A pinch of pepper

The months of February and March in Bangalore remind me of the fate of the Duchess in 'Alice in Wonderland'.

The Duchess is in the kitchen supervising the making of soup, to which she kept adding pepper and as a result she kept sneezing and sneezing while her nose turned red and eyes streamed with tears.

Take that story with a pinch of salt, if you wish, but it emphatically demonstrates the dry season in Bengalooru.
Take these last two years; it has been bad. My area is dotted with buildingsu00a0 under demolition or being reconstructed. The air is thick with debris and the noise of migrant labourers who are not exactly soft-spoken or well-bred..

The army of road sweepers, who are supposed to sweep the dried leaves and flowers into little heaps for removal by contracted lorries.

Relative humidity starts dropping simultaneously.. The 'pepper-dust' season sets in. And Bangaloreans wake up sneezing; and keep sneezing all day.

Not everyone minds the heat and dust. Older folks with rheumatic complaints revel in the warmth. And kids revel in the dust. Much of the furniture in my house makes for easy games. Dusty tabletops serve to make Noughts and Crosses scribbled with fingertips. Or you can draw faces or write your name in finely layered sheets of dust.

But kids are not what they used to be. When we were relatively young we used to be easily satisfied with simple games (Ludo or Snakes and Ladders) and later Scrabble or Chess) or simple amusements like toy phones.

I recently acquired a laptop. So I decided to give away my now outdated Pentium which had been more that adequate for my work, I had just bought a new colour monitor and keyboard.

I offered the young son of a friend, the 'old' Pentium computer. I phoned up to check with him. He answered the phone himself. The confident style of the modern kid is a new step in evolution,
"Hi Peter," he said (man to man, 11 year old to 60!!)
"Hi Anup," I said. "Whacha doing," I asked him.

'I'm talking to you Peter, he said with the cheeky giggle of a boy who has successfully been smartalecky.
"How do you like the new computer?"

Immediate response, "Nice!"

I thought that was that. But it wasn't...

"Peter I want to give that computer back to you."

"Why, what's wrong with it?" I asked him.

"Nothing," he drawledu00a0....u00a0 "It's too slow. And it doesn't have a USB port so I can't download games from the web."

u00a0"What's a USB port?" I asked ignorantly... Besides you're not allowed to surf the web without supervision.

"Not for the web connection, Peter. But I can't even plug in my I-pod."

I was about to ask him 'What's an I-Pod,' but I thought better of it, Imagine a 60-year-old asking an 11-year-old a question like that.

I choked off the question with an embarrassed sneeze and put the phone down in a fit of simulated coughing...