Ajith Nair

Hugging complete strangers and all that…

2011-04-03T14:21:00.001+05:30

Looked like it will be yet another Saturday of household chores, family and then catching the world cup final at home from the confines of one’s couch.
A tweet offering last minute tickets was bait, a huge one. It not only meant paying a bomb but also getting out of the couch getting to Wankhede in no time, no time for mental preparations, if you know what I mean. Time was running away. In 60 minutes, I had the decision, the tickets in place and that nervous feeling which said “What am I headed to”
A suburban local train ride in Mumbai always puts things in perspective. It was ‘me’ time, almost like I was preparing for the game. Bat first get to 300, if we chase we lose, will Sachin get to 100, who’ll play Malinga, what if he does a Kenya to us. I looked around and everyone in the compartment seemed on their way to work or some such, I seemed out of place, why weren’t these guys excited, nervous, chatting about the game. I had to talk to myself; there was no one around who seemed interested.
An hour or so later, I reached what looked like my worst nightmare. The longest queue ever, unruly, crazy, everyone chanting slogans, looked like I will miss the national anthem at the stadium. I did not want to miss the goose bumps galore, the million waving flags, the “Sachin Sachin” chants, the players practicing; the preamble rituals that make the ceremony grand. A police constable made the nightmare worse. He looked at my ticket and said “Son, this is not even your gate, its about half a km away” I was running already, so were many thousands who desperately tried to locate their gate. In retrospect, I realized that the ticket had directions clearly provided, it was one of those days when you don’t read, you just go with the flow. Gods were with me, Gate no 5 turned out to be a dream getting in. In five mins I was at Tier 3, H Block, North Stand, seat no 747.
Everyone was a stranger to begin with, but one round of ‘Sachin’ chant and the ice was broken. I found a buddy from Hongkong and an elderly gentleman and family who seemed to be from Delhi. We started with spotting players and naming then, going onto strategy, tactics, team compositions, all in the space of 15mins. The national anthem began and a sea of humanity stood still, frozen by those 60 secs or so, looking at each other, soaking in the atmosphere, emotions running high, I saw tears, fears, hope, brotherhood, hands on hearts and raised fists, emotions galore. Whatever happened later didn’t seem to matter; this was one huge bonding of the men in blue, from the team and from the country, Indians of all hues together, united.
The first half went away in a blur- Zak’s maidens, Mexican waves, India India chants, Booing Sreesanth, celebrating every wicket like we did when we got Viv Richards out in 1983. Pereira spoilt the party in the end and we knew it’d take a special inning from someone. All this while, food and drink were being passed around like we’re all family, didn’t matter who you were sharing your drink or food with.
Sachin walked out to bat and the roar just wouldn’t stop, just wouldn’t. For the first time one came close to understanding what this man carries as hopes, expectations, joys and sorrows. It was mere 35000 in the stadium but it seemed like a billion, I was scared for the diminutive man in the centre; he hardly seemed to be flustered. He scored 18 runs as if it were in his backyard, come to think of it, it WAS his backyard. But 31 for 2 and hopes fell, a nervous rush of phone calls, rushing to the loo, let’s get some food etc happened around me. Something refused to move within me, I was doing everything that those guys were doing, albeit mentally. “Will this come crashing down, will I see a double digit dismissal of the team”. Nervous, nervous, nervous!
The new India that now drives the team had other plans of course. Every run thereon was cheered as if it were a winning stroke; a million eyes wished the target downwards, one at a time, misfields just adding to the vociferous banter. Gambhir played attritional cricket with frequent reminder of his aggressive side as well. Instructions flew thick and fast from everyone “Easy Gauti” “Two for that Dhoni two for that”. Dhoni started the climax, with lusty powerful shots that could be clearly heard as “thwack” over all the din. It seemed that he was silencing one critic at a time with each lethal blow. He didn’t realise he’d got to 50 until everyone around him stood up and cheered, his celebrations were muted- the script was only half done. The way he grabbed the game by the collar thereon and thrust it away from the Lankans, is really the attitude of how hard this team plays the game. We are second to none,- bring em on Lee or Tait, Akhar or Gul, Malinga or Mendis. The demons within have been exorcised, this is Captain Cool
That winning six was a purgation of the dreads of a nation that had seen so many batting collapses and unsuccessful chases, once upon a time. When the winning moment came, I hugged and was hugged by everyone around, it was a fated collective, mixed together randomly by chance, united by an occasion bigger than any had witnessed ever. It will remain etched in each mind that saw it at the stadium and in the conscience of Indians at large wherever they were. It was time to write and rewrite history, Dhoni and his men, not boys, did it in style
Jai Hind!

India's got Talent- Obama on Call

2010-11-07T08:46:00.004+05:30

Air Force One avoided precisely four bird hits, and three misguided diwali rockets from Kurla to land on some loose sand and gravel at CSIA Mumbai. In a major security breach that could possibly embarrass all Indians and Americans alike, President Obama received a call on his BB even as he had just landed, offering to sell him Insurance, Auto Loans, Home Loans, personal loans and a car loan. Sensing it to be an Al Qaeda Trojan call, the Secret Service urged him to continue the call, while they put a quick trace on it. President Obama took the call from his secret chamber inside Air Force One even before he stepped out to wave and greet India.
A brief transcript of the conversation is available exclusively with this newspaper and exclusively with 200 other newspapers too
Telecaller (TC): Good morning, kya mein Barack Obama ji se baat kar sakti hoon?
BO: WTF!!!
Telecaller (TC): My apologies sir. Can I speak to Mr. Barack Obama?
BO: Yes this is Barack
Telecaller: Sir this is Sally calling on behalf of Daylight Robbery Bank. Thank you for confirming you name sir, can you please confirm your date of birth and address for verification sake
BO: Do you know who I am and who you are speaking to?
Telecaller (TC): No sir I don’t. That is why I need to verify whether you are who you claim you are. I do this even when I call up my father. It’s become a habit now
BO: No problem, now in what format do you want my date of birth?
Telecaller (TC): Sir you are not allowed to ask this question. It is not part of the telecalling script sir.
BO: Ok fine, what is this phone call all about?
Telecaller (TC): Sir as I told you earlier I am calling to offer you the best possible offer for any of financial requirement
BO: Ok, let me think. I need to continue my war in Afghanistan for the next one year; can you fund me for that?
Telecaller (TC): For this purpose I will have to check with my supervisor sir. Could you please wait a minute and hear our boring hold tune while I do so?
The Secret Service meanwhile has laid a trace on the call. It seems to be emerging from a remote ramshackle cattle shed in Southern India. They are trying to get an ID on the location and the telecaller
Telecaller (TC): Sir, I have checked with my supervisor. Since our bank provides all types of loans even this loan will be possible. But you will have to tell me if it is a personal loan, an auto loan or a car loan?

BO: (sounding irritated) Oh don’t even bother !(gestures to the SS whether they have an ID yet, who signal negative)
Telecaller (TC): Don’t say like that sir. It is my duty to bother, at least that is what my telescript asks me to say
BO: Holy crap, so let’s get chatting about some personal stuff then
Telecaller (TC): (shyly) for that I can provide you an alternate number sir, but you will be charged USD 2 a second and that won’t be me but one of my senior colleagues sir.
BO: Ok, (now starting to smile). Tell me, where are you calling from?
Telecaller (TC): (Hesitating) I am calling from Washington DC
BO: (chuckles) Alright! Now which part of Washington DC will that be?
Telecaller (TC): All the parts sir, we can call from any part we want
BO: And who gave you this number?
Telecaller (TC): My boss sir
BO: And what was he telling you when he gave it to you?
Telecaller (TC): he told me that this gentleman needs all the money that he can get; his House is in a bad shape, he can’t pay his bills, he has many wars to fight. So I thought you will need loans, especially a home loan since your house is in a bad shape
BO: Do you know that I can trace you now and have you obliterated?
Telecaller (TC): (now sounding nervous) Actually I am a jobless engineer from Kochahampalli sir who desperately took up this job to make some money and add value to my CV saying I have been “dealing with Americans”. You are the first call that I made
BO: Have you heard the name Barack Obama before?
Telecaller (TC): yes sir!
BO: Great, where have you heard it?
Telecaller (TC): You just told me your name is that
BO: (Sounding frustrated) Have you heard about the President of the United States of America?
Telecaller (TC): yes sir, It is George Bush sir. He is a very brave man, single handedly fighting Saddam Hussein
BO: Now who the hell told you that?
Telecaller (TC): My boss sir
BO: Your boss seems to know a lot more than I do. Can you put me through to him
Telecaller (TC): Just a minute sir, for that I will have to get back to you. Please hold the line and this time I will play you a different hold tune, hopefully this is less irritating

Again an irritating hold tune comes along and Barack Obama has to wait for long. Meanwhile CIA informs him that the whole of India is anxious about why Obama is refusing to emerge from Air Force one. Some TV channels have started speculating if Obama has a severe case of piles and can’t move his butt while others are saying that he’s busy rehearsing his Hindi
Line Opens and a deep voice says “Hello”
BO: (says to himself) Now that voice is familiar
Boss : Sir, what can I do for you?
BO: Dude, you just called the President of the United States
Boss : Oh did I, I had programmed the calling device to try Putin and Sarkozy before they dialed you
BO: Man, I just can’t place that voice, sounds very familiar
Even as he says this the chief of Secret Service barges into his cabin and tell him
SS: Mr President, you won’t believe who this is
BO: Don’t tell me it’s that man Bin Laden again, have we found him in India this time?
SS: No sir, if you wondered where President Bush disappeared after his term, look no further that BLABBER (Bush’s outbound call centre based in Bengaluru India)
BO: Man is this going to a tough India trip or what!!!

(Postscript: Predictably, the Bush story made more headlines than Obama’s entry. Sally, called Satyalakshmi received two promotions in the space of 4 hours, thanks to her boss George W Bush. She later gave a Texan accent interview to CNN which was telecast worldwide and watched by 3 million viewers, Bangalore meanwhile continued to be the outsourced voice of service to America)

India's Got Talent

2010-10-31T12:46:00.004+05:30

In a strange turn of things, the President of the US, Barack Obama landed at an undisclosed location one day before schedule on Diwali Day and met with a host of undisclosed Indians in a show of solidarity.
1. Bal T: While Obama insisted on using a translator into Marathi, this meeting was short-lived because most expletives uttered by Bal T were beyond the comprehension of the interlocutor. It is reported that Bal T provided a one sentence suggestion to Barack O to get rid of the Taliban “Burn their taxis and beat them up and they will go back to where they came from”
2. Rakhi Sawant: In a special episode of Rakhi ka Insaaf called Raakhi ka Insaaf v/s Guantanamo Bay Rakhi taught the President and the CIA how to use verbal torture and killer looks to neutralize opponents. It is said that the President himself seemed absolutely awestruck by Ms Sawant’s candidness in laying it bare in more ways than one
3. Big Boss: In what could be called TV History, President Obama met the Big Boss in person and also witnessed goings on inside the Big Boss House. Apparently, President Obama picked up tips on how to eliminate people week after week, without being seen as a tyrant
4. Suresh Kalmadi: This happened at an undisclosed location, given that SK has gone into hiding to count all the money he made during the CWG. Having said that, this meeting seemed to be a huge success. President Obama has agreed to host Olympics in Kabul, as a confidence building measure, organized under the experienced team of SK. SK also has been provided a grant of US 2bn for his NGO, (Lack of) Transparency Kalmadi International, a force against corruption and nepotism.
5. Rajnikanth: This meeting was purportedly the highlight of the President’s schedule, with the two world leaders sharing lunch, the President eating off his plate, while Rajni sir consumed it via Bluetooth. They agreed that a film should be made in 2011 by Shankar which will star both of them. The President also sought Rajni Sir’s help in locating and exterminating Bin Laden but the great man declined given that he has no dates available until 2115 AD
6. Akshay Masterchef Kumar: President Obama had to wait for a while as Akshay Kumar insisted on sliding down a 35 story building chute before he met him. He also was carrying Momos and Dal made on his show Masterchef India and ended up spilling some of this on Obama during his antics. Obama refused to wash his dirty linen in public, instead being really impressed with how a man could be cookery show host, a husband, a Thums Up drinker, an acrobat, a Bollywood Star all at the same time. Akshay appeared modest, focusing instead on teaching CIA men how to make the right kind of dal makhani
7. Baba Ramdev: The president met Baba Ramdev early in the morning over a dose of Kapal Bhaati and Anulom Vilom. He seemed to be impressed with the power of Yoga and made a remark about how this will help in twist and turn through the various debates and criticisms that he faces every day. Viewers of Aastha channel were blessed with seeing this whole meeting live at 3.48am today
8. Arnab Goswami: The President bumped into him at the Loo of the Taj. An interview ensued in which the President came under a vicious monologue attack and it took 4 CIA men and the rest of the Taj Staff to outshout the inebriated Arnab G. This seems to have severely dented India’s chances of getting a seat at the UN Security Council
9. Mamta Banerjee: Refused to meet the President first but later gave in when he promised a TMC Chair of Oneupmanship at the Prestigious Reckless School of Leadership. Mamta Di apparently told the President how India had figured out the true meaning of Railroad by blurring the distinction between Rail and the road. Obama appeared fascinated and made furious notes in the propaganda leaflet offered to him by a supporter of Mamta Di. She also urged a Mamta US accord to end Communism in Bengal
10. The bookseller at the signal: While traveling back to his hotel President Obama bought a book at a signal even before the Presidential Guards could intervene. Interestingly he bought a copy of his own Audacity of Hope for USD 4 and was overjoyed how it had reached even the streets of Mumbai, “It’s a truly flat world as my friend Tom says” he remarked. He was later disappointed to find that there were pages missing in the book and the ink was smudged on all the pages. He intends going back and engaging in a dialogue with the boy who sold him this book to understand what challenges he faces

A White House spokesperson refused to confirm or deny any of these. Needless to say, the Indian media has managed to leak out the names of all who he met and what transpired courtesy Wikileaks

Sleeping with the enemy

2010-04-20T12:24:00.004+05:30

The IPL is the biggest private party that anyone’s ever had in India. While we can debate who the host is, who’s serving drinks, who’s invited and gate crashing, the party is here to stay. It is a metaphor for the raunchiness that pervades a society’s mind that is coming to grips with its identity caught in the time warp between hallowed ideala and a materialistic identity. It’s about the collective subjecting itself to a sin, knowing in its conscience that this is wrong
The layering makes the case very interesting. The nomenclature of the teams has an aggressive tone to it; battle cries adorn all their team songs. Every team has a either a glamorous owner or a ravishing ambassador, the late night parties being the story of legendary exploits of players off the field. There are skimpily clad cheerleaders, being treated as feminine objects, meant to prance about in a gladiatorial setting. Every inch of space, on the ground, in the mind has been sold, franchised commercialized labeled. Real selves have been swathed under reams of commercial vinyl and paint, meant to create a make believe chimera that is psychedelic in its grip. The players are mere pawns, the teams hardly seem to matter, and it’s all to do it with the collective frenzy that gets churned, orgasmic, and foreplayed by the chants, peaking with the slog of the willow. There is a price on every player, sophisticated slave trade designed to emulate free markets, meant to challenge the spin doctoring skills of power brokers and business patrons. An essential ingredient to this concoction, is Bollywood, the other national passion, the net product being a promiscuous mixture of half baked cricket experts in short skirts and serendipitous cricketers at late night parties
The two protagonists to this tale used their own symbols and stars- Tharoor with his articulate Stephanian accent and 140 character at a time unraveling of opinions, Modi with his in your face, brash, money talks and can win any battle demeanor. The two had their own agendas to fulfill, riding on the IPL frenzy. While we can argue who the larger devil is, the point is both stretched it too far. So while the rest of us call for their heads to roll, most powers that be secretly hope that they get to ride the gravy train next, whether it is Laloo Yadav alias fodder scammer or Shashank Manohar. IPL seems to have become that mistress that everyone wants to sleep with at night, but no one wants to be seen with by day.

Look, who's listening?

2010-02-14T19:29:00.002+05:30

The ideology space in society is constantly shifting and changing. As we go global and create the Indian way of doing global things, the debate on what we are all about is hitting us, sometimes in a rather shallow manner. The idea that one can have multiple identities yet be an Indian, seems to put uncomfortable question marks on some faces, the numbers of these only increasing. Not to say that PLU (People like Us) have got it all right. Our ideology stems from conveniently shaping a world around us as we deem fit. So this might mean displacing farmers, getting rid of slums, marginalizing the poor and sanitizing the city. This might also mean thrusting upon society a model of progress that is marked by greater material gain, a wider global footprint and a more liberal outlook, as we see it.
Our acceptance of alternate spaces, lifestyles, points of view is limited, and is paid lip service to in debate forums. Real data if measured might reveal that our understanding, empathy and drive towards inclusiveness as an educated, truly evolved society have only declined. We are conveniently peddling what suits us but ignoring and deriding what questions our models. How many of us know the genesis of the Taliban, the Al Qaeda or closer home, even the Maoists or for that matter? Even if we do, what is that lens through which we view what they stand for?. The idea of the Sena or any of these right wing outfits to propagate Marathi is a noble one. The means might be wrong but the ideology is not. I have not seen anyone talk about the need for the local language to survive or for the local culture to be protected. Sensible middle ground is never available in most debates; the centrists are not welcome in most debates, just because they don’t spew forth vitriol.
The debate over MNIK might have been over shallow premises but then which debate nowadays isn’t? The support that Shahrukh received was probably based on the premise that most of what the Sena says or does is unlike ‘us’ hence let’s not even attempt to look at the issue. Of course, the Sena does itself no good by sending messages on hurled stones. But then it’s for the more sensible ones among us to understand the deeper meanings of what these trends mean. The movie’s fortunes rested on a Friday frenzy, wonder what lies ahead for all of us?

All is Well?

2010-01-10T19:19:00.000+05:30

Three idiots was entertaining and thought provoking. It seemed easy to stand at the sidelines and label those who follow curriculum as boring. Conversely, it seemed fascinating that one day everyone would find their calling if they followed their hearts, and become inventors, artists, thinkers and geniuses. The world would become a great place to live in with everyone doing what they’re essentially good at. The problem with this chimera seems to be, how can one reliably know that this is it. How do we figure out that this is what we are made for and there isn’t anything better to do out there? The simple answer is one probably can't and this has its own perils.
Look no further than Mumbai where a spate of suicides has taken place in the recent past by children who’ve been rejected by a system that suddenly seems to be thrusting children into all kinds of talent exploration. Some children have given up at not having won a talent contest or not having been selected for another. One could have seen this coming. Kids in the neighborhood do 7 hours of school, two hours of private tuition, an hour of karate classes, some music, sport, art and then of course home science and Japanese lessons. At the end of the day, you have a pooped, fatigued child who’d rather stick to one class- slumber. Their parents were the Chatur generation, learning by rote, mugging up texts and puking all over answer sheets. They did this with frustration, with no real choices available. They vowed every time they lost marks in Math that they would let their kid do its own thing. And they seem to; at least that’s what they think. The problem is by enrolling kids for a spate of extra curriculars, they’re subjecting kids to the same curriculum phenomenon, just that it seems to be rather broadly defined now to include all kinds of non subject junk. Keeping up with the Jones' seems to be taking on a new meaning. It might be helping some kids genuinely find their own niche, but that’s more the exception than the rule.
Parents seem to be erring on the side of caution, ensuring that they throw everything at their kids, leaving nothing out from what the neighbours might be doing. The kid doesn’t have much choice except duck in a few cases. So while its easy junking what could be learning by rote, how easy is it to define a viable relevant alternative that works? Any ideas Ranchoddas Chanchad?

Mind your Pees and Thoos

2009-09-23T09:48:00.001+05:30

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 lived in Mumbai will know that there are certified popular peeing spots in every locality. These are alleys, wall fronts, railway walls etc which seemed to have been always built for these purposes. The smarter marshals might station themselves around these watering holes and collect their fines once the deed is done. In fact with peeing catching someone in the act is easier compared to say spitting which is a blink and you miss kind of activity. With the incentives for peeing and spitting being the same, it’s very clear why marshals gather more from peeing fines that spitting.
In fact half of what’s collected goes to the agencies who run these marshals! 120 marshals collected 6 crore rupees in 7 months that’s roughly about 90 lakh a month for the entire group or 3 lakh per day i.e roughly about 2500 per marshal per day. Rs 200 is the fine per act of peeing which really means if I get 15 people to pee on a certain wall in a day, I make my average. The rest is a bonus. If we assume, conservatively that 10% of Mumbai’s working population pees atleast once a year on a wall somewhere, that’s a whopping 1800 crore just out of spotting and fining people who pee. Now now, do we have a business proposition here or what!

Kahani mein Twits

2009-09-19T23:12:00.002+05:30

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 CV. The more insecure ones might also feel he’s an upstart usurper to their thrones. In a cabinet of senile satraps, Tharoor is an anathema. He makes the rest look less glamorous, less evolved and more Neanderthal.
In such a scenario, the septuagenarian sabha is slyly singing sermons shunning shashi’s sacrilege. It’s the cabinet equivalent of college ragging, albeit rather serious. They are baying for blood while brandishing bovine batons. The cow, has graduated from provider of milk to icon of our ilk. It’s the best opportunity that the mediocre cabinet will ever get to castigate and put in place that snooty Stephanian who seems to threaten the closed corridors of the cabinet with his 140 character ‘leaks’
This 140 character assassination might die a natural death or get lost in the timeline of other such trivial pursuits. I feel we need such mild earthquakes frequently to prevent our democracy from slipping into a comfortable ennui. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to follow Mr Tharoor on Twitter, holy cow or not.

In Jet we Trust?

2009-09-12T18:56:00.001+05:30

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 nonsense. Its more fancy competitors have raised hemlines, worked on vital stats of air hostesses and introduced other frills, with limited success among passengers like me who’d rather have a simple professionally managed flying experience. In fact, it’s this consistent delightful experience that made me invest in Jet stock which predictably is in the red these days.
The stock has been held to ransom now by the vicissitudes of the men who fly it. Pilots have always been at the more glamorous end of any airline, seen as the bosses on board. They’re like prized sharp shooting mercenaries who have been spoilt by the price that the Indian civil aviation industry is ready to pay to have them, with demi -god like statuses. I have nothing against them making huge salaries or living a high life but the lack of ownership for the airline and brand that they have shown is disappointing. They probably fail to realize the permanent damage that they have done to India’s leading aviation brand. More seriously, they fail to realize the failure of the airline to live up to the trust that it has created among customers. By default, pilots have become a touch point which inadvertently has permanently damaged the brand experience
The blame is not squarely on the pilots. I don’t believe that the way the Jet management has handled this crisis is spectacular. In fact on that count they’ve never been a great example. Even when the sacked a 1000 temporary employees, they were made to retract their steps by some political parties. This precedent has probably encouraged the pilots to hold adamantly onto their demands. And this time too it looks like the management will give into the demands of the pilots.
Though I would not want to admit to it, but this episode has dented my confidence, both as a customer and investor.

See where you Pee!

2009-09-01T14:34:00.001+05:30

Xixi no Banho - 1 Translation(s) | dotSUB

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The language of Freedom

2009-08-15T11:22:00.004+05:30

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

Vigilantism

2009-06-18T21:42:00.002+05:30

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 in Lalgarh. Pot bellied policemen with lathis are standing and staring in defiance.

Vision 2020

2009-05-17T17:56:00.003+05:30

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 city. Similarly in Karnataka, the no of seats that the BJP has won is worrying, given all the Sri Ram Sene moral policing
5. Hats off to Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, and YSR. Each has run a development based agenda in their states and its worked beautifully
6. Narendra Modi won only 15 out of 26 in Gujarat. Similar to last time, though his vote share seems to have gone up. The demon has been contained?
7. Fantastic to see leeches who suck the blood off any Govt being marginalised. BSP, AIADMK, SP, LJP, RLD,SAD have all been sidelined
8. The need for a constructive opposition is looming large. With the Congress getting as many seats as it has, we need a strong opp bench to have meaningful debate in Parliament. Can the BJP provide this? have my doubts
9. Independents like Meera Sanyal,Mallika Sarabhai have had their moment in the sun. Now please go back to where you come from. Enough of the flirtation with the electoral politics
10. Look forward to seeing Shashi Tharoor and Milind Deora in action in the parliament
Jai Ho!

Vote didn't happen?

2009-04-30T20:47:00.004+05:30

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.

Interesting take on co-operation (thanks Abhishek)

2009-03-21T18:11:00.002+05:30

Treasure Stunt

2009-03-07T12:19:00.002+05:30

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 have suddenly become national property with a big “HANDLE WITH CARE’ emblazoned against them. Their family lives have become the talk of town and everyone has an opinion on which way their lives should go. Social Networking sites have groups dedicated to ridiculing the Western view of Indian slums and how they denigrate the image of India. Are we touchy or what.
Bapu’s relaunch happened, again paradoxically, through a rogue playing a role called Munnabhai on screen. For a few months then, Gandhigiri was in and newspapers would frequently carry real life examples of Gandhigiri. Eventually Bapu returned to his smiling passive existence on the walls of Govt offices and on circles in the centre of town, overseeing traffic jams. Until now when we heard that his belongings were up for grabs. We’d like to believe that we are still a nation that walks Bapu’s talk. While his values seem unreal and out of reach we constantly make attempts to showcase that we are a nation of high ideals. So while Dalits and untouchability remain, we’d never allow a foreigner to own Bapu’s things. What an irony. I can imagine the liquor baron do a press conference very soon, brandishing his auction victory and posing as the Emperor who restored glory to India. Bapu’s accessories meanwhile will get confined to a Gandhi museum somewhere. Bapu will continue to smile at us from wherever he’s perched.

Battling on a wicked wicket

2009-03-03T21:02:00.002+05:30

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 drive the bus away quickly, as the Lahore driver did today or like Mr Zende who shouted his throat hoarse in Mumbai CST during the 26/11 attacks. More or less, most common men will helplessly play to what has been scripted
The Sri Lankan cricketers in a sense are the common man of the cricketing community. They would probably have been joking about how they’ll get 300 runs more today and bat the Pakis out of the game when the bullets hit their bus. Largely uncelebrated until 1996 their captain Ranatunga led them to the World Cup and lots of self dignity. Prior to that he had also led a protest walk off in Australia when his prized Murali was called for chucking. After that victory, the Lankans have been good in parts, scintillating at times but equally ordinary otherwise. Even their so called stars, Murali and Jayasuriya have always appeared amiable and jovial, ones with everyone else. Their sense of self respect and dignity has always been supreme. The sense that one gets from the Lankan team is that they are all simple folks, people who might have been running small businesses back home if they’d not discovered the willow. The only team that feels more bucolic is the West Indian one and they by the way, happen to be best behaved on the field. After the Lahore incident, The Lankan cricketers might wonder “Why us”? But then that’s a question that most innocent terror victims around the world have been asking themselves for quite some time now, all in vain.

The Story of my experiments with MTNL try-band

2009-02-08T07:29:00.001+05:30

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 watching "Page Cannot Be Displayed" and futile attempts at calling various numbers I decided to investigate the matter myself and entered the Mankhurd Telephone Exchange. A gentle Mr Tulaskar who comes from the Gentle Maharashtrian school of thought and doesn't chew paan, took pity on my expression while staring at the phone that I held. He said with his hand beckoning towards an inner chamber "Madam ko bolta hoon" Madam whose darshan I have still not got was probably not propitiated enough for my modem remained in limbo post that visit.

A week has gone by when I decided to don my excited avtaar and approach Mr Tulaskar again. The sight of me made him feel guilty as all the values that his parents had rendered him while he was a kid in Satara district came to the fore. Bypassing madam and putting his Gratuity at risk, Tulaskar stormed the control room to set my connection right. A plethora of lineman swarmed about like bees making and breaking people's DSL lifelines. "Party aaleli aahe" was the term that preceded a complex 15 mins while my connection was attempted to be set right. My expressions went from remorse to anticipation and finally to glee when told everything is alright now. I reached home, pessimist that I am, sure that the demons of MTNL were still be exorcised. I was right.
A call to Tulaskar again, confirmed that there was a twist in the story or the ADSL line.There was a 'local' issue which was beyond the farthest reaches of his eye and authority. His woebegone face made me shed crocodile tears and I left him desolate in his wooden chamber, sorry to have stirred the numb conscience of a govt servant
By this time, patience had run out and opportunity had surfaced in the form of an alternate Internet Connection. While still mulling over whether the larger hole in the pocket was worth it, I decided to give the Helpline a last final call for succour. The lady who answered this time was quite unlike the rest. She looked like she had cut all her vegetables back at home and was here to do a job. She gave me some 'higher ups' numbers. Meanwhile I also managed to procure some influential email IDs and gathered some protocols from the MTNL website (they do have one!!!). The final frontier was here, die or do
The higher ups, may be because of the altitude, offered better weather and service. Within a day, multiple fratic calls began to emerge from the same numbers that had rejected my calls like the plague. There was desperation, drama and helplessness in them. In 24 hours after I had called and written to the powers that be, my Internet Connection was reborn.
Happy Easter!

An alternate perspective- Interesting read

2008-12-06T20:28:00.000+05:30

Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ?

Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.

Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one another
during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a terror of
another kind. The terror of assaulting one's mind and sensitivity with
cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All these channels have
been trying to manufacture my consent for a big lie called - Hotel Taj
the icon of India.

Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not
bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from
terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station.
CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station
hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal
and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming
themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with
the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise
the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No
Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj to
show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the guards.
And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ hospital to
find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead they were
again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop shot of the
dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of workers
from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving by train at
CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. Even after 60
hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered to cover in
detail what transpired there.

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam Aadmis of
India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj, Oberoi and Trident
closing down for a couple of weeks or months. What mattered to them
was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for one hour.
But the channels were not covering that aspect of the terror attack.
Such information at best merited a scroll line, while the cameras have
to be dedicated for real time thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman
bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around
heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is that
Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the globe
congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and politics, not
India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers of India. The
Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who passed through CST
and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for those who wielded power
over these mass of labouring classes. Leopold club and Taj were the
haunts of rich spoilt kids who would drive their vehicles over
sleeping Aam Aadmis on the pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever
financing the glitterati of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) ,
Political brokers and industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people, that
the terrorists chose to strike.

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam
Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains.
He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even
survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels
and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said
Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same
sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of
the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in
this game of one upmanship over TRPs ? They all attacked resilience
this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling
terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains
and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the
ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or
manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the
rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be
resilient themselves. They cry for government intervention now to
protect their private spas and swimming pools and bars and
restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, General Motors and
the ilk cry for government money when their coffers are emptied by
their own ideologies.

The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is unperturbed by
terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a terror of government
sponsored inflation and market sponsored exclusion, pain is something
he has learnt to live with. The rich of Mumbai and India Inc are
facing the pain for the first time and learning about it just as the
middle classes of India learnt about violation of human rights only
during emergency, a cool 28 years after independence.

And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to whip
at times of terrorism.

Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those
champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave and
selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting terorism.
Well, the counter question would be where were you when such officers
were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has there ever been any
24 hour non stop coverage of violence against dalits and adivasis of
this country?

This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the extra
legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police and army but
Arnabs don't miss a single opportunity to serve their class masters,
this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy to whitewash the
entire uniformed services.

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down
dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending
but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also brain.
Israel has a point when it says the operations were misplanned
resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the
mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in
management that the top brass should never t ravel together in crisis.
The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would have
laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine commandos, an
elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a see-through
cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea about the
structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to liberate. But the
terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he acknowledged.

Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss
operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering?
This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he had
to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a hotel.
Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral hotel to
the commandos within one hour considering the mighty apparatus at his
and government's disposal? Are satelite pictures only available for
terrorists and not the government agencies ? In an operation known to
consume time, one more hour for preparation would have only improved
the efficiency of execution.

Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances. But
the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better planning
than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic mood would not
raise any question about any of these issues.

They after all have their favourite whipping boy - the politician the
eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Nanmohan Singh and Advani
visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even at
this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why can't these channels
pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this time of
national calamity and share the sound and visual bites which could
mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge human
resource to command? Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep
harping every five minutes that this piece of information was
exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a national crisis? Is
this the time to promote the channel? If that is valid, the politician
promoting his own political constituency is equally valid. And the
duty of the politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the
people to evaluate that politics.

And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the practice
of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and
improvement.. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps
terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. And
the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators to do
business with.

Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose deaths
are not even mourned - the taxi driver who lost the entire family at
CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost their lives
working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one time bill for
their masters.

Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to all
the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they have been
constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything and
everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All
channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the victims
of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of India. Your
obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from the print
media please. No channel bothered. Only srinivasan Jain replied: you
are right. We are trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing
happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after the terror
attack.

Hope Lives

2008-12-04T21:58:00.001+05:30

Before 26th Nov, the biggest congregations in Mumbai happened at Mumbai CST and Churchgate railway stations during peak hours. A million anonymous faces jostled with each other, garnered inches, all with the common purpose of getting that prize foothold in a suburban local. Strangers and even more strangers poured in and out of these stations like a giant assembly line. In between, strange circuits sparked conversations, cricket scores, what’s the time now, can you shift a bit, is this the Borivali Fast or the Andheri slow and so on. Such transactional pieces of conversation defined the crowded space that we all shared. Elsewhere, stock prices, prices of vegetables on the street, saale ****ve baaju hat na in traffic or a more paternal baap ka rasta hai kya. This is our lingo, defined by ourselves either as the ones who launched these or the ones who received these. This common code defined the language of transaction, transaction of every kind in Mumbai. Yes there were the show of emotions in the light of the train blasts, genuine, but these were ephemeral. It was almost like everyone was following an unwritten job description. Next day, Mumbai was back at work or at play, whatever. Some called it the spirit of Mumbai, I call it the compulsion of Mumbai.
All until 26th Nov.I was at the Gateway of India yesterday, again part of an anonymous crowd of tens of thousands, one which had a million voices but only one soul. Everyone had their pet peeve on placards and posters, the ones who didn’t had Vande Mataram on their lips. The combined energy of the polity, the mind of the mass, people’s movement whatever you call it, it was all on display. Most in that crowd would have only read about the freedom struggle but it felt like our genes which carry these memories and even more had woken up and played history back through us. There was no fixed purpose, at the same time there was no careless tomfoolery. There were a million islands of groups, chants, candlelights, abuses, national anthems and songs. You could get into any group, blend, unblend and then join another one. The new age mind of Mumbai was on display with some holding up laptops on slideshow mode and most playing around with words smartly to make their point. It was impossible not to be caught up in the frenzy and if anybody managed not to, he or she didn’t deserve to be there. For me what stood out was a Muslim family, aged folks, who joined in with equal fervor if not more. I feared for their well being considering how most Indians equate Pakistan and Indian muslims. But the crowd behaved, enraged but civil. It was mass purgation and am sure the Gods up there heard the chants that resonated out of Mumbai
It needs to be said that points of congregation of the young have been rock concerts, pubs and such hangouts, college festivals and many such trivial pursuits as some might call it. The cynics among us have always looked down upon this set and said they would never quite understand what national pride is all about. This event proves them wrong. Maybe the young lot still doesn’t quite get it fully, maybe they’re naïve in asking for an attack on Pakistan but they are not just seeking titillation through cheap pursuits. Their soul has been stirred and it showed in every face that I saw yesterday. Remember, it was a young, very young Bhagat Singh that emerged and showed the British yet another formidable violent side to Indians. I don’t expect anything of the same legendary proportion from this group but what I do know is that this young collective, and its 60% of the country, can surely make things happen, given a direction.
This is where the professionals in our society, lawyers, bureaucrats, artists, writers, thinkers need to tap into this energy. Make this youth brigade the engine of change. Give this avalanche direction, and the change that we all seek will be here sooner than later. Hope lives.
Jai Hind!

One bullet- daily

2008-12-02T21:54:00.001+05:30

A daily dose of madness
That rare moment to smile
That breathless march of life
Gasping once a while

Life eludes me everyday
I chase and cling to the rails
Manage to hold my course somehow
With wind against my sails

Balance daily my burden
Wife, home and kid
And frustrated sometimes at work
I wish I never did

When the routine day ends
and I wish I wouldn’t live again
a terrorist shoots at me point blank
Relieves me of my pain

Missing Government

2008-11-28T07:27:00.003+05:30

We're in the third morning of the Mumbai attacks. Some things have emerged which will define the way history is written
1. Taj has become immortal to this country. Stories of how young Taj managers went out of their way, helped protect guests, sent sms to guests who were away at the time of attacks to not return and many such are pouring in. An indelible symbol has endured even further through its people
2. Mumbai civilians as usual are on the streets doing their bit. Chants of vande mataram are all over and people are serving the commandos tea, snacks etc. Not one to back off, am proud of my city and its people
3. The media has behaved and been sensible.They've obeyed orders to edit stories and pictures which might feed terrorist intelligence. Its said that it takes a tough event to make a child grow up, is this that event which has made the media mature?
4. The Mumbaikar resilience is weak. people stayed indoors and the feeling of helplessness and fear is high. On the upside, maybe this is what will finally ended that much abused word called Mumbai Spirit and ring the change that we all need
5. A kerala born, Bihar regiment officer died trying to save a Havaldar from Haryana who later succumbed too.Raj Thackeray do we need say more
6. Even as I write, Hemant Karkare makes his way silently to the other world that he will serve. His detination is Shivaji Park, a place where divise politics, vitriolic speeches and petty goondas have fomented fury in Mumbai. Today when a real hero of the city makes his last march, he has only one color on him, the tricolor. This is the real Shivaji park.
7. Indians abroad have provided mixed reactions. Some are genuinely concerned, others go about their lives least bothered. In a way good riddance.
8. We are up against war. This was the first wave. I dread to think what will happen next and where
9. I have lost faith in that pansy prime minister and equally impotent home minsters, both central and state. Meanwhile that rogue from the neighbouring state came in and announced 1 crore for the victims. I wish, sincerely seriously wish that the terrorists had got this scum instead of those brave officers
10. Mumbai will see a citizen's movement soon. It will be unprecedented and far spread. You can sense it coming. All it needs is Obama like leadership, where is that leader?

Yes We can, Mr. President

2008-11-08T11:38:00.004+05:30

Much has been said, written, blogged, messaged and shown about that remarkable man Barack Obama. A lot of us know more about him than say about our neighbours. There is a remarkable connect that he’s made from Fiji to Florida from Melbourne to Moscow. Everybody has a reason to like Barack Obama and there is almost a personal connect that each of us feels. Most politicians around the world would give an arm and a leg to achieve this kind of connects with their electorate.
Yes We can might have worked in America, In Europe it was the alternative to Mr. Bush theory, In Africa it was the son of the soil reasons, in Indonesia he was seen like family, in the Arab world he was partly their own religion and so on. While the gene pool and demographics like African American played their role, I feel the connect with Obama had a deeper reason.
The world that we live in has only got more fractured, more complex and more strife ridden. There are cross purposes to every action, there are unwarranted fall outs of every decision. While popular sentiment says that we’re now more comfortable with complexity, the situation on the ground seems less so. Israel and Palestine are still on the brink, the Middle East is trying to go beyond just meaning oil and radicalism, Iran and North Korea might run their own radical course any time. Russia is standing on a war face off and Europe is struggling to find a unified identity. Iraq is now passé but vulnerable, while Afghanistan seems to be the new bête noire of the West. China and India are running the growth path, but also continuously seek a legitimate power position in the world. The pieces on the chess board are still being juggled around and nobody really seems to be in control. It’s in these times that the world needs inspirational leadership. Something that we haven’t seen in a long long time.
The President of the United States has always held de-facto power, given military might and economic supremacy. Which really meant there were shades to how countries and its leaders engaged with him? Some did it because he spoke their language; others wanted favors from him, and some other purely out of economic gain. There really wasn’t too much in the personality, it was all about the position. Not since Reagan have we seen any American President who was admired for what he was as a person. Clinton, some might argue came close, but then he was too much a product of the American system.
So after such a glut, when a strong personality emerges, who displays authentic leadership qualities, seems to address and have solutions to key issues, the world starts to find their image in him. I am reminded of the movie Nayak in which Anil Kapoor gets a one day stint at Chief Ministership and he runs an ideal government. This movie always gets great TV ratings, and most people have watched it multiple times. The strong idealism in the movie is very inspirational. Obama today represents the face of that idealism. He represents the marriage of ideals and power that in most minds are the recipe for a great world order. Until now, true leaders like Gandhi and Mandela stood outside the system and led people to the right path. Obama just might do the same, while being part of it.
Yes we can Mr. President.

Courting the Devil

2008-10-16T18:35:00.002+05:30

Its sad news that high flying crew of India’s premier airline are now grounded. They had contracts which said that they could be sacked with immediate effect and that is what happened. While my sympathies rest with the employees, it is obvious that they hadn’t read the contract fully before signing. Even if they did, they never thought this would happen to them. None of us ever read our job contracts. The durability of our jobs is assumedly given and we simply sign on the dotted line. The only parts that we read are ones related to salary, role and title. The rest is legalese which is ignored, to one’s peril.
The sad part is how this incident has created space for that goon called Raj Thackeray to enter the civilized industry space. Starting with railway applicants, cab drivers, graduating to MERU cabs and now to airlines, the devil is making his footprint felt. Jet employees, are now courting the devil to their advantage. So educated, stable minded, courteous youth who smiled and served you on airlines are now relying on Mumbai’s political Goonda to find them succor. Raj of course, in true vitriolic style has proclaimed that he will ground all Jet flights. A few months ago, the same set of crew could have been discussing the high handedness of Raj Thackeray in how he was beating up north Indian migrants in the city. What’s ironic is that the same set of goons will now stand next to North Indian middle class crew members and shout slogans, or even throw stones at the Jet Corporate office.
This tells me about the spurious morality of our middle class. Not one to stand up for its own rights, it has always needed a walking stick. I would have admired the Jet crew if they, without any political backing of any kind had lodged protests and fought their own battles. Just as the Jet Kingfisher alliance looked so easy and convenient, so does this one between the crew and MNS. Loss of jobs is one thing, loss of morality another.

Tata's nano perspective

2008-10-12T19:15:00.000+05:30

MBA business primers speak about environmental factors as key in devising strategies. The reaction of businesses to their environment is now a point of intense scrutiny and debate. World over, businesses seem to be at the receiving end of global vicissitudes, some might argue they are the ones who caused it in the first place. Whether its contaminated milk in China, the Financial crisis in the West or what happened to the Nano in our country, businesses are being closely watched for what they do or what they don’t. In fact, a case in point is KV Kamath and the amount of PR activity that ICICI Bank has undertaken to assuage anxieties about whether it will go the Lehman way. An interesting trend is the amount of front page space newspapers provide for businesses and what they are doing. If one were to rewind ten years and do a simple comparison of no of business related headlines then compared to now, it’s a no brainer which way the numbers will show up. The case for business diplomacy, corporate public affairs and leader posturing is a very strong one in such an environment. PR agencies have their acts cut out I guess.
In this context, something significant happened this week, which gave me a disturbing message. The journey that the Nano factory traveled, from an extreme Left state to an extreme Right one was much talked about and speculated. The sight of Mr Ratan Tata in a warm hug with Narendra Modi broke my heart. As a group, Tata has always stood for the Indian virtues led business model that all of us admire. They have genuinely walked the talk, gone beyond the brief and arguably, have been the pioneers of corporate social responsibility in India. Off late, as they have gone global, the manner in which they have been aggressive, yet never hostile, confident yet never arrogant in all their business acquisitions is commendable and sets a shining example for the Indian way of doing business. In fact the Tata Code of Conduct (TCoC) is something that is actively practiced, monitored, audited and celebrated within the group. For such a group to actively endorse a man, who controversially, is responsible for the killings of thousands, directly or indirectly, is disappointing to say the least. Gujarat, to be fair, is the most investor friendly state that India has. Modi, has emerged with flying colors on all hard governance aspects. He is on sticky wicket though when it comes to inclusiveness, harmony and security of all his Gujarati citizens. One might argue that Mr Tata took a business decision, how does it matter which state, as every state has its Godhra equivalent story in its history books.
It’s a complex decision to make. On the one hand, the promise of a one lakh car is not just about selling four wheels but also about showcasing to the world what India can do as a pioneer. Who better than the Tata Group to do so. In a way, the move to Gujarat can be seen as a victory for the country, wherein we managed to find a solution in one state, even as bitter opposition existed in another. It also showcases how states which are nimble and clear in their objectives will attract the best of investment, irrespective of their moral fabric. In my mind, Mr Ratan Tata and the Tata Group operate slightly higher than mere business decisions. Their decisions have a conscience, one which resonates with society. This one though does not have my vote. The Nano will roll out of a land that still has some unanswered questions. It might have an engine but it will never have a heart.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

2008-09-28T10:24:00.000+05:30

Networked World
1. Best prices for products
2. Access to markets
3. Cross cultural information
4. Greater tolerance
5. Global communities
6. Opportunities to develop
7. Million applications on Facebook
8. Lost friends on Orkut
9. Concerted efforts on environment
10. Point of view on everything

Networked World
1. Terror on everyone’s mind
2. Spam in everyone’s Inbox
3. AIDS for all
4. Climate changes that kill
5. Helplessness and despondency
6. Point of view on everything
7. Financial Crisis
8. Rupee is cheap
9. “We love you Bush” (huh!!!)
10. Osama has more power than Obama

No Solutions

2008-09-21T21:48:00.000+05:30

As I write this, Karnal Singh, JCP, Delhi Police has had his second round of press conference, detailing the complex web of SIMI and Indian Mujahideen, time and again to an inattentive, misbehaved, mike thrusting media. The core perpetrators of most recent blasts have been the same people. A good number of them have been accounted for, the rest are at large.
Meanwhile opinion among the public and experts are rife about root causes of terrorism. Many have talked about the marginalization of the minority, the ineffective policing of states and the failure of our intelligence network. Some analyses have been commendable and state the truth, with ample support. Others have been emotional diatribes, scathing but hollow. On the solution side, it’s been a repeat of the most popular POTA equivalent which enables arrest without evidence and trial. As someone said, it might only lead to Idgahs in jails and nothing else.
As with most other areas, India’s ability to analyze far surpasses its solution ability. This is cultural, with the journey always being as important as the destination, if not more, for the average Indian. So the analysis of events, the labeling of scapegoats, the arguments and counter arguments are celebrated, with no one really looking objectively at how closer are we to the solution. In board rooms, meetings are full of data, anecdotes, jibes and accusations. The ability to create an aura of progress, through descriptive analysis, storytelling is usually more impactful than progress itself. Then there is the karmic cycle explanation which underlies most Indian phenomenon. If something is destined, it will happen. And what’s happened can’t be overturned so let the cycle of life churn and let us play our rightful parts and move on. So memory is short, and gets frequently overwritten by the immediacy of things. It also gets crowded out by noise (such a calling for the Home Minister’s head because he changed thrice), mob mentality, generalizations (all Muslims should be sent to jail) and a need to find solace is some argument, however shallow. This cultural trait feeds everyone’s hunger conveniently and sadly also serves to drown out the real voices of reason and solution.
As we seem to move from one blast post mortem to another, there is a constant feeling of déjà vu. The same groups, the same arguments and yes the same ‘no solutions’.

What would we do without women in politics?

2008-09-05T15:20:00.004+05:30

An unmarried woman stands firm in the path of an unmarried man finding his long cherished dream. That sounds sensational enough, come to think of it Singur can be described that way. Mamata, with her vitriolic vilification of the Tata Group is desperately trying to occupy the militant anti Capitalist space that the Left has left vacant, thanks to the Buddha effect. Land or not, she sure is trying to make this property her own and by the looks of it, is winning hands down. It took a lot of provocation for the well behaved Mr. Tata to come out and even make a statement that they ‘may move out of Bengal’. The battle is cultural, the militant, aggressive Bengali woman versus the stoic, cultured Parsi. At the risk of sounding controversial, Mamata’s fight against Nano is almost a feminist cry against a largely male bastion- the car, the CPI, the Tata Group (when was the last time that you saw a woman top exec in the Tata group)
We have a ‘very married’ woman on the other side of the world, still finding her feet in politics with her pretty legs. Sarah Palin has no qualms about holding a gun, supporting a philandering daughter or supporting a child with Down’s syndrome. She is anti abortion and anti Obama. Suddenly Grandpa Mc Cain has a real pretty looking cane on which he can walk the road down to the White House. Speculation is rife in the media and in household around the world on why was she chosen? No answers yet but it’s sure taken the steam away, albeit temporarily from the Democrats. Sarah Palin is doing her own Singur protest by being loud and upfront about how she cares two hoots about her opinion among Washington Walruses. She with her two pence experience but a million MW confidence and smile has taken on the man most likely the next President of the arguably the most powerful nation on earth. We haven’t heard the last of this one yet for sure.
Hillary, Sonia, Maywati, Jayalalitha have their own quirks and ways of doing things. To me they provide that much needed breath of fresh air/ something different in politics. As with all other areas, I think it keeps the men on their toes.

Babu-ism

2008-09-05T07:37:00.001+05:30

Babu Lingo

Concerned Department- an illusion that you chase endlessly (hardly find any concern for your concerns here)

Saheb- Anyone from Lower Divisional Clerk to Chief Secretary. Depends entire on who uses it.Saheb is usually found behind closed doors (the ones that split down the middle and swing both ways, kinda explains their behaviour too)or a pile of files

Chai Paani- The vital connect between expectation and outcome

plan this to be a series, updated off and on. Suggestions welcome!

Mumbai Meri Jaan

2008-08-28T20:47:00.002+05:30

Rewind to July 2006. Until 10th July, it was just another monsoon month in Mumbai. On the 11th day it became the day the nerve of the city, the suburban rail, actually burst and oozed blood. The natural disaster that monsoon had caused the previous year, came back as a man made one to create panic, fear and chaos all over again. Everyone had a prayer on their lips that day, some for the departed, many for the untraced and everyone for the future. The next day, Mumbai came back to work. The media called it the Spirit of Mumbai, only the true Mumbaikar could sense that look on everyone’s face that day. The local trains were packed as usual but each of them had a new passenger, terror.
In Mumbai Meri Jaan, Nishikant Kamat, extracts that terror out of Mumbaikar’s hearts and places it on the screen. He visits homes, hearts and minds of all kinds and tells the story sitting in there. In a city where feelings are kept at home as people head out to work, the vulnerability of the average Mumbaikar is almost fictional. The heroic city has always been the image of the breadwinner, no feelings, relentless worker, stopping if anything to wipe sweat off the forehead. Kamat questions this beautifully as he travels upper middle class to the lowest class and derails every Mumbai stereotype. Soha Ali Khan, a successful media journalist finds her own tragedy being turned into a sound byte. Madhavan, that conscientious upper middle executive, who travels by first class for he finds cars a burden to the city, is forced to introspect and struggles to come to terms with his feelings that he can’t share with anyone, even though he has a family. He happens to be on the same train. The vulnerability of the average police constable is portrayed beautifully by Paresh Rawal, who submerges his frustrations under the guise of rustic humor. His younger colleague, idealist, isn’t as mature and almost succumbs to his frustrations. Irrfan Khan, a tea vendor, finds himself being increasingly alienated by a city finding Cappucino in malls more chic than cutting in thelas. He finds his own way of getting back at the city, no he doesn’t plant the bombs. Last but not the least, there’s Kay Kay Menon, as the right wing Mumbaikar who wild goose chases trying to trace the perpetrators of the blast is telling of the state of mind that some of our Mumbaikars are in
There is no story or to be fair there isn’t one story. If the director had his way he could’ve had told a story for every Mumbaikar and there’d be more to be said. The movie never really ends nor does it begin. Someone just took a slice out of our terror ridden lives and put it up there. And it moved me to tears.

BAH!!!! (Bachna Ae Haseeno)

2008-08-16T11:36:00.004+05:30

Part one
Act I: Switzerland
Boy meets girl
Boy greets girl
Boy dates girl
boy drops girl

Act 2 Mumbai
The above four steps all over again. With a different girl.And different location of course

Act 3 Sydney
Boy meets girl
Boy greets girl
boy dates girl
girl drops boy

Part 2- Pessimistic
What part 2?

Part 2- Optimistic
Act 1 Amritsar
Boy is rueful
Girl 1 is woeful
Her hubby is nice
unromantic but wise
Boy plays cupid
so wat if it looks stupid
he restores their love
forgiven and how!

Act 2- Italy
Boy is rueful
Girl 2 is now a bitch
he says sorry but she's got a hitch
he has to play her waiter
she couldn't put it straighter
he's forgiven too easy
and its happy days again
they hug n smile
and he's off on a plane

Act 3- Sydney
Girl 3 and Boy live happily ever after. Bah!!!

Death of the Cycle

2008-07-28T21:01:00.002+05:30

The innocuous transport of the aam aadmi has a tarnished image now. The mazdoor’s transport, a symbol of penury is now a weapon of terrorists. In fact its being exploited for its inherent characteristic, that of being Indian, hoi polloi and indistinguishable in any marketplace. The cyclist has always been a simple man, in films either the postman or a simpleton peon who carries the burden of a large family, struggling to do so. During the bad times, the cycle represents the vicious cycle that he is caught in, the good times the cycle represents wheels of progress. Mass produced and mass consumed, the cycle can even claim to be one of the biggest uniting symbols of the Indian mass, irrespective of culture and language. Even the names of the biggest cycle brands, Hero, Hercules, Atlas are quite a revelation about the burden that the cycle is meant to carry. Its earnestness is not lost to the aam aadmi, there is exponential relation of an ignition and acceleration. The equation is honest, the more the effort, the greater the speed. The typical color black also represents the functionality of the device. Colors came much later and for most reading this post, the first thought of cycle would have conjured up the image of a black hero cycle. A cycle also represents the balancing act for the Indian. Wife at the back (at the front when the marriage was still new) and kids of the rod in front, sometimes even on the handle, can be precarious proposition, but the ages have seen this delicate balance thrive with ample joy and smiles on faces. The Bajaj scooter has usurped this position somewhat but then in the villages of India, Bajaj is still aspirational, while Hero is still staple.
Its interesting how a cycle mingles into the marketplace. Parked against anybody’s wall, it’s never seen as a burden. Pretty much like the mongrels which inhabit temple stairs and railway stations. Their essentiality to the very definition of that surrounding, inconspicuous by their very nature, subdued like a village yokel. Its also the only vehicle that ‘walks’ as much as it runs. The ease with which it is pulled up into foothpaths, manoeuvred through railway crossings and led through crowded railway bridges is worth mentioning. While it has an owner in most cases, there are no qualms about letting it go for someone else’s errand. There is ego massage and there is no symbolism. The cycle is there for you to see and what you see is what you get.
For me the use of the cycle in multiple terrorist attacks now, represents the end of an age of innocence. Remember the last time you heard the tring of a bicycle behind you and how you budged exactly an inch to let it pass. And it did. And on it was an innocent Indian who was probably on his way to deliver letters or buy vegetables. Alas, the next time I see a bicycle, my eyes will miss the innocence.

A face in the crowd

2008-07-27T12:37:00.000+05:30

Its deja vu and the frequency is now alarming. Serial bomb blasts are now more frequent than Indian test defeats and in both cases, more often than not there is a foreign hand. As I had written in May 2007,the govt and related pillars seem to have perfected the reaction to a blast scenario. Its both amusing and saddening.

All this happens so perilously close, it could be you next or the time after that. What seemed so distant when blast reports used to come from Israel, Iraq, Kabul or even Kashmir is suddenly upon us, staring us in the eye. The perpetrators also seem to be increasingly like you and me. Laptops, emails, for all you know he travels with you everyday and plots your death too. He went to the same school or the same kind of school, chased the same dreams and ate at the same wada pav stall. You might have brushed past him at the crowded marketplace or asked him the way to a particular address. He might have been part of that cricket team that you fought with many years ago over who gets first right to play at the ground. Maybe you shared the same first class compartment, the same milk vendor, the same barber and the same supermarket. He might wear Allen Solly too and work in the same Corporate Park. He has a home loan, maybe better interest rate and wants to win at stocks. He has a child, a faith, a religion and family. He is a good man, prays for others and fends for his fellow beings. He has dreams of a future that is brighter and better. He has a bit of cholestrol, a growing paunch, that same glazed look every work day and the same stubble every weekend. He breathes the same air and runs to the same clock. He too feels that the world has to change, the kind of feeling that all of us get when we are treated unfairly, when we miss a signal or get jostled out of an overcrowded train. His means of change is a timer device, for us its nothing.

It works!

2008-07-21T19:08:00.001+05:30

A bad foot meant that I was immobile and locked in one position this Monday. After flipping innumerable boring channels, I chanced upon one where all the action was. Lok Sabha tv, i knew this one existed, or atleast deserved to exist, just to showcase the tomfoolery of our elected representatives.I missed the PM speak, but then haven't most people over the last four years :) An economist who stays quiet is a dangerous sign, even more so if he's also the PM. His adversary and the fat book autobiographer was much more vocal today. Though, unlike the Advani we know, he made two fundamental mistakes. One to say that Pandit Nehru never signed the NPT, how could he when he died in 1964 and the NPT came into existence around 1970.The next was to expose the opportunistic politics of his govt by claiming that the Congress is a destabiliser. Pranab da cashed in well on these two and in true Bengali mishti style, drove home these two hard hitting points during his speech. The opposition benches were stunned into silence, a stoic Advani stoned. Pranab da had his embarasing moments too, bungling up on arithmetic when detailing the support that the UPA enjoys and also mixing up papers while he tried to throw facts and figures. But then have to say, he's earned respect in my eyes as an excellent debater. He played his senior role well, using a mix of facts and light humor to drive home valid points. The Left MP from Kolkata, Md Saleem put his party to shame,speaking as if arguing with a hilsa vendor who had reneged on his promise to give him a discount.
As the camera panned Parliament, one realised that some seats were empty, in fact lot of them. Some were dozing off to their hearts content, guess the deal isn't worth losing sleep over. Every MP on an average represents 2 million people. Every time he speaks, it, hopefully represents, 2 million voices atleast. Every time he sleeps, it represents, a lost opportunity for 2 million people.
When we criticise our politicians, we also sometimes trespass into the process and the system. Seeing the open debate today, it felt great to be part of an open democratic system where anyone could speak without being shot at.The quality of debate is pedestrian but then its better to speak than sleep

HOME=HOpe+MEmory

2008-06-28T12:52:00.003+05:30

I was at the inaugural Gallup Behavior Economics Forum in Singapore this week. The forum brought together some great minds from within Gallup and outside and discussed the concepts of well being among other things. It was heartening to hear ministers and bureaucrats from Singapore talk about the way they have and they intend to, think about their city. The minster of defense mentioned four aspects that they have always focused on in creating the great city. Leadership scheme and how they can develop potential leaders in all spheres of life., the fact that there is anticipation of change and preparedness for it, the concept of reward for work and work for reward and the constant effort to create a state that is for everyone and offers opportunity for all. Come to think of it, these four will work well for organizations too. An ex bureaucrat mentioned a framework which explained the various levels at which governance operates and how cities should look to move continually on that path. He spoke about the role of Govt evolving from Regulator to Facilitator and eventually to Aggregator. He explained that e governance which is the buzzword now with most advanced cities also has many layers of advancement. E governance moves from Inform to Explain to Consult and then to Connect- Connect being one where you actually accept proactive ideas from citizens or citizen groups in shaping policy decisions. While it was heartening to hear a Govt official speak this way, one can’t help feeing disappointed about how India is nowhere on this scale, or even if it is, sadly none of it is visible.
Informal chat during the coffee breaks with the some delegates who were natives of Singapore revealed much more and helped better understanding of the city. The citizens spoke about how the hard stuff and infrastructure are all in place but most people sense a degree of stifling. The freedom to self express and explore is lacking. The Govt is doing a great job, sometimes too good a job for its own good. In fact a pertinent question that an ex bureaucrat of Singapore faced was interesting. A local, used the analogy of a modern teenage daughter and her complex relationship to her old economy father to explain how citizens might feel about their relationship with their country of origin. The answer didn’t matter, what did and was noteworthy was that a question of this kind even got asked in a public forum in Singapore. I also heard from some learned colleagues that if you point out a flaw in the infrastructure of the city, there is a good chance that you get sued if you are a citizen. If you’re not a citizen, they apparently just ignore you, that too says a lot. The newspapers are full of glory to the nation and its rulers and hardly run any critical or negative stories. In fact, they run a host of negative stories on other countries around the region, including India which has many to offer, so that citizens are conditioned daily into a sense of national superiority. I was shocked to read Singapore’s Mentor Minister and Founding Father mention that it will take only five years of an alternate rule to ruin Singapore. Such narrow leadership is limiting to achieveing greatness for Singapore
The cities of the future will have to compete like companies do today for people share. And this is not just ordinary people but the brightest minds who can contribute and create. Singapore will have to fight a huge battle with cities like London and New York which are equally creative but organized, soulful yet systematic and equal but unique to everyone. In my mind, the battle for the best minds will be won by cities which make them dream better and makes them say “This is where I will find my calling in life”
P.S: The title is a succinct representation of what represents a thriving city

Sarkar's Raj

2008-06-15T16:03:00.000+05:30

RGV thank god you’re back. After Satya and Company, the man had lost his way. He’s back now and Sarkar Raj is better than the prequel. It’s a gripper on screen, keeps you in the zone, living breathing and dying with the characters. The camera angles are unique, side shots, up close and personal, Abhishek’s beard, Ash’s lips, The Big Bs wrinkles. The shadows are omnipresent, the darkness being part of both the plot and the screen. In the background, the chants of Govinda don’t seem force fit, and the score blends tightly to fasten you to your seat even more. There is an abrupt reset to silent mode right from when you enter the theatre. Most dialogues are in expression and what’s unsaid is what is beautifully said. Speech is a luxury, scarce but scathing. The delivery is even better. There are no breathers on this treadmill; the run is slow poison, thank god for the interval.
Ramu’s magic is best visible on Abhishek, Shankar fills the screen up making props and people pale. He plays the modern messiah to a prospective power plant that Ash is leading. His conviction shows and powers its way into you and you root for his success, as the rest of the audience around you also does so, in silence. Ash finds a role fit to her persona and she emotes with endurance. Her shrill voice is absent, only a subtle whisper at various points to deliver the right dialogues. She cries well too, a natural act, is an understatement. The Big B is smaller this time, leaving the plot and the heroics to his protégé. When he has the screen to himself, he showcases the miles that still separate him from the others, in this film or otherwise. The plot has a dash of mafia killing and the machinations of a complex political drama. There is enough blood, but it’s the anticipation of blood that creates drama. The murders are silent, the musings too. In the end after many are killed, you’re still in the zone anticipating more. Ramu, calls for an abrupt cut in the end, saving the rest for hopefully part three.

BEST practices

2008-04-06T11:54:00.003+05:30

There are some examples that I have seen recently that tell me that the journey towards a service oriented economy is not mere lip service. Let me start with what is or rather was the biggest point of pain in my life, the Internet connection, rather the lack of it most times.
Like most white collar Indians, the predilection for anything multi national is a given. So I preferred Hathway over Tata Indicom, Satyam or even the sloth MTNL. Let me summarise my experience succinctly, Hathway delighted me on only one count, shutting up when I asked them to, over an inebriated, frustrated phone conversation. Repeated line drops, non collection of payment cheques (also implying no payment avenues except home collection of cheques), adhoc disconnections, adhoc disconnections (the former meaning purposive, the latter meaning vagaries of the connectivity). So I had a black cable emerging like an umbilical cord from my laptop but then the baby was long dead. With a heavy heart and an unjustly light pocket thanks to Hathway, I moved to MTNL. I knew that I could expect nothing, hence expectations were rock bottom, but then so were prices. So seemed like a deal, if not a steal. The image of tobacco chewing, couldn’t care a damn linesmen loomed large in my mind and I feared not just for the future health of my internet connection but even for the safety of my laptop. I was pleasantly surprised.
There was proactive calling from MTNL before installation. The technician was good at his job, didn’t take too much time and explained everything in detail. The Marathi accent was there for all to see, but so was his competence. MTNL also has a dedicated line, where people actually answer the phone when you call up with your issues. The phone bill doesn’t seem any heavier but the Internet Connection sure is more reliable.
My second example relates to the brash, rude and recently killing fleet of BEST buses. BEST introduced AC buses a couple of years back. These were a boon to people like me who didn’t drive to work and also didn’t want to get crushed among motley of populace. Priced at a premium, these buses are well frequented by PLU (people like us). Off late, the BEST, has introduced the BRTS routes. Low floored buses, with huge windows and very comfortable seating, these ply on arterial routes. The pricing is not very premium, more importantly the comfort is transformational. In fact even the bus driver is at greater ease, compared to the normal buses where he is subject to incessant honking and the heat of the engine next to him. My hypothesis is that the stress levels of those driving these buses are much lower than those driving normal buses, given the same route and timing. The other BEST initiative is to hand out tickets at bus stops itself vis-à-vis waiting for the conductor to do it. This has multiple benefits. It eases the conductor’s burden considerably, it prevents ticket less travel to a great extent and it also minimizes losses to alternate options like shared taxis and autos, especially when buses are late. The third initiative from the BEST which is commendable is the issue of smart cards. These are cards which can be read via handheld devices which the BEST bus conductors carry. There were fears of the same card being employed by multiple persons, which has now been addressed to a great extent by conductors demanding accompanying photo IDs. Off late, there has been a move to make these cards, mode neutral. Which means the same card will function across trains and buses, like in Singapore and other cities.
Downsides remain, some emanating from the attitude of the BEST bus drivers which remains cavalier. So he still honks hard, still cuts lane and still makes life miserable for the smaller motorists, albeit while in a modern machine. But then hey, the sloth has moved and that counts.

2008-03-29T21:19:00.000+05:30

Looks like a dog strayed in the path of a Kingfisher airline. It’s interesting to note that dogs seem to have a way of getting through most security cordons. Follow street dogs around any fence and they will show you a breach that no one could anticipate. Dogs have been the most evolutionary creature of our times. They way they have adapted to rapid urbanization is telling of how this animal might be still around when humans as a race are long on, maybe that’s saying too much.

Right since when Laika visited space to when Zanjeer sniffed out RDX, the celebration of canines has gone hand in hand with pelting them with stones. In urban centers, you’ll find dogs cluster smartly around where the sources of food are. This could be outside where an animal lover lives to the vicinity of garbage bins. You can also see visible efforts by dogs to mingle. So they’re curled up at bus stops, right there around marriage halls, frequently found at the heels of anyone carrying a food bag and probably are informally employed by most corporate via their contract security guards.

Dogs also seem to treat everyone at par. Irrespective of quality of light poles, given an opportunity they’ll still piss on it. In the streets of Mumbai, you’ll find dogs coexisting with urchins and the homeless. At the other extreme you’ll also find dogs that coexist with socialites and page 3 starlets.
Have you ever noticed what happens when some sadist kicks/ stones a dog? It yelps, and runs off, sometimes quite a distance. A couple of hours later you’ll find the same dog curled up at the same location. They seem to rationalize their lives well, taking the pain with the high points. Goes without saying that feed a dog once and you have a friend for life.
Dogs have always been domestic. They seem to figure out a way to survive most times in the harshest of societies. Unless of course they’re run over by airplanes.

Million Dollar Mumbai

2008-03-27T14:28:00.001+05:30

Ratan Tata will now drive Jaguar or even a land Rover. His servants servants will drive the Nano. Singur will produce the small car and London will deliver the big ones. Meanwhile, we also have some very rich Indians in the Forbes list and many more Indians buying yachts and islands. A crore is spelt easier than peanuts and doesn’t have too much value unless it has four or more digits in front of it. Personally, I know people who have invested a crore to buy matchbox houses at corners of Mumbai which don’t get much light, what an irony. Everybody wants their kid to have an IB education, a foreign degree and earn the highest salary. Money seems to have overcrowded our minds and our conversations.
Off late, in Mumbai’s public transport, you can find ample examples of wannabe noveau riche conversations. Right from ESOP windfalls, to making a killing in the stock market (sometimes being killed by it too), the average Mumbaikar (probably Indian too) is looking at the cash tills all the time. He is building castles on borrowed dreams, fed by images on television and funded by ICICI bank. The cash is someone else’s, the house is hardly mine, the car is on loan, but everything else is fine. Multi crore deals get discussed while hanging precariously off first class compartments and everybody has the pink paper at hand. Elders converse frequently on the lakhs that wards make every month and take pride in discussing how busy their sons and daughters are (“I can hardly remember what he looks like “). Names like London, LA get frequently dropped as if they’re loose change, introduction lines frequently sound like “Meet my nephew Rahul, he is from London “. Property deals seem to be in vogue too. Buying at a steal (under construction) and selling it six times over is a pastime, the home is now where dreams get sold and bought not where dreams get nurtured and built. No conversation begins or ends without property location, size of parking, resale value, rate appreciation and proximity of slums. Car parking in some areas is at three times the value of the car and this gets proudly stated by some. Ever imagine paying more for sitting at a restaurant than the food.

The frustrations of the have-nots are being fueled by these images and conversations. What’s more they are being marginalized by land deals and slum clearances. The have nots are being slapped hard on the face every day, everywhere by the unreachable heights of the rich. There are clear monetary dotted lines that they can’t afford to cross. Looks like the island city is going back to being the seven islands that it was at one point in time. This time though, the islands will be in the mind.

Look who's changing

2008-03-26T22:48:00.002+05:30

Don’t look the RSS is changing,. Especially because it’s changing its trousers, to be precise the khaki no longer is mandatory. There are several, reasons that come immediately to mind when one thinks about the Sangh shorts. The first fiendish thought, and there are many more to come, is on the fact that the shorts revealed more than it concealed. True to the vociferous nature of many a RSS spokesperson, the khaki shorts was also flamboyant and expansive. The trouble is, such exposure doesn’t augur too well for a party that has repeatedly stood for adequate clothing as the true indicator of moral character and conversely has violently taken down many a skimpily clad poster and people. There are some other rather obvious connections with the khaki, the notorious one being that with the cops. Given that nowadays, everyone from ex cops (KPS Gill) to encounter specialists are getting the wrong end of the (hockey) stick, the RSS probably wants to distance itself from such peeves.
Its worthwhile imagining what the shakhas will henceforth see disciples wearing. There have been talks of Bermudas being allowed, but then given the geographical proximity that Bermuda has to Cuba or even to the US, the RSS might have some reservations about it. Shorts in the color red, a symbol of vitality in the Hindu context will certainly not signal the right intentions within the shakha, given that the Communists swear by this color. There might be some quarters in the RSS who might argue that Lal is the first name of their supreme Advaniji but given that most shakhas are more anti Left than pro Right, this argument might not hold water. The color green will be met with utmost hostility for obvious reasons, no need to explain that logic any more. That leaves the color blue, but then it’s the color of the Samajwadi Party, the polar opposite of the upper caste Hindu RSS.
Looks like the Saffron brigade will have to resort to its tried and tested color formula to color its shorts. Am sure that’s one color that runs deep within all its ranks.

Mumbai Maharashtrians (and not Indians!)

2008-03-24T22:46:00.004+05:30

The Mumbai IPL team is practicing on the eve of their first encounter at Wankhede. Standing by the side, Sachin is chewing on his nails. He awaits a crucial encounter.
Enter Raj Thackeray, the local goon, and the bone of contention. He is demanding his pound of flesh and a couple of spots in the Mumbai side for the locals. For the first time, inspite of not being on 99, Sachin Tendulkar is tense.
Raj comes straight to the point “Chaila (Marathi expression for what the hell!), I want sons of the soil in the team, not some foreign players. Sachin bhau, I respect you, but this is unfair. Aamcha Mumbai cha team, aani phakt ekas marathi manoos (Our Mumbai side and only one Marathi native!)

Sachin tries to leave that argument alone, and raises his arms in helplessness.

Mukeshbhai entered the stadium just then, two bodyguards and four petis with other lackeys.
“Raj bhai kaise ho, suna hai aapko bhi cricket khelna hai?”
“Dekho Mukeshbhai, aapke office mein hamare bahut saare ladke hain isliye aapko chhod raha hoon. Warna Reliance to kabka bandh ho jaata”
Mukesh chuckles and says” Bhau, aapke ladkon ko main chance de sakta hoon. Par sirf nets practice mein “
Raj is angered. He adjusts his spectacles and roars
“ Aapne kya hume fisherman samajh rakha hai… chaila nets mein chance dega MNS mein sirf koli (fisher folk in Maharashtra) log nahin hain!!”
From the other end, Jayasuriya runs in agitated
“Sachin, those goons are bashing up Dilhara (Fernando) and Lasith (Malinga). In fact, Lasith has lost all his hair color already. They tried to catch me by my hair, but didn’t succeed for obvious reasons”
Raj smiles and says “These Madrasis were almost kicked out by my uncle. Now I will finish them off fully”
Sachin says “arre bhau yeh Sri Lankan hai”
Raj “ Sri Lankan, Sri-nath Sree-santh sab ek hi to hain hamare liye, nikalo saalon ko bahar”

Shaun Pollock meanwhile comes rushing in, clothes in tatters.
“Mr Ambani, your contract never said I’ll be unclothed by locals while at practice, this is ridiculous”
Raj looks at him and says “Saala African hai lekin gora hai, zaroor kidhar milavat hai”
Sachin butts in “Bhau, yeh South African hai “
Raj looks angered and says “Anything to do with the South is banned in my city”

Uthappa hears Raj’s last statement and tries to escape but Raj spots him.
“Wah, here comes my favorite meal, Uthappa. I won’t spare him, I’ll have you for breakfast”
Mukesh and Sachin try to pacify Raj but with no avail
He tries to grab Uthappa when Bhajji enters from behind and holds his hand.
Everyone is stunned. Mukesh and Sachin scamper for cover but there is none. The scene freezes like the climax of a cheap drama.
Bhaji breaks the silence. Staring Raj straight in the eye he says
“Saale, tere saare aadmi logon ko bhaiya logon ko harass karne se phursat mile to woh aake cricket khelenge na!!!”
Last heard the Mumbai IPL team had heeded Raj Thackeray’s call for inclusion of “sons of the soil” in the Mumbai IPL team. Raj’s men had been handed over the soil and gardening at Wankhede stadium. Raj was unavailable for comment as he was busy breaking North Indian bones in shanties in Mumbai suburbs.

National Anathema

2008-03-24T16:04:00.002+05:30

It is very comic to see movie theatre patrons struggle to keep the sanctity of the national anthem alive. For the uninitiated, all movie theatres in Mumbai, play the national anthem before any movie starts. Am not too sure if it happens with the sleazy Pyaasi Jawani kind of movie halls but I can vouch for the others (smart way of making a clean morality statement!)
I can imagine why this whole national anthem rendition started. A self appointed upholder of India’s morals would have decided that our country gets corrupted in the movie theatres. So the national anthem was the anti dote that audiences would consume before they expose their senses to debauchery
There are multiple spoilers to the national anthem. The one that comes to mind immediately is the fact that most audiences are not in their seats when the national anthem is being played, they’re still strolling in (blame it on traffic, obesity, bad signs in theatres and lack of civic sense). Some people find sadistic pleasure in crushing toes in ill sized aisles, especially in Mumbai where people do it day in and day out in local trains. So some will stop right where they are as soon as they hear the anthem go, not realizing they are downsizing someone’s toe. Some others will keep walking, though with a mix of apology and stand at attention, tough to describe but they do pull it off. Popcorn munching and cell phone buzzes have the share of the other spoilers. The icing on the cake comes right at the end when people can’t wait to sit at the end of it all. So by the time the audio is at the last ‘Jaya He’ most people have started shuffling and adjusting their seats.
I couldn’t think of a better way to insult the national anthem.

Cold Dog

2008-02-10T08:07:00.001+05:30

Curled up within
In an unseasonal cold
At the bus stop
A petty mongrel old

He sees winter clothes
People wrapped snug
Adjusting their shawls
And ear plug

Crowds never die
At the tea stall
And there’s only few
Hearing the kulfi call

No one ventures to kick him
Or pelt stones
Life is peaceful
So what if there are no bones

In a city of cold stares
And crowds of strangers
There’s someone loving the cold
It’s the petty mongrel old

And Gilly Walked

2008-01-29T15:03:00.000+05:30

Didn’t take much to get him to do his swansong, did it? A few dropped chances, self appointed critics calling for his head and out walked the man who could have easily blazed victories for Australia for at least two more seasons. That act pretty much sums up a simple family man who loved to give the ball a resounding thump and had gloves that could grab passing thoughts, not to say the red cherry, with alacrity.
In the team of seasoned street gangsters that he was part of, he had a cardinal like presence. Not one to claim a wrong dismissal and not one to let go off a right one. He embarrassed his rather greedy team mates on more than one occasion by not lending vociferous support to their dubious appeals for that all important wicket. He wore his conscience on his glove and however hard something thudded into it, the glove would remain unmoved. So when he did appeal, and was he loud, the umpires could trust him with the judgment and not just the appeal (a certain Mr Dravid might vehemently disagree but we all know Gilly never lies).
He transformed from Dr Jekyll to Mr. Hyde the moment you handed him the willow. As the Sri Lankan team discovered at the World Cup final and most bowlers have on one occasion or the other, the battle with Gilly’s bat is one of hope. He is the master of dominance, one where the bowler is a minor cast and fielder a mute spectator. Gilly’s strokes usually scorch their route to the advertising boards or describe projectile equations of all kinds, parabolic and non parabolic while they send spectators scampering to catch them in the stands. There is scant respect for either rookie or legend as Monty and Murali will tell you. The only time he provides respite is when he goes to the non striking end, albeit only temporary.
Gilly has never waited for anyone to have the last word on his life. When batting he walked when he knew it was out, and now he walked when he felt his time was up. Hats off to one of the best human beings of modern day cricket. By the way, he was a genius too.

Bull in an India Shop

2008-01-24T22:05:00.000+05:30

Both parts of the term SENSEX defy logic. There doesn’t seem to be too much sense in what’s happening at the market, neither is there too much pleasure as connoted by the latter half of the term. Some souls who’ve lost most earnings and their bearings are blaming the Bull installed outside the BSE. That’s quite a U turn for a country reveres its consort the cow and worships Nandi, the Bull, the animal that the Destroyer rides. Of course, off late Nandi-gram has been in the news for all the wrong reasons so when this Nandi sees red either in terms of the Communists in Bengal or the stock exchange crash we seem to have a problem, a big one at that.

The bull run is something that I’ve never understood except the Jallikattu kind during Pongal in Tamilnadu, which the Supreme Court recently tried to put a ban on, in vain. During Jallikattu insane young men try to tame an inebraited bull usually causing much damage to men and property. Maybe the apex court should try putting a similar ban on the Sensex bull runs so that aapro Gujju bhais are prevented from doing the same to their families and in frustration trying to immerse their woes and souls in an Ahmedabad lake. The notorious lake now has more sorrow content than algae or rubbish. Interestingly, cops are doing everything to prevent a disaster emanating out of what I term a grand gambling expedition gone wrong, like cordoning off the lake. What’s pitiable is how no one seems to have an answer or a preventive mechanism when Farmers in Vidarbha do the same with their lives, year on year, not around some man made disaster called Sensex but for good old survival. Their bull run is probably what we should be praying for, for when their bulls run, the country gets better off in real terms.

David v/s Goliath

2008-01-20T14:32:00.000+05:30

If you thought Ponting was Bhajji’s bunny, think again. Bhajji has competition from a lanky North Indian named Ishant Sharma.

If David had the sling against Goliath, Ishant had the swing against Punter. In an hour of relentless interrogation, there were more questions asked than answers given. There were other legends of the bat standing at slips and watching as a rookie from their team undid a legendary opponent. The fielders were incidental, there were hardly any runs coming. Most of them were enjoying the undoing of the most competitive street fighter in modern day cricket.

Ponting fumbling against spin is something that even the school kids of Tasmania would tell you about but this fresh script is a promising one. For a man who more often that not has a boundary as his first scoring shot and pulls fast bowlers for six over deep square as if that is where they were always meant to be, being undone by an Indian rookie is unfathomable. A six foot plus, wiry young lad with a bunch of amulets around his neck deserves nothing more than a second glance in Ponting’s diary, instead he got a standing ovation from Perth. There was no great variety in what Ishant delivered; there was a lot of venom though. Ponting knew what was coming; he just couldn’t fathom the rate at which it did.

The umpires seemed to be enjoying the battle too, that probably explains why they charitably granted Punter a life or two. After 42 relentless missiles when the Southie, conservative rational Kumble decided to reign in his war horse, the Jat from Najafgarh intervened. Ek aur dalega? Are famous last words that Kumble uttered as obituary to Ponting.

Seldom has one seen such relentless ‘working’ of any batsman by an Indian fast bowler before getting him out. It’s very akin to how tigers are prone to playing with their catch, even as it struggles for life before delivering it from its suffering. Ishant did that to the Aussie skipper, and how.

Modis Operandi

2007-12-23T18:26:00.000+05:30

The Insurance industry has a lot to learn from Narendra ‘bhai’. He sells fear of death better than anyone does and this is one sauda where the Gujju doesn’t look at the bhav, he simple buys it. Sar kaatke jiyo, seems to be the triumphant line that 49% of Gujarat seems to be uttering and how. From Gandhigiri to Modigiri from Gandhinagar to Modinagar, from walking miles to make salt to using guile to shield assault, the state has seen it all.

To be fair to the man, he’s ushered in development in a state that has always seen calamity, natural or man-made. Development is the sheep’s clothes that the wolf wears, and the polity loves this attire. Predictably, there is a confusing enigma of a quasi carnivore, with the rare slip through of carnal instincts but also the oft portrayal of the loh purush. There is an orgy of fear, caution, awe, respect, admiration and daresay love that gets evoked when the bearded brahmachari brews brouhaha. He’s larger than the party; the sangh blood in him has disciplined him from uttering that yet. The voices of dissent against him within the BJP sound like lambs bleating in front of a monstrous growling about to launch jet engine. Moditva has almost made it to the RSS Shakhas as a model for instruction, a subject where work is still in progress, but results are rapid and scathingly clear. There is also talk of adopting the same ‘model’ of polity elsewhere, in other states. Opposition is paltry and only serves to make Modi look magical.The real sycophants are proclaiming Modi for PM.
Why does Gujarat vote for a murderer? Does half of the state’s population living in constant fear of their lives mean great governance? Are we living two parallel universes, one where there are exposes’, sting operations, calls for justice, candle light vigils, talk shows, sms campaigns, Gandhigiri and the other where the saffron devil gets more than his due. Where does the truth lie, does it lie in our universe, if so, is this truth relevant at all or is it something like an undersea aquarium for Modi and his ilk to watch and share a private joke over?

I hate to stay in a country where Gandhi is on the notes but Modi is on the votes.

OSO- So So

2007-11-09T20:35:00.000+05:30

Flatters to deceive. It’s a bit like Sachin getting out to a full toss after a lovely start.
The bad part:
The second half could have been another movie. In fact, I wish it were. Hangs like an orphan, poor cousin to a hilarious first half. It’s like sending Chanderpaul out to bat after Lara’s scored a quick fire 60, what a let down. The facts will read a bit like a lousy blood report, but some things have to be said. The ending is a rip off from Karz and Madhumati, wife tells me so. The rip off isn’t all that spectacular and seems a bit like a designer cut gone horribly wrong. Deepika is mostly silent and that’s the highlight, cos she can’t do too much with her face than flaunt her lovely eyes and omnipresent dimple. This part sees the re-birth sequence, a deja ‘woo’ of Arjun Ram-pall into confessing his crime and a chandelier climax. There also is the endless party number where the entire film fraternity is on screen, most being ones who aren’t doing too much work nowadays. Shahrukh hams to the T, he just can’t cry. Period. Shreyas Talpade should ideally have stuck to bowling really well in Iqbal.
The good part:
The first half is the best spoof on 70s Bollywood, ever made, I hazard. MTV could have done this in episodes, but Farah Khan pulls it off in one cut. Her passion for 70s cinema is clear, and she’s spoofed it with panache, making a really entertaining sequence of parody. Shahrukh plays the struggling junior artiste with a huge shock of hair and a hugely hopeful ma (Kirron Kher). He does some endearing solos, none better than one where he’s drunk and spewing an award speech. You can’t help but laugh at the obvious digs at cinema of the Emergency era. His love for Shantipriya, the diva of Bollywood then, results in a fire rescue sequence and an equally flamed end which consumes both of them. He’s reborn thirty years later, with the past coming back to haunt him.

The songs are an obvious highlight but nothing beats that 70s show. I wish there were second chances in cinema. One where film makers could quickly re-do parts. I wish Farah had given us that entertainer which so seems to lurk somewhere behind this script, but never shows up. Pity that something so well begun, remains half done.

Check thy India!

2007-11-04T19:10:00.000+05:30

An FM channel which plays great Hindi classics was living up to its track record by playing melancholic Mukesh. The cab driver, instantly, switched to the latest Om Shanti Om number and let it stay.

I tried to thinking about the last time I had heard a sad song in a new movie release, it was futile. Not that I am a Bollywood buff, but my First Day First Show friends struggled too. In fact, we struggled to name many recent tragedies, except ones like Himesh Reshammiya who are quite tragic, whether in movies or not.

The age of melancholy and self pity is out. Looks like the age of celebration, fanfare, and ostentation is here to stay, not just in the movies.

We seem to celebrate everything as if it were the last time we’d do it. T20 victory to kid’s birthday parties, Sensex booms to Shahrukh’s six pack. The event becomes irrelevant in the light of the celebration. Celebrity marriages are more about who’s attending, who’s performing, hardly about who’s wedding. The other day’s T20 match against Australia was more about what Deepika felt about Dhoni than what Gambhir thought about Clark.

Ostentation is on display. How TV sets have lost weight. From bulky picture tubes to flat screens to LCD to Plasma. With loss of weight, it’s also gained mobility, climbing onto color co-coordinated walls and sometimes onto the ceiling. Mobile phones have moved from being phones to identity cards “change the sets to match the phone please” says a line in an LG phone ad. The next time, when you gang with people at a coffee shop, notice how the ones with the coolest phones are usually first to place them on the table. How aesthetics of some other durables have changed. Godrej refrigerators were like plump Sharma aunties. Electrolux and LG ones are like svelte Svetlana. Do cool is not enough, look cool is in. Homes have moved from family units to display units. From Sunil Babu, to HarGhar kuch kehta hai to Shalini Chopra, the color of homes have changed as rapidly as the desires of those staying in them It’s not just the material stuff, but even so called talent. Pea sized kids, wear revealing dresses, sing raunchy songs, accompanied by equally raunchy actions. Sitting in TV studios, a hyper ambitious hopeful parent gazes at her kid and then at the judges. Tear jerker finals, crazy SMS voting, blood shed and rioting, all in the name of ‘displaying’ talent. At cricket matches, the buffoons outnumber the real fan. Face painted, skimpily clad, they’d hardly know their Googly from a Chinaman. Their 5 secs of display on the big screen is what makes the match worthwhile for them. At marriages, it sometimes becomes difficult to figure out the groom or the bride. There are enough men and women around trying to be centre of attention, sometimes the parents too.

A life of moderation, learning from rejection, poetry in melancholy, philosophy in the pursuit of the truth within. These were principles that led the paths of our ancestors. We’re running down a different path, unbridled, shallow. Lest we fall, sooner than later.

Yercaud- Paradise Lost, Parasite Found!

2007-11-03T13:53:00.000+05:30

A weekend is too short or long depending on whether you’re in office or not. A fortnight back, wife n I decided on a quick exile to the hilly confines of Yercaud (220 km from Bangalore). Hopes of simple living, high thinking led us to the TTDC resort (Tamilnadu Resort), more like last resort in retrospect.
Our room supposedly a super deluxe cottage had heritage bathrooms and lots of fauna to boot. The ‘heritage bathroom’, we discovered, was heritage because it hadn’t been cleaned since Rajaraja Chola rode that way many a century ago. It was dimly lit; almost as if it wanted to go unnoticed, in shame. Hot water was confined to within the large sized geyser and didn’t quite manage to find its way out of the tap. Cold water was full of self doubt and made sporadic appearances, making bathing a dry and wet affair. The room had flowery curtains which made you wonder if someone in the vicinity had been relieved of their worn out clothes. Fauna included snails, spiders, grasshoppers and some variety which is exclusive found there. The only saving grace to the place was that it had a gate through which you could escape as easily as you came in. We cut our two day booking short and ran out as fast as we could to the safe confines of Hotel Grand Palace.

Yercaud, is only a day long stay unless you have the compulsive habit of visiting places twice. It takes 20 hair pins to get there, I enjoyed counting them, but you might not especially if you get motion sick. Salem is the closest railhead, mere 30 km away. Yercaud offers views from various perches and not much more. If you’re a hill freak then this place is for you. Trust the local cab guys to take you to a local temple first and then all over. Montfort School was one non hilly landmark that we visited, our driver telling us about how a certain South Indian actor had studied there. Overall it’s not full of spectacular views but has enough to keep you interested and more than enough to make you feel good at the end of it.

Post Script:We've got bitter memories of the hotel and what came free as parting gift from them was a Malarial parasite package for a couple. We're still recuperating.

T20- Gully cricket and a little more

2007-10-01T10:55:00.000+05:30

T20 is just like what we used to play every weekend as teenagers. 8 over matches, hard tennis ball, no care in the world and a 1000 window panes to knock over. Hardly any time to settle down; see the bowling and all those nice things mentioned in the coaching manuals. It was downright scything from the word go, some did it better with technique, others just did it. As evening approached 8 overs would come down to 6 and the attitude would become more scavengers like. Standing 4 ft outside the crease to a fast ball, attempting impossible singles, getting away with it, running off overthrows, mock running off every ball, fighting with umpires and crying hoarse on parched mouths shouting abuses at someone who bungled. At the end of the day, there would have been 6 ‘matches’ and a cool kitty of money if it had been our day. Otherwise there would be hell breaking loose, with accusations flying at a rate that would put Ferrari to shame.
Dhoni and his boys, took this to a different level, so did Shoaib and his boys. When our arch rivals played taped ball cricket all their lives, they didn’t realize that they were practicing for a T20 final many years later. Dhoni, Yuvi and the small town brigade would have knocked more of tennis balls and window panes that kookaburras. When the two met at the Wanderers they had left behind correct cricket and the coaching manuals in the dressing room. The dug out had only animal instincts and it showed.

Just another statistic

2007-08-28T10:06:00.000+05:30

Ram didn’t remember too much about his village back in Maharashtra except for the face of his mother at sleep, the day that he’d decided to escape. The sparsely occupied room had stood mute while he packed a small rucksack of his torn shorts and shirts, two of them. As the sun rose, Ram was sitting atop a generous bullock cart which would take him to the nearest bus station 50 km away.

12 years passed, during which he had never written to his mother, he had never learnt how to. His only link back home was two hundred rupees that he sent her every month, without fail. The money might bring a smile to her face and tell her that all was well with her son.

A Sunday evening when he had finished delivering all the courier letters, Ram stood next to the sea. He loved doing this, as among the thousands of people who thronged there Sunday evening, he was anonymous. He was not the son of the farmer who lost hope and committed suicide; he was not the brother of two sisters who had been married off to rich old men, just to feed the family. He also was not the son of a mother who thought he would not be like his father. He would not run away, she had always said. But he had, and that thought hurt Ram. The two hundred rupees that he sent her was as much in seeking forgiveness as in quelling his own sense of guilt. Would mother have understood why he left home?

His thoughts were interrupted by screams of a group of kids as they tried to push each other into the oncoming waves. They were happy, without burden. Their joy was infectious, Ram smiled. He felt light and optimistic, the gentle warmth of the setting sun only added to his positive feeling. He was surprised at how easily his being had gone from being woebegone to feeling energized. He felt like having a chaat, a rare treat that he gave himself a couple of times a year.

The chaat stalls were full of families spending the Sunday binge-ing on street food that Mumbai was so famous for. There were young couples too, college students, who were sharing the same plate and probably the same dreams. He double checked his breast pocket for the two hundred rupees that he had to send back home the next day, they were there, safe. Five minutes later Ram had his first morsel of chaat, celebrating Sunday evening on his own. Suddenly, a sharp blast threw him two hundred metres away. A feeling of emptiness was the last sense that Ram felt.

The next morning, Times of India carried a picture of a mangled body; Ram was now the symbol of a terrorist attack, to be played over and over again on news channels and newspapers.

A week later, back in his village, Ram’s mother wondered why the two hundred rupees had not come this time.

Post script: There are many like Ram who become mere statistics in blasts and mishaps. What saddens me the most is the thought that they continue to live for some people who are oblivious to what's happened to their dear one back in the city

ICL- Beggars can be choosers

2007-08-23T09:45:00.000+05:30

Choice is always welcome, especially if it involves something that’s remained a monopoly for 80 years. In fact, it’s quite surprising that this didn’t take place concomitant with the liberalization of the economy. We had newer cars, the congress lost power regularly, more variety of soap (both TV and bathing) but the same cricket board.
The problem with the BCCI, for ever and recently has been that non- cricketers have been taking decisions on behalf of cricketers. So you have an agricultural minister who runs both Baramati and BCCI, the man who preceded him was a seasoned baniya. Cricket some might argue is serious business; my contention is that is its cricket first and business later.
So do we have genuine choice now, I don’t think so. Subhash Chandra is a shrewd businessman, don’t know too much about how much he loves cricket. He’s roped in the man who brought tears to eyes in 1983 and tears to his own eyes in 2000. The Haryana Hurricane is now an emotional whirlwind with a financial windfall on the side am sure. His eyes light up when he speaks about ICL, is he seeing something that most of us cannot see. Mr Chandra shrewdly remains in the background, pulling strings and opening purse strings, ensruing that ICL is not seen as a ‘business’ venture. He’s got all the ingredients that makes this venture succeed- he’s got media, he’s got the players and he’s got large hearted patrons like Laloo who’ve promised him railway grounds to host matches on.
The line up of players is mostly one that would qualify as archives today more than players. Well past their prime, they look like they have relented to what seems to them like a last resort. There is ample talk of the big guns coming, am sure they will. So we’ll have a mix of Ranji players, India discards, India hopefuls (whose hope remains just that, a hope) discards from other nations, players past their primes and some legends. Such line-ups, in pre- ICL days, made up exhibition matches or charity games. Never imagined someone would actually make a business proposition out of it.
What is working for ICL? The fact that it’s so difficult to make it to the Indian cricket team. Just 16 spots for grabs of which 4 seem fixed forever. What makes it worse is that Ranji trophy pays peanuts and all you have for spectators is mongrels, crows and the two umpires. Everybody wants to secure their future might be a done to death line in insurance, but for these players it just might be what they are hoping to do. For people like Kiran More and the rest, it’s clearly the limelight and the lucre, for Kapil Paaji, just might be the passion.
ICL might not do to cricket what Kerry Packer managed to do. But they sure are hitting the BCCI where it hurts the most… money.

Clip of the Day

2007-08-17T14:34:00.000+05:30

After Killings, Sense of Unity Surprises Newark

Life and Exclusive!

2007-08-17T11:54:00.000+05:30

The Times carried a thought provoking article on which way the world could be headed.

Our lives are increasingly governed by the principles of exclusion. Some of these examples readily come to mind
1. Our housing societies have multiple layers of security, not the smallest of insects could steal their way in. Have you ever noticed how any stranger who 'walks' into a society gets treated at the gate by the watchmen compared to say someone who drives in?
2. We have AC cars that shut the smells of the city out and tinted glasses that effectively color our view of dirty uncleaned streets and urchin
3. Even when we walk, we effectively use ear plugs of all kinds that dish out music to the ears... who wants to hear the traffic honk or the cacophony at the railway station
4. Ever noticed the ease with which people dismiss slums off when the make statements like these "I've just bought a flat, actually it's under construction. You know what, I got a steal cos there are slums in front of the plot right now. The builder tells me that the slums will go away".
5. Think about the last time you looked the rickshaw or cab driver in the eye except for a fight over the fare
6. Think about how the so called lowest layer of our society seldom have names they just have titles like Peon, Mali, Courierwala, plumber
7. Ever thought about the ease with which we hand out stale food to beggars- if you couldn't eat it how would they?
8. Think about how all of us condemn flooding during rains when it appears on the news, but how many of us drive past flooded homes and do nothing about them?

There could be many more examples here. Most of us who either write such stuff or read them are part of the exclusive excluder set. High time we started introspection before someone else comes along and begins to exclude us.

Chak De India

2007-08-15T12:53:00.000+05:30

Bobilli Vijaykumar has a lot to write everyday, considering that he seems to be the only spors journalist that TOI has. In today's TOI he typefies the Indian attitude to wins

After running through the article, you'd probably think that the title doesn't do justice to the content. The first half is a diatribe, the second half eulogy of sorts. For me this typefies how journalists today are shallow opinion makers who don't have the conviction to follow through and play the long hard innings.

Learned cricket lovers will empathise with Dravid, Vaughan being the first. For a team labelled poor travelers, this move was conservative yes, cowardly, no. The same journalist would have pounded Dravid to pieces if we'd asked the Poms to follow on and lost. Remember, we don't have a great record batting last, do we?.

So the phrase BVK uses " A few scared minds and a defensive approach" does not do justice to the kind of cricket that we played through this series. Zaheer gave the English a taste of his venom in the first test when he hit Vaughan square on the visor. The message was clear and Vaughan knew it.Karthik came to the party, he spilled a few catches but gathered a lot of praise.Dada loves English settings.11 years might be a long time but he re-dscovered the magic that had the stiff upper lipped members' stand at Lords stunned in 1996. Dhoni saved us the first, Zaheer and RP delivered the second. A battle of minds and some times bodies, as Sreesanth might tell you, ensued with some jelly beans thrown in for good measure. England had some consolation,a South African mercenary called KP who bats for them got some runs, but true English blood failed.

Let me get jingoistic here and say that we paid the English back in the 60th year of our Independence.And am proud of it. Well done Rahul, well done India. Jai Hind.

Traffic Corpse?

2007-08-08T10:13:00.000+05:30

Here's something from Yahoo on traffic cops in China
wonder what is the red signal age for the Mama who stands grinding tambaku (tobacco) at Mumbai traffic signals and is a poster boy for making a quick buck?
Maybe we do have the answer for his corrupt practices- bad salary, pathetic work conditions and a from what this article says short life span. Who wouldn't want to maximise returns?
Would be interesting to see the link between the age of dead traffic cops and how corrupt they were. Two perspectives that could be examined
1. Did these guys know that they're short lived and hence they were most corrupt?
2. Or did the live a short life because they were so corrupt (the whole moral angle)

We'll never get data on this one :)

Visa Power- the Road to 'Go Get It'

2007-08-03T00:55:00.000+05:30

A rainy day was a bad omen. I didn’t want to be standing wet and vulnerable in front of the Visa Officer at the US Consulate. In retrospect, the whole saga is funny and how.

Arriving half an hour before my scheduled time, I thought I might be laughed at. Instead, what greeted me was a sombre looking line that threatened to make me back pedal at least half a kilometer. Parents and wards, husbands and wives and all genetic combinations possible had arrived with rain gear and mortal fear, hours in advance. Nobody spoke, just tentative glances, shuffling of feet and then tentative glances again, this time in the direction of the gates to the Consulate. Mumbaikars are an optimistic lot; else why would one of the gentlemen preceding me in queue not carry an umbrella, in spite of it having poured that morning. His feeble attempts at accommodating himself in the rear part of his neighbour’s umbrella ended with a feeble smile from him and a condescending stare from his counterpart. Interestingly, that was when a bearded rag picker came along vending two umbrellas (no I have not strayed into another post by mistake, this one IS about the US visa :-)) and sold one of them to this gentleman for a cool two hundred bucks. I could bet my passport that that umbrella wouldn’t last two hundred hours.
A while later we were herded like refugees into a canopy just outside the consulate gates. I could see faces tighten, breathing get heavier and eyes lighting up at the slightest movement. Episode 2 was just about to unfold. A well dressed gentleman, wearing a suit actually, had carried a suitcase too many. You just can’t carry anything into the Consulate, except probably yourself. He used native Gujarati and to good effect. An unsuspecting father who was accompanying his daughter to the visa interview agreed to tow his luggage. After exchanging pleasantries and his suitcase, he was a relieved man, in more ways than one. That poor uncle (girl’s father) now resembled a Gujju luggage rack, two suitcases, a ladies' hand bag and a pink umbrella. The umbrella was short lived, it gave way as soon as the good(s) Samaritan stepped out into the rain, must’ve been a cheap Chinese import.
People kept falling off the line for various reasons, none related to ineligibility of course. I wouldn’t blame terrorists for driving a jeep in here. Looked like there was no other way to get in. The third episode comprised a hyper gentleman who was asked to reveal the innards of his err….umbrella, by the insecure security guards. The soaked thing opened in a jiffy and with a bang, showering monsoon arbitrarily in four different directions. The guards were wet and angry. I came off the security check with a bad expression on your face and a wooden token in hand
The scene within the interviewing centre DID resemble a refugee camp. Looked like there were terrorists within who were polishing off hostages by the hour. Anxious faces tried to read expressions of those who emerged from the visa interviews, looking for cues which might see them through. The atmosphere was very similar to one outside ICUs in hospitals, just that all who waited for their turn also looked to be in a serious condition.
The announcement system summoned people to interview booths had the vagaries of the Consul Officers voice. So some came in genuine American accents which led to everyone cocking the ears but no one quite fathoming what was said. Some others came in Desi American accents which were even worse.
I finished my interview and on my way out witnessed many more ‘incidents’ in the queue which had swelled by now, much like the rain water outside. All in all getting the Visa wasn’t half as entertaining as the journey to getting there.

Post- Mortem

2007-08-01T23:29:00.000+05:30

I won’t post anything new until

1. The English pick the Jelly Bean that they threw at Zaheer and throw it at themselves (they’ll gladly do this if it makes Zaka bowl lollypops at Oval)
2. Sachin gets a hundred (not with Taufel around am sure…kidding)
3. Sanjay Dutt gets slapped with TADA (if wishes were horses)
4. Pratibha Patil smiles (now that she’s finally got to Raisina Hill)
5. Himesh-bhai takes his cap off (and shows he’s human and bald after all)
6. Amitabh goes farming (better this than some of his latest commercials)
7. Pronoy Roy comes back to anchor the 9’O Clock news (enough of sending the kids)
8. Contestants stop crying in singing shows on TV (and start singing )
9. I stop seeing Harry Potter books and young readers who increasingly resemble him
10. I can come up with filler ideas like these while my writing takes an un-sanctioned vacation

Back with a Bong!

2007-07-20T01:00:00.000+05:30

This one is one from the archives...but given that we love to hate this tiny neighbouring country that we created (esp after what they did to us in the World Cup), here's a piece from my mail archives on a rather unsavoury experience that I had on board the Bangla national airline (yes it does exist and yes it also flies)

well for starters, i was booked on a biman- which for the uninitiated happens to be bangladesh's national airline.....now we know where half of their GDP goes, its in maintaining a fleet of two or maybe three aircraft....

well i entered dubai airport at 10pm for a 12.30 am flight.....hoping to have a real comfortable flight back home where i could catch at least thirty five winks if not forty....

after a detailed search on google and every other search engine possible, including some hostile Arabs, i discovered where the check-in line for Biman was....thank god....well i said it too early...

it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get that piece of cardboard called a boarding pass- well what went wrong? everything that possibly could..........to give you a background biman offers more luggage capacity- 50 kg which obviously is 40+10 or 30+20.....the prob is the bongs from the other side aren't as smart as their brethren from india....they think the whole house fits into 50kg. So one could make out people like shapes behind huge mounds of luggage in queue.....for a moment i thought was i headed for a cargo plane....(my weight comes close u see)

so all hell was breaking loose time and again when people's luggages were getting rejected....and that happened for everyone....and i mean everyone....

the other problem of course is that our neighbours also don't believe in queues or maybe they do- just that queues come from all directions and everyone believes that the queuestarts off from whereever they are.....so u can imagine......a planeload of insane bongs all trying to be first.....or 'pharst' as the rosogolla accent might utter....

halfway down the queue or the P or R or S, i discovered that the flight was scheduled to take off only at 2am- obviously.....i quickly double checked to ascertain whether it was the same night or the next night.....

2 am dubai time and the flight to nowhere was exactly that....nowhere in sight..... 2.30 am and all of us were herded into buses that took so much time to get to the aircraft that i suspect, i really do that we eventually took off from Sharjah or from some unused old airport in the outskirts of Dubai....

On board, the first olfactory sense that I got was that I had entered a tin of mustard oil..... was dimly lit with yellow lighting and airhostesses who were behaving as overbearing aunties...(we all know how bong women can be!)

hardly slept on the flight....not with mustard oil air freshner around....and was thanking my lucky stars to be back in Mumbai in one piece.....

It wasn't over yet....no sir....the check in luggage was let loose simultaneously on two conveyor belts or was it three and you had passengers scrambling to gather their suticases before they disappered into yet another merry go round.....

The ground staff looked like they were grounded cos none of them were around.....well after all that one had gone through you really didn't expect one did you?

Biman finally took off I think for Dhaka not before half a planeload of Mumbai passengers exclaimed in unison- "Good riddance!"

Malabar Musing and Mosquito

2007-06-23T10:19:00.000+05:30

Kerala never fails to enchant, same case this time. This trip was special, and didn’t disappoint. A honeymoon in Kerala conjures up exciting images for most. Fed by scenes of coconut trees, boat races, backwaters, kathakali and karimeen, Incredible India is initiated in these popular iridescent images.
For me, this trip was a homecoming of sorts. Born a Malayali, and a true one at heart, it was time to shed the Mumbaikar sheen and smell the land. We did four destinations and each sparkled in its own glory, juxtaposing different facets of the same Gods creation to exhibit different flavours of God’s own country. We saw a silent backwater holding its own against a roaring sea front at Poovar. We saw nature at peace with itself, disturbed only by humans at Kumarakom. We were closest to the heavens in Munnar, sometimes within touching distance. And at Cherai, we signed off an idyllic end to a trip of alifetime. As we touched down in Mumbai, a rather bumpy one in the state airline, it was a rude return to reality from a ravishing escape.
After the eulogy, the reality. Kerala is the neatest, cleanest place that one can ever visit. Hygiene and cleanliness begins at home and even the rarely found beggar has neat clothes on. Its surprising then, in the wake of such personal hygiene, to see the incidence of Chikungunya and other diseases, again. The conclusion is simple and quite a hard slap on the state machinery. The civic systems are not good enough to take care of locally generated waste. Every house being kept clean means that there’s a lot of garbage out there, especially in a state with a very high density of population. What makes matters worse is that it rains a lot and hence chances of water getting accumulated and hence contaminated also are high. Add to that, a host of backwater fed districts, which is incidentally where the epidemic is most prevalent.
Recently, the state Govt. did a wise thing by demolishing a host of illegal structures at Munnar. The current chief minister is a man of principles and could be the best bet that the state has in addressing problems in healthcare and basic amenities. If only he got his priorities right, lest God’s Own Country gets labeled Perpetually Prone Country

Anatomy of a blast

2007-05-19T10:34:00.000+05:30

Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid was bombed this afternoon. Sad.

Except the blast, almost everything that happens around it seems so predictable. I’ll try and recreate some almost done to death sequences that happen post.

1. Local correspondent of local channel and national channel have ear piece dangling and mouth piece blabbering. “This city is under siege” is a commonly seen scroller on most un-creative news channels. The more creative ones make a story around it like “Is this the beginning of the end” (ha ha ha…).Incidentally that reporter will be stationed there for the next fortnight everyday pointing out to the spot where the blast occurred.
2. Expert Anti Terror Squad will be at the spot with terror trained Labradors sniffing and snorting.
3. PM will condemn attack.
4. CM will condemn attack
5. CM will announce compensation of 5 lakh for families of those dead, 3 lakh for those half dead (shouldn’t that be 2.5?), 1 lakh for those that lost limbs etc
6. Home minister will decide to ‘rush’ to the spot either that evening or the next day….the rush factor will depend largely on how many are dead. I think that the Home ministry has norms that have been developed internally which reads something like “If no of dead is less than 100, ask Home secretary to make a statement”, “if no of dead is more than 100, make a statement yourself”, “if no of dead is more than 500, then ‘rush’ within 12 hours”, you get the drift don’t you
7. Experts will be interviewed on TV panels. They will wax eloquent on the type of explosive used and try and draw parallels to earlier blasts.
8. Right wing politicians will blame appeasement of minorities as the root cause, the Left as usual will try and make a so called intellectual but absolutely useless observation (Sitaram Yechury :-))
9. Local insignificant political party will call for city bandh the next day
10. This is the stupidest one. All neighbouring states will be proclaimed “on high alert”. This state of affairs doesn’t do much except inconvenience general public. Naka bandis, extra frisking at airports, random rummaging of baggage at railway stations…
11. Suddenly, there will be unexploded bombs that will be discovered at other parts in the city.
12. Curfew will be imposed and the situation will be termed “tense but under control”
13. National newspapers will launch “Relief Funds” the next day. People who donate more than a lakh will find their name in print in font size 3. Font size increases proportionate to corpus donated.
14. Retired judge will be appointed to head a ‘commission of enquiry’. (Have always wondered why ‘only’ retired judges head such Commissions)
15. Microphone will be thrust into the face of injured and bleeding survivor lying mangled in Municipal hospital by a ‘daring’ reporter who will question him thus “Aap ko blast ke bare mein kya kehna hai” or the most stupid variety will ask “aapko kya lagta hai iss blast ke peeche lya Lashkar ka haath hai”

Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid was bombed this afternoon. Sad.

Ganpati Bappa more yeah!

2007-05-14T23:45:00.000+05:30

My mom has a grouse that am not creative with picking gifts. All I can do is pick up Ganesha idols. What she can’t understand is... what do you do when ¾ th of most novelty stores nowadays have Ganesha in various forms and substance.
Among all our Gods, Ganpati seems to be the one who has managed to find a relevant role in every generation. In the first quarter of this century, the tusker was used by Lokmanya Tilak to aggregate the masses around Mandals, which would also serve to foster unity and patriotic values. It seemed to work. Later on the mill workers of Mumbai used Ganesha as a show of strength and solidarity in the wake of capitalist pressures. Pandals spawned in every mill compound and the event became annualized. There also was much pomp and revelry around it. About 13 years ago, Ganesha shocked the hell out of everyone by drinking milk. Amul and Aarey did good business as the pot bellied God had his fill. This relaunched the age of miracles and was quite a paradox to the age of liberalization and rational thinking that was finding wings in India. In the last 10 years or so, Ganesha has spawned many a Ganeshas and many an avatar. You have Ganesha in all sizes, shapes, postures and moods adorning novelty stores. From dashboards, to office cubicles, to all wedding cards, you find Vighnaharta enjoying pride of place.

Ganesha seems to be the only God who lends himself to such malleability. His image is that of being playful, approachable and quite ‘user friendly’ vis-à-vis say his father Shiva who is the angry omnipresent man of mythology. It is almost like Ganpati is the only God who would take no offence at being molded into any shape of size.

Saturday Night Insight

2007-05-08T20:27:00.000+05:30

I avoid Saturday evening outings like the scourge. More on reasons why later.

This last weekend, I happened to be on the way to a good friend’s wedding. Saturday evening and Andheri West are a bit like mixing karela juice and soured milk, you always knew it was going to be bad and you were stupid in trying it in the first place.

After 15 futile minutes of hailing rickshaws politely, a friend and I decided to do it the way it actually should have been always done. An uncivil forced entry into an empty Rick which refused to ply suddenly put us in the position of unprepared Priests subject to a confession. The man behind the wheel confessed that he wasn’t taking passengers cos he was rushing to an emergency. In Mumbai, emergency happens only when the bowels are over active or if there are bloody riots. Since the Sena was in power at the BMC and riots happened only when they were in opposition, I assumed it to be the former. A compromise was reached though. The man in distress would drop us halfway and then god willing another auto wallah who presumably wouldn’t have an emergency would take over.

We found an alternate one soon and started the second leg of our journey. An empty road beckoned tantalizingly and our Rick driver fell for it. In Mumbai, empty roads have the same effect as snow would in Somalia. You really don’t know what to do with it, but hell would break loose for sure. So our autowallah and all his brethren carting various other souls all got into Formula One mode. I had an eye on the road, so that I could at least see death coming. Sure enough, Satan passed us perilously by. The man who was winning the race toppled about 20 metres in front of us, thanks to a stray pedestrian. We careened to a halt and out rushed the man at the wheel. A crowd had gathered, curious to see how people wriggle out of an overturned Rick. Sure enough a PYT (Pretty-Young-Thing) party goer did, shaken for sure but not at all bruised. Looked like rickwallahs had a technique to topple over too, one that prevented any injury. That sight was surely an anti-climax and the crowd disappeared, like they had seen a bad Hindi film end. We thanked our lucky stars, the driver boarded nonchalantly and we were away.

At the wedding, we were surprised to find that we would get to meet only the groom. Shia tradition has it that men and women occupy separate spaces during wedding and as my friend who was getting married put it, it’s a bit like the Mumbai locals. Women can travel in the men’s compartment, if they dare to, but vice versa is a strict no no. Incidentally the venue was Good Shepherd Church. Next door, in the next enclosure, we had a pure Catholic wedding with the wedding march, the ball dance, wine and women. The crowd at my friend’s wedding had one dominant caste but there was a mix of the others too.

In the space of those four hours on Saturday, Mumbai, dare I say India, had shown me various values, good, bad and ugly.

The rickwallah who had an emergency symbolized how we sometimes share anything intimately with strangers. This happens frequently when on the road or when traveling. It’s a bit like saying, I know that I’ll never see you again, so what the heck. I call it the one night stand conversation.
The Rick that toppled over episode symbolizes our resilience and ability to cope with almost anything (some might call it apathy). Half an hour after the episode, the incident became juicy news for me to tell everyone. It stopped being a spine chiller. In fact, the next day I even forgot to mention it to some people.

The marriage for me symbolized how we as Indians are comfortable with conflicts or maybe contradictions. A traditional Muslim wedding, held in a Christian church, amidst the revelry of a Christian wedding and attended by Hindus like me. I might also hypothesize, that the grooms on either side may have even gone to the same school and might have had the same education. But on one side, the Muslim groom is comfortable and happy, being cut off from his bride by purdah while next door the Christian one jives away to glory with his partner for life.

The Genius who walks

2007-04-29T22:35:00.000+05:30

It was worth the 47 day wait. As barmy army, swami army and the mystery around Bob Woolmer’s demise faded into the background, one man rose, literally after the Ashes.
It’s been a long time since one saw massacre on the cricket field. There’s been enough talk around it when the practitioners of the art, or the scythe if I may call it that, walked out to bat. But few delivered, and even if they did it was against minnows and bowlers who wouldn’t qualify to bowl at the Aussie nets mostly. One man waited, accumulating all his aggressive instincts only to unleash it at the biggest spectacle of all modern day cricket. He picked the big occasion, as had his skipper in the earlier edition, to create an indelible aura around himself. And how. As the big man Viv said, at one stage it looked like a benefit match.

A word or two on the Lankan obituary. Making Hayden look like a spectator, Gilly sent the Lankans on a leather hunt of their lifetime. Starting off with Vaas, Gilly had the Lankans guarding the ropes and fetching it from beyond right from the word go. He also manufactured drama when he provided Dilhara Fernando with a half chance. The Gods hadn’t had had enough of the entertainment and they certainly weren’t letting a burly dark Lankan get in the way of an epic. Malinga was creamed over mid off for a flat six, Jayasuriya found the stands more than the blockhole and Murali knew that he had bowled the wrong one when the ball hit tier 3 of the Kensington Oval. A puny Dilshan, tried to be the trump card, but he was promptly packed off in two big overs and soon Mahela ran out of both bowlers and ideas. Tom Moody, for once was glad that he was coach and not player. It seemed like a bull ring with matadors reluctantly taking turns to be bulldozed. By the time Gilly got to 100, the opposition was only glad that it would only last 38 overs at max. Far away in the jungles of Lanka, the LTTE hung its head in shame. They always thought they had last word on how to attack the Lankans.

Gilchrist defines simplicity of action and potency of impact. No real technique, largely has his own rule book, defies his own Aussie culture most times, for he is a nice guy, now that’s calling for too much from an Aussie isn’t it. The bat seems rather innocuous in his hands, compared to his Obelixesque partner who hunts wild boars when he’s not hunting bowlers. The man who defined the walk, yesterday also defined the path for an Aussie annihilation. Phrases like 'single handedly taking a team to victory' are frequently abused when mortals in the game play decent innings. If ever there was a knock that deserved this phrase and more praise then this is it.

Post Script: Lara, Gilchrist, Hayden. Three big left handers who defined aggressive cricket have walked or are walking the last mile. Can’t quite count any other big left handers in this generation, except maybe Sanath and Saurav who made southpaws look precious and exclusive. Can’t see many promising ones on the horzon either, except Sangakkara.

Footpath- quite pedestrian

2007-04-23T01:30:00.000+05:30

I grew up in a Govt. colony in Mumbai. This meant that I had the luxury of a lot of things that were absent in the city outside campus. One of these was the footpath.
Right since I was a toddler, I was instructed to keep to the footpath, lest I get in the path of a ‘speeding’ Fiat (that’s an oxymoron). That might sound funny, but the inherent message was clear, steer clear of the motorist.
In a city where cars outnumber themselves everyday, it’s become a challenge to find a footpath. Most of you might have noticed this but its worth reiterating.

1. Footpaths do exist. Just that above them also exist a layer called hawkers. This layer is more permanent than pedestrian aspirations and difficult to remove.
2. Footpaths do exist. Just that above them frequently is a mosaic of human excreta, with some dog poo thrown in between. Nearby slums can’t do their bit on the highway can they and there’s nowhere else to go.
3. Footpaths do exist. Just that often the BMC or MTNL or MMRDA or such body decides to investigate what lies beneath. So what could be a footpath becomes a trap that sometimes swallows up people, leading to ‘Prince who got saved’ kind of episodes
4. Footpaths do exist. Just that when people have lots of cars parked within building compounds, the surplus comes onto the footpath. There is always just enough space for you to wriggle between wide-bodied cars and make your way through. Helps you contemplate getting fitter so that you actually can.
5. Footpaths do exist. Just that on Shivaji Jayanti or Ambedkar Jayanti or Satyanarayan Pooja, the Gods or Demi-gods just takeover. After all what’s pedestrian walking space compared to loftier causes?
6. Footpaths do exist. Just that some MMRDA civil engineer conducted an uncivil act by making them so narrow that they resemble just what they are, an apology. So if two people want to walk side by side they can, as long as one is not on the footpath
7. Footpaths do exist. Just that they also contain potted plants sitting right in the middle. An otherwise narrow space becomes narrower. All good causes need to be interwoven seems to be the mantra. So when we provide people space to walk, we should also provide them a beautiful ambience and clean air to breathe, ‘in’ that very 5ft space!
8. Footpaths don’t exist.

‘Foot’ note: Recently in Mumbai, all dividers have been barricaded to prevent jay walking. Fair enough. This means that people have to walk and cross roads at designated breaches in the dividers. These breaches seem more like rat holes, which can hold just about 3 people standing side by side. The rest spillover to the road, exposing them to traffic. Moreover where’s the foothpath that people can actually walk on, given this scenario?

Greg's Dharma

2007-04-08T00:41:00.000+05:30

Arjuna (Rahul) looked at the Kauravas (BCCI members) standing in front of him on the battlefield and said
“Oh Krishna! how will I fight my own bosses”

Krishna (Chappell), his charioteer, assumed his Vishwarupa and exclaimed “It is all about The Process Arjuna” Saying this he removed his laptop and made a 10 min PowerPoint presentation on The Process.

Bheema (Sachin), wielding his MRF mace and standing next to the chariot exclaimed
“Chaila Krishna ….I don’t like the animation …and moreover this doesn’t not have an exclusive section devoted to me”
Krishna looked at him benignly and said
“O great wielder of the MRF Mace willow…your days of being invincible are numbered…there stands between you and your destiny nothing but the hand of god”
Bheema, started biting his nail and staring away into the distance…he ignored his cell phone as a couple of sponsors tried contacting him

Enter Yudishtira (Saurav), eldest of the lot, who looked at the PowerPoint presentation through his glasses.
“O Krishna, this has mentions of every player needing to do 16 laps everyday. Does that include me whose (left handed) drives on the righteous path are beyond comparison”

Krishna looked at him grimly and said
“In the battlefield Yudishtira, you need to be able to run too. Your drives will be stopped and you will be found out by the rising evil (bouncer).”
Yudishtira shook his head, took his shirt off and started revolving it around his head.

Nakula and Sahadeva (Yuvi and Dhoni), also were eager to see the PowerPoint ppt.

Nakula made a face first and then said” Sir, why does your Process say am not a star yet….my dates with Kim (Sharma) Devi are known in the three worlds and I appear on Page 3 regularly. And I play like no left hander does in the three Lokas”

Krishna smiled and said “Son, you are a blessed soul but your ego is as large as your talent…your star will shine the day you realize this”
Nakula smirked and looked in the other direction

Sahadeva with the long hair was waiting patiently
Krishna looked at him and said” Your fame in Bharatvarsh is like Bheema’s but you need to learn how to wage war in the three Lokas and not just keep roaming around in your Divya Ratha (bike)”

Seeing this, Bheeshma (Sharad Pawar) emerged from the Kaurava camp
“O Krishna! this is unfair. How can you be with the Pandavas when we have paid your Taj Bills?”
Krishna took a moment to collect his thoughts and said
“O fat one…sorry mighty one. You will find yourself on a bed on arrows laid for you by the system. It will keep pricking you. You have to follow the Process else be doomed”

Murmurs of opposition began to emerge from the Kauravas and the Pandavas

Krishna, addressed all of them as a group and said
“The might of Bharatvarsh lies in you realizing that the solution lies not in war but in the Process”.

Saying this Krishna walked away into the setting sun.

(At the sidelines of the battlefield)

Sanjaya (Rajdeep Sardesai), said” Looks like all the breaking news of today is done Dhritarashtra (TV watching fools like us who are blind to what we watch)”

Dhritarashtra smiled and went to bed, hopeful of more breaking news the next day

Glorious Uncertainty

2007-03-19T16:04:00.000+05:30

As a child I harboured dreams about playing for India, I soon realized that playing for the building team was much easier and less pressured. All arguments about the perks of the job apart, I think it’s a tough life. Sad that it took a foreign coach’s death to nail that one home, for now at least.

As a youngster when one hits the International cricket scene, the curtains in your bedroom are drawn wide open and a thousand cameras start following you like the Truman Show. Your privacy exists only when other cricketers or issues become more important, else its a day night game. Everything that you don’t do is also news, people would pay to have your shadow pass them by. You sign on big endorsements like Nike the smaller ones will keep queueing up... You’ll cut many ribbons and even lanes, no one will stop you. Every morning the papers will have you reading things that happened to you while you were sleeping, or while you were looking the other way. At award functions, you’ll sit next to people who you paid to watch Matinee on Friday afternoons, shiny legs, Armani suit et al. You’ll find it difficult to contain your ego when the kids from Shivaji Park shout your name out on TV, prodded by a rookie Journo. Then you will be on national news, being asked by Rajdeep or Arnab about how you managed to york Ricky Ponting (wish u knew!) or pull that last ball off Glenn Mc Grath for six (wish u knew!).

All until you score that duck or give those runs away that kept coming your way a few matches back. Or maybe until the team loses to Bangladesh and you happen to be named in that line up. A free coat of black paint might deck your walls, and someone who resembles you thanks to the placard dangling against its neck gets burnt on the roads. The same reporter will thrust the same mike in the face of the same kids asking for bad mouthing and the kids will oblige. Rajdeep and Co will be on TV again, with pie chart, bar chart, expert and rookie, slicing your life into un-gatherable pieces, while viewers sms their verbal volleys. Some ‘supporters’ might even demonstrate how to throw well by hurling some missiles in the direction of your most ardent supporters sitting in the drawing room of your house. Your parents might not what to say, your wife will keep giving your sympathetic glances. The local politicians will ask for your head, his cronies might at least attempt the headlights, of your car. National dailies will pun without pardon and the first lines of your cricketing obituary will be written.

Cricketer Insurance anyone?

Summer

2007-03-12T04:29:00.000+05:30

muezzin calls for the aft prayer
a solitary shirt hangs to dry
an expectant crow peeps from the window
a still life afternoon slowly goes by

The summers not hot yet
but its stillness is here to stay
the stuble on my cheek feel full
remains of a lazy sunday

soon the sun will laze too
and the shadows will dominate
the dogs will remain idle
and the cows will ruminate

The muezzin will call again
and the sun might relent by then
a small breeze might twirl the solitary shirt
a summer day shall pass by then

Budget Deficit

2007-03-04T11:17:00.000+05:30

Ah the budget, gets blockbuster status even though the guy in the lead role has remained the same for the last four years…he wears a loin cloth that inspired India when wrapped around some other thinner legs half a century ago but now is a symbol of a conservative south….PC wears a Harvard accent on a Chidambaram surname. He wears a progressive veil on a Pandi bandwagon.

After that rather controversial beginning (sorry that one didn’t end in the previous paragraph), let me begin. My biggest problem with the budget, well a big problem that I have with the budget, or let me just say…well should I just not say. What the hell!!!!
It’s the jargon, men! (as my petite East Indian receptionist might tell you).

What’s a fiscal deficit, is it what we generally call being kangaal. Imagine the street corner beggar go “Sir can you contribute to reducing my fiscal deficit” (A certain World Bank does hear that from us, maybe used to). Or for that matter what the hell is capital ACOUNT CONVERTIBILITY. Does it mean something that’s got to do with potential religious mass conversions in Delhi. Maybe there also is non-capital account convertibility (this one is not in caps…. for the dunce heads).
Tax and its various avatars. Can’t PC take my money away in one stroke, by just calling it one name! Why call it different names for Godssake What’s a cess….sounds like mess or even like a bad wound.And if he levies that cess time and again will he call it re-cess? Related and equally sad I guess is the word surcharge. It’s the icing on the take, the chillar on the note. Fringe benefit tax (FBT)-scrounging for that last penny that you made on the ESOP. It describes taxing what you get on the side, like it’s the only money on the side that anybody ever made or will ever make. PC wants to make the most of it right now, what if the fringe benefits becomes part of Income (he’ll then probably call it FBTHNBPOIT (Fringe benefit that has now become part of Income….tax). Then of course there is the OPD (Oil Pool Deficit). My hypothesis is that OPD happens when a bunch of mallus decide to up their coconut oil usage or is it something that’s got to do with what happens to pools around the country when there’s an Oil tanker disaster.
Coming soon FEMA, SME, CENVAT, VAT, BCTT,
QBKDW, NVDVS, BQIBIQ……AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

SMART move?

2007-02-26T22:07:00.000+05:30

The BEST has introduced a SMART card. The first part is fiction, the second part is plastic.

For 1200 bucks a month, the BEST lets you get onto any bus anywhere, any time. Now if they came up with movie tickets like that I know that there would be takers.
Nonetheless, the economists of the BEST who also double up as conductors seem to have seen something that most consumers haven’t. Hence the only people who have bought the cards are these people and their kith and kin. At a more serious level, 1200 or even the 800 bucks a month option is simply a big loser to the other 12 rake mammoth that easily picks up 5000 people at a time and deposits them the other side of town in half the time. So what if you get badly crushed and start smelling like sardines….the BEST is not aroma-therapeutic either. And on bad days you could end up having two meals on the bus if not three, given traffic and more traffic.

The card is hardly SMART. The conductor has a contraption which still needs to do a stethoscope like reading of your card. This takes about half a minute. It involves punching some numbers into the reader and then seeing if the expiry date’s gone by This in spite of your card having your nincompoop like passport size photograph, the date, time and multiple stamps of all BEST authorities (all ‘concerned’ authorities). A train pass is much simpler and no wonder has much more takers. Thus the conductor who now has to additionally assuage his conscience by monitoring SMART cards ends up spending more time that he actually would punching tickets. What’s worse is imagining him doing this to a packed bus of 100 people (with a slated capacity of 60 needless to say). The smarter ones might just call attendance and do a ‘please raise your hands if you have a pass’ routine.

The beauty of the BEST is its ubiquity. The SMART card might work if it can get as smart as the Mumbaikar!

Begs the Question

2007-02-10T21:11:00.001+05:30

Beggars are as much a part of Mumbai as the Gateway of India. Over the last 10 years of actively roaming around the city, the no of cars have increased and so have the no of beggars. What has also changed is the kind of beggars in the city. The first kind of beggar that I encountered was the simple woebegone face kinds who would sit by the roadside and keep uttering monosyllables the year round. There was no strategy of any kind in place, and the adage beggars can’t be choosers used to get played out. Most of them seemed fatalistic.
As the economy evolved and liberalized, so did beggars. For one, I think even the beggar economy opened up. There were a lot many more beggars because there was a lot many more economic activity (and hence money to be handed out) and a lot many more people. The quality of begging also changed. Some beggars, in order to differentiate their pitch, started to exhibit their skills. So you had harmonium totting kids and adults causing disharmony in trains. Strategies also changed. Begging gravitated towards traffic signals a lot more. This was because there were a lot many more cars and also because other traditional begging posts were getting challenged. For example, on a Dadar street, a beggar had to fight for real estate with hawkers, dogs and passers by in general. There was also the concept of the hafta at play especially on ‘prime’ streets. The biggest loss to the beggar economy has been the whole security around religious places. The first people to get the boot around Siddhivinayak temple were the beggars. What might have affected the beggar’s ability to gauge prospective targets in cars would surely be the whole AC car and tinted glass movement. The construction of flyovers at major signals also means that the bulk of the population flies over the top of most beggars. The beggar hence remains under the flyover and below the poverty line.
In Mumbai, and with all other cities, people get extremely uncomfortable when a beggar is in front of them. Most people neither say a yes or no explicitly, thus wasting both the beggars’ time and causing discomfort to oneself. This has always perplexed me, with some hypothesis around why people do this. The presence of a beggar speaks directly to our guilt, our sense of well being (at the cost of so many homeless and foodless). We turn out eyes away, wishing that he disappear, at the same time conscious that he will never go away forever. The more charitable kinds, find an easier route. They actually handover loose change and wish him away. The way this is done is rather shameful. Try and recall the last time you were charitable. Did you look the beggar in the eye, have you ever done so? Think why not? For us the presence of the unfortunate in some ways reinforces our sense of well being and on the other hand also contributes to our sense of guilt. This might explain why people are more charitable outside temples than offices.

Flagging Spirit

2007-01-26T22:40:00.000+05:30

Today is the 26th Jan. And it’s a Friday. Thank god for that, cos no Indian would ever have their long awaited, most cherished long weekend otherwise. Thank God that our revered leaders chose this date to turn republic else what if they’d chosen 25th? How many would have had to sacrifice a Casual Leave in the name of the nation in order to get a long weekend!
Flag hoisting in residential complexes, done by the ones who are not away sun tanning on beaches ‘this’ long weekend, is usually a hilarious affair. There is a statutory notice, full of typo that goes up in the society notice board every January. It speaks about the glory of India, in two lines and then the schedule of ‘cultural’ programs in the next four. Flag hoisting will be at a convenient, 10am when all and sundry including the mongrel dog have had a late lazing morning wake up, farted in peace, yawned at will, consumed two cups of tea and browsed through two newspapers. The flag pole, is rusted, browned and orphaned until this day. At about 9.55am the society secretary makes his way out, the tricolor neatly folded and ensconced in his smelly armpit. He asks the watchman to play monkey, clean the pole and install the tricolor. Between 10am and a quarter to eleven, all uncles of all regions in the country try and master the knot. By that time, they have crumpled the tricolor and accidentally hoisted it thrice already. A gaggle of children who are the only ones who know the national song, have given up on their dads and are now creating a ruckus around the campus. Some wives, who were window spectators, now descend to gossip around the sanctum sanctorum. Its time to hoist the flag and that’s when the octogenarian is summoned. Every society has one and he’s our ‘weakest’ and best link with 1947. Just as the national anthem is being sung, three cell phones go off. The old man who hoisted the flag is asked to give a speech, he can barely breathe. At his decibel level the only ones who can hear him are his own vocal chords, the rest of the crowd does asynchronous nods while the brash ones begin chatting among themselves. Now its time for the kids to render the crows ineffective and this is where every parent wants his ward to be on stage. Sweets are distributed and then conversation veers off into society politics, water shortages, maintenance money and how property rates are zooming. A lonely tricolor on a rusted pole stands mute spectator to all this.

Guru- Big Man Small Story

2007-01-14T23:27:00.000+05:30

A movie whose time has come had to be made. Guru is the story of entrepreneurial success and the man who defined it for all of us. It legitimizes using any and every mean to get what one wants. This might not have been acceptable about fifteen years ago, when India was still third world and middle class values were still bordering on un-materialistic. Today when we’re fighting global battles in business and wanting to make money is a legitimate thing to say in class, this movie tries to play to a now popular sentiment by saying that here’s a man who did it first. And how. Alas it falls flat.

For one the narrative is linear, it struggles to find enough ‘big’ episodes in the life of man who always thought big. Sometimes threatening to be a documentary, it makes desperate attempts at injecting commercial value. The songs are a glaring example. Except the main theme, all others stick out like bad share scrip. One senses that the crew knew what it wanted to say but didn’t quite manage to articulate it as well. Especially Guru’s character which in behaviour and persona is well done but fails to deliver the inner fire that drove the big Indian. Abhishek is good and versatile, playing both young man and old doyen with ease. But he fails to live the character from within and that shows amply. Weak dialogues further accentuate this.

Around him are thrown in a cluster of characters whose relationship with him is literally defined with no deeper meaning attached. Ash is passable in parts, especially ones where she’s not on screen. Mithun da’s character again promises a lot but falls flat and short of brilliance. Madhavan and the multiple sclerosis-ised Vidya Balan would not have been missed. Rajeev Menon’s treasure trove of picturesque landscape and moving near shots gets released time and again, injecting life into otherwise normal screenplay. Rehman’s music will, like all his other scores, grow on us.

The climax is a typical commercial Hindi movie one. I think Mr. Maniratnam would have wanted to move movie halls into vocal support for Gurubhai as he argues his case in front of a judicial enquiry commission, with his father’s (Big Bs) accent and a made up conviction. The end could have been the middle or even the beginning of this movie. It dangles like a lifeless limb.

This one is a one time watch for some reasons. Abhishek grows up from being a young actor to a mature one. Teenagers, whose dreams are now taking shape, need to see how bad it could have been for the earlier generation entrepreneurs. Finally for the lack of many other movie options this is a decent way to spend 150 bucks.

Dressed to kill!

2007-01-13T07:30:00.000+05:30

I was privy to a decking up ceremony. Before you get ideas, it happened to be a truck. A goods carrier. I have never seen a new truck, a brand new one, not even in pictures. For me trucks have always been pesky, irritating occupiers of road space without whom travel would have been so much smoother. They are dirty, spew a lot of smoke, and are all noise and no speed and perpetually breakdown and cause traffic snarls.
Finding a new truck was special. I’ve never stared long enough at the front face of a truck. You don’t want to see the face of most things you don’t like right. Truck posteriors with Horn Ok Please messages have inundated my vision, more by default cos one is usually tailing a truck that refuses to give right of way. Coming back to how the ‘new’ truck looked. At the forehead, was a salutation to a certain Goddess, written in bright saffron. Right below, the forehead, much like a human face, was a wide eyed windscreen which gives the driver a large view of the smaller pieces of transport whose life he’s about to screw. On the bonnet, which is shaped like a nose, you had the abused but ubiquitous Shubh Labh written on either side, with some decoration that made me think of the nose ring that brides wear. There also was, right below the bonnet a salutation to another god, something to the effect of “Veerabhadra Prasanna”. I guessed that in the trucker community, there might be different gods to be propitiated for different parts of the truck- one for the bonnet, the engine, the windscreen. The fender, had another message written, something about someone’s parents blessings being with the truck. This was one blessed vehicle.
The driver was playing self designated priest/ pujari. He looked unbathed, but then what did the truck know. He broke a coconut on the side of the truck and spilled coconut water on the bonnet, on the road and on his trousers. Both man and machine were purified now. He then broke the coconut up into four pieces and inserted them below all four tyres. It was critical that a poor fruit be subject to four tyres so that the supreme gods that govern the roads be happy.
Having moved into the cockpit, he prayed to the steering, lit some incense sticks and waved them around. Now the speed dial, the brakes, the accelerator and the ignition key were all under divine intervention.
The ignition turned and the truck roared, spewing forth its first installment of carbon monoxide and dust. The driver put on a squeaky tape that was high on treble and low on melody. He arbitrarily cut in into nearby traffic, as two autos scurried to take cover. A cyclist was ignored and a couple of passenger cars suitably cornered. It laboured to reach top speed of 35 kmph while taking the rightmost lane. The mammoth was well and truly on its way.

Last Flight Out!

2007-01-10T19:50:00.000+05:30

Recently newspapers have been full of people who’ve died while on flights. Condolences. Having experienced most domestic airlines and what’s offered along with, I’m not surprised. Some examples of the agents of death as one travels
1. Food on Indian Airlines
2. Airhostesses on Indian Airlines- if their looks don’t kill you their glares will
3. Delays on Air Deccan- I just about celebrated two birthdays waiting for one to take off
4.The ‘suraksha niyam’ routine on all airlines- especially that phrase “agar kisi karanvash vimaan ko paani mein utarna pade” (now that’s what you call watering down the worst)
5. The endless wait at conveyor belts to collect one’s luggage even as everyone else seems to be getting theirs faster.
6. Security check and what goes with it- stashing everything into an already overloaded hand baggage and the latest one at Lucknow was about getting the laptop screened separately, not under the guise of a leather cover. The next thing you know they might ask you to pee just to check if ur carrying explosives inside.
7. The ‘holier than thou’ attitude of some who still feel that they are the only ones ‘entitled’ to take flights
8. The loud mouthed fools who subject someone on the phone or their hapless colleagues to their achievements. These people get especially loud while on the transit bus.
9. The transport to and fro airport can kill even before you board. Recently paid 260 bucks for 9 km

10. The waiting time to pee especially just after the meal trolleys have cleared

God of All Things

2007-01-06T00:36:00.000+05:30

I was in small town North India, Lucknow to be precise, today. This blog has nothing to do with Lucknow exclusively but since the stimulus happened there, I thought the city deserved a mention.
I noticed how we seem to have various ways of using our Gods and Goddesses in our day to day lives. The stimulus in question was a wall tile with God’s picture on it. This tile, for the ignorant, was placed so that passers by refrain from painting the town ‘red’ with their paan and other products. So I passed a beaming Goddess Lakshmi, a meditating Lord Shiva and an ever enthusiastic Lord Ganesha all playing divine guards to cheap walls. It seemed to work, for I saw the walls around them spotlessly clean. The tiles were small ones, occupying just one tile space in huge walls. But they seemed to hold enough power to thwart any miscreant. The casualty of course was the atheist wall, which was multicolored and looked like a poor man’s Hussain.

God appeared in a different avatar in a cheap rundown hotel that I had to spend four hours in (more on this experience later). The hotel was called New Radha Krishna which symbolized old sanctity combined with recent modernity I presumed. My impressions were corrected the moment I entered the hotel. Far from being Brindavan and romantic, it was more like the cell in which Kamsa had locked Vasudev and Devaki. A quick glance around at the hotel and the run down shape of the room gave me the impression that Raas Leela of a different kind would surely be happening there. Thankfully I had only four hours to spend there, that too during non Raas Leela hours.

In Mumbai too, a lot of erstwhile dance bars, which have now been orchestra bars just for namesake, have names like Lakshmi Palace, Durga Palace. Lakshmi of course meaning opulence and all that comes with it I guess. What’s interesting is that the inside of most of these places, am sure, will have a small mandir for Gods just above where the cashier sits. The more audacious ones will surely have larger murtis. Quite a paradox this, Gods being mute spectators to sleaze and skin show.

Autos, Sumos, Qualis’ which serve as tourists vehicles also often have Gods messages written right at the back. They scream down expressways, cutting lanes and causing palpitations. As you stare at the rear of the vehicle disappear, the words “Sai Baba Cha Aaashirwad” stares at you in bold saffron. My read of that message is simply “God help those who travel in this vehicle”

Gods have percolated our office tables, wallets, walls in rooms and every other avenue. The ease with which they gather dust, get shoved around by careless peons and bais and sometimes find themselves under immense duress because of fat posteriors is not a joke.

Maybe it’s high time we looked at how and where we place our Gods, for godssake!

Plane Truths II

2006-12-30T14:21:00.001+05:30

Continuing my series of what happens to me in relation to airplanes, I have a gem to share.
The wrestle of the arm rest can be quite irritating especially when both adversaries want it equally badly. The war of course is lost right at the beginning if one of the adversaries has an arm that's armrest size!

My Chennai to Mumbai flight was spent in half a seat, with me folded up around an imaginary vertical axis, actually measuring kilometers to Mumbai and counting down time. I thought I was lucky to get a window seat, my luck ended the moment the middle seat next to me and half of my seat got occupied by a gargantuan who was impersonating a human being. Arm rest was the first casualty, I gave it up in the first 5 secs; my midriff also was being molested constantly by the elbow of the beast. Am not slightly built either but I know how to mark my territory out and contain my body within. Land grabbing was being rendered a new meaning by my sizable neigbour and I felt a bit like Papua New Guinea being attacked by the US. As luck would have it, the flight was full, had to be, for my ample neighbour had five such clones sitting in various parts of the aircraft. One more of the lot and we would have never taken off…So I had no alternate seats to occupy….
Very soon, the passengers sitting in the row ahead decided to add their bit to it and they reclined their seats. To give you a background, everyone who’s about 5ft 8” and above and travels regularly by Jet will develop acute arthritis of the knees in five years, simply because of reclining seats in front which crush your bones. Today was special- I had my bones crushed alright and my neighbour simply expanded sideways to occupy a good part of my body. So there I was legs wrapped inwards to avoid to seat crush and body sucked in to avoid ogre’s hug. Hathayoga at its best.

I tried to adopt a philosophical outlook and say that some things are destined. Atleast he’s not being pesky and irritating otherwise. Thought too soon, as a clear snore rendered its presence loud and clear. He was now exhaling in my direction, I could have installed windmills there and made some money out of wind energy…Alternately I thought I could offer him the window seat and take the middle one myself so that he could just lean on the right window…I decided against it cos there was a good chance that his weight pulled the flight the other way and we ended up in Bhopal instead of Mumbai….

The airline crew couldn’t find me another seat…in protest and in asphyxia I refused to partake any meal. My neighbour did, he had a ‘territory’ to feed you see. The meal seemed to have energized him no end . He discovered that there’s a view outside the plane and he had to take a closer look. I was in between, or so I thought, but he discounted my presence for a mere eyesore. He lunged across time and again, to check if we were flying the same direction as we had been 5 minutes back.

Thankfully Chennai Mumbai is hour and a half . Dazed and bruised I was the last to get off the flight, accompanied by pitiful glances from the crew. One of them handed me a bag of goodies as a mix of apology and stock clearance. The bag looked familiar and pleasant. As I opened it fully, the words”Air Sickness Bag” loomed large in front of me. I was sick alright but didn’t need goodies in THAT bag to tell me that. Now I know why some passengers kept giving me those dirty looks. They were probably wondering why the hell was I carrying my puke home!

Post Script” Can’t such huge people qualify as cargo. I would have gladly exchanged him for a HUGE suitcase atleast it wouldn’t poke me in the ribs and stay in place!

Legends of the Ball

2006-12-24T13:44:00.000+05:30

TV has played a huge (and largely unacknowledged) role in making the legend called Warne or for that matter any sportsperson of this generation. There is no bigger joy than watching the camera capture and replay the revolutions on a Warney delivery and the magic being executed as it roughs up soil and dishes venom to take the outside edge or the stumps of a flummoxed batter. Right since the ball of the century, every delivery that Warne has sent down has been mesmerizing to one and all, the cameras of course adding to all the effect. I can’t imagine how boring it would have been to watch Warne bowl just using the run of the mill cameras which would never have been able to capture positioning of the seam and the rip off the wicket. Mc Grath too with his consistent seam position and the subtle variations that could unnerve the best, was unraveled by some great camera work.

On the players side, videos of Warne have been studied to death by opposition teams, not with too much success though. In fact its an essential part of any coach’s repertoire now, promoted initially by the celebrated Woolmer.

I wonder whether the percolation of Warne’s greatness, or for that matter Sachin and Lara’s genius strokeplay, to public at large would have been complete if we didn’t have some great cameras at work.

Post script: Mc Grath and Warne both retiring in one go have huge implications on how the Aussies will fill in those big boots. While I don’t have access to stats of this kind, am sure just like fast bowlers hunted in pairs, this was a unique pace and spin combination that beat a lot of the Thommo Lillee, Wasim Waqar, Curtly Courtney combinations. Can remember numerous times when Mc Grath had cleaned up the top order with his first spell and then Warne did the rest in with his turners. In fact caught Warne at slips bowled Mc Grath is also ubiquitous. Can’t quite remember a unique combination of this sort that has been so deadly. The other closest pair that comes to mind is that of Murali and Vaas but then they haven’t been as consistent in all conditions.

Characters of Tests

2006-12-19T22:06:00.000+05:30

Both have been doubted . One was dropped unceremoniously the other was never picked cos his coach felt that turbaned sardars made good taxi drivers and that’s all. This is not about how both went on to prove their critics wrong. It’s about what makes them special.
There are only two 'characters' in the English cricket team- one’s a huge name already the other is a public favorite at least. Kevin ‘colored hair’ Pietersen wears his personality on his sleeve and his heart in the willow. The joys of watching him on the field are comparable to the joys of watching him bat. As Mark Nicholas pointed out recently, the art of being Pietersen is about forgetting the catch that you just spilled and shouting out the next ball “get him boys”. Monty is an apprentice in this school but a promising one at that. He has Muralitharan like eyes which light up whenever he sees the ball, even when he’s not bowling. He resembles a yokel when he chases the ball to the boundary and frequently messes it up to concede one. When he spins he pales in comparison to his turbaned seniors but it’s almost like it’s his verve that spins the ball and not his fingers. He celebrates every wicket as if it was his first and takes every breath as if it were his last. He has character the talent of course if there for all to see.

Sreesanth is our new mascot. His rendition of a mixture of break-dance, kathakali and Kalaripayattu at the Wanderers was the most impressive delivery of the day. Nel of course is a sore loser and didn’t know how to react, much like what he goes through when he gets tonked to the boundary. Sreesanth is a TV producers dream; never will any shot of him be ordinary. His form might fail him but his style never will. Some of us might remember the way he threatened Sachin in the Challenger trophy. Was a bit carried away for sure, nevertheless it spoke of an attitude never found before in Indian cricket.

It takes character and characters to build a sport. Football is full of them, right from the head butting Zindane to the anytime is jig time Roger Milla. Tennis had John Mc Enroe and Agassi who brought their own style to the game. Cricket has had its share too- names like Merv Hughes, Sarfraz Nawaz, Jonty Rhodes spring readily to mind. Now two Indians are added to that list. This just might be our final rebuttal of the colonial hangover. Gentleman’s game…pah!

All a game

2006-12-14T20:12:00.000+05:30

There is voyeur’s delight stuff on Sony every night. It’s called Big Boss. I happen to belong to the set who doesn’t watch this one. Set might be an ambitious term considering that everyone around seems to watch. Lunch time conversations in office are around who got knocked off, who cried, who’s dating whom and so on. I managed to see parts of it last Friday at a friend’s place. Based on his description of the plot and my observations of the sham, I figured out that the whole idea sounds a bit like what happens to Indian cricket all the time.
Like
In both, everyone’s in perpetual fear of getting knocked off/ dropped. (Especially when we go on tours to places like SA)
There is a lot of popular sentiment around who should get knocked off and why. There is hardly consensus.
There is gamesmanship in both. Cricketers are forever nominating who in their team deserves to be dropped.
The one who gets dropped always gets to know who wanted him dropped (leaked email landing on national daily’s desk). That’s how you create bonhomie.
There are some old written off fogies who suddenly seem to have found limelight. Maybe Laxman and Rahul Roy should compare notes.
There are some brash new comers on the show who seem to be hogging all the limelight for no great achievement. Same with our team.
Everyone is always wary of the Big Boss. In cricket it varies from Chappell to Pawar to Dalmiya depending on who’s captain or journalistic spin.
Participants on big boss are given arbitrary tasks. That description can be used for the experiments that we do with our batting line up. Openers turning sloggers, Kaif playing one drop, Pathan turning into batsman who can roll his arm over too.

.

Sanju and Sidhu

2006-12-09T16:02:00.001+05:30

As the title suggests this one is about finding a commonality to what’s transpired in their lives.
Both have had ‘happening’ lives, both have played to the public gallery and both got booked for crimes and got away cheap.

Sanju was always the spoilt kid one who was stupid but never a criminal. Public perception saw him as one whose reel and real lives were inexplicably intertwined and he seemed to lead a happier life on screen. Flanked by an idealist father and a darling of the nation mother there was no way that our ‘emotional’ nation could ever look at anything that Sanju did objectively. “Oh he’s has a bad childhood which is why, “oh he’s just naïve” are frequent arguments in his favor. So when he decided that he wanted to see how AK 47s looked, people said that he was just inquisitive. His march from doing Rocky to Gandhigiri was always etched in people’s minds like a fairy tale about the spoilt son who returned home cleansed and virtuous. “Dil ka saaf to har sazaa maaf” seemed to apply to him more often than not. No wonder that he got away with peanut punishment while others who did the same thing have got booked under TADA (including a poor65 year old woman). The judge also gave Sanju baba time so that he could ‘take care’ of his daughter’s education. When Sanju emerges from jail, there will be many more scripts waiting for him and he would have attained sainthood in the heart of foolish many.

Sidhu evolved from being a written off sardar to a much written about one. From tonking sixes to off spin to taking the whole nation with his word spin the master of the gab caught popular imagination. What made him a hero first were images of him going down the wicket pointing his bat at Aamir Sohail, the arch enemy. The Amritsari sardar loved the new aggressor in their midst, so what if he was bred in Patiala. Sidhu was on TV talking about kissing airhostesses and grass being for cows and very soon reached parliament too. It isn’t a surprise that he’s actually killed someone. He’s quite capable of doing that with his words if not with his actions. His immediate resignation from parliament was a master stroke, much like his clearing boundaries. He knew just when to step out and close an argument. No wonder he has the public by his side and much like Sanju, will emerge a martyr at the end of it all. The BJP is planning to field him in the next election against the current Punjab CM. Who said crime doesn’t pay

To Sir with love?

2006-12-02T11:37:00.001+05:30

It’s the most underrated profession. Behind every successful man is a good teacher. A lot of you might want to argue this out and you must. We need a lot of argument around the roles of teaching and learning. Only then will we rediscover the concept of teacher.

What prompts this piece, is a newspaper item today that says that a teacher broke the knuckles of a pupil simply because he couldn’t solve a ‘surprise’ test. No surprise really. This kind of news and a lot even worse percolate everyday. Sadly, the role of the teacher is synonymous now with the role of the beater. I know that it’s a broad brush that am using but very few teachers are exceptions.

If there’s any profession in this world that can’t be taught, it’s teaching. The love of teaching shows up clearly in those who inherently do. For a lot of the others it’s either a default option or a nice soft occupation. So the whole factory that churns out teachers through BEd training or whatever probably creates a lot of instructors and beaters. They are spoon-fed probably on curricula and how to handle errant hordes. The art of teaching or better worded, sharing knowledge, is not and can never be taught. I have personally known teachers whose primary job in schools was to ensure that enough numbers attended their ‘private’ tuition classes. These classes were hotbeds of ‘most likely questions’ and so on. The most likely ones were surely in the exam question paper so the vicious cycle got completed. The ones who didn’t attend tuition classes of course had to bear the brunt of extreme censure in class.

Teaching requires a selfless being. It’s the supreme art of sharing all that one knows without expecting anything in return and possibly guiding the pupil along a particular path. A teacher’s best compliment is a successful student who comes back years later to him. (The Raymond commercial plays on this sentiment to a great extent.)
Humility is another virtue, rare and precious. Great teachers stand at the ringside and applaud when successful pupils make it big. His moment comes when the pupil mentions him in the victory speech. Ramakant Achrekar experienced that am sure when a young 17 yr old spoke his heart out after his first Test hundred.

Daadhi Uncool!

2006-11-29T23:23:00.000+05:30

If you think this is about the futile attempts to find Osama, sorry, have better things to write about. Alternately if you thought this is about the attempt to find vegetated faces then read on, you might just find something worthwhile.
My first encounter with beards occurred at the age of three. The first feared person, someone who my parents used to scare me into obeying things, had a beard. He used to stay in the vicinity and looked like he could gobble up anybody with his thick beard. As fear gave way to adolescent curiosity, the need for a moustache was prime but the fascination with the beard only grew. Especially at saloons when hirsute uncles around with thick moustaches and dense beards used to look much more in control that a meek me sitting in a corner. My admiration for the genuine care that went into the beard only grew with each visit. There was an art attached to it and sadly enough I didn’t even have the raw material.
After a lot of prayer and puberty, a thin moustache adorned my face. It was an inconsequential line, as if drawn with a worn out HB pencil. I used to track its Hindu rate of growth with a magnifying glass, which tells you the rate at which it was growing. The faster ones onto adulthood in my class had better moustaches and could pass themselves off as full grown men in saloons. No such luck for me.
A few years later when I realized the relatively low value of the moustache I still felt the deep desire in me to grow a beard, rather be capable of having a beard if need be. As all men and most women might know, growing a beard is not easy, especially when the only hair on your face is all lined up above your upper lip. Amateurish suggestions like shave well only then will hair grow was a bit like telling a farmer to till harder if he wanted to make barren land flower. After many a shaving cream brand and many a plough on the face, I declared my face barren. All attempts at beard were to stop.
Now when I look around I don’ see any men with beard. The metro sexual mania has made the moustache mundane and the beard non existent. Silky smooth faces of chikna men are the order of the day. Osama and his kin have done their bit in de-marketing the beard. My aspirations remain though.

White Man's Burden

2006-11-17T22:29:00.000+05:30

Angelina and Brad are hot property; they fetch much better rates than prime South Mumbai real estate. Greg Chappell gets mentioned in the papers if India loses, wins or the match gets rained off. John Wright, moderate opener, ordinary Kiwi, writes a book about Indian Cricket and sells like hot cakes. Fair and Lovely of course is the largest selling cosmetic in the country, if you discount some of Baba Ramdev’s remedies….

I watch 15 mins of news and that just about sums up my average TV viewing even on days when I have exclusive rights on the couch and feel like a potato. In those 15 mins I see Brad, Angelina and their Chinky and Negroid adopt-springs being flashed. They make a nice ad for probably Benetton or maybe racial unity. There is such a lot of ‘you know what’ reporting. E.g. “You know what Angelina boarded a local today…”You know what she also got off it”. There are journo sleuths following their motorcades, being thrown off like bad trash copy by their bodyguards, only to resiliently dust themselves and wag the tail on the trail, once again. Its not just the media, our minister of state of external affairs stood in front of cameras for so long holding Ms Jolie’s hand as if they had just agreed on a most strategic piece of the Indo US nuclear deal. No comments on what else he felt during the act.

Greg Chappell had journalists sneaking up behind his back during a practice session and listening to words of wisdom as they fell from his mouth, pitched on good length and beat every Indian player. He was widely reported to have scolded the Indian team and taken them to task. For all you know they might have discussed the ugly pajamas that Lalit Modi wears.

The fair skin still makes us Indians sit up and take notice. The White man’s burden is something that we carry with us, whether we admit to it or not. It’s probably not easy to shake off genetic conditioning that lasted a good 347 years when Paleface ruled us. Here’s to more brown and black days.

(Lack of) Hygiene Factors

2006-11-15T08:47:00.000+05:30

It’s very encouraging when I see people who otherwise don’t have even basic shelter taking a bath in the morning under public pipes. After that one liner on broadly what’s hygiene for us, let me list my pet grouses and feel good.

The same set of people, whom I saw bathing (please don’t imagine me standing there and staring at those men) might have been defecating in the open if I’d decided to leave earlier or if their body clock was running slightly late. The debate on whether we have enough public loos can happen later, what matters is that shit happens, and all in the open.

If you’ve stayed in buildings which have lousy acoustics which carry sounds in all directions, then you will recall, sounds of “khhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaashhhhhhhhh” at various pitches, decibel levels, surs, taals emanating from all over in the morning. Men have the copyright on this sound, which for those who’re deaf or don’t have the IQ to understand what I’m saying’ refers to the art of expurgation that we Indians have mastered. It’s a potent force accompanied by sound that emanates from the base of the stomach and like a mini tornado seems to envelope everything from the the windpipe, the food pipe, the lungs, the five senses, the mind, the body and probably even the soul, in a cataclysmic churn. What emerges as end product may not be described here but the act is a war against the demons that might have entered or might have been generated in the system at night. There are multiple rounds of it that is exercised until the esophagus threatens to pop out. Women have their milder versions of this which instantly buries any modicum of feminine appeal that might have existed. A slightly different school of thought also believes in puking, vomiting as it’s technically called, so that bile and other contents which are too heavy to lug around are suitably donated to the sewers. This is usually done by inserting one’s own finger deep into the mouth or by listening to Himesh Reshammiya’s nasal twang (always work with me if I want to relieve the contents of my stomach). Someone from another culture who walks into any residential in the morning might think “Gosh they had one big party last night”.

While the BMC digs roads, we dig noses. The two acts never seem to stop and don’t seem to improve living conditions. They exist as acts in themselves which don’t have to be justified by reason. Both can be arbitrarily started and stopped and don’t give a damn about what others think. Nose digging is a loner’s delight and I’ve seen people sitting by the seaside just digging their nose all afternoon. These are self indulgent acts, almost like semi orgasm. There is a reverie or sorts that happens when that little finger works its way up the nasal passage and tries to retrieve that elusive piece of, for lack of a better term, gold. To make it really gross, people love to examine the spoils of their acts in detail, just in case they find divine providence in there. I’ve seen people clean up after this minute examination, if you know what I mean, on any piece of equipment that is nearby. So car bonnets, edges of seats, parapets, elevator walls anything goes. What’s worse, most believe this to be a civil act, being done in the larger interest of ones nose and humankind.

Men’s love for what’s under their underwear is legendary. It’s not surprising therefore to find guys indulge themselves in some scratch n adjustment of their prized possessions while in public. The obvious answer to why this happens is lack of hygiene, I feel there’s a different psyche to this. It comes out of sheer force of habit. Freud might argue that it also stems from a basic insecurity of whether one’s manhood is in place. Not to implicate just men, I’ve seen women do this too in public, to themselves that is. Not very frequently though (that might be limited by my powers of observation and my definition of not looking consciously to find these acts in women).

Now to the big one and I mean the mega one. This is the art of creating projectiles in the mouth and launching them in directions that one feels like. Sounds a bit like what Saddam did in 1991 but tell you what its worse. You can’t sentence people to death for this. Bus windows offer the right launching pad for most. The windows are right sized and there’s anonymity cos there are so many windows and one can get away with the act while in a moving bus, literally. It could have been anyone from the bus driver to that pretty face sitting right up front who spat on you as the bus passed you by. Trains and railway platforms in particular are another launching favorite. Even as millions wait for the Churchgate fast, they inundate the tracks with their offerings, usually with a frequency of atleast thrice a minute. The contents can be paan, gutkha or plain saliva which seems to always be in ample stock. The BMC has designated corners and nooks for spitting paan, these can be seen spit painted red and are maintained as heritage sites in honour of all those who spat hard to keep this national pastime alive.

Make-out Mela

2006-11-12T10:22:00.000+05:30

I was at Bandra Bandstand yesterday after a long long time. Nice to see that It retains its defining characteristic of land on one side, sea on the other and couples making out in between the two. In line with the growing economy and India shining, the boldness quotient of couples also seems to be going up. For Non Mumbaikars and the uninitiated let me give you both sides of the story.

Then
(before India Shining, Bofors, during pouted PV as PM times, when Sachin was still slogging and we still had empty trains in non peak hours)

Couples made out behind rocks. And making out would mean smooching kissing n doing that over n over again simply but cos one can’t do much else. The guy would be the aggressor and the woman the ‘slightly embarrassed but not wanting to let go of the fun’ receiver. There was the constant watch of ‘innocent’ bystanders and greedy cops who sometimes had to be bribed by the hour. The innocent bystanders used to be there just to learn the act and understand what to do when they landed girl friends of their own. Most couples would be conscious and would face the sea and sit so all that passers by could see was intertwined behinds. There also was the threat of eunuchs who by design could empathize with what the girl feels and also what the boy does. This was the easiest money spinning option for them and men usually donate more when their testosterone is running high. Occasionally one would also hear of complaints from regular walkers on the promenade who felt that there was too much obscenity. Rarely there would be reports of crimes of passion. Overall it was understood that if one had to get cosy at cheap rates (and in cheap ways) bandstand was the address to go to

Now:
The promenade for one has been beautified. In line with wanting to be like Shanghai its better lit, tiled and has neat benches. Couples have been washed ashore hence and some can be seen getting cosy right there on land. Women have taken up aggressor roles and have been seen to be smothering guys with equal aplomb. The on the rocks variety is still at it, the change being that they don’t necessarily face the Middle East and do it. They’re staring at you in the eye. The kind of stuff that gets done is not limted to smooching n coochie cooing. Eye withness reports from ‘innocent’ bystanders claim to have seen more. Cops apparently still make money, much more given the consistent GDP growth of 8%. The density of couples, broadly defined as number of couples per sq km is also higher, much higher. So you could have symmetrically place strangers necking their own partners or sharing the same rock. That’s probably due to lesser number of rocks too but overall it looked more crowded. The profile of people making out also seems to have gone up a notch or maybe the earlier ones got better jobs or something.

I like the fact we have a public space that has defined itself in this manner. As real estate gets crazy driven by imaginary prices, public spaces are constantly under threat. Parks, Walkways, gardens are all coming under the hammer. Everyone wants to pay a premium to get space to live, so what if there’s no space to breathe. No wonder then that couples take to the sea to make out. May the tribe grow.

In quest of the thin wallet

2006-11-10T21:54:00.000+05:30

Odd shaped posteriors in men are a frequent sight in Mumbai. Any conclusions on whether such observations form my favorite pastime may please be reserved till the end of this piece. There are multiple reasons for this apparent deformity. Genetics and the fact that the Brits kicked our backside too often could be the case. The other more plausible reason, I ‘figure’, is the presence of the wallet in the rear pocket.
It’s not the wallet per se; it’s the wallet’s contents. The way we eat, the way we live and the way we stuff our wallets are all indicative of the same mindset. Our typical food is the thali, a serving of all that one could ask for during the course of a meal, served within the same circumference. Plates are stuffed to the edge with Papads tilted over achars and salads. Our houses are clustered settings, next to each other; cozy neighbourhoods are getting even cozier, congested in my opinion. Wallets are repositories of what was, what is and what may be. Some of the contents that are typical Mumbai wallet or even an Indian one are (pls feel free to rummage through ur own and add on)

1. Pictures of Gods and goddesses- Have always wondered why…..is it that we treat them like Guardian Angels of our money. Considering where we park our wallets usually I’d say its sacrilege!

2. Pictures of wife/ girlfriend/ kids- Again why does a family portrait have to be in the wallet? Just in case you get lost or lose your memory, people will know you have a family? Or the less social kinds know exactly whom to extort money from?

3. Miniature phone books- With font size 3 entries, initial alphabetical order has given way to entries in all possible directions, strike offs, over-written, smudged ink, dog eared pages. My dad has a phone book that’s’ been around more than me. He also gives me the feeling sometimes that he loves it more than me.

4. Visiting cards- All and sundry, including ones own cards to handout.I happen to have my doodhwallas visiting card in my wallet.

5. Bills- Past and present, old and new, used and fresh. Laundry, ATM receipts, petrol pump receipts, credit card receipts.

6. Documents- Folded 16 times over, you’ll see twenty page documents compressed into a small compartment.

7. Driving Licence- People including urs truly carries it even though they don’t drive (strange)

8. Credit Cards- Multiple, various brands, unused ones, dated ones. Multiple credit cards. It’s again a back up syndrome, used to also be a show off syndrome until cards began to be distributed like errr…..cards.

9. Money- we still carry loads of it. Inspite of plastic money, we still haven’t got to carrying ‘just right’ amounts. What if I have to get married on the way to work, who’ll pay the expenses?

10. Rainy day money- Usually a 500 rupee note or even higher, stuffed away in a corner of the wallet. Usually for emergencies it seems, when the other 5 grand that you’re carrying gets exhausted. Why do we need ATMs then? Emergencies in the case of men is usually at a watering hole, especially rainy day money emerges on rainy days at binges.

11. Loose Change- Most irritating but must have, needed for bus/ train travel and to pay rick wallahs and buy Mid Day. Pokes the posterior, creates edges to the wallet and jingles sometimes while you walk.

I clean my wallet up once in three months, I mean apart from the money, which is cleaned up by various agencies. The day next to the cleaning, my wallet starts resembling a Somalian- emaciated and frail. It doesn’t look ‘prosperous’. The fact that it looks obese and out of shape when full worries me less. I promptly start filling it with new bills and reinserting stuff that I had discarded first thinking it’s not mandatory. Aaah, now that feels good to sit on.

End of an era?

2006-11-08T22:25:00.000+05:30

Mumbai is a vertical city. It reaches the heights of intolerance, impatience, gonnda-giri, bonhomie, floods and every possible event that you might imagine. To such a city of extremes, the presence of the double decker on its roads is a fitting tribute. The double decker represents an extreme of bus travel- both good and bad depending on the nature of the experience that you’ve had. My first sight of a double decker was that of the long necked one, which looked a bit like a crane lying flat on its belly. The driver was well cut off from the rest of the bus and seemed to enjoy supreme powers. Those didn’t last long I presume. The versions that are currently on draw the driver close in and hold the whole package tight. The driver is still cut off from the passenger compartment by a grill that makes one feel like prisoners sometimes.
The joy of the double decker is obviously at the top. The bottom layer can almost be treated as a must have for holding the top up that’s all. The exhilaration began right at the start when the double decker rolled in. I had a double decker bus starting from where I lived, so had the good fortune of witnessing empty BEST buses first thing in the morning. Believe me it was a good omen in an otherwise packed city. The double decker tested your agility with the first step. The ground clearance of the footboard was not mean and kids used to be required to be hauled up and elders and women would need help too. The entrance (and the exit) was like a gaping hole which led to nowhere. It had support bars on either side, that’s all. Anybody getting in from somewhere in between the two extremes had nothing to hold onto except the next passenger.

Once you were in the bus, the next big question was about whether to take the level below or to rush above. My choice was clear but conflicts used to arise when elders were around. The top storey was a driverless one and obviously the one with the view. Prime seats were right up front, with the wind blowing into you r hair and you in the driver’s seat literally. The feeling of sitting virtually on the edge of the bus can’t be explained in words. In Mumbai where heights are at premium and the farther you are from the ground, you’re charged floor rise, this was luxury at its best. The window right up front also accorded u the ability to Lord over traffic in general and pass comments at all n sundry…..the relevance of this at an age when testosterone is high and marks are at a low can’t be overstated. During monsoons, this seat would be preferred by young dudes n duddettes who wanted the spray in their faces. Was a different thing that with the BEST bus roof quality you could have a spray sitting anywhere during monsoon.

The floor below the one above, the one where the condemned and the unlucky ones traveled was a nightmare of sorts. It’s a level that’s lower than single decker buses and makes u feel like you’re a prisoner being taken to the gallows, especially after you’ve experienced the upper storey. It’s less lit, more cramped, usually more crowded. It reminds me of how chawls exist at the bottom of and in and around most high rises in Mumbai.

A thin well guarded set of stairs lead from the chawls below to the apartments upstairs. These stairs are winding and it’s an art trying to negotiate them when the double decker is in full flight. During peak hours these also get inhabited by people on their way up some on their way down and a lot of others interspersed facing various directions.

The space below the stairs is at a premium though. It’s like a safe alcove that prevents u from the the jostle of those going in and out and up and down. Is like the next best piece of real estate in a BEST bus to getting a seat.

It’s a sight to behold, a double decker on a key route. During peak hours you’ll have people popping out of its windows and the footboard at the rear being tested for density of occupation and strength of purpose. Howsoever full that it might be it always seems to have room for that one more person or rather at least his toe. In a lot of ways, the story of the Double Decker is the story of Mumbai. Perpetually crowded, but somehow keeps moving. Howsoever high u might be, you’re still limited by the same limitations as the guy down below. And finally there’s always room for that one more person.

Epilogue: Read in the papers today about how double deckers will slowly be phased out. They’re giving way to the AC buses the low floor variety etc etc. Faster, lither, more fuel efficient. It’s a sign of the times. Hope I do find my double decker in a museum at least in future, if not on the roads.

Calypso Collapse

2006-11-06T21:52:00.000+05:30

The Carribeans are simple people. There’s beer, there’s calypso and then there’s cricket. In between mundane things like work n family happen. When beer’s inside, sunshine outside and the sweet sound of Lara middling Mc Grath- its pure heaven,. If any of those bearded bajaans had been at the Brabourne they’d have sobbed the beer out of them or maybe they’d have hurled some empty bottles in the direction of the Windies dressing room.

The Windies, to sum it up, as Lara succinctly put it (much like his pull shot), had a stage fright. I know what they’re saying as I have gone through it in detail. Stage Fright for me began in class I when I couldn’t spell either Stage or Fright. I was pushed into Poetry recitation Competition by my English teacher simply because I had scored the most in English. The written word doesn’t guarantee Caesar like oratory else even Shakespeare would have been Churchill right? So after mumbling a mix of defiance, sorrow and the only two lines I could recall I ran back stage with that disease called stage fright. Then it grew with me and within, beating me to adolescence and by age 15 it had grown into a full adult inside me. I’ll relate how I grew out of it in my autobiography at age 65 so have patience.
Coming back to the Windies, they started off like a bunch of Sub Saharan Africans who had just seen water for the first time. There was a mix of greed, anxiety, joy, wonderment, gay abandon in the way they started batting. Especially Chanderpaul who looked like he had a flight to catch. He surely would have caught it cos he didn’t last long. Gayle got a peach of a delivery and before he had time to pad up, Lara was up close and personal with Pigeon. Mc Grath has a penchant to get his generation folks early. It helps if it’s Brian Lara. The Southpaw behind the stumps, no small name himself, favoured Pigeon feed with a stunning catch off the outside edge and all promise of a Lara Lashing was laid to rest. Post which it was easy to miss wickets as they seemed to be falling even as one blinked. 139 would have been a fighting total in a 20/20 game, but this was the longer version and the only 20/20 here seemed to be Ponting’s vision of the Champions Trophy. The rain threatened to to delay celebrations- ultimately Ponting duly snatched the cup from Pawar’s hands. Minister of Agriculture had just witnessed the Australian scythe at work.

India suffered the big stage fright at the 2003 World Cup. We lost it in over No 1 then when Zaheer Khan gave away 16 runs by trying to bowl too fast. Pakistan went through the same when they were bundled out for 123 in the 1999 World Cup final. The Windies too seemed to lose it in ten overs. Ironically they had the best run rate ever in those ten. Sadly enough the backbone of the team was unpadded n vegetating in the dressing room by them.

It takes a lot of maturity to manage a boat that’s running at full steam ahead. Not just in sport but in all walks of life. When we’re performing well, there never seems to be too much of a plan. All of us just ride the wave, the high. The Windies did that too n got winded. One can’t blame them for getting carried away. The bigger lesson lies with the Australians who might have lost some battles but they never lost the lesson. Mc Grath and Lee the spearheads got smeared over the park initially but Bracken delivered. They had a plan for every player and they stuck to that, The aborigines triumphed in primitive planning and execution. They deserve the game.

Instant Somnolence

2006-11-04T19:16:00.000+05:30

In Mumbai and maybe in India at large, man and dog alike have mastered the art of instant sleep. There are multiple motivations behind this phenomenon, the first one of course being the much talked about, how under-slept we all are. The other is sleep spaces are at a premium, which might be causing under sleeping in the first place, vocations like call centers with the ‘graveyard shift’ don’t help the 'sleep well' cause.
The most faithful of all animals, leads the evolution of instant sleepers. Stray dogs in Mumbai are leading lights in somnolence of all kinds. It isn’t rare to find a dog that’s nestled under your parked car, sound asleep but with enough warning systems in place to make way the moment you turn the ignition. In the most crowded market places of Mumbai you’ll find millions of legs and hands and in between them mongrels that are fast asleep. They are part of the Mumbaikar’s conscience and I’ve never seem anybody trip over them or step on them. If anybody does, the amateur mongrel lets out a yelp walks 10mts and dozes off again. The seasoned one doesn’t bother. There is another variety here which sleeps in garbage bins, closest to food might be the logic. Then of course there is the concept of the boundary wall dog which is increasingly getting common.This type is under threat from the society watchman whose pet passion is to flog them. So the boundary wall seems to be some kind of a truce that’s been worked out between the men who watch and the dogs who also do. Any threat from an inebriated watchman is followed by a simple ‘jump to the other side’. Once the threat is withdrawn, sleeping places and posture are restored.

Men and women sleep in cabs,autos,buses and while clinging onto local trains. These sleeps are sometimes in sachets until the cell rings or rarely long ones facilitated by an end to end train journey. The tendency to fall over and sometimes lean on the guy next to oneself is frequent and not a pretty sight for onlookers. The real deep sleepers sometimes end up in orgy like positions with each other. When they do alight it's as if they’ve just been revived from a dose of sedative.

Its on the streets of Mumbai that man and dog sleep together. Between families of the homeless sleeping fitfully on the streets, one can find the odd mongrel nestled, that’s looking for no more than some warmth and space for the night.

Cheap Imitation

2006-11-03T10:34:00.000+05:30

I don’t have too many memories of the 1983 World Cup or earlier. I just remember seeing my first test match in 1984 on TV when the fearful Malcolm Marshall was pulverizing Indians. My elder neighbour used to tell me that the West Indies could bowl any batsmen out whenever they wanted. I was baptized into believing that bowling like the West Indies do is the most appealing part of cricket.
I turned myself into a rookie fast bowler, enrolled for a coaching camp. I would bowl like the West Indies do, provided the batsmen batted like Papua New Guinea. What was encouraging was that the senior members of the club started calling me Walsh. I later understood that the nick was not because of my bowling accuracy but rather due to the fact that I did a particularly poor imitation of him in bowling. The next season, Sportstar started the star poster offer with every issue and I remember plastering the wall above my study table with Waqar Wasim, Ambrose and Walsh. Ambrose though was the new heart throb in my life; I wanted to bowl lethal yorkers like he did. He gave way next season to Patrick Patterson who burst onto the International cricket scene much like his bowling action. Accompanied by Bishop who hardly looked devout and the old tall horses, they were a formidable attack. I tried to run in like Patterson with a stooping back and wide eyes, with a run that ended with splayed feet in the crease. The nastier ones in my team also told me that my complexion was just right. Limited success for both him and hence me ended that attempt.
After doing a Mc Dermott and surprise surprise Javagal Srinath I realized that fast bowling was a lot of hard work, especially the imitation part. I graduated to bowling gentle medium pace, a hybrid of Mohinder Amarnath in run up and Dermot Reeve in delivery and nothing great in outcome.
When I see the current West Indian attack, it makes me want to bowl fast again. Ok, lemme see, is Jerome Taylor easier to copy or Fidel Edwards?

Fast unto death

2006-10-28T09:11:00.000+05:30

I write this in response to a new item that seems to be in all papers. A series of tragic accidents have plagued highways leading into and out of Mumbai. Entire families have been wiped out and a family which was carrying its son’s body (who incidentally died in another accident) also met with a tragic end.
Our idea of speed is like in the movies when Amitabh and his kin man oeuvre the biggest of vehicles through the narrowest of lanes while dodging 20 bullets and with one arm protecting the heroine. Our in city driving, while not fast at all, is all about cutting lanes and gunning for that 4 sq inch of space that is available. This means overtaking the overtaker and while on the highway knocking at the Undertakers. I’ve experienced the Goa Highway, where these accidents occurred first hand. Conveying that experience will be limited by my ability with words but it still sends shivers down my spine. It’s a three lane highway which means that traffic in both directions is fighting for a lane and a half. The monsters of roads- the ST bus drivers, Sumo and quails touristers all come into their own and let go in all directions.

I was unfortunate enough to be seated on the front seat of a Qualis whose driver had an appointment to keep, hopefully not with the man up there. There was hardly a stretch of 50mtrs when we traveled straight. All Other times we were liked ginger footed nymphets trying to balance pots of water on their heads. I found myself recalling all the Gods that I had ever learnt about including the ones that governed driving abilities, with no names in particular. The seat belt strapped across my thumping chest seemed more restraining that reassuring. I wanted to break free and even as we careened around a trailer to just brush past a head on bus, the bile within me rose manic proportions only to be suppressed by a feeble will. The next pit stop at a dhaba, had me praying in gratitude and puking in multitudes. The driver of course sipped chai nonchalantly.

As u might realize I survived that drive but on a more serious note while we design expressways and Golden quadrilaterals are we prepared for the worst. The moot point is whether we as a society are ‘grown’ up enough to deal with speed. Highway war stories from my ‘macho’ friends are usually abt how they did Pune in less than two hours and burnt rubber. The ones with SUVs love the fact that they crushed the smaller cars around bends and so on.

Speed at another level governs how we are living our lives. Too fast for our own good we end up crashing into others frequently, both in our personal and professional lives. Everyone’s in a hurry to go somewhere.

Incremental Gandhigiri!

2006-10-21T22:02:00.000+05:30

Finally watched Munnabhai today...the movie that has relaunched Gandhiji. He is the Father of the nation, though wherever he is today, might not want to stake claim to that title!

The movie is an entertainer for sure and like Rang De Basanti has apparently done lots apart from just running to packed halls and selling more popcorn….Sales of My Experiments with Truth have gone up and all kinds of Gandhi merchandise have taken off…

Personally, until now, the Mahatma was just that, a Mahatma. He was, to use a crude comparison a bit like Sachin….everybody looks up to him and wants to emulate him but when it comes to doing things his way its tough man, bloody tough.

The movie gave me a fresh perspective or should I say rekindled one.

Munnabhai tries to simplify things and that’s where its success lies. It tries to convey I guess, that all of us have a Gandhi in ourselves. I remember a public service message that used to be run by the Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad on DD many years ago that showed this Gandhi outline being drawn with the Raghupati Raghav tune playing in the background. The message signed off by saying “Let’s try and discover the Gandhi in ourselves”. That message stayed with me in some corner of my mind and it came back today as I watched the movie unfold

The challenge today, in my mind, is two fold, maybe three. At a fundamental level we don’t have anything called a value system or even something called a conscience. It has probably been mortgaged for a new car or something. Ask someone from our generation or half a generation down and they’ll surely struggle to define what they stand for.

Second we don’t FEEL the need for a value system in the first place. Our lives seem perfectly ok without it. We don’t question ourselves enough on the righteousness of our actions.

Third it’s quite a challenge to translate Gandhian ideals to the current context. As we get more materialistic and worldly, the concept of Gandhi stands in anathema Gandhi is passé also because we don’t see a relevant avtaar in the current context that carries his ideals and translates it for us. The closest that we come are with some public figures with his surname.

We probably need to try and analyze our day to day lives and see where Gandhigiri fits in practically. It might be about not paying extra for the cab, it might mean not throwing garbage wherever it is generated. Small steps in the right direction is probably the answer, there’s still miles to walk if we wish to be, as Bapu said “the change that we wish to see in the world”

A tale of All Cities

2006-10-14T07:34:00.000+05:30

I had the opportunity to visit some of the bigger Indian cities recently. Earlier visits to different cities were marked by a mix of anticipation, uncertainty, curiosity and a lot of advice on what to do and where to shop and so on and so forth. There was an unwritten rule with most people that I know that you pickup something unique from the city- either as souvenir or as consumable. So with Delhi it could be the Petha, with Kolkata the Sandesh, down south you could actually carry back some fresh brewed coffee and so on.
Got a fresh slightly different and disturbing perspective this time. The rate at which most Indian cities are growing is min boggling (sorry that’s not disturbing!). Now you don’t need to get to the city from the airport, the city probably has already come to you. Except Mumbai where anything can be constructed almost anywhere anyone likes, the other cities had airports in the outskirts. The journey from the airport to the city used to be a build up of sorts. Bigger spaces and more basic people giving way to crowded roads and dazzling lights as one entered the heart of the city.

I was amazed this trip and got a glimpse of how similar all our cities would look in the future after our kids and their kids all have taken their loans and bought their flats. The Rajarhat road in Kolkata is an example. It is one long stretch of empty open space, with greenery on either side with a wide potholed road running through it. While you go from airport to city, cattle has a tendency to go from the left of the road to the right (for lunch I presume) and sometimes even just mull over at the centre. Apart from this quirk and potential traffic hazard, this road resembles the Palm Beach Road in Navi Mumbai, the satellite township around Mumbai. The spread of new age buildings, slowly beginning to crowd in clusters, the hoardings around hawking everything from sanitary ware to mutual funds, the same brands and the same ads create an environment which seems like it just got supplanted. The ground realities are the same. As in Mumbai, even in Kolkata residents of this outskirt will struggle to get to the heart of the city. And as our lopsided planning will have it, they will have to for most things

Second, the local city’s giving way to the new city. So local flavours are dying and very soon all the cattle that cross roads would have been run over, or their owners displaced.

So all that one might get to carry back from various cities in future, is this strange, not so great feeling of deja’ vu.

Plane Truths

2006-10-08T20:11:00.000+05:30

Have been living out of a suitcase and airplane for the last four days. Some fundamental questions need to be cleared before I can breathe easy. Be warned you might feel insulted by some of these as you might be guilty of some of these acts

1. I am 6ft tall almost. Am ogre like and hard to miss. Yet at airports gentlemen and not so gentle women pass through me to get to the counter as if I don’t exist. I was making way for the guy who was exiting and there you go, you had a fat Delhi bred Punju woman who had defied her ample self and occupied my rightful place at the check in counter. Now you know why Punjab is closest to the border. The whole state probably wrestled its way there. (Sorry for this rather emotional outburst!)
2. Have you seen the run for your lives scramble that happens when the flight boarding announcement takes place? I wonder whether the guys who queue up first at departure actually reach the destination earlier.
3. Anytime of the day or night, all air travelers have an obsessive compulsive disorder of reading the newspaper the moment, the very moment they enter the flight. Some news just can’t wait I guess. It’s also a smart way of avoiding painful acquaintances by covering the face up.
4. There is always Mr Babloo Srivastava who usually makes the first announcement on the plane. He incidentally is not the crew but a passenger. He is letting his relative know loud and clear that he is aboard the aircraft. At that decibel I wonder does he really need a phone to send the message across.
5. Ok this is the BIG one. Who owns the common arm rest? When will we stop fighting elbow wars? When will we sign an MOU with the guy sitting next to us and say half the flight I take it the rest of it, u can. Did the DGCA ever have this in its travel policies?
6. Why is there always that one nincompoop who doesn’t understand that switching off the cell phone is not a statutory warning like the cigarette smoking one on packs. Can I suggest changing this instruction to “Please switch off your cell phone first and also ensure that the guy sitting next to you is doing so”
7. The safety instruction routing which includes my fave line “Agar vimaan ko paani mein utarna pade” is passé. I will never remember those lines when death’s staring me in the face. And how many of us have read the “safety instruction card in the seat pocket for further details”
8. Seat recliners are nice, as long as they don’t cause knee fracture to the guys sitting right behind. I’ve survived two lethal attempts. Might not be third time lucky

9. The last guy who pees- this one’s not too common but common enough to report here. Usually happens just before landing when the pilot’s got the cabin crew to take their positions and the ATCs cleared the path. One old uncle who probably suffers from an irritable bladder or landing related OCD gets up and tries to make his way to the loo.
10. In addition to Afzal we should be hanging some other chaps. The ones whose cell phones beep even as the plane is landing.
11. As with boarding, the scramble to get out of the plane first is equally amusing. It’s a bit like how we drive in Mumbai streets. You just won’t let guys coming from the lanes to come into the main road. So it’s quite funny to see how people waiting in their streets try to cut in into the moving aisle queue. No honking or stopping here. Accidents of course are common.

The BEST driver psyche n some gems from the BEST website!

2006-10-01T19:21:00.000+05:30

I have always looked at this with a mix of awe, marvel and sheer abhorrence.
There is something about the guy behind the wheel that is worth marveling about and let me tell you why. Most roads in Mumbai are after thoughts. They were wrestled out of what remained after everyone had grabbed their piece of the land action. In such after thoughts where fresh air is at a premium and parallel lines coincide, getting a full blown BEST bus to even move to move is an art, to say the least. It takes immense patience when every possible animal, man, woman and child would want to cross the road before the bus passes them by. Then there is the ubiquitous rick wallah whose ability to move 360 in the same spot is a gift from the powers that be. Last but not the least there is the hawker whose prime objective in life seems to be to take as much of the main street to himself.

Now for the abhorrence bit. A secret not yet revealed part of the BEST training to its drivers in about how to intimidate everyone around you while on the road. While I have not been to this training I have done some observation research that will help us shed some light here
1. Autos are like flies in your path. Keep swatting them away. Just like swatting a fly never kills it, and even if it does, there are a lot of them out there anyways, who’ll notice!
2. Pedestrians are just that, pedestrians. They can be crushed into moving into any space, even where there’s none.
3. When someone who wants to disembark apply brakes so that he/ she has to cling onto dear life. Makes them more respectful towards you
4. Never stop for that guy who’s coming running just as you leave the stop. He deserves to be ignored and sent to hell. How can he assume that you will stop and what the hell. Stop doesn’t mean stop forever? If possible also splash water from the nearby puddle while you pass him by. Serves the bugger right!
5. Private vehicles of all sorts, especially the good looking cars will always be faster than you. The only way that you can stop them from doing so is by being on the fastest lane and driving as slowly as possible.
6. You are born with the right to cut lanes with just a casual arm if anything indicating broadly the direction you’re going in

The significance of point no 6 is immense. Apparently a BEST driver is fined only, ONLY if the front of the bus is damaged in an accident. Those from Mumbai can easily related to the BEST grazing past ur fresh paint while in a car.

Gems from the BEST website- as said there (my comments in Italics)
The common citizen of Mumbai is obviously not aware of many surprising features of the BEST's Bus Service. Just to state a few examples :
Bus Route No. 166 - plies on roads interconnecting maximum Hospitals. (Has this got to do with people searching hospital after hospital for bodies of relatives after the blasts???? Why the hell would one want to cover ALL hospitals in one go)
Bus Route No. 161 - This route covers on the way maximum Oil Reservoirs and unpopulated areas in Eastern wings of the city. (Whoa I didn’t know that Oil traveled too and wats with the unpopulated stretch, ghost travel is it?)
Bus Route No. 9 - A network of large number of school and colleges is interwoven by this route. (Not wasting words Same comments as above)
Bus Route No. 320, 22ltd., 25ltd. - These routes have an outstanding feature of connecting two largest water reservoirs of the city. (Now we know……the project to interconnect rivers is already on!!!)
Bus Route No. 1,66,202 - Round the clock operating bus routes. (Finally some sense here!)
This is the first step in our endeavor of revealing this information regarding our Bus Service (bus shervheece in a local accent) through the Internet.

Father of the Weekend

2006-09-27T21:29:00.000+05:30

“So what you doin this weekend?” is the most common refrain that one’s hearing this week. This weekend, for those who aren’t tuned in yet, happens to be a ‘long’ one. The Father of the Nation was born on the 2nd October which “fortunately falls on a Monday this time”. So all us folks who are overworked, under and overpaid and couldn’t care two hoots about Gandhiji’s life or death will be in drunken stupor after two days of partying or doing our own movie watching or socializing on that day. Many of us, including yours truly, are planning to watch the Gandhigiri themed Munnabhai on that day. That film incidentally stars someone who has been a drug addict and accused in the Mumbai blast case of 1993.
Gandhiji meanwhile will continue to smile at us from walls in schools, as statues in the centre of towns, as main roads in all cities.

Lakshmi RIP

2006-09-24T09:31:00.000+05:30

Lakshmi died day before. She was knocked down by a speeding truck, very close to where I stay. I used to see Lakshmi being bathed by a cackle of local street urchins, all having the time of their lives. This used to happen right next to the highway and used to be a quite a sight for passersby. She would be most patient, wallowing in the attention that she deservedly got. The mahout of course, used all the labour that he could get, that too for free.I have never seen a more obedient animal. She followed instructions to the T, whether out of fear or love we’ll never know. The mahout as has been widely written now, used her to make money. That would mean everything from taking part in temple festivals to actually begging on roads. I don’t know what’s more cruel- being displaced from her natural habitat for life, being made to walk miles on concrete which she obviously doesn’t enjoy, not getting her fill everyday, being made to beg…the list is endless.
The mahout had his reasons am sure, but nothing in this world justifies torture. Her end came badly too, paralysed, lifted by steel wires to go to the Animal Hospital. In the end it was too late.
We are increasingly getting intolerant of our surroundings; we couldn’t care less for greenery as long as we have enough of it in our immediate surroundings (read society). Stray animals of all kinds need to be cleaned up is the popular opinion. At some level this phenomenon is seen even among how we treat other humans. Some people still, seem to be more equal than others.

Scrap hook

2006-09-21T23:23:00.000+05:30

I have been on Orkut for the last four months. There are changes that it has brought about, some incremental, and some monumental. For one its just picks up your network and puts it up for everyone to see. It also puts up the conversations that you are having with others on public display through the scrapbook. So while it is a voyeur’s delight it is also a subtle reinforcement that “all is well with me cos people are scrapping me”.

Orkut marries the multiple worlds that we inhabit. It also brings together the past and the present in the same window, literally. In that sense it is the best forum to identify the Connectors as Malcolm Gladwell defines them in Tipping Point. My multiple worlds have brought back identities that I had lost as I grew into newer things. I rediscovered that I used to be poet and quite keen on maths theorems. I also was reminded by this sweet friend of mine that I was a drummer with the college band. The latest positive reinforcement came from someone that I spoke to after about 9 years. She remembered my ability to write well while in college and said that the first thing that she did was to visit my blog! Suddenly there were people holding different mirrors to me constantly and it felt good to keep looking at oneself in different avatars. It’s almost like picking up old worn out dusty albums from the closet and browsing through them. That thought itself brings a smile to my face.