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V Gangadhar

Calendar standards

These days, the walls of my flat appear empty. The old calendars have been thrown away, the new ones have not yet arrived. I have problems maintaining the milk and dhobhi accounts, which I've always noted on the calendars.

My wife is quite upset over my inability to procure new calendars. "I don't want fancy ones," she tells me. "Can't we at least have those simple ones which give the dates and days of the month?"

I tried to pacify her. "They must be on the way. Don't you remember how we received a dozen calendars after January last year?"

In the meantime, my college-going daughter demands to know the fate of her new diary. "I have to note down my innermost thoughts," she complains. "And I cannot remember them all. Particularly the names of my favourite boys."

The postman knocks on my door, even when there is no mail. "Saab," he enquires, "diary hain kuch?" I telephoned a friend who usually provides me with one. "We have reduced our budget," he apologises. "Diaries are restricted to staff members and those who do business with us."

The world of calendars and diaries did not, obviously, recognise ageing journalists who had withdrawn from mainstream journalism. I know of newspaper and magazine editors, as well as influential political and business correspondents, who are blessed with numerous diaries and calendars, besides costly gifts like dry fruits packets. They have no use for columnists who write about cricket or the good old days of the past.

My wife points out, with some degree of bitterness, that most of our neighbours are exhibiting a variety of glossy calendars, some of which feature beautiful film stars.

Going by calendar standards, it had been a steady comedown. When I was young, our house was flooded with calendars and diaries supplied by businessmen, industrialists and private individuals. Father, as a senior government officer, had contacts everywhere. He never accepted gifts during Diwali or New Year, but could not refuse calendars or diaries.

We lived in huge government bungalows and the walls were full of all types of calendars. Many of these featured buxom female Indian goddesses, the work of painters like Ravi Varma of Kerala. They found a ready place in the puja room. At the end of the year, we had requests from relatives, and even servants, who wanted pictures from these calendars for their puja rooms.

But in Fort Cochin, where we lived amidst foreign executives working for firms like Volkart Brothers and Gannon Dunkerley, we received expensive calendars featuring breathtaking photographs of scenes from Switzerland, Scotland, Austria and other countries. Except for a couple, which went to my favourite teachers in school, I made sure none of the calendars were given away.

There was one beautiful calendar that featured the world's most spectacular waterfalls. The photographs were so realistic, you literally felt the water splashing on you! I framed the pictures and kept them with me for several years. Recently, my daughter, who is studying at Ohio University, visited the Niagara Falls. I told her I had seen them much earlier, on the pages of a calendar.

My first job, in the stores and purchase department of Calico Mills, had a lot to do with calendars and diaries. Since the department dealt with a large number of business houses and suppliers of different commodities, diaries and calendars arrived in plenty.

I knew that several of my colleagues in the department looked forward to something more than calendars and diaries during the new year. Invariably, they got their commission in the deals they concluded with the merchants.

I was only 18 then and my innocence and inexperience clearly showed. But the merchants who greeted my colleagues with "Happy New Year" and "Saal mubark", and presented them with closed envelopes, did not ignore me totally. They presented me with beautiful calendars and diaries. Since I lived in one room in those days, I could not make use of all of them.

But I enjoyed walking in front of colleagues in the other departments like finance, cotton and sales, distributing the excess calendars and diaries freely. My close friends got the best ones, the casual friends got the others. And the game went on for the whole month.

Some of my neighbours, who never visited me normally, made it a point to drop in during the first few days of January. Their eyes glinted when they saw the piled-up calendars and diaries. Some of them brought up the subject directly, others beat around the bush till I offered them the calendars.

It was only after entering journalism that I began to keep a diary. It was not the 'Dear Diary' approach; I used it for noting down appointments and telephone numbers.

Diaries, in those days were simple. Today, they offer all sorts of information and are exquisitely produced. Formerly, diaries had space for only names and addresses. Today, there are columns for telephone, telex, fax numbers, e-mail addresses and what not.

Somehow, I cannot think of penning my most intimate thoughts in a diary. I mean, Virgina Woolf did it and so did other writers and great men and women. But, then, to sit alone, night after night, and think of the events and persons of the day and how they influence you, is just too much.

Yet, I was deeply moved by The Diary of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who died in a concentration camp during the second world war. My experiences in life were simpler. I mean, how can one keep a diary with entries like, "Got up, brought vegetables from the market. Wrote and faxed three columns; two of them did not reach the publications concerned. Had to do it all over again!"

Illustration: Dominic Xavier