Ajith Nair

This is heartfelt reaction to a column in today’s HT by the very suave, the very liberal, the self proclaimed God of all things Alyque Padamsee. This is what he wrote. CITY that once hosted Tamikointo aher hot tomato and striptease is now forcing us 1820s village culture. If we want Bombay to be like Shanghai, our governing bodies had better wake up. Bombay is known as the city that never sleeps and yet we have the ridiculous closing down of pubs and restaurants at early hours and banning of dance bars and the latest ban on adult movies on TV. Is the government trying to turn Bombay into the Vatican City?! Wake up Mr Chief Minister, or you’ll find all the multinational businesses moving out of our prestigious city. Soon we’ll be left with only Slumbay. When I was in college, we had a gala time visiting restaurants witch dancing till 4 am. Like Venice at the Airlines Hotel, Volga opposite Akbarally’s and half a dozen other lively joints. I specially remember the Mandarin restaurant oppo...

Amsterdam to Mumbai is a lot Fancy aisle seat I’d got Enough for a butt brush and a wink or two A nine hours flight, you need stuff to do! We were revving up as all planes do And I was busy ogling at the shapely crew The pilot announced stuff as he always does I said aloud “take off sir, karo bhi bas” My phone rang and had to take the call Yousee, was an important call after all Flung the seat belt to make some room Even as the jet slowly began to zoom Call done and back in my seat I returned to my ogling retreat Soon enough I heard they say We’re headed back the very same way! Land we did in great style My ogling opportunity had lasted just a mile Why the hell were we back And that too they didn’t serve any snack Saw some crew point towards me Finally they realized how handsome I could be I was handcuffed and led outside the plane Bid a service goodbye by shapely hostess Jane. Write this from a 4X4 cell While I experience Dutch hell Am not a terrorist never was one And ogle I did, but...

Today's Hindustan Times reports that Pune apparently goes on a sex overdrive during Ganesh Chaturthi. This is borne out by sale of condoms through the Govt channels. The reasons for as stated being 1. A lot many more prostitutes are in town 2. Couples out in the city end up making out more often as they're away from the prying eyes of parents A similar thing occurs during Navratri in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Dandiya raas and Raas Leela seem to be not so strange bedfellows. It's interesting to note that 'religious' festivals which in Hindu mythlogy are ideally associated with chastity, purity of the mind and soul should be in fact doing the opposite. I know that its unfair to blame the festival but then the conditions created by the festival are probably what drive licentious behaviour. I don't recommend trying to curb this behaviour, but its up to the Govt to use this fact constructively. Social messages related to safe sex or even condom vending machines can be...

We have a leaner meaner solar system now. Pluto has been ostracized and am sure that some of the other planets are feeling slightly insecure- Who’s next? We earthlings assume that we have the moral right to define who stays and who doesn’t. That’s a bit like what the US is doing isn’t it? Am sure that there are aliens out there who must be having a hearty laugh at our ‘logical’ exclusion of Pluto. We face this kind of arbitrary changes all the time with our laws and policies. Quotas in educational institutions, cable tv or DTH or CAS, Hair and his recent decision come to mind immediately. Some of us are made to feel like Pluto in the process. Bejan Daruwala gave the whole episode new West vs. us spin. He opined that we should not listen to the west and follow our own rules. Am sure our expert astrologers, most of whom are not on TV like Bejan have that sense ingrained in them already. Meanwhile, Disney will now have to probably find a new name for Mickey’s dog.

BEST buses have their own way of creating parity. They have seats reserved up front for the ladies, senior citizens and the handicapped. Off late these have been imposed with some force and seem to be serving their rightful purpose. Today I witnessed the downside of this. A middle aged couple were occupying a ‘ladies’ seat and soon the man had to give it up for another woman. He wasn’t amused and started blaming his wife for having drawn him from another ‘neutral’ seat into sitting there. The wife, not one to give up, argued loud and clear about how it wasn’t her insistence and how he always had a choice. Suddenly the phrase dirty linen in public was being enacted much to the amusement of all and sundry. The man, now a mixture of embarrassment and anger explained to everyone at large and no one in particular that how he was actually questioning only the “principle” of it all. For non Indians- this is usually what an Indian man does when he wants to blame his wife but doesn’t have the b...

I received this ominous sounding email in my Inbox a couple of days back. I was reasonably sure that an email bomb hadn't been invented yet and moreover the terrorists had white people to kill. What would a brown skin like me be worth anyways.Moreover I have never traveled on a transatlantic flight. But hey i've taken a Mumbai local....does that mean I qualify as a target.....Shudder! Coming back to my dilemma....its about this amail (see in Italics below) the text of which reads like a mix of a Hindi movie, a Jehadi's diary and a bank's solicitation mail.You'll agree that its obviously a crude way to identify suckers who will provide Khalid, he's got a name you see, with their bank details or maybe gullible fools like me who will dedicate a blog entry to him. I might actually be furthering his cause by writing about it here but what the hell no one reads my blog and those who do don't take it seriously so..... Coming back to Khalid's email, he also make...

Cable wallahs blacked out signals in Mumbai for the last couple of days. Our cops who are strong moral police if not the best terror preventers went all out and ransacked MSOs all over Mumbai. Cablewallahs, who themselves have a dubious record, pulled the plug on the last mile in protest. We folks at home suddenly had no choice but to discover the merits of books, talk to each other and turn in early by default. Many of the younger generation who hadn’t quite experienced a TV less life survived it for two days and emerged disoriented. Suddenly there was a lot of time on our hands. No tears to shed over soaps, no cars to dream about on game shows and no skimpily clad women to look at. Women in particular lamented the plight of their favorite characters while they were denied a dekko. Dinner took place at the designate dinner table, with both hands being suitably occupied. The left hand which usually held the remote was relatively idle, confused by lack of application. At precisely 10.30...

Warning: I’m comatose so anything that I write might just be the blatant truth. It took me two hours to get back home from work. It’s a distance of about 10- 15km I guess. The first three km took an hour. After that, I stopped looking at my watch and started staring at the line of fate on my palm instead. Surely there must be a positive side to this. For company on the BEST bus I have work weary, dreary eyed passengers who look like they’re headed for a Nazi concentration camp and they know it. The guy sitting next to me might have been dead for all you know; his expression hasn’t changed in the last half an hour. Much like the traffic situation. I try to entertain myself by reading all possible billboards, notices, shop signs, discount offers. In five minutes I have memorized everything in my line of sight. As if on cue, the bus inches and lo behold, I have added something to the scenery from my window. It happens to be the rear end of a truck which is green in color. Green color truc...

The fiasco in the Pak England test match had to have an Aussie somewhere. The pakis take the cake for creating fracas in most occasions and there’s only one another nation which can give it a good run for its money, you guessed it! Recently two Aussies have been in the news, one for shooting off his mouth, the other for not having opened it! Dean Jones- of the madras test double hundred and dehydration fame, recently called Hashim Amla a terrorist. And then later apologized by calling the Pakistani team his friends. While I didn’t quite see the connection between the two, Deano was sent packing. Interestingly Cricket Australia didn’t say or do anything about this whole episode. Yesterday the sloth like Hair who has few friends in the sub continent, felt that the Pakis were at it again. The old art of scratching their balls! He signaled five penalty runs, stared at his sloth counterpart- the ever so poised and somnolent Inzy and walked off for tea. No explanations mate! Post tea, Inzy a...

I overheard this at Mahim yesterday "Allah bol raha hai daro, main abhi hoon" In the face of water logged streets, when parts of Mumbai have no water to drink, one has often heard the refrain “Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink” A couple of days ago, Mumbai found a source of unlimited ‘sweet’ drinking water. The Mahim sea face turned saccharine apparently and there was mass hysteria, largely from members of a particular community. The presence of a dargah there accelerated the divine connection. For those who haven’t seen it first hand, The Mahim creek or Mithi river has dark grey or black water flowing. It carries the dredge from everywhere it flows- a mix of chemicals, waste, human excreta and rotting stuff. It empties into the sea near Mahim. Thousands have been drinking this ‘sweet’ water now.Wonder why no one’s drawn the connection yet between the Mithi name and sea water turning sweet? From my limited knowledge of Hindu mythology, I remember that Amrit Manth...

The connectivity that we enjoy might actually be spreading the bad along with the good. Stress travels and it doesn't stop with firewalls. Moreover its hard to eradicate it from within our networked lives. Road rage for instance is probably the on road manifestation of stress that began at work or maybe at home depending on which part of the day you're talking about. Vice versa is also true. Ive been reading stories about how people have been experiencing trauma out of seeing the Mumbai blast images on tv. So while we might pride ourselves in being unaffected by most things, its never so easy to avoid stress when it comes around. Email is another big culprit. While forwards might be doing their bit, the bulk of email usually add to stresslevels implicitly or explicitly. Stinkers from above, outside,inside and writing some in return contribute.

Mumbai gave me a new lease of life today. I do market research for a living. Questionnaires form the lifeline of what we do. As luck would have it, someone decided to cart questionnaires by bike on a rainy day and ended up dropping a good bundle of 200 of them on a Mumbai main road. Five mins later when he realised , he rushed back and found nothing. Mumbai, known for its ability to practise ' finders keepers' had just lived up.....once again. Meanwhile, in office, the rest of us dreaded everything from client ire to loss of confidentiality to contemplating sacking the culprit. A phone call from a garage mechanic almost got dismissed by the receptionist as wrong number. He had the booty and no this was not a ransom call.It was just a simple Mumbaikar delivering in true Mumbai spirit. An overjoyed office accepted with gratitude the 200 questionnaires- crisp, clean and stacked up neatly. The samaritan accepted no gifts and vanished soon. He had a garage to run you see.

I am a non voter by choice or maybe by laziness. Haven’t voted anyone to Parliament or for that matter to school head boy. Today was different. My benevolent neighbour, who has a Dr prefix to his name, dashed into my living room this morning. The next 20 mins were spent in a monologue on my housing society elections. I received a crash course on who’s good, bad and ugly and who needed to be voted for and why. In culmination, he thrust a chit of paper into my hand and said this is the list that you vote for. I felt like a dumb voter, which I am, who had just been subtly brainwashed into voting for a list of Martians, for all u know. This is how most of India votes for most elections. There are no real issues; the issues if any are never in the public domain. Most voters are ignorant, a lot of them vote by habit, few of them feel pride in fulfilling their constitutional duty and a few others are even thankful that they are being asked to express their opinion. I voted for my neighbour, s...

16 Indians recently perished in Bahrain. Apparently362 Indians commited suicide in the Middle East lastyear, am sure actual numbers are higher. We lost about 200 people in the Mumbai bomb blasts. farmers die everyday, people have stopped counting. Is it because we are plenty that there seems to be no value to human life? Contrast this with the rather drastic action that Israel undertook in reaction to jst two of its soldiers being taken captive by Hizbollah. Am not justifying war but there surely is a message there, however feeble, on how it values its people. In our country, some lives are more important than the others. the lives that are protected are the ones who don;t deserve the protection they get. the rest of us don't evn know the value of our lives. So much for life insurance.