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