The Battle Royale.

He is still there, watching her through the open kitchen window, with a reproachful look in his eyes. She is firmly ignoring him. She doesn’t take very kindly to anyone refusing to eat her cooking.

Amma loves to feed birds, and has kept dishes filled with food and water on her kitchen window sill. That is how the crow started coming to our house.

Amma had made something of a pet of this crow who sat in the kitchen window every day, waiting for her to feed him left over food, stale slices of bread, things which crows are supposed to eat uncomplainingly. Even this one did. Till one day he tasted chaklis.

While poking around in the cabinets Amma came across old packets of Chaklis. No one remembered purchasing them, maybe left over from Diwali. And by now the chaklis were several months old, and emanated musty smell of stale oil. We all refused to even touch them, and declared them unfit for human consumption. Amma’s thrifty heart baulked at such a waste, and she hated to throw out the good -well, the Almost good -chaklis this way. Finally she threw one chakli in the bird dish. Her crow was sitting there, waiting for his turn, ignoring the birdseed. He pounced on the chalki and caught it in midair gracefully and was a changed crow from that day onwards.

In the early days it was all fun. We would stand around and watch him crunch the chakli. Amma would say with grim satisfaction, "at least the chaklis were not wasted", and we laughed at the way the crow would call his cronies over. But soon, very soon, the chaklis got over, and then began a battle of wills. The crow refused to eat anything other than chaklis.

At first Amma was amused to see him sitting there, refusing the slice of bread in the dish, and later became exasperated. After that it sort of became a challenge to make that crow eat something. Instead of stale bread he was now being tempted with fresh bread. Instead of leftover roti, he now got freshly made one, warm from Tawaa. But he still held out for chaklis. He would just poke at the food and leave it uneaten. And after giving Amma, what we thought as reproachful look for playing such a dirty trick on him, he would fly away. I am afraid Amma took his rejection rather to her heart.

Days went by; we could see Amma cooing to the crow in persuasive whispers. There were jokes galore. We suggested she buttered the bread, or perhaps some jam? There were solicitous enquiries about the crow's preference in fruit. Will fresh ones do or would he prefer rotten ones. Dad loudly worried about the crow's cholesterol levels, and asked Amma to feed her pet nutritious food. At dinner time he would ask meekly, “Can I have one more roti? If the crow doesn’t want it, that is.” Amma took all this ragging in good spirit, but neither the crow nor she would give in. "I have brought up three children" was her refrain.

But it was clear that something had to be done. Amma was trying to discipline her crow with same ruthlessness she had shown while bringing us up.” Everything in the plate must be finished. There are children starving in the world. Eat up. This is good for you”. Maybe that’s why we loved our crow. My bossy Amma had met her match at last. We were having bets to see who wins. Meanwhile , the crow went on sitting in our window with sad look in his eyes. Amma too had started to look rather frazzled.

Finally this morning, just as I was stepping out, Amma whispered to me, “Get a packet of Chaklis, the broken ones will do. They are cheaper.”

Jaipur Lit. Fest. workshop.

The writing workshop conducted by Jugal Mody was on the third day of the Lit. Fest. Jan 21^st .We were told by the organizers to 'Be There' at 9 'Sharp':) Sitting in Amchi Mumbai 9 sharp doesn’t sound like an ungodly hour. We are the people who catch 7.52 super fast.

So on the cold morning of 21^st, in the Pink City of Jaipur where even the sun was reluctant to show his face before ten, Rashmi Dhanwani and I marched to Diggi palace- the venue for the workshop. And I am glad we did.

The workshop was planned for anyone above the age of 18. The number of participants was limited to 25 and there were a few complaints about it, as the response to the workshop has been so tremendous that the management had to turn away lot of people. Jugal wanted to keep the number small so there could be time for interaction and feed back. Finally, extra participants were allowed to join, and the final count was 32. I could see a few familiar faces of other caferatii .

We all sat there, huddled under our sweaters and shawls waiting for our esteemed moderator to start.

Jugal- the moderator explained to the participants that he was not planning to teach them anything , but share with them a method of thinking which will help them to write better.

And we launched into the workshop.

For next two hours, we followed the moderator’s directions, pencils flying all over our papers, read aloud for every one to critique. Slowly even shy one lost their stage fear and opened up. The suggestions and comments were flying all around and Jugal running from person to person with the mic in his hand got a good work out. After a while people stopped waiting for their turn or the mic and started giving their comments eagerly. The atmosphere was charged with an excitement of the participants who were discovering that they could write. The moderator had made writing seem easy :)

There were all levels of writers. From skilled ones who had obviously done some writing before, to the very fresh ones, who were still discovering thrill of putting their thoughts on paper.

By now people had started walking in to watch what was happening. A few of them pulled paper and pen out of their bag and joined in. One of them was a French lady who had written her exercises in French but obligingly read it in English for our benefit.

After following up on all the exercises, everyone realized that what we had in our hands was a complete story. All day long I kept meeting these participants on the fest grounds. They now smiled at me like old friends, we had shared something fun an enjoyable.

The workshop ROCKED. Like everyone else, I too am planning to hold on to my notes on the exercises. There is a story in there.