When the sun stops shining

When the sun stops shiningPunam Khaira Sidhu

NO I did not know Sunanda Pushkar. But I admired the dignity and dexterity with which she handled the IPL fracas, and then the pictures of her wedding were just so beautiful. You just had to pause to look, because the fact that the two people were in love shone through every picture.

And that I can relate to, having had a taste of being irretrievably in love. Love is such a profound, uplifting, emotion but it can change a woman in indefinable ways breeding a dangerous dependence.

Strong, sensible women usually fall harder. My father, who knows me better than anyone else, always tells me that I will become 'whole' only when I get over the man I love. Sad but true because 23 years on, I know that like the Carpenters song, the sun stops shining, when he and I are at odds.

Why do I, a strong professional woman, allow myself to fall to pieces over a man? I have a professionally satisfying career, fabulous sons, great parents, supportive friends, creative skills, but the world is right only when he and I are right, and that sadly is the way the cookie crumbles.

And so too did Sunanda crumble. Here was a woman who had pulled herself up from a small town in Jammu, travelled to Dubai and Canada, while continuing to support her family and trying to make a life for her son and herself. The world is not kind to attractive single women and I'm sure she did not have an easy time. But she did her best and she had succeeded. And then she fell in love and threw caution and the life she had built to the wind to follow the man she loved.

When things went wrong, she crumbled, but there was more here. As a woman in love, I know that I would never hold back the man I love, if he wanted to move on, even if it killed me. And that is what one of Sunanda's tweets said. So this was not a woman scorned. This was a woman who was not loved enough — the way she wanted. And I believe that perhaps was what was destroying her. Perhaps she felt her trust had not been kept. That she had staked her reputation and goodwill and put herself out on a limb for the man she loved and who she thought loved her back. Disappointed, she once hit out at the man she loved. Before her death, the two had announced to the world that they were happily married.

So let's just raise a toast to a strong, beautiful woman, who was a great mother, a great daughter, a great wife and someone who could have been more if only she had had the chance and not fallen in love with an unsuitable boy. R.I.P. Sunanda, and chin up Shiv — your fabulous mother will always be watching over you.

Khushwants columns

THROUGH a lifetime spent reading books, I have learnt to regard bestsellers with suspicion. Whenever I have succumbed to the temptation of reading what everyone is reading and see the title of the book and name of the author on top of the bestseller lists of journal week after week, I have been sorely disappointed.

EARLIER COLUMNS

Of scarecrows and political satire February 28, 2004

The importance of punctuating thought February 21, 2004

Ghalib knew his worth February 14, 2004

In the sunset of their lives February 7, 2004

Chennai, the city of achievers January 31, 2004

Pakistanis are like us only January 24, 2004

Farid was the first to use Punjabi in poetry January 17, 2004

Sahir’s tortured soul January 10, 2004

The colourful story of dull dictionary January 03, 2004

Guru Gobind Singh did not want to separate God from God December 27, 2003

The art of doing nothing December 20, 2003

Manto’s description of the mayhem of 1947 December 13, 2003

Election fever spreads November 29, 2003

Jayalalithaa has grown more enigmatic with time November 22, 2003

It is different with books which have won awards like the Booker, Pulitzer, Goncourt, Thomas Cooks (for travel) or Whitbread: they have been scanned by critics who can tell the difference between the good and the not-so-good writing. That is not so in the case of bestsellers. The classic example is Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (Harper Collins). It has been on the top of the bestseller lists round the world for months on end and sold over twenty million copies. It raised my curiosity but I had no intention of buying and reading it till my friend Punam Sidhu Khaira rang me up from Chandigarh to tell me about it. She was ecstatic: "I can’t put it down," she said in a breathless voice. "I will get back to you after you have read it."

So I borrowed a copy from another friend and read it in two days: it is only 175 pages in bold print and written in simple, lucid prose. It is the story of a Spanish boy (the author is Brazilian) who discards his studies to become a shepherd. He drives his flock of sheep across the Andalusian plains from one pasture land to another. His only companions are his sheep. He sleeps with them under the stars or in derelict buildings. One night while sleeping in a broken-down chapel under a Sycamore tree, he ponders over the purpose of life. He concludes that everything — animate, or inanimate — has its destiny to fulfil. Life is a gamble: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Coelho writes: "We are afraid of losing what we had, whether it is our life or our possessions and property. But the fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

Thus encouraged by a wise old man he meets, he is assured that a vast treasure awaits him, if he has daring to look for it at the foot of the pyramids in Egypt. So the boy sells his flock of sheep and crosses over to northern Africa. He is robbed of his money and takes up a job of cleaning and selling crystalware. When he has saved enough, he joins a caravan which will take him across the Sahara desert to his destination. Among others in the caravan is an English alchemist who is looking for the philosopher’s stone, which can turn base metal into gold, and the elixir of life, which will make man immortal. They have many adventures. At an oasis the boy meets an Arab girl and falls in love with her. But his ambition drives him on. He is taken captive by marauding tribesmen and beaten up. He does not give up his quest. At the base of the pyramids, he digs for the treasure he is looking for. He finds a stone with an inscription which when deciphered advises him to look for his treasure under the Sycamore tree of the ruined chapel where he had first dreamt about it. He returns to it and digs, and lo and behold, he finds a treasure chest full of gold, silver and precious stones. He can now fetch the Arab girl from her tent in the oasis in the Sahara desert, marry her and live happily ever after.

It is an allegoric tale with a message: Keep striving, don’t let setbacks deter you and surely you will get what you dreamt of getting. It is not great writing but will appeal to those who religiously read The Readers’ Digest as a literary magazine.

Ramma Bans

Defying age: Ramma Bans

Ramma Bans has turned 80, she looks 50. When I first got to know her in Bombay she was 50; she looked 30. The secret of her youthfulness is having spent a lifetime looking after her body and teaching others how to look after theirs. For many years, she managed Taj Hotel’s health club where I spent an hour or more every other evening, sweating in the sauna and running on the treadmill before plunging into an icy-cold pool to cool off. I felt on top of the world.

Ramma lived in a flat close by mine in Colaba. Often in the early hours when I sat in my balcony reading the morning paper, I saw her striding along the road on her way to the Taj. There was nothing feminine in her walk; she marched like a soldier on her way to the parade ground, her curling jet-black hair bobbing up and down as she went along. We became good friends. Once she persuaded me to have a facial. I can never forget the sensuous touch of her soft, gentle fingers going over my eyelids, nibbling my earlobes and all over my face like a light feather. Once a week, she would take me to dine with her former husband I.S. Johar, who lived alone in a large flat in Lotus Court. Those moments were memorable. Johar was never at home when we arrived. Ramma would ring him up at the CCI (Cricket Club of India), where he spent his evenings playing bridge to tell him we had arrived and ask him to bring some Chinese food from the club. Ramma and I had an hour to ourselves to cuddle the snoring Pekinese bitch Pheeno (snub-nosed) and indulge in some mild flirtation.

The atmosphere changed when Johar arrived with cartons of spring rolls and chopsuey. He would spread himself on his mattress on the floor and pour out a drink for me. While Ramma was busy getting dinner ready, Johar regaled me with stories of his exploits with young women. I had no great opinion of him as an actor or a director, but I had to concede he was a master story-teller. He mixed small bits of facts with liberal doses of make-believe. After dinner, Ramma walked back with me to my flat. She never accepted my invitation to come in.

I was never sure of Ramma’s marital status. I was there in Lahore when she married I.S. Johar. She bore him a son and a daughter. Then ditched him to marry Bans in Delhi, where she ran her beauty parlour. She then ditched Bans and returned to Bombay but lived apart from Johar. I often teased her as being the only Hindu woman I knew who had two husbands at one time. Her reply was always a winsome smile.

Ramma has much to chortle about. She took pains to learn the kinds of diet and exercise an individual requires to have the right weight, remove flabs of unsightly flesh and make the skin glow. She came to be much sought after by girls aspiring to become beauty queens and film stars. Amongst those who made it to the top were Sushmita Sen, Lymraina D’Souza and Yukta Mookhey. Ramma Bans runs Weight-n-Watch Club in Mumbai.

Thumb-sucking

Dr Banta Singh was the new village physician. One day a lady brought her son to him and said: "Doctor, please see if you can stop my son from sucking his thumb." The doctor carefully examined the young lad and then wrote out his prescription. The mother looked at the prescription and exclaimed: "Doctor, this is no prescription for medicine. You have simply written that I should buy him new short pants three sizes too large. How will that help?" The doctor answered: "Madam, your son will be so busy holding up his pants that he will hardly be able to suck his thumb."

(Contributed by Brig Sukhjit Singh, Kapurthala)

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Khushwant

THIS ABOVE ALL
In the sunset of their lives
Khushwant Singh

THERE were a few English families which even during the hey day of the Raj preferred friendship with Indians over friendship with their own kind. They lent tacit support to the freedom movement, stayed in India after it gained Independence and reluctantly returned to England when their bread-winners retired. They continued to retain their India connections as best as they could by keeping open house for their friends visiting England.

On the Indian side, such friendships were restricted to the Black sahibs or wogs (westernised Oriental gentlemen) who could meet the Brits on equal terms, speak their language as well as they spoke it, have the same taste for food and liquor and subscribe to the same values. It was a small community which did not gloat over the end of British rule as good riddance to an oppressor but continued to harbour nostalgic memories about it. Most of them are now dead or in the sunset of their lives. I was lucky in enjoying such friendship with a few: Sinbad Sinclair (Burmah Shell), Charlton (The Statesman), Croom Johnson (British Council), Guy Wint (The Guardian), Zinkin (Lever Brothers). Whenever anyone of them visited Delhi, they stayed with me. Whenever I went to England, I stayed with one of them in London or Oxford.

Sinbad died quite some time ago. I can never forget his description of this last meeting with Pandit Gobind Ballabh Pant to settle terms of the take-over of Burmah Shell by the Indian Government. Both men suffered from Parkinson’s disease and their hands shook while holding the draft of the agreement in their fingers. Wint had a stroke in the train on his way from Oxford to spend the weekend with me in London. He was the next to go. I spent one summer with his wife Freda and their two children in their home in Oxford. Freda converted to Buddhism. She is 92. Henry Croom Johnson went some six years ago; his wife followed a few months later. The same happened with the Zinkins: Maurice died last year; Taya followed a few months later. Of my closer English friends, only Elinor Sinclair, who is the same age as I, remains. I was told her memory was fast failing. However, when I called on her in London about four years ago I noticed no lapse of memory. She asked about every member of my family, had me autograph books I had sent her and told me she was writing her Indian memoirs. Some months ago, I wrote to her from Kasauli. I got no reply. I concluded she too had deserted me. Fortunately that was no so. Her daughter Margaret, who looks after her, had responded but her letter never reached me.

A few days ago, Sinbad’s son Mark Sinclair rang me up from London to tell me he would be spending an evening with me and bring a copy of Margaret’s letter. So he did. It said her mother was in poor shape. Her memory was gone, she was confined to a wheel-chair. She also mentioned Joy Charlton who had been in good health but had suddenly died while she was at work. The Statesman, which her husband had edited for many years in Delhi and Calcutta, did not have a word about her going.

It was a long evening by the fire-side. Mark who looks the spitting image of his father from the snow-white mop of hair down to his toes has his mother’s intonation. He went down the list of obituaries. I felt like one in a deserted banquet hall from where others had departed. I recalled lines from Thomas Moor’s Oft in the Still Night:

When I remember all

The friends so linked together

I’ve seen around me fall

Like leaves in wintry weather.

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed....."

Lovely laddoos

By way of a Lohri gift, Poonam Sidhu Khaira of Chandigarh sent me a box of laddoos and panjiri (a kind of dried halwa). They were tastefully packed in a box, bearing the Sikh logo Ek Onkar in large letters with the name and address of confectioners Lovely Jalandhar Cantonment. I have tasted nothing better in the way of mithai. In my thank-you letter, I expressed surprise that such excellent stuff could have been produced by sardars not famous for their skills as halwais. Who was Mr Lovely? She sent me the details. It turned out to be a heart-warming success story.

EARLIER COLUMNS

Chennai, the city of achievers January 31, 2004

Pakistanis are like us only January 24, 2004

Farid was the first to use Punjabi in poetry January 17, 2004

Sahir’s tortured soul January 10, 2004

The colourful story of dull dictionary January 03, 2004

Guru Gobind Singh did not want to separate God from God December 27, 2003

The art of doing nothing December 20, 2003

Manto’s description of the mayhem of 1947 December 13, 2003

Election fever spreads November 29, 2003

Jayalalithaa has grown more enigmatic with time November 22, 2003

Languages need infusion of foreign blood November 15, 2003

You cannot take your wealth to the other world November 8, 2003

In love with death November 1, 2003

The confectioners known as the Lovely Group are not Sikhs as I had presumed from the logo, but Mittal banias who had a modest army contract business in Sialkot (Pakistan). After Partition, they moved to Jalandhar, hoping to resume that business with the Indian Army. They did not do as well as they had hoped. The eldest Baldev Raj decided to go into confectionery as a side business: every bania has mithai in his blood. He was an instant success. He opened his shop for only two hours in the evening from 6 to 8 p.m. Everything he made got sold out by then. In 1986, it became a full-fledged mithai shop. For reasons unknown, they named it Lovely. Soon they were catering for large wedding parties and other celebrations in Punjab, Kashmir, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan.

I am not sure whether it was Lovely’s laddoos that persuaded Rahul Bajaj to give the dealership of his motor cycles to the Lovely Group when he visited Jalandhar in 1991. Five years later, they got the Maruti Agency as well. Today the annual turnover of this once impoverished refugee family from Pakistan, is over Rs 120 crore.

Baldev Raj has three sons: Romesh, Naresh and Ashok. They live under one roof, but work in different offices. The family is giving back to the people some of the prosperity it owes them. They started with the Lovely Institute of Management and added institutes of engineering, pharmacy, architecture, law and education to it. They now plan to set up a university.

Junglee city

There is an Urdu quarterly Tamseel-e-Nau, edited by Dr Imam Azam of Qilaghat, Burdwan, which I make a point to read: it has good articles, short stories and poems. In its last issue, I came across a short poem by Shahid Kadeem Ara entitled Yeh Tasveer Nahin Jungle Kee (this is not the picture of a jungle). It tells its own tale in a few memorable lines. I render a very free translation :

Lofty mountains and running streams,

Cluster of trees with green leaves,

A tiger springs with all its might

On a thirsty deer in full flight

A snake has a frog in its mouth,

The frog in its mouth a butterfly

It is not the picture of a jungle, it is a lie,

It is the picture of a city doomed to die

It has humans but no humanity.

Happily Ever After

Happily ever after
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

Newspapers report a galloping increase in Indian divorce rates. Are Indian marriages headed for euthanasia? An actor is reported as saying that he beheld his sleeping wife and realised what the pattern of his life would be: “..waking up next to the same woman each morning”. Expectedly, he walked out on her shortly thereafter.

My father, and mother who recently marked 46 years together, would perhaps have reacted differently. To my father, his sleeping wife’s form may have evoked initial concern for her well-being, followed by irritation for her tardiness. And conversely, I am certain that when my father lies supine and snoring, my mother does not ever stop to ponder if that is the blueprint for her life. She arrived in her husband’s home in a Doli and will leave there only on an “Arthi” (bier). I often see melancholy but never despondency in her eyes. She still believes that she can and will reform my Father. But aren’t they the Generation-Past?

Gen-Now raised on Chat and action @ speed of thought possess short attention spans and faster rates of ennui. My older teenager started his innings in the girlfriend stakes two years ago, assuring me solemnly that he was a one-woman man. A year later, he had worked his way through several successive girlfriends. The girls aren’t crying their hearts out for him, either. They are moving on, with different boyfriends. Maybe just teenagers growing up or maybe the shape of things to come ?

Men, with some honorable exceptions, are chauvinistic. Marriages in India survived because women lacked choice and were raised with a strong socialisation in being the good daughter, wife and mother. Augmenting this was the stigma attached to divorce. Gen-Now women have lower flashpoints and the time-honored traditions of sacrificial dogsbody are fading. Girls today are reared with far more equitable choices than the social-stereotyping of yore. Education has empowered them with financial independence and endowed them with choice. It’s when the realisation dawns on a woman that she doesn’t need a man to bring to fruition her aspirations, or tolerate shabby treatment, that perhaps the countdown to the end of a marriage begins. Divorced and single women are also increasingly finding surrogate families in friends and colleagues, ie the new “Urban Tribes”.

Modern-day stories are thus not reading, “…and they lived happily ever after”. The message for marriages to survive is perhaps for men to evolve, because women are evolving and exercising their choices. But if, like my mother, 46 years on, the presence of a silver-haired man fighting a losing battle with his waistline, still fills you with a warm sense of well-being, then do start coordinating the buntings, crockery and napkins for your golden or diamond anniversaries. After all love, tolerance and marriage deserve to be saluted and what better tribute than an anniversary celebration.

Book review: the guru by Mala Dyal

Distinctive strokes
Punam Khaira Sidhu

Nanak: The Guru
by Mala Dayal. Illustrations by Arpana Caur. Rupa. Pages 48. Rs 195.

AS a parent of one teenager and one tweenie (pre-teen), I am often concerned by their lack of interest in reading books. Television and video games dominate their leisure time. If this generation is to be weaned away from their plasma screens and I-pods, the subject has to be a visual treat strong enough to grab their eyeballs and the text has be pithy and brief. Mala Dayal, the author who has been involved with developing, selecting, editing and writing material for children for over 30 years, has clearly imbibed this lesson well because, in this collaboration with Arpana Caur, the artist, she achieves near perfection. The Ardas offered by every Sikh is to invoke Lord’s blessings to bless him with the strength and the will to read and listen to the scriptures, "Bani padhan te sunan da bal bakhsho", which is indeed a fine introduction to the Guru’s legacy for a child.

In the space of 48 pages, most of the Janamsakhis associated with Guru Nanak Devji’s life find a place in this book in a language that is simple and lucid, yet conveys the essence of the Guru’s life and teachings through its simplicity. The prose is used as an effective medium for the Guru’s message. The teachings of Guru Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs who laid the foundation of the fine traditions of langar and exhorted people to rise above caste and material considerations because they were all children of one God, are as relevant today as they were when He composed the Japji Sahib, Asa di Var and Mul Mantra beneath the early morning sky in Kartarpur in the 1500s. This is a book a child or an adult can read in one sitting, yet gain a pleasing insight into the life of a visionary and a leader of men of all faiths. The author puts it succinctly through the saying "Baba Nanak Shah Fakir, Hindu ka Guru, Musalman ka Pir".

Mala Dayal, who is publisher Ravi Dayal’s wife, has dedicated the book to her father, the celebrated author Khushwant Singh, for whom this was a surprise Baisakhi gift this year. Caur’s painting of the Guru Granth Sahib, protecting her grandfather and carrying his belongings in a sack from Pakistan in her "Partition Series" has always been a personal favourite. The visuals in this book are in Caur’s trademark style of stocky figures with their strong folk motif underpinnings, the colours rich and textured to complement the elegant pared down text. The mala and khadava of the Guru have been used as a leitmotif throughout.

When I first browsed through Roopinder Singh’s Guru Nanak—His Life and Teachings, also by Rupa, my immediate reaction was: "Here’s a Collectors Edition at paperback prices". I remember buying several copies for NRI friends and family, who look forward to books, which will introduce their children to the Gurus and indeed to the Sikh faith and maryada. Mala Dayal’s Guru Nanak is another book in the same genre, though for a younger audience. It has evocative illustrations. As a parent, it is my sincere hope that this collaboration of author and artist will not stop at this single volume.

HOME

When men Cry

When men cry
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

My teenaged son had been the undefeated champion in the 100 metre dash for the last three years. Every year, after the sports day finale, when we went to collect him from the stands, his chest covered in gold and silver medals, it was evident that the medal that brought him the most satisfaction was the dash.

On the D-Day this year, instead of the sports staff, the school had engaged professionals to identify the winners in each race. They stood confused, being nudged by the students holding the finishing tape, the official photographers, and eager parents being shooed away by stern school marms.

Our son ran a magnificent race in the outermost lane. We watched him take the lead and maintain it to the finish. As we waited for him to take the victory stand along came the googly. We watched in surprise and dismay as the so-called professionals completely ignored him and put him nowhere among the top three. This was not a case of “participating and losing” but of “winning and losing”. Whatever happened, was all we could ask in shocked dismay.

While we as parents were outraged what of the child who had run and won? The school staff, sensing the little commotion, stepped in with its damage control. “We shall look into it”. “Rest assured, we shall see that justice is done”. While our senses rankled at the injustice done, what of the young man-child?

School rules did not permit parents to have any contact with the child until after the function. But his teachers later told us he cried. For a teenager there is nothing more sissy than tears. He would rather be caught with his pants down, than with tears in his eyes.

Feeling let down, vulnerable, and despondent, our son wept like a baby. His slight, weary face awash with saline, his bewhiskered teenaged cheeks furrowed with fat tears. It was a measure of his dejection and disappointment that he succumbed to the tears he so despised and did not run the next event.

I remember responding to a senior officer’s diktat with a “…but that’s not fair” remark, only to be snubbed with the cynical response of, “…it’s an unfair world, and I am surprised that you have come this far without realising it”.

This was how my husband responded as did indeed some of the teachers there: No platitudes, the world is a harsh, unfair place and the sooner our children learn this, the better for them.

With all of them, I beg to disagree. Childhood and innocence deserve to be cherished. Our children need to be nurtured in an atmosphere where righteousness, fairplay and integrity rule their little worlds, so that they grow up believing that justice and truth always prevail and that wrongs will be righted.

Only then will they emerge strong, brave and armed to face the onslaughts of unfair reality. Only then will they be audacious and indeed courageous enough to pick up the gauntlet to constantly challenge and fashion a better reality.

To allow the cynicism of an unfair world to scar their childhood, is to crush their idealism in the bud and train them to submit to the status quo and the dumb charades that we as adults acquiesce in.

Leaf Dance

Leaf dance
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

It’s that time of the year when winter has all but faded and spring is in the air. It’s when deciduous trees and shrubs shed their foliage to stand tall in all their bare-bodied glory of strong branches and sturdy trunks. Tiny buds soon arrive heralding the onset of spring and the long hot summer ahead.

Piles of leaves mound the roadsides: brown, beige, red, golden, caramel, rust, toffee, chocolate, the colours of rest and hibernation. The wind comes along lifting them up. Golden brown leaves, wrinkled yet crackling with energy. The leaves dance along the roads. Briefly, each gust of wind carrying the little piles up in a charming dance.

My heart dances too, at one with the leaves, and very briefly I am transported to a garden that is seeped in memories of tenderness. My grandmother’s garden comes alive. The leaves dancing oh so merrily and us little ones tumbling into the piles raked neatly by the gardener for leaf manure.

Why do leaves change colour, grandma? I remember asking. Grandma, one of the first five women graduates in the undivided Panjab usually, had an answer for everything. First would come the lesson in biology. Leaves get their green colour from chlorophyll, a pigment that enables them to process sunlight, I remember being told. Usually the chlorophyll pigment dominates and makes leaves look green. When chlorophyll moves from the leaves to the branches, trunk, and roots, the yellow and orange pigments that are always present become visible.

“Trees,” said my grandma, “like us need to store as many nutrients as they can to enable rejuvenation in spring.” Throughout the winter, trees accumulate Carotenoids (sugars) and anthocyanins (phosphates). As sugar accumulates, the leaves turn brighter red. Red colour is nature’s sunscreen. It shades the chlorophyll so it doesn’t break down and thereby conserves the supply needed to put forth fresh foliage.

In the newly sprung foliage, the red pigments of the anthocyanins shade sensitive photosynthetic tissue while trees reabsorb nutrients from their leaves to put forth new growth.

Biology lesson over, it was usually time for grandma to transport us to a world peopled by little people like us: Brownies, Elves, Fairies and all those denizens of an enchanted world so far removed from the fantasy worlds of today’s children peopled by weaponry and bloodthirsty assassins in games such as Counterstrike.

In that enchanted tale the Brownies rode down from their abode in the trees, astride the golden brown leaves to attend midsummer-night feasts and spring soirees. My grandmother usually exhorted us to go find a Brownie and hold him tight until he granted us a wish.

And at this time of the year part of me always peers surreptitiously under the dancing leaves hoping to spot an elusive Brownie. Perhaps I haven’t quite stopped hoping that I will find one who will trade me a wish for his freedom. And so I watch the leaves tumbling in a wild abandon of gold and rust, and my heart dances along too.