The Proact Blog

Kolaveri Di - Signifying Everything

2011-12-03T07:34:00.001+05:30

Why this Kolaveri Di? 14 million hits on 3rd December 2011 and counting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8

The funny thing about a viral is that – like news, it is time-bound, and after the initial buzz, fizzles so completely that you later wonder what it was about.

Kolaveri is relatable by all – and yet not quite one's own lingo. Most of it is understood yet leaves something incomplete to the Indian imagination.

Tamil is the not-quite-other 'other' to the rest of India. A Dravidian language spoken in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Tamil, and its brethren Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada form the base of the regional film industry. With a glancing acquaintance with Northern India's Bollywood, the two worlds rarely come together or collide. They could belong to different planets – going by the stars, sets, stories, music and fans.

Until Kolaveri Di.

The seamless social network and the vast Indian demographic dividend of the 65% less-than-35-years youth segment have finally made out with one another, cutting across regions.

In the Indian world mediated as it is by twenty two official languages, Kolaveri uses 'only English' – in Tamil. And this is the patois spoken in more urban homes today. Where the nouns and adjectives, in English, are strung together by the grammatical 'if’, ‘but’, ‘the’, ‘and’ and ‘is' in the tongue spoken by the parents. ‘Windanu shudda kar de’ (‘shut the window’ – in Punjabi), ‘Moonu-white-u’ (‘the moon is white’ - in Tamil), ‘Bread-e butter dao’ (‘give me buttered bread’ – in Bengali) is what the nextgen feels totally at home in.

Kolaveri sublimates and air-conditions the stereotypical broken heart, moon, holy cow, white girl with black heart – in Tamlish, and hits the sweet spot at multiple points. Why has this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri diexploded as an anthem of a cynical youth-gen fed 24/7 through dozens of channels and the internet on an over abundant supply of West and East – Lady Gaga, Bieber, Antabella, and the now jaded Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Pritam, and worse, Punjabi Bollywood?

Dhanush has given multiple interviews in the last few days expressing surprise at the song's success because he says he is not actually a singer (he is a Tamil film actor and son-in-law of the Tamil super-god-star Rajnikanth). My dad, a Hindustani classical musician, laughs this off. After I got him to hear Kolaveri, (he enjoyed it), he said do not underestimate a South Indian's command over 'sur' (melody) and 'taal' (rhythm). One more of those wonderful beliefs we all live with, north of the Sahyadris.

The entire filming of the video is as if in the studio – right out of the reality show genre. The expression on the face of the music cast is poker-faced and vacant, not unlike the faces of the artists, waiting in the wings to go on stage of a highly theatrical and impassioned drama.

For now, let us leave the ensemble reveling in the encore.

Pa pa pa ppan, pa pa pa ppan, pa pa ppan ppan pa pa ppan

RESPONDING (2)

2 December 2011 at 1:56 pm
Priya says:
I really like this song. I have heard it at least 1000 times.
1 December 2011 at 11:15 pm
Malcolm Evans says:
I’m getting mega-enthusiastic feedback about this piece and the link from all over. What a great song. Nothing like this musically and lyrically in UK since everybody over the age of 3 was singing ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley one summer 5 or 6 years ago. Dear semionauts, please share the music that’s currently getting under people’s skin and into their brains and bodies wherever you are. And give us some of the story as Piyul has done with such poise and fun and brilliance here!

It's All About the Looks, Silly

2011-08-02T09:13:00.011+05:30

What do ZNMD and our obsession about Hina Khar have in common?

Apart from the bag worth lakhs of rupees that is - ?

Both celebrate the pinnacle position of our consumption economy. What Santosh Desai calls the importance of the trivial overriding the significant, in our lives. Our readiness to embrace the culture of consumption. Where glamour has translated into presumed effectiveness.

India-Pakistan - koi problems hi nahi hai bhai. All simulated by those Delhi-Isloo types.

The movie celebrates how cool it is to be rich and inward gazing and the media frenzy on Khar represents that everything can be - and is - and should be, a spectacle.

The world is no longer about delayed gratification. The new prevailing mood is 'relayed gratification' - in the name of adventure sports or attires or shoes.

Once upon a time, the youth of the seventies had the Angry Young Man created in part by Javed Akhtar: A Rebel With a Cause. Amitabh Bachchan

By the turn of the century and along the line came Rakesh Mehra's Rang De Basanti - Rebels without a Cause. Yet youth in search of goals in life.

By the time the next decade has come around, the Akhtar nextgen has put their finger as unerringly as their dad did, on the shooting pulse of the youth: Rebels Without a Pause.

Unending self-centred live-in-own-bubble gratification. Of simulating dangers - for the world inhabited has no real dangers in any case, to then face them squarely.

Aa Bail Mujhe Maar is legit motto of the Indian demographic dividend.

Human relationships or any other global causes - eh, whatcha talking about??

There were two tantalizing angles left dangling. Hrithik and Farhan start out in an uneasy awkwardness over a woman in the past, who is no longer in the picture. Is in fact irrelevant to their lives. A delicious irony in the fractures left behind - but in keeping with the true spirit of the times, the intriguing depths of such a relationship between the guys is not dwelled on at all.

As in the times, we skim thru life. It's as if the media is telling me: Don't be so hyper, learn to enjoy life. Problem kaheko khada kar rahe ho? Enjoy the movie na... Splurge on the multiplex, chill with a soda, sit back in your designer wear.

Firangis (Spaniards bichare whoa re thrilled we will now line up as tourists in their land) are now grist to the games of our over-confident and brash Indian selves, and the jokes played on unsuspecting bystanders is the new benchmark of being funny.

A son in search of a biological father, has no compunctions of starting off a potent and short-lived relationship with the dad, riding on the back of a failed joke that brings them to the police station. It's just one more non-place to pass through, in life, which parents will take care of, kind of like Manu Sharma - the chap who shot Jessica.

When Farhan wants to call 'Salman', his friends ask him 'But why would he help us'?

Well-asked, well noted by screenplay writer Farhan. Talk of the singularity of rich brats' lives: the thought of strangers helping out is unthinkable - in lives spent chasing the next rainbow. The rest of the planet's inhabitants are mere props on the stage, when they are not the thoughtless butt of jokes that is.

Live life in this moment alone is the credo that has chased the makers of the film to their later publicity tour. While in the NDTV studio in the weekend the movie released, even before the director or the lead stars got any comment in edgeways, the channel cut them off rudely and dramatically. Because tabloid king 'Murdoch had just been attacked'. As it turned out, by a clown with shaving foam.

Motto of the second decade of the twenty first century: pleasure seeking is legit. Enjoying money is my own prerogative - am no Gandhi to think of anything else and come on, give me a break, this is my life.

All those Motorcycle Diaries road trip and all - first of all, dunno what you are talking about. This face on my T shirt? Oh that's Che, some chap who became an icon not quite sure why. But he sure makes a cool icon - bought it for 100 dollars.

There is a phrase academics have for this: it's called Late Capitalism. In which we puppets dance to the tune of the market. The ultimate aim, for all of us is to be covered in the intellectual People magazine and live life in 3D on P3.

Greenathon Success Equals State Failure

2011-06-06T07:03:00.009+05:30

My mom wants to buy a few solar lanterns and take it with her when she next goes back to Kamarpukur, the village where she runs a preparatory free tuitions school for some rural children in West Bengal.

She's asked me to buy it from NDTV's Greenathon and give it to her.

Except that it doesn't quite work that way.

What we are asked to do is to donate money and they will go provide the lanterns at villages of their choice. Apparently 200 villages covered so far. Even that - not the entire village, I expect - just a few homes in each.

And this is how the individualized world of a liberalized economy operates.

We stop questioning why the state - the central government that is - has not ensured electricity to the masses nearly 65 yrs after independence, and more than 20 years after reaching a 'galloping GDP' trajectory.

We learn to take pride in our individual feel and do good moments, and brush thoughts of factors such as 0.033% aside. That is what 200 villages actually represents in a country of 600,000 villages. When calculated as number of households, the percentage will plunge further.

As the media celebrates and self-congratulates, will someone stop and question why the state is under no pressure, no answerability whatsoever to make a true scaleable difference? When and how has it abdicated so completely that it can now rest comfortably allowing 'civil society' to feel it is doing fine?

And, simultaneously, we need to ponder this: what sort of a mirror are we putting up around us in society, that we are unable to judge criminal indifference of the policy makers? It is akin to the well-heeled (non-voting) elite family that sponsors their driver's children's education, and believes it has done more than enough for the nation.

Please listen very carefully to Jerry, folks!

2011-05-25T10:24:00.007+05:30

You know when the virulent (and utterly gleeful) media goes to town interviewing profs, politicians and students in the wake of the Jairam Ramesh interview (quote: "IITs are surviving because of their students. There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty,"), who all then very piously rebutted:

a) how wonderful the teaching is

b) if Fortune 500 companies are choosing the best students, can they be wrong

one can understand their quick-fix answer making for the all important sound-bites necessary in the 24/7 world of today.

Let us go back and look at what Jerry has said. He has questioned the RESEARCH at these places.

(If he is raising questions on the faculty, yes, we need to question the amount of time the faculty is being allowed to do research as versus teaching, so it is all about research ultimately)

Relatively speaking, there must be some reason for IITs never to be rated in the top 100 of the top 500 educational institutes rankings, no?

http://bit.ly/myT1oU

In fact, to all purposes IITs are slipping. Why??

I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Just pointing this out. (For I am not sure what greatness Harvard et al are doing, by being at the top of the heap - I kind of liked the knuckle-rapping JK Rowling did at the august institution a few years back. Where she instigates them to use their privileges to bring about change amongst the under-privileged (which very few do - Fortune 500 is far more beckoning for all of us

http://bit.ly/jvfwhl )

Talking about IIMs. Imagine this: for preparing folks for a business career, here are our top institutes who are ready to take FRESHIES straight from the IITs/ universities, whereas every top univ in the world (not to speak of common sense) know that students who have at least 4 to 6 years work experience are in a far better position to appreciate, understand and then use the knowledge being imparted at these places.

So if we stop comparing, and take a look at the research in absolute terms: yes, for sure there are pathbreaking initiatives. CTARA here in Powai is one. Center for technology Alternatives for Rural India.

To give Jerry the benefit of the doubt, perhaps what he is trying to indicate is that the research being undertaken is not at all enough for the challenges a nation of 1.2 billion is facing. Where IITians and IIMites have access to the infrastructure, have the brains, but then have not mixed it up in a way that augurs a better world.

Or that a lot of these initiatives do not get converted into actionable plans on the ground, and remain 'clouds of dust raised in the lecture rooms'.

And by the way, getting taken in Fortune 500 companies on fancy salaries is not what research that he is questioning is about.

Thank God for some voices in our ministries that continue to raise debates. Now whether the end result will be productive or just fizzle out into tu tu main mains remains to be seen. I hope and pray he does not backtrack now!

Piyul

‘Rerailed’

2011-01-07T11:29:00.006+05:30

‘Understanding Indian Society’. This is the name of the book I have brought to read on this Howrah to Mumbai train journey. However within hours of embarking on the journey, a relative (;-) ) took severely ill with dysentery and probable gastro enteritis. Any liquid intake, she was throwing up or needing to go to the toilet. As her trips to the toilet became more and more frequent, and she began shivering, she was beginning to lose blood. There was a point of time, when, as we were reaching Raipur, I was seriously debating getting off the train, taking her to a hospital overnight and catching the morning flight to Mumbai. Called my travel agent to find availability, and he did. Tickets were available on the 9.30 Jetlite Raipur-Mumbai flight the next morning.

Raipur is now far behind us. We are still in the train and have entered Maharashtra – a while back, passed a station called Malkapur, and more recently Bhusaval and Manmad, and in these past 24 hours, have understood and experienced firsthand what our society – and our train journeys are all about. She is much better now. But to begin at the beginning.

While boarding the train, my feelings were straightforward. To be at last on a long distance train firmly ensconced on an AC two tier upper berth was a delight I had long been looking forward to, books in tow. Early in the morning hours with the sky still wearing its dark blanket, we reached the spanking second terminal at Howrah, and later as the sound of the train settled to its undulating rhythm, we bunkered down with all our possessions strewn and hung around us within careful distance. A thick blue purdah kept the light out but not any of the sounds. Gentle snores of folks in adjoining coupes merged with long slurps of tea by those determined to stay awake. Pre-schoolers’ pleasant prattle blended with the desultory chatting of a family gradually settling down, and loudest was the conversation of three interlopers who got in at Tatanagar till the next station (note how Jamshedpur in the business and media lingo is always Tatanagar in the world of the railways ).

‘Why do you men always complain women gossip and talk too much? You should be ashamed’ I demanded to know in Hindi of guys never seen before, and never to be set eyes on again, as I pushed the blue purdah aside. One chap got indignant. ‘We are talking among ourselves. What’s your problem’. But the shot had hit home and I had my little triumphal male bashing moment.

She and I hold three berths between the two of us. With the mountain of luggage we are going back with (patali gud from Kolkata, fresh vegetables from Kakdwip…), we retained the third ticket though the passenger scheduled to travel is no longer doing so. Immediately other small advantages have surfaced. Extra pillows, chadars, blankets and napkins, and one less person crowding in, in the inner coupe. Only prob: continuous explanation of why we want to keep that third seat to the TC, to the bearer, and to sundry short-distance passengers seeking a seat.

‘Who’s on this seat?’

‘She and me’

‘No, I mean this one’

‘Yes, it’s us’

‘But you are sitting there’

‘Yepp’

‘So who’s sitting here?’

‘Us’

Silence…

Finally: ‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

Stars like McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, I read somewhere, always travel first class with two seats on airplanes. One for themselves and one for their tennis racquets. Do you think they have to face this across the Atlantic? ‘No, that seat is mine’, ‘Oh no no nooo you can’t sit there’.

(We gave the seat to a woman we felt deserved to sit, later).

At Rs. 4000 for three tickets (she’s a senior citizen), it is a fraction of two tickets by air at current holiday rates that would have set us back by Rs. 18,000 from Kolkata to Mumbai. Add the sheer feeling of bliss at the potential for uninterrupted reading. And the marvels of the passing land. This train journey is like a gentle finger caressing the land from East to West, drawing our eyes to the delicate skien of its trees, little rivers, fields of jowar-bajra, its thousands of power cables and towns full of mobile shops, homeo clinics and school children wrapped up against the cold. Each feels like a place where I feel I could surely have lived in a different parallel lifetime.

A family of four got a curtained coupe to themselves, and travel the next 30 hours blissfully insulated from the rest of the co-passengers. They were already like a well established household which in its rock solid un-moveability, becomes a counter point to all the movements in and out of other neighboring homes that are tenanted or sold, or have loud differences of opinion regarding shared space or encroachments on verandahs.

Even more fascinating, I find the women traveling with kith and kin. The middle-school going children quickly settle down into games – cards, snakes n ladders, and increasingly, the cell phone that they pore over and play on together, keeping themselves busy. The mother has tucked herself under a blanket and gone to sleep on a lower berth. As I have seen on numerous other journeys, and this would be as common throughout the second class compartments, the mother will arise out of her slumber when it is mealtimes, spread out the plates and the food she may have stayed up late at night to cook, serve all, and then – go back to a deeply regenerating deep slumber again. In all likelihood, she sleeps for at least 16 to 20 hours in the 24 hour cycle within. While everyone loves to catch a nap on a train, the Indian home maker woman does so with a vengeance. This train interlude is that time in her life when she need not give explanations to anyone regarding the need to take rest or relax. During a visit to a maika, were she to go to bed this often, it would only alarm her parents who would think she is depressed or hiding something. Nor is there a need to begin to industriously clean up, in the train. That is postponed inevitably to the end of the journey. Even the interruptions she welcomes at home are unavailable here. The strident TV whose invasion she awaits and looks forward to: the soap operas in her mother tongue, and the fairness creams and stay looking young ads and reality shows.

Life on the train picks up its own rhythm. Choice here is between a range of goods. ‘Col-drinks’, milk, coffee, tea, soup, water, Frooti. Or Chow Mein, Bhajia, Samosa, Idli Vada , Bread cutlet and what not. The tea vendors pass through at various times calling out attention to their distinct offerings. One says it is with adrak, one tells us of the ‘peshal chai of Manoharpur’, or ‘Tata se aaya’ (note to myself: he’s not saying ‘made with Tata tea but of location’), ‘masala chai’. One guy kept yelling ‘kharab chai, kharab chai’. When I ask him why call it kharab. How bad was his tea, he retorted ‘It caught your attention, didn’t it?’

Stretching beyond the confines of this compartment, right at the back of the train is the unreserved class. Not even second class. With at least 300 packed in, into a space that can accommodate not more than eighty. But that is notional to us folks in the AC compartments, they were visible but momentarily on the platform as a patient snaking queue of people. To get in, into an enclosed mayhem for the next 30 hours. Where they will overflow on the berths, under the berths, in the passage and even around the toilets.

And then she got unwell. Up the train through the AC two tier compartments, I went asking if there was a doctor on board. Unfortunately, there were none. Called a doc friend in Mumbai who said, she should be given some Electral immediately.

The TC radio’d ahead to Raipur for a doctor, but by the time we reached the station, the doctor had not arrived and the train had to continue on its journey. As the train was pulling out, a young co- passenger came up panting. With a pack of Electral. He had sprinted across Platform one at Raipur and picked it up from a store that he was aware kept medicines.

Gratefully received. Gave mom some sips which is all she could have. Next came Durg after half hour. No doctor yet. As the train pulled out, another passenger traveling up to Mumbai came up and gave me two packs of Electral. The co-passenger had asked a relative to come to meet her at the platform as the train passed through, also asked him to bring some Electral... this after overhearing the conversation between the TC and me.

At Dungargarh, the railway doctor hopped in even as the train was pulling into the station. The lady doc was already right next to the A1 compartment and came with a helper. While the doc quickly examined her, the helper took the patient's BP. A high 90-180. Some medicines and a packet of ORT were given and even as I was tucking her in, they had left and the train was on its way. No more than the usual six minute halt, efficiently dealt with. I ran to the door and yelled ‘thanks doctor’ and the unnamed saviour waved back, still walking away at great speed. I don’t know the lady's name, and there was no time to take a phone number. The railways has not yet charged us a penny for this service.

As the train left, two more packets of Electral arrived. From more co-passengers. All of whom have firmly refused to take any money.

She has spent a quiet night, and is miles better. The book will surely be read at some point of time. ‘Understanding Indian Society’.

So we travel in this microcosm hurtling forward towards Mumbai. The aspiring and the invisible classes of citizens, each virtually separated in their own silos, yet connected in inexplicable, heart tugging ways. And we will all reach the same destination.

I mean the robust 9% GDP growth rate predicted for the nation. Any doubts? I have none. We are on track.

Gender-Vendors

2010-08-08T09:10:00.013+05:30

Flamingo London called & asked to interview me on 'Indian Women'. Me in my hat of a sociologist as versus market researcher.

When someone actually asks me, I don't know where to begin. Like the tufts of grass we take for granted around us. Highlighting the unseen fertile humus we walk over daily. All the gender-benders we take for granted around us. Ways in which society maintains its patriarchal hegemony, and the lopsided inequality between the (higher) groom's side of the family over the (lower) bride's.

Take for instance, my trip to Delhi last week. Someone I work with there - let's call him Vikram - is a Northie married to a Mumbai-wali. Wifey is expecting a baby in Sept - their first, and her mom came up to Del from Mumbai to bring her home. In the tradition of Western India, a girl comes home to deliver, in the cocooned environs of her maika.

Vikram's mom told her sambandhi and I quote: In our tradition, we do not have this 'sending home' stuff. Our children are born here. However if you insist, you are free to take her back.

Whereupon the visiting mom hastened to say 'No, oh no - She is now your daughter, and of course you know best' and quickly went back to the city she had come from.

Not a breath of anyone dreaming to even ask the young mother-to-be what she herself might wish to do.
But everyone else is talking with her best interests at heart, so where is the problem, is the likely surprised response to such a question.

End of story.

Well, not quite.

Earlier in the day, over lunch with our visiting foreign clients, we had ordered a range of dishes. Both veg and non-veg. Gosht, chicken reshmi kebab, fish tikka et al. Vikram, a true Punjabi. who used to love his chicken, declined to touch it.

Palak paneer and dum aloo kashmiri sufficed.

Why? Because his wife had tacitly convinced him to turn vegetarian. She was not around over lunch, and we asked him if he would like to try a part of a dish. No! he said. Firmly.

In other words, wifey is not as helpless as one would think. She had quietly ensured hubby dearest leaves non-veg for the purer veg food - always good for health.

My feeling is: at a delicate turning point of life (unborn baby), it was best not to tempt fate & eat the forbidden. In India, veggie is always the satvik 'godly' option after all.

Whatever it is, just when we think we need to sympathize with the hapless lot of the woman, she turns around and shows you her awesome invisible (invincible?) power.

This is India.

Amboli - A Spiritual Getaway

2010-02-14T18:43:00.006+05:30

Recently visited this non-touristy forest classified district of Amboli at the Maharashtra-Goa border.

Our world hurtles forward and we witness a telescoping of destruction of the natural habitat. Any such dense pocket of green yet untouched by the greedy hands of developers is like a sudden delightful treasure trove discovered.

Thanks to Swami Chidananda of Krishnamurthy Foundation, Rajghat Varanasi, I attended the camp on 'Atmabodha'.

Absolutely loved it and hope to go back again and again. To the area. To Vedanta. To Swami Chidananda's presence.
Even more serendipitous was my emotion when the ashram hosting the retreat turned out to be part of Swami Dayananda Educational Trust.

Sw Dayananda, a presence from childhood - same as Swami Chinmayananda, at the Powai Sandeepany Ashram.

All these illustrious seers - Sw. C, D and C - and their sheer reach of intellect - privileged indeed to have overlapped and shared the planet with each of them.

Reprinted from The Hindu & SACW... 10 Reasons Why Criminals in Khaki Get Away...

2009-12-26T20:03:00.001+05:30

India: Patriarchy and the Power of the Uniform?

The Hindu
December 25, 2009

TEN REASONS WHY CRIMINALS IN KHAKI GET AWAY

by Siddharth Varadarajan

Former Haryana DGP S.P.S. Rathore and his advocate wife Abha Rathore coming out of special CBI court on Monday. Photo: Akhilesh Kumar

Behind every man like S.P.S. Rathore who abuses his authority stand the generals and footsoldiers who help and support him. We need to take them all down.

S.P.S. Rathore, the criminal former top cop of Haryana, may appear alone today but we must never forget that he was able to get away with the sexual molestation of a young child and the illegal harassment of her family for 19 years because he had hundreds of men who supported him in his effort to evade justice.

The fact that these men – fellow police officers, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, judges, school administrators – were willing to bend the system to accommodate a man accused of molesting a minor speaks volumes for the moral impoverishment of our establishment and country. Decent societies shun those involved in sexual offences against children. Even criminals jailed for ‘ordinary’ crimes like murder treat those serving time for molesting children as beyond the pale. But in India, men like Rathore have their uses for their masters, so the system circles its wagons and protects them.

The CBI’s appeal may lead to the enhancement of Rathore’s sentence and perhaps even the slapping of abetment to suicide charges, since his young victim killed herself to put an end to the criminal intimidation her family was being subjected to by Rathore and his men. But the systemic rot which the case has exposed will not be remedied unless sustained public pressure is put on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, two men who have it in their power to push for simple remedies in the way the Indian law enforcement and justice delivery system works.

First, abolish the need for official, i.e. political sanction to prosecute bureaucrats, policemen and security forces personnel when they are accused of committing crimes. The original intent behind this built-in stay-out-of-jail card was to protect state functionaries from acts done in the course of discharging their duties in good faith. Somewhere along the line, this has come to mean protecting our custodians of law and order when they murder innocent civilians (eg. the infamous Panchalthan case in Kashmir where the trial of army men indicted by the CBI for murdering five villagers in 2000 still cannot take place because the Central government will not grant permission), or assault or molest women and children. No civilised, democratic society grants such impunity. It is disgusting to see former officials and bureaucrats from Haryana saying how they had wanted Rathore prosecuted but were prevented from doing so because of pressure. Such officials should either be made formally to testify in a criminal case against the politicians who so pressured them or they should themselves be hauled up for perverting the course of justice.

Second, stop talking about how making the police and army answerable to the law will somehow demoralise their morale. Does anybody care about the morale of ordinary citizens any more? Or the morale of upright police and army officers, who do not think it is right for their colleagues to be able to get away with criminal acts?

Third, bring an end to the cosy relationship between the police and politicians. Rathore was protected by four chief ministers of Haryana. He served them and they served him by ensuring his unfettered rise. It is absurd that the Indian Police is still governed by a colonial-era Act dating back to 1861. A number of commissions have made recommendations for reforming the police over the years; but no government or political party wants to give up its ability to use and misuse the police for their own benefit.

Fourth, ensure that police officers who abuse their authority and engage in mala fide prosecutions are dismissed from service and sentenced to jail for a long period of time. Mr. Chidambaram should use the considerable resources at his command to find out who were the policemen involved in filing 11 bogus cases against the teenaged brother of the young girl Rathore molested. He should then make sure criminal proceedings are initiated against all of them. The message must go out to every policeman in the country: If you abuse the law at the behest of a superior, you will suffer legal consequences.

Fifth, ensure that criminal charges against law enforcement personnel are fast-tracked as a matter of routine so that a powerful defendant is not able to use his position to delay proceedings the way Rathore did for years on end. The destruction or disappearance of material evidence in such cases must be treated as a grave offence with strict criminal liability imposed on the individual responsible for breaking the chain of custody.

Sixth, empower the National Human Rights Commission with teeth so that police departments and state governments cannot brush aside their orders as happened in the Rathore case. This would also require appointing to the NHRC women and men who have a proven record of defending human rights in their professional life, something that is done today only in the breach. The attitude of the Manmohan Singh government to this commission and others like the National Commission for Women (NCW) and National Commission for Minorities is shocking. Vacancies are not filled for months on end.

Seventh, ensure the early enactment of pending legislation broadening the ambit of sexual crimes, including sexual crimes against children. Between rape, defined as forced penetrative sex, and the vague, Victorian-era crime of ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’, the Indian Penal Code recognises no other form of sexual violence. As a result, all forms of sexual molestation and assault short of rape attract fairly lenient punishment, of the kind Rathore got. In his case, the judge did not even hand down the maximum sentence, citing concerns for the criminal’s age. Sadly, he did not take into account the age of the victim and neither does the IPC, which fails to distinguish between ‘outraging the modesty’ of an adult woman and a young child.

A draft law changing these provisions and bringing India into line with the rest of the modern world has been pending with the NCW and Law Ministry for years. Perhaps the government may now be shamed into pushing it through Parliament at the earliest.

Eighth, take steps to introduce a system of protection of witnesses and complainants. The fate that the family of Rathore’s young victim had to endure is testament to the fact that people who seek justice in India do so at their own peril.

Ninth, ensure that robust interrogation techniques like narco-analysis, which are routinely used against other alleged criminals, are also employed against police officers accused of crimes.

Tenth, the media and the higher judiciary must also turn the light inward and ask themselves whether they were also derelict in their duty. The Rathore case did not attract the kind of constant media attention it deserved, nor do other cases involving serving police officers accused of crimes against women, workers, peasants and minorities. As for the upper courts, their record is too patchy to inspire confidence. It was, after all, the high court which chose to disregard the CBI’s request for including abetment to suicide charges.

Child Molesters, Skewed North, Ram Jethmalani & more...

2009-12-24T10:51:00.016+05:30

Barkha Dutt

DGP Rathore, the convicted yet let off lightly molester

Ram Jethmalani, the crafty & artful dodger

Watch This: IS THE LAW TOO KIND ?

This video clip of Barkha Dutt's The Buck Stopped Here on NDTV is around 30 minutes. Let us watch this telecast, on Ruchika Girhotra's molester - the ex-DGP of Haryana Rathore and his getting away with a 'sentence' of six months imprisonment.

A short history : 14 yr old Ruchika was felt up by dear Rathore in the Lawn tennis office back in 1990. When she and her well-wishers made an official complaint, all hell broke loose. Official government machinery ensured the Girhotra family was hounded in multiple ways - thrown out of school (for not paying fees by due date); young brother charged with auto theft not once but six times/ beaten up (and each time acquitted and case thrown out for lack of evidence); goons calling up & threatening at all times - and finally destroyed: She committed suicide 3 years later.

Footage of Rathore's grinning visage and 'thanks to his lovely wife' apart (they will now forever after be comfortably ensconced in their well padded life of close cronies and money, away from the minor irritants of the outside world - such is the power of the shielding by our society), we watch the Chautala son pompously 'welcome' the court ruling, and then, wait - at the end, comes the coup de grace.

Ram Jethmalani smartly and smoothly and totally casually, insinuates that a) Ruchika's suicide cannot be linked to grinning molester leaving court with lovely wife b) He accuses Ruchika's brother, who was helplessly slapped with at least half a dozen cases of 'auto theft' when he was a minor nearly two decades ago, as maybe a proven defaulter and c) NDTV and the entire media as 'sensationalists' who are painting a non-entity of an issue as being important.

Barkha handles the sudden attack by this Ram Jethmalani with aplomb, but well - he has already smartly got his 2 minutes of spanner-in-the-works glory on National TV.
Who is to now attack him back with all the proof that is out there?? And of course, in all the hullaballoo, he has so chalu'ly put the ball in the court of the others as needing to 'prove' all his baseless charges wrong all over again (and believe you me, the proof is there, for every single charge. Just see today's Indian Express. 24th December 2009)

Audience is aghast. My fellow twitterers want to reach into the TV to smash his face in.

I wonder for a while if he is senile and then figure, this is no sign of senility.

This is sheer cunning and well thought out strategy. He has had a crafty long innings in this lifetime already finetuning his art.

But what I muse now, is the crafty long innings our society has had over centuries and millennia, perfecting this inequality.

Punjab and the North have the worse gender skew in the nation, and a male is seen as God's grace while a daughter is God's curse. Take a look at the soap operas on TV. Surfing across channels, I am sickened at the programs which via 'portraying societal stories', quietly and snidely perpetuate the status quo of 'helpless' women; karva chauth; widowhood, conniving women et al. The channels are all party to it.
Colors. Sahara One. Star Plus. NDTV Imagine. Sony. Zee.

How come there is no firebrand crusader 'Rajani' on TV in today's so called 'modern' times, nearly 30 years after Rajani was aired on Doordarshan ??

Child molesters are of course everywhere.

Perhaps, it is a sign of the evolving times that the media, the connected world we live in, is aiding to bring the spotlight on a few of these cases. Let us not delude ourselves. This is like a fraction of a fraction of cases all around us. Yet, it is a beginning. The malaise runs deeper. Child molestation is just one of the symptoms of the disease of inequality.

And when i wonder what this means about where we are headed, I am struck with a thought.
Ram Jethmalani kind of characters are necessary for us to be jolted out of our comfort zones. To realize what a tenuous world of 'right' and 'wrong' we live in. With such ex- 'law ministers' guarding us...

Let us not allow our children, the Ruchika Girhotras to get fed up of the system in the future. And give up by commiting suicide at age 17. While smooth talking smartasses like Ram Jethmalani mouth such complete horseshit through their looooonng (86 going strong) innings.

The very need of society to continuously bombard us with our powerlessness - in every format and through every avenue, is a sign of the fact that : You know what, The power is in our hands, ladies !
Why the hell should we be ashamed of the muck and dirt of dirty minds??? And who says I am talking of molesters alone??

Old Baggage At Home... and why I stopped subscribing to Time & Newsweek

2009-11-09T23:35:00.010+05:30

In India, at least, the older gen tends to store things.

For who knows ye kab kaam aa jaye!

Old curtains, clothes in good condition but not quite the right size / fashion / mood to wear, old bartans and crockery, purses, umbrellas, leftover wall-paint, toys, rugs, old landline telephones ... even old lotions, lipsticks, cardboard boxes...

Don't we all have all of these and more?

Throwing it out is impossible.
Even the thought of throwing it out creates anxiety... and usually the younger generation just cannot understand this stubborn behavior of the parents.

Grandparents are a step ahead. The loving, all-forgiving grandparent suddenly roars in irritation and anger. One does not dare touch or move their stuff, forget discuss sending it out of the house (you do not use phrases such as 'throw out' with them)

We have theories too.
These old folks are of the pre-liberalization era - what else can you expect anyway.
It was a time of shortages and minimal supplies.
Aadat se majboor hain (bichare).
Yeh sab hai joint family state of mind (especially in the number of bicchonas/ bedsheets/ towels we all think we need at home).

Exasperating.

Yet...

What I blame my mom and dad and mother-in-law - is playing out.
In me. A tad differently...

And twitter is solely responsible.

My attic, my storeroom, my forgotten suitcase - is my long list of reading online...

The number of good articles I want to read - and I find & store links to - has grown exponentially in the last 6 months.
At any point of time, it is impossible to do justice to each article, so I store it for later.
Via bookmarks, stars, notes to myself... the aim is to come back and read it at leisure. Aaram se, with feet put up, and a cup of tea next to me.

It is not that the moments I crave do not arrive.
They do.
But then, so do the newspapers daily.
And the magazines. (Not to ignore the reality check of the idiot box)
AND the latest tweets with more fabulous links that i simply must read.

That I feel I simply can use productively sooner or later...

It has taken me a few weeks and months to figure this out.
Ke 'that day' has not arrived...
May never arrive.
Perhaps I should just junk it. All...
The idea of reading each wonderfully crafted article one day.

I just know I'll be the loser. Phir bhi.

What choice do I have when the day is still the same 24 hours, the body is still sleep deprived, when the schedule is still as crazy as ever.

And yet human nature - one feels one MUST do some spring cleaning... must throw something out...

So I do throw out something...It is easier to jettison overboard the riffraff of paid magazine subscriptions.

The good articles will in any case come to me, thru helpful tweets of likeminded folks I follow.
Often, to stay unread. Or to read for free.

Here's a small sample of articles I know I can ponder over / chew over/ have excellent insights and perspectives... but all I have done is gulped them down in bits and pieces as I have skim read them... and in some cases, postponed it for later...

Tom ewing....

On smartphones

Just shut up n listen

On friendship

science of retweets

And so endlessly on and so endlessly forth...

So... what am I to do?
And you know what? I wonder, what will happen by the time the next gen grows older.
Where exactly is the human on this planet headed, huh??

(The article that raises some frighteningly interesting questions is one by Clay Shirky - and this one I did read again and again.

And lest I sent the wrong signal out, I simply do love (some) articles in Time and Newsweek too! Here's one - on the anthropology of Wall Street

Let's face It... Twitter IS elitist English in India. Tharoor's Achille's Heel...

2009-09-17T11:03:00.016+05:30

As per stats available, India has the third largest number of twitterers in the world. At 7 % of all twitter users, which is stated to be 7 million in February 2009, this works out to 0.49 million.

In a nation that has a total of 80 million internet users. And a media savvy population of at least 400 million. With a popn of over one billion.

Although intended as 'a service for friends, family and co-workers', it has become a social networking place. Cool so far. Thing is, in a nation where a mere 40 million are supposed to be speaking English fluently, twitter by its very nature - i.e. the need to communicate skillfully in 140 characters - is elitist... it is the more comfy in Angrezi variety of folks who tweet regularly.
Must be the top skimmed 0.49 million of the 40 million Angrezi bolne wale, I am guessing.

The ones who know when to use 'myself' (Those saying 'Myself Ravi' or 'Myself Sunita' ko cold shoulder dene wale), or when to use 'was' versus 'were'... as per '5 grammer mistakes that make you sound like a chimp'
'If I were rich, I would buy lots n lots of pants' versus 'If I was rich' ke nuances samajhne waale.

What this means is that folks like Shashi Tharoor 'joke' for this skimmed audience, and of course it is but natural, that we tweeple are now taking up cudgels on his behalf.

And THAT makes me uncomfortable.

Just because you are MoS in External Affairs, does not mean that you do not think of the wider ramifications of an audience (by far, higher than 0.49 million angrezi jokes samajhne waale) who can all hear you now quoted in context or out - and misconstrue you.

I can already imagine the way the Shashi Tharoor tweet 'Absolutely. In cattle class in solidarity with all our holy cows' would have been gleefully picked up and translated by now across the vernacular press and media - who we all KNOW - are waiting for juicy cud to chew over.

This is what in Hindi would make one ask of the 'careless whispers' of the hon minister : 'Akkal kya ghaas charane bhej diya?'

Diplomacy is a word that has recently become a must-have for celebrity-hood. Ever since the world has enabled a 24x7 spotlight.

Else, the earliest & widest use of this word was via that word 'Diplomats' - those suave IFS types who we all know - strived to steer clear of all controversy at all times.

And here we have an MoS of the very same biradari... who does not think things through... and expects all to behave like 0.49 million bhaasha experts. It is like filmstars judging everyone out there as a 'fan' via the ones who send in fanmail personally to them.

We may debate it till the cows come home, pur bheedu, duniyadari isi ka naam hai.

He is lucky Congress is merely 'annoyed'...
at this 'mad cow disease' of 'foot in the mouth'.

Discipline & Punish - Sach Ka Saamna

2009-07-24T06:17:00.015+05:30

There was a chap called Foucault.
Who analyzed the 'gaze' and the power games the world employs... in prisons, hospitals, yahan tak ke, on 'sex'.

And as we gaze at this program... slightly repelled, quite hypnotized, very irritated... going by all the blogs & media erupted discussions, two stories come up again and again - Kambli : and his belief Sachin did not do enough for him; and some poor woman called Smita Mathai (Rashmi, have taken her name from your blog) whose reply on infidelity shoved her out of the program, it seems. And into conversations in trains & buses, and canteens & kitty parties.

And Foucault would have asked us to question this :
How come the show had the woman being put in the awkward seat and not the man?
How come Sachin was not the one who was asked the awkward questions? (Who knows what he thinks in private about Kambli).

But you see, it is the non-dominant getting back & rebelling inside the mind that is news.

AND : This speaks of the deep power relations that exist structuring our society....
Women, you shall always be lorded over. So you better be forever on the defensive...

Kambli : you were and shall always remain - a wannabe. In the modern world, we do not want to be called casteists, na... but hey, you better know your place.

THAT is what the show is about... Keeping society firmly in its place.

In a twitterized world, with everything in a jiffy, where everyone attempts to break free - the truth is this :
we (the power that quietly runs society) shall colonize your minds.

1984 is here. The Orwellian 1984.
Where we now live in a totalitarian future society.

postscript : Santosh Desai's take on SKS, published today : 27 July, is absolutely brilliant .

Excerpts :

The show is not interested in the truth but specifically seeks that truth which will cause damage to the individual's self esteem and poison relationships. It is a spectacle only when participants disclose something scandalous. The reason why the family is such an important part of the show is because in some ways it is the show. We have in effect created a market for preying on someone else's personal misery.

The commoditization of truth is part of an overall movement towards taking all that constitutes the personal and private and giving it exchange value in order to make it marketable. We can make money on the basis of our looks, education, ability, luck, our willingness to do stupid things and our openness to making our private life public. Everything has exchange value; we can monetize all parts of our life

We become consumers of ourselves as we turn our insides out for the consumption of the outside world. In effect society turns cannibalistic as it feeds on itself and its most cherished institutions.

Relationships are not based on absolute honesty. Given the way society has been constructed, they cannot be. In fact they are based on the opposite- they need others to be insulated from all of an individual's real feelings. It is revealing that almost all viewers who recoil at the show and vow never to take part do so not because they have nothing to hide but because they do and are smart enough not to hurt their loved ones with the truth. This is not limited to a few of us, but is close to being a universal truth.

In the guise of modernity it takes us back to the primitive, as we take pleasure in a new and refined form of an ancient bloodsport.

Mithi (River) Memories...

2009-07-15T12:06:00.008+05:30

The girls are Isha and Asya... Isha, born in Mumbai, is originally from Nepal, and Asya is from Allahabad. They stay around Saki Naka. And work in the same beauty parlour at Hiranandani Gardens.

Recent heavy rains brought back memories of 26/07, that crazy day when Mumbai went under four years ago. With Saki Naka right next to the Mithi river, it was one of the worst affected areas, and I asked about their experience.

Isha is ever smiling.... there is something very pleasant about her presence. Ever since I have come to know her in the last three years, I have noticed this - she attracts her patrons to her like a magnet. She is a also a widow - widowed at age 26, with two daughters. And stays in a one room chawl with her extended family.

Asya has a young son and a daughter. Her husband Babloo temps when my driver is on long leave – and he usually drives a taxi. A great couple. They have a hearing handicapped young relative to hold fort and help out with the children, while both parents work long hours to make ends meet in this city of dreams.

Babloo was driving a taxi and had gone into the city that morning. When it became apparent the rains were getting worse, Asya rushed to the school to pick up her older six year old son. And then – as happened with a zillion others – she got stuck more than a kilometer away from home on her way back, unable to go either forward or backward. There was a raging river flowing by then - more than one river actually- and any traffic of people was away from Saki Naka. Things deteriorated and b4 she knew anything, pockets of Saki Naka had completely submerged, some chawls had washed away, and yet others next to the Mithi had collapsed.
‘Aap samajh sakte ho meri haalat. Ghar mein teen saal ki bachhi aur ek ladki jo bol nahi sakti, kisiko bula nahi sakti. Unka kya hua, woh kahan gaye, kuchh mujhe pata nahi tha’, she recalls with a shudder.

She was physically prevented from heading back, with a sea of faces telling her not to be crazy – and to look after her young son, one she was clutching ing to her bosom. At the same time, she met up with people rushing out from her basti, who shook their heads and said ‘poori basti hi beh gayi hai...’

Under the awning of a shelter, they stood shivering all night watching the torrential waters, at places raging six feet high, rushing down a trajectory that was once the Saki Vihar road. At one point of time, there was a child flowing away and a man standing alongside in the crowd, rushed towards the furious waters. When the others tried to stop him, he said "How can I just stand here and watch a child go past? Ek bachhe to kaise beh jaane doon?" He jumped in, went under and in a few moments, emerged with a child...

Like a puppet, eyes wide open. The man stood there with the lifeless body and then helplessly allowed the waters to carry it away. Came back to the shelter where Asya and many others watched shell shocked. And hours passed. As she desperately prayed for the well being of her little three year old daughter and her niece, tears merging with the storming rains.

It was more than 24 hours later that the entire family was reunited and they heard of what had transpired back home. The neighbors had rushed in to check if anyone was around. Pure luck... because the petrified girls were sitting on top of a cupboard - quietly - and the rising water in the one room tenement was already just a few feet away from the ceiling. These good samaritans took them out to safety. And a few more lives got saved.

Yes, the home door got left open.. EVERY SINGLE thing Asya owned washed away... Not one
utensil, not one stitch of cloth... nothing left. Yet she speaks of that day with gratitude. She is just so glad her neighbors saved her family.

You should meet Asya. With a gentle sense of humor as always... When the idle chat was about rising sea levels, and aren’t we lucky to be at Powai, away from the Mumbai coast, and about ‘the poor sods who stay at Juhu and Bandra who’ll go under first', said Asya with a straight face : ‘Haan na. Hum pehle un logon ko dekhenge, baat ko theek tarah se samjhenge… Aur uske baad hi hum marenge’.

Isha had her memories to share. She said, ‘floods ke din jo hua so hua’ but the day that created maximum pandemomium was two or three days later, after 26/07 when the word spread like wildfire ‘Powai dam toot gaya hai – sab bhaago, sab chhodke bhaago’ and there was this sudden rush of people running away from the neighborhood. After the recent mind numbing experience, this word of mouth information received - of the dam having breached - was enough for all to go into a state of immediate panic.

At home, she and her family… her daughters, her devar, devrani, their young child and her mother in law were just about to sit down to lunch. ‘Baida curry aur chawal’. Egg curry made specially for everyone, for having got back safe from the harrowing experience of the previous days.

They left everything and ran out into the terrified crowds. Her devar came back and locked the room. They all ran for miles, down the ‘90 ft road’. In the direction away from Powai lake… Isha grimly holding on to her two daughters...

This was a moment that Isha faced and that not many of us get in our lifetime.
A moment shorn of all essentials & non essentials.

When she just knew what she wanted in life – and that was the safety of her daughters. Everything else was secondary.
A moment that helps her keep her priorities in focus to this day.

Police vehicles arrived and told them it was a rumor. The dam had not broken, and ‘everyone, please go back home’. It took the police more than an hour to convince the mass of hundreds and thousands of people rushing away in the opposite direction to retrace their steps. It was when they brought out their megaphones and even put up a barrier up ahead, that at last, gradually, the panic subsided and everyone started heading back sheepishly.

This is when they began to notice one another.

There were people who were walking back ‘in their chaddis’ who had run with shampoo in their hair. One man with a big baksaa on his head became the butt of jokes, as everyone began to conjecture on its contents. Another woman who was wearing an all enveloping nighty - that outfit, so common in the chawls - had actually stopped to wear all her gold jewelry before she ran out. Including her tikli, long necklaces, an arm ful of bangles and gold danglers. Yahan tak ke, even a cummerbund. Much to the delight of all walking back, she was ribbed on her combination of jewelry and dress.

Back home, Isha and her family were reunited with - her mother in law.

Thing is, mom in law could not bring herself to run away leaving a full kadhai of baida curry go waste. She climbed up on to the loft to stuff the food at the highest safe place she could find befire she ran, and her younger son had unknowingly locked her in.

And so. Everyone had baida curry and rice after all.

Services Gendered...

2009-06-20T23:16:00.009+05:30

Girls Outdo Guys in Maharashtra HSC exam

This is borne out time and again, in every exam, city after city, state after state, year after year. That girls consistently outperform boys, at every single school final examinations. (And this is what we shall see in the coming week, when the tenth standard results are declared)

And yet... a few years later :

- they will fall off the map as they 'keep house'; become the barter in the dowry stakes; become the self-sacrificing and celebrated Bharatiya Naari
- Although they may have successfully outperformed even in PCB / PCM - the science subjects - their representation in engineering and science colleges will become inversely proportional to earlier promise shown.
- Those who work at all, will begin a crazy balancing act between home and workplace.
- they will be reduced to participating in shrill debates on TV channels while male MPs punctiliously ensure there is no 'reservation' for them in parliament.
- This is when they are not supposed to be 'karva chauthing' or 'vat poornimaing' / 'haldi kumkuming' , as part of our 'culture'
- 'looking good' - fairer, more 'beautiful' as decided by society will become far more important than being good from the inside. Doing good to the world. Than learning to stand up for one's place in this planet.
- There will be those well educated, yet many women will give up a career, to 'take care of the home'. Which really means they will fret over every last mark brought home by their children. They will want to live their personal thwarted ambitions thru the already overloaded nextgen, and never stop to question the system that asks for this marks oriented education in the first place.
- If the magazines stocked in beauty parlours are any indication of level of IQ catered to, it is all about 'keeping your man happy' (and getting your pleasure out of it); ways to dish up that fancy meal, or 'how to ensure your man recognizes your need for a day out'..
(Why is it that you'll never see a truly thought provoking magazine kept on ANY beauty parlour shelf ?? And what does it say about our collective dumbing down that the most expensive and glossy 'women's magazines' are full of fluff)

Saguna Baug - a Getaway from Mumbai We Love...

2009-05-31T19:18:00.011+05:30

Imagine a log home... sound of gentle water lapping up behind you, around you and under you. Once in a while a bullock cart, or a few cyclists go past. Those close to you are the kingfishers, lapwings, wood pigeons, partridges, hoopoes.. If you are lucky, you take the Salim Ali book of Indian Birds and get introduced to more members.
A boat all your own, to go paddling when you feel like. Put your feet up to 'chill' in the midst of the pond. Perhaps watch a snake gliding lazily on the banks.
A gaggle of geese to call, befriend and talk to when you feel like company. Fishing rods at your disposal that are like magnets to the fishes... each immediately put back in the water as they indignantly swim away, and we watch in delight.
A string of a river busy as ever, rushing off somewhere, to bathe in. Or to just walk around fields of paddy, vanilla plantations, mango trees...
For those who love lobster sized fresh water prawns, the most amazing catch caught from the pond and cooked for you.

Home cooked food served on your private verandah. To reach out and eat from your jhoolas.
Yummy breakfast of kanda poha - or puri bhaji, or upma with piping hot tea and coffee. Fresh vegetables straight from the farm. Rice, Dal, Chapati. Cooked sans spice for that's how we like it... light, healthy, aromatic. The best hot puran polis I have eaten anywhere as dessert. With cold milk and ghee. Or gulab jamun. Or sheera...
And the Bhadsavle family alert as always looking after their guests personally.

Only three hours from Mumbai. An hour from the new Mumbai-Pune expressway.

No AC, no TV. My daughter's whining refrain of 'Aw, ma... what am I going to do here' on the first day is never heard again. A city born and bred child experiences farming first hand. Is busy all through the lazy day. Plucking cucumber, chillies, green leafy vegetables. Works with the staff at a culvert next to the river, and leaves her initial 'I' for posterity...

And at night, we catapult straight into the Milky Way.
Together, we are awed at the range of Nature. At the sheer reach of the Universe. And far away in the distant Matheran Hills, lights of village homes merge with the stars of the sky... 360 degrees of stars... 360 degrees of water... As we merge into the Infinite.

Water, sky, stars, birds and beasts... Silence, peace, quiet...
Just three hours away.

If This Is A Reality Show, Keep 'em Coming !

2009-05-24T09:06:00.015+05:30

Click to see this halt-in-tracks dance --> : Antwerp Station - 23rd March 2009

There are plenty of youtube links to this spontaneous display by 200 'passengers'. Created by a Belgian channel, as part of their search for Maria to play the lead in the new remixed and upcoming 'Sound of Music'. (Apparently choreographed by Ijvi Hagelstein)...

With more than 8 million hits across the youtube uploads - in less than 2 months, what is spectacular is the range of more than 15000 comments from across the world.... Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, US, UK, India.... Apart from the 'surreal', 'superb', goosebumps, 'fantabulous', 'phenomena;', 'charming' 'brilliant' 'incredible' 'inspirational' superlatives, here is a sample of some other comments :
Awesome. Makes me wonder if even ten percent of military expenditures
were re-directed towards organizing and funding random Arts such as
that what kind of world we’d have now.
The world needs MORE senseless acts of random beauty like this....
war, death, famine, aids, recession, depression.. hey what's that dancing mob doing over there? whooohooo!!
I dare anyone to watch this and not smile..or even laugh out loud...
As long as humanity (or at least part of it) is still capable of this kind of creativity and positivity (even if it, apparantly, is for commercial reasons in this case), living still has a purpose.
Makes me proud to be human:)!
I bet there were a lot of happier people at the offices that morning. Marvelous!!!! Pass the tissue.....
the way the world is today. It's a reminder to celebrate what we have.
How wonderful the human race is. In spite of all the turmoil, we can still dance. Negativity will never take away the joy of life and these wonderful dancers have proved that. Thank you soooo much. LU!!
one more time; this seriously keeps a drowning man alive. thank you for another breath and another day. this video has become like oxygen to me.
for regular people do not behave that way, ... but perhaps, they should, and we would live in a slightly better place =)
If every city did this every day, it would change the world. Perhaps it already has. What joy!
If you don't smile watching this you have no heart. Wonderful
how in the world was this pulled off?
By the way,the remix of the song just made it better....I guess I've watched this video nearly 100 times so far and every time I find little details that I didn't notice before....It's such uplifting video...Wish others vids were like that...Theres so much BS vids in youtube..
damn talk about breaking into a song and dance. I thought this only happens in movies lol
This is what I was looking for. So peaceful. I hope whole world will dance like this soon. We just have to start.....
this never happened... its photoshopped..
it makes such a refreshing change to see something like this. these days the internet is too full of "serious" stories when this is just uplifting! well done all!
it's funny how a very simple act of cooperation in an unexpected setting is that amazing and touching. i wish people could act like this in more aspects of life.
i love watching the look on ppls faces who are not participating. This is a fantastic way of cheering everyone up when the world is so rotten!!
We should have more of this around the world!
I am so thankful that there are people in this world willing to give of their talent and time to make others happy. I loved the response from the unsuspecting audience.
If the entire world followed this path, am certain there would be fewer wars.
there's hope for the species after all!
Life is made of little things,
Because there's nothing any bigger!

Stranger To History.... My Reading Journey

2009-05-11T11:32:00.011+05:30

My twelve-nearly-thirteen year old daughter Isha gifted me 'Stranger to History' for Mother's Day. Yesterday.
A book by Aatish Taseer, that is also dedicated 'For Ma'...

Finished reading it late last night. Am still awed. Which means, I went online and voraciously read all I could find of Aatish's early works - his articles in Prospect magazine as journalist. I read the reviews of this book. On Amazon. In the Guardian. In Independent. On blogs..

The one that captures my sentiments completely is a review by Gabrielle O, (scroll down) on the Amazon book site.

All that has to be said on his seeking out of Islam via a journey over eight months through Istanbul, Damascus, Tehran, Mecca, and finally Pakistan, and thereby, to knowing his absent father - has been said already by folks.

Let me add my two bits here.

Yes, this is a son's journey through ruthlessly all-male Islamic lands, triggered off by his absent from childhood father (Salmaan Taseer from Pakistan)'s supreme indifference... whenever the son tried to reach out to him (never ever the other way round).
But I was equally amazed to discover that the book is actually hyphenated and bracketed - between two women. Begins with a dedication 'For Ma' (Indian Tavleen Singh) and ends with a final acknowledgment to Ella Windsor (quote: 'whose love and friendship run silently through each of these pages' unquote)

And this is no mere coincidence. The women of his life are present in what I see as Aatish's comfort in being himself... never scathing, nor scornful as he tries to make sense of the other's version of the world. A quiet invisible love appears to prop him up. As he always tries to get to the root of all conversations, with a diverse bunch of Muslim - men. Across borders.

Yes, as Gabrielle (not to be confused with Aatish's girl friend Gabriella!) points out in her Amazon review, this is indeed a very male - focused book.

I agree. In the way women enter and exit it, it is in their role as nurturers only (mom picks him up after work from aunt's home; aunt feeds him; stepmother takes care of him; Anahita cooking dinner; grandmom... therapist... et al). The comments on Islam, the rigid beliefs - are always from 'men' (discounting Violet and Nargis in Iran, who are larger than life in their eccentricities).

Elsewhere he carelessly throws in little anecdotes of moments shared with his dad, such as in the story his father tells him of being tortured in jail - poignant in the need of a son to latch on to such father-son bonding moments. And yet, it is the cocooning influence of women, I expect, that cushions his writing. A mother who is non-judgmental ('go, my darling' she says at one point, as he sets forth on his journey).
Makes his point of view less angular or harsh, more holistic, imho.

What made the book attractive to me - and I expect all those who have ensured it is Number One on the bestseller list currently, is his openness to want to understand various perspectives. His control on language. His thoughtful insights. Yet, when I go online, i am shocked to see the vitriolic reaction in the Pakistani press. It is as if they have embraced their own son.. at the cost of the son's son.
The two reviews - in the Guardian as well as the Independent, are written by Muslim authors, who seem to find constant occasions to pan the book. Little realizing that they - in this way - ADD, rather than take away from his point on the rejection of composite culture by Islamists.

The Guardian reviewer Yassin-Kassab asks : How seriously would we take a cultural analysis of Britain written by someone who speaks no English? (in order to reject non-believer Taseer's seeking of Muslim culture and history)
All I can say is, I would always value and marvel at that traveler's comments who has gone down a path that I can go vicariously ,as a first time traveler, rather than one who has been-there-done-that, and believes he knows it all.

Similarly, Ziauddin Sardar in the Independent, makes sweeping statements re: the book (and quotes this as Taseer's description of the Kaba) : When he finally discovers it, he sees it as "nothing". It is solid, impenetrable and mute, he tells us; and its "utter poverty" expresses "cosmic contempt for the things of the world".

Which I think totally misses the point. It was Aatish's response to the awe it inspired. Were I to quote him, I would go with this line he writes re the Kaba : So silent and unrevealing a sanctum was this, that it implied faith, rewarding the believer with nothing, as if faith itself was the reward...

Elsewhere a phrase he uses in the book, like an ever present leit motif - violent purity signifies all that is left unsaid. After all the back page of Stranger to History has the large shadow of this phrase... and what it seems to read is this...
anger
story

In the final analysis, a sharp indictment and perhaps anger? At dear daddy? Who elicits disgust - at 'the smallness of my father's world, the homogeneity of the place, in which people voiced ugly opinions without challenge: a safe area for casual hatred'.

Ultimately, as a reviewer points out : 'Uncomfortable reading for Daddy, certainly, but gripping for the rest of us.'

Going online also means that one cannot get away from the gossip that this celebrityhood will now bestow. One learns - sorrowfully - that his engagement with Lady Windsor is now off, for he wants to come back to India, and she - wary of what happened to Jemima when she married Imran Khan, says the article - does not...

This then is the truth after all. As postmodern history gets written : In an always on connected world, where information is just a breath away via cell phones, internet and text messages; where a geographical continent is a mere hours away by jetplane, truth is that boundaries are still massive - between cultures, religions.
And the genders. Even when men may live their lives bracketed between women.

Massive monolithic boundaries, far more potent - in its invisibility.

What Makes for Sticky Eyeballs Today?

2009-05-02T07:52:00.005+05:30

Indian pollsters and psephologists seek prescience in figuring out who will lead this Lok Sabha polls.
And over the years, corporates in India, and TAM ratings have tried to figure out which GEC - General Entertainment Channel - leads. More importantly, WHY it leads. The secret, if any, of its success.

Post liberalization, Zee TV was the first off the starting block in the early '90s. A few years later, Star TV arrived. Riding on the success of KBC, it soon grabbed the eyeballs with its K serials. It was the new superstar, just like Amitabh Bachchan in the early '70s.

Gaudy, over the top, dressed in their best even in bed stories of 'joint families' and their murky family stories. HAHK, MPK in the drawing room stories (and no wonder, this became a category killer to Sooraj Barjatya's movies). Celebrating 'traditional' values in a nation rapidly telescoping into the future, became the recipe for success. Soon, they began to believe in their own myth and endlessly flogging the same theme became their raison d'etre.

Next came NDTV Imagine. Launched with a lot of fanfare, it started with a big bang. And it suffered the way a Bollywood movie does. When launched with an array of top stars, but lack of a screenplay. Makes for good page three but not good trade paper ratings.

The most recent entrant has been Colors. That, in a span of a few months (and without the flagship of any program equivalent to the initial KBC) has endured, grown and shot up to the top.

What exactly happened?

Some of my students at a few MBA institutes, in a class on Consumer Insight Mining, did a dipstick. A few (really a dipstick) folks were called at random and interviewed over the cell phone. All over India. What was the imagery of the four channels... beliefs... how would they recognize the channel from its program if the name of the channel was masked... which / what visuals did folks associate with a channel...

What this classroom study ( students, each calling a few folks on the cell phone...) brought out is this...

It has become fashionable for the middle classes - once the bastions of Star TV - to bash its K serials. Somewhat like we Mumbaikars bashed our political leaders recently, and ultimately, we all live with them (only 40% came out to vote)...
The point is not whether they watch it or not - for many continue to do so - but the increasing defensiveness in watching it. Akin to young college girls reading Mills & Boon - but hiding it.

Zee TV is the Steady State theory types. No Big Bang here, but gently and relentlessly going strong. The Dharmendra of the '60s and '70s...Song and Dance is the mainstay, and gaana bajaana is part of the Indian psyche, now nicely packed with an appropriate dose of Reality TV.

NDTV Imagine has a schizophrenic image at best... represents anything and everything - and nothing. Lack of a clear distinct image. Is it Farhan Akhtar? Mythology based? Flagship soap opera based? Not at all clear.

Colors is the only one that comes out smelling of roses. And what's more, even with a diverse imagery - 'for young people' ; 'for families' - there is a common underlying thread.It is seen as socially relevant. And this is invariable spoken of, with awe.

In a post liberalized world that has by now accepted the initial onslaught of consumerism, its goodies and products and a better life, the viewers were ready for 'social soul searching' - of course vicariously. Catch the Indian Middle Class actually jumping into the fray. Inward gazing as we all are. We all want more of the feel good stories. We want the Slumdog slum kids to get a better life, and read their stories on the front pages avidly... and ignore that child outside our car window at the traffic signal...

And this channel is fulfilling this need wonderfully. Balika Badhu et al.
Via this 'social relevance' frame of mind, the MCM - the middle class millions - (it is the Middle Class that watches Digital / Cable TV, let's face it. It is NOT about the total India)... these MCM can go to bed peacefully each night. Secure in the thought that the world we inhabit is nicely and wonderfully colored.

Dignifying Jane Goody : Dr. D. Parthasarathy

2009-04-23T12:10:00.009+05:30

The idea of 'Reality shows' is a strange amoebic creature. Morphing, continuously evolving, exponentially growing-like-bacteria - an output of the 'always on technology' times we live in.

Prof Parthsarathy's take on the 'Life and Death of Jane Goody' highlights a very significant take on how media constructs 'goodness' or should one say. 'badness' of Ms. Goody.

His article Dignifying Jane Goody is on kafila.org.

We in India, got carried away and created our 'bad girl' image of her, ages ago when we made it a national issue - of she versus 'apni' Shilpa Shetty. Without ever observing this person with empathy.

Dr. Parthasarathy's perspective highlights the other side of the picture that we never look at but live through in our day to day lives... nearly 50% of the planet...

And I quote :

That Jade Goody was a woman, that family backgrounds and upbringing such as hers affect women in a much more intense manner than men, that women have fewer livelihood and economic opportunities given similar amounts of low credential and cultural capital – all these issues are rarely raised or addressed.

Shunu Sen, HLL and Road Number 3 HO.... ADIOS...

2009-04-18T22:20:00.031+05:30

Soon, Levers will move lock stock and barrel to its new offices in the Mumbai suburbs.

And that will be the end of an era.

Back in 1985, we - 65 of us - began our Masters in Management Studies at Jamnalal Bajaj, situated on 'Road Number 3'. This address is so nameless. Situated in Backbay Reclamation, it sounded (still sounds) like some forgotten postscript of the city of Bombay. Like a garrison. Or a prison to house the goons of the city or something. (It does house the MLA hostel).

But then, we Bajajites had HLL directly opposite us on the other side of the road. We basked in the penumbra of its quiet glow. A steady stream of the most impeccable visiting faculty was assured. And made up for the fact that we were not IIM A, B or C... the three IIMs that existed, and the only other 'ranked' institutes.

We spent two years less than a stone's throw away, and yet rarely got to see the stalwarts that made up the top brass. In a city of 8 to 10 million (those days) it was easier to catch a sight of top film stars rather than the 'big guys' of Levers.

Later, during campus placement, two of our brightest batchies got into the company. And the image of the company shot up in campus. For one of the truths of MBA life is that batchies everywhere form impressions of a company basis its ability to recognize talent we KNOW in house.
And Nitin Paranjpe and Srila Chatterjee were our stars for sure.

Other companies were busy shooting themselves in the foot and committing both Type 1 and Type 2 blunders/ errors. Some real good guys of the batch did not get taken. Some duds of the batch did. So many companies have forever since, been scorned by the rest of us.

I had already opted to accept the job offer made to me by Lintas during summers, and this was to be the beginning of a career where my work has been intertwined with that of... well.... what do I call the company now... HUL? Sounds like some truncated Bhangra rap word. When i first heard it a couple of years ago at an MBA campus, for a moment I imagined an oil company, drilling in the sea, raking in the petrodollars.

It is not HLL any longer, the moniker treated with awe across generations of MBA students at the best institutes, as THE place to work in.
It was our Day-One company, in an era when placement began with the 'first' day and had not yet regressed to the newfangled policy of 'Day Zero' at the institutes.
(Typically Day Zero companies recently have been the I-Banks. Lehmann, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank...Apt name, no?
Day 'ZERO' --- Shoonya. Nothing. Nought... )

Most of us prefer to (continue to ) call it Levers. And that thrill of walking into its conference rooms exists as ripples of feelings of a long while ago rookie entering its portals. Recently, I was at its HO for a workshop and had this out of body experience. For a moment, I was in my early 20s again, and the month was December, 1988.
Shunu Sen and my boss at Lintas, Pranesh Misra had sent me into the boondocks - go find out whatever you can about rural India. A brief made all the more formidable for its sheer laconic nature. Boldly go forth where no corporate (wo)man had gone before - and figure out the future...

And I came back with 'P: RuMark'.
Rural Markets.
A key finding : villagers everywhere purchased goods in 'chhataaks'... to suit their weekly purchase cycle, and the shopkeepers opened up the large sealed packs to sell it loose / piecemeal in these chhataaks.

Chhataak : A word from pre Independence times to mean a smaller quantity. Usually and loosely worked out to invariably cost one rupee. And packed in a piece of grubby newspaper. Detergent, daal, sugar, salt, tea, aur to aur, even soaps were cut up and sold in chhataaks.

Shunu, sitting at the head of the table loved it. He began to envision the future of many Lever brands as pouch packs. In one rupee formats. Chhataak packs.

Sachets was not yet a word in our FMCG dictionary. Back then...

And rarely have I felt so GOOD in my 22 years career, as at his words of praise...

Shunu had a back problem (he was not yet on his wheelchair) and back then he would talk to folks sitting both sides of the long conference table without eye contact with them, looking only straight ahead. As the presenter, I was at the other end of the long table, and over the next few years got used to the unnerving experience of Shunu speaking to other individuals via eye contact with me alone.

What sheer joy to listen to him talk of the future of various brands, to his core lietenants of those days. Sharp, holistic, marketing knowledge of the highest order.. all 'spoken' as if to me :-).

And that was another amazing quality about him. His hands on, always keen on participating in consumer findings, frame of mind. As far back as I can recall, he ALWAYS made it a point to attend quali research presentations. Research results across Lifebuoy, Surf, Pears, Fair & Lovely, Paras Fertilisers, Sunlight detergent, Close Up... it was his way of staying in touch with his core target, his ear to the ground. Perhaps, those were simpler times. Fewer brands.

But hey, there was far more of an aura. And the adrenalin rush of being in the presence of a person who I saw as the Ultimate Brains. One who others have called Guru, and who could ask the most unexpected of questions. Catching the presenter off-guard.

Today I see young capable managers rushing around in Levers. Brands are the same. The semiotics have changed. And like on this day recently, I seek that distant twinkling alive presence. So essential to the essence of HLL.

HLL to HUL. Road Number 3 HO will soon morph into the new HO off distant WE Highway.

Nitin Paranjpe, classmate, today is the youngest CEO this company HUL/ HLL has seen in its 75 year history.

Srila Chatterjee, who quit HLL ages ago, is one of the finest, most respected film producers that the advertising world - and Indian film world too - has seen. Her creative instincts are for all to see in Blue Frog as well, that amazing live music watering hole, recently rated at par with Madison Square Garden, by The Independent, London.

Shunu Sen passed away in 2003.

Forever leaving a vacuum.

And I regret this. That I never did tell Shunu. How much gyan seeped in, into the akkal in his presence, what this has meant to me.

Perhaps that is how it was to be. For sure, he would have had a cutting yet kind retort. Something unexpected. And funny. ('Don't call me a Guru. Gurus don't have sex')
In a world suffering from SOHF - Sense of Humour Failure, Shunu Sen's day to day life was the stuff that today's corporate legends are made of.

India - Expectedly Unexpected... or Vice Versa...

2009-04-17T21:03:00.013+05:30

Doors open to the Future :
Nextgen - the star in her eyes...
Note his T -Shirt : I have my Mom's Brains and my Dad's Bank Balance.
(Salem : Mom did not reach high school, and dad is doing his best to ensure three children go through their education)

Making ends meet... of watch straps, torch batteries and locks...

The Great Wall of a thousand shiv ling temples, appears a few miles outside Salem...

A Honeymooning Couple, at Palghat : in a nation where public display of affection between the sexes is frowned upon, being photographed in 'his arms' is nowadays, a necessary part of the photo album... oops, I meant DVD records...

Temples ho to yun ho...

Just being on the road, this last trip to Salem and Coimbatore (and Palghat) is being alive to our potential... a beauty we forget, we take for granted...

Hundred Years of The RIGHT Honorable Shoe...

2009-04-09T20:45:00.011+05:30

In the Hands of Aam Aadmi

My brethren sociologists have been shouting themselves hoarse these last 25 years, on the physical and emosanal atyachar of veteran Congressmen in 1984. Here comes a completely random act and balances out the scales of justice. In one swift 'Home' run.

Am SO proud to be an Indian today, boss.

And may our soles rest in peace...

Yes, DEV D id

2009-04-07T21:06:00.016+05:30

id : The uncoordinated instinctual basic drives... Sigmund Freud...

Dev D intrigued me. Ever since this youth focus group met at Mumbai for the study on Axe deodorants spoke of it (movie)/ him (Abhay Deol) in awed tones.

Dev was a 'sad person, lost in love', said the 18 and 19 year olds..

But he redeemed himself completely in their eyes ('ye modern Devdas hai') when he ended up with Chandramukhi. Life is not about sad endings, they said.

Here is their take :
- You must move on
- Go for another girl
- Should not cry for any girl
- Choose the right one. Later hi sahi.
- Chanda IS the right girl

Interesting theme. Much to my regret, could not take this conversation forward during the focus group. We had other more 'Axe' effect things to do.

Which is in any case about 'getting the girl'. So we are all on the same boat...

Bought the VCD and watched Dev D. OK, OK, I know I missed the whole hall thing. Totally fascinated. At the pace, the cinematography, the angles, the crowd shots, the storyline, the psychedelic songs and the drug hazed atmosphere of (almost but never quite) failure...
Recall the inconsequential shots as much as the main story. Such as the Band Baaja party waiting for Dev to land, outside Chandigarh airport. Listlessly sitting there till someone gives a signal to get up and start playing out of tune... LOVED it. These are so true to the world we live in, it is SO Indian.

And here's one movie where while it has stayed faithful to the faithless Devdas theme, is a movie that young women have liked as much as have the guys.... They identify with Paro - both in her no holds barred attitude towards Dev, as well as the moving on when he turns out to be a loser jilting her. (And where are these new actresses crawling out from, which non existent woodwork? Mahie Gill, unforgettable)

Women said :
- You must move on
- Go for another guy
- The widower IS the right guy for Paro. He loves her.
- Should not cry for any guy forever.
- Choose the right one. Later hi sahi.

In Chanda's character as well(incidentally, love the idea of introducing each character with the comic book like flourished lettering, at separate intervals during the film... reflexively brings back a 'novel' feel. Bookish and new) as well, the nuanced reading of a mixed parentage girl (white skin and India... another hornet's nest). Of a high schooler caught in less than palatable circumstances, of the MMS clip (where again of course the boy goes off scot free in life), of the way the pimps are shown as far more human than their Bollywood antecedents of the past - who even get her to go to college. (Kalki Koechlin... read somewhere that she was the last character to be cast... cannot imagine this movie without her).

And of course, the bang on target reading of the larger tale of Indian gender relations. Sarat Chandra through the narcissistically withdrawn lover Devdas a mere century ago, enacted a story deceptively simple in its unravelling.
Like a good myth, forever and in perpetuity entangling us Indians in its weft. At the same time, this movie is so 2009.

As Sudhir Kakar says, in his awesome Intimate Relations, Indian folklore is replete with stories that have a marked lack of any tender feeling or mutuality between men and women, who move across the pages as if they are members of different species altogether. Where the female sees the man as a creature of shortlived passions. Where the man is revealed as a being full of guilt who will unceremoniously dump and desert the woman he has loved to distraction only a short time ago.

As well as in the idea of the withdrawn hero who would rather be admired than loved. It is enough for him to know that the woman is solely devoted to him while he can enjoy the position of deciding whether to take her or leave her. Where he seeks unconditional love, but gives it conditionally. (And even in a 'modern story' Dev and Paro's relationship stays unconsummated till the end!)

The theme resonates. And DevD ish stories - the going, going, gone stories are all around us. In Fiza and Chand Mohamed's loveless/lorn life on the front pages e.g.

(Btw, The book Intimate Relations is full of gems... As to why a woman (aka Fiza) would rather want to commit suicide than just go for separation, and finds the answer in our 'myth' of the single two person entity celebrated in India... SiyaRam, Radhekrishna... that is NOT Siya and Ram, nor Radha and / or Krishna... The importance attributed to the jodi in the Indian female identity...)

One of the most memorable moments in Dev D is when Chanda bares her soul to Dev about her expectation from a dad to forgive her and to move on, whereas he takes the cowardly way out of committing suicide. Electra complex.... ultimate betrayal.
And Dev makes her turn to him, embraces her and utters the lines she wished her dad had spoken... Redeeming his faithless booze induced life in one little moment.

'All will be OK'.

Life is not about 'sad' endings. Ask any young person on the road... same belief...

Anurag Kashyap, for you : taaliyan !

Weak, Self-Destructive Men....

2009-03-23T00:59:00.007+05:30

Often, I used to wonder/ marvel: why has Devdas been such a popular theme down the decades.

I think i just found the insight... in Great Bong's review of Dev D :

Anurag Kashyap’s Devdas accurately captures the essence of the original character , that of a weak, sniveling, self-destructive individual with a morbid fascination for emotional cruelty, who always realizes the worth of something after he has lost it.

Funny thing is, each of us can recognize at least one specimen of this male archetype as having passed by, on the road of life...

Passed by being the operative phrase...

Am looking for the full form of AIG

2009-03-17T14:48:00.007+05:30

A Amazingly

I Idiotic

G Gadhas

(Gadhas are donkeys. Asses... In Hindi literature, seen as brainless creatures, for some sad reason. Thankfully, the metaphorical meaning is enough for us, even if donkeys, actual ones, bless their innocent souls have never had to AIGGGGH.... pay or take bonuses in their most honorable lives)

A Aise

I Insaani

G Gamblers

A Absolutely

I Instantaneous

G Gains

Any 'acronym'ous full form of this acronym welcome...

send to proact@gmail.com.

Always Invest in Greed...

Asses Insist on Grabbing....

Abe Idhar dekh, Ghanchakkar

Hope to find the 'real' one, one of these days,

Acrimoniously yours,

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder...

2009-03-10T22:09:00.005+05:30

What can be more beautiful than unexpected thunder and lightening? Tonight over Powai... Yet : No Rain whatsoever...

The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by --
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself --
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life --
Indebtedness to Oxygen
The Happy may repay,
But not the obligation
To Electricity --
It founds the Homes and decks the Days
And every clamor bright
Is but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying Light --
The Thought is quiet as a Flake --
A Crash without a Sound,
How Life's reverberation
Its Explanation found --

Emily Dickinson

March 8th Women's Day YAWN...

2009-03-09T00:50:00.007+05:30

EVERY DAY IS WOMAN'S DAY, FOR GODS SAKE...
How can 50% of the world keep one measly day out of 365 aside for herself??

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS... LONDON Kensington High Street...

2009-03-05T11:46:00.017+05:30

The High Street of Shopping stands liberally dotted with signs such as these today.

Otoh, on Oxford Street a few miles away, Primark and Selfridges coexist... both going strong as ever.

I buy a purse at Primark for the princely sum of 7.00 sterling pounds, that by current rates is less than Rs. 500/-. It is teeming with folks purchasing as if there is no tomorrow. Prices that give the word 'Bargain' a good name...

Nearby, inside Selfridges, there is a neat purse on display. With no price tag. I ask the guy on the 'shopfloor' who in turn has to call in his supervisor to help locate the price.
Above GBP 500.00 I am told and the sign of the 'designer' pointed out, as I quickly retract my hand, singed.
Rs. 35,000.00 plus.

The newspapers report that the wealthy are a tad embarrassed at making purchases. Though the pockets are bursting. Financial meltdown and all that you know.
Perhaps that is also one more reason why there are no price tags.

To tackle this, sellers have hit upon the right strategy.

What they have figured is this: they need to use the C word to loosen the platinum purse strings.

Charity Pricing.

No. Not priced 'charitably' low.
What this means instead is : Pricing obscenely high...

E. G. Before you can say YSL, his estate is sold for 400 million dollars. Apparently, it is all for charity you see, so the velvet fist can be displayed. With its wads of obscene money.

That's the new phrase I coin. Charity Pricing. And the way things are going, will soon enter all vocabs.. Like imagine this : perhaps that GBP 500.00 purse will be sold as soon as there is a sign that reads 'Part of the proceeds will go towards feeding those who cannot enter this store' ...
Who knows! The store for sure has survived the downturn so far, so there must be some logic...

And the world continues to go round.

Afterword : Watched The Devil Wears Prada, on my flight back.
People actually PAID to see this movie?? Or is it that in the new world we live in, it does not really matter... when I saw it, someone somewhere did pay for it, no?

Luck By Chance. Circular Reasoning - Not By Chance

2009-02-09T09:27:00.015+05:30

'A film that critiques and disses nepotism in the industry, could only be made because there is nepotism in the industry', says Badshah (not his 'real' name. This is his daknaam) as we stream down the outer stairs of the multiplex.

True... Hrithik agrees to do a role that a usual minor character actor may have refused, Bollywood star power flexes its muscles via a steady stream of 'gush - gush thank you sooo much' title track kind of appearances.. All doing a 'real' favour to the Akhtars...

Yet, there is something piquant about the movie. While watching, it grows on you. Like Farhan has done in his career as well... a gentle progress from Director to Actor to singer (or a mix of all 3).
And when directed by a woman - Zoya Akhtar - the movie has a certain distinct sensibility. Of a clearer depiction of the female perspective. Even while it is defines the heroine (Konkona Sen Sharma) within usual feminine 'goody and nice' parameters, the story indicates that while these are virtues, it does not take her very far in life materially or in getting adulation.
And yes, the moral victory is hers (what would we Indians do if we did not have that, huh !?)

The 'hero' (Farhan Akhtar playing the wannabe film actor) does not exactly have feet of clay, he's shown to have feet caked with clay.... e.g. he's not above tweaking each situation to extract maximum mileage (gives deliberate wrong advice to a competitor to better his own chances; ditches his girl friend when it is inconvenient).

And the current multiplex audience laps it up... this is the India of today.

Heard some folks saying they wished the film was at least half an hour shorter. This is one more 'India of today' response.
Life is at sms speed. Short and quick. Soon we shall have fast paced one hour movies coming up.

Like the Kala Ghoda festival that has a 55 word short story contest going on.

More on Kala Ghoda another time. The nicely artsy bitsy Page Three street festival of South Mumbai. Like at one place, there is this loudspeaker with carefully constructed sounds of inside the CST. Batate wade Samose types, Train Horns, Platform talk... Kala Ghoda (the black horse I mean, that gives the street its name ) does not really exist out there in front of Jehangir Art Gallery any longer ( though it did once upon a time long before any of us were born, is now a forgotten and forlorn statue somewhere inside Byculla Zoo).

The real street folks do not quite really exist on this particular gated street... A large dollop of the visible audience, I wager, arrived in their Mercs, and lapping all this up, would not have ever seen the inside of the real CST. Recent terror strike tourism notwithstanding. Here's a simulated reality more real than the real thing.
Who said Jean Baudrillard is dead?

The SLUMDOG balance sheet : Some Calculations...

2009-01-25T14:15:00.015+05:30

This is not a review of Slumdog...

Though I write this having seen the first show last Friday, along with my friend Rashmi (who is sure to have a worth-every-word-she-writes review, as and when she gets around to it !!)...

Hollywood made Bollywood style is a moment to pause for sure...
A moment to celebrate. A moment to bask in the sun of reverse snobbery...
The young boy rolls down the slope as he falls off the speeding train, and what do you know ! He has grown up, by the time he gets up brushing his back.
End of the movie, title sequence has 'hero' and 'heroine' doing a Hindi movie ishtyle dance, between the local trains.
The 'hero' and 'heroine' with their spotless unsullied reputations all through, as they lead the life of the underdogs, when all else around them have shades of grey.

WOW !
I loved every moment of the nonsense..

And I have no issues about the depiction or stereotyping of 'slums'.. we Indians need to wake up, and step outside our Gated Communities.
Slums exist. With all its unspoken and swept under the never-washed carpet grittiness.

I also loved the depiction of firangis, the white skinned foreigners. If they are there at all on screen, they are present as blink and you-shall-miss-them stereotypical tourists...

So how can one complain of one stereotype when everything is a stereotype.

OK, what I am zapped with is this : We have seen all the actors, major and minor, dressed in their best at every award function - also major and minor... Irrrfffan Khan (sorry, can never get his spelling right); Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, along with the Director Danny Boyle, Co-Director Loveleen Tandon, the producers - flying around to every city around the world for the grand openings. Collecting and sweeping in the trophies. (By the way, how much does a first class air ticket cost nowadays?? Three or four thousand dollars perhaps?)
A movie made with a 'shoestring' budget of USD 14 million has grossed four times that amount even before being launched worldwide, sez the movie website.. And continues to make money as all good movies ought to.

And yet, what I see is this: today's Indian Express has an endearing photo of one of the two main kids, the one who played the role of Salim (and was on screen almost as long if not longer than the teenagers playing the roles of the two older protagonists). He is flipping through an album of photos of the movie - inside his makeshift tenement in some park near Bandra station. With his dazed, emaciated parents visible in the shadows.

A 'proper' studio one room apartment in Mahim (close to Bandra) will not cost more than rupees twenty lakhs, even by inflated by Indian real estate standards.
That is like USD 40,000/- or less ...

Obviously, too high by slumdog calculations, no? Even if it is less than 0.25 % of profits generated to date.

Kind of reminds me of the financial calculations going around recently on Wall Street...

The kids who breathed life into the movie.. are discarded like dregs of fragrant coffee - after the brew is made. No one is saying we need a socialist model or something... And for sure, India and we Indians need to learn how not to turn a blind eye to the have-nots...

But doesn't it feel a tad odd that while other co-actors tuxedo it to the Oscars/ Golden Globes, even get Hollywood agents for future work, another is still resident in a hut here this way?

This is not about the dripped in potty shot in the beginning of the movie that has everyone disturbed and upset and reviewing about..

It is our planet's accepting attitude that, well, stinks....

A Layman on Lehman : Troubling Finance Buyout stories...

2009-01-18T10:50:00.010+05:30

Lehman got taken over by Nomura...

And from what I can gather, they paid out 'bonuses' to retain staff... big monies paid one hears.

Senior employees who for a few months were as mortally scared as any at the prospect of looming uncertainties and a finance collapse, who would have been thankful at the fact that their jobs were intact, have been paid hefty bonuses to 'stay on' at a job they would have been more than happy to stay on anyway.

So what does this tell me? ... System mein kuchh ghoch hai... Something is odd about the system of bail outs...

A few years ago, I ventured to ask a friend to explain 'derivatives'. Sub-primes. Reinsurance... I am sure it was explained wonderfully. Much as I sagely nodded all through, thing is, it made no sense. I am no finance expert... never have been. It all seemed deliciously complex.

Was impressed. That I have friends who understood all this modern world stuff that are gobbledegook to me. What I could understand that I did not understand back then was this. How come I-banks paid out millions of rupees in salaries to fresh and raw just-out-of-school recruits at the IIMs, institutes never known to take people with work- ex anyway... what could these zero workex 23 year olds do that was worth so much?

Now I figure that the house of cards has come crashing down. Now I hear rumours that what we have seen so far is a domino effect that has just begun...

So I come back to my original question.. How come the world of today continues to pay out million rupee bonuses?
Am I that layman who is missing something again?

Should I do what I had always done...
Shut up and ask the questions no more? Eh, Nomura?

In the meantime here's something I am reading re the Wall Street bailout, with horrified fascination: Naomi Klein

In Search of Picasso...

2009-01-05T09:21:00.018+05:30

Look carefully! It is just as important. You must do what is not there. What has never been done.

This statement by the ultimate 20th century iconoclast Picasso encapsulates my quest in Paris.

And I wait - and wait in an indeterminately long queue to enter the Grand Palais on a cold Thursday morning, and I wonder what I am doing here. A mere weeks after the mayhem in Mumbai, here is this dilettante to all purposes, actually waiting to enter and view - a paintings exhibition.

Every hour or so, the low ranking guards (daily wages?) take pity on the snaking queue and allow an arbitrary 15 to 20 odd people to get in, while others continue their vigil in this drizzling Parisian weather. We are the dumb ones who have not had the foresight to make a booking earlier on, via the internet, and have arrived 'just like that'.

We: as in me and folks, mainly Europeans. Average age 50 plus. In a world that is rapidly aging, there is simply no question of senior citizens getting the right of way. Only when a near 80 year old woman faints, is she allowed to go in immediately. Its an interesting paradigm for me as an Indian - in our young nation with a hoary tradition, 65% are below 35. And it is second nature for young folks to 'take care' of anyone remotely old looking, even strangers. Giving up a seat, a place in the queue, running around and obtaining paperwork, helping in some way or the other.

Otoh, those who have booked online, as well as journalists and art students, are allowed to go in right away via separate queues. (Curse myself for not having obtained that Press Card yet... Coatings World hote hue)

After three hours in the biting cold, my turn does come, and I skip up the stairs, as much as a motley 'oldie' group can skip that is, and buy my twelve euro ticket.

Immediately and miraculously, the travails of the morning stand forgotten. catapulted into a mesmerizing world. Up close to Picasso and his various artist muses.... his productivity, his control on every aspect of art...
To be able to see so many original paintings of Picasso under one roof is toe-curling enough. To see the originals of Masters such as El Greco, Cezanne, Goya, Poussin, Manet, Ingres, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Delacroix side by side with Picasso's impressions of various paintings, has been an experience that will be embedded in my brain forever. These are the people who ultimately matter. Who cared, who commented. On a world fractured by wars and crises through the ages.

Courbet, one of the artists Picasso was 'impressed' with had said 'I do not paint angels because I have never seen any'. And Picasso, just like the Impressionists, abandoned the canons of representation for 'a more acute grasp of reality'.

I paint in reaction to the paintings that count for me, he said... Through the screen of painting, he distilled the substance of the experience of painting and his troubled emotions.

It has taken me a lifetime to paint like a child

Academic teaching of beauty is false. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty. It is what instinct and the brain imagine quite apart from that canon...

Every human being is a whole colony you know...

This Bohemian journey - Paris, I will not forget you in a hurry... a more acute grasp of reality...

(paintings here are - in order depicted - by El Greco, Manet and Velasquez - and their impressions by Picasso)

Dissipated Energies...

2008-12-31T22:41:00.016+05:30

As I touchdown at Paris, the grounded Concorde greets me at the fog enveloped airport.

This faster-than-sound Mach breaking symbol of innovation in flying, has now been stifled. A quiet death. But instead of being given a decent burial, what do we have here? Propped up ignominiously, nose in the sky, it lies bare to all curious gazes in a forlorn corner next to the runways of Charles de Gaulle.

And Charles de Gaulle. A man once reviled and ridiculed by students and workers. Not very far back in memory. A mere 40 years ago in 1968. The year that is seen to be THE year of social revolution in France.

Today the name falls off thousands of tongues carelessly, as the name of a busy airport.
And history books get written anew. He is now seen reverentially....

Huge wall sized photographs celebrate President de Gaulle at the airport terminals. With various 'leaders' of the world. Not just JFK, Nehru, Churchill, but take a look at this... with 'Kroutschchev' - as they spell Khruschev.

Like an alley cat's scratches turning into a pitiful whimper even as it is taken away in the stray-catcher van, the student and worker revolts of 1968 stand forgotten... At the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, no one has any memory whatsoever, and no, they did not 'celebrate' this 40th anniversary back in May 2008 either. In fact, all those I asked, were surprised. 'What commemoration?'

In the years I was growing up in India, the word 'Million' was just entering our vocabularies that was struggling to make sense of a 'lakh' (100,000). Later, the M word mutated to the B word, and in recent years, to the T word... Trillions.... A 'googolic' word from the world of astronomy, where the number of zeroes is necessary in the measurement of impossible distances, of time. In the last frontier of space, this is all that is real, that matters.

In the years of my growing up, the newspapers were covering man's landing on the moon. The advent of the space shuttle that was promising a regularity of space missions. And the newspapers today? Finance rules the news and the front pages. In Paris, it was full of stories of the billions made off by Madoff in the US.

And while the finance wizards across the world have siphoned off billions & trillions of dollars in recent years (What in the world did the money get spent on? Holidays? Yachts? Jewelry?), what do we see here? Any plans of man landing on the moon has been totally scrapped in the same time period. Budgetary constraints by NASA cited - the lack of a few hundred billion dollars has necessitated this. Space frontiers have bowed down to corporate greed.

What a wonky world we inhabit...

The Year of Living Dangerously

2008-12-19T22:14:00.012+05:30

The Year of Living Stupidly...

At every opportunity, people took insane risks in 2008.

Yes, Truly...

Some words picked at random from the issue of Time dated Dec 29 and Jan 5:
(publishing this on Dec 25, '08)

Haunted by killings that haunt him like war crimes; Unaffected emotions of tears; A wrenching, rewarding experience; Self assurance and cool efficiency; An old guy seeking vengeance and redemption; Nastier, Edgier, way easier to anger (re: Clint Eastwood's role in Gran Torino)

Symphonic brilliance; Genius that soured into madness; venomous and bitter seclusion (obit for Bobby Fischer)

Tenuous connection to consensual reality; extremely clever; psychotic brushes with madness (re: Carrie Fisher)

A nuclear-armed nation threatened by Islamic militancy and on the verge of economic collapse (re: Zardari as President of Pakistan)

Somali pirates used to be fishermen before their waters were overfished by foreigners. Now they hijack and hold for ransom... they say: We are living between life and death anyway.

Despite the presence of over 60,000 foreign troops, the country (Afghanistan) has grown more lawless and volatile.

The existential distance that separates people from one another - a distance tried to bridge with words... 'Fiction writing is lonely in a way most people misunderstand. It's really yourself you have to be estranged from, really, to work' (said by David Foster Wallace)

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible (said by Arthur Clarke)

Quieter attributes of constancy and rigour (exemplified by who else but Paul Newman... already and for ever a hero)

When I get angry, i am not a shouter. I find that what is always effective, is just making people feel real guilty. Like 'I am disappointed in you. I expected so much more';
I have a low tolerance of nonsense and turf battles and game playing, and I send that message very clearly;
If I was speaking honestly and truthfully about what i thought my priorities were, then I always thought we had a good chance of winning...
We pledged that whatever happened, we would come out of this whole...
It is important to carve out time to think and not spend your entire day reactive. Because there is always a crisis coming at you.
(all said by Time's Person of the Year Barack Obama)

And through all of these, I continue the search
for meaning...
for myself....
for the future.

What Is The Purpose Of My Existence?

2008-12-14T10:01:00.006+05:30

Those 40 hours were the most intense learning process’

(Third Eye is a favorite Sunday column in IE... This was the one today)

Deepak Bagra is a director with 3i, an international private equity firm. He spent 40 hours at the Oberoi after barely escaping the terrorists at the hotel’s restaurant. He was freed around 2.30am on November 28

Will that experience be a turning point in your life?
It has actually completely redefined my life. I have tasted a sense of finality, not once, but multiple times, in a very short period of time. Those forty hours were the most intense learning process I have ever gone through and any individual could go through. If not for the collateral damage, I would strongly recommend it to everyone. Because the more you go through it, the more you realize a few crucial things.

First of all, I understood that the sense of being in control of our lives, the feeling that through our efforts and through the people we know we can control situations, things, people etc. --- all of that is a complete fallacy, a complete and utter illusion. In those moments, nobody can do anything for you. Every individual I knew, even some I had not seen for thirty years tried everything they could to get me out of there. But frankly, it was about God and me, no one else.

Second, I realized how many people in the world deeply care for me. And how many people I never met were ready to stake their lives to save me --- such as the five NSG commandos who came and picked us up in our room. I actually felt guilty to live in comfort during those forty hours --- after all, we had a bed to lie on, some water to drink, biscuits to eat, whereas those guys out there were putting their lives in danger with nothing to eat, only to protect the life of individuals they never met.
That kind of thing completely changes your life, and redefines the motivating factors of your life.

Has your sense of purpose in life therefore changed?
Definitely. As bankers we mostly think of our bonus at the end of the year and suddenly you realize how ridiculous and shallow it all is. I understood that there are so many more meaningful things in life, and how selfish I had been all along. It finally dawned on me that so many things I had been chasing and spending time on was completely futile. I had never sat down and designed my life; I had just flowed with whatever had come. I had never thought before in terms of purpose, or mission.

So it took me to go through that experience to realize that I wanted to give back, and do something for the people who saved me. I do not think that I was saved just by the law of probabilities, I do feel there was some force at play. But then it did not save others. So I must feel all the more blessed, and think that I may have been saved for a reason, that there must be another meaning to life than what I had been doing until now. And it has to do with giving back to society. How will I do it? It will take a bit of time to find all the answers to that question, but I know it will be the most important factor governing my mind and life from now on.

Do you feel anger about what happened?
Absolutely not. Not a drop of it. Neither against the perpetrators, nor against those who could have stopped it and didn’t. I am surprised myself at this complete lack of anger. The only feeling I have is how can I help.

Then, how do you explain the anger of those who have not gone through this experience themselves?
It is driven out of helplessness. They were witnessing the whole attack second by second on their televisions and could not do anything, whereas I was inside, constantly doing something to help myself.

Do you think this anger will die down or be transformed into positive change?
I do not think it will die down, and I hope it will be transformed into something positive. I actually feel our society is at a tipping point. The financial crisis has also been a form of catharsis and this is adding to it.
We have had a financial system that worked well for a hundred years but the world has changed, and the underlying system has not adapted. So like for any transformation, you have to go through pain before you get a new system, and this is what the financial crisis is, the end of the old, and the beginning of the new.

Finally, if there was one question you could ask god, what would it be?
What is the purpose of my existence?

GADA MURDA UKHAADNA...

2008-12-12T21:37:00.017+05:30

Nights of Terror at Mumbai - we have not forgotten you.
But just sometimes, we need to take a breather. Thing is, my bheja is on strike.

While negotiations continue between body and mind, here's a rerun, for the show to go on...
Of a 15 month old blog. Of why I believed Ram Gopal Varma's AAG was a success.

Back in September 2007, this is what I said:

Let me theorize without ever having seen the movie (and God forbid, ever having to see it), that RGV who I’ve never met (and God forbid... ), has always been made out to be this supercilious and arrogant son-of-a-gun who ignores every single tangible individual in his life - his sister, his actresses & actors, and the media goes adoringly hysterical about a guy who is so atypical of the cultural norms of seeking social reassurance.

Well, once in a while, it is within the realms of this new quasi-reality that the director must get his diabolical come-uppance from those who actively partake of his life, so freely supplied, as much as his movies, that one buys tickets for.

Prophetic, kya? peace disclaimer: brain on strike...

Talking of prophetic visions, here's my nephew in law Vikram Nandwani, in point blank, back on September 15th, 2008

Talk of 'Basket States'...

2008-12-07T20:42:00.008+05:30

A Hoax Call?

To the President of a sovereign country??

That has the potential to start a dangerous WAR???

Which world are we living in ????

What next ?????

A Nuclear 'Accidental' Hoax, in which
ordinary folks both sides will be the sacrificial pawns ??????

!

DEMOCRACY, ETHICS AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNT ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA

2008-12-03T16:31:00.046+05:30

FREEDOM OF SPEECH - RESPONSIBLY, RESPONSIVELY

Picture credit Ritam Banerjee

26 Nov : When the news broke, no one had any idea of the potential devastation coming up. Not inside CST. Not elsewhere.

Exactly a week earlier, Nov 19th, I had taken a local from Vikhroli to VT (the maiden name of CST. As part of VT's maika, my entire childhood, college years were with her, and I shall always refer to her by the earlier name). I walked across to the main line. Even the time was exactly the same - a few minutes before 10 pm, to catch a train to Solapur that was to leave at 10.30. With time on my hands, I sauntered over to purchase a packet of 'soap papers' - a most useful innovation only available at our railway stations, and then a toothbrush that I took my time in choosing. As is usual in India, the shopkeeper, uninvited, advised me on the do's and dont's of choosing the right toothbrush and we had a desultory conversation. There was time yet, so i stopped at the magazine stall as well. Then, a reviving cup of tea. Weaving through people peacefully sitting, some sleeping with their luggage, I made my way to Platform 14 where Siddheswar Express always departs from. The station was exasperatingly crowded as always. So much so, that my 'strolley' overnighter was better carried than pulled behind me. So many dogs as well. Sleeping, walking around. As far back as I can remember, the Central Railways Main Line concourse has belonged to one and all.

And when the news broke on TV at around 10.15 pm 26 Nov night, my friend Rashmi Bansal had just reached home. Her 'getting away' was doubly relieving. As a key organizer of the IIMA alumni do at the Oberoi, where a professor from MIT was the key speaker, she had been at the hotel since noon. Sent me a terse message at 6 pm for having ditched my plans of attending the talk. The alumni gathering ended at 7.45. Our plan had been to stay on - she and I - for one of our 'sisterhood' dinners. For a quick catch up. Usually at Japengo, at the INOX. Idea being that we would catch the locals from VT back home post dinner - she heading to Vashi, me to Vikhroli. Not later than 10 pm.
On 26 Nov she left the hotel at 8.30. And caught the train at 9.15 pm.

When the news broke over the TV channels, it was not yet clear how sophisticatedly ruthless this was going to prove to be. What it sounded like was that one or perhaps two guys in a misguided moment were running amuck inside CST. Perhaps there would be a few injuries.

Peculiar human tendency - a part of the mind was appeased. All those I knew personally, and who were to be in town were now at home. The nagging worry was about the guys who respectively sold me the toothbrush, magazines and tea at VT. But I somehow wanted to believe they would know how to take care of themselves.

It took a couple of hours to sink in. To the world. The audacity . As the scale of the exercise gradually came to light. Taj, Oberoi, Vile Parle, Nariman House... Later in the days to come, we would learn 57 deaths in CST alone, hundreds injured. And nearly 200 acrossboard.

And when a news channel made an announcement just after midnight, that the CEO & MD of a well known company was likely to be inside the Taj, perhaps taken hostage, the mind went numb.

This was my friend and MBA classmate.
How could I find out if all was well? What could I do? Should I text him directly?

I did that anyway, and was frantically calling up other friends and colleagues for confirmation when I was absolutely aghast to receive an sms reply : 'Holed up in Taj. Blasts, firings still on'...

As my blood ran cold, compounding my fear was this: Did the terrorists also have access to the media? Had they also just heard via the media that this MNC's top brass was inside?
Wouldn't that totally and completely compromise their safety? Soon the other channels were picking this up and flashing it as well. I replied back to him - sms again. 'You hang in there, OK?' And more on those lines...
And he again responded immediately.

This morning, I was reading Michael Pollack's spine chilling account of being inside the Taj. I quote here : We were told The Chambers was the safest place we could be because the army was now guarding its two entrances and the streets were still dangerous. There had been attacks at a major railway station and a hospital. But then, a member of parliament phoned into a live newscast and let the world know that hundreds of people--including CEOs, foreigners and members of parliament--were "secure and safe in The Chambers together."

And Pollack goes on to describe how the terrorists soon arrived at the Chambers as well... Some of those hiding escaped. Many did not...

My friend, his wife, his colleagues, and their wives, spent hours in a room on the first floor, before they took a gamble and decided to make a getaway attempt. I cannot even begin to imagine their state of mind through every nanosecond of it all. At 4.45 am, I received a text from him 'With everyone's prayers, we managed to get out safely from the Taj. Thank you all'.

They had made an incredible escape. And a true selfless friend as always, instead of just heading home exhausted, he immediately ensured that all his friends who were in touch with him were put out of this killing suspense.

I can understand that the media was doing what it needed to - and perhaps all the channels were doing the same.
BUT. At the same time, I agree 100% with the view being increasingly expressed - that the media went way over the top.

We saw Karkare.
So did the terror masterminds....
For GODS SAKE this was the ATS chief no less.. the Anti Terrorist Squad chief.. If we have now found satellite phones, cell phones at the Taj, at the Oberoi, why do we believe these two at the CST didn't have any??
We saw the NSG landing atop Nariman House....
So did they...
The unarmed firefighters going up outside the Taj...

The list can go on...

FOR SURE, we need mechanisms in place that clamps down on this media circus in the future. If the government imposed a diktat and banned such telecasts - as a matter of the integrity of the nation (as is often done in relation to defense matters), would not more lives have been saved? Perhaps what we needed was a single point government spokesperson as the source of information.
True this would have been frustrating for us as 'viewers' (voyeurs?). But it may have been a necessary step.
Of course expecting proactive behavior of the present government that has been so out of synch with everything, and MOST of all security... is a different matter.

I am almost tempted to believe in singer Abhijeet's 'conspiracy theory'.

Didn't the constable who was in the back of the ATS team's vehicle, the one who had a narrow escape, mention that they had been told to follow / look out for a red car? Where did that info emanate from, one wonders. Yes, in every way, we as a nation have played into the hands of the strikers of terror .

Another important lesson for all of us, in this past week - politicians, aam aadmi, page three elites - has been the new and always on presence of the 'camera and microphone' that captures anything and everything spoken 'in private'.

In fact, 'in private' is becoming an obsolete term. As we all have to measure our thinking, and mind our p's and q's. This, IMHO, is not a bad thing at all.

Politicians can no longer issue a flat denial as they used to. The Kerala CM, snubbed by Major Unnikrishnan's dad, was captured on camera : 'If it was not for the fact that he was the father of Major Sundeep Unnikrishnan, not even a dog would have gone to meet him'.

And here the media has played an excellent vigilante role - of going after the CM hammer and tongs. One channel even dug out the fact that the CM's office actually did send dogs in, to the Unnikrishnan home in Bangalore. Sniffer dogs had arrived in advance before the CM did... to check 'if all was safe'.

M. Naqvi of the BJP put his foot in his mouth when he ranted on something about 'women campaign against democracy in their lipsticks and powder, speak out against politicians; they are like the terrorists of Kashmir'.

Simi Garewal, the grand ol' dame of indeterminate age and now we see indeterminate experience as well - took the cake and the bakery of this 'foot in the mouth disease' that is afflicting us en masse, when she referred to certain flags seen in the shanties of Mumbai as 'Pakistani flags'.
Once more, driving home to all, how completely disconnected is the Indian elite to the world outside the confines of the air conditioned cars and five star hotels frequented and rendesvous'd in.

What the careless references to dogs, lipsticks, 'small incidents that happen in big cities (R. R. Patil), Pakistani flags (turned out to be religious flags) have proven is this...
Every time we open our big mouths, we tend to shoot it off. Every time we lose sight of being true to humanity and essential value systems - respect, love, a deep caring for the other, we make monumental gaffes.

And I want to emphasize that this is increasingly true for all those of us who are not necessarily in the media glare.
The times we live in, with cameras and mikes on cell phones, careless comments can be captured anytime. These are to be avoided. And I don't mean just for the sake of image - of presenting the right picture.

I have relatives and friends in the US. The Hindu NRIs. What bothers me no end is how loosely some of them come up with 'quick fix' extreme right wing solutions. Even while they call to find out if all is well - in Mumbai.
Stereotypes abound, and unfortunately these 'extremists' of a different nature have zero connection to ground realities. The reality of young molten happening India. A united India that recognizes the real enemy - of apathy.

Would this bigotry be expressed on TV? Mostly no! Because somewhere deep down even they are aware of both the incendiary nature as well as the lack of clarity of their privately expressed feelings if aired.

This is precisely what I mean. In the new interconnected world of the 24x7 glare of technology, it may not be a bad thing at all, to be far more circumspect. The more one thinks things through, learns to appreciate all perspectives, the sharper our value systems. The social-skills and inter-personal skills. The clarity of thought. And then the passion for productive change.

Just take a look at how Michael Pollack speaks of his recounting of his terror filled night. He is one person who would have been excused had he felt radical emotions. Yet what he says is this:
We later learned that the terrorists went along a different corridor of The Chambers, room by room, and systematically executed everyone: women, elderly, Muslims, Hindus, foreigners. A group huddled next to Anjali was devout Bori Muslims who would have been slaughtered just like everyone else, had the terrorists gone into their room. Everyone was in deep prayer and most, Anjali included, had accepted that their lives were likely over. It was terrorism in its purest form. No one was spared...

And he has the greatness to say :

It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed.

Last word :

As I write this, thousands are gathering at the Gateway of India. And other towns and cities. And I see true passion here. What is liberating is that there is no need to hide these fiery yet not loosely expressed feelings.

The freedom of speech of speaking from the heart...

Like blogging - Here one can get away with venting our feelings such as me calling the current bunch of Indian politicians snakes in the grass!!
Which they are, they are, THEY ARE.

LET US ALL VOW TO STOP PAYING EACH AND EVERY BRIBE WE ARE ASKED FOR, FROM NOW ON. We only line the pockets of this most corrupt breed.

And I go thru CST tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed. That I meet the chaiwala, the shopkeeper and the magazine stall guy.

Piyul

piyulm@iitb.ac.in

WHO SAYS THERE WERE NO COMMANDOS WITH AK-47s IN MUMBAI ON THE NIGHT OF WEDNESDAY 26th Nov ?

2008-12-01T10:23:00.031+05:30

There is this belief that Mumbai was caught with 'its pants down' (as Kavita Khanna aptly put it on a CNN program) and one of the ways we know this is that it took at least six to seven ** hours before the elite commandos could fly in from New Delhi, and reach the besieged Taj, Oberoi and Nariman House in Mumbai. (folks have written in correcting my erroneous beliefs - the NSG arrived NINE hours later)

I think we need to do our homework a tad more properly, folks.
There are always enough commandos in Mumbai and Maharashtra already. At all times...

It is just that hey, they are all busy guarding our 'bahut impotent' politicians.
(As you can see, in the picture here, the danger must have been from the dead bodies... even while hundreds were traumatically hostage to terrorists a few miles away).

We saw it again and again and again. Narendra Modi walking up to address a press conference at our Ground Zero, preceded by AK- 47 toting commandos in front of him. even while the need for desperate action was right behind him.

And when R. R. Patil says what is a few lives lost when 5000 could have gone in this 'itne bade shahar'? Listen, we need to pay attention to him. He is SO right...
Think of its implications...

Will someone tell the Narendra Modis, Bal & Raj Thackereys, Vilasrao Deshmukhs, Sharad Pawars, L.K. Advanis, R.R. Patils of this world: had they just let the commandos guarding them, join in the action, what a difference it could have made early on?
And when left naked without Z + cover , had they actually lost their lives behind the gates of their fortresses late that night, by that remote one-in-a-million chance, what is a few lives lost, while '5000' get saved, no ?

Leading from the front is to set by example.
Salaskar, Karkare and Kamte have proven it.
Since we aam junta have no Z plus, Z , Y, X or even the basic ABC of security, my question is this
a) when will these junta-ke-pratinidhis learn to breathe the same air, live in the same world that we live in?
b) I was under the impression that this democracy believes every single citizen is equal - the only reason politicians are given Z level cover is because there is a distinct security threat to the individual.
Here the security threat was clearly to other individuals. Why was this not recognized???

Piyul

piyulm@iitb.ac.in

ANYONE REMEMBER LEAD INDIA ?

2008-11-29T15:42:00.030+05:30

This blog is a follow up to

SEISMIC, SYSTEMIC, SYSTEMATIC FAILURE

Sanjiv Kaura, Dipayan Dey, Ranjit Gadgil, Abha Singh....

Names ring a bell?

No?

Ok - how about Devang Nanavati? R.K. Mishra...

Not yet??

Forgotten already, huh?
Like yesterday's stale TV soap operas... Washed off with the next soap.

These names are of those who 'fought'....
nahi, nahi - not the NSG commandos - these were the regional 'Lead India' spectacle 'winners'.

These 'actors' did stand in the center of our drawing rooms and bedrooms...
Unfortunately, their presence at this most intimate of places lasted only as long as their presence on the idiot box.
They have since vanished. Off the face of the (visible media) earth. The only 'place' that seems to matter in today's connected world.

Back then it was decided that all we needed to truly 'Lead India' was one winning leader. In this frame of reference, leadership was all about gamesmanship and 'winning' as decided by media heavy weights.
Fair enough.
But then, no one really knows where the chosen one is. Nor where any of the other 'finalists' are...

So I come back to my original question - WHERE AND WHO ARE THE TRUE LEADERS?

I am that aam Bharatiya - the one seeking a leader out there, and the question is this : when I look towards Lead India for a leader, am I just being silly ??

But Lead India did get the best of the awards - Cannes Lions Grand Prix, no less... a clean sweep of the Indian awards as well....

So is that what the spectacle was all about actually??

While The Times of India, JWT and Ram Madhvani covered their shelves with the glory of trophies, whatever happened to the basic issue? That of Leading India - indefatigably - with the real aam junta's needs, or was it about feel-good desh-bhakt ads and awards??

Shah Rukh Khan, and so on - the faces of the build up to Lead India might say : Hello, we were participating in a worthy exercise, when we became the public face in the ads...ask Ram and JWT what this Lead India was about...

Equinox films, the company of Ram Madhvani might say : I was only making a film to the best of my ability, ask JWT who approached us...

JWT, the ad agency will say : We were only making a path-breaking campaign. Ask the TOI who ideated on this...

TOI is likely to say : We are a media company, we were doing what we know best... creating and consolidating the newsworthiness of the seeking out of a leader'.

I am back to my search... WHERE ARE THE TRUE LEADERS?

Ram Madhvani loves to diss research. He proclaims - at every public speaking opportunity - how much he dislikes the idea of having his ads checked amongst customers . I would like to humbly submit this. As a market researcher, I listen to the voice of the aam aadmi day in and day out. As a sociology student as well. And not just today when they are out on the streets making themselves heard.
This junta - be it in the corporate board rooms, the elites of South Mumbai, or those who wait quietly and peaceably in the concourse of the railways, has been asking a simple question...

WHERE ARE THE REAL LEADERS??

Andrew Bacevich writes : "Most Americans subscribe to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasizes the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack."

Here in India, it is time to 'shoulder a rucksack'. And flush out - no, not just the terrorists. The corrupt, inept office-bearers out there. We need to stop paying that next small or big bribe asked for. By anybody. Perhaps stop and question the 'let's make a quick buck of money / fame/ rewards of awards' profit motive out there. Let autonomy and transparency come in, in our governance - and decimate political interference. In the police, in security, in our education system... In short, in everything.

'Lead India patriotism' ; 'Wear White today / Black today, in the memory of those who laid down their lives' patriotism' ; 'Light a candle patriotism'. This is pseudo and it is time to recognize it for what it is...

We can all do without this 'limited liability' version of bumper-sticker patriotism please... It is time for all of us to become the leader we seek, and together move forward.

Piyul

piyulm@iitb.ac.in

A SEISMIC, SYSTEMIC, SYSTEMATIC FAILURE

2008-11-29T09:18:00.027+05:30

Why are Politicians such Snakes in the Grass ?

Just a few weeks after the euphoric high across the world as Barack Obama became the US President-elect, the same world has halted in its tracks, and watched the playing out of the terrorists take-over of Mumbai - my city.

A reality show that continues to play across all news channels.

Obama will be the US President, and we in the world outside America have celebrated as if 'our man' has been voted in. Mumbai is under siege, and I have now seen the world come together and share our shock and disgust.
This then is what defines current times. A unification even in the fractured times we live in.

And what is most disgusting, is the attitude of the politicians. Winning power in the coming elections takes center-stage in India, not the real issues facing the citizens. Not the complete infrastructural failure. Not the total lack of coordination. Nor the abysmal failure of administration when confronted with danger. An absolute nincompoop attitude evident amongst each elected official.
Narendra Modi of course takes the prize. When he arrives and ensures he gains maximum media visibility while he takes calculated potshots at the establishment. I would call him the king. Among all the snakes in the grass ... And as hypnotically fascinating - especially when you hear his oratorial skills. . He can be a mesmerizing speaker.
Mrs. Hemant Karkare - HATS OFF to her for refusing to have anything to deal with Modi. When he hypocritically came to offer her 'rupees one crore' on the death of her heroic husband, the head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad as he led from the front... this was just days after this same fellow had called Hemant Karkare 'a villain'. For having gone after the masterminds of the Malegaon blast.

Unfortunately these politicos have such thick skins, this cold-shoulder will be water off their scaly reptilian backs.

In America and in India, democracy is a common factor oft celebrated.
Right now, another factor is the increasingly evident and hugely frustrating 'lame duck' attitude of the present incumbents.... Bush in the White House, and Manmohan Singh and his team in the Indian Parliament House. Out in the US, we have a man who even after two terms in office, has not grown out of the braggadocio of little boys playing battleships and war-war and is actually issuing plaintive statements such as 'I am going to miss being Commander in Chief'.
At first I was sure this couldn't be real, he couldn't have said that - was sure this line was a creation of Jon Stewart, but no, these are mouthed really by the leaders we, the citizens of the world, have chosen for ourselves.

And the less said about the waffling Indian Leadership, the better.

This is the time when we look around wondering where are the fiery Bhagat Singhs, Swami Vivekanandas, Aurobindo Ghoshes of this generation? How did society manage to decimate our fires-in-the-bellies so completely that our hundreds of thousands of schools have failed to throw up any truly real leaders?
As versus assembly line 'High IQ scorers', the thousands who 'crack' TOEFL, GRE and GMAT scores. As parents who take pride in their topper-type nextgen heading out to the IITs and IIMs. Through the elite portals of JEE and CAT. I mean, take a look at the role models of today ... It is the billionaires. the Nandan Nilekanis and Lakshmi Mittals.

This is the time when we need Obama like figures in Indian politics to lead from the front... and for sure, millions will get galvanized. To join up. No idea how President Obama is really going to shape up. As we all pin our hopes on him. But by Jove, just having someone like him around is so heartwarming to millions around the planet.

We - the Indian citizens - have not turned out back to democracy and politics.
We have not turned our backs to our nation.
We have definitely not turned our backs to the future of this fragile planet.
We just don't want to have anything to do with the current band of corrupt politicians. Global, National, Regional, Local...

Like I wonder how come Indian Members of Parliaments of Beed and one more place were staying at the spiffing Taj Mahal Hotel. Is this why we vote for them? So that they can live it up in five star luxury? ** More than a week later, as I update this blog, a survivor Shruti Jalan- Narang speaks of the way these MPs were escorted out, under cover of security even while other guests stayed on in the Chambers, terror-stricken.

As it is, the number of monopolies of supplies held by politicians through shadow ownership patterns, in India, is overwhelming...
Who do you think actually owns the beedi making factories of Solapur that make its poor women workers barely eke out a living? I am told, it is actually a certain Central Minister .
Who do you think owns all the paver-blocks used to concretize streets and roads? Yet another Central Minister...
Not to mention the hugely lucrative business of educational colleges. That all have their fingers in.

References to the Indian Parliament siege have been coming up again and again on TV... and a security expert called in by CNN-IBN made an interesting observation... That not one single death of those inside had taken place in that stand-off, and he wondered if that was a good thing or not such a good thing... Did he mean why not have a 'clean sweep' of a different kind!?

And whatever happened to that 'Lead India' thingy run by a newspaper, hmm? Why did we never hear of that winner whatever-his-name-was ever again? Did the entire build up and media hype satisfy the criteria of sticky eye-balls, and by now has outlived its use-by date?

One more gimmicky 'bumper-sticker patriotism' of the material world we live in?
Dunno about you but I have already received text messages to 'wear white' or 'to light a candle' on this sunset day of the terror strike.
Will this token 'limited-liability patriotism' ( an incredibly evocative term coined by Andrew Bacevich) be enough?

Can we have a head count of the true leaders please??

Last word :

Having blogged on this issue in the past, I simply love this sms going around, and I cock my snook at being politically correct :
Where is Raj Thackerey and his brave Sena? Tell him that the 200 NSG commandos from Delhi (all South and North Indians) have been sent to fight the terrorists so that he can sleep peacefully at Shivaji Park.

Degrees of Separation - from Barack Obama

2008-11-14T18:02:00.014+05:30

I voted too. I mean... I am not an American citizen.

But in the year 2008 when has that been a deterrent in voting during the American elections?
Three different sites asked me to do so online. And in my choice, I have joined hands with almost everyone around the world, who voted for Our Man.

All that is - barring a majority of poor sods in the states of Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, and suchlike. The international countries that chose McCain in the online electoral plumping were Cuba, Congo and Algeria...

See the trend? Nebraska, Congo, Utah, Algeria, Idaho... These are names that pass you by in the usual course of life. Folks living at these places sure have plenty of catching up to do on the planet we live in. As the world hurtles towards a plural and more encompassing future. And these places run the risk of imploding or falling off the map.

Going by reports across magazines, almost everyone around the world is connected to the President-Elect in some way... it is all about apna Obama. Our Obama. From Kenya to Indonesia, to Hawaii, to Chicago. Canada to Georgia (the other one!), South Korea to Argentina. Our own guy who's now going to be at the White House. And animated discussions on his looks - he looks so much like one of us'.... wonder what will he do with the 132 rooms there (get the drift? An invite almost coming up :-) ) ... and so on and so forth.

And I have reason you see, to be part of the clan who can speculate about this particular 'one of us'. My linkedin profile tells me I am three degrees separated from President-Elect Obama. Which means I know somebody who knows somebody, who actually knows Barack Obama personally.

And imagine that! He really is on linkedin - that modern and hip bastion of the corporate world! See? He is less a politician and more 'one of US'.

But here's the catch. I am already feeling a trifle left out.
Everyone is animatedly discussing 'Barack' nowadays (did you ever call the earlier chaps George or Bill or Jimmy??) - three degrees of separation is already two degrees too many.

In Bad Taste ...?

2008-10-10T16:36:00.020+05:30

When millions lose their homes, their savings, their faith in the future - in the US, even in their own government - starkly represented by Karthik Rajaram murdering his entire family, and himself in LA (is there an irony or what? That the first mass suicide story coming out of the US in these recessionary times, in the recent financial world pogrom, is an Indian) what do we have here back home...
CELEBRATING LUXURY... This is the timenstyle thick glazed-paper spiffing supplement that has come in, with today’s main newspaper here in India. Free. Though ostensibly priced at Rs. 10/- . With ads of Chanel, Salvatore Ferragamo, Vertu, Corum, Mont Blanc, Parmigiani, Lladro, Bugatti, Porsche, Bvlgari, Mercedes. Also Rolex, Tagheuer.

I have never quite figured the logic.. paying in tens and hundreds of thousands of rupees for a single watch, if we have no concept of the time running out for the planet. As we over-utilize and exhaust its resources. A fraction of the money spent on 'luxury' by each well-heeled member of the public could go such a long way in bringing a smile to less fortunate faces, changing their lives in some way irrevocably - rather than as mere charity. More important, give the lonely giver a degree of immense satisfaction that no expensive bauble owned ever can.

Just so you don’t miss the point : The spiff tells us Sheaffer Stars of Egypt costs Rs. 950,000/-. If you are like me and don’t know what we are talking about - this is not a car nor a holiday package. It is the price of a single pen.

The Times of India group is nobody’s fool. So, if they have brought this supplement out, it means there are enough folks out there who will lap this up and ‘buy in’ to luxury. With all the names listed already having paid mega bucks to advertise. Bhaskar Das in his editorial says the Indian luxury market was 4.35 billion USD in 2006. And will be 15 B by 2015.

What I read in the magazine is what is left unsaid: So what if the Sensex is down to near 10,000 and the Dow Jones trawling at the bottom. If you are unemployed, or in a state of depression - poor you. The rest of the real world (really rich you know) needs to move on, and who told you to over- invest in all those stocks anyway?
(Otoh, if you had made a killing at the stockmarket on a bull run, for sure we would all have been with you... after all, you need to park your profits somewhere)

Was reading Mukul Kesavan’s recent book ‘The Ugliness of the Indian Male’ (which is not throughout about Male Ugliness, it is a collection of disparate essays). Chapter 13 is titled ‘The Jews of Georgette Heyer’. And it begins with this line : ‘Most of us have had the disconcerting experience of discovering indefensible prejudice in favorite books’.

Georgette Heyer wrote historical romantic novels. So when she displays a systematic and repelling anti-semitism in her book Grand Sophy in describing a Jew, can she be excused since it is ‘historical fiction’. This is the deeply uncomfortable question Kesavan raises. Especially - and this is critical - when he points out that the book was actually written in the year 1950, hardly a few years after Hitler, when millions had been murdered cruelly. And the world was still reeling at the rampant carnage.

Kesavan proceeds to show that if such passages could be written and respectably published within years of the Holocaust, all it means is that she had to be able to assume that her readership shared her prejudices. He ends his essay on a hopeful note – that nothing comparable happened here (in India). ‘For I can’t think of any mainstream Indian writer publishing villainous caricatures of sinister Muslims or Hindus inside five years of the pogroms of Partition.’

And I come back to my original ugly theme. What about the respectable publishing of ‘Luxury’? ‘Celebrating luxury' – in this topsy turvy world - can that or can't that be called a crime? Blood Diamonds?? Or is this actually necessary for the 'money out there to circulate'. Does the ‘profits are all’ state of mind mean that some of us (especially qualitative researchers like me !) should not be hitting out at those that pay for our bread. ‘Luxury segment’ focus groups, observation studies and in depth interviews are very often our staple, after all. In a panoptical world, where clients choose their suppliers basis their ‘reputation’, we who question, are likely to draw the ire of ‘those who pay us’.

And if they want to draw in the poor deluded multi-millionaire sods, who want to buy million rupee pens, why should anyone have 'writeous' issues, right? Those like me, who do, can easily be painted as the fox who believed the grapes are sour.

Ya, for sure, I do have a very bad, real bad taste in my mouth through this morning.

What the world is NOW saying about the financial crisis...

2008-10-07T11:23:00.033+05:30

I like the analysis on the financial crisis 'Reversal of Fortune' by Joseph Stiglitz, in the November issue of Vanity Fair. On CNBC, we can see & hear him as well. He as ever, is the most cogent thinker and economist out there. Some of his views on how to prevent the next Wall Street crisis is great reading as well.

But nothing like black humour to drive home the message. Closer home, Great Bong's take on the meltdown is brilliant, - he uses, of all things, a Mithun B Grade movie list of characters as metaphor - Bullah, Lucky Chikna, Chutiya et al... And it works! I figured what all those words 'sub prime', 'insurance' 'derivative' really meant, never to be forgotten now.

My friend sent in this link - a must watch - the last word in British humour, on investment bankers.. 'dodgy debts' become 'Structured Investment Vehicles' and with a straight face, indicates the importance of 'names'.
As versus reputations : hedge funds instead of being hedgy and dodgy, sound really 'high' when called 'High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage Funds', and loved the role of market 'sentiments' (like 'OHMYGOD, I'm losing MONEY...')

My question tho' is not about understanding the intricacies - it is a tad different -
why did none of the 'finance' whiz kids and experts ever write an article last year or the year before that - explaining this system and its potential fallout.
I mean, if these were the facts of the money market and the housing bubble, this did not happen overnight, na? How come not a single blowing of the bugle happened, and today we have a million and half explanations/ discussions, after the horse has bolted.

And to think Day Zero, Day One companies at the IIM A, B, C , at my alma mater as well - have been Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Barclays etc. etc. in the past few years... Investment banks, international banks all.
Oh oh oh...
What does it tell us about the ability of our future managers (and our blue blooded finance professors at the creme de la creme IIMs) to dig below the surface? What about the toppers and winners who get placed on Day Zero and One?
Is it all about the crores that a 'freshie' could draw just out of the institute, that became that mirror - what's it called - in Harry Potter's Hogwarts.
The fat bonuses that then in turn paid for fancy first class holidays, diamonds, branded attire, seven star hotels. Chanel, Salvatore Ferragamo, Vertu, Corum, Mont Blanc, Parmigiani, Lladro, Bugatti, Porsche, Bvlgari, Mercedes. Also Rolex, Tagheuer. (sorry, these names are in my 'future' blog coming up :-) )
With no one bothered about how the other more-than-half - more like 95% plus of the planet lives.

Which is why - I tell you - one turns more and more to the strikingly handsome Paul Newman, Sunil Dutt. The vanished breed of REAL men. Who quietly gave their all to society (blogged last time.)

P.S. : Crossword the bookstore has at last located a copy of the book 'Ugliness of the Indian Male'. Nearly six months after I asked for it. Expect to receive it later today by courier.
I even emailed author Mukul Kesavan whose write up on Dharmendra in Outlook touched a deep chord - as to why Dharmendra who ought to have been seen as the best thing that ever happened to Bollywood, instead missed the bus... I pointed out to him the lack of visibility of said book. Strand Book Stall had asked in surprise 'Ugliness? What Ugliness? Indian Male? Are you sure?', and said knowledgeably 'Mukul Kesavan writes on Indian cricket, you know'.
Crossword fished out 'Ugliness of India' . Which anyone will agree is not even remotely as exciting a concept. While both might be true. Truly ugly I mean.

Mukul said he would ask his publisher to send me a copy - got the impression this was yet another male (he called his publisher, well - let me just say its droll wording could not be aimed at a woman imhfo - in my humble female opinion). Anyway, the book never arrived.
Was beginning to believe this was that ultimate 'male' conspiracy.

Where even the publisher would rather the truth not be out.. The insight of 'Indian men aren't born ugly: They achieve ugliness through practice. It is their habits and routines that make them ugly'.
Dunno about the author hiding the book as well - Very Woody Allen-like, and wonderfully circular reasoning ... Male author writes 'Ugliness of the Indian Male' and then proceeds to keep it as best kept secret...

Moti baat : It's reached me at last. And from the few pages I have glanced through, am already laughing. Guffawing actually. Going to have a simply marvelous time reading it.
Definitely, shall write about it here - I mean, what are blogs for anyway?
Mediocre reviewers relish reviewing books painstakingly put together :-)

In case anyone seeks a copy of this rare and vanished book, suggest you ask Mukul directly !

And may the Force be with you...

(A friend Prakash Iyer, when asked if he had read 'Ugliness of the Indian Male' said this to me and I quote verbatim : "I don't read fiction" !!)

Two Strikingly Handsome Men - All The Way Deep Inside

2008-09-28T11:49:00.019+05:30

Paul Newman......... Sunil Dutt

Two of the most amazing men on this planet have now moved on.

Yesterday, Paul Newman.
Three years ago, Sunil Dutt.

This is what Paul Newman has said : I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - tried to be part of his times. Tried to help people communicate with one another. Tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being.

Sunil Dutt died in 2005.
And this is what Sunil Dutt has said, and dedicated his entire life for : "Disease and suffering have no religion and no nationality."

Paul Newman : Forever changed the lives of all those he touched with his generosity, humour and humanness. Quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman's Own, to charity. An astounding US $ 120 million.

Owned The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp, a summer camp for children with cancer and other blood-related diesases (and their siblings) in Ashford, Connecticut. Also runs a fall "Discovery" program for inner city kids, also in Ashford.
Finished 2nd in the 1979 Le Mans 24 hr. race in a Porsche 935.
(1987) Won Best Actor Oscar for "The Color of Money" (1986).
(1990) Chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world.
(1995) Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#12).

Sunil Dutt - Whatever we speak of him will never match up to his towering presence. Whatever he did for India, Indians will never be able to be grateful enough. I was not even aware of one more aspect that I came to know from my friend - he blogs thus: The details of his will is another proof of his greatness. He wished nothing should be named after him, not even a postage stamp.

This planet in its relentless rush towards its future may not find the time to halt and say thank you. To these stalwarts.
Generations to come may not even be aware of the full extent of the persons they shall have missed.

Sunil Dutt : Jalte Hain Jiske Liye....

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

Another factor, not at all trivial :
Their respective loving monogamous relationship. Paul Newman with Joanne Woodward.
Sunil Dutt with Nargis.
Till the very end.
In an industry - and indeed increasingly in this world, where this is not just an exception. It is downright queer.

What is it that went into the making of these men? Why are they so rare?

Postscript :
From the Economist, Oct 4th 2008, that points out that Paul Newman was 'the most generous individual, relative to his income, in the 20th century history of the United States' (profits of over US $ 250 million went to charitable causes around the world including Hole in the Wall camps):
Paul Newman thought little of his blue eyes. He asked his fans whether this was all that they valued him for. His epitaph, he once said, should be "Here lies Paul Newman who died a failure because his eyes turned brown"

Celebrity bugged him in every aspect : the studio contract system from which he rapidly escaped, the Hollywood gossip mill, from which he fled into long-term marriage, motor-racing and Connecticut, the loveless pressure for Oscars and nominations. All this was 'rubbish'. He was unbothered when age began to furrow the brow and fill out the jowls. Unlike Robert Redford, he never made any attempt to preserve his prettiness. Hollywood could deal with him as he was...
Mr. Newman was not a man for plans; he preferred creative chaos.

And in the issue of Oct 13, 2008, Time, and written by Robert Redford :

Paul was very engaged at work. He was there. he liked a lot of rehearsal. But he was fun too. Whenever he made a mistake on set, he would enjoy it more than anybody.
What impressed me about Paul was that he was very realistic about who he was. He knew the world of hyperbole and distortion he was in. That meant he maintained a certain amount of privacy. This commitment to his profession was as serious, as was his commitment to social responsibility and especially to his family. He had a life that had real meaning...
Whatever success one of us would have, the other would knock it down. If you are in a position to be viewed iconically, you'd better have a mechanism to take yourself down to keep the balance. I think we did that for each other.

Mooh Se Nikli Hui Boli, aur Banduk se Nikli Hui...

2008-09-10T18:55:00.011+05:30

Jaya Bachchan's dad Tarun Bhaduri was the one who wrote those amazing stories in Bangla on dacoits. He could dip into his considerable experience of time spent in the Chambal Valley. That later became the picture in non-Bangla speaking Amjad Khan's mind when he wanted to portray a more authentic Gabbar Singh.

And when Guddi arrived in 1970, Bongs outside Bengal heaved a sigh of relief. Here at last was a Bong by name Jaya Bhaduri who actually spoke chaste Hindi, and all could puff their chests out in glory at last. No one dare accuse bhadrolok Easterners of dipping every Hindi word in roshogullas, softening every 'S' before spouting it to the hapless world. Aka Sharmila, Uttam, Biswajeet, Asit Sen.

Those were the forward looking times, when localizations were merging into a national identity. When the pride was in knowing other languages beyond your mother tongue.

When all still recalled successfully jettisoning the Brits out of the united subcontinent.

Now are the backward bending times. When we pseudo- nationals wear our local bhasha identity on our sleeves.

Which language do you think in? Hello, don't answer it yet... Be (local)politically correct. And how many of us have nothing better to do in life, but be indignant either with a view for or against which bhasha I think in issue. Even while we send our next gen - the Thackereys included - to ace English speaking English medium schools.

As children of a Bangla medium mom and an Oriya medium dad brought up in Mumbai (Bombay in the days we grew up), my brother and I have the hodge-podge distinction of being able to speak Bangla-Oriya-Marathi-Hindi-Angrezi.

Which means we often come up with the right word, but in the wrong language.

My bro, for instance, settled as he is now in New York, knows some of the most obscure Oriya idioms... moharaguru jainkiri kanthare padhila... And insists there is no equivalent in any other language for that exact emotion. So irrespective of place, he can find the befitting occasion for sure to spout his 'moharagurus' much to our amusement. Has he ever been in Orissa? Never, apart from a very few holiday visits. Yet, will proudly own up to being from Mumbai, Kolkata, Cuttack - and now, New York. And my brother's daughter Asya - now, her other parent is originally from St Petersburg. So Asya fluently speaks a unique combo of English, Russian, a few words of 'Indian' = some Hindi, some Bangla, some Oriya.

That's the world we live in today. And yet, there are the Raj Thackereys who seem to live on some other planet, shooting off his mouth from his hip in a narrow world of 'mee Mumbaikar'.

Time for some Martians to attack Earth. Perhaps that's the only hope we have of uniting once again, on this pointless issues mein divided planet.

Bade Ghar Ke Bete... Why I have No Issues with Abhinav's Rich Background

2008-08-17T16:34:00.009+05:30

All my friends, quite a few in the media - are talking about Abhinav winning the Gold Medal in a shooting event at the Beijing Olympics - simply because he had a dad who could afford to give him the best of the best training. A sort of scorn for the State, yet tinged with pride.

Look at these two pictures - see the similarity?
Both are Bade Ghar ke Bete... Scions of wealthy parents.

All I say is this :
Better for the nextgen of the 'haves' to be shooting in the Olympics, than at the hapless Jessica Lalls, here in India.

We have hundreds - perhaps thousands of very well-to-do indulgent Indian parents out there. Who will do anything for their children.

Well - may they all learn a thing or two, from the Bindras - Apjit and Babli rather than from the Sharmas - Vinod and whatever, who were ready to cover the tracks of son Manu Sharma - pictured here at right, in his shortlived 'acquittal' in 2006. For the murder of Jessical Lall, in 1999, with so many witnesses who were then arm-twisted. Justice has since prevailed, and he is serving Life Imprisonment.

Unfortunately, the truth is this: Each of us can list at least six families - those in the media - the celebrities and politicians, or even in own circle friends or society, where there is a higher probability of parental 'cover-up' tactics rather than the patient year-in-year-out training, as seen with Abhinav. So, for sure, he has an Olympic size back up system at home.

Better a training ground at home, international coach, than a Mercedes or a BMW. And dad's unlimited political clout.

What Happened to the Child?

2008-08-14T19:45:00.011+05:30

Sulochana Bai cannot read or write. Her conversations are peppered with words like 'danger', ' 'emergency', and that favorite word used by so many folks : 'Chapter', to be used this way: 'yeh aadmi ek chapter hai'. Chapter = What a Character.
She was with me, next to me at a hospital in front of the MRI department, and wanted to know what MRI was. Was it X-Ra (that's the way she pronounced it - X-Ra).

As I struggled to come up with an explanation, she came to my rescue herself:
'CT- Can type ka kuch hai kya?'
Yeah!
'Haan na, CT-Scan ke tarah hi kuch hai.'

Bai may be illiterate, but she is the current head - adhyakhsh - of the mahila mandal in her residential area. Time spent with her is always so illuminating. About life in the basti, social tensions, how resolved, how not. And I always wonder why I don't talk more often about these essentials, rather than day to day stuff like 'kapda-dhona, sukhana, bartan saaf karna, kuda-kachra'.

She asked me if I remembered what she had told me a couple of years ago - of the couple that had died by pouring 'rakel' kerosene on themselves, in her neighborhood? Of course I recalled the incident. The man was a perennial drunkard, and the wife struggled to make ends meet, to send her seven year old child - who was slightly handicapped physically - to school.

One day after the usual late night fight over her money, she had - in a fit of pique - poured kerosene on the man, and dared him over god knows what. He was part -drunk, went and picked up a match, lit it. Before she knew what was happening, he went and caught her in a tight bind, saying ' *#@*, come, you die with me'.

The little boy had come running to Bai's house, the neighbors went running back. The man had over 80% burns, she had less - 60%. Was conscious, narrated what had happened. Over the next few days, she succumbed first. He went a day or two later.

Her sister arrived from somewhere in the boondocks of Northern Maharashtra.
When the neighborhood said - and this is always such a heartening aspect of life in a basti - they would pool in and continue to send the boy to school, the aunt said, No need, I'll take him back with me, to myhome. And send him to a good 'English' school there. I owe this to my sister.

Bai became suspicious when she happened to see this woman trying on various saris of the dead sister, when she thought no one was looking, inside the small home.
But the police said they wouldn't stop her from taking the child. After all she was the legitimate relative. The basti women on their own, quietly removed the dead woman's bank book, and kept it in their own safe keeping. With some Rs. 30,000/- in it. That they could not touch, of course, but the idea being that it could go to the child some day.

The dead man, it seems, had just sold the hutment. For some Rs. 25,000/- advance and this issue and the money already in the home was the root cause. Of all that had then taken place. Aunty dearest got this money, sold the TV, almirah and whatever else she could get hold of, and went away.

This was two years ago.

Last week, she arrived, asking for the bank book. Saying how the boy was now in fourth standard doing so well. After all, he had always been a quiet, shy and such a good student at his studies as all the neighbors were aware of. She arrived with this man, who went off to catch a drink. Bai and the other women of the mahila-mandal smelt a rat, and continued drilling her, talking to her, trying to figure out how the boy was doing.

A couple of hours later, the man comes back, completely drunk, and tells them 'Don't you believe a word of all that she is saying. She threw him out two years ago. She just wants the bank money now'.

This 'aunty' later, I am told, escaped.

After a sound thrashing from the basti women. Apparently, in a moment of distraction, while they debated what to do, how to get the police to take some action.... Basti life and the police after all share a strange, uneasy equation - they had wanted to be sure of what to do.

No one has any idea where the little boy is today.
Is he somewhere begging. Did some kind soul take him under his / her wing (our minds would want such an outcome, and these are the 'happy endings' we wish are happening). Is he alive at all. Does he have anyone to call his own.
And what about his state of mind? What happens to a shy, quiet, endearing seven year old? Who was a favorite of the neighborhood. And yet, how could a seven year old ever find his way back to a certain loving basti of this large metropolitan city from some place 250 kilometres away?

And having heard this incident, what can we do? Do I leave it as it is? Another story to be filed away in my mind? And how do believers explain this 'logic' of God?

And how come some 'shy, unassuming' kids become Abhinav Bindra, chased by all the newspapers. Others - I don't even know this child's name - fall between the cracks of our attention?

At Long Last, A Great Satisfying Read!

2008-08-04T16:31:00.021+05:30

There are some excellent reviews out there. Of the Case of Exploding Mangoes.
New York Times
Jai Arjun

And some overly critical ones as well. The Guardian for example.

What can I add? Yet it is one of those books that affects deeply and goes beyond trite words such as unputdownable, brilliant and so on.
And I don't think it is merely because we in the subcontinent are aware of this moment of our regional history - Of Zia's assassination in 1988.

Each of us will have our own favorite parts in this book as we read it ...
One to me, is this. ... Almost at the tail end of the book, 'Ali' the protagonist (who is in every alternate chapter, author writing in first person) grabs the book his friend Obaid is reading - "Chronicles of a Death Foretold", and reads the first sentence.
"So does Nasr really die?"
"I think so"
"It says so right here in the first sentence. Why keep reading it when you already know that the hero is going to die."
"To see how he dies. What were his last words. That kind of thing"
"You are a pervert, comrade." I throw the book back at him.

And Mohammed Hanif has most successfully thrown history back at us - After all, we all know Zia (a hero in his own eyes at least) is dead, and the book in the very first chapter describes his last walk up to 'Pak One'. The one that explodes four minutes after take-off.
Like a Moebius strip we come back at the end of the book to the beginning, and it is magnetic enough to make me want to continue reading all over again.
So I would wager that this viciously satirical book will have hundreds of thousands readers like me, across the subcontinent, across the US and the rest of the world, devouring every bit. Reading the book at a multiple of levels.
To the West, this book reminds of Yossarian and Catch 22. To us Indians, it is seminal as well . Somewhat like what English August was to the IAS, this one is to the Pakistan Air Force - and I expect all Armed Forces anywhere in the world. I was also reminded of Manil Suri's Death of Vishnu somewhere - I am not quite sure why.
Here then is a master writer. His command over language, situations, satire is awesome. Even the words related to religion. Words that the rest of the world is usually mortally scared of, words used gingerly in general in the fear of hurting sentiments of some moral guardians somewhere. Ditto for his searing indictment of archaic laws in a radically Islamized nation.

And New York Times has indicated the book's zany timeliness - the book is about a time when the Soviet forces were about to pullout of Afghanistan, now in real-time of the book release, it is NATO's pullout time from Afghanistan; back then it was the mystery of Zia's death along with so many of his key Generals, now it is Benazir who has recently been assassinated. (NYT also makes a very pertinent observation in the beginning about the fact that it is 'Men' who love to write about things like assassinations!)

I for one am most fascinated by the Reality Show nature of the current world we live in. Our entire media. TV shows - Fear Factor, the choice of our music icons, Big Brother and what not. That tread a thin line between fact and fiction, where it is all a simulated reality. So when a popular lead music icon dies - in real life last week, it is almost as if the reality show TRPs just shot up, so it was worthwhile to someone somewhere. Kind of eerie.

This author - coincidentally or not, he works in the world of 24 X 7 TV: BBC - follows such a genre as well - with 'a foot in both boats' as we would say - of real history as well as masterfully manufactured fiction. And gets away with it. I have often wondered how people who are alive in real life take it when they seem to wander into the realms of fiction via the imagination of authors.
Do they shrug it off as non-facts, or do they get all het up? In this book, apart from the usual General Beg, CIA etc. , Mrs. Zia ul Haq comes off - if not exactly smelling of roses, at least a person one can wonderfully empathize with. Similarly Nancy Raphel, wife of the then US Ambassador to Pakistan (the ambassador went down in Pak One along with Zia) surely she exists somewhere out there. Is she then to be treated as 'real' or not, as part of this world we live in? Or should she be treated as a faded shadow, no longer relevant thus to be 'fictionalized'. Perhaps she is a fictional character through and through. And there is no Nancy Raphel?

At some point, 'Ali' calls Lata and Asha the 'old, fat, ugly Indian sisters who both sing like they were teenage sex kittens' . So should Lata and Asha ignore it. After all wherever they are spoken of in the book, it is as if in Ali Shigri's thoughts and his world , as if 'through the mouth of a fictional character'.
Or is it about the author's own aversions?

American reviewers of course are hugely amused that OBL of Laden & Co is in the book as well, when he comes to the party thrown by the ambassador and where all Americans come dressed as the mujahideen.

And I begin to feel : do we in our own lives nowadays live like that? Not quite sure where fact ends and fiction begins. And perhaps it just doesn't matter in this post-modern world we inhabit.

Aka 'Cigarette smoking is injurious to health', we all know the line 'All characters in this book bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead'.
Random House the publishers have done away with this statutory announcement in this book.
Making you wonder why all the other books all these days required it anyway!

Ultimately it is Le Carre's description of the book - 'Deliciously Anarchic' - that says it all.
My money is on this book for the Booker.
If this book misses this year's Man Booker, all it means,
critics' critiques have begun to override the public imagination and the mangoes were sour.

ABHI NA JAO CHHODKAR...

2008-07-28T15:07:00.018+05:30

Recently this song Abhi Na Jao Chhodkar Ke Dil Abhi Bhara Nahin has been spoken of by Shankar Mahadevan and even by Farhan Akhtar as their 'all time favorite'. In the build up to their new film Rock On.

Undoubtedly, Hum Dono had some of the most amazing songs of all time.
I can listen to them again and again for hours.
A tribute to Sahir Ludhianvi as to Jaidev.
Kabhi Khud Pe, Kabhi Haalat Pe Rona Aaya...
Allah Tero Naam, Ishwar Tero Naam... each a jewel.
And especially the song Abhi Na Jao in Hum Dono could be part of the story of so many young couples falling in love - it is that toe-curlingly wonderful in its everyday point of view.

The only thing is this.
There was another HUGELY talented music director and Thumri singer. By the name of Balakrishna Das. A student of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan saheb. Who had also assisted the legendary composer R.C. Boral for a while in the '40s/ '50s.
... and there is this absolutely adorable Oriya song Nayana Sunayana Re that is his composition. His HMV record of this song, sung in his own voice was out in the late 50s. Long, really long before Abhi Na Jao happened in 1961, this love song was on many Oriya lips. And the tune?
You guessed it....

Does that reduce Jaidev's talent? I don't think so. His national awards - luckily received for other movies, not Hum Dono are (hopefully ! :-) ) well-deserved.

Perhaps all it does is this : it enhances the stature of Balakrishna Das... Here was a music director who had been approached by Bimal Roy to compose for his movies, but this non-materialistic gentleman did not find Bombay his 'cup of tea'.
Even when Abhi Na Jao reached stratospheric heights, and he was asked to take Jaidev to task, Balakrishna Das shrugged it off. 'It's OK. Let him be' he said. (Btw, two of Balakrishna Das's other tunes would be familiar to Bollywood aficionados ... am waiting to get the irrevocable details from Orissa - shall upload as soon as I get it)

These then, are the people who make India what it is.
Tolerant, all-encompassing, loving.
Sometimes walked and trampled over.

Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin
Abhi abhi to ai ho abhi abhi to
Abhi abhi to ai ho bahar banke chhai ho
Hawa zara mahak to le nazar zara bahak to le
Ye sham dhal to le zara
Ye sham dhal to le zara ye dil sambhal to le zara
Main thodi der jee to lun nashe ke ghunt pee to lun
nashe ke ghunt pee to lun
Abhi to kuchh kaha nahin abhi to kuchh suna nahin
Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin

Sitare jhilmila uthe
sitare jhilmila uthe charag jagamaga uthe
Bas ab na mujhko tokana
Bas ab na mujhko tokana na badhake rah rokana
Agar main ruk gayi abhi to ja na paungi kabhi
Yahi kahoge tum sada ke dil abhi nahin bhara
Jo khatm ho kisi jagah ye aisa silasila nahin
Abhi nahin abhi nahin nahin nahin nahin nahin
Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin

Adhuri aas
Adhuri aas chhodke adhuri pyaas chhodake
Jo roz yunhi jaogi to kis tarah nibhaogi
Ke zindagi ki raah men jawaan dilon ki chah men
Kayii muqam aenge jo ham ko azamaenge
Bura na mano baat ka ye pyaar hai gila nahin
Haan yahi kahoge tum sada ke dil abhi bhara nahin
Haan dil bhara nahin nahin nahin nahin nahin

So We Understand Each Other...

2008-07-21T19:06:00.018+05:30

Just completed The Motorcycle Diaries. First the book and then, the DVD movie.

Although I had purchased my copy of this all-students-must-own book two years ago, got around to reading it now. Post vipassana. Post - well, so many other things as well...

Am awed anew. At Che Guevara the iconoclast.

This twentieth century icon begins his memoirs on his youth thus :

This is not a story of incredible heroism, or merely the narrative of a cynic. It is the glimpse of two lives that ran parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.

And with these words on the first page of your diary, Che, I have felt a deep bond of kinship, that has strengthened as I have gone through all the pages. The quiet strength, the underlying sense of humour, the eye-opening moments, the loneliness of adventure even when shared with marvellous friend Alberto.

And I have felt so proud of you!

... to know that I share my date of birth with you.

... To recognize how the trials & tribulations of human lives always touched you in life, especially on this most seminal of trips when you were 23-24 , a very 'Coming of Age' age.

... To be totally moved at your vision of a single race not divided into unstable and illusory nations and narrow-minded provincialism. You mention America and mean 'Mexico to the Magellan Straits.'
I think of the entire planet. And when you describe certain lives, it is like seeing my fieldwork in Solapur come alive... Some give the impression they go on living only because it is a habit they cannot shake. I am reminded of the beedi workers met in my fieldwork again, when you say: On top of the very low wages paid in the south, unemployment is high and the authorities afford workers very little protection.
How things have stayed unchanged, Che, 40 years since you were murdered, even as the world has moved on, in man's indefatigable thirst to take control and exercise total authority.

In my need to establish more spiritual and emotional points of contact, I find I can link a few more. Some might say tenuous, but in this journal of your self-discovery, mere mortals like me shall seek other parallels with legendary souls who went on to find themselves :

... To find out you were born in Rosario, a town that I have visited up the Mar del Plata on a most incredibly memorable ship voyage (the only time I have been on a ship that actually went up a river - she traveled across the Atlantic from Antwerp, and then slowly and majestically moved up this river with breathtaking banks visible both port and starboard, all the way to Rosario) , a city I recall in vivid detail. Both its comic aspects ( my first evening ever at a sailor's 'pub' and all because I, an officer's wife, had asked good friend Piggy, the Captain of the M. V. Mannan (Piyush Srivastava actually) about where all the sailors disappeared to as soon as we berthed at any port - and he insisted I go along to 'see' for myself, much to the shock and horror of the officers but more so, those 'girls' in the pub :-)) .
Also the underbelly of the city, with the sight of its middle class begging and selling off everything owned - Argentina those days of the mid '90s was in severe recession.

To know you visited Necochea for a day on your motorcycle - a town I visited for exactly a day too, and one I recall as fascinating - pride of place in the town square held by the statue of - a dog. And where in its port, I had my first close and hilarious 'brush' with a moustached walrus. To know you played soccer and went to medical school in Buenos Aires, that city where time stands still. Where I felt I was transported into another era and catapulted as if into the insides of a beautiful movie.

You write : 'The person who wrote these notes passed away the moment his feet touched (back in Argentinian soil). The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I'm not the person I once was. All this wandering around - has changed me more than I thought.'

The movie rephrases these original words and ends thus:

I am not me anymore. At least I'm not the same me I was.
Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty?
Were our conclusions too rigid?
Maybe.

Change and Che.
Isn't that true - even if not in a world-changing way - of all our diaries and journals? Of all of us? The global and universal theme of a search for one's identity.

And Che leaves us at the end of his introduction chapter 'So We Understand Each Other' thus :

It will be hard for you to find an alternative to the truth I am about to tell. But I will leave you now, with myself, the person I used to be.

Che, salut !! To the young you and to the you you became. A legend and inspiration to all those who denounce suffering. Hatred. Inequality.

From both me that was.
And the me I have become.

NO RESIDUES

2008-07-03T19:29:00.004+05:30

Swami Chidananda says:

For most people, activities of life not only cause physical tiredness but also mental exhaustion. When we are wise, the latter reduces if not disappear.

A hundred people pass in front of a mirror and images of all of them are formed on its surface. However, they go their way and the mirror remains unaffected. Even the heaviest of those visitors does not leave behind a ‘residue’ through his or her image that was formed upon the mirror.

Can our mind also likewise be totally silent after a hectic day filled with interactions? Can it be silent in the sense of absence of regret, guilt, pride or other residues? Can it be quiet but vibrant, cheerful and available?

Shri Krishna calls this akarma in karma (Geeta 4.18). Non-action in action is when the action does not leave behind any noise in our mind. Ordinarily we go on remembering especially the moments of friction, compromise or contradiction. I should not have said that, or I should not have done that, etc keep coming up in our thoughts. Upon a close examination of the matter, we realize that all this is the result of self-importance. The ego in us is much upset if something goes wrong at our hands. I should be perfect and all should admire me, etc are the underlying assertions.

We cannot be quiet by deciding to be so. At the most it will amount to suppression, and the emotions suppressed will explode at a later time. Many people in the world take shelter under some ideal and, in its inspiration, are successful in making the selfish worries and agitations subside. Religious or secular models give us often a lift and we are able to put aside our sorrows of loss or defeat. The limitation here is that the ideals also tend to change and, as we evolve, we cannot receive the same inspiration from them as we did before. Further, many realities of life collide with the ideals we adore and we are torn between the ideal and the actual. Some of us even meet with a total disillusionment with regard to what we held before as the supreme truth or the most right way of living.

The healthiest way to arrive at inner peace is by giving up egoistic ways right away. We need not cling to some conceptual support (like an ideal) to do this. We need to directly see how our thoughts have given undue importance to I, me and my. What I said, how somebody ignored me and how my position was undermined – these are the crux of the matter. Let us not justify it all saying it is most natural. If we do so, then endless suffering also would be natural. Egoistic ways are not so much natural as they are wide-spread and common.

Our mind is in a true learning mode when we keep the ego under control. The ego is itself a bundle of residues and it further causes residues to be formed. Right in the present moment, we must perceive situations with full attention. As we do so, we gain understanding and move on. There is no burden of hurt or pride. Then, as Shri Krishna put it, though there was action (which normally strains us), it is as though there was no action (for the mind is free of all strain).

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

www.fowai.org

As I go for Vipassana at Igatpuri, these are the vibrant thoughts, that steer me! Really looking forward to the next 10 days...

Our 'Copying' Fetish in Education

2008-06-18T07:59:00.009+05:30

A building coming up in Powai has signs put up all around it : IBS Mumbai. India Business School Mumbai.

This morning, front page ads announce the CFA Program leading to a CFA charter.

The ponytailed hero of the Indian MBA wannabes, Arindam something-or-the-other takes full page ads in the national dailies with - among all else, for sure - his own photo. (I know a professor at IIM A who cringes each time - he is a namesake!)

Yet another gentleman 'Chate' ensures he hogs the media ad space every time there is talk of extra classes or tuition classes.

IBS is written exactly as the logo of LBS, the London Business School. Down to the very same blue square background. With a red underline.

The CFA India thing uses words of the original CFA program of the US, but is actually a Tripura based body, who even took the poor firangis to court (and won!). Calling what they give as a degree a 'CFA charter' and what not. A different matter, if I-Banks such as Accenture, Lehman Brothers, E & Y give a far different weightage to who they see as the actual CFA charter holder - a crazily tough place to get into and then get through its exams, where even chartered accountants and IIT engineers are known to fail - as versus these tom-tomming media and space hoggers. God knows if the Tripura one is at all entertained by the international finance institutions. It would be interesting to see how these two CFAs measure up against each other, in - say - a third exam.

Even suggesting this - same for IBS versus LBS - is perhaps giving them too much 'bhav'. And 'bhav' is something the Arindams and the Chates obviously give bhav to.

While India is definitely going places, it is a sad state of affairs that she is doing so willy-nilly.
An Anything Goes attitude that would make Paul Feyerabend cringe.

Soda - A Caustic Story....

2008-05-24T07:45:00.008+05:30

Fourteen year old Pooja candidly indicated the shape of things to hear at Solapur.

She said : Pepsi and Coke and drinks like that have soda. And soda is what mom uses to clean the sandhaas.

Sandhaas or sandaas is the rather popular colloquial word used across all of India - well, most of it - for a dirty Indian toilet.
I mean Indian etiquette demands that sandhaas is one of the first words we jettison as we become 'cultured' - it is that 'dirty' a word.

A couple of days later, in another part of Solapur, as part of a different interview - for my PhD stuff - nothing corporate about these interviews - ten year old Naveen more or less repeated the same thing when he remarked rather casually - he was encouraging me to drink the cool nimbu pani his mom was offering me ( i really needed no second bidding for it, what with temperatures of 45 d. And no electric fans either since all non-metros face a scorching load shedding schedule... the size of the town in India is in reverse proportion to the number of hours of 'black-outs', and so what if the current Minister of 'Power' at the center Sushil Kumar Shinde is from Solapur, and of course by now I think I'm getting away from my topic or perhaps not...)

Aunty, I never drink Coca Cola, he said dismissively. That's the stuff used in the sandaas...

Oh Oh!

Apparently Ramdev Baba in his very successful recent visit to the town had addressed a session on the sprawling open grounds of his shibir, one day - with the students of various Solapur schools. His message had been simple - and as we have seen - starkly evocative. The need to stay in good health not just by vyayaam or exercise but via the ingestion of the right stuff.

Completely irrefutable logic as far as all the children were concerned.
Yes, soda is indeed the word written on the 'do-not-touch' powders used for the recalcitrantly dirty toilets.

At least we Indians do not use 'soda' as a generic word for colas as in the West.
Can you imagine the plight of Pepsi and Coke if that were so :-) :-)

You Know You Are Back Home When...

2008-05-19T05:56:00.003+05:30

* You come back to India and see magazines with a nation wide reach continuing to have Amitabh Bachchan on its cover as STAR of stars. 'Oh No', goes the mind, but then within the covers, one discovers a treasure trove of truly excellent articles such as Mukul Kesavan's take on why Dharmendra (an all-time favorite!) never got the true recognition he deserved, or any award. Paromita Vohra's comments on Bollywood stardom : 'a genetically modified, steroid-sculpted giant tomato'. Even Bhaichand Patel's indignant reaction on having his dreams shattered by discovering that the feet and knees he had fantasized over, as Meena Kumari 'bathed' in Footpath, belonged to someone else.

* You come to know (many days after the event) that bomb blasts have occurred in yet another city - this time Jaipur, creating a trail of media indignance nationally. But nary a ripple internationally in a terror-weary world.

* In the coalition politics of the home - between bai (the maid), Bharati (the cook), mali (the gardener), and Ganesh, the general handyman, the homefront has borne the brunt of its stresses and strains... a microcosm of the nation :-)

* When the headline that greets you as you deplane - is of a nose-dived fellow Air India aeroplane.

* When everyone you recount an incident to - of a question asked to me at the conference I am back from - Can you in India hold focus groups with a few 'untouchables' in it - is morally indignant at the West's tunnel vision.

* And then, the next day's lead story on the front pages is of celebrating a brother-sister 'other backward caste' duo who have broken through the glass ceiling of the uber-elitist IAS.

My next step:

To locate Mukul Kesavan's book 'The Ugliness of the Indian Male, and Other Propositions'. Sounds very interesting indeed....

Randy Pausch, Steve Jobs - What Do They Have in Common?

2008-05-03T22:19:00.005+05:30

You don't speak ill of the dead.
You don't speak ill, even more so, of the near-dead.

So far, my gold standard of a lecture at a university - any commemoration lecture that is - is Steve Jobs' convocation address at Stanford in June 2005. Recently I was one of those who added up to the curious 10 million who've hit youtube to see Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

And you know what, my Steve Jobs gold standard has just become platinum.

RP's talk was painstakingly gung-ho. For some reason it had the same effect on me as when a stranger had once begun to cry opposite me in the local train. You know, you are taken aback, then you want to reach out, mumble some pacificatory stuff, put your arm around the person with what you hope will be taken as compassion rather than pity, and when the stranger disembarks, there is a curious sense of being touched yet untouched - I would even say achievement rather than sadness - like the feeling just after doing a good deed or participating in charity.

What else can you feel anyway?

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (note the capital L's - it's already an epigraph) was so much 'Look at me, I am OK, Don't pity me' - esp the push up part, remember? that contrarily, 'pity' starts becoming the overriding theme of the viewing. And also it was somehow nerve wracking in the speech's intensity of dotting every unfinished 'i' of life, and crossing every 't' junction he is now never likely to reach.

In Steve Jobs speech, otoh, the quiet 'I've seen death face to face' moment (incidentally both touch on pancreatic cancer), is not reduced in any way just because he managed to get out of it providentially... In his talk, there is a sense of expansion, of breathing deeply and savoring every transient moment of life - that gets infectiously communicated.
So much so that you expand, reach out. Want to send the talk to all your loved ones. And this is surely the story of 9999 of us in every 10000 perhaps, who have no idea how long or short is going to be our Future, with a capital F. We, who have no idea when and how we are going to die. There is one day in every year that posterity will know as my Death Day, but we are blissfully unaware of it now. What comes across in Steve Jobs' Stanford speech, with its minimal number of words, is the sense of quiet and monumental creativity that will always find an outlet whatever the circumstances doled out by fate - of a person whose genius is surely one in a billion.

And so. In the years to come, give me the June 2005 lecture of Steve Jobs anytime -and I will draw sustenance from it. Randy Pausch's?
Well... All I can say is, we all have to die one day, don't we? So many of the 10 million who hit youtube are perhaps already dead, for that matter. Who were vicariously trying to figure out this 'death' thing from afar.

Recall the first week after Princess Di died? In 1997? It was like the world came to a standstill, every minute, every hour in that first week was encased with Diana, enshrined on every channel. But after the stirring funeral, there was a sense of closure, of in fact feeling a bit abashed at having spent so many hours glued to the TV, and of everyone in the world wanting to get back to the daily routine.

I have this peculiar habit - and I know it is peculiar - of clearing up my tables, finishing my backlog of work, and sort of ensuring that my paperwork is in order, when it is time to go abroad (not as often as some, but often enough - say once a year). Yeah, yeah, I know more accidents take place on the streets in your local town blah blah blah. But bus, waisi hi hoon.

So right now, have made lists of all payments made, future payments to be made, cheques, bills to be cleared, pending dues... I mean the domestic and home related stuff. Not work of course. That has a semblance of order courtesy income tax and the chartered accountant.

All my keys are now neatly labeled. I mean the tangible ones. Kaun jaane cyber space passwords ka kya hoga... where no duplicates can be made either... Preparation, preparation, preparation.

In one respect, am way behind Chhotokaka. When Baba, my father in law passed away so suddenly back in 1991, we were all caught unawares. Shocked. Everyone, and especially the soft hearted Chhotokaka, in disarray. The religious sanskars came to the rescue keeping the mind occupied - the rituals, the preparation for the shraddha. Attending to the hundreds of well-wishers who came over in Calcutta. And in the midst of it all what did Chhotokaka - Baba's youngest brother - do?

Having witnessed the chaos in locating a good photo of the departed soul (ultimately a group photo was enlarged, spliced and a part again blown up - this was way before the ease of the digital times).
He suggested to all the siblings and his gen to go to the nearest photo studio and take the right photograph. With proper lighting etc. To be garlanded in the future.
'At least when our time comes, we'll rest in peace knowing what everyone is sadly staring at', he said.

Msg for Gaurpriya

2008-04-27T10:59:00.002+05:30

During my three time sent-for-repairs cell phone, have lost your tel number.

Please do call :-)

Black or White... Sons and Moms.....

2008-04-18T14:04:00.009+05:30

The magazine Time has decided to tell us about Obama’s mother who was this (white) PhD in anthropology. After all these days of building up the story of the first ‘black’ candidate who’s reached so far, the media finally wants us to think of him as legit as if we can now talk of his ‘acceptable’ side or something? Crazy.

Anyway, no point in agonizing over this duniya’s sense of do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs. Have had a nice lazy morning reading the meandering blogs of Abhinav Jain. He loves to talk of his loving 52 year old mom ( the shape of things to come in a few years when my daughter starts to announce the parental age with impunity. I mean the age by itself is not the problem, I wouldn't mind some more grey as I wouldn't mind waist length hair. In the hope that it makes one look suitably distinguished - and sexy. It is the way the nextgen carelessly shunts the parent over to a sort of passion-less territory :-)). And here’s the interesting bit – he has a persistent gang of ‘commentors’ who are all almost equally entertaining. Like there’s this continuous hyperventilation over Abhinav’s punctuation marks and why he always leaves a gap before his commas and full stops. Then there's this gang who wants to score points by being the first (or the 50th or the 100th) to post a comment. Quite a fan following of girls – has this young and single 26 year old namesake (Munnu). Each of his string of blog comments always seem to end with some anonymous haplog mail that goes blah blahHindi.haplogdotcom Malayalam.haplogdotcom kannada.haplogdotcom music.haplogdotcom radio.haplogdotcom tv.haplogdotcom (Tamil.Haplogdotcom)

I am sure there was yet another mom and son combo I had been meaning to write about – before I got called away on dire emergencies at home. By bai (‘didi, istri wala keh raha hai ye kapde aapne diya pur maine ye pehle kabhi nahi dekha’), by Ganesh (‘didi, kachra wala terrace ka kachra nahi lega, kahan phenku?’).

Was it about my hubby and his mom? My younger bro and his mom (mine too?). Nah I I don't think so…

May be this is the onslaught of early Alzheimer’s. Am not sure how deeply I should agonize over the memory loss. Worse is what if the retrieved memory is quite a let down. Perhaps it is better to stay in this stage of ‘let me see if I can recall’…

Like nostalgia. And mushy sentimentality. Wonder if this is a necessary side-effect of blogging. Am sure everyone keeps getting called away. The other thing I wonder about is if everyone has this feeling of being vaguely guilty. At taking time out to blog. As if there are more important things to do and I am shirking from the things that make the planet go round....

(Three hours later)...

Yaad aaya. Two more combos actually. Richard Branson & his mom, and SRK and his mom - both pairs as gleaned from resp autobio and bio. Anupama Chopra displays her usual assured sense of the heartbeat of Bollywood. As usual her books are total paisa-vasool and sometimes she uses phrases that resonate long after the book is over and done with. Here I love her take on Hindi movies esp of Yash Raj films that she says are never about 'the inexplicably untidy debris of relationships'. SRK's mom completely endorsed all that the son planned to do and was not around to see the heights he reached.

Richard Branson's autobio is rivetting. Am on page 136 now. The SRK book gives a great feel for the superstar's life, especially its unreality. It even has a 'cast of characters' in the beginning - that theatrical it is... The 'cast of characters' has real people as well as Gabbar Singh listed.
Otoh, RB's is so real so down to earth that you feel you can be one of his friends too, invite him over for dinner to your home for potluck perhaps and he'll come.

And his mom. The sort of things done thru childhood to instill values - make him bicycle 50 miles to make him independent, continually find things ('work') for the kids to do, ensure that the company at dinner was as interesting (often more interesting) than the food, always valued the children's opinion....

My indefatigable mom is no less come to think of it. (Don't want to tell her I'm writing this. She may get a heart attack or something what with our constant 'loggerheads' way of reaching out to one another!) She made me and my bro human and whatever we have achieved today is as much her level of motivation. Right now, she is resident at the village of Kamarpukur, all the time going after families of beggars ensuring they send their children to come to school. Since the state schools give lunch on the other days, she feeds them breakfast everyday plus two hours of morning tuitions, and on Sunday, lunch. Busy, busy, busy with her Spoken English classes as well as Computer classes (we sent our old desktops over to her) for the youth of the village. Her logic to go off into the boondocks was that we grew up and did not need her services any longer. Needless to say, they all adore her. The streets resonate with 'amma' , 'amma' wherever you go with her. She loves this name far more than her own - Nivedita.

As Gerald Durrell has said of his mom in 'My Family and Other Animals', our mom is a credit to how well we have brought her up :-)

And now that I am reading RB , let me surf the net for what I wanted to check out - the sound of Tubular Bells.

The Reader-Author Jugalbandi

2008-04-02T06:20:00.017+05:30

Some 5000 read my Jab We Met review. In 2 days? Bollywood topics sure attract the readers, no?

MSN allows the reader to rate it, some 49 of these readers have taken the pains to mark a very middling 3 out of 5 in their rating. It only means this: Next time, shall keep in mind that the saamnewala is - right this moment - scoring me a low grade :-) when I hold forth at gatherings and parties.

Did the scores get averaged out? If I give myself a low rating of 1 out of 5 now... wonder how that'll get reflected in the overall scheme of things...

Earlier today, I seemed to come across the Dalai Lama everywhere. (In every paper and magazine I mean, aam aadmi jo hum thehre). Here is one revered individual who we get to meet, mediated by the skew and tilt of the newspaper and the lens of each writer. Newsweek, just arrived at our doorstep, for instance, starts off the entire interview by asking Dalai Lama straight out something like ‘What happens when you die?’

One can even hear the casual Amriki twang in the tone of this question & little matter if there is an Indian journalist Sudip Mazumder who’s also supposed to be partially taking this interview. He speaks Newsweekean. Ultimately, it is what 6 billion plus non- Amrikis see as the inward gazing ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude. The overall article is full of innuendos and quotes on the Dalai Lama... The way he is spoken of, is full of 'He said he was driven to tears' (instead of - 'he was driven to tears') or look at this line : 'Meanwhile the Dalai Lama is losing his ability to rein in his militant followers' . Or this one: The Dalai Lama's 'great respect' (quotation marks of Newsweek as if let's begin to doubt if this is real) for Hu Jintao etc. Newsweek just a week or so back had this article on how 'we' are oh-so-unbiased, but in the overall sum and substance, is the media's new smart and sneaky way, to go out and be as biased as you wish.

The magazine ‘Time’ was lying in the HSBC waiting area. Here, the magazine does the ‘We know Dalai Lama the best – after all, it is Asian Pico Iyer who writes on His Holiness for us, over the years, 1987, 1997, and now in 2008’. (Thus kal- ka - chhokra Pico Iyer shares his name and almost equal space on the cover, with the revered DL). More of a sense of deep respect evident through the article, beginning with how the young Pico kept a picture of the Lama on his desk all through his childhood, and yet, Time is another magazine out of the US. Bending backwards the other end.

And Vinod Mehta of Outlook does the ultimate Indian reverse snobbery thing – the ‘I-don’t believe-in-these-spiritual-types-though-I-am-an-Indian’ . But one who reveals his totally dehati and desi roots when he owns up to touching the Dalai Lama’s feet, before he leaves his presence!

Am reminded of Foucault’s ‘What Is An Author’. The author as the origin of something original is deconstructed by Foucault. Right now, how we plebeians view the exalted soul, depends on what we read in the media and who writes about the Dalai Lama.

The only point of view is that each medium presents a fragmented point of view. The truth is, there are no universal Truths, even when His Holiness is involved. Perhaps even more so when Buddhism is the central theme. Each author is nothing but one more manifestation of the current social dynamic. Each one somewhere deep down dwells in and revels in his (his magazine’s) own ‘Will To Power’… to quietly swell his chest in his role of mediator in moulding and creating a reader perspective. (Aside: I use the pronoun 'he' purposefully in these politically correct gender times we live in :-) )

The identity of the Dalai Lama then shifts from the reader perspective – from author to author. All we get to see - in today’s media-exploded, internet enabled world, is that the author-function is murkier than ever before.

And if we hapless readers give a low ‘grade’ to the media spewed output, like I'm doing at this moment, all we are doing is deluding ourselves on having had a say.

Jab We Met... And DDLJ

2008-03-30T12:57:00.013+05:30

Is there any rule that states reviews of movies need to be written as soon as the movie is out? Thing is, I've just seen Jab We Met, five or six months after it got released (courtesy Moser Baer – still cannot believe DVDs cost Rs. 49/- !). Adored the movie like all met so far.

And compared it to DDLJ – again as any Bollywood moviegoer ought to have already done.

At the risk of talking about what everyone has seen and heard, here goes my forty nine paisa worth … and like a good myth and story, hope you don’t mind if the movie is rehashed once again.

I am going to first begin with comparing moms and dads. Then I’ll go along to compare trains. (Can’t help it, trains are the leit motif of my current life… indeed, have always been so… trains have taken me to known destinations, have taken folks away to destinations unknown…)

We shall also talk of acronyms. When Jab We Met is already so succinct and wonderfully Indinglish, why make a much- longer- in- phonetic-terms JWM (Jay-Double U-Em) out of it, right? Unlike Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, a local language mouthful, that just needed to be ruthlessly downsized to DDLJ, and so what if the vistas were London and Switzerland. (Already the so called younger gen Adi Chopra and Karan Johar with their KANK, KKHH, K3G sound passe, the speed at which things move in today's planet!). And if there is time (which I am sure I’ll find since I am procrastinating in the writing of my forthcoming international presentation), we shall talk of Hindi movie ishtyle ‘pyaar-vyaar’ in the ‘90s versus the ‘00s. If not of earlier.

I begin with a question to Javed-saab. After all, you & Salim wrote the ever-eternal and cult-following line ‘Mere Paas Maa Hai’ in the ‘70s.

How do you place the character of Shahid Kapoor’s mom in the story? Is she present or is she absent? If she is present, why is she voiceless? If she is absent, why is she present at all? At this rate, where do you think, is the ‘mom’ likely to be headed in ten or twenty years time?

And which one was the bride’s dad exactly? In DDLJ, Amrish Puri was the hugely larger-than-life, humungously louder-than-life father-figure. Here, in Jab We Met, for someone who was not paying all that much attention to inessentials (me), there was some confusion between Kareena’s ‘dad’ and ‘chacha’ with the two characters seeming quite interchangeable. It was grandpa Dara Singh as created by Imtiaz Ali that had a firm grip, and always stood out, ancient deer antlers above him, true relics of a bygone era.

Point kya hai, you ask? Point yeh hai, ki grandpas are always putty in grandchildren’s hands, and if we now celebrate ‘family’ by blissfully rubbing out the beech-wala generation, it only means what we have all always known but never been ready to face. The face of future India is one in which we parents shall be present if we sort of fit in, within the youth’s scheme of things! And never you mind all that gyan about Indian tradition that reveres age and experience.

And so. While both movies celebrate the ‘no cause to rebel in life, everything is so hunky-dory’ post-liberalization phenomenon, chronologically the initial one that had to come along and pave the way was DDLJ. This movie indicated that prior to boy and girl coming together, huge labour pains in the form of garmagaram family dialogues, even painful and gory violence was necessary. Whereas by the time we reach the more recent Jab We Met, we see that we can conveniently brush off all family objections by a simple ‘Oh, they’ll come around, give them time’. Conservative attitudes of the girl (remember Kajol?) are passe, and as long as she is 'true' to her love, the family is with her. We can even 'happily run away' from reality. It is the modern pyaar version… If the guy and gal truly script their love together, other family members merely provide the much needed props and the backdrop. Along with Bollywood things like the fun Pritam soundtrack, halt-in-the-tracks lines such as 'Manzil se behtar lagne lage hain yeh raaste' and endearingly choreographed dances. Where the bottomline is Jo kuchh insaan real mein chahta hai na, actual mein, woh usey mil jata hai.

And then the whole train thingy. Today, we stand proud in our own Indian skins, and Laloo-land railways is good enough for us, thank you very much. London and Switzerland give way to Ratlam, Kota and Bhatinda. And although we laboriously lock and chain our belongings in real-life trains, sleeping fitfully and waking up with a start to check if all is in place every few minutes, in reel-life it is absolutely possible that we have all our stuff carefully delivered at the next station by a station-master we rude-talk to.

Am I beginning to sound whiney now? It is true I pretty much thought DDLJ was over-hyped, once upon a time. But believe you me, I loved, absolutely was smitten by Jab We Met, and have now seen it four times in three days (the new Rs. 49/- pricing feels even more paisa-vasool - value for money, the more you see it) and with the round-the-clock presence of a movie at home that has an eleven year old in it... it may actually be more than 4 times.

Imagine. If we extrapolate this to my fellow Indians, who are all much quicker off the mark than I have been, I cannot even begin to imagine the number of times we have all met up with Jab We Met so far.

A final curious question – do they still run that DDLJ daily single matinee at Maratha Mandir, as proudly as ever? God! What an anachronistic contrast! :-)

In the Holi Interstices of Life

2008-03-22T12:41:00.016+05:30

Tough to know if I'm coming or going - this frenetic month. But experientially rich nonetheless. Moving from the left to the right of the country. To top everything, my letter ‘a’ of the new E series cell-phone decided to go defunct & hide itself. With life and business being conducted on the sms, I find I do figure out w'ys to keep ‘a’ out of the picture. Soon, even seem to think with no ‘a’ in it! This write-up till now, title et 'l, without ‘a’... But most irrit'ting. Vowels r essent'l like so m'ny other ch'r'cters, in life. Not complaining too loudly since this cell-phone is one’s client too!

West Bengl, Krntk, Mhrshtr… Brdwn, Kolh’pur, Sol’pur, Bij’pur. Unilever project in smll towns, plus PhD fieldwork. Not to mention qlty time with mom in her vill’ge school in the birth village of Sri Ramakrishna, Kamarpukur, district Hooghly, where she is now resident past one year. And then, b'ck to short interv’ls at home when - here - m comfort’bly living out of suitc’ses.

Just bck fm an outstn trip – t’ken with family in tow ( me on work at Sol'pur… dtr on her spring break in school, hubby's decided to recruit in sm'll town desh, pretty successfully I might add... he got some excellent engineers). Str’t eleven hours drive b’ck from Bij. But wh’t a wonderful 2 day get’wy. 3 of us roadies on the Golden Q’dril'teral highway. Not knowing who we will meet next, where we'll stay at next, eat next, see next. Qlty bonding within. With everything im'ginable b'ck in the boot – why am i pushing this non-a business to the extreme?? You want a fan? We hve a mini electric p'nkha. Pillows? Hai na. Ordin'ry nahi chalega - bolster hi ch'hiye? Woh bhi hai. Gifts to give junta? 300 of them (OK, this one ws for the Sociology PhD fieldwork). ‘Discovered’ this new archaeological marvel at the Mhrshtr-Krntk border, tks to the excellent archaeologist Dr. Jadhav of Solapur University for pointing the place out.

KudalSangam, next to the coming together of the two tributaries of Krishna river, Seena and Bhima, and here an unbelievable eleventh century temple. Surrounded by miles of untouched greenery. Two garbha-gruhas side by side inside the temple that has emerged just six years ago, from centuries of being hidden – one for Shiva and one for Vishnu … with novel frescos on the ceiling carved out of single stone representing the bala-krishna, that you can twirl around 360 degrees and look at. Sunlight that reaches deep inside through seven doors in a direct ray, only on the solstice of 14 - 15 Jan every year.

And what a magnificent sight.... the 360 torsos each jutting out from the lingam - together in the shape of this large elegant shivling. Never seen anything like this anywhere. 360 is the number of days in the Marathi calender. The two huge Naga wall frescos were equally mesmerizing. Snakes have always held our fascination down the millenia. Sudhir Kakar has an excellent analysis in 'Intimate Relations' - what a book in every which way.

I tell you, what a country we belong to. Hidden treasures everywhere. Spotted by just a few. In the people, in its towns, in its digs. Folks ever smiling in spite of the worse possible struggles and situations in life, in the eternal and somehow assured wait for emerging triumphant. The Shaikh family in Solapur, that gamely moves along debts and all. The Nagane family hit by yet another tragedy after the third daughter's wedding. This other woman just met, with three children, who makes beedis and earns Rs. 35 for every 1000 made (and if the raw material provided by the factory owners runs out before the magic figure of 1000 is reached, she is expected to replenish at own cost) who wants to give us 'sherbet', yet another family who makes the cylindrical paper package covers that cover the tobacco sold in villages. She gets Rs. 5/- for every 1000 such covers made. We time her. She takes 6 seconds to make one.... Average of 9 per minute, that is 500 per hour, and thus two hours of working like a machine with no break gives her rupees five. My daughter is awed. By the value that the same money that carelessly passes through our hands, can command.

Bijapur – one more town that is so much a part of this nation, yet not quite on the beaten trail – with its Gol Gumbaj of the Adil Shahi sultanate. The original geodesic dome. HUGE. Made around 1640. A whisper at one end of its inner ring verandah that is at 7 floors height - we go up the minaret on its outside, what a view! - and this can be heard at the other distant end of the cavernous inner diameter. Even the rubbing of the palms (as instructed by a helpful fellow tourist, what would we do without them) is clear, and I as I walk to the other end, I overhear my daughter quietly negotiating the next Coke with her dad, even as they wait for me to reach the other end. I whisper a 'No thanda' firmly, and they are both startled at the clarity. The Adil Shahi must have turned in his grave deep down there below at mundane Coca Cola conversations.

If he hasn't already done so that is. He has his wife tombed on one side and his 'Hindu dancing consort' entombed on the other :-) , so we were told - again by yet another helpful chap .

Right now, back here on this holiday, every neighboring apartment building worth its brand new sturdy foundations is strenuously playing up the loudspeakers. The one to our West is playing ‘Harre Ram Harre Ram Harre Krishna Harre Ram’ from the movie Bhool Bhulaiyya. Our lobby – building friends have by now called at least 5 times asking us to come down and join the community celebration – is playing Nagara Nagara Nagara bajaa. The reverberations of the hits of 2007. A building further away is playing a more ghisa-pita old Holi song. Some silsilays are best erased yet remain a burr deep in the mind. What to do. Sounds of actual drums also. The mishmash in total – surprisingly – is not cacophonic. Ek ajeeb sa festive sa mood hai. Sounds. Colours. Smells...

Home reverberates with the khandaan. The three musketeers – Isha, Anupama, Ishani – ages 11, 10 and 9 – have at last managed to pester their Ron-kaka to wake up, leave home and bring abeer and pichhkaris. Their two grandmoms from Kolkata - Thamma and Bubu have at last located enough purana kapda for all to wear. Chhod-dada, their favorite grandpa visiting from Kolkata, insists on sleeping through it all to their chagrin. Aja, the other favorite and resident grandpa has refused to step out of his home at Powai Park. Bulpi-pishi is busy dishing out cheese omelettes, and Tina-kaki has just got the terrace ready water pipes et al, for the imminent dunking session. Breakfast has also triggered IAI to go make a ‘fruit-chaat’ for all. 3 bachchas plus 2 adults in the kitchen (not me) – it is a happy and holy mess all around. I love it!

But I digress. Where was I? Yes, in Bijapur. My holiday reading was ‘The Routledge Companion to Post-Modernism’. My attempt to make sense of subjects such as Critical & Cultural Theory and my life – not necessarily in that order.

And my daughter Isha was reading Skellig.
Her homework assignment from school. I tried reading it. A play with a 12 year old protagonist Michael. Who discovers this creature in his garage. Who loves Chinese food, but could be an archaeopteryx. Or is it all in his imagination? His friend Mina can see it too anyway.

And does having the main character as a child, make the book a children’s book? More so, a padhai wala book? Talk of post-modern works. If I began the book clueless, have ended it even more mystified. Can’t imagine our Indian boards – ICSc, CBSE, any of our state boards ever recommending a book like this as part of academic reading. What is this book?? Is it weird, or what!

Yet it is a compelling play. Compelling also in its lack of a clearcut narrative (belied by the presence of a ‘narrator’ on every page). The only aspect that makes you do a double-take is that this book is supposed to have won quite a few awards. It's a very recent book released in 2003. And the ultimate paradox - it's a recommended book for 11 and 12 year olds in an IB school. Post-modernism turned upside down. Have asked my daughter to explain life as the book and the character Skellig sees it. If this is essential reading, I am surely missing something - perhaps need to understand life as the nextgen sees it, once explained to me.

And with this general delicious feeling, I now go back to catch a much needed and well-earned snooze. On this lazy frenetic, noisy day of Holi, life is quiet.

Managing Hurt...

2008-03-20T12:55:00.004+05:30

This is something Swami Chidananda sent - as usual his timing is impeccable! (More on him in www.fowai.net)

When a blade hurts us physically, there are medical means to heal the wound. Let us consider here psychological hurt, and see what can heal the injury.

This topic is of utmost importance. All spirituality is essentially about being free from hurt. When our mind is totally cleansed of all the scars of the past, that itself is moksha, liberation. The root cause of hurt and of its continuation is one and the same in the cases of other common psychological ailments such as fear, worry, greed and jealousy.

We say, “I am hurt.” The wise ask us, “Who is hurt? Who or what is that ‘I’ that is hurt?”

The entity that is hurt is a conception of I. Many thoughts, born of memory, build this concept. If I have enjoyed fame and name for years, there is a large bundle of memories of all that and I carry a ‘me’ that expects special regard and attention from others, who are common men (and women) in my eyes. When I do not receive any special consideration, it hurts me. Even in the case of a relationship between just two people, it is the attachment to memories that keeps certain expectations arising and, when they are not fulfilled, there is hurt. Go anywhere in the world, you will soon be caught in the net of expectations. Spiritual centers are no exception. You expect the so-called gurus to constantly pay attention to you; what is more tragic, some (unripe) gurus seek attention or continued admiration from a good number (if not all) of their followers.

A mind that expects nothing cannot be hurt. Such a mind is an empty but alert mind.

We cannot go far by merely deciding not to expect. Willpower is a charming aspect of mind’s capabilities, which actually is utterly incapable of blessing us with true freedom. Intelligence and willpower are poles apart when it comes to how they influence the human mind. The former is born of total seeing while the latter breeds on partial consideration. With willpower, we may win battles but are sure to lose the war. Its glories are short-lived and it puts no end at all to any human misery. Will power gives us energy in a chosen direction and helps us achieve tasks but we are back to square one very soon. Intelligence removes basic misconceptions and leads us to illumination.

We need to give up our hurried ways that often border on panic, and take a dispassionate look at how we think. What drives our thoughts? Does a certain self-image act as the basis of all our reactions to situations? Is this image closer to facts or is it sustained by fancies?
Do ideas of ‘what we should be’ have a great power to shape our thoughts? Is the fact of ‘what we are’ on the back seat, helpless and hapless?

True intelligence is the ability to see through the games that our own thoughts play. It is about gaining basic understanding of how the machinery of thought functions within us. It is not a matter of generating great thoughts; it is rather made of insights into the structure of thought.

Self-observation, carried with intelligence, dismantles all the images in the mind. The walls of the hall then shine brightly without the clutter of too many framed pictures upon them. Such a mind comes upon silence. It has transparency. Old hurt leaves it and new hurt cannot then be.

Swami Chidananda

Monday, March 17, 2008

MANY LIES, MANY MASTERS…

2008-03-02T09:10:00.003+05:30

1.5 million copies sold. Says the jacket. True story, it says. Of a psychiatrist, his young patient and the past-life therapy that changed their lives.

I made my 18^th attempt to complete reading ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’, my interest in half life mode. i.e. going down exponentially - half-hearted as compared to the last time I tried reading - each time.

How come so many folks swear by this book, and I find the going so totally uphill?

Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love to do a past-life therapy on myself. Imagine if science can get my DNA to talk, and tell its fascinating history. Imagine – if I can re-look at the seed of me that existed at an earlier point of time – for something of me was there, always, in the past, that is as sure as I stand here living and breathing.

If I decide to begin my journey, say, a mere hundred years ago, there are clearly eight people I am, for sure, merged in – the four sets of parents of my grandparents. Each with future bits of me… my predilections, my genes, my inherent tendencies…Ah, that’s the one I got the dust allergy from. Oh, he’s the one who dislikes sweets, is it? And wow, look at how well she sings and plays the instrument – why did this gene evade me? My ancestors, while they gave me the genes, what I would love to know more of, is what is called the ‘environment’ they each lived in - each bound in social roles, so many untold thoughts, so many untold histories. And all stories, in a real and fascinating way, enmeshed deep deep inside me, in the mist of the past.

Imagine. As I go back further and further in time, there are not just eight, but perhaps hundreds who I am, in a real sense , a part of back at any point of time – I am a living proof of their presence on this planet today. This is such a soul-stirring feeling, such a seamlessly connected to the wide world feeling, so much my-continuing-life feeling. So simple in the truth in it. So awesome too.

Just like the flower blooms so simply,

The morning in my life has woken up the same way.

… and I hope that my evening time also recognizes

To end in the same tune…

Tagore, I think. Who else can put in focus, our time on this planet, so well.

And science tells us there are no endings. If I am a drop in the ocean, I am so, along with billions of molecules. When I merge and go back, and then re-emerge, it will be as another combination of molecules perhaps, but what a mesmerizing history each subpart might have. Like the billions of strands in the double helix of my DNA.

Yet, what do we do - we look at the whole, and seek the past of the complete drop as such. That is because we are so attached to the 'me' of this life!

That’s what this Brian Weiss is missing the point on. When the true reality is so very fascinating, how can these descriptions of past life, by one young girl – each sounding suspiciously like some pages out of a school history text book hold my attention? I mean, her past lives (and the many masters) would do yeoman service to the world, not by providing what is being presented as 'gems of wisdom' but by perhaps going to times that would make it truly incredible - such as deciphering the Indus Valley script, no? Why isn’t anyone ever from some place like this, in her past lives? And that’s the basic defect in the Weiss logic. That he well camouflages under the academic degrees, and with continuous explanations that he rambles on & on about - of his own doubts, and thus smartly tying up of every loose end that could degenerate into outright suspicion by other readers such as me, of course written in a fairly easy to read style.

But then, if indeed she had deciphered the Indus script, the irony is that the book may not have become this famous. Whoever heard of reality – such as archaeology – sell a million and half copies? And that is a telling comment on what we humans seek – doubtful answers to the unknown are always more interesting than some proven and concrete solutions.

I loved watching the movie Ghost – still watch it if I catch it on any of the channels. Enjoy the chemistry between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and the story is one you want to believe in - you want to imagine it real. It is exactly what a good 2 hour movie is supposed to do – provide entertainment, in a world of make-believe simulations outside. I loved reading Roots too, once upon a time, and could never understand why folks dissed the book saying Alex Haley created a work of fiction. So what? That’s great, it was well-researched, and an important addition to the racial anthology, I felt.

But I just cannot bring myself to fit this Many Lives Many Masters anywhere into my acceptance grey cells. It is a piece of shit - to me. And my opinion each time I try to complete it, only digs in deeper. And thank god for blogs where one can bare one’s feelings as it is!

Cell Phones: Cement or Fragment??

2008-02-20T10:05:00.008+05:30

Just back from Solapur...

Overheard this cell-phone conversation, as the young fellow talked first to his mom, and then his girl friend, even as one of his chums sat opposite... the guys were sitting across in the AC three tier.

The first thing the two guys commented on, as soon as they boarded the train Hindi-movie style while it was leaving the platform, all out of breath, is 'Arre, yahan recharge point nahi hai '. (Me - oldgen - I was thrilled enough to see clean purdahs and sheets, in our esteemed Rlys, now-making-a-profit ka AC dibbas)

Laloo, Laloo, suno toh sahi... While one of them swore he had seen it on a recent trip in another train, the other was a tad skeptical about it. Meanwhile, the skeptic received a call - ring-tone the default Nokia one - from his mom. Conversation in monosyllables, though mom, like all moms, seemed to have lots to say.
Apart from the 'Hmmmms....', 'Ji....s', 'Haan, Ma....'s', he got agitated at one point when his mom must have asked him - well, we can all guess what she asked him ... 'Ma, woh shahar ke ek kone mein rehta hai, aur mein doosre kone mein, kaise mil sakta hoon'?... and then, his phone got cut off...
Commiserated other friend , 'In today's time and age, this cutting off of signal is criminal.'
Nokia ringtone happens again almost immediately, though young man is sitting back not trying ...
'Nahi, Ma, yahan coverage nahi hai... YAHAN SIGNAL NAHI HAI...'
(listens) 'Main pahunchkar baat karta hoon... BAAT karta hoon.... nahi, Ma- TUMSE baat karunga...'
Had just about finished this conversation, when a piercing & loud police whistle went off with car-horns blaring, in the quiet of the train-night.
That - we all soon figured - was his ring-tone for girl-friend's call coming in...
'..Yeah, my phone was busy... was on an official call.... Sorry, i can't hear - there's poor signal.... No, no, SERIOUSLY, please believe me, coverage nahi hai... sach...
Arre bhai....
'Bhai' is just a figure of speech, yaar, hey-hey'....
Phone cuts off again...
Says sympathetic friend from the other side : 'In one or two years, we'll not be able to give the poor signal reason to anyone you know, what will we do...' (I made note and added to young gen's list of future problems in life in India)
Our friend (the one with the mom and the gf) is frantically trying to dial through - and getting jammed...
Piercing police constable whistle happens.... Train chugs along. All of us junta stoically do our own thing...He puts on the phone, not to his ear - first, to his mouth.
'Hello... Hello.... Mike... Testing... Testing....'.....
'Just checking.... Yeah.... OK, I am joking now....'
'Yeah, hey-hey - me too....'
'Warning you OK? The signal's not good, I am warning you, OK? Don't tell me later I didn't....'

So what do we call this aaj kal wale conversation and dialogues - is it two way/ three way / no way??? All that was spoken of, was the absence of a signal! While there was one voice I heard all through, funnily enough I never heard him - it was three other voices that were really speaking, speaking. Besides, if we remove 'signal' talk/ the cut calls, will service-providers start earning a lot less??

Mikhail Bakhtin, that great Russian thinker must be jumping up and down in his grave in delight... Back in the 40s, and later in the 60s and 70s, he had postulated the 'polyphonic' concept... the human capacity for simultaneous multiple voices; what he said was part of a 'dailogic imagination'... and his thoughts emerged out of his dislike for any structural codes of language.
Wouldn't he just adore this new fragmentedly together world we live in!!!

A 'Socio' story coming up !

2008-02-17T14:19:00.003+05:30

And which lens do YOU wear?

2008-02-16T13:52:00.002+05:30

Nominated, by UN, I am told, as best poem, 2006 - :

When I born, I black
When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black

And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you gray
And you calling me colored??

The New Seed-Keepers

2008-02-12T10:01:00.002+05:30

A few days ago, this film The Seed-Keepers totally blew me away, and that I've already blogged about. A valiant group of Dalit women in Andhra, keeping an age-old custom of a diversity of seeds alive from year to year, so that the nextgen - both of the seeds variety as well as children of these families, blossom and prosper.

On Sunday, the IITB e-cell organized an e-summit on entrepreneurship, where the Venture Capital muscle was out on display. To facilitate and 'incubate' the next-gen of the top end of young entrepreneurs. Names such as Canaan, Sherpalo, Helion, Seedfund, GlobalLogic, DFJ and many more. With India the flavor of the season, the hardened Silicon Valley 'seed-keepers' were here in full strength. I attended all day, and have come away with thoda sa queasy, thoda sa theek-thaak feelings. We students of IITB did not have to pay a penny ultimately, though the initial 'you can attend' mail told us IITians had to cough up teen sau rupaiya for lunch. Wow, was there a big outside contingent willing to pay much more, to attend the proceedings of the day. Yet, the thing is, I just did not feel completely gung-ho, in spite of the amount of money that sponsors had been willing to throw at this event (free lunch got added later, comprende?) , the media presence - that all went to indicate the general hope in the air of prosperity and riches.

And that precisely is what I am feeling odd about. No one says VCs are expected to be philanthropists. Sure, they are here to make money. But why did I get a feeling that reminded me of vultures swooping in for the kill? Talking of payback in 4 to 6 years, seed capital of 2 to 5 crores, IT this and IT that. Bade bade baatein. Oonche oonche nazar.

One fellow in one of the multiple sessions, from the audience, clad in a kurta, asked a pertinent question - in Hindi... Why is it that VCs do not 'micro-finance' entrepreneurship. Pay out Rs. 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs to hundreds of people - as versus seeking to pay out in crores to a few dozen. Why not a more 'social entrepreneur' role... I am not sure he got any clear answer.

And of the 'speakers' / 'mentors' / 'panel discussion members', the less said the better. The hype overshadowed the content. A great idea the e-summit, that got jacked by some strange folks who participated as speakers. But first, the good bit : Among the guys who were phenomenal, in their scope of thinking, were Ashish Gupta, of Junglee fame, and said to be one of the original 'seeders' of Google, and Sharad Sharma of Yahoo. Their two-man session sparkled, wit, gyan, food for thought all compounded wonderfully. A total pleasure and joy to behold. Total paisa-vasool. Ultimately, to all potential entrepreneurs, this is what one aims to be - that 'all-is-well' with the world, that bone-deep confidence.

In other sessions was Manik Arora, full of polite postures up on the stage, and while on camera to the media, and otoh, totally unwilling to give the time of day to genuine questions when I overheard him being asked outside - with a brusque "I don't have the time". In other words, if you are not a potential entrepreneur who I can make money out of, bugger off and do not disturb me. (And come to think of it, does doing a top-level job in an entrepreneurship company make one an entrepreneur?? Aka Manik-man as well as some others... Hitesh Oberoi who came in from Naukri for example (I thought that was Sanjeev Bhikchandani's baby??) ) Vivek Bhargava, another chap, so called entrepreneur made an ass of himself up on stage by using 'real' parenthood as versus adopted parenthood as a metaphor, that he was actually clueless about. Perhaps he should be reading today's newspaper item about this child who is hearing handicapped and has found a loving home with this couple in Bhopal.

Sab baccha party entrepreneurs, green behind the ears (behind the years?) - as we would say. This brings upfront the inherent contradiction... Ajit Balakrishnan of rediff (in the first panel discussion of the day) felt there was a need for many more mentors of the 45 to 60 year age-band variety. Kahan hai, bhai??

Rajendra Mishra arrived - if his name did not mean much, his intro in the booklet said 'Serial Entrepreneur' . If that still did not mean anything, his face (rather than his name) said 'RK Mishra' - Ah!
He was, justifiably, on a euphoric high, enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. This then is the guy who had just won the Lead India the previous evening, and was splattered across the front page of one - merely one (not others, of course!) daily. In today's world, 'news' is not common news - it is branded news - the papers decide who will be on their personal front pages.

Anyway, what he did - and good for him! - was that he generally threw a necessary spanner in the works - by demolishing the entire line-up of 'stars on display' at the summit as an unnecessary 'dotcom' e-venture.
Why is it, he asked, that all the speakers here are from software? If that is what IIT is about, you should just halt all other departments and only keep Computer Science. And where is the 'giving back to society' within all these talk of crores and billions?

Perhaps Mr. Ramadorai, the TCS head had the last word in his first words (he was the keynote speaker) - India had 13 million retail outlets. That tells you about the power of entrepreneurship in this country. The entrepreneurial spirit rather than the making-big-money factor.

Which is a theme, I think, that the e-cell organizers, need to do next year. Invite some grass-roots folks - banie ke dukan wale hi sahi; vegetable vendor hi sahi. In fact, we sorely need a reality check of a session that can no way be conducted in English. Yet of the success stories that keep this country rooted. And there are the top-end folks such as Dangayach of Sintex; that guy who's in the new rupee billionaire list - what's his name, from IIMA, who makes those sugar factories in Belgaum and so many more... Narendra Murkumbi, I think...Connected to the land, not flying up there folks. Most real (and really big) entrepreneurs always display a certain amazing quality - of not working for the money, and yet the money comes rolling in. These guys then channelize most of the funds in very interesting social ways. ... These are those who have understood the Swami Vivekananda diktat of 'Those alone live, who live for others' even as we take our country forward. It is time to move away from making the Ambani brothers our icons - who we only hear of, in terms of rocks worn around their necks or Gulf-Jets given as birthday gifts... More stories of folks like Dangayach who keeps insisting he is not a entrepreneur (if he is not, God knows who is!), the Subhiksha guy, our IIT's Dunu Roy, Shailesh Gandhi....

And of course, we would all gain by watching 'The Seed-Keepers' - the real seed-keepers that is! To begin with, those who missed the film , might as well read a bit about it.

Last word: I thought, paediatricians use 'incubators' only if a child is born premature? :-) :-)