Day 2
Enid Blyton's descriptions of English farms came alive as I looked upon the barn with clucking hens pecking away merrily and a little cocker spaniel (named Buster maybe? No, Buster was a Scottish Terrier and anyway that would have been asking for too much!) panted and gazed expectantly with sad eyes at us, as if willing us to throw a wooden stick for him to catch.
We had just alighted from our car after a 45 minutes journey from Edinburgh, to check out Mavis Hall Park, the venue for the outdoors activity we had planned for our group. The drive was again very pleasant, passing through small villages with quaint names and with green hillocks on both sides. It was drizzling lightly when we started and got steadily stronger as the journey progressed. But then that's the charm of English (sorry, Scottish!) weather!
A charming and pleasantly smiling lady named Fiona met us on arrival and ushered the three of us into her room. This was a converted shed on the farm, and was very cosy inside though cluttered all over just like a regular office space. There was another connected chamber which was occupied by some mysterious female voice that materialised just once to hand us some tea and then was never seen again (I mean, by us during our visit!).
The aforementioned spaniel, Fly was busy running between our legs and trying to introduce himself. Our hostess meanwhile had asked for some hot tea from that disembodied voice and there were some pieces of Scottish shortbread on the table. While Kirstie, our local contact and Shady, our event coordinator were busy sorting out the program details with the hostess, I was looking around the room. It was somewhat disconcerting to find a PC in these surroundings with windows of emails and Word documents open on the monitor. There was a small fax somewhere too. There were stacks of neatly labelled files on the floor. Visiting cards were put up on corkboard. Various Scottish-themed knickknacks like clan badges were scattered all over.
Having gone through the program details, we then pulled on some Wellingtons and clomped our way into the barn behind the office. This would be where the guests would be welcomed with a hot cup of tea or coffee (nothing stronger!). We came out of the barn, crossed the road and walked along a muddy path winding through the woods. We were closely surrounded with trees and shrubs on both sides of the ath. I could also hear the gurgling sound of a brook up ahead. Soon enough, we saw the brook somewhat below us to our right. The scene was absolutely enchanting.
After a few minutes of walking, we came across a vast clearing of grass that had a charming little loch at the far end. This was where our group would be playing traditional Scottish highland games. I could also see a medium sized castle to my left which presumably belonged to the landlord. The entire area was surrounded by mountains on three sides which gave it a very charming air.
We came back to the hotel by noon, and I retired to my room for a bit of rest and also to catch up on my email. I ordered a club sandwich from room service, which was an adventure by itself, since this hotel is not one of those conventional touristy hotels but is a character by itself. Anyway, I rested a while and waited for the group to arrive by 2pm. Their flight got delayed and they finally arrived by around 5pm or so.
Most people in the group were already familiar to me from previous trips but there were a few new faces as well, including a female. Hmm, the last time we had had a female in our trip had been a couple of years back in South Africa and that had turned out to be a rather interesting experience! But more on that later.
We had kept a light schedule for the group for the day of their arrival; just a spot of dinner followed by bed or the more adventurous ones could go out to explore the nightlife.
Over the light dinner, I welcomed the group to the event and congratulated them for being the high achievers that they were. I outlined the coming 3 days' program and explained a few helpful facts, including the contents of haggis, the Scots national dish. They were gratifyingly revolted.
Read more!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Stranger in a strange land: Memories of Scotland
Day 1
"Ajfxrtr jrrr uwg fgnkrng?" The girl at the immigration asked me. I looked uncomprehendingly at her.
She tried again, "Fheryjf sf krhg gtekjgfa sdtjhyg?" I gaped at her like a country bumpkin.
Then she tried it slower and louder, at this mentally retarded person.
"Do you speak English?"
The indignation was dripping from my voice as I answered, "Of course I do!"
And that was my introduction to Glasgow English.
I had a taste of more of the same when our driver who was driving us to Edinburgh tried to explain some of the scenery to us, and we would just try to read his lips and nod away smiling, because for the life of us, we could not figure out what he was saying. He kept asking me about some collar and I kept trying to figure out where that fitted into our conversation, because we had been discussing neither shirts nor dogs. Then it dawned on me that he was asking me if we found Glasgow cooler!
It is a rather humbling experience when after a lifetime of speaking and writing English fluently, you run into the wall of regional dialects and are made to appear a fool or a retard.
The flight from Dubai had been very comfortable though a bit long. Thankfully I had been bumped up to business class, so it was okay. I spent the long flight watching movies ("I Could Never Be Your Woman", "Charlie Bartlett"). We actually landed a couple of minutes before schedule (12:30pm), and the pilot announced this fact as if expecting an applause!
So after we had cleared immigration & customs, and collected out baggage which didn't take very long since I had just 1 small case, we ventured out and were met by the aforementioned driver who ushered us into a large sleek Merc. Hmmm!
We stopped just outside the airport to check out a hotel called Glynhill for lunch arrangements for the large group that would be following us tomorrow in the same flight. Nice hotel, but a tad expensive. We didn't think the group would be sufficiently hungry for a full-fledged 3 course meal. So then we went on to check other places, like a roadside service station which had a nice convenience store serving big sandwiches, juices and coffee.
After that, we continued onwards to Edinburgh. On both sides of the road were undulating green valleys full of bales of hay and sheep. Not many cows though. The weather was pretty good, with overcast skies and quite a bit of sunshine.
We reached Edinburgh at around 3pm. The Scotsman where we were staying is a very different kind of a hotel. First of all, it was never built to be one. It was the headquarters of The Scotsman newspaper, and was later converted into a hotel. So the entire design of this place is bewildering. The rooms are very comfortable and impressive though they were obviously some poor editor's office once upon a time. The Editor's suite where I was put up is a grand old place with wooden panelling all over the rooms, and small knobs indicating where there is a cupboard built cleverly into the wooden panel. There is even a secret hatch through which one can slide out the room service plates once one is finished with the meals, or put out one's shoes to be polished in the evening. The bedroom window looks out over the railway station a couple of stories below us, and one can gaze upon the stately structure of The Balmoral, another hotel nearby.
All this was not discovered by me immediately, since we had to rush out by 4pm to examine a venue for the Grand Dinner to be held on the last night of the event. And what a venue it turned out to be!
The Royal Yacht Britannia is a decommissioned Royal Yacht previously belonging to the Queen. It was decommissioned in 1997, and as the story goes, the Queen shed a tear when it was finally docked at its berth in Edinburgh port.
We were met by a lovely blonde (no, it's not relevant to the story, but still!) girl who took us around the boat and showed us the arrangements for the Grand Dinner. I will not go into details now, but let this be said, the plans were really Grand!
While discussing all the details over a cup of tea served in a monogrammed tea set (but of course!), I espied some mementos in the wall shelves, and asked the tour guide if there was a tourist shop on the boat. Of course there was. But since it wouldn't be open during our dinner time on Friday, I asked to be taken to it afterward so as to do some "impromptu" shopping. Having done that, we left the boat.
In the evening, we went off to The Living Room, a restaurant which would be hosting our group later this week. A nice cozy place, with live music. I had a grilled salmon washed down with 1664 beer, and then had a shot of 10 year old Macallan. Lovely! Read more!
"Ajfxrtr jrrr uwg fgnkrng?" The girl at the immigration asked me. I looked uncomprehendingly at her.
She tried again, "Fheryjf sf krhg gtekjgfa sdtjhyg?" I gaped at her like a country bumpkin.
Then she tried it slower and louder, at this mentally retarded person.
"Do you speak English?"
The indignation was dripping from my voice as I answered, "Of course I do!"
And that was my introduction to Glasgow English.
I had a taste of more of the same when our driver who was driving us to Edinburgh tried to explain some of the scenery to us, and we would just try to read his lips and nod away smiling, because for the life of us, we could not figure out what he was saying. He kept asking me about some collar and I kept trying to figure out where that fitted into our conversation, because we had been discussing neither shirts nor dogs. Then it dawned on me that he was asking me if we found Glasgow cooler!
It is a rather humbling experience when after a lifetime of speaking and writing English fluently, you run into the wall of regional dialects and are made to appear a fool or a retard.
The flight from Dubai had been very comfortable though a bit long. Thankfully I had been bumped up to business class, so it was okay. I spent the long flight watching movies ("I Could Never Be Your Woman", "Charlie Bartlett"). We actually landed a couple of minutes before schedule (12:30pm), and the pilot announced this fact as if expecting an applause!
So after we had cleared immigration & customs, and collected out baggage which didn't take very long since I had just 1 small case, we ventured out and were met by the aforementioned driver who ushered us into a large sleek Merc. Hmmm!
We stopped just outside the airport to check out a hotel called Glynhill for lunch arrangements for the large group that would be following us tomorrow in the same flight. Nice hotel, but a tad expensive. We didn't think the group would be sufficiently hungry for a full-fledged 3 course meal. So then we went on to check other places, like a roadside service station which had a nice convenience store serving big sandwiches, juices and coffee.
After that, we continued onwards to Edinburgh. On both sides of the road were undulating green valleys full of bales of hay and sheep. Not many cows though. The weather was pretty good, with overcast skies and quite a bit of sunshine.
We reached Edinburgh at around 3pm. The Scotsman where we were staying is a very different kind of a hotel. First of all, it was never built to be one. It was the headquarters of The Scotsman newspaper, and was later converted into a hotel. So the entire design of this place is bewildering. The rooms are very comfortable and impressive though they were obviously some poor editor's office once upon a time. The Editor's suite where I was put up is a grand old place with wooden panelling all over the rooms, and small knobs indicating where there is a cupboard built cleverly into the wooden panel. There is even a secret hatch through which one can slide out the room service plates once one is finished with the meals, or put out one's shoes to be polished in the evening. The bedroom window looks out over the railway station a couple of stories below us, and one can gaze upon the stately structure of The Balmoral, another hotel nearby.
All this was not discovered by me immediately, since we had to rush out by 4pm to examine a venue for the Grand Dinner to be held on the last night of the event. And what a venue it turned out to be!
The Royal Yacht Britannia is a decommissioned Royal Yacht previously belonging to the Queen. It was decommissioned in 1997, and as the story goes, the Queen shed a tear when it was finally docked at its berth in Edinburgh port.
We were met by a lovely blonde (no, it's not relevant to the story, but still!) girl who took us around the boat and showed us the arrangements for the Grand Dinner. I will not go into details now, but let this be said, the plans were really Grand!
While discussing all the details over a cup of tea served in a monogrammed tea set (but of course!), I espied some mementos in the wall shelves, and asked the tour guide if there was a tourist shop on the boat. Of course there was. But since it wouldn't be open during our dinner time on Friday, I asked to be taken to it afterward so as to do some "impromptu" shopping. Having done that, we left the boat.
In the evening, we went off to The Living Room, a restaurant which would be hosting our group later this week. A nice cozy place, with live music. I had a grilled salmon washed down with 1664 beer, and then had a shot of 10 year old Macallan. Lovely! Read more!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
It takes a village
A few minutes back, I see a little girl of 3 or 4 stepping off the curb at the traffic light, and there's no adult in sight. So instinctively I wag a finger at her, sternly telling her to stay on the pavement. She obeys immediately, with a guilty look on her face.
So then I am thinking to myself while walking the rest of the way home that these days you don't really see any children being admonished or told off by some unrelated grown up, when the kids are seen making some wrong move in public. We all want to be seen as politically correct. Even when parents are present and don't lift a finger to quieten a screaming child in a restaurant or to shake their head at a kid busily exploring the inside of her nose while being introduced to people in public, other adults will sit there, beaming beatifically at the "little angel". Their attitude seems to be either that this is none of their business or a quiet feeling of heartwarming schadenfreude.
In either case, kids get to feel that whatever they do is perfectly all right, and that they are generally free to create any ruckus anywhere anytime. If this was all there was to it, I could still console myself that the world will just have to adjust itself to several more ill-behaved grownups 20 years later. But serious implications can happen if such acquiescence continues to be extended towards antisocial or even reckless tendencies. Consider the example I started off my blog with. A kid that steps off the curb unattended and survives will be encouraged to do the same thing again and again. Oh, maybe that sort of behaviour does explain jaywalkers in Calcutta!
Previous generations would never have stood for this sort of mollycoddling. A firm whack on the side of the head was due to any kid that dared raise his voice in public, even if the administerer was someone not directly related. Horror of horrors, the parents would never take the side of the kid, as & when they got to know of it. It would be the principle that mattered, not the individuals involved or their relationship to the parents.
It does take an entire village to bring up a child. Read more!
So then I am thinking to myself while walking the rest of the way home that these days you don't really see any children being admonished or told off by some unrelated grown up, when the kids are seen making some wrong move in public. We all want to be seen as politically correct. Even when parents are present and don't lift a finger to quieten a screaming child in a restaurant or to shake their head at a kid busily exploring the inside of her nose while being introduced to people in public, other adults will sit there, beaming beatifically at the "little angel". Their attitude seems to be either that this is none of their business or a quiet feeling of heartwarming schadenfreude.
In either case, kids get to feel that whatever they do is perfectly all right, and that they are generally free to create any ruckus anywhere anytime. If this was all there was to it, I could still console myself that the world will just have to adjust itself to several more ill-behaved grownups 20 years later. But serious implications can happen if such acquiescence continues to be extended towards antisocial or even reckless tendencies. Consider the example I started off my blog with. A kid that steps off the curb unattended and survives will be encouraged to do the same thing again and again. Oh, maybe that sort of behaviour does explain jaywalkers in Calcutta!
Previous generations would never have stood for this sort of mollycoddling. A firm whack on the side of the head was due to any kid that dared raise his voice in public, even if the administerer was someone not directly related. Horror of horrors, the parents would never take the side of the kid, as & when they got to know of it. It would be the principle that mattered, not the individuals involved or their relationship to the parents.
It does take an entire village to bring up a child. Read more!
Actions and consequences
So this woman in my office comes over to me and starts making small talk. I am obviously a bit wary, frantically thinking ahead about what she wants out of me. You see, she belongs to a religious "cult" or movement where the followers are led to believe Sri Krishna is the One & Only God, their "Ain True Love". Well, imagine that! What is the use of being a Hindu if you have to believe in just one god, when there are so many millions more! I mean, the entire point is Choice, isn't it?
The last time this woman had approached me was to request me to print out a .jpg image as a big color poster, which she said she needed for some religious meeting. The best I could do for her was an A3 size poster, and she said that was fine. So she mailed me this file, which I duly printed out. So what was that image? Some happily smiling benign deity, colored indigo blue, playing among cows and frolicking with Gopikas? I wish it was as mundane as that!
The picture showed a man with his mouth wide open, screaming. Why? Well, you would be screaming too, if your innards were on display, and you were being eaten alive by a mound of termites. The picture was so garishly colored and revolting that I couldn't bear to look at it more than a second. It was more horrifying than Aaron Eckhardt's Two-face in The Gotham Knight.
Apparently this was what would happen to you if you were a nasty person that didn't believe in Sri Krishna being the only and only. I hoped that their religious meetings precluded any children attending, otherwise there is going to be this entire generation of Hindu children growing up with psychedelic nightmares of agonised screaming faces being eaten alive by crawling insects. Whatever happened to the concepts of love, truth and peace?
So this had been my previous encounter with this lovely lady. Now I was wondering what in the name of god she wanted from me now.
So after the inital inane pleasantries are over, she asks me if I can give her a few of those portable backup hard drives that are stacked in the storage room under my name. I ask why she needs more than one. She says she wants to distribute them to her religious congregation. I tell her that they are not mine to give away since they have been purchased as giveaways to customers, and are company property.
Later she send me a couple of emails, and I quote exactly from them below:
"I don’t mind taking all of the drives, I can distribute it to people within my satsang (religious gathering), I think its ok for them..."
"Could you kindly ask _____ on my behalf or shall I send him a message? I don’t know his proper name and email, send it to me please and also he doesn’t know me very well and may say no to me...so I request you to ask him if that’s ok. Otherwise I will ask him, no probs, then whatever he say, "Hari Iccha"."
"What I usually do is send to Vrindavan (...) temple where is a need for these things...See if you can manage otherwise forget the whole thing..."
"Pls. try, it’s a donation to the temple..Krsna will bless you yaar..."
My reply to her? "Krishna may bless me, the company auditors won't!"
I know that Lord Krishna said:
कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचनः
मा कर्मः फलः हेतुर भुर्मतेय संगोस्त्व अकर्मणि
You have a right to perform your prescribed action,but you are not entitled to the fruits of your action.
Never consider yourself the cause of the results your activities,and never be associated to not doing your duty.
But this question puzzles me: If you want to do some good, especially among your religious congregation, how can you in good faith give them things which you know were not acquired in the right way or were not yours to give away in the first place? And if so, you are not just committing a sin, but also compounding it by having others acquiesce in your act by accepting such gifts.
The last time this woman had approached me was to request me to print out a .jpg image as a big color poster, which she said she needed for some religious meeting. The best I could do for her was an A3 size poster, and she said that was fine. So she mailed me this file, which I duly printed out. So what was that image? Some happily smiling benign deity, colored indigo blue, playing among cows and frolicking with Gopikas? I wish it was as mundane as that!
The picture showed a man with his mouth wide open, screaming. Why? Well, you would be screaming too, if your innards were on display, and you were being eaten alive by a mound of termites. The picture was so garishly colored and revolting that I couldn't bear to look at it more than a second. It was more horrifying than Aaron Eckhardt's Two-face in The Gotham Knight.
Apparently this was what would happen to you if you were a nasty person that didn't believe in Sri Krishna being the only and only. I hoped that their religious meetings precluded any children attending, otherwise there is going to be this entire generation of Hindu children growing up with psychedelic nightmares of agonised screaming faces being eaten alive by crawling insects. Whatever happened to the concepts of love, truth and peace?
So this had been my previous encounter with this lovely lady. Now I was wondering what in the name of god she wanted from me now.
So after the inital inane pleasantries are over, she asks me if I can give her a few of those portable backup hard drives that are stacked in the storage room under my name. I ask why she needs more than one. She says she wants to distribute them to her religious congregation. I tell her that they are not mine to give away since they have been purchased as giveaways to customers, and are company property.
Later she send me a couple of emails, and I quote exactly from them below:
"I don’t mind taking all of the drives, I can distribute it to people within my satsang (religious gathering), I think its ok for them..."
"Could you kindly ask _____ on my behalf or shall I send him a message? I don’t know his proper name and email, send it to me please and also he doesn’t know me very well and may say no to me...so I request you to ask him if that’s ok. Otherwise I will ask him, no probs, then whatever he say, "Hari Iccha"."
"What I usually do is send to Vrindavan (...) temple where is a need for these things...See if you can manage otherwise forget the whole thing..."
"Pls. try, it’s a donation to the temple..Krsna will bless you yaar..."
My reply to her? "Krishna may bless me, the company auditors won't!"
I know that Lord Krishna said:
कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचनः
मा कर्मः फलः हेतुर भुर्मतेय संगोस्त्व अकर्मणि
You have a right to perform your prescribed action,but you are not entitled to the fruits of your action.
Never consider yourself the cause of the results your activities,and never be associated to not doing your duty.
But this question puzzles me: If you want to do some good, especially among your religious congregation, how can you in good faith give them things which you know were not acquired in the right way or were not yours to give away in the first place? And if so, you are not just committing a sin, but also compounding it by having others acquiesce in your act by accepting such gifts.
Read more!
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