Sunita Kripalani - VERBIE GOES BANANAS

My book VERBIE GOES BANANAS

Two books for the Welspun Foundation

In mid-2009, the Welspun Group, a US$ 3 billion company, approached me to write the biography of their founder, the late Mr. G R Goenka, who had passed away in December 2008. The book’s release was scheduled for December 2009 on the first anniversary of the gentleman's transition. After a few crucial preliminary meetings with his close family and associates, I had only three months to submit the final manuscript.

Those ninety days just flew past... Initially I was only taking down notes and gathering data, trying to structure the book in my head. Meetings were scheduled, conference calls and teleconferences were arranged, and interpreters provided to me as I chatted with family members and encouraged them to reminisce. It was arranged for me to visit the largest Welspun plant at Anjar, Gujarat, where I had an opportunity to talk to all those people with whom Mr Goenka used to interact on an everyday basis.



“How can you write about someone you’ve never met?” asked a friend. She had a point there, but as I talked to more and more people, the many facets of Mr. Goenka’s personality were revealed, it got easier as I visited his office, spoke to the heads of various departments, sat in his car and took a round of all the plants just the way he used to... and before long, I felt I was beginning to know him as a person.



A trip tracing Mr. Goenka’s life’s journey took me to the place where he was born, Churu in Rajasthan, then to Hisar in Haryana where he established his first business as a young man, and finally to Delhi where I met his children, his brothers, family and friends. As they shared their memories and dug out photographs from old, forgotten picture albums, I got enough material to compile the biography.



I had a deadline to respect. The frenzied pace and the long working hours necessitated putting almost everything else in my life on hold. The book was completed on time and It was gratifying to see that an aesthetic design complemented the content - the final result was visually very appealing. 

A commemorative book for Welspun, celebrating the Company's 25 years

To celebrate the occasion of Welspun Corporation reaching an important milestone of completing 25 years, the company commissioned me to write a commemorative book, a tome that would pay tribute to the Group’s growth and document important signposts. Once the theme and tone of the book were finalized, I began with the research and interviews and started composing the text, while closely interacting with the corporate office team. The data and photographs were collected from different departments and the entire project was run past various departmental heads for inputs and approval. I finalized the manuscript, collating all material, while coordinating with the designer to provide an aesthetically designed volume.

Heavy Going

Weighing the Alternatives

(This was published in TheTimes of India in 2001 and is one of my favourite articles,..)

MIDDLE
Heavy Going

By SUNITA KRIPALANI

WHEN my husband pointed out that he was not legally married to 15 kilos of me, I thought it was time to do something about it. I'd spent half my life gaining weight. Would I be spending the other half trying to lose it?

My first reaction however was that of indignant disbelief. Fat? Who, me? No, no, I'd always referred to myself as cuddly, plump, prosperous, healthy, or maybe just slightly overweight, but certainly not that F-word! 

Since I didn't want to give up an ounce of what belonged to me, I made excuses and blamed it on heredity and genes, steroids and toxicants, but was gently reminded time and again that if I managed to lose some weight, it would only be for my own good.

So I took a deep breath and consulted some books on the subject. Eat less, eat healthy, exercise more, said all of them. Easier said than done... for all I had to do was to look at food to put on weight. I pressed the ’hunger spot' diligently to curb appetite, but nothing happened. Mine remained an unhealthy body supporting an unhealthy mind.

While others might see it as a weight problem, I thought differently. I perceived it as a height problem: according to the height-weight chart, I should have been at least 8 ft 3 inches tall! But nobody quite saw it from my point of view and I suffered in silence my anguish and angst.

More diets start in dress shops than in doctors' clinics, I read somewhere. So I went to smart boutiques to see what could inspire me. Oooh, what a lovely pair of jeans... only they were two sizes too large! The sales assistant volunteered to have them altered for me. Never mind, no problem, I told him, I'll just put on some more weight and they'll fit me fine. And they did, they did, trust me, they did.

Who wants to punish the body by subjecting it to such torture as brisk walking, exercise, yoga, running up stairs, aerobics and jogging? Since I didn't want to actually become thinner this way, I decided to find ways and means of at least looking trimmer.

The fashion magazines suggested vertical stripes for a slimmer silhouette. I therefore invested in a brand-new wardrobe: my salwar-kameez suits, my saris, my kaftans, my nightgowns all now had vertical stripes in different hues. "Yes, I definitely look thinner, I am slimmer," I told myself thrice a day before meals, like Alice in Wonderland, sure that if I affirmed it three times, it must be true. 

"If you want to look thinner, stay around fatter people,'' quipped a cousin. So I chose my friends with care. I hovered around the real heavy-weights, feeling wonderfully slender and delicate in comparison, and I delighted in the company I now kept, but felt a little insecure that they might abandon me for other supersized cronies.

I wanted distorting mirrors installed in every room, to make me look anorexic and cadaverous, but the family would hear none of it. Disappointed at their lack of cooperation, I thought of getting a one-way ticket to the moon, where I'd be sure to weigh only a sixth of what I do here on Mother Earth.

When a neighbour contracted typhoid, I exclaimed, “Wow! You've lost so much weight!” The insensitive remark alienated me from all those nice people, but certainly gave me an idea. During the monsoons, I drank tap water, ate roadside junk and guzzled sugarcane juice by the gallons. But unfortunately, I remained fit as a fiddle.

As a final desperate resort, I've made a list of those organs that my body can do without - a lung, a kidney, ovaries, an eye, spleen, uterus, gall bladder, large chunks of intestines, teeth, my appendix... All I have to do now is to con some quack surgeon into operating upon me and removing all of the above in one shot. Or, should I just settle for a haircut and trim my fingernails instead? 

T S S - Tenth Standard Syndrome

(This article was published in Citadel magazine, 1995. That year, my nephew had appeared for his Board exams)

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Hereby hangs a modern tale comprising of all the elements of drama - hero, a villain in the shape of The Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research, Pune, and a proper tragi-comic ending.

Once upon a quite recent time, here in the city of Mumbai, lived the Pigg family. Mr. Pigg Sr. worked hard for a living, selflessly supporting his dependents that included Mrs. Pigg the homemaker, and their three children - Clever Pigg, Could-do-better Pigg and Satisfactory Pigg. Their actual names were long forgotten by everybody and only their report card remarks remained on their lips, for the family was very examination-oriented, as is politically correct to be these days.

Satisfactory Pigg, the youngest, was generally satisfied with his far-from-satisfactory results in the Unit tests and exams. Could-do-better Pigg decided it was too early to try and do better academically since she was only in Grade Seven;  she therefore devoted all her time and energy towards looking good and feeling great.

Clever Pigg, the oldest one and the hero (or perhaps the victim) of our story was a freak. He studied hard and mugged much all his waking hours since he was in the Tenth Standard. Clever had his own past reputation of standing first in the division to live up to, which, coupled with peer pressure, parental pressure, and tuition-teacher pressure, made him see mathematical formulae and chemistry equations even in his dreams.

Clever Pigg nurtured this secret ambition to work as a Systems Analyst in an IT Company. He had been highly impressed by the ambience when he had once visited such above-mentioned premises with his father, and ever since he couldn’t wait to get into well-creased executive trousers, don an executive shirt with a button-down collar, wear socks to match an executive tie, tuck a monogrammed executive handkerchief into the pocket of his executive trouser-pocket, wear executive shoes, grab an executive briefcase plus sport a neat, executive haircut.

Clever Pigg often visualized himself ensconced in an air-conditioned office, surrounded by computers and respectful staff, earning a multi-digit salary with perks to perk up his eligibility. With this yuppie goal in mind, he worked diligently and studiously in order to secure a respectable 99.99 % in the Secondary School Certificate Examination.

For our friend Clever Pigg, all had been hunky-dory till the ninth grade. Gifted with superior intelligence, quick grasping power, a good memory, and an inborn desire to gain his teachers’ approval, he had worked hard and scored well all along, giving his competitors sleepless nights.

But suddenly, in the Tenth Standard, all had been thrown out of gear for this teenager. He couldn’t first of all accept the fact that he would be a mere statistic on the S.S.C. Board and that his academic fate would be decided by some unknown, ignorant examiners who tend to assess papers arbitrarily (information courtesy: his classmates who often said: “If the examiner has had a fight with his wife, he’s sure to slash your marks,” or “If the examiner is in a good mood, you’ll be awarded full marks.”)

Our misguided missile believed all this to be true, and when he was told to learn up his textbooks from cover to cover and to mug up the guides, Clever Pigg was perplexed, puzzled, and consternated.  For how could he learn up the textbooks just like that - with all the spelling mistakes and factual errors that they contained?

Clever was in a dilemma. Being of a scientific temper, he questioned facts, counter-checked statements, verified equations, and got his formulae corrected by alternate sources of knowledge. Now that he was advised to blindly memorize his books, he felt a little disoriented.

Clever Pigg couldn’t believe that for the next few months, he would have to spell ‘little’ as ‘pissle’, nor could he bring himself to write the lens equation as 1/f = 1/v = 1/u when his logic and previous learning told him it was 1/f = 1/v – 1/u.  It was punishment for our hero Clever to spell to write ‘ZnS’ as ‘Zns’ and to spell ‘oedema’ as ‘odoma’, but this child nevertheless tirelessly wrote out the wrongly-spelt words and equations a hundred times every day in order to familiarise himself with them, so as to not make silly mistakes like writing the actual, correct spellings in his Board Exam.

Clever sure was confused. According to his books, aluminium was ‘the most abundant element’, ‘the third most abundant element’, and also ‘the third most abundant metal’. Clever Pigg bit the skin off his fingers trying to decide what he should really mention in his answers – should he write that one gram of fat provides approximately 9 kilocalories of energy as stated in his text book, whereas in actual fact, all it provides is approximately just 9 calories?

With so many confusing multiple choices, Clever Pigg gradually developed anxiety, poor concentration, and lack of appetite. Mrs. Pigg busied herself concocting delicious savouries for her first-born who was at such an important threshold in life, but Clever declined to partake of the most mouth-watering delicacies. His appetite remained below par and his sleep little and fitful. He developed symptoms of stress, lost a considerable amount of weight, and jumped when he was spoken to.

Mr. and Mrs. Pigg suffered in silence at first this parental angst. Later, their family physician recommended Clever to a teenage specialist who in turn recommended him to a psychotherapist who on his part recommended him to a psychoanalyst who, during the course of many expensive sessions (Mr. Pigg had to pledge most of his blue chip stocks to his bank in order to obtain a loan to meet this domestic need ) attempted to delve into his psyche and after long talks with the by-now babbling student, pronounced that his present stressful condition was directly related to certain unpleasant early childhood and even foetal memories, deeply and firmly rooted in the subconscious.

“Doctor, you’ve not spelt this word correctly – ‘appetite’ is spelt as ‘a-p-a-t-i-t-e’,” said Clever Pigg to the psychoanalyst while reading the doctor’s prescription.  “What makes you say that, Clever?” the good doctor asked him kindly. “My Science II text book cannot be wrong”, answered Clever, “see page 97 that clearly states, “In ber-beri, there is loss of apatite.”

The brilliant doctor consulted others of his profession, went through several imported books, and finally decided upon a suitable line of treatment for this high-strung youngster. He managed to convince Clever Pigg that a clever kid like him could easily unlearn the wrong spellings, equations, etc. and learn up the right ones. So with a lot of positive support from his doctor, parents, teachers, and friends, Clever Pigg slowly regained his appetite for food and learning. He managed to do very well in his preliminary exams, out beating his nearest rivals by a little over 3 %.

Our friend now studied with renewed enthusiasm. So while others dreaded the unknown format of the new syllabus exams, Clever prepared to face the challenge, hopping from one coaching class to another, continually pestering his teachers. Like Oliver Twist, he wanted more: more question papers for practice, more self-study books, more mathematical problems, more essays, and more grammar work. He clocked himself and solved three papers a day, working so hard that everyone was sure Clever's name would be on the merit list.

The scenario at home resembled a curfew-imposed area. Clever’s siblings were told to keep away and not disturb him in any way. A low decibel level was maintained and the cable T.V. disconnected. All pleas and tantrums from the other two kids were ignored. Mrs. Pigg made available milkshakes and sandwiches and idlis and coffee and snacks and soft drinks and fruit and nuts and juice to her offspring round the clock. The pastry shop across the street registered a fantastic sale of chicken-cheese croissants and Black Forest pastries during the month of March.

D-Day saw Clever fully prepared to tackle even the toughest questions. While his friends cursed and cribbed and whined, Clever Pigg was enthusiastic and confident. When the question papers leaked and he did not obtain any, Clever was upset for a while, but felt he would score full marks in Maths and Science, anyway. When there were rumours of re-examinations, Clever welcomed the idea: he did not mind studying all over again, as long as justice was done. But when he heard that the model answers were all wrong, and that the paper assessment had begun even before the inaccuracies were detected, Clever felt extremely let down.

His despair knew no bounds and he slowly slipped into melancholia. He developed symptoms of depression and lost appetite. His sleep was little and fitful, he lost a considerable amount of weight and jumped when he was spoken to. He did not watch television or listen to music. He avoided meeting friends and was caught talking to himself many times.

However, the tale ended with the psychoanalyst taking off after three sessions with him. He recommended Clever Pigg to another doctor, having decided to leave the country and educate his own children in another part of the world!

--Sunita Kripalani 

Perils of a self-taught gardener

( published in Citadel magazine - October, 1995 )

I have always believed, against much evidence, that I can learn to do anything by reading enough books and pamphlets on the subject. My earlier experiments with photography, interior decoration, ikebana, yoga, nouvelle cuisine and child-rearing yielded such wonderful results, so when my family bought a farmhouse at Panvel, I began to hang out in the garden section of bookstores and in the book section of garden stores.

Before long, I envisioned myself as a weekend Thoreau and going through the seed catalogues, I knew only one thing: I had to have my own vegetables, especially tomatoes, and lots of them! I ordered four varieties of tomatoes to see which would flourish best in the rocky acid that passes for soil on our land. The names inspired confidence: Maiden's Blush, Springset, Terrific and Sugar Lump! I also ordered many seeds from distant nurseries for Munchy Carrots, Luscious Lemons, Succulent Capsicum, Paramount Parsley and more. My seed bill came to an amount that, according to my husband, could have financed planting of coconut trees over several acres in arid Rajasthan.

Soon the desolate farmhouse took on the look of a greenhouse. Big and small pots everywhere, grow-lights, dirt on the floor, mud in the kitchen sink, soil in the doggie bowl, irrigation, impatience, irrigation, prayers and then green poked up at last. The frail sprouts took on real leaves and eventually the entire operation was transferred outdoors.

I soon discovered that you don’t merely put plants and seeds into the ground and water them. First, you till. That is, you run a monster of a machine over the area and it breaks up the soil to a depth of about four inches. Tilling is punishing work – your shoulder bones rattle, your hands cramp and you wonder if you’ve got premature arthritis. Still, you have the wonderful feeling of tearing something up. It is infinitely more satisfying than breaking rocks, which comes next. No matter how many times you rake, you quickly learn that there will be just as many stones to contend with as the first time.

Then I decided I needed a fence. I noticed other farms in the same area, operating flourishing gardens without fences, but well, I needed one. So I got a few fence posts hammered in and strung some small animal wire around. The only reliable defense against garden marauders, even the books advise, was over-planting – one for the rabbit, one for the crow, one for the worm, and one to grow. So naturally, I set about over-planting with a vengeance.

Once, getting out of bed uncommonly early, I saw a great, shambling, unidentified animal eating its way down one of my beet rows as methodically as a speed typist at work. I went berserk. Flinging myself down the stairs, pausing in the yard to collect whatever rocks I could grab, I began to fire missiles at it, screaming unprintables and using language that would have made a goonda blush. The felonious hunk squirmed out through the hole that it had forced in the wire and galloped clumsily off among the distant trees, but not before stopping mid-way in a field to give me a pained look.

Desperate enquiries revealed that a trail of creosote around a garden’s perimeter acts on rabbits and other small animals like a cross raised in the face of the devil. So I splashed that creosote. Generously, like as though my life depended upon it. Never mind that I had never heard of it until then. And when I was told that garlic juice repels pests, I pulverized garlic pods in the blender and sprayed hopefully. Whether garlic and creosote repel pests and other animals, I don’t know, but they certainly have an interesting effect on close friends.

“Organic Farming and Gardening” advised me to recycle domestic garbage and use it as manure. So the tea leaves and egg shells found their way outdoors. “Helpful Hints for the Novice Farmer” persuaded me to spread several bags of chemical fertilizer to supplement the organic nutrients. “Growing, the Natural Way” told me not to kill my plants with toxic chemicals, so I bought several bags of sheep manure and threw that on as well.

I also learned from one or another of my imported books that in order to get rid of slugs and snails, you must put out pans of beer. The slimy little creatures just stagger into the stuff and drown. I put out the beer a couple of times, much to the amusement of the kid, but got only two customers in three days, and those weren’t slugs or snails either.

Still, I’m hooked. Weekend gardening, which started as a secret vice, has now grown into an open addiction. Everything for the new gardener is miraculous, every day an adventure. I must admit I was a total failure with coriander, pumpkin, capsicum and lady-fingers, but I did have some definite successes, especially with tomatoes. Just about every tomato seedling I put in grew into a verdant, fruit-heavy wonder (and a tomato is a fruit, by the way).

But I had more troubles coming ! I had too many tomatoes now, for I had nurtured to full fruition a hundred and two thriving tomato plants, by precise count. Any responsible gardening book will warn you that for a small family, four or five productive tomato plants are enough, but I hadn’t wanted to listen or believe.

Now there were so many tomatoes that we were literally drowning in the stuff. Tomato sauce and stuffed tomatoes, tomato omelettes and tomato surprises, meats and vegetables in tomato gravy became our staple diet. I even forced them as presents upon unwilling friends and relations, servants, neighbors and casual acquaintances.

And then I bought more books and pamphlets and went into canning, again as a novice. I put up whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato purée, tomato-chilli sauce and I soon acquired the capacity to take care of the tomato requirements of a small town like Panvel. Perhaps if I hold on and don’t panic, the Russians will grow tired of American wheat and develop a taste for my tomato chutney.

Umm, excuse me, the tomato sauce is bubbling……

From an ignoramus to a 'know-it-all'..

(I wrote this just after the World Cup 1999)

                My Heart Beats For India

      How I changed from a cricket ignoramus to a know-it-all...

For someone who’s never ever held a cricket bat in her hands, who could never have told a googly from a Ganguly, and for whom cricketers were, until recently, a blur of nameless faces or faceless names, you should hear my ‘expert opinions’ now! They’d put even Sunil Gavaskar and Geoffrey Boycott to shame! In fact, those connoisseurs of the game ought to consult me for their columns and commentaries… or maybe I should give it some serious thought and hire myself out as an advisor to the BCCI before the selection of our national cricket team.

Earlier, I knew just the basics of the game and my interest in cricket was limited to joining the guys as they watched nail-biting finishes of Indo-Pak matches, but again, only if that happened to coincide with my free time.

One day, I found myself very brusquely excluded from all the excitement. I asked an ‘intelligent’ question and was brushed off with, “Oh, you won’t get it, you women can’t understand cricket, it’s a man’s game!”

That did it! I mean, I can fix a fuse and read a balance sheet, so why wouldn’t I understand a silly game like cricket, I asked myself, and set about learning it. Since there wasn’t a handbook around with the title, ‘What To Do When You Feel You Ought To Know Everything About Cricket And Actually You Do Know Whom To Ask But They Seem To Have Neither The Time Nor The Inclination To Educate You’, I did the next best thing: I took to watching cricket and cricket-related programmes on ESPN and Star Sports all day long.

Initially, of course, my comments provoked a lot of laughter. “Actually this Kumble is a fast bowler,” I pronounced very seriously one day. My son clutched his tummy and rolled about in uncontrollable mirth, my nephew spluttered on his coffee, and my husband laughed till he coughed. “Don’t utter that statement in public!” he warned me before launching into a fresh spasm of ‘coughter’. I tried to justify my words, repeating what the commentator had said, that “the batsman was beaten for Kumble’s pace and bounce.”

I also mixed up Brian Lara and Jimmy Adams and said, “Bryan Adams is out!” and when Srinath kept bowling "just outside the off-stump", I thought the boy was hopelessly inaccurate and questioned his place in the team.

I made rapid progress. The more cricket I watched, the more jargon I picked up and before long I was talking like I was some kind of authority on the game. I gave up watching movies and TV serials, preferring to see highlights of cricket matches. Cricket provided me with all the entertainment that I needed: heroes, villains, action, emotions, thrills, high drama, tragedy, comedy – it was all here.

My bookshelves now had nothing but Sportstar, Cricket Samrat and CricketTalk. I stopped purchasing more books and hid my existing collection out of sight, under the beds and over the cupboards. And as for the morning papers, I read them backward – sports’ news first and everything else later, and I’m sorry to confess, even Kargil didn’t interest me half as much as the Kargil benefit matches did. Cricket became my religion, but Sachin didn’t grow a long, white beard and don saffron, so he stopped just short of becoming my God.

Ask me today when the next match is scheduled and I’ll also tell you our team’s timetable for the entire coming season. Do you wish to know how the Net Run Rate is calculated? I can give you tuitions in the Duckworth-Lewis system as well. Would you like a list of the ten best websites on cricket? I’ll even provide the latest Ceat cricket ratings, tell you which player is endorsing what product, give you a minute-by-minute progress report on Sachin’s back, plus the names of those cricketers who sport an earring in one ear. I’m bursting with ‘cricinfo’ and feel confident about writing a thesis on the game, including domestic and women’s cricket, in addition to successfully performing a SWOT analysis of the players.

I’m the team’s fan, cheerleader, coach, manager, selector, strategist, analyst, statistician, umpire, square-leg umpire, third umpire, match adjudicator, commentator, doctor, physio, psychiatrist, motivational trainer, tax consultant and  mother all rolled into one, only it’s such a pity that nobody knows it.

Whenever a match is on, I wake up earlier than usual (“Aaj match hai, aaj match hai”), finish all my cooking and other chores at dizzying speed (“Aaj match hai, aaj match hai”), rush the maid and the family through their routine (“Aaj match hai, aaj match hai”), disconnect the phone, put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ placard around my neck, arm myself with the remote control, and sit back to enjoy the game. And if anyone makes the mistake of demanding food and beverages or disturbs me in any way, I howwwl in outrage and lament my shrinking personal space.

When our boys win, I’m there in front of the television set, cheering wildly; when they lose, I’m there, empathizing, clucking in sympathy, making excuses, getting all defensive and blaming it on the pitch.

During that mega event, the World Cup 1999, I went and bought truckloads of World Cup memorabilia – diaries and posters, calendars and coffee mugs, pencil boxes and key-chains all marketed so cleverly by Archie’s. I indulged in some plaintive bleating and sang "All the best" just like the younsters in the LG ad, I even waved miniature flags and chanted “Come on, India, dikha do”, encouraging the team from long distance. Each time Dravid or Ganguly hit a boundary, I was there, sipping Pepsi and begging, “Yeh dil maange more,” and believe it or not, that was me who discreetly wiped a tear when we lost that match to Zimbabwe.

Hey Sri, Jadu, Dada, Chopra, Monty, I hope you’re reading this, kids… when you guys toured Sri Lanka, Singapore, Australia, Toronto, Kenya, Sharjah or Dhaka, did you notice me as I tagged along, loyalty personified, following every ball from my hot seat at home?

I’ve been stumped, watching cricket up close, and as for the match-fixing scandal, well, that, in my opinion, is just an obnoxious interlude; what’s a little money got to do with it, I ask you, maybe Hansie and a few others could resist everything except temptation, like Oscar Wilde might have said, and besides, I can forgive anything as long as it’s unforgivable.

In the meantime, as I make myself a nimbu-paani, I await the launch of the new Coke campaign – will it be Srinath, or will it be Sourav? Whatever they promote, this ardent fan will sip, will eat, will use, will wear. Umm, I wonder what’s the price of that Tissot watch on Azhar’s wrist…