RHIP.

This is an acronym heard only amongst the Armed Forces officers. It means Rank Has Its Privileges. The seniors like the Generals, Admirals and Air Marshals get some privileges automatically when they are elevated to those ranks. The rest of the officers also have some privileges to a lesser degree. The privileges vary with the rank and an officer’s position on the totem pole in any unit. The seniors maintain a distance in direct proportion to their rank with the juniors around them. Only a few seniors bridge the gap, come down a few steps and mix freely with the hoi polloi. Such officers gain in popularity and acquire a set of followers who not only obey their commands with alacrity but also emulate them following the principles adopted or enunciated by the seniors. Some juniors assess the potential of the seniors to be the Lord High Commissioners and join their bandwagon for making rapid headway in their respective careers.

This is true in most of the organisations which have a hierarchy and the seniors automatically enjoy the privileges possibly not knowing about the acronym. This is also true in the virtual world and invisible community.

This piece is not about etiquette in the Armed Forces but to show that we at Sulekha also had a totem pole and those who stayed at the top enjoyed some privileges which need no enumeration. But some of them who occupied the top bloggers positions took time off and mixed with bloggers on the lower rungs of the ladder. Some mixed freely and some pretended to do so.

I had the good fortune of meting a top blogger guess where, right in my small abode. She had come down many steps and met me and my better half and filled our hearts with happiness. She came to our house 3 days back but the delay in posting this blog was entirely due to my search for the right words to describe her visit.

It all started with a note wherein she wanted my contact numbers to talk to me during her visit to our city. She said that much as she desired she wouldn’t be able to visit us at home for want of time and nothing else. I immediately gave my numbers, welcomed her to Vizag and expressed my anguish for missing an opportunity to see her in flesh and blood and talk to her.

Fortunately for me things worked out like a dream. Around 5 PM when my wife was leaving for her evening constitutional we got a call from the lady informing me that she was on her way to my flat. First I pinched myself and asked my wife to get out of her walking shoes and get her act together as a domestic engineer. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a red carpet in time.

 I switched off the TV showing a cricket match and donned a bright orange Polo T-shirt. After all I had to preserve my image as Romeo Square and a "could have been big G of the south".

She came on the dot as promised with her husband in tow. My seaman’s eye found it difficult to decide who amongst the couple was smarter.

She along with her husband graced our flat and spent a few hours on that delightful evening with us. While exchanging notes about Bombay we found few common friends and updated our information about them. One of them   did his Doctorate at Lumumba University Moscow. We agreed that he was an unqualified genius and had some idiosyncrasies bordering on insanity. We also talked about kings and queens of bloggers and the various changes being introduced at Sulekha, especially the good ones like publishing books of blogs.

I took this opportunity to present her my two books with a flourishing note and signature and blew my own trumpet for sometime. She must have thought that I suffer from bouts of delusion of grandeur or some of the qualities of my friend might have rubbed on me and endured me without any visible signs of irritation. On the contrary she maintained a quarter of smile throughout.

She on the other hand talked sensibly with total absence of any affectation, pretensions or vanity. Even when she announced that her poem was included in the first book being published by Sulekha she almost sounded apologetic.

She came across as a simple person with inbuilt charm and grace that needed no further embellishments. She won the hearts of my entire household including our children and grandchildren staring at us from their photos at their lofty perch on the pelmets.

Her husband suave, smart and neatly dressed in an ethnic outfit was a picture of dignity and perfect composure. He gave me the impression that even a violent storm wouldn’t ruffle his hair. The couple as a unit looked picture perfect; he a dignified engineer who talked with each word placed in correct position and symmetry and she a woman of letters using each word measured carefully.

The only disappointing feature (if it can be called that) of the few hours they spent in my house is that the gentleman had not done justice to my B/L.

They had on their hands an important job to distribute the invitations for their daughter’s wedding scheduled on 15^th May and many calls to make. When they took leave they left us with a mixed feeling of immense happiness for visiting us and anguish that they were leaving so soon.

It is now time to give the name of our visitor who is none other than one of our top bloggers, Mrs Nargis Natarajan. My wife and I wished the couple well and also conveyed our best wishes for their daughter’s marriage.