

Needless to say, I was smitten with those toothsome delights, and I fancy that my ardour for cinema would have been just as fervent if only that rascal of a movie had been a tad more intelligible. But that’s life for you, my dearest bosom pals – brimming with twists and turns and the occasional sweet surprise.

In any case, it was like love at first sight. This is how my enchantment with movies began. As the lights dim and the images start rolling on the silver screen, I would sit wide-eyed, lapping up the juicy goings on with a single-minded devotion which would have put someone like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to shame. The thrill of a car chase, the sheer pleasure of listening to some uplifting lyrics set to soulful music, the excitement of seeing a villain and his sidekicks getting brow-beaten by a smart hero, the gravity-defying stunts which would make someone like Newton squirm in his grave, and the rush of hormones when a comely heroine eventually fell into the arms of a dashing hero!  

As the couple walked hand in hand into a sunset and the credits started rolling by, one had no other option but to snap out of yet another phase of escapism. The thoughts quickly turned to satiating the needs of a stomach which suddenly started demanding its quota of nourishment.

I can go on and on, dear comrades, but have no intentions of boring you any further with the apparent frivolity of my first cinematic encounter which led to a lifetime bondage of sorts.

(Reviewed and somewhat spruced up by yours truly!)

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Of Filmitis and Serialitis

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My boundless admiration for P.G.Wodehouse, an unrivalled craftsman of English prose: An article by Dr. Shashi Tharoor

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , on June 3, 2023| 2 Comments »

(This article first appeared in the Khaleej Times, Saturday, May 13, 2023)

Wodehouse wrote 95 books, and authored more than 30 plays and musical comedies, and more than 20 film scripts. His impact on the English language was considerable.

Those who follow my literary life are aware of my boundless admiration for P.G.Wodehouse (1881-1975), the great British comic novelist, playwright and lyricist, whom I consider to be an absolutely unrivalled craftsman of English prose. But since this column is not about literature, I will refrain from sharing with you the many examples of Wodehousean style and technique that justify my judgement. Instead, since our column is about language, I will just confine myself to some of the words the Master invented, or brought into circulation (a habit he shared with William Shakespeare, no less), to our endless delight. Of course, it’s much more fun to encounter these words in his novels, but this is just to whet your appetite!

Wodehouse wrote 95 books, and authored more than 30 plays and musical comedies, and more than 20 film scripts. His impact on the English language was considerable. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, contains 1,756 quotations from Wodehouse to explain word usage. It confirms he invented multiple common expressions, like the word “cuppa” (as in “Come and have a cuppa”, Sam the Sudden, 1925) and “fifty-fifty” (“Let’s go fifty-fifty”, Little Nugget, 1913). And his famous character Jeeves, the super-smart valet to the feckless Bertie Wooster, is entered in the dictionary as a generic noun. A “Jeeves” means “a valet or butler especially of model behaviour.”

The most-quoted Wodehouse invention must be gruntled. It’s from his brilliant The Code of the Woosters (1938): ‘He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.’ Now the word ‘disgruntled’ never had an antonym before, but here’s a mock-serious adjective meaning ‘satisfied’ or ‘contented’.

Wodehouse’s upper-class idlers, members of the Drones Club, were all steeped in alcohol, but the author did not describe them merely as inebriated. In his 1927 book Meet Mr Mulliner, Wodehouse had already anticipated new words for ‘drunk’: ‘Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried … whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.’ His characters’ lexicon for those who have consumed too much fire-liquid also included: awash; lathered; illuminated; ossified; pie-eyed; polluted; primed; scrooched; stinko; squiffy; tanked; and woozled.

And, as befits a master of comic-hall theatre, Wodehouse had a great ear for onomatopoeia. At the age of 22 he published a story which used a new word for the sound of a cricket ball hitting a bat: ‘There was a beautiful, musical plonk, and the ball soared to the very opposite quarter of the field.’ (From Tales of St. Austin’s, 1903).

The same talent is evident in this description from Blandings Castle (1935) of a pig eating: ‘A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant.’ Neither “plobby” nor “wofflesome” will be found in your home dictionary, but they marvellously convey a greedy and ill-mannered creature tucking in. Apply it to some of your acquaintances at their next meal?

When someone speaks sharply, it’s hard to think of a more original way of describing it than this, from the 1930 novel Very Good, Jeeves: ‘When not pleased Aunt Dahlia, having spent most of her youth in the hunting-field, has a crispish way of expressing herself.’ Also in Very Good, Jeeves, came a new way of saying things were ‘all right’ or ‘fine’: ‘“All you have to do,” I said, “is to carry on here for a few weeks more, and everything will be oojah-cum-spiff.”’

The Oxford English Dictionary includes at least one Wodehousean invention that didn’t last: “snooter”, meaning to ‘harass’ or to ‘snub’, (“My Aunt Agatha wouldn’t be on hand to snooter me for at least another six weeks”, The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923) never really caught on and is listed in OED with the parenthesis ‘Only in P. G. Wodehouse.’ But some Wodehousiana seems very contemporary. Zing, for instance, inserted to convey ‘the sudden advent of a new situation or emotion’, as the OED puts it, could work today but actually appeared in the 1919 book Damsel in Distress: ‘The generous blood of the Belphers boiled over, and then—zing. They jerked him off to Vine Street [police station].’

(The original article can be seen at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/lifestyle/arts-and-culture/my-boundless-admiration-for-p-g-wodehouse-an-unrivalled-craftsman-of-english-prose)

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When Anatole Goes Off to Pondicherry, India

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2023| 2 Comments »

(Inspired by parts of Right Ho, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters, and Clustering Around Young Bingo)

I had barely crossed the threshold of the dining room when I perceived Aunt Dahlia at the table, morosely tucking into salmon mayonnaise.

Being a keen observer, I could make out that she was in a sorrowful mood. A pall of despondency hung over her. It was as if she had been handed out a harsh sentence of thirty days without the option by a stern-looking beak.

She gave me a sharp look of the kind a person gulping down her last bit of coffee would give to a dead beetle at the bottom of her cup. She sighed and waved a depressed fork at me.

‘Hullo, Bertie, howsoever sad the circumstances, I thought I would never find you far away from the food. Try some of this salmon.’

‘Anatole’s?’ I queried.

‘No. I do not know why he has suddenly gone AWOL. Missing in action since the past two weeks, leaving all of us twiddling our thumbs. Poor Thomas, his digestion has already gone for a toss. I was so desperate to touch him for some vitamin M for Milady’s Boudoir. But I have had to put that proposal on hold.’

Well, Uncle Thomas, when his gastric juices have been giving him the elbow, is not his genial and benevolent self. To touch him for some funds then would be akin to waking a lion from its slumber.

‘Somehow, the new kitchen maid has struck an inspired streak. It suddenly seems to have come home to her that she isn’t catering for a covey of buzzards in the Sahara Desert, and she has put out something quite fit for human consumption.’

‘You never know with these temperamental French cooks,’ I chipped in on a sympathetic note, while mouthing a forkful of the salmon on offer.

‘Of late, he did seem a bit moody. Luckily, he left at a time when the new kitchen maid was just about to arrive. We are somehow…’

She broke off. The door had opened, and we were plus a butler.

‘Hullo, Seppings,’ said Aunt Dahlia. ‘Was there something you wanted to see me about?’

‘Yes, madam. It is with reference to Monsieur Anatole. He is on a video call on your laptop. He is desirous of having a word with you.’

‘Yoicks! Tally Ho!!’, she exclaimed excitedly. 

I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now displayed. She rose like a rocketing pheasant and was out of her seat and the room making for the instrument which was bracing itself for an acrimonious exchange of views between a hunting field expert and the typical Queen’s language laced with liberal doses of French which the God’s gift to our gastric juices deployed. And feeling that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened after her, Seppings following at a loping gallop.

‘Hello, hello…’

Anatole’s round face popped up on the screen and one could discern a noisy air-conditioner growling in the background.  

‘Where are you calling from?’, Aunt Dahlia bellowed.

‘From India, Ma’am’.

‘What? India? What made you go to that God forsaken country?’

‘Sacre bleue! This is one pretty place – I am in Pondicherry, of which Madame is aware, I doubt myself.’

‘Pondicherry? Where the hell is that?’

‘Name of a dog, Madame! You don’t say! You are not serious! You haven’t heard of Pondicherry? It was a French colony years before.’

‘What are you doing there?’

‘I am ze most famous chef, Madame – know this! Even ze Indians know me. Several hotels here gave me jobs on ze platter.’

There was one of those long silences. Pregnant, I believe, is what they’re generally called. Aunt looked at butler. Butler looked at aunt. I looked at both of them. An eerie stillness seemed to envelop the room like a bubble pack for a silver cow creamer in transit.

‘But how can you leave us suddenly? It would have been nice if you could have at least told us about your plans,’ she said with as much politeness as she could muster. I couldn’t have believed that her robust voice could sink to such an absolute coo. More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else.

‘Je suis vraiment désolé, Madame .’

‘It’s quite all right. What are you doing there?’

‘Listen. Make some attention a little. I bring my recipes. I add many new French dishes for a premier hotel here.’

‘New dishes? Introducing French cuisine for some hotel?’

Anatole perked up a bit. His soup-strainer kind of a moustache was quivering a bit. Like an artist’s who is showing his first ever painting to a connoisseur of art.

‘They already have places where you can find pastries and breads like the French baguette, croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux amandes, macarons, crèmes caramel, etc. You pay little attention? I tell what I introduce here.’

‘Sure, I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will,’ cooed the aged relative. 

He then went on to rattle off several of his culinary achievements.

‘I introduce ze Boeuf bourguignon, Steak-frites, Poulet rôti, Ratatouille, Soupe à l’oignon, Bouillabaisse, Croque-Monsieur, Croque-Madame, Crêpe, Quiche Lorraine, to say a few. And, of course, many of which they never hear before, like Veloute auxfleurs de courgette, Consomme aux Pommes d’Amour, Sylphides a la Cremes d’ecrivesses, Mignonette de poulet Petit Duc, Pointes d’asperges a la Mistinguette, Supreme de foie gras au champagne, Neige aux Perles des Alpes, Timbale de ris de veau Toulousaine, Salade d’endive et de celery, Le Plum Pudding, L’Etoile au Berger, Bombe Nero, Friandises, and Diablotins.’

Of course, all this made me drool like never before. I imagined the lavish spread Aunt Dahlia and I had discussed while we were at Totleigh Towers quite some time back. I had then graciously offered to undergo thirty days in the second division in lieu of Anatole’s services being transferred to Pop Bassett. Luckily, I had been dismissed without a stain on my character.

I went weak in my knees, imagining putting down the hatch some of the delicacies mentioned by him.

The irony of the situation also hit me hard. God’s gift to our gastric juices whisked off by a Third World country from right under our noses. The wizard of the cooking stove cocking a snook at us? My sister in Calcutta once did mention to me that this century belonged to countries like India and China, but I never took her seriously. If all our valets, butlers, chefs, and parlourmaids decided to migrate to one of the emerging economies, what would the harvest be? The British upper classes will be left behind twiddling their thumbs trying to figure out how to lead their lives. God save the Empire was the thought which I was ruminating upon, while Aunt Dahlia came direct to the nub of the matter.

‘That sounds great. When do you think we could sample these dishes here at Brinkley Manor?’

‘All in time desired. For the instant, I am content here. It is the beautiful life here. They give me big house with glass pyramid on top. I have a car with an Indian chauffeur. The beach is at distance of march from my house. It is just like Côte d’Azur. It is a place to make dream.’

‘You must be exaggerating – surely the place can’t be as beautiful as Brighton?’

‘Au contraire, Madame! There is a beautiful promenade with a tall statue of an old man walking with a stick in hand – Gandhi is his name, I think. Listen and take note – full moon evenings are magnifique here. You should make one visit here. In the evenings, lovely demoiselles in silk dress with gold jewels and fleurs de jasmin in their lustrous hair come for walk. Good heavens, do I give them company? You bet your last dime no. Hélas, I am too busy with my work. Me, I am French – work is sacré for me.’

‘Oh, so you are quite comfortable there, are you?’

‘Eh bien oui, Madame. I have a lady colleague – she teach me many South Indian dishes with strange names: dosa, idli, sambhar, rasam, vadai…Cest incroyable – they have amazing variety of plates in India. Like what, to each county her cuisine.’

‘The perfect life, eh, Anatole?’

‘I take some rough with some smooth, Madame. Behold and lo, in each man’s life, some rain must fall. The weather is hot and humid here. Often, intolerable. However, late afternoon onwards, sea breeze starts blowing in, bringing some comfort. Also, the place has very many people. A noisy city.’    

When it comes to milk of human kindness, there are indeed times when Aunt Dahlia’s kindly overtures do leave me, as Roget would put it, amazed, astonished, astounded, blown-away, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, jolted, and rendered speechless.

‘Is there anything you need from here?’

‘Kind of you to ask, Madame. Le soleil ici est très dur. Could you manage to send across one of my favourite chapeaux? Seppings can find one in my room. I shall let him know the address and the care taker’s phone number which he may need.’

‘Monsieur Anatole, thy will shall be done.’

While leaving, Aunt Dahlia cast a venomous look at the laptop, much like an Indian resident would eye a cobra, had she found it nestling in her bathtub. Seppings took over the dialogue, as we retired to the dining room. The pall of gloom had deepened considerably. My aged relative was fanning herself with a reproachful fork. She appeared to have aged a lot.

‘What do we do now?’, she looked at me enquiringly.

Before I could respond, there was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves had materialized, much like an Indian fakir.

‘Jeeves, do you know of the calamity that has befallen us?’, I asked.

‘Perhaps you allude to the prolonged absence of Monsieur Anatole from our midst, sir?’, he responded, unflappable as ever.

‘Tetigisti nub materiae, Jeeves. What do you suggest?’

Aunt Dahlia gave him a reverential look, pleading with her mute eyes.

‘Allow me some time to give the matter some thought, sir.’

‘Sure, Jeeves. Have as much fish as you need. A crisis has arisen in the affairs of Brinkley Manor. We need to come to the aid of the party.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ he bowed respectfully and withdrew.

Life at Aunt Dahlia’s lair would have become a tad boring had it not been for the sudden arrival of my cousin Angela from one of her trips to Cannes. We spent a good deal of time together in the open spaces, she lampooning Tuppy Glossop’s conduct at Cannes in no uncertain terms, while all I had to do was to make sympathetic noises in the interim.

Funny thing, talking to females, if you know what I mean. You need to utter only one sentence, switch over to a silent mode, and start thinking some beautiful thoughts of your own. You merely hear the party of the other part, without necessarily listening to it blowing off steam on whatever issue happens to be tormenting it at the time. More of a monologue kind of a thing. Bringing anything sideways into the so-called dialogue is as perilous as offering a juicy lamb sandwich to an enraged tigress.  

Meanwhile, Aunt Dahlia went about her daily routine in a listless, morose, and disgruntled manner. Uncle Tom kept complaining about the lining of his stomach registering frequent protests of a rather strong kind.

But the mood of our Guardian Angels suddenly turned benign. A miracle of sorts happened on the sixth day. A taxi pulled up, and, lo and behold, Anatole was amongst us! Back home. Duly tanned and dulled, possibly by the excessive heat and humidity braved by him while at Pondicherry. There were dark circles below the eyes. The moustache was drooping, Sure enough, his soul was bruised.

When told of the return of the prodigal chef, Aunt Dahlia perked up like a member of the canine species being offered a fish slice.  However, one glance at Anatole’s visage led her to steady herself against the sideboard. She spoke in a low, husky voice:

‘Are you fine, Monsieur Anatole?’

‘I do not think so, Madame.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘I told you I was put up in a house with a glass pyramid on top.’

‘Oh, kind of a skylight?’

‘Yes. Honest to God, I liked it a lot. I used to look up at it and take in the moonlight sipping my post-dinner port.’

‘So, what went wrong?’

‘One night, I saw someone making faces at me through the glass pyramid.’

‘You mean someone was sitting on the roof?’

‘Oh là-là. You can say that. There was a walkway around the pyramid. This horrible man was standing on it, I guess. And I say, this is not true – jolly well no. But he kept staring at me making some faces. His eyes were bulging, and his mouth was open and tongue sticking out. Did it upset me? By Jove, you bet it upset me like anything. He looked like some rare fish in an aquarium.’

I must say that he had the complete attention and sympathies of the audience. Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, relishing his late-night snifter, thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in an easy chair, hoping to look at the moon, and suddenly becoming aware of a frightful face menacingly peering at them. A thing to jar the sturdiest soul.

While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was coming straight to the point:

‘When did this happen?’

Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of the spine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among the back hair.

‘Just two days after I spoke to you. Me, I am about to hit the hay, and presently I look up, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed glass pyramid. Was that a pretty affair? Was that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I was so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I was an honoured guest there, isn’t it? I was at the place given to me, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters peer at me so cool as a few cucumbers, making some faces?’

‘Must have been very upsetting,’ said Aunt Dahlia.

Anatole clutched his drooping moustache and gave it a tug.

‘Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on the glass pyramid on top of the house, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remained planted there, not giving any damns, and stood regarding me like a cat watching a duck. Was this amusing for me? You think I liked it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt’s loony. Je me fiche de ce type infect. C’est idiot de faire comme ça l’oiseau… Allez-vous-en, louffier….’

‘Did you not complain to your hosts?’

‘Immédiatement. They said it is all right – they will check in the morning. What a heap of trash – blistering barnacles – I am like some cat on hot bricks – and they say it is all right. Forsooth!”

Aunt Dahlia laid a quivering hand on his shoulder.

‘That was very inhospitable on their part, I say. You must be shaken.’

‘All right? Nom d’un nom d’un nom! The hell they say it’s all right! Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am a serious man. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer in that house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted.’

‘Of course. Those crazy loons!’, cried Aunt Dahlia, in that ringing voice of hers which had once caused nervous members of the Quorn to lose stirrups and take tosses from the saddle.

‘I tell them to make an immediate return booking. I collect all moneys due to me. Then I buzz off from that wretched place.’

‘You did the right thing’, cooed the aged relative. ‘I thought Indians believed in the principle that a guest is like God. What is the expression I am looking for, Jeeves?’

‘Perhaps you allude to a phrase in Sanskrit, Ma’am. Atithi devo bhavah.’

But Anatole went on, uttering such words as ‘marmiton de Domange’, ‘pignouf’, ‘hurluberlu’, and ‘roustisseur’. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at the Gallic language during my last Cannes visit, I’m still more or less an illiterate in that means of communication. I regretted this, for these words somehow sounded juicy.

Frenchmen are surely made of sterner stuff. Pretty soon, Anatole had regained his composure and got back to displaying his proficiency at the cooking stove, surpassing himself.

I am not a man who speaks hastily in these matters. I weigh my words. And I say again that Anatole had surpassed himself. The exotic fare dished out by him revived Uncle Thomas like a watered flower.

As we sat down to a sumptuous dinner, he was saying some things about the Government which they wouldn’t have cared to hear. With the soupe à l’oignon, he said but what could you expect nowadays? With the boeuf bourguignonde, he admitted rather decently that the Government couldn’t be held responsible for the rotten weather, anyway. And shortly after the quiche Lorraine, he was practically giving the lads the benefit of his whole-hearted support.

The dining table was yet again a lively place. Light-hearted family banter had once again become the norm. Aunt Dahlia was back to being a suave and genial host, presiding over the dinner-table on most nights. Often, the conversation in the group touched a high level and feasts of Reason and flows of Soul occurred. Angela and Tuppy had buried their hatchet and were no longer arguing whether a shark had indeed bitten Angela while she was swimming at Cannes. 

In other words, love and domestic peace had regained its throne. Flowers were in full bloom. Birds were twittering merrily. God was in heaven, and all was well at Brinkley Manor.

A day dawned when Jeeves and I were getting ready to drive back to the city. There was something troubling me within and I thought it fit to mention it to Jeeves.

‘Jeeves, I say, rummy all this, what? I mean Anatole popping back so very soon?’

‘Indeed sir. Most gratifying.’

‘Well, I suspect you had played some role there.’

‘Kind of you to say so, sir. I was somewhat baffled for a while, I must confess, sir. Then I was materially assisted by a fortunate opportunity that came up and I merely seized it.’

‘What opportunity?’

‘You may recall that some time back, Monsieur Anatole was very upset when Gussie Fink Nottle had made faces at him through the skylight of his bedroom.’

‘Yes. A chapter in the annals of Brinkley Manor which is not easy to forget.’

‘Since Anatole had given the contact particulars of the caretaker in Pondicherry to Seppings, it was not difficult for me to reach out to him. I explained the state of affairs at this end and he kindly accepted to help us out. He hired someone local to go on top of the house and deliver the goods, so to say, sir.’

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘this is genius of a high order.’

‘It is very good of you to say so, sir.’

‘What did Aunt Dahlia say about it?’

‘Details are not known to her, but she appeared gratified at the outcome, sir.’

‘To go into sordid figures, did she—’

‘Yes, sir. Two hundred pounds.’

‘Uncle Thomas?’

‘Yes, sir. He also behaved most handsomely, quite independently of Mrs Travers. Another two hundred and fifty pounds.

‘Good Lord, Jeeves! You’ve been coining the stuff!’

‘But, sir, I confess I owe one hundred pounds to the caretaker of the house where Anatole was staying while in Pondicherry.’

I gaped at the fellow.

‘Oh, for the services rendered?’

‘Indeed sir. There are no free lunches in life, as those across the pond say, sir.’

‘Well, I would hate to see you incurring a cost of that magnitude for benefitting a beloved aunt of mine. I suppose I had better pitch in and support you on that count.’

‘Why, thank you, sir. This is extremely generous of you.’

Notes:

  1. Inputs from Anand Pakiam, C G Suresh, Dominique Conterno, and Chakravarti Madhusudana are gratefully acknowledged.
  2. Illustration of Anatole courtesy Shalini Bhatia.
  3. Photo of beach road courtesy Sanjay Mohan.

Related Posts:

https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/eating-like-p-g-wodehouse-the-ultimate-anatole-menu-from-the-code-of-the-woosters
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/of-bertie-goofy-females-and-the-wooster-clan
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/attaining-matrimonial-bliss-some-tips-from-bingo-little-part-2-of-4
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/welcome-to-a-spirited-pondicherry
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/pondicherry-the-little-indie-french-town
https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/pondicherry-a-certain-sense-of-gallic-glory-gone-by

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My First Catch in Cricket: Guest Post by Suryamouli Datta

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , , on May 22, 2023| 2 Comments »

My dear friends, permit me to share with you the tale of my very first catch at a cricket match, an event that shall forever remain etched on the fabric of my memory.

I confess I am not as proficient in the game of cricket as, say, someone like Mike Jackson. Some of you may recall that he was a scion of a cricket clan, a distinction which I cannot claim. Nor do I have such a love for the outdoors as to think of ‘popping off’ a well-paying corporate assignment to play for my country. Anyhow, the sheer thrill of one’s first catch is not easy to forget.

So, grab a cuppa of your favourite tissue restorative and let me describe to you the sequence of events.

It was a bright and warm afternoon. The birds were chirping. The flowers were in full bloom, swaying in a gentle breeze. The bees and the butterflies were flitting about doing whatever they do. The sun, after a day’s hard work, was preparing to call it a day. I was standing at the infamous gully position during a school cricket match, determined to protect my team’s honour. I could not have fathomed the sequence of events that would soon conspire to change my destiny. Now, do not get me wrong, I am a fan of cricket, but I had never really been the one to actively participate in the game. I was more of a sideline spectator, cheering on my team with whatever degree of vibrancy I could muster.

On that ‘fateful day’ (the nearest phrase that I can think of at the moment), I remember how I wished to be an invisible entity, to disappear into thin air from the sight of my teammates, who looked at me with high expectations and aspirations. A keen observer might have noticed that my brow was furrowed. The stress of the mighty responsibility on my shoulders revealed itself in the profuse perspiration which adorned my not-so-handsome visage.

But as fate would have it, there was no escaping the inevitable. The ball, that red-colored round object that has the power to enchant and torment, came hurtling towards me with all its vim and vigour. It was like a thunderbolt, a messenger of the gods, which, if not dealt with, would bring upon calamity and chaos.

I did what any sane human being would do. I put out my open palm in a desperate attempt to shield myself from the oncoming danger. What were the odds that the ball would land in my hand? I must say, the chances were as slim as a hair on my by-now bald pate.

But lo and behold! The ball, in all its infinite wisdom, decided to fall in love with my palm and take some well-deserved rest there. Yes, you heard it right. It chose to stay there, to find solace and comfort in the warmth of my hand. It was a moment of ecstasy and of pure unadulterated joy. Words fail to describe that feel of the weight of the ball in my hands. It was like the loving caress of a specimen of the tribe of the delicately nurtured who had put her faith in my palm, much like Gladys putting her hands in those of Lord Emsworth, reposing her trust in him to protect her from the wrath of an irate Irish gardener charging at them at the speed of forty-five miles per hour. It was like the first-ever tender but electrifying touch of someone from the opposite sex, if you know what I mean.

Oh, the thrill of that moment! My heart was beating faster than a cheetah on a sprint! My breath was caught in my throat as I looked down at that precious ball, safely resting in my palm. The cheers (though not much but whatever my grey cells could register at the time) of my teammates and the people around me were music to my ears! It was as if I had conquered Mount Everest itself!

In that moment, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I had never felt before. I had done it! I had caught the ball, in just the right spot and at just the right time. I had made my team proud. Oh, what a feeling that was! It was as if I was suddenly swept away in a wave of euphoria, a wave that carried me higher and higher until I was sure that I would touch the very heavens, if only I dared to reach out!

And that, my dear followers, is how I felt when I took my first catch in a cricket match. It was a moment of magic, of beauty, of grace and of overwhelming joy! A moment that I will hold dear to my heart for all the days to come!

Mike Jackson would have been proud of me.

(Reviewed and somewhat spruced up by yours truly. Illustration courtesy the World Wide Web)

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PGW, New and Fresh – Part I

Posted in What ho!, tagged , , , on May 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

kaykay46's avatarTalk the Walk

Abstract

I re-read Something New by P G Wodehouse (PGW) for the umpteenth time recently. With a little digging, I found out that this novel had been first published in the USA on 3rd September 1915 and published in the UK as Something Fresh on 16th September 1915. Though there are some differences between the two, it is basically the same story. For the record, Lord Emsworth, Blandings Castle and its staff are introduced for the first time in this book. They would feature more prominently in PGW’s later novels and short stories.

Savouring Something New in its Kindle avatar last month, I was left in awe and admiration of PGW’s extraordinary ability to conjure up vivid word pictures of not just characters and situations but also locations and the processes at work. Secondly, PGW surprises you every now and then with his keen sense of observation and…

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