Fourth year at IIT Delhi. Anuj Jain agrees to help me with the software aspect of my final-year project. As expected, ‘help’ turns out to be a euphemism for ‘do’.
Let me recount a particular night to you. It’s well past midnight and Anuj has just returned from the computer centre after putting in hours of work on my project. He sees my room lights are on and so decides to apprise me of the progress. My door opens. It reveals that while Anuj was slogging away at the computer centre, the beneficiary of his toil was hosting a little jua party. And the travesty doesn’t end there! When Anuj(who isn’t from my engineering branch) puts forth a mechanical engineering related query that has cropped up in the software, I simply point to a tome on the book-shelf, “उसमें मिल जाएगा जवाब।” Guess what? Anuj picks up the book, wishes me goodnight, walks out, and shuts the door behind him. The jua party continues undisturbed.
I remember one of my friends telling my wife about it being I who’d introduced the gang to the so called vices. “पर सचिन को बिगाड़ा तो आप लोगों ने है,” pat had come the reply.
I guess she wasn’t wrong.

​Many many years ago......
The polizemaan and I are returning from a late-night movie show. We spot K, a batchmate, walking on the sidewalk. K’s all by himself and so the polizemaan suggests we give him a ride. I comply. But barely have we gone a kilometre or two down the road when we’re accosted by policemen. Oblivious of the romanticism of ‘three men in a boat’, these are men who don’t take kindly to three men on a bike. A challan hangs over us.
Now just a few days before this incident, a friend had narrated an episode about a similar encounter with traffic policemen, and about how he’d gotten away using a cock and bull story about a brother in the police services.
The story is fresh in my mind and I repeat it verbatim. It seems like a smart thing to do. It isn’t. Our policeman is nowhere as trusting of his fellow humans as the policeman who’d nabbed my friend was. ‘बात करादे तेरे भाई से’, he laconically mutters, as he points to the little kiosk where the landline phone is housed.
So there we are, the three of us, walking towards the kiosk. A thousand things are running in my mind about whom to call and how to wiggle out of this. Suddenly, K stops and - very elaborately - turns towards me. He has the expression of a guy who’s trying to come to terms with a great secret that life has just revealed to him. In his wonderful South Indian accent he says to me ‘तेरा बाई(भाई) तो पोउलीस में नई है।’ At first, I can’t believe what I hear. Then I’m tempted to play along in the absurdity and do a Don wala Amitabh on him (सोनिया ये तुम जानती हो रिवौलवर खाली है, मैं जानता हूँ रिवौलवर खाली है, मगर पुलिस नहीं जानती कि रिवौलवर ख़ाली है). But I desist. I just nod to let K know that he’s right.
Then we walk some more before K stops to share yet another revelation. ‘तेरा तो कोई बाई भी नई है,’ he accuses. I want to tell him that our predicament isn’t so much a result of a paucity of brothers as it is of his own extra self on the bike. But once again, I desist. Saying this to K would (as De Niro explains in Raging Bull) ‘defeat its own purpose.’
We continue to walk and almost reach the kiosk. K stops again. But this time, he doesn’t turn. He simply asks of the thin air, ‘मेरे पापा पोउलीस में है। मय फोन करूँ?’
And we live to tell the tale.
Moral of the story: वो आपका कोई प्रिय हो या हो भारतीय सरकार, धैर्य रखें, जो दर्द देता है वही दवा भी देगा। अमुमन।

​Anatolia, the major part of the Turkish Peninsula, is revered by the locals as ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ And not without reason! The Byzantine and Ottoman empires were born here. Besides, this landmass has been a part of not only the Mesopotamian civilisation but also - what Edgar Allan Poe calls - the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
We hence get to see, in close proximity to each other, both a Roman amphitheater (Aspendos) and Corinthian Greek columns (Perge). Also, not very distant from these sites are the hot springs of Pamukkale. Now considering that the first single celled microbes flourished near sulphurous hydrothermal vents, it may not be a bad idea for the Turkish to extend on their ‘cradle of civilisation’ theme. For all we know, Anatolia could very well have been the ‘cradle of life’ itself.
PS: Keeping up with the ‘cradle’ motif, the photos have been made to feature two products from the cradle of J&J.

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The beautiful chimneys and caves of Cappadocia come with historic appendage. Legend has it that early Christians - in order to escape persecution at the hands of the pagans - built their secret churches in these very caves.
As we check out the cave churches at Göreme, we come across a fresco of ‘The last supper.’ I ask young Anshuman Jha whether he knows the name of the disciple who betrayed Jesus. He doesn’t, he tells me; but he would be willing to guess if I gave him some options. The wife is of the opinion that if he can’t answer straightaway, options wouldn’t help either.
Not that one likes to contradict the better half but this is too good to let go by. Hence, I lay out the options before AJ. “The disciple who betrayed Jesus was
a) Banwarilal
b) Kailashchand
c) Judas “
Guess what! The boy gets it right.

​A Republic Day Story
When the case of ‘Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla’ came up before the Supreme Court of India, it’s fate was already decided. This was a case of unlawful detention. The court needed to opine whether the right to life & liberty stood valid in a state of Emergency. Given that the law of the day allowed (in case of Emergency)for the suspension of Article 21 of the constitution, the decision wasn’t a difficult one. Indeed, four judges of the bench decided to toe the line of the government. All four retired as Chief Justices of India.
The lone judge who dissented was the one who was in fact the next in line for the post of CJI. He knew (as came to be known later from a letter he had written to his sister) that his dissent will cost him that apex post. What’s hugely remarkable is that he also knew his dissent will be in a minority; and that it will have no effect on the final outcome of the case.
And yet, the honourable Justice Hans Raj Khanna decided to dissent. His reason?
‘A dissent is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting Judge believes the court to have been betrayed.’
As Justice Khanna had hoped, the eventual 44th amendment came to lay strict safeguards for suspension of fundamental rights.
Then, as we celebrate the constitution this Republic Day, lets not forget the sacrifices that have held it together.
सलाम खन्ना साहब!