Book Review: WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

Title: We Were The Lucky Ones
Author: Georgia Hunter
Publisher: Viking
Pages: 416

At first, I wondered about the appropriateness of titling a book set during the Holocaust We were the Lucky Ones.

But that is exactly that the Kurc family, resident in Radom, Poland, at the start of the war in March 1939, turned out to be. Despite suffering the worst excesses, this family emerged alive through the War, ready to make a fresh start in the post-war world.

Each chapter of this story is told from the third person present tense point of view of a different family member. 

It is in this manner that we meet Sol and Nechuma Kurc, a prosperous Jewish couple, and their children. Eldest daughter, Mila, is married to Selim; they have a two-year-old daughter, Felicia. Son Genek is married to Herta. Addy, still single, is working in Paris, Jakob is in love with Bella, and youngest daughter, Halina, is in a relationship with Adam, the family’s tenant.

When World War II breaks out, the men, Selim, Genek and Jakob, are conscripted to fight. Jakob asks Bella to join him in Lvov where they live, and she does so, nearly losing her life as she makes the perilous journey. Those left behind are assigned new jobs. 

Halina is sent to pluck beets at a beet farm and Mila to sew clothes at a garment factory, where she goes to work, with Felicia strapped to her chest. At the factory, the child plays under the table all day. Meanwhile, Sol and Nechuma work in a cafeteria. Nechuma smuggles home potato peels to season their meal.

And then there comes a day when the family is assigned to a new shabby home while their spacious five-bedroom apartment is usurped by Germans. The Kurcs may only take their clothes and valuables.

Meanwhile, in France, Addy is sent a summons for conscription. He secures a time-bound visa to travel to Brazil. But the ship that he is travelling in is refused entry into Brazil because of the political picture of the continent has altered in the months in the interim period. 

The ship docks at Casablanca, where he gets into a relationship with Eliska, a rich Jewish girl.

At the end of each chapter, we get the historical events that transpired then, the ones that led to the War and saw Jews being persecuted and subsequently exterminated in concentration camps. Each chapter shows us things getting worse.

Genek and Herta are taken away from their home in the middle of the night and transported by train over the next 42 days in horrific conditions to Siberia. There they are made to work felling logs, surviving on meagre rations and facing Siberia’s horrible winters. It is here that Herta becomes pregnant and gives birth to baby Jozef.

Meanwhile, Halina joins Adam, with great difficulty, just as Bella had once done. Around this time, Bella discovers that her sister, Anna, and her husband are killed. Living in Lvov is fraught with danger, and so Jakob, Bella and her cousin, Franka leave for Radom again. Adam is taken to a work camp. Halina gets him released, using her grandmother’s silver cutlery as a bribe.

Each member of the family lived through such a harrowing time, and for long years, it seemed that things only got worse. I kept looking at the timeline, longing for 1945, when the Allies would win and the War would be over.

Portions of it made for difficult reading. I couldn’t read beyond these parts, imagining the plight of these people.

During the course of Genek and Herta’s terrible journey to Siberia, we read the heartrending account of the mother who sat for days with a dead baby in her arms, and stopped eating when the baby was thrown out by the Soviet soldiers. Later, the soldiers threw her out of the train too. 

I was also upset by the part in which little Felicia, who has been hidden in a sack and told to act like a statue during a Nazi inspection of the factory is nearly discovered by them.

There is so much that members of this family went through at the concentration camps. The holes in the ground that served as toilets. The demeaning lack of privacy. The anxiety of not knowing whether one would survive from one minute to another.

In the midst of difficulties, things start looking up for Addy. He finally reaches Brazil and after seven months of doing odd jobs, gets his work permit and a job. He and Eliska grow apart as he misses his family and Eliska fails to understand his sorrow.

Jakob and Bella return to Radom. As the political situation alters, allies turn into foes and vice versa, worsening the plight of the Jews depending upon where they find themselves.

Genek, Herta and Jozef are released by the Soviets and taken by train to Kazakhstan.

Hitler allows some Jews to emigrate to America. Mila and Felicia are on the first train, on the first leg of their long journey. But the train is led to a wilderness where the passengers are told to dig their own graves.

Jakob and Bella get a job in a factory outside Radom, in German-occupied Poland.

As the political situation worsens, the most fragile of securities slips away. All the siblings make efforts to help each other. Of them, Halina is the feistiest of the lot.

But my heart went out to Mila and Felicia. Mila’s circumstances were truly heartrending as she took the biggest risks to safeguard herself and her child. And Felicia herself, seeing such horrors at her age.

As their bodies waste away for lack of food, the author tells us of Bella, Her cheekbones grew more pronounced, and under her shirt, her ribs jutted from beneath her skin like a keyboard made up of only sharps and flats.

It was only at the end of the book that I became aware that it was a true story and that the author is the granddaughter of Addy. Truly a beautiful and touching recountal.

The writing was good, and the descriptions more than adequate. The author could so easily have resorted to using abusive language against the hateful Nazis. But she keeps to the facts, and gives us this fictionalized retelling of historically true events.

I was glad to read this one through to the end.

While we remember the millions that died in the Holocaust, we can rejoice with this family that lived to give thanks to God for seeing them through the worst.

(I got a free ARC from FirstToRead).

A David and Goliath story

Every Goliath encounters his David at last.

But not every David uses a smooth, round pebble pinned to a sling to bring the big man down.



Priya*, my train friend, was having a hard time at work. Work was drudgery, but she plodded on. Her husband's garage was doing rather badly and they were still paying their home loan off. Giving up the job was out of the question.

Every evening, Priya ranted about the troubles she had faced during the day. The telling brought her immeasurable comfort, even though both she and Rohan*, her husband, knew that it would be the same story the following day, and the day after.

Sudarshan, her boss and the owner of the small firm where she worked, was a tyrant who believed that the best way to ensure productivity was to keep employees under control. He strictly forbade any discussions between co-workers on any subject other than work. There was no laughter, no fun at the workplace. Employees had to eat at their desks and finish faster than the others. The one who ate the quickest was allowed to get off work the earliest -- 30 minutes after closing time.

Mobile phones had to be switched off in the office premises. Phone calls were only allowed through the office line. The telephone operator was advised to maintain details of who received and made how many personal and official calls and for how long they spoke. To make sure that she could distinguish personal calls from official ones, the girl was unabashedly told to listen in on all conversations, in the interests of the company.

The poor girl did as she was ordered, for the most part, occasionally turning a blind eye and deaf ear to some of the personal calls, especially those to and from family members.

And that was how Priya used to receive one phone call each day from her young son, Kian*, all of five years old. The little one would give his mom an account of what had happened at school, squeezing in every last bit of the news he had to share before she excused herself and tried to cut the call. It would never do to be caught red-handed on a personal call by the boss.

Sudarshan prided himself on being process oriented. Appraisals were his idea of a fun-time. It gave him an opportunity, as if opportunity were a thing he lacked, to watch his employees squirm in their seats as he slung accusations of bad attitude, indecorous behaviour, unsatisfactory work, and generally anything he could think of. With the job market being tight, everyone on his payroll was desperate and unwilling to take risks, and so Sudarshan continued his reign of harassment.

Since employees were forbidden to fraternize with one another, there was no option but to go home and spew venom against Sudarshan, a necessary step if they were to preserve their sanity. Everyone knows that those who don't come up with healthy means of releasing stress cave in soon enough.

And so, with the TV cackling in the background, Priya laid down her day’s burden upon the ears of Rohan, who listened patiently. It was all he could do.

Kian was often privy to these conversations. After a day spent in the company of the boss from hell, Priya wouldn’t always remember to withhold the complaints until the little one was out of earshot.

In any case, the TV was on, playing some inane cartoon or the other, and the couple used the time to talk about how their day had gone.

And so it went on, day after day, week after week, month after month. The stress began to tell on Priya. She became more short-tempered, more frenzied, compensating for the crap she took at work.

Something had to give. 

And it did.



One afternoon, just after lunch, all the employees of Sudarshan's firm, including my friend, Priya, came across a most unbelievable sight. Sudarshan seemed out of sorts. He wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, and he was strangely subdued. Unaccustomed to such odd behaviour on his part, the employees began talking about it. But he was too wrapped up in himself to even notice the flouting of his rule.

It was only later that they came to know the reason behind it. Apparently some child called the company, asked to speak to Sudarshan and proceeded to shout at him for being mean to his mother.

They got the story from the telephone girl. She relayed the entire conversation to her eager audience, relishing every word. After all, she had only been obeying orders when she had listened in. Sudarshan did not get personal calls, and never from children.

With a child's disregard for tact, the boy had got straight to the point. “You’re the horrible man who is mean to my mummy and her friends?" he asked. "Because of you, my mummy is always worried. She does not sing to me, and she cries a lot. She has no time for me. And why do you send her home so late? Who will check my homework? And she is so tired, she can't cook. And we end up eating what daddy makes. I don't like this, okay. You start behaving yourself from now on. Don't make me come after you," he threatened, very angrily, his childish prattle an echo of parental scolding lingo.

Throughout the one-sided conversation, Sudarshan tried to get in a word of his own, and failed. The boy wasn't done yet. "You send my mummy home on time, okay? I'll be watching out for her today. Don't make me call again."

And then just as suddenly, Sudarshan heard the click. That the telephone operator was listening must have affected him somewhat.

He spent a few anxious days watching his female employees, wondering which one had put her child to the task. It was hard to guess. All the married women had young kids. The mystery of the caller remained.

It would be easy to say that Sudarshan was a changed man. But then this is a true story, not a fairy tale. But he did go easy on a number of his rules, and even allowed employees to keep their phones on, and chat with one another, and yes, go home on time. The mood got lighter, although the pressure of work didn’t and appraisals continued to offer opportunities for mental wrestling.

Several employees, including Priya, left in a few months. Priya got a job close to her home. The new job allows her more time with her son, and she's happier than she's been in a long time.

But there's another happy ending to this story.


On the day that changed everything, Priya went home on time, a smile on her lips. By the time Rohan brought Kian back from the creche, she was already in the kitchen, making banana fritters. Kian immediately hugged her tight as if he would never let go. When the burst of initial joy had subsided, Priya complained, "I missed your call today. Why didn't you call?"

"I did," he replied, before digging into the treat.


PS. The names of Priya, Rohan and Kian have been changed to protect their identity from the tyrant Sudarshan, very much his real name.

Book Review: MISS BRENDA AND THE LOVELADIES

Title: Miss Brenda and the Loveladies
Author: Brenda Spahn and Irene Zutell
Publisher: WaterBrook Press
Pages: 240






Miss Brenda and the Loveladies is the remarkable account of one woman who made a difference in the lives of thousands of women convicts, enabling them to rebuild their lives and turn their backs on their guilty pasts.

Growing up in poverty, Brenda Spahn had built up her own accountancy and audit business and an enviable lifestyle for herself on the strength of her own hard work. Investigated by the IRS for a crime she hadn’t committed, and under the mercy of a fierce legal system which threatened to send her to jail for it, she learned to rely on God. She promised herself, and God, that if she were able to avoid imprisonment, she would take an active part in prison ministry. She would rehabilitate women ex-convicts and help them re-build their lives again.

She kept her promise. For months she worked with the inmates of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, listening to them and giving them hope. The brief glimpse she had of prison life inspired in her the knowledge of the deadend it leads to. The knowledge inspired a God-directed vision, to give others a second chance, the way God had given her a second chance when she faced the possibility of years in prison.

And then the prison authorities sent her seven women convicts facing parole. One of these women was the proverbial gang leader from hell, and all were violent, hardened criminals who had done time for a host of felonies and crimes. The ones whose files declared them, CANNOT BE REHABILITATED.

And so began the greatest challenge that Brenda had ever undertaken.

Meanwhile, the housemother, cook and driver that she had hired quit on seeing the women. Through it all, Brenda has no idea what to do, or even what to do next. She fumbled on, knowing that God will direct her to do the right thing. Slowly the women got used to the routine at Brenda’s house, allowing Brenda’s faith to sweep over them.

It wasn’t easy. Living with ex-convicts who were doing time for some violent crimes. But Brenda never gave up. She overcame tremendous obstacles but refused to lose sight of her vision. Her patience and faith won eventually, as each of the women grabbed hold of the chance they had and decided to succeed, to repair their fractured lives and relationships.

Even as Brenda was convinced that the work she has undertaken was in keeping with God’s plan for her, she received a nasty surprise. When a local newspaper covered the work she was doing, her posh and wealthy neighbours accused her of harbouring convicts in their peaceful neighbourhood, and demanded that she leave immediately.

The hostility was overpowering and Brenda feared that this setback might spell the end of her programme. But God had a better plan. Eventually, He led Brenda on to establish the Lovelady Center in an abandoned hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. A whole-way house that serves 450 women and children every day, providing substance abuse counseling, drug rehabilitation, meals, childcare, career counseling, and job opportunities to women working to establish successful lives outside prison.

Miss Brenda and the Loveladies is the story of how Brenda got involved with a group of convicts and made their rehabilitation her life’s mission. This is not fiction, but real, although it does sound crazy enough to be fiction.

Each chapter begins with a quote that sets the stage for that which is to follow. The style is chatty, yet confessional, and matter of fact. The account is imbued with faith and hope, and conviction and a strong dash of humour. As when Brenda sees herself through the eyes of others and realizes just how crazy she must look.

Interspersed with Brenda’s narrative are single chapters each from Sharon “Shay” Curry, the toughest and the most vicious of the convicts, besides Tiffany, a drug abuser and felon, and Stephanie, an ex-employee of Brenda’s who came from a poor background and was helped by her boss, Brenda, and who eventually stole from her. The accounts detail the lives of physical and sexual abuse, besides drug abuse, stealing and prostitution.

Chapter 10, titled, “Imagine,” is hard hitting. Brenda proceeds to explain the abuse and deprivation that these women have gone through, through sentences preceded with the word, Imagine.

“Imagine if when your parents ran out of drug money, they gave you to drug dealers in exchange for dope.” Or “No one cared that you wore the same pair of underwear for weeks.”

With God’s help, the seven women later swelled to 20, and then to thousands of thousands. Brenda put in all she had into the programme, her money, time and resources, increasingly realising that it was her destiny to be doing that. Eventually she sold her business to devote herself full time to the programme.

Read this book to learn about how one woman, with God on her side, can achieve the seemingly impossible.

An inspiring true story, all the way.

Blogging for Books provided this book to me for free in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: ANGELS IN THE FIRE

Title: Angels in the Fire
Author: Dann Stadler
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 208








Angels in the Fire: The Dramatic True Story of an Impossible Rescue by Dann Stadler is the story of the author and his wife, Tracey, specifically of the horrific accident that struck them on the night of September 7, 1989, as a result of a head-on collision with a drunk driver who was driving at 75 miles per hour in the wrong lane. It was their fourth wedding anniversary and they were returning home from dinner to Tracey's parents' house where they were then vacationing.

The novel begins in the present tense, in the third person, describing the events that led to the collision. The crash causes the cars to char, killing the drunk driver on the spot, but Dann and Tracey miraculously survive. The high-speed impact leaves behind twisted metal, and results in both the Stadlers becoming a wreck of their former selves.

When fire extinguishers could not douse the fire, and it grew in intensity every second, some people made an almost superhuman but unsuccessful attempt to break the door down and rescue the couple while a man dropped down to his knees in prayer and supplication.

And then suddenly in front of everyone's stupefied gaze, a lone figure emerged from the woods and reached the car. Tracey's spirit recognised the figure as Jesus, her Saviour, even as her lifeless body was taken out of the car that no one could open just moments earlier.

While Dann's body caught fire, everything from the bumper in crashed on Tracey's lower body, leaving her with sixteen fractures between her pelvis and knee alone. They ended up staying in hospital for more than four-and-a-half months, undergoing numerous surgeries and skin grafts in an attempt to repair the damage. 

Medical experts warned them that life would always be a struggle, in which they would be largely dependent on others even for small routine tasks, and that they would never be able to have another baby. At the time of the crash, the Stadlers were parents to nine-month-old Meghan.

Contrary to these dire predictions, both Dann and Tracey went on to live a normal life as far as possible, including taking up their jobs without any respite in their responsibilities. They also went on to become parents for the second time to Rebekah and later adopted a third child, a baby girl, who they named Emma.

Interestingly, the last thing that Dann remembered telling Tracey before the crash occurred was to keep her seat belt on. In many ways, Tracey's faith works as a safety belt for the couple, helping them to survive and thrive in spite of all indications to the contrary. 

The book is a remarkable testimony to the fact that when God tests us with difficulties, He always tempers those difficulties with His steady love and grace. The account is also a reminder that God's angels are always with us, and that they guard and guide us, and watch over us as we go through life.

Besides these angels, Stadler also thanks the many real angels that helped them with their support and presence. These angels included his own parents and Tracey's too. Tracey's father takes up the task of looking after little Meghan while her parents are in the hospital.

While it seems incredible that anyone could still be alive after having been through such a terrible accident, the fact that the Stadlers are alive is proof that miracles happen and that when the going gets tough, faith is all that is required to live life well.

I received this book for free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I read it on Netgalley.

Guns and Roses

The newspapers last week brought a piece of news that I found particularly distressing. The two players in the tragedy reported were a brother-sister duo, five and two years old respectively, the same ages as my La Niña and El Niño. For some reason, that frightened me even more.


A five-year-old boy from Kentucky, USA, accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister, identified as Caroline Sparks, with a .22 calibre Crickett rifle that he had received as a gift on his birthday. The little girl was immediately rushed to hospital and doctors spent an anxious hour trying to revive her, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The little one was already beyond the might of modern medical science.

At the time of the tragedy, the children had been playing together in a room in which the gun, loaded with a single shell, was stowed. It was an accident waiting to happen.

The children's mother had been busy cleaning the house at that time. She had just stepped out of the house and onto the porch when she heard the gun go off. It had been no more than three minutes. The longest three minutes of her life that the unfortunate mother will very probably regret as long as she breathes.

The coroner who investigated the accident revealed that the boy was familiar with the intricacies of gun use and had often accompanied his father on shooting expeditions on their property. He added that it was a tragic situation.

This is not the first accident of its kind. Earlier, a six-year-old boy in the US died after his four-year-old playmate shot him by mistake during a playing session gone wrong. In another instance, a four-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a 48-year-old woman.

My first thought on reading the news was about the enormity of the tragedy. No matter that only one child had died, it was still a tragedy. A travesty of innocence.

I'm not really informed about the gun control debate that is on in the US. I don't understand why guns are necessary, why not letting people pack them is a violation of their rights and why the Constitution ought to sanction something as heinous as the possession of arms. All that I understand is that, as a mother, I am deeply saddened by the senseless death of two-year-old Caroline, as also by the painful, sudden yet irrevocable manner in which her older brother's life has been, for all practical purposes, cut short, arrested mid-development, forever. I wonder how many years of guilt and therapy lie in wait for him.

There are some things that I can’t even begin to understand. Why would anyone gift a child a gun? Why would anyone think a gun is an ideal toy for a five-year-old? Why would anyone keep a loaded gun within reach of not just one but two children?

The Crickett rifle responsible for this tragedy was marketed by a Pennsylvania-based company called Keystone Sporting Arms, a company well known for selling guns specifically for children. The company’s campaign, “My first rifle,” aims to make rifles and guns seem attractive to children. The colours in which these death-machines are available, blue and green, and pink for girls, entice kids and fool grownup fools into thinking of it as a cute, little educational toy that couldn’t possibly do any real harm.

In fact, the company’s website used to reiterate that it aimed "to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters."

The site has been taken down since in response to the furore raised in the wake of the tragedy. However, the pictures hosted on the Kid’s Corner section of the website are available for viewing on MotherJones.

The website and the opinion of the gun lobby seem to suggest that the way to keep a young child safe is by teaching him/her to properly load and unload a gun and shoot. In my opinion, the way to keep a young child safe is by keeping the gun far away and locked so children cannot get at it.

I don't understand why there has to be a romance created around a first rifle, the way there is around a first pen, watch or car, a sort of initiation into adulthood.

David Mann, the uncle of the children, said of the tragedy, "It's something that you can't prepare for," even as the little girl’s grandmother said, “It was her time to go.” A Kentucky State Police Trooper said, "It's just one of those nightmares, a quick thing that happens when you turn your back."

Responses such as these seem to suggest that the child’s death was inevitable, when the truth is that it could so easily have been prevented just by keeping the offending weapon out of reach on that fateful day, and every day.

Who is at fault here?

The company for peddling these vicious candy-flossed death traps to children? For creating a market for guns owned by children and encouraging the belief that the possession of a gun invests the owner with bravado and machismo? For snatching innocents from their cradles and hurtling them towards their graves?

Or the parents for not keeping them unloaded and hidden, for underestimating the danger?

Or the children themselves for believing the spiel?

Children today live far more imperiled lives than we did when we were their age. That is a sad fact of our times. Shouldn’t we, as responsible parents and grownups, mitigate the danger to their lives by keeping firearms away from them?

Isn’t it ironic that the same people who go to great lengths to childproof their homes think nothing of bringing a live, loaded weapon into their children’s lives?



 

Special 26: Con Banega Karodpati

Special 26 has received rave reviews for being a good thriller. But not much is being said about the skewed sense of right and wrong that the film is unintentionally reinforcing.

The film shows four cheats, Ajay (Akshay Kumar) from Bombay, PK Sharma (Anupam Kher) from Chandigarh, Iqbal (Kishor Kadam) from Jaipur, and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) from Old Delhi, who pose as CBI or Income Tax officials and raid corrupt politicians and very rich businessmen to steal their ill-gotten gains. For a raid at a minister’s house, they take the help of sub-inspector Ranveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) and lady constable Shanti Yadav (Divya Dutta). The heist yields them a rich haul.

Leaving Ranveer and Shanti at the minister’s house, the four make a quick getaway. Unwilling to talk about his black money, the minister refuses to file an FIR and is content with the suspension of Ranveer and Shanti.

Bristling with indignation, Ranveer is determined to bring the criminals to book. He makes some investigations of his own and appeals to the Central Bureau of Investigation for help. Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee), an upright officer, is assigned to help him.

Khan makes it his personal mission to catch the four red-handed, even as they are determined to pull off one last big heist, their 50^th and biggest, before they can retire. In order to pull off their most outrageous caper, they recruit 22 graduates ostensibly for a “top-secret raid.” The four chors, along with the 22 recruits, are supposed to be the Special 26. Keen on catching them red-handed, Wasim Khan succeeds in infiltrating two policemen into the roster of new recruits.

But will the good guy outwit the thieves or will they retire in style?

The film does a very good job of portraying urban India of the mid ’80s. Ah, the glorious days, when they could not tap your phone through remote access but had to send a telephone linesman to your home. The props are all there, including the rotary phones, scooters, Maruti 800s, Premier Padminis and Ambassadors on the roads, the old currency notes, no-colour newspaper, the lack of skyscrapers, the lack of crowds outside the airport and the hoarding for Thril on a Best bus stop (Wouldn’t it have been more thrilling with the second ‘l’?)

We were planning to loot Rs 2 crore in 30 minutes, says Sharma. It didn't seem like all that much until I remembered that the film was set in 1987 when Rs 1000 meant a fortune, average salaries were in the 100s and the 4 anna was in its element. Sigh! The reality shows on TV have really spoiled us.

Special 26 gains much from the thin layer of dry humour that coats it. The sequence where Waseem asks his boss if he should start accepting bribes since his promotion and increment are taking too long and running the home front running is proving to be tough. In another sequence in which the four interview some potential candidates for their final scam, the candidates, when questioned, say that they want to join the Central Bank of India, because they are very honest and want to rid the country of corruption. One guy, told to speak English, answers, “I want to do India.” Another girl tells Ajay, “Milke ukhadenge.”

Unlike some of their recruits, our four chors have no larger-than-life motivation for what they do. It's just the means by which they earn a living. There is no guilt attached to their actions. Even though Ajay tells his ladylove that she makes him want to be a better man, the truth is that the said lady never really mounts any sincere protest against his method of making money.

Robin Hoods they are not. While they steal from the rich, they do not give the money to the poor. On the other hand, they do not splurge on themselves either. So where does the money go?

 

Nor was there any heavy-speak about why they did what they did, except for a wishy-washy explanation about how Ajay was keen on working for the CBI but failed the interview and the test.

The visual narrative goes out of its way to invest the four thieves with a sense of grandeur. The walks towards the camera in slow-mo, the corporate attire and the air of confidence and flamboyance, all key weapons in the tricksters' armoury.

The film begins well with a high-energy raid on the home of a minister. In fact, the heist sequences are the most watchable.

The director ruined his own show with the love track between Ajay and his bland love interest, Kajal Aggarwal. In fact, Divya Dutta with her cameo makes a better impression. She has very little dialogue in the film, but there is one line that she repeats thrice, each time underlying a different significance.

The romance totally marred the story. I guess they felt compelled to put it in, given star Akshay Kumar's lover boy image, but the cat-and-mouse chor-police game was far more interesting, and would have been even more potent without the baggage of the love story and the Punjabi wedding with the mandatory gidda.

Kher is outstanding, one moment playing the part of a law enforcement official to the hilt, secure in the righteousness of his duty, fearing no one, the next moment suffering nervousness and slouching for fear of being caught.

The four actors complement one another well. Unfortunately, Joginder and Iqbal have nothing much to do, except blend into the background and provide able support. Interestingly, not one of the four suffers any doubts or regrets in relation to the work they do.

Unnecessary time and footage is devoted to showing the modes of transport by which the four escape to their respective homes after the heist. Do these irrelevant pieces of information help the story?

How did the four, hailing from four distant regions, meet for the first time and decide to team up to pull off these con jobs? How did they go about their first illegal raid? That would have helped flesh out the characters and their motivations far better than Ajay’s insipid love story, Joginder’s joint family sleeping in the yard, Iqbal washing clothes while his wife nags, and Sharmaji’s hum do hamare chhe family with one more in the making. Unfortunately, the only thing known about their interpersonal relationships is that Sharma and Ajay share a warm father-son kind of rapport.

While the plot of the film, loosely based on the Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri robbery in the mid-1980s, works, there are a lot of goofups that ruin the total effect.

For instance, the mantri seemed completely shaken by one raid. I found that hard to stomach. What a blot on the high standards of our elected ministers! Had he no Swiss account? Was he so stupid as to keep everything stashed at home, in such obvious places as cupboards, false ceilings, car seats, in a niche beneath the deity and behind the book case?

Also, when we know that mantris care little about transferring senior police officers for their honesty and ineptitude alike, it was strange to discover that this mantri did not even know the commissioner of police looked like.

Also, the visual effects shriek ‘fake’ and Opera House seems to have shifted to Fountain.

I didn’t like the impression the film conveyed, that crime pays and how, and that the good guys, played by Manoj Vajpayee, are just a bunch of smart fools. Had the cops been corrupt, one would not have felt so guilty about cheering the thieves on.

I certainly resented being arm-twisted into rooting for the sheer audacity of the four chors, when my sympathy should very clearly have gone to the good guys, who had been gypped in spite of their hard work and intelligence.

I wondered, is our moral compass so off that when Ajay sends Rs 100 back to Waseem, saying that he will not take the earnings of an honest man, he seemed to rise in our estimation. So much so that he nearly dwarfed Waseem whose sense of honour and honesty is actually beyond question.

Unfortunately, everyone comes out of the cinema hall having a good time, not questioning the four phonies for outraging our morality. It just goes to show how willing we are to adjust our morals to suit the occasion, in a world in which the disclosure of yet another scam leaves us blasé.

Director Neeraj Pandey's debut film, A Wednesday, raised high expectations, which he let down here somewhat. The film is an above average thriller, hampered by the love story, but it missed out on the opportunity to take a moral stance. Today we are sufficiently deluded and disillusioned with the moral realities of today. We don't need our films to emphasise the rewards that await those who choose to muffle their conscience.

What's in a name? (NaBloPoMo Day 23)

One post every day in November

A woman in London has named her baby daughter, ‘Hashtag,’ in honour of Twitter. She is an ordinary woman, mind you, not a celebrity, so I don’t know what her excuse is. Celebrities, particularly of the Hollywood and popular music fraternity, have a history of giving their children names that are out of the ordinary.

Some examples: Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter is called Apple. Nicholas Cage named his son Kal-el, which was Superman’s name on his planet, Krypton. Singer Frank Zappa named two of his kids, Moon Unit and Diva Thin Muffin. Actress Alicia Silverstone named her son, Bear Blu. Sylvester Stallone named his son, Sage Moonblood. Gwen Stefani named her son, Zuma Nesta Rock.

I wonder why celebrities think their status makes them exempt from using their common sense when it comes to baby names. Joaquin Phoenix’s siblings all boast of dreamy, romantic names like Summer, Rain, Liberty and River. Even Joaquin changed his name to Leaf for some time because he didn’t feel as if he quite belonged to the family.

When Katie Holmes delivered a baby girl, Tom Cruise's spokesman announced that the baby would be named Suri, which meant princess in Hebrew and red rose in Persian. We would have told him that it means knife in some Indian languages.

Celebrities will be celebrities, with their feet high above the ground. What prompted the lady Jameson to pick up such a name is not known. Incidentally, Baby Hashtag’s mother, identified only by her last name, Jameson, chose to make the announcement on Facebook. She wrote, "Hashtag Jameson was born at 10 oclock last nite. She weys 8pounds and i luv her so much!!!!!!"

The twitterati were aghast at the choice of name and very quickly expressed their feelings with other trending hashtags like #Foolishparents, #YourParentsHateYou and #StupidestNameEver. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poked fun at the name, joking that Hashtag’s sibling would be named “Retweet."

I shudder to think of the bullying and taunting that that little girl is going to face on the playground and at school. Unless this is one big elaborate joke or publicity stunt. What is increasingly more likely is that the child will fit in very well because she will be surrounded by other kids named Denim, Flying Rock and Chromosome.

In 2005, a Swedish couple named their baby boy, Oliver Google Kai. Another little baby in Sweden is called Lego. In 2011, an Israeli couple paid obeisance to Facebook, when they named their daughter, Like. Another gentleman from Egypt went further when he named his daughter, Facebook, apparently in honour of the website’s role in the Arab Spring that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.

The search for the most unique baby name is sending parents to the weirdest sources. Baby name books and websites are not the only places of choice. Increasingly some parents, still the exception, thankfully, are looking up the dictionary, the shopping mall, the cinema and all around for inspiration.

In India, a lot of parents read up on Indian mythology to get the most unique name. Sometimes they try spelling a name differently. Sometimes, though, they just let their feelings and prejudices dictate their choice of name. In 2011, the district administration in Satara, Maharashtra, identified 222 girls under the age of 18, who had been named ‘Nakusha’ or ‘Nakushi,’ meaning "unwanted", without the traditional naming ceremony, because their families had hoped for boys. There is also a belief that if a girl is named Nakushi, the child born after her will be a boy.  These girls were subsequently either renamed by the district administration or asked to choose a name for themselves.

Weird names such as these have caused the governments of certain countries to take a keen interest in naming trends. New Zealand has banned names like Number 16 Bus Shelter, Fish and Chips (for twins), Lucifer, Duke, Messiah, Bishop, Baron, General, Judge, King, Mr, 89 C, D, I and T. Sweden has pronounced disfavour on names like IKEA, Metallica, Veranda, Q, Superman, Metallica and Elvis, and Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced “Albin”).

If you are in the UK, you may not name your child 4Real. And Chow Tow, meaning Smelly Head, is out in Malaysia.

So will baby Hashtag sign herself #? We will need to wait and watch.

How not to promote vegetarianism (NaBloPoMo Day 16)

One post every day in November

So you love tandoori chicken? And you’re partial to omelette? Or maybe you can’t resist seafood? Beware!

There is a whole generation of young and impressionable school children who are being convinced about the absolute blackness of your character.

Students of Class VI studying in CBSE schools are being fed some radically “creative” stuff. A school textbook, titled New Healthway: Health, Hygiene, Physiology, Safety, Sex Education, Games and Exercises, has the following to say about you on page 56 of its hallowed pages. It says, “They [non-vegetarians] easily cheat, tell lies, they forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes.”

Lest the roster of crimes laid at the doorstep of a carnivorous diet not succeed in putting you off your mutton rogan josh or spicy chicken biryani, here’s more. The book goes on to enlighten you on just why meat is so tasty. Not the spices used to flavour it. In fact, better not ask unless you want to lose your appetite completely. What? You still want to know? You must have some sort of a death wish. Anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you. According to the all-knowing book, “it is the waste products which largely produce the flavour of meat.”

The publishers have proved that if you want to create a nation of bigoted, prejudiced individuals, this is the right way to do it. Poison at its source the font from which children will drink.

The book in question has been printed by S Chand, noted publishers who supply books to schools all over the country. If this is the sort of drivel that is being dished out in the name of education, is it any wonder that so many adults today are so woefully misinformed? For that matter, the learning on offer here is not so different from that put forth by the khaps of Haryana who insisted that fast food is responsible for the rising number of rapes. Begone from me, chowmein.

The book goes on to cheer the Japanese for the greens in their diet. It says, “They [the Japanese] are vegetarians and live longer than most other peoples. The generous use of green leafy vegetables, soya beans and grams has helped the people to maintain vigour, strength and endurance throughout the centuries.” Sushi and sashimi? Never heard of them?

Food isn’t the only subject upon which the publishers choose to follow a policy of “Have Opinion, Will Express.” Girls, the book says, should settle down in marriage between the ages of 18-25. “To get married without a bad name is a dream of every young girl.”

Dear publishers, if you want to promote vegetarianism, there are other ways to do it. How about arguing that a purely vegetarian diet would put far less strain on the earth’s resources? Or that it would be more humane?

Also, how about not bamboozling and bullying your little readers? But that would require too much effort on your part. It’s so much easier to resort to the devices of your imagination and build an intricate web of untruths. And if you are only selling falsehoods, does that mean you too are eating non-veg food?

A mother and her child (NaBloPoMo Day 7)

One post every day in November

A friend recently shared an experience with me. Travelling from Mumbai to Goa, she and her sister were in the train at VT station (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) when they espied a woman, destitute and mentally imbalanced, sitting on the platform. The woman stuck her thumb on her tongue, and made an imprint of the thumb on the dirty platform, then stuck the thumb on her tongue once again, and made an imprint on her own forehead. She persisted in this activity for a while, never once missing a step or even the sequence in which the steps occurred.

By and by, a little girl, about five years old she must have been, joined her. The woman now took a break from the sequence to initiate the child into her little game. While the basic activity remained the same, it was the child’s forehead that now received the thumb print. The child sat on, reasonably still, and allowed the woman to have her way, without any interruption.

My friend and her sister were moved by the sight of that pair. The train was about to pull off at any moment. They quickly called the child to the window. She came, not stopping to consult the woman about the wisdom of answering the call of two strangers, and received with a beaming smile the packet of Glucose biscuits that the sisters handed out to her through the bars of the window. With a light step, she skipped over to the woman, tore open the packet and shared the biscuits with the woman. Both ate in silence.

The train pulled off, leaving the woman and the girl behind, yet my friend could not shake the thought of the child from her mind. Nor could I, when she related the story to me.

As a mother, everything I see, especially when it relates to children, gets coloured by my mother-view, seen through the prism of my perceptions and feelings. That poor little girl, just a year older than La Niña, yet forced to fight demons and do battle with the dangers of the street, my heart went out to her.

I could see her, in my imagination, forced perhaps to grow up long before her time, and yet she was unmistakably a child, as evidenced by the delight with which she took the proffered biscuit packet. Her innocence was intact. As was her love for the woman.

A child’s love draws sustenance from its mother. How strong must be the template of mother love if it had succeeded in penetrating the heart of the child through the haze of the cobwebbed, befuddled mind! How had the destitute managed to achieve that? Her mind had shut itself down, but something in it was alive, something that looked out for the little one, something that showed care and concern.

I thought of that pair, homeless and friendless, and heart-achingly vulnerable to the snares of the street and the deviousness of mankind. How did they survive?

As parents who live within the ambit of societal structures, we have the means and the ability to safeguard our children from evils that childhood should never know about. What recourse does she have, living as she does with nothing to call her own? How will she protect her child? How will her child protect her?

I tell myself, they couldn’t possible survive on their own. Maybe there is someone, a kindly guardian, another denizen of the streets, who is watching over them.

Is that something I am saying to soothe myself? I, another member of that same selfish society – am I using that empty consolation to cover my own discomfort and guilt? Guilt at being better off than they are? I'd rather not think about the answer.

But every once in a while, especially when I rejoice in the company of my kids, I find myself thinking of that lonesome mother, who cannot revel in the gift that is motherhood, and of that little girl, who will never have her mother all to herself.

Or maybe I am wrong. I hope I am. Maybe in some magical way that only the Keeper of the Lost knows, they are both being watched over.



Strapped to his heart (NaBloPoMo Day 5)

One post every day in November

We hear, see and talk about so many instances of Mother Courage that it is almost tempting to think of father’s love and sentiments as always ceding Pole position to the mother. And yet there are many cases of fathers who place their lives on hold as they seek to be there for their children.

 

One such unsung hero is Bablu (may his tribe increase), resident of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, a state sadly too well known for its depressing maternal and infant (especially girl child) mortality figures, and the father of 45-day-old baby girl Damini. When his wife died in childbirth, this rickshaw puller found himself forced to look after the infant while struggling to earn a living. So he fashioned himself a cloth sling and began to carry his baby around. With his right hand steering the cycle handle of his rented rickshaw, and his left protectively holding the little baby, Bablu set about his daily work – too proud to ask for help or beg.

 

Deprived of her mother’s milk and care at birth, the health of little Damini, with a birth weight of just 2kg, was a matter of great concern. She was steadily losing weight and severely malnourished and anaemic. She was also suffering from respiratory problems and infection in the blood and needed an urgent blood transfusion.

 

Bablu, meanwhile, tried desperately to seek help for her, but was turned away at most places on account of his poverty. He said, "Damini needed urgent care, food and treatment but I was completely helpless. I could not even buy food and medicines."

 

The plight of the father and daughter came to the notice of the authorities, thanks to prompt media action. The district collector picked up the tab for Damini’s treatment. She was treated at Fortis Hospital, Jaipur. The treatment was the best of its kind and soon Damini began to respond positively. She began to gain weight and was taken off the ventilator yesterday. She was discharged from the hospital today.

 

Meanwhile, total strangers sent in their generous contributions. Today Bablu has a new rickshaw and Rs 14 lakh in his bank account. He is now determined to give his baby a good education and to ensure that she grows up feeling loved and with all the opportunities that every child deserves.

 

Far from abandoning the little one to the care of NGOs, who offered to look after the little one for two years, he has insisted on his right to bring her up, and is willing to shoulder all the responsibilities related to her growth and upbringing.

 

In a world that is often careless of the needs of the girl child, Bablu, an illiterate rickshaw puller, deserves our utmost respect for his willingness to go through hardships in order to keep his child alive. By strapping his precious baby close to his chest as he went about the task of earning his living, Bablu has proved beyond doubt that little Damini’s needs will always be close to his heart.