Friendship of more than half a century

Sweet and Sour

They had lived in Delhi for many years. Their three daughters were born here. He was an architect. She a novelist. All her novels were based on middle class people. Her best known novel ‘Heat and Dust’ won her the Booker Prize. Most of her novels were made into films by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. Ismail died in his early 50s. It broke Ruth’s heart.

Then suddenly, for reasons unknown to me, they decided to migrate to the United States and set up home in New York. Their eldest daughter Renana decided to stay in India to work for Ela Bhatt’s Sewa and shifted to Ahmedabad. She married Harish Khare who had worked for ‘The Hindustan Times’ and ‘The Hindu’ and is today media adviser of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. So the Jhabs come on an annual visit to see her as well as other friends they had. At one time their friends included Nirad Chaudhry and his wife Mehra Masani, myself and my wife. All are gone, only I remain.

So they make it a point to spend an evening with me, take my daughter Mala Dayal and grand daughter Naina Dayal out for dinner at the India International Centre.
I repeated my question: “How long have we known each other?” Jhab waived his hands to indicate he had no idea. Ruth had no doubt and replied: “51 years”.
So I calculated we had known each other for over half-a-century. I know Ruth has a strong sense of her Jewish identity and I asked her: “Are you religious?”
She replied, “Not really.”

“Do you believe in God?”
“I am not sure,” she replied evasively.
“What happened to us when we die?”

Jhab gave me the zoroastrian belief in that being a Chinwat pul — a half way bridge where a dead person good or bad are sorted out and he or she is sent to heaven or hell. It was evident that neither of them subscribed to it. But when they left Ruth stopped and kissed the Mazooza on my door.

Becoming rich overnight

Why not become rich overnight
And lead a life, lavish and bright
For which there are
opportunities galore
For instance, on paper build a colony
Or flout a fake company
And run away with the needy and greedy peoples’ money
And like Bacha, the A Raja aide
Be in murder or suicide paid
Ours is a free country
So it is a great opportunity
To use scam or bribery
And climb atop the fortune’s tree
It is time that the swindlers of the country unite
And for their statues in Sansad Bhavan fight
For, they are God’s chosen
creation
And the builders of a great
nation.

(Courtesy: Kuldip Salil, Delhi)

Poison

A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes and said, “I would like to buy some cyanide.”

The pharmacist asked, “Why in the world do you need cyanide?”. She replied, “I need it to poison my husband.” The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he exclaimed, “Lord have mercy! I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband. That is against the law! I’ll lose my license! They’ll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad things will happen.”

“Absolutely not! You cannot have any cyanide!”
The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife.

The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, “Well now, that’s different. You didn’t tell me you had a prescription.”

(Contributed by Vipin Buckshey, Delhi)