Ajith Nair

Mumbai has just released its ‘fines’ data. Most fines have been levied on people peeing on roads (65%) followed by those spitting. The fines have been levied by special beat marshals who’ve been recruited to reprimand and levy fines from citizens for various reasons. There are 120 odd marshals which essentially means one marshal for 1.5 lakh citizens! The equivalent cop ratio is one cop every 50000 citizens. These beat marshals have been assigned wards within which they’re supposed to operate. I head out every day to work but haven’t seen these Marshals ever, not surprising given the ratio above. If we try and analyse how the average Marshal might work, the truth is simple. There are certainly more number of people peeing than chewing paan and spitting. Everybody needs to pee but not everyone needs to chew paan and spit. If we did then we might have bigger industry players in the paan business than just the nukkad panwala. The fines for spitting and peeing are the same. Anyone who’s li

Am glad the old sardar finally spoke on the Tharoor controversy. Never one to be forceful but saying “it’s a joke” sent enough of a message I guess to the holy cows. But then the damage has been done. The elephant’s in the room isn’t it? Tharoor wears his personality on his ministry, totting a blackberry, frequently a mundu (traditional Malayali dhoti) and twitting through the day. Followers of his posts will vouch that while the secrets of Sharm Al sheikh haven’t been shared yet but there’s been enough to feed to curiosity of an eager intelligent polity. No wonder he has more followers now than Priyanka Chopra. Tharoor is seen as the firang in the current cabinet, suitably under the ‘Foreign minister’ label. In a party where innumerable chants of Gandhi and immeasurable measures of sycophancy might land you at best a front row seat in a rally, Tharoor is clearly an outsider. He is considered an upstart who managed to get to the corridors of power because someone sensible pushed his

One of my favorite brands is passing through tough times. Jet Airways, is yet to sort out the pilot mess that it has walked into. From a service perspective, pilots have always been a given in the scheme of things. Except a comment or two on the quality of landing they make, and the announcement that is made at the beginning of the flight which mentions who’s at the helm , the pilot is considered to be on auto pilot, a given. He is a bit like those faceless auto and taxiwallahs who ferry lakhs of passengers to from their destinations in Mumbai. The airline experience is defined entirely by his other colleagues, who check you in, board you, serve you and take care of you in the aluminum cabin. It’s also defined by employees who man the call centers, the ticketing offices and other touchpoints. It’s on these counts that Jet Airways has been delightful. Having flown the airline for the last 8 years fairly frequently, I can bet my last dollar on its service being on time, crisp, no nonse

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Independence means 1. Having cutting chai thela right outside a five star 2. Randomly chatting up neighbour on bus and getting an equally heartfelt response 3. Laughing at the same jokes, cringing at the same irritants 4. Creating' Indian Chinese cuisine and then mixing it with Punjabi in the same meal 5. Having an opinion on any mundane thing and sending SMSs to a random TV poll on the same (and getting a mention on air too... rarely!) 6. Kasab getting a fair trial 7. Marrying a woman from another language, region, caste, religion, social status, upbringing and yet having a child who's inherently Indian 8. Everyone being as suspectible to swine flu ;) 9. Watching pirated DVDs and shedding genuine tears 10.Having ur finger inked every five years so what if the candidate list isn't spectacular Jai Hind

Saw a man who attempted flicking a woman’s cell phone get mercilessly bashed up by two otherwise shady looking characters who conveniently assumed a moral high ground. In Mumbai we have a term for this, it’s called “haath dhoke lena”. The other day in Surat, a mob lynched two rapists from under the nose of some cops. It didn’t help that the rapists were Muslims, good old Gujarati bias also came to the fore I guess. Shiney Ahuja and his hapless maid are both get a similar haath dhona treatment from the media and public at large. The media is peddling stories of morality, sleaze and virtue and has pronounced him guilty. It doesn’t help that his wife comes out in the open and makes some pretty obnoxious statements (“even a man can get raped”) accompanied by what looked like a kitty party jing-bang of neighbouring aunties. The poor maid of course is the butt of many an insensitive jokes doing the rounds on sms and newspapers. In Bengal, Maoists are openly challenging the Govt to fight them

Has this been the most intelligent mandate ever by the Indian electorate? Not a particularly big fan of any party, I feel happy at the apparent logic that seems to have governed most voting patterns. Open to debate, most of the under are surmises from my limited understanding of Indian politics 1. People voted for non divisive, forward looking, development based agendas. Recrimination, slander and personality based campaigning was given the boot 2. The BJP suffered from not having a convincing clear positioning of what it stood for. A negative fallout of this defeat could be the re-emergence of Mandir based politics. India could well do without that era again 3. Every state took a hard look at who's standing and voted. There was no blinding imagery or larger than life persona effects which overtook the psyche of people. Rational voting at its best 4. It worries me that the MNS got a fair mandate in Mumbai though they never won any seat. Doesn't augur too well for the fabric of

Mumbai has seen a lower turnout than last time. Blame it on 1. Long weekend, most have voted with their feet for vacation spots around the city 2. Summer heat- people rather chill out at home than sweat it out poring over largely uninspiring candidate lists 3. What's in it for me- no real immediate faayda for a city used to immediate gratification 4. Offices remain open- Inspite of govt orders, offices functioned. What would you rather do, propitiate your irate boss or vote for that candidate you never ever saw? 5. Redrawing of constituencies- Familiar candidates now might be contesting from other constituencies. Unfamiliarity breeds absence I did vote, in relative comfort. Most booths were empty.

The accessories of the Father of the Nation have been rescued by the Frother of the Nation. I wonder if the great man in Khadi would have approved, cared, laughed or just shrugged it away. In true jingoistic fashion, the nation is celebrating the return of the treasure that ‘truly belongs to us’. It helps that our Knight in shining armour also happens to be the most flamboyant face of emerging India. For some, the paradox of the event is not lost. Beer baron, sybarite, ladies man, uses lucre to buy the belongings of someone who was anything but all these. There is a bigger question that needs to be asked and I dare to. Why is it that the urge to reclaim something that is ‘rightfully ours’ emerges only when an outsider attempts to capture that space. Slumdog Millionaire with all its generalizations and fantasies, made India suddenly sit up and want to stake claim for its street kids and urchins. Otherwise shoo-ed away or summarily dismissed without rolling down car windows, these kids

These are tough times for the sub continent. Sri Lanka thought it had won the war against the LTTE but then realized that it’s not over until it’s over. The Bangladeshi rifles went berserk, India went through 26/11, Pakistan is under ever increasing threat of falling to the Taliban and now the Lankan cricketers have been targeted in Pakistan. The Govt of India is reviewing feasibility of IPL given elections in April, May. Rubbish. Terror wars are creeping to our doors and the ploy now seems to be around doing the unexpected, taking by surprise and making the unexpected happen. I sympathize with the average Pakistani and the average Lankan. They probably don’t have too much to do with the reasons why an LTTE was born or why Taliban entered their country. Yet they seem to have been unwillingly cast in the dramatic chapters of how the terror war will ensue. They are props who will play corpses, maimed strugglers and terrified by standers. Some might go beyond their ‘designate’ roles and

What promised to end as an obituary now is a fantastic story of rebirth and resurrection. As you might have guessed from the title the villain, the vanquished and the villain of this story is that four letter Govt telecom company. Yours truly is a side hero, one who's as dispensible as Amar Singh's wit. Four weeks ago, the MTNL Triband connection whimpered to a halt. The data transfer light on my modem made occasional blinked like a lighthouse far away. I promptly rang the Helpline. The Help part of helpline in my opinion, needs an exclamation mark after it if it has to aptly describe the state of poor souls who seek its umbrage. A Maharashtrian aunty who had just finished cutting vegetables for the next day picked up the phone and said "Kya problem hai" I restrained pouring my heart filled with problems and told her the facts. "Complaint no 4508. Thud". I felt deprived and consigned to a shit hole like in the movie Slumdog Millionaire After a few days of wa