Ajith Nair

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.

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...