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The next threat that loomed was that I can't go out of my home but have to stay confined within its four walls under its roof for two whole weeks after the cataract surgery.
As I said many times earlier I am claustrophobic. I relate this to our lifestyle at Muthukur in my school years. Apart from the fact that we were playing outdoor games for at least 4 hours a day, most nights we used to sleep on folding cots carried into the street in front of our houses...there was no night-traffic.
And whenever we were living in a house with stairs to its roof, we were sleeping on the roof on rattan mats counting the stars.
We now live in an apartment on the 7th floor of a house on the hill that has as many as 4 balconies. Between them they cover half the skyline of Hyderabad, such as it is...no Manhattan this. Still I crave for an outing under the open sky every day.
The biggest threat invented by civilization that cows down a confirmed claustro is the lift (elevator).
There were no lifts in Muthukur (ha!) or Nellore or even in my university city of Vizagh in the 1950s. Our university was on a vast tree-strewn campus but no block of it had more than 3 floors. The thing that caught my attention as soon as I entered its forbidding portals were two vast bungalows just inside its out-gate...both were one-story villas with glistening plates on their gates. One read: Vice-Chancellor's Lodge and the other Registrar's Home. I couldn't follow why one was a lodge and the other a home till I was taught Elegant Variation in our lit classes.
The first lift that I saw was when I entered the imposing Foyer of the Main Building at IIT KGP in 1965. A full-size portrait of Tagore with his keen eyes and flowing beard was overlooking the Volkswagen-wide staircase leading to the Director's office on the first floor. And there was then only one more floor above it. But there was this lift beside the staircase.
I was curious but found that it was meant only for the VIPs...and disabled.
Within a couple of years I found a huge mirror nailed to the wall beside the lift on its outside. And I was told that VIPs (but not the disabled) were a busy lot and found that waiting for the lift for a precious second was too trying them. And IIT engineers discovered that looking at their VIP images in the mirror and adjusting their neckties and hairdo was pretty beguiling for our VIPs.
Anyway I was too scared of closed spaces and never used a lift even for the first six years of my stay in Hyderabad when we were living on ground and first floors of apartment blocks. When I found myself inside the multi-storied Inorbit Mall I preferred to climb the stairs to its 5 floors.
Soon after my retirement and shifting to Hyderabad I sank into a 2-year clinical depression when I couldn't read nor write. In 2007 when I started coming out of it I started reading Hyderabad's famous DC (Deccan Chronicle) in fits and starts.
One day I found an OP-ED article making fun of Gandhiji's futile attempts at celibacy...he had 4 sons. And I found the article tasteless and I was a little infuriated. I was no fan of Gandhiji (never met him since he was shot dead when I was 4). But I happened to read his autobiography and was amused. He sure was an interesting chap like Bernard Shaw who met him in London and proclaimed that he too was a Mahatma on the strength of his vegetarianism...he said:
"All animals are my friends...I don't eat my friends"
So I keyboarded a Letter to the Editor on the spur of the moment, sort of weakly defending Gandhiji and mailed it to the Editor of DC. And to my surprise found that it appeared the next day in its Letters Column. And I celebrated my return to sanity.
DC then and even now has a declared policy stated in its Edit-Page flaunting:
"Every Monday the best letter of the week wins Rs 300"
And I was stunned to find my name as the winner of the money the next Monday. And my joy knew no bounds. And I was daily waiting for the postman to deliver that coveted check from DC. Not that I badly needed that Rs 300 but I wanted to keep that check as a fond memento.
Days merged into weeks and weeks into months but no check ever came. And I decided to e-mail the Editor of DC thinking that his busy office forgot about it and expecting a check with profuse apologies.
Nothing came out of it and the next 3 reminders.
And I cursed DC and soon forgot about it.
Till I happened to be visiting the RS Bros Mall at Ameerpet one day with my wife. I parked our car and asked my wife to go ahead and choose her sari and I would be joining her after a cup of tea.
Sipping tea, I started reading the huge big signboard outside the building listing the various offices and business establishments on its 7 floors.
And found the legend:
"DC Ameerpet Office - 7th floor"
And I thought this was an opportunity for me to catch the DC chaps with their pants down and demand my Rs 300 in cash...for part-payment of my wife's sari.
There was a lift but it was unmanned. And no one was entering it.
So I climbed all its 7 stairs fretting and fuming and discovered that I was caught on the wrong foot and landed in the august office of the:
Deputy Commissioner (Commercial Taxes)
***********************************************************************************************************
The next threat that loomed was that I can't go out of my home but have to stay confined within its four walls under its roof for two whole weeks after the cataract surgery.
As I said many times earlier I am claustrophobic. I relate this to our lifestyle at Muthukur in my school years. Apart from the fact that we were playing outdoor games for at least 4 hours a day, most nights we used to sleep on folding cots carried into the street in front of our houses...there was no night-traffic.
And whenever we were living in a house with stairs to its roof, we were sleeping on the roof on rattan mats counting the stars.
We now live in an apartment on the 7th floor of a house on the hill that has as many as 4 balconies. Between them they cover half the skyline of Hyderabad, such as it is...no Manhattan this. Still I crave for an outing under the open sky every day.
The biggest threat invented by civilization that cows down a confirmed claustro is the lift (elevator).
There were no lifts in Muthukur (ha!) or Nellore or even in my university city of Vizagh in the 1950s. Our university was on a vast tree-strewn campus but no block of it had more than 3 floors. The thing that caught my attention as soon as I entered its forbidding portals were two vast bungalows just inside its out-gate...both were one-story villas with glistening plates on their gates. One read: Vice-Chancellor's Lodge and the other Registrar's Home. I couldn't follow why one was a lodge and the other a home till I was taught Elegant Variation in our lit classes.
The first lift that I saw was when I entered the imposing Foyer of the Main Building at IIT KGP in 1965. A full-size portrait of Tagore with his keen eyes and flowing beard was overlooking the Volkswagen-wide staircase leading to the Director's office on the first floor. And there was then only one more floor above it. But there was this lift beside the staircase.
I was curious but found that it was meant only for the VIPs...and disabled.
Within a couple of years I found a huge mirror nailed to the wall beside the lift on its outside. And I was told that VIPs (but not the disabled) were a busy lot and found that waiting for the lift for a precious second was too trying them. And IIT engineers discovered that looking at their VIP images in the mirror and adjusting their neckties and hairdo was pretty beguiling for our VIPs.
Anyway I was too scared of closed spaces and never used a lift even for the first six years of my stay in Hyderabad when we were living on ground and first floors of apartment blocks. When I found myself inside the multi-storied Inorbit Mall I preferred to climb the stairs to its 5 floors.
Soon after my retirement and shifting to Hyderabad I sank into a 2-year clinical depression when I couldn't read nor write. In 2007 when I started coming out of it I started reading Hyderabad's famous DC (Deccan Chronicle) in fits and starts.
One day I found an OP-ED article making fun of Gandhiji's futile attempts at celibacy...he had 4 sons. And I found the article tasteless and I was a little infuriated. I was no fan of Gandhiji (never met him since he was shot dead when I was 4). But I happened to read his autobiography and was amused. He sure was an interesting chap like Bernard Shaw who met him in London and proclaimed that he too was a Mahatma on the strength of his vegetarianism...he said:
"All animals are my friends...I don't eat my friends"
So I keyboarded a Letter to the Editor on the spur of the moment, sort of weakly defending Gandhiji and mailed it to the Editor of DC. And to my surprise found that it appeared the next day in its Letters Column. And I celebrated my return to sanity.
DC then and even now has a declared policy stated in its Edit-Page flaunting:
"Every Monday the best letter of the week wins Rs 300"
And I was stunned to find my name as the winner of the money the next Monday. And my joy knew no bounds. And I was daily waiting for the postman to deliver that coveted check from DC. Not that I badly needed that Rs 300 but I wanted to keep that check as a fond memento.
Days merged into weeks and weeks into months but no check ever came. And I decided to e-mail the Editor of DC thinking that his busy office forgot about it and expecting a check with profuse apologies.
Nothing came out of it and the next 3 reminders.
And I cursed DC and soon forgot about it.
Till I happened to be visiting the RS Bros Mall at Ameerpet one day with my wife. I parked our car and asked my wife to go ahead and choose her sari and I would be joining her after a cup of tea.
Sipping tea, I started reading the huge big signboard outside the building listing the various offices and business establishments on its 7 floors.
And found the legend:
"DC Ameerpet Office - 7th floor"
And I thought this was an opportunity for me to catch the DC chaps with their pants down and demand my Rs 300 in cash...for part-payment of my wife's sari.
There was a lift but it was unmanned. And no one was entering it.
So I climbed all its 7 stairs fretting and fuming and discovered that I was caught on the wrong foot and landed in the august office of the:
Deputy Commissioner (Commercial Taxes)
***********************************************************************************************************
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