Ajith Nair

Was speaking to a colleague of mine from Thailand who plans to visit India. The biggest shocker that she heard about India, is that there are a lot among us who defecate in the open. The Govt, in its health plans and high morality statements always talk about providing toilets for this lot.I've seen some of these provided toilets and let me tell u, i'd rather let go in the open. On the other hand Sulabh International ( http://www.sulabhenvis.in/pages/database_detail.asp?id=45 ) has created amazing toilets which work at a nominal fee. The fee is towards maintaining the loo and paying basic labour charges for people who work there.This is a model that has worked, both for the toiletless and for people in transit. The failure if any has been to provide enough number of these. 60% of Mumbai lives in slums thats close to 10million inMumbai itself. The number across India will be humongous of course. The act of defecation in the open is noteworthy. Most people with any degree of self...

Was part of a TV show audience recently. Hosted by one of India's most popular media faces, the show was supposed to ask incisive questions of the people who mattered. The crowd settled in well, comprised mainly of upper middle class 'thinking' mumbai whose voices are the loudest when any crisis occurs, but whose actions are usually the feeblest. The preamble to the shoot saw frantic calls being made by participants to all and sundry informing them about an impending appearance on television. Your truly was gulity too, preferring the SMS route to self promotion. There were loud conversations about "the city's infrastructure sucks" "am meeting governor Krishna tomorrow" and the like. Citizens had come, vanity, credentials and creased trousers. The panel comprised a film director who had created a teeny bopperish movie, a script writer whose only link with Mumbai seemed that she had scripted a movie with the city's name in it, a lawyer who regularl...

10 Questions 1. What is the Mumbai spirit- does it live and die only in the media? 2. What does Mumbai returns to normal mean- 1000 bereaving families, tensof thousands shit scared, what is normal? 3. What can the Mumbaikar expect next- a lot more bombs on trains, or will the venue change? 4. When will we act, rather than react? 5. A spontaneous outpouring of aid from Mumbaikars, can it save lives? 6. Why does the so called spirit of Mumbai surface only when there's crisis/ calamity? 7. How long before mass exodus begins from Mumbai? 8. Do running trains mean a thrviving city? 9. Can I trust my neighbour or is he a terrorist? 10. Can I trust myself to not become one?

List A: John Mc Enroe, Diego Maradona, Brian Lara, Shane Warne, Zinedine Zidane, Gary Kasparov List B: Pete Sampras, Rahul Dravid, Vishwanathan Anand, Michael Schumacher, Sachin tendulkar Genius has two sides to it. And both are equally marvellous. There is the refined genius which follows rules, adheres to systems and is the ideal role model. Then there is the maverick who in some ways is unpredictable, bohemian and brash but is an eqully good master as his saner counterpart. The root cause of how a genius turns out is probably a function of genetics and social conditioning both. Disturbed childhoods, trumatic experiences and a host of other factors might move a conventional genius into being a maverick.

Football is a contact sport, its about body clashes, sweat dripping brawls and constant jostling. Today when our lives are increasingly getting individualised, contact of any kind, symbolic or physical is getting compartmentalised. Most of long for our own spaces, hate crowded public areas and will pay a premium for anything thats'exclusive'. In such times where does football fit into our psyche? In my opinion, it symbolises the modern spectator sport. It is the modern equivalent of the amphitheatres, which showcase human extremities for all of us to enjoy from a distance. There is the range of emotions, there is the struggle, the ecstasy and the disappointment. With evey match there's a modern day tragedy that gets enacted. what makes it even more spectator like is the whole physicality associated with it. It packs in all the physicality that we miss in our lives. By extension, it isn't difficult to believe why football and sexual exhibitionism are so closely interlink...

5th July 2006, 6.45am. It’s the fourth day of yet another Mumbai rain deluge. It’s not as bad as last year, but then nothing can match hell, right? I switch on CNN IBN, a news channel that has always been a responsible and mature reporter. What makes most viewers, including me, tune into it, is the credibility that Rajdeep Sardesai, the chief of the channel, brings to the table. I see a young rookie reporter screaming into his mike “It’s pouring out here, things are very bad, people have been inconvenienced…..” He’s speaking about Chembur, where I stay. Shaken, I peer out of the window to find futile attempts by passing clouds to create a downpour. All that they can manage currently is a drizzle. I double check the channel to see if I’ve heard the intrepid reporter right. My ears have always been sharp. I switch off the television and get ready to go to office. I still watch CNN IBN….for entertainment.

Rahul seems friendly, approachable, amiable and down to earth The kind of guy that girls could take home and dad wouldn't frown, if anything, he would be happy. The kind of guy you could sit with in a coffee shop on a rainy day and talk about movies, women, philosophy and adventure. He typefies what most of us in the urban middle class want to be- successful, happy, seen as hardworking, true to his self. More importantly, he is the one from amongst us who made it big. Rahul grafts, struggles, stays there forever, surviving. Some times he gives you the impression that he can bat just with his mind. He is brahmanesque, standing for simple living and high thinking. He gives u the impression that he is quite capable of attaining nirvana if he so desires. He also seems to be a follower of the scientific method. He reads, assimilates, discusses, debates and then takes decisions. As he said in a recent interview, he wouldn't mind being chief mentor at Infosys. Rahul can be studied for...

Barkha Dutt writes in the HT today about her issues with Sabarimla not letting women enter. She wants to change that ruling- simply because it concerns women and their rights. Will being allowed to enter Shabarimala make the status of women better? Where does one draw the line between cultural mores and modern thinking. What is the problem with Shabarimala being treated as an all male domain, for whatever reason? If we look into our culture and tradition, we encounter some obviously neanderthal practises like Sati. Then there are restrictive ones like temple entry which still in a lot of places is restricted by caste and gender . Wil quashing these have an impact on rooted mindsets in terms of caste and religion? Equality is well practised while preserving elements which are closely linked to culture and tradition. Why should only the woman fast on Karva Chauth, why not the man? Doesn't that sound absurd!

There' a lot of talk around about whether football's on its way to replace cricket in India. Early days yet i think,but some visibile signs are telling. All around you, teens and pre teens discuss EPL, Formula 1 a lot more. Sachin and Sehwag aren't part of daily talk. This might be a largely urban/ big city phenomenon, but satellite television, might be taking EPL and Alonso right into rural homes as well. Right now everyone's wathcing football, simply put because its interesting. Whether this grows into a regular, every weekend,following of EPL and other leagues is yet to be seen. I have my doubts. I'll stick to cricket.

I have two bank accounts and limited memory. Each of my banks treats me like a king, a king of memory. They expect me to remember my 8 digit Internet login, my seven digit alpha numeric password, my 4 digit phone banking pin, my complex transaction password….if I do, I’ll probably edge my own phone number out of my memory….well the torture doesn’t end there. In their effort to create security, banks also advise me to have different passwords and usernames for all accounts and to keep changing them. So by the time I’m actual done with learning RX9oI87A by rote, it's time to change it to to “ anything that you wish says the bank” as long as…..Its got letters and alphabet (no symbols yet! Matter of time I guess, before that happens), it's between 18 and 29 characters in length, it’s not your name or even half of it, it’s not your girlfriend’s name either. So one has to create crypts that unless written down in font size 40 somewhere might just remain locked in the bank server’s m...

Great to see the Master get back into prime form. Lashing CC saw quite a lashing from the MRF blade apparently. Its just a matter of time now before he gets into the run getting habit again. Can't wait for that to happen. Shashi Tharoor will make quite a different UN sec gen, if he makes it that is. Vis-a-vis kofi Annan who looks calm, composed and Buddha- esque, our man is stylish flamboyant articulate and suave. Will do wonders for the public image of the UN. Meanwhile,might be a coincidence, but all three African nations playing the world cup this year are neighbours.....any Freakonomics style explanation to this?

Mumbai was just voted the rudest city in the world. There is a semblance of truth or even more than it in there, though my hard core Mumbaikar heart refuses to accept that. Meanwhile, Readers Digest who did the survey, used measures like whether someone opened the door for you, did someone help u pick up fallen stuff and whether someone thanked u after u shopped as metrics. Lets spend time on why this approach is flawed. Being non courteous i.e not doing some of the above things is, to my mind, being apathetic or insensitive. Its certainly not being rude. Rudeness has a certain actively evil dimension to it, which probably cannot be captured by the above three acts. Courtesy's polar opposite might not be 'rude'. Second, thanking someone after they've shopped has never been a tradition in India. I never remember a shokeeper thanking me for anything, so either we're all born 'rude' or the metric is irrelevant. Third, the practise of holding the door for someon...

http://www.thehindu.com/2006/06/17/stories/2006061705171300.htm It's all round us in Mumbai and probably the other cities. The dredge of the society that does our menial work is a nuisance when it's not doing our menial work. We need them to make us feel better about ourselves and there is no way that we'll do anything to alleviate their status- lest them become us, or even better than us. Our 'well constructed' urban world is designed to marginalise the poor- Flovers which are taxed and which necessarily have dark underbellies where beggars thrive. Our buildings and societies have exotic names which 'transform' us into an escapist reality. Most of our modern societies have everything within so that we don't have to face the reality outside. Even if we do, its through the tinted glasses of cars which are super cooled. Every member of the 'them' set has to prove his identity everyday at the gate, he's issued a pass without which his identity i...

While I write this, Ivory Coast is walking in with a purpose- a goal down against a Dutch side that looks to be at peak performance. The football today has been a notch higher than what one has seen until now. I waked in into the compond and a notice caught my eye.It said that we're banning mongrels in the compound cos they are potential threats to everything. This just adds to my theory that we are getting increasingly intolerant of most things, yest it was about beggars today it's about dogs. Meanwhile in true Mumbai style where land is scarce and every resource is disputed, we have a garbage bin dispute. The neighbouring slums have a problem against us dumping garbage in 'their' bin.

Kerala is the most literate state in India.It also has the highest suicide rate. It has the most beautiful rainfall, it also has some very dry throats. It has a thousand mouths to shout slogans but a lot more hungry mouths to feed Today Thiruvananthapuram decided that it has had enough of beggars and begging. Overnight, begging has been banned. It'll be interesting to see how this gets implemented- knowing the Kerala police force, they'll be licking their lips at the possibility of polishing off some beggars. It'll be even more interesting to see how citizens react to this, if they do that is. All of us get embarassedwhen a beggar confronts us in public- our schools haven't taught us how to deal with poverty. Its always been shunned, been never talked about and ever so easily pooh- pooed. Beggars remind us of what can be, don't they? They remind us of our existential reality that at the end of the day we all are comrades in alms! Something tells me that this is just...

From the leisurely pace of the English greens where everything happened in slow motion to the rough dry and raucous atmosphere of Jamshedpur to the unknown pitches of Abu Dhabi or god knows where next, the game has traveled and will keep traveling. Thirty years ago the stiff upper lipped member of the MCC scoffed at pajama cricket today he proudly sits and dines with Flintoff and Pietersen at any public do. It’s not too difficult to imagine a system in the future where an online television viewer rating system will actually set the pace of a match. Which basically means that if the viewership drops then players could be instructed to slog or maybe sledge and create drama so that viewers would come back. Viewers may even determine through a live online poll who’ll bat next or rather who’ll play in the first place If viewers don’t really come back then the match will be called off mid way, so what if Dravid Jr was due for a maiden double hundred. Sponsors will pay on a currency basis and...

Mumbai- the projected Shanghai of tomorrow is easily held ransom by two or three forces- nature's fury compounded by lack of good drainage, a political party which threatens to mutate into many other avtaars and last but certainly not the least the BEST.The other Best that I know is a gentleman called George Best whose antics on the football field and simultaneously off it are still discussed in learned football circles. His ability to strike won his team many a match. The BESTs strike of course is a lost cause.Every year- before Diwali when bonuses are to be declared the big fat lady demands a big fat bonus. It's given, no questions asked. Just as the BESTconductor doesn't bat an eyelid before asking u to disembark if you don't have exact change, the BEST also doesn't think twice before calling STRIKE. So Monu who takes 86 to school or Mr Mehta who takes the AC bus to Nariman Point have to suffer. The worst hit are the ones who don't have an option but take bus...