What does the future hold for you?

Rani, Poulami and Simone were three best friends, who had met in school in Lawrence Ooty. In 1992, in the last year of college in Bangalore, they decided to go on a holiday to Pondicherry together. On their way back from Pondicherry, they decided to stop off in Chennai for a day, before going their separate ways. They were all very excited, they had heard of a Nadi, this community of people in Chennai, who specialize in reading thumb prints. They take a thumb print, and then give the person his/her past lives and present lives, and what the future will hold. They tell you of the Karmic cycle of the soul and how the deeds done in the past, will effect what happens in the future.

The same evening they went to see the Nadi in Adiyar. He lived in a non descript house, and they were taken into a waiting area, and were told that they would be summoned one at a time.

Rani was the first to be called. She was told that in her past life, she was a big Zamindar’s wife, who was exceptionally cruel. She treated her servants really badly. Especially one servant, who looked after her. This servant was born in this life and was going to be her husband. His name would start with the alphabet R, and it would be an arranged marriage and he would also be Bengali like her.

Poulami, went next. She was told that in her previous life, she had been a temple elephant. She had been extremely hard working, and in this life her husband would be the mahout from her previous life and his name would start with K.

Simone was the last to go, and she was told that in her previous life, she had been a man, and was a very unfaithful husband. In this life she would marry a Coorg, it would be an arranged marriage. It would be a loveless marriage, she would have two kids, and when the elder son was 17, he would die of drug overdose, and the trauma of his death, would be too much for the couple and they would get divorced.

All three left the Nadi’s house very depressed. Soon they all went their separate ways.

Many years passed. All three friends met up for the 20^th anniversary of the school reunion in Ooty in 2009.

Rani was married to a French gentleman called Peirre Michels. She had met him while flying for Cathay. They were settled in HongKong and he is a pilot.

Poulami is a professer in Pune University, teaching linguistics, happily married to a man 20 years her senior. He had been her mentor in her Phd studies in college. She did not have any kids, but he did have two kids from his previous marriage.

Simone is married to a British banker, she had met him while working as an intern in Citibank. They live in Dubai, and had no plans for kids.

They all remembered that evening well, and had a good laugh about it…or may be it was for their next life?

Oooops...my memory

Muthanna was a snob. Period. Nothing in between. But sometimes God reminds you to be humble, or at least to try to be humble. This is one such story.

The year was 1984, Muthanna was standing at the check in line to catch a flight to London, at the Air India counter in Chennai, then Madras. As he reached the check out counter, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw someone he thought he recognised. A short portly man, in a safari suit, was standing next to him, talking animatedly to another man.

Muthanna finished his check in procedure, checked in his luggage, collected his boarding pass. The flight was not being boarded for another half an hour. So he decided to buy some books. After finishing his purchases, he proceeded towards the security line. There in front of him, was that gentleman again, who turned and looked at Muthanna, and his face lit up into a smile.

He reached over and shook Muthanna's hand vigorously. Muthanna, could not place him, so smiled politely and enquired about his family. They continued to chat, that gentleman said he had got a job in Dubai, and was catching a connecting flight in Bombay now Mumbai. After going through security, both shook hands again. And then just before parting ways, the gentleman asked Muthanna "Sir, now that I am leaving for Dubai, who will cut your hair?"......" Oh MY GOD"..thought Muthanna, "he is my BARBER!"

This story was never repeated to any one for many years, and I hope he is not reading this right now....

Fight for what is rightfully yours...or for ever hold your peace

Vidya and her husband Bopiah, stood on the steps of the courthouse, giving an interview to the press . It was a historic verdict for Vidya, the Supreme Court had ruled in her favour. She looked across the steps at her father and her step mother, and her father turned away in anger and left the building. It had been a long and hard fight, but finally she got justice. Then members of the press, started asking her questions, and she turned and started to reply to each and every one. “I want to send a message”, she said “ to all the women in this country, that we have equal rights under the law”. She paused, “ Equal rights to inheritance, and more importantly, what is rightfully yours, should never be taken away by anyone, whoever they are”.

The people of Coorg had been a bit divided about the whole affair. Vidya and her husband Bopiah had taken her father Pooviah and her step mother Dechu to court for her share in the property. But when she went to the lawyer, it opened a whole other can of worms. The lawyer found that the property had belonged to Vidya’s maternal grandfather, Somanna, who had left it to his only daughter, Divya, who was Vidya’s mother. Divya had died soon after giving birth to Vidya. Her father Pooviah soon remarried. His second wife, Dechu, was an ambitious, beautiful woman. She gave birth to two sons, and subsequently pushed Pooviah to join politics. His rise was slow, and finally he managed to become an Member of Parliament . Over the years, Pooviah had taken an income from the property and slowly built up his own wealth, a substantial fortune. He lived large, secure in the knowledge that no one would claim this property.

When Vidya got married to Bopiah, it was considered a good match. He was an I.A.S. officer, working in Delhi. The marriage was a quick and small affair. Vidya settled into her new life, blissfully happy. One day she opened the newspapers to read about a historic verdict and a change in the law in India, where the women’s bill had been passed, unanimously in the Parliament. This bill had changed the inheritance laws in the country, women now had equal rights. It got Vidya thinking. She spoke to her husband about it. When she went down to Coorg, she asked her Dad for her share in the property. Her father lost his temper and called her an ungrateful wretch. It got worse, he asked her to leave the house and never come back. Vidya, was so offended, that she went to a lawyer. The lawyer did some digging, and through the clerks records in Coorg, found that the bulk of the property did not belong to her father, but was left in the name of her late mother.

It had been 2 years since the revelation. Vidya’s case went from the lower courts, to the higher courts, finally after changing three lawyers, her appeal went to the Supreme Court, and she won the case. The press had got wind of the situation, it was a very unusual case of a daughter suing her father for her share in the property. The case had been building momentum, as it went along. It had been a long and exhausting battle, but one lesson Vidya learnt was that if you do not fight for what is yours you will never get it.

She turned back and looked directly into the camera, and said “ For years, women in India would rather keep the peace with their families, than ask for what is rightfully theirs, I hope with what happened here, they will get bolder and fight for their rights.”

The Heist

Pooviah woke up in the middle of the night to a sound downstairs, he thought he had heard the breaking of glass. Waking up his wife Kami, he told her that he was going to investigate the sound. Their daughter Rani was getting married in a weeks time and soon the house would be full of relatives and friends who were to come from all over the world.

He saw a beam of light coming from the guest bedroom door. On approaching the door, he decided to alert the thieves of his presence, so loudly asked “Who is there?”, and then repeated it in Kannada. The light immediately went off, and the room was plunged into darkness. He reached inside the door and gingerly switched on the light, but found that there was no power. As he moved further into the room, his foot kicked something soft, so he reached down to see what it was, he found a duffel bag, heavy with some objects. At that instant, something swished past above his head. Only then did he realize that the person or persons were armed. Ducking his head, he charged in the direction of the assailant. He made contact with a body and they both fell heavily with a crash onto the ground. The assailants’ weapon clattered to the ground. In the struggle that followed, Pooviah, tried to grab the man. Unfortunately for him, the assailant was half naked and had oiled his body. The assailant kicked Pooviah in the groin, who let out a cry of pain. Pooviah heard the sound of steps, some one was running out of the room. Even though he was in pain, he pulled himself together, got up and chased after the assailant. What the assailant had over him, was the element of surprise, but what Pooviah had over him, was he knew his house like the back of his hand, so he ran towards the kitchen, to get himself a kitchen knife and cut off the assailants exit from the back door. A torch came on in the dining room, the assailant was trying the windows. Pooviah, heard a loud crash of glass shattering, and the assailant was gone. Pooviah ran to the dining room, to find one window completely broken, and one of the dining room chairs missing. He looked out of the window and he saw in the dark what looked like a man running very fast towards the garage. Pooviah jumped through the opened window, giving chase. He followed the man till the garage, only to find that all the tyres of the cars had been slit. He continued to run behind the assailant, by now yelling on the top of his voice, to awake the farm hands. Soon there were a bunch of men, who had gathered, and started chasing the thief. Finally, one of his men threw what looked like a sickle at the thief, and he fell.

When Pooviah reached the man, now sprawled on the ground, unconcious, he was panting, and trying to catch his breath, when one of his farm hands, reached and turned the man over. Pooviah, was very shocked, he had never seen the man before.

The police were called, and the man was taken into custody. In the lock up, under interrogation, the man confessed. He worked as a teaboy in the village restaurant, and overheard Pooviah giving instructions to the florist about the wedding. He knew that there would be lots of jewellery and money in the house, and decided to try his luck. He befriended the maid, on one of her weekly shopping trip into the village, got a lay of the land, and planned his heist. He was startled to hear Pooviah wake up, the maid had told him that the family was going to Bangalore to finalize some of the preparations. That trip was cancelled by Pooviah, as his brother offered to pick up all the outstanding parcels from Bangalore for him.

The wedding went off without a hitch.

Family Tree

In 1969, in a remote village in Coorg, a man was stabbed to death in a barn. The crime was never solved. The killer was absconding, the police searched for clues and kept coming up to a dead end, and the case was closed. The dead man’s name was Shahabuddin. His death would have gone unnoticed, except for the fact that his granddaughter Ayesha in 2009, inherited among other things the diary maintained by him, along with all the other belongings left behind by her mother Arzoo on her untimely death. While going through her mother’s stuff, Ayesha also found a baby’s blanket with the letter P. K. initialed on it.

After performing all the last rites, Ayesha returned to Mysore where she lived. One day she decided to read the diary written in Urdu by her grandfather. What followed was a series of perplexing tales.

In 1947 at the at of 22, on the eve of the Indian Independence, Shahbuddin was working as a houseboy cum cook in a wealthy Coorg’s Kaverappa’s house. Shahabuddin’s wife Khatija, was expecting their first child. Khatija went into labour that night, and it lasted for around 14 hours. They had a baby girl, and the mother was overjoyed. She had miscarried many times before and had prayed that this time the baby would be healthy and safe. Shahabuddin took the child into his arms and walked out of the house to show the neighbours. Khatija went off to sleep, exhausted by the ordeal, and when she woke up, the child was safely bundled up, and asleep. The mother looked at the child and whispered into her ear “Arzoo…that is your name, as you are what I have prayed for.”

At the same time across the estate in the main house, Kamava the wife of Kaverappa, was giving birth to their third child. The child was a baby girl and immediately after the birth, the child was carried away by the midwife to get bathed. Kaverappa, who had been pacing up and down outside, immediately rushed into the room to be with his wife. He was a very happy man, he had wanted a daughter badly. He was going to call her Ganga, after the holiest of holy rivers in India.

Both children grew up under different circumstances, and both much loved by their parents. When they reached adulthood, both girls were married. Arzoo was married to a man in Mysore, who owned a bakery, and within the first couple of years, produced first a boy Armaan and then her daughter Ayesha. Then one day Arzoo, got a telegram from Coorg, her father had died. She rushed to Coorg and found her mother inconsolable, her father Shahbuddin had been murdered, stabbed to death. After performing the last rites, Arzoo returned to Mysore , but her mother refused to join her. She had found work as a cook in the main house, and was being looked after by Kaverappa . He had come for the funeral, and spared no expenses in looking after all her needs. He was meeting Arzoo for the first time, and spent some time asking her how she was doing, and if she was happy.

Life soon returned to normal, and many years passed, Ayesha grew up, into a beautiful girl, both her and her brother’s education was paid for by Kaverappa, and he made sure they received the best. Arzoo was very proud of how the grandchildren of a cook were now having good steady Government jobs. She would all her neighbours, that Ayesha and Armaan were like family to Mr. Kaverappa.

Ayesha finished reading her grandfather’s diary and had a long talk with her brother. They then boarded a bus for Coorg and went to meet Mr. Kaverappa. Now 86, he was ailing and in bed, but his mind was as sharp as ever. When they walked into his bedroom together, he told all others present to leave the room at once. He then beckoned to both to approach the bed, and then said “I am sorry, please forgive me. What your grandfather did to me was very wrong, and I know two wrongs do not make a right, but I was angry and upset, and I killed him.”

In his own words he narrated to them what transpired that faithful day in 1969. Shahbuddin had come to the barn to ask him for some money, Kaverappa refused. They got into an arguement, and had come to blows, Shahbuddin then picked up a stick and started hitting Kaverappa with it, who in turn dived and picked up a sickle lying on the ground. He stabbed Shahbuddin with it, who reeled back and hit the ground. He died soon after that. But before dying, he made a confession. Shahbuddin had switched his daughter with Kaverappa’s, on the night they were born, and had decided to come clean about it.

Kaverappa looked at Armaan and Ayesha and told them “ You are actually my grandchildren, and if you have it in you to forgive me, I could die a happy man.’
Its been a year since the meeting.

Ayesha and Armaan had just returned from Coorg after attending Kaverappa’s funeral. Kaverappa’s sons embraced their niece and nephew, and though they all knew it would be difficult, it was not impossible to form a new relationship.