Bikram Choudhury, the yoga guru of Madonna and Michael Jackson among other celebrities living in California's Beverly Hills, had a brilliant reply when someone confronted him with his alleged sexual indiscretions. He claimed that his students blackmail him into having sex with them. "What happens when they say they will commit suicide unless you sleep with them?" he asked rhetorically. "Sometimes, having an affair is the only way to save someone's life." Yes, indeed. Nearer home, my mom, who regularly attends a religious leader's katha-kalakshepams (musical discourses) defends her master, who has more than one wife. The leader tied the "three knots" of the thali - or the sacred thread that signifies matrimony - on these devotee-women because of similar threats. Of course, he says he maintains only platonic relationships with them. Ah, sannyasis (renunciates), who have vowed celibacy, marry and claim they remain celibate! The nice thing they have going for them is that they don't have to defend themselves - their students do it fiercely.

I am fascinated by how well they extricate themselves out of impossible situations and yet maintain a straight face. And now when I read stories about all the exciting political scams around the world in newspapers, I can't help admiring these swindlers, who come out of every situation unscathed, their reputation intact.

All you need to excel in this art is to have the presence of mind of the young man, a thief, who was caught climbing a coconut tree. The owner confronts the man, so the story goes, demanding to know what he was doing up on the tree. "Picking grass," replied the young man, nonchalantly.

"And pray, how would you find grass on the coconut tree?" the owner was baffled.

"Precisely. I realized that, and that's why I got down!!" replied the man, unfazed.

I did develop a presence of mind, thanks to my abiding love for sweets. Those were my childhood days in Allahabad; my mother would prepare sweets like ‘laddoos' and ‘gulabjamuns' and keep them in stainless steel containers in the loft. My elder sister, a self-appointed ringleader, would conspire with our cousin on how to steal the cookies, but would have none of me, the ‘buddhu' - or, the nincompoop. How could they forget the way I stood, transfixed, eyes and mouth agape, when the gardener caught me gathering the raw mangoes thrown down by my brother and sister perched on the tree? The duo managed to run away and there I was, absolutely defenceless. But for a child, it is horrible to be ignored by her peers. So I convinced them that I would do better this time around. My sister, being the eldest of us all, climbed the stool and reached for the steel box.

The next minute she was face-to-face with mother, her hands in the cookie jar. I did not lose my cool, but tried putting on an innocent look. I said my sister was counting how many cookies were there, as we had a bet on the number. It would not have convinced my mother, but perhaps it did invoke some kind of pride in having created an object of desire. She gave us some ‘laddoos' and said ‘you could have asked'.

We kids knew no mother could satisfy our incurable itch. So we perfected our tools. I was always made the guard to the entrance, and I would alert them in ways no mother would guess. But the vanishing cookies and the dental caries that we carried raised such a stink that my mother had to lock the store room. Yet, in her innocence about the ways of the kids' world, she would leave the keys at accessible points. Later she became wiser, and conspired with a maid servant to keep tabs on us.

Once again, we rose to the occasion. We bribed her with some of the stolen cookies, or if that didn't work, we would threaten to expose her own misdeeds.

As we entered our teens, we slowly mended our ways. We regaled our parents with all the stories of our escapades, and now, in turn, my parents recount with pride these stories to everyone. For, both my elder sister and cousin work in software companies as administrators in charge of data security. They know how to take care of the ‘cookies'.