Swalpa Adjust Maadi !

“Swalpa Adjust Maadi”, very common phrase one would quite often hear in Bangalore city. It just means “please adjust swalpa ( a little )”. How much swalpa that adjustment would be, it’s anybody’s guess.

Most common and serious adjustments one has to make is when he/she enters into married life. To adjust with the partner.  Drinking coffee will give way for tea, one may have to go to sleep earlier before the other one starts snoring so that the start of sleep is not affected for both partners. This list of swalpa adjustments to be made may not be that swalpa.

I also got married once, many years back. The priest was chanting hundreds of Sanskrit slokas during the wedding ceremony. Looking back after those many years, I am pretty sure one of those slokas was a message to me and my wife that in future we might have to do some adjustments to live happily. Though none of us or the crowd around or the priest himself, knew which particular solka that was.  Had me and my wife knew the message that day itself, by now she would have made a few more adjustments, I too would have made many more !

In Coimbatore city, a newly-wed lady took her life herself. She could not think of living a life without the non-stop use of whatsApp. Husband, a lorry driver by profession, probably knew only one use of his mobile, to make voice calls. He could not understand his wife’s attitude, looking and smiling more often at her mobile handset than looking at him. He could not adjust a bit. He took her phone away and went out. She went in and took her own life.

One should know what extent one can adjust. Like many girls my daughter also started learning dance, Bharatnatyam.  Like many others, she also stopped learning one fine day. Every other month there will be some performance or other organized by the dance school in one of the temple premises. What it meant for me was a lot of adjustments - take half day leave, help the mother in getting the daughter ready and more importantly drive them down to the venue. And of course, sit and watch those performances patiently with occasional applauds.

That evening the venue was a near-by Siva temple. As one would find, the approach to many of these temples start with very broad road and as and when one reaches near the temple the road narrows and narrows further. Finally there will be a still narrower outer entrance to the temple and the narrowest door opening where the deity really abodes. I stopped and parked the car when the first broad road ended and narrowness started opening up. I told my daughter and wife I could not adjust any more. They better walk the rest of 200 metres on foot, adjusting to the curious stare of bystanders who were a bit less appreciative of any form of art, compared to the people who sat inside the venue.

My friend Kumar also had a dancing daughter. He was also as adjustable as I. His daughter was also part of the dance program for that evening. He also took half day leave. He also cooked the lunch at home that day. He also did many more unfamiliar things. And they set out in his car. One difference was his car was new and he was new to driving. Another difference was he succumbed to his wife’s pressure to take a chance to drop them at the entrance of the venue. I was standing there when they arrived there ceremoniously. He got into a spot, dead-end in front of him. Only option for him was to take the car reverse for a good 50 metres or so in that narrow lane. It was unimaginable for a person like him who barely knew how to take the car in the forward direction. He jumped out of car with full rage and shouted at his wife throwing the car keys at her “You only asked to bring the car till this point, now you take it back”. Poor wife, she had to do a lot of adjustments to sit properly even in the passenger seat, sitting in the driver’s seat was beyond question. Finally, a lot of adjustments had to be made by the street vendors, moving many things by lifting and keeping aside, including Kumar’s new car !

If you are subjected to too many adjustments, you may react arrogantly, irrationally, illogically. That day I was traveling alone to Bangalore from Calcutta. The flight got delayed by many hours. I finished glancing through all the newspapers available. I finished pretending to going through the documents in my laptop computer, which I had done several times before.  Since there was no internet, wifi, 2G, whatsApp, FB etc, I had to remain local, no way I could go global by which I could have killed my time easily.  I had to shift intermittently from left to right and vice versa while sitting in that uncomfortable chair at the waiting lounge to minimize the mounting pain in my ass. There was no clue as when the flight will depart. Finally the call came for check-in. I didn’t see any smile on her face when the lady at the counter asked me “Window or aisle?”. With the same rude face I replied “both”. I could see the displeasure on her face, at least I got an opportunity to vent out my anger for the series of adjustments I had to make. Didn’t I deserve that much adjustment from them? What seat I got was immaterial, I was momentarily happy that I took some revenge on them, fully knowing what would be in store for me ahead till I reach Bangalore!

So when we hear or we say, ‘”Swalpa Adjust Maadi”, that swalpa is very important. If swalpa, turns out to be jaasti ( more )  then there is a problem, then it is no more an adjustment, It is a sacrifice by one party. And rarely someone will like to sacrifice, with no merit.