As a long-time resident of Delhi, I am aware that the city lies in a seismic zone, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. But that doesn’t mean you can keep feeling imaginary tremors and getting upset when other people point out that the tremors you are feeling are imaginary.
I am not judging anyone for feeling non-existent tremors. What I object to is people expecting to be treated like they are the granddaughters of Charles Francis Richter, the man famous for his scale. I also don’t appreciate my entire gender being branded as insensitive just because we don’t report false tremors.
I am sorry to bring gender into this, but with all due respect to my female readers, I find that it is always women who claim extrasensory seismic perception. In my entire life I’ve never had a man interrupt me when I am, say, in the middle of explaining how Kapalbhati can reduce air pollution, to ask me, “Can you feel it?”
The Kashmir dialogue
My wife does this all the time. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I was in the kitchen, quietly doing the dishes and minding my own business when she looked up from her laptop to ask, “So, what do you think of Kashmir?”
We hadn’t had a meaningful dialogue on Kashmir for many years. Delighted by her sudden interest, I began enlightening her on how Pakistan had single-handedly created the whole Kashmir mess only because it was envious of India’s nuclear missiles, which were much bigger than Pakistan’s nuclear missiles.
I was getting to the part about how the Pakistani army was exporting terror into India because it was jealous of our unique Aadhaar-based surveillance system when she cut me off to ask, “Can you feel it?”
“No,” I said. “But trust me, Aadhaar-based surveillance works even if you can’t feel it.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she snapped. “Can’t you feel the floor shaking?”
I looked at the floor, then at her. She was standing with her arms stretched out, a rapt expression on her face, as if Jesus might arrive any moment and save us both.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Are you alright?”
“There is an earthquake. How can you not feel it? Check the news!”
I went on Google, and sure enough, there was an earthquake — but in Venezuela.
“See?” she said, her face an emoji for “I told you so!”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “No way someone in Delhi can feel an earthquake in Venezuela!”
“But I did feel the tremors!”
“Look,” I said, “There are routine seismic incidents almost every day in some part of the world. You can’t feel them all sitting in your living room!”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realised I’d pushed the needle too far up the Richter scale.
“What’s wrong with sitting in my living room?” she shot back. “Would you prefer that I jump up and down?”
“I didn’t say you should jump up and down.”
“Don’t be so defensive.”
“I’m not being defensive.”
“As a man you can’t accept that a woman can be more sensitive than you are.”
“I actually believe women are more sensitive than most men.”
“So you agree that women are more sensitive than men to seismic tremors?”
“No!”
“Now you are being sexist!”
Sometimes, discretion is the better part of having the last word. So I decided to keep my peace. After all, I had grown up with a mother who would daily scan the papers for reports of earthquakes and retrospectively claim to have felt tremors from places like Samoa, Burundi, and Guatemala. On one occasion she had pulled the exact same trick that my wife did.
There was an earthquake
I must have been around 12 at the time. As usual, I was struggling with my lunch, which consisted of a plateful of hateful cauliflowers. My mother was in the middle of her Mom Ki Baat, which she delivered on loop every single day during mealtime. She was on her thirteenth iteration of the multitudinous health benefits of eating cauliflower when she abruptly fell silent. When I looked up, she whispered, “Big earthquake! Can you feel it?”
Honestly, I would have welcomed a mild earthquake at that point, just potent enough to topple the dining table and save me from having to finish the bhadracauliflower on my plate. But of course, there was no quake. I had to make dietary peace with the vegetable equivalent of Pakistan.
The next morning she thrust the newspaper under my nose, pointing to a news item about a major earthquake, measuring 0.0001 on the Richter scale, that had disturbed the afternoon nap of a spider in Bidjabidjan.
“I don’t believe this!” I said, exasperated. “Do you even know where is Bidjabidjan?”
“How is that relevant?” she said. “I told you there was an earthquake yesterday!”
