Tuesday 14 April 2009

Of Mid-Stream and Main-Stream

Having had a remarkably hospital-free life I was not prepared for the intricate processes that hospitals can thrust one into. During my present predicament when the doctors suspected that I also had infection in the urinary tract I was sent off to the lab to get a test done. The lab attendant thrust a plastic container in my hand, propelled me towards the men’s room and asked me to fill it up with a ‘sample’. As I was about to go in he added the words that have since then always scared me whenever I have had to go in for a ‘sample’, “Mind you” he added in a stern voice, “it must be a mid-stream sample”.

Knowing that scientific procedures are all about precision and exactitude I wondered how I would determine that the mid-stream had actually arrived. Through the process I would agonize whether I was still too close to the head of the stream or had passed the point-of-no-return? I somehow felt that if I fudged the attempt I would be found out just as my chemistry teacher in the school lab always knew when I was fudging the results of a chemical test. I could visualize the experts hunched over their microscopes, peering at my ‘sample’ and saying to themselves, “Aha, another mid-stream violator !!!”

I thought the matter was serious enough to mention it to a junior doctor who had become quite friendly with me. “Why,” I asked him, “was it that science with all its advances hadn’t managed to device a pill to be taken fifteen minutes before collecting the sample that would give off some indicator, like a low whistle or alarm or something, as the mid-stream came near?” The doctor responded in a slow grave voice, like explaining something to a ten-year old, “Firstly,” he said, “you have too much faith in the science and medicine that has not been able to find a cure for the common cold or the incessant hiccups you are afflicted with after every chemotherapy. And secondly, can you imagine what a chaos such a procedure would cause in a men’s room, setting off a general scramble for their containers among the samplers, not knowing whose whistle had gone off?” I acknowledged the error of my ways and returned to my ruminations on the mid-stream problem.

I realized that this was not the first time I had had problems with issues concerning ‘streams’. Having been born and brought up as a (I hope) good Christian, I was always reminded that in order to be a good Indian as well I must become a part of the “main-stream”. Loving my country as I do, I embarked on the search for this ‘main-stream’ where, when found, I could immediately jump into, clothes, shoes and all, and emerge, re-baptized as it were, a true-blue Indian. Just like the “mid-stream” issue this problem too proved to be far more elusive than I had imagined. Try as I might, I just could not discover the geographical or even metaphorical co-ordinates of this main-stream. But, intrepid researcher that I am, I did not give up my search.

Then I decided to get married to a charming young lady from a Hindu family much to the chagrin of my clan persons who felt that this would not just be a case of taking a dip in the main stream but actually drowning in it! However I soon discovered that she was a much better Christian than I was. I would have been disappointed had I not felt so shamed. So I turned to my in-laws for a hint about the whereabouts of the main-stream. I found that they were so engaged in the rivulets, brooks, creeks, gullies, gorges that the so-called main-stream was enmeshed in that it was just too difficult to identify the mid-stream of the main-stream where one could indulge oneself.

However, all was not lost. Along came a vivacious, articulate and clued-up daughter-in-law, who to add, as they say in the vernacular, “sone pe suhaga” came from a Jain family. But to my particular quest for the main-stream this too was unyielding of results. The Jains I found were even in a deeper quandary. While I was repeatedly reminded that I needed to belong to the main-stream, no one bothered to say even this to the Jains. They did not know whether they were in or out. Even in our redoubtable courts of law the jury was still out whether the Jains are a ‘minority’ or not.

Hope was re-kindled when along came a son-in-law: a tall, handsome, turbaned Sikh. “I want to marry your daughter” he said to me. In a voice I reserved for the most errant of my students, I said “Meri do sharaten hain – I have two conditions”. I could feel the intrepid fighter-pilot quake in his shoes as he wondered whether my sharat would be for him to shear off his hair and get baptized. I savoured the moment and then said, “After the gurudwara ceremony is over and we go for the Church blessing I want you to be attired in your ceremonial Air-Force uniform, and secondly whenever you converse with me it will not be in English but always in Punjabi.”

This perhaps was my way of continuing my quest for the main-stream. But alas I was again to be disappointed. The Sikhs, I found, were in a more difficult position than the Jains. They had been co-opted without as much as ‘by your leave’ and they had to do all kinds of things – some not very pleasant – to try and maintain their distinct identity, notwithstanding the turban, the kesh et al!! We have no objection to merging, they appeared to say, but we do object to being submerged.

Not having a third child (those were the days of “Hum do hamare do”) there is no chance of continuing my quest in that direction with the addition of a Muslim son/daughter to the family.

Last Christmas when we had our usual extended family Christmas-eve get-together, there were not just my Hindu saas, sasur and saalies, not just my Jain bahu and her charismatic sisters and parents, and the Sikh damad with his parents and younger brother in his bright patka, but along the line I had also acquired a petite sister-in-law who traced her ancestry to Gharwal, another no-nonsense but nevertheless a charmer from the impressive Himachali Sood biradari, a delightful conversationalist bong nephew-in-law with a sharp sense of humour, another with a boisterous laugh, a loving disposition and a trifle headstrong as people from the Hindi heartland are wont to be.

As they all crowded around the piano singing popular Christmas carols, I wondered if, without my knowing it, my quest was over. Am I now in the main-stream and perhaps right in the middle of it?

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