Ajith Nair

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

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

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

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

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...

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 emot...

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

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,...

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...

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 serv...

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, ...

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

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 solut...

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,...

Babu Lingo Concerned Department - an illusion that you chase endlessly (hardly find any concern for your concerns here) Sahe b- 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!

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 Mumbai...

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!!!

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...

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 ...