A Case for reminders

 
Reminder means prompt, aide memoir or cue. The first and third words find use in stage drama or during shooting of movie scenes. The latest avatar ‘teleprompter’ makes viewers see ‘eye-to-eye’ with the anchor, though in reality it reminds the presenter to stay with the script. The ‘forget-me-not-list’ or a ‘to do list’ is a mini version of aide memoir with a difference; the list is short , temporary record.

It is funny when people react vehemently on being reminded of a pending chore or action but do not mind it if a ‘forget-me-not-list’ silently stares at them! It remains a mystery when the prompt on the computer screen fails to evoke any reaction in anybody of being reminded that some action is pending! Why? May be the reminder or prompt from a second or third party is seriously viewed an act of finding fault or pointing out at a deficiency, which the note stuck on the fridge or mirror is incapable of doing!

Only when the first person feels being subjected to wilful nagging with reminders, this reaction is justified. In rare cases, it might be the first person requesting to be reminded about the note on the fridge either to keep forgetfulness at bay or to avail the help of these eager service providers. Here the first person has managed to cover up a short coming, willing to put up with any excess dosage of prompting – a small premium for the assured services.

What makes the second or the third party to take the role of a ‘reminderer’?  Pick up your reasons from any one of the following:
It is about a task that is entrusted to the first person, by others. It is about a task that the first person shows reluctance to complete. It is a task about which the second or third party fears negative impact if not completed in time. The second or third party is incapable of driving themselves to end points and need proxies! The first person is a compulsive procrastinator! The second or third party top the list of most worried people.

The process of reminding depends on the nature of the second or third person –gentle, stirring and scorching. A reminderer who has seen ups and downs in the business values customers more than ‘credit’ uses gentle prods.  One with bursting enthusiasm stirs up reminders like a bartender.   If a martinet, the reminders get sizzling hot, leaving   the poor soul smouldering.

Thinking that it would serve me better, I had developed an ultra mutant combining all the three forms and called it ‘gerrsching’. Unfortunately, the mutant had a compulsive and a runaway mind! There was always a mix up; a sensitive person was provoked with scorching reminders, an insensitive one was pushed with stirring  reminders and a come-what-may type person was cajoled with gentle  reminders.

To be on the safer side, I had taken a “tag and umbrella” insurance, to shield me from the showers of angry words from persons who don’t like to be reminded but I end up doing the same anyways. The senior citizen’s slip of the tongue tag was useful in ducking under angry glares or in the worst case scenario, opening the umbrella of forgetfulness pretty convenient.

I became the epicenter for the tremors that shook the household. The ‘gerrsching’ reminders did not spare anyone, including the pet animals. This inclusive medication produced undesirable side effects - the recipients responded by exchanging scathing verbal attacks, withering glances or stony silence or willfully ignoring my helping prompts.

With all the bashings received for the thankless service extended, I thought it is time to hang-up my shoes and stop playing the game of reminding others. This turned out to be a short lived resolution. What if I could come up with agreeable explanations for all the forms of reminders, and then can I not rescind the decision to hang my brand new shoes?

I selected innocent phrases of inquiries such as ‘did you get it’, ‘how was your trip’, ‘had any difficulty’, ‘had your meal’ etc; which are nothing but reminders being mistakenly considered as kind enquiries’    Here is how I went about  arguing  my case of reminders.

 Did you get it, conveys a hidden reminder that something had to be obtained either voluntarily or after somebody’s intervention. In both the instants self or an external reminder was at play. Will this not qualify as circumstantial evidence?

How your trip was stands for a series of follow ups, bookings, cancellations and so on. Surely some of these activities would have been prompted by timely reminders from somebody. Though not proving it beyond doubt, has it not succeeded in sowing doubts, at least?

Had any difficulty, implies getting reminded of a past history in the process of enquiring about current status. Interested parties may make a note of the indirect evidence presented.

Had your meals is a pleasing invitation for a homely lunch or dinner, no doubt but it is not so plain; it has a hidden meaning. It reminds the guest about the missed grub! A confession from the guest is all that is needed to make a water tight case. A Perry Masonic conclusion would be: it is an open and shut case!

The case of leaked diaries revisited ( How, When and Who?)

Bystander kept a meticulous record in his diaries and they in turn were kept in a place far away from the prying eyes. The methodology was simple – finished diaries got in to a carton box having no further utility. The diaries themselves were nondescript, resembling unbound school note books. Though, his cache was stacked alongside other utility cartons in the attic, it can be accessed only with the help of a tower stool. He had wrested the privilege to mount any search and find operation in the attic and reminding everyone that he was always ready. With so many inbuilt sneak-proof mechanisms, how the diaries had come out?

Though the question was simple, the answer eluded him. Sensing a no-win situation, he started to rake his brain like a cockerel or hen in search of grains. He experienced a serious side effect, while raking his haystack of a memory - inspirations and ideas came up to tease him. It took considerable will on his part to say “not now, may be later” to get on with the investigative journalism. Now and then he paused to think about the effect the wiki and ‘panama papers’ leaks wreaked on tall standing of the named. In comparison, the diaries leak paled like the colour of cheap cloth. There was still time to decide about his unwritten fictions.

The white wash was the answer as at no other times, the cartons left in the attic get disturbed. This time round operation whitewash got completed smoothly and I was not at home. The casually placed previous year diary must have attempted a free fall, spilling the currency note which he had left in between the pages. One currency note indicating a likely windfall - he had a fancy for almost fresh currency of 100,500 or 1000 denomination, some smart person had taken the pains of riffling through the pages of all the other diaries.  The discoverer quietly pocketed the cash and shared the secrets. That is how the leak must have occurred.

Though belatedly blaming the idiosyncrasy of leaving a currency note in each of the diaries and cursing his inability to put a figure on the loss account did not help in minimising the trauma of exposure. Bystander felt elated that in the process of answering ‘the how’ he had the answer for ‘the when’ also. Family members, relatives and friends who called on that day, the white washing team and the servant maid becoming logical suspects , the remaining question assumed threatening proportions and presented a statistical nightmare, but held the dangling keys to unlock the mystery.

Discrete inquiries, among the family members, with a sheepish grin revealed that friends and relatives did not visit on the days of whitewashing and rearranging activities. Maid servant being a sari-clad terror, he decided to deal with her in a different fashion – by the process of eliminating other suspects. Since, every third or fourth year, the same team conducted the whitewashing ritual it seemed easy to float innocent inquiries to gather information that would ultimately lead to the ‘Who’.

This took a bit of roaming as the team keeps on moving from one job to another and patience to talk to them alone so that somebody in the crew does not get alerted or spill the beans to one of the family members in a chance meeting. The final conclusion he came to was that the carton boxes were already on the floor when the team came for work. One of the key, from the dangling bunch, had to be with one of the family members or the servant maid as far as the discovery of the secret diaries was concerned.

Bystander started to experience a nightmare of confronting the team led by an aggressive homemaker on one hand and the sari-clad terror of a servant maid on the other. He shuddered even to think of the outside possibility of a silent JV in operation.

Bystander came to know that his son and daughter had reached hours before start of whitewashing, due to hitches in their travel plans. The three of them air and snarl disagreements, sulk in silence on trivial issues. A few hours later, each one of them want to give in if only the other two blink first. Intervening meal time helps matters a little; pushing a dish forward or filling a glass with water or by un-wrapping the sweet packet. When the ice breaks, the dinner table becomes the Tower of Babel, with discussions on any subject under the sun, without any inhibition. There was a predictable periodicity which eluded their reasoning. In the end, Why all this gets answered with a why not this?

Bystander waited for such an occasion to learn about who leaked the contents of his diaries. Within two days he had his answer - the son and daughter helped to bring down the cartons from the attic. Everyone took turns to hunt for the hidden currency and in the process managed to read the diaries.

The house looked like a refugee camp with number of bags and carton boxes of various sizes indicating that the flock is taking leave. He sardonically thought only the tents were missing! There was no other go except to share the space with his grandchildren who have chosen to sport a special smile for me, standing amidst the chaos. They thrust in to my hands a gift wrapped parcel before stepping out of the house.

The son and daughter, coming closer, said in a sympathetic gesture, “we know the troubles you had taken and understand your feelings, now”. The inflection on the “now’ conveyed a lot of meanings. They exited the scene saying, “if it gives you pleasure, then continue to write”. The diplomatic words did not say whether it is the diary or the fiction that I can continue to write!

Bystander made up his mind to open the packet, wondering what sort of a prank they have pulled on him. A handmade card that said simply “We are sorry”, two volumes of their caricatures capturing him in different moods and a bundle of currency notes totaling Rs. 19,200 brought tears to his eyes. He sat thinking about the great experience the diaries have given him.

Bystander turns the table

Though, outwardly appearing to be in peace with Tom, Bystander could not digest the fact that an upstart had easily boxed him, that too in his favourite pastime – babysitting. He vividly recollected the incidents from the past, which showed Tom in his true colours - as a ready reckoner for unnecessary doubts. By working on this weakness, Tom had meta-morphed in to a confident person counselled by himself and Muser.

Bystander did not want to rush in and confront but had no desire to leave a conflict of interest open. “If Tom knew some things, I know a little more” feeling made Bystander to mentally reconstruct Tom’s recent utterances. He decided to use the same points raised by Tom to set things in right perspective, and turn the table on him.

The much awaited opportunity came soon and unexpectedly. The opening was unwittingly provided by none other than Mr. Tom himself! Probably wanting to hear an appreciation, he asked Bystander “Do you agree with the points I made during that birthday function?” Bystander needed no other provocation to join issue, with his counters to level Tom’s pride.

“What is wrong in pacifying a crying child with a candy or a short walk or a drink? It might have felt hungry or thirsty or short of breath in a crowded place.  I can easily distinguish a cry in anguish or when it is used by the child to leverage its bargaining power. “Don’t think you have misconstrued my advice as sop”?

The logic in Bystander’s thinking made Tom to realise the shortcoming in this point he had made. He understood that a child may not cry, always, with intent to strike a deal.

“What is wrong in obliging or assisting a child in play or other activities; is it not a way to explain about team work while at play and where is the question of interfering with its physical and mental development?  Which child can plan and carry out all these things alone?”

“It is not a mistake to engage the attention of a child by talking by pointing out at various interesting things. It only helps to keep the curiosity alive and in due course of time to develop its own likes and dislikes”. 

After hearing these subtle rebuttals, Tom regretted the intended swipe he had taken at Bystander’s habit of talking to the child while taking it out for a walk.

“Asking the child to perform painstakingly taught activities is a continuous encouragement given to develop coordination and motor skills. The presence or absence of a visitor is not a prerequisite for the child to impress when the babysitter is on hand to witness!”

“The learning power of a child is limitless and trained circus animals, you mentioned, do not have power of imagination. How, then you can draw a comparison like that?” A babysitter is always proud of his/her protégé, performing or not performing!”

Looking at Tom, Bystander said, “When Newton could look at the world of science standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, why not my grandchildren do the same sitting on my hips?  Tom stood frozen in this icy innuendo which laid  open the weakness in all his ’learned’ points.

“If you know the psyche, you will observe the child attempts to achieve set goals and share the pleasure and fun. Even after the game is over, you might see the child still engaged in exploring alternate techniques. This is the child’s way of preparing to act independently and at a comfortable pace. The babysitter has been a facilitator that is all!”

“You have selectively chosen to highlight the negative approach of a babysitter, who is immature in thoughts, to compare one child with another, reflecting his/her own perception of the other child.  Bear it in mind, for a well meaning babysitter his/her ward is as unique as the others and is well aware of this hidden danger”.

Tom began to feel the weight of successive arguments that Bystander put forth.  He could not avoid the sinking feeling that more baptism might be on the way.

“The time a baby sitter gets to spend with the child is limited. When the child has placed absolute trust, where the inclination is to inculcate prejudices, notions and traits in the young mind – unless the babysitter happens to be insane?”

“Instilling discipline is a gentle process and not a military exercise. If the rapport between the babysitter and the child is excellent, then the child would automatically understand the impact of expectation and disappointment. Probably, the pampered child thinks it is a two-way traffic; letting the ‘pamperer’ also to be happy! Excessive, moderate and meager are relative terms as far as perceptions go!”

“A responsible babysitter knows the boundaries between excess and adequate. She/he is capable of providing entertaining moral sessions or moralising entertainments, anticipating the progress the child will be making as it ages. The child may not need the babysitter as a backseat driver later on, but this should not be an excuse to become philosophical about relative life spans.

“A babysitter has the confidence of parents and even if the child tries to charm and get things done, they would put it down to mutual affection. They also know after some time these things will change. Proscriptions and prescriptions come later and at the present the bonding of the young and old is important. Reading too much in to this will only confuse your script”

Tom cursed the rush of blood, then, when he made those pompous statements at the birthday function. He wondered why Bystander kept quite at that time and presenting his views now! What puzzled him more was Bystander falling silent afterwards, as if nothing had happened. This ‘studied’ silence bothered Tom more than the realisation that he had misread his ‘standing’ to have made such sweeping statements on babysitting.

Sub judice or another kind of domestic violence

Often hearing about domestic violence, Tom decided to visit the subject afresh to find out whether any other act can also be called by the same name. He chose an idle afternoon to get to the bottom of the affair and wrote down a series of questions and his answers below each one of them. He wondered how he can forget Muser who is his inspirational guide. Tom liked to write with pen or pencil and this gave him the satisfaction of emulating Muser, who is a sworn longhand writer.

The first question that got on to the paper was “Which other act or acts can be considered as ‘domestic violence’?

After a little thinking, he came to the conclusion that apart from getting physical, the common form of domestic violence, strangling of free thoughts and expressions, needless comparisons and enforcing likes and dislikes on others  are the other serious forms of that violence which  goes unreported as no punishable laws exist!

The second question, he wanted to answer was, “what are the external indicators for these confrontations?”

He characterised the nature of these violent occurrences as giving raise to voluminous sound “bytes” accompanied by contorting facial muscles. This exercise invariably leaves bitter feelings burning a hole in the minds of those involved and spares neither the initiator nor the receiver.

Tom felt a sense of de ja’ vu after successfully answering his own questions. He sat thinking for few minutes to frame his next set of questions to himself. Feeling like some on appearing for an examination, he was scared to write down a tough question which may not be easy to answer. 

“Which are the potent subjects that might trigger this form of domestic violence”?, was the next question that came to his mind.

He opted for the children or grandchildren in the house as the first choice that seldom fails to deliver, when tweaked a little. Figuratively speaking, the trigger, for a verbal violence, is in the hands of a man or a woman who conveniently selects a wrong moment to point out a fault in the child or grandchild - of being untidy, naughty or unhelpful or haughty. If the discussion on the ‘faults’ stops at an early stage, the tempers will remain under control and instead of that if the man or woman attempts  to bring out behavioural similarities or anomalies within the family of the ‘other speaker’, the outcome is a series of arguments and counter arguments which will finally end in a disastrous conversation. In a similar spirit, arguments, liberally laced with spite, may start about a *–in-law and erupt in a volcano of innuendo.

As he was finishing the above answer, this question popped up: “What is so special about ‘examples’ and ‘comparisons’ and how could it lead to further flare up”?

The game of comparison can be played across a spectrum of generations. The wife may suddenly jump the rails and happily start a verbal documentary on how ‘his close friends’ shoulder responsibilities or shower affection and understanding, at the drop of a porcelain cup or go the extra mile to understand the sufferings of a homemaker. 

The husband tries in vain to bring home the point that “individuals are unique and trying to fit any individual in an equation, for comparison, using chosen set of parameters is arbitrary”. Instead, he stops short of saying, “it would have been better for you to have married in to that family or this family rather than me”.

Though the answer to this question will certainly have a repercussion in his personal life, Tom chose to go ahead by penning his thoughts. May be the mellifluous scratching noise of nib on paper urged him to sail against this domestic danger!Enlarging his list, Tom added faith and disbelief, likes and dislikes, style and disgust as other potent subjects to brew in-house trouble as they behave like North and South poles of magnets or matter and antimatter of cosmos!

The choice of god or guru or method of worship is equally important as a threat perception for the youngsters and non-conformists in the family.The devout and the rest of them in the family take turns to propose and dispose faith in god and need to regular worship. With religion occupying prime slots in the morning TV broadcasts, the devout gets ample chances to guide the errant flock to the salvation centers. Munching on their own problems along with breakfast, the members of errant flock tend to ignore the baptism on the breakfast table. This is the fuel for the fire waiting to be lit, in the devotee’s mind. In this state of high alert, a witty comment intended to be a pun turns sour.

Though these are all individual preferences, the involvement is passionate and devoid of reason. In this galvanised mêlée, passion and reason act similar to like poles; repel each other. Arguments and counter arguments collide like matter and antimatter to annihilate each other! Tom was very pleased with the examples he could come up with.

Tom asked himself, “Will there be a way out of such an argument”?

In this state, even a small talk, on sundry things, has the potential to become another artless war of words. In such a situation, even if one of them wishes to accept the truth in the comparison or wants to bring out the untruth in the argument, a graceful exit has already been closed because of the disastrous conversation. The aggrieved person, upset with the lack of logic in comparisons, decides to walk away in silence to cool the tempers and to attend to the bruised ego.Tom started to explore the basis for these opinion clashes under the question: “what catalyses these chain reactions, which ultimately ends up as a form of domestic violence”?


The deemed infringement on freedom of choice or taste of an individual sets the ball rolling. The conservative middle class elder is often the epicenter for this domestic violence. To this elder anything chic is bad taste and waste of money and never fails to pass a comment on the choice of clothing or food. The youngster is in no mood to understand the effect of this cultural shock on the elder or worry about the dwindling personal bank balance. The youngster feels at ease with the current way of life and hates to be in the bygone era. The contentious issues about food and style leave both in bitterness.

Tom came to the important question “Why and does it suffer a generation gap?”

As people age, likes and dislikes also change but keep raising anachronistic questions like “You liked this then, but not now, why”, “You did it then and why not now?”, or “I like it and why you don’t too?”, “I don’t like it and why you do? Nobody wants to hear these stale reminders and aggressive statements, anymore now. People have become touchy.

This form of domestic violence is not restricted to the older generation in the family. The same type of situation could easily arise among the youngsters themselves. The changed script could be: friends, entertainment, casual approach to life and things or even a hairstyle. Though he wanted to delve deep into this topic, he curbed his enthusiasm fearing over statements.

Tom wondered, “What common thread runs through all these upheavals?”

In all these cases, the milder aggrieved person would be in a fix to say categorically “Yes or No”. The preference to act as an emotional sink overrides the impulse to put an end to the matter there and then.
In these careful acts of retreat, the aggrieved perceives a greater sense of purpose – to keep the pendulum of harmony or whatever is left of it swinging.  May be the aggrieved thinks that the accruing bitterness and its weight on the conscience is a small price to pay for a larger cause!

After rereading his notes, Tom felt emboldened to offer few solutions to manage the outbursts. A problem remains a problem as long as they are fed with dosages of hurt or helplessness or revenge. He chose to make his point with a simple example of garlic and onion. Only garlic leaves a heavy odour, for a long time but both are lachrymatory. These characteristics do not depend on whether they are garden fresh or off the shelf. A brief smile played on his lips, mischievously, when he wrote this comparison.

For the record he detested garlic more than the onions! Likewise, young and old in a family should try to understand and politely disagree with the other view point and become the onion people – cry a little and forget the bother.

He heard the approaching foot falls of Mrs. Tom and hastily closed the notebook on which he was writing. He will reveal the contents to her only after showing it to Muser. He considered the matter sub judice till then.

The leaked diaries or how a tiger became a cat!

Bystander was furious and as the one who shows his anger in full glare of the public, he was ready to explode like a thunderclap. His internal processing unit started working at terra flops speed to identify targets and the verbiage. He believed that the message should go down the throats of the prime mover and the secondary injection systems. It is his experience that a team work is always behind any inconvenience caused to him. However, he carefully left out the almighty for a future occasion!

As this turmoil was going on, his family members sensed a storm brewing in their midst and got ready to brave the fury. The pity was they had no clue as to the how or when or where? Because Bystander had this habit of traversing his gun through 360⁰, in ever increasing circles, to fire his anger at his clan, relatives and friends. It is rumoured that once he even contemplated to dispatch his verbal missiles over all the continents.

Bystander’s fury was on the selective leak of information from his diaries and the person responsible for it. He had taken so much care to keep them in safe custody, all these years, and yet somehow the security has been breached. Someone in the family had been smarter than him to get at those diaries.

He cursed himself for the habit of filling a diary with honest opinions, for the past 35 years. Since he started writing a diary at the age of 25, the bygone years, from childhood onward, were accommodated as a part of the new diary he began every year. He worshiped logic when not in anger!

It was an exercise to keep alive his interest in writing, hoping to become an author one day. Simply his jottings were a nursery of ideas and incidents for replanting in paragraphs and pages of fictions he planned to finish. Based on this plan, he had taken certain liberties in describing the actual persons finding a place in his narration of events. This proved to be his undoing and the reason for his blinding anger.

His wife had collected the photographs of each of the family member, from childhood to the present age, and got them fixed in a large frame. Another frame kept pictures of animals on display, below the family photos. One day as Bystander was within earshot she nonchalantly commented, “I have aged as the others in the family have done. If I look like a bear now, others can search among the other animals to identify a look alike for themselves”. 

“Wow! These diaries contain so much information and now that we know his secrets, we can easily tackle him, word for word or deed for deed! ” his son and daughter, who have come down for a visit, continued their assessment on the worth of the information on hand. Out of respect, they held this discussion as an aside but Bystander could not help hearing it.

“Had he taken to his studies seriously, he might have earned a doctorate degree, who knows?” his grandson told his friends as he was passing by. “The one who had escaped lectures to the cooler ambience of a theater is now objecting to someone watching TV!”. He heard his granddaughter telling her grandma, ignoring the grandpa sitting nearby.

A close cousin visits them twice or thrice in a week and the arrival always coincided with the lunch time in the house. Bystander’s son and daughter, when they were growing up, and now the grandchildren bonded well with him. During the previous visit, Bystander heard him say, at the dining table, “It is not that all the crows get fed from a plate; only the special ones! Even then, it is not the crow that begs for food but the giver begs the crow to take it, if you understand what I mean”. The gathering nodded in silence leaving him fuming.

A bosom friend became so close that he started to call the shots in the matters of children’s education, career and marriage – the last two not necessarily in the same order. Secretly Bystander started getting annoyed with this free run his friend had in the house but went along with the drift. In a direct speech that friend said,” “Mountaineering guides do not shout at the climbers from the hill tops; they lead by pitching their tents alongside theirs”

These increasing incidents of family members using odd tangential references and whispered asides were the indications that his future fiction works have been proof read, that too in secret. His belief that these secrets remained within the family received a high Voltage shock when a cousin, who was close to the family, and a bosom friend threw their veiled remarks at him.

Every one of the speakers has done a verbatim hijack to fix him for good. He regretted those descriptions and sentences finding a place in the diaries. He himself felt like a caged tiger and a tongue-scalded pussy shying away from a bowl of milk. The tiger will remain caged always but the pussy might be allowed to roam freely in the house. He decided to gladly exchange his ambition of becoming a writer of fiction with that pussy! Unbidden, his eyes came to a rest at the framed picture of a cat slurping milk, contently!

 He was troubled by the nagging questions, “How, Who and When?” He was not going to rest till the answers are found. But in his mind the transition from the wild to a caged tiger and then becoming a cat did not make much of a difference at all; all belonging to the same family of felines!